#character arc of “It turns out raising a child to be just like me has consequences”

[scarecrowdrugs]

Some assorted SV Jonathan sketches I've made over the past few weeks, along with Clarice, his half-sister/daughter figure/kidnapping victim

#jonathan crane #oc: clarice keeny #shiversverse #side note: he actually does wear glasses. I just don't know how to draw them lololol #disclaimer: don't kill your mom and kidnap your sister #it turns out children hate that #SV Jonathan's early character arc is darkly hilarious #character arc of “It turns out raising a child to be just like me has consequences” #this man wasn't ready for his family murder plan getting disrupted by an seven/eight year old girl triggering his PTSD #and then panicked and stole an entire child to compensate for feeling actual emotions towards a family member #the entire ride back to Gotham consisted of a grown man and a small child dissociating in a car in complete silence #they probably had to stop at McDonald's #this grown man really stole a child to spite the mother he just murdered and then freaked out when he realized he actually got attached

[queenofapeacefuldawn]

SPY × Family: Chapter 93 analysis

this is my first time doing something like this, and I'm no expert so please take my analysis with a grain of salt! all of this is my own theories, so you might disagree with me. please don't be mean, though (also, long post incoming!)

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 93 UNDER THE CUT

The chapter opens with the Eden kids getting the results of their marks, with Anya's...

overall rank shooting up, from 213th to 168th. Showing how she's slowly adjusting to the school and its pace of learning, despite being younger than everyone else (and, also, presumably doing extremely advanced things.... I remember seeing the pythagorean theorem on the board once in the anime)

Damian got highest in History (good job, buddy!), and Anya got second-highest in Classical Language (the one exam she genuinely studied hard for). But what I want to focus on is her expression:

Shock. She'd put up that front (that fake-face, if you will) in front of Becky, Damian, Emile and Ewen, pretending to be all cool and suave but when she sees her results, she's genuinely surprised to get good marks in Classical Language. And even her excited reaction. She was scared of disappointing Twilight (and maybe even Sigmund and Barbara) because she'd genuinely worked hard for this exam, tried to understand, and gave it her best attempt.

But, then, it all comes crashing down with her 24 points in math: but a win is a win!

Maybe this is Twilight's turning point in the fact that acquiring knowledge can be interesting, exciting, and not just a tool of survival? Twilight himself doesn't have a great relationship with studying, (see: his father scolding him as a child for not studying, later: his friends dying because he didn't know enough about the campaign they were going on... but Twilight's relationship with knowledge and its pursuit is a whole other post in itself).

Honestly, him realising that Anya is actually thriving in the setup where education is fun for her, opens up two new avenues:

Twilight himself trying to make learning fun for Anya (unlikely, he tried that before... it didn't work.)

Him leaning on Sigmund and Barbara to tutor Anya (this seems more likely- Endo is probably going to cement the Authens as recurring characters, so them being Anya's surrogate grandparents/neighbors/tutors would seem like a great way to do so!

And then...

My main focus is on the fact that he mumbles this (also his face. But that's irrelevant). Twilight may claim, "I don't understand children", but he's an extremely perceptive man. As much as I love to clown on him, he's highly skilled at picking up on cues of people's feelings. The few times he's failed are mostly due to Anya's shenanigans trying to hide her telepathy, mixed with his usual flavour of overthinking.

But the couple of things he knows about Anya are this:

She was probably raised in an environment where Classical Language was used.

She's not fond of talking about or remembering her past.

Which is why he didn't have the heart to fully sound out the question. In the case of Anya, this is an extremely delicate matter, and he doesn't want to upset her (or, in his words, "ruin Operation Strix.") The way he asked the question and it's portrayed made it feel like he'd been pondering on it for quite a while (which he has; since the beginning of the Cruise Arc), but more so usually. Most likely due to her high marks in the Classical Language tests (aka a dead language), and the fact that she got excellent marks in it, despite formally studying it for less than a year (at least, as far as he (and we) know.) He's been thinking of the possibility, and also thinking of a way to ask her. In the end, when he does ask her—

she lies.

and he lets her. (at least, that's my interpretation)

Obviously, he knows she's not ready to speak about it yet (though we know it's probably connected to her telepathy, so she's not ready to divulge that info).

Look, as much as I love talking about how clueless he is with his own feelings, in this scene, he was just... perceptive? I don't know if that's the right word. But he was trying to keep Anya happy, and bringing up this complex topic without ensuring proper care for her wouldn't be fair to her. And he knows that. So, he leaves it at, "Just forget about it, okay?"

This entire scene felt so... tense, and in itself felt like a fucking gut punch, so I don't know how I'll react to the reveal.)

And now, onto the main focus of the chapter:

him.

If I'm being honest, I thought Demetrius was, like, 16-19 (judging by his voice in the anime), and not... fucking twelve.

Honestly, that just makes his character all the more tragic: he's barely a teenager, and yet... he's going through this. From his awards ceremony, we can see that he got, what, 6 stellas? In addition to the eight he's gotten to be an Imperial Scholar, and if he performs this well in every exam... bro is literally hoarding the Stella supply of the school (sorry, bad joke).

But...

this panel comes up. It's definitely not Anya's telepathy malfunctioning, (heck, it works on Bond and even penguins). Honestly, I think, again, it could be one of two things:

He was experimented on, like Anya

He was trained, (most likely by Donovan), to keep his mind blank.

We're told that he and Donovan had an extremely close relationship:

This could be in support of both the theories: it could be Donovan checking up on his "experiment's" progress (a crude term to refer to him), or, it could have been him subconsciously training Demetrius to hide his thoughts, keep them safe. Anya's project is connected to Desmond's administration, and at the time she was "made", Demetrius would have been around 7 or 8. Old enough for him to figure out what he wanted to have been in life (ofc, that's different for everyone! It takes time, and 8 is an extremely young age to figure out what one wants to do). But, like, how Damian wants to be a politician, it's most likely that Demetrius, the prodigal, studious, first child, would have to follow the path of politics laid before him.

So it could have been Donovan teaching Demetrius to protect his sensitive thoughts from the "weapons" he himself was making: the test subject(s) of Anya's project (again, a crude term to refer to them). Donovan was putting a lot of faith into creating telepaths (most likely for covert work), and them having unwavering loyalty to his administration was not very likely.

And, even if Anya's project was the work of another administration or even country, there's no doubt that Donovan would want to keep his thoughts hidden from these kinds of spies: ones than can see into your very mind, especially if the world is at war: a physical battle or a war for information.

The first theory of Demetrius himself being a test subject is probably Not What Happened; so I think it's probably just Demetrius being trained to keep his thoughts hidden.

But then, we get some of his thoughts:

Which is a lot reminiscent of:

So, it's probable that Demetrius imbibed this from his dad.

It's honestly a bit scary to see how Donovan's "parenting" has affected him: for him, age 12, to be like this.

After this, the chapter ends lightheartedly: Anya trying to emulate Demetrius, and Loid Being Tired™️.

I'm mostly curious about Demetrius: I was so excited when he was finally revealed! But I hope we get to see more of his thoughts, soon. Especially more about his relationship with Damian. But, this chapter was fantastic!

(This was super fun to do- if i do posts like this for chapters as they come out, would you all like it? Again, I'm not an expert in psychology (or even analysis). It's just me and my silly lil thoughts. I hope you liked it!)

#spy x family #spy x family manga #spy x family manga spoilers #spy x family chapter 93 #loid forger #spy x family chapter 93 spoilers #agent twilight #twilight #anya forger #subject 007 #sigmund authen #barbara authen #donovan desmond #demetrius desmond #damian desmond

[bluepeachstudios]

Oo rank the splinters from worst to best dad! I have my own personal ranking but i wanna hear yours

SPLINTER BEST DAD: Worst to Best

Last Ronin Splinter: Raised children to fight in a family blood feud! Didn't let them stop even when they claimed to be tired of fighting and killing! Got one of his sons killed by refusing to retreat! Horrible person and father!

Mirage Splinter: Raised the turtles to kill a man that HE had the beef with because Shredder killed HIS master, but he couldn't do it on his own so he just!!! RAISED CHILDREN AS SOLDIERS INSTEAD???? He's mostly "sensei" instead of "dad".

IDW Splinter: OOuuhhohoho. I could get into it. I won't. I get why he did some of the things he did. Plus he never really raised kids, they just kinda. Mutated into teengers. Bad dad though like jesus. Made more trouble for his kids than he helped.

Bayverse Splinter: He's just.... there.... he taught them how to fight... his guidance is kinda blah and he's pretty harsh with his punishments. You don't see him have any really soft moments with the kids, but he's not really a horrible dad, he's just... meh. Mid. I blame this on the bad writing of the movies.

1987 Splinter: He's a great caretaker, honestly. But he's more a sensei than a dad. He acts more like their teacher, he calls them "my friends" or "my pupils" and "my turtles" which is v cute. They definitely see him as their dad/master. He's very good to them, so he gets extra points. <3

2012 Splinter: OKAY I KNOW PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE MAD ABOUT THIS ONE. But he ALMOST NEVER fights beside them. You never see him doing anything fun with the kids. I'm sure he has! But like you never see it in the show, he tends to keep a distance. He keeps them safe from the blood fued, doesn't want them getting involved with Shredder. He does push them to save the world and does the whole "sacrifice anything or anyone to complete the mission" to Leo, a 15 year old boy, and then just sits at home???? Until April has to convince him to help?? AND HE DOESN'T HELP HIS SONS HE HELPS APRIL AND I'M??? Anyway that always bothered me. I love him as a character.

Rise Splinter: Here's our boy! He's shown with photos that he participated in fun activities with the kids when they were little. Not in the best way, obviously, but like!! He helped them make a lemonade stand!! Which is such a human child thing to do. He wanted them to have a normal life! He refused to train them for a long time with anything but movies because he didn't want them to have to fight. He's depressed as hell and yeah he's selfish at times but he has character growth through the series and turns into an honestly great dad by the end of it. I wish they'd had more time to show that growth and the aftermath of it.

