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warrior-cats-rewritten · 23 days

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how are you going to handle ashfur in wcr? i’ve always loved him but also felt like he should have been more clearly written either as a sympathetic tragic character or a total asshole, instead of kind of both

Technically, both!

On one hand, his mother was brutally murdered when he was young. He and his 3 siblings relied heavily on each other, but when Ferncloud got together with Dustpelt, Tulipfur grows closer to the older cats of Thunderclan, and Elderleaf buried herself in her work to try and become Camp Keeper, he feels upset and left behind. He has a right to feel that way, but he keels feeling that way. Stuck in the past... And over time, he blames everyone around him for his troubles.

A bonus scene shows his trial shows that he is incredibly charming. He sways the jury by pleading to see his mother, being incredibly loving towards her, and asking about his passed on nieces, Larchkit and Hollykit.

He plays up the sympathy card, talking about how it was such a foolish thing to do, how he just loved Squirrelflight too much, and how he totally deserved what Hollyleaf did. He blames Brambleclaw in a roundabout way. See, he just looked do much like the cat who killed my mom :(

The jury is mostly split and the final vote falls to Yellowfang.

After she and Raggedstar split up, he became mates with Foxheart. He didn't love Foxheart, just used her feelings and affections to hurt Yelf. Yellowfang admitted that, though she knew what he was doing, it still hurt. She wanted to shout at him, hurt him, and even wanted to hurt Foxheart, who hadn't done anything wrong.

She votes in his favour, because she finds it a bit relatable. She fell for the act, many cats did. She is ashamed to admit it later on, but in that moment, she knew what that anger was like. She still disapproves of his treatment of Hollypaw, and his anger towards the Three, but his trial is about The Fire Scene specifically, and all of Starclan knows Squirrelflight is going to be on trial when she eventually passes away.

And, for a good chunk of his time in Starclan, he looks normal. He hangs out with his nieces, cheering when they get their Star names, Hollyfoot and Larchwhisker. He hangs out with Tulipfur when his brother dies during AVOS, defending him when his cross-clan relationship comes into question.

In Squirrelflight's eyes, he was strange, and controlling, he treated her like some precious thing that couldn't do too much or she would break, some kind of prize to be hoarded.

Many cats alive did not like him. His was an ass towards most cats in Thunderclan, and he wasn't popular.

TBC shows his true colours. Controlling, manipulative, holier-than-thou, vindictive, and entitled.

Squirrelflight is glad to finally put him down for good.

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mountain-man-cumeth · 3 years

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What Went Wrong: An In-Depth Analysis of Muriel's Route

*Youtuber voice*

Below are the opinions of an uneducated individual on what could’ve left the majority of The Arcana audience dissatisfied. I will explore the plot, tropes, themes and morals of the Muriel route and try to explain what may have gone wrong. I will be treating the game as a novel since it's advertised as one.

1. Consistency. If you are unfamiliar with the chekhov's gun; it's a story writing principle that dictates each element you introduce should come into play (foreshadowing). Now let's start with a few story beats that were later abandoned or concluded in an underwhelming manner:

Muriel's blanket

Muriel's magic mark (on his back)

Forest spirit (spirits in general)

Lucio's upbringing

Circumstances of MC's death

Figurines/whittling/charms

Muriel's blanket is teased to be a tapestry, which would tie in with his later fascination with them later on, as it had been the only thing he had left from his past. MC neither sees nor comments on the blanket, we only know it exists thanks to other playthroughs and short stories.

Magic marks are an important point in the game. Every main route emphasises on how it affects the chosen LI. It's reveal is important in a way that it serves as a passage to a new act where the reader explores magic and Arcana pantheon as they are a monumental part of the overall worldbuilding. This exact point applies to the Heart of the Forest and how spirits interact with the world around them as well.

Whittling and Charm making are the only hobbies we get from Muriel's isolated life, their introduction helps the reader humanise the character by giving us a crumb of his everyday life. It's never mentioned again after the scene where MC asks him what he does. He doesn't idly whittle during their journey and charms only come to play in an offhanded reference during reversed ending.

