#that are essentially role reversals because i actually enjoy the characters and their story as it is and want to find people that also | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

invisibletoothpasteman · 9 months

Text

Batman Day Comic Recommendation List

In honour of this day, I've compiled a list of 9 batman, or batman adjacent comics that I think everyone should check out (specifically fans who aren't super familiar with the comics yet). They're my "Batman Necessities" so to speak:

Batman by Grant Morrison: While there are certain some interesting things in this book that aren't really my favourite (a consequence of Morrison writing it), overall it captures such, for lack of a better word, camp. It's has the kind of creativity that makes silver age comics so fun while still remaining modern and serious. There are some great stories, it introduces Damian, and overall is just such a compelling run. In the same vein we get to...

Batman and Robin by Grant Morrison: Ok yeah this pretty similar to the above but I had to include both. I actual prefer this short series to Morrison's run on the main Batman book. It features Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin and is a great role reversal of the traditional Batman and Robin. The two of them have such a great dynamic and it takes place during such an interesting time in the Batman mythos with Bruces "death" (which I'll admit I wished lasted for longer. Honestly, any book from this era is a blast because of the brief change in the status quo.

Batman Vol. 1 #408-416, #421-425: If you're new to comics don't be intimidated by all the numbers! Batman 408 introduces Jason Todd's Post Crisis backstory and then the issues roll right up to his death. It's a pretty self contained story, and super easy to fly through. I think these are some of the most painfully underrated batman issues. Speaking of Jason's death, my next recommendation is...

Death in the Family + A Lonely Place of Dying: I won't say much because these are just classics and probably the most impactful comics for the Batman mythos ever. Read them.

Batman: Year One: If you want a good ol' Bruce Wayne Batman comic, this is the one. Beautiful art, timeless story, what's not to enjoy? It's also very influential for other Batman media(like The Batman movie) so if you liked that and want a good entrance into comics, this is a great place to start. It's a contained story too, which is really nice if you don't want to have to piece together stuff you missed from other comics. Definitly my favourite Frank Miller Batman story.

Nightwing Vol. 4 #78-: Sure, it's not Batman, but like it or not, Dick Grayson will always be an essential Batman character. Tom Taylor's and Bruno Redondo's run is a big hit for a reason. It's simultaneously fun, heartfelt, and impactful and the writing and art work so well together. It's such a treat to read every month and while it starts great, I feel like as it goes along it starts ironing out and issues I had with it. Great if you want to get into something ongoing (or even if you don't, read it anyways)!

Scott Snyder's Batman (specifically Batman vol 2. #1-12): New 52 was a tumultuous time in DC comics. On the bright side we got the court of owls out of it! Another really good Bruce Wayne Batman story that doesn't need any outside knowledge. I'm in love with Greg Capullo's art, it suits the series so well. The court of owls is such an interesting addition to batman, and honestly it feels like it's a much older part of the batman mythos it was added so seamlessly. If you want a taste of just a solid, simply batman story, this is it.

Batman and Robin by Peter J. Tomasi: This is some of the best New 52 has to offer. I love how Tomasi writes Damian, and I'm a sucker for his dynamic with Bruce. It's a just gives off the best, action packed comic fun vibes. When it's written well it's written WELL and even when it's not quite as perfect it's still solid. Lots of sweet moments too, which I am such a sucker for. And finally we get to the last rec on my list...

Robin: Son of Batman by Gleason (especially issues 1-6): Ok, yes yes I know it's not really a batman book. But just like Nightwing, Robin is an essential part of Batman and how could I leave out my favourite comic ever. Seriously, this book fundamentally changed me when I first read it. Gleason writing, Gray's art, and Kalisz's colouring all combine and complement each other so well. Honestly it's such a joy to look at, and get's even better when you read it. They get Damian, and he shines in this book. The story is tight and impactful and after only 6 issues you'll have such a deep appreciation for the character (and feel like you've been punched in the gut). I recommend everyone take a little bit of time to sit down and give this a read.

And so concludes my great batman recommendation post! Honestly, there's so many more that could be on here that aren't that the best piece of advice I have is pick up any Batman comic that looks interesting to you and give it a go. In all his years, Batman has had such range in his books that there really is something for everyone. Please feel free to add any necessities of your own!

31 notes · View notes

likes-words-and-shrimp · 5 months

Text

Chapters: 7/7 Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving Characters: Lloyd Irving, Colette Brunel, Genis Sage, Raine Sage, Zelos Wilder, Sheena Fujibayashi, Regal Bryant, Presea Combatir, Kratos Aurion, Yuan Ka-Fai, Dirk (Tales of Symphonia), Frank Brunel Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Wingfic, Eventual Romance, Mutual Pining, Self-Acceptance, Happy Ending, POV Multiple, Body Horror, Transformation Words: 36,180 Summary:

Lloyd had never been too fond of his wings. But they were still useful, and convenient when they needed to be. It only made sense to use what he had. Until his wings changed one night, and became permanent, with real feathers attached to bone. And they were heavy.

Looking back on 2023, I think one fic I'm really proud of writing is this one, a multichapter Symphonia fic I was able to complete, with a focus on Lloyd and his wings taking on a different transformation. It's seven chapters of Lloyd and Colette dealing with the painful and difficult changes, but also the rest of the party helping them on this new shift in their journey. If you decide to read it, I hope you enjoy!

Just have some more additional thoughts for this fic under the cut:

Since this year for Colloyd Week was going to be its 5th year running, and it was also Symphonia's 20th anniversary, me and @frayed-symphony wanted to do something a bit more special with the prompts this time. We decided to bring back some prompts from previous weeks while still using a new quote day and the usual free day. (Here's the prompt list with her art which everyone should see) With that in mind, I also wanted to do something a bit different for myself writing-wise, and tell a story over the course of each of the prompts!

The tidbit about mana wings eventually becoming more feathered versions is actually a bit of lore taken from the Kratos novel. Essentially, if an angel uses it for too long, the wings will become a permanent part of the body, the mana solidifying into feathers. That's why we see a lot of angels in Welgaia floating about with feathered wings, and explains why Kratos, Yuan and Mithos don't keep theirs out consistently. And the reason for the title, it's from the Lloyd's Thoughts on Angels skit because I thought it would be fun to make all those angelic issues relevant for this fic.

I really wanted to use this bit of canon lore for Lloyd, and whether it's an effect of his unique Exsphere, or anything else, his wings succumb to the same transformation. But, well, it's more than just the wings changing here.

I also wanted to play more with Lloyd's self-consciousness here and the guilt he probably still carries with him when he failed to notice Colette suffering in time. Lloyd is also the unifying force for the party where he helps inspire and lift them up from each member's own troubles, but I also wanted to see this reversed while Lloyd is going through his own baggage and past traumas. It was also more interesting to write about Lloyd going through physical changes the way Colette did in the game and have that comfort role-reversed.

A lot of this fic was a learning process! The wings in Symphonia are just a favorite aesthetic for me, and learning about how they can change was really intriguing, so much of this fic centered around the Wings prompt. I was also planning on having everyone play a part with the Soulmates prompt, which I felt was fitting for Symphonia's anniversary year. Much of the later half of the story came as it went, like with the focus on Dirk, and the very last chapter that's a few years in the future, where Lloyd has a better handle on who he is now.

Change itself is also something I just wanted to focus on overall; how we change as people, or how our loved ones change over time. And sometimes change is frightening, but it can also be exciting and learning to accept and welcome it can also feel rewarding in the end. I think I wanted to show that in this fic, though how well I succeeded kinda depends on the reading, and maybe I was heavy-handed with the wings metaphor haha.

But also, I just wanted to write a longer cute ship fic of my OTP. That's another reason. :D

Compared to most chaptered fics, this isn't very long, but I like that it's contained enough at just over 36k. I still have other Symphonia WIPs I want to finish, but I'm really proud of completing this one, and a big thank you to those who've read and commented on this fic! Symphonia has always been special to me and I'm glad I could celebrate both the game and my favorite ship this way.

Around the new year, I'll probably make a Symphonic fic recs list for stories I've read this year. If you read this far, hope you'll look forward to it!

#tales of symphonia #lloyd irving #colette brunel #colloyd #fanfiction #shrimpy rambles #this got a bit rambly but just wanted to finally jot some thoughts down #thank you again for people who were part of the week it def made my year

9 notes · View notes

sepublic · 1 year

Note

hihi this is a general purpose one from the oc and creators ask game feel free to narrow it down to ur faves (which i know we arent supposed to have but come on now) or from ur oc canon as a whole !!

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

Applying this question to my OC canon as a whole... Not really? My OCs are usually made in response to the story bringing up a role that suddenly needs filling. So for example, Lloyd and the other kids need a teacher at Arkley's, particularly one they can actually relate to, one who's genuinely concerned for them? In other words, that one nice teacher that everybody likes and remembers? Well, I fill in that spot and from there create Trexdis, throwing in character concepts and ideas that I've had floating about, and have always wanted to incorporate into something, before working from there.

In essence; The story needs a character, be it to flesh out a group, and/or provide a certain function/relationship to our characters. To serve as a piece of world building, because surely someone has to be in charge of this, etc. And from there, I look across a vast collection of bare-bones ideas and concepts for characters I have floating around; Stuff like a certain aesthetic, an unusual power I've wanted to toy around with... The basic structure of a backstory that informs their personality and motives, their mentality in life, that sort of thing.

Each concept doesn't have to be its own individual character, either; It's better if I combine a few to add more facets to an OC, while avoiding a crowded quantity over quality situation. Certain personalities and backstories are often devised from pieces of media I've liked, and wanted to try my own spin/take on...

For example, the Ensemble! I've always enjoyed the trope of the villains employing a mercenary that ends up working with them full-time, so what if the good guys did that instead? So I need at least one mercenary. And I was fascinated by the idea of a 'human' whose brain was actually a computer, essentially making them a robot in a meat suit, a natural reverse to the cyborg when it comes to the flesh-machine interface.

But what if we took that a step further? What if there were multiple robots in meat suits... And they were all synced? Because I like the idea of a singular mind spread out across multiple bodies, whom are more like different limbs than their own individuals, despite appearing as such. Robots are well-equipped to pull that off, and I have one operating a human body... So I mash them into a singular concept. From there I take this nebulous idea for an OC floating around, and then I use it to fill that 'mercenary working for the protagonists' role.

Lycan, Breda, Gene? It's because there needs to be a roster of actual students at Arkley's. Salazar? Started off as a necessary leader to the pre-existing Techno League (with an O, not an A). When I initially worked with the idea of various students being the children of big bad villains of notoriety, I needed a parent for Gene. Salazar already existed and I could make some similarities between him and Gene... And this aspect has since carried over.

Then there's groups like the Escapees or the Arkley Alumni; A fairly open sandbox for me to mess around with (the latter especially), and add any number of weirdoes, who manifest from concepts that are still unused. Organizing the Escapees felt fairly natural to me, and with Arkley's Alumni, there's a lot of empty space for me to fill in and create a new character from if I ever feel the need to.

If there's one OC whom I do struggle with, it's one I haven't properly introduced you guys to; His name is Shogaken, he's got this pretty bombastic, villainous personality, an evil warlord, that kind of thing. He initially started off as a canon character from another piece of media I was making an overly elaborate fanfic for (which is what the GEverse started off as), and I got attached to him and his design, the lore I fleshed out, etc. I basically re-characterized an 'interpretation' into an entirely different character.

So when I made the GEverse its own thing, I realized I could fully embrace this fact, and renamed him Shogaken as the beginning of the differentiation process, making this character my own. However, since I'm no longer wrapping the GEverse around the skeleton of another pre-existing storyline, I have the freedom to do whatever I want... Which means Shogaken's role is also liable to change.

And he started off as the ruler of the Underworld; But in a story where I get to decide everything, I'm not sure if I want the overseer of the afterlife to be so grounded and irresponsible. But I could make it work, so I'm trying different ideas out. Sometimes I don't want to force things, I just let time pass by, allow new influences to soak in, before I find inspiration.

And I guess there IS Beturos, who is another old OC of mine. He started off as a villain, and unlike Azayle or Magmint, I never made him an Escapee for some reason, when that idea came around... So I just haphazardly stuck him in somewhere. But now that the GEverse is no longer a fanfic/retelling, that means a lot of characters and roles from that original media are gone, left empty to be filled out; So I'll probably find something for Beturos there. Give him some justice, and probably some interactions with Azayle and Magmint, like old times. Maybe I'll just make him another Arkley's Alumnus...

