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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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Hi Goldy, JK was bold in the past, around 2017-2019 (to me, gcf & rosebowl can be considered as ‘coming out’). But it seems he now prefers to stay closeted? E.g. he snatched JM’s hand in the Xylitol x BTS shoot, then looked at the camera. Holding hands is normal among members… a lot of his interactions with Jin, V and other members are more intimate than holding hands… his reaction makes me feel like he wants me to pretend I didn’t know…?

Sorry I've been a bit AWOL lately...

I'm busy being the man of my woman's dreams in a cis het anti black capitalist world

Fun times.

I saw that bit, uWu-ed and kept it pushing.

It's nothing new really. I think a few months back when I was out here screaming Jikook are toning down, acting super professional around the cameras yadda yadda people out here were looking at me like I'd lost my two delulu heads- but this segues into that theme for me and since I've exhausted the topic I don't know what else to add.

I've said before they've both been very conscious of the cameras within certain periods post October- again nothing new, they be like that every now and then every season every phase and the whys will always be up for debate in these ship streets- on that subject, I've read a lot of opinions yet I think like mine better and will stick to it. Thanks Kimberly of Delulu precinct. Walk along now. Lol.

Jimin was like that during the Coway behind the scene shoot too when he noticed the cameras and quickly elbowed Jk to draw him away from the gaze of the cameras.

I don't think it's because they stopped being 'bold' or want to pretend. It takes a lot of courage to even pretend or even perform the gay in front of the world and your peers. I think they are just awfully aware and conscious of the people they work with as well as corporation's growing awareness, intentions and interests in them. You just never know which saessang is moonlighting as a brand PA or marketing director for a company they are working with. You just never know who is watching especially whenever they have to work with these 'outsiders.'

Think of Dispatch. Were they not allies or business partners, they'd be careful around them too if they worked with them. Know what I mean?

Toning down and exercising caution is necessary sometimes. I don't know why some people think that's absurd or Tuktukkerish when I say stuff like that. Especially with the kind of reputation they have as a ship and just how commercially attractive that image is. It's common sense at this point if you ask me.

Jikook sells. Argue with the analytics. I don't know who thinks they don't. Must be the clowns and penguins. They sell period. BigHit knows this, BTS knows this, companies know this. We don't scream Jikook is a brand within a brand for no reason.

And a lot of the toning down in recent times has perhaps inadvertently mitigated that growing power and demand of them as a marketing resource- who knows, that could have as well been by design, intentionally instigated for obvious reasons which I argue is the case but don't mind me. I'm delusional, gay and apparently the man of my woman's dreams uWu. Gotta wear that pants in my relationship. Ayaya Hwaiting.

When you say he prefers to stay closested- I thought they are both closested already?? They both have never been fully out in our opinion. Yes our opinion because I feel we are like minded. Let's be delulu mates.

On the topic of closets, I want to save that for a separate post. What I can say though is they are both growing and maturing and learning and unlearning. Jungkook's desire to 'come out' or act reckless with his glass closet in my opinion stemmed from him placing more value on his personal happiness over other values perhaps because he was young and hadn't fully grasped the full and complex nature of happiness or understand the privilege he has as part of BTS.

We make decisions based on our values most times. It's how I make sense of their actions really. I'm more likely to assume things that are consistent with the values they each have expressed openly and tend to reject any theory that contradicts or is inconsistent with those values. A guy who values his career is less likely to act in a way that puts that career at risk. And I'm well aware their values evolve over time.

These days he has never quit as one of his mottos next to rather dead than cool- do you see the contradictions in those values? Rather dead means quitting life. Yet now he says never quit. Don't mind me. I'm in a grumpy mood.

But what I'm saying is, the desire to want to show the world who this person means to him is not fixed or a priority all the time. Now i think he values his career a lot more than before which means he is more likely to compromise and less likely to do things that may put that career in jeopardy.

Transferring that to his relationship, I don't expect him to be breaching the glass closet anytime soon. And if he do, it might be incidental and may carry with it consequences which I believe he is well aware and concious of now. Will that change? You bet. Again it depends a lot on what his values in a given moment are and which ones he prioritizes.

It's their relationship. They chose which aspects of it they want to share with the cameras. Some of it get written off as fanservice. Fair enough. But the nonfanservice passing moments has always been questionable- although I must say, I find all Jikook moments and interactions questionable lol.

It's just skinship. Holding hands I mean. Why would he be conscious of that right? II'vetalked about consequences and repercussions of their actions. Sometimes I think it's the off screen scolding that gets to him. The ones silently whispered at his back. I mean we saw his reaction when Jimin was getting scolded by the hyungs for sleeping late. He's talked about skipping sleep too if I recall correctly. Jimin is hyung and I know the hyungs expect him to know better and do better. I'd Imagine Jimin would equally scold JK if his actions reflected poorly on him too.

So why the hell would he not say anything to Jungkook for posting on his birthday when he hadn't posted at all for any hyung's??? Sigh.

It's sad his guards are back up- but it's for good reason I believe given the context of the situation.

I don't think dramatizing his dynamic with Jimin makes him bold. Nor does Jimin's propensity to over express himself with Jungkook mean he loves Jungkook more than. Both are extreme takes for me.

Nevertheless, I contrast that moment with a Tae Kook moment which is one of my favorite tuktukk moments. In this moment, JK is staring at Jimin, his whole body turned towards him. Tae notices the cameras and draws JK's attention to it. I think there are two such moments like that from the recent contents? I don't know I have to cross check.

Tae in that moment reminded me a lot of Jimin. Jimin does this too- play out their relationship infront of the cameras to the point one might say he likes to show off their bond- which is such a BTS thing to do too so no big deal. I mean they like to show off their bond and chemistry as Tae said a while back.

It's one thing for JK to hesitate to act with a member because of the cameras, it's another for him to act self conscious only after the fact.

And JK has always been him like this with Jimin as Jimin used to say- JK acts different with me off cameras than he is on camera. He had a history of suppressing himself around Jimin owing in part to his personality

He's talked about putting on a mask around people and in a recent interview Jimin have talked about pretending and acting one way when he's not- I mean I've ever talked about the boy being in love with the Maknae being a facade- one of many.

They have public personas which, from what BTS themselves say, looks slightly different or similar to what we see on screens- or that they've grown to be more like what we see on screens.

I guess what I'm getting at is that 'pretending' isn't exactly a new thing or out of the ordinary. Personally I'd say he's being conscious of his surroundings like Jimin was and not that he is 'pretending.' If you know what I mean.

If he's pretending he has good reason to I believe and we can only speculate on that- we can't know for sure why.

If Jikook is fanservice then there's no need for either of them to worry about the cameras picking up on their interactions or who's watching them.

What goes on in Tae's head? I wanna know.

I don't know where to direct this post because you didn't really ask a question.

I'm fine thanks for asking. I'm really fine. I'm thinking of joining Jimin in the gym at 3am to bench press and build some biceps to match my role in my relationship😒

And no I don't need any advice. Keep it.

This is going to be my attitude until we switch back😐

I'm gonna be a boyfriend from hell and a blogger from satan's ass.

Also I think I overshare💀

GOLDY

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neverdoingmuch · 3 years

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Wait cql lawyer/law school AU

i got you my pal dont worry!!

law school, im gonna be honest and say i know like nothing about law or law school so pls ignore any inconsistencies or inaccuracies

lwj goes to law school and he is definitely the top student in his class. they’ve been there for like a month and everyone already knows he’s gonna be the best

his one and only competition is this dude called wei wuxian but lwj isn’t particularly worried about him

so far they’re still in the stage of the course where they do the fun things to sucker people into doing the class for the semester so there’s been some practise debates and arguments and stuff in their tutorial classes

wei wuxian has that Charisma and like yeah all of his arguments are perfect but also he has an amazing smile and people are like yes i can trust him

(he’s definitely the sort to be like hm, the easy way to argue this case would be to quote some laws and use precedence to justify this but that’s boring)

lwj is also good at that sort of stuff because his arguments are perfect and everything is so perfectly researched that there should be no ground at all for someone to lodge a counterargument

(wei wuxian manages somehow and it makes lwj so mad)

but that’s whatever lwj thinks,, a lot of people join law thinking it’s gonna be like the tv shows and books and then get completely blindsided when it comes to the rote learning part or like the actual laws

and for all of wwx’s confidence, lwj hasn’t actually seen wwx so much as touch the textbook/s and he always studies in the law library so he knows that wwx has probably never even been there bc he hasn’t seen him even once (why’s he looking? bc he needs to see which books wwx uses to study,, bc there has to be something going on there,, obviously)

then they do their first like proper written assignment and lwj and wwx tie for the highest scores and now lwj has a Rival and he refuses to lose to someone who thinks that putting a ‘-us’ sound at the end of a word makes it latin (did wwx say habeas corpus and then point at a soft drink and go sprite-us can-us,,, maybe,,,,)

anyway! lwj and wwx are kinda rivals for the top spot and it’s one of those situations where one test lwj wins by a point but then the next test wwx gets full marks and they just keep exchanging the top spot in class

and this whole time wwx is like The Worst to have in class. he’s always interrupting to ask questions or just straight up not listening and spends the class doodling pictures of rabbits (they’re cute but wwx is terrible and he’s not allowed to make cute drawings)

so after a few months the most horrible thing happens.... they get put together in a project and lwj is like ugh. internally of course but his face is also saying ugh

the first time wwx and lwj get together to work on the project, lwj is prepared with a proper list of tasks to do all nicely split up between the two of them and a schedule for when they should get certain parts done by.

needless to say, lwj does not expect wwx to be ready, but wwx is definitely on top of things

he rocks up and is like yeah let’s do this, this and this and have them done by this time - basically proposing to do everything that lwj has already written down

and lwj is pleasantly surprised and is like hm maybe i misjudged wwx and decides to like re-evaluate his opinion on him

in doing so he realises that when he’d never seen wwx studying, it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. he’s never seen wwx so much as touch a textbook or spend more than a minute on a laptop doing something that wasn’t minesweeper or solitaire

but wwx is also making all of their deadlines and even adds extra information and resources to their document that could be useful elsewhere and sometimes he shows up to their study sessions and he looks absolutely exhausted

eventually lwj manages to get the truth out and wwx is just like yeah it’s easier to get worse grades than a genius but if you both study and you still get lower grades, it’s not easy,, for jc or for me

so wwx usually studies at night when his brother is asleep and lwj is like that’s bad, you can’t keep that up and just when wwx is about to go off at him lwj is like you can come study at my place

and thus begins the wonderful time where everything is alright and lwj falls in love with wwx

they work really well together and wwx is strangely considerate and nice? when he finds out lwj likes rabbits, he goes out and buys bunny post-it notes for lwj and starts to always bring him a doodle of bunnies every time he comes over. he always gets his work done on time, early even, and his work is always so brilliant and every time wwx smiles at him, lwj feels warm inside etc etc

for a long while lwj is like yes (: this is friendship (: bc he’s never had a crush before but then on the day they submit their project wwx is like hey,, the two of us make a great team,, we should always work together,, now and next year and even when we graduate,, i want to help the innocent people who need our help and i think i’d like it a lot if you joined me and lwj has his oh moment

they get a perfect score on the project of course and even after it finishes, wwx keeps coming over to lwj’s place to study or just hang out and lwj is just falling more and more for wwx each day

they’re best friends now and everyone gets used to seeing them work together on projects and then turn around to try and decimate each other when they’re working one on one and lwj thinks that he might just be the happiest he’s ever been

but then one day wwx doesn’t show up to class. it shouldn’t be strange but wwx has never missed class even once and he ends up hearing from lxc who heard from jgy that wwx was caught sabotaging some other student’s work (the other student was jzxun, who had a fondness for playing devil’s advocate and other than wwx once telling him that his argument was shit, wwx never spoke to him or seemed to know who he was but lwj is a bit too angry to remember that)

he manages to find wwx outside of his dorms as he’s moving out and he’s just like why did you do that? and wwx is like oh y’know,, bc he’s not really sure what’s happening himself,, one second he was at the top of his class and the next he was being brought before a board and being told that he was being expelled but he’s not going to tell lwj that bc lwj would definitely try and stand up for him and then they’d both get expelled

but lwj is furious and just spits out well if our dreams meant so little to you then maybe it’s a good thing you failed now,, bc his mother was a lawyer who took all these little jobs that helped people who actually needed the help and lwj was looking forward to doing that with wwx and he doesn’t even seem to care that now they can’t do that

wwx flinches and then smiles at him and just cheerily says, that’s me and leaves. he doesn’t look back and lwj doesn’t chase after him.

lwj doesn’t see him again for years (you can do 13 or 5 or however long you feel like)

lwj is a fully licensed lawyer and he’s working for the family company and he spends half of his time working on cases and uses the rest of his time to do like outreach programs where he goes and visits schools and runs sessions on what it’s like to be a lawyer, how to apply, and to provide assistance to any students who decide to study law at uni

and then at one of these programs he meets this kid, wen yuan, who is ridiculously bright and enthusiastic and has a smile that seems oddly familiar

at the end of the second session he comes up to lwj and is like mr. lan, is your name lan wangji? and lwj just says yes, expecting the kid to be a fan of one of his cases or something but then wen yuan is like oh wow! i thought i recognised you from my dad’s photo!

