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bone-and-butterflies · 11 months

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How to hide plot twists from both your readers and your characters in a way that is not frustrating or annoying.

So I was watching a book review for a book that I liked but both loved and hated some of the plot twists. Of course this got me thinking about plot twists and why they work for both readers and the characters that are falling for these plot twists.

Readers

The key is to control the information that your readers have. Your readers aren't going to consider an option unless (1) that twist is really common for your genre and that reader has read that genre a lot and will therefore be expecting it or (2) you have very obviously given them the specific information nessesary to unintentionally figure out the twist before the characters.

Why does this information stand out, you may be wondering. It is because there is nothing else going on to distract away from a piece of information that can seem meaningless with the right context.

Most of the time, if you're not writing a very specific plot line with a very specific genre, your reader isn't going to immediately know where the plot is going so they may not be looking out for the information relevant to a later plot twist, so as long as you justify an informational choice that explains a later plot twist in a way that covers a variety of basis, they're probably not going to pick up on the one piece you left out, aka what is going to make this twist fun.

This piece of information should be something small and unassuming. It can be magical, but if you're writing fantasy that magic has to be hidden really really well. I find that a plot twist works the best when the piece of information that is missing is something you wouldn't really think about, like the reason a prince was able to infiltrate a prison and hide his identity was because he had his cousin standing in for him and we don't know that this cousin existed and knew the limits of that world's magic (this is actually a plot twist that fooled me btw despite how obvious at sounds now).

A good plot twist that fools the reader relies on twisting the information that the reader has and therefore twisting how they think the story will go.

Midway sidenote: not every plot twist needs to exist to fool both the reader and the character, sometimes it is really fun to watch a character fail because of something inherent to that character.

Characters

Remember how I said sometimes it's really fun to watch a character fail. That only works sometimes.

It is more annoying to figure out a plot twist that is really obvious and then have the character miss it because the author said so.

So how does a writer pull this off?

Be intentional. Have an idea in mind of when you want the reader to figure it out and ask your beta readers when they figured out your plot twists to control that as much as you can.

Your character does not know which genre they're in, so you have to both get inside the character's head and take the reader along with you so they understand why this character is making these poor choices and missing the most obvious villain in the room.

Why would a character miss a plot twist?

They are distracted or delusional. Characters have goals and they may ignore their better judgments to achieve these goals based on their personality. Put more emphasis on your character's motives to hide information that may make plot twists more obvious. Also, your characters may use information about their world to explain their motives and this information may also be vital to understanding a later plot twist

The average person does not go around thinking everybody around them is out to get them especially if those people seem incapable of that through the pov character's ego or the other character's demeanor. If your character has known somebody for a really long time or knows a piece of information that is vital to the worldview they're probably not going to immediately discard it. Fun fact: in the real world, when people have their views disputed, even with very good evidence, it can make them more likely to hold on to that old belief.

Expectation of harm. Different characters have different experiences with shape how bad they think things can get. For example, if a character has never experienced something, they may not know what can lead to that thing. (FYI older characters are more likely to know more things so be careful with this one.)

The Twist

For a twist to work, it must make sense with both real world and in world knowledge as well as common sense, so keep this in mind as you plan.

Conclusion

This isn't comprehensive because good plot twists require a lot of information to make them work and that's makes them very specific. While I would love to explain why different plot twists work, part of them working is them fooling you and hindsight bias is kind of a thing.

Keep writing. If a plot twist just isn't working either scrap it or let it sit until you have the information to build reasons why it should work.

#writing #novel #writing advice #writing tips #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writing resources

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dalishious · 6 months

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A BioWare Guide on How to Murder a Fanbase

I have been a Dragon Age super-fan for almost fourteen years, now. I have played every game, with every DLC. I have read every novel, lore book, and every comic — yes, even the terrible ones that are better off forgotten. I have seen the anime film, the animated series, and the web mini-series. I have enjoyed all of these pieces of the franchise over and over, more times than I can count. So, make no mistake: the negativity you’re about to hear comes from a place of love for this fantasy world, developed by many creative people over the years. I would love nothing more than to see the resurrection of passion in the Dragon Age fandom again. But the unfortunate truth is, that resurrection is only needed because BioWare took the fandom out back and shot it in the first place.

In December 2018, three years after the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Trespasser epilogue DLC, BioWare first announced the then-untitled next Dragon Age game with a teaser trailer. At this point, most fans were anticipating this would mean within the next couple years, we would see the game. This assumption was based on the fact that Dragon Age: Inquisition was first announced in 2012, and released in 2014, with an extra year of development added last minute.

There have been dribbles of extra content since then, adding to the franchise. This was enough to keep some fans still breathing and interested. 2020’s Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights was a lovely anthology. 2020’s Dragon Age: Blue Wraith and 2021’s Dark Fortress were wonderful comics tying up the story started in Knight Errant. And 2022’s Dragon Age: Absolution was a well-animated series with an interesting cast of characters and story. But all these still left the fandom with a major question: What was going on with the next game? It was untypical of BioWare to be so secretive, in comparison to how they handled sharing information of the past games in the franchise. The only form of updates fans still have to go on is mostly just concept art and short stories, hinting that something must be in production. But why was the wait so long?

In 2015, the first version of the next Dragon Age began with a clear vision, clear scope of practice, and a reportedly happy developer team. Most gloriously in my book, there was no multi-player… but this did not align with the Electronic Arts typical money-mad schemes. EA’s push for “games as a service” meant they wanted to monetize all their games as much as possible, and therefore, they wanted them to be a live service — as Anthem demonstrated, that meant sacrificing things that are staples of good RPGs, like narrative and character choice. So in 2017, version one of the next Dragon Age was scrapped and replaced. This new version would have, in total or to at least some degree, an online portion of play.

There is one part of Schreier’s article, “The Past and Present of Dragon Age 4,” that really sticks out to me, regarding this:

“One person close to the game told me this week that Morrison’s critical path, or main story, would be designed for single-player and that goal of the multiplayer elements would be to keep people engaged so that they would actually stick with post-launch content.”

The idea of splitting up components of a game into single-player and multi-player is a terrible idea, because it means that there would be a large bulk of content only accessible through online gaming; something many fans, like myself, are repulsed by. Even if I did enjoy it, I spent most of my life growing up with either no internet or shoddy internet incapable of playing online games. I know many rural people who are still in that position, losing more and more of their favourite gaming pastimes because they are locked out of the ability to play them. It is a disservice to hide content behind a wall like this, especially in a world that is so lore-heavy like Dragon Age. The news of multi-player in Dragon Age understandably upset many, and this is when I first noticed a large drop off in excitement over the next game.

However, in 2021, the failure of Anthem (multi-player) and success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (single-player) led the executives at EA to bend to the wishes of BioWare leadership and allow them to go back to the drawing board yet again on the next Dragon Age. This meant removing all multi-player content!

While I am very happy that there will reportedly be no multi-player in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, I can’t help but feel bitter and a little disgusted over the ridiculous development time spent on something no one but EA wanted in the first place. If it weren’t for this foolishness, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would be in our hands right now. Instead, it’s been in development hell for nearly nine years and counting. Nine years is a long time to expect fans to carry a torch for you through radio silence, but it’s no wonder BioWare has shared barely anything about the next game; it’s been in flux for so long, they likely haven’t had anything concrete to show.

BioWare hurt its reputation even more when the news broke that the studio very suddenly laid off 50 people who were working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. This is pretty damning on its own, but BioWare took it a step further. Former developer Jon Renish shared a statement revealing that the studio was only willing to offer laid-off employees two weeks of severance per year of service, and denied health benefits. The denial of health benefits in particular is a pretty wild move for a studio with a reputation for “stress casualties”. The latest news on this is that BioWare has still so far refused to negotiate better severance packages, leading to a lawsuit. The lawsuit originally had 15 former employees, but this dropped due to the fear of not being able to afford to pay their bills. So now, while EA sits on $400 million net income, the laid-off employees are struggling to buy holiday presents for their children. These horrid business practices are not to be ignored when accounting for a lack of faith in a studio. What kind of monsters reward workers who make your games special with vaguely reasoned lay-offs?

The latest news on the Dragon Age: Dreadwolf front from BioWare came early this month, December 2023, with a trailer… announcing a trailer that will come next summer… that will announce the release of the game. Supposedly. Maybe. We’ll see. But by this time, BioWare is something of a laughing stock of their own fandom. Reactions to the video released with a pretty map graphic and a few rendered locations were, from what I personally observed, mostly sardonic in nature. People have commented on the vapourware nature of the game, and like all vapourware, that leads to disintegrating trust.

