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romanasanders · 5 years

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Don’t make me write a Lore Talk

Ao3 Link Here!

"Don't Make Me" is a music video that Thomas helped create with Malinda Kathleen Reese. The teaser pictures on his Instagram caused a commotion, causing fans to theorise about this new character. One of those theories, that this King is the original Creativity, might fit more than we thought.

[disclaimer: yes, I know the story is Malinda's and has likely nothing to do with the Sanders Sides. But Thomas can still take inspiration from it, and my theory would fit perfectly if he ever decides to bring back the dragon witch as a character.]

First of all, lets start with the basics. The setting. The video seems to take place against a romanticised backdrop of European royalty. The use of “Once upon a time” and the narrator in the beginning suggest that it draws inspiration from classic fairy tales, and the costumes also fit in such a narrative.

But some things do not make sense. The “subjects” are a nameless and faceless crowd, and apart from the royal couple there are only four other humans in the castle/palace. Not to mention, there are some anachronisms in the background such as a modern lamp in the balcony scene and a light switch at the staircase.

This fairytale world doesn’t exist on its own, but is part of someone’s imagination. In particular, that of a child who has grown up on fairytales and disney but wouldn’t yet be aware of certain specifics. Someone like a young Thomas.

In this fantasy world from Thomas’ imagination, everything revolves around the King. Everyone else is simply a fragment of the imagination, created to forfill a role. The soldiers, the handmaidens and even the Queen herself. They all play in the fantasy that casts Thomas or more specifically, his Creativity as the hero and gives him a happily ever after. Creativity in this video is a playing child in an adult body.

But from the beginning, we notice something is wrong. The king clutches his hand after his new bride held it. The red spark in his eyes. The glitches. The queen notices it too, but gives it the “Benefit of the doubt” as she sings in the first line. She keeps playing the role she was made for.

What is happening is that Creativity has realised that maybe, Thomas doesn’t want a happily ever after. Not with a princess. And impulsive as Creativity is, he acts on a hunch, an intrusive thought you could call it. End the fairytale. Assassinate the Queen.

Unfortunately, the queen overhears the plotting. (Which is another clue to this taking place in a child’s imagination: both with a very childish drawing and neck slicing gesture) This was never supposed to happen, and you could say it disrupts the plan of the King, who is used to being in control.

The queen flees to her room with her maidens, singing “Never was built to be this way.” She doesn’t understand why her husband wants to kill her, because she did nothing wrong. She could not have: she was built, created with one purpose: to be the perfect wife and perfect queen in a fairytale.

But now, she deviates from that purpose: her outfit and the color scheme of the video change and the Queen becomes a Villain. Not without guilt: “Don’t make me be the bad guy” becomes a pleading, because she just wants to do what she was purposed for.

As the King enters the room to kill the queen, he gets suprised by the empty bed and a sword that crosses his. He is completely unprepared for a fight, because he did not expect one. He is out of control of this fantasy and it shows. The queen is perfect, so of course she knows how to swordfight and she overpowers the king, who flees outside.

At what is presumably the castle wall, he gets cornered by his queen-turned villain, and faces her with a panicked or even crazed look in his eyes, before he gets pushed off the edge.

You can see how the Queen’s gaze lingers as she processes what she has done: killed her husband, the reason why she exists in the first place. Or anything that she has ever known, for that matter. She realises that she will be seen as the villain of this fairytale.

Back inside, she faces her reflection in the mirror: the version of herself who has been singing the song to us. An evil queen. The bad guy of the imagination who had gained sentience on accident.

Creativity didn’t die, but he split in two over the guilt he felt, over his conflicted feelings and about the fairytale he had ruined. A prince and a duke. Black and white.

The Queen remained in the imagination. Her resentment towards Creativity caused her to be cast again and again in fantasies, but this time as the villain. Until she became nothing but a monster for the prince to conquer. An embodiment of all that is evil. A Dragon Witch, perhaps?

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #roman sanders #don’t make me #malinda kathreen reese #malinda #ts spoilers #lore talk

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yellow-saber-blog · 6 years

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The Star Wars Fan Wars or why some fans hated The Last Jedi.

If you are into StarWars or into films in general you are probably aware that the SW fandom is currently divided into two groups - those who hated the TLJ and those who loved it. Or so it would seem....I am pretty sure there are many people, like me, who stand in between: people who acknowledge the film’s flaws but who still find things they enjoy in it. But one thing is certain - those who stand at the extreme lines are very vocal about their opinions and are often pretty rude towards each other.