Every now and then, I do come up with an idea for a character that I just want to do, independently of an established role; And if there isn't another pre-existing niche/character to attach this to, well, I don't usually struggle to build a new place for them. The story is already fairly open, and part of the premise is a big world with all sorts of weirdoes and their strange stories mucking about, so it doesn't take me too much to fit them in...

The real problem is deciding if I'm satisfied with that, or want to do something more/different, after all. And sometimes I'll debate giving a certain personality/backstory to this character, or that one, if I could just do both and make them different enough through some other means to justify it, etc. And when it comes to more intricate storylines... Right now, I’m taking it slow and easy, no rush. A lot of good ideas have come to me after finding new influences and inspirations. But that’s more a question of what they’ll do in canon, rather than their place in canon.

#ask #reply #oc #ocs #my ocs #GEverse #the ensemble #Salazar techna #Kate Trexdis lasher

3 notes · View notes

megashadowdragon · 3 years

Link

Lancelot had a (b)romance with the half-giant king, Galehaut. Some fun stories about them

Galehaut's forces were laying siege to king Arthur's and looked as though they may prevail but before clinching victory, Galehaut offered surrender on the condition that the mighty black knight who fought so valiantly (Lancelot) become his friend. Arthur accepted the terms then Lancelot and Galehaut adventured together.

Galehaut helped cover for Lancelot and Guinevere, allowing them to use his castle for secret meetings.

He later encouraged Lancelot to move somewhere else where he could be with her even though it meant they'd never see each other again (his giant blood and own kingdom meant he couldn't leave).

Upon (false) news that Lancelot had died, Galehaut is said to have died of either loneliness or heartbreak (Lancelot had been kidnapped then driven mad so it wasn't completely implausible).

When Lancelot died, instead of being buried next to any of his three-ish wives, he chose to be laid to rest in the grave Galehaut set aside for the two of them so that they could be side by side for the rest of time

Gilgamesh is an architect nerd

Heracles madness and invulnerability isn't just due to his labours and being too strong to control

He had an actual moment of pure madness due to his invulnerability, his wife gifted him an undershirt that had been soaked in the blood of a centaur that tried to rape her, Heracles killed the centaur with an arrow coated in hydra blood, the hydras blood was deadly to all living things except those of divinity, the centaur knowing why it was dying told her if she felt her husband was cheating on her all she had to do was make him wear the cloth and he would fall completely in love with her and she gave him it as a gift

The hydra blood poisoned him but due to his inability to die he was stuck in perpetual pain and death with no cure he was eventually driven mad, during his madness he hit one of his friends so hard he sent them hurtling into the ocean, during his madness he commanded the building of an enormous pyre which once completed he threw himself on top of and set it on fire, hoping to burn his body into nothingness before it could heal and release him from the poison

I've never heard of a telling of Atalanta's story that has her die in that incident. Every version I've seen that includes that incident says that the two of them were transformed into lions.

As has been mentioned in other comments, FGO did address the existence of Chrysaor in Gorgon's Bond CE, and Mordred proposing to Guinevere, IIRC, is brought up in Fate/Apocrypha.

As for others...

While only addressed in the FGO Materials (and said materials note that it's unclear if this applies in the Nasuverse), some tales say that Medea and Achilles were once married.

There's one tale that happens before Heracles' labours, where he is tasked to hunt a supernatural lion (not the Nemean one). One version has him be rewarded for his success by being allowed to sleep with all 50 of the local king's daughters - Heracles beds and impregnates 49 in one night, and the only reason he didn't go for a full 50 is because one of the daughters wasn't DTF like the other 49. The other version has the hunt take 50 days, and each night Heracles is permitted to sleep with the king's eldest daughter... except they've plotted such that in the darkness, each night a different sister would crawl into bed with him, resulting in all of the sisters getting pregnant.

Heracles spent a couple of years as a lover to a snake-woman (who may or may not have been Echidna) during one of his labours (she was keeping Heracles' horses captive, and wouldn't let them free until she'd had three kids from him). One of their sons, Scythes, became the serpent-woman's heir, and is said to be the king for whom the Scythians were named. The other two sons either joined or founded other neighbouring tribes.

Going by Le Morte d'Arthur, Gareth gets really violent with cock-blockers (or, I suppose in the Nasuverse, clam-jammers). The first time, the intruder got their head cut off, but Gareth ended up being stabbed in the thigh and that ruined sexy-times. The second time, Gareth cut the intruder's head off, broke the skull into itty-bitty pieces, and threw them all into a moat... but sexy-times got ruined again because the fight re-opened the previous thigh-wound and the blood-loss nearly killed Gareth.

solomon and sheba

It varies depending on which version of Arthurian legend it is, but in Thomas Malory’s version, upon learning that mordred is an incest bastard, and Merlins prophecy that mordred will destroy Arthur and his kingdom, Arthur puts every baby born on the same day as mordred on boats and sends them away in hopes they all die, which obviously doesn’t work. I enjoy it because it makes mordreds hatred of his father a bit more understandable, and while he’s still a pretty bad dude, I feel for him a bit. Although in fate, mordred is my favorite character so I’m a little biased towards both her, and her actual counterpart

Arjuna

- "Endowed Hero" is a bullshit title. Arjuna and his brothers, due to being son of Pandu, was forced to be exiled and live in poverty for 14 years.

- Among Drona's student, he is the bravest among them. Even Karna's reason to study more under Parasurama was due to his jealousness toward Arjuna.

- Yudhistira is strong in using chariot and spear, Bhima in using mace, Arjuna in archery, Nakula and Sahadev in using sword. Despite all of that, Arjuna is better in technique than all of them in their respective forte.

- He got his astras by doing wrestle with Mahadev himself

- Among the youngling during Kurukshetra war (it means excluding Drona, Parasurama, and such. Oh, excluding Krishna as well), only Arjuna have fought non-human enemies and won.

Karna

- He's always the one with the obsession to beat Arjuna, not otherwise. Always want to be acknowledged.

- It's true that his armor is immune to everything thrown by Gandiva and even Chakra Sudharsana itself, but doesn't mean Karna is unbeatable. What impossible is to kill Karna, not beat him. Karna already loses 2 times against Arjuna before Kurukshetra war, either fainting or fled.

- Once Karna fought against Bhima. This battle happened years after Karna trade his armor with Vasavi Shakti. Both participants fought with normal weapon. No astras. No gods interference. No blessings. Bhima beat him so hard that Ashvattama needs to carry him.

In Greek mythology, Heracles was given another trial for some reason and he was given to a queen for said trial. The queen tried to humiliate him by making him dress up in women’s clothing and do knitting while she would dress up in his Nemean lion pelt and go into battle, essentially reversing gender roles. Well it turned out that the plan backfired on the queen as Heracles actually came to enjoy knitting. He said it was a calming exercise for him, so he actually found a new hobby out of this trial instead of humiliation. Needless to say that I would find it hilarious if we found berserker Heracles knitting a sweater for one of the children and ritsuka and mash catch him in the act. Just imagining a hulking behemoth like that knitting would be a hilarious image.

133 notes · View notes

skullsandwineglasses · 3 years

Text

Lost Romance Final Review (Taiwanese Drama)

I wrote about my first impressions of the drama after watching the first three episodes, and my first impression about it being cringey still stands even after having finished it. But, I admit that I did end up enjoying it despite my qualms. My thoughts about the whole drama are below.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The fictional world

The ML’s fictional persona (Situ Aoran) is hella douchey, and the drama only gives an explanation for why he was like that in the final episode. Essentially, Situ Aoran is the worst version of He Tinxing that he’s tried to hard to suppress and overcome over the years. It’s the version of him that’s childish, immature, arrogant, irresponsible, unreasonable. And yet, the FL, Zheng Xiao’en, still falls for this version of him. It’s a story about unwavering, unconditional love no matter who you are. On the other hand, Xiao’en begins as a “villainous” person in Aoran’s eyes, and yet, he learns to fall in love with her as well.

But, this meant that for the first 15 episodes of the drama, which is basically three quarters of the drama, I was constantly annoyed by Aoran/the fictional ML. Even when he got together with Xiao’en in the fictional world, I found it hard to ship them. Yes, Marcus Chang and Vivian Sung have chemistry, but I just didn’t enjoy the romance in the fictional world all that much.

I wasn’t hooked on the drama until episode 8ish when he finally showed some signs of liking Xiao’en, and then it picks up in episode 10 when he finally starts to take more initiative. But for the most part, it was Qingfeng, the second ML was the one who stole the show.

I’ve never had second male lead syndrome before, but I think that’s because in most dramas I’ve watched, even though the second male lead may unconditionally devoted to the FL, the ML still somehow does more.

But in Lost Romance, because the ML keep was dismissive, insensitive, and kept inadvertently hurting the FL, you end up finding that Qingfeng is actually someone who is dependable, supportive, a ray of sunshine, and an all-around better person in Xiao’en’s life. Not only that, but he’s hella charming as well. Simon Lian has such as mischievous glint in his eyes, and he carries himself with easy confidence. He flirts with Xiao’en, and she doesn’t even realize it. He’s a fictional character who’s become self-aware, and this sense of awareness and wisdom that no one else in the fictional world has makes him an even more attractive character since he’s able to see through everyone. What’s more, he goes against the script and falls for Xiao’en even when he isn’t supposed to. Him falling for Xiao’en made more sense than Aoran falling for Xiao’en.

Xiao’en and Aoran’s romance in the fictional world was very predictable. She lives in his house as a housekeeper, and he slowly warms up to her, but denies his feelings. When she leaves, he begins to miss her and gets jealous whenever she hangs out with the SML. He falls for her because she gives him a sense of safety and comfort. He feels at home with her, a feeling that he was deprived of since he was young. But because of this, it felt like the only reason he fell for her was because of what she can provide for him. And Xiao’en fell for him because he at first reminded her of He Tianxing, and then because he’s role as the ML in the story. And then she fell for him for real, flaws and all. But I guess this is a reflection of how love develops irl where both parties are able to offer something to the other in the relationship.

Qingfeng’s feelings for Xiao’en felt more pure and altruistic, which albeit makes it unrealistic, but I guess it suits his character, since he is an idealized fictional character after all.

The real world

Because Qingfeng is a fictional character, he has no real-world counterpart, so we don’t see him again after episode 15. He gets his “happy ending” in the last episode when the author finally finishes his story and he’s reunited with his storyworld sweetheart, but I still felt like there was no proper closure for his character. He finally developed real feelings, but then he’s forced back into his scripted role.

I liked how the ML and FL’s real life personas were different from the fictional world, and the drama takes a more serious tone when they return to the real world. He Tianxing is much more kind, considerate, and thoughtful than Aoran. His costuming also changed to reflect that: he no longer wears an earring, his hair is combed up instead of hanging over his forehead, and he doesn’t wear flashy rings and necklaces. He’s much more down-to-earth and humble, and you start to like him more.

Xiao’en is also much more mature. She isn’t fawning and lusting over him like in the fictional world, and she doesn’t force herself onto him, or to make him remember her. She knows that she loves Aoran, and tries to keep her attraction for Tianxing separate because she still hasn’t yet figured out whether they’re the same person. When her bestfriend asks her why she doesn’t assert herself more to jog his memory, Xian’en says that this is real life. It isn’t like the fictional world where you can be shameless with no consequence.

This means that the romantic dynamics become reversed in the real world. It’s now Tianxing’s turn to pursue Xiao’en, and Xiao’en resists. And I admit, it was cute. We get to see Tianxing fall for Xiao’en for herself and who she is as a person, and not because she’s his housemaid and lives with him. He becomes curious about her: he buys and reads all the books he’s edited, he asks her questions about her childhood and upbringing, and asks her about her feelings and opinions on things, he asks her about her memorable experiences. In the real world, he actually cares about her, not just what she can offer him. We also see Xiao’en learn about Tianxing and fall for his real-life traits. It’s an opportunity for them to truly learn about each other and fall for each other again.

The part when Tianxing reads the novel and regained his memories felt too abrupt and easy. It would have been more fun for the memories to come back in parts over time and him trying to figure out the pieces of the puzzle. It would have also have been nice to see him spend more time trying to convince Xiao’en that he really does remember and isn’t just regurgitating details from the novel. In other words, I’m a masochistic viewer and would have appreciated more drawn-out angst, but they quickly resolved this plotline within through a single gesture in the scene.