Despite all this, people like Mary Kirby, (one of the veteran Dragon Age writers who was a victim of the layoffs,) said, “it’s bittersweet that Dreadwolf is my last DA game, but I still hope you all love it as much as I do,” encouraging fans to still support the game when it eventually is released. But after every misstep BioWare has taken, that’s a tough sell now. Fans are finicky, RPG fans more so than others, one could argue. We have our favourites, and many of us stick to those favourites for life over our appreciation for the artistry — but that relationship between studio and fan should go both ways. EA and BioWare has betrayed that relationship, and it will take a hell of a lot to build it back up again, now.

[This piece is also available on Medium!]

#dragon age #dadw #dragon age dreadwolf #bioware #game development #meta #releasing this into the wild and running away

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littlemisssatanist · 3 months

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my acotar unpopular opinions

taking this time to come out as an acotar reader. yes i've read all the books and i've spent way too much time thinking about it. i enjoy the books in the sense that i enjoy hating on many of the characters and loving a few of the others.

be forewarned inner circle fans. you will not like this.

rhysand is not a 'morally grey' character. he's a rapist and a groomer. he sexually assaulted feyre utm, he groomed her (reminder that she was 19 in acotar), and he withheld important medical information from her. 'you'll always have a choice' my ass.

nesta telling feyre about her pregnancy was not a bad thing. why do people act like it is? 'oh she did it to hurt feyre' hurt her by doing what? revealing the lies that her beloved husband had woven? revealing the fact that she'd die giving birth? the fact that rhysand told literally everybody but feyre?

mor is not the champion for women everyone thinks she is. this i will give to sjm it is truly impressive to make a character like women and still be a pick me. i'm not even going to go into her whole weird ass relationship with her dad (i still don't understand why she wouldn't just kill him. 'oh rhys needed the army' rhys is supposed to be the most powerful high lord ever. either admit he's a fucking loser or give me an actual good reason for this) or the fact she's seemingly incapable of doing anything to help the women in the court of nightmares, but everytime she was mentioned, i had to let out a heavy sigh and rub my temples.

on a similar topic. i liked eris. like a lot. out of all the acotar characters sjm has written, eris is by far my favorite.

the inner circle needs to sit the fuck down. they are the most hypocritical bitches i've ever met. they like to think themselves high and mighty. reading them make fun of lucien's band of exiles while their name is literally 'court of dreamers' was the most infuriating thing ever. and then they have the gall to be insulted when called out. don't dish what you can't take.

out of all the inner circle, the only one i don't hate is azriel. this is simply because he is the only one who hasn't opened his big fat mouth and done something bad (except if you maybe count his whole thing with elain). cassian is on my hit list. it's on sight with cassian.

nessian is sjm's worst ship and i will stand by that. lucien/nesta could have been so much. 'nesta would have ripped lucien apart' and cassian was your first choice? not even azriel was considered? like be so for real right now. sjm didn't see the potential of lucien/nesta and i will forever mourn that.

sjm is a terrible writer. i'm not saying this to be mean but she seriously just sucks at it. that being said i admire her ability to still make millions of dollars off her shitty writing. as a woman, i am rooting for her. as a reader, every day i wake up a shoot a prayer to the heavens begging the gods to not let sjm write any more books from the inner circle's pov.

lucien/elain is better than azriel/elain. argue with the wall.

eris/azriel is better than azriel/elain. you can kiss my ass.

NESTA/ERIS IS BETTER THAN RHYSAND/FEYRE. i know this because i have been enlightened.

feyre is a victim to rhysand. that being said, she is also a major bitch. both can be true because these things are not mutually exclusive. i wish she could make friends outside of the ic like nesta did, but i know that's unlikely.

feyre's pregnancy storyline was completely useless and went against her whole character.

acomaf retconned everything about tamlin and feyre's relationship in order to make more money. idc.

tamlin gets a ridiculous amount of hate. rhysand is hypocritical. so tamlin locking feyre in a house because she wants to ride out with him into potential danger is terrible and abusive, but rhysand locking nesta in the house of wind for... *checks notes*... having sex and spending money on alcohol is helping her? what?

#anti rhysand #anti sjm #anti inner circle #anti acotar #rhysand critical #inner circle critical #acotar #acotar critical #pro nesta #anti nessian #pro eris vanserra #anti mor #this might be a controversial one

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butch-reidentified · 3 months

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I've spoken before about psychopathy, particularly my own, and the importance of recent research and demolishing the stigma and absolutely absurd past conceptions and measures of psychopathy, which were exclusively based on studies of male prisoners convicted of violent crime.

Just to reiterate - psychopathy is not being deranged and uncontrollably violent. Villanelle from Killing Eve is actually an excellent and well-researched example of high-EQ female psychopathy, and the first fictional portrayal I can genuinely see myself in. Psychopaths with high EQ are entirely capable of cognitive empathy, and many (like myself) are actually very gifted in it, and can even make excellent counselors/therapists as a result of this combined with a lack of strong internal biases and the fact that we won't be emotionally impacted/drained by patients. This presentation of psychopathy is becoming more and more recognized and studied, and is distinctly more common in women. We retain the core defining traits, obviously - boldness, deviancy, disinhibition, very high fear threshold, a tendency toward meanness (self-control is a thing, though), reduced capacity for remorse and regret*, and of course lack of affective (emotional) empathy - but are much more able to moderate ourselves and prioritize social functioning, and tend to view the sadistic behavior of low-EQ psychopathic males as wasteful. My wife calls it "prosocial psychopathy."

Anyway, I just kind of wanted to touch on this again since it's been a while and there's a fair few new followers out here. I encourage you to read the above links and check the tag - it's a pretty interesting topic, to me at least.

Edit 4/25/2024: *Regarding the reduced capacity for remorse/regret: I firmly believe this sounds worse than it is. For people like me, at least, it's not that I'm going around doing terrible things and incapable of feeling bad about any of them. The truth is that remorse & regret most frequently occur as a result of intensely emotion-driven behaviors, which as a concept is largely foreign to me - I don't tend toward remorse/regret because the way I interact with the world, analyze situations, and choose to behave in response, is inherently from the very beginning done with the acceptance of potential consequences actively held in my mind. I'm not prone to regret/remorse because I know myself extremely well and make choices as consistent with my understanding of self as possible, having already prepared myself for the possibility that things could go wrong. It's more about being prepared for what might happen and able to cope when things do go wrong, rather than being a piece of shit and not feeling anything about it.

This doesn't make me better or worse than others; it's a neutral fact that male supremacy has made seem otherwise by constantly claiming that "logic" or whatever is superior to emotions. Fuck that. Loads of the best people I've ever known have been very emotion-driven (what non-shit people identify as a firm of being passionate) and some of the shittest people I've known would waste their dying breath insisting they're 100% logical creatures, as if that's even a real thing. To me it feels very simple: if I'm making the best (most internally consistent, most reflective of my personality and values, etc) decisions I possibly can with whatever information I have at the time, then I've done my best, acted with integrity, and don't need to regret my choices. This is very challenging to write/talk about bc of the stigma & connotations involved, but again, this is a completely neutral fact to me in the same way I describe being a woman as a completely neutral fact despite the stigma & connotations involved there. Does any of this make sense?

#mine #psychopathy #emotionality

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specialagentartemis · 18 days

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The Murderbot Diaries and Terminator: Dark Fate: What Does a Killer Robot WANT, Anyway?

The Terminator (1984) is probably the most famous killer robot in media, setting the image for a what a killer robot is. It’s shaped like a bodybuilder, weapons built into its metal skeleton, eyes hidden behind cool and impersonal sunglasses, a threateningly “foreign” accent, and no feelings, no remorse, and no desires besides killing its target. Kyle Reese describes it to Sarah Connor bluntly: “That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!” And the film supports this wholeheartedly. We get a few scenes from the Terminator’s perspective, and they do not really indicate that it has much in the way of personality or free will. It’s scary because it is a ruthlessly efficient, tireless, and analytical machine built to kill. It will not stop until its target is dead, or it is.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) gives us a nice Terminator, a Terminator captured from its controlling Skynet and re-programmed to help Sarah and John Connor rather than hunt them. This Terminator gives slightly more suggestions that it has a personality of its own, but ultimately it is still now ruthlessly efficient, tireless, and analytical in protecting its charges, but it still dies at the end in the course of fulfilling its objective. It was, after all, programmed by the human rebels to protect John Connor, and it did.