and lwj isn’t expecting much but he asks what the photo looks like and wen yuan pulls out this photo from his pocket and lwj immediately recognises it,, it’s the only photo he has of him and wwx

your father is wei ying? lwj asks him and wen yuan is like yes, hesitates, and then asks, would you like to see him?

and that’s how lwj finds himself following wen yuan to some dinky little office that has a plaque outside that reads wen and wei

(wen ning is the nicest and sweetest person ever and lots of people underestimate him but then he’s an absolute monster on court. he gets up and completely decimates the opponent and then at the end is like (: it was so nice to meet you!! i am baby!! and all that,, you know our boy)

anyway they walk in and wwx turns to greet wen yuan but then he sees lwj and is like woah! you! and he’s not sure whether to hide or go and hug lwj so he just gives him a fist bump,, like a bro,, and immediately wants to shrivel up and die

anyway they get the reunion stuff out of the way, swelling music, tender wrist holding, lots of staring, lwj silently declaring his wholehearted love for wwx and refusing to believe rumours about him again even though he doesn’t actually know what happened, you know how it goes

from wwx’s side of things,, after he got kicked out he went to some small uni. good in its own right but not known for their law program and ended up specialising in family law

the first case he ever won was for the wens to have the right to keep custody of a-yuan and the first case wen ning ever won was to let wwx adopt a-yuan bc i’m soft like that

so wwx has just been kinda vibing,, being a single dad, living with the wens and helping to make that difference he always promised he would

now this isn’t gonna be some au where lwj goes oh my! i must give up my high salary job and work with wwx! bc lwj has been doing good stuff at his current job and for all of his family’s stuffiness, they run a fair and just company

but! he does end up helping wwx when wwx gets a letter with a bunch of information about the jins and how they’re actually super corrupt and evil (big surprise,,) and how wwx was maybe definitely framed bc he was doing some casual work on the side and stumbled across some bad shit on the jins back in uni

lwj ends up being the one to take the case officially but wwx is definitely the guy leading it and so lwj ends up spending most of his time at the wen-wei office

lwj definitely bonds with wen yuan, who also wants to go into law, and writes him recommendation letters and helps him edit his applications and stuff

(and one day wen yuan is like leaving you was the hardest thing dad ever did and i dont think you appreciated how much he cared about you. he really did think that he annoyed you ‘til the end and lwj is like no! he didn’t! and wen yuan is like yeah i know but you gotta tell him and lwj really does mean to but the time is never right or something like that but also wen yuan is all but calling lwj dad at this point)

anyway they end up going to court, side by side, working as a team just as they promised to do and just as they finish their final day on the case, ended with the jury ruling jgy guilty and wwx’s reputation all but saved, wwx turns around and flings himself at lwj

is he crying? is he laughing? a bit of both tbh but wwx ends up confessing right then and there, still on record and everything (is that how that works??? idk! let’s say it does)

and what can lwj do but make out with him?

did a news crew come in to film the results of this massive court case just to end up with five minutes of wangxian kissing?? maybe! but when it played on tv it meant wwx and lwj didnt have to actually tell anyone they got together

(and does lwj eventually pop the question using wwx’s bad latinification? yes and wwx is too busy laughing to accept at first but he does and they end up being the worst possible tutors for wen yuan as he goes through law school bc they keep being all gross and lovey-dovey and acting like law school is the most romantic place in the world)

#mdzs #Anonymous #modao zushi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #cql #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #all of my understanding of law comes from the pelican brief which i read over 10 years ago and one seminar on law courses at uni #so sorry if it's bad #):#lan sizhui #also i stand by wen yuan #let him keep his last name!#my aus #asks

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jellysharkbat · 4 years

Text

I’m going to preface this with: I’m not a fan of call-out posts. I’m going to post on one topic in this post, and another topic in a different post. I put up a read more so you don’t all get slammed by a all of text. Because I like to think I’m polite like that. ;)

Adding a second preface: I’m probably going to reblog or like stuff from people you may not personally agree with. I’m liking and reblogging because I like the work, not because I’m in love with the creator. People still like John Lennon’s music and he beat women.

Anyways, here goes for anyone who wants to read.

Okay, as much as I hate confrontation and do my best to avoid it, I can’t let this one lay. It’s just unfair all so many levels. I’m going to focus on Cullen, since he’s one of my favorites, and I don’t know the other characters mentioned (and those not mentioned) as well.

My, like many others, blog is nsfw. It’s 18+. I’m going to assume that anyone who follows me is an adult. And I’m going to pretend that anyone who isn’t, doesn’t. I am going to post things that are violent in nature and- here’s the one everyone’s super focused on- sex. Because I’m an adult. If I want to read about sex, I will. If I want to write about sex, I will. Because I’m an adult. And there is nothing wrong with sex.

There have been some names named and shamed for portraying characters as “hypersexualized”.

I have one answer to that: so what?

It’s no big deal if Cullen is portrayed as virginal or a sex god. He is not real. I’m going to repeat that: Cullen Rutherford is fake. He is fictional. He does not exist. He, like everyone else, is a character from a video game. We love him, but he is not real. He doesn’t have thoughts of his own, he doesn’t have feelings, he doesn’t have a life. He is a work of fiction created by Bioware.

I’m going to say this one more time: Characters from Dragon Age are not real. Stop acting like they are real people.

The great thing about fandoms is that we can take a character we like, and do whatever we want with them. If we want to fix inconsistencies that the creators didn’t, we can. If we want to fill in the gaps about their lives, we can do that. If we want to pluck them out of their canonical universe and put them in a new one, we can do that. If we want to rewrite stuff about them, we can do that. We own that creativity.

One of the biggest reasons for this “outcry” is that Cullen Rutherford was sexually assaulted and/or raped.

As far as I am aware, there is no canonical evidence to support this claim. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

His sexual trauma is something we assumed happened. We imagine that a character from a video game was treated horribly. Is it likely that this happened? Sure. I think we can all agree that it’s probable that the desire demon did more than mess with his mind. The implication is there. But we can’t confirm it. We can’t look at something and point to it as hard-based evidence. Because there is none.

We made it up.

Just like Scout Jim, we created that trauma. We want that trauma to exist.

We created it, and we can take it away.

I’m also going to say this: even if canon supported our theory, it wouldn’t matter. As fanfic writers and artists, we can change whatever we want. We can portray Cullen Rutherford’s personality, and other characters, however we want. Because he’s not real.

But the sexual assault! What about that?

You mean the sexual assault that never happened in real life? Because he’s not a real person? It doesn’t matter.

Should we approach the subject of sexual assault with respect to those who survived it? Yes. Because that is a real, traumatic experience a real individual went through. And their experience in such an attack should be handled according to that person’s wishes.

Does that mean the moment a work of fiction which may or may not involve it, it needs to be treated like glass? No. Because it didn’t happen in real life. And since it’s a work of fiction, we as creators don’t always need to pay attention to it or make it true for every single universe that includes Cullen Rutherford.

Some people might want to portray it as real as possible, others might want to eliminate it completely. There’s nothing wrong with either choice.

I’m going to assume that a most people have never experience sexual assault and/or rape. Have some people been harassed? Unfortunately, yes. But it is not true of the vast majority of us, and harassment (while a violation in its own right) is not the same as someone physically putting their hands on you. Most of us have no idea what it is like to be assaulted or raped. None. Nothing we imagine will ever compare to the real thing. We don’t know what it’s like, and therefore we will never portray it accurately. And quite frankly, I can’t imagine anyone who would want to know. I’m happy to keep the bad portrayals because it means no actual crime happened.

Even if we did know, real people react differently. Rape survivors do not all behave one way. They do not act one way, all the time. How they respond to anything will depend on their situation, their experience, their current circumstance, their comfort. You can stick two people in a room, have those people be raped in the same exact manner, and put them in a new situation which may or may not force them to think about what happened to them. And they’ll respond differently. Because they are different people. Sometimes they want no sex, sometimes they want all the sex. And that changes day to day, like it does for many people.

To tell them that they can never act any other way is an insult to them and what they survived. You should be ashamed of implying or outright stating that. How dare you slap them in the face.

That, however, is a real person. As I said, Cullen is not real. He is written and portrayed again and again by many different people. He is always going to be different from one portrayal to the next compared to his canonical, in-game self. Are there extremes? Sure. But I dare you to show me a fandom where there aren’t extremes. And in the end, it doesn’t matter if those extremes exist.

No one is actually being hurt (unless you’re a sick mofo and like writing your irl crimes…). It’s fiction. Fake. Not. Real.

If I want to write something about Cullen being violently raped, I can. If I want to pretend he was never abused in any way, I can. If I want to imagine him being sexually crazed, I can. If I want to rip off an arm and make him a eunuch, I can.

Because it’s all fake.

The beauty of fiction is that we created ways so people aren’t surprised by stuff they may not want to see. We created filters. We created blacklists. We created tags. Did we have to? No. You don’t go to a library or a bookstore and expect to see tags or filters, do you? Because those things don’t exist for books. You would just pick up a book and accept whatever is written inside. We didn’t have to do that. But we did. Because we want people to be comfortable, and have fun.

If you don’t like the way someone is portraying how you think- ah. That bit is important. I’m going to repeat myself again: If you don’t like the way someone is portraying how you think they should, that is on you. You have the expectation of something. It is no one’s responsibility but your own to cater to that expectation.

People aren’t creating works involving characters like Cullen solely for your, individual pleasure. How arrogant for you to think so.We are creating many versions of a fictional person in hopes that someone else might like that version and will share their own. We should not go around pretending that only one version is the True Correct Version.

That’s the kind of shit religions do. They love purity crusades.And that’s exactly what this seems to be to me. It’s not outrage because of how people portray a fictional character, it’s an outrage because some people don’t want to admit that they have a problem with other people freely enjoying sex.

You don’t own any of Bioware’s characters. You alone do not have the final say on what happens to a character outside of canonical information, or how that character should behave 100% of the time. And you have no right to harass people because they don’t have the same Vision you do.

If something like sexual assault was truly triggering for you, and not just something offensive to your delicate sensibilities, I’m going to say you probably wouldn’t search for it. You’d find ways to filter it out. And you would accept that if something does slip through, it’s no one’s fault. People can write or draw characters in whatever situation they want. You need to acknowledge that sometimes there will be something that you won’t like and if you still see it, because no one is obligated to do anything for you.

But we will, and we try. Because in general, the majority of us care. We want to have fun. We can adjust some things if asked. Nicely. Because a lot of us realize that not everyone is going to like the same thing. People are different and will have different tastes.

One more, final point: What someone writes or draws is not indicative of who they are as a person. I write and think about a lot of stuff. I’m a curious person. I want to be able to imagine what would happen in whatever scenario I create, good or bad. I have favorite characters. Because I like those characters, I like sticking them in the scenarios I create because I want to know how they would react. It doesn’t matter if it’s something soft and sweet or a rape roleplay. What that is has nothing to do with who I am. That goes for everyone else.

So let me tell you a little something about myself, since you have no other way of knowing if I don’t specifically tell you:

I am shy. I am quiet. I don’t like picking fights. I don’t speak eloquently. I am a pushover.

And sometimes- a lot of the time- I want my favorite fictional character Cullen Rutherford to act out a “hypersexualized” fantasy of mine.

