#i really really dislike dead characters turning out to be alive as a trope though personally- i've seen it done well a couple of times | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nyxi-pixie · 3 months

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yosano is so dear to me because as much as i usually dislike the trope of 'one of the only regular female characters in the show gets healing powers because what else would a woman have' i do really like when that trope is turned into an insidious distorted mess.

I'm putting a readmore bc holy fuck if i start talking about yos i DO NOT know how to stop.

Like she has healing powers but the ability ITSELF is horrendously violent (needing people to be basically dead before they do anything), and she is not the kind of person you would associate with traditional healing character traits. Most of the time, they're maternal, and friendly, and soft spoken, and reserved.

Yosano is none of these things.

Quite frankly, she's a hater. and that's not to say she's unpleasant, necessarily, because she isn't. but she's a little demanding, and a little unhinged, and a lot prone to violence.

(and the dislikes on her profile refer exclusively to men. (shes an icon))

And shes like that because she is the outcome of what an ability like that, a responsibility like that, would do to a person.

Because every time she faces someone dying, there are two options: unbelievable guilt that comes with Not saving someone, or the perversion of death that comes with bringing them back. That complete and utter refusal of the natural order.

What do you do when respect for life hinges on a person's ability to die, and you have not just the power, but the expectation, to take that away?

which leads us to her backstory.

she's eleven. ELEVEN. what eleven year old has any understanding of life and death? of the importance of endings and letting people rest?

she's basically playing god and she barely even understands what that means. Or perhaps more accurately, she's playing puppet for mori playing god.

So she's there, and it's kind of a boring task at first. Like a very cavalier 'I'm here to save you all that's my job you should congratulate me bc im sm cooler than u losers.' But then she speaks to the soldiers, grows to care about them, and suddenly this ISNT a job. Its saving them out of compassion, out of a desire to see them alive. to make sure theyre okay.

and then they keep dying. and she brings them back, and they die again, and again, and again, in an endless cycle that can never end and while she's doing it unwillingly by that point, the reason they can live to suffer again is because of her.

And in realising that, in trying to put an end to that pointless cycle and Mori preventing that by shooting someone she cares about in front of her, she cannot give them reprieve because of the very ability that got her into this position in the first place. By that ability, and, ironically, by that compassion of hers.

"You are too just."

She cares too much to do what she knows is right, what she knows is kindest for the soldiers. She hasn't grown used to losing people (partially because she's eleven, but mostly because death doesn't exist to her) so she can't accept it.

and when everything goes down hill, she still thinks of it all as her fault. (even though technically its mori's, and whomever was in charge of their unit for not surrendering)

even fourteen years later, shes still haunted by what happened. even fourteen years later, the balancing act between using her ability, and letting nature run its course, is a delicate one, and one that is only facilitared by her position in the ADA.

its incredible that with that position threatened, the very reason shes learned to live with herself being put in jeopardy, she keeps herself as stable as she does.

so. she's a little bit batshit. very violent when she wants to be. ready to beat a mfer within an inch of their life at the earliest opportunity.

her very capacity to heal is twisted and messy and terrifying. it isn't soft and delicate and sweet, or even reassuring. it's practical. it's useful. but it's deeply unsettling.

and i think thats a very realistic portrayal of what it would be like to have such an unnatural control over life and death.

#yosano akiko #bsd yosano #also when women have healing powers theyre often put on the back burner (“bc theyre too valuable to be in the field!”)#aka 'we dont wanna give them screentime' coughshoko (i mean.its an in-text ISSUE that she cnt be arnd. but still. GIVE HER MORE SCREENTIME)#BUT bc of the way yosanos ability works; with the only-healing-from-near-death stipulation.#she isnt just *useful* in the field. shes practically *necessary* in high risk situations (which is why she HEAVY carried s4)#anyway. yosano makes me chew on my walls etcetc #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #guys im so normal about her i promise

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retroyousei · 3 years

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Female characters in retro shojo [70s edition, part 1]

Ah, the 1970s (and early 80s), where a majority of the shojo manga stories took place in a distant European country or in America, surrounding either orphan girls from the 19th or early 20th century, who remain cheerful and have adventures, trying to find out who they are, making friends and falling in love, or epic historical stories filled with war, scandals and larger than life characters. If the manga was taking place in Japan, the plot was somehow more down to earth -though most of the time it restrained the same amount of unrealism- and it was either about following the journey of a girl who pursues the career of her dreams and evolves into a notable person, or a high school story filled either with melodrama and angst or a more heartwarming romantic comedy. But in this two-part article I won’t talk about plot tropes of the shojo manga of that era -as this topic deserves an exclusive article-, but about the female characters (I will dedicate an article on male characters some other time). Those characters are very important, as they set the standards of today’s manga and anime. But it should be noted that back then the formula of their design and characteristics are different from today’s. Those are the categories that I’ve noticed, regarding the appearance and personality.

The “average” protagonists

They are the most common category. Usually, they come from middle class and they are presented either as cheerful and a little dense schoolgirls, or plain looking and unrefined, as oppose to their antagonists or rivals who are well educated, beautiful and more talented, but this may serve as a determination for them to improve. Other times they are presented as headstrong heroines, ahead of their time, who refuse to compromise and for this they are a pain to their old-fashion society. Either way, they are kind, good, well-intentioned and want to help the others, that’s why they make friends easily. The thing that really works with these characters and makes them much more interesting than they may seem, is that they are independent and built their future on their own and they never give up, no matter what happens and what someone might say about them. Even when they are not sure of themselves, they always keep trying, until they reach to their dream. They use their obstacles as strength and determination to go on, proving that they are not average at all.

Maya, the protagonist of “Glass Mask” is a great example of this. She starts as a good-for-nothing daughter of a poor family, who isn’t particularly accomplished, but has a hidden passion for acting which she hadn’t realise it herself at that point. But when she is discovered by Tsukigake, a former legendary actress, she realises how much she wants to be an actress to a point that she lied saying that her mother allowed her to study to sensei’s acting school and ran away from home. Not even when her mother told her that she doesn’t consider her as her daughter anymore, she didn’t gave up, in spite of being very hurt by this. Her path towards acting wasn’t easy. Many times she has to face many who say that she doesn’t belong to that industry, or who are jealous of her talent and means her harm, but with her faith in herself, she always overcomes those obstacles. An admirable thing about her is that she dislikes fame, being shy, as she just wants to act and that she does not gives up, no matter what and even when she does, she quickly stands up. The most interesting dynamic of the story is her worthy rivalry with Ayumi, that is clearly a case of the trope “technician vs performer”, with Maya as the performer, as her standard method to learn how to play a character is to become that character. As the story progresses, Maya evolves from a girl with a hidden talent, to a young actress who portraits an original take to classic characters, but who still had much to learn, to one of the greatest actresses of her generation.

In “Yokohama Monogatari”, Uno starts as a plain, poor, orphan girl, who is ignorant about the world, as she hasn’t even seen the sea before and she believed that westerners were vampires who could drink people’s blood, that’s why they had blonde hair and blue eyes. She starts to work as a companion in a rich family to their daughter Mariko, who is the same age as her. Besides their differences, they become quickly best friends. While Mariko is a little spoiled, Uno, despite of her ignorance of world, can be more considerate and responsible in some matters. She also has a lust for learning and soon her and Mariko pursuade her family to go to school. There, she meets many people, among them there are a few foreigners too, she makes a lot of friends, and she excels at all of her studies, being hardworking. As the years passed by, Japan changes and allows exchange of ideas from many cultures -it’s Meiji era we are taking about, that means the last quarter of the 19th century- and Uno evolves from a poor, -many would say- hopeless for her situation, clueless of the world girl, to an open minded, educated and refined woman, surrounded by many people she loves.

In “Tokimeki Tonight”, Ranze -well except of being the daughter of Dracula and warewolf and having her own vampire powers as well- is an average girl who is friendly, sweet and little quirky girl who goes to school and falls in love with Shuun. Some may say that she is pretty basic, but in fact, she knows her self worth well, so even when her parents were disappointed with her not having any power yet, at the beginning of the story, she wasn’t particularly bothered by it. Also she is very headstrong that she falls in love with a human boy, while she knows well that a creature from the demon world and a human cannot be together. But in spite of all of that, she decides to stay true to her own feelings and even though she’s not so sure about Shuun’s feelings for her either, she doesn’t give up and waits for him, because she hopes and deep down knows that he likes her too and she is right. And even when her parents want her to marry prince Aaron of the demon world and even the king- learn that she likes a human, in spite of that being against the rules, she isn’t afraid to stand up for her beliefs. Later though, we learn that Shuun is the lost prince of the demon world, so he is not a human after all, but that’s another story.

In “Aim For The Ace”, Hiromi is a typical schoolgirl who struggles to get better in tennis, when she gets selected as one of the club’s main players in school by the new coach, as he saw potential in her. Some of her seniors are jealous of her because of that and at first she thinks that she is not worth such a discrimination, but soon she improves and realises how much she loves tennis. There’s also a very similar rivalry dynamic with “glass mask” between Hiromi and Reika who grow to be worthy opponents.

In “Haikara San Ga Toru”, Benio is a headstrong young woman who studies Kendo, drinks sake and prefers reading literature and feminist ideas, rather than being interested in housework. She also likes to dress in western clothes, rather than the traditional kimono and strongly believes that women should have the right to decide for their future on their own and they should marry for love. But her world turns upside down when her father announces that he has arranged a marriage for her. The one that he indends for her is someone she knew before, very briefly and accidentally, a lieutenant named Shinobu. Of course, she refuses, being loyal to her ideals and she goes out of her way to avoid him, just to satisfy her pride, in spite of actually starting developing feelings for him. When she moves to his grandparents’ house to get prepared as his wife, she purposely fails in all of her duties as a housewife and constantly argues with his grandparents, but all of that only makes Shinobu fall for her even more. It’s only when he leaves to go to the war, when she realises her feelings for him and during at that time when everyone thought that he was dead, she matured and became even stronger, remaining loyal to him and determined to work as a journalist to support his family, but also tracking him down, hoping that he’s still alive. Of course, at the very end, they live happily ever after together. Benio’s character development is admirable; starting as a clever, but headstrong girl, to an independent and wise woman, proving that you don’t have to disagree with everyone in order to prove that you are the one who chooses how to live your own life.

The villains

Their extreme pride and vain is their common nature. Most of the times they come from a wealthy family, so they are either oujo-sans who are always dressed elegantly, are seemingly refined and they tend to have curly, blonde hair -as blonde hair seem to be associated with wealth and sophistication in Japan-, or they are just spoiled brats that demand that everyone will do as they say. They are the main antagonist of the story for different reasons. The most common one is that they are jealous of the heroine, either because they are their love rivals and they are jealous of the heroine’s relationship with the love interest of the story, or because they are just pathologically jealous of the heroine because of her looks, her happiness, her luck and her loving nature. Another reason they act the way they do is because they want power and success, or they just want to secure all of that. The worse and least complex reason of all is that they are just mean for no particular reason.

Eliza, from “Candy Candy” is the typical alpha b*tch who is pathologically jealous of Candy. At first, she along with her brother, makes her life miserable, by blaming her for the bad things they do, such as hurting the horses in the stables, provoking her and then telling to their mother that she’s wild and leaving her alone in a town she doesn’t know and locking her in dark rooms. After that, during their time in London, Eliza says to everyone that Candy is an orphan who made her life miserable, even blaming her for Antony’s death. Later, having the habit of falling in love with the one that Candy likes too, school, she falls for Terry and constantly tries to turn him against her, failing miserably. She also writes a fake letter to her that it was supposedly from Terry and to Terry too, to meet each other in the stables at night and with this, she blabs them to the teachers and Candy, having no choice, leaves school. Later, when Candy was pursuing a career as a nurse, she continues her cruel ways and her mother also threats the director of the hospital where she was working, that if they won’t fire her, the Leagan family will withdraw their funds for the hospital and she also made sure that no hospital from Chicago will hire her, leaving Candy in a difficult situation. Those are only of few of the things that Leagan family did to Candy. The worst part is that they don’t pay for what they did at the end.

Fukiko from “Oniisama e” fits well this image; She is a refined lady from a rich family, the president of the sorority and very educated, that’s why she is admired by everyone. However, in reality she is manipulative, proud and very possessive. She wants to control everyone and she’s even willing to go out of her way to achieve what she wants. For instanse, she’s jealous of Nanako because she is close to Henmi Takehito, the one that she (Fukiko) is in love with, so to control her, she chooses her to be a member of the sorority and demands that she will stay away from him, even by pulling her into the lake and attempt to drown her . She also makes Rei’s life miserable, by stepping into her weakness, refuse to accept her as a member of their family and constantly manipulating her with the cruelest of ways. Also, it’s revealed that her friends from the sorority are feeling pressured because of her. Later, with the death of Rei, along with her realisation that Henmi and Kaoru No Kimi are truly in love, surprisingly, she regrets, gives up on her cruel ways and matures, growing even more beautiful for all of that.

Yoko from “Tokimeki Tonight” is a different case. She is the love rival of the story and the have loved Shuun ever since they were little. Being the only daughter of a rich businessman, she is spoiled and when something doesn’t go as she wants, she is is angry and demands that everything will go the way she wants. She envies Ranze for her close relationship with Makabe and ever since she accidentally saw her transforming, she tried desperately to prove others that she (Ranze) is a vampire. Her character is less dramatic and more comedic, as she is often grumpy and clumsy. But she isn’t really a bad person and she doesn’t really cause an awful lot of trouble.

In “The Rose of Versailles”, Madam Du Barry, the king’s mistress, wants to sustain her place in the court and demands that Marie Antoinette, who was at that time the dauphine, will speak to her. She also have tried to poison one of the court ladies. Countess De polignag becomes the queen’s best friend, for her own benefits and manipulates her without her (Marie Antoinette) knowing, like telling her to lie about being pregnant and also persuade her to start gambling in the court, which was illegal. She’s also Rosalie’s biological mother and accidentally kills the woman which raised her daughter and she’s the reason that her other daughter suicides, because she cannot handle the marriage the she arranged for her. Besides of her daughter’s death, she doesn’t seem to regret for any of her actions as she tries to make Rosalie merry the same man. Luckily Rosalie escapes. Also, she tried to sabotage Oscar many times and all this was just for the sake of power and money.

In “Glass Mask”, Norie Otobe, befriends Maya and she is supposedly her assistant, but in reality she just waits for the right moment to strike and steal Maya’s role and career. Unfortunately, she succeeds and it costs a lot for Maya, for a while. Luckily Ayumi discovers this and punishes her with the best way ever.

The tomboys

They are either mysterious, or lively, but one thing is for sure; they are dressed in clothes that are considered to be “manly”, they are handsome and they are constantly mistaken for a boy. They are also very elegant and educated and their image is that of a prince. That’s why they are admired by both women and men. Some may say that even though they are trying to be like a man, they are still weak, but they point out that just because they dress more “tomboyish”, doesn’t mean that it makes them less of a woman. After all, when they want to, they can transform into the most feminine girl of all. They also prove that their sexuality is not associated with their looks, as a “masculine” girl has the same possibilities of being heterosexual or homosexual, with a more “feminine” one. So, they break all the stereotypes regarding women. Many times, they are portrayed as headstrong heroines who stand up for their beliefs and their friends.

The most famous character that supports this image is Oscar from “the Rose of Versailles”. Oscar is one of the daughters of the Jerjeyes household. Not having any son, her father decided to raise her as a boy so that one day she will succeed him. Oscar dresses in boys’ clothes and learns activities like fencing and archery. When she was fourteen, she was tasked to serve as Marie Antoinette’s bodyguard. The manga often pointed out how different those two were regarding appearance and character, even if they were in the same age. Oscar has a strong sense of justice and she always protects the weak and is not afraid to challenge someone that she believes that isn’t right. Of course, she is admired by men and women alike and she is also a great and loyal friend. At one point she falls in love with Fersen, who loves Marie Antoinette. But because of her respect for the queen and her love of Fersen, she helps them, despite being heartbroken. At the end, she realises that she loves her childhood friend, Andre. She loves medieval combat, drinking heavy drinks, talking about politics and playing violin. Many pointed out that being a woman she was weaker but she always proved them wrong, pointing out that women can do anything and that it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, only how skilful you are. She was hiding her femininity not because she wanted to be a man, but because that if she acted like a woman, the society might think that she was weak and she wouldn’t be able to have the access and the freedom to do what women normally wouldn’t do back then, because women were alowed to limited things. In the early 1970s, by the time this manga was ongoing, the second wave of feminism had already started and women started fighting for equal legal and social rights, so Oscar’s character was influenced by all this.

Rei from “Oniisama e”, is admired by her fellow classmates and is also called “saint Juste”, named after one of the leaders from French Revolution, due to her physical resemblance to him. She is very charismatic, excelling to sports, piano, guitar and theatre, she is very elegant and dresses often in a black suit. Unfortunately she is drug-addict, she smokes and can be suicidal, carrying always pills and a sharp object with her. She is also obsessed with Fukiko, the sorority’s president, for many reasons, causing her to be controlled and abused by her. She also lives alone in a depressing house filled with mirrors and this also causes to be depressed. Her best friend is Kaoru no Kimi, who’s also a tomboy, but they are entirely different and she befriends Nanako and her friends. In the end she suicides, taking too many sleeping pills, having everyone, especially Nanako, left devastated.

