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morievna · 1 year

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Was Fyodor on Tokoyami island? Speculation on his past

Hello~~

So here I am – joining countless ppl on speculation on Fyodor xD

I must say I like a lot Fyodor as characters – he is truly intriguing and complex villain, which actions could be interpreted very differently as fandom discourse proves (Btw I am totally on side redemption + living atonement arc).

What is fascinating to me is how on one side we know a lot how he is now – his morals, worldview, goal, behaviour – but on the other side, we don’t really know what shaped him that way. After all, backstory are often key to understanding character – I believe that Asagiri is purposely obscuring that for surprise later on. But still imo there are some crumbs in the story – on that I want to focus on right now.

Ofc I can be totally wrong – but still speculation is fun ^_^

1. Does Fyodor has grudge against Mori?

When rereading series this scene caught my attention:

While Fyodor was attacking Mori there is such focus and almost full page is dedicated to his expression. Meaning that his response here is important. For me his look feel condemnatory, like passing sentence on him.

Also he is using knife – close proximity – meaning personal.

After all, it is rather different from other times when we see him kill others – which have more feeling of something he simply needs to do in order to fulfil his goal. Additionally, it is important too that he planned to it personally instead of having Hawthorne do it like with Fukuzawa (which was attacked from distance as opposite to this case).

Moreover, Fyodor was after Ace for specifically finding out Mori’s skill. Ofc it could be that he simply wanted to be prepared before Cannibalism plan, but still it is a little sus to me.

But to be clear – I don’t want to imply that Fyodor is after Mori because the latter did something bad to him specifically. I mean it could be – but imo it is more like Fyodor detests for what Mori is standing for.

Which bring us to Tokoyami Island.

2. Mori’s goal vs Fyodor’s goal

So Mori’s objective on Tokoyami island was to make government understand that times had changed – Europeans started to use skilled people as tools in war and Japan would fall behind if they didn’t adjust their strategy. Mori was thinking of ‘greater good’ and simply didn’t want his country to be ruined and conquered by foreign nation.

What’s important that he achieved that goal – Mori aka most successful anti-hero ever xD – as we see in story how Fukuchi was dispatched by government to the battlefield after battlefield; and also Special Division for Unusual Powers and Hunted Dogs were established to control situation in Yokohama; and military research and experimentation on people to get powerful skill users vide Arahabaki project.

Ofc it is not 100% Mori’s fault – it is more on human nature, where people in power want more power and system which often relies on regular people exploitation. You know, just like real world^^’

But still, Mori didn’t consider how repercussion will make on individual person – that treating living person as convenient weapon can lead to inhumane exploitation and PTSD just as in case of Yosano and Fukuchi. Also it is not that Mori is 100% evil – he just focuses on bigger picture too much and that’s why he needs his boyfriend Fukuzawa xD

Okay, so what all of that has to do with Fyodor? Let me explain~~

Fyodor’s goal is to remove abilities from the world – you know, it doesn’t have to be malevolent plan in his mind. After all:

Btw in polish official translation it is more like ‘let us meet in promised land’

Imo world without abilities doesn’t mean Fyodor wants to kill all people with skill – but more aiming at creation of new world where skilled people are born as regular people living ordinary life without being used by government as it is now. Imo it is possible that he rationalized killing people too - that they will be reborn according to karma. But for all of that he needs the Book, which has a power to rewrite the world and create new ones.

(BSD into the Multiverse xD or Multiverse of Madness more accurately xD)

But still, even though Fyodor wants to change the world, it is possible that he is feeling resentful towards Mori’s actions being starting point for government’s exploitation of skilled people. And later on cooperating with government via Tripartite Framework.

Especially what if he was able to witness Mori’s action first-hand?

3. Does Fyodor was on Tokoyami island on ‘enemy’ side?

First off – this conflict is based on real one between Japan and Russia:

Yosano's poem Thou Shalt Not Die, addressed to her younger brother, was published during the height of the Russo-Japanese War. It was used as a mild form of anti-war protest, as the number of Japanese casualties from the bloody Siege of Port Arthur became public. In September 1904, Yosano had learned that Japanese soldiers at Port Arthur were being used as "human bullets", being strapped with explosives and sent to blast holes through the Russian barbed wire entanglements in suicide missions.

Yosano attacked the central concept that it was the greatest honor for a man to die for the Emperor, who she sarcastically noted never put himself in harm's way, expecting others to die for him. For calling the war with Russia senseless and stupid, Yosano made herself into Japan's most controversial poet, and the government attempted to ban her poem.

[source] irl Yosano is goat <3

In both cases we have:

Imperialist agenda of government (on both sides) over territories not really belonging to them.

Strategy being more important to government than casualties

Fukuzawa mentioned that people were used as ‘human bombs’ on Tokoyami island too

IRL Yosano’s beliefs are similar to BSD Fukuchi xD

To sum it up – that conflict in BSD could be Japan vs Russia too.

It could be that Fyodor is ex-military agent/spy/intelligence officer, who was dispatched to fight in this war (maybe alongside with Gogol). And seeing first-hand not only terrors of war, but also effect of skill on battlefield –Yosano’s skill caused people being endlessly resurrected with no agency and sole purpose to fight as well as overwhelming power of Fukuchi’s skill, which mostly likely changed outcome of this battle for Japan’s favour. It could be after witnessing all of that terror was one of reasons he wanted to change the world to create new one without evil(=wars) and sin(=abilities).

After all, Fyodor is very negative on human nature – specifically on humans senselessly killing each other:

It could even be that he met broken Fukuchi there after battle – thus DoA was born from common goal and mindset. Even though there weren’t interaction between them so far – from symbolic perspective they stand for similar pessimistic values - that humans can’t do better on their own due to corrupt nature and that ideal world with god’s harmony can be only achieved via Book.

Why I think that Fyodor is ex-military? Well, it just aside from his unknown skill – he is capable very much like:

Hacking – very skilled - Moby Dick wasn’t supposed to be hackable, (otherwise Guild’s plan with Fitzgerald guarding transmitter makes no sense) and opening prison gates

Manipulation – it is like stating obvious but still - he is good at manipulation single person as well as crowds and global social response with DoA plan

Setting own information network – Fyodor has access to lot of not easily accessible information through the whole world. Basically he knows a lot, which doubled with his perfect memory is dangerous weapon.

Communication during Cannibalism arc – through requesting music in radio – it was really creative idea, which couldn’t be tracked or intercepted

Survival – as he mentioned that he is able to withstand starvation during Ace’s interrogation

Ofc, it can be that Fyodor is just self-taught genius – but it is more likely that he gained experience and knowledge during serving some organization on “wrong side”. Just pretty much like his foils - Dazai defecting PM to join side that ‘saves people before their eyes’ and Verlaine defecting France military because of wanting better future for his other self. Imo Fyodor is the same, but just on global scale – wanting to change the world for better one and bring karma as divine punishment to evil. And in BSD government is the evil xD

Honestly, i know I have just hunches – but still, we don’t know everything what was going on Tokoyami island and below things are especially sus to me:

Fukuchi POV on Tokoyama island is obscured - we got only glimpses or explanation from Fukazawa what happened there.

Tokoyami island being supernatural – well, in bsd usually causes of supernatural occurrences are people with ability xD Even though possibly that is just due to far north location, but imo skill users must been on enemy side as well, especially since from Yosano POV Japan was losing before Fukuchi arrived.

Fyodor’s age is unknown, which is sus… imo he will be around the same age as Gogol as all duos in bsd. (btw Gogol is 26, Yosano 25 for comparison)

A bit unrelated, but there is also case Tachihara’s brother knowing classified information on war – it could be just for exposition sake, but still pretty sus…

Also from thematic perspective:

Fukuchi is very anti-nationalism – pretty valid – it just would work neatly in story that starting point would be meeting supposed enemy and realizing they are human too.

Secondly, Asagiri loves parallels and foils - Fukuzawa picking up lost kids like Ranpo and Yosano – and on the other side Fukuchi picking up lost chaotic anti-society kids like Fyodor and Gogol xD and even with Mori, where PM is like new home for Chuuya and Verlaine. On symbolic level it is like one generation wants to start something new (ADA, new version PM) almost to repent for previous mistakes and picks up kids (which symbolize future) who share their vision.

Okay, it is all for today~~ I intend to make part 2 with speculation on Fyodor’s ability and probability of redemption arc, so stay tuned if you are interested^^

Thanks for reading as always and happy new year <3

#bsd #bsd meta #bsd theories #mori ougai #fyodor dostoevsky #bsd fyodor #bsd mori #bsd fukuchi #bsd manga #i wonder if i got something right xD

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rg060295 · 8 months

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Why I think short stories are great

A gateway back into reading - as they are a lot less intimidating than a full length novel.

A great way to find and sample new to you authors and genres - anthologies are a great way to sample new genres, sub genres and find multiple authors writing in that genre you may have never heard of!

Great way to read more work translated into English - particularly I found this when looking for more speculative fiction, translated into English.

More fulfilling - it is often easy to read a whole story in one sitting, so there is no pausing and continuing another day. You can start a story and reach its conclusion the same day, no waiting years for a sequel, or forgetting points after picking it back up days later.

Easy way to fit reading into a busy schedule - you can read while commuting, while waiting for something to cook, at lunch etc..

Super accessible - many short stories are published for free in zines, magazines, or even websites e.g. tor.com

Nostalgic - reminds me of reading as a child… a short story is basically a grown up fairy-tale or bedtime story.

Narrower focus than a novel - with a much smaller cast and normally following one idea or theme, the smaller scope of a story can lead to a much deeper character study

Can be more impactful than a novel - as short stories can on only one idea, thought or feeling to be explored without digression or distraction

No space wasted - shorter stories mean less space for rambling, slow moments or side plots.

Can be more unique than a full length novel - the short length meaning authors have to be more creative

Some stories just work better in short form - particularly I feel horror is a genre that works better in short form. There is less repetition and time, which will lead to you getting use to the ‘scary’ concept, and sometimes can be not fully explained which just adds to the eerie feeling (IMO)

Less disappointment - I have not loved every short story I have read, but I feel less bitter about the stories compared to full length novels which I have spent a lot of time and sometimes money on!

Feeling accomplished - that feeling of finishing a book, well you can have that even more with short stories!

#my posts

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thistle-and-thorn · 2 years

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Do you have any headcanons about religious/cultural practices and beliefs in Westeros? How do you think they vary between Dorne, the rest of the South and the North?

I talk to Lilium-convallium (who I know is lurking on this blog 👀 love u darling 🥰) talk about this ALL THE TIME. I need to re read the books because I don’t remember a lot of canon detail honestly so this will not be a meta post, just Vibes.

But how I imagine it when I write about it when I write fic is classical mythology in the form of the Catholic Church. Ancient Valyrian has a very traditional and recognizable mythology that is Greek, Roman or its predecessors/contemporaries like Sumerian or even Egyptian etc. like I picture elaborate burial rituals, Parthenon-like structures, etc. I think when the Targaryens invaded there was some marriage between religious beliefs.

I always imagine the literature of the Seven’s religion to take on much more of the mythologized story/poems/hymns of Ancient Greece, with that strange sort of circular and concurrent timeline, rather than the sort of linear arc that Jewish and Christian texts often seem to be (like, I don’t think, first there was Westerosi Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, the Noah, then Abraham, then Isaac and Ishmael, etc. or the idea of a House of David that eventually leads to Jesus, etc within Westerosi religion). It’s not a chronicle. There also appears to be no Savior figure, not in the Christian conception of a deity come to Earth. We have Azor Azhai but that is more reminiscent of Arthur—an extraordinary man with magical friends and strength of character rather than a literal God—and has the vagueness of many prophesies that appear in Greek or Roman mythology.

A lot of Southron Westeros is very Italian/Roman to me. The Lannisters are blatantly copied from the Borgias imo (side note: Tyrion’s storyline is literally about GRRM’s journey to atheism you cannot change my mind), the High Sparrow storyline is literally just Savonarola fanfic (the way the tale of Baelor the Blessed contains elements of George III fanfic). So the form that religion takes in Westeros is Catholic and thus really tactile as opposed to the more academic Protestant religions. Even though we have maesters, I think a lot of the social programming is provided by septons and septas. We also have, however, the sept taking indulgences, lots of man-created liturgies, cult sites, pilgrim tokens and relic tours—all the hallmarks of medieval Catholicism. Can you imagine how sexy Westerosi sainthood could be?!?! They don’t mention it like that but like—I love this idea!

