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anime-and-manga-rants · 3 years

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Why Jujutsu Kaisen’s First Episode is So Good

Today, I want to take a look at JJK’s first episode and how its structure makes it one of the best anime first episodes I’ve ever seen.

At first, I wanted to make this another installment of my The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly series, but I don’t think the way those analyses are organized would do this episode justice. I’m going to tackle this analysis in a more linear way than that series. I’ll still be giving JJK’s first episode a grade at the end, though. It’s still a first episode, after all. And it’s too fun not to.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

...

The episode doesn’t start off on a bad note:

The first character we actually see (Gojo) doesn’t appear again until the second episode, which is a little strange, but it’s nothing necessarily bad. Normally, it’d be best to first introduce us to Itadori. But it’s part of this opening scene’s intrigue, in a way.

Having Gojo be introduced first only to immediately disappear raises some questions throughout the rest of the episode. Obviously, he’s got to be important to the story to be shown first. So where the hell did he go? This, combined with the fact that Itadori’s set to be executed while clearly oblivious as to why makes for an opening scene full of questions. ‘Who are they?’ for one, of course. But more than that: ‘Why does this teacher at Jujutsu Tech want to execute a boy who seemingly has no idea what he did to get there?’ And: ‘What’s Jujutsu Tech?’

Despite this scene lacking a gripping opening line — the opening line is Gojo saying “good morning” — it still keeps us interested enough to keep watching. It raises too many questions we want answered to not do so.

The tension in this opening scene is palpable, and that’s what makes it good. Stories are all about tension.

...

Moving on... the inciting incident occurs at the end of the episode; therefore, everything before then is setup.

Before getting too deep into any breakdown of the setup in this episode, I’d like to mention that setup and backstory are often seen as one in the first episode of any show. But this isn’t so— at least, they shouldn’t be. Setup is necessary in a first episode, but backstory isn’t.

Setup is introducing us to a protagonist’s ordinary world so that we can get a sense of the difference between what they’re used to and what they’re about to face. Backstory is essentially anything that comes before the story, and it’s often what we find in lengthy info-dumps that interrupt the flow of a story. Backstory is needed sometimes, but it’s far better slipped into a story in moderation, not dumped onto a reader at the very beginning. A literary agent would take one look at a heap of backstory in the first chapter of a novel and toss it in the reject pile. If it can be done respectfully in a first episode, then I’m on board. But usually it’s not needed right up front.

Which is why it’s so refreshing to see that JJK’s first episode has not a trace of backstory anywhere. Overall, this episode is really strong, and I think the lack of backstory plays a role in that.

Furthermore, the setup in this episode is tremendously well done.

You see, before the inciting incident, we must first be introduced to our protagonist’s ordinary world. ('Inciting incident’ is the name for the event that sets the protagonist on the story’s main journey.) But their ordinary world is going to be more boring than the new world they’re going to find themselves in for the majority of the story. Therefore, we need some tension to make the setup before the inciting incident more interesting. Because if it’s too boring (or too long), chances are the audience is going to give up before the story gets anywhere.

There’s plenty of tension in this episode, and it’s almost all thanks to Fushiguro and his quest:

Every once in a while, Itadori’s POV is interrupted in the best way possible by Fushiguro on his search for Sukuna’s finger. This is where the true tension of the episode builds. While Fushiguro’s scenes focus on building the tension of the ‘curse problem’ that culminates at the end of the episode, Itadori’s scenes focus on introducing us to our protagonist. The constant trouble that we’re reminded of every time Fushiguro is on screen plus the promise of Itadori somehow being involved (it’s a story, after all—he has to be involved somehow) makes for an engaging first episode.

And we can’t forget how Itadori is plenty interesting enough to keep the audience engaged without all that promise of trouble to come. Not to say that promise is bad! But we get a great sense of who Itadori is in this episode, and he’s awfully likable and fun. We can tell he’s going to be a complex character worth following.

...

Before I start on the next section, I can’t neglect to mention how there’s no trace of forced dialogue anywhere in this episode! Not even in the setup, where it’s most common. There’s no sign of anyone mentioning anything that they know good and well just because the audience doesn’t know it. And nothing is lost because of it!

We still manage to learn that Itadori’s got some superhuman strength (which would be strange if it appeared out of nowhere later in the episode, when he fights those curses with Fushiguro). We still manage to learn that he’s in the occult club. And that he isn’t afraid of ghosts despite his upperclassmen being terrified of them, and he tags along with them when they go to haunted places for moral support. (Which is a form of specificity— it’s something that truly makes a complex and lovable character. And you bet I laughed when that image popped up of his upperclassmen cowering behind him as he strolled so nonchalantly. How could I not like Itadori’s character?)

This is how a first episode should be done. This is showing (rather than telling) at its finest.

...

Just by the way Itadori is depicted in this episode, through his dialogue and his actions, we can tell he’s going to be a complex character. (The best kind of character!) Not only through his dialogue and actions, though. His promise of complexity is ensured the moment the story-worthy problem is introduced.

(There are two kinds of ‘problems’ in stories: the story-worthy problem and the surface-level problems. The surface-level problems are the ones that are easy to spot— for example, defeating Loki in the The Avengers. There are dozens, even hundreds, of surface-level problems in a story. After all, to defeat Loki, didn’t they have to recruit each Avenger, stop Loki in Stuttgart, and take down the Chitauri army during the climax? And those are only three. But there’s usually only one (or a few if there’s a large cast of important characters) story-worthy problem. These are the problems that are associated with a character arc. Take The Avengers again— didn’t Tony Stark demonstrate how he learned to make sacrifices for others when he redirected the missile into the wormhole at the end? Tony’s story-worthy problem was being too selfish.)

The idea of Itadori’s story-worthy problem is introduced in this episode’s setup:

It’s when his grandfather tells him to help others and not to waste his life.

Now, while Itadori interprets this in his own way — I’ll discuss why this is great later — the beginning is there. His acceptance of his grandfather’s advice (with his own twist) is going to be his story-worthy problem. The episode wants you to know it, too. After all, Itadori references his grandfather’s words during his and Fushiguro’s fight with the biggest curse:

(I’m using the manga to keep everything succinct.)

He’s clearly accepted his grandfather’s advice, though he’s taken more to the idea of giving people proper deaths. Of course, this still manifests in him wanting to help people, as not helping them would very likely lead to their untimely demises. Like how he helps Fushiguro in this scene.

The development of his character will be based on this desire to fulfill his grandfather’s dying wishes and how his views of that desire change as he faces more and more surface-level problems. This is what makes it a story-worthy problem.

Every good story needs both a story-worthy problem and many surface-level problems, because a story with just the latter wouldn’t be much of a story at all. We want to see characters change, whether it’s for the better or for the worse. Your story’s surface-level problems would have to be pretty interesting to keep an audience interested for the entire duration if there’s no story-worthy problem to be seen. Even then, your audience isn’t going to leave your work with much satisfaction. The story-worthy problem is what gives meaning to your specific characters being a part of your story. Why not just any old gaggle of characters? The story-worthy problem also what holds the structure of a story together.

The inciting incident is the best place to introduce the initial surface-level problem and hint towards the story-worthy problem. Itadori saying he’s got his own curse to deal with is about as big of a hint as we could get. It’s fantastic! It’s no good when the story-worthy problem is too difficult to even pinpoint.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to determine what event is the true inciting incident of a story. But the true inciting incident will always be wherever the story is kickstarted plus wherever the story-worthy problem is hinted at. Therefore, the inciting incident of JJK occurs when Itadori helps Fushiguro take down the curse and eats Sukuna’s finger to do so. (Usually it’s not quite so obvious what the story-worthy problem is, but it certainly works in this case!) After all, the story-worthy problem is clearly there, and as soon as he eats Sukuna’s finger, he’s secured himself a spot in a world he’s never been a part of before. If he hadn’t eaten the finger, he could’ve gone back to his normal life after the curse was defeated.

Therefore, JJK succeeds in giving us an inciting incident that accomplishes exactly what it needs to do in a way that deserves nothing but praise.

...

Earlier, I mentioned that I needed to discuss why Itadori interpreting his grandfather’s words in his own way is important. Well, it all has to do with agency.

Protagonists need agency. In other words, they need to decide things for themselves. They need to be active. Passive protagonists who are simply dragged around by the plot and do anything necessary to keep the plot going are the worst kinds of protagonists. They’re the protagonists we get bored of at best, hate at worst. I mean, they can’t do anything for themselves. Who wants to follow a doormat through a story?

Itadori is certainly following his grandfather’s advice, but he gave it a meaning that suited him more. He isn’t really following his grandfather’s words blindly. Another example: when he eats Sukuna’s finger. Fushiguro didn’t tell him to do that. Fushiguro only mentioned that the curse wanted to eat it to gain power. It was completely Itadori’s decision.

Therefore, right off the bat, our protagonist is making decisions for himself, even while being thrown (unwillingly) into an entirely foreign world.

...

I can’t end this analysis without first mentioning how well everything in this episode fits together.

I mean, come on... Itadori’s in the occult club, which is how he knew where Sukuna’s finger went, and because his upperclassmen are in the occult club, they wanted to investigate a cursed object. It was mandatory to join a club, and the occult club finishes before five, which is how Itadori could visit his grandfather and hear his grandfather’s advice (which would become the story-worthy problem).

And what about the occult club’s presentation of their research project to the student council president? They theorize that there’s a dead body buried in the rugby field, and that’s why the rugby players kept falling ill and had to be hospitalized...

Then, later, when Fushiguro walks to the rugby field, he spots a curse and asks himself, “Is there a dead body buried here or something?”

This episode is fantastic!

...

Well, I believe that’s about all I wanted to cover in this post. Everything else is a bit too minor to include, and I don’t want to make this too long. So, let’s hurry up and get to the grade for this episode.

I’m giving it an A+. It absolutely deserves it. I can’t think of another anime’s first episode that I would even consider rating this high. (Even giving Dr. Stone’s first episode an A- was a bit generous, honestly.)

Good for Jujutsu Kaisen!

...

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk anime #jjk analysis #fushiguro megumi #itadori yuuji #gojo satoru #jujutsu megumi #jujutsu gojo #jujutsu itadori #manga analysis #anime analysis

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wingsandembers · 3 years

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Next book predictions, take it with a grain of salt, but I try my best to base them on what is canon and what we read already from the books, esp in ACOSF, but we all interpret things differently and these are just my initial predictions:

It will be either be on Azriel, Elain or both - no it’s not about ships or wanting them to be endgame, they’re logically who will be the next book be centered on, either way they’ll both be prominent characters in it regardless who will be marketed as the lead.

The story will take place more in the River House whenever they’re in Velaris than it will in the House of Wind, if at all, which means while we will only hear about the Valkyries (esp Gywn and Emerie) but we won’t see them as much, probably not until a battle scene, like Nesta needing their help to rescue Elain.

If the book is primarily Azriel, I think we will see the resolution to the Mor/Eris situation, which can then also lead to the Lucien/Elain situation. If it’s Elain, then more likely resolution to the Lucien/Elain/Azriel/Gywn? Question mark on gywn coz of point above. She’s primarily Nesta’s friend and we won’t see Gywn as much if she still refuses to leave the library and also what business does she have to be constantly interacting with IC? Same goes for Emerie and Mor. Mor will continue to be all over the place, and Emerie primarily in Illyria.

So as much as I am begging for it, I don’t think we will get a satisfying resolution to Nesta/Cassian/Mor/Azriel/Elain/Lucien + Mor/Eris + most unlikely resolutions to Mor/Emerie + Azriel/Gywn all in the next book, it’s all too much for one book (especially a middle book in the phase 2 of the acotar series). I’m sure sjm will either brush over a lot of it or focus on just one or two aspects of it to help move the plot forward. Whoever the pairings will be need to be very relevant to the plot of the next book.

If Koschei is the big bad, then he won’t be dealt with fully until the last book, so I think the next book will likely deal more with Beron (and Tamlin), possibly the remaining human queens and but most likely the need to unite pyrthian, which means either securing alliance finally or installing a high king.

My high king theory is that the high king would be Lucien not Rhys, and to parallel it with the first high king, the general and queen that will betray him is Azriel and Elain. That betrayal and what will Lucien do will be the cliffhanger for the last book. Again, doesn’t mean they’ll be endgame but that betrayal from Azriel and Elain, whether it’s just a one time thing between them that will cost them both or sth that will make Elain reject her mating bond, or will lead to Elain choosing Lucien despite wanting to be with Azriel coz of the need for the alliance or for Lucien to be the High King to stand a chance against koschei, will be the main romance drama in the next book...IMO.

I don’t buy into the evil!Elain theory, it doesn’t make sense for her character, she can definitely be made into an interesting and even flawed character without turning her evil. I think her haters will be proven wrong (this coming from someone who currently don’t like Elain)

In acosf when nesta noticed elain has learned to move stealthily and Cassian took notice that Elain is unlikely just starting community gardens all over Velaris, and the way Azriel and Elain was so charged looking at each other even before we read Azriel’s excerpt during solstice, I’m betting Elain and Azriel has been sneaking out together, maybe taking elain to one his spy missions, either way something must have happened in one of their secret excursions, and all that culminated right at solstice and what we read in the Azriel excerpt. Like that sexual tension between them didn’t just happen while Azriel was watching Elain plant flowers. But after what happened at solstice, Azriel did listen to Rhys and why Azriel was brooding more than usual and Elain seem to also be now avoiding Azriel as a result.

I also think Azriel knows more than Feyre what’s going on with Elain, and why Azriel felt the need to say out loud that she should not be exposed to the Troves, I think it’s more than just overprotectiveness or thinking elain can’t handle it but Nesta can. Azriel has been doing most of the spy work so he’s the one who knows the most what they’re going to be up against.