Tianxing’s relentless and determined pursuit to win over Xiao’en was cute, but only the context of this drama. He overtly stalks her using a drone, but as payback because that was how she stalked him at the beginning. A part of me knew that in any other drama, this would be creepy and overstepping boundaries, but I still couldn’t help but smile at these antics in Lost Romance. Maybe because Tianxing was reversing their roles and now he’s doing the heavy lifting to win her back, but in any case, it worked and was charming.

The family business drama

Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I skipped most scenes whenever the real-world family drama was shown, and I was still able to understand what happened in the end. The evil sister stops being evil and realizes the error of her ways (and actually has a pretty sympathetic backstory to explain her previous actions and motives) and joins forces with the ML, her younger half brother that she had wanted to kill, in order to take down a once-trusted employee who is now trying to take over and destroy the family business.

These scenes dragged out the story, but I guess they served as a reminder that the real world is still alive and kicking while the ML and FL were in a three-month long coma.

Questions

Like with most fantasy dramas, you end up accepting the plot holes and rolling with them. But there are still a few questions I still can’t get over:

1. How exactly did He Tianxing and Xiao’en end up in the fictional world of a random novel together? Why was only Xiao’en self-aware but Tianxing wasn’t? Was it because Xiao’en was editing the book so she already knew part of the story? Why did Tianxing fall into Situ Aoran’s character and why didn’t he have agency over his actions and feelings until later, while Xiao’en was a self-insert with full agency?

2. Why were only Tianxing and Xiao’en inhabiting fictional bodies, while the other characters only had the likeliness of people from real life but not the “soul” (since the characters were still conscious in real life)? Were Tianxing and Xiao’en projecting their memories of the appearances of the people they knew onto the characters in the storyworld, thereby creating a jointly shared fictional world? For instance, only Tianxing knew Chuchu irl, but Xiao’en didn’t, so he projected his image of ChuChu onto the character that Xiao’en could also see? But the fictional world was shown to be a parallel universe that had real consequences in the real-world, so the explanation for the appearance of the fictional characters can’t just be due to Tianxing and Xiao’en projecting their memories. These characters truly exist as separate, alternate entities in the storyworld. So, what exactly are these characters? Souless entities?

3. Qingfeng says that he floats from one story to the next. So why are some fictional characters fully fictional like Qingfeng, but other characters have real-life counterparts?

4. Why and how does the novel change irl when the fictional world changes? It’s also a pity that the author is completely uninvolved with all of these shenenigans, and it’s unfortunate that her novel is being using as the ML and FL’s playground. She basically lost control of her own story.

Overall impressions

It’s refreshing for a cdrama/twdrama, and they managed to keep Qingfeng’s identity a mystery for good part of the plot to keep you guessing. But for the most part, it’s another predictable, tropey modern romance drama. Even when they tried to subvert the tropes, their method of subversion was predictable. The chemistry and comedy was good, so I’d recommend it only if you have a high tolerance for cringe, since the cringe never really ends but does get better towards the last act of the drama when they return to the real world and gets more serious.

I think I’d give this drama a 7.5, mostly because I gave My Girlfriend is an Alien an 8. So if I gave Lost Romance an 8, I would bump MGIAA an 8.5 to keep it relative.

Both dramas feature a ML who deals with memory loss. The arc in Lost Romance was more serious and emotional since the FL is heartbroken over the loss, but the part where the ML regains his memory was a bit rushed. The arc in MGIAA is more comedic, but the part where he regains his memory had a bigger emotional payoff since memory loss was a major problem that the ML had been trying to overcome throughout the drama.

Might be an unpopular opinion but I think might have enjoyed this more than the Romance of Tiger and Rose. The Romance of Tiger and Rose was good, but it wasn��t very memorable. I watched it last summer, but I barely remember any details about it besides finding Zhao Lusi to be really cute. I think this drama made me feel more emotions: from frustration to embarrassment to relief to having butterflies to angst to sadness to amused.

Aoran/Tianxing and Qingfeng are also more interesting than Han Shuo. I guess I’ll wait 8 months to see if I still feel anything for this drama, or if it fades with time too.

Some other interesting notes

I had thought this drama was filmed in 2019 until I saw a sign on a bus that said “No boarding without a mask”. Turns out it was filmed in April 2020 or so, and then released in June. I was surprised that this was filmed during the peak of the pandemic when most western countries were in lockdown, but I understand that Taiwan already had things under control by then. But still, even if there wasn’t a pandemic, they filmed this in only 2-3 months, which is a quick and impressive turnaround time to film and edit a drama (even if it’s only 20 episode long). There was no indication this was filmed during a pandemic, except for the bus sign, and also the people walking in the background at the temple. You could tell many were wearing masks. Meanwhile, it’s been over a year since the pandemic started, and I’m still stuck at home, schools and outdoor activities are still closed where I am, and it just feels like my life is on hold. And yet, they filmed an entire ass drama during a pandemic. I still can’t get over that.

I haven’t watched a Taiwanese drama in a while, so there are some notable cultural differences I noticed between Taiwanese dramas and cdramas when I watched Lost Romance.

1. The uncensored intimate scenes 2. Swearing (?). Can’t remember when exactly, but I think Vivian Sung at one point said “wo kao” when she woke up and stumbled to the bathroom 3. The casual (and accurate) integration of English words and phrases. You can tell that Taiwan is much more open and comfortable with sprinkling English into their everyday vernacular. Hong Kong dramas do this as well. You see this less so in cdramas. English and other foreign languages are only used when the character is speaking to a foreign character. 4. No use of heavy filters and diffusers. Cdramas tend to look very glowy and dreamy, and they seem to use wide apertures to get a bokeh effect. Lost Romance had a more down-to-earth look. Granted, at points it did look a little dated, but I still appreciated this more toned-down, natural look. 5. LQBTQ+ references. Not only was there an accidental kiss scene between the FL and SFL, but they also mentioned how one of the male characters might be having an affair with a man. While there are BL idol dramas in China, all of the relationship dynamics are usually only heavily implied. There aren’t many explicit references to LGBTQ+ relationships in cdramas due to censorship. 6. References and homages/parodies of kdramas. Have there been cdramas that pay homage to foreign dramas as much as Lost Romance? 7. Original, non-dubbed voices. Yes, there are plenty of cdramas that use the original voices of actors, but there are also a lot of cdramas that use dubbed voices. Sometimes I’d binge watch 3 cdramas in a row, and the FLs and MLs have the same respective voice actors across all 3 dramas. The reason why I chose to watch Lost Romance was because I wanted to watch The Legends, but the FL uses the same voice actress as the FL in MGIAA, which I had just finished, so I needed a drama in between with different voices to help cleanse my palate. 8. Excessive cuts/commercial breaks. Always right before a character is about to say something pivotal, it cuts to a themesong break, which was really annoying. It really ruins the mood and suspense of the scene. And when it cuts back, it replays the last 20 seconds of the scene, while you’re on the end of your seat, yelling at the screen to tell them to get on with it and get to the point.

Anyway. Time to watch Cafe. Waiting. Love for Marcus and Vivian.

#lost romance #浪漫輸給你 #cdrama #twdrama #marcus chang #vivian sung #宋芸樺 #張立昂 #taiwanese drama

21 notes · View notes

whistlewhileiblogit · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on TLoU Part 2....Again

Yeah, I am back with another vent, rant, thoughts on...thing. I wanted to wait a long time after writing my initial reaction to the game, because I figured I’d get more clarity or something. Anyway, so here are my unedited and unfiltered thoughts...8 months later. So as always, this is going to be rambly, and I’ll probably just bold parts of note in case anyone wants to jump around. So here we go!

Oh and, SPOILERS AHEAD

Things I liked: These pretty much haven’t changed. The game is obviously beautiful, the gameplay itself I enjoyed immensely (when mentally separating it from the plot), the Joel and Ellie flashbacks. They were fantastic, and made me feel very reminiscent of the first game. Jesse and Dina were cool, but I found them underutilised, which is a massive shame because they were cool characters.

Yara and Lev were also great, and again, Yara was another completely wasted character potential. But love them nonetheless.

So yeah...that’s pretty much it, I think?

Now for the things I didn’t like...

The writing is the biggest sin in the game to me, as it creates so many structural issues. The pacing is wild and jarring, we aren’t given enough time to bond with certain characters before they are killed off, the narrative itself manages to be incredible simple yet complex simultaneously, but it is a total mess.

Let me explain. The end of the game essentially comes down to “revenge bad”, no matter how you look at it. Sure, you can also include other aspects like, “do good deeds”, but they seem sort of tacked on, considering what happens throughout the game. Ellie goes through the entire story with vengeance for Joel being basically the only thing on her mind (or at least, at the forefront of it), and then just...doesn’t go through with it at the end.

Honestly, the game felt by that point that she HAD to go through with it, after all, how would she learn her lesson? Yet she learns her lesson, without actually getting revenge? So what was the point? Some have said that she learnt in that final fight with Abby to forgive Joel, but this makes no sense. Ellie had already started to forgive Joel before his death. Obviously, she wasn’t over it yet, but she clearly wanted to make amends with her father figure. Besides, she’s fighting Abby, after all. And she certainly didn’t forgive her.

I think a lot of people took Ellie letting Abby go as forgiveness, but in reality, it was in complete grief. There was no point in killing her anymore.

But again, THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Given every. Single. Thing Ellie went through the game, all to find and kill Abby. Losing others she loved and cared for, her family, her fingers (and her ability to play guitar which was the only thing she had left connecting her to Joel)...all of that and she just let Abby go?

It would have made so much more sense had she gone through with killing Abby, only THEN to realise it didn’t make her feel better in the long run. That she was still conflicted in her feelings for Joel. Why bother having Ellie go through every point in the game, only to have her back out at the last second and STILL lose everything? What is that saying? If you do the “right” thing, you’ll still get shit anyway? Ugh.

So speaking of Abby...I thought hey, maybe after all this time, I’ll be able to grow to like her! Yeah, nope. She is just as unlikable as always. Abby is a deuteragonist that we are meant to grow to care for, like we do Ellie. But here’s the thing; Ellie has an ENTIRE GAME beforehand PLUS a freaking DLC game that gives us so much time to love her. So you would think that the writers must think, we’ll make Abby super likeable! NOPE.

Throughout the game, Abby is stoic (which isn’t a bad thing on its own), serious, and just flat-out boring. Sorry Naughty Dog, but I don’t find a character who collects coins as her biggest personality trait interesting. She isn’t funny, or kind or particularly clever. She has her strength, and that doesn’t count as a personality. She’s also a shitty friend, and person, and gets called out for that in the game by Dr Preggers (still don’t remember her name).

Even Abby’s flashbacks do little to make me like her. Oh wow, she has a magical, amazing, super perfect animal-helping papa? And? I just can’t latch onto her character and story. Even if she were really well written and interesting, I wonder if I could have after the game presents her as a total fucking barbaric monster in the first two hours of gameplay.

No, I’m still not over Joel’s death. And despite what some people try and say, it isn’t BECAUSE he died. I went into the game fully expecting Joel to die (I was lucky enough to see no spoilers prior to playing), because I felt like that would be the next step narratively that ND would go. This was a terrible decision on ND’s behalf, but I’ll get into that later.

Joel’s death as the way it plays out, does not only Joel a great disservice- but Abby as well. If ND wanted us all to like Abby so much, they easily could have just made her show some remorse, or conflict, or even just a quick, somewhat merciful death to Joel. But instead, we get ~torture porn~, which becomes the first scene of many of these in the game. This scene is so fucking brutal and sickening, I personally cannot watch it. I have seen it ONCE, and after that I have avoided having to watch it again. And I am not a person with a weak stomach.

Instead of having a death scene worthy of Joel’s character, like having him save Ellie somehow or going out in a blaze of glory, as many have suggested...we got an incredibly beloved character being treated as merely a plot device.

Imagine if the roles were reversed, and Ellie had been killed in Part 2, not Joel. I doubt those saying they’d be cool with it really would be. Especially in such a disgusting, horrific manner.