I think it would be interesting to lean into that—are there different varieties of septon, the way there are Cistercians and Benedictines and Franciscans? (I literally am obsessed with monasticism don’t mind me) I think it would also be interesting to consider potential schisms—Like Eastern Orthodoxy and the Western Churches. To me, the schism would clearly occur in Dorne. Do the Dornish practice the Seven? I don’t remember tbh but any form of the Seven would be distinct in Dorne from the rest of Westeros.

The North reminds me of Christianized Scandanavia where many of the indigenous mythologies were re-adapted to folklore and superstitions and occurred alongside the practice of Christianity. The Northern religion is fascinating to me—there is no pantheon. I like to envision its stories as being Celtic or Norse but I think this would take the form of the non-god related stories: giants, fae, brownies, Tolkien-style dwarves. I think there’s something apocalyptic about Northern mythologies—celestial battles, etc. Their traditions are oral, often sung—later developing into troubadours—and stories of heroes similar to Beowulf, Fionn mac Cumhaill, etc. would be popular as well as fabled histories similar to the Aeneid, Arthur, or the Iliad. I don’t think they would have fondness for trickster characters like Loki or Odysseus and would instead focus on the moral or chivalric meanings of the myths.

The Red Priests and Priestesses are Zoroastrians. And I think that’s cool because Zoroastrians are cool.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. More will bubble up—this is my literal favorite topic. What about your head canons?

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porschekittisawasds · 3 years

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i know this is kind of an unpopular opinion but as we get deeper into the season my hope for canon buddie is getting less and less :/ i feel like eddie and buck aren't getting nearly as much screen time together and it makes me wonder if that's because of the ryan and oliver drama. im just worried that because of their issues buck and eddie aren't going to have the same dynamic ):

under the cut because this got very long lmao

to begin with, let's talk about buck and eddie's screen time this season.

1 and 2: these episodes focus on the dam breaking and the landslide, so they're on calls almost the entire time. buck is paired with chimney for a good amount of time which is a change of pace considering he's usually paired with eddie. however, you have to keep in mind that this is the first episode we've seen since maddie and chimney found out they're having a baby. buck and chimney are now family outside of the 118, so it makes to pair them up especially when you consider chimney is experiencing a lot of anxiety about becoming a father.

3: lots of eddie/buck content this episode. buck teasing eddie about hilda. eddie knowing random facts just like buck. buck and eddie and chris hang out featuring chris asking buck if they can go play video games at his place and eddie giving buck a "we have to be a united front" look. chris and buck teaming up to prank eddie with what is presumably a pretty expensive coffee maker. literally Peak Buddie Content™.

lone star ep: buck, eddie and hen got split up this ep so we could have one 911 character with the 3 different lone star groups. buck is less than pleased when he finds out eddie is going off with marjan and it isn't going to be just the two of them. eddie defends buck to marjan when she calls him creepy and later asks her to follow buck back on instagram. tk assumes buck is asking him out and less than a second later eddie shows up (maybe that means something maybe it doesn’t). they were together for like 5 minutes of the total episode (and they really managed to cram in so much casual touching in that short amount of time) but we still got good buddie content.

4. not a ton of buddie scenes considering this ep was heavily focused on buck, maddie and their parents but the scene we did get was GOLD. when buck was venting about his family, eddie listened and validated his feelings at every turn, which is a change of pace from early season 3 eddie who was all about sucking up your problems and moving on. buck could have just as easily gone to bobby (you know, his father figure) but he was pissed off and hurt and he chose to talk to eddie over anyone else.

5. again, not a ton of buddie scenes but the ones we got were A+. buck being all self-deprecating and talking about how he's defective parts and eddie pushing back and telling buck that's not on him. eddie being the first person to show up in that warehouse fire and grab onto the rope ("people who love each other are always connected by an invisible string made of love"), setting him apart from the rest of the team. which imo is because buck has a very different relationship with eddie than he does the rest of the team. they do this again when eddie is the only member of the team there when buck and bobby arrive back to the station. that fond little “i know you did.”

6. straight up FLIRTING during the truck restock scene. buck was the first person eddie told about ana. he only talked to bobby about it AFTER buck told the team about her (in response to eddie teasing him about reading a book). if buck hadn't said anything who knows if/when eddie would have talked to them about it. the whole "i lost my partner" comment which was an interesting choice of words considering eddie's main struggle this episode was moving on from losing shannon. you know, his partner.

7. there wasn't a ton of eddie or buck in this ep considering it was a very hen and michael centric episode (nice), but we got to see buck talk about his date with eddie and them be dumb ass turkey hunters together. also v interesting that buck starts dating the episode after eddie goes out with ana. does it mean something? maybe. maybe not.

anyway my point is that even if they have had less screen time this season than they usually do (which im not sure is actually even true), there has still been a lot of good, meaningful buddie content.

as for potential ryan and oliver drama, i don't keep up with them so i have no clue, but listen. 911 does an exceptionally good job with storytelling. buck and eddie play a hugely important role in each others lives. outside of maddie and chris, their next closest relationship is arguably with each other. i don't care how much of an issue ryan and oliver have with each other, i don't see that influencing the writers' decision in terms of eddie and buck. it would make no sense for those characters to suddenly start pulling back from each other.

as for buddie, i think there's a good chance at this point in the show that the showrunners/writers have made a decision (or at the very least are leaning one way or another) in terms of whether to make them canon. if they've decided not to, then this is completely irrelevant. if they have, that takes some planning. if all the shit we've been analyzing this season was intentional and they do plan on making buddie canon, do you really think they're gonna be like “oh you guys don’t like each other anymore? no problem we’ll just scrap months of planning and go in a different direction.” more than likely they’re gonna be told to suck it up and do their jobs considering they’re, you know. ACTORS.

also as a side note, i've noticed some people say that they feel like the buck/eddie scenes this season have felt off but i genuinely think that's because people know there's a potential problem between the actors. imo buck and eddie have been soft as hell with each other this season and seem closer than ever.

in conclusion: don’t stress out too much about it. it’s completely out of our control. personally as long as neither of them die and they’re both happy and their friendship stays intact ill be okay with whatever direction the show goes.

#ask #anonymous #911 fox #911 spoilers #buddie

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gone-series-orchid · 2 years

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Rank the gone books from your favourite to least favourite :)

hi, anon!

1. plague (only read first 2 paragraphs, the last two talk about my least favorite)

2. gone - i talk a lot about what i like about this first book here, but tbh its main virtue imo is the potential the series had at the beginning. i love bully row and the way the conflicting political "sides" of coates and the townies are set up (even though imo mg doesn't execute the potential of this element at all), and the supernatural stuff is doled out at an intriguing and even pace so it doesn't overwhelm, instead emphasizes, the human conflict at the story's center (which again is something mg struggles to balance as the books continue and interpersonal conflict increasingly feels sidelined for the sake of big superpowers battles). as the books grow more complex, questions that started off the series get answered and expounded upon, and the characters grow more jaded, the shine of the series wears off a bit--it gets a bit tiring and repetitive tonally, just darkness upon darkness. but in the first book? the fear the kids feel at the loss of their parents and their trying to figure out the mystery of the fayz is unsettling and thrilling. the characters are fresh-faced and innocent and brimming with potential for character development. it's very compelling stuff!

3. lies - one of the books i initially felt lukewarm to and later liked a lot more. it's kind of a strange lull in the series but i did enjoy the bigger focus on the kids' struggle to govern the fayz (which you'd think would be a bigger aspect of the series as a whole, but it never feels as important as it should be imo). i love that astrid gets a chance to shine and develop, also.

4. hunger - not a bad book by any means--in fact i'd say this and lies are closely tied for 3rd place (the former wins because of astrid's bigger role)--but despite being similarly thrilling and emotionally devastating as the first book, i think this one falls short on character potential. caine and diana and drake sort of feel like they're stagnating already, their statuses as the big bads of the fayz lessened significantly as the threat of the gaiaphage gets more prominent, to the point where it's hard to ascertain why caine specifically isn't scared enough by the gaiaphage to stop his petty sibling rivalry. the stakes feel both higher but less personal, as talk of parents stop and the mystery of why the fayz is the way it is has been solved. the kids' starvation is palpable and really well written, but it feels like the social tension and unrest that would arise in the fayz due to that never gets explored, really, except for the one instance of the human crew--who imo are actually more effective and interesting antagonists than the coates trio and the gaiaphage due to their proximity to the main characters.

5. light - still pretty good! i don't have much to say about it other than that. i have my qualms about the epilogue because i think it's tonally off and too fanfiction-y in regard to the main characters being emancipated from their parents (with whom they were so motivated to reunite in the first book only to basically lose all desire to do so after), and i dislike how some character arcs ended, but i thought it was overall fairly satisfying.

6. fear - go to that link above and read the last two paragraphs for my thoughts on this one!

thank you for the question, anon! feel free to send more!

#gone series #the gone series #michael grant #fayz #fayzian

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simul16 · 3 years

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The Curious Case of the Original Women of Ravenloft (or Loose Canons Can Be Dangerous)

For many years, we in the Dungeons & Dragons RPG studio have considered things like D&D novels, D&D video games, D&D comic books, as wonderful expressions of D&D storytelling and D&D lore, but they are not canonical for the D&D roleplaying game. -Jeremy Crawford Those among us who are fortunate enough to become shepherds or stewards of the D&D game must train ourselves to become art and lore experts so that we know when we’re being faithful to the game’s past and when we’re moving in a new direction. We decide, based on our understanding of the game’s history and audience, what artwork or lore to pull forward, what artwork or lore needs to change, and what artwork or lore should be buried so deep that it never again sees the light of day. -Chris Perkins There is a very simple statement to be made about all these stories: they do not really come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too contrived, and too little aware of what goes on in the world. - Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"

There's been a bit of a stir in the D&D community over some comments that Jeremy Crawford made at a press briefing prior to the D&D Live event about how only the information published in a WotC Fifth Edition D&D product is 'canonical' for D&D. There was enough of a reaction that Chris Perkins, self-described as "one of the D&D Studio's principal game architects", published an article on the WotC site (linked under Perkins's name above) explaining this statement and explicitly calling out what it means when discussing an intellectual property with a long-standing and vast catalog of lore, where that lore is one of the primary positive features of that property.

On the surface, it seems pretty straight-forward. Crawford's comments focused on not overwhelming partners with lore requirements when producing peripheral products like novels and video games so that they can focus on producing their product rather than meeting arbitrary lore requirements (not that this seems to have helped the most recent video game product release). Perkins mentions this, too, explicitly evoking R.A. Salvatore's novels and how Salvatore (perhaps infamously) used to incorporate elements into his stories that were outright illegal according to the D&D game rules (such as Drizzt's dual-wielding of scimitars, only made legal in 5e, or his creation of Pikel Bouldershoulder, a 'mentally challenged' dwarf who believed himself to be a druid and even eventually displayed druid-like abilities, even though dwarves in the D&D of the era of the Cleric Quintet series, where Pikel appeared, were not allowed to be druids). Perkins's comments also refocused the discussion on players, DMs, and their games, making the point that every campaign develops its own canon, and that the version of the Forgotten Realms run at a given D&D table does not perfectly match either the version of the same world run at a different table, or even as presented in the official published campaign sourcebooks.

This position is easily defensible; I even presented it myself in a response on Twitter to Perkins's own comment on an event in the Acquisitions Incorporated campaign he runs and records for online consumption. A restaurant that exists in the Forgotten Realms of Acquisitions Incorporated might have been shut down for health reasons after a shambling mound attack in a different campaign, or a previous party of PCs might have made a disastrous error during the war with reborn Netheril that led to the fall of Cormyr, with the coastal area of the former kingdom being absorbed by their rivals in Sembia while the interior lands were allowed to be overrun with monsters migrating out of the Stonelands (which makes for a nearly ideal 'starter zone' for a new 5E Realms campaign, IMO).

But just because there are benefits to such an approach to canon doesn't mean that it's the best way to approach canon, particularly with respect to a property which has had a long lifespan and is expected to have an even longer one. There are plenty of ways to criticize such an approach, many of which have been brought up by other commenters:

In any long-lasting intellectual property, there is a core of fans that are devoted to the lore and canon of that property -- see Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. 'Loosening up' the lore not only convinces your existing super-fans not to continue to support and evangelize your property, but also prevents the creation of a new generation of such fans to continue your property's life into a new generation of fans.

Since much of what is on offer in a published sourcebook is the current 'canon' (despite Perkins's statement that "we don't produce sourcebooks that spool out a ton of backstory", the reality is that much of the content of sourcebooks like the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is setting material: i.e.: "backstory"), if you're not going to stand up for the lore of prior editions, and by implication make it clear that future editions aren't going to be beholden to the lore of even this edition, then why get heavily invested in the lore at all? (This ties into the above point, as the fewer people who get invested in the lore of a property, the fewer evangelists for that property you will produce.)