The magical object they’ll be searching for - coz they need to search for one in every book, that’s the basic arc of the storytelling in this series - will either be Narben or something only a seer can find, like maybe the fourth dread trove object, in order to explain why it can’t be feyre or nesta be looking for it this time.That magical object will also make someone who posses it high king and/or yield power that rivals the 3 dread troves combined, so they want to get it before it goes to the wrong hands, so Elain will go with Azriel to find it, resuming their secret excursions that will be official now. Something will go wrong, Lucien will know cause of his mating bond with elain, which will all lead to my high king theory above.

#elain archeron #Azriel #post acosf theories #acosf #lucien vanserra #Eris vanserra #morrigan #nesta archeron #feyre archeron #Cassian #acotar #I base my ships on what the books tell me & not make predictions based of who I want to see endgame or fave characters #as you can see I barely mention nesta and Cassian here and I want them to be prominent in the next book #but likely we will only get them as much as we got feysand in acosf if we’re lucky!#elriel #elucien

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spneveryseason · 4 years

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Do talk abt Sam in new ep

Okay so...this might be Discourse TM but I have thoughts and opinions on this and I’ll try to state them as clearly as I can here.

I know we discuss on here a lot about Sam’s role in later seasons, and there are two general camps: those who believe Sam is underused and underappreciated, and those who don’t think so. I know people who usually fall into the first camp are labeled bitter Sam girls but I want to have a genuine discussion about this without falling into those labels and accusations and such. Let’s talk about this as objectively as we can.

To set it up: the way I see it, tv shows with multiple protagonists have several ways they can divide up screentime and narrative space. The first way, which was used in shows like friends, was to divide time episode by episode to each character and make sure they get more or less equal screen time. The second is to divide episodes focuses throughout seasons: character get different episodes that will focus on them and it’ll all even out in the end. I think most shows will do a combination of both things.

The way I see it, Supernatutal also does the combination method. There are Dean episodes and Sam episodes. There are also episodes that will be Sam or Dean-heavy, but will also feature the other a bit more significantly. There are also eps where they get a more or less equal focus. In recent years, I feel like this balance has been skewed hugely in Dean’s favor, with Sam more or less disappearing in the Dean or Dean-heavy episodes, while Dean will still be a significant presence in the Sam or Sam-heavy episodes.

Let’s take season one as a case study. I’d say, for example, that 1x14 Nightmare is a Sam episode. Despite that, Dean gets a significant presence in the ep even if it doesn’t necessarily center on him: he gets to assert his worldview, to connect emotionally to the mother who has just lost her whole family. 1x13 Route 666 is a Dean episode, but Sam still gets a presence here and talks about his college life and how he’s feeling. 1x01 Pilot is a Sam-heavy episode but Dean is still major part of it, ditto with 1x12 being a Dean-heavy episode with a significant Sam presence. This all culminates in a finale in which both play a heavy role in the final, important choice that is made that wraps up the series arc. Both of their contributions feel like they’re on the same level.

Compare this to season 15. Again, we have Dean episodes and Sam episodes and Dean-heavy episodes and Sam-heavy episodes. And that’s fine, that’s normal. However. The way Sam is treated in the Dean episodes is markedly different from the way Dean is treated in the Sam episodes in general. Let’s use an example: I’d argue that 15x04 is a Sam episode. It’s also the episode in the season to feature the least amount of Dean in general, but that’s more because Jensen Ackles directed this ep. Despite this, we still get an individual sense of how he’s doing: we get the meat man quips, the joking around with the school mascot, the supportive speech at the end of the episode: Dean is more background to Sam’s foreground but he’s there. He’s participating. He even contributed meaningfully by being the person to kill the monster teen. 15x11 is another example: it’s not a straight up Sam episode but it is Sam heavy. And yet, Dean gets some emotional development with regards to his own identity as a hero and his own sense of self-worth.

Let’s compare this to, say, 15x13. Sam gets his moments here and there, but there’s no concrete sense of development or care here. He even gets left off altogether in the final battle, holding the door, for no discernable reason. It seems Sam is shifted to the side when there is development needed for Dean and others. The focus of Jack’s role in the episode is also focused through the lens of how Dean feels about it rather than Sam. Another example is this most recent episode, 15x15. It’s not a Dean or a Sam episode, it’s more a Cas and Jack episode. Dean still gets some concrete role here: he gets closure on his mother, he has a confrontation with Amara, he gets one-on-one time with her. Is there anything you can think of that Sam honestly and sincerely contributes to this ep? Last we see of him, perhaps 3/4 of the way into the episodes, is Dean telling him to stay in the car while he talks to Amara. He doesn’t even get to be in the final reveal scene. There’s something skewed here that there wasn’t before: episode contributions and screen time are overall distributed unevenly, and it seems Sam is the most acceptable of the brothers to sub out entirely when it comes to having an important episode moment.

All this to say: the beef I have isn’t with the way Sam is treated on the show generally. He does get attention in his own eps. However, what I do have a problem with is the way he’s treated in episodes that do not center on him, where generally he’s shuffled off into a corner. Dean categorically does not get this same treatment.

#sam winchester #spn critical #spn meta #long post #show negative #speaks #spn spoilers

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years

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I recently saw a video where GRRM talked about how he saw two different kinds of writers. He mentioned the gardener(planting the seed of an idea and letting it grow) and the architect(who plans out and organizes everything ahead of time). Obviously, every writer is a little bit of both but I was wondering which you relate to more and if you’d be willing to share some more about your own writing approaches and processes :)

I think I've answered similar questions in the past, but it'd be near impossible to dig it out in this ridiculously big, chaotic archive of my blog xD so I guess I'll answer it again, and if we come across the previous answers I've given, it'd even be fun to compare if there's anything different in the answer these days (?)

Personally, I think the best way to go about this is to have a mix of both things, but for me, it's in a very specific manner.

While I absolutely see the value in letting a story spiral and grow into whatever it wants to be, I have to say I don't think my best work comes from that. The lack of structure is similarly liberating and dangerous, because if your story's purpose isn't something you, as an author, have really made up your mind about, it's 100% possible that the story will end up going in very strange directions that MIGHT not make much sense, when you look at where you started out.

I've told this story a few times, but it bears repeating xD my first "serious" attempt at writing (by which I mean, I took it seriously, not that the content itself was super serious, since it was a trainwreck more often than not xD) started off as a perfectly happy romcom high school story! And tbh, to this day I love it as it is... but I know, I KNOW, that I totally warped the initial purpose and process of the story when, upon fulfilling the first bit of conflict in the story and leaving some massive loose ends I had to wrap up, I found myself at a loss because I had no idea how to continue. I was seriously, genuinely, at a loss for ideas and storylines to keep going. What, then, did I come up with?

... my happy romcom characters ended up embroiled in an organized crime catastrophe that has ZERO build-up in the first part of the story xD

(To the eagle-eyed who might have picked up something here... yes. That is 100% what I was poking fun at through Yang in Gladiator during the Fire Lord's Shadow arc. Yes. I mock myself. More accurately, I make Azula and Sokka mock my most questionable writing choices :'D)

Now, then, I had a very weird mess in my hands and I admit, it wasn't a great place to be at xD you see me now with my very, very small likelihood of falling into writer's block? Well, back then, I spent more time blocked than writing, for sure :'D and one of the reasons why that happened is because, while I had some ideas for what I wanted to write in the future? I didn't really have a set direction beyond "I want these and these characters as endgame relationships!", which is pretty much the most basic level of "plotting" you can pretend to do, as a writer xD And ironically, even then I was far more malleable and willing to experiment with whatever character combinations came up later, which even resulted in me discovering, well into writing a story, that some characters I absolutely did NOT conceive in a relationship were actually pretty good together! :'D

But that I had very little direction when I started writing that story was still a problem. I actually found more direction and built some more structure as I reached the last part of the story, and I will say, it's the strongest bit of it, by far xD (as evidence of what I'm saying, it was the first time I ever wrote an OUTLINE DOC! XD) but I have no doubts that, if I'd had the foresight to actually know where I was going, the story as a whole would be much much better, no matter how much I love it for what it is.

So! This particular writing experience of mine taught me countless things, among them, to actually ponder direction and purpose in stories instead of diving in blindlly. It's not really about having foreshadowing hints every ten minutes, which is what some people take as a sign of quality (I'll dare be quite controversial and say that not because you know what you'll write ten years down the line does it mean your story automatically makes sense... xD), it's about actually having a purpose in what you're building, a real direction, character arcs and plotlines that, to put it simply, work.

Therefore... I know for a fact that I can't be a full-blown plantser (or gardener) because I've tried it, and while I absolutely see the merits, the drawbacks are pretty sizable for me, and it just really doesn't work with my approach to storytelling.

Thus... If I MUST choose a category out of them both, I'd say I'm an architect, but the truth is I'm not an architect in the most strict sense of the word, either :'D

If you want a super strong building, you obviously need the best foundations for it. But you don't stop there, of course: erecting a building takes a lot of different efforts and processes if you really want your building to not only stand tall but to be a proper, decent place to live in. And while in real life, the reasonable thing would be to have a plan for each of those little details you have to build in, from filling the walls, to the type of flooring, down to even the decor... in writing, THIS is where I take the gardener approach! :'D

I don't know if I've said it in the past, but while sometimes I don't know how to start a story (which, despite my carelessness with the matter in the past, I've come to realize is a VERY delicate choice to make, one that can actually destroy my immersion in a story if it's a choice made carelessly), usually, I try to make myself think about where it's going, first of all. Currently, I have a few potential original projects rolling around in my head... and I don't know where they start :'D but I DO know where I'll take them, what the actual, ultimate climax of those stories would be. This, then, is the most basic foundation for a story, for me. I choose a destination, kinda, and then build the journey there :D

This is, loosely speaking, how I've built up Gladiator. And yet Gladiator, being the ridiculously big mess that it is, required a very unique plotting approach that I suppose might be at odds with a lot of what I've said so far xD yet it also remains true to a lot of what I've said here :'D

When I first started to ponder this story, the first plot point was obvious and instinctive: Sokka's capture. When Chaosconetic (the one who first gave me the idea for this story) suggested it, he didn't quite put forward the idea of having Azula being the one who captured Sokka personally. I thought of making Azula and Sokka first come face to face in this way because... honestly? Because I just wanted them to interact as soon as possible x'DDDD it complicated matters, of course, but that was absolutely something I could work with.

Yet... where was I going with this story? It was a rewrite of ATLA as a whole, so what exactly was the direction for the story? Clearly, Azula and Sokka would wind up falling in love, and how exactly would that come about? And beyond that, wouldn't it be a seeerious mess for this to happen in a setting where Ozai is STILL in power? Why, of course it would be! :'D It added a new layer of complications to the generally already complicated Sokkla relationship, and instead of it being kept secret or being a forbidden romance for the reasons canon-based stories typically make it so, it's BEYOND forbidden here because Ozai is still a very much active factor in this story, and he makes everything worse :D soooooo...

With these particular factors in mind, I had several things to think about. With Sokka fighting as a gladiator being the core of the story, I had to figure out who would be his rivals, and in doing so, figure out what his power curve as a warrior would look like :'D in doing so, I settled very quickly on Toph for his main serious rival, but Sokka wasn't the only one whose story I'd be telling: obviously, Azula's arc would be important too, as I'd have to work with developing her FAR MORE than I ever had before, and while Sokka's personal opponents would be important, Azula is the one who chooses Sokka as her personal warrior, therefore, she had to have a purpose in doing so. Said purpose then materialized when I decided to make use of Zhao's character for Azula's main goal and foil, and so, I needed Zhao to have THE best gladiator of all... and I didn't need to think about it too much before I settled on Combustion Man for the role :'D

Thus, those were small, isolated yet pivotal elements that I had to articulate into a structure that made sense :D they were small things I settled on pretty quickly, from the very first few days of plotting. I can say for certain that, by the third day, I already had settled on the climax (... can't decide whether that's a fortunate or unfortunate wording choice, tbh xD) scene of Part 1, when Azula and Sokka have their fateful fight in chapter 96, then finally succumb to their attraction and act on their feelings without holding back, in chapter 97 :'D I knew I wanted this to happen after Sokka hit a low point upon failing to defeat Toph, either for the second time or after losing against her far too many times that he just was too discouraged to keep going, hence, I knew what the lead-up to this would be from literally day THREE.

But beyond this? At like... day one or two of plotting, once I settled on Combustion Man as the ultimate man to defeat? I also settled on how Part 2 would end :> back then, I honestly had no idea how much time there would be between the events from chapter 97 and the upcoming culmination of Part 2, I wasn't anywhere near advanced enough with plotting to even KNOW I'd split the story into parts because it would get too big to handle xD But what I did know was that I needed these two situations to happen, situations deeply entwined with Sokka's role as a gladiator. Everything in between was variable, and it was stuff I could figure out slowly, along the way.

The ultimate direction of the story, though? That did take me a long time to settle on xD In fact, I think it took me well over a year after I got started to really figure out where I was going with all of this. A close friend helped me figure out things by offering many ideas for Zuko and Suki's storyline, basically tossing them at me in hopes that I'd make sense out of some of them... and I don't really know if she even knows how much that helped me xD I really spent a long time unsure of what I wanted to do, what I COULD do... until at long last, I settled on one slightly ambitious direction that eventually turned into what you'll all know as Part 3 :'DDDDD

So... yeah, that's why I say I'm being contradictory as heck xD Yes, I worked out some core details of the story since the very beginning, but it wasn't ALL the core details, let alone the ultimate direction of the story, BUT... in building up Azula's character arc, that direction slowly became clearer to the point where, when this particular possibility stared me in the face, I knew it was where we had to go, I realized that what I'd written over that year was leading up perfectly to that outcome.