Also from “Oniisama e”, Kaoru, is a tomboy who is strong and energetic. She is athletic and excels at basketball, but she is also very cool and doesn’t seem to care that she is the best at something that she’s doing, that’s why she is admired by her fellow classmates who gave her the nickname “Kaoru no Kimi”, from a Japanese classical novel; “the tale of Genji”. She also has a great sense of justice, as when she sees classmates being bullied, she defends them and put the bullies on their place. She is also very loyal and supportive and cares deeply about her friends, helping them when they are in need, especially her best friend, Rei, for whom she is very concerned. But in spite of her energetic appearance, she suffers from breast cancer and tries to keep it a secret, pretending that she is healthy and that everything is under control. But in fact, she pushes away her beloved, Henmi Takehito, concealing her true feelings, in order for him to be happy without her and not suffer anymore, showing how selfless she is and how much she loves him to a point of sacrificing her own feelings. At the end, it pays off and they end up together, living happily.

Another honourable mention is Rei, from “Glass Mask”. Rei is the older student of Tsukikage sensei’s company and one of Maya’s best friends. She is a tomboy who wears those characteristic 70s jeans and for some reason is mistaken by a boy -much to her dislike-, despite of being obvious that she is a girl. Being an actress, she can transform into a beautiful princess in no time, but she also portraits very well a prince. In the first volumes, she portrayed Jo, from “little women” which was a role very suited for her. As a sister figure for Maya, she is loyal, friendly and the responsible one who helps the theatre company stay organised and is a very strict teacher to Maya, helping her because she knows her potential. Also from “Glass Mask”, Keiko from the “Ikkakuju group” is also mistaken as boy, but she can transform into a pretty princess in no time.

Note: At the first half of the 20th century “Little Women” were very popular in Japan, particularly Jo, who was tomboyish and outspoken and her character had inspired the first female mangakas of the 60s for their stories and characters.

#retro shojo #shojo manga #70s manga #80s manga #glass mask #Tokimeki tonight #haikara san ga tooru #Oniisama e #the Rose of Versailles #Candy Candy #Yokohama monogatari #aim for the ace #character types #Shojo

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blorbosexterminator · 3 years

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Sergio's not gonna die, he is needed for a possible re-opening of the show. Palermo is too obvious (and that matters to pina), Raquel was already fake-killed. OTOH, Denver: has a lot more protagonism this season, with flashback and all, he is a universally beloved character (always a good candidate to kill), Jaime Lorente has been seen in some town with pedro and alba filming (prob flashback but why with those 2?). 90% sure he's the dead (if anyone).

Honestly, the only thing that would truly surprise me at this point if they indeed don't kill anyone next volume. Would be a move™, I'll give them that. But yes, I do think that they'll go with Denver too, and it has been foreshadowed to be honest. Doesn't change how much I dislike and genuinely disagree with that choice though. I don't think the actor would be up for a spin-off honestly, but anyway Sergio only has the element of surprise and the parallel with his father (the show is too fond of parallels lmfao) not much else to make his death a good choice.

And as you said, Palermo is predictable. And I imagine, with how politically aware™ the show is this season, they might also try to avoid the 'bury your gays' trope.

The thing is, most of what you and I just listed are just meta-textual reasons. I'm not saying those reasons have no place at all when considering writing choices, of course not, but I do disapprove, generally speaking, of writers taking this too much into account when writing their finales.

Sergio would be shocking to a more extent than the others, but that doesn't make him any more a good choice. Denver would guarantee as much of an angry and frustrated reaction as Nairobi (Although I honestly don't dislike Nairobi's death as much as everyone else. I thought it was well-played to an extent) and would have a strong emotional response plus parallels with Moscu, but to me it would be very misplayed.

I wasn't really talking about what I expect from the show as much as what I personally believe is a good writing choice. I most expect Denver to die, but I think Palermo is the most fitting choice.

Like sure, those things are subjective, and they change from one fan to the other as well as from one writer to the other. But just because the death of a character is predictable doesn't mean it's not the most fitting choice for the situation. Not really, I think it means the audience sees something there.

Look, before anyone starts assuming I just *want* Martín to die to see some afterlife scene for my ship, or even a parallel. Yeah, sure, preferablly as a fan of them I'd love this, but I don't think they are in any way necessar. To me, they would just be peppering that would make the death scene nicer stylistically speaking. I don't even think the show canonized the after-life or something of the sort, again I just think they are a mere stylistic choice. I wouldn't be at all actually bothered if we got nothing of the sort.

I just wholly believe the best choice to go with for both textual and meta-textual reasons is Palermo. First, the meta-textual ones, despite the fact that I disapprove of how they got there, I have to admit that the show managed to get him to be more likable this season. General audiences that have previously hated the hell out of him like him enough now. But at the same time Martín is still not Sergio, Raquel, or Denver. His death would cause some sadness and emotional response in the audience but not literal rage and feeling of betrayel, like say for example how GOT fans felt. Also, Martín now has enough alive characters that care about him that would make his death sad. It's unlikely an audience would give a shit about a character's death if none of the surrounding characters do. But now there is Helsinki, who incidentally Martín is also much nicer and caring towards this season, so Helsi would have "good reasons" to react strongly to his death, Sergio supposedly also cares for Martín, and we can say Raquel respects him. So the characters around him wouldn't be indifferent, especially if his death has value in the narrative, say an actual sacrifice for the rest of them. The show itself is VERY fond of the sort of arc that goes along the line 'Selfish character who caused harm and pain to all around them reaches selfishness and then sacrifices their life for the sake of the others.' It happened with Berlin, it happened with Tokyo. And it seems is effective enough. So if I were the writer and wanted a death that is effective but won't anger audience too much, I'd 100% go with him.

And again, a point is Martín even has something that neither Tokyo nor Andrés did, he had a very direct hand in the killing of a very beloved team member. Sure, you can say Tokyo had a hand in what happened to Moscu, but Tokyo legitimately had very little choice because she couldn't find Sergio and she had no intention to do harm, she didn't know her entrance would literally cost the man's life. Martín knew very, very well what Gandia was capable of and this is exactly why he did what he did.

Martín is narratively still responsible for Nairobi's death and took no hand in even avenging her from Gandia. That was Bogota and then Tokyo. And the character seems to be weighted by that guilt to a large extent. And I think the absolute best way for the narrative to resolve this point is by Martín dying directly to save Helsinki, who the show also made a point of also incapacitating, and I'd imagine that would have repercussions on how efficient getting out of the bank would be on him. Characters rarely get injured just for the sake of it, Nairobi's terrible injury from Alicia made her much more susceptible to Gandia, who had a huge leverage on her as she was physically incapable of resisting anything. (I imagine Monica's situation would also have repercussions--hopefully just not on Denver lmfao)

So despite generally not being a fan at all of the pairing in any way or form, and how they generally make no sense to me, with how the show is going now it's definitely best for Martín to die partially for his plan and partially for Helsinki.

Like ideally, what I'd personally most love to see and what I'd personally write a 2573 different fic versions of, is for Martín to die for his plan and for Sergio. I personally believe outside of the plan, Martín's most important relationship in his arc is with Sergio. But the show already ignored their relationship enough this volume as a first and Sergio already got the strong death scenes with Berlin and Tokyo as a second, it could be seen as an excess. But with Helsinki it's meaningful on a different level. The character Nairobi cared about the most is Helsinki (and he's also nearly as well-liked by the audience), so this would balance what he did to Nairobi in a pretty significant way, not completely out-do it, but the two acts would definitely balance each other. To both the audience and to the characters, Martín would be truly "redeemed." Which despite how much I dislike, and genuinely don't agree with it, the show is already putting a lot of focus on his 'redemption'. I don't like redemption arcs generally speaking, I don't think Martín is fit for it, and I don't think it's happening in an organic way at all, and I frankly believe it made him boring, but alas, it is what is is, the show is already half-way there, it already took that route, so the only end for it is to finish it and go all the way. It would be very useless if he ended up surviving lmfao.

And of course the other reason is for Martín's personal arc. The plan is his life's work, the thing he showed most loyality and love to from the moment he showed up 2 seasons ago, the end of his arc is with the end of his plan. Never mind how A LOT of scenes would be useless if Martín doesn't actually die for the success of the plan; the whole reason Sergio opposed it so strongly is because, in his own words, it was completely suicidal. Sure, you can say that they already proved the plan is dangerous by the army going in and all of this "war", but there was no Rio, Raquel, Plan Paris or Plan Roman in the original plan, so there would have been no reason for things to go that bad in that respect, all that happened in volume one is by direct consquence of the plan changing, so that still leaves the question why was Berlin and Palermo's plan so wrong and so suicidal if we don't take into account this war? If there is no answer and if there is no answer that is actually anchored by a death in canon, then those were really all just empty scenes. And of course it's Martín, the mastermind and engineer, the artist who crafted this poem, that has to die for its completion and overall success. Since day one, his arc has been tied intimately to this plan, we barely even know anything about him beyond it. And like, three people died for the mint heist and it was a plan made to work perfectly without a single flaw, where does this put a heist that was just full of romanticism and complete focus on the gold with disregard to the people? All of the scenes we saw of Sergio rejecting the bank heist in the flashbacks on that basis have to mean something now.

Against all of this, what does Denver have? What will his death signify? Nothing, in my opinion. The man didn't even want to be there. Also I guarantee you, if he does die for Monica the way he said, every single fan will turn against her and the hate the character will receive will be insane. Like why end the story of those two characters this way? What is there beyond edginess and grimness for their own sake?

Martín's death, even if it causes sadness, will be satisfying for his character. Besides, Martín as a character is too much like Tokyo, I don't imagine he himself would be very satisfied growing old and dying under the radar somewhere; going with a blaze now, sealing off his life's work and having his death mean something too is a much, much more satisfying ending for him.

Tldr; Palermo in a very balanced position to kill, especially that he is currently the actual leader, a position the show has given him with more space and better, much nicer spotlight now than in the third season. And I imagine with volume two focused more on extracting the gold, his role will get only bigger in that respect. He's still responsible for Nairobi's death. And he should 100% die for the Gold and the completion of his plan.

#asks #lcdp #Martín Berrote #Sergio Marquina #lcdp Denver #Monver

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

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Lots of fan discussion over who's is going to die next, or at least die by the end of the series. From discussions I've seen, everyone may die and everyone's fair game. Everyone except Asirpa. I've yet to see someone worry that Asirpa is going to die next, or ever. Why not? Given her seat as Jesus in the Last Supper pane, she will very likely die, probably to "save" others in either body or soul. Is it just fandom's dislike for contemplating the deaths of children in realistic story like GK?

To be honest...

...discussions about Asirpa dying were around in 2018, when people discussed a lot about the Last Supper picture... but they somehow died down with time.

I guess in 2018 the fandom was feeling more free to touch topics that are a bit heavy, like a child being killed or a child murdering someone (there were plenty of people in the fandom who wanted Asirpa to kill Ogata) and other things...

Now I can’t speak for all the fandom... but nowadays I hear many people in the fandom claiming they believe Noda shouldn’t use plot points that could make people morally uncomfortable so those options are ruled out because believed to be impossible and therefore not worth discussing.

Of course since the fandom is large and different and doesn’t have a hive mind, different people might have different motivations for not wanting to discuss such things and what I’ve heard might merely represent the tiny tip of the proverbial large iceberg.

As far as I’m involved I worried and I still worry about Asirpa, because if Noda were really to avoid uncomfortable things we wouldn’t have had neither Anehata nor Ueji not Upashy-chan or the white bear not tons of other things that honestly are a bit cringe worthy but fit perfectly with a plot that involves some of the worst criminals of Japan.

Still, in 2018 my theory/hope wasn’t that Asirpa would die but that Asirpa would be assumed dead and then turn out to be alive... because Jesus doesn’t just die he also resurrects few day after (it’s kind of a relevant plot point in the story of his life) and since I didn’t believe Noda would have Asirpa litterally resurrect from death, the closest thing was to have her assumed to be dead to then turn out to be alive.

Currently I wonder if the idea is instead that Asirpa is ‘Jesus resurrected’... even though she was the one to take part to the last supper.

I mean, if Asirpa is Jesus Wilk should represent ‘God’ but Noda actually named him ‘Horkew Oskoni’ (“catch up to the wolves”), not just ‘Horkew’ (“wolf” who, among the Ainu, is considered a god), which might be Noda implying Wilk isn’t mean to represent God.

Wilk’s scar has the shape of a cross, he metaphorically ‘died’ due to it (Siromakur might have told them that he said to an Army official about Wilk’s scar and eye, so Wilk skinned himself not just to trick the Ainu so that they wouldn’t think Asirpa would be responsible, but also to trick the Army officer, not knowing it was Hasegawa/Tsurumi), he was ‘betrayed’ and he let himself be captured without resistance. You might even die by becoming Nopperabou he resurrected... but I think the idea is that his goal/spirit whatever will resurrect in Asirpa.

And it fits with the fact that in Matthew 27 (Matthew is the evangelist Noda mentions here and there) we’ve the description of Jesus’s death and in the last chapters instead, which will end all in volume 27, we’ve Wilk’s backstory.

So, while I still worry Asirpa might get hurt, permanently psychologically scarred or things like that, my belief/hope is that no one will seriously harm her.

In addition to this Noda so far has tried not to use openly the “would hurt a child” trope likely because it’s considered a moral event horizon by too many and he doesn’t really want to depict his characters as merely evil... and unless Asirpa were to die in an incident, someone would have to be responsible for killing her.

Besides, it seems a waste to kill her as she’s the one carrying on most of the Ainu plot... and it would be pretty ugly if the ‘Ainu’s fate’ plot then eneded up carried on by Wajins who would do it in her memory.

Sure, the plot can be passed to minor Ainu characters like Kirawus or Ariko but still... for me it would feel like a weak development.

I prefer for Asirpa to be involved instead than for her to be mourned.

On another note in a way Asirpa ‘died’ on the ice field. Shooting that arrow to Ogata, learning about the minorities, discovering the truth and watching Kiro die in her arms in a way killed the innocent Asirpa to give space to the current Asirpa, who’s more aware of her people’s situation and, sadly, of what it might feel to cause someone’s death (even though Ogata actually didn’t die she clearly believed he would and the thought weighted on her and still does as she couldn’t defend herself against Ostrog because, when she considered murdering him in self defence she remembered the incident with Ogata and froze).

So in a way Asirpa too was ‘Jesus’.

said all this, let’s remember this isn’t really an alternate version of the gospel, Noda plays with it, take inspiration by it, but doesn’t follow it’s rules.

Japanese media sometimes like to take inspiration from Christian religion for various things so it’s not really that uncommon or that binding.

Thank you for your ask!

#Ask #Asirpa #Wilk #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Michael Ostrog #Anehata Shiton #Kirawus #Ariko Rikimatsu #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Siromakur #Kiroranke #Upashy #Ueji Keiji

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thephantomporg84 · 4 years

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As much as I love the trope of characters that hide that they have a lot of negative feelings by putting on an act, I really wish it was made more obvious Dante's cuhrayzee wahoo pizza man act is partly a front, since it kinda seems like people don't notice? Sure there was DMC2 but DMC2 is treated as barely canon by most, and Dante's characterization was one of many big complaints about it.

Oh god I totally feel this Anon. 1,000% agree, as someone who love love loves this trope, too. Lol. It’s why I devour a good DMC story on AO3, especially if the writer knocks this trope out of the park.

But yeah. That was sort of one of my bigger nitpicks about DMC5 as a whole. Like. While I do appreciate that the game (and series, really) can be played and the story does mostly work if you’re not invested in it and taking it at face value / just want a good action game — which is a super helpful tactic to bring new people in with such a gap between titles — I hate how it ruins the context of a lot of stuff.

Vergil (as V) all but looks directly at the camera and says ‘I’m a bastard and did what I did because I was afraid/wanted to be loved and protected’ but Dante’s internal conflict is wayyyy more subtle and it’s cheapened if you really have to spell it out, imo — because I feel like the ‘negative feelings behind a goofy exterior’ thing is easy to portray hard to give real depth to. As in, it’s easy to make Dante be cuhrayzee and swing his chainsaw motorcycle around, but hard to show that it’s an act to fool others (as well as himself, probably to some degree). Unfortunately, on top of all that, lot of people aren’t gonna wanna bend over backwards like you, me, and others have done to discuss and pick Dante’s (or any character from any series, really) personality apart.

That said: I don’t think there are nearly enough contextual clues present in any of the games to make this more apparent, either. I remember some guy made a pretty good video a few years back about how the anime proves Dante is actually depressed on YT, and that video blew up and got nearly 100-150k views (which is a lot, esp. when you consider how dead this series was ‘till E3 2018), and a lot of people were ‘shocked’ and ‘never noticed xyz indicator’ before.

Like... If you give me a scene and have given me all the clues I need, but they’re super vague and I miss it? That’s on me, and totally my bad — another reason to replay the game with a more watchful eye. But I feel like DMC has left way, wayyyy too much out about how Dante feels to even do that, now.

I think one of the best examples of that lack of any kind of solid clues about Dante’s personality is in DMC5: In game, Patty calls to invite him to her birthday, and is loud and chatty and kind of annoying. Dante just seems to cringe and brush it off/hang up. If you weren’t familiar with the anime, then you might just brush it off as a gag, or see it as a brief throwback/cameo if you were. Either way, you could chalk it up to ‘oh wow wrong number / what an annoying girl haha.’ But then if you look in Before the Nightmare, which isn’t even available in any language except Japanese, we see that Dante is incredibly uncomfortable at the idea of being around ‘normal’ people, and I believe it even mentions that he plans to make it up to her.