1990 Splinter: THE LIVE ACTION DAD EVER. (I'm electing to ignore The Next Mutation. he's not even a dad. he's their sensei. anyway fuck next mutatio-) He's so gentle with them. He loves them so much. Calls them his sons all the time. Protects them despite being captured and interrogated and presumably tortured for information. HE LOVES THEM SO MUCH.

2003 Splinter: The Best Dad. He's a rat dad. He's not carrying a whole lot of human baggage. He lost his family once and he knows how to make one now. He takes care of his boys, he scolds them for going out, and when he realizes they're going to keep going topside and he can't stop them, he makes them do it safely. He is with them for ALL of their big fights. He EXCLUSIVELY calls them "my sons" constantly. He loves them so much oh my god. Would die for them in a heartbeat. Never wanted them involved with the Foot, tried DESPERATELY to keep them safe from it, and when he realized they were involved, he explained everything to them. He hugs them every time they get separated, he handles Leo's Depression Arc(tm) as well as he can. He never gets mad at Leo for hurting him. He just realizes that he can't help his son and must send him to someone else. And that's so hard to do.

So anyway 2k3 Splinter is best rat dad. Rats were made to be dads imo.

#asks

[lady-fey]

The Two Types of Redemption

Aka, why Avatar’s story works when so many others don’t.

There are two main paths to redemption: a shift in perspective and a shift in personality. The first is quite common and works very well for a character arc. The second is incredibly rare and should only be used if you’re going to heavily focus on it. Unfortunately, the ‘personality shift’ path seems to be the go-to and, while there is absolutely nothing wrong with this type of story, it requires a ton of work to make it feel earned. Work that is often hand waved away.

To start, let’s define these paths.

A shift in perspective: your character is already a fundamentally ‘good’ person. They just have a messed up view of the world, likely due to their upbringing. During the story, their world view will be challenged, forcing them to realize that they’re on the ‘wrong’ side. The classic example of this is someone raised bigoted and then going to college or moving to a city and turning out accepting after being exposed to people of other races, sexualities, and so on.

A shift in personality: there is something fundamentally wrong with your character. The reasons for this are many and I’m not going to list them out, but they probably know that their behavior is unacceptable. They probably don’t think of themselves as being on the ‘right’ side or, if they do, it’s because they refuse to consider another perspective. During the story, they will have to do an incredible amount of work on themselves to try and completely change the way their brain is wired. The classic example of this is someone who goes through years and years of therapy.

Now I’m gonna talk about Zuko and Azula from Avatar because they’re extremely well-known characters, so most people on this site can read this without getting spoiled like they might with a lesser known property.

The reason why Zuko from Avatar has such a compelling story is that he’s a case of redemption through a shift in perspective. His personality doesn’t actually change. When we flash back to who he was as a child, it’s the same person that he ends up being as an adult. A loving, kind, honor-driven man who wants to be on the ‘right’ side. His only flaw is that he’s been raised in the Fire Nation, which means that his head is full of lies. Once he’s forced to interact with people on the other side of the war, he realizes that they’re not what he’s been told. This rocks him to his core and he struggles with it, but ultimately ends up giving up everything to be true to himself. To fight for honor.

His sister, Azula, never gets redeemed, but imagine if we put her in Zuko’s place and tried to tell the same story. It wouldn’t work because Azula delights in hurting others, something Zuko viewed as an unfortunate necessity of war. She views ruling as a way to gain power while Zuko views it as a burden taken on from duty to his people. To redeem Azula, you can’t just pop her in the Earth kingdom and make her see things from the other side. She actually does that and all that she sees is a great way to spy! Her redemption cannot be a passive one like Zuko’s was. It has to be an active focus of the story and would need her to want to seek help or have it forced on her.

Of course, there is a spectrum here, but the general principle that you can't lump all redemption stories together is an idea that often goes undiscussed, leading to characters like Azula getting treated like Zuko and it bothers me so you get a tumblr post about it!

As always, feel free to send me asks!

#writing advice #character development #character arcs #redemption arc #avatar the last airbender

[gffa]

"Grimm" is a five-part story from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight from 2002 and I kind of absolutely lost my mind over it because there was just so much validating everything I've always thought about these two. The premise is typical comics shenanigans, there's a Mother Grimm who is stealing street kids and abused children away to this fantastical underground carnival to let them live a whimsical life, where they're loved and cared for--which Dick falls into because he's clashing with Bruce, who is freaking out because he's worried that he's turning Dick into a mirror version of himself. The story is woven through with Alfred gently trying to push (which I've been losing my shit about here and here because this is exactly what I read comics for) both Bruce and Dick into acknowledging that they're becoming father and son--but it's clear that both of them are terrified of stepping into those roles, Bruce because he doesn't know how to raise a kid and he's afraid he's hurting more than helping, Dick because he's not sure Bruce even wants him around as Robin, much less as Dick Grayson, but you watch the way Alfred barely has to nudge them and you see them both start to lean into the idea before they get scared again and jump back into saying they're partners and friends instead. And it's so validating because it's the good stuff--Dick running away because he feels like Bruce doesn't want him, Bruce coming home to tell him that he's going to find Dick a new family because he's scared he's molding this kid into himself but he can't because Dick's already run off, but when Dick says he's going to stay with Mother Grimm, Bruce looks gut-punched like he can't actually believe Dick would leave. Meanwhile, Bruce tries to leave, but Mother Grimm secretly doses him with psychotropic drugs which send him into hallucinations about how he's dragging Dick into this violent world of his, and how he's setting him up for death, that because Bruce didn't die with his parents, now he's trying to get this kid--this kid who mirrors him in so many ways--killed instead. And it's all just so much terror at the thought of letting someone else in after their losses--Bruce because he's scared of losing more people, Dick scared because he's not sure he's wanted, and it'll take years yet for them to actually put anything into words, so instead they settle for "partners" and it might feel unsatisfying and half-assed, except honestly Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth were working miracles here. There's plenty of room for other interpretations, including soft dad!Bruce who eagerly embraces the idea (and it's not too far off from this, this Bruce very clearly does want that, he's just scared and so he keeps chickening out), but this is where I live, this is why Dick Grayson is so fundamentally important to Bruce Wayne's story, that neither character is complete without the other. Bruce Wayne is a character who lost his entire world on that night he was eight years old and didn't know how to grow beyond it for so long, and how do you make a character arc like that satisfying? How do you take a character that is defined by a child's loss of his parents, that shapes everything of who he came to be, and make a satisfying conclusion?

You do it by making him a father to a child who needs him. A child who mirrors him, where they could bring out the worst in each other--and sometimes they do tend to slide into those fears getting the better of them--but instead Bruce struggles his way to being someone who openly admits that he's fallible, he makes mistakes, but he loves his kid and he is a father, that he needs to step up. I've been reading a lot of Bruce & Damian comics lately and it's been striking me how different Bruce is--he's still emotionally constipated, but he understands that he has to get in there, set boundaries, set rules, and make sure the kid knows that he's proud of them. Has to be the adult that looks past the scared kid's bravado and harsh words, to see the vulnerability underneath.

Bruce could never have done any of what he's doing with Damian currently without THIS RIGHT HERE. Without the yearning for something he doesn't know how to put into words (even when Alfred basically spells it out for him), without Dick Grayson bringing light and love into his life, without Dick being such a bright and loving child who was still scared that he wasn't wanted, so Bruce has to open up and learn to start actually saying what he means.

You don't get Bruce & Damian (or Bruce & Jason or Bruce & Tim) without Bruce & Dick first. You don't get any of that without Bruce's relationship with Dick making him put his fears into words and learning to trust his heart to this kid, step by step.

Bruce and Dick's relationship being rocky in the early days isn't a mark against how much Bruce loved that kid, but instead a sign of just how miraculous it was that Dick Grayson got him this far in the first place. Dick Grayson had to be the first, because you don't get to current day Bruce Wayne with any of his other kids without him. (Overall, this was a fairly silly comic that was very much of its era, but I thought it was a great read because it really nailed how hard it was for them to even begin to approach the idea of Bruce being a dad, he couldn't even say it at the end of all this, despite that he literally pulled the most dad move of all time by waiting in the dark for his kid to sneak back in and basically tell him he was grounded. GOD THEY ARE SO EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED AND IT'S SO DELICIOUSLY FUN.)

#lumi.txt #dc #batfam #dick grayson #bruce wayne #batman: legends of the dark knight #i wrote this post for me but you can reblog it if you want 😂 #long post

[c-rose2081]

The Mal and Audrey swap AU is so interesting, I have so, SO many questions about it. Does Mal know she's actually Maleficent's daughter? If not, how does she handle the revelation? How will everyone else handle it? Will she actually go along with her bio-mom's evil plan? How does Mal and everyone else, including the VKs, feel about and treat Audrey? Do they think Audrey is Maleficent's daughter? If so, does Audrey correct them? Even though Audrey knows she's not Maleficent's daughter, does she know she's Aurora's daughter? If not, how will she find out the truth? How is everyone going to react when they find our Audrey is Aurora's daughter? Will finding her real mom be what pushes Audrey to stop Maleficent's evil plan, or will it be something else? Is Mal gonna change her awful ways? If so, will she have a similar arc to canon Audrey (losing her social status to Audrey, becoming a villain, getting defeated and repenting) or will it be different? Sorry, I know that's a ton of questions, I just gotta know how all this plays out, especially how both Mal and Audrey will develop as characters and how the events of D2 and D3 will be affected, since Ben will still wind up with Mal despite the role swap

Woof, that is a lot of questions XD, but I don’t mind. I’ll go over some of the basics for you:

1.) Audrey knows she’s not Maleficent’s daughter because Maleficent told her so (she has more dignity than raising the child of her greatest enemies as her own). Audrey doesn’t know where she comes from, as far as she knows her birth parents are long gone and Maleficent ‘saved’ her from dying as a baby. She has no clue she’s actually Aurora and Phillip’s daughter. She doesn’t even know her full name, which is why she goes by Auds or A. However, she is very aware that Maleficent’s actual daughter is in Auradon somewhere, just not exactly where she is/who she was raised by.

