#i cannot articulate how much I love their narrative and parallels

[girls-online]

hot take!!! eddie saying “and seventeen seconds” introduces a new means to interpret the shooting, and creates a parallel so romantic i might break.

so—when eddie gets shot, we’re immediately oriented by the framing of the scene to observe from buck’s perspective, watching eddie go down in slow motion. we as viewers are purposely placed to experience the aporetics of buck’s temporality with him—that is, the way that buck’s experience of time becomes separated from objective, clock time. it takes twenty seconds of “clock time”, when you watch the shooting scene back, for mehta to wrestle buck to the ground, the slow motion to cease, and for buck to revert back into an objective experience of time, where things are—in reality—happening extremely quickly. he experiences something more than the objective instant that it would have taken, if we didn’t watch from buck’s perspective, for eddie to have taken that bullet, fall, and for mehta to react.

when buck gets struck by lightening, however, we don’t experience it from eddie’s perspective. we do slow down, very slightly, but only to capture how the instant of the lightening distorts the teams’ ability to comprehend what has happened. within five seconds, though, that slight lag is dismissed, and we’re reorientated back in objective time. we don’t live the experience through eddie’s consciousness, we don’t even see him go from the ground to the ladder. we miss things. we only watch eddie through the objective lens of the third party onlooker. this isn’t, in itself, anything to note. it only matters thematically and narratively because the writers choose, later, to revisit how eddie remembers that experience through an explicit acknowledgement of objective clock time. because, when he does, he rejects the way that we typically talk about time—organizing it through the construct of ‘minutes’, a thing we usually do imprecisely for the sake of brevity or ease. as was the case in the poker scene. eddie can’t do this though. he has to reiterate each second in order to account for his experience. maybe to reconcile how much he felt in such a short stretch of time with how short it sounds in the scheme of things. but a minute can feel like an eternity, sometimes. we all know that.

so, yeah. there’s something about the writers reminding us of time. particularly, exactly how much of it passed between the lightening and buck’s resuscitation, and having eddie be the first person to both acknowledge and stress the length of it—every second of it. they choose to remind us of how he lived each one of those, and how he did so through eyes that we weren’t privy to like we were when it was buck. we are asked in that simple line to consider how it may have felt, or what it may have looked like, for eddie’s conscious experience of those events within his temporal framework. which is so interesting when we consider how temporality is one of the most critical considerations for the study of human experience in the arts and humanities. temporality is also a distinctly queer phenomenon, as it challenges the normative conception of time through a personal reality that shapes our experiences. i’m not saying any of this was intentional, at least not all of it, but i’m not pointing this out because i think it suggests “buddie canon”. i’m pointing it out because there’s just something so poetic about it. there’s something poetic about having eddie reframe what we had heard others refer to, and construct, as ‘three minutes’, because it challenges that construction. it suggests that eddie’s experience of buck’s death cannot be rationalized or reasoned with because that’s not how we experience existential horror or fear. it isn’t how we experience love.

the way we experience time—our temporality—is perpetually at odds with clock time because we are not objective thinkers. there is, despite how nonsensical and manic my articulation of it is here (sorry), a parallel between the lightening and the shooting that is explicitly connected to time. namely, to both buck and eddie’s dialectical encounters with the others death within the social conception of time. this is why temporality is one of my favourite themes in love stories, because love is something we experience so viscerally that it can undermine even the most necessary of our human understandings—time.

and what we are presented with through this parallel is something i can’t quite shake—two men, suspended in time while the other starts dying, as though resisting the second where he finally does. fighting to defy the clock—which is to fight and reject the essential construct that we depend upon to comprehend our experience of the world—just to keep the other for a moment longer. it is the sacrifice that our brain makes in moments of immense trauma to save us from despair.

romantic and terrible.

i love it.

#repost bc i made no sense first time around #yeah i’m crazy blah blah blah #911onfox #buddie #911 buddie #evan buck buckely #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buck x eddie #911 fox #911 spoilers #911 speculation #911 on fox

[thesherrinfordfacility]

LWA: The poster is right that the characters have deviated far from their originals, and not just because so much of their dialogue got swapped around in S1. Gaiman has confused matters because /he/ insists that the characters are fundamentally the same, even though the TV incarnations behave in ways that are implausible for their novel versions. A few years ago, I saw a Tumblr post that said, roughly, that if Novel!Crowley had tried the wall slam he would be made to see the error of his ways very quickly, and...yeah. That being said, S1 is an adaptation in dialogue with the original--a lot of what's interesting occurs in the dynamic engagement /between/ S1 and the novel, as opposed to saying that the novel /explains/ S1 or anything afterwards. I think that the novel's conclusions about "messing about," for example, are on the table for the S3 endgame, but I don't think that they'll be articulated the same way, or perhaps even have the same meaning in their new context.

S3 is a different beast because, among other things, it cannot be whatever Gaiman and Pratchett sketched out. Gaiman does a lot of retconning, to put it politely, and it seems dubious that the moves he makes at the end of S2 could set up the original plan (for starters, Gabriel had to be ported out because he had been injected into S1, and presumably would have been swanning away as Supreme Archangel otherwise ; there was no need to get C & A back on the clock because, technically, they weren't off it at the end of the original novel; TV!Aziraphale's religious trauma/cult abuse allegory is entirely foreign to Novel!Aziraphale's characterization, so whatever his motivations were, they couldn't have been that; etc.). Moreover, Gaiman has so depoliticized the original, beyond very loosey-goosey-hand-wavy type things, that it also isn't clear that we're going to get the kind of "tear down the system!!!" plot that a lot of fans seem to expect. Gaiman himself is very non-tear-down-systemy, and while it's hardly unheard of for authors to experiment in narrative with politics they don't hold, I wouldn't be surprised if the end result was less BURN IT ALL DOWN and more "hey, here's an exit strategy for other angels and demons who want out."

LWA!!!!✨ glad you saw that post, wondered if you might have a word or two to say on it!!!

i completely agree that where aziraphale and crowley's characterisation is concerned, it can't follow - what i presume - would have been their intentioned continuation following the end of the book and going into a sequel. i love how they are presented in the book, but as i tried (very badly) to explain in the tags of that post, i can't fully conflate them and how they are presented on screen. i personally therefore look to distance the two as if, frankly, they are entirely different characters. as you say though, some of the most intriguing choices are in how their traits, motivations, backgrounds, and their interactions/inner thought processes are translated to screen (as well as what has been chosen to be translated to screen; what is missed out/not depicted going from book > show is equally as interesting as what is).

however, i do think there is still potential, with s3, in revisiting the political analogy the book depicted (as did s1 to a certain extent); aziraphale is now in the heart of it, and i don't think it would be too out of field to say we might, respectively, see a lot more of the inner machinations of heaven than we have up to now. if we accept that there continues to be a litany of parallels between GO and the cold war for the characters personally (aziraphale and crowley, as well as multiple entities in the book/s1 (tracy/shadwell, anathema/newt, the them/johnsonites) are posed as adversaries to each other), it stands to reason that there would be a similar track upon which the story itself might very loosely follow, going into s3.

focusing solely on s1/book for a moment, we have the themes of espionage and surveillance made manifest by multiple references; agents meeting in st james' park or the museum (and aziraphale and crowley meeting in public places in general), crowley's comedic-but-insightful penchant for (and attempted embodiment of?) james bond, and aziraphale's list of professions that he's essentially used as covers since eden. the clandestinely-worded phone calls, the backdoor intelligence sharing between michael and ligur, constant means of surveillance that can be accessed at any point given the inclination, and the sitreps fed back to their respective superiors (to varying degrees of interest).

similarly - on a really basic level - we can look to the environment the story finds itself in. humanity - and earth by extension - is being divided up into good and evil, collectively under an overarching threat of punishment regardless. two higher powers with opposing, but equally faulted, ideologies carve up earth as its playground for an ulterior purpose irrespective of the consequences for those around and below them, who get no say in the matter. agents are sent across the borders on friendly liaison missions but with the covert assignment to gather intelligence, spread propaganda, and report back on what the opposition is doing. both are reluctant to make the first move into provoking out-and-out conflict because of the potential retaliation it could bring upon them, and instead employ means of spreading their own influence on those that will sway to one side or the other, and tip the scales that way instead.*

*albeit debatable where heaven's concerned.

but looking to the events of s1/book vs. cold war itself; a big example for me, and im sure im not the only one to have recognised or chuckled sensibly about it, is metatron's line: "we thought a multi-nation, nuclear exchange would be a nice start!". so, frankly, let's accept that armageddon is a direct...ish parallel for the cuban missile crisis. that would, on face value (because, in true GO fashion, everything gets reimagined and adapted for the narrative), make sense: a stand-off between two immensely powerful entities of the same original stock, both possessing equal power and capability, and both threatening to annihilate the other "just to see whose gang is best". obviously, armageddon doesn't resolve in the same exact way, but nonetheless both sides withdraw in the full knowledge that a reckoning is still likely to occur, and both are only kept at bay in a stalemate of what i think both heaven and hell secretly recognise to be, and are afraid will be, mutually assured destruction. a potential trump card lies in the second coming, to be sure, but in any case, as aziraphale and crowley discuss on the bench: this isn't the end of it.

but at which point, how far do we extend the analogy? given that real-world context has shifted between the times of the book and the show, how far can it extend, and how relevant would it be? well, arguably, it still is; recent conflict has proven this, and beyond that, even if the cold war has long ended, there is always conflict, and conflict because of opposing views thinking they are superior to the other. it isn't a complete analogy, but has enough similarity to be relevant. in which case, we could presumably look for an event in which there has been a symbolic sense of liberation and personal freedom, and apply that to be, potentially, the blueprint for the resolution of s3. my first thought would be the berlin wall.

because if we consider that heaven in the most rudimentary sense follows along the same lines as USSR/communist regime, the wall was built by the soviets. it was (and im really stringing this out, and grossly oversimplifying it - forgive me) built to prevent defection from east to west germany, to cut off east germany from the exaggerated allure of capitalism, and as a way to even up the power imbalance. whilst obviously not in any physicality, it's not too inconceivable that heaven would take a similar stance, in terms of policy, when it came to the fall - especially when considering how gabriel's intended punishment for subverting armageddon 2.0 was not to be condemned to fall and go to hell, but instead to be kept within the confines of heaven, hit with memory erasure, and a significant demotion to a role (and by extension choir/rank) that would keep him firmly under heaven's thumb.

furthermore, if we accept that the fall is the first notion of free will, ie. the choice to step away from a regime where your efforts are only in the interest of the state (👀 AWCW and his stars being for the purpose of fulfilling god's plan that will also see their dispassionately executed destruction in 6000 years, or so aziraphale explains 👀), then that's presumably the parallel advantage that hell offers. aziraphale even says, "surely the great thing about being a demon is that you can do whatever you want!"; crawly points out readily that aziraphale sounds jealous, no matter how quickly he tries to disparage that assessment.

however, if we consider that hell by extension of the analogy (getting more and more contrived by the minute) does represent the US/capitalism, how much of free will offered by hell is an illusion? well, arguably, it is an illusion; crowley seems more at liberty to do what he wants "as long as they get the paperwork", but he is readily pulled back to hell at any given moment, and equally under close surveillance throughout both s1 and 2. the grass is very rarely greener, depending on your circumstances, and there's no guarantee of anything that remotely resembles true freedom.

so let's go back to the berlin wall. quick, reductive summary (mainly to help me in trying to explain my thought process); the wall physically represented, and assured, the divide between the two 'sides', and when gorbachev's leadership started to reform how the previously hard-line regime was held in the eastern bloc, east germany started to take great interest in how this may lead to their own liberation too. east german military refused to fire on protestors, and many citizens went into hungary and austria, and back out into west germany once border controls had been relaxed. ultimately, in 1989, the barrier was opened, and piece by piece the berlin wall was brought down. germany later reunified, and the USSR was dissolved.

so, when talking about an "exit strategy for [those] who want out", i think this could have the potential to be extremely relevant - maybe not so literally, and not so much emphasis on the dissolution of heaven being the end goal, but more that removal of the divide between the two, allowing anyone and everyone to make their own choice for themselves - and do with their existence as they will, without fear of retribution - might be the answer. the cessation of being 'messed about'; not only from the viewpoint of how humanity is treated as a playground for these higher beings, but how the angels and demons themselves are messed about with, in turn, for ideologies/beliefs/purposes they possibly don't even truly understand anymore, and were only spoonfed in the first place.

whilst i do think, to some extent, that the focus of GO has shifted somewhat from the idea of liberation on a political level, and is more focused on that of a personal kind, the two for me can still go hand-in-hand. imo, both aziraphale and crowley still currently embody some of the ideals that keep them on opposite ends of the compass; crowley often acts (for a number of very good reasons) very individualist. aziraphale similarly often acts very collectivist. that being said, there are key moments where they cross over - it's not, ahem, as black-and-white as ive just reduced it to - and this only serves to highlight where the balance between the two speaks to true sense of self, morality, and subsequent liberation from having a 'side' at all. it makes sense that in s3 they would continue to exist in the grey, if they prove to be a driving force in how the overall story resolves - not to mention how it would contribute to the resolution of their own romantic subplot.

the crux of the matter is that, in the bigger picture, these two sides are not so fundamentally different; both, at the top of their respective circuses, instil a sense of, "the other side is the worse side, look! they are the opposition, they threaten everything that is right! they deserve to be eradicated!". and when it comes to those underneath them, the performers, it's much the same; that there is no difference whatsoever, and in fact you'll probably find you have more in common with your adversary, your opposite number, than you do with those above you - those that only value power, the security it brings to their own ends, and being the side to hold the most of it.

so having the freedom to choose, as far as i see it, comes from recognising that one isn't better than the other, and that there is no simple good vs evil; both define and give meaning to the other, and are often, depending on how you approach it, the same thing. it's all about perspective - seeing it, understanding it, and keeping it - and to be allowed to choose based on what you think is right... and what could mean a happy and fulfilling existence. however, to give that opportunity any credible foothold, it only works "if you start everyone off equal". maybe that might be the difference that aziraphale makes.

don't know if you observe/celebrate, LWA, but happy holidays to you and yours!!!✨💕

#in this house we talk about the cold war at 2.30am on christmas day #made all the better by my sudden yet impeccable reimagining of aziraphale but as an illya kuryakin figure - fantastic #good omens #ask #s3 narrative spec

[girl4music]

Since I’ve been watching ‘Warrior Nun’ over again (great show by the way but it was unfortunately cancelled after 2 seasons) I’ve noticed some parallels between Ava and Beatrice and Buffy and Spike. Especially the ending. I don’t know if I can explain this in an easily understandable but articulate way.