This ties back into my complaints about putting so much meat from the story in the side material, and then not even making the side material available with the game or even easy to access. I feel like putting that kind of interesting characterization in side material is almost criminal lol. Because that makes the whole scene have so much more weight — especially because it sets up that this man is clearly uncomfortable with what he is, possibly now more than ever, and is about to be asked to kill his brother, again... because of what they both are. You also lose that family dynamic of Nero experiencing the same type of isolation as Dante without even fully understanding why.

And if that wasn’t enough, you also lose some AMAZING bits of characterization if you never read Before the Nightmare like:

Dante still sending Grue’s (from the DMC1 novel) two living daughters / their other caretaker (Morrison looks after them, too) money. Dante also had to mercy kill Grue’s oldest daughter. He sends it to them from using money out of his own savings.

The former patrons of Bobby’s Cellar (re-named Grue’s Cellar) and those in the mercenary world immensely disliking Dante, and fully blaming him for the deaths in that bar, Grue’s death, Nell Goldstein’s death, and the hospital invasion/massacre that happened in the DMC1 novel. So, Dante is even hated in the mercenary world, and shoulders the blame for a lot of stuff that he didn’t do / has probably lost a lot of work because of this — and a lot of it is stuff that Gliver (👀) did or instigated.

The caretaker of Grue’s girls absolutely hating Dante, even though the sisters defend him, and he most likely knows and just says nothing. The caretaker even remarks that she thinks he’s a bad omen and she ‘Hopes he’s dead’ and that ‘If he’s alive, I’d love to stick a shotgun up his ass’.

Lady noticing that the qliphoth is growing in Redgrave City, and then noticing the name on Dante’s guns later — then wondering what the connection was there — indicating how little even people like Lady really know about him.

Like, holy shit that’s just a few things and it already adds so much depth to Dante’s character that’s not there in the games alone. I know I’ve said a million times not to take the series that seriously or in realistic terms, but... I mean... even ridiculously goofy stuff like JoJo’s has really well developed, layered characters that will surprise you / break your heart in the blink of an eye. So it’s not impossible for something like DMC to make some stuff a little more apparent.

Oh, and as for DMC2 — if it hadn’t followed the trend at the time of randomly making your protagonist into a dark/angsty/edgelord version of themselves, and had given the angsty turn some logical explanation, then I don’t think it would have been quite so hated (at least, janky gameplay and rushed design aside). Itsuno said that’s the one he’d remake if given a choice to do a remake, and I can’t help but think he wouldn’t say thay without having some ideas on what he’d do differently.

(SORRY I KNOW THIS IS SUPER LONG. But it’s something that really irks me a lot because it could be SO GOOD if handled a little better lol.)

#long post #dmc meta #anonymous #replies #dmc #devil may cry #before the nightmare #dmc before the nightmare #dmc5 #devil may cry 5 #dante #dmc dante #dante sparda

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thelittlehansy · 4 years

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A chronology of all my different opinions of Prince Hans. ( 2013-2020)

Long version of a old post i already make. my different opinion about Mr.of the southern isles not sure how much thats actually interesting XD but it is truly CRAZY how many opinion i got about that character so i m gonna tried to give the most faithful inside look i have about Hans trought the years.😁

1-Neutrality ( 2013)

I was at first kind of neutral toward Hans. Like i was adoring already the love is an open door and the dynamic between Hans and Anna jinx jinx again it was my fav part 😂 but at the end i was more pleasantly suprise by the twist its was suprising and to me THE thing of the movie. the part exciting to watch again and know people reaction of it.. Like its was the beginning of the twist trend i was more pleasantly surprise that betrayed. I was finding Anna and kristoff really cute together and i remembered the comments "she kiss the others guy at the end its ruined the lesson of the movie" annoyed me a LOT 😂like i find that funny because now i understand more the critiscm of the end. Something that never change was my opinion of the punch at the end......*rolled my eyes* I never though it was something funny even if hans deserve it.

2- Hans is a loathsome character. ( around 2014-2017)

Frozen began to be one those movies with tangled and the princess and the frog that i watch several times because of how entertaining they were. So i begin To really associated Hans to a very messed up character cruel cold sadistic i was having that strong image of him during the betrayal scene. The emotionally abusive Hans to a poor princess . Really the worst part of what he did is how personal and mean he was To Anna. How he treat anna with so much cruelty.

I remember also didnt finding Hans handsome at all and didnt even understanding all the appeal around his design. ( now i have completly change my mind XD ) i think thats hans actions makes him even more ugly to me at that period. That period last a long time because that opinion was at a period i was not at all interest that much of frozen and that period last a long time. So yeah didnt was hating him but highly disliking him.

3- Hans : the disney villain ! ( around 2017)

That we entered in a dark period when i began interest in one thing : writing disney crossover fanfiction. When i treat Hans as every disney classical villain. 😂Every trait à disney villain got hans was having it in my head. I want to cringe at myself at that period because when i was trying to wrote crossover fanfic Hans was someone indicredibly violent who loved blood. i was making him do stupid thing for the sake of doing stupid thing. He really was hate by everyone. He wanted to rules the world i was enjoying makes other character put him down like his brothers or other disney princess and prince😅. Like in my head Hans was a disney villain so there was no way he was being friend with prince and princess But really he was always doing dumb thing and all the princes were hating on him because this is "Hans" you know😂. I took Hans as excuse to have some baddies in the fanfic i was imagining so what about the plot that hans team up with jafar in order To rules over the southern isles 😂 seriously remind myself of these hans period makes me want to hit my head against a wall. Because its obvious now that i was just not interest in the character , i put 0 thinking in his character and was making him do dumb very very dumb things for the sake of making shine the heroes of my fanfic.

Now i beleive this is something we are a lot to do i can name once upon a time who makes hans do stupid thing in order for Anna and kristoff to shine and maleficent who put down every single character of sleeping beauty to makes shine Maleficent sorry Beneficent.

I think at that period i have also learn some stuff about a frozen heart like lars the name of a brothers that is Nice to Hans and was making hans being an asshole to him and lars hating him After arendelle 😄

4- The best villain EVER OK !!!!! (2017-2018)

I think at the level I was reading more frozen fanfic because i got extremely interest in him at the difference of before who really i didnt paid attention to his character at all he was only a very very random disney villain. finally but most importantly i Feel in love with the idea of an evil prince. So thats when become my period Hans is the most evil disney villain he is amazing the twist is AWESOME OK !!!!!! Dont critized it ok !!! Thats perfect its makes totally sense 😂

The smile under the boat ? Thats a smirk what are you talking about.😄

Sociopath ? He is one. Look i know nothing about anti social personality disorder i put 0 observation in Hans actual personality BUT he was abused by his brothers. See thats not how sociopath are made ? Doesnt people who are abused turn into monster ??? ( god what an awful reasoning i hate now people who say he was abused so thats make sense he is evil) see jennifer lee said he is one ! *disappoint face while reading several people making good arguement as why he is not*

The hints ? I rewatch frozen especially for Hans and notice his face and all the hints were blowing my mind. But most importantly the one at that ice castle and his look at the chandelier to killed elsa. I swear i have read a comment saying the creators confirmed it was not part of the script and an error because i rememeber be very very upset and wanting this hint to be true 😅

Also my worst enemy at that period : the troll theory because it was logical....And the redemption fans wanted.😅 i was like

He is EVIL let him stay EVIL !!!!!!

Now i think i did like Anna 🙄😂 she feel in love with idea of love instead of Hans and me i Feel in love with the idea of an evil prince that took Hans for the character he is..😄

5 : Hans : Anna'ex fiance ( 2018)

The thing with disney princess villain is that most of the times the princess and the prince relationship are at the heart of the movie. So when frozen come out its was cool because elsa and Anna sisters relationship was at the heart of the movie. But in the end we saw more Anna with kristoff that with Elsa so i kind of associated personally frozen with anna and kristoff relationship. So that period where i start to stop having this very rigid point of view and allowed myself getting interest into something i was defitntly not with the other disney princess movies. The relationship between the princess and the villain who here was her ex fiance. So hans Begin in my mind much more Anna ex fiance that a classical disney villains and thats around here i start to truly ship them because i was really exploring Hans relationship with anna and the funny comical post canon relationship between them they could have. like them keep getting inviting at Ball arguing making their own propaganda on their side making love is an open door reference so i discovered there that Hans to me could have a pretty funny amazing dynamic with Anna that i never thought in the past. But it was more at that period start to find Hans and anna relationship interesting that shipping them.

6- team Jacob team peeta sorry team Hans or team kristoff. ( 2018)

My triangle love drama period basically. I began to considerably ship way more hansanna. Of course in post canon redemption story or AU and i think i have at that period read literraly all the hansanna fanfic ever. anna in poly relationship was my otp 😂 began a level where i start to extremely not ship kristanna not ship hansanna but ship them at the same time. 😂

and really shipping kristanna and hansanna alone had not the same charm as shipping them together.

So i began to see Hans more from a shipping point of view that for his own character. even when i watched frozen the very first times i was liking Anna subplot romantic arc with kristoff and Hans. And it was bringing me good old feeling of my teen and pre Teen years when i was addict to the hunger games and twilight and basically love triangle😂. Something there isnt technically in frozen but there are still Anna and two suitors with Hans and kristoff.

7- the grey characters with an interesting family. ( 2018)

Reading more fanfic i start to view him more as a grey characters and start to be interest in hans family. Yeah before i was all the time imagining hans alone didnt really take into consideration the little very little tiny detail that hans is a prince has a kingdom and a pretty big family. I had two strong headcanon about his family his brothers were jerks but just jerks and most of them were nice oh and their dad was dead i was loving the idea of hans older brother be the king. The king and the queen were character that i overlook that i was not interest but i was way more interest in hans brothers. So i continue my view on grey Hans and that relationship with anna i was so interest while being more and more interest in Hans family. So my world of headcanon crush when i discovered more stuff about that book a frozen heart publish by disney. And well in that book most of Hans brothers were really more than jerks but really horrible so first headcanon destroyed but i tried to keep the name Caleb but imagine the character with the personality i like. The king was alive....ok second headcanon destroyed 😅 ok gonna deal with that and like the idea of the king being nice. ( didnt knew how mess up he actually was)

8- the king of the southern isles : view Hans from the point of view of his relationship with his father.( 2019-2020)

The step : i finally command a frozen heart i spoiled myself while reading tv tropes😂😂 ( around that time i created myself a tumblr account) and read that book : basically i got incredibly more interest in : Hans psychology , the king of the southern isles hans relationship with his dad.something that i never through about in the past. But reading tv tropes makes me a LOT interest in the king of the southern isles and Hans relationship with him. really ironic taking my old headcanon into consideration really that book how it developp hans psychology really makes me view him A LOT different. We learn Hans hates violence is a pacifist never do evil thing in his life safe for what he did during those 3 years for his dad but he hates every bit of it. So i really started to view Hans dependant under the influence of his father and thinking that what is evil with Hans is more that toxic relationship with his father than Hans himself. Every bad thing he did this is because of his father corrosive influence. Thats also a period when i start to really saw him from a psychologist point of view his daddy issues his trauma. So yeah A Frozen Heart make me really see Hans in a whole new light

9- Hans the victim and the not so great villain (2020)

So now i think we move to my recent opinion well i m sorry but i cant ignore stuff publish my disney not a matter of liking a frozen heart or not To me stuff publish by disney are canon until Proven not and also i read that a group was form when frozen began something huge to keep everything same in the franchise. So after reading and analyzing a frozen heart thinking...thinking way too much about it i start to think even more about Hans😂. And here we got a character with a very big Ndad hans being his scapegoat who was all his life emotionally, verbally , physically , mentally abused since he is little victim of narcissist abuse. All the times reject , humiliated, bully and thats very hard to ignore all of That because from jeenifer lee word of Hans childhood to that recent comic disney publish with little Hans. They really go for : hans has a very messed up life. I m sorry but at this point thats canon. And the problem i have is that all of That that is defintly not a tragic backstory the character is still very much being currently mistress , abused and neglect by his family. He is still living that life as a kid as a teen as a young adult as an adult And nope whatever how much we like elsa and anna and it was wrong what hans do. He do not deserve to be punished by his abusers. And his abusers do not deserve to punish him. So when you have disney giving all that information about him showing him being a interesting character complex that has never do anything evil on his own wish except in frozen. But most importantly giving him such an Horrible life something that was never do for the others disney villain this is really hard to consider Hans a true disney villain. And yeah he is the villain of Anna and elsa story but very much the victim from the point of view of his family. So thats all of this that makes hans a character that truly break my heart for what he has endure and is still enduring in his life. So my current vision of Hans is victim Hans of course i repeat not toward elsa and Anna you know the kind of stuff some people would twist about what i say but a victim because Hans got very very bigger villain in his life on the contrary of the others disney villains. What is even more sad is that the two people that cares for him lars and his mom dont even stand up for him in public. So thats really complicated....even ship i slighty change my mind i ship even more hansanna , i ship kristanna and Anna in a poly relationship is still my otp🤣🤣 but...getting a tumblr account last summer and reading the whole blog fnafiction.net and archive of our own had be associated kristanna with not very good thing but i still like the ship. What change a lot is my view on him as villain now i agree that the twist sucks 😅it wasnt done very well and the hints...after reading some stuff now i belive most of them are creation of the fans. So thats a whole different point of view. 😂😂and nah hans has a lot of people above him in the hierarchy , he was not the big obstacle of the movie and i found out that Hans lying to anna was not even a thing at all during love is an open door while paying attention at several stuff on the franchise ( i make several post about it on my blog) the hints when hans look at the chandelier dont even exist in the scenario i chekced it. Hans was a bad guy to ony the main characters elsa and anna at the difference of the others disney villains. So all of those stuff compare to disney villains make hans to me A weak villain and more fitting in the disney princes line up as he is too me interesting and complex but not at the level of evil queen tremaine frollo scar shang yu jafar ursula maleficent dr facilier.

So yeah thats makes a 180 degree change just like him in the movie 😄 i dont know maybe my mind is gonna change again ?

it really never happen to me with any other disney character before To change so much my mind.

#my opinion through the years

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raccoon-wizard · 4 years

Text

Two and Half Assholes

An entire one person (shout out to @jumpfiend) expressed their wish for me to write an angry essay about the long dead show Two and Half Men (2003-2015) and all the problems it has. Allow me to start by saying that I am by no means a professional critic and I have never really written an in-depth review of anything. But I have a lot of feelings that I need to get out about this shitshow, otherwise my head is gonna explode next time my father insists on watching it.

Just a warning, this is a very long post.

What is Two and Half Men about?

If I tried to write my own summary here, I would probably end up tearing it to shreds already. Instead, I’m going to borrow the annotation from IMDB.com: “A hedonistic jingle writer's free-wheeling life comes to an abrupt halt when his brother and 10-year-old nephew move into his beachfront house.”

That doesn’t really say much, does it now. Luckily, the same site also provides us with a wide range of plot (hahahah “plot”) summaries written by users. This one tells us a little more: “The Harper brothers Charlie and Alan are almost opposites but form a great team. They have little in common except their dislike for their mundane, maternally cold and domineering mother, Evelyn. Alan, a compulsively neat chiropractor and control-freak, is thrown out by his manipulative wife Judith who nevertheless gets him to pay for everything and do most jobs in the house. Charlie is a freelance jingle composer and irresistible Casanova who lives in a luxurious beach-house and rarely gets up before noon. Charlie "temporarily" allows Alan and his son Jake, a food-obsessed, lazy kid who shuttles between his parents, to move in with them after Alan's separation/divorce. The sitcom revolves around their conflicting lifestyles, raising Jake (who has the efficient, caring dad while having a ball with his fun-loving sugar uncle who teaches him boyish things), and bantering with Evelyn and various other friends and family. Other fairly regular characters include Charlie's cleaning lady Berta and his rich, self-confessed stalker neighbor Rose who often sneaks in to spy on Charlie.”

Now that’s much better. It gives us quite a decent picture of the show’s ensemble. At least for the starter episodes, this is pretty much what it is. But as the show progresses, we see that the characters have a little bit more depth to them. But not that much.

Let’s start with Charlie Harper, the “freelance jingle composer and irresistible Casanova who lives in a luxurious beach-house and rarely gets up before noon” portrayed by Charlie Sheen. (Is that man still a thing?) I think we can get a lot by taking apart this brief description of him. Freelance jingle composer pretty much means that he has a grand piano in his house and we can occasionally see him playing it while trying to put together words for a commercial for some random product. And that’s it. He has a few other musician friends who are just as big of assholes as he is, but we’ll get to that later. Other than that, we don’t really see him working at all. I think there is one episode about him writing kids’ songs because his girlfriend’s kid likes them. And one about him getting an award?? I don’t know man. The second part of that statement is a much more prominent “personality” trait of Charlie’s. In nearly every episode, we see him “dating” (meaning shagging and then dumping) another woman. I have mentioned in my initial post that this show is misogynistic. Don’t worry, I will also get into that later. For now I’m going to say that Charlie treats all these women absolutely disgustingly and we’re supposed to laugh at that. On the rare occasions we see him in a long term relationship (which happens twice I think? I’m not sure now), we get the stereotypical ball and chain bullshit. The woman takes all his freedom and tries to make him better. While I hate that trope with burning passion, I have to admit that in this case, she does have a solid point. Charlie is a pathetic excuse of a man who has to count on his good looks (questionable) and his riches. By the way, where did he even get them? Does composing jingles really make that much money? Is he that good of a gambler? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen another episode addressing the fact that the answer to both of these questions is no. Where the hell did this luxurious beach-house come from??? So many questions about a show that deserves so little.