And one of my biggest grievances with the game- the retconning. I’ve had some people argue with me, that the game doesn’t retcon anything. Those people are fooling themselves or just being wilfully ignorant. Part 2 completely contradicts facts from Part 1. Including:

- Joel didn’t completely lie to Ellie. He half lied. If Joel finds all of the recorders in the hospital, it is revealed that the fireflies DID find dozens of immune people. And killed all of them trying to make a cure...and it didn’t work. This is literal in-game proof that the fireflies never would have succeeded in their quest, had Joel let them kill Ellie.

- Part 2 would have you believe that the fireflies were doing well with their groups and their research. Part 2 shows a beautiful, modern-day looking hospital. But the fact is, as shown in Part 1, the fireflies were on their last legs, and killing Ellie to try and find a cure was their last-ditch attempt to find meaning in their cause. It never was going to work. The hospital is shown to be filthy, and barely up to scratch by all standards. The fireflies were struggling, despite what part 2 tells us.

- The character design changes. We have all seen the comparison pictures of the doctor in part 1 vs part 2. They tried to make Jerry (?) look so wholesome and kind, begging for humanities sake. That isn’t how it went down, and he isn’t the same person. They just wanted Joel to look like a total villain.

I also want to mention what a disservice the marketing was to this game. I know Naughty Dog is very anti-spoiler, for obvious reasons, but they went above and beyond hiding spoilers that they straight up falsely advertised the game. And no, I will not forgive them for that.

The game completely undoes what made the first game special. It was a story about two people, struggling to survive, and somehow through it all, finding a familial love and trust within each other, and fighting to keep it, no matter what.

Ellie and Joel ARE The Last of Us, and Part 2 literally kills of half of what made the first game so incredibly special. As soon as Joel was killed, I wondered how the game would remedy those moments, and aside from the few Joel flashbacks, there really isn’t anything comparable to these scenes. Ellie is alone, so she doesn’t get to develop, or show her personality. And even when she is partnered up for short periods of time, she is too miserable (for good reason), to be the joking, lovable character we knew from the first game.

Final thoughts...

All in all, I would say my opinions have stayed pretty much the same for Part 2. I will forever love Part 1 (played it not long ago for the millionth time), and it is always going to be special to me.

But part 2, as it is, is nonredeemable to me. It really could have been something truly special, like part 1, but I guess that’s just what made The Last of Us so special.

#the last of us #the last of us part 2 #TLOU pt 2 #tlou part 2 #tlou 2 #thoughts #rant #rambles #my crap #joel miller #ellie williams #rip Joel #love you #i stg if anyone comments that I missed the point I-#nobody missed the point #the point is just fucking stupid

47 notes · View notes

mallowstep · 3 years

Note

Just saying on the whole: I decided on Brackenpelt and Mintfur's personalities, this blogs anon's (and a bit you, no offense) literally decided to kick canon Reedwhisker to the curb, he now looks like Oakheart, and he's a sweetheart and a bit of an idiot who tries his best to protectand tell on Hawkfrost? (I've not read past TNP, so idk if he's actually like this so if he is forgive me.)

oh my god i. i can't.

okay so i have this thing that. is kind of long and convoluted to explain and also i neither want nor have to but i have this thing about repeating work. i can't do it. like i physically cannot make myself do it. if something interrupts what i am doing, and i lose what i wrote for an ask, i cannot make myself rewrite it. the thought alone is enough to make me want to cry.

so. i was. god. i can't even -- even summarizing what i wrote is very difficult for me. so i'm just going to jump in to where i was writing, maybe back up a little, because i was having fun talking about character arcs, and -- y'all can just deal.

(n.b. when i bring this up, people tend to suggest things like drafting responses to asks in software with autosave, or just saving responses to asks as drafts periodically. the answer is always, "i know that's an option, and it doesn't work for me for any number of reasons." while i appreciate the care, i'd rather save us all the time.)

(but to respond as quickly as i can to your actual ask -- i change background characters all the time, and no one has ever commented on it. secondly, while i often enjoy what anons offer me from different ideas, i'd prefer if we don't -- treat them as mine, perhaps? hm. not sure how to phrase that well and i want to move on now.)

anyway, basically, i'm rambling about decisions anons make and why i wouldn't personally make them. because i was in the middle of a thought, i'm going to have to back up a little, but -- i'm going to try to save myself some time and pain and just make one starting statement and then move on.

while i'm about to explain why i wouldn't make the following choices, that does not make them bad choices. in fact, i often enjoy responding to your asks with snippets utilizing these choices. they're just not choices i would independently make, but that doesn't make them bad. i just like to ramble about character arcs, and this gives me an excuse

reedpaw interfering with hawkpaw's dreams of the dark forest

the arc i have planned for hawkfrost revolves around no one knowing about the dark forest. it is essential to tigerstar's manipulation of him that no one knows. it is fundamental to his character arc.

so -- i can't just throw in reedpaw interfering. it would change every character's arc. and i like my arc for hawkfrost. i do not think it is benefitted by reedpaw interacting with it.

(this is kind of what i mean -- i've greatly enjoyed writing the drama that comes of reedpaw interfering, but i would never choose to have him interfere in independent content.)

reedkit being born not long after hawkkit, mothkit, and frogkit

this is the piece i'm most angry to have lost. i had -- guys i had a very good explanation of this one. it's. i will do my best because -- i don't know.

i am very -- the misty au matters to me. unlike the other aus, the misty au is mine. it is not some web of ideas, it is my au, and while i adore seeing everyone play with it, it often feels like -- handing someone a rubiks cube, watching them fiddle with it, and then, when they give it back to you, you solve it in a few moments. (i did speed cubing personal best was 27s, although i doubt i could get anywhere close to that now.)

like, you hand me this idea. mistyfoot has another kit about six moons after hawkkit, mothkit, and frogkit. i nod as you explain, am excited to see you so excited about it, but i cannot simply leave the cube unsolved. it is a compulsion of a sort. you hand me an unsolved cube, and i will solve it. i don't mean to, sometimes. it is simply that i know the patterns so well, and the process of observing and solving a cube is so instinctual, that i look for the best cross without realizing what i am doing, start to solve without meaning to.

and -- in this case, this is me solving the cube, this explanation. i have inserted this metaphor in part to explain why i feel i must try to explain this once again, why i am -- now that the chance, the idea of covering this topic has been raised, i cannot set it down.

so. although it is difficult, i want to tell you why i wouldn't choose to do this. again. there will be less couching this time, as there always is, so review my -- i don't think you're wrong, i just wouldn't make these choices -- above. i mean it.

reedkit being born changes every character's arc inherently. i've mentioned this in passing, but it fundamentally changes every single character's arc. for the main seven, it is a direct and tangible change, and for others, it is a ripple effect, and no stone is left unturned.

but i will use mistyfoot's arc as a catch-all, to explain my reason for not making this choice.

mistyfoot -- okay, if reedkit is born, mistyfoot's primary focus is no longer feathertail. i'm not one for "one child is loved more" stories. i don't like writing them. so. mistyfoot's focus is split between reedkit and feathertail.

and that is a problem. because -- feathertail is the most important thing in the world to mistyfoot. in an unhealthy way at first, but in a healthy way, later on. it is Unhealthy for mistyfoot to base her every action around how it affects feathertail; it is healthy for mistyfoot's top priority to be feathertail. codependency vs being a parent.

so. why is that a problem? well -- because it changes a lot of things, but most importantly, or at least, most close to the main time period the misty au covers, it changes how mistyfoot builds a relationship with hawk, moth, and frog.

because -- well, let's back up for a moment.

mistyfoot does not go in the nursery once. despite the fact that it is feathertail, that before and after this, they are nearly inseparable (unhealthily before, heathily after), she does not visit feathertail in the nursery a single time.

[insert a tangent about mistyfoot being in the nursery with reedkit i cannot bring myself to rewrite]

her interactions with the kits, once they are weaned, are either highly structured, or incidental moments she avoids and escapes from as fast as she can.

but -- feathertail is always there as a buffer. feathertail brings them out to mistyfoot as her kits, as a form of -- presentation, almost. or, mistyfoot and feathertail are talking, and one of the kits approaches momentarily.

because she can't do it anyway.

[insert tangent about mistyfoot being a good mother and how in this instance, that means not being around them]

and as the kits grow up, it is through feathertail that mistyfoot manages to build a relationship with them. the fact that they are feathertail's kits is how she does it. in part because -- it is a degree of separation that she is afforded. if things are too much -- she is not their mother. she can back off. but also because -- they are important to feathertail, and that makes it easier for mistyfoot to want to know them.

this is -- core to all five arcs at hand, here.

she sees hawkpaw seek out feathertail after a nightmare, and she sees a kit, who loves, who feathertail loves. she sees -- it makes it easier to forget his father, if he can simply be a child, sleeping with his mother to ward of nightmares.

hawkfrost is -- will always be the one she has the hardest time connecting to. this has little to do with his appearance (while he looks similar to tigerstar, he is not a clone -- he has more contrasting markings, a white chest, blue eyes, a narrower build, sleeker, glossier fur, and so on), and everything to do with the grief he causes feathertail as an apprentice. she worries over him, and mistyfoot doesn't know what to do.

frogheart is easier, or at least more straightforward. he bonds with mistyfoot when he's carrying feathertail down the mountain. there's -- two levels. first, he's doing a great service to the most important person to mistyfoot. second, this is a very hard time for feathertail, and mistyfoot wants to be with her for it. so -- they walk down together.

mothwing is -- she starts to be more and more responsible for feathertail's healthcare. and -- mistyfoot is. pretty much always with feathertail for that. even something as simple as marigold on a scratch, or getting a thorn pulled out -- mistyfoot is there.

it is an Anxiety Inducing Time. feathertail associates being treated with very bad things, and avoids going to the medicine den, so like -- mistyfoot has to be there to actually get her to go.

so while mothwing is learning to deal with -- a bit of a role reversal, in that she has to take care of feathertail. as a doctor, yes, but feathertail -- requires a lot of patience, cajoling, and creativity. and you know, that's hard. it is hard to see the cat who raised you like that. that's a big theme for mothwing.

but it means she starts to build a relationship with mistyfoot.

so -- why does it matter?

well, putting aside a long list of reasons that mistyfoot having reedkit then is so angst inducing (she's grieving for her first litter, she's not in a place to voluntary have another child, she's still coping with the trauma of a forced pregnancy, etc), if her focus is split between reedkit and feathertail, the weight of all of this is decreased.

not -- by half, or anything. love is not some finite resource. but mistyfoot no longer avoids the nursery, and she has many more early interactions with the kits. when feathertail leaves, she has another kit that means she can't fall apart in the same way. and -- that means that frogpaw, hawkpaw, and mothpaw's initial impression of her never changes.

when feathertail vanishes, they start to gain a deeper understanding of mistyfoot, which enables them to be able to start connecting to her.

other stuff

i'm doing this thing where i try to go to bed before 3am, so unfortunately, not right now.

oh wait i lied real quick

tawnypelt

i think this is because you haven't seen her pov yet, but a lot of asks about her tend to misunderstand her internal thought process. or at least -- they don't characterize her the way i intend to.

#ask #mine #misty au #anon #not sure how to tag this tbh #reed au #i don't know #again to be clear #anons never change #i just felt like explaining #why i make the decisions i make #and i like talking about mistyfoot

5 notes · View notes

seddm · 3 years

Note

Oh father of wisdom, gimme your thougths on the first half of Amphibia. Please...

Short answer: it's fine, a role reversal scenario to explore the characters a little more and show how Anne changed and what she still needs to change to grow as a person. Too much filler.

Longer, actual answer: I saw the same thing that happens in almost any show of comparable target and structure. Talking about X in any way would force the character / story to use a pivotal moment early on, so stuff get compartmentalized to the extreme and outside incredibly small snippets (such as Anne at the end of Anne-Sterminator or the letters in the recent Christmas episode) something that should reasonably be at the front of a character's mind all the time gets delayed until the mid season finale or later. It happened to Starco in Star Vs case, it's happening to the elephant in the room of Sasha and Marcy still being nowhere to be seen while half LA knows Anne is back on Earth in Amphibia's. And I'm mostly confident when the show is finally going to get its emotional payoff it's going to be moving and beautiful and important for all the characters involved, but it will never be fully able to wash away the many "it happened too late" "ok but the emotional whiplash was still too much-" "good execution in the moment but everything before-".

Just like Starco in the last three episodes of the show.