If you have any Organized Play for your game (which D&D does, as does so-called 'living card games' which are based on an advancing storyline), loosened canon makes it easier for those authors to produce content, but simultaneously makes it harder to incorporate the content that players enjoy into the overall game. In addition, the later stories can't take into account all of the potential outcomes that a given group might have taken through a given adventure, so in effect, this turns all adventures into "railroad plots" with respect to the larger campaign narrative, where the best outcome is assumed for each adventure and thus the PCs don't really have the ability to influence the overall metaplot. (This gets complicated, because it necessarily involves different campaign outcomes contesting with one another to become the 'canonical' outcome, which is itself pretty challenging. Regardless, one of the attractions of a 'living campaign' is that the campaign in theory adapts to respond to the actions of the players; a 'living campaign' that doesn't do this is no different than a traditional scripted campaign.)

Perkins's final point in his essay, though, seems just as important to the current 'administration' as any of the other explanations, and that's the quote referenced at the top. In effect, what Perkins is saying is that the 5E team wants to be able to take what they consider 'good lore' and keep in in the game, while revising or outright eliminating 'bad lore'. Again, this seems like a defensible position, but it also has a flip side: it assumes that your changes to the lore are not just lazy or arbitrary, but are made consciously and for specific reasons. This could work well if you actually follow through on your intention, but given the realities of publishing on a schedule, it's inevitable that some amount of lazy or arbitrary decision-making will occur, and in those decisions, you can inadvertently (or allow someone without your knowledge to deliberately) make decisions that harm the canon. The statement seems reasonable, but as we'll discover below, it's actually fundamentally dishonest.

With that in mind, let's explore...

The Curious Case of the Original Women of Ravenloft

The original Ravenloft setting as released in the early 1990s, like the game studio that released it, contained a lot of old white guys, and it didn't necessarily get any more diverse with time. The early 3E Ravenloft product "Secrets of the Dread Realms" by Swords & Sorcery Studios lists eighteen Domains of Dread, half of which were unambiguously run by old white dudes. Depending on how you want to define 'old' and 'white', you could even add a few more domains to the list (such as Verbrek, ruled by the son of the former old white dude darklord, and Markovia, depending on whether you consider Markov to still be human enough to qualify as an old white dude). Only five domains were ruled by female darklords, and one of those (Borca) isn't even wholly ruled by the female darklord. Comparing the darklords of Secrets of the Dread Realms to that of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft points out just how much of a priority it was for the 5E team to increase the diversity of darklords in the setting.

Curiously, though, the female characters retained from classic Ravenloft don't appear to have been changed in a manner that fits Perkins's explanation of what they consider when deciding what to bring forward from older lore, as in nearly every case, the character became less interesting and possesses less agency in her current 5E presentation than she did in her original pre-5E incarnation.

Jacqueline Montarri

Let's begin our survey with a character who technically doesn't yet exist in 5E lore, and thus by Crawford's definition doesn't exist in lore at all. It might seem odd to begin my presentation of 'female characters deprived of agency by their 5E presentations' by starting with a character who wasn't presented, but on the other hand, being removed from canon and thus from existence could be argued as the most severe loss of agency possible for a character.

Jacqueline doesn't exist in 5E because the organization she founded, the Red Vardo Traders, doesn't exist in 5E. In older editions, the Red Vardo Traders was both a legitimate trade company as well as a criminal organization engaging in smuggling, assassination, and other crimes, and are based in the Barovian town of Krezk. The version of Krezk presented in Curse of Strahd, however, makes no mention of the Red Vardo Traders, choosing instead to present Krezk as a small village dominated by the Monastery of Saint Markovia*, a location that does not exist in pre-5E Ravenloft. The Red Vardo Traders were founded by Jacqueline for a specific purpose, and thus both their legitimate business operations and their criminal pursuits are but shells for their true purpose: to find Jacqueline Montarri's head.

* - Saint Markovia himself was initially presented in the late 3E reboot adventure "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft", as one of the inhabitants of Castle Ravenloft's crypts; Markovia was changed from a man into a woman as part of Curse of Strahd, and the Sanctuary of First Light, the largest church of the Morninglord in Ravenloft pre-5E and placed in Krezk by its developers, was re-written in Curse of Strahd as the Monastery of Saint Markovia.

Montarri sought the secret of eternal youth, and in doing so, consulted with the Vistani seer Madame Eva to find it. Eva originally resisted, but finally revealed that the secret rested within the library of Castle Ravenloft, and Jacqueline, out of a desire to be the only possessor of such a secret, out of a need to do evil, or perhaps both, murdered Eva before departing for Strahd's castle. Unfortunately, Jacqueline's infiltration of Castle Ravenloft attracted Strahd's attention, and she was captured, turned over to the villagers in Barovia, and beheaded for her crime against Strahd. However, some of Eva's fellow Vistani asked to take custody of the body, explaining that the woman had murdered their leader, and Jacqueline eventually awoke -- wearing Madame Eva's head. She since learned that she could 'wear' the decapitated heads of others, and cannot survive long without one. Jacqueline's body has not aged, but her head ages a year for each day she wears it, requiring her to continually murder (and possibly assume the identities of those she murders) to survive while she searches for her original head, the only thing that can break the curse that Eva's kin placed upon her.

That's a pretty amazing backstory, and one I'd think would be very worth including in a new Ravenloft setting, save for one problem: Madame Eva's death. Now this isn't actually a big problem in the context of classic Ravenloft: both Eva herself and her tribe of Vistani were known to have a 'curious' relationship to time (former Ravenloft writer John W. Mangrum explicitly called Madame Eva a "time traveler" when it was pointed out that Eva's continued existence in Ravenloft canon suggested that she had not actually been killed), but it did cause confusion among those with a more static approach to continuity. Since Eva unambiguously exists in 5E Ravenloft, being referenced in both Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, it appears that the decision to jettison Jacqueline and her Red Vardo Traders comes mainly from a desire to untangle that confusing bit about Eva actually being dead but still walking around.

Granted, the need for an organization like the Red Vardo Traders is perhaps less significant in a Ravenloft where the Core doesn't exist and every domain is its own Island of Terror, but given that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft still lists a number of organizations known to be capable of travel between domains, including two that they just invented out of whole cloth, it would seem as though making use of a pre-existing organization might have worked just as well. The other complicating factor is that Montarri is not herself a darklord; with the focus of the 5E Ravenloft experience on darklords as linchpins of the setting, having a compelling NPC who isn't a darklord (but who honestly could be made into one fairly easily, as her curse lends itself to a darklord's punishment and her formation of the Red Vardo Traders into her way of dealing with the limitations of being a darklord) would seem to detract from what the 5E designers were trying to do with the setting.

But this isn't the only or even the worst example of a female character deprived of her agency in the new regime...

Gabrielle Aderre

Unlike Jacqueline, whose elimination from Ravenloft seems like an editorial red pen taken to an otherwise merely irritating issue, anyone familiar with Gabrielle Aderre's backstory realized that her background would have to change significantly given the changes to the Vistani in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

In pre-5E Ravenloft, the Vistani were an exotic human culture of outsiders, driven by their heritage and abilities to make their own way within the Domains of Dread, and having developed mysterious abilities and customs to protect themselves from its dangers. Non-Vistani were viewed with suspicion, to the point where the Vistani had a specific word ("giorgio") for non-Vistani, and those who chose to breed with non-Vistani and their offspring were frequently outcast from Vistani culture. Female Vistani were often gifted with 'The Sight', a precognitive or divination ability, but the Vistani took great pains to ensure that no male children were born with The Sight, lest that child grow up to be a prophesied doom-bringer known as a Dukkar. (One such seer was Hyskosa, whose legendary prophesies eventually led to the Great Conjunction which nearly tore the realms apart.) Because of their separation from mundane society, more traditional settlements tended to fear the Vistani, especially their rumored skill with fashioning deadly curses when wronged, and though Vistani would often trade with such settlements, they were never truly welcome in them; ultimately, the Vistani would follow their wanderlust and move on, leaving even more strange tales and confusing lore in their wake.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft changed all that. Now, the Vistani are simply a sprawling human culture who "refuses to be captives of a single domain, the Mists, or any terror." Their abilities are no longer unique -- there are a number of Vistani who "possess the Mist Walker Dark Gift" that can be taken by any character -- though they are said to "understand how to employ Mist Talismans" with their "traditional magic". Instead of being seen by others as mysterious outsiders, now "the news and goods Vistani bring ensures a genuine welcome" from more traditional settlements, and only "more dismal communities view Vistani with suspicion"; likewise the Vistani themselves no longer refer to non-Vistani as "giorgio", nor do they seem to have any issues with those of mixed Vistani blood traveling or dwelling among them. Most significantly, the legends of the Dukkar no longer exist, with both male and female Vistani serving as spellcasters "with many favoring divination magic for the practical help if provides in avoiding danger." In fact, Hyskosa is no longer a lost seer prophesying the doom of the Dread Realms, but "a renowned poet and storyteller" who is alive and leads his own caravan of Vistani through the Mists.

Given all of this, Gabrielle's pre-5E backstory would need to change quite drastically. Gabrielle's mother was half-Vistani, and possessed enough of The Sight to prophesy that Gabrielle could never seek to have a family or tragedy would be the inevitable result. Learning to hate the Vistani based on her mother's incessant refusal to acknowledge her desires for a family, Gabrielle eventually abandoned her mother during a werewolf attack, fleeing into Invidia where she was captured and brought before the darklord, who sought to enslave her to command her exotic sensuality. Instead, Gabrielle made use of the traditional Vistani "evil eye" to paralyze the darklord, murdering him and assuming his lordship over Invidia. Not long after, Gabrielle was visited by a 'mysterious gentleman caller', after which she discovered she was pregnant, eventually giving birth to a boy who proved to possess The Sight. Delighted that she had managed to give birth to a Dukkar, she failed to realize how quickly the boy grew or how powerful he proved to be until her son, Malocchio, usurped her throne (but not the dark lordship of Invidia) and cast her out of his court. Though there are definitely some problematic things in this story, it's not so terrible that it couldn't still serve as the foundation of a tragic Darklord's origin.

In Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Invidia is detailed among the short descriptions of "Other Domains of Dread", and her pre-5E backstory has been utterly thrown out. There's no indication of how Gabrielle became darklord of Invidia, who the father of her child is, or anything from pre-5E lore. Instead, Gabrielle has become one of the parents from the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- a rich, bad mom convinced of her child's greatness and willing to accept anyone who supports that story while turning a blind eye to her child's misbehavior and cruelty toward his servants and teachers.

Pre-5E Gabrielle wasn't ideal, but at least she had a drive: she wanted a family, and refused to accept that her desire could not overcome the inevitable grinding wheel of fate. 5E Gabrielle arguably isn't even evil, just supernaturally deluded (ironically, her main flaw is her blind acceptance of the rightness of her own privilege), so it's not even clear why she rather than Malocchio is the darklord of Invidia. Rather than wanting a thing she can never have, 'modern' Gabrielle assumes she has a thing that doesn't exist, and is less a tragic figure desperately trying to assert her own agency than a deluded puppet, acting out a part in a drama that makes no sense. Granted, as we noted above, some degree of Gabrielle's old backstory would need to change to accommodate the other changes to Ravenloft lore as part of the 5E transition, but the decision to simply throw out the old Gabrielle and turn her into a character who isn't even aware of her own lack of agency in her situation is, in its own way, even more tragic than Gabrielle's original pre-5E story.

Isolde

Isolde is a fascinating character, because she was created after the Carnival, the group she leads in Ravenloft lore. In pre-5E Ravenloft, the Carnival was the Carnival l'Morai, run by a sinister being known as the Puppetmaster. The events that led to the Carnival breaking free of the Puppetmaster's influence are detailed in the 1993 Ravenloft novel "Carnival of Fear". Then, in the 1999 supplement "Carnival", John W. Mangrum and Steve Miller take the Carnival l'Morai and introduce them to Isolde, a mysterious woman who joins the Carnival and assumes the role of its leader and protector. Much of the internal story within the supplement itself involves the theories that many of the other characters have about who Isolde is and where she comes from, and how various aspects of the Carnival, such as the Twisting (a change that comes over those who remain with the Carnival for any signficant amount of time and seem to bring hidden or secret traits to the surface as exotic abilities or mutations), relate to her. In the end, though (spoiler alert!), Mangrum and Miller reveal Isolde's true backstory -- she is a chaotic good ghaele eladrin who voluntarily chose to enter Ravenloft in pursuit of a fiend named the Gentleman Caller (thus the Carnival supplement is also the origin of the Caller, one of the signature non-darklord villains of the setting). The Twisting is revealed to be a side-effect of Isolde's 'reality wrinkle'; as an outsider, Isolde can re-make reality in a short distance around her, and one of the ways she does this is by bringing someone's inner self out and making it visible to others. Honestly, if you wanted a domain or group whose underlying reason-to-exist seems tailor-made for a modern RPG audience, it would be one where having your inner self revealed to the world, one that you've been taught is freakish and strange, proves to be beautiful to those who accept you.