Surprisingly, Charlie is the better one out of the two brothers. At the start, we really do feel sorry for Alan. His wife (who is a HORRIBLE person by the way) kicks him out and manipulates him into still paying for everything and doing many things for her around the house. Who wouldn’t feel bad for someone like this? He moves in with Charlie “for the time being”. Soon, we realise that he is not leaving the house anytime soon. He becomes a disgusting leech, a truly pathetic excuse of a man. And he doesn’t even bother hiding it. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel sorry for him or laugh at him, but either case doesn’t really work if you spend at least ten seconds thinking about it. How are we supposed to sympathise with a man that lives off of others and barely lifts a finger to change it? The worst part is, the show presents it as something completely normal. We don’t really see Alan’s actions turning against him, do we? Most of the time, whatever shit he does, works just fine for him.

Another prominent character is Alan’s son, Jake, who grows up throughout the series. A fat little boy, not exactly bright. A spoiled brat (if it’s the fault of Alan or Judith is questionable) that has everything handed to him, as Charlie points out in one episode. It’s another bad personality trait that we’re supposed to find funny. And at first, we kind of do. But once again, as the show progresses, it gets worse. Jake becomes the oldest kid in his class because he fails so many times. He only gets to start middle school because “he’s too big for the desks in his class now”. A bit of a watered down Dudley Dursley now that I think about it. It feels that the older Jake gets, the dumber he is. He eventually joins the military because he is too daft to realise. (If I remember correctly, that was done only so Jake’s actor could leave the show because he pretty much realised how bad it was.)

The main reason why I hate this show so much, however, is its way of handling female characters. There’s a few prominent ones - the aforementioned Judith, Alan’s ex wife, a cold hearted manipulative bitch, that also follows the trope of “I’m breaking up with you because I’m a lesbian” for a while, but then it’s never addressed again, not even once. Then we have Alan and Charlie’s mother, Evelyn, also a cold hearted bitch lacking any motherly instincts whatsoever that the men blame for how they turned out. Honestly, I can kind of see it. There’s Rose, Charlie’s neighbour whom he had slept with once and who’s been obsessed with him ever since, following him pretty much wherever he goes and inappropriately visiting him, usually in order to chase any woman that gets close to him away. We have Berta, Charlie’s housekeeper that I would like to believe is there to show the differences between different classes, as she has a large family to take care of, fending of her daughters’ admirers and dealing with drug and alcohol issues. But at this point we all know she’s only there so we can laugh at her struggles and the witty remarks she likes to make.

A special category of women in this show are the lovers and girlfriends. All of them end up either leaving the men for someone better (good for them tbh), or getting left by them. But remember, we’re supposed to always be siding with the men. The women are there for us to laugh at and hate. Rose the stalker? The only reason Charlie never gets rid of her is so we can laugh as she appears unexpected on his balcony over and over again. Are her apparent mental health issues ever addressed? Maybe once, but as a joke. You know, the classic ha ha ha ha look an insane person that’s hilarious. Judith the ex wife and her flock of weird friends (that Charlie converts)? Look, evil wives hating men, ha ha ha ha. Better run away from there, men, or they’ll eat you alive! Ha ha ha ha. Judith wanting support from friends and claiming she deserves to be happy is played off as something we scoff at. Chelsea, Charlie’s girlfriend and fiancée? The ball and chain thing, similarly to Judith, but not nearly as manipulative - this one we can see really means well and wants to help Charlie, but he’s a Man™ and cannot handle that, despite claiming to love her very dearly. Lindsay, Alan’s on again, off again girlfriend? Oof. Where to even start with that one. As most of the characters (save for maybe Judith), she starts off decent, despite her inexplicable desire for Alan. (Seriously though what in the world is up with that.) Also, now that I mentioned Alan’s weird sex appeal (not to me but to the female characters of the show, ew), what the hell was up with Judith wanting to suddenly fuck him again and HIM ENDING UP BEING THE FATHER OF HER DAUGHTER???? Was that the point when the writers just said “you know what, fuck this” or?

Some additional things the men on the show did to women:

Infidelity. Aka “ha ha ha many women want man what a lucky bastard he gets to fuck many women ha ha ha oh no he’s been caught ha ha ha funny”.

Infidelity with their friends/family members. I’m pretty sure this happened multiple times. One of the male protagonists gets a girlfriend. Girlfriend has an attractive daughter. Man sleeps with daughter. Girlfriend is mad. Man claims that it is actually a compliment to her because the daughter is just a younger version of her. Man gets upset when girlfriend disagrees. Poor man, girlfriend mean :(((

Another thing I would like to point out is the show’s dumbass approach to sexuality and gender. It’s the age old, straight men bullshit that lesbians = hot, gay men = ew. We see that throughout the whole thing a bunch of times. Alan ends up marrying Walden (whom I will talk about as well) so they can scam an adoption agency. That’s just wrong, man. That’s awful. And regarding gender, the way this shitshow handles trans people is disgusting. I can currently only think of one instance of this, but I have a feeling it happened multiple times, but with Charlie and Alan. They meet a woman, flirt, sleep together, all fun and games. But for some god forsaken reason, after all is done, the woman decides to be like “yeah by the way I used to be a dude” and?? Why?? First of, why would any trans person want to tell anyone their deadname and other things after successfully transitioning? I’m a cis woman, but this really makes no sense to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this one, but if you’ve spent years trying to pass as whatever gender you identify with, transitioned, you wouldn’t exactly go around sleeping with people and afterwards telling them about it, would you? And second of all, the entire reason why these characters appear are so we can be like “eww he slept with someone who used to have a penis eww” and laugh as they have a small crisis because of it. Just. Why?? I am aware that this is a thing other shows do/have done as well, but it really bothers me. And even when the guy decides to roll with it, all we get are those jokes that the woman is “more manly” than him. I remember vividly Alan hooking up with a trans lady and briefly dating her, only so we can see her pick a fight with a man, pay for their food and shit and Alan being flustered because he feels like less of a man. Again, please correct me if I’m wrong since my knowledge of gender is limited, but I’m about 97 % sure this is not how it works.

One would have thought that most of this would end after Charlie’s death. His place is taken by Walden Schmidt, portrayed by the angel that is Ashton Kutcher, a “billionaire internet entrepreneur who has recently been divorced and is now suicidal” (wiki). Before I dig in to how it actually got worse, let’s talk about Walden for a while. He really is a nice change. Walden is a genuinely good character, we see him working super hard and treating women well and just being great. I actually like him. The problem the show has when it comes to him is treating his suicidal-ness as just another little joke. Ha ha ha man wants to die man weak. Funny. But as we get over this part (rather quickly tbh), things involving Walden get actually good (besides the part where he sleeps with Alan’s mother). We do see some annoyingly familiar divorce related things, but in contrast to Alan, we see Walden actually get back on his own two feet.

Alan will forever be my biggest issue with this show. I don’t know if he gets worse or if it’s just the contrast with Walden that makes it seem that way, but he becomes a bigger and bigger parasite, exploiting Walden’s kindness, becoming a lover to his, at that point, former girlfriend Lindsay and somehow exploiting her current boyfriend? He just goes haywire is what I’m trying to say.

I’m not saying that people like that don’t exist. We see it every day, the rich playboys, the pathetic incels. They are everywhere and we totally should talk about them. But not like this. We shouldn’t feel like we should sympathise with them, we shouldn’t hate those that try to criticise them, or those who want to get rid of them. We shouldn’t laugh when they hurt people around them. Men shouldn’t want to relate to them. Characters like this should be presented as something we should avoid becoming.

“What’s your problem? It’s just something I watch to unwind,” my father scoffs at me as I complain about yet another evening we all have to spend listening to the nonsense Two and Half Men brings us. Yea, maybe for you. Maybe you know better than to treat people around you, especially women, like they’re just something you can play around with and then throw into the sewers. Maybe you give everyone equal respect. (No he doesn’t, by the way.) But you know, with the way this TV channel plays this show over and over and over and over again (five episodes a day, every day, and the second they get to the end, they just start over), there’s probably a number of young people who don’t realise how wrong it is and take what’s said there as something to live by. Maybe they’ll think that it’s okay to use people to their advantage. Maybe they’ll think like a rich entitled middle aged straight white man. That’s my problem. Even though the show ended five years ago, it still lives on our televisions and it still gives us wrong examples on how to live our lives. That’s why I hate the show. Not just the awful writing and “plot” holes. It’s the way it treats people and presents it as something that’s totally fine.

#tv #television #tv shows #comedy #sitcom #two and half men #jon cryer #ashton kutcher #charlie sheen #sexism #misogyny

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elliepassmore · 4 years

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The Never Tilting World Review

4/5 stars Recommended for people who like: fantasy, multiple POVs, goddesses, magic, demons, LGBTQ+ romance, strong female leads, kick-ass women, women engineers, disability representation, mental illness representation, characters of color, complex morality I will say that for the most part I really enjoyed this book. The concept is fascinating and the characters and world were splendid. I took off a star because, as nice as it is sometimes to not have every detail of a world explained, with something like magic, it does have to be explained to a certain extent. By-and-large I understand how the 'gates' work, but we're dropped right into the terminology within the first couple of pages without explanation and it was a little confusing and took me a few tries to get at it. Then, I just wasn't a huge fan of Odessa and it does take away from the book a little when you just don't like one of the MCs or narrators, but I'll explain more about Odessa when I get to her. Lan, Tianlan, is the first narrator, so I'm starting with her. She's what's called a Catseye (also something whose we had to figure out figure out ourselves), which means she can heal people or inflict sickness upon them in a form of dual magic. Two sides to every coin, right? I really, really love this idea and think it's a fantastic spin on the typical 'healer' character you see in fantasy. I suppose, theoretically, healers could always turn their magic to use by harming people, in fantasy books healers are relegated to only healing, save for here and in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha and Six of Crows trilogy, where healing and harming are seen as two sides of the same magic, though a person typically has more strength in one than the other, so it doesn't come out quite like it does here. I enjoyed being in Lan's POV because she's caught between wanting to do the right thing by the world that's been plunged into eternal night and also wanting to keep Odessa, her lover, safe. I also thought that Chupeco writing Lan has having PTSD after a pre-book incident was refreshing considering the number of books that just skip over the psychological effects events have on characters. This was also an area where Chupeco turned the 'healer' trope on its head a little, as Catseyes can work with physical illnesses and injuries, but also mental ones, taking on the role of healer and therapist (though obviously not for themselves), so not only do we get to see Lan experiencing PTSD, but we also see her coming to terms with it and seeking therapy-like treatment for it, which is pretty unusual in most novels. Despite being in the 'healer' role and having magic that can infect and destroy if she wishes, Lan is also skilled with a blade and hand-to-hand combat and has something of a quick temper. She's definitely the 'protector' type more than anything else and is striving to make sure everyone comes out alright in the end. Odessa comes next, because I'm grouping the characters based on where they're from and Lan and Odessa are both from Aranth. Odessa is one of the daughter-goddesses in the novel who is unaware her twin is alive. She has some kind of chronic illness that prevents her from being very active without tiring out and that Catseyes have been able to treat but not cure. In the beginning Odessa seems like she'll be a pretty good character, a little too doe-eyed and teary for my tastes, but has plenty of potential. Then she starts to get bratty and doesn't seem to have the ability to logically think things through. From a writing standpoint I really appreciate how complex Chupeco makes Odessa and I think within the plot it's super fascinating. It's even explained to us toward the end why Odessa made the sudden turn from teary-but-okay-princess to brat-with-little-rationale, so I appreciate the cleverness of how the reason was woven throughout Lan and Odessa's chapters for us to find but maybe not pinpoint exactly. However, the great reasoning behind it doesn't stop me from not liking Odessa. The weird power-imbalance Odessa has going on with Lan and their relationship that I'm not a huge favor of. They love each other, great, fantastic, I believe that and I actually think they make a great couple in the beginning of the novel. They certainly have a better set-up for a romance than Arjun and Haidee do, though their 'love' is only marginally slower moving, but I'm just a teeny bit uncomfortable with the power imbalance of Odessa being a goddess/princess and Lan being the person assigned to guard and protect her. It's one thing when Lan is serving the crown in some general 'technical' sense and the two of them are in a relationship and it's another thing entirely when Lan is serving Odessa and her mother directly. It would be better, I think, if Lan wasn't serving directly under Odessa or it was like Lan's previous relationship where both girls were rangers. While Lan has no issues disregarding Odessa's commands, the imbalance is still there and becomes a bit of a problem later, but is never fully addressed, so I'm not sure how I feel about that or about some of the scenes with Lan and dark!Odessa. The relationship has the potential in the beginning and it is, for the most part good, but then once the difference in rank and power becomes clearer and Odessa becomes darker I get just a little uncomfortable with it. Haidee is the other daughter-goddess and she lives in the Golden City on the always-day side of the planet. She's what's called a 'mechanika' in the world, but what we would classify as an engineer. She's quick on her feet, fiery, stubborn, and extremely empathetic. In one of her very first scenes she's crying over a days-dead whale, if that's any indication. As much as I love her determination, smarts, and stubbornness, her ignorance of the world and optimistic attitude do grate on my nerves at times. She's just a bit too happy-go-lucky in some instances, though it largely works out for her. I will be fair, Haidee is one of my favorites, but I feel like Chupeco set things up so that Haidee would always have things work out for her and it seems a bit too obvious at times. Despite my dislike of Odessa, things go wrong for her, sometimes very wrong, and while things do occasionally go wrong for Haidee and seem like they'll be bad, I don't ever really get the full-on sense of dread like I do with Odessa. Arjun and Haidee meet by the whale and their first scene involves them trying to kill each other. Naturally, he becomes her love interest. Arjun is, hands down, the funniest person in the entire book. He has a very dry sense of humor and can be extremely sarcastic. He follows along with the idea of prophecies and with Haidee's ideas a little to mellowly for what I'd been expecting given our introduction to him, which I think says more about the whole 'everything works out for Haidee' but than about him. I also enjoy that Arjun decided to go with a prosthetic magical rifle after he lost his hand (not a spoiler, it happened pre-book). I don't know how they engineer the things they do in the desert, but I just found it amusing that instead of engineering a hand or hook or knife or something they went with a rifle that could channel his fire magic. It really fits his personality, honestly. While Arjun's and Haidee's romance is definitely more power-balanced than Lan's and Odessa's, there are still some holes in it. Mainly that they meet and fall in love within the span of the book, which I'm pretty sure takes place over, like, a month. I love fantasy and dystopian, and sci-fi, but oh my god I am getting sick of the quick romances. Chupeco did a decent job of showing why they fell in love and how they respected each other and became friends before they fell in love, but it's still only been a month. Sorry, but I know 19-year-olds, being one and being in college, and I'm just really not certain that your 'month to love' romance is gonna last. There are different depths to love and you can love more than once, but the insta-true-love, will-survive-anything has just, for some reason, been getting on my nerves lately. Maybe in a couple months or years I'll be fine with it again, but right now I'm just not a fan, even if I do like the characters together. The mythology and general world-building in the book is also something I enjoyed. Chupeco keeps the ideas of duality, sacrifice, and "a demoness is what they call a goddess that men cannot control" going throughout the book. It centers around two young goddesses whose mother(s) are goddesses and a world that somehow stopped spinning and split into only-night and only-day, so there's obviously a lot of mythology and magic going into the base of this book. Since the 'Breaking,' as they call it, neither mother-goddess has really told the twins much about previous generations of goddesses. Odessa gets more of an education about it than Haidee does, but both are still largely left in the dark about their world's mythology, which allows Chupeco to reveal it to the reader in a way that feels natural without info-dumping. There's a lot to do with goddesses, prophecies, and rituals that starts to get unpacked in this one, but which mainly sets up for the sequel. I'm super interested in learning more about the goddesses and rituals in the next book and have plenty of theories regarding them. The duality piece of things is interesting, because you don't necessarily recognize it in the beginning or even halfway through the book. It was more toward the end that I began to see what Chupeco was doing with the night-day, ill-healthy, healer-'plague-giver' sort of balance. The goddesses are twins, as all goddesses before them have been, and that set-up is a fantastic literary device for setting up dualities. You can have the good twin vs. the evil twin, the knowledgeable vs. the ignorant, and so many other varieties, and Chupeco plays with a bit of each in each twin. Odessa knows more about their past from the start, but it's Haidee who learns more about it and their world on the way. Odessa starts out as the chronically-ill sister, but Haidee ends up drained and exhausted. Odessa becomes more and more morally complex and dark but still has soft spots, Haidee is blindingly optimistic but has moments of destructive rage. They're set up to mirror and foil one another, yet each still comes together in the end and finds strength in knowing their twin. The girls are quite similar even though the book sets up a lot of their differences. Without giving too many spoilers I can say that this is 100% reflected in where the plot takes us and the things that are revealed. In terms of world-building I thought Chupeco gave us very distinct settings, creatures, and peoples. The night-side of the world is described as very rainy and cold, with threats of storms, kraken, and icebergs. Though Lan and Odessa are only in the city for a short period of time, I remember the impression I got of it. Old bookstores, tall buildings, dreary because of the rain. This is set against the next setting Lan and Odessa experience, which is the borderlands near the Abyss. While these lands are still dark, there's more foliage described as well as eerie lakes, currents made of air that are strong enough to hold ships, and creatures of darkness and shadow. It is also here where the sky begins to lighten as they move closer to the Abyss and the always-day side of the world. This is even more different from the settings Arjun and Haidee encounter. The desert is vast and deadly, full of dangerous scorpions, an acid sea, and a sea of sand complete with sand-dolphins and sand-sea creatures. The desert is full of raiders and nomadic clans instead of shadow people, but the former can be just as deadly. The Golden City is more steampunk than the night city, Aranth, is described to be. It also seems to be full of snootier people than Aranth does, and all-in-all, despite it being a city run by a twin goddess with a twin goddess daughter, Haidee's city is a very different city from the one Lan and Odessa left. Then there's Inanna's Temple and the Abyss itself, which remind me of dawn and pure darkness, respectively, but still have their own distinct feelings and descriptions. It's very easy to get immersed in the world Chupeco has created here and it's one of those rare world-building experiences that makes me wish I could see it artistically rendered. The Never Tilting World is a good book with unique, distinct characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses that are explored throughout the book. Chupeco writes the characters relatively realistically, meaning they deal with physical and mental trauma as well as tough decisions they sometimes respond to poorly. The Arjun-Haidee romance felt kind of rushed and the Lan-Odessa romance felt like it had a power-imbalance I wasn't 100% comfortable with. Since there is another book, however, and since the Lan-Odessa romance had a lot more promise in the beginning than the middle and end, I'm hoping it'll get itself sorted out. I also dinged the book's score because of terminology that we're left to figure out for ourselves that really would've been better if it had just been explained outright. Definitely think it's a good read, though and would recommend picking it up if you enjoy fantasy.