Ergo, Gladiator is 100% a work of gardening and architecture, woven together to a point where I have a hard time remembering what, exactly, was the result of each thing. There's some things that I settled on early on, like I said, structure things... and then there are some parts where the characters just went wild and did things I did NOT expect them to do xD There's one scene coming up, right before the climax of Part 2, where Azula actually does something that I honestly WASN'T sure of doing... and yet I couldn't resist the urge to go forward with it, once the idea came to mind, and so I did it. And now I regret nothing xD was it necessary? Possibly not. Will some people find it weird and out of place? Maybe. But was it CATHARTIC AS HECK!? Aaaabsolutely friggin' yes XD pardon me for being so self-indulgent, but that's part of what being a gardener is about (?)

So, I really think the best stories benefit from a careful approach to mixing the principles of both ideas. I know that some gardeners think that a structure can stifle creativity (not necessarily true, if you sense a lack of creativity in anything you're doing, it IS up to you to turn it around, switch it up and make it interesting, right...?), I also suspect architects might think gardeners would be utterly unable to tell a good story altogether in virtue of letting the story run away with them (also not necessarily true, as the quality of a story isn't quantifiable as easily as that, gardeners might just make masterpieces without as much need of direction as I personally require: Philip Pullman apparently had no set direction in the His Dark Materials trilogy and I could swear that's some of the best storytelling I have EVER seen).

Ultimately, each person gets to choose their ideal approach and what exactly they're trying to do with their work, as well as how they want to do it... but if you ask me, if your characters never seem to pull you in unexpected directions, you might just need to rework them or approach them differently to give them more life. If they DO pull you in those unexpected directions, but you're not sure if you can follow them just because you need to follow structure, it's really up to you as the author to choose whether to sacrifice the life/creativity within your own work and stick to structure, or sacrifice structure and potentially cause your story's course to crumble :'D

It may sound like I'm advocating for gardening so much more, despite I've labeled myself an architect, buuuuut... ironically, a very complicated but VERY rewarding scene in Gladiator Part 3 damn near WRECKED my structure when I was writing it a few weeks ago :'D I literally had to take a day off from actually writing so I could make a list of ALL the elements that would be impacted by this change if I went forward with it. If I chose against it, I would have to rewrite the complicated scene in a different way, and it might have been waaay too weird to make it work. If I chose to keep it, I had to tread VERY carefully or end up potentially making a mess of the ultimate direction of Gladiator's story, even threatening the themes and nuance that I have been counting on since I settled on this direction. Thus, sometimes gardening can be dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

I THINK I found a fair enough compromise that allows me to keep the best of both worlds... but I hope I've made it clear that both ways of working have their pros and cons, and why even mixing both things can have pros and cons xD but this is also why I, personally, think that a writer benefits the most from figuring out at least a loose outline, the broad strokes of what they want to achieve in a story, and then figuring out the many ways in which they could fill in those foundations, in whatever way they're most comfortable.

And so, I have rambled plenty xD I hope that was thorough enough, my position in this particular subject is honestly to oscillate in the middle of both things, where part of your job as the writer is to determine which situation benefits more from either approach :D Like I said before, I've found structure isn't something I can sacrifice easily, but more often than not, letting the story flow, letting the characters make their own choices, can enrich your story rather than hinder it. So... I lay the foundations, the structure, so that seeds can grow inside it, if that makes sense xD

#anon #woops #why do I talk so much #I just always do #minor tidbit spoilers here you could say though I don't THINK I gave away anything too important...#:'DDDD #but yep I am a gardenchitect #architardener (?)#whatever you wanna call it xD

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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years

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Rhythm of War Review

PART 1

It feels a little separate from the rest of the book to me at the moment because I read it pre-release, but I think it did a good job setting up the rest of the plot. I greatly enjoyed Navani’s perspective and ideas throughout the book, and the first section established her much more firmly as a character than any of the previous books; her couple of chapters in Oathbringer were more focused on politics and her relationship with Dalinar, so it was great yo see much more of her scientific side.

When I first read Part 1 it felt very Kaladin-heavy, but after completing the book I see how it was necessary to establish his burnout in order to set up the rest of the plot. And Chapter 12 (A Way to Help), in addition to being our only chance in the book to see our trio together, did a great job setting up Kaladin’s later work with mentally ill people, both by establishing the need and showing what kind of help was needed. I was nonetheless quite frustrated by Kaladin reacting to Shallan’s DID with “that would be nice...”. She’s having serious problems, Kal! She’s your friend and could use support, not you regarding her issues as a neat way to take a holiday from one’s own brain! Kaladin’s very kind and caring with those he chooses to protect, as we see with Bridge 4 in TWOK and the mentally ill people in Chapter 25, but sometimes I think he’s not a very good friend. I know he was not in a good place, but in Oathbringer when they were in Shadesmar Shallan had just had a complete breakdown and she still went out of her way to emotionally support Kal, so it would be nice to see his friendships become a bit more two-way. (For similar reasons, I liked seeing the moments of Shallan-to-Adolin emotional support in Shadesmar in ROW, because a lot of their relationship in OB was her relying on him; it felt balanced in ROW as both supported each other.)

PART 2

I loved the Shadesmar arc! The emotional arcs for both main characters were very strong - I had been looking forward to seeing Adolin’s reaction to (in-universe) Oathbringer, and it did not disappoint; the conflict between genuinely loving Dalinar and being unable to forgive what he’d done was well-drawn. I was so pissed off at Dalinar in that last conversation! You burned his mom to death, you do not get to take the moral high ground and lecture him. And I do see a difference between killing innocents, as Taravangian does, and killing someone who’s effectively declared war on you and has a history of treason.

I also liked Adolin’s sense of being generally at sea with his purpose in the world. He’s been trained primarily as a warrior and general, and his combat skills have been made virtually obsolete by the Radiants. And at the same time, the reader can see what makes Adolin special, and it’s not combat skills - though those do give him a big heroic moment in a pinch - it’s his care and compassion for others. The way he interacts with Maya and slowly brings her life is absolutely beautiful. Chapter 35 was such a wonderful Shadolin moment (and starspren are amazing!); he really gets her and understands what she needs. Chapter 24 was sweet too, though super cheesy.

I spent the entire Shadesmar arc side-eying Veil and Radiant, especially with Veil’s takeover stunt at the start, but in the end they genuinely were supporting and helping Shallan. So in retrospect I do like scenes like the one with Veil trying to draw Shallan out by drawing Adolin badly.

Spoeking of drawing, I love the spren art, it’s some of the best art so far, and fascianting to see how they all look!

Kaladin finding non-violent ways to protect, culminating in pioneering Rosharan therapy - and Teft insisting on staying to support him - was everything I wanted for him. His arc could have just been that, and I’d have been perfectly happy. Chapter 25 (Devotary of Mercy) is still my favourite in the entire book.

Unfortunately, then Odium’s forces had to show up and SPOIL EVERYTHING. I’m rather appalled by how quickly Urithiru fell - the enemy forces were literally in the pillar room by the time anyone noticed them.

PART 3

Part 3 was a real slog for me, partly because it is a slog and partly because I hit it at the height of my sleep deptivation. (It’s really...not a good thing to be reading on zero sleep at the literal darkest-hour-before-dawn.) Kaladin’s arc in Urithiru is just so exhausting; he’s so clearly worn to the boneand everything feels so hopeless. Kaladin’s had bad times before - Bridge 4 in TWOK, for example - but then the reader could see progress even if Kaladin couldn’t. (Kaladin: I’m getting nowhere and failing at everything! Everyone else: Kaladin, you were literally just miraculously resurrected.) Here, though - well, I genuinely spent the whole book from Part 3 through to the climax thinking that they would lose Urithiru.

Navani’s arc, and Venli’s, I did enjoy.

The other section of Part 3, in Emul, just felt rather disjointed. It had some interesting moments, but it didn’t have a sense of cohesion or of where it was going. I was entertained by Dalinar’s musings on the merits of despositism and the need to free Queen Fen from having - horrors! - a parliament. (I wonder if the Fourth Ideal will be something like “I will recognize that it can sometimes be beneficial to have people oppose my decisions.”)

PART 4

Again, adored the Shadesmar arc. Really strong character arcs for both Adolin and Shallan, combined with excellent plots and a strong sense of momentum. I was pretty sure Maya would be crucial in the trial, but that didn’t make the moment any less powerful (though Sanders probably shouldn’t have tried quite as hard to replicate his “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.” moment from Oathbringer). I need to put together a proper post on the theme of choice in Oathbringer, because that moment - combined with Kaladin’s fourth ideal and the conflict with Lirin over the way he’s inspiring the resistance - really crystallized it for me. To treat a person’s choice and sacrifices as something done to them is to devalue their volition, their agency. Maya is put in the horrifying situation of being used as a prop and treated as evidence of a point that she is diametrically opposed to and turned into a weapon against someone she loves, and it’s enough to drive her to regain her voice and speak for herself. I am very curious to know what specifically led the spren to agree to the Recreance!

I did not remotely guess what Shallan’s secret was, even though in retrospect the Cryptic deadeye should have made it incredibly obvious. I think her fear that she’d lose Adolin if it came out was overblown - he already knows she killed both her parents, he’s not going to be fazed by “I was so distraught over having to kill my own mother in self-defence at age ten that I broke my Radiant oaths”. But obviously it’s not something Shalkan would be able to consider duspassionately. Her arc was rather terrifying once I realized that Formless was, well, basically her, but more specifically, Shallan’s idea of the monster that she was, and her breakdown was driving her to “accept who she was” as being that monster. I like Shallan and was never that into Veil - though she was fairly good in this book and went out well - so I’m not sad to see the back of her.

I haven’t managed to work through all the espionage/mole elements. Yes, Pattern used the box to talk to Wit, and Radiant killed Ialai so Shallan wouldn’t, but who’s Mraize’s spy close to Dalinar?

This arc ended too abruptly. I think Sanderson could easily have traded a Kaladin chapter in Part 3 for an extra chapter wrapping up events in Shadesmar; maybe one where Shallan first goes to see Testament.

I enjoyed the Urithiru arc in Part 4 as well. Switching to Bridge 4 points of view other than Kaladin was a good move - we already know he’s worn to ribbons, so we don’t need to be inside his head to see it. “The Dog and the Dragon” was amazing, and the most appropriate story ever for Kaladin. (I get how Wit’s schtick of telling incredibly topical stories and then saying “no, I don’t have a point, what point?” would be really aggravating in person.) It was nice to see him be gentle with Kaladin for a change, the way he is with Shallan - his two previous encounters with Kaladin read as rather baiting, which annoyed me.

Dabbid was - I don’t know quite how to say this, but his inclusion struck an amazing balance in this book. Navani’s arc is all about two amazingly smart people doing science and making incredible breakthroughs, and that is sincerely valued and given importance by the narrative, and then you get chapters like Dabbid’s and one of Taravangian’s emphasizing that a person’s value and ability to contribute is not determined by their intelligence.

Navani’s arc continued to be excellent. All of her research, and the way the story took you through the process, and her complex relationship with Raboniel, was great.

I loved Venli’s character development, and growing willingness to take risks for the sake of others. To me, her arc parallels Dalinar’s in the last book in some ways. If we can love the story of a bloodthirsty conqueror growing to become a good person, why can’t we equally love the story of a coward coming to become a good person? There seems to be a tendency to be more drawn to strength, even in its most terrible forms, than to weakness. To me, Venli’s confession to Rlain and acceptance of his disgust at her was one of the book’s great moments. (And I can’t understand people saying her arc took up two much space. She had 5 chapters in Part 3, and 4 in Part 4. That’s not very many! I’ll grant that the flasbacks packed less punch than some earlier flashback sequences because we already knew the main events - Brandon acknowledged that even before the book came out - but I still liked them well enough, and Venli’s present-day arc was excellent.)

Anyway, the amount of space I’ve spent on this section relative to Part 3 is another strong inducation of the differences in how I feel about them!

PART 5

I should probably start this section with a discussion of Moash. I’ll try to keep it summarized. here - I could, and may, write a short essay on his development through The Stormlight Archive. The first thing that jumps out about Moash’s arc in this book is his reaction to Renarin’s vision in Part 1. I think that vision is showing Moash who he could still be, in a similar way to Shallan’s inspirational drawings of people - both use the Surge of Illumination. So it’s not that Moash is irredeemable; Renarin is specifucally holding out to him the possibility of redemption.

And Moash’s reaction is to run away in terror. Because he desperately wants his decision to be irrevocable. He desperately wants there to only be one possible path forward for him. Because if there are alternative paths, it means he can choose them, and that would mean facing guilt, facing the fact that his past choices were wrong, and his current choices are wrong. And that is exactly what Moash sought to avoid by giving up his pain and sense of guilt to Odium.

Moash is, nonetheless, very much Moash and not Vyre, as evidenced by his continuing obsession with Kaladin. As with his above need to not be wrong, here he needs to feel that he’s right, and the only way he can feel that he’s right is if Kaladin - whom he still deeply admires - makes the same decision as him, and if Moash can convince himself that he’s doing Kaladin a favour in driving him to that point. It’s ironic that he’s given up almost all feeling abd become almost enturely detached, but his worst actions are driven by his attitude towards the one person in the world who he still does have very strong feelings about. By the end of the book, he’s comprehensively broken, to the point that even when his ability to feel is restored he’s unable to even feel genuine remose over the cold-blooded murder of a friend. I don’t know where he’ll go from here - it would be ironic if he was only ever really appealing to Rayse-Odium, and Taravangian-Odium found Moash too much of a flat villain for his purposes and cast him off.