But that's not what we got in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, perhaps because of the book's insistence on page 6 that "Nowhere Is Safe". Instead of the 3E ghaele eladrin, Isolde is now just an eladrin, a 4E planar elf variant. Instead of entering Ravenloft and finding the Carnival l'Morai in need of a leader and protector, she was manipulated first by a powerful archfey into leading a fey carnival, then inexplicably decided to swap carnivals with a different carnival run by a group of shadar-kai through the Shadowfell, even going so far as to accept the intelligent (and evil) sword Nepenthe, who is the actual darklord of the Carnival.

Again, as with Gabrielle, some simplification of Isolde's backstory was probably inevitable, as the original backstory made use of very specific Ravenloft mechanics that the 5E version simply doesn't want to deal with (mainly Isolde's 'reality wrinkle' which drives the Twisting). But not only did the designers take a character who had explicitly chosen both to enter Ravenloft in pursuit of the Gentleman Caller and to take leadership of the Carnival to serve as its protector and changed her into a character who is manipulated into doing everything she does that gets her into Ravenloft (and leaves her no memory of how or why she got there), the designers didn't even decide to keep Isolde as the most significant character in Carnival, allowing the sword Isolde carries to take that starring role.

Oddly, a lot of the changes to Isolde's story are reminiscent of the classic Ravenloft story of Elena Faith-Hold and how she became the darklord of Nidala in the Shadowlands, which suggested to me that perhaps at one time the Shadowlands were not going to be included in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and the changes to Isolde's story were meant to be a call-out to what would be the missing story of Elena. But the Shadowlands also exist as an "Other Domain of Dread", so in the end, the changes to Isolde served no real positive purpose.

Interlude

It's worth taking a moment to contrast the characters above with the domains in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft that gained female darklords who didn't have female darklords previously:

Dementlieu, formerly ruled by Dominic D'Honaire, is now ruled by Saidra D'Honaire; it is hinted but not stated explicitly in Saidra's backstory that she is not actually related to the former darklord, but simply assumed the family name as part of her assumption of the rulership of Dementlieu, in which the Grand Masquerade must be maintained above all else.

Falkovnia, formerly ruled by Vlad Drakov, is now ruled by Vladeska Drakov; Vladeska's backstory makes it plain that she is a female re-skin of the original Vlad Drakov, himself a character from the Dragonlance world of Krynn. Other than her origin, which is now no longer tied to Dragonlance, her backstory is largely the same as her predecessor's, save that instead of the dead rising to battle Drakov's attempted invasions of their northern neighbor, Darkon, now the dead rise to reclaim Falkovnia itself from Vladeska's attempt to 'pacify' it.

Lamordia, formerly ruled by Adam, the creation of the mad doctor Victor Mordenheim, is now ruled by the mad doctor Viktra Mordenheim; Victor's hubris in his attempt to create life are matched by Viktra's attempts to defeat death.

Valachan, formerly ruled by Baron Urik von Kharkov, is now ruled by Chakuna; in one of the few backstories in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft that acknowledges a former darklord, Chakuna's backstory is that she had to become a monster (a were-panther, specifically) to defeat a monster (a panther who was polymorphed into a man as part of a revenge plot, fled from the Forgotten Realms into Ravenloft upon realizing what he was, where he was transformed into a vampire...look, not every convoluted backstory for the old Ravenloft darklords was necessarily a good convoluted backstory).

I'd argue that each of the darklords above retains her agency in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but it's curious to note that each of those darklords seems to have inherited that sense of agency from her relationship to the male darklord that preceded her, sometimes literally (in the cases of Saidra and Chakuna) and sometimes figuratively (in the cases where Vladeska and Viktra are mainly female re-skinnings of the original male darklords). The designers clearly have the capacity to allow a female darklord to exercise agency and have drive and purpose to her existence, if that drive and purpose was inherited from or inspired by an original male character. If the character was a woman all along, though, then agency and drive and purpose are not really important to the designers, if they can fit that character into the specially designed hole the size of the concept they had for the new domain. Which brings us to the character who I feel was done dirtiest by the designers in moving from classic Ravenloft to 5E...

Jacqueline Renier

Jacqueline Renier is one of the original Ravenloft darklords, tracing her origins all the way back to the original "Black Box" campaign setting released by TSR in 1990. She appears in two different places in that boxed set -- once as the chaotic evil darklord of Richemulot in the Realm of Terror booklet, and in a portrait of the Renier family included as a handout in the box. The Renier family was actually an ancient wererat clan in the world they originally came from, and Jacqueline herself was the granddaughter of the patriarch of the clan, Claude Renier. When the Reniers fled into Ravenloft to escape the justice of their original world, they first appeared in Falkovnia, where they ruled the sewers until finally forced out by Vlad Drakov's troops. Fleeing into the Mists, the Reniers found themselves in the new domain of Richemulot, and Claude found himself the domain's darklord.

Jacqueline proved an eager student in the manipulative ways of her elders, however; both her grandfather, who maintained control over the clan through a combination of coercion and sheer force of personality, and her mother, who murdered Jacqueline's father seemingly only so that Jacqueline and her twin sister would not need to lose the Renier name. Jacqueline learned the game so well that one day she manipulated her own grandfather into his destruction at her hands, so cleanly that no one else in the family dared to oppose her ascension. Jacqueline was now the matriarch of the Reniers, and the ruler of Richemulot.

But 3E Ravenloft added a few additional wrinkles to Jacqueline's backstory. In the Ravenloft Gazetteers, it was revealed that Jacqueline's ambition to assume control of her clan and the domain of Richemulot were not just driven by a desire for power, but in the name of a vision of the future where wererats would reigns supreme over all other humanoids. She began encouraging migration into the largely undeveloped and underpopulated lands of Richemulot, while overseeing work in putrid laboratories to develop the Becoming Plague -- a disease that would transform humanoids en-masse into wererats under Jacqueline's ultimate command. In every speech Jacqueline would give about the glorious future of Richemulot, it was not the future of humanity she was referring to, but rather the coming age of the rat.

Jacqueline's backstory wasn't perfect -- as with other female darklords, she also got saddled with the 'she desperately wants to be loved and is terrified of being alone' trope -- but for the most part, this is a truly impressive backstory. And in our age, a domain featuring an ambitious politician pushing nationalism to motivate her partisans, only for that nationalism to not be what her partisans believe it is would seem to be an extremely fitting template for horror. It would certainly seem possible to re-write the few problematic aspects of her character with more modern tropes; make Jacqueline an 'ace' (asexual) but who still craves romance based on her upbringing and is both attracted to and terrified by anyone who might potentially prove to be her equal, and you've got what I'd consider to be one of the best darklords in the setting.

As you might expect, given Jacqueline's placement on this list, that's not nearly what we got in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Instead, Jacqueline was born as a noblewoman within Richemulot, and was quick to notice that the rise of the bourgeoise would threaten the power of the nobility and lead to their diminution in society. Jacqueline's grandfather was not the charismatic, sadistic mastermind of a clan of wererats, but an aging nobleman growing infirm in his old age, and he proved unable and/or unwilling to work to change things, so Jacqueline would need to be the person to reverse her family's fortunes and the decline of the nobility in society. Not by doing anything herself, mind, but rather by trying to find an organization of nobles working to maintain the supremacy of the nobility. Finding them, she learned too late that they were secretly a society of wererats when she was forcibly made into one of them, but she quickly adapted, rising to command both the rat and wererat populations before finally unleashing a plague -- the Gnawing Plague -- upon the populace. Rather than converting the population into wererats, the Gnawing Plague just killed them, and when the people begged Jacqueline and the nobles for aid, Jacqueline made helpful noises but did nothing useful (it's not recorded if she uttered the words "Let them eat cake," as she watched the peasants die). Her 'torment' as a darklord is that she wants to return to the privileged life she had as a noblewoman, but can't, as the need to supervise the creation of new, more virulent plagues and unleash them to keep the peasantry from revolting and overthrowing the nobility prevents her from building the kind of society that would actually support a thriving nobility.

Instead of a domain where we have seen the future and humanity has no place in it, we have a one-percenter using every ounce of her privilege to stay above the ranks of the peasants she despises. Instead of an intelligent, ambitious planner capable of executing long-range goals flawlessly, we have a vapid, shallow socialite yearning to return to her days as a debutante. As villains go, Jacqueline has fallen a long, long way from her portrayal in pre-5E Ravenloft.

Probably the most offensive part of the redesign of Richemulot as 'the plague domain' is that we've spent over nineteen months living through a plague of our own, and the kind of horror that is presented as Richemulot's primary adventure cycle, the Cycle of the Plague, bears almost no resemblance to the reality we've lived through. Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft presents a world where common people are to be feared, and authorities abuse their power to heartlessly quarantine the sick to stop the disease from overtaking everyone, yet say nothing about the horror of those who refuse to accept that the plague exists, or who profiteer from bizarre 'cures' and treatments. The designers present Richemulot as an example of 'disaster horror', where "the world has fallen into ruin -- or it's getting there fast," when the domain could be an example of the most classic of all horror tropes: humans are the most horrible of monsters.

Thus, the final quote leading this essay. It's not my place to argue that the folks who wrote Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft are good or bad writers, and as Raymond Chandler noted, it's not really necessary. After all, "[t]he poor writer is dishonest without knowing it, and the fairly good one can be dishonest because he doesn't know what to be honest about." And ultimately this entire drive, to try to distance the product from the mistakes of the past by also distancing it from its successes, all while presuming that one can correct the deficiencies of the past without committing mistakes that, in hindsight, will seem just as obvious to our successors: that undertaking is fundamentally dishonest. The people writing, editing, and publishing Dungeons & Dragons today grew up on the old tropes that are now being rejected as no longer being relevant, as unnecessary complexity, as potentially harmful, without realizing that the harmful bits aren't just what was written down, but what was learned, such as a woman's motivation and agency meaning little unless they correspond with those of a man.

Yes, there's a lot of stuff published before 2014 that seems bad to us today that, for whatever reason, didn't seem bad to us back when it was published, read, and became part of our fictional worlds. But there's also no reason to assume that process ended in 2014. Update the lore where it's needed, but realize that the process never ends, even with the lore you're writing today to replace it.

#dnd

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Off track question, do you have favorite runs for Superman and Damian individually? And also, if a book reader who has never read comics wanted to read some, would you be able to recommend at least one very good run from each of the big 3?

Hmm, good question but I’m gonna have to open this up for others to weigh in on because I just haven’t read enough Superman in years to really have any springing to mind there. Clark’s one of those characters that I love but I just don’t like most writers take on him whatsoever so I’m like.....hmm, I’m gonna skip it, lol.

For Damian I’d recommend avoiding his Teen Titans runs because YIKES do I hate how they characterize him there.....whereas Supersons stuff with Jon Kent and Damian, while skewing younger, is pretty fun, and its great to see Damian with an actual friend, y’know?

Morrison’s original Batman and Robin run with Dick as Batman and Damian as his Robin is.....idk, I hesitate to recommend it because on the one hand its pretty formative and essential to Dick and Damian’s relationship and did some sizable development and foundation-laying there.....but on the other hand I hate almost everything else about it, Morrison’s take on Jason is trash, and I just don’t really care for their take on a lot of the larger Batfam dynamics. I think Morrison is one of those writers who goes into a run with a very clear vision in their head of what story they want to tell, and have no problem reconfiguring characters into whatever they need to be in order to make their story work, rather than trying to build a story around pre-existing characterizations and that’s just not really to my taste, personally. So its one of those runs that is iconic and kinda necessary to be at least familiar with to really understand a lot of what’s done later with various characters, and there are certainly parts of it overall that I like, but I don’t really like the run itself as a whole, lol. So make of that what you will. I’m not even sure if that actually counts as recommending it or not fhaslkhfkalhfla.

For good runs about the Big Three.....for Wonder Woman, I’d recommend Greg Rucka’s run. He’s the writer of the comic The Old Guard movie on Netflix was based on, if you’re familiar with that, and I really liked his take on Diana, and how he incorporated Greek mythology into her adventures. Its pre-Flashpoint, so it goes with the version of Diana brought to life by the gods for Hippolyta rather than her being a daughter of Zeus like in the New 52, just FYI.