I don't know why this happens so often. Naturally there's a certain level of compartmentalization intrinsic to essentially any work of fiction, especially when events happen at 11 minutes increments temporally separated one from the other; but in many cases it ends up being waaay too much. Is it due to networks having a super rigid policy about the structure of seasons, with no "plot rush" until the very end? Does the blame fall on writers and boarders, who find it easier to have the goals they set for their characters happen all at once and in fully separated bursts? Probably a mix of everything.

Anyway, it's far from being tragic (and subjectively I don't mind too much because I happen to fall in the sweet spot as far as Amphibia goes, being into the series and its characters enough to be genuinely invested, but not enough for it to affect my real emotional well being beyond the confines of the episodes), but I hope S3B gets back to Amphibia fast: not because I don't enjoy Earth shenanigans per-se (Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy have been an extremely welcome surprise), but because at this point it's clear Anne is not allowed to have any epiphany nor acknowledge Marcy and Sasha existing until she's either back in the bug dimension, or at the very least on the brink of being able to do so.

#seddm answers

3 notes · View notes

lilunebriumplays · 4 years

Note

oh geez don't be sorry, I'm excited to see you got into wayhaven finally! do you have a favorite romance?

Aaah anon, thank you so much! I'll still try and start using a queue though, I'm usually not overly active on here and now I feel like I'm all of a sudden flooding people's dashes, eeeeep (sorry guys!).

I thought long and hard on an answer to who my favourite romance is, but to be completely honest with you, I've reached the conclusion that I genuinely love all of them. Every route is so different and unique and brings it own appeal, I just love itttt. Every romance is different and every romance is completely valid and everything just makes sense within them.

(Eeep, so I turned out going on a bit of a ramble about every separate romance and what I love about them, so placed it under the cut to spare people’s dashboards!)

I love A because of the tensionnnnnnn and yearning, it's just so so so good 👌 But what really solidifies it for me is that, yes, neither A or the Detective are honest with their feelings, but it is never presented in a toxic manner.

There are still PLENTY of soft moments throughout, moments where they smile at each other, grow close to each other, and clearly appreciate each other's company.

Sure, those same moments get cut off by refusing to take the next step or even acknowledging they want to, but what I love so much about @seraphinitegames writing is that it's all done respectfully so. Neither A or the Detective are ever punished or made to feel worthless (sure they feel frustrated or sad, but there’s a distinct difference there). It’s always made clear that the reason A doesn’t go full-on into the romance is not because they don’t trust the Detective or that they’re not sure they like them - it’s because A doesn’t trust themselves and genuinely want what they think will make the Detective happiest. It’s a tragic romance, but never punishing.

Playing a genuine, friendly, deduction-based Detective for A's route, by far my favourite aspect is how they seem to just be effortlessly drawn to each other and are portrayed as so comfortable (the library-scene when you choose supernatural study is A+++ ♥), right up until one of them becomes aware of exactly that and takes a step back. Plus, the times where giving a patient response to A’s defensive comments and watching their armour slowly crumble as a result is just... *chef’s kiss* perfection. They are dorks and I love themmmm

Then there's N. My favourite part there is how N is just unquestioningly there for the Detective - dependable, reliable, supportive. Out of all the RO’s, I think N is the one who really shines through when it comes to taking an interest in the Detective’s view on matters. The other ones do as well, don’t get me wrong! But I think N is most vocal about it - they constantly check up on the Detective and ask them their opinion on situations, and make a point of conveying how much value they place in their company and just genuinely as a person in general. The fact that N was the one who wanted to explain everything to the Detective from the start as well really shows a genuine care and how much they appreciate and respect them. They are so refreshingly respectful of the Detective - letting them dictate the pace and constantly making sure they are ok with what is happening. They value the Detective as a person.

I play a stubborn, stoic, and independent Detective for their route, and honestly, N is just the best thing that could have happened to them, in a way that they provide them seemingly unconditional stability and support. Seeing the Detective slowly come out of their shell is such a rewarding narrative experience, and it’s a hallmark for N’s radiant influence.

M... oh man. So my detective for M’s route is bright and bubbly, focused on helping people and making horrible puns. At the same time, they get incredibly flustered at even the slightest hint of M’s interest in them. I have a feeling the route can play out quite differently when going for the Bold options, but my Detective basically spurned any and all advances from M right up until the hospital scene where they finally kissed. And it was just... so incredibly rewarding.

I love how M’s route starts off with pure physical energy but gradually evolves into something that just exudes comfort and trust. It’s shown in such low-key details like M actually thinking about adapting their smoking habit before meeting the Detective again in book 2, or how M is gradually sitting closer to the Detective without giving it much thought, or the rooftop scene (T_T) where it’s inexplicably shown how much of a calming effect the Detective has on M.

Throughout the entire romance, the focus can definitely lay on the flirting and the heat between M and the detective, but I personally get the most joy out of seeing how much M gets out of their shell because of the Detective - without question, and without seemingly any effort or conscious thought about it, the Detective is shown to slowly have become M’s anchor. Their way of connecting and engaging with the world.

F. Oh my gosh. I don’t even know where to start. I played F’s route last, and I am so so so grateful I did, because there’s so many details you can pick up on if you play the other routes first. So many moments that are shared with other routes - the bedroom scene before the thrall attack in book 1 for example - where, if you pay attention to the details, you notice how the roles have been reversed in F’s romance route. The fact that the RO is usually the one to step towards the action with the Detective following them, yet with F it’s the other way around and F follows the Detective instead, is just such such such a small yet nice detail that perfectly portrays how sincerely F has fallen for the Detective. I love ittttttt. ;_;

They are sincere, genuine, upfront, inexplicably in love with the Detective and offer absolutely no excuse for it - in fact, they wear their love on their sleeve. No hiding, no second-guessing, no hesitation, just pure, unadulterated honest love.

But what really, truly draws me towards F, is their joy. The light that they bring into the Detective’s life. The care and consideration. The laughs with them, the sly smiles, the upfront importance they place on their company, but above all, their optimism. Their sheer ability to pull the Detective up from any and all low and put a love for life back into them. The pure ability to enjoy and savour every moment has made the Detective’s life so much more radiant throughout the entire romance, it’s just...... I’m.......

F makes the Detective’s everyday infinitely more beautiful and enthralling just by effortlessly making them slow down and open their eyes to how rich and full and exciting and magical their life can be.

Oh my gosh. I just love all four of them. Picking a favourite is genuinely impossible since their romances just cannot be compared to one another. Each one is so unique and beautiful and offers different joys. Sera really, truly, genuinely delivered such fantastic work on fleshing out her characters and stories, I am almost speechless.

(....I type, after having written essentially an essay, oops.)

#wayhaven chronicles #the wayhaven chronicles #twc #seraphinitegames #agent a #agent f #agent m #agent n #ask tag

248 notes · View notes

thenightling · 3 years

Note

I have been too shy to talk to you as I haven't been a fan of The Sandman for very long. I hope that's okay and I love your fan fiction. I am almost done reading volume 6 Fables and Reflections and I would like to know how would you rank the stories in it from most favorite to least favorite? Also how would you rank the stories in the third volume Dream Country from most favorite to least favorite?

Hello,

Oh, sure! Don't be shy. I won't bite (unless asked. ;-) I love talking about The Sandman. And welcome to the fandom! I still consider myself new too. I only finally read it for the first time in 2017 and others of my age group were reading them since the 90s. So I'm making up for lost time.

Let's see.

Fables and Reflections in order of favorite to least favorite...

There are so many good ones in this one it's hard to decide.

Fear of Falling - I love this one. Morpheus is helpful and inspiring and it's very pro-creativity and pro-taking chances on yourself and what you do, artistically. Note: Not every version of Fables and Reflections comes with this but the 30th anniversary one does and I'm using that to make this list.

Soft Places - I like this one a lot. It tells the nature of The Soft Places / the Shifting Zones. It's a good story and you get to see characters at different points in their adventures. You have Marco Polo of the thirteenth century, Gilbert obviously shortly after A Game of You but before Brief lives. And Morpheus, fresh from his captivity, right before Imperfect Hosts. This is before Gregory found him and brought him to The House of Mystery to recover. And you can see his character growth. Marco Polo gives him water and in return he uses his last bit of strength to help Marco Polo get home. It's sweet.

Parliament of Rooks - I love this one. It introduces us to the concept of The Lil' Endless, we get to see baby Daniel apparently lucid dreaming while still only a toddler. We get the story of Eve. And it's always great to see Cain and Abel as storytellers. I also love seeing Matthew mock Cain and compare him to Vincent Price. "That Bargain basement Vaudevillian!" Hehe. (I love Vincent Price.) Also Goldie is very distinctly gendered as he here, repeatedly. So why is it, I wonder, that in all the spin-off versions of The Dreaming Goldie is suddenly a she?

Thermidor - I like Johanna Constantine. And this is the first appearance (I believe) of Orpheus other than his brief mention in Calliope and the stand-alone Sandman: Special Song of Orpheus. I also really like Jessamy. (*Glares at David S. Goyer* YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! ....I'm okay... JESSSSAMY!!!! (You'll get that in about a year I think...)

The Hunt - Who doesn't love a slightly subversive werewolf story / fairy tale? Also Lucien looks great here and we get to see him pro-actively protecting his library.

Song of Orpheus - Some versions of Fables and Reflections don't have this story as it was originally a stand alone one shot but it's absolutely necessary if you aren't well versed in Greek mythology. It essentially retells the myth of Orpheus but with The Endless and Morpheus as his father (Many think Apollo was his father). It's very well told and you really feel for Orpheus. This is not a comfortable story to read but gives you an idea of what Morpheus was like at his most... assholary. It's also really well drawn.

Ramadan - I like this one. The artwork is a little busy but I do love Morpheus’ entrance into the story. Again this is back during his asshole days and there is some good commentary here. It’s also very respectful to the Islamic faith. I love Morpheus’ outfit in this one.

Three Septembers and a January. - This is a good one. Dream vs. Despair. And the real world, historic, Emperor Norton gets to appear in The Sandman. It's historically accurate (save for The Endless) and actually very respectful to history.

August - This one is good but a little sad, a little depressing. It's very well drawn and it introduces us to the raven Aristeas, the poet. Poor Morpheus, welcome to the running gag of being mistaken as Apollo. There's some abuse in here, if I remember right. And Morpheus is a little callous, as he often was before his "Time out" bubble.

___________________________________________

Dream Country in order of favorite to least favorite

A Midsummer Night’s Dream - I love this one. We get to see William Shakespeare for the first time since Men of Good Fortune (the story that introduces us to Hob Gadling). A Midsummer Night’s Dream happens to be my favorite Shakespearean play. I always loved Puck even if Neil did feel the need to turn him into a little psychopath.

If you pay careful attention you see that Shakepseare’s son is tempted with faery fruit and so will be turned into a faery by the eating of it, as is how it goes in some folklore. Sometimes it places you under the faery’s spell. Sometimes it makes you one of them. In this case he becomes an immortal faery and that’s a much better fate than dying (I hope.) He does end up Titania’s slave (Unfortunately fae are a race with a very slave-based class system) but fae are strange and fickle and maybe he enjoys his role serving her and prefers it to the short life he would have had as a human.

This is also the story where we get the famous “Shadow truths” speech from Morpheus, which I hope will be in the new Netflix series. And we learn that it’s thanks to Morpheus that mortals will continue to dream of, think of, and even believe in the fae for years to come thanks to him having Shakespeare write that play. He has helped to sustain faery magick in our world and I like that.

Calliope - This one is a very difficult read since it addresses concepts like slavery, dehumanizing, forced imprisonment and rape. ��It’s the second time we see non-human creatures being dehumanized by being stripped of clothing and not being perceived as a person. The first time was with Morpheus, himself, in the very first issue, Sleep of the Just. This one is difficult to read because you feel so bad for Calliope. But the revenge Morpheus takes for her is so satisfying. I hope the Netflix show doesn’t change it too much. I know how modern audiences and writers feel about “White knights” and might want Calliope to save herself but I think it’s important to show Morpheus coming to her aid because it reveals how much character growth he’s had. That he knows he treated her poorly back when they were married. And again, the revenge he takes for her is very satisfying.