But I’ll try…

Chosen One: Buffy/Ava

A teenage warrior fighting for the greater good, taking on a destiny they never asked for or chose to take part in. It was just unfairly thrust upon them by the “Council/Church” - an institution run by the patriarchy. But they eventually learn to embrace it as who they are despite the constant urge to want to deny and rebel or give up or not try at all. Despite it not being a choice for them to become this “hero”. This is basic and something you can see immediately. The Chosen One is a narrative that is very common. So you can immediately see the parallels there.

Now for Spike/Sister Beatrice: This will be much more in-depth because I’m still sorting out and shifting through my thoughts and feelings on the parallels that I think I see through their respective character arcs. Forgetting the whole “mortal enemies” thing because that’s not what I mean here. That’s not relevant to this. Not either in a literal or metaphorical way because Beatrice doesn’t go “evil” to begin with. But she very much COULD HAVE, and for much the same reasons as Spike did. Which is my thought process on this whole parallel with them.

Hear me out. I often refer to Spike as a “repressed lesbian” because he so damn queer-coded in such a feminine way but not in a transgender/non-binary way. Plus all the parallels with Willow - who is an actual lesbian but I’m not gonna go into that. But anyway, all through his arc he is fighting his inner violent nature. His monster. His demon. The part of him he cannot escape from indefinitely because it follows him wherever he goes like a dark shadow. Beatrice is a trained warrior and killer basically. She jumps into an identity and a society that doesn’t necessarily accept her but know they need her around for her immense tactical skills and abilities against the “dark side”. And because she knows she has nowhere to go with being rejected by her family for her attraction to girls. And so she falls in line in her circle much the same way Spike falls in line with being forced to work for the Scoobies to earn his keep/keep his life. While Beatrice is very loyal to her Warrior Sister family, she begins to recognize that there’s conflict between who she is and what she believes in and what the Vatican is and believes in. Much of it because of how they’re treating Ava. She starts to see the corruption from her side and not just to the side she’s told to fight against. And then she falls in love with Ava. While it doesn’t dictate or determine her actions and choices, what it does do is make her see that there’s a whole other side to life that she has not considered because of being so sheltered as a child and unable to live life as she chooses. Something she very much relates to Ava on because in her own way she is also incapacitated. Imprisoned. And like Spike - she also could have just gone to the dark side initially. Off the rails completely and became a monster. Resented everything and everybody for the abusive ways that she was treated by everyone around her. But that was never her true nature. And it was never Spike’s either. It was only what they believed of themselves because that’s how they were told and taught to see and think of their life. As worthless. Beneath the worthiness of love or honor or respect or trust. Beneath the right to be treated like a human being. Beatrice could have indeed ended up where Spike ended up. Drawn to the dark side out of the desperation to belong or to matter in the world. To have a purpose or to feel like that they are of purpose to it despite being “too queer” to navigate within it because people can only ever see their hard cover for the pages of pain and trauma and loss that they have inside. And so something of which they think of as their release from their imprisonment at the time ends up being what chains them the most. And for Beatrice that’s all without becoming “evil”. She skipped that phase entirely or maybe it was just very brief like Dark Willow. I don’t know, I haven’t really paid all that much attention to her backstory. I’m much more interested in how it informs her future. That’s why it’s worth it.

And as for Avatrice paralleling Spuffy. It’s mainly the ending scene where I saw it. Only this time it was the Chosen One giving up her life to save the world. Like the original Chosen One hadn’t done all that before. And it’s Beatrice saying too little too late “I love you.” Maybe someone could do a parallel gif set for it.

Like I said - I’m only noticing all this now as I’m watching ‘Warrior Nun’ for the 3RD time all over again. Because honestly I thought it was a pretty damn good show. There’s a lot I didn’t understand but that’s not necessarily anything to do with the writing. Just my capability to follow it so that I can fully understand it. I was like this with Buffy’s ‘Restless’ initially. Didn’t stop it from becoming my favourite Buffy episode, did it? And I think the actresses have some real chemistry for as short-lived as that WLW romance is. But that’s how you know that it is something special to behold. When the chemistry is off the charts from DAY 1. Anyway, I just wanted to write about this as I watch.

I still think the scene with Ava being booted off the cliff is the best scene in the whole show regardless. That was some Goofy “AAAH HOO HOO HOOEY” brilliance. When I say I miss camp. I mean like this.

#buffy the vampire slayer #warrior nun #buffy summers #ava silva #spike #sister beatrice #chosen one #parallels

[rollertoasteroflife]

'I wish I can make you live'

'You're doing that already. You're making me live for real already'

#toasterrambles #bruh these 2 are killing me #the embodiment of disaster and someone who's entire life is always going wrong finding each other and finding happiness #just aaaaaaaaaaaa #im suffering but i'm happy about it #i cannot articulate how much I love their narrative and parallels #doom at your service

[alexromero]

I guess I just don’t see what the point of going down the Sam/Rebecca route is. They’re obviously not endgame if they’re getting them together at this halfway dark forest point. So what’s the lesson here- don’t fuck around with your much younger subordinates? S1 Rebecca was a trainwreck but due to Rupert that’s probably the one thing she *did* know.

If I had to take a stab in the dark on this very out of pot narrative point, I'd break it down into two possible... theories?

1. Perhaps this is the writer's very one dimensional attempt at making Rebecca confront just what her marriage did to her. I always go back to that scene of her and Ted talking about therapy. She self diagnoses herself and then pretends that nothing is wrong. She makes this grandiose speech about friends and how they're sounding boards for our "traumas" but refuses to share with Ted. To me, that's deflection 101. Then, there's the very obvious parallel of Rupert and Rebecca. What is more sobering than coming to the realization that you're doing the same thing your ex husband did to you that became the emotional crux of your insecurity? Here's where I interject that I don't think Rebecca is doing it on purpose like Rupert did. I think she internalized from Rupert more than she realized and she has yet to realize that.

This idea of her wealth and power come into play here. She has the luxury to engage with Sam in this way. She has wealth. She's the owner of the club. She can call the shots. She feels in control of this relationship. She also feels... safe. She knows Sam. She knows he can't possibly hurt her because she's not emotionally invested in him the way she was with Rupert (and possibly Ted.) That doesn't mean she doesn't care for Sam, but she knows this is not a lasting thing. When she decides to pursue this relationship, it's done out of impulse and because she sees it as an opportunity to be in absolute control (we seriously cannot forget just how much of a control freak Rebecca is.)

Do I think this was the only way to make Rebecca face her insecurities and fears of intimacy? Hell no. This was the worst way possible. It's only gonna put her in the center of moral dilemma once again while Ted is allowed to unburden himself from his inner demons in a way that isn't explicitly morally wrong.

2. This second possible theory is a lot less galaxy brain than the former. They could simply be using this as a way to move Sam's narrative forward. I think the second Ted decided to bring back Jaime despite his talk with Sam, that was the moment Sam realized he needed to leave eventually. Which I do think he will, Rebecca relationship or not. He's reading A Wrinkle in Time which alludes to the idea that he is ready to become the leader of his own team. Does it also suck they're using Rebecca to elevate Sam to his "leader" status in a very weird way? Yeah. Because this is not just gonna impact Sam. This is gonna blow everything wide open, for her career, her relationships and the possibility of losing the club. Which, would be ironic since her intention to begin with was to destroy the club.

They could also be doing this to hold off on the Ted/Rebecca romance plot. I know for a fact Jason's intentions for Ted this season was a thorough internal examination of Ted (which I think was a brilliant idea considering just how one dimensional people were interpreting Ted to begin with.) So, I think that was a great step. Now, with Rebecca I feel like they fumbled very very hard with her. I think she was sidelined at the beginning of the season and by the time we do get to the more meaty parts of her backstory, they throw this curveball that is more of a shocking "reveal" than anything.

In the end, I'm just ... sad? If I could properly articulate why without sounding like some surface level "shipper" (god I hate that word) I would. Most people are gonna think I say all of this strictly through the lens of wanting Ted and Rebecca to have this lovely romantic narrative. And don't get me wrong, I do. But I also hate the way female characters are being treated this season (do we know anything about Keeley as a human being outside of helping Roy and Rebecca?) there are moments between Ted/Rebecca that speak to a very strong romantic future but with this whole Sam thing... it does taint it a little. But maybe that's the point? Nothing is ever "perfect" on the way to the destination. I don't know anon, I don't even know if any of this makes sense.

#anon #reply #ted lasso spoilers #ted lasso

[thebluelemontree]

Is it wrong to say that Sansa uses an out of sight out of mind coping mechanism? I noticed it because it's what I do a lot. I know some ppl say she rewrites traumatic memories to make the memories bearable but it doesn't make sense. If that was how she coped, wouldn't she have been telling herself lies about Joffrey still in acok? Or found a way to erase/rewrite Marillion's attempt to rape her?

Yes and no. She does that except all the times she doesn’t. ;) I think that characterization is extremely reductionist (and ignores character complexity and  growth) when it’s applied that broadly to every situation Sansa has been in. You have to take these things instance by instance because they aren’t all the same. Sometimes that labeling doesn’t fit at all. In many cases, it feels more like the fandom pathologizing the act of romanticizing or trying to push aside or reframe something unpleasant or even traumatic when that’s just something most human beings do now and then. Some do it more than others, but its all within the realm of typical coping behavior and being older or more educated or more “logical” doesn’t make one immune to it. So I hope you don’t let those interpretations make you feel abnormal or more fallible for identifying with Sansa in that way. Romanticizing doesn’t even have to be about coping at all, but simply expressing desire through daydreams. People imagine being in idealized scenarios with crushes all the time.  

You also hit the nail on the head. Sansa just doesn’t go around making up false narratives about every objectively awful thing that happens to her. In fact, her actual responses to those moments can be a useful basis for comparison when we’re analyzing the unkiss, for example. Misunderstanding the unkiss is usually where a lot of these assumptions stem from. That’s a whole other can of worms in itself. The unkiss is just too long of a discussion to put here, so I just recommend this post as to the reasons why it isn’t about trauma and take a browse through my unkiss tag. It does bear repeating that Sansa factually remembers every scary thing that happened during the Blackwater and why it happened, indicating she has processed it honestly and critically, before any incarnation of the unkiss happens. The unkiss is a mismemory added on to the facts, which began as her being the actor that kissed him first. It’s not a lie to deny the facts or to excuse his behavior. It’s regrettable to her that Sandor was not able to be the person she could rely on to get her out of KL at that time. Nonetheless, this repressed desire is just so strong in her that it manifested in a kiss so real she could remember how it felt after the reality of his leaving KL for good sank in. 

Early AGOT Sansa tended to want to move past unpleasantness rather quickly. Just sweep those red flags under the rug so everything can go back to blissful harmony. Sansa is naturally averse to conflict and just wants her present with the royal family to be smooth sailing into a bright future. Ned had a very similar tendency when it came to concerns over Robert’s true character. He saw things that disturbed him, but he hoped and clung to his idea of Robert anyway. For Sansa, this resulted in some misplaced blame and rewriting events so she could deal with the aftermath. This is mostly seen in her processing the Mycah incident after Lady’s death and how her perception of all the characters involved shifted in varying ways. This is after she knew perfectly well what really happened, because Ned says Sansa had already told him the truth of what Joffrey did while Arya was still missing. However, it would also be unfair to completely chalk this up to Sansa’s idiosyncrasies. We have to put her flip-flopping in the context of the situation as well. She’s also experienced a gutting loss with Lady’s death and the fact that the first blow to her innocence was her father volunteering to put Lady down. She doesn’t have Catelyn to go to with her confusion and hurt, and Ned has largely been silent. She’s also still engaged to Joffrey through all this, this is still a patriarchy, there are political ramifications to speaking against a crown prince, and she doesn’t know how to deal with seeing such cruelty and vindictiveness in her future husband. Especially when he responded to her tender concern and wanting to help him with venom and hate. 

I mean, jeez, she’s 11. I don’t expect an 11 year old to understand how to identify the signs of emotional manipulation or see how this situation can escalate into domestic violence. Just because Sansa can’t articulate what is happening within her relationship with Joffrey, doesn’t mean she has blocked out any notion that Joffrey can turn his anger on her. Part of the reason she misplaces blame on Arya (and rewrites what happened) is because Joffrey turns scornful of Sansa for being a witness to his emasculating shame. He punishes her with the cold shoulder because she didn’t immediately take his side and pretended not to see instead. He regains power through making Sansa feel small and fearful of his moods. 

“He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him.” -- Sansa II, AGOT.

Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table. -- Sansa II, AGOT.

This is coming from someone who is supposed to love her and someone she will spend the rest of her life with. To fix things, she must be unequivocally on Joffrey’s side going forward or suffer the consequences, which we can see happening as her story completely flips over breakfast sometime later. This is not saying Sansa is fully exonerated from not supporting her sister when she needed her, but that it’s understandable how she arrived at this point. Even when things start to get really bad after Ned’s arrest, Sansa still holds out some hope that she can appeal to Joffrey’s (and Cersei’s) love for her to get him to be merciful. Is it really her fault she believed a part of Joffrey really loved her (and thus was reachable by her pleas) if he also heavily love bombed her and treated her like she was the most special girl in the world? Love bombing is a classic feature of the seduction phase leading up to abuse.  