#book #book recommendations #book review #fiction #ya fiction #fantasy #scifi #multiple pov #rin chupeco #disability representation #women of color #lgbtq #lgbtq representation #lesbian characters #magic #grey morals

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immortals-malec · 5 years

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So we’ve moved to comparing/making a rant on Lucelyn and Maruke. (this will be a lot of rambling probably.) First we shall talk about Lucelyn, whom we all shipped for like one season, but that’s because we wanted Luke to be happy. Anyways, what’s the problem with them and why they didn’t work. i had a little post on it while i was rewatching “The Mortal Cup” episode and have decided to expand on it. Let’s go- we begin with the writing because no shocker there that the writing is the main reason why they didn’t work but that’s only on one character’s fault, Jocelyn! Luke seemed to have nice relationship building but Jocelyn’s a mess. So in the pilot we basically shown that Luke and Jocelyn are in a relationship, which is confirmed by Luke’s boss, telling him to marry Jocelyn, I know some might say oh it’s a coverstory but from how Luke acts and how they wrote the relationship from his side, they were in a romantic relationship. But with Jocelyn, they never really wrote her feelings for Luke, NEVER. From the beginning of her character to the end in s2, she’s never shown any romantic feelings to Luke, tbh whenever they interacted it was all about Clary, never about their relationship, it was always about Clary and the memory blocks/erasing she had Magnus do. They showed that Luke really loved her, but Jocelyn never showed that she loved him back as much as he did, makes you wonder if she really ever did love him romantically. Or if she settled for him as a substitute for Valentine. (Get to that in a bit) It really doesn’t help that development that Lucelyn had was all from like I said before Luke’s point of view and the fact is she was in a magical sleep for whole 13 episodes of season one. And also doesn’t help that Jocelyn is a shit character with the writing she had, the show in the first season tried to tell us she was like savior to the downworld(ers), she saved them bah, bah, she’s pure of heart etc. When in reality she’s a selfish bitch and is just as racist as the Clave or as her husband is, just shows it in a different way and never really grew and they just continued to write her that way. I’m basically dead set on her blackmailing downworlders into helping her, because she had the mortal cup so yeah there. Luke didn’t deserve her, when she acted like a racist half of the time to downworlders, he deserved someone who didn’t treat his kind like shit, which Jocelyn showed her true colors in s2, they were there in s1, just they really showed in s2. (Jesus Christ Alec and Magnus were the only ones to call her out on her bullshit) Anyways, she’s a shit character, who didn’t grow. Instead put Alec’s life in danger, to find her daughter! Who is someone’s fucking child. (Still angry) But back to what I was saying the development for them was all one sided, and now I feel like Luke could have been a substitute for Valentine... why? Oh boy let me explain this. Remember 1x06? The episode that explains Luke’s/the Circle’s backstories? When Luke awakens and explained everything to Clary in Magnus’s (guest?) bedroom, he describes how Valentine was before he became a mass murderer. She basically says “He is Mom’s type, just like you.” And boy it rubs me the wrong way and made me realize holy fuck, Luke could’ve been just a substitute for Valentine??? Because this quote makes it seem like it. I mean- look, Valentine was Luke’s parabatai at the time, and when he started to pull away, and she noticed signs of him murdering downworlders, turning evil, she knew it would make her look bad (even though she’s racist herself, she denies it but she is) so she turned to someone else who was basically feeling the same thing: Luke, in a way reminds her of Valentine, I guess, while Luke fell for her, she just fell for the fact he was her husband’s parabatai and had the same qualities. But if that’s not true, I don’t think she loved him romantically as he did her, Valentine’s crazy racist actions against the accords and Downworlders, supposedly pushed her and Luke together, to lean on each other’s shoulders, meanwhile it’s clear Luke hadn’t loved anyone before or at least he thought to himself, he fell in love. With Jocelyn, she loved Valentine, and it seems to be clear that they were meant to be (the alt world is proof) and maybe she thought she did but reality either got it confused with platonic feelings or she used Luke as a rebound which is probably more possible here. Because Jocelyn is just a bitch. Either way it’s clear with the writing Jocelyn had, that she didn’t really love him the way he did her or whatever, just seems to be that she used him for a lot of things. Anyways, now the second problem chemistry or as I should say the one sided chemistry just as there was one sided writing with the relationship. Isaiah is not the problem, in fact he’s what made half of them work but it wasn’t enough. Maxim was the problem- like okay she’s what I pictured Jocelyn to look like, she acts pretty good, but her chemistry with Isaiah is just eehhugh. She didn’t even try tbh, she didn’t try to ever give me emotions, never. She just stood there with the same expression her face when it came to somewhat romantic scenes she had with Isaiah, who did give you Luke’s emotions towards Jocelyn in that flashback in 1x06, that scene where he finds Jocelyn in 1x11, the standing by her side scenes in 1x12/1x13 and catching her at the end of s1? You felt it, you even felt his one scene with Jocelyn in 2x04 like he did it, but with her? Zero emotions! Like even if the writing lacked, improv exists. Just everything with them was one sided and Jocelyn continued to be the worst character/mother alive. The best change they ever did was killing her off, Luke got himself a sexy ass woman. Oop- let’s move onto everyone’s favorite even though we weren’t sure about it at first, Maruke! Now Maruke is everything Lucelyn wished it could be, with the writing and the chemistry. So first we will begin with the writing- you could always tell with what little writing we got for Maruke that they cared about each other, and could be romantically in love with each other one day, which really lacked with Luke and Jocelyn’s relationship, Luke and Maryse isn’t one sided. And also some who still like Lucelyn are like Maryse is/was the same as Jocelyn!!! EVEN WORSE. Lol she had something Jocelyn didn’t. Character development, Maryse’s development is also what makes Maruke works as well. In s1 yeah, she was racist, a bad parent, reminded you of Jocelyn in a different way, we disliked her, in s2 it continued for a bit up until she left and came back for Max getting his first rune, you notice she’s trying to change there, she’s trying to gain back her children’s trust, and also trying not to be so racist with Magnus, (Nicola mentioned at a con that 2x08 is when Maryse started to change her mind about Magnus because he saved Alec’s life when she couldn’t something along those lines) and she makes up with her adoptive son, and Alec brings up their father, which caused her to break down because the whole cheating thing, and we get her sobbing and Alec confronting her, and you feel bad for her, and you see she’s trying to make up for what she did to her children and we were all like “is this the beginning of a redemption arc??? if so i’m fucking up” and she returns in 2b to continue making amends with people and how she treated them before hand, Luke and Izzy, which are both heavily important because she did sl*t shame her daughter, made her feel less compared how she treated Alec and Luke she treated differently because he turned into a werewolf, and honestly good shit, then they continued with making her own up to her mistakes by de-runing her and making full amends with Magnus (3x03 is really fucking important) and fully accepting Alec’s relationship with him! She had the character development to be with Luke. And Jocelyn, was just lol nothing but undercover racist to showing in fully s2, when she died. Back to what I was saying before, with what little we got with Luke and Maryse worked perfectly. Hell even the talk in 3x06 which I love because Luke comes in after Maryse has been deruned and she’s like “Lucian” and they sit down to talk about how they have been ripped away from being a shadowhunter, etc etc. and Luke goes right into how he fucking remembers the last time she had her hair down and that was like twenty years ago ( listen if you remember the last time she had her hair down, you’ve feelings for them okay) and they’re making hearteyes and shit its *chief’s kiss* Their first kiss was oof, like it was damn good okay, they bond over shit and it fits them where you didn’t get to see that with Lucelyn. Also not to forget that Maryse tells Magnus that her and Luke used to be rivals at the Shadowhunter academy and than in the Circle (I believe? I have watched it once I think she mentioned the circle too) which is like holy fuck, one of my favorite tropes is Rivals-Enemies-to -Friends then Lovers, because they really don’t hate each other, they like each other, whoo. With the littlest things in their set up and writing, makes you ship them (along with Nicola and Isaiah’s chemistry which in a minute), and also makes you wonder, did they like each other back then and realize it but couldn’t act on it because they didn’t think the other liked them that way, just with little things you see it in their writing, with Lucelyn’s you didn’t. And now the chemistry, tbh their chemistry is good shit. Like on the top tier as Harry and Matt’s, for Malec. You can see the emotions in the romantic scenes, which lacked with Lucelyn’s, it’s not one sided chemistry with one actor, both actors are showing the emotions, the hearteyes, and probably things that aren’t in the script. Isaiah and Nicola played their strengths with each other, hoenstly, just honestly, even little eye contact was enough for you to be like woahhh. All of their scenes never lacked anything, you could see they were a building romance, even though I don’t know if they were just planting it to see our reactions in s2, so they could build on it, or our huge interest in them and how they could be a romantic relationship made them do it, someone should ask this question. Together, being able to show us the emotions along with the little writing they got, is how Isaiah and Nicola made Maruke work. Bottom line: Lucelyn suffered from one sided writing/chemistry and Jocelyn’s shit character, who never grew, continued to be a racist, selfish woman, while Maruke worked because Maryse had the development, so did the relationship as a whole and were able to show me that these two care a lot about/like each other and eventually will fall in love. Even with little writing.

#lucelyn #maruke #writing problems #chemistry problems #sh couples

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pennysword · 4 years

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An Ode to My Hero Academia

Okay, like every anime fan, I've fallen into the My Hero Academia hole and can't get up... and that's not a bad thing.

I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't on the fanwagon when My Hero Academia landed on American shores in 2016. I was two years out of college and the only thing I cared about was finding a nine-to-five that paid my bills and kept my mom from telling me to do something with my life. I was also deep in the pit of post college depression, wherein I'd moved away from all my friends and thought myself too socially awkward and weird to be able to make new ones. That's something a lot of us deal with, I think, especially when we're forced out of our comfort zones.

I am a shojo romantic at heart. Most shonen don't really hook me emotionally the way shojos do. And if it does hook me, it's set in a world so fantastical and so bizarre that my interest wanes before long and I would forget the plot all together. When I did delve back into manga or anime (decreasingly so once I got my first adult job at twenty-three), I wanted to wrap myself in the blanket of the tropes that were comfortable to me: a wallflower female lead with surprising feistiness and sense of justice, a beautiful male lead like prince from a fairy tale, a second lead who would do anything for your affection. These stories were mostly set in the real world, even if they didn't make sense sometimes, I could make excuses because I loved the idea of shojo so much more than disliking the flaws.

While a lot of my friends watch anime religiously, I'm more of a casual fan (which is really a nightmare to otakus, who expect you to know every single canon, fanon, and side canon that has ever existed). I remember my first encounter with the show was equally as casual. My friend explained to me it's general concept while waiting in line for my badge at ACEN 2017. “It's about superheroes! There's this girl who is literally a frog! An ostentatious personification of America! When people cosplay this other character they wear a green zentai suit because she's supposed to be invisible and that's funny!”

Fresh off the tails of One Punch Man, which came out in 2015, I thought it was the same concept and I rolled my eyes. I knew that anime followed trends, like most things in the world: one year psychic-mecha anime was what everyone wanted to do and the next, post apocalyptic themes were all the rage. So I thought My Hero Academia was just another One Punch Man, a self-referential, satirical comedy about heroes who knew how ridiculous their own genre was. I'd seen it once and wasn't really interested in seeing it again.

My second encounter with My Hero was a bit more personal. It was 2019 and I was taking my eight-year-old cousin to her first anime convention ever. Her family has always been a little more conservative, being Jehovah's Witnesses and living in one of the most right wing cities in Mid Michigan... and I was thrilled when she confessed to me that she enjoyed shonen-ai, that her mom had bought her a complete set of Sailor Moon manga, and that she wanted to borrow my own personal manga collection for reading. There was only a four month turn around, but I made her a janky cosplay and drove her to Kalamazoo for one day of their local convention, Dokidokon, wherein she pointed out someone cosplaying her favorite character, Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia.

At this point I had the base knowledge that my friend had given me at ACEN two years prior, but I just couldn't follow what my cousin was saying. After she shyly asked for a picture with the cosplayer, she explained to me why she shipped this character with that character and why that other character was a jerk... I couldn't understand any of it. And I realized that I had missed something much more important than hopping on the fanwagon of one of the greatest anime of its time... I'd missed an opportunity to connect further with my little cousin, someone who was just beginning to sprout seeds of her own ideas and her own interests, separate from her religiously zealous mother and her perpetually aloof father. I had missed a chance to truly enjoy her happiness, to witness her excitement when she saw her favorite characters pop out of the television screen and manifest themselves before her, alive and in the flesh... and just as heroic as their two dimensional counterparts.

That fall, I watched the first episode of My Hero Academia on my morning elliptical workout and my life was changed.

I mentioned before that one of the reasons I have a difficult time connecting with the shonen genre is the fantastical worlds that I cannot relate to. For instance, I can apply logic to the world of Naruto in my head, but it never seems real like it could be real to me. I always find myself questioning social structure, in-world history, and the story's depiction of the human condition. There's always a nagging voice in my head that refutes all of these pretend worlds in shonen... but My Hero is set in a world not unlike our own. In fact, aside from his green hair, the main character seemed like someone I might have known in middle school: a small, meek nerd type who is always scribbling something in his journal, always knew more than he was letting on... someone you wanted as a friend, whether you realized it or not. Izuku Midoriya as a character is as close to the shojo trope of a wallflower main lead as you could get. When we meet him, he's quirkless and is often bullied for by his childhood frienemy, Katsuki Bakugou. He's kinda squirrely, kinda spazzy, but feels like a grounded character because his golden heart is his most defining attribute. Midoriya has no illusions about what he is. He knows he's weak. He knows that people look down on him. But he is just… good. His goodness is infallible and his goodness rings true in everything he does, including when he risks his life to save said bully in episode two.

Conversely, while Midoriya is full of impressionistic verve, Bakugou turns the tables on the typical second lead shonen stereotype because he's not some edgelord that wants revenge for his slaughtered family. He actually has both parents at home and lives in a nice house and neighborhood. He doesn't have some kind of revenge fantasy playing in his head on his journey to become the best hero... he's just a fucking dick. A dick with a chip on his shoulder because his whole life people have told him that he's the better than his peers... and when Midoriya proves to Bakugou that natural talent isn't everything, he must grapple with the idea that world wasn't everything he thought it was.

Midoriya doesn't automatically become a cool kid after attaining his quirk from his idol, All Might, either. He doesn't stop being socially awkward. Midoriya still nerds out when it comes to All Might and he still takes copious notes on every hero he encounters, his classmates or otherwise. Midoriya has a goal but he doesn't have a grand plan. There's no shortcut to the end, only day after day of hard work and determination and figuring shit out on his own. Since he is the protagonist, we see the reasoning behind everything he does and this fact grounds the world of My Hero Academia for me. We see Midoriya fail and win and fail again, but we never stop rooting for him because we know he is smarter and more capable than his awkwardness allows him to show the world.

We follow Midoriya during some of the darkest times of his life, including when he learns that he would never develop a quirk. What hurt him more than the doctor delivering this news was his mother's fervent apologies rather than words of encouragement. Because even without a quirk, Midoriya could have done anything he wanted to, had he had the support of his family. In shonen anime the parents are usually convenient plot devices or they are dead. In My Hero, though, Midoriya has a close and communicative relationship with his mother. One of the more powerful scenes involving Inko Midoriya is when she refuses to let Midoriya go back to his dream school despite his protests. She explains that, first and foremost, she is his mother and her duty is to keep him safe. When I see this scene I always choke up because this is how humans act and I don't think I've seen it in another shonen before. I hear the common argument, “Well, he's training to become a hero. He's gonna get hurt.” as a justification of why Inko should be fine with Midoriya's broken bones. And while logistically that may be true, we know that most parents wouldn't feel that way. It makes sense as a narrative, given what we know about Midoriya and Inko's relationship.