2.) Mallory doesn’t know either. This is due to a very strong glamor spell Maleficent cast when the swap was made. It’s so strong that no one questions why Mal doesn’t look anything like her parents, and keeps her from wondering about it too much. She’s happy with her life and has no reason to question it. Her magic was explained away as a weird side-effect of Aurora’s time in the enchanted sleep.

3.) Audrey is basically an observer in D1’s main plot, a bit like a background character. On the Isle of the Lost she is a nobody and is treated as such. She’s a servant to Maleficent and bullied by the other VK’s. She takes orders without question, stays out of other people’s way, has no allies or friends of her own, and doesn’t interfere with Maleficent’s plans unless specifically told to do so.

When she gets sent to Auradon, for all intents and purposes she is Maleficent’s daughter (she would never say otherwise). She’s there to deliver Maleficent’s spellbook to Mallory, her one order, while the other VK’s are tasked with turning her evil. The story progresses similarly to canon, VK’s trying to get to the wand, spelling Ben with a cookie to try and fix his and Mal’s relationship, ect. ect. but Audrey is a passive observer to the entire thing, with her own little story on the side where she starts to make some friends (or rather, Jane and Lonnie start trying to be friends with her) and even has a romance with Mr. Chad Charming (I’m a Chaudrey shipper, sue me!)

4.) The glamor begins to wear off once Auds and Mal are in the same place for long enough, which is when people start to figure out something’s up. Queen Leah at Family Day really breaks things open, as her lack of time in the glamor made seeing Mal as an untrue heir easier to accept (she and Mal still don’t get along). Leah recognizes Audrey at family day, which spooks literally everyone and sends everything into confusion.

5.) I’m not spoiling endings or full realizations yet (mostly cause I haven’t decided what I want yet)

🥲 I hope this helps with some of your questions!

#disney descendants #audrey descendants #mal descendants #swapped au #answered asks

[zeroducks-2]

Let’s talk Helena Wayne bc like it’s criminal that we barely get anything about her and that they completely changed her origin and family (the bertinelli mafia family) to add her into the main comic book line.

im torn bc I love both versions of her :(

But I wanted Dick to share some older siblings trauma with her and for Damian to have that “blood” sibling bc I think that would have completely rocked early Damian’s shit. All his life, he was told to be the true heir of Bruce Wayne, but it turns out he has an OLDER SISTER BRUCE HID FROM TALIA AND RA. Idk I just think that would have crushed his lil murder ego and made for some interesting sibling moments and an interesting dynamic.

Lastly, can we talk about how the Batfam fandom completely stole all of Helena (Bertinelli)’s character traits and gave them to Jason??? Im sorry but when in the material source has Jason ever been super devout and catholic? Helena is the religious one, why am I reading about Jason’s apparent Catholicism in fics and HC dumps? Also Jason (besides his Robin days) has never been this savour and protector of the woman and children of Gotham, that’s very very veryyyyyy clearly a trait from Helena and strongly ties into her backstory as a child who suffered coming from a rich bloodline of syndicate crime. And don’t think this is me bashing on Jason, bc it’s not!! I love Jason Todd - but for who he is. Not for this weird fandom version of him who is either still suffering from the craze the lazarus pit puts you through, or this Joan of Arc of Gotham character either.

I'm gonna be honest with you, this character confuses me a bit. I know that Bruce and Selina got married and had a daughter in their Earth-Two incarnations, and this daughter is Helena Wayne, who's Dick best buddy and a vigilante in her own right called Huntress.

Then I know Helena Bertinelli, daughter of a mafia lord who was introduced in the late 80s in the preboot comic continuity, and was a quite murdery vigilante called Huntress who Bruce didn't accept because she "reminded him of Barbara" (you gotta love DC's excuses for sexism and ableism lol it's not like Barbara was dead just paralyzed. Also it did not look like Bruce gave a shit about it at the end of TKJ that Joker had crippled her - "she reminds him or Barbara". LMAO Bruce).

Then post reboot the title Huntress was given back to Helena Wayne, however Helena Bertinelli is ALSO there and she's ALSO called Huntress? She appears in the Grayson run where Dick is an agent of Spyral, and she seems to be Italian-American but I don't think her origin is the same as in preboot? Also I have no idea about Helena Wayne's continuity post reboot - when she was conceived, who raised her, how did she become a vigilante, neither I have any idea where to find this info.

I agree that if she had been raised by Bruce it could have made for an interesting dynamic amongst the bats and birds. It did in Earth 2 even if only Dick is just there - they're not siblings but they also aren't not siblings? The dynamic is murky and I love murky. Pretty sure it would have changed everything for Damian as well, especially the fact that she would have most likely been the first object of Damian's need to prove himself worthy, instead of Tim.

That being said, not much of what you mentioned is fanon about Jason.

Jason had an arc in which he's a priest. Pretty normal that fans HC him as devout or anyway catholic.

Father Todd in Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint Vol. 1 - this is an AU in which Jason was never taken in by Bruce and was never Robin.

As for the whole "protector of women and children" thing, you probably know that Jason was born in extreme poverty, his father was in and out of prison and his mother died of overdose. He is very much a child who suffered because of a broken system, and given how harshly he reacts when women and children are the recipient of violence "in his Robin days", is it really that strange that fans assume he carried these traits in adulthood?

We see him being sweet and protective to kids many times, or anyway losing his mcfucking shit when children are being harmed (like in Brothers in Blood). Imo that of Jason caring about vulnerable people is barely a headcanon, and I don't see how this would make him the Joan of Arc of Gotham either - if I'm being honest ALL vigilantes should care about minorities and vulnerable people, it's the other way around that is weird as fuck (like that arc in which Dick almost dies to prevent this guy from shutting down Bludhaven's casinos, like what the hell was Tim Seeley thinking exactly).

That being said, I understand your frustration if the character you like doesn't have recognition. Trust me I do! There's a lot of them for me too, especially female and/or non white characters who had maybe 1 run ages ago and then got forgotten by DC, and I would REALLY LIKE to see them more, and to see them acknowledged more by the fans (from the top of my mind, Jenni Ognats or Patricia Trayce).

But this isn't fandom's fault. As I mentioned before, Helena Bertinelli as a fleshed out character was a thing between 20 and 30 years ago, and most of tumblr's userbase was either very young or not born yet. DC forgot about her, stripped Huntress from her to give it to Helena Wayne, then brought her back but as an agent of Spyral and it really doesn't look like they care. Fans can't be held accountable for the fact that she's simply not there. They didn't "steal" Helena's traits to give them to Jason; this implies a willful and malicious intent from people who saw this character and decided her features fit another character better, and it's obviously not what happened - people barely know Helena Bertinelli exists if at all.

Also - I said this about Jason already and I will repeat it a million times: Jason wasn't picked at random from the sea of DC characters to be people's blorbo, he resonates with fans for a reason. Under the Red Hood is a deeply emotional and relatable arc for many people because it's the story of how a child was failed by every single person who was supposed to protect and guide him, and then was failed again as an adult victim who demanded to be seen and heard and acknowledged, and instead was silenced again. It's heartbreaking to see how many people see this and say "this is me, this is what happened to me", but it is what it is, and most of all there is no taking this away from Jason's fans. DC tried to villainize him, to make him look and sound like a madman, to make him unhinged and deranged and they had Tim suggest that "maybe it's the Lazarus Pit that drove him mad", but it didn't work and fans still love him and still consider him a symbol of how "bad victims" are treated worse than their abusers, and keep being retraumatized by a society that prefers turning a blind eye to violence than deal with the issue at its root.

And lastly, bitching won't get you anywhere. I am the living proof that the right way to make people interested in something is to be passionate about that something. You want more folks to pay attention to Helena Bertinelli, then since DC won't do anything with her, the most effective thing you can do is post about her - write essays, draw her, write fics with her, create webweavings and moodboards, commission this stuff if you don't have the skills. Complaining that she should be the recipient of fandom love won't make anyone more interested in her.

#my asks #long post #yall please stop blaming fandom for DC's sins #'no one cares about my blorbo!' look up and see if your blorbo is anywhere in the source material in the past 10 years #DC has historically culled female characters and minority characters even when their runs were beloved and successful #see Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain for an easy accessible example #if it hadn't been for fans yelling about them we probably wouldn't have them AT ALL since DC was adamant in pretending they never existed #despite both of them having had perfectly good selling runs #so no it's not the fans' fault for being sexist #of course there's sexism in fandoms there is sexism everywhere #but it's not that simple and fans aren't responsible for the fuckups of the source material anyway #okay rant over #jason todd #helena wayne #helena bertinelli

[tempenensis]

If you have time, do you mind helping me with some character analysis? Gojo is very hard to write because he's a very internalized person who doesn't actually show his inner thoughts very often. The times we get them, he is much more serious and analytical than his frivolous personality is meant to show.

Gojo is popular for the same reason that people hate him: truthfully we don't know much about *him* when it comes to the kinds of details which can be used to figure out where someone's personality came from. He comes from a privileged background, so there's lots of people who assume that he never really went through any troubles - that he never had moments of self-doubt or needed to find his place in the world, that his powers likely came easy to him because he's a prodigy, that his family "spoiling" him meant that he was never subjected to the cruel or intense training we know some of the nobles have set up in their family homes. He's also always been special, and it's unlikely that he ever had a desire to be a total non-sorcerer. He could walk away any time he wanted, like Yuki, and it's not like anyone could stop him either.

And Gege never truly refutes this. Gojo's personality is also so good at pretending nothing ever touches him (thematic!) that from the surface it could seem true. He is not the kind of person to be filled with self-pity so we never get panels of him hashing out his situation with the other characters (not that he can because no one is his equal enough to do this...). He's so busy he literally doesn't have time to dwell. He has been shown spending time with his friends, but no one wants to talk about the shit job they all do during down time, they unwind and talk about regular stuff, like regular people, and simply enjoy the company.

But deduction also tells us that people who grew up normal and well adjusted don't behave the way he's behaving. (Nobara and Yuuji had the most normal sounding childhoods of all the students and it shows, even behind the typical shonen characterization).