So we can see Sansa does ignore truths and rewrite events sometimes and her personality is a factor; however, the context surrounding it matters a lot. Post Ned’s execution, Sansa does a full 180 regarding Joffrey and Cersei.

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. -- Sansa VI, AGOT.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again. -- Sansa I, ACOK. 

"A monster," she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. "Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher's boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He's evil and cruel, my lady, it's so. And the queen as well." -- Sansa I, ASOS. 

There’s also her conscious efforts to push away thoughts of her dead family and Jeyne Poole, but she states why she does that. It’s traumatic, the tears start flowing uncontrollably, and she is desperately trying to avoid falling into another suicidal depression. Her survival in KL depends on her holding it together and appearing loyal and obedient to Joffrey. Mourning her loved ones would imply to Joffrey she is plotting treason. Besides, she knows that even if she did ask Cersei or LF about Jeyne, she has no reason to believe they’d do anything but lie to her face in a patronizing way. There’s no point being plagued with wondering what the truth might be when she can’t do anything about it. Still, she prayed for Jeyne wherever she might be. She genuinely thought Arya had made it to WF on the ship and was safe at least until she got word of her brothers’ deaths and her home being sacked by the Iron Born, though there was initially a touch of projection and fantasizing about Arya being free while she remains captured. As of Feast, she believes she is the last Stark left alive and she has no one but Littlefinger to help her. So while she is suppressing her grief, it’s done with good reason, and it’s not being replaced with any false narratives to cope. 

We also cannot ignore that her relationship to Sandor Clegane has instilled in her an appreciation for the un-sugarcoated truth now that she has experienced betrayal and injustice first hand. In his own way, he’s encouraged her to listen to her own inner bullshit detector. The rose-tinted glasses have become a lot more clear compared to where she started. This is a newly learned skill though, and her self-confidence has been wrecked by internalized verbal abuse. She’s also been left on her own to figure out people’s intentions by herself, which runs parallel to her mounting desperation to get out of KL as Joffrey’s violence escalates. Developing a touch more of a jaded, skeptical side does sometimes clash with her enduring idealism and faith in other people (like with the Tyrells). This struggle is not a bad thing. The goal isn’t to become as cynical as the Hound, but to arrive at an earned optimism that has been tempered by wisdom and practical experience.

Her situation with Littlefinger is much more challenging than anything she faced in KL. He moves her where he wants her to go with complex web of lies, manipulation, grooming, isolation, coercion, dependence, guilt and shame. Her safety and desire to go home are tightly bound to being complicit in his lies and criminal activities. She feels indebted to him for getting her out of KL, even though his methods push her past her boundaries and force her to compromise her moral integrity. The thing is, there are things Sansa does know about LF, but she doesn’t seem to be ready to try and put the puzzle pieces together. She’s not daring to ask probing questions about Lysa’s reference to the “tears” and Jon Arryn or about the possible dangers of Maester Colemon prescribing sweetsleep for Robert’s convulsions. While the subject of Jeyne’s fate is still one she doesn’t want to revisit, somewhere in her mind she does know LF took custody of her friend. If it feels like this is somewhat of a regression back to her early AGOT self, there’s probably some truth to that; however, it’s perfectly okay for positive character arcs to be an imperfect progress. There can be relapses, regressions, setbacks, missteps, and misguided actions. All that growth isn’t lost. Everything she knows is just stored in the back of her mind, not forgotten completely. The general trend line moves her toward successfully confronting Littlefinger with the truth when GRRM is ready to pull the trigger. She’s definitely aware of Littlefinger lying to her more than she lets on and she knows his help is not out of the kindness of his heart, but motivated by what he wants her to be to him. But it’s not like she has the option to go anywhere else, does she? She’s a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head and has no other friend or ally in the Vale she can trust with the truth of her identity. Confronting LF without any means of neutralizing his power over her isn’t the smartest thing to do when he’s shown her he can literally get away with multiple murders. Again, it’s not just her personality that makes her hesitant to pull back the veil and face the horrible truth head on. The outside forces pressuring her perceptions and behavior cannot be discounted either.    

#valyrianscrolls #sansa stark meta #sansa stark #joffrey baratheon #sandor clegane #littlefinger #cersei #asoiaf characterization #the unkiss #character arcs #my meta #anonymous

[bestworstcase]

it’s feeling gutted about how wasted zhan tiri’s character was hours. like tts really pulled together a few esoteric bits of lore, an evil tree, and some quirky villain of the week disciples and then hired a phenomenal voice actress all so they could… use this character like a cattle prod to make cass do the evil thing. and then killed her off in the most anticlimactic way possible at the end and never elaborated on any of her lore. like. holy missed opportunity batman.

and it’s hard to dissect without discussing cassandra’s arc too, because zhan tiri and cassandra are so intertwined in season three, but even in this regard there feels like so much potential wasted because both of them are so vacuous in season three that they can’t even properly be discussed as foils; they’re just there, making the plot happen more or less by authorial fiat.

and… tts has always had an issue with needing to position rapunzel at the epicenter of everything, to the detriment of other character arcs and also the plot. but it is breathtaking to me that zhan tiri was given such a vital role in the plot without a single drop of character development to go with it, for the sake of her not pulling oxygen from the cass/raps friendship?

fuck THAT.

i’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who was inordinately keen on zhan tiri as a concept from the minute i watched QFAD, and someone who spun a whole character out of her appearances in s1-2 before s3 even started airing and will always prefer my version over canon’s. i’m deeply biased here. but it seems to me that the logical, the obvious thing to do with this character whose sole narrative purpose is to facilitate cassandra taking the moonstone, is to MAKE HER A FOIL TO CASSANDRA.

and it baffles me that tts did not do that. i think perhaps the intention was for them to be understood as foils, but that only works in OAH and even then, only in the most shallow way because it’s all built on the question of whether cass is a villain or not… which is a moral question, only tangentially related to characterization.

but this isn’t really a post about how tts failed zhan tiri as a character so much as it is mulling over bitter snow and like…why zhan tiri is the way she is, because frankly i did not give a lot of thought to who zhan tiri was as a person (“person”) before i started writing og bitter snow—she was very much an intuitive “this feels correct” creature of my imagination—and now that i’m in the thick of the revamp and writing an actual serious story in which she is a significant player i’m trying to… clarify the why of these writing choices for myself.

and it’s about cassandra. at the end of the day that’s really all it is; zhan tiri as i impulsively characterized her is cassandra’s narrative foil. lmao

cass is a character who desperately wants things but cannot articulate her true goal, because she doesn’t know what it is. she is so full of ambition and anger and despair because she has this tremendous unnamed desire that she cannot give voice to and cannot fulfill, and all she knows for sure is she doesn’t have it yet, and the longer she waits for it and the harder she tries to reach it the more she seems to lose. she wants to be a guard. she wants her dad to trust her. she wants to keep rapunzel safe. she wants rapunzel to trust her. she wants…what?

and then she meets zhan tiri in the house of yesterdays tomorrow, and she learns something terrible, and she cuts herself off from rapunzel and takes the moonstone for herself. and then…what?

cassandra’s journey as a character is (or should have been) about unraveling this great internal mystery, about FIGURING OUT what this lack is and how to fill it.

and that is why bitter snow zhan tiri is, fundamentally, hunger. she IS want. she IS desire. she is an insatiable craving that can never be met. she knows precisely what she wants—satisfaction—but that is impossible for her to achieve and she knows that too… but she can’t escape her nature. she can’t stop wanting. she can’t stop taking. but she is so, so old and she has lived and grown and changed herself so much and she’s tired.

so she meets cassandra and feels this kinship. they both are driven by this terrible, implacable urge for something that they can’t reach, and they have both been vicious, selfish, irrational, short-sighted, and self-destructive in pursuit of what they want. zhan tiri can empathize, perhaps more than any other character in the cast, with how excruciatingly painful it is for cass to have this empty feeling she can’t describe and can’t fill, because in a sense that pain IS zhan tiri. or zhan tiri IS that pain.

but cass is also human and she has the potential for relief in a way that zhan tiri does not. and… i think there is at once a compassion and a resentment that grows from this, for cass and for any mortal zhan tiri has gotten attached to over the years. she doesn’t want cass to suffer but she also covets her relief.

and cassandra in turn gets caught up in compassion for this ancient being who is at once so alien and so familiar, and like. i think one of the key reasons s3 was ultimately so unsatisfying is that cassandra never had any…bond with zhan tiri. because in my head there was already this whole vast complicated relationship built on cass and zhan tiri identifying so intensely with each other and cass wanting to understand and coming to see her as not just an advisor or confidante but as a *friend* and someone she wanted to *help* and yet them also being so different in such a small but vital way and the tension that created—and s3 gave me NONE of that. i loved it in OAH when zhan tiri did the “we’re not so different, you and i” but i loved it because it spoke to the character *i* made, the relationship *i* developed, not the one that actually played out on screen where cass didn’t even know zhan tiri’s name.

(and this is not even GETTING INTO how if you want to lean into the s3 zhan tiri backstory tidbits even more you could go absolutely nuts with the ziti+demanitus / cassandra+rapunzel parallels because W H O O F)

#bitter snow #*cries in cass+ziti* why weren’t they FRIENDS

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

eyooo!! i listened to firesorrow girl [TUMBLR | SOUNDCLOUD] by @gerrydelano and HAD A MIGHTY NEED (to also analyze this)

disclaimer: I have only listened to TMA through one (1), read it ONE time, so if you read something that seems wrong it probably is because my memory is not The Best (the seasons are 40 eps long and 30 mins each, Jonny why) and I’m probably straight-up not remembering or misremembering some aspect or detail about a character/a relationship/a part of their narrative

(and before you say it, i absolutely CANNOT just go relisten to an ep out of order. my nd brain Will Not Let Me until i have listened thru all 4 seasons, In Order, several times)

ALSO: i speak very definitively here, but it doesn’t mean i’m right abt my analysis

italics and bold are lyrics, normal is analysis. if there’s a way i can make this more accessible, lmk!

analysis under cut

little girl tries sleeping in the fireplace at home no one banished her inside it, she just lay down on her own she stares up into the darkness of the chimney and she hopes that someday she may go up in smoke this makes me think abt hilltop road first and foremost (but i have a feeling i’m missing something aljlkdjf) this is also the first hint to agnes’s wavering thoughts abt her being “the chosen one” for the lightless flame she’s already wishing she could burn, or in other words be normal

oh, the ends of her hair curl into embers in the wood beneath her head like a pillow, splintered shoulders in the soot flickers turn to flame and moves in kisses up her arms it loves her, so refuses her a scar i really like the imagery here bc, aside from the splinters, it evokes a softness embers are pretty, pillows are soft, “moves in kisses up her arms” really evokes a gentle intimacy, even before the line “it loves her” but then the last line really solidifies agnes’s relationship with fire--she wishes it would burn her but it loves her too much to do that, so she doesn’t

she doesn't burn oh, she learns again, reinforcing the motif agnes’s relationship with fire--the layers of 1) her not wanting this but 2) the first doesn’t care and loves her anyway i also see it as foreshadowing, or at least leading up to what she learns (put a pin in this)

pretty girl sits quiet in the coffee shop alone staring empty out the window like she used to do at home she feels his eyes fall down upon her from the counter, like a doe the ache of yearning blisters in her bones jack barnabas! hilltop road the use of doe, evokes the visual of “wide eyes,” which, in turn, evokes naivety--jack doesn’t know who agnes is, what she is, or that she could hurt him, even if she didn’t want to love, love, LOVE the fire motif here and used throughout the song--using fire metaphors bc it’s so fitting (put a pin in this)

he follows her up to the hill where water never works to send him down she broke his crown and blessed him with a curse her only kiss a smear of kerosene, a desperation unrehearsed and love made sure to let her know it hurts (love made sure it hurt) this only hit me like after the 5th time listening in a row, but LISTEN, “jack and jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.” i think it could also mean hilltop road, but i do think the stronger theme lies in that nursery rhyme. his name is jack and then to solidify that, “to send him down she broke his crown” vs. “jack fell down and broke his crown” i really love the contradiction of “blessed him with a curse” *ben from parks and rec voice* it’s about the layers. so listen, love is often seen as a blessing. but coming from agnes it’s a curse bc she burns anyone she touches. this is also in reference to her momentarily transferring her curse (the love from the lightless flame/fire) to him through her kiss “smear of kerosene”--another way of using a metaphor that evokes images of fire, and I LOVE IT “a desperation unrehearsed” MORE LAYERS YO. she knows what her touch will do to him but she’s so desperate to feel normal for even a second, she kisses him anyway “and love made sure to let her know it hurts”--going back to her curse, the love from fire/flame, and the destruction is causes bc of this. it could also be representative of how love can be very destructive. ppl often describe “the fires of passion” or passion as being like fire/hot *eyes emoji* i think the addition of “love made sure it hurt” could also communicate how the fire’s love for agnes is possessive--she cannot be normal or human or have any other relationship except with the lightless flame

he burns oh, she learns a parallel to “she doesn’t burn”--the striking difference between her and jack (the lightless flame and the rest of the world) what she learns here, tho, is also a parallel between what she learns at the beginning of the song there she is learning abt herself, here is is learning about everyone else

learns that breathing screamsmoke blackens hearts as much as lungs a heart motif, representative of love another fire-related metaphor that breathing in smoke doesn’t just fill your lungs with soot, but also covers the heart (love) in soot, as well a toxic love, as soot is bad for lungs and hearts it can’t be coughed back out and she can’t glisten like the sun using fire-related metaphors--the soot in her lungs and on her heart cannot be “cleaned” or cleared from her body with the body’s natural reaction to something obstructing breathing, which is coughing listen, i’ve said this before AND YOU’LL HEAR IT AGAIN: i really love “she can’t glisten like the sun” bc the whole point of fire, as the lightless flame sees it, is what the fear is named for: desolation. BUT fire is ultimately a neutral thing. if you respect and carefully control it, it can give warmth and life--like the sun (tho you can’t control the sun lmao). so there are positive aspects to. but not for agnes, given her upbringing and literally how she was conceived there’s no one left to save with love and no one she can touch affection is the pyre built on wildfire in the brush reinforcing her being unable to connect with normal humans bc of who she is ALSO i’m pretty sure this is referencing the bonfire she was born in--the ritual that made her the lightless flame’s messiah also, also, the use of the word “affection” uses the theme that fire itself love agnes, in it’s own, twisted way

her hands were only ever made to press through burning flesh and boiling tears won’t put it out but scald it like the rest referencing her birth again--that she was made to be this messiah for the lightless flame, for their ritual to remake the world through the lens of the desolation also more fire-related metaphors that i am IN LOVE with ugh, and, okay “boiling tears” communicates what agnes is feeling again--that she Does Not want to be their messiah, she just wants to be normal. she doesn’t want what the fire has given her but even her tears burn bc that’s what she is, what she was made for and the love of waxen women makes no difference in the end if never she can make and keep a simple human friend reference to jude, specifically, but other members of the lightless flame, as well. from what i remember, they all loved her but in the way that the fire loves her: possessive and toxic (like soot in the lungs) and then the reinforcement that she’s not human and cannot have the connection with humans she desperately craves, even if it’s just a tiny sliver

she can’t burn oh, she’s learned YO the difference between “she doesn’t burn” and “she can’t burn”--there’s a passiveness to it in the first line, but it’s more active in the second. here me out: as i said before, the “learn” lines communicate the inner thoughts of what agnes is thinking, the revelations she makes as he grows and lives. so “she doesn’t burn” communicates her learning and get used to the fact that fire doesn’t hurt her. versus “she can’t burn” communicates her knowing and accepting that the fire doesn’t hurt her, but she can hurt others with that very same fire. lowkey it’s so hard to articulate this difference, but this is the best my brain came up, hope it makes sense