#ngl #a little bit interested to see if I'll get a reasonable #actual adult answer to this #and not teenage hysteria #If you think differently #please tell me why #I like hearing other people's opinions #seriously #cullen rutherford #dragon age #you do realize that if you don't like something #you can ask for it to be tagged so you can blacklist it right?#this is very much a grow up and deal with it thing

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bobbimorses · 4 years

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I saw you mentioning that Clint's personality/portrayal in more recent works has been done poorly. What sort of things do you want to see acknowledged/come back in the modern Hawkeye portrayal?

ok, i’m gonna refrain from embedding panels since this will be so long. skip to the bold for what i’d like acknowledged again because i first try to analyze what recent misinterpretations stem from before getting to your point. whoops!

currently, people seem to overwhelmingly portray clint in only these terms: coffee, catchphrases, and clueless. now that’s not to say that the man doesn’t drink coffee, or that he’s an omniscient super-genius, but that people have taken traits from one portrayal they recognize and run so far with it that it seems like that’s all he is.

i think this is because a lot of people have either misinterpreted the circumstances at play in fraction’s hawkeye, or only know of clint from fanon or decontextualized panels from that run and subsequent appearances

here’s what was happening in fraction’s hawkeye: clint was in a state of depression. fraction’s run took a lot of inspiration from hawkeye’s first solo series (v1), by gruenwald, where clint’s also shown in a rut. in both runs, his depression partially stemmed from his lack of belief/confidence in himself. in v1, it’s a betrayal that makes him doubt he’s worthy of being loved. in fraction’s hawkeye (v4), it’s the amalgamation of all the beatings he’s recently taken in the avengers that makes him doubt he’s worthy of being an avenger.

v4 immediately follows from clint being burned to an absolute crisp (then healed...but not instantly) in a big event, avengers vs. x-men, while facing the phoenix-possessed x-men, aka god-like powered beings. issue 1 of v4 opens with clint being completely wrecked in a fall while avengering. he’d also been killed and thrown around a lot of other major marvel events in a short time prior to all this. basically, he’s been painfully reminded of just how human he is among a bunch of gods and super soldiers. he can handle the pain, but he can’t handle that all the breaks and burns are reminders of his fragility, his humanness; how was he unable to stop them from happening? he starts to question his place in the avengers.

so what you see in fraction’s hawkeye? the moping, the mess of an apartment, the subsistence on pizza, coffee, beer and cereal, long periods of just being on the couch and wanting to nap, the occasional apathy and bewilderment at things happening around him? that’s depression. clint’s not on his A-game, he’s at a low point. unfortunately, a side-effect of v4′s popularity (it’s a well-made comic!) is a lot of people only know this side of clint; they don’t have the image of clint on a good day to “compare” against, and think “this is it.” but that’s not it; i think v4 is meant to show that even the most heroic can slip into apathy when sinking into depression. v4 is about clint finally accepting help from his friends, his neighbors, overcoming his indifference, and believing that not only is he the one that has to stop the villains, but that he can and will. because he’s hawkeye.

now onto what’s lacking in portrayals that misinterpret/represent clint:

jumping off from that doubt in his capabilities, clint has previously been shown to suffer from insecurities. his outwardly overconfident attitude was, in his beginnings, a mask for his low self-esteem and total self-reliance. of course he knew he was the earth’s greatest marksman, but was this enough to take on all these world-ending threats? eventually, after proving himself time and time again, he shed a lot of these insecurities. his confidence was more than earned. his cockiness also threw enemies for a loop: “look at this dude with a bow saying he’s gonna annihilate us. as if he-OH NO.”

now, he’s being portrayed in an inversion of that same strategy: he’s written as getting enemies to underestimate him by acting dumb, bumbling, a klutz. the problem with writing this as clint’s consistent strategy instead of an occasional usage is uninformed readers, or decontextualization, will have people thinking he’s actually like that. that’s why i miss clint being brash and overly-boastful to throw enemies off. he’s already “just a guy with a bow,” why does he need an extra layer of feigned incompetence if everyone already sees him as that guy?

he does have that lingering thought of “am i really good enough to be an avenger?” but he responds to it by trying to be even better, and that drive is what makes him excel, one of the best, worthy of the rank. that drive should always be present. it also makes him kind of competitive (though that’s also just for fun)

snark & attitude: clint’s also always been snarky. i wouldn’t say he’s at the level of spider-man in terms of constant quipping, but when clint and pete have fought together, they’ve given each other a run for their money. clint’s humor also has a sort of lovable jerk quality to it at times, because he’s very light-hearted about it. he’s got a certain levity about him, because you have to when you’re aiming an arrow at a dude made of steel. i’ve seen this quality slowly return to the comics, i think. on that same note, his belligerence with authority, though obviously now more mellowed, can come in little doses like questioning aspects of a plan/order. clint is a confrontation magnet and can be a real loudmouth, even if he’s fiercely loyal to his team.

street smarts! clint has always been clever and had out-of-the-box thinking because he had to scrap by in an orphanage, then a travelling circus (and have you ever played a carnival game?). he’s used his smarts to gather intel, infiltrate (break into) places, trick people, and defeat many a villain. and he’s not above cheating to do it. he literally defeated an elder of the universe, saving the entire defeated roster of the avengers and the universe, by pulling an old carny trick.

trickshots: the first elder of the universe he defeated was with a combination of his cleverness and a trickshot. i want more trickshots again! ricocheting shots, shots where he’s had to determine all the involved angles almost instantaneously in his head, just ridiculously pulled off shots from a distance or at difficult targets all really demonstrate clint’s skill. he didn’t and doesn’t do all that training to not be the best archer. speaking of...

training: clint regularly trains to maintain and hone his skills daily. this isn’t really an issue with current comics writing per se but some people seem to think he just sits around all day (and not just for a vacation). literally his whole shtick is training a skill so much that he’s on par with superhumans. c’mon, guys. relatedly, he’s also skilled in combat because he trained with cap (ronin skills!)

acrobatics: clint spent his adolescence in a circus and was always trying to get in the show, so you know he brushed up on acrobatics. clint and cap even did some gymnastics training in the early days. i want more flips that clint didn’t necessarily have any business doing when he could’ve just leapt around with much less flare, like the typical showman he is (tales of suspense did have this)

accent: this one’s more nitpicky, but i’d maybe like a return of a little bit of a lilt on his dialogue again. i know marvel phased out overly-phoneticized accents, but clint, orphaned carny that he is, always had a casual way of speaking, and i enjoyed how that was reflected in his written dialogue. dropped g’s in gerunds, d’s in and, shortened word combos, etc. it doesn’t have to be over the top, just touches where needed. this is a thing that was kind of present in fraction’s hawkeye, actually.

leadership: though it’s not like marvel denies clint ever led multiple teams (editorial wouldn’t let that happen), lately he’s sometimes written as if he doesn’t have this experience to draw from, and sometimes not. it’s a bit inconsistent. this isn’t to say clint has to be the leader at all times, he works well in a team in any capacity--just don’t shrug off the development and coordinating abilities he gained from his leadership

disaster?: i don’t fault situations where clint's going about the motions and suddenly everything around him is a disaster because when isn’t it with clint’s luck, dude once got cornered by like 10 supervillains in a sewer. and the man can make some bad decisions. but just remember how he’d respond to a disaster: thinking up a plan (or trying to on the fly), using all the resources at his disposal to conquer the problem, maybe insulting 5 people in the process, trying to wink after he gets stabbed

i’m not trying to disparage some people’s interpretations of certain aspects of clint, i’m just advocating against a misunderstanding or persistent misconceptions of clint as a character. he’s a character rich in development because he’s been kicking around continuity for over 50 years now. he went from screaming at cap like a grounded teenager to being offered the shield and rejecting it out of utter respect. he’s complicated in his experiences, his relationships, and many facets of his character, though his motivations can sometimes be simple (help people, show off, prove i can be be that good by being better). to whittle hawkeye down to one note would be a disservice to clint barton’s journey and evolution.

actually, here’s a panel:

#Anonymous #to be clear this is abt comics #this answer was almost as long as my conlaw exam #meta #i've had a compilation of panels mentioning clint training sitting in my drafts #it's so long there's just no text to it #also not to say 'every appearance of clint should be written based on this template from issue -13 from thunderbolts'#bc that's just restrictive #varied writing keeps things fresh #but like...there's layers #WAIT i forgot to talk about his relationships #bring back clint's close friendships #it's like a running joke now when he shows up for a few panels in something #and everyone's like 'ugh hawkeye's here'#stop!!!#at least no road home had him and wanda on a diner friend date

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juhihuji · 3 years

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do u have any random facts or things about Depth of heaven and ur characters (sfw or nsfw 🤭) even if what you want never comes to light, I really enjoy reading the concepts and asks about ur OCs

Hehehe I haven't thought about the characters and their story in a long time, until recently...but I never put a huge amount of thought into them before either! I kinda just knew I...wished I could make something cool that had everything I wanted in that kind of game lmao. Even if it doesn't happen, I felt like I wanted there to be twists and secrets...if it never happens then nobody but me will ever know about them, huh! But, if it does happen then I'll spoil stuff for later! What to do...ah I'll share about it! But I'm giving it a spoiler warning for something that doesn't exist anyway lmao Also I'm not a writer or a scientist this is all wacky world rules ok xd also there might be inconsistencies idk I never wrote anything down I'll tell u their heights! June: 5'4 Puzzle: 6'3 Koa: 5'6 Adam: 6'1 Keizo: 6'7 Lloyd: 5'11 Static: 6' Cyril: 5'9 Holly: 5'7

In high school June and Puzzle were da weeaboos who listened to vocaloid on their phones at lunch. Puzzle wore cat ears, big headphones, and tutus to school. I think....I decided that because of her old bad design lmao. I thought I had a drawing of her in cat ears but I can't find it 😔 June prolly just wore hoodies and graphic t-shirts. They were each others prom dates! June wore a tux! Okay spoilery stuff ahead!

I have a general idea what I want the story to be, but right now I just see it as disjointed scenes in my head. I posted some June and Puzzle wearing dresses where I wanted a scene to happen in a casino on the ship. Cruise ship casinos are kinda lame though lol, but it'll be as big and cool as I want >:•3 and it's an excuse to have everyone in cool formal wear cuz that's always fun! The cult leader calls for a big party on the ship and everyone has to attend! It's also where he culls the herd...because not everyone is worthy of going to heaven...apparently Koa likes playing video games! He's on the top of the leaderboard for one MMO, and during one event the top prize was blueprints for an in-game item: roller skates! It would make for cool merch to put on your wall or something. There was a rumor among the playerbase that the blueprints could make skates that function as they do in the game. Koa won the prints then used them to custom build his own skates (they look kinda generic now but I haven't put a lot of thought into their design lmao). The combination of materials used and construction give them a magical quality that allows him to skate faster than any human could! He's always pushing his limits, and sometimes it gets him in twubble xd Keizo has an issue with bad dreams...at night he replays all the times in his life where people were rude to him or each other, how he needs to keep peace between them, he just really hates assholes! He has nightmares about them treating him badly and there's nothing he can do, because at his height and with his strength he'd come off as the bad guy no matter what! They push and push 'til he's about to snap...then he wakes up! The rage super heats his blood and his skin glows red and steam pours out his ears! His hair is all wacky cuz it holds it's shape on the pillow from all the heat lmao June and the rest of them find out about it when they see steam coming out from under his door at night. Don't wake him up though! If he's still glowing hot he'll sleep walk while in a berserk state. First, it makes him really rude himself lmao. He'll say all the nasty things he won't when he's awake! Second, if he sees someone doin' shit he don't like, they're gettin' these 🤜🤛 In his happy ending you'd see him with his hair flat for the first time wouldn't that be nice :•3 Adam is always doing experiments on himself, kinda just for shits, kinda because he wants to discover something amazing....!.....?!?!??! When he was younger, his sister, who he loved v much, died. He wanted to become a doctor, not because he wanted to find a cure for the thing that killed his sister...because she died in an accident! He wanted to find a way to make people invincible! He's always injecting himself with stuff hoping it'll make him stronger. He likes Keizo as a friend, but to Adam Keizo is a perfect specimen of an indestructable human. Adam's been fascinated with him for a while, but Keizo also just makes for a good subject for testing against! Also, they met when Adam was studying abroad and Keizo came up on a motorbike and attacked the wheels on Adam's scooter. Cute! :•) Keizo used to be a bad boy :•( Other experiments Adam's done: Eyesight like a HAWK Cat ears but for real Jelly bones(?) Longer ween 😳 Lloyd is a stinky tech wiz who likes playing around with AI's and robotics! He has myassive myega brains and he monitors many of the functions of the ship by himself in his server room. When the captain is captured and thrown off the ship, Lloyd uses his know-how and special accesses to make sure the cult doesn't make a mess of everything. He knows about and can see everything that happens on the ship...for fun he likes video games toooo! And plays with Koa! He likes buildin' lil gadgets n tings for fun too! They can come in real handy! nsfw! Stuff past here!!!!!!!!! June, Koa, and Lloyd are all inexperienced!

As a lover, Keizo tries to be gentle...but once he gets into it he can be a bit rough! If you're into it, just enjoy! Or speak up and he'll slow down! Hmmm I was inspired by a scene from the film Crying Freeman (which I haven't actually watched 8•|) of some ppl doin' it in a closet(?)...it's all dark and cramped and humid and their skin is so shiny and glistening it's probably the thing that awoken me to drawing people super sweaty. I just can't help myself 😳 def wanna give Keizo a scene like that. This doodle was inspired by it actually lmao

Adam is patient and gentle! Lots of kisses and verbal reassurance and checking in w/ u. He's aware of his age and he doesn't wanna come off badly so he'll let you do all the pursuing. And June will pursue him hard if she has to! He's also gonna make you beg and ask, just so he's sure sure :•) He loves to sit her up on the examining table n do things wit his mouf n fingers 😳 I'd probably make it an option to call him daddy in certain scenarios...up to u if u choose it find out what happens for urself idk 😳😳😳 or don't

Koa likes to tease you, maybe bully you a lil, but when it comes to intimacy he's a wimp! I just like the idea of making the bully bend to your will, but he likes it. It just feels good to wipe that cocky smile off his face! Step on him! Make him whimper! I know June's a virg too, but Koa is just so easy to tease it makes it feel like second nature. BUT the more time they spend together, the more confident Koa becomes. So! Enjoy havin' him under your thumb while you can cuz it might not last forever! Lloyd tries to stay composed when June starts showing an interest. He's usually alone in his server room, but secretly appreciates her company when she comes by. At first he'll act like he's too busy. He's not used to being around women! As his interest in June grows it becomes harder to hide his feelings! So June notices...and teases him! Cuz it's just so easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYY 😩 Seeing his serious expression crack when you put ur hands in his pants is lots of fun :•3 And he shows you a voice he's never shown anyone else before 🤤 He does his research and with your help he'll learn exactly how to worship u 😌 IF it ever happens there has to b a new game plus where u unlock threesome scenes with Koa/Lloyd and Adam/Keizo :•x That's all 4 now! Sorry I'm fuckin' gross and don't know how to type :•|

#the depth of heaven #koa #keizo #adam #lloyd #june #ocs #puzzle #text post

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screechthemighty · 4 years

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OKAY TIME TO RAG ON T*M C*SSIELLO YET AGAIN.