Clearly, the flashback arc is shown because in a way that is the origin story of the current conflict, and the origin of Gojo's current personality (Geto had a lot of positive influence on him).

Gojo turns against the sorcerer system because it cost him Geto, not because of anything that may or may not have happened to him. He was doing every mission the higher-ups could possibly have sent him on after Riko died. He wasn't rebelling against the system, he was trying to solve it by becoming the single solution all on his own. Again, not the response of a well-adjusted person.

He was not originally the kind of person to take revenge or turn against a system for personal issues, although he later becomes a little like this when he starts taking young sorcerer's under his wing.

There's a lot of fandom speculation that has hints that these things could to be true:

He was spoiled by his family, but they were emotionally distant in the way of all sorcerer families, praising the technique and seeing the technique instead of the child who was wielding it. It's possible he doesn't associate closely with his clan apart from very structured social patterns because he realizes that being "special" never meant he didn't deserve being treated like a child or taught how to behave. He's perfectly aware he has a "bad personality" and knows that this is in part because of how he was raised.

He projects emotionally onto the students in his care, and acknowledges that something about the way he was treated (mostly as a fine commodity) was deeply unfair, but he hasn't actually found another way except to acknowledge at the end of the day that this job gives you trauma and it's usually not worth dying for unless that's your thing (I mean how he throws the students into situations where they think they're going to die and his concession is to place himself as the safety net), and that you shouldn't miss age-appropriate events just because some grown up tells you to become a better little cog.

A lot of the fandom likes to assume that using Six-Eyes is overstimulating or possibly painful for him right away because at least then there's a cost to his using his power, and once again the sorcerer system doesn't care about the cost to its workers (I'm not sure about the right away part. we know that if he doesn't cover his eyes he gets tired, but Gege doesn't want to give gojo any weaknesses so who knows how long it takes).

Gojo is maybe not "afraid" of getting truly close to people but he keeps people at arm's length. No one at this point could bear the burden he does, and that's what he believes it means to be his equal. It's possible but unlikely that if someone reached out to him first, he would let him. We know touching Infinity can feel like you're touching him from the first vs.Jogo fight, and it's likely he truly does keep it on all the time, leaving him physically and psychologically prepared to keep anyone from touching him at all times, even if they don't realize it...

(Overall, it's very funny to me that Gege's friends apparently think his personality is like Gojo's. It makes it more understandable why he wouldn't want to talk about his character, or be annoyed that the person who is a secondary became too popular, but also the cat is a troll and is the kind of person to laugh and walk away if you try to ask them a question -_-. However, if you take the answers we do have literally, it sounds like Gege accidentally made a character with a lot of depth, but he doesn't want to deal with it…)

But we have no answers to the truth of these presumptions in a lot of cases, and I could keep going but I'm running out of steam and I'm already sorry to put so much in your inbox….

I know you don't give headcanons because your blog is more textual analysis blog, so I won't ask for them! Part of me is not even sure what to ask, because we simply have no answers, and I don't think anyone is going to give them to us. That's fine because fandom wants and needs space to do its own interpretations of the character, but when you want an answer that isn't there, it can truly feel like diving off a cliff to make that choice all on your own and run with it (cries because that means there are literally infinite choices to make and each of them alters the story a little).

Maybe what I'm really asking is, if you have time, would you pick apart my characterization of Gojo above? I'm a bit curious about what you agree with and what you disagree with because you're so good with finding the text evidence! I already appreciate you reading if you've gotten this far, and I appreciate all the work you do in the fandom. I won't feel bad if you refuse (not that you will, but I just want to make it clear I have no expectations!!) Thank you again so much for all you do and for letting us play in the space with you!

Hi, anon!

If you're asking about my opinion, I must say, this is pretty solid read. I agree with almost everything that you said, and can't really add much to this. Gege had said before that he "has no personality", I think that means he doesn't think too much about Gojou's character, unlike for example Yuuji or Nanami. This makes us learns more about him by crumbles dropped here and then - and not a lot actually told explicitly in the manga. ((it sounds like Gege accidentally made a character with a lot of depth, but he doesn't want to deal with it)) is actually a good point lol, fans' interest in Gojou is definitely deeper than Gege himself.

One of the most interesting thing about him is that despite his vocal opposing of the current jujutsu system, he still does his duty to this very system that he opposes. Even if he messes around sometimes, Gojou is the only special-grade sorcerer who actually goes to missions assigned to him and has been mentioned to clean other sorcerers' messes - which is why he is so busy all the time. This speaks more about him knowing that his priority lies in saving other's lives. I think for him, he is an actual proper jujutsushi who has lived as one since he was born because of the techniques he inherited - maybe the point of being a jujutsu sorcerer and what he has to do has been driven to him since he can handle his own technique. So all he knows is to be a jujutsushi first - and his desire to change the system only comes later, after he saw what this system does to people around him, especially Riko and Getou. Even then, he tries to change it from inside, as jujutsushi who is one under the very system he want to change. All he knows is how to live as a jujutsushi and he doesn't seem to want to stop being one, even if it means he can destroy the system from outside. He wants jujutsushi to continue, but with a better system, not to stop or destroy all of them entirely.

#le-ask #jujutsu kaisen #jjk manga spoilers #gojou satoru #jjk meta #a very good analysis anon kudos to you!

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #18 – Montress Volume 3: Haven by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

I have been reading one volume of this comic a month, in part as a way to force myself to take it a bit slowly and appreciate the issues and volumes as distinct arcs and works in their own right instead of archive binging, and in part because a volume of comic books being more than ~20% of my reading goal for the year feels like cheating. This has accomplished both of those goals splendidly, but it is making it increasingly hard to come up with different ways of talking about the basic premise of the story. So I’m just not going to.

The plot picks up fairly directly where the last plot dropped off – with Maika having escaped the last maratime city-state she’d found refuge in (now wanted fugitive) and settling into the next one. To secure safety for herself and her little crew of misfits (eldritch god-monster her mom bore and raised her to be a host for, adorable fox-child she treats like shit, terrible cat who betrays everyone, improbably hot noble magic assassin whose technically supposed to be murdering her), she’s conscripted by the royal engineer to assist in repairing the ancient magical shield which protected the city during the last war – which, due to her heritage and the aforementioned eldritch god, she might be the only one capable of safely accessing. That (literally) blows up in everyone’s face just about immediately, and the remainder of the arc is spent scrambling to deal.

Dramatically the volume works very well as a self-contained narrative, though a decade of marvel movies have left me kind of incapable of taking a big climax involving an apocalyptic glowing hole in the sky that seriously. Beyond that though, this is definitely a Lore volume, digging deep into the history of the Shaman Empress, her relationship with Zinn, and what the other Montrum are or want. It also, if my memory is right, marks the point where Zinn finishes transitioning from this terrible quasi-unknowable parasite ruining Maika’s life and turning her into a walking atrocity to just, like, Some Guy. They’re a little shit with an improbably amount of flattering amnesia and also murder a bunch of people but like, they’re a character now. They banter with Maika constantly, and also keep fucking up and being wrong about things. Deeply endearing tbh.

This also marks the point where The Doctor and Maika’s paternal family more broadly starts being a lot more plot-relavent which, going to be honest, I’m kind of dreading. Can’t remember any real details but my memories of the whole upcoming arc basically boil down to ‘at least Maika got that badass clockwork prosthetic out of it’.

Kippa and Ren are basically irrelevant to the actual plot this time, which is totally fine because I love them both dearly and would have happily read an entire issue of them going shopping and having a nice day in the market. Kippa, besides being adorable, does actually get some pretty meaty scenes providing the view from the gutter here though – Maika gets scooped up by a scheming vizier engineer as soon as she walks into town, and also hates people, but Kippa is absolutely the sort of person to go wandering through a sprawling refugee camp doing whatever she can to help. Which is both good worldbuilding and characterization and provides some desperately needed grounding to keep the whole story from vanishing entirely into mythic freudian psychodrama.

Speaking of preferring the social and political storytelling – I’m not sure they ever actually matter, but I do love the two bit characters who occasionally get scenes of their desperate heroic spycraft and diplomacy as they try everything they can to prevent another war breaking out. Their little bit in this volume also does a great job illuminating what a broken mess the politics of the Federation is – given the incredibly vague 1930s-East-Asia analogy underlying the story’s geopolitics, I like that the genocidal power about to plunge the world into war is riven with internal contradictions and five minutes away from a coup with the army and navy barely able to stand in the same room without gunfights breaking out).

Anyway yeah, it’s still Monstress. Still good! I probably sound like a broken record saying it at this point, but the character design remains just sublime, even for very thoroughly secondary characters. Speaking of, my favourite one has now shown up!

#book review #comic #monstress #sff #Marjorie Liu #Sana Takeda

[andsomemaniacgotridofthewheel]

Our Flag Means Death vs. The Magicians

I was not sure whether I should even write something, but the closer the season 2 finale and, hopefully, a 3rd season of OFMD comes, the more nervous I get. So it's gotta come out.

Thing is, I trust David Jenkins. Or, more accurately, I want to trust David Jenkins.

But 4 years and *checks watch* 6 months ago I also trusted the showrunners of "The Magicians".

Because they, too, responded thoughtful and kindly on Twitter to their fandom's worries. They assured us they were aware of how important queer representation was, and that they would handle their show's queer pairing of two main (!) characters with the utmost respect and sensitivity. They said they knew how badly queer people were treated on the media and they did not want to do that in their show. They had done their research, they carefully listened to their fans, and they were different.

A lot of fans were NOT convinced by that and maintained that it would still turn out to be queerbaiting. We others, we trusted. They obviously knew what they were doing!

For those of you who were not around here back then or simply not in the fandom, and who have no idea what I am talking about, let me try to summarise the shitshow what happened.

"The Magicians" was a very original, weird, entertaining and, for 3 seasons and 12 episodes, good urban fantasy show about a group of young, well, magicians. It was based on a book series of the same name by Lev Grossmann.