Did the Terminator want any of that? The second film halfheartedly cares a little, and the first film certainly did not at all. It’s an irrelevant question. It’s a robot; it’s incapable of truly wanting anything, it just does as it’s programmed. It fulfills its objective.

In modern sci-fi, that’s not really a satisfying answer anymore. It looks like a human, has human organic parts built into it, and it clearly has the ability to process large amounts of information and make complex and reasoned decisions. Why do we write it off so thoroughly? Does a Terminator like what it does? Would it choose this? What does a Terminator want?

The Murderbot Diaries (2017-present) by Martha Wells isn’t a direct answer to this question, but it sure is considering it.

The titular Murderbot is very similar to the Terminator: a human-form cyborg, a robot with human organic parts built in, a machine with guns in its arms made to do a job and that job being to protect and/or oppress humans. But as a thinking, feeling, complex entity, it has opinions about that job.

You know what else is a clear response to early Terminator movies’ fundamental uninterest in the Terminator’s inner life and personal opinions on things? Later Terminator movies. Specifically Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

The fact that The Murderbot Diaries and Dark Fate came out at roughly the same time, in the same sci-fi AI-story zeitgeist, looking back critically at the 80’s and early 90’s Terminator and asking, well, what would it do if it didn’t have to murder, who would it be if it had the choice, is telling.

The Murderbot Diaries stars Murderbot, a SecurityUnit owned by a callously greedy and corner-cutting company that uses such SecUnits ostensibly to protect but in reality to intimidate, control, and surveil human clients. It calls itself “Murderbot” and all SecUnits as a whole “murderbots” for a reason. The world of the books sees SecUnits as mindless killer robots kept in check by their programming, in a very similar way that the Terminator was presented in 1984. We see the story from Murderbot’s point of view: it’s snarky, depressed, anxious, bitter, funny, and very opinionated. It also really, really hates intimidating, controlling, and surveilling people, and it specifically broke its own programming meant to keep it compliant so it wouldn’t have to hurt people. Instead, it wants to half-ass its job and watch soap operas… but it’s sympathetic to humans in danger despite itself, and when it chooses humans it cares about, it will go to great lengths (ruthless, but very tired and full of fear and pity) to protect them. What does it want? To be given space; to not be given orders; to have the ability to take its time and watch its shows and determine what its job as Security means to it.

Terminator: Dark Fate takes a different tack. (It’s actually about three badass women and I’m very sorry for focusing on the man-like character here BUT) Dark Fate presents an alternate timeline off the main series, where the Terminator succeeded in killing young John Connor. Previously, we had seen Terminators that would not stop until they were dead; this one fulfills Reese’s other warning. It will not stop until John Connor is dead. Well…. it succeeded. John Connor is dead.

Now what?

In the opening scene, we see this from his mother Sarah Connor’s perspective. The Terminator appears out of time, ambushes and kills young John Connor, and then stands there looking impassively at the destruction it wrought while Sarah screams.

It looks cold and satisfied when that scene is first presented. But when we see it again from the Terminator’s perspective, it seems to just stand there, staring stupidly, suddenly with no direction in life. It fulfilled its objective. It followed its programming. Now it has no more objective, can receive no more orders, and its programming has nothing more to tell it to do. It eventually disappears into the woods, learns more about humanity, grows a conscience, lives in a little cabin with a woman and her son fleeing an abusive husband in an apparently mutually very supportive relationship, chops wood, drives a truck, and gives Sarah Connor insider information to allow her to track down other incoming Terminators as a way of atonement. It does have remorse, if given time to think for itself and realize it. It doesn’t really want to hurt people, and even, similar to Murderbot, has a drive to use its strength and intimidating-ness to protect the people it chooses. It mostly wants to be quietly and safely left alone.

Both the Terminator and Murderbot are killer robots left adrift, aimless, reeling, suddenly having to decide for themselves what to do with their lives for the first time. Both are stories that circle back to the original Terminator premise and say, okay, but that killer robot isn’t killing for the sheer thrill of it, it was forced into doing that by a top-down authority in control of its programming. That would kind of fuck someone up, actually. It’s a hopeful narrative: these things are people, and they don’t want to be hurting other people. When given the option, they just want to rest, make amends, understand the truth, find a place they belong, and see the people they care about safe. And I think it’s fascinating that not only is smaller, literary sci-fi asking this question and telling this story, but so is the Terminator franchise itself.

We also just as blatantly see the evolution of Sarah Connor as a character. In The Terminator (1984) the Terminator is sent to kill Sarah Connor. When I was watching it recently with some friends who had never seen it before, they guessed—almost correctly—“oh, it’s because she’s the rebel leader in the future!” Sorry guys, this is a 1980s mainstream sci-fi blockbuster. Her as-yet unborn son is going to be the rebel leader. That’s why the robots in the future need to kill her, before she gives birth to the hero of the humans. Blech, I know.

Over the course of the movie, though, she becomes tough, fierce, and brave, the type who can and will survive the apocalypse; in future movies and tv series (like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 2008, where she gets to be the eponymous title character this time!), she gets to be a strong leader in her own right. This is particularly true in Terminator: Dark Fate, where Sarah Connor is a tough, grizzled, middle-aged Terminator-fighter, who steals heavy weaponry from the government to track down and kill Terminators arriving from the future. She becomes a mentor to the new woman being hunted down by the new Terminator threat, Dani Ramos. This time, though, Dani isn’t fated to be the mother of the human rebel leader—she is destined to become the human rebel leader herself. Along with Dani’s own Kyle Reese figure, a cybernetically-augmented human fighter from the future named Grace, women get central action-hero and rebel-leader roles in Terminator: Dark Fate, feeling like an awkward apology for the sexism inherent in the premise of 1984’s The Terminator. (However, Dark Fate stops short of committing to the Dani-Sarah/Grace-Reese parallel and letting them be lesbians. It’s still a mainstream action movie, I guess.) We even see the development of a curt but resentfully respectful understanding between Sarah Connor and the Terminator that killed her son.

I lay this out because in the same way I see the literary DNA of the Terminator in Murderbot, I see elements of Sarah Connor in Dr. Mensah. She’s the human protagonist—the one who would be the protagonist if All Systems Red had been from the human perspective—and feels like the answer to a similar question to “what does a killer robot want?”, namely, “what if, instead of enemies locked into battle to the death, the badass human and the killer robot worked together and came to an understanding? What if they could be friends instead of enemies?” Mensah also feels like a feminist response to some of the issues I had with Sarah Connor—that she didn’t get to be the leader herself, that despite her own strength and tenacity being the mother to the leader was the most important thing she would do—and responds to them in a similar way that Dark Fate somewhat apologetically does. Mensah is the leader of her society (her planet). Mensah is a mother and she is a scientist and a leader and gets her badass action-hero moments (MINING DRILL). She is the first to reach out to Murderbot. To ask it how it feels, and calm down the others later when they’re afraid; her relationship with Murderbot is unique. She’s a foil to Murderbot in a parallel but opposite way that Sarah Connor is a foil to the Terminator. And while in Dark Fate they are not friends (the Terminator did still kill Sarah’s son, even if it didn’t specifically want to) we see the same kind of desire reflected: what if they were at least allies? What if they were working together? How would that relationship go? What kind of understanding could they come to, about what it means to be human and to be machine? It's a smaller part of the movie and they don't give a whole lot of answers, but it's there.

Both All Systems Red (and the subsequent Murderbot Diaries books) and Terminator: Dark Fate were released in a very different sci-fi zeitgeist than The Terminator was. They’re both looking back, and reacting to it: Dark Fate directly, The Murderbot Diaries indirectly. And they’re approaching the concept of the Terminator and its Sarah Connor figure with similar questions: What does the robot want, aside from its programming to kill, and if it could be freed of its programming to kill, what kind of relationships—with society, with the concept of self-determination, and with its human woman foil—could it potentially be able to develop, with that freedom?

#They’re also both aroace #is it regressive? Does it imply things about sex/romance and humanity?#I don’t care I appreciate that neither one had to prove itself a whole person by falling in love #that’s a topic for a different post #Dani and Grace didn’t get a romance either. Cowards #but I kind of appreciate there was no human romance and sex/inhuman lack of romance and sex that was sorta lowkey going on in the original #This piece is less polished than last week's but oh well #MurderMetaMay #The Terminator #Terminator Dark Fate #The Murderbot Diaries #meta #my meta

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tobiasdrake · 1 day

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What do you think of Gohan and Piccolo?