Dream of a Thousand cats - I love animals. I love cats. I have three cats of my own. Two of them I adopted the very day I read Dream of a Thousand cats for the first time (by pure coincidence). The death of the kittens is something very difficult for me. That is gut wrenching. But I do love the concept that if a thousand souls dream the same thing at the same time it has the potential to re-write all of reality is that things were always a certain way. This also nicely foreshadows the story we get in The Sandman: Overture and I love Overture.

Façade - I’m sorry to say I kind of dislike this one. I don’t think it’s what Neil intended but if feels like it romanticizes death a bit (as a concept, not a person). You have a protagonist who is clearly clinically depressed and isolated and the best answer is apparently suicide!? What she needed was a real friend, one that wouldn’t judge her by her appearance, and perhaps counseling. A friend of mine attempted suicide a few summers ago and I had to hastily contact her mother on Facebook while it was happening so that may have impacted how I see this story. This is one of those stories where I don’t think Death is as kind and sweet as so many fans think she is. She came off as rather callous to me and not really friendly, and Kat Dennings’ delivery in the audio drama verison didn’t help matters.

I’m glad The Sandman audio drama reversed the order for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and façade. I think A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a much better place to end on than Façade.

#The Sandman #Sandman

6 notes · View notes

chika-the-terrible · 3 years

Text

Resident Evil AU Ideas (#1)

So, recently I’ve finally gotten out of the black hole that is Stranger Things (still love it and active but not as much as before) and fallen into a different one: Resident Evil. I’ll tell you guys right now that I will never play the games because I just cannot take the tension and I know I would be horrible at them. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in the lore.

I’ve been watching playthroughs of the games (finished watching 4 yesterday) and I plan on watching the movies as well, maybe see a few lore videos about other parts I might miss. But I’m already hooked and I’ve found my fav character to be Leon. Not that I don’t like the others, but his combination of looks and backstory have got me hooked to him.

Now then, onto the actual reason for this post, if you’ve made it this far: I’m willing to share some AU ideas I’ve already got in mind, if you guys ask. Don’t feel as if you need to, but if you’re curious, I’ll give an explanation on the AU you ask about. Fair warning, though, these will be primarily Leon-centric and a few are crossovers.

BioShock AU - Leon was an expendable man, and this was an expendable mission. No one expected his return, but Sherry’s glad to have him back. Except he’s not the same, and after everything they’ve gone through, that’s really saying something.

Harry Potter AU (going by the working title Little Lion Man) - Where Leon adopts Harry and a few things change for the better. Magic also doesn’t work on BOWs so the wizards might be screwed.

Prince Plagas - Leon doesn’t manage to get rid of the parasite, but neither does he fall under Saddler’s control. Something more unexpected befalls him…

Digimon AU - Two stories, two worlds to save, one possible ending. Or where Wesker creates the end of both the Real and Digital Worlds and Chris, Claire, Jill, and Leon have to team up with Digimon to fix this mess.

Pokémon AU - Essentially the same story as the games (maybe more) but everyone has Pokémon partners and so a few things might change.

Role Reversal - Instead of Claire and Sherry/Leon and Ada, it’s Leon and Sherry/Claire and Ada. (Probably has been done before but I still like the idea and might have other role reversals)

Brütal Legend AU - Eddie returns from the past to a world he doesn’t recognize and instead finds himself recruited by the BSAA for his ‘special talent.’ (Don’t necessarily need to know what Brütal Legend is but helps you know the characters better)

Werewolf AU - Leon the werewolf, going through his story. A few changes, of course, but mostly he gets called GoldenEye and Dogstar and hates it. (Dogstar exclusively by Ada)

Of course these are works in progress and might not be written but I will blab on all day about these AUs and more that might pop up as I get deeper into RE. I hope you guys have questions or enjoy these silly ideas of mine!

#resident evil #my post #writing ideas #writing

3 notes · View notes

calliecat93 · 3 years

Text

Star Trek Into Darkness. I had heard a LOT of negative reception to this one. A lot of it is due to the casting decisions with Khan that I’m not touching with a 39 1/2 foot pole. But in general it’s. It seen as a great film at least in the areas that I’ve circled. But that’s other people’s opinion, I need to form my own. So my opinion?

It’s... slightly better imo than 2009, but still not great.

Pros are still the same as before. Good cinematography. Good acting. Good effects. Very good action. I also failed to mention this the first time, but the films ARE more diverse with the Enterprise staff than in TOS. We not only have varied PoC, but different alien species and styles as well. It’s one of the advantages of being closer to modern times and just helps add so much.. well, life. I also continue to love Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov in these things. They’re allowed a little more than they got int he show without overpowering the main... well duo since Bones sadly isn’t that lucky. But still, they’re great characters and I love them.

Kirk is... better. I feel like they did a better job making some of his actions understandable and sympathetic. He loses his mentor, almost loses Spock and being reprimanded for breaking Prime Directive for it, and his failure to have these feelings properly addressed is messing with him. It’s understandable and makes me feel bad for him and he is trying to do the right thing. I fully sided with him when justifying breaking Prime Directive to save Spock and while he’d have done a FAR better job explaining it to Starfleet, it’s what TOS Kirk likely would have done. Him also trying to have his crew spared also shows that he HAS grown and despite his recklessness, he has a heroic soul. However... I DID agree that Kirk deserves to lose his captaincy. He DID get it handed to him. He IS immature and unprepared, as his reactions here and how he’s still sleeping around (which WHY is that still a thing after the first?!) only emphasizes the point. So I am liking him more and I can say that I like him, but Beyond better do a better job because this still is not James Tibirius Kirk, just a standard action hero with the same name.

Spock was fine. Felt like we should have heard more about how he’s been doing since... you know, the destruction of his planet last film and all. But he still felt good here. He has a better grasp on himself compared to before. Still don’t like his forced relationship with Uhura, though they don’t drag out their conflict at least. They bring up his self-sacrificial nature and his seeming lack of care about how it would affect him or his loved ones and while maybe it got wrapped up too quickly, it was properly addressed. Essentially he felt like Spock. He felt more like TOS Spock while still being his own character compared to last time so that’s good! I was overall happy with him here. Also glad that he was smart enough to contact Prime Spock in case he had faced Khan before. Prime Spock sadly felt included for fanservice, but this would be Nimoy’s final time as the character, so I can’t complain about it. It was nice to see him one last time.

Bones once again gets screwed over. I will give them some points since he does at least get to show his intelligence and medical skills FAR more than last time where they only used it to have him drug Jim. Ut otherwise he exists and is still a fun character with Urban continuing to put his all into it. Him helping Spock with the torpedos got a grin out of me. But again, the filmmakers completely ignored his role and importance. In a film where Kirk is going through some major emotional trauma, this would have been a great place to let McCoy shine since it’s his role to be the one who gets Jim through his emotional issues. The episodes Obsession and The Ultimate Computer are excellent TOS examples of it. But they don’t. His reaction to Jim’s death and slaving away to save him was good though... even though he doesn’t even get a thank you for it (nor Uhura for that matter). Appreciate your doctors folks.

The Triumvirate is a tad better, but still not formed or given any focus at all. It’s still mainly Kirk and Spock who ARE more friendly and who I actually believe are friends. I actually care about their relationship now and it doesn’t feel forced or just that way cause canon said so. But they still have the two on opposite ends and not Kirk being the balance to Spock and McCoy. I will say though that while it only happens a little, I DID enjoy the three interacting together. It felt like ‘yes, they are together and it feels RIGHT’. I don’t get how the perfect package is sitting there in front of them but they ignore it. But it IS better. But these three were at their greatest potential together and the films just seem afraid to tap into it for some reason. I really don’t get it except they want to use Kirk and Spock to keep cashing in cause they think that’s what the audience wants. Yeah you get your money and general satisfaction... but you lose true story and character potential and fan respect for those who want to see those characters and their dynamic again.

Also... yeah the ending was trying to pull the reverse form Wrath of Khan with Kirk dying instead of Spock. While it DID have emotion behind it and was very well axted, filmed, and the score was perfect, it didn’t work. Not only because we know that there is no way they’re going to kill Jim off so the impact of his death is killed instantly, but because it is only there for the reverse. You wanna know why Spock’s sacrifice in WoK worked? Even if one could see it and predict that he’d come back and are fully aware of it in the years since? Because we’d had 80 episodes of seeing Spock. We had gotten to know him. We had seen his relationship with Kirk. We had seen them go through so much together. We had seen Spock’s struggles and related to him. When I watched WoK despite knowing that he’d be back. i was sad because of all that time I’d spent with him, and was relieved and happy when he came back in Search for Spock. The films don’t have that time. They had a film that didn’t portray their relationship properly and a second that did better, but still misunderstands it. Thus, the film succeeded in making it sad, but they failed in capturing the powerful emotions and meaning that it had before. It’s there to essentially cash in on WoK without any of the effort, and that pisses me off to no end.

Khan was okay. Again not going into the casting thing, but the character is nowhere near as food as TOS Khan. Carol was okay, but we needed the scene of her undressing because...? Plot was better than last time with good pacing and actual emotion/themes in it. The Nurse Chapel reference pissed me off especially for it’s implications about Kirk’s ‘womanizing’ ways that shouldn’t exist and considering that was who Roddenberry’s wife played, seems pretty damn disrespectful to the woman. Marcus was just a standard ‘evil authority’ character who IDT was needed at all. Also again, HOW did the timeline changing cause ANY of this?! The films see no reason to explain, it’s just an excuse to justify their own vision no matter if it works or not. It’s their way of doing what they want without puttin any work into justifying anything. I think that the film IS better than 2009... but it’s STILL not Star Trek. It’s a sci-fi summer blockbuster that uses the Star Trek name and characters to bring the viewers in. I’ve heard that Beyond had new writers and directors that actually DO understand TOS, so I am hopeful that that’s true and we get a good movie out of it. But Into Darkness, while I don’t agree it’s worse than last time (though the blatant cashing in without the work makes me fully understand why people feel that way), it’s still a film that doesn’t understand it’s source material.

#st watchthrough

1 note · View note

mamusings · 4 years

Text

Supernatural Season 1 Thoughts

So I'm rewatching mainly to distract myself from the dogs breakfast the show has descended into. But also because my feelings about the show as a whole are decidedly mixed. I come to it as a buffy fan. I've always been curious about spn as a successor show to buffy, but only watched thr first 13 seasons in 2020. Blame lockdown.

Anyway s1. Blinding start, blinding finish. But the middle is just too many MOTW episodes without enough season arc development. I keep wondering who the show is for. It feels aesthetically very male. Lots of blood, guns and violence. Well-realised horror feel - although I think it's hard to really feel fear when you dont particularly care about who might die. It's only when you threaten a major character death that things hit harder. Also the genuflecting to realism by drawing on urban myths feels like something for stereotypically 'male' rather than 'female'. Probably reflects my preferences that I was never to into the MOTW format some buffy fans loved and that I was always more interested in the story telling than realism or even consistency. Monsters as metaphors works better for me. But Spn is a much more cloistered universe. Two guys and their absent father is what s1 is about. But it dits weirdly between being comfort viewing and needing attention. There's much that starts to feel formulaic with MOTW episodes: Impala on the road scene, some rock music, an opener that gives you a new mystery and people to go with it blah blah. You can practically set your watch by the final denouement happening in the final 8 mins. It feels like the show is diligently checking off every myth and monster going which gets tedious. I found the need for setting up yet another family in danger was something that gets hard to care about. "Oh look a couple, someone's gonna die, shall I fast forward until sam and dean show up." And yet there are some interesting undercutting of the white working class vibe the show has. Two that stand out to me are: the 'female gazing' of the camera work off Sam and Dean. There's a lot of panning - are we getting in the boys with the guns and hardware and then offering up the handsome male bodies for women? I felt a little cheap, but they they are v cute. The other is having a black/bi racial woman play Dean's only serious love interest. The ghost truck thing is terrible but putting attitudes to race at the centre of this particular storyline was intriguing. Perhaps a counter balance to the overall wwc feel of things. (Full disclosure I am a black woman and I enjoyed seeing this - even tho I did have several moments of wondering was the predominant female look so uniform back then. All the girls have the same build (and did we all wear such low rise jeans?) plus long, wavy/curly hair...except Meg who basically has Sam's hairstyle ha ha)

What's impressive? The first few episodes give us a cluster of core lines: bitch/jerk, no chick flick moments, and the sibling dynamic This show hits its stride right in the pilot and wendigo is still one of the scarier episodes. Thats a really good opening shot imo.