The main character, Quentin, was canonically struggling with clinical depression. At the beginning of the show he had admitted himself to a mental health clinic, and he was on medication, and his illness was treated as a part of his character throughout the show. And they received a lot of praise for their sensitive, realistic representation of people with depression and their continuing struggle.

Around Quentin there was an ensemble of other main characters. His (male) best friend (Eliot) was gay and played by a gay actor.

Season 1 ended with a drunken decision from Quentin, Eliot and Eliot's (female) best friend (Margot) to have a threesome; which basically ended Quentin's het-relationship (with Alice) that had developed during the season. This was the first indication that the depressed main character Quentin might also be bisexual.

In season 3 there came a mind-blowing episode where Quentin & Eliot spend the entire rest of their lives living together in a cabin in the woods and raising a son, in what turned out to be an alternative timeline. Basically, in order to solve a plot-arc relevant puzzle, they move to the cabin where the puzzle was set, not knowing how long it would take. After a few months together Quentin initiates an affair with Eliot. A little bit later a woman, with whom Quentin then has a child, moves in; a couple of years later she dies, Quentin & Eliot raise the kid together, and when Eliot, the older one, finally dies of old age, leaving Quentin alone behind, the puzzle named "The Beauty of all Life" is finally solved, the timeline reset, and young Quentin & Eliot in the past receive the solution of the puzzle together with the memories of their life together in the other timeline.

It was a beautiful, beautiful episode. Heartbreaking and life-affirming and queer and just wonderful. It also established beyond a doubt that the depressed main character Quentin was definitely bisexual (and polyamorous).

Then, for the whole 4th season, Eliot was separated from the rest of the group and in great danger, while Quentin and the others tried to find and save him. And when Eliot had to do some soul searching, he remembered something the audience never saw from that one season 3 episode, they added a brand new scene: after they both had been stunned into silence by having the memories of a whole other life dropped onto them, just where the original episode had ended, Quentin had actually asked Eliot if they should "just try it", because "who gets proof of concept like that"? And Eliot, scared of the gravity of it and full of abandonment issues, had shot him down. Present Eliot decides then, if he ever sees Quentin again, to stop being scared and just go for a relationship with him.

(On the other side of the plot, Quentin gets more and more desperate and frantic, trying to find Eliot and save his life. He is clearly masking a steadily worsening spiral into a severe mental health crisis.)

It's queerbaiting, said the nay-sayers and skeptics. It will never happen. At the end of season 4, Quentin will get back together with his ex-girlfriend Alice, they're End Game, and Eliot will end up dead alone at the sidelines, undergoing character development through loss, as a gay character should. /s

They thought we were naive, but we thought they weren't paying attention. Two (2!) episodes in two (2!) seasons with the sole purpose to set Queliot up as a couple, in canon. This wasn't subtext, it wasn't queer-coding; it was text, it was spoken aloud, it was named, it was shown. Why would they do that if nothing else would come of it? Also, they had promised us. The gay actor who played Eliot repeatedly stated how proud he was to be on a show where this was happening, he was just as excited as us, he was one of us.

Then the season 4 finale came, and it wasn't exactly queerbait.

It was much, much worse.

I was on Tumblr right after the finale aired, and it was eerie. No episode reactions, no gif-sets, no comments or shitposts or anything. Even the nay-sayers and skeptics couldn't bring themselves to utter the well-deserved "told you so"s to break the stunned silence. All that was missing from the scene were actual tumbleweeds blowing across our dashboards.

Even from the actors of the show who were on twitter, usually very active and involved, came only radio silence. The last tweet for a while came the day before the finale aired. It was a tweet from the POC actor of an unrelated character, who had spend the last season supporting queer fans and assuaging our fears that something bad might happen to Queliot. And this tweet from him simply stated that he had just found out he had filmed a fake finale scene, one that was never intended to be aired, and that it had served its purpose: he had no idea how the season would actually end.*

And here is how it did end: with the clinically depressed and queer main character blowing himself up in order to permanently ban that season's big bad. He had saved Eliot before that, but he didn't get a chance to talk to him, instead he did get a final scene straight out of the suicidal ideation fantasy handbook: after he killed himself, he witnessed his friends, unseen by them, grieving for him and acknowledging how his sacrifice had made all of their lives better in various ways. And no, I'm not making this up.

And it wasn't even the end of the showrunners stupidity, because in an utter display of tone-deafness, they were taking to Twitter celebrating themselves for the progressive (!!!) decision to kill off their White Male Main Character™, to focus more on the POC characters in the show. And, of course, the recently introduced cis-het male white dudebro character, who had started as a guest but somehow kept getting more and more screentime lately.

They had pulled a Bury Your Gays, but With A Vengeance. In only 10 minutes of screentime they had completely destroyed everything that had made their show critically acclaimed, retroactively un-deserving all the praise and recognition they had gotten for good representation of mental illness and the courage to introduce a canon queer relationship between their established main characters.

And they didn't even get it. They honestly expected praise for their "woke" decision to kill of their White Male Main Character™ (they kept repeating it like a mantra), and they reacted like children when they were instead confronted with an epic shitstorm from upset and angry queer and mentally ill fans.**

In hindsight we realised that what had fooled us was them just parroting the right words and phrases back at us. They had no idea what queerbaiting was. They had even less of an idea what a Bury Your Gays was. They didn't know what we meant when we said that queer representation was so important, and that we were worried if they would do it right; and they didn't understand that they themselves were lying when they answered that they would handle the queer representation in their show with care and respect, because they didn't understand what care and respect in relation to queer representation even was. They didn't even realise that his depression alone, and even more so combined with his absolute lack of toxic masculinity, separated Quentin from the usual White Male Main Character Trope they somehow so desperately wanted to fight - and for some reason they didn't even seem to have realised that they (accidentally?) written him as bisexual? (I am still not too clear on how that even could happen.)

And that's where my worry for "Our Flag Means Death" and David Jenkins comes in. Yes, he was publicly flabbergasted when he learned about queerbaiting and how deeply it had traumatized queer fans and destroyed our trust. He publicly noticed, he publicly cared.

But does he really understand?

Even if he knows and understands queerbaiting (now), does he also know what a Bury Your Gays is? Does he understand?

The historical Edward "Blackbeard" Teach died November 1718. The historical Stede "Gentlemen Pirate" Bonnet died a month later, December 1718. That's at the very most less than a year from when our favourite gay pirate couple is now. And yes, David Jenkins makes it a point to screw with history, he does what he wants no matter what. But their death dates are pretty huge. A fixed point in time, if you will.

I want to believe that all the faking of deaths talk is indeed foreshadowing, that they will be officially dead to history, but actually have run off together to open Jeff's Inn by the Sea, with a Bar & Grill and Other Delicacies & Delights, Snake Snackery, Gift Shop and Fishing Gear in the back. That we will get our Happy Ending. That they will get their Happy Ending. No Bury Your Gays. Everyone lives, just this once, everyone lives.

But what if it is a red herring instead of foreshadowing? What if it is supposed to make their eventual deaths even more heartbreaking and tragic? WHAT IF DAVID JENKINS DOESN'T ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT BURY YOUR GAYS? What if he says he does, what if he believes he does, but what if he doesn't actually understand?

What if he just says what he believes we want to hear, without really understanding the reason?

For me personally, that's not even the worst of it.

When "The Magicians" season 4 aired, I had just gone through the worst depressive episode of my life. It was actually the reason I hyper-fixated so strongly on the show and why I had repeatedly binge-watched the first three seasons in a span of only 3 weeks. It was the reason I obsessed over Quentin, the character who was in a place that I was in just months before, I place I had lost and felt I would never reach again, a place that gradually and painfully I did reach again by the end of those weeks. When I had caught up with season 4 and the finale aired, I was actually a lot better. But even then, Quentin's death and the way he died hurt me, confused me, triggered me, set me back. Talking to other fans with the same problems helped. Removing myself from the fandom and not looking at anything Magician's-related for near-on two years helped also.

And I was in luck. Only one month later "Good Omens" was released. I had liked the book, I had looked forward to its adaption, but I was completely unprepared for what Neil Gaiman had done with it. It healed me, it fully filled the void "The Magicians" and Queliot had left inside me, and it made everything better.

In "Our Flag Means Death", Stede is clearly on the autism spectrum. I was bullied at school, just like him, not for being queer, but for "being a fucking weirdo". Because I have ADHD, like Ed. Unlike Ed I don't have the hyperactive kind, but the inattentive kind. I can never tell if someone is sarcastic or sincere. I also have difficulty with and anxiety in social situations, and I have almost never felt accepted by my peers or my family. I am permanently masking. I relate deeply to Stede's belief that he has to change in order to be worthy of love. I also related deeply to Ed's mental health spiral and suicidal ideation in the beginning of season 2. I obsessed for days over the moment when Ed decided to finally let go, only to be saved in the very last moment by love. It felt way too real, way too familiar, and it was so important for me and my state of mind that it ended in hope. They managed to take the trauma and make it cathartic. So even if my genderfluid ass didn't relate better to mlm relationships than to any cishet relationship, relating a whole lot to Stede and only a little less to Ed because of their neurodivergent traits will be enough for their deaths to destroy me. Just like Quentin's death almost had. And I don't even know if there will be a "Good Omens 3" to stop my fall only a month later.

*= with the exception of the actor leaving the show, none of the actors on "The Magicians" knew. They had all been given fake scenes to film. They didn't even know their colleague was leaving them until the day the finale aired.

**= when I had finally distanced myself enough from the show emotionally and wondered if I should maybe watch season 5, it was included in my Prime subscription anyway, I was told not to, because a) apparently the showrunners had written it as a giant FUCK YOU to everyone who was upset by the season 4 finale, and b) because they had done all the characters dirty, but especially fan-favourite (and mine) Eliot, apparently he fared even worse in season 5 than in season 4. But I am glad to be able to at least inform you that season 5 pretty much tanked both critically as well as in viewership, I have never seen a show go from successful and popular to irrelevant and hated so quickly and so completely.