As the plot climaxes go, I thought the ones for Navani and Venli were excellent and very satisfying. I enjoyed Kaladin’s as well and found it cathartic, but it a was moment we all knew had to come, so it didn’t have quite the kick of some of Kaladin’s other big moments. I did love his reconciliation with Lirin. One of the themes of the book was finding common ground despite deeply felt disagreements - with Navani and Raboniel, with Navani and the Sibling, and with humans and singers/Fused more generally - and Kaladin and Lirin’s reconciliation fit well with that. I am far more favourable to Lirin than most people - if you’ve lived as a pacifist in storming Alethkar, which values the lives of its people slightly more than it does crem, you’re going to have been right a solid 95% of the time, where everyone else was wrong. I can make allowances for the other five percent, especially when Lirin’s life lesson from the last five or so years has been “resisting oppression and standing up for what you believe in will destroy everyone you love”.

And on the topic of finding common ground, Leshwi’s reaction to the revelation that Venli was a Radiant was one of the single most beautiful moments of the book, and one of my absolute favourites. It’s gorgeous and moving, and at the same time rather tragic, because - what might have bern different if Venli had revealed herself to Leshwi at the start of the book? How much of the conflict could have been avoided. Singers don’t appear to attract spren as strongly as humans do, which makes Leshwi drawing joyspren particularly powerful. And then the bittersweet note from “My soul is too long owned by someone else”. (Come to think of it, this is another inverted paralell to Moash. This is someone realizing “I was wrong about everything and I’m so glad about that because it means I have a chance to be someone better than I was.”) Oh my goodness, I would love a Leshwi chapter in a later book, just to check in on her and see how she’s doing in her new life with the Singers.

I also loved the climax of Navani’s arc, and was so relieved, because up until that very moment I wasn’t sure if the Sibling would survuve uncorrupted. I know that some people weren’t pleased because the Sibling didn’t even like her, but to me that became a core part of the story, like I said above - people who deeply disagree finding common ground and common cause. That is a key element of being a Bondsmith - the process of bringing people together in spite of their differences - and something that fits Navani so well given the rapport she found with Raboniel. (Though I was conflicted about the latter. On the one hand, she made amazing discoveries that enabled her to save Urithiru. One the other hand, she...kind of collaborated with the enemy and gave them terrible weapons out of intellectual curiosity and a desire to prove herself?) I will grant that it makes the series, and the characters with the most crucial importance to Roshar, rather Kholin-heavy.

For Taravodium, all I can say is - YIPES. I have no idea how to process the implications of that, but I feel like it will be bad. Really really bad. (Taravangian is probably my least favourite character in the entire Stormlight Archive. The attitude of “I am so brave and selfless for doing evil things and look at how wonderful I am for sacrificing my own morality for the benefit of all, you petty selfish people wanting to be good could never make such a grand sacrifice” drives me absolutely nuts. It’s a complete inversion and twisting of morality, and intensely arrogant.)

Dalinar’s encounter with Ishar was fascinating, and I’m very curious to see where this goes. The spren experiments were deeply creepy! And the way Radiant Oaths can temporarily restore a Herald’s sanity was fascinating - I’m very eager to see where this goes in the next book. I suspect that Dalinar may have made a very serious mistake with regards to this trial my combat, and I have no idea how/if they’re going to fit Szeth’s whole arc into the ten days before the duel. I’ve been eagerly anticipating Szeth’s arc ever since The Way of Kings!

#brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #rhythm of war #row spoilers #kaladin #shallan #adolin #dalinar kholin #navani kholin #leshwi #moash

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johannas-motivational-insults · 5 years

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Glimmer’s Upcoming Villain Arc

So, I’m pretty sure Glimmer’s going to become one of the villains at some point in the final two arcs of SPOP. Not a Horde-aligned villain, obviously, but I think she’s going to have a villain arc and may even end up fighting against Adora. Sound crazy? Well, there’s actually precedent for all this in the Buffyverse, with the Dark Willow story arc. I will get more into those parallels below.

First, though, let’s look at Glimmer and her situation in isolation.

Glimmer is currently in a vulnerable position. She’s grieving the loss of her only remaining parent (so far as she knows) and she’s now going to be saddled with the responsibilities of ruling Bright Moon, all while lacking a parental/mentor figure to guide her. And who do we know who loves to guide and manipulate young people with magical powers? Shadow Weaver.

Some people saw Shadow Weaver allying with the Rebellion as the beginning of a redemption arc. However, it actually makes a hell of a lot more sense for the writers to have put her there to gain influence over Glimmer and kickstart her villain arc, starting with their unexpected connection in season 3. Though Glimmer clearly hadn’t forgiven Shadow Weaver for torturing her in season 1 or for emotionally abusing Adora throughout her childhood, she decided the Rebellion needed this evil woman’s help. It was a means to an end. But now that that mission to save Adora and disable the portal was a success, she probably won’t hesitate to ask for her help again.

Not only did Shadow Weaver gain a bit of Glimmer’s trust, Glimmer loved the boost in power she got from Shadow Weaver. She’s complained several times about how she thinks her powers aren’t that useful or strong, but Shadow Weaver fed her ego and gave her a chance to increase her powers. When she successfully teleported the Princess Alliance into the Fright Zone, she was ecstatic.

“We did it! I did it! That was amazing!”

Simply put, Glimmer is power hungry. Just look at her eyes when Shadow Weaver is talking about her potential to be a great sorcerer like her father.

This scene and the following scene in the tower gave me the creeps so bad, you could just feel Glimmer being pulled to the dark side by the promise of power. And now post-season 3, not only will she be craving that feeling of power again, there’s an inciting incident prompting her to use it.

With her mom trapped in an empty dimension forever, which is essentially hell (especially for an immortal person ffs), Glimmer will probably do everything she can to get her out. I’m guessing she’ll go to her Aunt Casta for help, but Casta will say there’s nothing to be done (at least not without resorting to dark magic), so Glimmer will go to Shadow Weaver out of desperation. Even if Shadow Weaver could come up with a way to bring Angella back, she’ll say she can’t, because she can use Glimmer’s grief for her own ends.

Shadow Weaver’s motive for defecting to the Rebellion was to take down Hordak and Catra, and at this point she could easily convince Glimmer to help her get revenge on Catra. In fact, there’s a chance Glimmer will go to Shadow Weaver herself looking to team up and get this revenge, though it’s more likely Shadow Weaver will plant the seed and manipulate her into thinking it was her own idea.

Inciting incidents aside, Glimmer has always been someone who had the potential to break bad. Like Catra, she’s power hungry and eager to prove herself, brash and impulsive, and quick to resort to violence. She’s easily blinded by emotion and can be quite heartless, both of which were illustrated in 1x01-02 by how she treated Adora because of what the Horde had done to her father.

She’s also morally gray, willing to go to extremes to achieve an outcome that she considers to be good or just. Her decision to free Shadow Weaver and use her to access the Fright Zone is a great example. Another notable instance was when she had Catra as a hostage in 2x02 and threatened to kill her to counter Catra’s threat against Entrapta. She was eventually talked down by Bow, but only while complaining about how having to take the moral high ground isn’t fair. She was clearly frustrated that entire episode by the constraints of being one of the good guys, and it culminated here.

Fighting for the rebellion, Glimmer is a force for good. But if she decides to chase her own agenda, her powers and personality could easily be used for evil. Especially when there’s someone there expertly guiding her down that slippery slope.

Now, if the plot does indeed go this way, it will put Adora in a rather unfortunate position. If it comes down to a situation where Shadow Weaver and Glimmer have an opportunity to kill Catra, Adora will have to intervene on Catra’s behalf, for several reasons. 1) Catra is the most important person in her life, as we all know. 2) She cares for Glimmer’s soul. She knows that if Glimmer murders Catra it will haunt her and change her, and she doesn’t want that for her friend. 3) She feels the need to protect the helpless. Catra will probably be all alone in the world at this point, having pushed all her friends and allies away. So not only will she not have allies to fight with her, she’ll be in a poor state mentally, maybe even welcoming death. Even if she was in good shape, she wouldn’t stand a chance against Glimmer and Shadow Weaver’s combined magical powers. And since Adora can’t stand watching defenseless people get hurt, this will force her to step in and protect Catra despite all the negative feelings she has for her right now.

There are two people I could see pulling Glimmer out of this spiral, bringing her back to the light: Bow or Micah. Adora isn’t the best at sympathizing with someone’s dark impulses while fighting tham, as we’ve seen multiple times with Catra. Her job is to protect the world, and she will prioritize that over everything else, including her best friend (don’t we know it?). So that leaves Bow to talk Glimmer down, either by appealing to her morals (somewhat likely, but wouldn’t work at that point) or by reminding her of her innate good side, of the person she is deep down and the love he feels for her. The other way this could go down is Micah escaping from wherever he is trapped (he’s alive, yo) and convincing Glimmer to stand down with a dose of parental love and wisdom (and a big hug).

There are so many parallels to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this potential situation, and here’s where we get into the Willow comparisons. SPOILERS for BtVS under the cut!

The comparison between Catra and the rogue slayer Faith has been made many times before, along with the relationships these two characters have with the respective heroes of their shows. But if Catradora is Fuffy, that leaves Glimmer in the Willow role. And there are actually a lot of similarities between the two characters, both being fiercely protective but tempermental magical sidekicks to the hero (who hate being called sidekicks, btw). Both have had trouble making friends in the past, and both have a dude they were best friends with for years before the hero came along and turned them into an inseperable trio.

And now, there are notable and worrisome plot parallels between Glimmer and Willow in seasons 5 and 6 of BtVS.

Buffy sacrifices herself to save the world at the end of season 5, and the “Scooby Gang” believes she was sucked into hell in the process, so they decide to try to bring her back via magic. There is some dissent among the ranks, but ultimately they defer to Willow (who leads in Buffy’s absence like Glimmer will be leading the Rebellion in Angella’s absence), and Willow is not afraid of dark magic. In fact, we already saw her use it in season 5 against Glory (that season’s big bad) after Glory temporarily stole the sanity of Willow’s girlfriend, Tara.

Willow’s attack on Glory was emotionally motivated - she went off on her own after the others thought they had talked her down, thinking an attack was unwise. It was clearly motivated by revenge rather than strategy, which was made exceptionally clear by what she said to Glory.

(This scene actually reminds me a bit of the aforementioned incident with Catra in 2x02, only more extreme. The situations were obviously different, but the vengeful overtones and the mages’ frustration with allies trying to constrain their powers were similar. Both of them were struggling with impulsiveness, morality, and vengeful desires.)

Willow is ultimately successful in bringing Buffy back, though it turns out to not be entirely a good thing. If Glimmer fails to bring Angella back, as I theorized above, she could easily skip ahead to the end of Willow’s season 6 arc, the next time Willow suffers a great loss.

(The middle of Willow’s season 6 arc is her getting addicted to magic and using it in morally dubious ways on Tara and her other friends, which causes Tara to leave her until after she stops using magic and recovers from the addiction. SPOP’s writers could include something like this, but I don’t think they will, for time’s sake. More likely they will just continue to show Glimmer being tempted and corrupted by power as she gets closer to Shadow Weaver, rather than using her powers on her friends.)

The end of Willow’s season 6 arc starts with the notorious shooting death of Tara Maclay. When Tara is hit by a stray bullet and dies in Willow’s arms, Willow attempts to use magic to bring her back, but is denied. This sends her into a spiral of rage and grief, and she spends the next two episodes attempting to kill the shooter and his hapless allies. She catches up to Warren and flays him alive, but the others escape with Buffy’s help. (In the finale she tries to end the world because she believes it is for the best, as life is too full of pain. SPOP definitely won’t pull this same plot point twice, but the revenge quest up to that point is absolutely something that would work for Glimmer.)

Speaking of Buffy stepping in, let’s look at parallels to the situation Adora will find herself in, if my theory is correct.

Buffy tries to dissuade Willow from murdering Warren because she believes it’s wrong and she doesn’t want Willow to have to live with it after. When she finds Warren’s body she decides Willow has gone too far and stands against her when she tries to go after Warren’s allies. Willow is tired of Buffy’s lectures on morality, of living by the good guys’ rules. She wants revenge, and Buffy is standing in her way. She’s also tired of being treated like a sidekick and is eager to show Buffy who is more powerful. They end up having an epic fight scene before she decides to end the world.

With the way she gives in to her dark impulses, fights against Buffy and their friends, and tries to end the world, Dark Willow actually ends up being the big bad of season 6. Her best friend Xander is the one who ends up saving the world - not by fighting her, but by blocking her magic with his body, reminding her of who she has been all these years, and telling her repetitively that he loves her. He literally saves her (and the world) with the power of love and friendship, a recurring phrase on SPOP.

The perfect parallel here would be Bow stepping in and reminding Glimmer of the goodness inside her. Perhaps he’d face off with her while Adora is fending off Shadow Weaver. But yeah, for the reasons I outlined above, Bow would be the perfect candidate to call Glimmer back from the brink of becoming a murderer. He’s known her longer than Adora and is more empathetic. Xander is often referred to as “the heart” of the Scooby Gang, the one who lacks magical powers but makes up for it with his empathy, courage, and enthusiasm. Bow fills that same role in the Best Friend Squad and Princess Alliance, and he wears a literal heart on his chest. (Yes, Xander is problematic in some ways but damn it that’s so off-topic and I’m not getting into it.)

I don’t think Glimmer will actually succeed in her quest for vengeance, or at least it won’t culminate in Catra’s murder. SPOP deals with some dark themes but it's meant for a younger audience than BtVS, plus Noelle surely knows better than to kill a fan fave wlw. But Glimmer will probably have an opportunity to kill Catra and be dissuaded at the last second, then have to embark on a redemption arc of her own.