YOOOO GIVE ME A MOMENT THIS NEXT PART IS MY FAVORITE PART

firesorrow girl says, “hang me up; i’d like to go” (i would like to go) referencing her death--her realizing that bc she’s fallen in love with jack, she can no longer lead the ritual for the lightless flame. but bro, listen, the addition  of “i would like to go” is a direct line to what agnes is thinking and feeling. more than not being able to lead the ritual, she doesn’t want to live like this anymore; doesn’t want to live her life unable to make connections with humans this isn’t quite a chimney she can column up to choke (i choose now to choke) a throwback to the first lines about her lying down in the fireplace and looking up through the chimney ALSO has a double meaning here, reinforced by what agnes is thinking: you can choke on smoke. her death involves literal choking the “i choose now to choke” again is a direct line to what agnes is thinking/feeling BUT ALSO a decision she finally gets to make autonomously the weighted hand upon her waist is chained there like a ghost, (always been a ghost) i know you’re probably tired of hearing but i ain’t gonna stop saying it. I REALLY LOVE THIS LINE. the lyrics say one thing, agnes’s internal thoughts say another bc raymond fielding is a ghost. not just like a ghost. he is one to her. i believe it was distortion helen who said that there was a scar on hilltop road. and we find out later that it’s bc hilltop road belonged to the web and even tho agnes burnt the house down, the web still left a mark on her. part of that mark is fielding, who i assume, was an avatar for the web. and it’s quite literal, as agnes never got rid of his hand he literally is a ghost haunting her bc of this but the rope she wears is woven cold with hope (yearning to be cold) THIS LINE BRO,,, i’m gonna say it I FUCKING LOVE IT. of course, referencing the rope she uses to hang herself BUT LISTEN “woven cold with hope” YOOOO THIS IS TAKING THE FIRE LOVES HER THEME AND TURNING IT ON ITS HEAD COMPLETELY she has been burning with fire this entire song, her body a raging inferno, contained in a body that appears human but hurts anything she touches. BUT AT THE END OF THE SONG WE GET THE COLD fire is often associated with warmth is often associated with hope, right?? but this time bc of the circumstances and what fire means to agnes and the lightless flame, being cold, not burning everyone she touches horribly, is her hope ”yearning to be cold” strengthens that message coldness is also associated with death, and here it’s quite literal but it’s also important to note that it’s also still agnes’s hope. so it’s still a very positive thing, even tho it’s associated with very negative things. bro,,, i gotta go lie down

those who can remember sing her name out like a prayer (i am not your prayer) the lightless flame, of course, bc they are a cult. don’t @ me, i’m right BUT “i am not your prayer”: again, a direct line into agnes’s thoughts. she never wanted, nor asked to be their messiah. she was thrust into the position against her will as she was literally borne in flames. from birth she had this shouldered on her. and she doesn’t want it, even in death the music to it hollow of the truth in her despair (hollow with despair) goes along with the “prayer” for her above: the lightless flame sing and mourn her but they’re not mourning her, not agnes, they’re mourning their messiah, the one who was going to lead them through a ritual that would remake the world. their words ring hollow bc of this. and it hurts even more with “in her despair” bc even in agnes’s despair at not being able to connect with a human, as well as not being able to lead the lightless flame like they wanted her too, they’re only mourning the idea of agnes they’ve created in their minds, not who agnes really was in wickerwind the crackleburn of candles cries for fate (i rewrite my fate) and firesorrow girl may someday be chosen again (firechosen girl, again) i LOVE the use of “wickerwind” and “crackleburn.” no analysis i just love the way they sound okay but the “cries for fate.” i think this has a lot of meanings. one is the fire crying out either about agne’s ultimate fate (having to kill herself or die, anyway) and/or crying out for another to fill her position (putting agnes’s fate onto someone else’s shoulders). another is the lightless flame also crying out for the same reasons. and the third is agnes, herself, crying out about her unfair fate. i think that last one is strengthened by “i rewrite my fate.” a common but powerful theme in many stories of a character defying fate bc it’s unacceptable to them. it’s also wholly contradictory to what the lightless flame wanted and then, of course, the second line strengthens the idea that they’re already looking for another messiah for their ritual

and so the wheel turns ‘round and ‘round

final note abt the music that is probably wrong bc i’m not musically inclined BUT i have been listing to sideways on youtube, who is very musically inclined. and that makes me an expert right? /s anyway, what i wanted to note abt this musical structure is that the beats aren’t the usual 4/4 that most popular songs use these days.

and what that means is that you get gratification ever 4 beats. (sideways describes it way better than i ever could here) this song doesn’t follow that structure (i think lakjlkdjf again, i’m not musically inclined at all) and i think it really adds to the theme of how agnes feels: trapped with this fire burning inside her until she finally chooses freedom (tho i know it’s more complicated than that in-verse).

now whether was was purposeful or not, i have no idea. but still a cool detail i, personally, noticed.

--

again hope it was semi-coherent. as with my other analysis, i just listened to the song and wrote what i was thinking, stream of consciousness

bloodwater ballad analysis | bonus meme i made for these analyses bc it’s funny and i wanted to share

#tma #the magnus archives #tma meta #(kinda) #agnes montague #jude perry #chirp.meta

[theskyexists]

I watched wonder woman 1984 and it was fascinating because in concept it was really good. But in execution it wasn't.

So they wrapped up all their themes (unlike....many many films), but the themes didn't land.

Why?

I've seen people say it's because the narrative threads were too crowded. There might be something to that, but I think the most important problem is that Diana didn't feel like the protagonist. Max Lord was the protagonist. And that wasn't just because Pedro Pascal knocked it astronomically out of the park. (Also the kid they cast for allister was really good)

They tried to make the lasso of truth an artefact of power, give it some more mythology, but despite its serious screen time, that mostly failed.

They tried to say: it is better to have the truth, reality, than to have a lie, a desire you must pay terribly for. But it didn't land.

Why? Why? Why? Because the climax of the movie did not align with the climax of Diana's story.

And because the lesson Diana drew from her youth applied most specifically to Max, not herself. They should really have put in at least two more 'bits' whether separate or part of the starting 'young Diana' sequence. One of these should have centred on the lasso in its full mythological origin and glory, and a centrepiece of Amazon culture and Hyppolita's lessons - nobody remembers what was said about it in the first movie! This should have been inserted at the least before they discover the wishing stone's divine origin so that it's explicitly paralleled as the inverse divine object.

(Also the action scenes were really bad holy SHIT. It looked BAD. And silly.)

If you have three stories of three characters, then all those stories must come together at the same moment, or they will feel like sidethreads.

Diana's story resolved the moment she said goodbye to Steve and regained her powers - the rest was denouement. That made her story the side story. That was a poor choice. The epilogue of the movie would have been bittersweet if we saw her resolve to try and learn to fly after being open to a chat with a nice man (whose body she did not involve in sex without consent....yikes) - really landing that combo on moving on but honouring Steve through his gift - flight.

Cheetah's and Diana's fight should not have resolved (or ...LOOKED like that) before the climax. Steve should have been with Diana, as she stubbornly refuses to renounce her wish, he flies her wounded to Max and Cheetah to face an impossible battle.

Diana puts on Asteria's armour (I did not like her outfits at all especially all the Focus on the heels (CLOSED! CLOSED HEELS, NOT EVEN HORSE RIDER'S HEELS!! THAT WOULD HAVE MADE SOME SENSE - they even did a little inside joke on it and I was super mad lol) but THOUGH she can deflect a missile (Diana manages to make the plane invisible but Cheetah's senses have been enhanced so much that she can pick them out bc of superior senses and Diana is forced to try and fly - Steve and Diana fly together for one moment!) - she cannot deflect Cheetah's claws - which establishes Cheetah as a Force to be reckoned with and the armour not as simply flimsy.

So she gets kicked around by Cheetah (the fight in the White House should have been shorter) even as Steve tries his absolute best to help getting busted up more and more - which hurts Diana terribly, she cant protect him again and again (I did like how his part in fights was always essential if at a different level - and they did a good job on believably weakening Diana).

They bust through to Max Lord and Cheetah is pissed that Diana is 'not taking her seriously'. She is about to kill her and Steve is like - Diana there is no choice! Look at what you'll lose!!! What is at stake! Interspersed with the rising destruction of the world because Steve takes the lasso and wraps it around HER wrist - a glimpse of Allister in there. Max is just raving. And Steve echoes Diana's mother!!!!!!!!

God. Because they did not articulate the link - it does not land.

He echoes that this is the day, the truth is that she is a hero. It is her time to win, to protect, to sacrifice, to stay behind, to be like the golden warrior. That is the second bit that should have been part of Diana's youth in this film: there should have been a flashback to the GRIEF that came with the golden warrior being left behind - of losing and being lost. Winning, being like the golden warrior, is being strong enough to stand that. It also inverts Steve/Diana's martyrdom - the martyr is the one who is left behind.) That is the truth.

She whispers soundlessly that she renounces her wish - Steve's fascilime of a body crumbles. She explodes into golden light instead of weirdly wheeling into the sky. Cheetah is thrown back.

The lasso gets a real close up and Diana loops Max and Cheetah in - just like she did with the robbers in the first scene - and shows them the truth - along with the world. We get shots of Max's past, Barbara's past, and then faster and faster the people of the world losing, grieving and people FAILING.

Because, though Diana deals with loss and grief - Max and Barbara are dealing with failure. Diana should narrate Antiope's response to young Diana's claim that things are not fair.

The order of the climax was also wrong. People in the world should have started renouncing their wishes, and Max should have protested. UNTIL, Allister comes onto the scene. This was an enormously touching sequence. It was exactly right. Keep it exactly the way it should though Cheetah should visibly lose some of her power in the shot that Max runs away. The world rights itself explicitly as wishes once granted and their effects are disappeared. Max has his touching moment with Allister.

We go back to Diana and Barbara in the ruins, both kneeling. Both lost. Diana gets up and stretches a hand out to Barbara.

But Barbara is the one person who wished on the stone before it was Max, her wish is still in effect. She's still caught on the lasso - but she looks at her old self and she despises it - she stands up herself and she refuses to renounce her wish. Not when Diana implores her to, not when she sees the nice homeless man's face after she kicked the shit out of the horrible dude - because she hated feeling weak and disliked and afraid.

Now we get the lines about Diana having it all and her being patronising. DIANA JUST LOST THE MAN SHE LOVED AGAIN. Diana should try to say: you were the only one who drew me out of my shell, you made me feel happy again. That was your power. I wanted to be your friend.

Barbara runs. A nemesis for the future.

Then there's the epilogue with the snow and the man and the learning to fly. And then Lynda Carter as Asteria because that was DOPE.

----

This would tie Diana's decision into the other two's. It would make her decision the climax - the triumphant and tragic moment - and the other two's the (inverse) parallels that they are.

Diana renounces the person she loves for her protective power, Max renounces his destructive power for the person he loves, and Barbara.... was heavily, and I mean, HEAVILY coded with romantic comedy tropes with Diana. While Diana rejected all classic romantic film tropes with dudes - she played the partner to them for Barbara (picking up her papers for her, going on a date, Steve being Diana's old friend and Barbara Diana's new friend). Barbara gives up the person she admired/could have loved for her destructive power.

#wonder woman #my stuff #scriptdoctoring #wonder woman 1984 #also the fireworks scene should have been shorter #lol #i also wasnt entirely sure why Max kept dying from granting wishes - they could have clarified that earlier #vidi

[hamliet]

Tragic Snow White: Renfri as a Mirror to Ciri

So in my initial review of The Witcher (the show version) I talked about how I thought it was fitting that Renfri’s story was the one the show adapted first, because it perfectly articulated what the story’s main questions and themes would be. At the time I’d only read the first two books and hadn’t even started the main saga, and now that I’ve finished the main saga, I think Renfri’s story is even more important than I initially thought.

The story is a tragic foil to the entire Witcher saga, with Renfri as a foil of Yennefer to an extent, but especially a foil--even more of a parallel--to Ciri. It pretty much tells you exactly how the entire saga will end, even.