#quentin coldwater deserved better #the magicians #david jenkins #our flag means death #queliot #gentlebeard #edward teach #stede bonnet #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #ofmd #bury your gays #queerbait #queer representation #cw: depression #cw: suicide #good omens #neil gaiman #nikku.txt #nikku #blackbonnet #quentin coldwater x eliot waugh #eliot waugh x quentin coldwater #ofmd blackbeard #stedeward #ed teach #blackbeard #ed x stede #stede x ed

[class1akids]

As someone who had dropped the manga way back but still know generally what’s happened, why do you hate the “Dark Deku arc” (besides that stupid name)

I think the basic idea - letting Deku react to the war by ditching everyone and break himself to become All Might 2.0 - was a fine one.

Deku's biggest flaw is his self-sacrificing, self-destructive, martyristic tendencies and his saviour syndrome, which is ironically both extreme self-lessness (as in not care about himself) and extreme selfishness (as in not caring about the feeling of others who do care about him). Letting this flaw play out until it leads to an epic downfall that the MC has to suffer so he can rise again is the bread and butter of hero stories.

But the problem was with the execution, and notably Horikoshi's biggest flaw as a writer - he's so scared of making Deku unlikable that every single time he pulls his punches, which in turn stunts Deku's character development. To me, this is the biggest problem of the arc - Deku's fall is so ambiguous that half the fandom is convinced that he could have gotten himself out just fine from the predicament he was in, and then "soloed" all of Class A if he made any effort. This ambiguity shows that it wasn't a real downfall.

Another grave looming consequence of Deku's choices was the heart-breaking scene of him ditching All Might. Both Deku and All Might were meant to learn from this arc that the Symbol of Peace was a flawed concept, that it is insane to place the burden of a nation's security on a single person, no matter how powerful or driven. But despite building a perfect scene, Hori did nothing with it. Neither Deku, nor All Might ever fully confront the reality - they just reconcile, like nothing happened, Stain tells All Might that the Symbol was the right thing and it feels like there is nothing learnt.

Dark Deku that was meant to be a tragic, sad figure of a child driven to the breaking point by the burden he's carrying as a legacy and the pressure both external and self-imposed to step into a role he cannot be and shouldn't ever have to be ready for, becomes nothing but an empty "dark aesthetic" to please Deku-stans who wanted him to be "cool" and "strong" and "edgy".

When half the fandom doesn't realize that Dark Deku is a point in the narrative where Deku is ironically the weakest in heroic spirit - he's driven by fear, by a selfish obsession to do it all alone, by wanting to deny others their ability to step up as heroes because they are not strong enough, when he's slowly becoming everything he was the antithesis of at the beginning of the story and it still goes over the head of the audience, the point was not well-made.

There are a number of other problems with the arc:

Class A's aftermath gets skipped - we get zero emotional pay-off for big things that happened like Midnight's death, Aizawa losing an eye and leg, how the Dabi-reveal affects Shouto, how the class is impacted by the collapse of hero society, how the parents feel about their children being on the frontlines. Tons of issues the war raised and never delivered on.

Deku's power-ups come too quickly and feeling largely "unearned". It led to a huge power-creep where Deku is nothing than empty recipient of free candy. There is no hype of him reaching "faux-100%" because it doesn't feel like he made any effort to get there. There is no learning curve, everything he tries succeeds immediately. It's boring. It cheapens everyone else's hard-earned progress. It’s frustrating how little sense of accomplishment there is now in the final arc as Deku uses all his powers together in a big power-demonstration. It’s just not satisfying to watch at all. 

The HPSC plot that's been brewing in the background since the Licensing Arc fizzles into a non-sensical plot of a single assassin who takes out false heroes to uphold hero society. A person never referenced committing shady black-ops never alluded to, having no impact on the overall story. By Horikoshi's own admission, he basically ripped off the character and plot from an over-the-top assassin movie (Wanted) like the week before. Which really shows. This is one of my biggest disappointments of the arc. There was such a good build-up to exposing the rotten core of HPSC and it felt like it was set-up originally as a Hawks fall-from-grace-become-a-shadowy-operator kind of plot that would have given also Hawks a more satisfying post-war arc than "being optimistic to a fault". But I feel that just like with Deku, Horikoshi has the same issue with Hawks - being too afraid to make him unlikeable.

The Nagant-fight even as a fight is deeply unsatisfying and honestly feels like a Deku-circlejerk, where Nagant is beaten way too easily for all her hype, turned way too easily by the "irresistible heroism of Deku" who does something that every other hero in the story always did. Like, I hope the end-game no-jutsu will be more satisfying.

The OFA-plot and vestiges are in the center, but still, we are given almost no reason to care about the vestiges or their relationship with Deku or the history of AFO vs OFA. The whole mystery of the 2nd and the 3rd ends in an unsatisfying reveal, where Deku doesn't have to do a damn thing again to get those two on his side.

I do like Class A showing up and the one chapter of flashback we get of them. Some of the fight is fun, some of it is extremely cringy though. The message is also wishy-washy. I think the fight should have squarely focused on the class refusing Deku seeing them as useless victims and telling him that he doesn't get to choose who cares about him. But again, 80% of it is just a "Deku-praise-fest".

Bakugou apology is great though and the highlight of the arc.

Deku's return and Uraraka's speech and the straw-manning of the civilians is again pretty terrible, and the only thing that carries those chapters is Horikoshi laying down thick the ham-fisted parallels.

So these are the main issues. I think the arc could have worked but it didn't because the overall execution was really bad. It had beautiful art and some compelling scenes / images, but didn't feel coherent.

But its biggest flaw was Horikoshi pulling his punches. Not letting Deku stumble, doubt, question, fail meant he learnt nothing and didn't get the kind of downfall after which you feel the sweet satisfaction of him standing back up again (these scenes tend to go to Bakugou).

#c1a asks #bnha meta #villain hunt arc #dark deku #midoriya izuku #class a #bnha critical

[narutocharacterpolls]

Now that the semi-finals polls ended, would you like to share your opinion on Kakashi's character? :)

Pie splat deserved

I think it’s obvious that I take in the story broadly through a Sasuke lens and so the biggest reason I hate Kakashi is because of the way he treats Sasuke. There are other reason sprinkled throughout but that’s why I mainly dislike him.

However firstly, I think it’s obvious based on the group of characters I’ve made clear are some of my favourites, but I’m very anti-Konoha and don’t like bootlickers. So that immediately makes me criticize Kakashi and knocks some respect I could have for him off.

Anyways, Kakashi is incapable of treating team 7, most specifically Sasuke but it does affect all of them, normally because he cannot stop projecting team Minato onto his team, and that heavily affects the ways that he interacts and treats his team. He obviously projects himself onto Sasuke and as a result treats him really weirdly imo due to his own self loathing. He teaches Sasuke (a severely traumatized child) the chidori in an attempt to alleviate his own guilt from creating the jutsu that killed his best friend. I really don’t see much, if any, reason that Kakashi did this outside of his own selfishness and he most certainly didn’t think it through in the context of Sasuke. Again, because he views Sasuke as a reflection of himself rather than being his own unique person. He then goes on to literally tie Sasuke to a tree and scorn him for using the chidori (and may I add— while I’m aware Sasuke asked for the fight against Naruto, Sasuke only raised the chidori in defence when Naruto raised his rasengan) and seeking revenge against Itachi (y’know, the man that killed his entire clan, manipulated him, and tortured him by making him watch Itachi killing his family for 72 hours straight), then he LEFT HIM THERE TIED UP TO THE TREE. Not to mention he once again reflects himself onto Sasuke by saying he personally didn’t seek revenge and chose to move on. They are not in the same situation. At all. Sorry but that just rubs on me very unpleasantly.

A lot of my distaste was actually from him in Shippuuden though because his treatment and attitude towards Sasuke just gets worse. When Sakura tries to go to kill Sasuke and he shows up he decides that getting Sakura and getting out isn’t the right thing to do, but decides it’s his turn to try to kill him….. Ehem….. Alright….. Claims that Sasuke has turned to some kind of dark side but claims Obito to still be a hero of Konoha later on….. What a man. Still on the topic of Sakura trying to kill Sasuke, he criticizes Sasuke not once, but twice (later on during a war…. There are bigger things to focus on here) about how crazy and messed up it was for Sasuke to attack Sakura…. When he didn’t just attack her, he acted in self defence after she tried to kill him. But does Kakashi critique Sakura outside of saying she knows she wouldn’t be able to beat Sasuke? No, he doesn’t.

With Sakura on the mind, literally during war arc (once again, more important things to focus on here) he tells Sasuke that Sakura suffers from loving him and that no one needs a reason to love someone, just to hate someone. This is such disgusting behaviour to me as he once again is discarding Sasukes feelings and what Sasuke has stated he wants. Sasuke had literally just told Kakashi how he feels but Kakashi does not care about what Sasuke desires. But it doesn’t matter to Kakashi because to him Sasuke is a reflection of himself and since Kakashi doesn’t view it that way Sasuke isn’t allowed to. It’s a really gross sentiment.

The whole thing of how Kakashi treated Tobi revealing the truth of the Uchiha genocide and the way he reacted to it is also incredibly upsetting. And that revelation still didn’t change the way Kakashi viewed Sasuke at all. He still felt it was right to try to immediately kill Sasuke rather than… Approach him in a similar way to Naruto. But whatever, I don’t feel like getting much into this whole thing though.

There’s other random things, he’s hypocritical within his view of Sasuke’s revenge, I find him overrated as a “powerful fighter”, I personally find him having the sharingan uncomfortable and undeserved, he did not show care for Sakura in the way he did to the other two in classic, bootlicker Hokage, ect., but I’m not going to delve into anything else because I don’t feel like it lol.

All in all I don’t care about people that do like Kakashi, but it annoys be that he’s so often portrayed as someone that he isn’t. I know there’s some good to Kakashi, I find his back story rather interesting as well, he has handled some things well, but the negatives heavily outweigh the positives for me. To Kakashi lovers that decided to read this, you are valid and it’s okay to like him. I just don’t.