Again, this is all just a crazy theory, but the idea of Glimmer going dark is both scary and exciting. She’s most interesting as a character when she’s struggling with her darker urges, and I think SPOP has been hinting at and slowly setting this up over the first two arcs. Now with an inciting incident at play, she could easily give in to those urges in the wake of her grief, letting her vengeful streak bubble to the surface like it did for Willow. I can’t wait to see where the story takes her in arc 3.

#spop #she ra #she-ra #meta #theories #glimmer #dark glimmer #glimmer and shadow weaver #best friend squad #glimbo #shadow weaver #catra #bow #adora #btvs #parallels #dark willow #willow rosenberg

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pynkhues · 4 years

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I just want Beth to be like, fuck boomer. How can she be so forgiving for everything he did to her and Annie?

I’ve only watched the episode once at this stage, anon, but the impression I got was that she did say ‘fuck Boomer’, and that she wasn’t forgiving of him at all. As soon as she saw him pop out of the septic tank, she knew what Rio was asking, and she never wavered in delivering him, which is huge, huge growth for Beth (and Annie and Ruby too). I’d argue too that trying to take him to Marion was smattered with three very different sets of motivations.

Annie was doing it for Marion.

Beth was doing it for Annie.

And Ruby was doing it for Beth.

None of them were doing it for Boomer.

Overall though, I think this episode marked a really substantive growth in terms of Beth’s handling of a rotten egg, and that it represented a natural evolution from the horror of what happened to Lucy, and the initial disaster of her handling of the Boomer situation in the early parts of s2, in a way that felt true to her character and true to her moral descent, which is less a plummet off a cliff, than it is a stagger down the stairs.

So let’s break that down a bit:

Annie + Boomer + Beth

The first real scene of violence (as opposed to threatened or inferred violence) on this show is actually through Annie, Boomer and Beth.

He tries to rape Annie, and Beth first holds a toy gun on him, and then smashes a bottle over his head.

This scene is a really clear precursor to what happens later in the series, but also a very distinct character set-up for Beth, because it shows that she thinks quickly on her feet, will protect her and hers (aka Annie and Ruby), doesn’t think things through (was there ever a plan of what to do with Boomer in the treehouse?) and has a lot of barely contained rage, simmering beneath the surface of her.

Beth + Rio + Dean

In a lot of ways, that barely contained rage manifests with Beth getting Rio arrested, an act motivated out of a conflicting cocktail of fear, anger, vindictiveness, and - as I’ve argued on here before - genuine hurt. The scene at the end of 1.10 is such a good cliffhanger, and they explode that cliffhanger back open with 2.01.

Rio gives her the gun, manipulates Beth’s trust, and then uses that trust as a weapon against Beth to get her to willingly give him back the gun as he shoots Dean.

It’s a scene that punctuates Rio’s ability to do what Beth can’t.

The Girls + Boomer

And yet, for Rio, that immediately seems to build into a desire to get her to do it.

He’s just shot her husband, and now he’s strongarming, goading, and - in 2.04 - positively gleeful at the prospect of getting her to shoot someone too.

Boomer is really the first person who’s framed as a dead man walking on this show, and by the time the show articulates that explicitly in 2.01, it comes with a loaded, complex history. Boomer’s Annie’s boss, her would-be rapist, and now the fiance of their sort-of-employee? It’s a mess from the word go, and it falls out as a mess because Rio’s overshot, because Beth isn’t ready.

That whole mess just falls out and falls out and falls out across season 2, until it culminates in:

The Loft

Which not only parallels with 1.10/2.01, but also the Boomer arc.

Rio gives Beth Turner as a gift, a lesson, and a punishment combined, and once again, Beth isn’t ready for any of it.

It compounding with the games and then the abandonment and then the kidnapping, means Beth shoots the wrong person in a way that calls back to 1.01. It’s an explosion of desperation and then an ill-thought out rage that resets the board for s3.

Season 3

In a lot of ways, Rio’s taken a step back from Beth this season, and I think in no small part, that that’s manifested in his desire to see Beth get her hands dirty. That desire is absolutely still there, but he’s downloaded a lesson plan, and he’s pivoted his approach.

Now, it isn’t about getting a gun in her hands, it’s about making her complicit with the gun in his.

Beth + Rio

This is really started in 3.02/3.03 with their reunion, and the extension of the shift in violence in their relationship which was escalated in 2.13.

Namely though, it reiterates a set of rules that haven’t always appeared so plainly, but have certainly underpinned many of their interactions.

1. The gun is in Rio’s hands and he makes sure she knows that it’s there (he tells her he’s planning on killing her).

2. Beth scrambles to save someone (in this case herself through the pregnancy lie).

3. She plays along (she goes to the OBGYN with him).

4. She tries to negotiate (their whole conversation at the bar in 3.04)

5. She suffers the consequences (lets him strongarm into her business.)

And then it escalates.

Beth + Lucy

I’ve talked about it before, but Lucy’s death was a marked shift for the show, because it wasn’t about making Beth do it, it was about making her complicit in the crime.

Again, it follows a formula, albeit this time, not over two episodes. It’s in a handful of scenes.

1. The gun is in Rio’s handsand he makes sure Beth knows that it’s there (he presents as a clear and obvious danger to Lucy, echoes language he’s used with Beth when trying to kill her to emphasise his intentions. I talked about this a lot in the post I linked to above).

2. Beth scrambles to save someone (she tries to tell Lucy not to finish the new template.)

3. She plays along (she goes out to the van with Rio and his guys).

4. She tries to negotiate (passionately this time! But - notably - for herself, Annie and Ruby first, Lucy second - her first moral slip in this particular sense).

5. She suffers the consequences (Lucy’s killed).

It’s a stark contrast to 2.01, because Dean survived, and an even starker one to all of the other scenes of violence on this show so far, because Lucy was an innocent, unlike Dean, Boomer and Rio.

Hell, she’s even unlike Annie and Mary-Pat, who have both experienced awful sexual violence in this series at Boomer’s hands. There is no situation ever in which any person deserves that or invites it; however, in talking about the violence on this show, it’s important to acknowledge not only their respective traumas, but the way they play as morally grey characters in the storyworld versus Lucy, who was never presented to us as anything other than ‘good’.

The brief foray between Beth, Max and Rio that falls out of it forms a compelling, but short-lived exploration of the ramifications to this, and is in no small terms about highlighting two things. a) Beth has never been as innocent as Max, who wets himself in the heat of the moment, and b) that she’s stumbled down a few stairs in terms of what she can do, while c) still letting her guilt guide her course of action.

Beth + Boomer

Which is why this episode was, in practically every way, an escalation of what Beth’s capable of, even if it did perhaps feel like it wasn’t.

1. The gun is in Rio’s hands (a fact Beth instantly accepts when Boomer pops out of the septic tank).

2. Beth doesn’t scramble to save him. At all. This is huge for her and a really, really marked shift in terms of her character. Like I said at the start of this post, everything she did in this episode was for Annie’s benefit, not for Boomer’s, but I’ll come back to that in a tick.

3. She plays along, but it’s different this time. She’s both falling into line, while creating her own space. Yes. She’s going to bring Rio Boomer. But she also might need more time within that, and she’ll fight for that when it’s for her sister (taking Boomer to say goodbye to Marion), but she won’t when it’s for Boomer himself at their expense (she’ll steal away the urn and threaten to throw it away when it’s too much). Beth bossed up in a big way. Not in a pretty way, sure, and not in a way that perhaps immediately presented as empowering, but it was - she did what needed to be done to deliver, not just play along.

4. This is why I think Beth’s negotiation here was important and needed to be in there. The shift in her own morality in this episode has been both a logical evolution of the series and a really stark one. She needed to know she tried, and it’s no accident that her brief, half-hearted efforts at negotiating for Boomer’s life with Rio came after Boomer was appealing to Annie again, and again, and again, and again in that car.

We’ve seen what Beth’s like when she’s fighting for a life.

She wasn’t fighting for Boomer.

If anything, she was providing the most base of comforts to her sister, and likely herself too.

They tried.

5. She suffers the consequences. She doesn’t fight it. She doesn’t spring from the car, or start her filibuster like she usually would. Which means she doesn’t just suffer Boomer’s death.

For the first time in the series, she accepts it.

And she lets it go.

And sure, maybe it’s not a fuck you, but for Beth? The woman who can’t even divorce her husband? I think that’s pretty huge.

I also think that the end of the episode where Annie tried to give peace to Marion just reiterated how much this episode was about her for Annie, not about Boomer (which is why it’s also important that the show reminded us that Marion was racist, and that she chose Boomer over Annie anyway, which I really appreciated).

And going off that final montage? None of them mourned him like they did Lucy, which, well. Says a lot, particularly when paralleled with their respective guilt spirals in 2.04 after disposing of Boomer the first time.

#gg 3.08 #crime time #dis/armed #beth boland #annie marks #ruby hill #rio #leslie peterson #dean boland #gg spoilers #Anonymous

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nonbinaryhatboxghost · 3 years

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Okay, today has been a quiet Saturday morning so far, I have some time, and I like lists. So here is my random (personal) ranking of Star Trek series and movies, out of what I’ve seen, which is everything but seasons 5-7 of Voyager, all of Enterprise, and all of Picard. I’m only counting shows with three or more seasons because it’s easier. But let the record show that I love Lower Decks so far and The Animated Series is actually a blast.

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

Series Ranking

The Original Series - As influential of a show as it is, I constantly forget how much damn fun the original Trek is. There is an almost Community-like variance in tone and genre throughout the show. And I’m a sucker for a future that embraces primary colors. It is the Trek show I revisit the most so far, and it remains my favorite.

Deep Space Nine - This one comes close, though. It starts out as a solid spinoff with very well-defined characters, and then becomes a big, sprawling epic that had my eyes welling up by the end. It feels more like a sequel to The Original Series than The Next Generation did to me. It dealt with subject matter both different and darker than was expected for the time. It had characters at odds with each other. Religion was explored in a way that balanced brutal honesty with genuine respect. War and the various traumas it induces were acknowledged. And it had “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”. I only finished this one recently but I look forward to watching it again.

Discovery - I was rooting for this show to be good even as it went through so much behind-the-scenes drama during its first two seasons. Even with all of that going on, the show became a fascinating watch as you saw it change from its arguably-too-dark beginnings as a prequel, to the almost Doctor Who-like second season with its joyful embracing of classic Trek, and finally to its current iteration that at long last gives us a Trek show that’s not bound by prequel limitations. Michael Burnham is such a great character and getting to see her arc alone makes this one of my favorite Trek stories. The queer/nonbinary representation also warms my heart.

Voyager - I’m just starting the fifth season, but the show has settled into an interesting groove with its characters. And Voyager’s characters are so damn good that they counterbalance a lot of the show’s early problems. It takes a while for Voyager to realize that the Kazon do not work very well as villains. But once the show realizes that, it begins an upward trajectory in quality that reminds me of Deep Space Nine after it began doing Dominion plots. And Seven of Nine’s effect on the crew dynamic lives up to the hype. Any scene between her and Janeway demonstrates such a unique relationship between captain and crewmate that an episode plot can be meh and still worth it for a scene with those two. Also, Janeway is the best captain character. No other Trek show (that I’ve seen so far) comes close to showing us the weight of leadership like Voyager, and Mulgrew constantly brings it.

The Next Generation - This is my first Trek show. It’s the one that my dad watched. There are several standout episodes to me, but I find myself less drawn to revisiting TNG than the other Trek shows because ultimately it took me too long to understand and care about its cast of characters. If you were to ask me to describe any character from any other Trek show, I would be able to. Ask me to describe a TNG character and I would likely fail to give any good adjectives for any character besides Data and Worf. As iconic as the show is, and as great as it became, it doesn’t have the same pull on me as other Trek shows. But it was the template for the spinoffs that followed, and the portrayal of Picard’s trauma post-Borg assimilation earns its reputation as an all-timer for me.

Movie Ranking

VI: The Undiscovered Country - I’m surprised this one isn’t talked about as much as other Trek movies. It’s a very frank depiction of prejudices and learning to deal with them. It has one of the best Kirk/Spock scenes ever. Christopher Plummer as a Klingon. The ORIGINAL cast credits sign-off (yes, Avengers: Endgame borrowed from this). A score that carefully balances menace with eventual hope. A fun whodunit structure. I could go on and on. It’s just so damn great, and so far the only successful send-off to a Trek crew in any of the movies.

II: The Wrath of Khan - It’s a classic for a reason. I’ve probably rewatched this more than any other Trek movie. You got your great villain, your classic crew beginning to deal with their mortality, an all-timer death scene, a kickass early James Horner score. What more could you want?

The Motion Picture - This is an interesting one. When I first watched it as a teen, I hated it. I agreed with every critique of it being thinly plotted and having an excessive runtime. When I revisited it in my 20s, it became a favorite. It’s Star Trek’s exploration of existential dread, and the struggle to find agency and identity within that dread. It has possibly Jerry Goldsmith’s greatest score. It is the best that the Enterprise has ever looked. This movie envelopes you with eerie and epic imagery, culminating in a finale with interesting philosophical ramifications and a well-earned return to optimism from its crew. This one is criminally underrated.

First Contact - This one is just rock solid all around. The best-ever TNG villains, further exploration of Picard’s trauma from Borg assimilation, Alfre Woodard, Alice Krige, fun action, the genesis of the Federation. It has the best balance of darkness and fun out of all of the Trek movies. It also has a character actually say the words “star trek” in a way that never ceases to make me smile. I don’t know if it’s a good line, but it’s funny regardless.

Beyond - Like The Motion Picture, I initially disliked this upon first viewing. I was still in the middle of watching The Original Series and was in the wrong mindset for this mashup of TOS and Fast & Furious. But it’s one of the most underrated Treks because it’s a perfect balance of the more kinetic action found in the 2010s with a very well-done breakdown of the inherent point and value of Star Trek: learning to be better and move beyond fighting the same battles among ourselves.