There is a fandom war over whether Goku or Piccolo is Gohan's "real dad" and the honest truth is that Gohan's upbringing is very much "It takes a village to raise a child". He is the product of Chi-Chi, Goku, Piccolo, and to a lesser extent Krillin's influences.

But. Also. Though Piccolo and Gohan develop a strong emotional bond, it warrants noting that Piccolo's initial contribution to Gohan's upbringing is pretty monstrous, as befits the reincarnation of pure evil.

There's a tendency to be more critical of Goku's choices than Piccolo's because Piccolo was a bad guy and Goku was a good one. Generally speaking, we tend to give characters a pass for behavior that's... within their narrative wheelhouse, if that makes sense.

When good guys are being good and bad guys are being bad, we consider that business as usual. That's just what they're supposed to do. If Vegeta kills a bunch of people, nobody cares because Vegeta is a bad guy. Bad guys kill people. This is not a worthwhile observation on his character.

So there's a tendency in fandom to hyperfixate only on the good parts of bad guys, and on the bad parts of good guys - and to ignore the rest. Those are the only parts that we consider noteworthy, because they're the areas where the character is going against their mold. It's important, I think, not to do this with Piccolo when talking about Gohan, because while we all love seeing Gohan's innocence reach Piccolo and redeem him, the darker aspect of his earlier choices inform his later growth and development.

We need to learn how to consider the villainous part of villains and the heroic side of heroes in equal measure to the villain's redeeming qualities and the hero's flaws.

By the time of the fight with Raditz, Piccolo is less evil than his previous iteration. According to Gohan, that's Goku's assessment of him. Implied to be Goku's assessment of the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, as that's the only time the two have met since Piccolo's reincarnation, prior to Raditz's arrival.

This is a fair assessment. I've talked about it before, but reincarnating as a flesh-and-blood Namekian with a complete range of morality rather than simply being the embodiment of one guy's evilness had an effect on Piccolo.

Piccolo opposes the Saiyans because he wants to rule the world and doesn't want them killing everyone he means to govern. But Daimao's plan for world domination was just to inflict a 40-year extermination on humanity. Piccolo's original incarnation was just evil, incapable of really thinking about his own ideas and why he wants them the way the newer form of Piccolo has.

Daimao would never have teamed up with Goku to save "his subjects" from extermination. He wanted to kill them all too. This capacity for growth and change was already in motion, already forcing him to reconsider what he actually wants from his own ambitions, from the moment he awoke in his new body.

But he was still a bastard. He'd been Evil Incarnate for 300 years; You don't get over that in an afternoon. He still had all of his memories,a ll of his knowledge; There was a lot of wickedness baked into his personality from the get-go.

Since he was no longer Mazoku, he had a brand new range of moral depth to engage with. But he didn't have the luxury of getting to start over as a brand new person. No clean slate for Piccolo. Now that he was capable of change, he still needed a reason and a will to experience it. Circumstances that would force him to re-evaluate his relationship with himself, others, and the world.

The threat of the Saiyans provided that impetus, by giving Piccolo a plan. A nasty plan. A plan based on strict utilitarian assessment of Gohan's involvement in the preceding fight, with no regard to the fact that this is a four-year-old child.

Piccolo, in this moment, sees Gohan as a resource to be used. He has zero empathy for him or for anyone else.

Of course he doesn't. He was the embodiment of selfishness and cruelty for 300 years. He has a capacity for empathy now but has never been put in a position where it might begin to develop. As he says to Gohan in his dying moments:

"You were the only one who ever really talked to me."

Like. Let's not sympathize too much here; this is more on him than anyone else. He tried to reconquer the world and tried multiple times to kill Goku, the only person he has any sort of relationship with. Even the attack he used to kill Raditz was designed for killing Goku.

The reason nobody ever "really talked to [him]" before Gohan is because Piccolo's only interactions with other people were verbal and physical violence. This is what I was getting at earlier. The guy, at this point in time, is a villain existing in uneasy alliance with the heroes. Let's not forget that. In fact, even his relationship with Gohan is verbally and physically violent.

That sweet scene up there where Gohan confronts Piccolo with the fact that he's not such a bad guy? This is how that scene ends.

This is what we tend to give Piccolo a pass on because we expect this behavior from villains, but it needs to be said that Piccolo's approach to Gohan's training is cruel and abusive. The development of their bond has more to do with Gohan's purehearted innocence than with Piccolo's changing outlook.

That's not a slight against Piccolo. It's the setup. This cruelty is what makes it so meaningful when he does change. It's why this moment is so powerful.

The reason this is such a moment that Toei can't stop trying to remake it is because it comes on the heels of all of that cruelty and dismissal. That he would even do this is as much a surprise to Piccolo as it is to everyone else. It violently contradicts and recontextualizes everything he and Gohan have been through for the last year.

Gohan's innocence won out and it changed Piccolo in ways he didn't even realize were happening. When Piccolo says that no one ever really talked to him before, this isn't an indictment against the world for mistreating him. Piccolo is not the Warriors of Hope from Danganronpa. It's validating Gohan for having the courage and empathy to reach him despite it all.

Gohan's training was an idea born of cruel arithmetic. Gohan himself gained some rudimentary martial knowledge but didn't get much else out of it - because Piccolo himself was unsuited to the emotional guidance that Gohan needed. When the Saiyans arrived, he was woefully unprepared for the task that Piccolo expected of him.

What did you expect? It doesn't matter that you taught him how to throw a punch; That boy is five years old. Piccolo pays for this mistake with his life.

But what he does get out of it, what he and Gohan both get out of it, is the development of an emotional bond that will last the rest of their lives - with his dying moment, his sacrifice for Gohan, being what truly kicks off their relationship.

That sacrifice is the reason Gohan goes to Namek.

Gohan, innocent and kind, doesn't resent Piccolo for the things he did. Quite the contrary, he respects Piccolo a lot. By his own admission, he has the same admiration for Piccolo that he does for Goku.

Gohan and Piccolo's bond is now pretty tight, and it remains so through the Namek and Android arcs.

Piccolo grows from his mistake, lets his ambitions for world domination slide away, and he and Gohan now have each other's backs in earnest. The respect and empathy Gohan needed is now there.

It's from that experience (and the wisdom of God now joined into him) that Piccolo's later able to call out Goku for his mistake in the Cell Games.

Piccolo sees the flaw in Goku's plan because he's been Goku. He's stood where Goku's standing, waiting with baited breath for a warrior's hunger to suddenly awaken inside Gohan and for him to fuck this guy up. He had to learn the hard way that that's not who Gohan is, and he brings that development to the table here. He's projected onto Gohan the way Goku now is, and it cost him his life.

Neither Goku nor Piccolo is entirely right here. But neither is entirely wrong either. Goku's plan does ultimately work, but only because of the effort Cell and 16 put into correcting Goku's bad assumptions and finding a trigger that will set Gohan off.

This, I think, is what gets lost in the "Real Dad Goku vs Real Dad Piccolo" debate. It's too binary. Gohan cares a great deal about both of them, they're both prominent influences on him, and they both had a formative effect on his childhood. If you asked him to pick one, he'd probably look at you like you're crazy. The correct answer is:

That panel, that entire panel, is who Gohan's primary male role model is.

Though if you want to know whose kid Gohan really is more than anyone's, it's her:

No matter how distasteful Vegeta might find it, Gohan is his mother's son. He's sensitive, kind, curious, and far more interested in academia than in martial arts; All the qualities Chi-Chi wanted to instill in him. But he nonetheless has a lot of admiration for Goku and Piccolo too, and he carries their influence with him all the same.

(Also, as an aside. Like. Krillin? Kindly fuck off. Gohan may not be as badly hurt as Goku but he was still beaten half to death by both Nappa and Vegeta over the course of this battle. He couldn't even stand up under his own power anymore before he became the Oozaru. Also, he's five and Chi-Chi hasn't seen him, her baby boy, in a year.

It is absolutely valid for her to be way more concerned for Gohan than for Goku.)

But I digress. Point is, Piccolo and Gohan got off to a rocky start and I think that Piccolo's behavior during that time shouldn't be ignored, but also he changed dramatically due to Gohan's influence. Piccolo shaped much of who Gohan was as a fighter in his early years, but Gohan did far more for Piccolo by making him part of a family despite himself.