The other two are also ignored but I will touch on Lucio later on.

Why do these matter? A few abandoned plot points don't make or break the story but on a grander level it hinders the audience investment. When we read, we like to think the details we notice will come to play eventually, we like recognizing references that were introduced earlier. I'm sure I don't need to give examples on this one, I don't think anyone will disagree.

2. Themes. Thematic influences this story utilized are all over the place, and it seems to me like it stems from the improper application of certain tropes;

The Hero's Journey

Home Sweet Home

Shell-Shocked Vet

Last of His Kind

etc.

Some of these tropes tackle themes such as;

Slavery

PTSD

Survivor's Guilt

Genocide

I'm not going to try to explain How to Write any of these topics. I'm not remotely qualified. I think it's better if I just give examples from popular media because whether you know how to write it or not, you can still understand when it's written well;

AtLA deals with genocide and survivor's guilt. It's in the name; The Last Airbender. Aang is the sole survivor of a culture he'd only had an opportunity to engage in for a handful of years. He left them with a childish tantrum and now they're gone forever. I can't think of another mainstream series that shows the gruesome reality of war and genocide better than this one.

When Muriel realizes his true heritage and loses Khamgalai is the point of the story where Luke sees his family's farm burned down, Aang goes back to the air temple, Treebeard walks in on the demolished part of the forest. (The inciting incident)

(Could also have been forest spirit’s death but it was too early in the story so I don’t consider it a missed opportunity.)

Up until this point the hero has their doubts, they're going through the motions but they are either underestimating the enemy or they're a passive protagonist. Either way, this is the point where the hero has to take the reins of the story. What purpose does this serve in Muriel's route instead? It simply validates Muriel's beliefs. He's useless, he isn't strong enough. We as the reader need a point to see where the hero takes a step to drive the story forward or whoever takes that step will steal the spotlight, it will be their story. As it is, this is the point where it ceases to be Muriel’s story.

PTSD got the worst end of the deal. Since Dragon Age fandom has a huge overlap with the Arcana I will use Fenris as an example; for those who are unfamiliar with the character, Fenris is an escaped slave. After the sex scene he vividly describes an experience that most people can easily identify as a flashback. The game never tells us that he was abused, it doesn’t show us him having a panic attack but it shows us that whatever transpired between him and the player character clearly triggered an unpleasant memory.

Arcana tries and initially succeeds to do something similar. We see that the character is untrustworthy, sensitive to touch, easily agitated, can’t sleep outside of his perceived safe environment… It introduces us the cause later on and the story has two options, each will drastically change the moral of the story:

Remember these as they will be important later on

Portray Muriel fighting as a bad thing; You can’t fight violence with violence angle or the fact that the villain’s forcing him into a situation where he’ll have to fight again makes the villain all the more intimidating.

Portray Muriel fighting as a good thing; He has the means to defeat the villain and he just needs encouragement. With great power comes great responsibility. By not fighting he willingly condemns everyone to an awful fate and that he is selfish.

I’d like to take a second to explore the 1. Option, I feel like the game may have intended to implement that idea but failed because of the implementation of Morga and choices presented for the player character: Morga is an Old-Soldier, these characters are often push the hero out of their comfort zone in an aggressive way towards complacency, they are a narrative foil to the mentor. For the first option to work the story had to show Khamgalai acting as a mentor and having the protagonists challenge Morga’s teachings(see Ozai-Iroh). As it is, Morga’s actions are never put under scrutiny (narratively) and her death feels hollow as a result. She didn’t sacrifice herself for the heroes due to her guilt, she died because she felt a moment of sympathy for her son which wasn’t explored before, she showed no intention to change nor any doubt.

It is clear the game choose 2. Option, it is a controversial choice given Muriel’s mental condition and the game is acutely aware of this, which is likely why Muriel’s PTSD will get carefully scraped from the story from here on out. (I won’t address other instances where his trauma wasn’t taken into account, I feel like this explanation should cover them as well.)