Something I also love about this series is that every character has a fail stop, a logical reason why they aren't as OP as possible: if Todoroki uses his right side too much he gets frostbite and if he abuses his left he gets burned. If Ururaka overexerts her Zero Gravity, she gets motion sickness. Even All Might, Midoriya's mentor and the strongest hero in the world™, cannot be in his hero form for more than three hours a day. Every character must learn to recognize and live with their shortcomings, because even heroes need to find their place in the universe... and rely on those who fill the empty spaces around them. Because this show, despite it's taglines and ultimate moves, thrives on the logic of balance, of give and take accepting that no one can go at it completely alone, I realized that it was nothing like the aforementioned anime. It was so much more.

Like my friend told me three years ago, on a surface My Hero Academia is about superheroes. It's about capes and costumes and training montages and redemption arcs and all the things that we nerds love... But beneath the surface, My Hero Academia is about recognizing your own power. Izuku Midoriya isn't a hero because he inherited All Might's quirk. He's a hero because, to the very marrow in his bones, he does what is right. Izuku strives to be better than his own self doubt and the world telling him he's not good enough, even though most times he ends up crying his eyes out. He embodies the will to succeed that we all have within us when we find our passions, whether it be beginning your fitness journey with some anime on the elliptical, bagging that nine-to-five job, or something more substantial, like training, despite the odds, to become a hero who saves people with a smile on his face.

#my hero academia #boku no academia #anime #plus ultra

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starfaring-princelotor · 5 years

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Ranting anon. I have a lot. I’ll try and split this into pieces. I wouldn’t say that Lotor was my absolute favorite character, but he was an enjoyable and interesting one. He was a more refined antagonist (not necessarily a villain) who had every capacity of being a great ally and friend. I won’t lie, I liked the idea of Allura and Lotor together, (1/?)

As a parallel to Zarkon and Honerva by being a Galra/Altean power couple that fought for good instead of evil. Lotor is clever and diplomatic and poised, so I honestly thought that he could help Allura cool down her impulsive nature and rash temper and help her become a good leader through example. (2/?)

But in the end, all we got was Lotor giving her an ego boost that in the end didn’t even matter because she dropped him like a hot potato in what feels like a forced “girl power!!” Moment. And I feel like that’s a big problem with how Allura’s character was handled. (3/?)

She’s meant to be this wise, kind, but fierce leader lady, but unlike say, Zelda (another warrior princess,) she doesn’t display the patience or level-headedness that Zelda does, despite people making numerous comparisons between the two. The argument that she’s inexperienced falls through halfway through the series at the very least. Allura never takes any steps to curb her temper or his pushy nature. (4/?)

And somehow no one calls her out on it! A big red flag for me was her reaction when Keith was revealed to be half galra and she just…turned fucking mean for no reason. And while Keith felt guilty for something he shouldn’t have felt guilty for, everyone else was…taking her side? (6/?)

And basically the matter is resolved by him mostly apologizing and her kind of mumbling a half-assed sorry. She was literally being racist to someone she called a friend right until she found out about his heritage. Despite him having done absolutely nothing to her. And no one called her out on it. That pissed me off. It feels like the paladins personalities suffered in order to make Allura look good. Like their moralities and personalities got tossed out the window to revolve around her. (8/8)

A forewarning to Lotura shippers, I never liked the ship in the first place, so if you are looking for validation about Lotura or even Allura herself, this rant is not for you. Allow me to pitch in my own two cents about myself, Allura, the Paladins, and the comparison referring to Zelda.

Anon, let me just say this first, I adore reading the asks you sent because all of it was basically the biggest problem I had with Allura the second she was revealed in Voltron. And the main reason for that? Was how she introduced herself by being a glaringly-obvious Princess-brat trope that does not think before she decides to speak. This was her first rash and impulsive act as a “royal” Princess.

This is why I have a hard time believing those who say Allura’s racism towards the Galra is valid because, I do not know about you, but being cryogenically frozen during the heat of war then waking up and thinking the main important thing to do is call someone’s ears hideous? What happened to “the war is still fresh in her mind”? And no, suddenly opening up a journal to remember “Oh, yeah, the war! Zarkon evil! I should be angry!” does not fly with me.

I am not saying her trauma is not real, only her reaction to it is slightly misplaced.

In any case, let us move on to the comparison of Allura and I being similar to Honerva and Zarkon. Oddly enough, I did not see this clicking at all in the show. Mostly because, in terms of what happened between them story-wise, Allura and I are more like Alfor and Zarkon. And this is just based off their relationship. Maybe I am a man who strives more for platonic relationships in shows aimed towards children, but I really did not feel the romance at all in Lotura.

Not even with the sickening way she suddenly started pining after me at the realization that I am half-Altean.

And this is the big point in the show. Zarkon and Honerva loved each other not because of their race, but because they just do. Alfor and Zarkon? They both use their power as royals to achieve a greater good. Except, in the case of Allura, she chose to commit unspeakable acts of betrayal based on feelings. Sounds oddly familiar to Alfor, no? Sacrificing all of Altea to ensure she lives? Because he is such a good father, pure of heart who must protect his daughter at the expense of not one, but two entire planets.

He loves her so much, he sacrificed his own people for her. That is why Allura is more like her father in that aspect. Both rulers let their feelings control their actions. Throughout the entire 8 seasons of Voltron, Allura has constantly gone either completely irrational or completely poised for the public, never in between. She does her self-sacrificing bit way too many times and, when she coincidentally lives afterwards, she puts herself on a pedestal as if she was right in her self-indulgent martyr actions.

Which she most certainly is not, because it is common knowledge that if you want to help people, you should be actively staying alive to do so. It is as though once she believed all “her” people died, she has no real purpose to stay around after her grand plan of eradicating all the “evil” Galra from space gets completed. I am sorry to say, or perhaps not, but she really does remind me of a terrible Mary Sue who can do no wrong. Alive or dead.

And this shit? Gets brushed aside or ignored by a majority of the Paladins. I will go ahead and blame it that most of them are all very, very young and lack the experience to speak out against those in charge. In fact, the only two who spoke against her in any sense were Shiro and Keith, even Pidge for family reasons. Shiro when he wanted to support putting myself on the throne and Keith? Well, that is a bit more complicated.

Anyone remember the scene where Keith kept telling Allura that he does not want to hear a lecture from her, and she does it anyways because she is just looking out for Voltron and emotionally guilting him is the best way to go about it? No? Oh, right, maybe it was because she acted like a mother admonishing him for “shirking” his responsibilities. I do not even need to go on about how much I heavily dislike one of the two female members mothering her teammates.

You know what would have been a great development here? If she supported him instead of “disciplining” him as if he stayed out past midnight. Maybe not even support him! Just be like “Okay, I know this is important for you, so tell us what we need to do to help you. We’re a team and as a team we will help you however we can.”

In this sense, Shiro was trusting Keith and doing the right thing by giving him the space he needed to find himself. Allura, on the other hand, was pushy and ultimately did not care at all for him as a person, but him as a useful Paladin tool. If he was so revered as the Black Paladin, then should she not be, I do not know, following his orders by the T? Or is her role as a royal, Altean Princess whose spirit is connected to Voltron more important?

And even before all this, she believes her and Keith are supposedly buddies now since she gave a half-assed apology for being a racist cunt to him. No one, I guarantee you, no one forgets racist comments, regardless of repaired friendships. Especially when her cold-shoulder and outright blatant ignorance is being seen as “Oh, it’s okay for her to feel like this! What do we know, we’re just humans from Earth who have apparently never read a history book.”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details about why comparing Zelda and Allura are the same people, let me just say this concerning Allura’s hot-headed temper and unchecked racism involving a relationship with myself. That shit does not work and Allura should have taken the time to sort herself out before mixing in a “loving” relationship with an Altean and Galran man. I am all for equal support in a couple, but she did nothing to support myself as a person because she never saw both sides of my heritage.

Allura only saw Altean blood and hyperfixated on that alone. Which, do I even need to spell out how terrible it is to judge someone based on their appearance? Based on their race? Whether in a good or bad light, she once again goes from “I will not have some quiznaking Galra on my ship” to “Your mother was Honerva? You’re Altean!” mode. It is fine to be prideful, but she should have already known the dangers of being too prideful of one’s race.

Considering she is a royal, considering she was raised with political knowledge, considering her father and the Emperor of the Galra Empire worked together, Allura should have been aware of her Achilles Heel and understand her responsibilities.

Okay, now, Allura being like Zelda?

Alright, I only played a handful of LoZ games, but even I know that Allura is absolutely nothing like Zelda, even with both of them having the Princess title.

We already established that Allura is way too rash and irrational when under any duress. Even when shit is not going down, her way of thinking is very straight forward and linear, disregarding the bigger picture as a whole for her own closeted judgements. Allura has even ignored her royal advisor’s advice too many times to count, excusing her reasoning as “It’s the only way, Coran. I must do this.”

Zelda? Zelda does not, at all, follow Allura’s way of thinking. In fact, OoT has a similar plot to Allura and myself. Link skips 7 years of his life, wakes up to Hyrule being controlled by Ganondorf, and the Princess is MIA. Though, if any of you have played the game, then you know that the Princess was actively trying to save the kingdom. Not just Hylians, but Zoras and Gorons as well.

And the way she accomplished this was by disguising herself as Sheik. Not because she was a coward, but because she knew the importance that came with being a Princess, the next heir to rule, and the one who has the Triforce of Wisdom under her control. Key word here: WISDOM. Something Allura did not display at all in the show.

If we are comparing Zelda to any character, she is more like the exiled Prince than Allura herself. Both Zelda and myself have the wisdom and first-hand experience of suffering under active war. Both actively saved, or tried to save, those they came across. And both understood the political discourse that hurt everyone, not just one specific race. Everyone.

But if that is the case, then Link would be similar to Allura in the sense that they both woke up to disaster. The big difference between Link and Allura? Link would not have killed Sheik once he revealed himself to be Zelda. Not even because Sheik was being deceiving. Link would understand why Zelda had to hide for her own safety, because she was vital to the plan to restore balance to Hyrule.

Even if Link was miffed about Zelda not being truthful? He knows that, under no circumstances, can they chance the risk to kill her over his own personal feelings.

“But that doesn’t mean Zelda never curbed her temper!”

In Twilight Princess, when the kingdom was already starting to fall under evil clutches, Zelda teams up with Midna, an exiled Princess of the Twilight world. I can not imagine how helpless Zelda felt in the face of Zant overthrowing the kingdom, but did she go off and leave the citizens to suffer for all of eternity? No. She accepted aid from those who were willing, even the Princess of the other world.

And, on top of that, Zelda understood that Midna’s world and her own were like two sides of a coin. They must coexist with each other to achieve peace. In fact, I vaguely remember Zelda sacrificing herself to help Midna. Imagine that. Using your powers to help the “enemy” for the greater good. Tell me when Allura helped the Galra out of her own free will? Her own understanding that the Galra need her help just like every other race in the universe?

No, the BoM does not count. Not with her attitude shining through after her “Zarkon is in power because you guys are cowards!” spiel. Not when she begrudgingly helped save Warlord Lahn while simultaneously profiling him out of spite with “Did you buy those weapons or steal them?” And no, not when she built Sincline with myself with the intention to harvest unlimited quintessence then immediately turn around and aid in murdering me, the Emperor of the Galra Empire, over a weak accusation.

Overall, Allura really is the type of person to barge into other people’s problems, claim “I am here to help you all!”, then throw a hissy fit when people ask for specific aid rather than follow her “My way or the highway” attitude. Terrible writing or not, she was always like this since the very beginning. It is kind of like…she had many chances to improve, but she just made her own situation worse and refused to stop to reflect upon herself.

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aproblematicpanda · 4 years

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Harry Potter? For the in-depth fandom ask

Hi thank you! ♥ I will use the books for my answers, since I didn’t really like most of the movies. I apologize if I mix up some of the characters, I’ve only read the books in my native language so I will have to google for some of the names in English. :’D

Top 5 favorite characters: Minerva McGonagall, Luna Lovegood, Fred & George Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley. Other characters you like: The golden trio obviously, Molly, Dobby, Draco Malfoy, ... There are not a lot of characters I dislike. Least favourite characters: Umbridge, for obvious reasons. Otps: Hermione and Ron. Notps: I don’t think I have any? I’m not very invested in shipping when it comes to the HP fandom, I pretty much keep an open mind to everything? Except incest but I’ve never seen anyone ship anything like that, so. Favourite friendships: Harry, Ron and Hermione, obviously, and I also really liked Fren, George and Lee, and Lavender and Parvati. Favourite family: The Weasleys Favourite episodes: / Favourite book: Prisoner of Azkaban is probably my favorite book. Favourite quotes: "If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." "But you know, happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." "Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, 'It unscrews the other way.’" "There is no need to call me ‘sir,’ Professor." And probably more. The books have so many amazing scenes, funny, inspirational, sad, hopeful, ... It was really hard to pick just a few. Best musical moment: / Moment that made you fangirl the hardest: Ehh... I mean, obviously I was rooting for Harry and the ending was a satisfying one, just like every other time Harry beat Voldemort, but the moment that made me fangirl the hardest would probably be Hermione punching Draco in the face. xD When it really disappointed you: The only truly disappointing thing about the book is how House-Elves are treated. Other than that, the only time I’m disappoint is literally every time JK Rowling decides it’s a good idea to open her mouth. Saddest moment: The moment Harry breaks down in Dumbledore’s chambers after Sirius dies gives me chills every. damn. time I reread the book. Most well done character death: Oh god, this is so hard because most of the deaths really hit me hard Favourite guest star: / Favourite cast member: / Character you wish was still alive: Honestly? Probably Hedwig. Maybe Fred. One thing you hope really happens: That JK Rowling’s Twitter account is banned so she doesn’t have a damn platform anymore. Most shocking twist: When did you start reading: I think the first three books were already out when I started to read them. My classmates kept telling me to do it and I was in that annoying phase where I refused to dive into anything that was this massively popular - but I’m glad I eventually caved because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have grown up in this fandom and that means I would’ve had an entirely different experience. Now I can still say I grew up with the books and I’m glad I did. Best animal/creature: I’m a gigantic sucker for unicorns and I’m not sorry about it. xD Favourite location: I mean, Hogwarts is amazing, the descriptions of the castle never get old. Trope you wish they would stop using: Ehh... I honestly don’t know? One thing this book does better than others: I love how this show has such an inspired, dedicated, creative fanbase. The amount of HP related art, fanfiction, headcanons, ... out there is mindblowing. I’ve never quite seen that happen in any other fandom and it’s part of why I love this one as much as I do. Like how people can take a character that’s mentioned maybe a couple of times in the books and they create so much content for them to the point where I’ve actively had to stop myself from writing an answer to this questions because the answer isn’t canon, that’s admirable. Funniest moments: Fred and George wrecking havoc on Umbridge and finally leaving the castle after they get caught is without a doubt the funniest scene I can think of. Couple you would like to see: Like I said, I was never really into shipping anyone with anyone. I enjoy quite a lot of fanon ships I see on Tumblr, though. Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: / Favourite outfit: Every outfit I can think of is influenced by the movies so I don’t really have an answer to this. I would’ve loved to see Hermione’s dress to the Yule Ball, though, and the Patil sisters’. Oh, and Fleur’s wedding dress. Favourite item: The Marauder’s map. Do you own anything related to this show: No. What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in: I’m a Slytherin. Most boring plotline: I can’t think of anything. The passage that bores me the most is the one where the Minister of Magic meets the Muggle Prime Minister but that’s not a plotline. I guess everything is just so well thought of, everything that’s in the books in there for a reason and I wouldn’t cut anything out of it. Most laughably bad moment: As much as I dislike JK Rowling, she wrote seven brilliant books. I can’t think of a bad moment. There are plot holes, sure, and things that really fucking bug me, but no laughably bad moments. At least, not any that I can think of right now. The fact that she gave Cho Chang two last names as a name is a bad moment, though - but it’s not laughably. It’s just more proof that JK Rowling is a terrible person. Best flashback/flashfoward if any: The memories Snape shows to Harry, and the ones they both get to see of each other during their Occlumency lessons. Most layered character: I love the character development Ron goes through. Most one dimensional character: Ehh. There were a lot of important characters so it makes sense that not all of them got the layers they deserved. Right now nobody who’s relevant to the plot comes to mind as an answer? Scariest moment: Well, when Harry and Dumbledore came back from finding the fake Horcrux, that had me scared. Not for their lives (because it was obvious that Harry would live and Dumbledore would die) but because it felt like all of Dumbledore’s plans would be ruined so that’d probably be the scariest moment for me? Grossest moment: Ehh... I would probably throw up if I had witnessed Nagini sliding out of Bathilda’s dead body so I’m gonna go with that one, that must’ve been horrifying for Harry, especially because he spares Hermione the details. Best looking male: Well the books name Cedric Diggory as the most attractive one, so... Let’s go with that one then? Best looking female: Fleur and Ginny Who you’re crushing on (if any): I would probably be all over Ginny if I had gone to Hogwarts. Favourite cast moment: / Favourite transportation: A Thestral! Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): I really love the descriptions of Hogwarts. Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Oh god, so. many. Off the top of my head, here we go. 1. The carriages that bring the students back to the train station are mentioned specifically at the end of the fourth book and yet Harry can’t see the Thestrals until the beginning of the fifth book. 2. In what world are the Weasleys poor? Hermione specifically mentions in the seventh book that you can increase the quantity of food and Harry gets more wine for Slughorn and Hagrid with a spell in the sixth book, so no wizard or witch would have to spend any money on food, ever. And like with clothes and books and everything, why buy multiple ones? Just buy one and then duplicate it like when Hermione did it with the medallion? 3. Harry randomly remembering the phone number to get into the Ministry of Magic after almost an entire year, having heard them once: please. I started rereading the fifth book like two months ago for the gazillionth time and I already don’t remember them anymore. 4. Supposedly there’s a curse on the position as the DADA professor ever since Voldemort asked for the job, so there’s a new teacher every year, but Professor Quirrel is introduced in a way that makes it seem as if he has been teaching there for quite a while and other students (like Fred and George) treat him as such - seems to me like the curse was only activated with Harry coming to Hogwarts but that’s not what’s canon. 5. Voldemort conveniently waiting for the end of the school year each year to make his move. 6. The school year somehow always starts on a Monday and the Hogwarts express always leaves on September 1 which would mean that September 1 was a Sunday for seven years in a row. 7. Why, WHY, would they use feathers and parchment? What the hell is wrong with pen and paper? Or things like torches, when electricity has been a thing since forever? And the same goes for using owls to send letters, or the memos that are used in the Ministry of Magic: just text or e-mail, dudes. One sloppy ‘this doesn’t work here because there’s too much magic in the air’ just doesn’t cut it for me, especially because Harry does wear a watch, for instance. I probably have more but this is all I can come up with right now. xD Best promo: My childhood best friend bugging me about the books until I finally caved and started to read them. xD At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: Literally the first chapter.