So. Here’s the thing. The deal. The scoop. My meta complaints can basically be summed up in three sentences. One: T*m kept trying to sell us a friendship that wasn’t there, which only adds to how abrupt it falling apart is. Two: I do not trust this writing team with this plot line, and the way they handled parts of it in the comic itself only cement that distrust. Three: Why the HECK are they putting lore on TWITTER and only twitter. I won’t expand on that one because...that kind of speaks for itself, not everyone has twitter and it’s dumb that they’re confining important plot/character info to just twitter. But for more explanation of the other two, check under the cut.

Part One: T*m Stop Tweeting I’m Begging You

So, in my last post, I referenced the fact that this argument feels really contrived due to a lack of in-canon friendship between Mirage and Wraith. I’ve talked about this before, but tl;dr for those who don’t read my discourse: outside of some banter and bickering, there is little to no interaction between Mirage and Wraith pre-season 6 comics that implies a real connection. The s1 trailer comes close, but with everything else, it’s mostly just “Mirage says dumb thing while Wraith rolls her eyes in the background”, which establishes Literally Nothing.

But we all know they’re friends, right? This isn’t just wistful thinking by us Miraiths? No, we do know...because T*m said so on twitter. Think about it. He’s gleefully sold every interaction they get (or might get) as being food for the Miraith fans who ask about interactions, he’s the one who said Elliott is in her top three people she can stand (she NEVER explicitly names Mirage, only Natalie), and he also said this:

(screenshot orginally posted by @apexmirxith)

Read that description. Read it again. Think about what we’ve actually gotten in the lore, both before the twitter comic and in it.

Something does not add up here. Literally nothing he said has been reflected in the canon at any point. And I would love it to be! Nothing would make me happier! If I could think of moments that lined up with that, I’d never shut up about them because I’m a single brain cell Miraith shipper and everyone knows it! But it’s not there, T*m!!!!!

Basically, Word of Author and The Actual Text are in conflict in a BIG way. It’s like T*m KNOWS he can just fill in the plot blanks with his twitter canon, but that’s NOT GOOD WRITING, and it makes what should be really interesting character moments SUPER hollow because again, none of the building blocks are there. They’re just in T*m’s mind, and then he offhandedly mentions them while replying to fan art. I swear, this dude should not keep tweeting about the plot of the games, because if he’s not doing stuff like this, he’s actively making promises he can’t keep. It’s so frustrating.

Okay, now that we’re done with that rant...

Part Two: Y’all Don’t Know How To Handle Abelism, Is The Thing

I discussed a lot of this during headcasegate II: the quickening, but for those of you who don’t read my complaining-disguised-as-analysis, the big issues are as follows:

I don’t think the intricate character work needed to grow out of abelism is actually something you can do in Apex Legends as a means of storytelling due to time constraints, the fact that plots can and will be dropped at any time (they did this with Bangalore this season, for instance) and a large cast all vying for attention in the plot.

T*m has repeatedly proven he has blind spots wrt abelism, starting with him implying autism could be cured (he walked this one back and admitted he was wrong, but still), to using abelist language as a plot device more than once, to being dismissive of people pointing that out instead of trying to understand why people were criticizing it. I don’t see any signs he’s actively learned (except the autism thing), so I don’t expect this angle to improve.

Elliott exhibits several traits of neurodivergency, from social anxiety to several HEAVILY ADHD coded traits (chronic tardiness, rambles heavily, impulsive spending, misunderstanding instructions), and has a stutter on top of that, but so far this has been ENTIRELY played for laughs and to make him look like a dumbass, not taken seriously.

And those three points really do stand, and are the basis of a lot of my concern. But there’s another angle that became more of an issue for me as I was reading the latest comic, and it has to do with Wraith.

The game has already been really, really weird with how they’ve treated mental illness related when it comes to Wraith. They leaned heavily into the “owo scawwy mental patient! owo” imagery with banner frames and arguably her Liberator skin (I do love that skin because shaved head = chef’s kiss, but it does draw on mental illness imagery with the straight jacket look of her outfit), and she has on-and-off talked about/reacted to the voices as if they’re more a harmful influence akin to true psychosis and not helpful alternate selves. All of that leads to her being very heavily psychosis-coded, which has been noted by a lot of people.

And yet.

When the abelism is finally addressed, her breaking point, the thing the comics treat as The Thing You Shouldn’t Be Making Fun Of Her For, is...her amnesia.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s also wrong to make fun of her for having amnesia. But why is that the trait they chose to focus on? When I hear Elliott call her “brainwreck” my first thought isn’t “wow, he’s making fun of her for not remembering her past”, it’s “wow, he’s making fun of her for hearing voices.” It’s not even logical for that to be the thing that he and Bangalore are pointing out by calling her names, because like...who does that?? I don’t think even awful abelists do that. If they wanted to target her amnesia, they’d use completely different language. Brainwreck I can kinda see tying into her amnesia, but how does “headcase” relate back to that?? Literally, how??

Basically, when given the chance to address the abelism thrown at Wraith, they focus on the one thing that’s not the issue, rather than the thing that everyone points out is what makes her a mentally ill icon. And you might say, “but Screech, but it’s not a mental illness, the voices are real!” And to that I say, then why in the hell did they lean so heavily into mental illness imagery and her reacting negatively to the voices as if they are true hallucinations?? It’s just plain inconsistent, and almost feels like they don’t really want to tackle psychosis (in which case they are COWARDS, other devs have proved you can do that in a video game), so instead they focus on her amnesia and call it a day.

Dude. That’s totally not it in any way. What are you doing. What is my life. What is this GAME.

...anyways I hope all of that makes sense.

#apex legends #apex critical #discourse for ts #discourse cw

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goneseriesanalysis · 3 years

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Drake Merwin

I am soo sorry, this is super late but I got incredibly distracted with reading and forgot that literally anything else existed. Drake was a really hard character for me to analyse because his characterisation was just so disappointing to me - but luckily my intrinsic desire to have everyone hear my opinions prevailed, and so here it is. I hope you enjoy!!

Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers for Gone, Minor spoilers for the rest of the series and the monster trilogy

Old Opinion: I had a sort of morbid obsession with Drake and thought he was a top-tier villain

New Opinion: So far Drake is tied with Astrid for most-changed opinion. His character has almost no-depth and could be placed in almost any story without changing a single thing about him - and it would make sense. I found myself desperately trying to make him more interesting than he is in an attempt to justify younger me’s obsession - but alas I was unsuccessful. He had a lot of potential, but instead he ended up as a copy-paste villain with no realistic motivations and no real intrigue.

1.) DRAKE’S APPEARANCE:

Drake is, I think, the character who is best (as in most thoroughly) described in the first book. Not only do we get an idea of his actual appearance beyond the vaguest possible descriptions (sorry to Sam, Caine, Diana and every minor character) but we also get some idea as to the effect his appearance has on other people.

In Chapter 14, when we are first introduced to the Coates kids, Drake is described as, “a smiling, playful, mean-eyed kid with shaggy, sandy-coloured hair.” I actually really like this description. Contrasting “smiling” and “playful” with “mean” really brilliantly sets Drake up to be a complex villain – the kind of villain we all love to hate, who cracks a joke while slitting your throat. It has the implication of a layered personality but sadly, this is not the villain we get. In fact his character in the first chapter compared to the character we get as the book continues is so drastically different that it almost seems like mg did a complete 180 on his character. An original description is supposed to give us some indication as to what a character is like – their personality and role in the story, and we know that mg can do this really well. (Sam’s non-descript description setting him up to be the underdog, Quinn’s mismatched attire hinting at his inability to fit in, Astrid’s colour scheme reflecting her innocence and religiosity), and so it seems particularly odd, not to mention disappointing, that Drake’s description gives us…nothing. No real indication as to who he is or his purpose other than to hint to him being an antagonist (which we already guessed from his affiliation with Caine.) I could go on and on about what a waste Drake’s character was, but I’ll save it for a later paragraph.

We will then skip ahead to Chapter 37 where both Howard and Lana describe a similarity between Drake and Pack Leader:

“The one time she had seen Drake Merwin. He had made her think of Pack Leader: strong, hyper alert, dangerous. Now, the lean physique looked gaunt, the shark’s grin was a tight grimace, his eyes were red-rimmed. His stare, once languidly menacing, was now intense, burning hot. He looked like someone who had been tortured beyond endurance.”

“The two of them, two of a kind, it seemed to Howard, stared holes into each other.”

This is a much better example of mg using descriptions to establish the purpose of a character. By drawing a comparison between these two, mg sets up Drake’s later role in the books, where he replaces Pack Leader as the gaiphage’s right-hand man. This almost leads me to believe that mg had decided very early on that Drake was going to desert Caine and this is possibly why he seems so out of place and underdeveloped as Caine’s underling in the first two books. Mg had already moved on from this side of his character…and it shows. Lana’s description of Drake also works as a basis for showing the reader how he has changed since losing his arm (before gaining his whip) and acts as an insight into his current mental state – which is important as we don’t get much introspection during Drake’s POV’s. But, I still have a few issues with this. First of all, his “lean physique”. Now this isn’t really a problem all by itself, but unless I have forgotten what 14 year olds looks like (which is a possibility though I doubt it) I don’t think that they should be muscly with minimal body fat. And Drake is not the only character he does this with. Quinn gets extremely muscly later on in the books (I’ll admit that there is a plausible reason behind this so this example isn’t terrible but it’s mentioned like every 5 sentences) and in Fear Caine is described as having wash-board abs. Why are we sexualising children?? Children should be pudgy and awkward and still growing into their bodies, not lean and muscly!! The attractive, damaged man who hates women for no reason at all is also a really really really common trope and tbh I’m just so bored of it. It’s not relatable (at least it shouldn’t be) and it’s just really unimaginative – although it does help us to understand Drake’s character as we’ve seen him before so many times in all types of media. My second issue with this description is the way it really really highlights how much of a waste of character Drake was. The potential of a high-school bully with a skewed world-view due to the death of his father and the later abuse of his mother at the hands of his replacement father figure trying hard to impress the charming “leader” with unimaginable power (that he so desperately wants) only to be undermined at every turn by a girl who teases him by pointing out his flaws and insecurities taking his anger out on everyone around him (especially women) as a way to cope with his childhood traumas then turning into a heartless monster who not only enjoys others pain but lives for it after being “tortured beyond endurance”, was astronomical. But we don’t get that. Instead we get a cheesy, one-dimensional cartoon villain. The change that his body and mind go through after his maiming should have been pivotal to his character, but that just doesn’t come across in the writing. :/ But more on this later.

And last but not least, the whip-hand, which is very important to Drake’s character. It turns his actual body into a weapon and his excitement over this is indicative of his sadistic nature. Again, I think this is an example of a wasted opportunity. I would have liked mg to have gone in to depth about how Drake’s body undergoing this change affected his psyche (and I’m not counting his one-off line in the monster trilogy). I think it could be argued that Drake’s “change” is a metaphor for him going through puberty. Him gaining the whip that ultimately turned him into his very own weapon shows his transition from a child [a little messed up but still just a kid] into a monster, someone who is capable of committing atrocities without a second thought. It would have been particularly interesting for Drake and Orc’s final battle to put some focus on the fact that they both suffer through monstrous physical changes that can be used to represent their shift from children to young adults but whereas one relishes in this, one is completely disgusted. The whip-hand is described as being an “impossible blood-red snake” and then that “It was stretched. Like it had been turned into dark, blood-red taffy. It wrapped twice around his body.” – Both of these occurring in Chapter 39. I don’t have much to comment about this – other than that I think red is great colour choice for Drake, thematically at least.

I know this point was mostly about what Drake could have been as opposed to an actual analysis of his appearance, but I’m just so tired of the attractive misogynistic villain that seems to appear in every single piece of media. His characterisation really bummed me out and put me into a slump so instead of analysing his appearance I decided to roast him instead. But, onto actual analysis now (I am going to further expand on some of the points I made here I promise).

2.) DRAKE’S PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

I mentioned in the previous point that a lot of Drake’s characterisation seems like an afterthought at best and one of the things that made me think this, is the inconsistencies with his character and the most obvious example of this is the discrepancies with his birthday. In chapter 20, Diana says that his birthday is “April twelfth, just one minute after midnight.” But, in Chapter 33 we get the line “Sooner would be better,’ Drake drawled, ‘what with me having a month.” This is a really small nit-pick, I know, but it just really bugs me that mg overlooked something as simple as a birthday – especially when birthdays are such an important plot point in this book. But anyway, moving on. I promise this whole review isn’t going to be negative.