3. Morals. Every story, whether the author intends it or not, has a moral. The Villain most often acts against that moral and in turn can change the hero's perspective. Morals are not ideals; the morality of Killmonger isn’t that marginalised people should fight for their rights, it is that vengeance is just. Whether it’s right or wrong can be debated but what makes an ideal the moral of the story is in the portrayal. How the narrator depicts the events, how people around the heroes react... all are a part of portrayal.

The story choosing “Muriel fighting is a good thing” earlier puts in the foundation of a moral. The story tells us Muriel has to fight, it’s the right thing to do. He has to be brave for the people he loves.

This choice affects how his past actions will be perceived; now, him escaping the arena to save himself is cowardly, abandoning Morga is cowardly.

The story tells us it wasn’t, but shows us that it was. This is the end of the midpoint of the story, at this point we need to have a good grasp on what we should perceive as wrong or right for us to feel invested. If we zig-zag between the morals we won’t know which actions we should root for. But more than that, the conclusion will not feel cathartic as it will inevitably demonstrate the opposing ideals clashing at its climax.

Villain doesn't necessarily have to be sympathetic and Muriel's route makes no effort to make him as such, but they need to be understandable. What danger does Lucio pose to the status quo, what makes him a compelling villain? Whether he conquers Vesuvia or not doesn’t drastically affect Muriel’s way of life, he’s been in hiding for years. He doesn’t threaten to steal MC’s body, Muriel is not compelled to pick up arms to save his beloved. He wants to protect the people from going through what he’s been through, right? That is what the story wants us to think. But what has he been through? Fighting was his choice, Lucio tricked him into it. Lucio later tricked Morga, his own mother, to save his own hide. This tells us that Lucio is a manipulator, but he doesn’t manipulate his way into Vesuvia, he barges in with deus ex machina monsters. He doesn’t demonstrate his skills as a tactician by making deals with neighbouring kingdoms to get their armies. We don’t know his strengths therefore we don’t know his weaknesses. If he seems to be losing he can just conjure a giant dragon to burn everything down, we just can’t know. That is why the application of deus ex machina is highly taboo, the victories don’t feel earned and defeats feel unfair.

4. Tone. Playing with the genre is not uncommon and a game such as Arcana has many opportunities to do so. It is a romance story, everything else is the back-drop. The tone works best when its overall consistent but tonal changes act as shock for the audience to keep them engaged and keeping one tone indefinitely gets us desensitized. We can’t feel constant misery if we are not made to feel tinges of hope in between. Good examples of dramatic tonal change (that I can think of): Mulan - arriving at the decimated village, La Vita e Bella - the father’s death, M*A*S*H - death of Hawkeye’s friend. Two of these examples are mostly comedy which is why this tonal shift affects us so, it was all fun and games until we are slapped in the face with the war going on. There are no one liners in those scenes, the story takes a moment to show appropriate respect to the dead, it gives its characters time to digest and come to terms with loss. Bad examples are the majority of Marvel movies.

In Muriel’s route there’s never such a thing, Muriel has a panic attack and MC kisses him. This unintentionally tells us, the genre being romance, that the panic attack only served to further MC’s advances. It tells us that he’s never had the control of his life and it’s yet again stripped from him by the decisions of player character. This is not the only instance this happens. The story shoe-horns in multiple cuddle sessions between important plot beats. And it does the exact opposite during a moment where he is having a heart-to-heart with the person he loves by having the ghost of Morga appear to give an ominous warning/advice.

When he runs off during masquerade it’s built up to be an important plot point. Muriel will finally face his past, he’s been running away from it all along, and he will have an opportunity to be accepted back in. MC is supportive but ultimately, it’s meant to be Muriel's moment. But as I mentioned above this is not his story anymore so he’s not given any time to address his problems, instead a ghost appears to tell him what he needs to do, again. Because we need to wrap the story up, we don’t have time.

Remember how I said the 2 Options will be important later on, well here we are at the very end. Upright and reversed.