Send me a show/fandom and I’ll answer

#hp #ask

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thedovahcat · 5 years

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And Then There Was...Wildstar

Since today is the anniversary of the shut down announcement, or at least I think it is, and cuz I’m a copycat and I’ve seen a few people’s introspective posts flying around my dash today, it’s time to add my experience to the pile.

Where do I even begin with Wildstar? It came around during an EXTREMELY volatile time in my life, aka the end of the teens and my early twenties. The real ‘formative years’ if you asked my opinion on it.

I had been an avid WoW fan since I could first play at the age of 13, which had to have been about 2007-2008 abouts. When 2013 or so rolled around, I had been told by friends that a new MMO was coming out, and that it was all space-western-y, my two greatest loves.

Naturally I waited, along with everyone else for a beta, and got in and instantly fell in love with what we’d come to know as Nexus. I was star-struck. The art, the music, the style, the humor, everything hit home with me like no other game had at that point, and I was ready to throw WoW to the wind to go full time and soak up as much of those space rays as I could. And it was even better because it was going to be with friends! I had already established I wanted to bring Rev over and start anew in the Dominion. I had so many new plotlines and ideas whirling around in my head faster than a tornado over a bee farm.

Unfortunately, during this time as well, I saw Wildstar as an escape.

I was being bullied away from WoW at the time by someone who wanted what I had. You think, “Who would do that?? What did they try to do, Dovah?” Many things really. At first they were small aggressions disguised as an interest in trying to befriend me, then that curtain dropped and the aggressions got bigger and bigger.

It was like watching something rot out from the inside. Was I absolutely jealous they were trying to steal a close-now-best friend from me?? Absolutely. I knew it was intentional. I could see it written on the walls. And while I was accustomed to this kind of shit occurring in real life and on the internet to some degree, it only really hurt because for a while, nobody believed me.

Rumors had been planted, people had been told lies and god knows what else, that I was the bad guy of this story. Accused of doing everything that was being done towards me at the same time. It was just another episode of ‘Who Started The Drama’ on Wyrmrest Accord, business as usual amiright?

And I won’t lie, I did try to retaliate several times to stop everything. I got desperate. Said things I meant, said things I didn’t mean, to the point where I couldn’t tell which was which anymore. Everything was wrapped in a huge burrito of panic and fear. And will I be ashamed of that, possibly for the rest of my life? Absolutely positively one hundred percent yes.

After a while, I didn’t fight back anymore. I didn’t make public call-outs, naming names. Sure, did I tell people about it if they asked? Of course, but in private only (because it turned out they too had suffered a similar situation like I was at the time.) Or, sometimes I told people unprompted in private because we happened to talk about our experiences being caught in drama, and I never hesitated to give my side of the story. The side that was RARELY ever heard, to my knowledge. I wanted as many people as possible to know what this person was like and what they were doing to me. For my own sanity, and for the sake of getting the truth out there in some form or another. It was relatively contained as far as I knew, so I rolled over onto my back, ready to accept my lot in life once again as someone’s punching bag because they were jealous of me and what I had and just would NOT go away no matter what happened. Naturally, I thought it really was all my fault that this was happening. We all jump to that conclusion at least once or ten times.

And then came Wildstar, and it had started to look very tempting.

I could start over. I could get away from it all. I could play with my friends ‘in secret’ and not have to worry about being slandered or god knew whatever ELSE had been done at that point on WoW, or wherever else.

Foolish was I to think that my troubles had ended there.

Many people from WoW came to play Wildstar, which was both a blessing and a curse. Moreso the latter in my case.

The person in question found out, began to main the same faction, and just put their hands on everything all over again. I felt as though I had hit a reset button, everything just started over once again. They told people about me, they got me blacklisted and blocked from one of the biggest RP guilds ever to hit the server at the time, and who knows where it branched out from there.

I went silent again. Kind of like a dog with its tail between its legs. The Dominion was no place for me, so, what was I to do?? I didn’t want to abandon this game and world I’d come to love so much in such a short amount of time.

I had never taken an interest in the Exiles. For some reason they hadn’t appealed to me at first. They were the overrated good guys. The underdogs that would always win. I wanted to play the ‘bad guys’ and do my whole spiel about making them more than JUST the bad guys.

But suddenly? As dramatic as it sounds, the Exiles, suddenly sounded very appropriate, in terms of matching up to how I felt.

Exiled. For stupid shit ‘crimes’ I never ‘committed.’

So, I rolled up my sleeves and rerolled Rev’s character, deciding to branch him out in a different direction entirely. I ended up with Roger, and was dumped out into the Gambler’s Ruin, the complete shamble-of-an-arkship. And after that? The frosty bitter cold of the Northern Wastes.

My friend had offered to make another character with me, so that we could play together without being bothered. I had a glimmer of hope. Everything wasn’t over and I wasn’t dead yet (but man did I feel it) and so I pressed onwards.

I saw Algoroc for the first time and all its rolling plains and roans and the mountains and the whole wide open range. It felt so much different than the stormy Levian Bay, or the dark and gloomy Ellevar. The music was lighter, more upbeat, more ‘western’, which is silly because I had stated earlier that that was what I was looking forward to the most. The WESTERN COWBOY YEEHAW aspect of it.

Things were brighter, no less colorful, happier, hopeful. There was SO much land to explore and so many things to do. I was ready. Ready to start all over one more time. So I did.

I made my way through the area, learning about the Exiles and their culture, and the Eldan and whatever sinister happenings they had going in beneath the surface.

Before I knew it, I had reached Thayd, and was absolutely blown away by the size of the city. I was used to large environments from WoW, no doubt. But Thayd felt so interactive for some reason or another. Maybe it was the art style or the NPCs inhabiting it (and the players of course). But it felt alive. There were so many nooks and crannys to get lost in, how will I ever see this whole entire city?? I wondered.

It was a broken mish-mash of all that the Exiles slapped haphazardly together. Different people that didn’t fit together, trying to make something out of lots of little pieces of seemingly nothing.

It was a whole symbolic thing for me essentially.

After that I felt like I was home, in yet another dramatic sense.

Thayd felt right, what with its trashy streets and mismatched themes. Illium and its golden and crimson towers had never struck me as somewhere I belonged.

From that point on, things blur. I explored Galeras after that, introduced to the dire situation that was the Dominion descending upon the Exiles, ready to blast them all to kingdom come to reclaim a planet they believed theirs. I felt the tension, in a good way. It was a great story waiting to unfold, I thought. And I get to see it all from the beginning and be a part of it. I was absolutely ecstatic.

And then, from there, I went to Whitevale. One of the most FRUSTRATING ZONES I will never forget. I don’t even remember why. Maybe it was the size. Over time, I grew to love it in its own weird way, only because I departed for the damn MOON (Farside) afterwards and realized I hated the lack of gravity.

But, despite all. I had so much fun.

I thought about Roger and how he’d come to the Exiles, because I still wanted him to have a connection to the Dominion somewhere. I wanted to try exploring new character tropes and such with him, I wanted to be bold and take chances with ideas and do things I’d rarely seen people do (in my case? Traumatic brain injuries, good going.) I did myresearch, I kept exploring the world, I put all the pieces together little by little and I crafted a story. A story that grew larger and larger and larger and branched out to other characters I created alongside just Roger.

Suddenly I had an entire ‘world’ on my hands. Maybe not one the size of all of Nexus in this instance, but it was ROGER’S world.

I had locations planned thanks to the housing system, I had different story lines going alongside the ‘main one’. Every so often they would mesh and meet up and affect one another, and the ‘world’ would continue to grow from there.

These characters, new as they were, suddenly had lives. They had history, they had jobs, they had all those little aspects of fictional characters that bring them to life. Personalities, likes and dislikes, feelings, all of it. I was no stranger to creating characters, of course they did! In fact, most of them were based off many existing characters I had already HAD, just Wildstar-ified.

Over time, they became their own separate entities, only because they had grown and branched out into different directions I had never dreamed they would.

I don’t remember how long I had been in this enormous creative process of planting my roots. Maybe a year or two? It didn’t really matter. I was having the absolute time of my life.

However, on the back burner I knew all those awful things were still being said about me out there. I continued to play the game and storycraft mostly by myself. I knew if I stayed away from the masses that were WSRP, then no one would ever have any ‘proof’. No one could twist anything I said, or twist interactions I had with people, and use it against me.

You can’t accuse someone of something or things when all they do is play by themselves in their own little box all day long, can you? That was my line of logic.

Naturally I still got blocked from people’s tumblrs and such, which I found out on complete accident when I would try to fav posts. I never showed up to events. I did my artwork and only did artwork of my or my friends characters. Everything was very controlled.

And then one fucking day in August, my name gets tagged in someone’s call out post. At first I fucking panic, because of course. What did I do NOW? I made EXTRA SURE to stay out of everyone’s way. Who could POSSIBLY HAVE A BEEF WITH ME-

I checked the post.

Turns out, I wasn’t the one being called out.

No.

It was that person who’d been HOUNDING me for several years at that point, who was finally being called out.

The original poster had mentioned my name because, according to their words, and I’ll never forget it, ‘they heard through the grapevine’ that all that nasty crap had happened to me. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who had been treated this way. MANY other people had been. There had to have been a good two handfuls of them out there, maybe more, who had been harassed by this person and their crummy friends. I was named in the post, and all the abuse I had took was relayed to the entire damn community (however it was worded in a way that it had to have been from an outsider’s perspective who’d heard the rumors spread about me, and never spoke to me directly. Cuz I didn’t know ANY OF THESE people and some of the details were wrong...but I digress.)

My business was practically on the front page of the Wildstar and WoW RP community (A smaller portion of the latter.) People had known about what happened to some degree. They had been on the receiving end of these rumors, they heard all the bullshit, they looked me up, they saw I had no dirt to my name. Never did anything to anybody. Maybe some of the stories I had told got relayed to them via playing telephone with other people, I’ll have no real way of knowing for certain.

If people didn’t know me then, they sure knew me NOW, I thought.

It turned into a hot fucking mess after that. People came out with their stories, people got angry at the victims, or at the abuser. There was collateral damage from what I could see from my spot in the corner.

That bad person was supposedly reprimanded by their guild leader for the backlash they received, though I’ll never know how big it actually was. It was probably really small, realistically. But like I said, I don’t know.

It was only then that I was finally believed. Like, completely. There were always little shreds of doubt with people, but this? This blew it out of the water.

I wasn’t at fault. People saw it wasn’t my fault.

I felt…

Liberated?? Like the shackles of this depressive, anxious...whatever DISASTER state I was in, finally broke off. And so QUICKLY too. I didn’t really know what the hell to do. There was nothing I COULD do except move on and try to recover.

It was OVER. It was finally fucking over and I was at a loss, because I had grown used to living in a state of panic and sadness and anger and god knows what else.

So, slowly, I started to.

I came to the conclusion, now that it was over, or ‘over’, I wanted to make some new friends.

Roger and company had already been set up and I found very little wiggle room for collaboration with people I didn’t know. So? What better way to fix that than make a new character to use to reach out to new folk?

I grabbed one of my older characters I salvaged from a falling out I had had before this entire post began, fixed him up and threw him into Thayd face first.

And so was the infamous Captain Yaedra reborn. With an e added to his fake name because it was ‘Yadra’ before, yet for some reason both names are said exactly the same way.

I had no idea what to do with him. I hated elves. I hated long ears. They were boring. Everyone was making them and beautifying them and whatever else. I was salty. I wanted to create a raccoon more than I wanted an elf.

The zombie aesthetic definitely helped me some.

I played through all the Mordesh areas, trying to learn as much as I could about their history, about Grismara, about the Contagion.

A zombie story...it utterly fascinated me. And considering I had not changed Captain’s outfit design from his original self in the slightest? Once more, I rolled up my sleeves and began to craft a world. Another world.

Yaedra’s entire world. And by extension, my own version of a portion of Grismara.

His hometown, his career, his life, his family, every little bit. I brought it all to life once more, and soon found myself living in the ‘past’ as much as I was living in the ‘present’. As far as character timelines go.

During all this, I tried being nice to random people, or I saw art and commented on it, I tried to be more open with the community, I even joined another small guild and in the end I ended up making some really great friends who I still talk to today!

They loved what I had created. And I loved their creations in turn. We formed a tight knit group of ‘heroes’ if you would. Got into all kinds of IC shenanigans. It was fun, it was silly, it was dramatic. I didn’t feel any pressure to be anyone in particular. I felt like I could be myself, and so could Captain. We were where we belonged. And it was fantastic. And still is.

From there, I met some of their friends, and so on and so on, and I did end up gaining a small bit of presence in the community via commissions and doing my own artwork as well. Things were finally nice, and calm.

I felt like I had waded through a war of some kind, and finally, at long last, it was OVER. Peace had finally COME. I had gone through a lot of mental trauma, but as the months and several years went on, I slowly came around. I tried very hard to. My dragon scales grew thicker as time went on, and my flames certainly hotter.

And, after a while… I found myself playing Wildstar less and less. Not because I hated it, not at all. But because it no longer felt like a crutch to me. I no longer felt as though I needed it to stay afloat. I had grown and changed, for the better no doubt. I learned to stand my ground from all the knocks I had taken, I learned to start speaking up when things were being done to me that weren’t right, or nice, or whatever. Did I end some friendships that way? Sadly, yes.

But I was done. I wouldn’t be ANYONE’S punching bag anymore.

The Exiles toughened me up. I wasn’t about to take ANYONE’S crap and neither was Captain. Both of us, fists BARED.

My time on Nexus dwindled even more.

I went back to WoW out of habit, and spent more time there. Soon enough I was hardly logging onto Wildstar at all. Many people were bored of the game’s lack of ...everything. Content most certainly. You could only do the same things so many times. I wasn’t part of a huge RP guild that constantly had events going, though I was by the end (but even that was kind of flakey because people just weren’t as interested in the game as they had once been.)

I hadn’t thought much about my story lines or characters. They had, over time, fallen into situations and such that I had long resolved. My ‘characters’ were tired of adventure and drama, and I wanted to give them a chance to have their happily ever afters, via ‘soft-retiring’ them. I still wrote stuff and drew art on the side, just….less of it.

In the months before Wildstar, I rarely thought about Nexus at all.

Until the horn sounded with Wildstar’s imminent closing.

For months prior to that, I had been sitting and watching. I knew it had been on the way. NC SOFT being...NC SOFT of course (with Carbine’s mismanagement in general, though at the time I did not know about this,) made this more than obvious.

So it didn’t come as a surprise to me.

If anything, I felt a sort of subdued melancholy about it.

If I can compare it to anything, it was like watching a pet or something grow old. There was the initial excitement of a new friend, and the beginning years were amazing and fast and fun filled and emotional. And then over time, things grew comfortable. I didn’t need to give Nexus my full attention anymore. ‘We’ had this ‘understanding.’ I could always go back to Nexus whenever I wanted. I always had a place there waiting for me. Characters, fun, stories, etc.

And then I began to move on.

Wildstar for me was a lot of things. It was a period of mental destruction, it was a period of rebirth and growth for me as a person, it was a reminder of the roller coaster ride that was good and bad times all bundled into one. It was my ‘growing up’ period. It was the rocky road of a transitional phase from the end of my childhood, to the beginning of my adult years.

Yes I know this might sound silly, all over an MMO that barely lasted at all, and the last thing I wanna do is be silly, but it’s how I felt. I’m not going to try to disguise it as something else, because that was what it all was to me.

The months sped by and before I knew it, it was the last day the server was up. Wildstar would be closing that evening or afternoon, or whatever. I don’t recall the time.

I had sat there debating whether or not to attend that final count down.

A part of me wanted to. I wanted to be there, to send off this MMO that had meant so much to me!

But another part of it told me to not go.

In the end, I did not go.

Not because I would be crying, or throwing a fit or whatever.

The main reason I didn’t go, was because I wanted to remember Nexus the way it was. I didn’t want to see people bunched up in one area, being turned into all sorts of critters, I didn’t want the lag to destroy my computer, I didn’t want to see their storm of messages and how sad everyone was, I didn’t want to read the Caretaker’s countdown messages saying how he’d miss us, in his own special way.

To me, all that meant Wildstar was due to die at any moment. That Nexus would suddenly cease to be, that all these things everyone worked so hard on, would just be gone, in the blink of an eye.