Backtracking now to Chapter 14. Drake’s character here seems to differ quite drastically from his later characterisation. He seems here to be an example of the laughably evil trope, he has a kind of dry sarcastic humour that is quite fun and seems to lighten the tone of the story a little bit. Rather than showing us the boringly disgusting misogynistic villain that Drake turns out to be, we instead see a funny, charismatic character who seems to prefer picking on those who already have power – as is seen here:

“Drake paused halfway, turned back, and spoke for the first time. In an amused voice he said, ‘Oh, um, Captain Orc? Have your people – the ones who aren’t injured- line up outside. We’ll work out your… um, duties.’ With a grin that was almost a snarl, Drake added a cheerful, ‘Later’.” – Chapter 33

Now I understand that the reason we don’t see the real Drake here is because Sam is obviously not yet aware of his true personality – my issue lies in the fact that based on just this small excerpt here, I expected so much more from his character. We get hints of his sadistic nature here, with him joking about Cookie’s horrific injury and clearly taking joy in exerting power over Orc, but it is evenly balanced by the fact that he’s kind of amusing and we don’t really like Orc at this point anyway. Can we see that something isn’t quite right with him?? Yes. But do we kind of like him anyway?? Well I did. At this point. I would have really loved it if mg had carried on this idea of Drake abusing those who already have power – him enjoying to take down bully after bully so he can be King bully, instead of him picking on people who he perceives as weak and vulnerable. Mg relying on misogyny as a motivator is just really disappointing to me because there is no depth to it, and it’s pretty lazy. He hates Diana because she is a woman and he sees women as beneath him?? Weak. Over-used. Dull. He hates Diana because she has power over Caine in a way that he never can, which makes him feel insecure in himself and the fragile sense of stability and power that he has struggled to cultivate within his damaged psyche?? Yes pls. Not only would this have made Drake a much more engaging character, but it would also have made his desertion of Caine in hunger much more impactful. And while I think there are aspects of this within his character, which I will go into later, I wish there had been more of it. Again, I’m sorry that this has become more of a “what could have been” rather than an analysis but there really is just so little to analyse without just pointing out obvious facts and statements. There’s no spice here :/

Moving on now to Chapter 16, where we as an audience, as well as the characters within the book, begin to realise what Drake truly is – an unhinged madman. We are told by Sam that Drake has been abusing his power as Sheriff – which particularly stands out as, so far at least, Drake is the only member of Coates who has shown this kind of behaviour (Caine is actually a pretty sound leader until he loses his shit and attacks Sam). And this is the first major distinction that we get between Caine and Drake and their capacity as villains in the story. Caine is a bad person who will do bad things to achieve his goals, he is power-hungry and ambitious but he is not needlessly violent. Everything he does he (in his own mind) is able to justify as it helps him to achieve his vision. Drake, on the other hand, doesn’t really seem to have an end goal. He is violent for the sake of being violent – he is a sadist who enjoys the suffering of other people as we see here, “Drake was more than a little scary. Kids who defied Drake or any of his so-called sheriff’s had been slapped, punched, pushed, knocked down or, in one case, dragged into a bathroom and given a swirlie. Fear of Drake was replacing fear of the unknown.” Now, we still don’t get to see the full extent of Drake’s madness here. Most of the crimes listed are pretty mundane bully things – they’re still wrong, but they aren’t life-threatening. He hasn’t bashed anyone’s head in with a baseball bat. While Caine is playing with politics, Drake seems unable to move past his role of high school bully. If he had played it right, the role of Sheriff would have been perfect for him. I mean, how many actual police officers get away with literal murder in the name of “upholding the law”?? But he is unable of seeing the bigger picture, unable to grow and fit the new world order as Caine does so naturally, and so, instead of properly taking on the role of Sheriff and building up his own authority in this way, he turns back to his tried and tested method – hurt them and they’ll fall in line.

I particularly enjoy this as I think it explains, a little bit more, why he hates Diana and Astrid so much. Now I know the bottom line is simply that he is a violent misogynist – but that doesn’t explain why he hates Diana and Astrid specifically. Is it because they’re both attractive women and he is unable to distinguish sex and violence in his head?? Partly yes, but then Taylor is also described as attractive (and most people find her annoying) and yet he doesn’t seem to hate her to this extent. I think the real reason he hates these two specifically, more than anyone else, is because he simply cannot understand them – and that scares him (although he is unwilling to admit it). Drake only knows how to gain power through violence – he sees this work at home, he used it on Holden, he used it to gain his reputation at Coates and, although he has the ability to gain authority in other ways, he continues to use this method even now in the FAYZ. Diana and Astrid cannot do this, they are not fit to fight, they are not able to use violence to assert their status – and yet they both have more power in the FAYZ than he does. They make him question his whole world view and, as he cannot or will not adapt to the new hierarchy of the FAYZ, he resorts to trying to destroy them, in order to return the world to what it was before. His hatred of others gaining power through (what he sees as) unconventional means is then further established with his dislike of actual powers and the people who have them:

“I’m sick of all this powers crap. You saw what we did to freaks at Coates?? Who do you think it was that took care of that?? All these kids with their stupid so-called powers. Starting fires and moving stuff around and reading your mind and all?? Who do you think it was grabbed them one by one in their sleep and beat them down and when they woke up their hands were setting in a block of cement??

[…]

That’s right. And I didn’t even have a gun then. It’s not about who’s got powers, morons. It’s about who’s not afraid. And who’s going to do what has to be done.”

We get told by Diana that it was Drake’s idea to cement the kids in the first place (and a bad one at that) and I really think that is all the evidence you need to see that Drake’s hatred and fear all stem from his complete inability to adapt. He is trapped in a cycle of abuse that started with his father, a police officer who teaches him how to shoot people (however unwillingly) and is then continued by his step-father (an actual abuser) rendering him incapable of recognising any kind of authority if it is not gained from violent means. And so of course he hates the powers – none of the kids gained their powers through suffering or through causing suffering. They didn’t earn their authority in any valid way, according to him. (This is also another reason why I think Drake was so ecstatic at gaining his whip-hand. He suffered for it and therefore, in his twisted mind, he earned it. It is physical proof of his supposed power over these kids.) It’s tragic really – but mg then goes on to make him so disgustingly unsympathetic that his story loses its meaning. I love mg’s writing but Drake’s character truly was butchered for shock value and plot convenience and it makes me so sad.

Ok back to Chapter 16. Here, not only do we hear about some of the things that Drake is capable of, but we see them as well. His beat-down of Orc is the first indicator we get that Drake is someone we should really be afraid of. Heads up, this is a long quote:

“Nobody move,’ Drake said. Orc pushed Edilio off and jumped to his feet. He started kicking Edilio, landing size-eleven Nike blows into Edilio’s defensive arms. Sam jumped in to help his friend, but Drake was quicker. He stepped behind Orc, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back, and smashed his elbow into Orc’s face. Blood poured from Orc’s nose, and he howled in rage. Drake hit him again and released Orc to fall to the concrete. ‘Which part of “nobody move” did you not understand, Orc?’ Drake demanded. Orc rose to his knees and went for Drake like a linebacker, Drake stepped aside, nimble as a matador. He stuck his hand out and said to Chaz, ‘Give me that.’ Chaz handed him the bat. Drake hit Orc in the ribs with a short, sharp forwards thrust of the bat. Then again in the kidneys and again in the side of the head. Each blow was measured, accurate, effective. Orc rolled over on to his back, helpless, exposed. Drake pushed the thick end of the bat against Orc’s throat. ‘Dude. You really need to learn to listen when I talk.’ Then Drake laughed, stepped back, twirled the bat in the air, caught it and rested it on his shoulder. He grinned at Sam.”

“Sam had gone up against bullies before. But he’d never seen anything like Drake Merwin. Orc outweighed Drake by at least fifty pounds, but Drake had handled him like a little toy action figure.”

Orc has already been established as the top bully in Perdido beach – we’ve already seen that our main character is afraid of him – and for good reason. And so for Orc to be defeated so casually and so easily is shocking. It lets us know that the old world order has collapsed and old fears are fading away with it, with new, much more threatening adversaries taking their place. I actually think that this scene was exceptionally clever of mg. Drake is attacking someone who has already been set up as an antagonist, at the same time rescuing Edilio, who the reader has been conditioned to like. But, through context clues, we know that this is not a good thing. It sets up the villainous nature of the Coates kids, Orc’s redemption, Drake and Orc’s rivalry and Sam’s fear of Drake. And it feels natural, even after re-reading the book multiple times. It’s scenes like these that really remind me how great of a writer mg is.

Another thing I really wanted to talk about here IS Drake and Orc’s rivalry because, yet again, I think mg missed a huge opportunity with this. Drake and Orc are very similar before, and in the early days of the FAYZ. Both have abusive fathers (a step-father in Drake’s case but still), both enjoy asserting their power over people through violent means and both are put in positions of power that they are unable to fully take advantage of – Sheriff and Sheriff Deputy. And even as the books continue, similarities can still be found. They both suffer mutations that turn their bodies into grotesque weapons, dehumanising them and alienating them from their peers and That Scene in Plague tells us that Orc and Drake sometimes have similar “desires”. Their stories are constantly intertwined, with them being played off of each other from the start and Orc becoming Drake’s jailor later on (and in turn Drake sort of becoming his). Their differences come from their reactions to the horrific acts of violence they have committed – and of course why they do them. I’m going to make a whole separate post on this because it’s long enough to be a standalone, but my I just wish mg had played up both their similarities and differences more. It would have made Drake so much more interesting.

We also get more hints at his sadism in this scene. He is later unbothered that Betty has been hurt and it seems that the only reason he attacked Orc was because it gave him an opportunity to assert his dominance over him. All in all, this is one of my personal favourite scenes in the book as it establishes characters, themes and relationships very well. I just wish some of these had been developed further – but mg dropping certain aspects of the story does seem to be a common problem.

The final thing I wanted to talk about in regards to Drake’s personality and character is this line we get in Chapter 23, “It was small, just two bedrooms, very neat, very organised, the way Drake liked things.” This was another thing that irked me slightly. It’s such a small aspect of his characterisation but it reinforced the idea that drake is just another cookie-cutter villain with no real personality, nothing that makes him stand out in the sea of white male psychopaths with a hatred for women. His whole character could be replaced with any other misogynistic psychopath at no detriment to the story. My immediate though when reading this was that even the smallest aspects of his character can be seen in other, more developed villains – this line in particular is hugely reminiscent of Patrick Bateman. Nothing seems to be his own. No aspect of his character is even remotely unique. (I think this may also be why some young fans develop an obsession with him. His character is comfortable because we’ve seen it so many times before.) He is so entirely replaceable and replicable - only reason he isn’t completely forgettable is because you are constantly plagued by the horrific things he has done. Mg sacrificed depth and development for shock value and it’s so disappointing

3.) DRAKE’S PAST

Onto Drake’s life before the FAYZ. Not only does Drake receive some of the longest and most POV time in this book, he is also the character whose life before the FAYZ we learn the most about (with the possible exception of Sam). This is especially shocking to think about seen as Drake is arguably one of the most underdeveloped characters in the whole book, but anyway. There are two scenes I’m going to talk about here, both occurring in Chapter 23, with the first being his dad teaching him how to shoot. I apologise in advance for the long quote:

“His father had taught him how to shoot, using his service pistol. Drake still remembered the first time.

[…]

He remembered the way his father had taught him to grip the butt firmly but not too tight. To rest his right hand in the palm of his left and sight carefully, to turn his body sideways to present a smaller target if someone was shooting back. His father had had to yell because they were both wearing ear protection. ‘If you’re target shooting, you centre the front sight in the notch of the rear sights. Raise it till your sights are sitting right under your target. Let your breath out slowly and squeeze.’ That first bang, the recoil, the way the gun jumped six inches, the smell of the powder – it was all as clear in Drake’s mind as any memory he had. […]

‘What if I’m not shooting if I’m not shooting at a target?’ He’d asked his father. ‘What if I’m shooting at a person?’ ‘Don’t shoot a person,’ his father had said. But then he relented, relieved no doubt to find something he could share with his disturbing son. ‘Different people will tell you different techniques. But if it’s me, say I’m doing a traffic stop and I think I see he citizen reaching for a weapon, and I’m thinking I may have to take a quick shot? I just point. Point like the barrel is a sixth finger. You point and if you have to fire, you shoot half the clip, bang, bang, bang, bang.’ ‘Why do you shoot so many times?’ ‘Because if you have to shoot, you shoot to kill. Situation like that, you’re not aiming carefully for his head or his heart, you’re pointing at the centre of mass and you’re hoping you get a lucky shot., but if you don’t, if all you’re hitting is shoulder or belly, the sheer velocity of the rounds will knock him down.”