“Portray Muriel fighting as a bad thing”

This suggests that the triumph of Muriel won’t be through violence. Maybe he will outsmart Lucio in a different way, he won’t play his games anymore. This option suggests that Lucio will not be beaten by his own terms.

“Portray Muriel fighting as a good thing”

This option concludes with Muriel finally overcoming his reservations on violence and doing what's right to save the people he loves. And bringing justice to people who Lucio hurt.

If you are wondering why the upright ending feels random, this is likely why. The ending plays out as if the story was building on the 1st option while we spent chapters upon chapters playing out the 2nd one. It is unearned.

(The reversed ending, being reversed, also uses Option 1 path but in which Muriel can’t achieve his narrative conclusion)

The Coliseum is filled with people who are on their side against Lucio’s shadow goons. Because we can’t have people being on Lucio’s side without addressing the duality of human nature, even though it’s an important part of Muriel’s story. The people who watched and enjoyed Lucio’s bloodsport are no more, they are all new and enlightened offscreen. We completely skipped the part where Vesuvia comes to terms with its own complacency and Muriel simply feels at ease because the crowd is cheering on him now. This is what happens when you give the character a chance to challenge those who have been complicit in his abuse (masquerade scene) and completely skip it to move the story along.

Muriel doesn't get justice, ever. The people only love him now because he's fighting for them instead of his own survival. Morga or her clan doesn't answer for the massacre of Kokhuri, Vesuvia doesn't answer for the sick entertainment they indulged in and Lucio doesn't answer for Muriel's enslavement. It is not even acknowledged, nowhere in the story (except the very end of reversed ending, and even then it almost gets him killed so its clearly the wrong thing to do on his part) is a choice presented where Muriel has an opportunity to get any sort of compensation where he instead chooses to move on.

I don’t intend to straw man anyone but this is a sentiment I’ve seen a lot; “It’s a short story, a dating-sim, what do you expect?”

I expect nothing, I’m simply explaining why some people feel how they feel. It is a short dating-sim but it seems to me like it was aiming to be something more by borrowing elements that were clearly far above their weight range to tease something more and under deliver. It is okay to feel content with the story, and it’s okay to feel let down. If we had a unanimous decision on literature we would never be inclined to write our own stories.

#personal #muriel #muriel spoilers #tw: PTSD #tw: trauma #tw: slavery #tw: genocide #karayan

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azdoine · 5 years

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A followup on Henry Darger

So about a week ago I made some pretty brusque posts about Henry Darger -- an outsider artist infamous for his depictions of young gender-variant children, both as epic innocent heroes and as victims of graphic violence.

Last night, my copy of Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy by Jim Elledge came in the mail, and I am deeply conflicted about it.

On the whole I think that Throwaway Boy was a necessary book, as a sympathetic, queer, and exhaustively-researched reading of Darger and his work, but it was also a deeply frustrating book.

Elledge presents a strong account of historical queerness during the time of Darger’s life, but he views historical transfemininity as something primarily or solely imposed upon cis gay men, rather than something which might have existed for its own sake; and this colors all of his analysis, not just of Darger. Elledge misgenders and deadnames infamous historical trans women such as Jennie June, claims the hermaphrodite as a figure and symbol primarily of male homosexuality rather than gender-variance more broadly, and, evil of evils, unironically uses the word “transgendered”.

Nevertheless, Elledge presents an almost irrefutable argument that Darger was queer; almost certainly trans feminine, IMHO, although Elledge reads and presents Darger as a cis gay man, perhaps not unfairly.

Elledge’s research contributes a number of items to this end and others, which he relates to the reader:

Henry “Extremely Neurotypical” Darger

Henry “was a little too funny and made strange noises” with his “mouth, nose and throat” during class. He wanted his classmates to think he was a clever, fun-loving boy and hoped they would laugh. His plan backfired. Instead of being invited into the fold as he’d hoped, the other boys and girls were so aggravated by Henry that they gave him “saucy and hateful looks.” Some even told him that, if he didn’t stop it, they’d put him in his place after school.

...