Now he's in Gohan's wedding photo.

And Chi-Chi isn't for reasons that can only be attributed to Toei's utter disdain for her character.

And he's teaching martial arts to Gohan's kid, with a much gentler hand than the one he once used on Gohan.

There's a real argument to be made that Gohan did more to shape who Piccolo became in the years following their training together than Piccolo did to shape Gohan. Sometimes the master learns as much or even more from the apprentice than the apprentice does from the master.

#dragon ball #dragon ball z #son gohan #piccolo

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salvidida · 1 month

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Everything about Scar's treatment in Brotherhood sucks so bad, but there was something specific that has been bothering me for awhile. I hadn't been able to quite put my finger on what it was since watching FMAB for the first time recently (as a lifelong 03 fan). So I rewatched FMA 03 again and it finally clicked what it was that further upsets me about Brotherhood regarding Scar, besides the more obvious imperialist propaganda and racism:

The Elric's relationship to him.

Now obviously Ed's racism towards Scar in Brotherhood is pointed out frequently enough, but it doesn't stop there. It's the way that Brohood Ed is incapable and fully resistant to ever bridging that gap besides a deeply uneasy allyship-of-convenience. Al is also fully distant from Scar, besides their mutual antagonism in the earlier arc. And nothing more is really explored here between these characters.

And I didn't realize how much I valued the way 03's Scar, Ed, and Al contrast, overlap, mirror, battle, and support one another. Their fates and goals are inseparable. Alchemy's impact on the Elrics' lives is reflected with Scar's life and his brother's, as well as their familial relationship to their own brothers; many point out the similarities between 03 Scar and Al, with some noting how Ed and Scar's brother match each other. And the way the Elrics here are more able to engage with the harsh realities that inform Scar's choices and actions versus that of their place as Amestrians, and for Ed as an active member of the military who, despite wanting to cling to his principle of never taking a life, at times can see Scar's point of view and even, with reticence, sympathize with him (Al even more so).

There are layers to the relationship across these three characters. The tension and humanity that arises is a driving force in revealing the dialectics of this show. It's to the point that Al and even at times Ed defend Scar when talking with other characters towards the end of the show, and they even ultimately owe their lives to him (the philosopher stone and grand arcanum that allowed both Ed and Al to live, and for Al to regain his body). And the bond between the Elrics help Scar to forgive his brother, to speak aloud that he loves him in his final moments, before triumphantly accomplishing his goal against the Amestrian military, saving the remaining Liorans, and saving Al from becoming Kimbly's final bomb.

And there are other moments, such as Scar helping Al in Lab 5, telling him he sees his unmistakable humanity after Al helps him save Ishbalan refugees. Scar attempting to help Ed in Lab 5 after he refuses to sacrifice the prisoners for the Philosopher Stone, because he sees the humanity in Ed too, the humanity that can resist merely being a ruthless military dog and scientist. The way Scar treats Al almost like a little brother of his own, and when he mentions that Ed and his older brother share the same kind eyes- said at a time when Scar still harbours ill feelings for his brother's taboos and his sacrifice; which becomes all the more poignant when he forgives his brother before creating a Stone passed down to the Elrics. Scar mentions having sworn off specifically targetting state alchemists post-Lab 5, and this feels like his way of sparing the Elrics of his wrath, even as he holds fast to fighting against an oppressive system with necessary violence. The material here is rich for analysis and appreciation! It doesn't settle on more digestible, black-and-white character archetypes and plot conveniences.

There's a reason why the final outro for 03, where it flashes across four deceased characters who mattered to the Elrics, includes Scar. The man is in the ranks of Trisha, Nina, and Hughes! This isn't a mistake, the writers are intentionally showing the indelible impacts of these people who they cared about.

But with FMAB, it's exceptionally flat here and entirely derogatory. Ed hates Scar, and the narrative treats him as wholly right to do so. Scar needs to repent and reform to the side of his genociders, and never shall these characters interact or converse beyond putting a stop to Father. Scar was nothing more than a vehicle to reach his murdered brother's alchemic research, and an example to be made of any radical who so much as raises a finger against the State. All three of these characters want nothing to do with each other, and that's about as far as we get with them. In Scar's own words, he's nothing more than the 'ooze' (the poison) that arises from military conquest, and by the end of the show it's clear that, even with Scar saving the entire country that destroyed his life, to the Elrics, he will always be that 'ooze'.

In Brotherhood Scar committed what the Elrics clearly considers to be the ultimate sin: he killed Winry's parents, and no matter the circumstances surrounding that event, no matter what else changes, no matter which mass murderers, monsters, and genociders the Elrics can sympathize with, humanize, befriend, and forgive, Scar will never be anything more than an unforgivable murderer. The best everyone gets here is moving on and living seperate lives. Nothing more.

The fact that Ed openly wishes he could beat the shit out of Scar, he verbalizes as such while Winry patches him up and Miles lectures him about the value of reforming the military regime to include more racialized people for its imperialist complex. And the big mercy Ed in this moment offers to Scar is... Not kicking the shit out of him after all.

The juxtaposition between these adaptations, the cold hatred of FMAB versus the entangled, poetic antagonism and comradery of FMA 03 makes experiencing the former anime so depressing. Until watching Broho it never dawned on me just how much I truly appreciated the complexities between Scar and the Elrics in 03. Finding Scar's Earth counterpart at the end of Shambala wasn't just a fun cameo: it feels like a road that leads back to an ally.

At least now I have something I can more consciously enjoy whenever I revisit 03, while articulating yet another reason why I can't stand Broho.

#fma #fma 03 #fmab #this def needs editing but its late and i wanted to get my thoughts out there #the antagonism and humanity and comradery of 03 is achieved with so much subtlety and skill #it never ceases to blow me away #eta: ok so i spruced up the post a bit. this is still a bit of a messily written meta but eh #also i'll probably reblog this later on with further analysis and examples of how 03 handles the Scar-Elrics bond

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justenjoythegossip · 5 months

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PR spin, credibility of team PR/team Real and the toxicity that they purposefully manufacture, the end of the shitshow: a few random thoughts

The PR spin

Some mods have been writing that the recent papwalk of Chris and Abba was staged (which it clearly was by the way), Jesal the trolling pap has admitted to it as well, proving something. But regarding celebrities, 99% of what comes out in the media or on SM is staged and manufactured for PR purposes.

Meghan and Harry call the paps on them all the time and people are not questioning whether they are a legitimate couple. Robert Pattinson and Suki have called Backgrid to show that they were expecting. And guess what? They were expecting. When Jennifer Garner was recently pictured giving money to a homeless person, it was clearly staged and probably served as damaged control for her horrible interview with Regina King.

So again the staging and the manufacturing for PR purposes do not give us any information on whether a couple is legitimate or if they are only playing for the cameras. Of course, we can strongly suspect Chris and Abba are not legitimate, there are so many clues and signs that point to it but it’s for another discussion.

The purposely badly manufactured PR…

However, we can question the quality of the content that’s being fed to us because their papwalk didn’t sell their love or marriage at all (that aspect has been already discussed). So the question remains. Why is that? Does Chris hate her so much that he is incapable of acting a very simple scene? Or doesn’t he make much of an effort to sell it because it serves another purpose? Because, they are both actors and what is asked of them is not Sophie’s Choice. So many actors who hated each other’s guts had to play romantic leads and managed to sell it. On the show Castle, Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic famously hated one another and there are countless examples. But why can’t Chris and Abba do it? Or why won’t they?

The general public won’t look past the big picture. So for them, Chris and Abba will look either cute or creepy (most comments seem pretty negative though). However, the people who pay close attention will be able to interpret the signs the way they want to. So by staging this bad papwalk, they are feeding both team real and team pr by keeping the discourse very much alive and riling people up in order to keep them engaged.

It has been the tactics used by their teams since the very beginning. They have been weaponizing Chris’ fandom to instigate anger and division so that they could drive traffic and make them gain more attention. Because, they don’t register with the general public. Their names were not even used for clickbait in the Just Jared article about the Scarlett’s Christmas party (which was more likely Colin’s party given all the SNL people present but the spin that it was her party and not her husband’s is telling). Interest in him is fading and she is still a nobody. So the controversy, the inconsistencies, the mysteries and of course the end of the shitshow are all designed to keep his fandom (or what’s left of it) engaged.