For Batman, again pre-Flashpoint but I’d go with Bruce Wayne: Murderer? and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive. I recommend them because while not necessarily the best Batman runs out there, I think they cover a good....spectrum? Like, in the course of them they show a lot of different sides to Bruce and the Batfam in general (at least for that era....Dick, Tim, Steph, Cass and Babs in specific). I think all of those characters get a pretty good showing at various points of the story, it contains some of my favorite Dick and Cass interactions and team-ups, shows the early stages of Cass and Steph’s friendship, and does a pretty good job at getting at what makes Bruce tick, both the highs and the lows of his character without ever going TOO low with Bruce’s character and dipping him into outright abusive behavior like other runs have. Like, I was frustrated with Bruce a LOT in those stories, but you’re supposed to be and the narrative does that for a REASON and doesn’t leave it unresolved, which is my big gripe with most runs’ treatment of Bruce and issues that arise between him and his family.

Another good one for Bruce in particular is The Long Halloween....its an older run but really quality and delves into a lot of the Rogues and his views of and interactions with them individually. Just realized that I’m recommending a lot of Loeb here which is weird because overall I am SO not a Jeph Loeb fan but I have to admit his Batman stuff is definitely better than most of his other work. And in for a penny in for a pound so I might as well go ahead and rec Batman: Hush too, which is a bit of a weird one and not really beloved by a lot of fans but I’ve always been pretty partial to it because I like the focus on Bruce’s investigative methods and process and thoughts as he goes about trying to get to the root of a mystery that’s deliberately pushing at all his buttons....again, without giving into the urge to take Bruce to too dark a place and completely alienate him from his family. Also I think Hush is an underrated Batman villain and could be a major player if used more and with the right touch.

And again, as for Superman, I don’t really have any runs that stick out for me as faves......most of my love for Clark’s character comes from his appearances in other books and characters’ lives, as for various reasons most writers’ focus just on his character in his own book tends to lose me. Like, I either find their depiction too superficial and think they lean too much into the caricature of Clark Kent the good wholesome Midwest farmboy without any real depth to him, or else they lean too far in the direction of trying to make him edgy or throw curveballs into their depiction of him just to surprise readers and shake up the perception of him. The ideal Clark Kent for me lies somewhere in between those two extremes.

That said, for lack of any other ideas I’d go with the Death of Superman arc from the early 90s. Because it was big, it had weight and impact at the time, and I think its underrated and has been largely moved past in most readers’ minds and DC’s as well, which is a shame because if nothing else, it was a story with momentum and consequences and really brought into focus what Superman means to the DC universe and other characters in a way that few other stories have IMO.

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darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

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Scooby-Doo and Guess Who Review

I know that the second season hasn’t all come out yet but I watched everything that has and the opinions I have seem pretty solid so I am going to write out a review on everything I’ve watched so far. If there are any changes later on, I will edit accordingly because I do plan on finishing this series (however long it may go on). I am going to start with the things that I don’t like so that I can leave this off on a positive note.

The mysteries are weirdly constructed and feel like an afterthought. There is a lot more focus on the gang (and mainly Shaggy and Scooby) bonding with the guest star that there doesn’t seem to be enough time for the mystery to unfold properly which also affects the pacing. The episodes are 20 minutes (which was a far better call than the 40+-minute episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies) but they feel longer and like they’re dragging out because there isn’t all that much happening when it comes to the mystery. Usually, there are one or two clues that I have zero idea how Velma connects into a whole mystery because they feel so far fetched. That is not the case with all of the episodes but it happens a lot and so many times they don’t even know what the motive of the villain is which... you call that a solved mystery? Not in my book but okay, I guess.

The comedy is just... subpar doesn’t cover it. It’s bad, okay. Out of 46 episodes that I watched, I considered only 1 sufficiently funny. There were a couple others that weren’t terrible but oh, god, there was this one episode that didn’t stop saying that comedy is in the timing and yet, it was the absolute worst when it came to comedy. The jokes feel like the center of the narrative which is bad when so many of them don’t land. It feels like they don’t write jokes for the plot they have and instead write the plot around the jokes that they want to include. So many of the jokes are so tired because you’ve seen them a million times. They used the “they’re behind me, right?” joke so many times and it isn’t even properly timed in order to be funny. Just, please, stop already! How did they manage to kill Shaggy’s humor? I don’t understand.

Speaking of repetitions, I don’t know why but they have decided to give new catchphrases to the characters even though they already have some! And those were enough! We already love “jinkies”, “jeepers” and “zoinks” but now they’ve thrown in others. Fred is saying “hold the phone” over and over again to the point where it’s painful and if I hear “It’s trappin’ time” from him or “This mystery is really coming together” from Velma one more time, I swear to god! It’s too much. Please, just stop! I am begging you! What we had was good enough. Don’t overdo it!

On the topic of the gang, it feels like they are trying to push roles on them which I can understand since each member’s function was very undefined in the original show (and for some time after) but I feel like they are going too far and not far enough at the same time. Shaggy and Scooby are scared and hungry all the time and act as bait. Nothing new or unusual there. That formula is pretty hard to fuck up, tbh, but it still feels a little off. That is not the problem, however. Velma is definitely pushed into the role of the one who is solving the mysteries which is overdone, imo, because no one else seems to have any idea what is going on and she is the one that is pretty much solving the mysteries on her own. Fred is made into that trappin’ guy from Mystery Inc again but at least that is tamer here. And there are some side things thrown in about him so it isn’t that bad. Daphne is truly the mystery of this show, however. She is... just there. She doesn’t have a role, at all. I remember an era when Daphne was a martial arts legend and a different characterization where she was super creative with accessorizing and that worked for here. But here she’s just... existing around. She doesn’t really do much. And it really stands out when all of the others are so confined to one single role. I am not sure what they were thinking with this.

Now for the good parts. There are so many little moments in which the gang are actually shown to care for each other and that saves everything for me tbh. It is super cute because it is obvious how much they care for each other in a way that was rarely shown in other series/movies. A lot of the time it was actually implied that mysteries are what holds them together but here you can see the genuine friendship that is built between them even if it is just glimpses over the different episodes. It is really endearing and I am absolutely loving it. They are a perfectly caring unit and no one hesitates to do something for their friends or apologize or anything. It is heartwarming and what made me stick with this series so long.

And I have to talk about the guest stars now. I was not a fan of The New Scooby-Doo movies because of the guest stars. I don’t even remember much from watching them but I know that I wasn’t a fan. This time it feels a lot better. They have definitely found a way to incorporate the guest stars in the episodes better. I like the way that some of them are friends of the gang while others just come along with the gang to help with the mystery. I like it. It’s definitely not bad and I like a lot of the guest stars they’ve included. Also, a few times the guest star was the monster and I was hoping for that because it wouldn’t be interesting otherwise. Well, they delivered.

Generally speaking, despite the annoyances I have, I could have been thoroughly happy with the series if the mysteries felt better composed. That, imo, is the only component that is lacking to the point where it is detrimental to the story. Everything else I could forgive if the mysteries had been a little more engaging. I still like the series, however, and I can see it continuing for more than two seasons based on the fact that there are many famous people who guest star. That wouldn’t be the worst case scenario but I hope they will update some of the elements if the series does go on. It could be better even if it is already enjoyable.

#scooby doo #scooby-doo and guess who #shaggy rogers #velma dinkley #daphne blake #fred jones #review #series review #tv shows

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amuelia · 4 years

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I'm not sure if you've ever mentioned anything about this but how do you feel about show Roose? I was really sad to see his character get cut so much but I really like his voice,,,,it's a good Roose voice ( also it's CRIMINAL how they took away the Bolton's pink like they don't even wear anything but black in the show 😭😭 ) (( also also I absolutely love your art YOU MAKE SO MUCH GOOD ART OF UNDER APPRECIATED CHARACTERS ITS SO GOOD TO SEE 🥺😭♥️♥️ ))

I think the actor is very handsome and talented! I like reading his Interviews, he seems very intelligent and you can see the thought he put into his character and his scenes. He did a great job with the material he was given, and i think it’s very understandable and professional that he read the first books but then decided to focus his portrayal on the show scripts, because the way they wrote him was too different.

Did you read the books before you started filming? I read the books before I started. Well, I read two of the books, and then I stopped actually. Because the character in the books is very, very different to the character in the show. The core differences were he spoke with a whisper. He never raised his voice. He had no emotion on his face. I remember there's a [line] that joy and laughter were very similar. So you couldn't play that. It's fine if it was the Roose Bolton show, you could do something like that. The character was not written like that at all. So it kind of did me a disservice reading the books. So I put them aside and just concentrated on the character in the scripts. - Michael McElhatton, IGN interview

But also, in the end, what he mentions about the difference is part of why, as a book stan, the show version doesn’t interest me that much; it’s not even about him specifically, but just a general thing all the show characters share. Just like most other characters they adapted, they completely suck the fun out of the character grrm wrote - no leeches, no icy eyes or pale face, no pink house sigil; ending up with a character that pretty much looks and acts like every other dude. I don’t need Roose to look like Dracula (as much as i love it, the long dark hair for example is not book canon, since his hair is never described), but he should be memorable! Instead, i often hear that people new to the show don’t remember his s2 scenes, or mix him up with other regular looking dudes like Stannis, or otherwise don’t remember him. One of grrm’s biggest strengths is how with just a few traits he makes every character memorable and distiguishable; think about any random character and youll probbaly remember at least one “special trait” that sets their appearance or personality apart from the rest. The show completely falls flat in this regard, ironically making it so that the books make better use of the “visual medium” than the show does.

Apart from that, visually the actor is ok; Considering a Dance with Dragons came out at a similar time as the first season and the casting process takes a while, I don’t blame them for leaving out some details of his character descriptions (for example his “ageless” appearance or the small close-set eyes are only mentioned in aDwD). His height (175cm, influenced my hc for the book version) and body type are close to the book, though i wish they’d left him clean-shaven like in s2 for the entire show. He has a bit of a long face which fits with the book’s northmen. He’s no Supermodel but i heard him called handsome frequently, so idk if that fits with the book description “not handsome but not quite plain”; i love interesting faces more than conventionally attractive ones so i can’t really judge objectively. Voice is imo too deep (imdb also calls it “commanding”), i imagine him having more of a mid range voice; and the actor also just talks normally instead of being notably whispery/quiet.

In terms of characterization, as the actor hints at, I do not think they are written very similarly. Roose in the books is a character who is ruled by an underlying fear/anxiety that drives him to, at all times, ensure his own safety and health (I elaborate on this more in this meta); The show version the way i remember it does not show this a lot. He doesn’t have the leeching scene and if he has scenes about being obsessed with health they werent prominent enough for me to remember (maybe the Jaime scene included some book dialogue?). He is serious, but he does not act emotionless to hide his feelings (Though the show scene where he says he doesn’t drink was a nice touch; it is not completely congruent with book canon, but brings across the same idea that he wants to be in control of a situation and his feelings).

For a bigger example: Show!Roose’s characterization in the Red Wedding episode shows him acting very confident and in a great mood, bantering with Cat, and staying in the room the entire time while wearing chainmail; while in the books he barely eats and doesn’t talk to Cat, is shown exchanging threatening glances with Walder, and leaves early to ensure his own safety only to return fully decked out in armor to give Robb the final blow. In the books, imo, you can see that he is stressed out by the situation; because while he planned it very thoroughly with Lothar Frey, it is still a great risk for such a cautious man to take, and he needs to trust that Walder doesn’t backstab him.

Bolton had made a toast to Lord Walder's grandsons when the wedding feast began, pointedly mentioning that Walder and Walder were in the care of his bastard son. From the way the old man had squinted at him, his mouth sucking at the air, Catelyn knew he had heard the unspoken threat.

They are not necessarily great story-changing differences, but to me still paint a different picture of his character. People always say “oh a character doesnt need to look exactly like the descriptions as long as the actor works for the story, oh you dont need to adapt every little character detail as long as the story is intact”, but do this too much and somewhere along the way you lose what makes the character themselves. The small details and human traits are what makes me love a character, so if those are missing i end up not seeing them as a an adaptation of the same guy, even if the plot is similar. I do think there are scenes in the show where you can see the scriptwriter read the books and put in some of the book characterization, but the general direction of the character is still different.

I also loathe the s2 change that had Arya as Tywin’s cupbearer; it removes one (/two) of Roose’ best chapters and also the one that establishes a lot of his character traits and Red Wedding foreshadowing. The Tywin-Arya scenes are everything wrong with the show; changing scenes arbitrarily to prop up fan-favourite characters (later culminating in stuff the s7 wight hunt), bad “feminism” (like Arya saying “most girls are idiots”), having characters act OOC to be more “likable” or “sympathetic” (like that weird “fatherly” way Tywin acts towards Arya), ignoring how people in that time period and universe act (as if a man like Tywin would even glance at a servant), etc etc... here is a great post on that scene by @turtle-paced.