Henry was also called on the carpet for moving his hands up and down and back and forth in the air, gestures that the adults around him probably identified as masturbatory, although he described them as “pretending it was snowing” or “raining.”

The Boyfriend Situation

Henry was proud to boast that “every evening and Sunday afternoons off” he “went visiting a special friend of mine”--”special friend” giving an important clue as to their relationship. In the early 1900s, gay men often used “special friend” and similar phrases as codes for their mates, and with that phrase, Henry cast his and Whillie’s liason as romantic and almost certainly sexual. By also bragging that they were together “every evening and Sunday afternoons” that the two didn’t work, Henry hinted at the intensity of their relationship. Like any couple in love, they spent every free minute that they had in each other’s company.

Marie

Henry... feminized himself in a variety of ways, both in his first novel and in its source materials. Midway through The Realms, Henry included a scene that he borrowed from his childhood, and in it, he depicted himself as "Marie," an adult woman recalling her mother's death when she was a child...

Clearly echoing the scene of his mother's deathbed, Henry depicted himself as a "frightened little girl" who had been "inflicted" with "a wound" in her "soul" that had "never healed." He also revealed that he understood why his father had abandoned him over over and over: because [his mother's] death had "driven" [his father] "insane and he knew not what he was doing" when he threw Henry away. Despite the many times his father abandoned him, Henry, adopting the persona of the mature Marie, was tender and understanding towards his father's grief.

Of Pretty Style

In the penultimate volume of The Realms, Henry added another scene... It’s a memo written by two of his characters, Detectives Fox and West...

Henry depicted himself as one of “the two little girl children of pretty style” who were his father’s daughters. The second “little girl” was his sister, whom he never knew... his anger over his father’s “insanity” and his “foolish grief” that stemmed from “the loss of his wife” comes through loud and clear. In stark opposition to Marie’s recollection, the detectives assert that the father wallowed in his grief and ignored his children, putting their emotional and physical welfare after his own.

Annie Aronburg

To familiarize himself with Church doctrine before taking communion, Henry carefully copied a Roman Catholic catechism word for word from a published edition into a notebook that has been called his Reference Ledger. He wrote an introduction to the catechism that he copied, but he signed it with the name of one of his most important characters, Annie Aronburg, whom he named after his favorite aunt. This is not the only time that Annie had "authored" one of Henry's texts. Two pages into the introduction to the catechism, Annie makes an interesting claim: "I am the full writer of the manuscript as far as it goes of the Glandelinians and the rebels at the child labor places, and will have them published as soon as I can." She, according to Henry, wrote The Realms, and... she thinks it's good enough to publish.

Henry continued to use Annie as a persona, a resource, and a guide outside of the novel for decades. After Sister Rose left St. Joseph’s in 1917, she and Henry corresponded for a short time. One of the things that makes their correspondence so important is the fact that Henry doctored her letters to him so that it appears that she was not writing to Henry at all but to Annie Aronburg. The original version of one, dated June 19, 1917, begins:

My dear Henry

Both of your letters reached me and I am grateful for your kind thought. I am glad that you are trying to be an even better boy since I left.

Henry's doctored version of her letter became:

My dear Aronburg

Both of your letters reached me and I am grateful for your kind thought. I am glad that you are trying to be an even better girl since I left.

He would also revise other documents, such as his discharge papers from the army, by crossing out specific words and inserting others so that the documents referred to Annie, again metaphorically transforming himself into her.

Webber George

Despite all the similarities between Henry and the Vivians, the character who represents Henry most strikingly is not any of the Vivians... but Webber George...

Webber shares more important attributes with Henry than any other character Henry ever created. Henry established the link between himself and Webber almost immediately...