I didn’t want that to be the last memory I had of that place.

And so, the shut down came. The night went on.

I woke up the next morning, and everything felt ok, for the most part. Yes I felt like I was missing a piece of myself, but it was a lot smaller than I can say for some people.

The hole I had in my heart had mostly patched itself up with nicer memories. With the possibilities that were yet unexplored.

As far as I WAS, and am, aware? Nexus isn’t dead. Not at all. It’s just sleeping, for right now. It’s taking a well needed rest. It’s not really gone.

All the stories, all the characters, they exist in our head spaces. They still go on. I still write for them occasionally.

If anything, I feel like they have even MORE to explore now.

These days, people are working or playing already on private servers, and while I entertain the idea of joining one or finding another group to play with… Well, that’s all it really ends up being. An idea.

I’m perfectly happy with what I got out of Wildstar, and what I got to take away from it and keep.

I grew as a person, albeit the hard way (but that’s just how it is sometimes.) My creativity grew, my ability to make better stories and characters grew alongside that. I made new friends that I still keep to this day. That bad person got their just desserts and my most-likely-over-exaggerated-because-I’m-sure-people-have-gone-through-worse-torment was finally put to rest. I had more confidence in myself, yada yada… You get the idea.

Everything had resolved, for the most part.

Everything was said and done, regarding that chapter of my life.

And what a ride it was.

BUT I have to say, if there’s one specific thing I favor, that I got from this entire putrid mess that I would do it all over again for??

I got Cap back.

So, thank you for returning my raccoon to me, Nexus. I’ll never forget it. One day when those private servers are finished and the game is mostly restored, I’ll definitely come back to play through it again, and most likely come up with even more new adventures for me to write and explore.

Until then, cupcakes! Dovah signing off on this...eight page story-rant!

#wildstar #i didnt mention EVERYTHING in here because it would be even longer #but for the most part this was my experience #and i wouldnt trade it for the world

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ranier-layarte · 5 years

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LONG Character Survey: Ranier Leveilleur

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Ranier Kyran Layarte Leveilleur

NICKNAME: Ran, Raven

AGE: 21-25 (depending on expac)

BIRTHDAY: 1st Sun of the 2nd astral moon

ETHNIC GROUP: Au ra (Xaela)

NATIONALITY: Eorzean – From Ul'dah

LANGUAGE(S): Eorzean,

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: No

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Isn't this the same as the above?

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Married

CLASS: Weapon Master

• Proficient in almost all martial weapons.

• Tends to carry multiple weapons at all times.

• Prefers Axes out of all the bladed weaponry

HOMETOWN / AREA: Ul'dah

CURRENT HOMETOWN/ AREA: Shirogane Mansion

PROFESSION(S): WoL, Scion, Machinist, Businessman, Crafter

PHYSICAL: Extremely fit, exercises daily. Muscular build

HAIR: Black/Dark Blue

EYES: Crimson

NOSE: Average, straight, roman-esque

FACE: Straight essentially a greek nose. (At least if I had to try and describe it)

LIPS: A bit on the thinner side, very lightly pink.

COMPLEXION: A mix of Fair and Medium?

BLEMISHES: None

SCARS: Scar on left thigh from stab wound, Scar on left midsection, and upper right thigh.

TATTOOS: WoL tattoo on the palm of his right hand. (Working on giving him another)

HEIGHT: 7'4

WEIGHT: 330 LBS/ 150kg

BUILD: Tall, Muscular, Fit,

FEATURES: None

ALLERGIES: None, at least not yet.

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Long hair parted in the middle framing the face. Pulled into a ponytail and held with a silver bead big enough for the tail.

USUAL FACE LOOK: Around 40% expressionless, 30% Scowling, 20% Reflective, 10% happy.

USUAL CLOTHING: Higher end clothing generally a mix of casual with formal preferring long pants and a short sleeved shirt. Boots of some kind and armor of some kind at all times. Either under or over the clothes having a preference for the bulkier armors.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR(S): Dying and thereby becoming unable to prevent future deaths and incidents. A fear of the unknown. (Which is part of why he tries to prepare for so many things)

ASPIRATION(S): Being able to amass enough wealth to live comfortably and to continue making the lives of the less fortunate easier. Helping create a better society for all.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Empathetic, Compassionate, Humanitarian, Perseverance, Fairness, Courageous, Loving, Self discipline, Reliable, Thoughtful, Patient

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Bossy, Jealous, Secretive, Grumpy, Harsh, Aloof, Stubborn, Cruel (Only to enemies but that doesn't really matter to people does it?) Arrogant (In some things though less now)

ZODIAC: Pisces

TEMPERAMENT: Mix of choleric and melancholic.

SOUL TYPE(S): King, Warrior, Server (In that order)

ANIMALS: Raven, Bear

VICE HABIT(S): Training, Fixing machines, Drinking, Rubbing Chin,

FAITH: The Twelve (Loosely)

GHOSTS?: I mean if you've seen them you can't deny them.

AFTERLIFE?: With everything we see there has to be right?

REINCARNATION?: Yes, it's clear there is.

ALIENS?: Yes.

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Leftist

ECONOMIC PREFERENCE: Prosperous, everyone has what they need. Along with the means to go beyond that if they are willing and able.

SOCIO POLITICAL POSITION: I think there’s enough to go on.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Higher end of the spectrum, attended sharlayan schooling for a few years of his life. (Around three) Was home taught and by other teachers. Extensive knowledge in numerous subjects such as Machinery, Technology, Gunsmithing, Gemology, Business. Holding the equivalent of a mixture of Graduate or Masters in the subjects.

FAMILY.

FATHER: Kyran Layarte

MOTHER: Sahar Layarte

SIBLINGS: Kyari Layarte

EXTENDED FAMILY:

NAME MEANING(S): Ranier (Rainier with out the first I Meaning Wise army apparently)Kyran (Beam of Light) Sahar (Early morning or Dawn) Kyari (???)

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: My families connection to history? My connection? My father was one of the survivors of the hotgo tribe also. Does fighting in the Calamity among all the other events count?

FAVORITES.

BOOK: Whatever has his current interest, it can very.

MOVIE PLAY: Does this mean Movie or Play?

5 SONGS:

• “Shock me” Baroness

• “Up In The Air” Thirty Seconds To Mars

• “Rise” League of Legends, Glitch Mob, The Word Alive

• “Unbreakable” Of Mice and Men

• “Drown” Bring Me The Horizon

DEITY: Halone

HOLIDAY: Valentione's day

MONTH: March

SEASON: Fall

PLACE: Beside his wife or workshop.

WEATHER: Light rain

SOUND: The turning of pages, the sound of rain, metal moving against each other.

SCENT(S): Smoke, Metal, Old books, and sweat

TASTE(S): Dulcet, Spicy,

FEEL(S): Rocks, Silk, Smooth metals,

ANIMAL(S): This was listed before.

NUMBER: 1? I don't know.

COLORS: Black, Blue, Red, Gold, Silver

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Metalworking, Singing, Sewing, Gem Cutting, Technology, Smithing, Machinery, Dexterous.

BAD AT: Getting rest even now, Not over exerting himself, Not overthinking potential scenarios that may never happen. Dealing with almost all animals, Even now sometimes talking about what bothers him too well, but he’s gotten much better over the years/expansions.

TURN ONS: Caring, Helpful, Courageous, Educated, Aggressive. Listening, Reliable,

TURN OFFS: Selfishness, Boastful, Belligerent, Cruelty, Intolerant, Racism, Weak willed, Careless,

HOBBIES: Creating new things be it machines, armor, clothes, weapons, tools, etc. Working on the same as before. Reading, Exercising, Cooking. Shopping.

TROPES: Pragmatic Hero, Bad ass boast, Big Fancy House, Chekhov's Gun, Determinator, Don't You Dare Pity Me, Genius Bruiser, Heroic Build, It's All My Fault, No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction, Super toughness, Friend to All Children, The Chosen One, The Ace, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, Always Save The Girl, Berserk Button, Death glare, Excuse me while I multi task, Game face, Hypocrite, Lady and Knight, Not So Stoic, Not So Invincible After all, Red Eyes, Take Warning, Stern Teacher, Undying Loyalty, The Power of Love

AESTHETIC TAGS: Workshops, Tools, Kitchens, Weaponry, Guns, Armor, Fine Clothes, Rain, Feathers, Azure Skies, Romance.

VOICE CLAIM(S): Keith Silverstein, (Speaking voice) John Rzeznik (Singing) John Baizley (Singing)

FC INFO.

MAIN FC(S): Free company? Azure Talons.

ALT FC(S): What?

OLDER FC(S): What?

YOUNGER FC(S): What?

GENDERBENT FC(S): What the fuck?

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1: IF YOU COULD WRITE YOUR CHARACTER YOUR WAY IN THEIR OWN MOVIE, WHAT WOULD IT BE CALLED, WHAT STYLE WOULD IT BE FILMED IN, AND WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?:

• I genuinely don’t know. Something with the grandeur of lord of the rings maybe? But with the ability to add comedy and romance in the proper way. I'm all for serious movies but I enjoy the ability to add a well executed joke or sweet moment. It also would probably not just be a single film. Taking the general events and using my fics as material would probably be fine.

I’d have to think about it a lot more than I will right now

As for the name, well, I don't really have many options. But, probably something with Final Fantasy XIV as the main title. Give it a JRPG title I suppose as a sub title. Sort of like Warriors Dissonance or Uncovered Stories.

Q2: WHAT WOULD THEIR SOUNDTRACK / SCORE SOUND LIKE?:

• Ambient, switching to full of energy, able to convey emotion. Again mentioning LOTR, the score by Howard shore is really great and able to accompany many scenes in such a fantastic manner. As for the other bits perhaps the addition of artist tracks such as from favorite bands and those songs that have meaning to him. Like the ones listed above.

Q3: WHY DID YOU START WRITING THIS CHARACTER?:

• As a way to work on and show that, a character doesn't just have to be overly reliant on tropes and cliches. That those are good as part of them but not as defining traits of them. Along with breaking some of those. Like how all protagonists always have dead parents, what's up with that? I enjoy seeing characters that try to break their molds and be more than that.

Q4: WHAT FIRST ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?:

• My general thing in any game where you can create your own character has always been. To make who you'd want to be in this universe. I did that and then worked on it and reworked things until I got what I have now. So also, yes, he was a self insert.

Q5: DESCRIBE THE BIGGEST THING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR MUSE:

• Hard one I suppose but. I'd say how he is capable of doing so much. Even though I work with it as it is a key part of him, it's still hard to make him feel right, feel human when he's got these clear incredible strengths. He's very proficient at so many things some would maybe say he's a mary sue type of character. I make an effort to work on how he became that way to offset it. So it's a lot of extra work than if I had him being a more archetypal hero of his type. I may dislike this the most but I also like it. Love hate relationship you know?

Q6: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON WITH YOUR MUSE?:

• A good part of our attitudes and personality though on his end they are greater generally. Along with our want to be as best as we can at certain things.

Q7: HOW DOES YOUR MUSE FEEL ABOUT YOU?:

• Honestly, and in my current state. He would probably be very upset with me and to just know me or the hand I have in his creation and self.

Q8: WHAT CHARACTERS DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE INTERESTING INTERACTIONS WITH?

• Alisaie Leveilleur – She is the main one being his main love interest, girlfriend, and wife later. Though overall he sees her as an equal and a partner, which is part of the reason their relationship grows as much as it does. Along with giving someone who he can trust in and rely on, and vice versa.

• Finn Hogveart - Who harasses Ranier often enough especially with his pet and regarding moogles.

• Alphinaud Leveilleur - and him sometimes get along strangely due to Ranier's relationship with his sister. For a long time he tried to spy on Ranier and make sure he was good for his sister even though he knew he was a good person.

• Cid Garlond - Ranier sees him as a mentor of sorts, along with someone that he can bounce ideas off of and work with on projects leading to a solid relationship between the two. The two sometimes bicker regarding their work but it's always just them being passionate for the projects.

• Gerolt Blackthorn – Similar to cid in some ways. Ranier looks up to Gerolt and his ability to continue making such amazing creations. Wanting to learn more regarding the processes means Ranier visits him when possible, bringing some drinks for him when he does. Almost having a relationship like bros. Ranier also sometimes has gone to try and sway Rowena on his behalf to lower his debt.

There are more but I don’t want to make this too much longer.

Q9: WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION TO WRITE YOUR MUSE?

• I do not control the write, also Alisaie.

Q10: HOW LONG DID THIS TAKE YOU TO COMPLETE?:

Uhhhh maybe an hour all together. Over the course of three hours.

==========

Tagged by: @amandafullmetal @lyllyan-weiss

Tagging: @heyafinney @anikisbox and anyone who wants to do it that sees this.

#Ranier Leveilleur #Ranier Layarte #I did the best I could with it with the time i put into it.#I'm not the best at these either Hopefully someone finds new things or interesting #things from it

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laufire · 4 years

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tvd

Top 5 favourite characters: Caroline, Bonnie, Qetsiyah, Tyler, and Klaus (if we include TO Klaus raises to number 2, but here I’m talking exclusively about his run in TVD).

Other characters you like: Lily, Kai, Anna, Katherine, Silas, Vicky, Jeremy, Dorian, Liz, Oscar, Jesse, Carol, Uncle John, Isobel, Pearl, Grams... I loved so, so many dead people in this show xDD

Least favourite characters: Mattttttt. Ugh.

Otps: Caroline/Klaus, Bonnie/Kai, Qetsiyah/Silas, Bonnie/Kai, Caroline/Katherine, Caroline/Tyler, Caroline/Stefan, Anna/Jeremy...

Notps: Caroline/Matt, Bonnie/Elena. I disliked others, but those are the ones that make me raaaaage.

Favourite friendships: I ended up loving Bonnie & Damon’s relationship.

Favourite family: Caroline & Liz!

Favourite episodes: Caroline’s off-switch episode, the series finale, Qetsiyah’s triumph, Elena’s off-switch episode, the last two episodes of s3, the one where Caroline confronts Elena about the sire bond, KC’s blood sharing, basically almsot the entirety of s6...

Favourite season/book/movie: s6, but followed really closely by s8.

Favourite quotes: there’s waaaaay too many. I’m going with Caroline’s “Yeah, it is [a competition]” and Klaus’ extra cynic speech about humanity~~, since they made me fall in love with them.

Best musical moment: Caroline singing in Liz’s funeral *sniffs*

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: the finale. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing :DD

When it really disappointed you: when Bonnie and Kai didn’t make out on my screen.

Saddest moment: I still get a lot of feels about Forwood’s breakup.

Most well done character death: Liz’s.

Favourite guest star: Kai. He’s da best.

Favourite cast member: idk them lol (Candice had some interesting interviews. The dudes were largely all assholes -minus Trevino and McQueen).

Character you wish was still alive: TYLER. My bby :(

One thing you hope really happens: cameos from the cast in Legacies lol. Caroline, in particular. I want to see her interact with the twins and with Hope.

Most shocking twist: sometimes I think back to the s3 finale and I can’t believe what I saw lol. Extremely IC and consistent, but still. STEFAN WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. I mean that literally. Like, what has to go on in someone’s brain to do what you did o.0

When did you start watching/reading?: very early in the beginning. I think there were maybe a few episodes out?

Best animal/creature: vampires make the law of the land, lbr.

Favourite location: MF is a beautiful town and everything interesting happens there. You couldn’t pay me to visit tho xD

Trope you wish they would stop using: how many times did Bonnie die again?

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: its honesty about humanity is one of my favourite things. But most of all, I do think it’s one show that really turned things upside down in terms of structure. The ending would’ve been unthinkable to anyone who’d just watched s1, IMO.

Funniest moments: the dark humour was on point. I especially loved off-switch Caroline and Kai’s brands.

Couple you would like to see: BONNIE AND KAI SHOULD’VE FORKED.

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: n/a.

Favourite outfit: so so many. But I’m going with the KC dress Because.

Favourite item: the KC check xDD

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: nope. I barely own merch of anything. I’d like to have some though.

What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: vampire pls. Better chance of survival, and it’s a good deal lbr.

Most boring plotline: s7. Borenzo in particular. Like, why.

Most laughably bad moment: Ian S.’s eye acting. IT WAS WEIRD.

Best flashback/flashfoward if any: I love the s1/2 flashbacks with Katherine and the Salvabros.

Most layered character: at this point I’m divided between Caroline and Stefan and I’m clacking at the thought. Who would’ve thunk.

Most one dimensional character: Enzo. Who cares.

Scariest moment: off-switch Caroline was creepy af.

Grossest moment: these vampires don’t know how to eat and make everything a mess.

Best looking male: Jesse.

Best looking female: Bonnie.

Who you’re crushing on (if any): I would’ve crushed on Anna. Or Liv. Or Nora. And definitely Lily xD (MILFs >>>>)

Favourite cast moment: all I can think rn is when Chris Wood & some dudes from TO dance a Backstreet Boys song xD

Favourite transportation: vamp speed.

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): all the woods scenes. One of my faves is when Caroline killed 12 people in front of Stefan & Klaus lol.

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: n/a.

Best promo: n/a.

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: my problem is that I feel for Caroline almost immediately and I was lost xD. The show itself is more complicated, It might’ve been in late s1? In the Miss MF episode.

#replies #talking to the void #my thoughts #plecverse thoughts #the vampire diaries #plecvese #my forever show #for better or worse xD #caroline forbes #because this is mostly about her lbr #Anonymous

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