Spoilers for the books and potentially disturbing subject matter below.

Vilgefortz is to Ciri what Stregobor is to Renfri. 

Stregobor and Vilgefortz both want to control little girls because of the circumstances of their birth. 

Stregobor hunts Renfri because she was born during an eclipse known as the Black Sun (which is an alchemy reference, fyi). He believes all the girls born then are evil and hunts them to vivisect them. He claims Renfri was strangling puppies even as a child, but he is hardly a reliable source of information, so it’s impossible to say. All we know is that he persuaded Renfri’s stepmother, the Queen, to hire a huntsman to murder Renfri. But she lives, just like Snow White... or not. Here’s how she summarizes it to Geralt:

Like Renfri, Ciri is a princess whose life is thrown into chaos and violence. For Ciri, though, it’s because her kingdom fell, and she has to run. Vilgefortz and Emhyr (and like, the mages, also the elves, also half the world) hunt Ciri because of almost the exact opposite reason: after years of genetic experiments, Ciri is prophesied to give birth to a son who will save the world from a coming calamity. However, no one thinks that Ciri might have opinions on what is done to her own body.  

Vilgefortz, in particular, is notably similar to Stregobor in that what he wants to do to Ciri is absolutely grotesque: artificially inseminate her and then rip out her placenta to study it, so that he might obtain power. Both men look to treat these girls’ bodies to suit their own selfish needs for prestige while under the guise of the “greater good.” It’s disgusting, and as Geralt says to Emhyr:

“The ends justify the means,” the Emperor said flatly. “I do it for the future of the world. For its salvation.”

“If you have to save the world like this,” the witcher lifted his head, “this world would be better off disappearing. Believe me… it would be better to perish.”

Like Ciri, Renfri takes on another identity that isn’t really who she is. She becomes known as Shrike for her method of killing, but she asks Geralt not to call her that. Ciri goes by Falka when she runs around with the Rats, the name of an ancestor of hers who was a princess sent away by the king as a baby, who grew and led a rebellion, killing her family in revenge before ultimately being executed herself. 

Shrike and Falka are the worst of Renfri and Ciri, and so it is meaningful that Renfri asks Geralt not to call her Shrike. She tells him to kill Stregobor to save the town, because she cannot renounce her vengeance, going so far as to risk her safety to sneak into his room and ask him. She asks him not to make her Shrike, not to let her kill, but she cannot let Stregobor live after all she has suffered. 

Geralt believes Renfri can change, urges her to leave her past, cares deeply for her, yet ends up having to kill her because he wasn’t able to fully understand the depths of Renfri’s pain (I’m not saying he should have killed Stregobor, merely pointing out that he does fail here). He cannot make a decision and reacts instead of acting, and by then no good options are left. Yet, at the very least, he refuses to allow Stregobor to touch her body. The Witcher is a decently straightforward fictionalization of the argument that women have the right to control their bodies.

We see Geralt responding to Ciri’s predicament as if she is a second chance for Geralt after Renfri. Instead of being reactive, he is proactive, trying to protect her before the fall of Cintra and then trying to destroy her enemies. However, he still struggles to understand just what it was that Renfri was asking him for. It wasn’t just to act. It was to empathize with her pain. Ciri, too, winds up feeling abandoned by Geralt, and after a series of terrible events, winds up following a similarly murderous path just like Renfri. In trying to prevent a repeat, Geralt almost caused a repeat. 

However, thankfully, this does not happen, because Geralt and Yennefer’s genuine love for Ciri, even if imperfect, helps Ciri pull out of her spiral, whereas Renfri was never given the chance. Yennefer is absolutely instrumental to this, because, like Renfri, she’s a bitter, emotional, and violent person, determined to get what she wants. And that is why when Yennefer is so determined to self-destruct just to control the djinn, Geralt chooses to empathize and use his last wish to, presumably somehow, tie her fate to his to save her. Ciri has seen this empathetic part of Geralt even as he tries to cloak it in other coping mechanisms, and so she has hope, while Renfri did not know Geralt beyond their time in Blaviken. 

Notably, the narrative does not condemn Renfri for this even though she dies. It’s seen as a tragedy, with Renfri as someone worth mourning. Additionally, her death and her questions haunt Geralt. Her questions are the ones he essentially finally answers with the above quote to Emhyr: what is the lesser evil? And his answer is that you can’t make a right world on the foundation of hurting someone--anyone. 

As Renfri states, Geralt is terrible at making decisions, and this is why he has to repeatedly struggle to make decisions and learn to pursue people and to give people second chances--Yennefer, Jaskier, Regis, Cahir, Angoulême, Ciri. Through helping others redeem themselves, he redeems himself; through finding others, in learning to empathize with them and to trust them, he finds himself. 

#the witcher meta #yennefer of vengerberg #renfri #geralt of rivia #ciri #cirilla fiona elen riannon #princess cirilla #the witcher saga #andrzej sapkowski #witcher meta #netflix's the witcher #yenralt #yennefer x geralt

[incorrect-vrains-quotes]

I knew would have thought about the mask thing with revolver but now that you've mentioned it, I totally agree with you. It is a step back from the arc they were taking him on. I think the main thing I didn't like about Aoi, besides her lack of screentime, was possibly her indecisiveness. She kept going back and forth between I want to do what's right (when earth died) but I can't because of SOL and my brother. Though I will say that I liked her a lot more as Blue Maiden. (1)

aaaa I’m strangely flattered that I managed to make a unique (?) point about Revolver and his mask

I just feel like they could have done better with her character in general. I feel like they were trying way to hard to make her the female version of Yusaku, when the two aren't that much alike (in my opinion). It would have been nice to have a moment where maybe Spectre saw Earth. We saw that Earth's death affected him so some expansion on that would have been nice. On an unrelated note but does anyone know why season 3 was so short? I'm disappointed so much was left unsaid (2)

those are fair points to make about Aoi, her arc definitely feels muddled because of that indecision. But I don’t think I agree with you on the “female version of Yusaku” part because, if anything, the narrative mirror/parallel between Datastormshipping and Zinniashipping, if anything should point to Aoi having more in common with Ryoken but on the other hand, my inner Angelmaker is like incoherently screaming with disagreement I can’t verbalise because I think they’re very similar but I just can’t articulate it beyond The Vibe

also Spectre did see Earth; he and Ryoken had Earth vs Go livestreamed lol and Spectre was fucking salty that Earth lost (again, he is all about one second big moments for some reason; just like him mourning for Earth was short, his vehement anger about this duel was also very short)

but yes, expansion would have been nice and if things had played out differently, it is entirely possible that Ai vs Spectre was supposed to be on-screen or in more detail, after all, how did Spectre even get to Faust so quickly when he was paired up with Ghost Girl and Blood Shepherd. Yeah, weird things are happening, both in text and behind the scenes...

and oh gosh. season three and production issues. I don’t have anything concrete to say about why it was cut short but I can state the following as facts:

but first, DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to start a rumour mill, I am genuinely rehashing discussion which occurred at the time

there were always behind the scenes issues, hence why there were the clipshow episodes and this is more shaky (as in I can’t find a source for this off the top of my head) but also creative differences between episode directors, most evident in how the Link VRAINS backgrounds were portrayed

Spectre’s VA was unavailable, he had other things going on his professional life. His VA, Kajimoto Daiki, isn’t a professional voice actor, in fact, this was his first gig as an anime voice actor. He’s actually a thespian/actor in a theatre company and moonlights (?) as a Youtuber, where he does ASMR and plays acoustic guitar, as far as I know (this is all from his twitter which I recommend following, he posts THE CUTEST cat pics) 

(also, it can be inferred that he loved playing Spectre, he’s uploaded pics to his twitter of doing Spectre’s hand thing whilst in costume for his irl production, he tried redrawing that one expression from vs Lightning, etc)

Episode 120 was confirmed as the final episode literally the week before, there were no other announcements before it and to be honest, I don’t even think it being cut short was ever addressed

However in the aftermath, of that, Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens was immediately confirmed after it but we didn’t get information on it until December. It was also immediately confirmed that Vrains was going to be the last Yu-Gi-Oh production from Studio Gallop as Sevens is being handled by Studio Bridge

So the following is speculation but there might be a link between Vrains’ ending (cancellation?) and Sevens’ rebirth but it’s just that. Speculation. and I cannot emphasise that enough.

- Mod Playmaker

#mod stuff #not a quote #i don't even know how to tag this lol #Anonymous

[royaltealovingkookiness]

I was wondering, could you do an analysis on Zuko’s fever dream where he sees himself as the avatar? I feel like it’s incredibly significant, but I can’t articulate why. Thanks in advance if you decide to!

Sure. 

It’s one of those Aang-Zuko parallels that run through the entire series. Zuko’s fever dreams mirror Aang’s spiritual journey working through his chakras in the Guru.

In 2.01, The Avatar State sets up both Zuko’s and Aang’s attachments that hold them back from their destinies: for Zuko it’s his craving for Ozai’s love and approval, for Aang, it’s his attachment to Katara.

Zuko starts his journey, symbolically cutting off his ponytail and as he travels through Earth Kingdom (and deep down the rabbit hole of the truth about the war) we see his ties with the Fire Nation and his faith in his mission gradually weaken. It’s a lot of raw, unprocessed experiences of seeing people hurt, families torn apart, poverty, violence and it makes no sense in light of the propaganda he was taught, but it’s not something he’s ready to confront consciously. 

And then comes his decision of freeing Appa. It’s more than just one selfless act. Zuko is giving Aang the means to leave Ba Sing Se, and to put himself out of Zuko’s reach pretty much permanently. It’s giving up his search. It’s giving up his dream of fixing his own life, going home and things “going back to normal”. It’s not a small thing - it’s Zuko breaking through his ego and his own desires that made him get through the last 3 years to do something selfless and altruistic. 

On top of this, he goes into Appa’s lair as the Blue Spirit, but when Iroh comes after him, he drops the mask. So he takes the decision to free Appa as himself, not having the mask anymore to dissociate himself from his actions. Surely, it’s liberating in a way to let go, but for someone whose entire self-perception is built on never giving up, this must feel like being a quitter. It feels both terribly right and wrong at the same time. 

As Iroh says, it’s Zuko’s “critical decision, what you did beneath that lake…it was in such conflict with your image of yourself, that you are now at war within your own mind and body.” It releases spiritual energy that activates his kundalini - check out this meta - working its way through his body. Because Zuko is not doing this through conscious meditation, but through unprocessed decisions, his body is unable to handle this sudden energy and his mind is equally unable to process deliberately the repressed, festering doubts and conflicts. So he falls into a fever dream, to help the metamorphosis. 

Now I would rather focus on the narrative symbolism, rather than the chakra discussion. 

The Dragon scene

We see Zuko’s perfect image of himself - the one he was holding onto. A scarless, unblemished Fire Lord, spitting image of his father, surrounded by all the trappings and symbols of wealth and power. It’s his dream of having his honor returned, of things turning back to normal. It’s the redemption he thinks Ozai can give him. 

The red and blue dragons are shaped like the kundalini, the spiritual energy working inside him. It’s interesting that Zuko’s inner voices are Azula and Iroh - they are the two most important influences in his life - the “perfect” v “failure”, the “ruthless” v “kind”, the “insider” v “outcast” (Ozai is an absence). He will have to choose between them. Azula’s Blue Dragon tries to lull his consciousness back into sleep, to keep him stuck with this “past image” of himself. While Iroh’s red dragon urges him to leave this place behind, to keep awake for his “new self”.

The Blue Dragon almost manages to lull him back to sleep, but Ursa appears in the darkness, dressed as she was when she left and Zuko sees his own reflection through her eyes. I think it’s a throwback to the promise he made to her that we saw in Zuko Alone - that he wouldn’t forget who he truly is. Seeing this Ozai-like reflection of himself through Ursa’s eyes helps him to let go, but it’s also a leap into the darkness. It foreshadows how his mother’s image helps him to walk away in Book 3.

2. The elements

As we see Zuko struggle through the fever, all the elements are around him. He’s not who he was anymore, he’s new self is forged through his experiences and everything he learnt in the past years. 

The past image of himself that he clings to is surrounded by fire, just like his past and identity is linked with fire. The blue and red dragons symbolize how the element has both negative and positive influence in his life.

The symbol of his transformation is water. It cleanses, soothes him through the worst of the fever. And water plays a big role in changing him. His entire Book 1 journey is the push and pull of different influences, pitting his mission to capture Aang against his better instincts of being loyal to his uncle, to consider his crew, to even being compassionate to his enemies. The Blue Spirit is born of water.

His physical struggle is all earth colors of green and brown of the room and his blankets. It’s his physically exacting journey through the Earth Kingdom when he learns not only the limits of his own endurance and resilience, but also that of the common people. He shares their suffering and it’s going to be crucial in his redemption.

3. The “Avatar-self” Scene

As his body works through the fever, his new self - or more accurately a possible version of an ideal, awakened self - emerges. We get a glimpse through the mirror, who Zuko could be if he managed to open his Crown Chakra. This self is a completely bared down version of himself, free of his earthly attachments of wealth and pomp. He is bald and bears an airbender tattoo. He looks hauntingly similar to Aang - to remind us of the illusion of separation, and to point Zuko towards his true destiny. Air is of course the element of freedom, of spirituality and embracing it opens up the possibility of reconciliation between the Avatar and the Fire Lord. This foreshadows the Book 3 Zuko who leaves everything behind to go help the Aang.

This self is also scarless, just like Zuko’s past image, which is an important piece of foreshadowing. Zuko cannot be this person until he is free of his scar somehow. 

4. Awakening

When he wakes up, his hand goes immediately to his eyes. And it’s both sadness and relief that the scar is still there. He’s in conflict of who he wants to be. It foreshadows his entire scene in the cavern - he wants to be free to choose, despite his scar, but is unable to do it, because it still defines him. Zuko needs to heal to embrace this awakened self. But the healing he needs is not the physical one that Katara offers, but a spiritual one, which he himself started, but didn’t fully achieve.