Of all the similarities between Webber and Henry, being a “thoroughly bad boy” is the most important and, ultimately, the most revealing. Henry admitted over and over again how “bad” he had been as a child and gave plenty of examples, but he could never bring himself to reveal why. After strongly linking himself to Webber, Henry made an amazing revelation about Webber and, by extension, about himself: “One cause mainly of the boy being bad, and a foolish one at that was that was because he was angry at God for not having created him into a girl which he wanted to be more than anything else.” Henry’s anger at God, which began when he was five or six years old, was certainly caused by the physical and sexual abuse he suffered, by the jealousy he felt because other children’s parents were taking care of them while his father ignored him, and by the general mistreatment he experienced, usually at the hands of adults. Yet Henry was also angry--which became manifest in his “thoroughly bad” behavior--because he wanted to be female instead of male, just as his ten-year-old doppelganger Webber did...

Webber’s desire to have been born female rather than male was Henry’s. Webber’s anger was Henry’s, too. Webber transferred his anger from God to those around him. He couldn’t lash out at the Divine, so he lashed out at any little girl around him because a little girl “had many advantages which [a little] boy did not...”

Henry pushed the envelope even further a few pages later. He actually entered the narrative and spoke directly to the reader as himself in nineteenth-century fashion. In the process he essentially admitted that he was part of Chicago’s queer subculture. “The reader may think this”--Webber’s desire to have been born female--is “strange,” Henry wrote, but “the writer knows quite a number of boys who would give anything to have been born a girl.”

#henry darger #henry darger throwaway boy

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kob131 · 5 years

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Is it wrong that I think Adam fulfilled his role in RWBY well enough that his death was fully justified?

Hm...

If I may induldge my tendency to be the devil’s advocate:

That’s a hard question to answer.

I’ll give you a quick Tl:Dr before I go any further: Yes in the sense that his role in the canonical RWBY as an extremist portrayed as an opponent to Blake and a counterpart to Yang. However, the issues around Yang’s PTSD arc as well as a miscommunication with Blake in Volumes 1 and 2 have caused some considerable damage to what he is suppose to be seen as and unfortunately, the people who see Adam as a righteous freedom fighter are the result of this and thus not completely at fault.

With that quick answer out of the way, let’s get into the...complicated stuff.

To understand what a character’s role in the story is, we need to analyze how they are portrayed in the piece of media in question as well as how the character treat this character/how right they are seen in the eyes of the author.

For example, let’s take Ozpin. Ozpin is suppose to be like Dumbledore: a character who leads the good guys through the faulty means of manipulation and secret holding who is ultimately not completely good because of their faulty means as well as their own human flaws. We can tell this from how Ozpin is animated, with a constant upright and mysterious yet comforting presence along with his voice which conveys to us a sense of wisdom and knowledge beyond his shown age and his dialogue which is constantly vague but still guiding. We can tell he’s using manipulation through how he talks to the protagonists, how he dealt with the situation with Pyrrha and his secret keeping that is shown throughout the series. His humans flaws can be seen from how Ironwood isn’t shown to fully trust Ozpin and is portrayed as paranoid with a point (through Glynda’s sympathy), his secrets backfiring on him as the group logically turns against him as they can’t understand his viewpoint while seemingly denying theirs and his attempts to keep his past with Salem a secret due to pain and regret.

I also choose Ozpin as my example because Ozpin also carries with him some issues with the writing. His mysterious behavior and manipulations weren’t fully convincing of his flawed but well meaning mindset and thus people began assuming he was some secret mastermind villain. While this is partially due to bias against Ozpin for multiple reasons, the communication between the creators and the audience also sent some unintentional messages that supported this as well. Nevertheless, he still does a good job at the part he was created for.

I bring this up because Adam fits into the same hole that Ozpin does here: a competently written character that had some flaws in the early states that eventually grew into the mess we see today. Adam is portrayed as a childish but still sympathetic extremist, obsessed with power and control because of the pain he endured and the resulting obsession stemming from what he lost in his past.

We can tell he is childish due to his black and white mindset, the way he acts towards Blake and his recklessness in his actions/

We can tell he is an extremist due to how Sienna treats his actions as going too far while she herself is treated as kind of extreme herself, his actions against humans resulting in needless deaths and his actions also hurting the Fanaus, the people he is supposedly fighting for.