As far as the post-s3 scenes go I’m not a fan (though i did not rewatch those a lot, so feel free to remind me if i forgot something). i don’t like that they made Ramsay the main character of the plot, with Roose merely as a supporting role side character; the books give Roose a great arc starting in aDwD that imo is needed as a continuation of the Red Wedding plot. They pretty much cut out the Winterfell aDwD story (one of my fave storylines in asoiaf) entirely and replaced it with forgettable scenes. Replacing Jeyne with Sansa not only makes no sense for Littlefinger but also for Roose, since that makes him antagonize the Iron Throne. His death scene was so bad that it makes me hopeful he will have a bigger story in the books, and that they just culled him because they wanted to thin out plots like they did with Mance, Barristan, and Stannis.

Though in the end, while i don’t like the show’s writing and visual direction, i do still thank them for making the Boltons such prominent characters; They seem to have gained a lot of fans through the show, and are regarded as very important characters (i even see them in some “great houses” gifsets). They are of course also important in the books, but not as prominent/central as for example Ramsay was in s6. So even if they are adapted badly (Show Ramsay is especially bad), if they make people interested in their book counterparts, it’s still some sort of a win in my book.

(Also, thank you so much!! Glad you enjoy my art ❤️❤️)

#asks #asoiaf #roose bolton #meta #game of thrones #Anonymous #not art #long post

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homeformyheart · 3 years

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NSFW was my original intention but if you do both, it will make me very happy. Thank you!

can do (i totally understand going on anon for nsfw, but anytime you want to pop into my askbox or DMs to talk about adam or twc, please do!!)

i’m so excited to explore this for adam & regina since they are my most established twc pairing! this will be a long post, sorry (but also not, because i love them and this is definitely going to help inspire my canon relationship fic for them)!

based on this fluff list and this nsfw list (always accepting asks for any of my detectives/pairings!)

Fluff answers

D reams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

Ugh this hits me in the heart since I picture this a lot and have already written stuff for this that is definitely their canon story. Regina definitely pictures having a family with Adam, in part, because she wants (in some ways, a redo) a family of her own and be the mother she always wanted. It takes convincing for Adam to agree though because of how aware he is of her mortality and wanting to protect her - adding children to that would make it that much harder. Regina wants to rebuild Adam’s family line - in a way that makes sense for them both in the current era, as a way to help him also come to terms with what happened in his past.

I have not yet decided in their canon story if she turns or not and I think at the time she has kids, she is undecided, so another reason is to make sure that Adam has a piece of her through their family line after she’s gone (if she decides not to turn).

I’m getting emotional thinking about this - but I’ve written pieces of this in several prompt fills & full fics (including the scenario where she dies of old age). I think there are at least four prompt fills focused on post-marriage life, so happy to let you know which ones if you want.

W ild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon. I picked: L ove Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

I picked this one because I have a wip planned for this - don’t know yet if I’m going to give it a happy ending or angsty ending and whether it’ll be a one-shot or part of their canon story, BUT he begs her to say it first, basically.

I don’t want to spoil the fic but I am also really excited about it so... okay, basically something big happens and Adam truly realizes he doesn’t want to run from his feelings anymore (he almost loses Regina physically, then mentally, then emotionally in that order) and she asks him what he wants and he asks her to “say it, please” and it’s an incredibly vulnerable and terrifying moment for her because after Bobby and other relationships, she’s sworn never to say it first.

I have not yet decided if he says it back (hence whether it’s happy ending or angsty ending is TBD).

R omance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

This one is an interesting one. I think Adam would be more cliche, but classic in romantic gestures - like hand-written letters, flowers (starts with red roses until he learns her favorite type, etc.), etc. and she would absolutely adore it, not ever having someone be that way with her before.

I think how they are with each other definitely evolves throughout their relationship - like Regina is very stubborn and hates being told what to do, especially when Adam insists its for her protection but after getting married and having kids, she definitely comes around and goes along with him. She knows it helps him worry less and be happier and she wants to put him at ease.

This would be such a lovely headcanon to explore in more established relationship fics (now I want to daydream about this).

H onesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

Oooh, interesting. The only secret(s) that come to mind for Regina is sort of the details of her relationship with Tane (I know I haven’t really written it yet but it is part of their canon relationship backstory) for 2 main reasons: 1) it’s not important at the end of the day - Adam is so much more important to her and their relationship is so much more meaningful in every single way, and 2) she doesn’t want him to feel inadequate, bad, competitive, etc. with anyone from her past, but especially Tane (given that relationship happened during a rough patch with Adam, and his whole issue with Unit Alpha, plus the relationship with Tane was mostly sexual).

I think over time Adam shares more of himself with her and trusts her fully. I think where he might always hold back a little are his deep-rooted fears and anxiety about losing her or not being able to protect her (she can tell and knows anyway, but I don’t think he’d admit it to her often).

(minors STOP here and do not interact)

* * * * *

NS*W/NSFT answers (hope these aren’t TMI 🙊)

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

I’m interpreting this in terms of turn ons in my answers. It won’t be a secret for long once they’re established, but Regina absolutely loves it when Adam takes control, and she’ll say or do anything that’ll turn on that side of him in bed (calling him “Commander,” roleplaying “disobeying orders,” etc.). It’s convenient that it is a very strong turn-on for him. She also loves it when he loses control - typically when she goes down on him.

An actual secret that Adam will be very surprised to learn deep in the relationship are the pair of numbing handcuffs she has buried from her time with Tane. By “numbing,” I mean they can subdue a supernatural’s strength a teensy bit (not dmb-level, and I made this up purely for the smut with Tane). I don’t know if she’d ever mention it (she might just forget about) because of reasons (answered in Honesty above as it relates to Tane). If Adam does discover it, the “numbing” spell or whatever it is (I made it up on the spot okay!) would have worn off by then, but I think he’d find it conflictingly concerning / intriguing & be a little jealous.

This may be partially inspired by a ns*w prompt ask that @crackerdumortain sent me that I’m working on, but I think Adam is incredibly turned on post-combat training Regina (assuming she hasn’t passed out in exhaustion) - in tight workout clothes, sweaty and energized, confident - I think he’s really proud of her tenacity and skill over time and there’s just something about how she exudes power and confidence after a workout that he is attracted to and doesn’t care that she is sweaty (even though she cares).

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice) Picking the same letter as fluff for consistency: L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

For Adam, I think it’s her bedroom, and then later when they move into their own place, their bedroom. For the former, it’s that symbol of trust and being let into her private / personal space, especially after she was kidnapped from her own home, that would mean a lot to him (she was never with anyone else sexually in her own bed - not even Falk or Tane, so it makes their first time there even more special).

I think Regina is more willing to explore / experiment with other locations like the shower, against the wall, other areas of the warehouse as long as no one else is home, etc. (never in the library though, she would NOT want to disgust Nate like that).

Neither of them would be into public or semi-public sex just because they want to be able to fully focus on each other and not risk an unwanted audience.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

I think Regina might be open to experimenting, and if she wants to try something, she’d have to bring it up / initiate. I’d like to think they figure out how to talk about it before trying it (as awkward as it might be) because she wouldn’t want to spring it on him in the act. I think some things he might have to think about and let her know if he’s comfortable. I do think over time in deep romance, he’d pretty much be willing to try almost anything with her (minus the public locations per above and anything bordering on harmful/bdsm).

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

I laughed at this because I know Mishka answered a couple asks on this and it upset a lot of people (I asked her a separate question about manscaping/shaving and it gave me a different impression so I choose to ignore her tumblr answers). Sorry if some of this is TMI 😅 (but I’ll start with yes, carpet matches the drapes).

I personally think Adam does not manscape until after he and Regina are well established (but not fully bare, let’s be real here) and I’m basing this off the fact that in canon he has a buzzcut and gives off that “soldier” vibe in Book 1, which to me, makes me think he doesn’t want to have to fuss or concern himself over his appearance / hair (whereas Nate absolutely spends time styling his hair imo).

Regina upkeeps her routine as much as she can - sort of a habit she built out of self-consciousnesss with Bobby (let’s say he was not very nice about it). I think with all the supernatural activity and being busy, there would have been a couple times she just didn’t bother and finally met someone that didn’t care (re: Falk - although not sure if this will be one-off or canon and Tane) and it made her more comfortable with not needing to be well-groomed all the time. Once they get together, Adam is the same way about it (but might groom himself a little bit down there out of concern for her comfort).

#adam x regina #adam x detective #detective regina bishop #adam x regina bishop #anon #long post #nsft #ns*w #n*fw #minors dni #not choices #i was already soft for them but ugh this sent me over the edge #my detective #my twc headcanons #oc asks

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inessencedevided · 4 years

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Once you're done with the entire show, could you maybe do sorting for all the characters? I usually know the house for each character, but I have literally no idea with The Untamed. WWX for example I can equally see him as a Gryffindor, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff and my brain hurts trying to decide.

First of all: I'm so so sorry anon! This took ages to answer! I hope you're still out there to read this! I started answering ages ago and then trailed off because I had to think about it. So here goes:

Thank you so much for this opening! I LOVE sorting non-HP characters into Hogwarts houses!! And for some of these, I’ve already done so in my head ages ago :D

Disclaimer: I’m mostly going off live action canon here, but will make some comments about the novel from time to time.

Disclaimer 2: Obviously, these are extremely subjective. If anyone disagrees, I would love to hear your counter arguments! I love discussing these things!

Wei Wuxian

GRYFFINDOR!

I know you said you weren’t sure but in my book, he’s a textbook Gryffindor. I’m not saying he doesn’t have Hufflepuff or Raveclaw traits (his sense of justice and his “out of the box thinking” kinda genius come to mind), but those aren’t the main drive of his actions imo. WWX follows his confiction and he often does so without even considering a second option or a compromise, especially before his death. And he is not afraid of deviating from the law or societal expectations to do so. This alone could also make him a Slytherin. The reason I wouldn’t place him there is the way he acts very much in the open. He doesn’t try to bring about change by quietly working in the background. He openly calls people out on their bullshit, even when it is clearly to his disadvantage and might just come back to bite him in the ass. Imo, WWX is a brilliant example of how a gryffindor might be driven to doing some very questionable shit given the "right" circumstances.

Lan Wangji

Now, he’s a different story. I have a lot more problems sorting him, maybe because he is not our point of view character. And he's the reason why it took me so long to answer this ask. My conclusion might be controversial, so let me work up to it. Slytherin? His most slytherin trait, imo, is his determination and drive, which I think stems, among other things, from a desire to prove himself. However, I believe his main reasons for this were family loyalty and (somewhat headcanon territory) the rejection he must have felt at his parents absence. And I don't see him as cunning either, as that always carries a certain level of deceitful intent, even if it's not malicious. And deceitful? That's one thing lwj certainly isn't. So, Slytherin is not a good fit for him. Ravenclaw maybe? He is certainly very intelligent, but that intelligence is more due to his studious nature and his focus, imo. And wisdom and out-of-the-box-thinking are not traits I would associate him with, especially in his younger years. So gryffindor then? He is certainly brave in many ways. He is enduring and stubborn, both gryffindor traits. But he also someone who takes his time to arrive at decisions, unless he is under extreme emotional duress (losing his mother or the love of his live). His bravery, to me, seems to be deeply rooted in his deep deep devotion. He goes through extreme, long lasting pain for the few people he holds close to his heart. In the end it all comes down to his heart, his loyalties, his devotion. Ironically, even more so in the book than in cql. And that loyalty, that steadfastness, that devotion is extremely hufflepuff.

So here you go:

HUFFLEPUFF! (There is no yellow:/)

(And now I really wanna write that AU :D on first glance, lwj would make such an unusual hufflepuff, with his cold and aloof behaviour. I want to play with this idea now!)

Lan Xichen

HUFFLEPUFF!

Aaaahhh! Now I really like the idea of the twin jades of hufflepuff. :D and Lan Xichen is a bit more obvious right? He certainly has the intelligence of a ravenclaw, but his defining characteristics are his devotion to his duty, his kindness, his fairness and his willingness to carefully consider all sides. A hufflepuff to boot. No wonder, I love him so much.

(And now I can't help but imagine lan Xichen, welcoming his little brother at the hufflepuff table, beaming with pride. And later, making sure that they eat at least 1 meal per day together because he knows his brother doesn't make friends easily, even in a house as theirs. Until there's a certain rebellious and bright eyed gryffindor, with a penchant for DADA ...)