It's no surprise that what's really riveting is Sam and Dean. But on rewatching I saw a lot more on why this is so interesting. Basically when the characters are introduced you first get Sam. He's your archetypal nice guy whis hot everything though for him. Stanford, girlfriend, friends, great test score but also and crucially hes likeable. Then you get Dean and hes introduced as a dick. Breaks in, wrestles Sam, comes on to/is sleazy with Sams gf. So cocky bad boy: check.

In the pilot dean is the annoying big brother to a t. So they set up two contrasting personalities. Dean is disrespectful to cops, Sam is embarrassed by it. Dean is into hunting, Sam is unwillingly persuaded. Dean is insensitive, Sam kinder and sweet. Dean plays dumb, Sam's the academic achiever. But what we witness over the course of the season essentially reverses this. Sam's the real rebel defying his father, Dean the obedient son. Dean gets a lot of scenes showing him make swift emotional connections esp with children or people in caretaker roles. Dean's very adult 'I'm 26 of course I go on hunts alone' is unmasked by the fact he gets Sam to help him because hes lonely. And Dean (often clumsily) tries to help Sam move on about Jess and open up about his nightmares. While the explicit dialogue casts Sam as the geeky loser brother what we see in this season is that the loser is actually Dean. Sam has friends, Sam has a relationship, Sam has a life he wants to get back to. Dean has no one and some of the hardest emotional hits this season are when his mask is lifted to show us just that. For instance shape shifter Dean voices his jealousy in Skin. Also Azazel taunts Dean about how he needs Sam and John in a way that they dont need him.

The closing episodes really bring some of these contrasts home. Dead Mans Blood gives us a great bonding scene between Sam and John, for me that's a moment where it falls into place that they so much in common that it leaves Dean on the outside. They both loved women they lost to a demon. For both of them (at this stage) the mission, as in killing this demon, matters more than family. Its Dean who constantly prioritises family, even while his family deprioritise him. Both Sam in Salvation and John in Devils Trap put sacrificing themselves to kill the demon as their first priority. Whereas Dean consistently argues for family, first persuading John that they are stronger together, then telling Sam that the three of us 'is all I have' in Salvation. The point gets hammered home in Devils Trap where Dean says (in case the stupid viewer missed it "you and Dad are a lot more alike..cant wait to sacrifice yourselves, but I'm going to be the one to bury you").

Much of the rest of the relationship development is about showing us the partnership Sam and Dean are developing. You see increasing ease in working together - maybe most cliched in how they toss weapons back and forth in Hell House. Plus that interesting sibling dynamic when you love someone and find them intensely annoying that feels enjoyable even if your own sibling relationship is nothing like it.

But what's interesting is that while Dean's character is revealed throughout the season. You see through the episodes the difference between his Dean presents himself and hiw he is, but dean doesn't change. Hes immature and emotionally driven I'd also savvy and brave. Its Sam who changes. Not in how he is, but in his priorities. Sam realises the good bit about Dean among the stuff that irritates him. But most importantly the final episode shows us Sam moving from thinking the mission is what matters just like John. To thinking his family matters more. He doesnt shoot Azazel inside John and when John berates him for it his look at the bloodied-up Dean in the rearview mirror speaks volumes.

It's all the more striking because thus argument has been the core dilemma for the last 3 episodes. It's also the crux of how Dean, for all his obedience, sees himself as falling short of who his father wants him to be. He cant turn his heart off. Its Dean who calls his dad sounding like a tearful little boy in Home. It's when John approves of him making the heart choice and using the colt to save Sam, that Dean realises it's not his father but Azazel speaking. I find that painful to watch it's been so well set up. You get lots of preview of Dean really wanting approval and when it finally comes and you're all ahh fsmily bonding, Dean puts it together and goes you're not my father. Ouch.

Absent fathers and eventually I guess an absent God is a big spn theme. So there is something to say for looking at it in this season. John's absence is the driver of the whole season. But it's also the foundation stone of both Sam and Dean's character. What we get most of in s1 is a sense of the impact of his fathers absence on Dean. The childhood neglect, but also the absence of approval. My European background always makes it jarring when children address their father as sir so I hope I'm not over reading this. When John gets back the way it emasculates Dean is jarring. The jumping to attention with the yessirs and the following orders is such a distance from the cocky law breaker. Its interesting that the first scenes in which I recall the boys speaking in unison are these yessirs. But the scene I remember most is a trivial one, Dean offers John a machete out of Babys messy looking trunk - hes already been pulled up by dad for inadequate car maintenance. But John pulls a bigger, better, cleaner machete out of his high spec truck - Dead Mans Blood. Sums it up for me. Dean is so eager for approval, his father withholds it so casually. Sam is less like this, because he had Dean to parent him however ineptly. Sam did not have a hoid parent in Dean, but Dean showed up. Sam starts to make that realisation in season 1 and there are a few thank you moments. Contrast Dean's only outburst against his father when hes admonished to call when in trouble. He takes a leaf out of Sam's book and notes that they did call in Lawrence and they called when Dean was dying in Faith, hes angry and rightly so. John didn't show. But its interesting that Dean's fight with John sounds like a child fighting with a parent. It even ends with 'I dont care for your tone' from John even as he accepts Dean's point. Constrast Sam and John who have a much deeper ongoing disagreement. But Sam fights his father from an adult position. He's not looking for approval or acceptance, Sam claims his ground, argues his point. Dean still just needs to be loved.

But as well as the impact of the absent parent there is also having grown beyond the parent. I feel like the final few episodes show us that 'the boys' have surpassed their father. John's fake colt idea is lame and Dean calls it. By contrast the devils trap at Bobby's to catch Meg feels like a moment of brilliance particularly as the trap is sprung on the viewer so we feel surprised too.. Sure they call in help from Bobby, but what they do is well planned and they pull it off. And calling in helo when you need it us grown up.

Theres an element of fate vs character exploration when it comes to Sam and Dean. What happens to Sam is fate. It's not related to how he is or how he behaves. We find that out more fully soon. Whereas what happend to Dean relates to his character. IMO Dean actually has the option of walking away from hunting that Sam tried to exercise. Unlike Sam, hunting wouldn't have pursued Dean by killing his girlfriend. But Dean's character means he doesnt chose to walk away because family is important to him, in a way that it isn't for Sam until the end of this season. Its interesting that Sam perceives of himself as having choices he doesn't have. Whereas Dean sees himself as having no choice, when in fact he does. But I guess we don't know that yet so maybe the argument doesn't work?

#supernatural #sam #dean #winchester

10 notes · View notes

theorynexus · 4 years

Text

Retrospective Analysis of Dirk:

After the initial thoughts I had this morning, following some light (re-)reading, I have come to various conclusions: The role that Dave Strider played in the Meat Epilogue was nearly identical to that that Dirk’s Bro (Alpha Dave Strider) played in the story--- DOOMed rebel fighting against the rise of another dictatorial Crocker. I am sure that Dirk realized this, both considering the fact that this was an echo of Dave’s soul across the multiple instances of himself, and because he partially engineered this eventuality. Intriguingly enough, this might imply that Rose likely would have sided against Crocker (Jane) if her ascension had not incapacitated her and Dirk hadn’t been puppeteer-distracting her at the time (for reasons beyond her connection to Kanaya). More importantly, it helps establish an important further parallel: Dirk acted as the puppetmaster in the shadows, essentially controlling the election and determining its outcome from the beginning. Lord English remained the most important force in the Alpha Kids’ world and session in much the same manner, despite )(er Imperious Condescension’s attempted Rebellion. Both individuals were playing broader and longer games than the women they were manipulating to suit their purposes. Though Dirk’s purposes have not yet been revealed to the fullest extent, Jane Crocker had a narrower perspective that failed to grasp the true nature of the battles going on and underestimated her “supporter” ‘s power and intentions. This relates to another way in which Dirk Strider and Caliborn/Lord English: Both of them represent iterations/avatars/fulfillments of the idea of Calmasis--- both tricked a Calliope into losing a major confrontation by making her confuse an attack on one piece with that of another (a major short term/immediate objective--- an attack on a queen [in Dirk’s case, Jake English/the election] ---with an attack on the king [Alt!Calliope, who acted as essentially the commander of the forces opposed to him]); furthermore, and more importantly, both act as protagonists and antagonists to the story at the same time (villain and anti-hero). Dirk presumably sees himself as working towards the perpetuation of reality by forcing more conflict into an otherwise ended story; or alternatively, sees himself striving for freedom in opposition to causality and enslavement to cosmic will (which would jive well with his Kamina-esque aesthetic). Meanwhile, Caliborn/Lord English obviously served as the main villain of Homestuck, but were also the protagonists of their little side adventure and was trying to develop himself and expand his horizons despite his severe disadvantages, much the way the Kids and Trolls did. Dirk’s fulfillment of that role may have actually been why he downplayed the importance of Complacency of the Learned in his conversation with Rose just before he began to subsume her will in earnest. Of course, that is somewhat speculative, and hard to prove, one way or the other. ... Regardless, upon making these sorts of connections, I began to think about whether Dirk was intended to become a villain from the moment he was introduced, and/or relatively early on. Andrew Hussie seems to have a habit of working out many plot details a great deal in advance (see the Alpha Kids being hinted at as early as Act 4 with Jake’s letter to John, Doc Scratch probably being intended to have been/contained at least an iteration of Dirk from the beginning [as shown via his comment to Rose that she ought to think of him as a kindly human uncle figure-- shoved in our face via a certain Truthsplosion]), so the idea didn’t seem all that farfetched. After all, as referenced in the above parenthetical reference, Doc Scratch shows that Dirk always had at least the potential for villainy in him, under the right circumstances. The first thing that jumped into my mind (other than the fact that Bro is a bit of a dick, I guess, and the early narrative of Act 6 emphasizes the fact that this is in fact the kid version of Bro quite a bit) was the fact that Dirk’s introductory period created clear parallels with two trolls of a highly corrupt moral character--- Vriska and Equius: Beyond the obvious tendencies to manipul8 others and his willingness to “cheat” in certain ways (defeating Squarewave in a rap battle bit exploiting his weakness to liquid shorting him out, teleporting his head to Jake for the revive+kiss with the intent of forcing a start to their relationship that way, et cetera) Dirk is also pining for a Page who he attempts to force a redrom with (more effectively, in his case, at least in the short term), and whom he attempts to “groom” by pushing challenges that the Page is clearly not prepared to face his way (Brobot’s awkward difficulty settings parallel the FLARP encounters Vriska gave Tavros). That Vriska and Dirk’s first on-screen kills were both decapitations is probably a coincidence. As for Equius: There is the wife beater that Dirk sometimes wears, the similarities between horses and musclebeasts, the fact that both build robots whom they then face off against in lethal combat, the fact that both wear shades and are initially blacked out upon introduction (though this latter matter is of less significance) the fact that both have dominating personalities and a secret kinky submissive side (albeit these play out in different ways for the two), the fact that Brobot and Aradiabot both take out their “hearts” and POUND POUND POUND them up dramatically (note: though this is a bit of a stretch, the parallel makes the affinity’s intention obvious), their willingness to lie and take extreme measures (Equius considers lying and double-crossing to be in a blue blood’s nature and/or their “superior” culture; Dirk outright tells Jane that one of three statements he is making is a lie, and the only one it could possibly be is that he believes that Roxy’s decision to blow up Jane’s computer as a way to scare Jane away from playing was too extreme [meaning that, since this was a lie, he is absolutely willing to go to such extremes to get the job done--- as shown later with his willingness to decapitate himself, publicly display the fact that he’d killed Hegemonic Brute, et cetera])... and most obviously+ominously, his declaration to Jane that while she was going to remain the group’s leader as far as everyone else was concerned, he was going to be the person controlling things from the shadows (which is a reversal of Equius’ demand that Aradia be the shadow leader for the Blue Team, but obviously calls him to mind via allusion/reference). Now, while a case can be made for either of these characters not being that bad, and I am personally someone who likes and feels for Vriska quite a lot, I will be the first to admit that she is the closest thing the trolls have to Caliborn or Dirk (Gamzee doesn’t count: he’s has a mental breakdown and is basically brainwashed by LE via Lil Cal; he’s not a planner or someone who went out of his way to embrace his “turn to the dark side” of his own volition--- if you can call it that, for Caliborn; you know what I mean). As for Equius: he was highly violent and could have been quite the menace, if it weren’t for his moirail. He had a generally demented mentality. Neither of these are the sorts of comparisons you want to be made with a character being painted as particularly heroic and good. Next comes the fact that, as I have discussed previously, Dirk Strider and Caliborn/Lord English have been deeply entangled with one another’s fates. Caliborn liked Dirk the best out of all of the Alpha Kids, it was ironically Dirk who ended up defeating him in the end (in both the form of soul trapping and via ARquius). However, it was also Dirk who provided Caliborn with the mechanical leg that allowed him to escape (and presumably have confidence in the idea of escape) from his SAW Room Death Trap binding with Calliope. Presumably, either Dirk or AR must have figured that that was the intention behind the request/present, at some point. (I rather doubt it was something that Dirk knew the implications of at the time, but I wouldn’t necessarily rule out that possibility. He might not have cared, especially since that was years before the Alpha Kids began their session, and he/they might not have had much of a bond with Calliope, at that point. Not that he ever got all that close to her, generally.) Note: Caliborn’s favor toward Dirk does not necessarily suggest anything inherently wrong with Dirk, but it helps set him apart from the others. This is just another warning sign suggesting something “off” about him. Dirk’s “I have failed,” before he went wandering off into the glitches and self-destructed in the [S] Game Over. version of the Alpha similarly can be interpreted as hinting at his God Complex/Megalomaniac tendencies. It seems a logical extension of his general personality that he wouldn’t be able to settle down and enjoy a peaceful life in a “perfect” paradise planet (which is probably one of the reasons he decided to leave it). I suppose this is just another thing that wasn’t generally thought about as the community was so focused on the actual process of getting to the victory point, and what that would mean? At the very least, I don’t remember any such considerations. There were certainly warning signs. The biggest factor that convinces me that Dirk’s villainy was planned quite early on (and which thus supports to some extent the idea that Jake is meant to be his eventual foil) is that Dave, after seeing his Bro’s corpse, said, “I’m not a hero, my bro was.” This was almost certainly made at a point where Dirk Strider was conceptually developed/invented already, definitely was at a point where Dave’s baggage surrounding heroism and its connection with how he felt toward his brother was in play, and most certainly was well after the audience could have seen that Bro was abusive and sortof a dirtbag. Thus, there was already some irony, there. However, he also called John a hero in that same statement, so it clearly was not totally derogatory, and so the irony could be increased. It was, as shown by the fact that the Alpha Kids were not “Heroes” of their session, but Nobles. This was not enough. Dirk has eventually turned into the anti-hero and villain of his own story. Perhaps this might be enough; however, it wouldn’t quite feel fully “right” if he hadn’t been intended to have been so from the beginning-- and perhaps that’s actually why their group were called Nobles in the first place, not only because of the fact that they couldn’t complete their session without the others, but because not all of them were heroic at heart. [Non-sequitur: I wonder if LE would have been anywhere near as dangerous, if not for Lil Hal’s capacity to make incredibly complicated calculations {needed for Furthest Ring travel, among other things, presumably}, and his capacity as Doc Scratch to pave the way for LE’s arrival. This would seem a very similar relationship to how Dirk facilitated Caliborn’s entry via the leg, in retrospect.] ... While the section immediately above isn’t as well-developed as I’d like-- mostly because I’m tired, distracted, and it’s been at least 3 hours since I started this post in the first place, and I want to at least get the last part that I thought of in before it leaves my memory. I may add to/edit in more for this post, or post follow-up material later, when I remember more that might have slipped my mind on this subject/I think of more. Anyway!--- as I was considering all of this, a very intriguing thought popped into my head: While I had initially assumed that it was simply to not rehash old material and/or that it was to keep us with John for the sake of narrative consistency, since I now know that it was Dirk who was narrating this segment of the story, and thus it was a narrator with bias and interest in the facts being related, it has occurred to me that it is actually quite odd for Dirk to omit some relation of the actual facts of the Caliborn’s Masterpiece encounter. We are placed by his hand at a place even further removed from the reality of the battle than the clearly biased and somewhat embellished account that the Cherub gave of his own rise to power. This strikes me as odd particularly given the fact that it is Dirk’s great moment of heroism, which might serve as a sort of counter-balance to much of his otherwise morally questionable deeds. Given his egotism (and the fact that there would seem to be no OOC reason strong enough to justify such an omission on the author’s part, since this means that there is no faithful depiction of the battle shown to us in the story), this makes it seem as if Dirk chooses to not show the conclusion of this battle for some specific and tangible reason. I would not suspect it to be out of embarrassment, a desire to conceal his identity longer, or plain trollishness (though the last of these strikes me as almost being fitting). Rather, I wonder if there is something worth concealing in the end of this encounter. Maybe the Alpha Kids actually lost, and Dirk’s placement of Cal into Lil Cal was an act of capitulation. Maybe Dirk otherwise willingly and knowingly created Lord English via the soul trap at the behest of ARquiusprite, or said sprite tricked him into doing so, claiming it was the only way to defeat their opponent (which it was) and omitting the consequences. I do not know which of these, if any, is the correct answer, but Dirk being the one to choose to omit the details does, I shall repeat, seem extremely fishy to me, all things considered. ~~~ While I will not put a summary here, I would just like to say: In retrospect, the Meat Epilogue has done more than the requisite “adding on to the story in appreciable ways and tying up loose ends,” but has served to add depth to an already incredibly deep story and caused me to reconsider and better understand characters and themes which I had not previously delved into so deeply before. I wonder, now, if Dirk Strider and Lord English shall prove to have been even more deeply connected than it has seemed up to this point, once I have reached the end of the Candy Epilogue and thus will be allowed to properly investigate what’s going on at the beginning of Homestuck^2. Final thought: Hmm. So much of his imagery speaks to him being a sort of twisted version of Kamina (embodiment of masculinity, warrior spirit, noble sacrifice, heroism [not being able to live up to those last two, and lampshading to some extent his frustration at that, in Epilogue Part 7]), but it also vaguely seems to me that he at least sees himself as being like Simon--- this is to say, leading the charge for freedom against the forces of determinism and the chains of repression that would hold back humanity (and/or himself). It’s a very striking thing, especially considering the fact that it is only Simon who takes the fight to space in a fancy ship, once what seems to have been the final villain was defeated and the real threat began to loom on the horizon. I wonder how this contrast will develop in the future, and how noble his true ideals may in fact be. ~~~ Major Edit:

What. The heck. How did I not remember this blatant nonsense? Fricking... darn it.

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Epilogue #Meat Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #Character Analysis #Retrospective #Toppa Tengen Gurren Lagann #Bro Strider #Dirk Strider #Homestuck Theory #Caliborn #Calmasis #Themes #Allusion

26 notes · View notes

takaraphoenix · 4 years

Text

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 3

Finally finished my rewatch of season 3. Among the high school arc, this one was my least liked, though I did enjoy this overall villain!

1. Favorite character of this season?

Buffy, as boring as saying the main character's name is. Her journey from episode 1, where she is so struggling with everything she's been through, to trying to settle back into Sunnydale, then Faith disrupting her life, the whole Angel drama, Joyce now knowing the truth. It's a lot emotionally for Buffy to handle this season and her emotional journey – and the fact that the things that hurt her actually hurt her and have an after-effect – is what I enjoy most about this show.

2. Outstanding minor character (positive or negative)?

Anya! I absolutely love Anyanka. She is still rather awkwardly fit in here, post losing her powers, but I adore Anya

3. Favorite character dynamic?

Faith and Buffy. It is so complex. Best friends, two sides of the same coin, the good and the bad. Jealousy from Buffy's side shifting over to jealousy on Faith's side, with an explosive finale. Their is one of the, if not the, most complex dynamic in the entire show, at least in my opinion. Gotta admit, I am far more fond of it in the final season, but to see how it all started out and gradually shifted over the season is really fascinating.

4. Favorite canon romantic ship?

Not really a lot of positive romantic relationships going on. I love Oz/Willow, but hate that she cheated on him and that he essentially just took her back and it went back to normal without much actual... effect on the dynamic, they just went past the cheating. Xander/Cordy were just as ruined by the cheating and quite honestly, at this point in story, the Angel/Buffy has gotten too dramatic.

I would say Giles/Joyce. That is that one ship that got away, for me at least. I think they have great potential and the blushy avoidance after Band Candy was adorable, I always wished the show had fully gone there and given them a chance romantically.

5. Least favorite canon romantic ship?

Xander/Willow. What utterly forced OoC nonsense was that, really? Willow, of all the kind sweet people, to cheat on her partner? And really, Xander, after having been best buds all your life, NOW is is that you notice Willow is an attractive girl? Now that you are in a relationship with an amazing woman and she is in a relationship with an amazing guy?

Seriously, the fact that Willow's a lesbian is genuinely the only explanation I have for this. Trying to actively sabotage her relationship with Oz, because he is such a good and sweet guy.

I hate cheating with a passion, cheating plotlines are bullshit. And to put two characters I love into that? And have both of them have other relationships at the time?

6. Favorite episode?

Got a couple 4s in there (I am rating each episode between 1 and 5, with 5 being reserved to my absolute favorite episodes). Not so much one that really stands out, but many I am fond of.

03x06 Band Candy, which was a lot of fun with the role reversal of mother and daughter.

03x08 Lovers Walk was a lot of fun, I just love emotionally vulnerable Spike, I also love the awkwardness of the Spike-Willow dynamic (as this is not the last instance of us seeing this) and Spike giving Angel and Buffy the cold hard facts about their relationship. It's a fun episode!

03x09 The Wish is amazing, I always love a “What If” episode with an alternate reality and vampire!Willow makes me really truly gay, honestly. Alyson's acting in this episode is amazing.

03x11 Gingerbread is one that I like a lot because the whole... witch-hunt of it is fascinating and seeing Buffy opposing her mother as the 'main' enemy for the most episode is interesting to watch.

03x12 Helpless is an intense, emotional episode, it really tests the Giles-Buffy dynamic.

7. Least favorite episode?

Only got one I didn't like this season, that's 03x04 Beauty and the Beasts. The whole girl being abused by Jekyll and Hyde dude was... just not my cup of tea.

8. Favorite Monster Of The Week?

That Hänsel/Gretel monster from Gingerbread, I really found the whole idea really interesting. A demon that brings out the worth in people and makes them go after each other.

9. Least favorite Monster Of The Week?

Mh... Tucker Wells in 03x20 The Prom? He was just... bland. “I trained hell-hounds to attack the prom because a girl rejected me”. Gee. I mean, the whole point was to make the villain unimportant because this one really was about Buffy's emotions and the prom itself, but still.

10. Rate the overarching villain!

Mayor Wilkins was a fun villain! He was amusing to watch, he was quirky and weird. He was particularly outstanding due to his dynamic with Faith and the... fatherly fondness he developed for her. I do love when a villain is being humanized because simply fighting Pure Soulless Evil is rather boring, to be quite frank. Seeing the pure evil actually have human emotions makes them much more interesting to watch.

Bonus: Other thoughts?

My perspective on Faith has changed a lot over the years and that's fascinating.

I only used to look at her as the bad influence on Buffy (and she is), as a kid and teen who looked at them as much more mature than they are. Now, as an adult, I look at these children and I see Faith as the kid who's lacking a good influence on her.

I mean, seriously. Her OG watcher was killed, she came to Sunnydale on her own. The council never sent her her own new watcher though, Giles was kind of taking her under his wing. But really only “kind of”, because when she slacked off it was just shrugged off and commented as part of her bad character traits. No one would have let Buffy slack off, Giles would have made her train – and that was a big part of what shaped Buffy. The relentlessness of others.

And it's not even just the training. Faith is a kid, just like the Scoobies, but she isn't attending school. No one cares about her having a semblance of a normal life, even a bit. No one cares about her discipline. And she's living in a crappy, gross little motel.

Why is she not... living with Giles? Giles has a whole rather nicely sized house, surely there would be a room to spare for his second Slayer. But no one even seems to care that she is living in that crappy little motel.

What she needed was a watcher who cared about her as much as Giles cares about Buffy. Someone to guide her, to set her head straight, to show her she is cared for. Instead, she was treated as kind of the unwanted step-slayer, until push came to shove – and she found care with the villain.

#Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Phoe Watching Buffy

5 notes · View notes