Ok so the first thing I want to analyse here, is how important this memory clearly is to Drake. He remembers it fondly, in immense detail and seems to call back on it when he needs to clear his head (notice how this memory is placed while Drake is trying to figure out what to do, not while he is doing it.) It seems that rather than just using this memory as a source of useful information, it is also a source of comfort to him. Now there are some things that I really wish mg had told us that would help to analyse this scene better, like: How old was Drake when this memory took place?? How old was Drake when his father died?? How did his father die?? But alas, we don’t know these things (at least not that I’m aware of, and not within this book) so I’m going to try and do the best I can with the information that we have. Now, in Light, Drake makes it seem like his step-fathers behaviour has been significant in forming his worldview – which makes sense, trauma does that. But he spends half of his time away at Coates, which says to me that for this behaviour to have had such a profound effect on him, his step-father must have been around for a while. Right?? I’m gonna take a guess at 3-4 years at the least. Give Drake’s mother about a year to meet and start dating this man after the passing of her husband – this means that Drake would have been around 9/10 at the latest when this scene took place. That’s pretty young. Like, this is a formative memory and from the way it’s written, it seems like this may be some of the only bonding that Drake and his father ever did together. No wonder Drake has such an unhealthy obsession with guns as is seen with these quotes:

“He started from Astrid’s house, which was already beginning to smoke. He worked his way methodically, a hunter, looking for any movement. Each time he spotted someone walking or running or biking, he would take a look at them through the rifle scope, line them up in the crosshairs. He felt like God. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger.” – Chapter 23

“Drake kept all three guns loaded all the time. They were set out on the dining room table, a display, something to be gazed at lovingly.” – Chapter 23

“Drake could not leave the gun alone. He kept thumbing the safety on and off. He rolled down the window and aimed it at stop signs as they passed, but did not fire.” – Chapter 31

Drake shooting Sam and his gleeful reaction – Chapter 34

For him, guns are the ultimate symbol of power and authority. He was introduced to these weapons of incredible power at such a young age – of course he loves them. That being said, it seems that Drake has always been “disturbed” so I suppose we can’t fully blame his father and step-father for his mind-set – and I have to say I don’t really like this. Drake’s issue as a character is that he is completely de-humanised by all the horrific things he does. By having it seem like Drake was irredeemable from the off-set, it just adds to this idea and again removes any possible depth or character development. Imo it would have been much better to present Drake as becoming the way he is AFTER his father’s death. It would bring a sense of tragedy to his character – the way he uses his father’s advice to hunt down Astrid would seem less like a by-product of his sadism and more like a misguided attempt to feel connected to his deceased father.

However, flawed though it is, this scene does give us some insight as to why Drake is the way he is – through the characterisation of his father. Admittedly we don’t get much, but one line really stood out to me, “Because if you have to shoot, you shoot to kill.” Ummm..sir?? I don’t think that’s how police officers work. Isn’t your goal to incapacitate – not to just kill on sight?? The fact that he not only stands by this rule himself, but also gives this advice to his CHILD is disconcerting. Drake is not only receiving this harmful rhetoric from his father figure but also a police officer. Someone who is meant to uphold the law. I think this links back to my earlier point on how Drake only recognises authority if it is gained by violent means. While we get no indication that his real father was ever violent to Drake or his mother, he openly tells Drake that when he is upholding the law (in this hypothetical situation) he does it by using force. That is a dangerous thing to tell a child, especially a child who you already think is disturbed. This twisted-take on a father-son relationship nicely sets the precedent for Drake’s warped perceptions, I just wish it had been developed further. And this leads us nicely into the next scene – the shooting of Holden:

“He remembered with vivid, slow-motion detail the time he had shot Holden, the neighbour’s kid who liked to come over and annoy him. That had been a bullet to the thigh, with a low-level calibre gun, and still the kid had nearly died. That ‘accident’ had landed Drake at Coates.”

Again, first and foremost I just wish we had a little bit more information. It is not clear whether this situation occurred before or after his father’s death – which seems like a pretty important detail to me. Although, we don’t actually find out that Drake’s father is dead within this book, and this omission again makes me feel like mg adding that detail was little more than an after-thought. It feels like in Light he wanted to quickly try and make Drake more of a sympathetic character and so he added in an abusive step-dad to try and tone down or at least explain Drake’s violence and misogyny. It seems like Drake is a plot-point first and a character second and the lack of detail here really highlights that for me. What purpose did these scenes really have in the story?? They did very little to flesh out his character, they introduced no new themes or relationships. It seems like mg just wanted to let us know – “Hey! Drake knows how to use a gun. That’s gonna be important later.” That being said, there are a couple of other things I would like to quickly mention. Firstly, I think the fact that Drake did not aim to kill Holden, even though he could have, is meant to be indicative of his change between then and now. It’s done to tell us that Drake wasn’t always this bad – there was at one point some hope. For this to have the desired effect though, I really think mg should have waited until after Drake lost his arm to straight up try and murder Astrid and Little Pete. Like, you can’t tell us that Drake was a little messed up but still redeemable before his maiming and then go and have him try to kill a random girl and her five year old brother. Because that’s more than a little messed up (and that’s not even mentioning the cementing). And it also contrasts the idea that Drake has always been disturbed. An idea that was introduced to us not even a page ago!! The other thing I wanted to pick up on, which I actually quite liked, is the ambiguous “who liked to come over and annoy him.” Because this is Drake’s point of view – so “annoy” could mean anything. Was Holden actually just an annoying kid?? Was he just trying to be Drake’s friend?? Or was he actually a bully and Drake doesn’t want to admit it?? I guess we’ll never know.

4.) DRAK’ES MOTIVATIONS

For this point, I wanted to focus on three particular motivators: Caine, Diana and Astrid. These are the three people, I believe, who provide, either consciously or unconsciously, the motivation for his actions within the FAYZ. I’ll start first with Astrid and Diana, the two people who Drake hates the most. Throughout this book it is clear that Drake has no real goals – he has no desire to be in control like Caine, no desire to re-invent the world like Albert. All he wants is to cause pain, with his preferred targets being these two. And, as I’ve said before, I think this is partly because he hates the authority that they have within the FAYZ – which stems from manipulation and intelligence rather than violence.

In Chapter 20, Drake explains his hatred for Diana, “Drake had made the time to check out Diana’s psych file the day after the FAYZ came. But her file had been missing by then. In its place she had left Drake’s file lying open on the doc’s desk and drawn a little smiley face beside the word ‘sadist’. Drake had already hated her. But after that, hating Diana had become a full-time occupation.” What I take from this scene, is that Drake’s loathing stems from Diana’s ability to get under his skin, to make him feel inferior – to annoy him. (Perhaps Holden had a similar talent). I’m going to assume that his prior hatred of her can be boiled down to his misogyny and his disgust at Caine’s weakness for her, both of which have been explicitly stated in the text. His hatred after this though, comes from a pretty mundane incident. I mean all she did was get there quicker, and do exactly what he was going to do to her. And so I think this loathing is less about what she did and more about his own personal reaction to it. Diana was able to weaponise Drake’s own anger against him – to make him feel inferior and powerless. She challenges Drake’s fragile perception of authority and takes a diagnosis that he seems to not only be ok with, but is actually proud of, and makes him feel embarrassed. His whole perception of power is rooted in the idea that his ability to inflict pain on others with no guilt or remorse is what makes him better, it is what gives him his power. But she takes this idea and belittles him for it and so his initial reaction is to attack. This is an idea that is again seen with Astrid. Astrid intentionally tries to make Drake feel inferior by bringing up his biggest insecurity, Diana’s treatment of him “Doesn’t it bother you that Diana treats you like some wild animal she keeps on a leash?” And she does escape him – twice. Her and her autistic brother (and we already know how Drake feels about autistic people). She also proves herself to be more intelligent than him, in their little argument over the r-slur. Drake only gets violent after he realises that, in an intellectual sense, she has more power than him. It seems to be his defence mechanism just as much as his pleasure – and therefore Astrid and Diana’s power over him motivates him to use it.

Now onto Caine. Caine and Drake’s relationship is, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of Drake’s character and while I’ll only be mentioning it in its capacity as a motivator here, I have a whole post planed out for it. Drake seems to simultaneously hate Caine and admire him. He is constantly looking to impress him and the only time we ever see Drake think about betraying him in this book is when Caine gives his attention to Diana rather than Drake. And, because of this, I can kind of understand why people ship them (although I personally dislike the idea of Drake being gay). A lot of the time this motivation is completely unprompted by Caine himself, like in these quotes:

“Drake cursed and, again, for just a moment, felt the almost desperate fear of failing Caine. He wasn’t worried about what Caine would do to him – after all, Caine needed him – but he knew if he failed to carry out Caine’s orders, Diana would laugh.” – Chapter 23

“I got him’ Drake announced. ‘I got them all.’ ‘Yes, you did,’ Caine said. ‘Good work, Drake.” – Chapter 34

In Chapter 23, it seems that both Drake’s need to impress Caine and his need to prove to himself that he is better than Diana are his main motivators for his extreme attack on Astrid. I think it’s important to note that he only planned on trying to catch her, until Caine told him to kill her. His sadistic nature is brought out in full because he needs to prove himself to Caine. But why does he?? If he is planning on taking over from Caine in the end, why does he have a “desperate fear of failing Caine”?? Sure, part of it is his desire to prove himself to be better than Diana. But even this has roots in his absolute need for Caine to take notice of him. Drake is drawn to Caine because of his power and authority over people. Caine seems to be the closest thing that Drake can get to an equal, someone who shares the same motivations, ambitions and worldview (of course Caine and Drake do not share these things, but Drake doesn’t realise this…yet.) He seeks validation from Caine because he wants to have these things in common with someone – yet another motivation for his hatred of Diana as she constantly gets in the way of this.

We also know that Caine is, at least, partly aware of his effect on Drake. He is paranoid that Drake will turn on him (because Caine sees being equal to someone as relinquishing power) and he is able to manipulate Drake’s misguided feelings when he wants to – most notably in Chapter 36:

“It’s not Diana or Chunk or even me,’ Caine said. ‘It’s none of us, Drake. It’s Sam. It’s Sam who did this to you, Drake. You want him to get away with it? Or do you want to live long enough to make him suffer?”

This is such a clever moments as it sets up Drake’s whole character in Hunger, and it’s false. Because yes, Sam is the one who burned Drake’s arm and Drake has every right and reason to hate him. But it was Caine who abandoned him to save himself. And it was Caine who refused to let Drake die, even though he was begging for it (and let’s face it, he didn’t refuse to kill him out of any affection – it was a selfish decision.) But Drake is so desperate for that equal, for that validation that his worldview is correct and is shared by another person, that he just idk forgets?? He never brings up this conversation again and just accepts Caine’s word as gospel. I have so much more to say about their relationship but, as I said, I’ll save it for a later post.

5.) DRAKE’S MENTAL STATE

And finally, we have Drake’s mental state. Now I’m not going to try and give him an official diagnosis or anything, but I wanted to make a small point specifically about his mental state after his maiming. I think we can all agree that what Drake went through was pretty horrific, and while I personally struggle to feel any amount of sympathy for him due his own list of horrific crimes, the change he goes through after this is extremely significant, or at least it’s supposed to be. I think mg wants us to believe that Drake’s descent into madness was directly cause by the loss of his arm, and that before that he did have the chance to be redeemed. I think whether you buy into this depends on how forgiving you are, but I want to focus more on the actual proof of change that we see.

I’ve already talked about the physical changes he goes through, and the implications of this so I’m going to focus solely on his mental state during and partly after the whole ordeal. I think the first and most important thing to talk about is the fact that Drake didn’t actually want to survive:

“Don’t cut off my arm,’ Drake cried. ‘Let me die. Just let me die. Shoot me.” – Chapter 36

He would rather die than lose his arm (his gun arm to be specific). Now, while I don’t doubt that the burning was indescribably painful, I’m still not sure that the majority of people would beg for death. Especially when an alternative (in this case losing his arm) is presented. Not to mention, he doesn’t actually talk about the pain when begging for his death – what he talks about is the loss of his arm. Of course it could be argued that the reason he didn’t want his arm to be cut off is because he knew it would mean more pain, but I don’t think that this is the case. Rather, I think that Drake is so scared of losing the power that he has, that he would genuinely rather die. This 14 year old boy is so messed up that his own death is preferable to the idea of no longer being able to hurt people. And so when he gets his power back, he doubles down. He has realised by this point what he truly wants, that he would rather die than be rendered powerless, so he begins committing more heinous acts (like attacking the prees). Pair this with the amount of pain that he went through, which most definitely will have had an effect on his already damaged brain, and you can see how a high-school bully became what he did. The groundwork for an interesting and though-provoking character was right here. I think yet again the problem with his character is the execution. Interesting aspects of his personality are dropped in favour of plot convenience and shock value and it cheapens his character as a whole until all the intended nuances are lost and over-shadowed.

I’m really sorry if this is a bit all over the place and not quite as polished as my other posts. I found Drake so difficult to write about and so my thoughts kept going haywire. Thank you so much for reading (and being patient with my brain). I hope you enjoy!!

#the gone series #Drake Merwin #character analysis #gone

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rattyarts · 3 years

Text

Huge-ask post (I am VERY funny)

Because I have so many questions that can be answered with just text, and I have mentioned my dislike of filling my art blog up with Words Words Words... let’s get them all done in one go!

(You guys can blacklist #rattytalks if you’re just here for the draws, btw)

A shit ton of asks under the cut!

Anonymous said: So for the center of the world, what with it being forcefully PG and all Bad Thoughts TM being prevented, how does having kids happen? Do parents just black out and wake up holding a child in their arms and vague memories of the last 9 months?

Ever seen a movie where they do that “and one day... a baby was born!” thing and a kid just appears offscreen with no explanation?

(This is how it works everywhere, Edgelands included; no one does the do or gets pregnant in this setting.)

Anonymous said: Hello! Quick question, and sorry if you’ve answered this before, but can other elves see the “intangible” bits of one another? Big fan of your work btw!