Jiang Cheng

He, too, gave me a hard time sorting him. Ravenclaw, I discarded immediately. Gryffindor came next. He's definitely brave in his own way. Going on after the devastating loss of his entire family is brave beyond anything I can imagine, but his motivation why he did it, I believe, was a mixture of family loyalty and his competitiveness and drive to prove himself worthy. Thise are hufflepuff and Slytherin traits, respectively. I would tip the scale towards the latter, simply because his inner conflict is so defined by his feelings of inferiority, his feelings of never living up to his parents expectations. He's in that weird place of being both extremely privileged and emotionally neglected. It reminds me of Draco, come to think of it. So, my favourite angry grape, I'll place in ...

SLYTHERIN!

(He's even rockin' the snake aesthetic already :D)

Jiang Yanli

With her association with cooking and motherly love she seems to be a rather obvious hufflepuff. She is certainly brave, too, enduring her family's near destruction and moving on, or standing in front of her adoptive brother and defending his place in her family and in society. But again, it's very much tied to the people she loves. So yeah,

HUFFLEPUFF!

Nie Mingjue

The jock to end all jocks and still he's got a heart of gold. He's kinda the cliche gryffindor and I can't find a reason to not place him there. So *head barely touches him*

GRYFFINDOR!

Nie Huaisang

SLYTHERIN!

If the twist at the end didn't happen, I'd have placed him in Ravenclaw, as it is, he is such a quintessential Slytherin and also, just ... my favourite kind, especially in cql, where he just fuvjs off to paint his fans and leaves others to do the heavy lifting. He got what he wanted, revenge for his beloved older brother. It reminds me a bit of Horace Slughorn (minus the people collecting). He doesn't want to be at the top. He just wants a comfortable enough life and the possibility to reach his very specific and not at all mainstream goals. A legend. (In mdzs, where he becomes chief cultivator, he's still a Slytherin, albeit a slightly less interesting one.)

Wen Qing

Now, she is another hard one. Another fiercely loyal person (although that's a common trait in mdzs/cql), she also had to show incredible resourcefulness to survive and still stick to her principles throughout her life. But to mention that she invented and su subsequently performed the first core transfer in history. (In the book, it is specifically mentioned that the essay on this subject was written by her). In short, this woman is s genius in her field and forward thinking and incentive. All of those are textbook Ravenclaw traits. So, with her we have ...

RAVENCLAW!

Wen Ning

Puh, he is hard. I know, with his timid behaviour and gentle nature, hufflepuff comes to mind BUT ... he strikes me as a neville. As in, his bravery lies in the fact that his own insecurities hinder him constantly and yet he overcomes them every day in a hundred small ways. He is brave precisely because he is afraid of so many things. And, like Neville, when his sense if right and wrong demands it, he takes a stand. His rescue of wwx and jc extremely dangerous circumstances and the core reveal come to mind. So, even though he probably argues with the hat to place him in hufflepuff, I'll place him in ...

GRYFFINDOR!

Jin Guangyao

SLYTHERIN!

Do I have to explain this?

Luo Qingyang

I know, she's a much more minor character than the others but I love her and this is my post, so she's in it. Do i have to say it? I hate to be the "Gryffindors ftw!!!"-one (as a proud snake), but yeah, Nie Mingjue was goddamn right when he said that she's got more backbone than half the cultivation world combined. My queen snapped and removed herself from the narrative and I love her for it!

GRYFFINDOR!

Let's get to the juniors:

Lan Sizhui

Now, maybe the hufflepuff does run in his family because I do think he belongs there, too. His defining characteristics are shown to be kindness, fairness and filial piety, even though he also has a mischievous streak and does not shy away from confrontation when he thinks his warranted (politely defending "Mo Xuanyu" in front of the Mo clan comes to mind). So yeah

HUFFLEPUFF!

Lan Jingyi

His brash and outgoing nature would make him a good gryffindor fit, certainly. However, the trait I associate with him the most is his nonconformity and that in a sect where that is highly unusual. He might not be as much of a social butterfly as Luba, but he still reminds me more of the kind of eccentricity associated with ...

RAVENCLAW!

Jin Ling

Now he's hard. Maybe because he postures a lot though that's something that's true for a lot of these characters. He tries to imitate his uncle but has non of the trauma to back it up, though he is an orphan and,in his position, probably pretty lonely which leads to the kind of breakdown we see him having over his confrontation with the person who killed his parents and he can't even really blame and so he just... crumbles. And non of that really helps me in my search for a house for him. I don't really see him as a Slytherin because while he loves to posture and play his privileges, he mostly crumbles under pressure and I don't think there's conviction behind it. He's certainly not sly either. Rabenclaw? Nah. I see neither outstanding amounts of eccentricity or wisdom. Gryffindor? Maybe. He's certainly impulsive. And he displayed bravery both in Yi City and even more so in the Guanyin temple where he had to face the fact that one of his uncles, the men who raised him, would kill him to achieve his goals. Still, what left the biggest impression on me was how, after his own world had just completely changed, he send his dog away because wwx would fear him. And how he then tried to get his uncle to talk to wwx. So I'd tentatively go with

HUFFLEPUFF!

Ouyang Zizhen

Another hard one because we don't know him very well in canon. But what we do know is that he is very emotional (passionate one might say) and has no qualms going against his father in a fit of teenage rebellion. I love him for it but that's not that much to go on. Both of these point to gryffindor however, so that's where he goes. :D

GRYFFINDOR!

So ... that's where I'll leave it. I know I missed the Yi city arc but it's getting late and I'm tired. 😅 If anyone wants to add them, feel free!

Congrats of you've made it this far down! :D

Please, do come and discuss these with me!

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scribbleboxfox · 3 years

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Well now that RvB:0 is over, time to share some thoughts;

This was originally posted on Twitter so it might be a bit...meandering? Just because of how it was originally formatted.

Overall, I think I'd give the season a solid C+

It wasn't a bad season, but there were a lot of little things that added up over time that I feel like could've been done a little bit better. The main two were the pacing and the animations.

Having a season that was mostly mocap was really cool! I know this is total blasphemy, since I'm an RvB fan, but regular machinima is kind of boring to me bc you can only do so much with it. On the flipside, it takes a lot of skill to nail down characterization with it alone. Mocap and keyed animation create the opportunity to show characterization through body language and the like, which is why I like it more (I'm a simple bitch, I acknowledge this.) That being said, the way both these forms of animation were utilized in Zero were kinda overdone.

Let's talk about exaggerated movement in animation as if it's a dial for a minute. 1 is characters standing still and talking with barely any movement. 10 is movement being HEAVILY exaggerated (example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=J8XxuW-Orww) Knowing that, I'd put the IDLE ANIMATIONS (where the characters are standing around and talking) for Zero at a 7, when they could have probably been at a 4 or 5. The only reason I'm criticizing this at all is that this was the case for pretty much every scene like this.

Now, obviously the Zero team had a LOT working against them. We're in a pandemic. Most of them were probably working from home during production. And said production ended WHILE THE SEASON WAS BEING RELEASED (which is a way RT has repeatedly shot this show in the foot across multiple seasons, but that's another conversation entirely.) RvB isn't exactly known for it's stellar animation like RWBY and Gen:Lock. It's a machinima. It started out as some dudes fucking around on an XBox. That being said, when we compare Zero's animation to S9, the difference becomes very apparent. Now obviously these were two different teams, but I think S9's animations hold up far better than Zero's will in the long run, simply bc they seemed to focus more on realistic movement than trying to make their animations look cool. S9 and later seasons that use mocap/keyframed animation still look really cool! They're clunky in some parts, sure, but it's excusable. Zero's animations are admittedly less clunky, but they trade that out for being overdone in some parts, and are at times difficult to follow.

Overall, I hope the team grows and learns how to find a happy medium between what S9 and later seasons had going for them, and the animation they did for Zero. Making animations that look cool only get you so far, and overdoing them can cancel out all the work put into them.

[Insert comment about me hoping I’m articulating well bc I have a headache bc I drank like one cup of water total yesterday bc I have no sense of self-preservation. Apparently.] :’D

This is already super long, but a quick note about the pacing is that I'm sure it'll hold up well once the season is condensed in DVD format. But as individual episodes, it tends to go a bit fast. If we see this same cast and crew again for the next season I hope they find a way to slow things down just a tad. I think some of the pacing issues come from the fact that they had to cut some things from the story. Which is why I'd like to reiterate the point about production wrapping up while the season is airing. Idk WHY it's a thing with RvB. Maybe they do it for other shows too. But it's a bad practice and it leads to similar issues like the aforementioned, and crunch. I'd be more than willing to wait longer for a season that doesn't finish production while airing if it means better pacing, writing, and animation. Not to say that the writing was terrible, the story was actually very cool, but it DOES go hand-in-hand with pacing. And when you're cramming exposition into each episode...it becomes a problem.

I'd like next season to have a story that's tightened up, that doesn't get anything cut out of it. Because I think, if given the time, the current team could make something really amazing.

I feel like I'm rambling/failing to get points across at this point (headache.) So I'll wrap up with some things I'd like to see from this team if they come back for another season;

More time for idle character interactions (to build on characterization and relationships)

Slightly slower pacing

Toned down idle animations (where appropriate)

And in a perfect world, they'd get to wrap up production before the season starts airing.

All in all, I'd like to see this team make another season! I think they did well with the odds stacked against them. RvB:0 is DEFINITELY one for the books in terms of technical execution and the amount of hype the production team had for it! But it could also use a lot of work. I'm sure the team learned a lot this season, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with if they work on the next!

Also, in terms of how much fun the season was to watch? Totally an A-! It was SUPER fun to sit through! (And that's arguably the most important thing imo) The C+ is mostly for how the technical side of things was handled.

(I could continue on here and start nitpicking things that I wish they had done differently [like giving us a chance to see how Wash reacts to the implant/showing us why he changed his mind about having something jammed in his head,] but that’ll make this post even longer, and I need to go get groceries so...:’D)

TL;DR; Season was fun to watch, but the animations were overdone and the pacing was way too fast, overall leaving a lot to be desired in the final product. But I still hope the team gets a chance to make another season, because I think they probably learned a lot during Zero

#rvb:0 #rvb critical #the fox says #this season is the first time I've really critically examined anything rvb-related #just cuz I felt like I had to #It's interesting reading what everyone else has to say #and I agree with a lot of it #I don't think the season was bad #it's on the same tier as s15-17 was for me tbh #I'll also admit I'm giving the season a slightly higher grade that I probably would have bc the team def had a LOT working against them #if the pandemic wasn't happening #this season would probs be a C- on my list #but I feel like they earned a little bit of credit bc the whole world is basically ending rn lol #i hope the team grows bc i really want to see them do another season #i just want them to learn a bit from the mistakes they made this season first #and try to focus on making something coherent instead of something that looks cool

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aspiestvmusings · 3 years

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ZEP: S1 - PARALLELS

This is part of my ZEP: S1 Thoughts Master Post

Here’s the new & updated long analysis post for ZEP S1. This one features the whole season, all 12 episodes.

Just me...dissecting & analyzing the storyline...with focus on Zoey & Team Max. But since the stories are so intertwined, there’s Zoey/dad & Zoey/Simon talk, too. Among other things...relevant to it all...

ZEP: MAX & ZOEY - THOUGHTS 1 [LINK HERE]

PARALLELS

ZOEY & MAX AS NEW TEAM MANAGERS #twoofakind

In 1x02 when Zoey gives her first introductory speech as the new Team Manager on the 4th Floor, she prepares flash cards for the speech..with the first one being her name (Hi, Im Zoey). In 1x10 when Max becomes the new Team Manager on the 6th Floor, he prepares flash cards for his speech..with the first one being his name (Hi, I’m Max).

In 1x02 Zoey makes an awkard joke at the beginning of her speech “Please don’t say anything stupid” (one of her notes to herself). In 1x10 Max makes awkard joke at the beginning of his speech (Please hold your applause til the end" (one of his notes to himself)

In 1x02 Zoey tells Joan that she prepared for the new job by reading multiple books & listening to several popular podcasts on how to be an effective leader. In 1x10 Max tells his new team that he prepared for the new job by reading about a 7-step leadership program..online….

In 1x02 Joan is watching on the background as Zoey gives her team a great motivational speech (in the end)... and connects with them. She smiles like a proud parent seeing this. In 1x10 Ava is watching on the background as Max gives his team a great motivational speech (in the end)... and connects with them. She smiles like a proud parent seeing this.