#full thoughts under the cut #don’t start shit on this if you read it and get upset that’s all on you #it’s all under the cut AND it’s tagged properly #please make the right decision for yourself if you want to read this or not #i’m also not going to read over this so excuse any typos or messiness #anti kakashi #asks #anon #id in alt text

[its-me-vixen]

I enjoyed talking to you about it, and you said you have more to say, so... elaborate on your kfp 4 rewrite? I've been living off seeing people try and fix this movie, and there's not NEARLY enough variants around. I'd love to hear more, especially since I'm not super well-versed in the franchise lore, specifically Tai Lung as a character.

OOh In that case bestie allow me, as someone who's hyperfixated on the series off and on, to ramble. This might be long becuase I'm justing wingin it lol

So Tai Lung as a character is introduced as basically Shifu's first adopted child, an orphan he took in to train in Kung Fu with the specific intent of making him into the Dragon Warrior. Oogway denied this, causing Shifu to abandon Tai Lung, forcing him out and causing his turn to evil after everything he had trained for his entire life was taken away from him.

This series of events is why Tigress (also an orphan Shifu took in) is raised much stricter, with an emphasis on a lack of feeling.

This also is Shifu's main character arc; the transition from thinking that everything he's done has earned him control over the future but realizing he is at the whims of the universe no matter how much he try's to change things. This is extremely contradictory to how he was presented in KP4 where he's suddenly encouraging Po to make his exact mistakes in KP1 all over again, with even less effort.

Back to Tai Lung - His entire life was consumed with the acquisition of the Dragon Warrior scroll, and the appointment of Po was at odds with everything he had ever believed about the way the world worked - that raw power and skill was all that mattered. Po defeats him of course, and send him to the spirit world.

In the events of the third movie, the chi of all Kung Fu masters in the spirit world is stolen to be used by General Kai, and we can assume Tai Lung was included in that, which would have been another defeat that could have pushed him further from that ideal still. I haven't thought this aspect all too much, but with the way they present the spirit world one could assume some character change and growth from the years he spent there. I think this would contribute to a growing sense of questioning things, along with rage at failing.

This growing feeling would be brought to the surface when Tai Lung is summoned much closer to the beginning of the movie, in an opening scene taking place on the night of the blood moon, or whatever allows the spell to happen. Tai Lung is not the first to be summoned, and witnesses specifically General Kai get absorbed - similar to yours, with no body remaining. The sequence could be made to parallel Kai's own ability to take the chi of others and turn them into Jade figures, maybe leaving them transfigured into some kind of object. I'm picturing that lovely golden tree palanquin, maybe they become the jewels. The process is through a specific item with a single task.

More exploration of the Chameleon as a Sorcerer would be very important. In this scene, Tai Lung would be the audience POV witnessing what's happening. He is powerless in the moment, to his increased and endless frustration, but something unrelated happens that allows him to escape mid-absorption. We don't clearly see who or how the spell is happening, its obscured and more esoteric. The vibe is much darker, in a visible sense.

He is left powerless, unable to remember or do any kung fu, and is forced with very little choice in how to recover his power at all. He has had some ability to observe Po from the afterlife, and knows that he is now well established as the Dragon Warrior, and that he is unfortunately the most powerful person, and thus the one capable of defeating this new evil. He is reluctant, but could have some interaction that sets him on the path, like getting shoved aside by someone now much stronger than him and seeing some kind of poster about Po.

The Dragon Warrior would be more popular in my version, if only like a bit of a Mascot. This guy has saved the capital, he found the lost city of the Pandas, people may not know exactly who he is, but they know the Dragon Warrior. In the first movie, there was merchandising for the Furious Five, so there certainly would be for Po, too.

Cut to Po kicking butt, devolving into a montage of battles that he handles well and gladly, happy in his routine, until there's another transition where he's entering the Jade Palace. Shifu is noticeably older, Po has some new visual changes to his design/outfit the imply more experience and maturity. He regards Shifu with respect before relaxing into his casual, comedic self. Shifu has actually found peace, more resembling Oogway in the first film, his arc has finished and he is enjoying a peaceful life.

The Furious Five has dispersed to create their own schools or take on more permanent responsibilities elsewhere, going where they're needed. Po has put off settling down in any way, and is used to being alone on missions, seeking adventure. He finds it difficult to stay in one place for long now that his world has opened up. His dads have that scene where he's late, he's often far from town these days.

Shifu has been trying to get him to stick around for longer stretches, telling him to teach classes.

(If we consider supplementary media, Po has already had storylines about being kind of pushed into being a teacher, I recommend Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny, so while that's an aspect of this I don't want it to be the central theme of his arc over the movie.)

Shifu announces to Po that he wants to step down and is naming Po as his successor, and suddenly there's a looming future where he becomes the Master of the Jade Palace instead of the Dragon Warrior.

Po has some kind of imagination sequence about becoming something he isn't, settling down, no longer being a warrior.

Shifu snaps him back to reality and encourages him to oversee a new crop of students, illustrating how there's nothing else that needs to be done. Po oversees a scene with auditioning students. Shifu is absent. He is very bored, antsy for the thrill of adventure, but being forced to let others handle it instead. In a parallel to the first movie, Tai Lung bursts into the courtyard in the middle of the proceedings, causing a full response from the guards, all shaken because they're watching a ghost collapse to the ground. Po jumps at the opportunity for something he perceives as a task only he can accomplish.

{I'm not a great comedy writer, so please assume there's also jokes and light-hearted air to this lol}

Po confronts Tai Lung in private (jail? I'm unsure, I wasn't into how they did that) wondering what the heck is going on. Coming back from the spirit world is a thing that's been established in this world, so he wouldn't bee too shocked I don't think? He'd also be defensively cocky because he's beat this guy before, but seeing Tai Lung's actual state would defuse the tension. Po gains a feeling of sympathy for him.

Tai Lung tells him about a new, growing evil, and that no matter how much he hates it, if he wants to regain his power and return to the spirit world, he needs Po's help. They leave for Juniper City. The journey actually matters this time around, illustrating the growth of their connection, while the dynamic is similar to the journey in the film. Po is overly friendly in the eyes of the pissed off, exhausted Tai Lung, pushing his boundaries. Po is wired and a little stressed, deflecting with a manic energy. Tai Lung is jumpy and snaps often now that he feels powerless. Po offers to help him re-learn, but is quickly shot down, and so circumvents it by acting like he's casually "practicing" things. Eventually Tai Lung would have to ask a question and they would make progress forward. Tai Lung would have been clinging to the idea that he was the best and needed to get HIS power back, and that nothing Po did could be anywhere near as good, being very stubborn etc but Po would casually wear him down. They make genuine progress by the end of the sequence.

Po has a vision about the villain, and the consequences of their plans going unchecked during the last night. There is a moment where Tai Lung shows concern for Po - some kind of emotional connection. They're both awkward about it lol

When they approach the border of the city they have some kind of encounter with a citizen who gets terrified or something? Something that makes it so they have to lay very low, perhaps they're wanted, perhaps the rumor of the ghost of the formidable villain Tai Lung has been haunting the countryside. They end up in a situation where they are saved by Zhen - a fast-talking street thief of Juniper City. Also not Awkwafina lol

Tai Lung is suspicious of the fox, but Po sings the praises of helping others in need and putting good out into the world. He's still trying to be more eloquent with creating proverbs over the course of the movie, but doesn't notice saying decent ones when he isn't trying.

Zhen leads them to the underground crime syndicate place and listens incredulously as Po overshares about their goals. She says that if something like that was going down in Juniper City, she'd know about it! Tai Lung describes the place he remembers escaping from, its the palace (much less dramatic but still heavily fortified). Zhen tells them that they'll need her help to get in.

Other denizens of the underground avoid her and ignore Po, making a few scared reactions to Tai Lung. There is gossipy, nervous whispering. Time passes, Zhen has befriended Po with food and conversation. They even have a small, genuine moment of connection over something while Zhen explains their approach.

The group invades the castle.

Zhen is taken out early and encourages the others to go on without her.

They encounter the Chameleon, we get a reveal of them. I would redesign the Chameleon to be a more shadowy figure, literally, with a constantly shifting appearance in some way. A normal chameleon in this world would be able to shift colors but would otherwise look fairly simple. They are hurt by the world, and feel abandoned and isolated. There is emphasis on how their sorcery has changed them, physically and mentally. I'd also like them more androgynous as a personal choice. They are menacing and formidable, their own guards abandoning the fight as soon as magic kicks up. This is the big, flashy, gorgeous fight scene.

Tai Lung is incapacitated via sorcery. The ability to take any shape is shown here, and the transition is much more complete. Po faces the Chameleon on his own, and it's more of a draw than a defeat. He is thrown off by the mental aspect of recognizing the Masters, Chameleon fumbling with a lack of practice at these new powers. They experience joy at the intense power at their disposal. I think the Chameleon should also be a bit more mentally unstable. There's monologuing where we learn that The Chameleon's goal is to absorb Po, China's strongest warrior, and take over China. There's some kind of dialogue like,

"No Kung Fu Master could ever defeat me!"

Po gets trapped, and is saved by a self-sacrificial move from Tai Lung, forcing his escape through the floor.

Po is alone and ends up back in the underground, feeling like a failure as a leader, projecting the feeling on his running away from his responsibilities. There would be hints of his self-doubt and deflection prior.

The dads' storyline is fine, I love them, best pairing in the whole series tbh. I'd probably just shift it so they end up also in the underground, maybe feeding all the criminals haha

Po meets up with them there, feeling supported by their presence and encouragement, some kind of scene where they help him see his worth and continued potential. Po rises to the challenge of being a leader, rallying the criminals together, and having a comical scene where they all show off their various skills, and Po has to come up with a plan that uses their skills that aren't Kung Fu, the only option is to try something new.

They pull off an infiltration, the group emerging back into the throne/ritual room, there's combat, it's comical and creative. Po finds a restrained Zhen, and is happy to see her until she begins to lose her form - Zhen was always The Chameleon.

{Adored your idea for that so don't mind if I use some inspiration here!!}

A more chaotic fight ensues, everyone coming together to conquer the Chameleon with their unique gifts and new things they practiced that were explored prior. Po has a realization regarding how skills aren't exclusively useful in their original contexts.