Iroh’s love and caring (and tea) gets him through this experience, like it did his banishment, but his love also cannot heal the scar.

Only Zuko himself can do it. His healing is only complete when he confronts his father, lets go of his attachment to Ozai and refuses to be defined by his abuse anymore. That’s when he becomes the “beautiful prince” he was meant to be.

#atla #atla meta #rtk #zuko #fever dream #the earth king #2.18

[jeanandthedreamofhorses]

Eren the Free, Part 1: Response to linkspooky’s ‘Eren the Slave’

Thanks for asking for my response, anon, because it has allowed me to string together and articulate my own thoughts on Eren’s character at this stage of the story.

Needless to say, I have several interpretive, philosophical disagreements with @linkspooky‘s ‘Eren the Slave’ and these are expressed in my ‘Eren Jaeger – Who Freer than the Tyrant?’ meta, so please read that first. The purpose of this post will be to argue against specific claims made in linkspooky’s meta and tackle what I believe to be logical flaws in my opponent’s argument. This meta is in two parts not to flex but because my computer had an aneurysm trying to load the whole post.

Well, if the Defence in the trial of Eren Jaeger may take the floor, my opening statement is thus: Eren is no slave, and has pursued the path of freedom further than any other character.

Narrative and Personal Narrative

linkspooky draws a distinction between the Narrative of the manga and Eren’s Personal Narrative, the story he tells himself. They argue that people who have faith in Eren’s self-conception fall into his personal narrative.

But is his story not a Narrative? It is quite natural to expect character development from characters in a story - it could only rightly be called a mistake when it comes to real life. And do Eren’s detractors not themselves fall into the Personal Narratives of Armin, Mikasa and Zeke? They have repeatedly made the statement that Eren is not free, that he is being controlled by Zeke or Grisha, and every time he has proven them wrong.

There is indeed an authorial Narrative separate from the characters’ Personal Narratives which can be detected through symbolism and the course the story takes. I find that the course of the story thus far lines up far more with Eren’s Personal Narrative than it does with those of his detractors. We can tell this from how he has disproved Armin, Mikasa and Zeke’s accusations of manipulation and also how, in the last chapter, he symbolically rips free of his chains.

There is also the fact that we the readers are more in the dark about Eren’s thoughts and intentions than we are about any other character. How could we be seduced into a Personal Narrative we know next to nothing about? And why would the story deliberately hide from us the very perspective that is meant to deceive us? I think it is far more likely that the reason Eren’s intentions have been shielded from the reader is because they take the nature of a terrible truth that must be dug up with bloodied hands.

Whenever Eren opens up about his thoughts and feelings, the meta unfairly dismisses them as mere lip service despite Eren having no reason to lie to Reiner and Falco as two people he intends to kill.

Rather than our side of the fandom being deceived by Eren’s Personal Narrative, I find that the opposing side dismisses it out of hand because they have no intention of listening to Eren’s side of the story. Why is Eren’s perspective less valid than anyone else’s, especially when he knows more than every other character by virtue of his ability to literally see the future?

The only explanation I can find for this attitude, if I may be forgiven the presumption, is that people approach the topic with the automatic assumption that what Eren is doing has to be wrong instead of questioning their own morals - which is, after all, what Attack On Titan is all about.

Armin even says that he no longer understands Eren. I don’t think we should trust the perception of a character as being authorial Narrative when he explicitly makes a statement like this. linkspooky does have an explanation for this scene, however, which I shall address in the next part.

Armin and Mikasa’s Perceptions of Eren

linkspooky claims that the reason for Armin’s confusion is that his romanticised view of Eren is falling apart, which indeed it is, and the same is true of Mikasa. However, I don’t think it’s right to claim that their new perception of him is an accurate one, since they still haven’t heard anything from Eren himself apart from what both I and linkspooky agree are lies to distance himself from them.

While they both once focused excessively on the positive in Eren, now they focus excessively on the negative, not considering the reason for Eren’s actions that I believe we have received hints of in the last two chapters.

linkspooky and I both think that Eren wants to protect his friends - in my case I most definitely see it as his primary motivation. If Armin knew this about Eren, I do not think he would condone him, but I don’t think he’d so roundly condemn him as he does here either.

So I don’t think it is right to consider Armin’s words the straight truth here, given the lack of information he’s working with, and that indeed, the fandom is working with. Because Eren is doing the most morally questionable things, and because we are seeing things more often from Armin’s perspective than his these days, there is perhaps an impulse to put faith in Armin’s words over Eren’s. But in this series, nothing is ever so black and white.

In Mikasa’s case, her treasured memory of the scarf is now being being challenged by the memory of Eren murdering the kidnappers - but we know from 121 that Eren places special value on the scarf as well, instead of just the murder.

Rather than trying to paint Eren in a white or black light, they need to see Eren as he really is: like the freedom he represents, a force beyond good and evil. 

Enemy of the World

One of linkspooky’s arguments is that being the ‘Enemy of the World’ is just Eren’s fantasy as he frequently relies on others. However, linkspooky also mentions how Eren manipulates everyone close to him. I would argue that the person who manipulates you is, in fact, your enemy, and that Eren is the Enemy of the World not because he never relies on help but because he is entirely on his own side.

Indeed he knows that assistance from others is necessary even just to activate the Founder’s power, and he also refers to the Survey Corps as his friends, or even comrades, depending on your translation.

This is why he manipulates them - and the reason he manipulates rather than relying on them is because he feels that his Will contradicts the Wills of everyone around him. There is no-one who desires the outcome that Eren desires, not even Floch and the Eldian nationalists, I believe: I think even they will baulk at the scale of destruction Eren intends. Historia is the only character I think may be an exception to this rule as the other bearer of the ‘enemies of mankind’ moniker. 

This otherwise total isolation of intention is what makes Eren the Enemy of the World. Because he fights for his freedom, he rebels against peace.

I think this panel is another example of why the authorial Narrative itself supports the idea of Eren being an Enemy of the World. The positioning of the speech bubble and outside text was entirely the decision of Isayama and his editor, and is not a thought bubble from Eren’s head. He has never actually addressed himself as ‘the Enemy of the World’: Historia calls him the enemy of mankind and Willy says he rebels against peace, but while Eren has said he “might just destroy the world” and only in response to Willy’s words, he is still not ascribing himself a title or role.

Eren’s Individualism

linkspooky claims that the scene in the FT arc, where the Levi Squad is slaughtered because Eren didn’t rely on his power instead of theirs, is misinterpreted because Eren also lost the fight on his own. However, this is where I think this meta falls prey to one of its greatest weaknesses: the omission of the Uprising Arc from the analysis of Eren’s character, wherein his most pivotal transitions take place.

The event that caused Eren to trust in his own strength over the strength of others was not his fight against Annie, but when a similar situation repeats itself in the Crystal Cave.

In this circumstance, Eren is able to protect all of his friends by relying on his own strength, when they would have died had they attempted their risky manoeuvre. Eren has become strong enough to protect them on his own - this was the first inkling of that realisation.

I say ‘first inkling’ because Eren does say this afterwards, which seems to influence Armin towards his current ideology. Such an idea seems at odds with what I believe to be Eren’s current aim to genocide those different to him as a wholly antagonistic force, like the bullies in Armin’s memories who Armin now wants to make peace with.

I believe this is because Eren soon learns that those differences between people are simply too great and too much of a threat to his freedom. People are stronger together, but only if he can be confident that they will follow his Will, which is how he learned to manipulate his allies. The differences between him and Levi in the Serumbowl nearly caused the loss of his best friend, and then, when he receives Grisha’s memories and learns of Marley’s treatment of Eldians, he learns just how deeply divided humans are and loses faith in overcoming those differences.

Far from character stagnancy, this is the development I see in Eren that has led him to this individualistic conclusion.

I would also like to address what I think is a fallacy in linkspooky’s analysis of the fight Eren loses against Annie. Eren loses both with his comrades and without them - how does that make the former path any better than the latter? Eren was actually doing very well in his fight against Annie, and only lost when he realised her identity from her fighting stance.

What I think Eren really took away from that fight is the lesson he is applying now - he cannot show any mercy to his enemies.

Levi Parallelism

I find the parallels drawn between Eren and Levi quite interesting and am not necessarily opposed to it, but personally I find that Levi has more parallels with Mikasa than Eren as two Ackermans driven by their love for others (though of course this is a big part of Eren’s motivation as well). Mikasa realising she can’t protect Eren or always be by his side is more in line with Levi accepting that he can’t save everyone imo.

Those Who Push Themselves into that Hell

linkspooky draws attention to Eren’s use of language to indicate that he is not free, such as in the following scene: 

They argue that the ‘something’ pushing Eren along means he is not moving from his own will.

However, I find this claim to be contradicted by the distinction Eren makes within this very scene. He differentiates between those who are pushed into hell by their circumstances and those who “push themselves into hell”, clearly putting himself - at least as he is now - in the latter category. So I find that Eren is articulating that, because his whole past and future are manifestations of his own Will (as I argue in the attached meta), he is freely choosing to enter this arena rather than being forced to do so.

I Just Keep Moving Forward

linkspooky also argues that the reluctance in the line “I just keep moving forward’” suggests a lack of freedom. I would argue that continuing to fight for your goal even though you are frightened is a sign of strength of will rather than the reverse.

They also argue that, because those words are remembered as Reiner is about to kill himself, they are portrayed in a negative light. But this omits the crucial follow-up to that scene, where Reiner does not kill himself and finds a reason to live after hearing Falco express his desire to protect Gabi. Reiner is saved by that will to keep moving forward.

They further argue that Eren takes these words from Hange and twists them to suit himself.

But this is untrue. As they pointed out themself, Eren first heard these words in his training days from Reiner where it did mean what he thinks it means. Furthermore, there is no panel showing Eren having any special reaction to Hange’s words. He is shown with the other key Serumbowl players before Hange says them, but not afterwards, where the focus is solely on Mikasa.

I believe Isayama has Hange say Eren’s tagline because it is a key phrase in the themes of the story, and not because it has any special effect on Eren.

I Didn’t Have Any Other Choice

Lines such as “I didn’t have any other choice” and “Is there another way” are similarly argued to be indicative of Eren’s enslavement to a single course of action.

But this is just the conflict between long and short term gratification – enduring hardship to obtain your goal is an example of a strong will, not an enslaved one. Even if he is enslaved to circumstance, this is the case for everybody else as well, and it is an enslavement he seeks to permanently free himself from by crushing his enemies for good. After that, he and Eldia can do whatever they will.

Born This Way

The lines “I’ve always been that way, ever since I was born”, and “It’s probably been like this since the day we were born” are argued to be a form of enslavement to one’s sense of self. I cover this in my attached meta, where I argue that it is rather an affirmation of his own Will and right to exist.

One specific point I’d like to address is the claim that Eren saying those words after Reiner tries to take personal responsibility for his actions is evidence that Eren is running away from his guilt, and is therefore not at peace with his actions, and is therefore not free. But rather than in denial or frustrated, Eren appears to be in a state of sad serenity.

Eren does not say these words in immediate response to Reiner, but only after he hears Willy say “Because I was born into this world”. I think that here Eren is simply recognising that Reiner was simply following the unique nature of his Will - doing it because he wanted to, not because he had to, which is indeed what Eren is doing - and acknowledging that it is something he cannot criticise him for, but also something that he cannot spare him for. That is the command of Eren’s unique Will.

As for Eren not being at peace with his actions meaning he is not free, refer to the short/long term gratification point I made earlier.

Jealousy of Mikasa and the Need to be a One Man Army

linkspooky claims that Eren is still trying too hard to be as strong as Mikasa and Levi, but once again the meta suffers due to a lack of consideration for the Uprising Arc. In that arc, Eren got over his jealousy of Mikasa and Levi and explicitly stated as much.

This, I think, is also sufficient evidence against a persisting desire on Eren’s part to be a One Man Army (as opposed to freedom, which he does have a desire for). His words here make it clear that he wishes to fight alongside his friends if possible. He has simply learnt that, to achieve his goals, ruthless manipulation and rugged individualism is necessary.

Need to be Special

This is also something Eren overcame in the Uprising Arc. He thinks of himself as a normal person, the son of a special father, that he never needed to happen.

He is not doing all of this to be special. He has simply become special by pursuing his birthright: not a birthright of exceptionalism, but of the right to exist, something I shall explain further in the ‘Meaning of Carla’s Words’ section in the next part.

As with the One Man Army, it is a matter of necessity rather than desire. I cover this more in my attached Eren meta, but Eren’s character has developed in a perfect loop. Though his actions remain the same, his understanding of them has increased dramatically: that is to say, he has come to understand himself.

Indeed, people are not naturally special. But can one really argue that special people do not exist at all? To say such a thing would be to argue that there is no difference between Daz and Erwin. People become special -  Supermen, to reference Nietzsche - because they relentlessly pursue their Will to Power, their driving force to actualise their desires.

linkspooky also argues that the reason Eren’s change is the most dramatic after the time-skip is because in actuality he hasn’t changed. My argument is that it is simply the result of having the most explicit and tumultuous development in the story up to now, and crucially, the ability to see a future no-one else can.

Read the rest in Part 2 here!

#shingeki no kyojin #eren jaeger #eren yeager #snk meta #meta response #snk spoilers #aot spoilers #I haven't directly quoted since I was asked not to #but I hope it's clear I'm arguing in good faith #Also @ls please feel no obligation to read this behemoth #It's a ridiculously long response

[frankendeers]

“I am Made of Love and It’s Stronger than You”: Steven Universe and Alternative Models of Queer Resistance in Science-Fiction.

I needed to motivate myself because I have been working on this for ages - so here, have the prospectus to my M.A thesis. Maybe you’re interested in talking about it, or reading more as the thesis is being developed?