IV: The Voyage Home - This one is such a satisfying culmination of the crew’s arc starting in The Wrath of Khan that the joy of the 1980s material is almost just a bonus to me. Nimoy does a good job of keeping things light without disregarding stakes. He gets the best portrayal of the crew’s camaraderie in this and The Search for Spock. And Spock’s reaction to the concept of “exact change” always makes me laugh.

III: The Search for Spock - I revisited this one recently and it held up better than I expected. Seeing the weight of Spock’s death on Kirk in the beginning hits hard. Christopher Lloyd as the Klingon villain is casually one of the best Trek movie villains. And seeing the crew uniting over trying to bring back Spock gives us some of the best on-screen moments of this cast.

Star Trek - One of the reasons I love Beyond so much is that it retroactively makes this one better. I was crazy for this movie when it came out. I was in high school, Star Trek in general was something I was only really aware of because of my dad. But this is the thing that got me into Trek. And as mixed of a bag as it now plays to me, ‘09 Star Trek being a gateway for me to general Trek, combined with the perfect casting of the crew, the excellent Giacchino score, and the emotion of the opening sequence, thankfully makes this one still a blast to revisit.

Nemesis - I have only seen this twice, and both of those times without having seen TNG in its entirety. This was also the very first Trek movie I ever saw. Nostalgia is a factor for why this is higher than the others on the list. Curiosity is another, as I was unaware of Tom Hardy when I watched this, and have no idea what my opinion will be on rewatch. But what I always remembered of this movie was its ending, which even to a novice like myself when I first saw it had an impact.

Generations - There are quite a few great scenes that Stewart gets in this movie. Malcolm McDowell is also great in it. But the whole plot feels too forced for me to get actually swept up in it. And as fun as it is to see Shatner and Stewart share the screen... it ultimately has no impact and leads to a strangely lame death for Kirk.

Insurrection - The idea of Enterprise going rogue against the Federation for forcibly relocating a population for a natural resource is such a good concept... which makes the goofiness and half-baked writing of this entry all the more confusing. All the elements are there, but it feels like the tone was forced to be lighter than the material warranted. It’s frustrating because Frakes’ directing chops that he showed off on First Contact are still visible here. But for whatever reason, this one just falls apart.

Into Darkness - This one is low on the list mainly because it represents almost all the negative traits of the modern blockbuster to me. Darkness without depth, franchise callbacks without substance, and no character development/change by the end. Another reason why Beyond works better as a sequel to ‘09 Star Trek than this one is that Into Darkness feels more like it’s trying to make Star Trek a bigger movie franchise rather than develop this iteration of the Enterprise crew. Nothing and no one is changed by the end of this story.

V: The Final Frontier - It is the most difficult Trek movie to sit through, and yet I can’t call it a disaster. For all of its misfirings on the comedy front (dancing Uhura, for instance), the camping material with Kirk, Spock and McCoy is genuinely great. The premise of its villain being on a quest to find God is ultimately a misfire, but it leads to a very engagingly ridiculous climax centered around the question “What does God need with a starship?” There are far too many undeveloped ideas in this one, but that scene is worth seeing this movie for. At least, now that we know it didn’t kill the franchise, as so many apparently feared when this came out.

#star trek #kyle rants

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jcmorrigan · 4 years

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Princess Elise is in the wrong game.

I’ve been studying her character for a while now, and I find myself drawn to her, even though she’s supposedly the “worst” character from the “worst” Sonic game. I won’t disagree on that second point, but that first point? I really, really like Elise, and I think I can pinpoint what went wrong with her at her core.

I think Sonic ‘06 flounders because it’s trying to tell two tonally different stories in the same blow. I haven’t seen every piece of Sonic media, admittedly - only a few things here and there. But I think Sonic works best when it’s treated as a corny, candy-colored mascot game (I don’t think I can call it a “platformer” when it’s more about running than actually overcoming obstacles) in the vein of Mario. The place I’ve actually been most impressed with Sonic is Sonic Adventure, which I admittedly have not played myself but seen playthroughs of. SA shares a lot of the same material as ‘06 - time travel, a princess with a mysterious destiny, a vengeful chaos god - but it’s all done in this very casual, cartoony fashion. The landscapes are all designed to be fantastical, the cast focuses on its anthro animals, even Chaos is a watery entity that is only threatening in his own context. Most of all, the story is very simple. Sonic and his friends versus Eggman is a rivalry without complication, and there isn’t too much character work done - Amy gets a nice message about learning her own self-worth and being the person she wants Sonic to notice, and I like how Tails’ story culminates in him stepping up despite his immense fear of the situation, but there aren’t any in-depth character studies here.

So now in Sonic ‘06, you suddenly have a prominent human character in the cast whose arc is very character-driven. Elise has more in common with your standard JRPG heroine than any Sonic character to date. The parallels between her and Yuna from Final Fantasy X actually stood out to me a while back - the heroine who carries a great burden that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, who’s ready to sacrifice herself to save her people, but who ends up loving one person so much that it breaks her heart to choose between him and the safety of everyone else. (Though I realized it’s especially sad with Elise because...Yuna had to lose Tidus, but at least she still had Kimahri, Rikku, and her other friends. Sonic was Elise’s only friend. End of story.) Elise also has a criminally underused gimmick in that she’s bound to an Eldritch horror she doesn’t even know about; she’s been trained not to cry or display emotion, but thinks that is linked to the strength needed to hold her position, not because it will unleash the monster within.

Where I think it all comes crashing down is that Elise’s story requires so much character work, but because she’s first and foremost in a game that focuses more on sending its playable characters through candy-colored environments, she has to act the role of the damsel so often because Sonic and Eggman need that simple rivalry, and one of the (unfortunately) quickest ways to code that rivalry is to have the villain take the woman the hero likes hostage, à la Bowser and Mario. The addition of Mephiles as the Bigger Bad is really just another fumble of trying to combine the two tones - attempting to create a more character-driven, serious villain with the aesthetic of a cartoon hedgehog.

I guess I technically have to count myself among people who think Sonic ‘06 would be more tonally consistent without Elise, but I wouldn’t want her to just...disappear. I feel like she needed to be in a game of her own, with other cast members who had serious burdens and could respond to her in more genuine ways than Sonic the Hedgehog ever could. Her prophetic visions of an Iblis-torn future, the way she feels the pain of repressing her emotions, being torn between the love of her people and the only true friend she’s ever had - this is heavy material, and she just has a very pleasant personality all around. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking to watch her navigate this, and she really just needed a more story-heavy sort of game to allow her the proper amount of cutscenes to flesh this out and complete her arc without having to be used as the damsel that furthered the rivalry between the mascot hero and mascot villain.

Feel free to disagree, but those are my two cents.

#princess elise #elise #sonic 06 #sonic the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog critical #HOT TAKE INCOMING

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natsubeatsrock · 4 years

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Why is My Hero Academia a school series?

Look, I'm not stupid.

The series is called My Hero Academia. Of course, this series would focus on a school-like setting. I'm not arguing that this series should have fundamentally changed into something completely different than what it ended up becoming. That would be ridiculous, especially considering that's part of what makes this series so unique.

What I am asking is why UA is an actual school. As in, why do we have to have finals, sports festivals, cultural festivals, summer breaks, and class trips in this anime?

The crazy thing is that I wouldn't have thought about this normally. I've seen arguments regarding the popularity of this genre. It would make sense that someone would think to combine the format of the DBZ-style battle action series with that of a school setting anime. The fact that this series is so popular, as far as I can tell, is at least partially because it combines both of these elements fairly well.

You'll never guess what actually got me to start thinking about this.

Keijo!!!!!!!!

I wish I was joking.

In that anime, the characters are also a part of a special school that's made specifically for them to learn the sport. The main difference is that the school they're a part of isn't a high school. In fact, they're all doing this after high school. The school feels like an alternative to college and only exists to train students into becoming better Keijo players. Their classes and activities revolve around improving their skills in and knowledge of Keijo.

This deals with something that’s kind of annoying about shows with school settings. I’ve said this before but it’s rare that a show that takes place in a school setting focuses on the schooling. I don’t mean that tests or school subjects are plot points. I mean, we’re not likely to get an arc where Horikoshi actually teaches his audience how to perform the kinds of differential equations Deku got wrong recently.

With that in mind, why is UA High an actual school? Is there a reason My Hero Academia needed to take place in an actual school? What was stopping UA from being a similar type of school for hero work?

As of the time I'm writing this, we've seen two events animated that would be characteristic of a school anime: sports festival and cultural festival. I could count internships, final exams, summer training camps, and work-study, but I figure that something similar to those things could happen if UA wasn't a normal school. Keijo even has its own form of summer training.

What was the point of the cultural festival?

Well, there really isn't one.

Of course, there's a reason to have a cultural festival. It's a break from the work students have done up to that point and serves as a chance for the non-hero classes to shine. I'm not here to say those things aren't important in the lives of high school students. Most of my favorite high school memories were made outside of the classroom. And, considering I have degrees in music, it would be wrong to act like all kids should do in school is learning.

But the only reason this happens is that they're an actual school. Maybe the support class and business classes get some experience and exposure. However, it's not as if there aren't ways for them to get that exposure. With UA's prestige, they could have an event similar to the sports festival to gain more eyes on their students

Speaking of which, what is the point of the sports festival in UA?

The sports festival is described as a great source of competitive entertainment. In a sense, it replaces the Olympics in terms of scale and importance for a lot of people. For the students, it can serve as a networking opportunity for work studies, internships, and future jobs with agencies.

But does this need to take the form of a sports festival?

I don't think it would be impossible to have the same benefits if they were competing with other schools. It would benefit a wider amount of people in a lot more schools. You can also section off groups so that hero studies students compete amongst each other, support studies students have their own event, and so on.

Of course, this isn't a perfect suggestion. There's the matter of having a large enough facility to have this kind of event and how an even larger crowd of students is thinned into a group small enough to have a tournament fight. Not to mention, something like Shinsou's rise to the hero classes was only possible because everyone was competing across classes and disciplines. That might not be the case if it fights are sectioned off.

However, this kind of thing isn't impossible. Fairy Tail has two different types of big competitions: the Grand Magic Games (for wizards and mages) and the Grand Secret Treasure Games (for treasure hunters). Heck, Keijo's anime culminates into a competition between the two elite keijo schools in Japan on either side of the country. Again, that was what got me to think about this in the first place.

Though, there are benefits to the structure of MHA as a school anime.

When I think of MHA as a universe, I think of it as similar to the X-Men universe, but with the emphasis on powers swapped. If you don't know, the X-Men universe focuses on the fact that people with mutations and mutant powers are the oppressed minority. The series is largely centered around the Xavier Institute for Gifted Individuals, which is a school for mutants to better learn their powers. The world of MHA feels like it's a similar world but one where Professor X has long won and mutants have become not only accepted but the norm of society.

In my opinion, this aspect of the world is one of the best things about the series. MHA is built around the idea that quirks are as commonplace as skin tones and hair colors, even if individual quirks affect either one individually. The idea that someone could be a hero is treated the same way that any other potential profession is: you get the training you need to do well at it and do it, killing as few people as possible in the process.

We already have high schools that focus on stuff like STEM and arts in addition to normal education in our world. That multiple schools focus on being heroes isn't a bad thing. It goes to show how much quirks have affected the lives of the characters in universe.

And high school isn't a bad time to set this type of education. It's mentioned early on in the series that people usually develop their quirks early on in life and are counseled on the use of their quirks. So, by the time a person enters high school, they've presumably had plenty of time to understand their quirk to a reasonable degree.

High school is an interesting time in life. A lot of what you thought to be true even in middle school about yourself and the world turns out to change or be proven false. If you want to push the boundaries of what your body can do, it makes sense to do it when several other assertions and considerations prove themselves to be either true or false.

To be fair, it is weird to see kids so young in the dangerous situations we see them in. It’s probably the most reasonable justification behind the costume redesigns I mentioned earlier in the week. As much as I would have likely disagreed, I was not ready to take on the world at 16. I was barely able to take on English classes. (Go figure.)

At the same time, it’s exactly because I was a 16-year old private school boy that I get why MHA strikes a chord with so many people. I totally wish that my high school was like UA. I wish that I got to do the stuff that UA planned (read: I want to the stuff 1-A got to do and not worry about the League). Disney World and two trips to Carnegie Hall pail in comparison to just the festival events.

In Conclusion:

MHA wouldn’t be broken if it weren’t based in an actual school. However, the fact that it is set in a school is a cool element of world building.

#not fairy tail month: crisis on infinite fandoms #my hero academia #kohei horikoshi #mha #this was something i hinted at a while ago #didn't think i'd touch it #i thought i'd be talking about fairy tail forever #only two more posts #and i'm done with this

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stephadoodles · 4 years

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I wanted to analyze Cece’s character and her overall arc in the show, because she has quite a bit of character development, but I haven’t really seen it discussed much in the fandom.

The other two characters that have similar redemption arcs are Amber and TJ, but their arcs are a bit different from Cece’s since

They’re a lot younger than her

They are very clearly labelled as ‘mean’ characters from the beginning, which makes it easier to give them a clear path to redemption.

Cece is a very interesting character to analyze, for a number of reasons. She’s a fully grown adult, with a family and a steady, stable life (in opposition to Bex and Bowie, the other adults). When we first see her, she’s very strict, she doesn’t allow Andi to do much, and it’s clear from her first appearance that her relationship with Bex is basically nonexistent, and what is there is pretty bad.