Who are Team PR and Team real…

By team Real and Team PR, I am not including mods who have an opinion on whether Chris and Abba are a legitimate couple with a PR spin (situationship or not, relationship or not, married or not) or exclusively PR but I am talking about mods who claim to know the truth one way or the other, who claim to have insider information and use vitriolic rhetoric against the other group and attack them constantly and viciously or anyone who writes anything contradictory to the narrative they are trying to sell. Those mods are, I believe, either trolls or plants paid by their teams to keep the discourse alive.

Why both Team PR and Team real have no credibility…

Both Teams have lost all credibility at this point.

Team Real have seen some of their mods make a complete incredible nonsensical and non-credible U-turn from debunking Chris and Abba’s stunts to selling them as a real couple and shipping them. This includes the mods who had debunked the yoga certificate, pointed out the photoshopped pics in the scare videos or Valentine’s drop and so forth.

By the way, how credible is it that those people recognized the hotel room in Finland (that had 12 rooms by the way) from one picture of Chris and Abba? How credible is it that they recognized the hotel room in Lisbon from the video Chris did for that teacher? Also how credible is it (and how hilarious) that those mods got the exclusive that Renner and Hemsworth were in Boston and told two strangers that they were there for Chris’ kinda first “wedding” when they “reportedly signed an NDA” according to very reliable People’s magazine (read sarcasm here)?

Team Real also includes the mods that called Chris absolute horrible names like groomer and pedophile before making a complete U-turn when they allegedly went to the NY con to get a pic with their favorite Captain America.

But Team PR has lost all credibility as well. They have pretended to be privy to private and personal information regarding Chris to spew nonsense, viciously attack, troll and lie for more than a year now.

One mod (that I won’t name) have recently made a post saying that people who didn’t know PR or Chris shouldn’t express their opinion on the matter. As if they had any credibility to do so themselves? Recently again they have said that the PR was about to be over because they were spending Thanksgiving apart and the Forbes articles made no mention of her. Also let’s not forget that those mods were part of a scam when they asked fans to give money for a fund to save Chris (a multimillionaire) from this PR nightmare!

But it’s very possible that those mods don’t want people to express their opinions because they want to control the narrative, like their counterparts from Team real.

The controversy around the ending of that shitshow…

I can safely say that the end of this shitshow is a controversial subject because I was recently insulted and blocked by one of those so-called Team PR blogs for only stating after the Forbes article that I thought that the PR games were very likely to continue for a while. I still believe a 4-month marriage would be bad publicity for Chris, especially after marrying a 26 year old that looks like his niece.

But what I find interesting is that they are pushing that the end is near (they have been pushing that lie since the Ghosted premiere by the way) when in truth no one knows when it’s going to end. Except the protagonists of that shitshow and their teams.

Of course they will probably be right at some point. I think no one believes that they are endgame. But what’s interesting is by keeping people’s hopes alive that it will end soon, they are making sure that people stay engaged. If you were to tell people, relax, it’s going to last for a while, many would check out and leave the fandom. Because many fans that are left are waiting for the end, desperately waiting for it.

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sunflowericescribbles · 1 month

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A Radioapple SpyxFamily AU idea dump

It seems that I´ve become incapable of writing down my ideas into a decent story, so I will just dump everything into this post - and whoever wants to pick up these pieces and string it together into a coherent story is welcome to take them and run with it. I just need to get it out of the system otherwise I´m gonna mad here.

Setting:

SpyxFamily Universe - Cold War between Ostania & Westalis (if I wanted to be funny I´d have renamed them into "Elysiana" & "Ereboris" or smth like that, because there already exists Eden Academy, so why not turn it into "Heaven & Hell")

A/B/O- Universe (?)

Alastor as westalian spy known as "Smiles". He´s an expert in hiding in between shadows & and concealing his presence. (You only know he´s there when you see a creepy smile, but then it´s already too late for you.) Officially he works as a radio host at a radio station, which serves also the purpose to get the latest news from everywhere and subtly altering it if necessary. They also use it to communicate in code via broadcast. His excuse for getting almost murdered on the streets or for coming home with injuries will most likely be "haters of his radio persona" or "fanatic fans". Yes, he has a very intense fanbase (and hatebase), yes some might call him the radio demon.

He accidentally rescued a little girl called Niffty while on a mission, who refused to leave his side since then. And before he could get rid of her, his superiors had the brilliant idea to keep her, so he could take on operation "Strix", because it seemed that she´s smart (& old) enough to be enrolled in the famous Eden Academy.

Niffty is able to read minds, so she knows that the plan is to get closer to the youngest son of Sera Desmond, Adam. (You can imagine how the first meeting will go when I say that Adam will be terrified of her most of the time and will constantly try to convince everyone that she tries to murder him.) Lute will be his bodyguard, of course.

Our little gremlin will also make sure that Al gets a "wife"/mate/partner, because of course Eden Academy has this strange/stupid rule that the kids need to a whole set of parents to even have a chance to get into it. Al is not eager to go through the list of potential partners that his informant and old friend Husker provided him. Fortunately the problem solves itself with a chance meeting at the park where Niffty almost falls into a pond full of ducks.

And look who´s there! A cute little blonde (omega) with the name Lucifer, who is pondering his life choices and who´s in desperate need to prove that he´s NOT single and/or incapable of taking care of himself. See, he can still look after a kid and prevent her from falling head first into a pond. See, he can also sympathize with being a single parent, because he´s been in that role many years since Lilith´s death.

The wedding ring on his hand? Oh, that´s just an old remnant that he keeps wearing because he´s not really into finding a new partner & when they see the ring they usually back off and leave him be. Unfortunately it led to his new coworkers believing he was still married, because he had been too distracted (and not in the mood to talk about it) in giving them a direct answer ("I don´t have a wife"- "Oh sorry, husband then"). And somehow he talked himself into a corner with his adult daughter Charlie, too, because she believes he´s been dating someone for a while now. He had only been on a handful of dates because she had been constantly nagging him over the phone & then simply started lying to her about it to make her stop worrying.

Now he has one problem coming from two sides: His new coworkers invited him to a dance party, so he needs a dance partner - preferably his nonexistent husband, because he´s too embarrassed to admit he´s single now that he´s already been there for a while and never corrected this assumption. His daughter deems it appropriate to finally meet his new (imaginary) partner & make sure her dad is in good hands.

Lucifer also kinda fears that Charlie would actually throw away her carrier chances if she worried too much about him, because as much as he tried to hide his struggles from her, he knows she´s seen it. Luckily Charlie doesn´t (& hopefully never will) know how far he went to make ends meet for them, because he´s definitely not proud of it. He will never regret marrying Lilith & having Charlie, even though they got disowned by their families and never got the chance to finish their education at Eden Academy after they found out about them (and the pregnancy).

Lucifer is officially working a boring office job, but has a (regrettably) successful carrier as an assassin since his daughter´s childhood years, because he was desperate for money and would have done anything for his daughter to get her a at least somewhat decent childhood & education. His codename is "Rotten Apple" (he always leaves a faint smell of rotten apples behind) and he´s very good at disguising himself. His small and slender build also makes it easy for him to disguise as woman if necessary.

Anyway, Alastor & Lucifer come to the conclusion that it will benefit both of them if they entered a fake marriage. Lucifer is very glad he found Alastor, because not only can this man cook a thousand times better than him, he can also dance and make his coworkers jealous! Well, Charlie is not entirely convinced yet, but you have to forgive her, she´s very protective of her dad & worries too much (Vaggie is trying to convince her to let her dad be). Alastor is somewhat relieved that he found someone who has experience in child raising & knowledge of Eden Academy. He doesn´t care that his mate is older than him & already had a child roughly 20 years ago. If someone asks why he didn´t choose a younger one: He likes that they can enjoy the same things, such as music, dancing, playing instruments, etc. He´s also good with kids, has experience, doesn´t mind marrying someone with a child, does he need to go on? Ah, yes and both of them don´t ask too many unnecessary questions, because gotta keep their secrets.

Btw Vox is not happy about this fake marriage, because he wanted to play happy family with Al. (Niffty does not, she likes her new "bad boy" dad very much, thank you.)