How do we resist oppression? Even before the emergence of queer theory as an academic discipline, authors and activists alike have wondered how the persistent structures of hegemonic discourse can be opposed. Aside from important endeavours to organise and dismantle political ideology and its effect on the material world, fiction is slowly recognised as a possible tool for queer resistance. By representing marginalised groups and opening discussions about different kinds of subjectivity, fiction provides new frameworks for dreaming queer revolution. Stressing the importance of conjuring imaginative scenarios to explore societal issues, it is no surprise that the genre of Science-Fiction has risen to the challenge. Its visions of both utopian and dystopian futures speculate upon how issues of marginalisation might be dealt with going forward and is therefore meaningfully engaging with the Other.

A particularly interesting outlet for social commentary is constituted in the figure of the alien. By taking the concept of the outsider to its most literal meaning, Science Fiction is able to extricate itself from reality and use imaginary cultures to draw parallels to our own world. In some texts, the alien is meant to incite the Freudian concept of the uncanny. The relative proximity to humanity is here meant to signify cultural lines and warn the audience against transgression. In other works, the distance between human and alien is reduced further, until a certain level of identification with the strange Other is reached. This strategy is most often employed to show the alien as a bringer of progress and incite positive change in how the audience sees what it cannot understand. Due to the multiplicity of the alien’s symbolic meaning, utilising the concept to interrogate the nature of gender identity and sexual desire has been proven quite fruitful. From feminist utopias where all men go extinct to allegories of same-sex relationships, extra-terrestrial characters are useful metaphors to discern how we view queerness. More than this, the ways in which queerness is constituted in alien cultures, technologies and biologies can be utilised to point towards strategies to free marginalised groups from oppression. One recent work of Science Fiction stands out in its attempt to interrogate the nature of queerness and rebellion by employing the alien as a symbol for human society: The Cartoon Network’s children’s program Steven Universe. My paper will examine how Steven Universe reflects on queerness through alien characters and, furthermore, offers a unique model of radical empathy as a viable way to resist oppressive structures.

Steven Universe has proven to be undeniably relevant to queer discourse. The show received the Media Award for Outstanding Kids and Family Programming by the GLAAD Organisation (Gay and Lesbian Association against Defamation) in 2019 and wrote history by depicting the first on-screen queer kiss in a children’s animated program. Steven Universe focusses on its titular character, Steven, a young alien/human hybrid who learns to control his supernatural powers under the guidance of his four alien surrogate mothers: Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl. The heart of the show is constituted in Steven’s engagement with the society, biology and history of his alien heritage, an extra-terrestrial species called the Gems. Throughout the show, the plot reveals a legacy of oppression and war, with the gem’s homeworld representing imperial and fascist ideology against which his late mother has rebelled. As the story continues, Steven must realise that the ancient war his mother battled against her home planet merely resulted in a stand-still and that it is his duty to find ways for resistance.

In order to see how Steven Universe uses the alien in relation to queer identity, my paper will first reflect on how queerness is represented within the show. Although the nature of queerness is notoriously hard to articulate, it will be necessary to outline the terminology and specify how the concept is used for my specific purpose. Queerness defines itself exactly through its breaking of boundaries and blurring of conventional lines, it pertains -most commonly- to matters of sexuality, identity, gender and desire: “Broadly speaking, queer describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatize incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire. Resisting that model or stability –which claims heterosexuality as its origin, when it is more properly its effect –queer focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire.” (Jagose 3). In other words, I will use queerness as a direct opposition to the hegemonic discourse, which demands stable and unchanging categories of gender, sexuality and their expressions. These demands are rooted in normative assumptions about the naturalness of heterosexuality[M3]  and rigid ideas about gender roles. Defining these boundaries, will furthermore be achieved by looking at Simone de Beavoirs The Second Sex and Judith Butler’s analysis on the performative nature of gender.

Using these definitions reveals the usefulness of Steven Universe in queer context. One outstanding detail is the fact that all gems, Steven himself excluded, are female presenting to human audiences, yet their internal gender identity remains ambiguous. Gems reproduce asexually, having no need for biological sex (or even gender) and are often even unable to grasp the concept itself. Their presentation as female is shown to be an unquestioned default, putting the dominant assumption of neutral masculinity into question. Characters like Amethyst, are shown to explore their gender on a deeper level, occasionally taking on masculine alter egos and preferring male pronouns while presenting this way. Steven himself is positioned in opposition to general notions of hegemonic masculinity. His weapons are defensive, his powers involve healing, and his design is dominated by soft shapes and the colour pink. More than that, Steven is empathetic, gentle, and shown to enjoy stereotypically feminine activities such as wearing dresses and planning weddings. His close connection to the figure of the mother queers him in more ways than one. Besides this being an unusual feature of a male-centred storyline, the asexual nature of the Gems negates his gender identity. Strangers to reproduction, the enemies mistake Steven for his mother, misgendering him and drawing direct parallels to lived experiences of transgender people. His fight against their oppressive regime is ultimately similar to the struggles of transgender people, who are fighting for recognition of their identities.

This explicit disconnection between sex and gender also means that various romances formed between main characters are visually presented as lesbian relationships, while simultaneously putting the essentialist nature of gender into question. Complex romances are put to the forefront, meant to interrogate issues of prejudice, authenticity and power relations. The character Pearl, formerly a servant of Steven’s mother, rebels against her home planet out of romantic affection for her master. The narrative presents the death of Steven’s mother as a traumatic event and invites questions of how her queer identity interacted with her liberation. On the one hand, “lesbian” affection was the cause for Pearl joining the rebellion, yet she is unable to shed her subservience to Steven’s mother. The narrative criticises her loss of self-worth, rooted in ideological indoctrination as much as romantic dependence.

Connecting multiple issues of gender and sexuality, the alien biology of the gems is infused with inherent queerness. Steven Universe’s alien race has a mechanism to question fixed identity itself: Fusion. Here, two gems perform a dancing routine to synchronise with each other until they fuse to form a new entity altogether. Most often employed as a strategy to gain strength in battle, fusion is also shown to be a deeply intimate and emotional matter. The resulting character is physically and mentally an amalgam of the two (or more Gems) who created them. In this way, fusion functions as an exploration of identity and relationships, deeply queer in matters of gender and sexual desire. One fusion particularly stands out when analysing gender fluidity: The fusion of Stevonnie comes into existence when Steven, and his best friend Connie fuse. Stevonnie is explicitly stated and shown to be nonbinary and intersex.  They are capable, relatable and even shown to be desirable in the eyes of other characters. The fact that Steven and Connie break with gender conventions by switching masculine and feminine roles, makes analysing Stevonnie all the more fruitful. Stevonnie is also far from the only nonbinary fusion of the show. Throughout the seasons, Steven fuses with multiple gems, resulting in an array of nonbinary characters of vastly different gender representations and pronouns.

The show’s revolutionary approach is reinforced by the fact that the gem’s planet, simply called Homeworld, practically operates under a fascist dictatorship. Its society is made up of different types of gems, created for distinct purposes they are meant to fulfil without question. Remarkably, Homeworld explicitly forbids fusion between two different types of gems. Overstepping this line is not only cause for scandal but punishable by death. The show presents this as a thinly veiled allegory for the oppressed nature of LGBT relationships in the real world. In relation to that, the show examines themes of queer oppression and queer resistance in the character of Garnet. Garnet is a permanently fused gem, made up of Ruby and Sapphire who chose to rebel against Homeworld. Their romantic relationship is not weakened by its metaphorical nature, as Ruby and Sapphire’s visual resemblance to women is a constant reminder of its queerness.

As the show progresses, Steven is forced to confront Homeworld and decide upon strategies for liberation. Here, the show is ambivalent towards the usage of physical force. On the one hand, the war for independence fought by the rebellion five thousand years ago, is shown to have been effective in fighting against Homeworld’s armies. However, it also wiped out nearly all the rebellious gems and has ultimately only achieved a temporary peace. Contrarily, Steven’s innate empathy and deep desire to engage with whom he opposes is presented as inciting long-lasting change. Not only pertaining to his personality, but also encoded in his alien biology, Steven has the power to feel the emotions of his enemies. As he recognises physical force as inevitable in some instances, the real shift always occurs due to him trying to understand his opponents on an emotional level. The show hereby raises the complicated question of how to consolidate liberation and a need to cease the perpetuation of violence, offering radical empathy as a possible solution. Radical empathy, as the idea to resist oppression through understanding, is negating the more masculine realm of physical fight. Using a male character to introduce this idea, is already marked as queer. Nevertheless, radical empathy is also a contested subject and it will be necessary to evaluate how Steven Universe answers to the possibility of its ineffectiveness in queer liberation discourse. For this purpose, I will employ, among others, Jack Halberstam’s theories on Queer Violence in media and Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Both will be used to examine whether the progressive politics of Steven Universe can truly be used as an advocate for queer resistance, or if they promote liberalism and complacency.

In conclusion, my paper will examine how the concept of the alien is shown to be queer in Steven Universe, and how alien society is utilised as a metaphor for real-world queer discourse. It will further attempt to outline the different models of resistance brought forth by the show and address criticism towards its compliance with systemic injustice and accusations of demonising more violent forms of revolution.

  Bibliography: (Preliminary)

Primary Texts:

Steven Universe. Cartoon Network. 2013-2019.

Secondary Texts:

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books 1989, c1952. Print.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Dunn, Eli. “Steven Universe, Fusion Magic, and the Queer Cartoon Carnivalesque.” Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 56, 2016, pp. 44–57.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. , 2004. Print.

Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Print.

Halberstam, Judith. “Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representation, Rage, and Resistance.” Social Text, no. 37, 1993, pp. 187–201.

Hollinger, Veronica. “(Re)Reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 [77], Mar. 1999, pp. 23–40.

Lothian, Alexis. “Feminist and Queer Science Fiction in America.” The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction, edited by Eric Carl Link and Gerry Canavan, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 70–82.

Melzer, Patricia. Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. University of Texas Press, 2006.

Merrick, Helen. “Gender in Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 241–252.

Moore, Mandy Elizabeth "Future Visions: Queer Utopia in Steven Universe," Research on Diversity in Youth Literature: 2.1, 2019.

Pawlak, Wendy Sue. “The Spaces between: Non-Binary Representations of Gender in Twentieth-Century American Film.” Dissertation Abstracts International, vol. 73, no. 11, U of ArizonaProQuest, May 2013.

Pearson, Wendy Gay. “Queer Theory.” The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould et al., Routledge, 2009, pp. 298–307.

Pearson, Wendy Gay. “Science Fiction and Queer Theory” Published as a book chapter in: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. (Eds.), 2003. Pp. 149-160.

Roqueta Fernandez, Marta “Posthumanism and the creation of racialised, queer identities and sexualities: An analysis of ‘Steven Universe’” Monográfico: Nuevas Amazonas, 2.7, 2019. Pp. 48-84.

Thomas, Misty. “‘I am a Conversation’: Media Literacy, Queer Pedagogy, and Steven Universe in College Curriculum”. Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 6.3, 2019.

Valentin, Al. “Using the Animator’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House? Gender, Race, Sexuality and Disability in Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe.” Buffy to Batgirl: Essays on Female Power, Evolving Femininity and Gender Roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Julie M. Still et al., McFarland & Company Publishing, 2019, pp. 175–215.

#Steven universe #su #steven universe meta #su analysis #academia #thesis #media analysis #steven universe analysis #long post

[strawberryybird]

Me sees the character songs post, immediately wants to know what character songs you have for the characters and why.

ok so. welcome to the rabbit hole that is my music taste and what is my no.1 most frequently done activity.. plastering emotions i have for fictional characters all over my music taste. I restricted myself to ¾ songs for each character & then to Edie, Hubert, Dorothea, Lysithea & Byleth because otherwise we’d be here all day (and those are the Primary Daydream Candidates rn)

under a rm because as im sure we’ve all seen.. i just don’t fucking stop.. also i got weirdly deep about some of these topics. i don’t know how to tag it. tread careful?

Here are some songs.. welcome to my (notoriously bad) music taste. alsoi go in Very heavy handed about it all. i make only a few apologies:

Edelgard:Everybody wants to rule the word - tears for fears. (ucan go with Lorde’s cover but i prefer the original bc im like that.) i meanit’s pretty heavy handed but it’s such an Edelgard song it !!!! fuels my ficwriting. if it’s not so very Edelgard’s relationship with twsitd then idk whatto tell you. plus it’s an iconic song

Medicine - daughter. (daughter is My Favourite Band. Ever. I cannot articulate how much ilove their (and ex:re’s) music!!) anway. this is a hegegard song & i don’ttake constructive criticism. I’ll reiterate this better in other descriptions,but please don’t take my inclusion of a song about such a topic as adevaluation of it in any way, that’s not my intention. The reason I go so feralfor Hegegard is because im no stranger to watching someone you care about hurt themselvesin a way you can’t stop, and that’s what the AM ending evokes in me. Hence: asong I love that one can read the same story in. And then the lyrics ‘You couldstill be / What you want to / What you said you were / When I met you” just !! parallelsEdge of Dawn’s lyrics about regret & overall I’m very feral about this.

(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - blue oystercult. this is PRIME Edelgard telling freshly-awokenbyleth she’s been waging war for 5 years. also !!!! “Seasonsdon’t fear the reaper / Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be likethey are” >>> “The Edge of Dawn (Seasons ofWarfare) (フレスベルグの少女～風花雪月～,lit. Girl of Hresvelg ~Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon~)” .. the link is tenuous but coincidence?? is it, fuck.

Seneca - Novo Amor. this is another one of those songs that could mean something different to everyone. very easy to project onto, is novo amor. I like the story of being prepared to run and break ties at any given moment, but ending up - emotionally or physically - in the same place one always was. apart from the glaring tie of how Edelgard returned to garreg mach, this song is a lot of me trying to repatriate Edelgard’s lack of emotional arc in the game by saying . well. this song. 