However, we have hints that she wasn’t always the super strict parental figure, and it seems like she went from being relaxed and fun, to super strict, and then back again. I think the best example is the parallel from the parties. At the first party, she shows up, screams at everyone to leave, and is clearly pissed. By the last party, she sneaks in dressed in a dinosaur costume, busts out a few moves, and joins in on the party. It was quite the character evolution, and it was done pretty well.

There are a few things to take into account with Cece’s character when it comes to looking at how she’s changed. The main thing that really drives her development is her relationship with Bex. It informs a lot of her decisions and the way that they interact with one another over the course of the show changes quite drastically, and it’s a crucial part of her character. It’s literally impossible to talk about her character development without talking about Bex with it.

The other thing is her relationship with her sister. While she’s only in two episodes, Mei’s character provides a lot of context for why Cece is the way that she is. I believe it also had an impact on her relationship with Bex to a degree.

Pre-Show: Most of what we know about Cece before the show starts is a little vague. Early on, we get the bikini scene, which implies that she was pretty free-spirited and fun-loving when she was younger. Throughout the course of the show, we see that she loves dancing, and isn’t completely opposed to partying. She is willing to have fun, but due to various events in her life, she became more reluctant to engage in those types of things.

We also see her relationship with Mei through the two episodes. It’s clear that they’re incredibly competitive with one another, and are constantly trying to prove that they are excelling more than the other in life. If their relationship has always been this way, it would explain quite a bit about why Cece tends to strive for perfection. There isn’t really an indication of whether their parents fueled any of this rivalry, so it’s hard to say if it came from them or just from a natural sibling rivalry.

The other main things about Cece are that she doesn’t like surprises and she’s very strict with Andi. We learn both of these things in the first episode, but it becomes clear why after the reveal of Bex being Andi’s mom. I’m sure Cece was worried about Andi being reckless like her mother (and accidentally getting pregnant as a teenager), which lent itself to her strict rules. As far as surprises go:

I saw someone once suggest that Cece found a pregnancy test in the box, and that would make a lot of sense.

Pre-show relationship with Bex: It’s clear from their first scene together, which is also Cece’s first scene on the show, that the relationship between the two has degraded extremely and barely exists. Through flashbacks and other anecdotes, we get an idea of what Bex was like as a teenager, and what her relationship with Cece was like during that time.

It’s normal for teens to clash with their parents, and for them to rebel against the rules. From what we’ve learned about teenage Bex, she definitely did this more than average. She snuck out, had boys over while babysitting, was heavily into the punk style of fashion, (which Cece clearly didn’t like), and while the show danced around it, she was sexually active as a teen.

Having a teenager that pushed the limits like Bex did definitely would have caused some tension, and I’m sure her parents were worried about her getting into trouble or getting hurt, which likely resulted in arguments and punishments. When she did end up getting pregnant as a teenager, I’m sure that was the tipping point that proved she was out of control (at least in Cece’s eyes).

Now, having your teenage daughter get accidentally pregnant at 17~ish is stressful and complicated enough for any family, but going back to Cece’s relationship with her sister, I have a feeling that it played into everything as well.

From what we can tell, Lin is a little older than Bex. It’s highly likely that Mei was comparing the two girls and making comments about how successful her daughter was. We have little hints of Bex’s childhood that make me think Cece was pushing her do follow a similar path, (for example, it’s mentioned that Bex played piccolo at some point, which doesn’t seem like something she would normally be interested in). While Lin was probably in some top-notch college, Bex ended up pregnant. It seems that Mei did know the secret, and I’m sure she held it over Cece’s head for quite some time.

The combination of Cece feeling like she has to excel as a parent coupled with Bex’s seeming determination to make that as difficult as possible, it’s not surprising that their relationship became a hostile and argumentative one.

Relationship in the show: As we get into the show, we see more of their dynamic, and how they are different from one another. One interesting thing that the show does is give them both the opportunity to be right and wrong. This is also related to Bex’s own arc, where she does mature and learn how to be a responsible adult. And while Cece is generally presented as the more mature character, there are a few moments in the show where she does act rather immaturely.

Cloud 10 and Makeup: A running theme with Bex and Cece and something that actually tied their relationship together was Bex’s makeup abilities. At the beginning of the show, when Bex is trying to get along with her mom, she has them both say something nice to one another.

Bex gives a heartfelt compliment to her mom, while Cece gives a superficial one. However, it later leads to Cece extending an olive branch of sorts when she asks Bex to do her makeup for a night out. It’s Cece acknowledging one of Bex’s talents, which is honestly the first nice thing we’ve seen her say to Bex. In season 2, Bex starts taking classes so she can be certified to do makeovers, and we finally get the culminating moment when Cece tells her that she’s proud of her. It’s set up nicely, with Bex’s comment in season 1 about how she just wanted her mom to be proud of her, and they have their first ever hug on-screen. It really highlights how badly in shape their relationship was - it took 24 episodes before they touched each other in a positive way.

Then we shift into the Cloud 10 plot, which essentially lasts until the end of the show. For the first time, we see the two working together towards a common goal. There’s a fair share of bickering along the way, but it’s over small things that they are able to work through much more easily.

Moving Out: The moving out plot line also helped to mend their relationship. After rehashing an argument, Bex gets an apartment and moves in with Andi. This is the first time we see Cece actually upset and in tears about something, and really the first time she shows any kind of emotion other than anger or annoyance. While we didn’t get to see what the Mack household was like before Bex showed up, Cece clearly cares very much about Andi and had thought of her like a daughter. Suddenly, she’s gone and it’s a transition that Cece clearly wasn’t prepared for.

However, on the flip side, Bex is once again clearly not prepared for this big move. In what was a stunning moment of maturity, she takes Andi back and admits to her mom that she wasn’t able to manage it after all. She had to put Andi’s needs above her own, and sucks up her pride and admits that she was wrong. In response, Cece brings Andi back to the apartment, because she can tell that Andi misses being with her mom. And despite her earlier insistence that Bex didn’t know what she was doing and that she couldn’t handle things, Cece tells her, “It's harder than it looks, but apparently you're getting the hang of it.”

There’s also the flashback episode where we see what happened when Bex moved out when Andi was a baby. It’s the first time that Cece and Bex really have a conversation and work through things together. Bex thanks her for taking care of Andi, and Cece admits that she couldn’t have left, even if it was the best thing for Andi. They finally are looking at the situation from each other’s points of view, and it’s one of the biggest moments that helps to fix their relationship.

In 2x08, we really start to see a different side to Cece. They’re pretty settled in their routine of Andi living with Bex (and sometimes Bowie), with occasional visits to the Mack house. However, when Cece decides to sell the house, it causes a lot of problems. Andi gets upset, folds her protest cranes, and Cece takes it as an opportunity to try and get Andi to spend more time with her. It leads to a number of scenes where she’s trying to be ‘fun’ and ‘cool,’ even though it’s not what she usually does.

It’s a nice reversal of roles, because we see Bex shift into the more responsible parental role as a result, when she freaks out because Andi never showed up to school and she was worried about what happened. She ends up scolding Cece and Andi for being irresponsible, which is the complete opposite of what we’ve seen so far on the show.

This is where things really start to change, and Bex and Cece both have a chance to act in a way similar to what the other usually does. It’s great because we get to see Cece be more fun and relaxed, while Bex is being more responsible and aware of consequences.

Wedding: The wedding was really the final part of Cece’s arc. Season 3 opens with Bex and Bowie finally getting engaged (which was something Cece was pushing for all the way back in Season 2). We get the second episode with Mei, and it really goes to show how much of a negative influence her sister has on Cece. (As the oldest of four, I can concur that no one can make you revert to being immature like your siblings can). She’s once again determined to prove to her sister that her family is more successful, and hypes up the wedding without consulting Bex.

Rewatching Season 3 makes it very obvious how often Bex protests the idea of the big wedding and how against it she is. She refuses to take part in the planning, constantly makes comments about how she doesn’t want it to be a big deal, and the fact that she ends up panicking and cancelling it was not surprising in the least. While Andi and Cece were so excited about it, they pretty much ignored what Bex was saying, and that’s why it ended up blowing up in their faces. While it’s understandable that they were upset (especially since they did put a lot of work into it), they really didn’t listen to Bex’s wishes.

Cece acts pretty rudely in response to Bex after this, and it’s almost as though she’s reverted back to her season 1 self. Ultimately, what brings them back to good terms is Bex panicking when she has to go pick Andi up from jail. I feel like there was probably quite a bit more to this story line and how they fixed their relationship, but that it got lost due to the reshoots and edits of the later episodes (especially the missing episode).

However, Cece does seem to accept the inevitable, as does Andi, which makes the surprise wedding reveal even better. In the end, everyone got what they wanted, and Bex and Cece have this exchange:

The culmination of it all in the final episode is Cece leaving for a trip, telling Bex not to have a party. She knows that it’s what’s going to ultimately happen of course, but this time she trusts Bex, and knows that she’s responsible enough to handle throwing this party, and that it won’t be something that ends up going out of control. And in the middle of it all, Cece sneaks back in and has a dance break in a dinosaur costume, before surprising everyone with her reveal. She admits that she actually wanted to come to one of the parties, and now she’s able to. Her last line of the show is a snarky comment about how they’ll need to wash the costume, which is really the perfect way to sum up her character.

To sum it all up, she went from the strict, no fun, rule-abiding authoritarian, to the fun yet responsible “not a grandma.” Through the development of her relationship with her daughter, and the shifting of her responsibilities from mother to grandmother, she was able to open up, have fun, and express her true self. While she’s still practical and responsible, she’s willing to bend the rules and enjoy things in a way she wasn’t at the beginning.

#cece mack #andi mack #bex mack #andi mack analysis #andi mack meta #my analysis #oh my god it's finally done

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cogentranting · 4 years

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I still think Once Upon a Time could have done something really interesting if Rumple died instead of Neal in season 3.

Rumple has arcs I like after season 3, but overall when I look back at his full story over the seven seasons, it doesn’t work very well because there are too many back and forths between he’s redeemed, no he’s not, he’ll do anything for Belle, he’s gonna be really abusive for a season etc. It’s too inconsistent. But if you end the story with his death in 3, it’s a pretty clear clean arc.

Meanwhile Neal is the Dark One’s son, a huge part of Emma’s origins, Henry’s father, the whole reason the curse was cast... and his impact in the present is pretty minimal. Even his sacrificial death doesn’t actually do that much. It just tells them who the witch is (which they could have found out if they just thought to themselves for a second ‘hmm there’re exactly two new people in town after this second curse. Zelena and Robin. I wonder which one is the evil witch lady?’). Even his role within the love triangle feels underutilized because Emma never makes any sort of choice. She never even really confronts her complicated feelings for Neal.

So what if, instead, Rumple dies stopping Pan same as always, but then when Neal brings him back using the vault, the way that they save Neal is not by doing the weird combining Neal and Rumple thing- it’s by giving Neal the dagger and having him stab Rumple, becoming the Dark One.

Then you have Rumple die his big hero death in 3A and cement it in 3B by not letting Neal trade his life for his. And you have Neal suffer the consequences of turning to Dark magic regardless of the price, by being corrupted. From that point forward, Neal can take the place of most of Rumple’s story lines.

For the rest of 3B Neal is the Dark One and is controlled by Zelena. Through this there’s little hints of him going dark but mostly he remains the same. During this Emma follows the same progression in her relationship with Hook, but at the same time gets to actually make the choice to close the door on her relationship with Neal instead of having it closed for her. She can even make that choice at around the same point that Neal dies in the real show (3x15). Then at the end of the season, Neal is free, seems to be stable, but kills Zelena, just like Rumple did. This is his tipping point into becoming really the Dark One.

Season 4A his motivations are essentially the same as what Rumples were; he wants to separate himself from the dagger but keep his power (because he’s been powerless his whole life, trapped by his father, by Pan, in hiding in the real world, controlled by Zelena etc. and he’s never gonna be controlled again blah blah blah). He still takes Hook’s heart but this time the connection dives more into the whole twisted family history and their Neverland connection. You maybe bring in some of the “you took Emma from me” idea but keep it pretty clearly as a side thing. The whole situation now has this added note of tragedy because instead of a straightforward rivalry there was once real familial affection between them. At the end of 4A he’s driven out of town just like Rumple. I think you maintain the connection/friendship that he had with Belle in 3x15 throughout 3B and 4A and still have her be the one to use the dagger for this (though now maybe also have Hook and Emma there as his other two main connections) and it still reflects similar growth in how she views the Dark Ones just with the romantic element removed.

4B plays out basically the same except that instead of Rumple rewriting his story to make Belle love him, Neal is trying to force Henry to love him (you use 4A to do more with their relationship of them trying to build something but it being off because of how Neal is being corrupted, and then you use Hook and Henry bonding as a foil for that, a positive alternative. This influences the animosity Neal feels while he’s controlling Hook. And at the end of the arc Henry also cuts ties with Neal. In fact if you wanted you could have him fully take the role of Belle in this arc and not develop a relationship with Belle and Neal. However, I don’t want to cut Belle from the story, so you’d have to find her a completely new arc. Maybe you find her a new love interest (not Will. Ana’s his true love) or maybe you just develop her as a friend for Mary Margaret or Emma. ) The story mostly plays out the same way but with Henry a little more center which fits well with his role in the finale becoming the author. However, there are two difficulties. 1. you have to remove the arc about the darkness killing Rumple, since Neal wouldn’t have accumulated near enough darkness to be killing him. You do have to work in some actually truly evil things for him to do instead of just evil things he almost does, so I think some characters have to really get murdered. I’m thinking Archie or some fairies since they don’t do much anyone and everyone would be horrified. The attempt to remove the darkness to save him would need slightly different justification but it’s all magical mumbo-jumbo anyway so who cares. Potentially he could do something to try to hurt Henry and that could be framed as “an act so dark and against his nature that it’s destroying all the light in his heart” or something like. or it could just be a misguided attempt to stop him from being the Dark One that backfires. The other difficulty is the alternate storybook. The finale story line really only works if Henry isn’t initially in the book. But I think you can work around that just by saying that A. Isaac is pulling the strings and B. putting in something about how because Henry is the author, their attempts to rewrite him into the book didnt’ work. Other than that it’s the same. You can even still have “heroic Rumple” in the story.