MATCHING OUTFITS

In 1x12 Max wears a dark green hoodie in the beginning of the episode (Cheesequakes scene)....during the day. And in 1x12 Zoey wears a dark green hoodie (with a zippr, and same colour top/T-shirt under it) later in the episode (Movie Nights/Make out session scene)...later in the same day. They match tone-to-tone in this episode.

TURNING POINTS: DAD’S HEALTH

1x06 vs 1x12 The mud-season finale & the season finale. In 1x06 Zoey's moment with Max was interrupted by a phone call about her dad's health. Because while the episode focused on the Z/S/J triangle, a turn of events had just happened. Max, after witnessing the burnt roses, dropped everything (his plan on finding a date), and was there for Zoey, by her side..every step. Then a phone call, and he made sure she got to her family, and stayed by her side..the whole time (til bedtime). In 1x12 Zoey & Max's movie night "date" make-out session was interrupted by a call about her dad's health. Max made sure she got to her family, and stayed by her side... the whole time (til it was time for "just the family").

1x06 ended with Zoey saying goodbye to Max and shutting the door of her parents house as he left. And this happened after a sweet moment between the two (hug & his promise to always be there for her). And then she leans on the wall next to the door...and hears Max continue singing his heart song to her. This night/song was, IMO, the turning point for her...the moment when she was really starting to see him in a new light. The moment that was her "I think I might love him" moment for her. 1x12 ended with Zoey saying goodbye to Max (after the funeral/wake) and shutting the door of her parents house as he left. And this happened after a sweet moment between them (them sitting on the stairs as he sang his "AP" verse, and him hugging her & giving her a forehead kiss before he left). And then she leans on the wall next to the door...and she starts singing "AP".

CHEESEQUAKES

1x01 We see Zoey getting cheesequakes for her & Simon...but then she learns that he's engaged. It's a "love triangle" moment as she meets Jessica...with her being the third wheel, the one who is jealous... Simon hadn't told Zoey the truth... that he is taken/with someone. 1x12 We see Zoey getting cheesequakes for her & Max...but then Simon arrives. It's a "love triangle" moment as Simon sees the two acting in a "more than just friends" way....and with himbeing the third wheel, who is jealous. Zoey hasn't told Simon the whole ruth about her relationship with Max. Shes claimed that they're just friends, and after this claims he has nothing to be jealous about.

GRIEF ACTIONS

Grieving Simon proposed to his girlfriend Jessica after his dad's death. Everything points to his proposal being more about trying to pretend to move on. It was a distraction. Grieving Zoey pursued the engaged man, Simon...as her dad'd health was declining and she was preparing for her dad's death. Everything points to her pursuit of him being about pretenting to move on. But is is a distraction. (and so will be her choice to be with Simon...for now, after Mitch's death...)

MRI (BACK TO THE BEGINNING…)

In 1x01 gets an MRI...that goes wrong..."thanks" to an earthquake...and she end up having a "zoeyality" superpower. In 1x02 we hear her sing a song [even if it turns out to be just her dream]...the first one she sings..inbtead of others singing to her. The song is "I've got the music in Me". In 1x12 we/Zoey sees the same MRI machine & same technician/doctor as she's in a hospital [for Emilys false alarm], and he sings to her/hums to himself the song "I’ve got the Music in Me".

Remember how it all started? With Zoey’s MRI in Pilot…going all wrong…because of an eathquake. She went to check on her health because she had concerns..because of her fathers condition. We saw her “take the test”. But… we never heard how it ended. Did the earthquake interfere with the results & she’d have to get another MRI to find out the results? Did she get the results, but never mentioned them?

After the MRI we see her talking to her mom, but it’s never mentioned how the test went. The results…or lack of them…is never mentioned… until episode 11. Instead…after the experience she’s “going crazy” - hearing everyone sing their inner feelings. But not once does she mention the MRI in any other context than it being the result she got her superpower. And we’ve only heard her mention it to her family, Mo & Max, no one else even knows she got an MRI.

A lot of things in the series are hinting at Zoey having the same disease as her dad has. And the singing might be her first, early, strange “symptom”. Because she has the same condition is probably why she hears people singing, too. Even the ASL storyline supports it. Not to mention some other scenes & lines from songs in the show. Like her mom/family singing “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place” in 1x11. And since we know that the lyrics of the heart songs tell the truth and are part of the narrative/story, then they have a real meaning.

A stranger at the caskett room sings during Maggie’s song: “Now my girl you’re so young and pretty, and one thing I know is true: You’ll be dead before your time is due, I know” & later Maggie sings the same lines, and then the camera moves to Zoey…witnessing the song, and it doesn’ really feel like it’s cause we see it all from her POV..but cause the line is a “clue” for her…

CHIRP vs ZOEY-ALITY PARALLELS

Invading privacy. How come no-one has mentioned this? Especially Max. We’ve seen him be concerned about “mind reading”, and then they’re all working on “mind reading code”

I do think that all this was done intentionally & they chose to use a piece of technology that is similar to Zoeys ability…to make a point..in the future. And I’ve found it quite interesting that no-one has…yet (by the end of episode 11) questioned how ethical the tech is, or how it could invade peoples privacy.

If they’d had a character mention it, I would’ve expected it to be Max. I mean… in episode 1x01 when Zoey asks him what he thinks about te ability to read other peoples minds, he says that he’d get his feelings hurt a lot..more. And he has voiced concern about Zoey being able to “read his mind”…several times. His main concern has been that she can read his mind/see into his heart (via heart songs…while he can’t see into hers…). And he was also very uncomfortable when he found out that everyone could “read him” (that everyone knew he has had a crush on Zoey…forever). He’s the one character whose expressed most concern about people knowing his secret feelings & thoughts. Hence I have been surprised he hasn’t commented on CHIRP yet (until ep 11).

Though anyone on the team might bring it up..at one point. And another good possibility is Simon. Because since he’s still in the dark about her superpower, that would be one way to take it back to the beginning. Cause as we remember from the PIlot, he was “impressed” by Zoey’s ability to “read his mind”..only he thought that that must mean they have a “natural” connection, so when he finds out she had help (from her superpower…which is basically like getting help from a CHIRP technology), he’s gonna have a whole new look on their connection and everything. And he’s most likely gonna be “betrayed” and “disappointed”, because he’ll realize that their connection wasn’t actually real, and she “cheated in the game”.

And CHIRP is most definitely a “plot device”. The parallels to/with Zoey’s abilities are just…too obvious

#ZEP #ZOEY'S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST #CLARKEMAN #LONG POST #ZOEYS' EP #TEXT POST #ONG POST #LIST POST #ZOEYS EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST #Zoey's EP #Zoey Clarke #Max Richman #Zomax #Zax #ZEP S1 #ZEP SEASON 1 #SEASON 1

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d3sertdream3r · 4 years

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TFA ruined SW imo. As soon as they chose to have Han and Leia be shit parents to Ben the story was broken. Not to mention Luke trying to kill him in his sleep! I don’t blame Rian because he had to provide a valid reason for Luke to be hiding like a coward while the Galaxy goes to hell (which again, was set up in TFA not TLJ) and why Ben went dark. Ben never should’ve been evil and should’ve been the MC. It’s the SKYWALKER SAGA. So a Skywalker should’ve been the MC, not a Palpatine.

This basically turned into a Meta, so stay with me if you can! 😅

I think Rey worked well as being half of the protagonist while Ben served as the other half of the protagonist, as Rian Johnson put it. I do think that his backstory was desperately needed though. The full story of the Last Skywalker should absolutely NOT be told in side-stories like comics and books that most of the audience doesn’t read. His story parallels Rey’s beautifully, and it would’ve been amazing to see them really lean into that on the screen instead of just implying it and then filling all that in later in outside material. 🙄

Honestly I don’t see Han and Leia as being awful parents. I don’t see Luke as being a terrible Uncle either. I see them as people that grew up during an age of oppression and fighting a massive war that damaged them all on a deeply psychological and emotional level.

I see Leia being a fierce woman whose parents showed her they loved her by focusing everything on making the Galaxy a better place for her. I see a girl that inherited her mother’s political prowess and insatiable desire to fight for justice, along with her father’s cunning strategical mind in battle, and using these strengths to her advantage from a very young age. I see her as someone who had to stand by and watch her parents and her entire planet explode and die before her eyes. In the novel Bloodline, we learn that the only way she was able to keep fighting after that devastating loss (that none of us can even attempt to understand) was to focus on destroying Vader and the Empire once and for all and making them pay for what they did to her. I see her as someone who found out that the man who gave her life was the same man she hated with every fiber of her being. I see her as a woman that was terrified of her biological father having an influence on her and even seeing herself in him and his actions. Of knowing she has issues with extreme pride that make her want to force people to listen to her and do what she knows to be the way things should be. Of even feeling a small, dark sense of smugness at seeing them all blow up in the sky above her after they refused to listen to her (read TFA novel; it’s in there!). She had a lot of fear and a healthy dose of anger and darkness after everything she’d been through, and frankly I see a ton of Anakin’s flaws in her, just as she did. She wasn’t just scared of Ben being like his grandfather; she was scared of him inheriting the darkness from her. She kept all these fears and feelings close to her chest. She talked a little bit with Luke but not much. She didn’t talk to Han about it at all, feeling like he wouldn’t understand. She really didn’t think anyone would. She had so many walls put up around her emotions, yet she still wanted Ben to know she loved him. So she showed him the way her parents showed their love for her: by focusing on making the Galaxy a better place for him. Unfortunately that meant not being around much. How could someone hiding so much fear and loneliness be expected to raise a child perfectly?

I see Han Solo as an orphan that loved his father so much, he became a pilot to honor the dream that the man he adored never got to live out, and even got a ship that his father likely worked on. He carried the wound of losing his parents, especially his dad, all his life. But the circumstances of his childhood didn’t allow him to truly grieve. He had to hide it and put on a passive face in order to survive, never fully dealing with it imo. In fact I think he ran from that pain; literally. From planet to planet in fact. His scoundrel swagger masked his true self; the incredibly loyal and extremely compassionate man he actually was. He didn’t see that in himself though. He believed the Scoundrel™️ mask he wore, as much as his son Ben believed he was Kylo Ren. He thought he was a bad person and he had no business raising a kid who might pick up his bad habits. He couldn’t live up to the selfless and kind father that had given up being a pilot for him. He had to keep being a pilot and having adventures because his dad didn’t get to. He kept his dad from getting to do that. How could he reconcile the guilt of his father never getting to live his dream because he was too busy raising him, with the guilt of trying to make it up to his dad by having adventures but in turn not always being there for his own small son?

I see Luke as a kid that always longed for adventure, but learned very quickly that it can sometimes come with a terrible price. I see a boy that suddenly had the weight of the whole galaxy thrust upon his shoulders at just 19 years old. I see a boy that loves his friends so much he ran recklessly to their aid, knowing it was a trap and he would probably die. I see a man that was willing to die for the tiniest chance that his father might actually love him. Someone who then had to try and live up to all the hype and legends and expectations building up all over the galaxy without letting the weight of it all crush him. Someone trying to restore a millennia old order that he knew next to nothing about. Who then had a 10 year old child to look after, train, and basically raise because the boy’s parents had so much pain to work through concerning both their personal lives and each other, along with their individual levels of selfishness they’d learned to harbor in order to survive their cruel circumstances, which kept them from being fully present for their son the way he needed them to be. How could Luke balance the weight of the galaxy on one hand, the restoration of the great Jedi Order on the other, and be the extremely attentive uncle that soft and sensitive Little Ben needed?

They all failed him to be sure. But it wasn’t entirely their fault. They are each complex and layered characters that have experienced more than any of us could ever comprehend, and TFA and TLJ chose to show the toll their inner and outer struggles had on them.

They each loved Ben with their entire hearts and souls, and when Palpatine and Snoke claimed him, their lives were utterly shattered. Han and Leia’s marriage was completely destroyed. Luke wasn’t hiding out of cowardice; he hid out of shame and pain. He crumbled under the weight of the Mighty Skywalker name and expectations of being the one to make the hard and selfless choice and always save the day no matter what. Ironically, in trying to protect what he loved most, it cost him that very same treasure; his family. Not to mention it opened up the galaxy for another Dark Organization to take over. Wouldn’t you want to hide and live miserably until you finally die? That’s how I’d feel.

Luke wasn’t perfect. Neither were Han and Leia. They weren’t gods. They were all very flawed HUMAN BEINGS. That’s what made them so relatable. That’s the beauty of the way the original trio was handled.... up until TRoS. Han was great, but Luke and Leia were handled terribly imo. However, that’s a whole other topic. 😉

Sorry for the length! I hope you made it to the end! 😬😄

#I have many feelings #I love them all #ben solo #leia organa #han solo #luke skywalker #tfa #tlj #ask #anon #meta

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