You can call me Al -  paul simon. am i projecting edeleth thoughts onto my favourite song? it’s morelikely than you think!!! but also i like the chorus and all the exasperating ‘call me el’jokes i can make.. i may be half writing a fic based on this song.

Dorothea:Agnes - glass animals. so i have significant emotions about edelthea at the best of times !! and this song !!! really bloody hits it home !! yes I knowit’s got a really heavy and real subject matter and I’m not trying to devalueit or minimise it.. but the story - about watching someone close to you hurtthemselves/get hurt, and doing so in ways you can’t stop them from - is adamn real one. And a Lot of why I love Dorothea’s character in the gamebecause she’s the one who can’t stop her friends from getting hurt – through exposureto warfare .. or  stopping Edelgard becomingthe monster at the end of the story. Even though she’s one of the healers onthe beagle’s team. And I feel that.

Ex’s and Oh’s – Elle King. So you know that one spn fanvid featuringthis song about all of dean winchester’s relationships? That, but for my flirting Queen Dorothea Arnault. (and I have the dumbest most fun little headcanon thatonce Dorothea and Sylvain derailed a lgbt+ society meeting whilst Edie wastrying to go over the budget by blasting this song and dancing on the table.The idea makes me laugh)

Hold My Girl – George Ezra. The whole thing about wanting just that onemoment to cherish the people you love for one moment more before you have goout face the world? If that’s not the timeskip’d Dorothea Arnault Aesthetic, Idon’t know what is.

(Call Me Out – sea girls. On a much lighter note, this song is fueling the later half of mydrafts of road trip au. And it’s literally because of that one verse. im gayshut up.)

Hubert:Red Right Hand – nick cave and the bad seeds. Is it on the nose? Is itheavy handed? Oh u fuckin bet but that won’t stop me!!! A) it’s a good song. ItIs. B) I like narrative songs. C) Any ‘red right hand’ symbolism in Anycharacter has me love them immediately and also plonk this song in the middleof any playlist about them. sure, the artic monkeys version might be a bit more on hubert’s brand.. but my mileage varies about it lmao

I had fortress by bear’s den earmarked for Hubie, as I think it’s easilyread about boundaries and a one sided intense relationship & that’s! Hubiebaybee! But I can’t possibly cover unhealthy relationships without shoving thealbum Hospice by The Antlers into every which way of it. It’s by no meansdirectly translatable to Edelgard and hubert’s relationship and it’s arguable ifI should even mention it in the same sentence as a bloody fictional character… that beingsaid, I’ve been having emotions about:Shiva – the antlers. This song specifically reads to me to be a really goodarticulation of my own thoughts about Hubert’s perspective of Edie getting experimentedon. heavy but damn. I like that. I just see a lot of what their teen years togethermust have been like in Shiva.

Time – Pink Floyd. Ok so.. it’s like Hubert in parallel bc I think thissong is a lot about searching for a purpose/reason or a quote unquote bloodyred path in life. And I may have been listening to it when I watched Hubert/DorotheaA support & now it’s just permanently associated with it bc it complementedit so well. And I like it. So . it stays. It’s very much a beagles song to meas well.

Lysithea:The Beautiful Dream – George Ezra. Ok so I read this Edelysithea ficwith this on repeat bc the title reminded me of it, and then I stuck it onrepeat because it worked too well and now.. im crying.. and i like the inflection of Lysithea’s bitterness over the titular lyric. (but also, it remains one of my steadfast edeleth songs.. sorry lys)

Secrets (Cellar Door) – Radical Face. Another Edelgard&/Lysitheasong!! I really like their relationship ok. And given the song itself can beread straight or an allegory for whatever you particularly want, but the storyis just too on the nose for me not to mention it here.(also general advocation of listening to the whole of radical face’s musicbecause I’ve loved it for years now & the work is beautiful.) (also it’swonderful for fe awakening projection. Or ur own.)

Oh Children – nick cave and the bad seeds. there’s a million different interpretations of this song, but to try nail a few onto Lysithea.. there’s the harry potter use of making/finding a light in the depths of tragedy & i love that for Lys. there’s the whole ‘the kids aren’t alright’ theme and it’s various depths. and i like narrative lyrics to plaster my large fictional-character-caused-emotions onto, so make of this one what you will.

Marianne (and Lysithea too if you like)Bad Blood – Radical Face. Ok so. This is one of my favourite songs in bloodyexistence, and it’s so loaded with meaning & it has a metric tonne of it. Icould wax lyrical about how much I love Radical Face’s work. I don’t want myinclusion of this song (specifically this one) to in any way devalue it. Butmusic is ofc incredibly subjective, and so is my reading of a lot of threehouses – in case it’s not bloody obvious by now. There’s a Lot of stories onecould take from Marianne’s character (and none of them are More Valid^tm thanany other), and I do see a very personal story in her – as I do in this song. Hgghhghive just spent 10 minutes trying to find an impersonal way to talk about twovery personal and relative stories, which naturally doesn’t work. That, and theway I read her story is Real Fucking Dicey for tumblr.com. so if this song is about accepting rejection because of parts of yourself so deep they’re in your blood, i think.. y’all can see.. where my neurodivergent gay self is going with this..

Byleth:Something to Believe In – Tom Walker. Yeah. You’re bloody welcome. If this isn’ta completely on the nose Byleth song, I’ll eat Dorothea’s hat.

Don’t Let the Man – Fatboy Slim. ~ And the sign said green-hairedpartially possessed emotionally void mercenaries need not apply for aprofessorship at the country’s most prestigious academic centre… ~

Emigrate - Novo Amor. this just fucking Got Me in the ‘actively choosing crimson flower’ feelings. im an emotional wreak but its aight. the lyrics just matched up too well for me to let it go !!!

Alps - Novo Amor. this hit me in the ‘i miss the gremlin child sothis’ feelings one day and now it’s permanently stuck that way.

Make Them Gold – chvrches. (this is very much associated with awakening’sfuture past kids and also the Carmilla series in my mind But!!) I love a story about‘if we’re all falling, we’re going down together’ and the magical power of teamwork, and how it brings out the best in people.. & that’s what this song& Byleth kinda bloody stand for ya know??

woooh.. oh my god . i need another cup of tea.

#ask #birb says what // #fe meta #that tag's just for kicks and so i can find this again #oh my god i just don't shut up sometimes #but oh my god that was fun #easiest way to get me into a mouse trap or something is to tell me to make a character playlist i s2g #anyway. thank you for the ask!!! #apologies for the brick wall of text!!! #hope someone out there found at least one part of this they liked that'd be rad #but like. i do this shit for ME lmao #kalinary

[nellie-elizabeth]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Have a Date Tonight (4x16)

Weird Al! White Josh! Dr. Akopian! I had so much fun with this episode and also I'm so nervous about next week and I don't know what to think!

Cons:

Okay, obviously, obviously, the narrative is promoting Greg over the other two. For my money, Josh was never in the running in a serious way, although I appreciate the connection that he and Rebecca have. I have some problems with the idea of Greg and Rebecca ending up together, even though I really do like them and think they're sweet. It's kind of difficult to be articulate about it, though. First is the undeniable fact that Skylar Astin is doing a great job, but he doesn't seem like Greg to me. The dynamic that him and Rebecca have now is perfectly sweet, but it does not in any way feel like a continuation of the same character and the same relationship that we saw before. I know that in some ways this is intentional, but in other ways it's kind of weak because we didn't get to see this new thing develop for long enough for me to want it as end-game? If that makes sense?

I also think this story does a bit of a disservice to all three of Rebecca's suitors. With Nathaniel, we have seen how far he's come, but I feel like at some point the show decided that we'd had enough development with him, so now his only personality trait is that he loves Rebecca. Same with Josh - we know he's been going to therapy and working on himself, which is great, but here at the end it's like all of his character focus is about Rebecca, instead of about being a fully realized character in his own right. That's kind of disappointing, and I don't know if the finale could possibly be good enough on its own to assuage some of my unfulfilled feelings.

I will probably be delighted with whatever happens with Rebecca. At this point, she's either a) picking Greg, or b) picking nobody, or c) picking some fourth option we don't know about yet, or d) picking nobody with the hint of a future suitor tagged on at the end. I think I'll be satisfied with the end of Rebecca's narrative, but I'm less sure that I'll be satisfied with the narratives for all the rest of the characters. And hell, maybe something will come out of left field and Rebecca will end up with Josh or Nathaniel. That's pretty much the only thing that could surprise me at this point!

Pros:

Despite everything I just said above, I did get intense warm fuzzies when Greg said that Rebecca was the love of his life. That was just so cute, and so pure, and it felt very real. Sure, I have my complaints, but if the show ends with the two of them together, I'll be pretty happy about it. Backing up to look at Greg's date in its entirety... honestly I loved everything about Greg in this episode. He starts off being confident, knowing that he and Rebecca have something special and don't need anything flashy. People start to get into his head and he gets nervous, so he goes too far and wants to book a hot air balloon... but the date ends up being Rebecca and Greg ordering take-out while sitting in the mechanic's shop waiting for Greg's car to get fixed. It's domestic, it's sweet, and it gives both of them a chance to reflect on how much they didn't want to do the whole big, elaborate date thing. Rebecca had so much fun with Josh and Nathaniel, but those dates didn't help her to make a decision of any sort. This one? Just being with Greg and cutting away all the pretense? It's pretty perfect.

It also occurs to me that this situation is a direct parallel to Greg and Rebecca's disastrous date to Josh's sister's wedding back in Season One. Back then, Greg decided not to put any effort in, and Rebecca was crushed. Here, Greg decided to put in all sorts of effort, then it went wrong, and Rebecca and Greg were both happy with the result of a casual, uncomplicated evening together. I think that's a pretty clear sign.

One of my favorite moments of this episode was the scene between Nathaniel and Josh. They are allied and paralleled in so many ways in this episode. They both have an unfair "advantage" with Rebecca that needs to be neutralized - Nathaniel's money, and Josh's hot body. They both take Rebecca on a simple date involving a picnic. And they both love her and want to be with her, but they both will probably be okay if Rebecca doesn't choose them. They even have a "good game" moment, and I can see them being friends when this is all over, no matter the results.

And those dates... Josh was just so cute, tying back in his past with Rebecca, but making sure she knows that it's not about looking backwards, but about coming full circle. They spend the date mostly talking about the past, though, remembering their experience at camp. I think Rebecca and Josh will always have a special connection because of the things they've been through together, and I think they can survive this situation as good friends.

Nathaniel and Rebecca's date made me so happy, and despite the obvious narrative pull towards Greg, I'm always going to be a bit enamored with Nathaniel/Rebecca. I mentioned earlier that I think the narrative is doing a disservice to Nathaniel as a character, and the best way I can articulate that is that I think Nathaniel is currently at a "mid-season-three-Rebecca" kind of stage. He's not ready yet to be the one that Rebecca ends up with. We've seen a lot of development and introspection from him, but he's still focusing a lot of his energy on being with Rebecca, despite the many times he's realized that he should back off. This mirrors so much of what Rebecca had to go through to get to a healthy place. If the show were centered on Nathaniel, and there was a Season Five coming up, we'd probably see him develop further into a person who could comfortably be able to commit to another person in a healthy way. I hope that he finds that love, and that while Rebecca was the first love of his life that made him realize he needed to change and grow, he's able to find happiness elsewhere. Plus, Nathaniel and Rebecca have hella good chemistry and they look super cute dancing together. The end.

The rest of the gang spends the episode betting on Rebecca's love life, and it is so much that I never knew I needed. First off, just having the whole gang together warmed my heart in unexpected ways. There was so much fun energy, and interesting character dynamics, and jokes from characters we don't get to see enough of... I liked seeing who was rooting for which guy, and I think there's something very interesting about how that ends up panning out.

For the main three gals: we've got Paula rooting for Josh. Paula is supposed to be Rebecca's best friend, the one who knows her the best, and yet here we see her picking the guy that seems the least likely. Heather, someone who's been a friend to Rebecca for most of her time in West Covina, goes with Nathaniel, someone who she has grown to appreciate more over time. And Valencia, the one who started as Rebecca's adversary, picks the guy that narrative-wise makes the most sense for Rebecca at this point. I think all three women have interesting points in why they chose their men, but Paula is focused on the story-book aspect, Heather is focused on how Nathaniel has grown, while Valencia seems to see to the heart of Greg and Rebecca as a good couple.

White Josh. Love of my life. I was just complaining that we haven't seen enough of him lately, and then we get this. Guys and Dolls is one of my favorite musicals of all time, so that "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" number was just excellent for me on every level. I like that we start with White Josh being his normal judgmental self, but then he literally says "JK LOL" and is all about it. There's something so fun and carefree and mean-spirited but in a way that's still kind of allowable. We get a fun group dance number, lots of hilarious jokes, and a general feeling of celebration and lightness. In some ways, it's this subplot that gives us permission to be okay with the bizarre Bachelorette-like scenario that Rebecca has going on here. The tone of the show is telling us that this isn't Rebecca having another back-slide. This is silly and weird, but it's okay to have fun with it.

We also get that message more explicitly with Dr. Akopian. As much as Rebecca is doing great with managing her mental health, she can still get a little bit intense at times, and stalking Dr. Akopian definitely qualifies as problematic behavior. I love that poor Dr. Akopian is just trying to live her life, but she tries to be patient with Rebecca as well. Still, she knows her boundaries, and asks Rebecca if she can have her morning back. She's a therapist, and we know her in this show in that context almost exclusively. But just like every other character on this show, no matter how minor, she has a life outside of Rebecca, and it's fun to see little hints of that.

I could keep going, but I think that's all I've got for now. This was an excellent episode. I'm conflicted about so many things. Some of those things I think it's good to be conflicted about... others, I'm not so sure. Still, every time I've had doubts about this show, I've been proven wrong. I cannot wait to see what the finale holds next week, and that musical concert thing afterwards is sure to be a lot of fun!

8.5/10

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