I am writing this post here on Tumblr because I want to address a particular issue that is bothering me a lot and that is: how people who liked the TLJ are labeling those who didn’t like the film as “butthurt fanboys” and discredit their opinions and feelings as being simply “broken expectations”.

I want to defend those angry “fanboys/girls” a bit, because it seems that some fans miss the point of why others hated TLJ. Lots of the complains people have, even though often expressed with anger and harsh words, are legit.

Now, before we go further, I want to address another issue that people neglect - personal oppinion vs facts.

Now imagine you are going to buy a shirt in the store with your friend. You both like clothes from the StarWars brand. They now have a new collection of shirts. You absolutely love that new blue shirt but your friend doesn’t like it at all. This shows your different taste and leads to your opposite opinions on something that is subjective. No one can convince the other that their opinion is right or wrong because that is the nature of subjective opinions and personal taste.

The same is with movies - someone will enjoy a film that another will hate and both are free to express their joy or frustration as much as they want without trying to discredit the other.

Now there is another aspect to things - the facts. As much as you like that new shirt’s design if you look at it closely, you might notice that it’s not sewed properly or that there are some other defects on it. You can still like it or buy it but you cannot deny the fact that there are defects on that shirt and that is not made as good as it could have been done.

The same thing can be said about the TLJ - that film is not stitched up together as good as it might have been. You can still enjoy it immensely but you will be lying to yourself if you insist that this is a good movie because it isn’t. The script, the pacing and the inconsistent tone of the movie are some of it’s bigger problems. When audiences go to see a StarWars film made with billions of dollars from some of the best in Hollywood, they naturally expect to see a decent, competent movie. You can’t blame people for complaining when they are given something far less professional than promised.

I think we can all acknowledge that TLJ has weak points in terms of storytelling, consistency and basic logic. That being said, we should also all acknowledge that visually this film is magnificent and one of the best looking StarWars films. Those aspects we can consider facts about the film. You will be insulting a lot of classic movies if you insist these things aren’t true.You can still love or hate the movie all you want but you should at least acknowledge those basic truths about it. So objectively this film deserve probably around 6/10. Definitely not the best of StarWars. But it can still be your favourite SW film, nonetheless.

Now lets get to the point - why some fans hate this movie? The main reasons are simple and I will list them in no particular order:

- Silly side story - the dump and illogical things that happen with the Resistance and all the subplots revolving around Poe, Finn and Rose. The movie just doesn’t know what to do with them. The plan about going to Canto Bight gets stupider the more you think about it. General Holdo’s motivations and character in general are simply weird for a Resistance leader. Everything there feels like a filler episode of a TV show. Is that all they could come up with? You might at least understand why such a silly plot makes some people angry or irritates them. StarWars never had any super complex plot points - but no matter how simple those stories might have been, they were at least bound by a basic logic and overall narrative purpose. ( and they were much more fun to watch)

- The First Order start to feel like a joke. Snoke is killed without explaining anything about him at all, Hux is more like a comic relief and not like a serious bad guy. The whole First Order feels underwhelming. The Dark Side has always been very cool and a bit frightening. Now is more like a bunch of idiots with cool looking ships.

- The bad treatment of the original characters - Luke is misused and his character is completely changed without proper explanation or motivation. I won’t even go into details about Luke because it will take me ages. Leia, in turn, is given close to nothing to do and her “force flying” appears to be more laughable than impressive. Yes, there are some good scenes with Luke and Mark Hamill is amazing in the part but the negative things are just overshadowing the good ones.

To those reasons you can add other complains that people still have about Rey being a Mary Sue, about Snoke being useless, about Kylo Ren’s still unclear motivations and so on.

But let me condense it all in it’s basic essence - Disney/Ryan/Kathleen Kennedy and whoever else was involved - they all tried to be original in the wrong places and changed things they shouldn’t have changed AND at the same time they were unoriginal and silly in story points they should have changed or be creative with. Let me elaborate:

Luke won’t train Rey the way you think. Luke is not the hero you might expect to see. He is actually responsible for the fall of Kylo Ren and he did things against his character because you won’t expect that. And when Luke finally decides to do something he just Force project himself to have a “surprise” at the end. And dies. Basically Luke is written to be nothing you expect him to be, so you will be surprised. But the truth is: no one wants to be surprised by Luke or see him as a broken old man, no one wants to see their beloved characters killed off in such ways as Han and Luke. Give the audience the Luke they love and know. Surprise the fans with new characters and plots points without ruining the things fans already love. That is what will make people happy, why is it so hard to understand?