#hazbin hotel au #spy x family au #Spy “Smiles” Alastor #Assassin “Rotten Apple” Lucifer #mind reader child Niffty #who terrorizes little Adam at school #fake marriage #Charlie is not happy about her dad´s dating choice #but has to live with it #Husker´s new side job is babysitter #abo dynamics #alastor x lucifer #radioapple #they can get Keekee as their pet #also Zestial is the class teacher #need to find a role for Angel

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wildmelon · 2 years

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my wayhaven detectives 🔍🖤

🥺👉🏼👈🏼 i’ve been wanting to post them for a while, but i always put it off (mostly since i tweak them constantly, i’ve redone all of these portraits at least once since i first drafted this). but it’s a foggy november morning here and it put me in the mood. here are my actual children, i’m putting info about them under the cut for anyone like me who loves reading about other ppl’s mcs 😊

Elliott Moran [Felix]

Kind and thoughtful, Elliott has the disposition of an elementary school history teacher. Slightly spacey and dreamy, he’s better at connecting with people than he is holding information. On the bright side, his intuition tends to steer him right when it comes to technology, and he has a knack for fixing things. His perpetual cheerfulness quickly charmed Natalie and attracted Felix.

Elliott’s sensitivity can leave him easily hurt and drained. His care for the people around him supercedes hurt feelings, though, and he’s incapable of holding a grudge. He’s happier than he ever thought he’d be since he started dating Felix.

Waverly Green [Adam]

Waverly spent much of her youth rebelling in bids for attention from her absentee mother. Whatever her initial motivations, she maintains an innate propensity for chaos as an adult. Impulsive, sarcastic, and stubborn, Waverly isn’t always the easiest teammate, though she can turn on the charm when she wants to. (Nine times out of ten. Adam seems immune so far.) She’s always been drawn towards the catharsis of combat. Exercising is one of the only times her mind goes truly blank. She’s also fairly well versed in technology and naturally handy. Her open pessimism and incisive quips sparked a somewhat unlikely friendship with Mason.

Past her bravado lies a deeply insecure and wounded girl who feels like a chronic failure, never good enough for the people around her. (This whole situation with Adam may be touching a nerve.)

Araminta (Minty) Udo [Nat]

Naturally charming and charismatic, Araminta’s easygoing nature and popularity made her a good choice to be detective. The people of Wayhaven trust her wholeheartedly-- or at least they did before all these supernatural occurrences began cropping up. Still, her optimism and quiet self-assuredness puts the people around her at ease. She maintains a (seemingly) great relationship with her mother, has fallen head-over-heels for Natalie, and gets along particularly well with Farah.

Minty seems so well-adjusted it can be hard for people to remember she needs to be taken care of as well. Her forgiveness and patience seem inexhaustible but take a toll that sometimes makes her want to scream. Luckily, she now has Nat to worry about her feelings.

Alice Atwell [Mason]

Incredibly intelligent and deeply logical, Alice is often the voice of reason. She prides herself on her ability to keep calm in a crisis, and her levelheadedness serves her well. Being a detective seemed like the best way to put her sharp mind to good use in Wayhaven, and her sincerity has made her a trusted figure in the community. Her knowledgeability, easygoing nature, and interest in history contributed to a fast friendship with Nat. Mason, meanwhile, is attracted to her goodheartedness against his will (and knowledge).

Underneath Alice’s patient exterior lies a deep need to prove herself and receive love. She seems to have a good relationship with her mother, but Rebecca’s long absences have left her with deep-rooted fear that she’s unlovable that she tries hard to keep buried. (Good thing she’s falling for Mason, he’ll provide her with plenty of reassurance. /s. At least she’s an optimist.)

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theerurishipper · 10 months

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Thinking about how Adrien's arc was about finding his self-worth and his independence and learning to let himself be loved unconditionally, and how the narrative undercuts this by proving Gabriel right at every turn.

Thinking about the way Adrien has internalized Gabriel's lessons that love is conditional and dependent on pleasing others, and how Gabriel is proven right, because Adrien's relationship with Ladybug which is meant to be his escape from the expectations others place on him has turned into another part of his life where he has to hide his trauma and his feelings so as to not inconvenience her with them.

Thinking about the way Gabriel's abuse of Adrien hinges on him denying Adrien his freedom and agency to make his own choices under the notion that he is too emotional and incapable of independent thought and controlling him under the guise of "protecting him," and how he is proven to be right, because those who should have been the people he forms relationships with who actually treat him with respect and validate his emotions are also denying him his agency and taking away his ability to choose, thereby making decisions for him, constantly lying to him and hiding things from him, and treating him like he is too emotional to be informed of his own life and should have his emotions be controlled by others, all under the notion that they are "protecting him," but they're doing it out of love so it's okay, thereby validating Gabriel because these were his exact reasonings.

Thinking about how Adrien is dehumanized by Gabriel and treated like a perfect, flawless doll who doesn't get to make choices, who doesn't have needs of his own and only exists to do whatever Gabriel wants of him, and how the narrative goes out to its way to do the same to Adrien as a character, because all he exists for in the show is to be a pretty prize for Marinette, her trophy boyfriend for beating the bad guy, and is not allowed to have any choices or feelings that would get in the way of her own or would inconvenience her in any way.

Thinking about how all Adrien's problems are because of Gabriel, and how the narrative validates Gabriel by making Adrien practically worship him by the end of the season.

Thinking about how the narrative insists that this is all good and fine and wholesome, and how it veers from being just a bad show into straight up abuse apologia, taking large parts of the fandom with it.

Thinking about how Adrien deserved so much better as a character.

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pinkberrypocky · 13 days

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How Kyoko Did What Mami Couldn’t

A long rambling series of thoughts about how kyoko and mami are more similar than they seem and how kyoko is the one who truly succeeds at it

So normally I think of Sayaka and Kyoko being the duo to think about, but upon this rewatch I noticed some interesting things about Mami. Mami’s role in the anime is essentially to show Madoka and Sayaka the ropes of being a magical girl and help them decide if they want to become magical girls themselves. However, there is a massive gap in this goal of hers/our perception of her role in the show and what she actually does in the anime. Mami tells Madoka and Sayaka that she wants them to know the stakes of becoming a magical girl before they decide if that’s something they are willing to go through in order to have a wish granted. On a surface level, this seems like exactly what she does. She takes them with her while she hunts and kills witches, she talks with them about potential wishes, and she even warns Sayaka about the possible complications of making a wish for someone else’s sake. However, in actuality she only encourages Madoka and Sayaka to become magical girls, all while sheltering them from the true weight of the profession, though this is likely not known even to her as she does so. She takes them into witch fights without ever warning them that this is a life or death scenario and she might not be able to protect them. Instead, she tells them that she’ll protect them and puts up a front that she is an unstoppable and untouchable object. But that obviously crashes down very quickly when she dies in front of them in the third episode. While telling Madoka and Sayaka that she is going to teach them what it is to be a magical girl, she effectively shelters them from the very things they need to be aware of in order to make an informed decision on whether or not to make a contract.

I want to emphasize that I don’t think this is intentionally selfish, though it definitely is in function. Mami didn’t have a choice when she became a magical girl, it was make a contract and become a magical girl or die. So it makes sense that it’s important to her that Madoka and Sayaka make an informed decision before jumping into magical girlhood. So why doesn’t she? Why does she put active effort into making sure they don’t see the ugliest parts? Why does she put up a front that she isn’t affected by risking her life to fight witches? Because she was trying to give Madoka and Sayaka the protection that is so starkly absent from her own life. Mami has no close relatives, her parents died in the car accident that forced her to become a magical girl years ago. This means she has been on her own for a long time. And remember, all of the characters are middle schoolers. Mami had to grow up far too fast and so she tried to protect Madoka and Sayaka from this by sheltering them from the cold truth about being a magical girl. Not that I’m saying she kept explicit secrets, Mami died never knowing about the truth of the soul gems or the witches, but she kept the psychological effects and risk of serious physical harm from them, even though it was with good intentions.

What’s wrong with that? I think we can all agree that these girls could all use a more active parental figure to protect them. So was Mami in the right for this? No. The issue with this is that it is starkly incompatible with the goal she expressed to Madoka and Sayaka, to teach them what it’s like to be a magical girl. Unfortunately, Madoka and Sayaka have already been pulled into this world and as such deserve to be informed about what that entails. Mami is incapable of doing this. But if Mami really wanted what was best for Madoka and Sayaka and to be a mentor to them, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to tell them the truth and then help them work through it? Yes, yes it would. But she can’t, because the real obstacle holding Mami Tomoe back from being 100% honest with Madoka and Sayaka is the fact that she is so deeply afraid of being alone. Mami has been alone since becoming a magical girl, both in the way that being a magical girl isolates all of them but also in that her family is dead. Mami has no one. So when Madoka and Sayaka enter the picture with the preassigned, by Kyubey, context that they might want to become magical girls, Mami is set on selling them the job. Because if Madoka and Sayaka become magical girls then she won’t be alone anymore, both in fighting witches and in life. So even though Mami has the surface level goal and knowledge of making sure Madoka and Sayaka know the truth, she has a much stronger goal hidden beneath the surface from even herself: to not have to be alone anymore. So in actuality, she doesn’t want Madoka and Sayaka to realize how horrible the job is, because if they did there’s no way they’d join her and she’d remain alone. Because of this goal that she herself isn’t aware of, she consequently presents a false narrative of what it is to be a magical girl, therefore putting Madoka and Sayaka in immense amounts of danger.