Nope! And thank you!

Anonymous said: Leopold was in my dream last night but I sadly cannot remember any of it.

I am SO sorry. I will try to keep my stinky murder men out of your head in the future.

Anonymous said: are the floaty bits stuck in one spot, or could the one they are attached to learn to move them around their body as long as its still within a certain distance? like, someone with the Floaty limbs, lets call him Ray, can move his limbs all over his body, allowing him to do all sorts of neat things that others with their attached limbs probably couldn't?

Whatever you want, honestly. As a general rule of thumb I don’t like putting down TOO many hard rules that prevent people from having fun with this setting. (Please ignore and scrap anything you think is stupid, I do this all the time and enjoy keeping this setting inconsistent and contradictory)

Anonymous said: Do elf names work off of Death Note rules, or is it like, if you know one elf’s name, all elves with that name are now unable to harm you? So if all the elf brothers are named Martin, for example, does it only work with blue?

I think it’s prolly just the one! Probably? Idk, might change if I think of something funnier.

Anonymous said: Can elves do magic on themselves or does thst go against the knowing name rule

Most people tend to know their own names, lol. So in my opinion, no, but don’t let me stop you if you got a fun idea.

Anonymous said: Could an Elf stitch on parts from another elf and have them work? i.e an Elf's finds the arm of another Elf. "Hey, free arm, might as well put it to good use", so they attach the arm and now they can give three high fives at once!

Same deal as previous questions, I personally would say no, but I also encourage people to do whatever the hell they want. It’s more fun that way!

Anonymous said: I bet elves are greasy to the touch.

They’re very powdery! Like if you rolled them in flour. And by flour I mean nasty glowing elf dandruff.

Anonymous said: Can elves fly or are their wings just for show?

No flying!!! (Unless you’re a mousefly)

Anonymous said: Something tells me that the elves would LOVE Obatzda.

Had to look that up, but definitely!

no1fan15: Not sure if someone asked already- Does Edgeworld have any equivalent to demons and angels? Like the old rubberhose cartoon kind?

Demons, yes! That’s what imps are: basically any demon, devil, or generic monster, but tiny! Even a couple of pop culture critters in there, there’s probably a very small gillman or robot monster running around there somewhere.

Angels, not so far.

Anonymous said: How come Margaret hasn't yeeted George's jar into the Edge yet

I’d say being locked in a closet is good enough! (and also I need him for plot reasons, don’t tell anyone)

Anonymous said: If elves have knees bulges in the front then do they have butt bulges in the back?

i do not want to think about elf bulges

Anonymous said: So if you find a baby Therewoof and you say "aw you're so cute", their true name is So Cute?

Yep!

Anonymous said: Since a Therewoof's true name can be something like "cutie pie" or "dingus", does their name have to be spoken with "intent" for it to doggo-fy them? Or do they just have to live with the reality that any casual conversation/flirting can make them lose up to a month to Doggy Mode? My mom has little terrier dog named "Sweetie" so that got me thinking 'bout Therewoof names. & Anonymous said: here's a good question: If someone says a therewoof's true name, but not reffering to them, does it still affect them?

Just saying it will do! It’s based on those old werewolf stories where calling out the person’s name will change them back into a human/cure them, and a lot of the time it was by accident.

(My favorite is the one where they slam the door on the wolf’s tail and then say his name, and the dude ends up with a wolf tail for the rest of his life.)

Anonymous said: Would Seeing eye Therewoofs be a thing?

I... guess? Probably? Since regular dogs can turn into woofs, yeah. You might have to start paying em once they turn into a person tho.

Anonymous said: Was ChalkZone ever an inspiration for you? Because I just love the silly world of ChalkZone and I noticed getting that same warm feeling when thinking about Edgeworld.

Maaaan, I wish. I’ve only seen about three episodes or so, but it seems really fun!

Anonymous said: So I saw your mimic post, and even though I don't think I've seen any other of your art before I was absolutely HAMMERED with an indescribable sense of slightly unsettling strangeness and comfortable familiarity. Your art feels like something from like, an old point and click computer game I would have had formative memories of before accidentally losing or scratching the disc therefore making me unsure if it ever REALLY existed. Sorry for being weird but I love the wacky nostalgia feel here

Aaaaaah, THANK YOU! That is SUCH a cool comparison and I appreciate!!!

Anonymous said: If the Edgeworld is based on cartoons then is there a Reverse Edge-world that’s based on anime?

Lol, I mean I DID have an anime phase for a while there, so...

caydebug: Man I’d love to see this as a cartoon some day

Honestly, same. Best you’re gonna get is the occasional animatic or gif, tho.

Anonymous said: Does anyone..."go" in Edgeworld? or is it like Pleasantville where bathrooms exist but there are no toilets in them because acknowledging it is yucky?

Oh god I keep getting asked this and have been avoiding it like the damn plague. But... Uh. No. No they do not. I am begging you all not to send any followup questions.

Anonymous said: Have you considered putting computer viruses or illnesses in with the buggymen? Since those are typically called ‘bugs’

Sure!

Anonymous said: are there any limits to what an Animimic could posess? i.e if they were in a costume of a Buggieman with multiple arms, could they control all of them? what about a small Mousefly costume? can multiple fit into one costume like a clown car? and what about in pitch black darkness, where you can only see the lights of their eyes and not their bodies? could one fit inside the pocket of a jacket you are wearing and help you steal things/wield a gun like a living turret?

Since clothing fills into the body type of the intended wearer, they would indeed be able to control all arms/legs in buggieman clothes.

Size restrictions is one of these things I wanna try to be vague about: I personally have been imagining them sticking to hiding in things no smaller than, um. Maybe imp sized, but really, whatever. It’s a cartoon eyeball critter!

You can put multiple animimics in one outfit!

They can move around just fine in darkness without being off screen, yeah!

And sure why not. lol

Anonymous said: I know you have been asked this once before, and you said nah you don't, but with a few more months of worldbuilding, do you have an idea for what could be down the edge now? ��

Not really! It’s not super important, honestly. I’d say any fan theory is about as valid as anything else I can come up with.

ps2polpo: I doubt you’ll ever elaborate on The Edge but I like to imagine there’s just one dude there like the Nowhere Man from the Yellow Submarine movie. Mostly cause the thought of someone accidentally winding up there being like “where am I?” And there’s just a guy casually waving at him like a friendly neighbor is funny to me & Anonymous said: The implication that the Edge is the physical manifestation of edginess so there’s probably like, Trevor Henderson monsters hanging out down there.

See above question! Valid! I also accept falling forever, getting erased from existence, ending up in another universe, getting stuck in limbo with thousands of other people, whatever you want, really!

Anonymous said: " he has very few bones and weighs basically nothing, " "Fastball special" trope, but with Leo?

YEET THE NASTY MAN

Anonymous said: did you ever watch dragon tales as a kid? because george and margaret make me think of murderous zak and wheezie from that show, and i love it to bits

I did not, but I would have loved it. Definitely up my alley!

(watched Quest for Camelot a loooot, though!)

Imma go ahead and stop here! There’s more but I’ve been writing for well over an hour and I have things to do. If your question is missing I’m either saving it for later, wasn’t entirely sure how to answer, or it’s spoilery.

Will probably do another one of these at some point!

#rattytalks #asks #edgeworld

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enthusiastic-nimrod · 4 years

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Hey I'm Fred's fourth daddy anon! I sent that to you, and what felt like five minutes later you came in with that gorgeous sketch. Do you have any art tips or videos that have taught you cause I've been stuck draw trying to draw anything not resembling a lump for two years. Also yeah it was whirlwind episode, f*ck Rose, and Fred should have turned that loon in.

Hey FD Anon, thanks so much! I don’t draw a lot of “horror” art so I’m really happy with it’s progress so far!

While I do agree with you that Rose is The Worst, I think she added in an interesting dynamic and I’d be happy if she became a recurring character in the Scooby mythos at large. As for Fred not turning his dad in... I agree, but I also understand why he didn’t.

The episode went out of it’s way to show off how frightening and weird he is but Fred made it very clear that when he wasn’t wearing the mask he was a good parent, and that all of his crimes were shown as nonviolent. He didn’t seem to steal anything (unless I missed that line?) he just liked messing with people by confusing them.

As for art tips, I... honestly never expected anybody to ask for advice from me? That’s super flattering wow.

Okay, so I’m still pretty much a novice, but lemme give you some of my best tips and tricks:

1) Notice how my last sketch had a grey background? This wasn’t just for that sketch, this is how I use ALL of my digital canvases. I do this because the grey causes less strain to my eyes, and allows me to work longer and more easily. Being so close to a screen, especially a blue or white one, can make it harder to work for long periods of time.

2) If you want to do digital art, you need to learn “traditional art” (pencil and paper) first. It makes transitioning to digital more easy and it’s pretty much what any art teacher would recommend, for good reason.

3) Using one method of art not only limits you, but stops you from learning other techniques which can be incorporated into what you typically prefer. Not only that, but you can also discover a medium you really love that you never would have thought of before!

4) Whenever you get the chance, work in black and white or monochrome. This is a great way to help yourself learn about values and intensity, and just looks cool in general.

5) Piggybacking on that last point, if you’re ever worried about your shading, values, etc becoming muddled either A] take a picture and use a filter to make it black and white, or B] create another, pure white layer on top of the others and change it from “Normal” to “Hue”. Doing this can really help change your approach to coloring (black and white effect may be different for every art program).

6) If you want to get better at realistic faces, I was taught using the grid system. You have squares on your reference picture, squares on your paper, and then match up the body parts to the squares. I personally didn’t like this method, but it’s a really solid style of learning.

7) Start with the torso instead of the head. what you start with the head, the body may end up becoming wonky and having the neck stretched out at an odd angle or having a too small cranium. This is easier to fix in digital art but I suggest just remembering the importance of that rib cage (this is something I’m still training myself out of).

8) Asking for feedback can be an invaluable tool. For example, last year I had this really weird thing where I drew my eyes way too close together- I never noticed until I had it pointed out to me, and it took MONTHS to break this habit.

9) References are very useful, and one fun technique I’ve found great use in is to draw a pose, first with no reference, and then following that reference very strictly. This can be helpful when you want to see where you are developmentally.

10) Every now and then while drawing, you want to put the pencil down, prop up your paper, and walk away so that you can see the full image from a distance. If you’re working digitally, you zoom out a great deal so that the image appears smaller. This is a GREAT tool for seeing which sections of the piece need the most attention and how those smaller details hold up.

11) If you have the opportunity, you REALLY want to participate in an actual art class. Having a teacher that can see what you’re doing in real time and knows where you’re at skill-wise is an INVALUABLE thing to have- these people were specifically taught how to teach you these skills, recognize your problems and how to fix them. Don’t be afraid to talk to them and ask for advice about non-classwork art, either! You can’t receive help if you don’t ask for it.

12) Flip your canvas! I know you’ve probably heard this before, but this is one of the best ways to check for anatomy inconsistencies.

13) When it comes to youtube artists, I don’t really actively follow any, but I do know of some!

Mark Crilley: While I don’t watch his videos much now, I used to follow his videos RELIGIOUSLY. He’s got some really solid advice on how to map out comics and mangas, and he taught me the importance of silent scenes and keeping your work from getting too wordy. He mostly does the soft anime look, but he also does some pretty stellar realism.

mikeymegamega: I’m not going to lie to you, anon- this man likes his cheesecake. This guy is all about the cute anime girls, so if you’re not looking for that, skip him, but I really can’t recommend his videos on hands, feet, and faces enough.

Proko: Has a video about best drawing exorcises and is the guy you turn to when you want to know about figure drawing. He tends to focus on the more realistic anatomy, and while his videos may be long he’s got some good advice. I’d say to check out his studying anatomy correctly video, and then just kinda scroll through his pages.

Ethan Becker: THE KNIFE MAN. The first time I clicked on him I thought he was making a troll video- but then he Got Into It and my dudes, my guys, he has some CRAZY good advice. The way he words things and shows you examples in his videos are amazing and I really can’t recommend him enough. He did a video called “Fixing PROKO's LAZY Drawings“ and while you’d think it would be a bash fest his advice on shading in it is just so incredibly useful. Click on pretty much any of his videos and you’ll be entertained and learning.

I'd also suggest watching speedpaints. Even if it was unintentional, I’ve learned several really solid art hacks from speedpaint and storytime videos- so always be aware that you have an option for that.

…. Oh! And also, practice! I know you’ve probably been given this advice from everyone already, but it’s worth remembering.

Sorry if this got a bit long, I just figured I’d try to give you some good hacks- and even if you have already heard of most of these, I hope I could at the very least entertain!

#ask #response #anon #art advice #art tips #scooby doo #fred jones #professor huh #bcsd

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rolaplayor101 · 3 years

Text

Best Bois of 2020 Comp/Playlist

Utada Hikaru - Sanctuary (Marrzaan Remix)

underscores - clean

Splynts - SFV

ONE OK ROCK - Bombs Away

sapientdream - shooting star

Lana del Rey - Summertime Sadness (SxAde Synthwave Remix)

Face My Fears (dreamEater Remix)

Stand Out Fit In - ONE OK ROCK

Face My Fears (Kasger x MELURAN Bootleg)

Tracking the improvement of my Digital Art through The Best Bois of 2020 under the cut

3/7/2020- bad. Just bad. The line art is lazy and too thick. the hands make no sense. It was my first time drawing both of them, I think. The background is nice but I had something else planned originally and couldn’t draw it right so I just put a bunch of colors together to look like clouds.