We can tell he is obsessed with Power and Control because of how his abuse manifests with Blake as him blaming her for the results of his actions, as though he should dictate what she can or can’t do; the death of Sienna which is needless and could have been avoided and he breaks down when something doesn’t go his way. We can also tell that this is because of his pain and suffering due to what Blake said as well as his face reveal.

Speaking of his face reveal, we know he’s suppose to have some sympathy to him since his face was revealed to indicate that he is not a faceless monster but rather a person; his backstory isn’t shown to be fake or overexaggerated as well as how his face is animated in his final episodes, where he lacks the more monstrous animations he had in the past.

But the issue here is that: Between Blake not directly communicating that she was abused by Adam and how Yang’s PTSD arc played out meaning it could feel tacked onto Adam, there was some miscommunication between the creators and audience as to what role Adam was suppose to have.

Is the audience blameless? No, in fact I’d argue the majority of the blame lies with the audience either over obsessing with Bumbleby (which made the Adam fans disgruntled) and people refusing to let go of headcanons. But the cretaors hold some blame here as well.

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galleywinter · 7 years

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I love your answers (parent ask again), thank you for indulging me! I do not think you are as slow as George RR Martin, but then again I just found your blog/story randomly while in the #varian one day about a month ago so maybe I haven't had to wait as long... I am very surprised you don't like Anduin as a character. He is one my favorites. But I am sure I will like how you write him and thank you again for answering my questions!

You are so welcome. Thank you for asking them! (srsly nonny i’m gonna say this every time you thank me for answering i’m not even a little joking)

I am slow. It’s terrible. I’m trying to get better about being faster, though. I really really am.

Anduin’s a bit of a sticky issue for me. A lot of my problem with Anduin stems from how the authors were using him. For years, they used him as a club with which to beat his father and drive home what a “war monger” Varian was and, especially in Wolfheart, what an abusive father and loose cannon he is.

And none of those things are true. They aren’t. Not just for my version of Varian, but even canon Varian.

I also especially have a problem with the instances in The Shattering where Varian understandably storms Ironforge to try to assure that his son - who he believes to be kidnapped and who is essentially being held hostage - is safe and Anduin - WHO IS CANONICALLY TWELVE AT THE TIME - chastises Varian for being undiplomatic and essentially treats him like a dog who’s dragged poo across the carpet. And the narrative supports this behavior. Instead of pointing out that Anduin is a child and Varian is his parent. Instead of pointing out that Varian, while hating politics, is still pretty damn good at playing them. Instead of Varian telling him why he acted as he did or the narrative supporting that Varian has a right to be afraid for his son’s life….the narrative acts like Varian was a war-mongering child who needed to be parented by his own juvenile son who clearly knows better.

The narrative time and again supports Anduin doing what Anduin wants as being okay, and treats Varian as an uncaring father (at best) for insisting that, as Crown Prince, Anduin’s duty is to his people first and not to his own desires, no matter how noble he feels they are. The whole story of Pandaria is us chasing Anduin around because he decided he doesn’t want to come home and then being so hurt that his people are hurting and he can’t leave Pandaria until the destruction is under control. …. kid it wouldn’t have been so bad if you wouldn’t have mind controlled sully and then ran off half a zone in. It’s largely his own fault. And yet that’s never addressed. It’s just swept under the rug.

I have a bigger problem, though, in that I want to like Anduin. I really do. But mostly I want to write him in a way that I feel is sympathetic and still addresses these flaws of his (unlike canon which tends to gloss them over if they even acknowledge them at all) while still making sure he feels true to his canon self. I think I have a way that I can do that, and it involves a pretty good ficlet (if not a full chapter) between Anduin and Varian that lifts directly from a conversation my mother and I had after my parents divorced when I was 10.

I think flaws need to be addressed rather than ignored. It makes a character more real. In Anduin’s defense, I can probably make the argument for why he does try to parent Varian as often as he does. I mean, the whole thing with Onyxia was really messed up and left Varian…very much not himself while it was going on. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay that Anduin does it, and it certainly doesn’t mean that he’s right to do it or that Varian should just accept it.

#Anon of the Greyface #Galley answers stuff

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