Season 5A plays out the same except Belle needs a new plot. Play up the Merida connection, let her flirt with Merlin, have her trying to save Neal for the sake of Rumple. I don’t know, her 5A story isn’t great to begin with. Emma and Hook’s Dark One guide is still Rumple not Neal (for that matter if you want to keep Rumple around let Neal see Imp Rumple as his guide for a season or so). Letting Hook die to get his power back is seen as a big step toward Neal being irredeemable. His underworld arc involves a lot of back and forth of different influences-- he’s being forced to try to save Hook who he’s burned a bunch of bridges with, he’s reunited with his mother who gets to move on but her influence isn’t enough to save him, Pan plays more of a role of trying to forge a connection with him, and ultimately he keeps making worse and worse choices until he’s more and more like Rumple at his worst. Eventually he sides with Hades in the conflict and he ends up killing someone (Robin if you want to keep the rest of the story mostly the same, Zelena if you want to make further changes. Belle if you want to go really dark and tragic.) Then Henry trying to destroy magic in the finale is a direct parallel of Baelfire trying to go to a land without magic, because this time Henry is trying to save Neal from the influence of the Dark One. But the season still ends with Neal being the most evil he’s been yet.

Season 6 has more of a shift. The Black Fairy is still a major influence but instead of using Gideon (who no longer exists in our story), she’s interacting with Neal directly. You keep the savior Rumple backstory because it still plays into the themes of the family history and the two sides of Henry’s lineage. But here Fiona takes more of a backseat and Neal becomes the main villain of the season, and in a lot of ways the culminating villain of the main seasons 1-6 arc. It ends with Emma defeating him, but after he’s defeated there’s a moment of him turning on Fiona inspired by Henry’s love for him (very Luke and Vader- esque). This isn’t presented as redeeming Neal, just offering a glimmer of hope for his redemption. He ends up banished back to the enchanted forest (or another realm).

Neal then takes Rumple’s role in season 7. He’s looking for the Guardian but now the motivation is sort of a short cut to redeeming himself-- he’s trying to remove the darkness at the expense of someone else in hopes of it magically making him back into who he once was. The Alice relationship is essentially the same. Now the Weaver/Tilly relationship also provides a sort of parallel to the his relationship with Emma when they first met (though of course not romantic) except this time he’s redeeming himself by becoming a more positive influence rather than shaping her into a thief. The Weaver/Rogers relationship plays basically the same role, with adjustments made to accommodate the ways in which the Hook/Neal relationship is different from Hook/Rumple one. But now, Weaver’s connection to Henry is a big deal, and the relationship ties the plot lines together more tightly. Neal’s redemption plays out through this season in equal parts through Alice, Rogers and Henry. It culminates in the finale, with Wish Rumple still being in the finale as a sort of final temptation, and with the glimpse of evil Wish Henry being an inspiration toward his final act of redemption, saving Rogers in order to heal the separated father and child in a way that his own family was never able to heal. This is also plays a part in Wish Henry and real Henry’s final confrontation.

The way I’ve described it here make it sounded a little like focus is shifted off of Emma, but that’s not the case, her story remains virtually the same and she is just as dominant. But this gives us three clear avenues- the hero lineage with Snow and Charming and Emma, the redeemed villains with Regina and Hook, and the villain lineage with Pan, the Black Fairy, Rumple and Neal. It gives us a clear through-line on the side of the villains where each subsequent villain gets us closer to our ultimate villain as we watch Neal go from the kind and noble son of the Dark One who he lost, to the skeevy love interest, to the Dark One and the main nemesis. His negative character development becomes the antiparallel to Emma’s heroic growth.

It also keeps the story lines more closely linked, since often Rumple’s motives in the real show are tangential to what the main heroes are doing. Neal’s corrupt “love” of Henry that put him in clear opposition to Emma’s true love. The romantic history of Emma and Neal informs and complicates their dynamic and presents extra challenges in confronting him, without being a main point, except to positively highlight the strengths of the Captain Swan romance. It let’s Emma be a clear nemesis to the main villain, rather than an incidental obstacle. Defeating him also thematically represents defeating the tragedies of her past-- rising above the broken relationship that made her stop trusting, led to her giving up her son, and putting up her walls etc. in order to be someone who is a wonderful mother, is very happily married, and a hero who protects everyone.

It also streamlines Henry’s arc. There’s some concept in the existing story of Henry’s mixed lineage, but it’s only explored intermittently. This allows him to have clear representation from all three avenues: from his mother’s side of the family you have the clear heroes. From his father’s side you have the worst villains. And in his chosen family (his adoptive mother and his stepfather) you have the redeemed villains. He’s the product of every type of great hero and villain. By having an evil Neal continually vying for his affections, and having Henry continually and consistently choosing the side of good and hope and redemption, you have a clear representation in him of the show’s main themes. The finale involving adult Henry, Wish Henry, Wish Rumple, Dark Neal, Regina, a version of Hook (even if it’s not actually the one that’s Henry’s step father) and (in this version) more of a presence for Emma (discussing her more even if you still couldn’t have her in it, but if we’re spinning entire alternate shows here, I’m putting her in the finale) Henry and Wish Henry become a focal point for the themes of the show and Henry’s triumph and the resulting redemption for Neal become a representation of the show’s values. The heroes of seasons 1-6 who aren’t in season 7 also get a piece of this final triumph because their influence on Henry (making him someone who ultimately kind, and generous, and brave and faithful) is what has won out in the end.

#ouat #ouat au #ouat rewatch

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nautilusopus · 4 years

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I’M TIRED OF BEING NICE AND I’M GONNA GO APESHIT

Don’t mind me just sticking my face in this hornet’s nest at long last.

Hot take for the day: Clotis complaining about the Cleriths' need to excise giant chunks of Cloud's character arc to make their ship work that won’t shut the fuck up about “childhood friends” for ten seconds are in absolutely no position to talk.

OH ALSO Cleriths in turn have no fucking right to act so put-upon by the mean old Clotis when it is a well known fact that they start the most shit/do the most hating out of EVERYONE in this fandom combined. You fuckers literally have an anti-tifa tag. I had to block the majority of the VII tag when I first got to Tumblr because the vast majority of the damn thing was made up of hatemail, sent from you, to other people’s blogs showing any Tifa positivity whatsoever.

OH AND ALSO I think we excuse a lot of the bad Cloti takes because in comparison the damage done to the story by them isn't nearly as bad as the damage done by the Cleriths trying to like... chop out 90% of Cloud's character arc, so we let a lot of garbage slide, but we really shouldn't. (Again I stg if I have to see one more fucking "childhood friends" post...) Clotis just as frequently come up with shit takes that warp the story to prop up their ship, it’s just concentrated in different areas.

Please stop attributing literally fucking everything Aeris does to Zack. Please. Stop it. Fucking stop it for chrissake I don’t care if it gets her neatly out of the way, weren’t you assholes dunking on the Cleriths for this like... last week? You don’t care how bad Aeris gets butchered as long as she’s out of the fucking way and she’s never allowed to make decisions or have agency of her own and it really goes to show how shallow your “oh but we’re the ones that REALLY appreciate the story and characters” lines are. Fuck, you don’t even really care about Tifa either given you spent the last, like.. decade calling Aeris a bland damsel and then every day I log into this blue hell and see another Cloud Saving Tifa gifset compilation.

Like... FACT: Cloud and Tifa were never childhood friends. If this doesn’t fuel your ship in the exact way you want, too bad. This is the story of the game. Stop snipping it out. Tifa never gave two shits about Cloud prior to meeting him in Midgar years later. The fact that the promise in and of itself is some juvenile nonsense that ultimately meant little to their relationship in and if itself is just part of the game.

ALSO FACT: Tifa and Cloud love each other and it informs nearly every part of Cloud’s character arc. Whether or not you think it’s platonic or romantic, that’s your call, but his need for her validation kicked off his entire arc and is woven into nearly every part of hers, with them learning to be vulnerable and honest with one another being the culmination of both of them, and in and of itself is a reflection of the themes about identity and acceptance Cloud’s story conveys. To cut that out is to cut out the core of who Cloud is.

ALSO A FUCKING FACT: Aeris can, should, and does have decisions she makes independent of the fact that she was Zack’s girlfriend at this point and YES this fucking includes her relationship with Cloud. The fact that acknowledging that threatens getting her neatly out of the way of Cloud is irrelevant to the fact that it’s a part of the story of the game. Zack being retconned to be responsible for everything she ever did or thought is NOT something you should be celebrating if you care about the story being coherent.

Basically I’m saying you all suck and “oh at least the Clotis aren’t run by neo-Nazis” is a low, low bar and you should all be ashamed that’s our quality vetting point by now.

And hey while I’m here most Aerti content sucks too because it’s “gay disaster” this “gay disaster” that, y’all are hugely projecting onto Aeris where she’s fainting and drooling over Tifa’s arms every three seconds. There are other types of character besides gay disaster. Shameful.

#squid alienates vii fans #I HATE YOU BOTH G'NIGHT EVERYBODY!!!#THAT'S RIGHT I DIDN'T EVEN CENSOR THE NAMES SUCK IT

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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If you think about just the array of powers, training and competence that would exist in a lineup of the original Titans’ kids once teenagers or adults themselves, including the ones created after that one arc where they met some of their kids in the future....like....

Lian, the oldest by a year or so, daughter of one of the world’s greatest marksmen and spies, as well as one of its greatest assassins and the undisputed mistress of all manners of poisons....

Robert, the next oldest, son of the original Wonder Girl, scion of prophecies, heir to his mother’s power and with access to the tutelage of both the Titans the team and the Titans of old, in a continuity where they hadn’t had to take away his powers as a baby to avoid him growing up to be Lord Chaos because of Extant’s manipulations....

Either Cerdian or Mar’i would be the next oldest, depending on when Dick and Kori had Mar’i in a timeline where DC editors didn’t say “okay but what if they weren’t though” at each and every point where it looked like there was even a slight possibility of them being happy.....

But say Cerdian was born first, son of Garth and Dolphin, a prince in his own right, possessing all the powers of his father and magical skill accumulated from the combined teachings of Garth, Raven and any other tutors the two acquired for him by asking politely (Garth) or terrifying into compliance (Raven)...

Then Mar’i, with all of Kori’s powers, endurance, flight, strength and battle prowess, as well as all the accumulated knowledge and training bestowed by her father, who would insist that given the number of ways villains have of circumventing or negating various superhuman abilities, he wanted his kids to be equally formidable even should they temporarily find themselves without them....not to mention with additional training in investigation, hacking, and any other number of other specialties courtesy not just of her parents and her Titan aunts and uncles, but also thanks to the doting attention of her Grandpa Batman and her various aunts and uncles within the Batfamily - Jason’s weapons expertise, Babs’ hacking, Cassandra’s body language tutorials, Steph’s “when a brick is all you have, even a brick can work” How To DIY sessions, Superhero Style....

Then the twins, Irey and Jai, who are allowed to actually stay twins in a continuity where they’re allowed to grow up normally with their peers and aren’t randomly left with an age gap of three years that no writer ever really does anything with character-wise to justify its existence and it just happens because ‘Hey Wouldn’t It Be Weird If’...

The Tornado Twins as a combined and united force of two speedsters of differing but still complementing temperaments, balancing each other’s out, Irey’s impulsiveness and Jai’s measured consideration, Jai’s intellect easily as formidable as any speedster before him but with the additional focus and honing he does of it specifically, leaning into all the various scientific principles that can be toyed with and defied by a speedster who devotes himself entirely to figuring out if Speed + Science Sometimes can accomplish this, what can I do with Speed + Science ALL THE TIME.....

While Irey possesses a more innate connection to and understanding of the Speed Force that defies explanation, or at least her ability to explain in any way that allows anyone else to grasp it the way she does as second nature, as instinctively accomplishing feats with the Speed Force comes as naturally to her as breathing.

Almost like the two of them are the ultimate yin and yang of a grand design, the end culmination of the dual aspects possessed by so many speedsters before them, from Barry to Wally to even Eobard and Zolomon, with Jai being the ultimate evolution of The Scientist granted access to all the secrets of the universe that only speed and hyperdimensional travel can unlock, and with Irey being the ultimate evolution of The Speedster itself, the perfect union of conscious mind and supernatural force that the Speed Force has always seemed to be inching closer and closer to with each new speedster to access its power....

And then finally, Jake, the baby of the team, but no less formidable than his big and obnoxiously overprotective older sister Mar’i, due to sharing in both her powers and her training, just enough years younger than her that its totally annoying to him that his sister thinks he needs to be babied, but still enough years younger than her that for all that his aunts and uncles nod sympathetically when he complains about it to them, they slip her a secretive “well done” nod of acknowledgment when Jake looks away.

Which maybe at times leads to him feeling a need to take out some of this frustration on their enemies with truly awe-inspiring feats hurling bolts of starfire, smacking a supervillain out of the park by swinging a city bus at him like a baseball bat, ferrying a villain from ‘about to stab one of his teammates in the back’ to ‘trying to figure out where all the oxygen went suddenly - oh shit, they’re in orbit wtf wtf that’s the moon wtf’ in thirty seconds or less.....like, obviously, no kid of Dick Grayson and Princess Kor’iander of Tamaran does well with being coddled, but hey, what can you do.

*Shrugs* Anyway, I’m just saying....

Holy Terrifying Titans lineup, Batman!

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