3/8/2020- better. Getting more used to drawing anime digitally. Gave them some cool outfits. The lineart is still thick but it worked better here in full body. The hand still looks bad and the lineart for Midoriya’s face is inconsistent, but I think Shinra came out well, especially his shoes. the background didn’t look good so I pixelized it because I thought it would look better. It didn’t. I still look back at this fondly though.

3/10/2020- a dumb edit I couldn’t stop thinking about when I first started watching Fire Force

3/29/2020- I LOVE this one! The lighting is a first for this pair. I messed up Shinra’s hand but it’s a lot better than the others and Midoriya’s is super good too! The background I love, as well! I remember this taking a while. The desks are disproportionate, though, and I probably should have gave Shinra another outfit XD this is one of my best Midoriya’s!! I love the thin lineart!

4/3/2020- continuing with thin lineart, but trying new compositions and actiony poses! It came out alright. Shinra looks weird In both face and proportions but I think Midoriya looks amazing! One eye is off but that’s alright. I struggled drawing their clothes correctly. The lighting is what I’m most proud of, and I like the explosion in the sky in the background. Shinra’s hair and feet are the best part of his image.

4/3/2020- this was more of a doodle than anything. I wanted to see him wear the Fire Forces uniform once.I let him keep his shoes since he needs them for his powers. The lineart is messy and bold but it worked for what I was going for.

4/11/20- I wanted more movement in their poses. The line art is cleaner, cool new outfits, nice colorful background. Colored line art which I started doing more of lately. Midoriyas head is too small but his hair is huge and bright. His shoes are nicer than last time! Composition is different than usual, too. I wanted it to look like it was taken from below. I also colored the room before I did the line art for the ground.

4/15/2020- the clouds!!! The lighting! I was so proud of it, even if I hated the last 3 panels. Shinra looks fine in the first panel, but I could NOT for the life of me get Midoriya right! And then the last panel Shinra just has a awkwardly placed head that hurts to look at. I had a hard time with the eyes for Midoriya, as well as his shoulders. But the lineart is cleaner and thinner for Shinra than Midoriya.

4/16/2020- this was fun! I wanted to try more scenic pictures, with things going on. Them running somewhere in a hurry. It’s not as dependent on facial features and lineart here. The lineart is colored again, and pretty clean! The background was important here and I enjoyed making cloudy weather and fire coming from Shinra’s feet. The lightening effect was useful here too, for Midoriya.

4/18/2020-back to black line art. The background grabs more attention than the characters, and the story of the picture seems more important than the picture itself. I drew this on the same day as the picture before, so I was more worried with getting it done than it being good. The hands took a backseat in this one, and Midoriya’s profile is an amateur chibi style.

4/19/2020- the double date. My first time drawing objects for the Best Bois. Perspective is weird. Konro’s eyes are disproportionate, Yagi’s hand is doll-like and crippled, and Benimaru’s head is too small. The lineart is black and messy, but I drew more characters in one photo than usual, and I was getting out of my comfort zone with more objects, multiple characters, and a unique composition.

5/9/2020- the womennnn! Miruko came out amazing, but Hibana was very hard to nail down. The colored lineart is back and the hand on Miruko looks great. Hibana’s shoulder is kind of weird, an her eyes and mouth are off, but for the most part this was a success! The background too! I especially love the shading and lighting on this, which took a bit to nail down.

5/14/2020- these fake screenshots took a lot out of me! These are my favorite set of Best Bois photos! I tried for a little bit of manga style for the dialogue, and the lineart and color came out perfect I think! Shinra in screenshot three looks a bit too bold and the seventh and eighth screenshots have problems, particularly the red forehead on midoriya, but overall, pretty proud of this one!remmeber

5/18/2020- more supporting characters!! I remember these taking the most out of me. The lineart is the best it’s ever been and the colors are perfect, the hair is exquisite outside of maybe Hatsumei Mei, who eyes and mouth are also out of style for bnha.the shading and lighting is pretty good. Maki’s arm is a little weird but the bad parts of the art are just nitpicks for the most part. Vulcans Left eye could be bigger.

7/13/2020- wonderful lineart and color. The ears are good, the lighting is good. The background looks out of perspective with the characters and has random leaves that look like they’ve come from nowhere. Both Izuku and Shinra look in character style. Midoriya’s left arm could have been more muscular, but thems the breaks.

8/30/2020- Shinra looks cool, with really dark shading, but Midoriya is off in all of his panels. The hands were worked on and Izukus hair is nice. The Lineart is clean and crisp, and the background is simple.

9/30/2020- once again working on backgrounds. The hands have upgraded to their final forms, as well as the shoes. A lot of detail is in the background. Neither Shinra or Midoriya looks off in any way. The lineart is clean, the clothes are shaded, and everything is neat and colorful.10/10

10/31/2020- took like a month. Once again out of comfort zone with objects, this time with food and people in the background. And entire busy restaurant drawn in background. Food looks good for first time, some less detailed than others. The hands have nails and are pretty alright. They do what they’re meant for. Side view of characters are neat and well proportioned. Lineart clean and still.overall amazing good vibes 20/10

12/10/2020- last full body of the year. Objects again with a soda can and cup. Clean line art with nice purple lighting and shading. Amazing hair and eyes for Midoriya and nice profile on Shinra. Shoes are topnotch for him, a little lazy on Midoriya. Hands aren’t too detailed but aren’t bad at all, they do what they’re meant for as well. Nice simple way to end off the year.

That was 2020! It was a long year, folks. Let’s get it this 2021. 👀 y’all bout to see who we got for the best bois of 2021. Guess! Here’s a hint: they like to troll a certain alien boy 👀 👀 👀

Check out the Best Bois of 2020 tag to see all these pics! Give the original posts some love!!

#Rolaplayart #playlist #best bois of 2020 #best bois of 2020 playlist #izuku midoriya #shinra kusakabe #fire force #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #my hero academia #enen no shouboutai #rumi usagiyama #toshinori yagi #dave shield #benimaru shinmon #konro sagamiya #touya todoroki #maki oze

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astrologista · 4 years

Text

jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!!

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands.

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up.

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth.

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally?#for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

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monstercupcake61176 · 5 years

Text

Conspiracy Theory!!!!

This is a little theory I had about the recently released “Don’t Make Me” music video featuring two of the best people on the planet, Malinda Kathleen Reese and Thomas Sanders. Seriously if you haven’t watched it yet please do it’s a work of art and the song is catchy as heck even if I still don’t know all the lyrics...

Also there will be SPOILERS in this theory so if you don’t wanna be spoiled, go watch the video, then come back.

Did you watch the video? Good.

Okay, here’s my theory I like to title as: “The Twisted Version of the Story Theory”

Or the “One-Sided” theory if you prefer that...

@hitmewiththatfanart33 you wanted conspiracy theories so here you go!

Okay so if you’ve seen the video you know the main gist of the story. A prince and princess get married, everything seems perfect, until we learn that this happily ever after is about to be ruined by the prince hatching a plot to kill his newlywed wife. She finds out about the plot just in the nick of time to hatch a plan to save herself and hurls the evil prince off the castle wall to his supposed death. Finally, a happy ending!

Except it’s not.

Something that really confused me about this video was why the princess (who I will now refer to as Malinda because I’m going to get tired of typing out “the princess” every time I refer to the character) considered herself to be the bad guy for defending herself against someone who was literally trying to kill her.

Like, I’m pretty sure that’s self-defense. One could make the argument that she had truly loved the prince (who I will now refer to as Thomas for the same reason stated earlier) and was torn between saving her own life and sparing his. Cue the “Don’t make me be the bad guy” chorus.

Now, this would make sense, if she actually felt remorse about her actions.

I mean, it’s obvious that this video is a flashback of previous events. But for someone who’s adamant about not being made into the “bad guy” Malinda doesn’t seem too bothered by what she has to do.

Also, just look at some of the lines in this song: Turning the other cheek to see you less

All of our friends are my army, yeah

Let's say it right: not my fault you got regrets

Can I offer you a little salt for that wound?

And might I add my favorite line to overanalyze:

Never was built to be this way

But turns out the villain is fun to play

There’s a lot more to unpack here, and eventually, I’m gonna go through the whole song and break it down. But for now let’s get back on track.

This continued to bother me for a while, along with the random tone shifts throughout the video. For such a serious plot, there’s some pretty goofy moments going on.

For one thing, the entire scene where Malinda finds out about the threat on her life. We see Thomas standing around a table with two guards, and on that table is a pretty childish drawing of the queen being killed.

Um, okay? I get it if you’re not a good artist but like, you know you could have just told the guards to get your point across instead of leaving evidence out in the open like this.

And then there’s this moment...

Like, dude. Is this some kinda sick joke to you? Which if it is then I am disturbed. But the reason I bring this up is that this moment clashes with how Thomas has acted throughout the video so far.

He’s been calm, elegant, poised, kingly, regal, confident, charming, handsome, and I’m running out of things to say-

So seeing him act like this is kinda weird, right? Especially considering how no one else acts like this. His two guards are pretty emotionless. The only other time something similar to this happens with another character is later during the sword fight, which I’ll get to in a moment.

So after this scene Malinda runs off in again, what I found to be kind of a weird editing choice. She’s sped up while running, proceeds to run into a maid, then drags said maid behind her all while being put on a fast forward. Something in editing that is normally used for comedic purposes.

Two other tone shifts that I can remember are near the beginning when Malinda notices Thomas’ eyes glowing red she gives an awkward reaction that I first found comedic. Then later during that sword fight scene, after Thomas runs off, she rolls her eyes before following.

Okay first of all: I thought this was a serious issue. You were panicking lady! And now all of a sudden you’re gonna roll your eyes because he’s fleeing for his life? Unless you just got super confident all of a sudden and recognize him for the coward he is in which case, good for you girl!

But again I had to wonder, why these random tone shifts? One could say that this was just Malinda’s way of lightening up the video. Both her and Thomas have been known to make silly content, while both being able to mix the silly stuff with more serious story elements.

However, what if these random moments weren’t random at all? What if they were intentional?

Backing up a bit, we know that things are being told from Malinda’s perspective. She’s the one singing the song, she’s the one we see in present-day after the video’s events, and she’s the one whose point of view we get.

So Malinda is established as our narrator after the first narrator lady who established the setting (sorta) and who our main characters were was cut off after saying that the two would live happily ever after. As Malinda spoils for us later:

The ending ain’t happy

Now here’s the thing about narrators, they have the most power in a story. They’re the windows to the outside world that the viewers are looking through. One could say this whole video is Malinda explaining what happened to others, while also stating that she didn’t want to be the “bad guy” but just look at her in that above shot! Does that look like someone who doesn’t want to be the villain? I daresay she’s enjoying her new role! Heck she says it herself, playing the villain is fun.

So what I’m getting at is this: What if Malinda in being an unreliable narrator? What if we’re not getting the full story here?

So far, Malinda is our only window into this world. We don’t get to see Thomas’ perspective or those of the maids or guards. Speaking of these side characters, notice how the guards are blank slates. Sure, one is seen smiling during the wedding, but during the scenes where they’re alone with the prince? Nothing.

Now the maids, they’re more expressive. But they too act somewhat cartoony. During the fight, the two manage to take out both guards, unarmed. (Although one does end up acquiring a knife) but it seems highly unlikely that two untrained maids would be able to take on two armed guards with years of fighting experience.

Also Malinda suddenly being able to use a sword out of the blue is rather suspicious, unless she (and possibly her “Maids”) have had training before. Those two could have actually been her bodyguards posing as maids, but if they were then why wouldn’t they have weapons on them? And again, the prince’s soldiers are taken out quite easily, and again in a rather comedic fashion.

Even Thomas’ character seems inconsistent. Being all regal and serious one minute then goofy and cowardly the next. Something isn’t adding up here.

Almost like someone isn’t getting their story straight, or should I say, her story straight. After all, it is her story right? She’s the one telling us what really happened. Or is she?

What if the real villain of this story isn’t Thomas, but Malinda? And the entire song and the video itself, is her fabrication of the events that took place. So if Malinda is the villain, does that make Thomas the hero? The one who’s trying to protect his kingdom?

Well, I don’t really have an answer for that. There are some scenes that make me question his credibility as a villain, which I’ll probably cover in another theory since this one is getting WAY too long.

But I’ll close off with this: Remember Thomas’ “death” at the end? He’s pushed off the roof and we’re led to assume he’s dead. But we never actually see his body. We see those of the two guards, but never Thomas.

Maybe this is implying a possible sequel? Will Thomas come back to get revenge?

Or maybe this time, we’ll get to see his side of the story.

But hey, that’s just a theory!

A...

theory theory!

(Honestly none of this is to be taken as fact this is just speculation and me overanalyzing a three minute video and not having anything better to do with my life)

#don't make me #malinda kathleen reese #thomas sanders #spoilers #tw death #tw murder

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