The "This is not going to go the way you think” theme goes on - Rey parents will be nobodies because you won’t expect that. Snoke will die, because you won’t expect that, Holdo has a secret plan all along because you won’t expect that. These choices are not about being original or creative, they are just doing the opposite because they want people to get something “they don’t expect”.

JJ and the marketing team created all that mystery around Rey and Snoke, it’s not just the fans’ imagination going wild. Still they didn’t deliver anything intriguing about those “mystery boxes”. I am personally ok with Rey’s parents being nobodies - I actually expected that to be the case. But you can’t blame people for wanting to know more about Snoke. When the first Star Wars films were out it was enough to say “this is the Emperor” and he is the bad guy. Now we have 6 movies and even more canon books and tv series. You have all that existing history there. The context of the story is different. It’s normal for people to want to know where those new powerful characters are placed in the history of the story. If you give them no answers about Snoke, you make the character pointless to the fans. So he is just a tool for Kylo to rise to power? But it’s Star Wars - people want to have something more to the story than just unexplained and undeveloped characters.

Still with the new characters, people are more perceptive to changes therefore one can do something really bold with them and change them upside down and get away with it. But the characters we grew up with - they need to be consistent with what we know about them. There is the balance between things you can twist/change and things you should respect and honer.

Now despite all the “ this is not what you expect” ideas, the creators of the film have the same story points as the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi - we have a space chase, a white planet battle with walkers, an exotic world where we meet someone who will betray our characters, Rey will face Snoke as Luke faced the Emperor and so on. Those story similarities are the things they could have made completely different and be as creative as they want with those. Yet, they chose the similar plot points and visual elements to echo the OT but changed the characters from the OT. Why??? That is a very dump decision if you know anything about StarWars fans or if you know anything about people expectations and behaviour in general. Disney are not trying to win Oscars with this, they are trying to please the audience. But something in their research tables and marketing graphics went totally wrong.

There are at least 100 ways to write that same story both pushing forward the new characters and honouring the OT characters. They killed Han in an idiotic way, Luke is now gone in a poetic but useless manner. All those misplaced creative choices make the new films out of balance. They talk about balance so much in the story but they cannot achieve it. The balance between new and old, between the old generation and the new, between creativity and honouring the established lore. This imbalance it the real problem of the new trilogy. And this is a REAL PROBLEM no matter if it personally bothers you or not. If it doesn’t - good for you. But don’t disregard the opinions of those who are bothered by the unbalanced new trilogy and don’t call their complains “whining” or “lack of vision”.

You can enjoy the characters and the movie despite those problems but to deny that those ARE problems is a bit naive and short-sighted.

At this point it seems that Disney have no real idea of what they are doing with this franchise. At times it’s apparent that they are more concern with marketing and money rather than making a good film product. But is that really true? I am sure no one at Disney wanted to make a bad movie on purpose. But it turned out to be a rather messy one. One can make huge mistakes with the best of intentions.

They are nuances to things - nothing is black and white. Neither “playing safe” nor its opposite “disregard the film legacy” are good choices.

I just want to conclude this post by saying that people who grew up with StarWars don’t take this universe lightly. Life might suck big time but when you go to your StarWars corner of the galaxy, things should be better there. When someone hurts a character you love from your childhood you have the right to be angry, you have the right to complain, you have the right to demand a better treatment of that character.

We should all demand to be given better movies, better treatment in general as audience. I am sure there are many new, original and great stories that are not given green light so we can have more Marvel, more DC, more Star Wars. Therefore Star Wars movies should be made worthy of their title, of their popularity and of the resources poured into them. The hardest thing in all aspects of life is to get the balance right.

I really hope that Lucasfilm are making something better for the final movie, something that will bring fans back together.

I personally consider everything from TFA until now to be alternative universe and this is how I am fine with it. But still I would prefer to see a movie with a more intelligent script and not a filler subplots.

How many times per day we say to each other the same thing - do not disregard people’s feelings and opinions just because they differ from yours, don’t attack or insult those people because what they say makes you feel uncomfortable.

We all love the same thing lets be more civilised about it.

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