Mami is a tragic character because what she wants to do is the opposite of what she does, and as soon as she reaches her goal she is killed at the height of her positivity. But that’s not to say that there isn’t a character who doesn’t do the work of explaining the truths of the magical girl world in an accurate and effective way in the series. But that girl isn’t Mami, it’s Kyoko.

The moment in the show that sparked this whole train of thought for me was in the scene in episode nine right before Madoka and Kyoko confront witch Sayaka. Kyoko asks Madoka if she’s sure about coming with her, reminding her that she can’t say for sure that she can protect her and pointing out that she doesn’t even know if her plan will work. Madoka affirms that she wants to come along, and begins a bit of a monologue about how she’s never been able to help the magical girls since she is too scared to become one herself. Kyoko immediately tells Madoka that she’s one of the lucky ones, that if it’s not a life or death situation she shouldn’t even think about making a contract with Kyubey. Madoka pushes back on this but Kyoko holds firm, insisting that it’s not wrong for Madoka to enjoy her life and that there is no pressure or reason for her to become a magical girl. Whether or not Madoka is able to truly hear and internalize Kyoko’s words is separate, though based on the end of the show I think we all know that conversation did not encode, the fact of the matter is that Kyoko bore all the truths of the situation to Madoka. She didn’t pull any punches, and she didn’t shelter or protect Madoka from things that she thought might be too hard on her.

This lack of sugar coating is really important to Kyoko’s character as a whole. Throughout the show she always speaks what she believes to be the truth, which is really all you can ask of her considering the earth shattering secrets Kyubey kept from all of them. You can see this a lot with Sayaka, who Kyoko tries time and time again to convince to change her ways to put more emphasis on herself. Kyoko knows that Sayaka is functioning as if the world follows her strictly constructed ideals, and she also knows that the world doesn’t. She used to think like Sayaka, but she was forced to face the truth that sometimes the world is horrible. Sometimes the people you love most hurt you. Sometimes a wish you made out of love only leads to pain. She tries countless times to convey this to Sayaka, which is exemplified most plainly in the scene in Kyoko’s father’s old church. She tosses Sayaka an apple, saying she has a long story to share with her, but Sayaka immediately throws the apple to the floor. The symbolism of apples cannot be ignored in this scene, especially considering the setting of the church and the nature of the story Kyoko shares with Sayaka. Sayaka rejecting the apple, the biblical symbol of knowledge, at the beginning of the scene shows her refusal to face the truth even when it is handed to her.So even while Kyoko failed to be heard, which is very reminiscent of her father and the nature of her wish and I plan to discuss further later on, she did not fail to convey the whole, brutal truth. Kyoko acts truly selflessly when she tries to get Madoka and Sayaka to understand the realities of being a magical girl, which is so interesting considering she is so adamant that she is a selfish person. All the other characters in the series want so badly to be selfless, but end up finding that in the end they are unable to get rid of that selfish part inside them. As I described earlier, Mami does this when she warps her portrayal of magical girl life, but it can also be seen in Sayaka who makes a wish to heal her crush’s incurable injury and ends up feeling cheated and jealous when he doesn’t recognize her. Sayaka sets out to be a magical girl like Mami was, and in this way she completes her goal. She strives endlessly, however hopelessly, to be selfless and eventually dies in the process. Sayaka suffers because no matter how hard she wants to be selfless she isn’t. Which isn’t to say she’s a bad person, very few people are capable of doing things that are 100% selfless, nevermind doing so all the time. But Kyoko, who is always saying how selfish she is, is the one who is able to be truly selfless by giving Madoka, and attempting to give Sayaka, the whole truth without any sugar coating so that they can make their own decisions based on what they want. Kyoko thinks she’s selfish because she doesn’t believe that fighting is something that should be done unless there is no other option, but it is actually this belief that allows her to selflessly present Madoka and Sayaka with the truth.

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #madohomu #madoka magica #holy quintet #madoka kaname #homura akemi #mahou shoujo madoka magica #uh idk no one is probably reading this far but if you are hi! ty! i hope you don't think im stupid now!

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batsarebetterthanpeople · 5 months

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Hi! I’m sorry if this is dumb but I’m not understanding why the Ed hate is racist? From what I’ve seen it has nothing to do with his race, just his actions? What is racist about it? I’m asking this very genuinely because I want to understand and learn more from this so please don’t take this as being annoying or patronizing or something!

ok so not all Ed hate falls under the racism catagory some people just have genuinely bad taste. The thing that is racist is insisting that he's an abuser. I've explained several times why he's not abusive, as have many many others. But, here's the quick recap: Izzy was abusing him, Ed has a history of lashing out towards his abusers with physical violence and Izzy established that he had been doing this sort of thing to Ed for years so you know, he's going the way of Ed's father and nobody would argue that Ed was abusing his father. Ed wasn't abusive towards the crew. Like he did some shitty things while suicidal. He hurt his friends I'm not saying he didn't. However: 1. This show is full of very very over the top violence and no one is getting up Button's ass about Lucius's finger. 2. It would be an incredibly strange move for a rom com to make one of it's leads a domestic abuser, It's not such a weird move to give a character in a rom com a suicidal arc where they push all their friends away. The first choice would yeild a completely unwatchable show the second is what happened in ofmd. 3. David Jenkins himself has talked about this and he said "What Blackbeard did was by the standards of the pirate world a bit much" I don't know if I even agree with this considering everything we've heard about Hornigold but I certainly agree with the sentiment that Ed did some shitty things but nothing that was significantly more horrific than other characters in the show who nobody treats the way they treat Ed.

So with all of that in mind: Why is it racist to call him an abuser. Like sure, all of this adds up to the abuse truthers being wrong and stupid but what does it have to do with Ed's skin color? This ties into the history that the Maori people share with a lot of indigenous groups who were colonized by europeans. I would encourage you to do more research on your own but I'll point you in the generally right direction. Indigenous men are portrayed as hyper violent in order to justify their subjugation (see head hunters stereotypes or how often people assume indigenous cultures were doing human sacrifice). A lot of the Ed hate exaggerates how violent he is in comparison to other characters. Indigenous men are portrayed as dirty and barbaric and in need of being civilized by a benevolent white savior. A lot of fic and meta positions either Stede or Izzy as needing to save Ed from himself, or as needing to babysit him or teach him to read or bathe, ect. That's why people are so up in arms about the soap eating joke.

And finally the abuse thing. Positioning indigenous men as abusers has been used historically as a shoddy justification for family separation. This stereotype pairs incredibly well with the violent stereotype. So IF Ed was abusing poor defenseless little white Izzy it would actually be a racist decision for the writers to make. Like there's a way to portray characters of color doing abuse, because being nonwhite doesn't make you incapable of doing shitty things, but that would not be it. Thankfully that is catagorically not what's happening, we've been told that the Kraken is an abuse responce, Izzy provokes the Kraken, we've seen Izzy be paralelled with Ed's two other abusers (Hornigold and Ed's dad), we've been shown Izzy controlling the flow of information between Ed and his crew, we've been showing Izzy manipulating Ed, we've been shown him lying to turn the crew against Ed, we've been shown Izzy attempting to murder someone Ed cares about specifically because Ed cares about them, we've seen Izzy threaten Ed's life for acting wrong, we've heard Izzy confess to doing all of that shit FOR YEARS on his death bed (a time which it would completely undercut the emotional impact of the scene if he was lying). So like... people ignoring all of that shit in order to portray Ed as shooting off his leg for no fucking reason and say he's the abuser is very... "You forgot the racism don't worry we'll add it back in for you" and continuing to insist on that and be shitty to people who won't cop to your dumbass shit is actively making the fandom a more racist space.

#ofmd meta #fandom racism

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