The fight sequence ends with the item for the absorption being used against the Chameleon, while also releasing all of the previous victims, and restoring their powers. They also begin unsummoning, Tai Lung taking the item now containing all of the sorcerer magic with him into the Spirit World. Po and Tai Lung have a moment of mutual respect before he goes.

The chameleon isn't sent into the Spirit World, but is instead offered a place at the Jade Palace by Po, offering to help them learn something new.

Po would return to his responsibilities, but also give them his own unique flair!! Time would pass and you'd see The Chameleon/Zhen growing into the better person they didn't think they could be. We get a bright ending showing hope for the future.

~~~

Okay I feel batshit insane after spending like two solid hours on this??

2300+ words later and here I am lol I kept going back and revising to try and make the story beats and themeing consistent, but I haven't like, edited this with any consistency. So don't judge me if somethings don't quite make sense lol And god the pacing feels so off writing like this but hopefully it still makes sense????? Anyways. Thank you so much for asking what I would do, I had a blast thinking about this in detail!!

#me #mine #ask #kung fu panda #kung fu panda 4 #kung fu panda 4 rewrite #fanfic #? #drabble #ramble #theory #rewrite

[duckiemimi]

I AM SO PISSED OFF ABOUT GOJO'S DEATH, like everyone is ofc, the execution was so miserable. but lemme elaborate

I love tragedies, i love when a character dies before they can achieve their goal, when the ending is completely hopeless, when happiness is completely out of reach for the mc, that's my type of thing, i love stories that are willing to have an ending that kicks you in the nuts and makes you regret ever consuming it. and I'm 90% that's what gege is going for, maybe not that extreme but a sort of bittersweet ending (more bitter than sweet tho).

but the thing is that writing effective tragedies is hard, it's a very careful process because it can easily feel cheap or lazy, you need to set it up properly or it will fall apart, and i personally believe that gege's set up was pretty decent! but they pay off...

i'm used to important characters dying, i love it! but i look at Gojo's death and it's like... damn, what a wasted chance. that thing had the potential to be one of the most impactful deads in modern manga, yet it was so rushed, so lazy and cheap, a good character death can make you cry for a character that u didn't even care about to begin with, but with Gojo, whos character i loved, I didn't shed a single tear! gege really set up this amazing character FOR NOTHING, IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO POWERFUL, WE WERE ROBBED!!!

also, I'm so angry abut the lack of reaction from gojo, like, you are fighting the child you basically RAISED, SHOW SOME EMOTION, sure he is possessed but it's still his body??? like at least pretend to care y'know? it could have been another incredible powerful thing yet gege said "nu-uh :3"

when i catch u gege....

i completely agree! and i know gege’s capable of writing fantastic tragic character arcs because geto’s a great example—no one ever actually complains about how his death was written! gege absolutely nailed the set up of his character and the downhill journey he went through in the hidden inventory arc, and even when he turned villainous, readers still loved him because of how human he read. geto never had a happy ending! but we still loved the way he was written and the way he ended! it made sense, it had meaning.

gege used to be great at resolutions and pay offs, at delivering the unwritten promises he started the story with, but this arc has just been one big mess…just like you, when gojo died, it didn’t feel real to me. but not because it was grief for a well-loved character; it was because it held no weight at all. he died and the world kept turning, and while that’s just the way their universe works, having someone who came out the womb shifting the balance of the world just die inconsequentially makes no sense. no one stopped to mourn him? no one gave him the minute he gave to geto in shibuya? no minuscule pause at all, no shock or outright anger? was he not loved?

i’ve lost most of my hope for the ending i’d hoped for, but i’m staying because i want to see yuuji decide to live for himself. but even that small flame of faith i have, it wavers…

#asks #jjk 236 #jjk spoilers #gojo #gojo satoru #geto suguru

[stupidrant]

at the end of the day, i'm looking forward for what santa monica have planned out in terms for character arcs and storylines, because i trust them on this and they have me very impressed with the superb writing in the games. there are still many questions left unanswered and i know this was done on purpose so that they could be answered in the next installments. like what happened to the other giants, will the aesir and vanir cooperate post-ragnarok? will there be reparations from the aesir?

i doubt there will be any forced interactions between thrud and angrboda. though i do understand if angrboda would need some time before speaking to her (remember, in the game angrboda mostly spoke to her fellow jotnar atreus & gryla, along with kratos, mimir, and freya. she has not spoken to an aesir and understandably so. why would she anyways? they killed her people.)

i would love to see some type of soul-searching and accountability on thrud's part. yes yes the child is not to blame for the father's sin, but she was raised with whatever aesir propaganda odin & co. came up with. a step forward, true courage and righting wrongs would be an amazing thing to see from her.

real life example; my ancestors did commit unspeakable acts of war crimes against a group of human beings, i am not proud of this part of history and deeply ashamed of it. i would totally understand if someone whose family suffered from what my people did would want to stay away from me. even though it's not my fault personally, but the wounds run deep. then it's my responsibility to respect that, and work for how i can help to heal some of the wounds.

another note: friendships between girls are much appreciated than rivalry, solidarity between girls of different backgrounds (real, mutual respect and admiration and love) is vital to see just in general but also for this series. i do think angrboda needs more friends, especially girl friends. so i'm an optimist, i'm sure there will be something for her that will make me cry tears of joy. (THANK YOU FOR READING THIS WALL OF TEXT HAHAHAHA SORRY I HAVE WORMS IN MY BRAIN)

with the way thor died, i think thrud has already started on the soul searching journey as we can see in that post-rag cutscene and that makes the most sense anyways.

unless what will happen is that she uses training as a way to forget everything rather than confront the internal and external issues (which is a repeat of thor’s drinking habits) which would probably in turn go towards her getting over that somewhere in the next game. Atreus isnt responsible for his fathers actions either but theres a chance he goes to random places and says his father’s name and people would look at him funny. Anyways, I would hope they do the former and if any interactions between her and angrboda are present, i hope it will be only good or good awkward ? ones

#Thor #thrud #angrboda #atreus #god of war #god of war ragnarok #gowr #gow ragnarok #gow #asks

[autumnfuzz]

Rashta's side story was just a dream

Ah damn it. When I first read about it, I mistook it as an alternative timeline but turns out it was just a dream. So Sovieshu having another woman as a mistress and Rashta working as Navier's maid was just her soul dream. Makes sense if you think about the arc. To Rashta, Sovieshu wanted a child and him having a drunken one night stand with a countess as revenge on Navier's supposed affair with he*nry was just her imagination of the situation. It was just a wish fulfilling dream unlike other side stories that actually happened in the canon. (RE has lots of side stories)

The children Side stories

Glorym aka Mote is revealed to be Sovieshu's child in the side stories. She grows up looking like Sovieshu, with white hair. Mote/Glorym also identifies herself as Rashta and Sovieshu's kid. Sovieshu later offers the throne to her but she declines. Sovieshu loves his child no less. He always harbours a great deal of parental love for his daughter.

Sovieshu has good relationship with Kai and Lari. He loves them both. He basically has the cool uncle relationship with them.

Evely side story

Evely has a sister named Dartha who was stolen by the bandits and grew up with them just like Glorym. Dartha also has healing power like Evely.

Evely regularly heals Sovieshu and later heals ergi's mom.

There's a scene between her and Sovieshu in the garden where she was crying and Sovieshu comforted her. Which made me uncomfortable cause it was oddly intimate. People were speculating that this might be the hint the hint of her being his future third wife. I HOPE NOT. THAT'D BE WEIRD.

Sovieshu sees her as just a kid. Yes in the main story, Evely at first thought Sovieshu brought her in the palace to be his concubine and outright asked him about it but Sovieshu laughed it off as the idea was too absurd. Why the writer is murking the water in the side stories? I wish I could understand Korean cause MTL is mess.

Anyway there are other side stories but they don't interest me.

And the last one is

Sovieshu's regression

Turns out Sovieshu's new arc has been well accepted among Navar readers. I like this one too. Sovieshu showed great character depth. Instead of dodging responsibility, he owned them. He admitted his fault instead of blaming others. He never discarded Rashta rather took care of her and Glorym. Well, even in main timeline he tried to give her multiple chances until it was too far gone. Anyway he never blamed Rashta for his situation rather blamed himself for not being more cautious about her. He corrected his fault in this timeline and warned her against Ergi and disclosed to her that he knew about her past. (Lots of could have been avoided in the main timeline if he told her he knew about her past). In the end he gave her a bigger palace to stay in with their daughter Glorym. He never went back to her as a lover.

And with Navier. Boy oh boy it was fun to see him grovel. He ate a giant humble pie. Rightfully so. Navier didn't forgave him easily. And I am glad Sovieshu didn't disrespect her. He never raised his voice against her and admitted that it was his fault alone for ruining their marriage. This arc is filled with cute moments between Sovieshu and Navier. Sovieshu finally admitted his love for her and Navier thought it just temporary. Sovieshu would have returned to original timeline if he didn't win her heart. As he remained with her in the new parallel timeline, it means Navier finally forgave him. The ending was also beautiful. Sovieshu treasured Navier for the rest of his life and them falling in love with each other again.

I'd have preferred if Sovieshu went back in time before Rashta arrived. But I guess author didn't want to erase Glorym. I love Glorym but don't like Sovieshu getting a second wife. The problem could have solved if Glorym was Allen's child but author complicated that by later turning Glorym into Sovieshu's bio kid in other side stories. Author wanted have her cake and eat it too with Sovieshu I guess.

Anyway Sovieshu's regression is the best arc in my opinion. It flows very well with the main timeline. Not a dream rather continuation of the main story. It happens after Sovieshu retired as an emperor and Lari is preparing for the coronation. In a way, it can be interpreted as the main ending too.

Finally the novel has come to its end.

#the remarried empress #navier #sovieshu #remarried empress #rashta #evely #glorym #kai #lari #webtoon #otome isekai #webtoon comic #beware of the villainess #tapas comic #manhwa