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tohrules · 2 months

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hazbin hotel characters and their backstories

Backstories under cut

Jason(right): born in 2004 and raised in hollywood Jason found success as a child actor. Unknowing of his life ahead he agreed to act at age five and soon learned of what it ment. His coworkers were nice as were the directors.

it was his mom that caused issues starting to put him on diets and constantly lecturing him about his looks. After filming he was heading home. He was being driven by the same man who had drove him all his life named mark though they were far from close in experiences or age,mark was 75 jason was 17, they bonded and enjoyed talking on long drives.

Everything seemed fine till a raccoon ran into the road causing another car to swerve and hit the car Jason and Mark were in killing them both. Mark went to heaven while Jason woke up in hell. When he first saw himself he yelled in shock having become tall and thin, exactly what his mother would of wanted and exactly what he dreaded looking like.

At first he tried to scrub off what he thought was makeup around his eyes he soon realized like the ears and tail they would never come off. He claims that he went to hell for vanity when it's actually for his envy of others.

When he finally got used to hell he saw a girl tearing off her wings and went to make sure she didn't bleed out. It took a while for him to recognize her as an angel but when he did he turned to go near her for weeks. Eventually they formed a band due to his love for music. He is far more comfortable rocking out on stage but ivy thought being redeemed would get him a better life. At first he hates the idea but after being dragged to the hotel he is taught he is worthy or redeeming and he finally agreed to work on being better taking the first step to redemption.

Ivy(left): born in heaven ivy served as an exterminator till one year she was sent down and couldn't compleat a kill due to the demon seeming to weak due to their eyes pleading for death. She believed something was wrong with her for showing mercy and tore of her wings to keep herself from heaven believing she deserved hell for being unable to do as she was ordered to. She has two large X's on her back due to this

After being saved by jason she starts to miss heaven telling him about her past. When they start their band ivy leans twords just being a duo till twins from the lust ring arrive in pride for the additions. Without ivy knowing Jason payed a freelancing imp and hellhound to spread fliers for the band's additions. Only the two succubus showed up and the imp apologized only to be offered the spot of handling social Media by ivy with the hellhound being the bodyguard.

When ivy heard about the hotel she knew she would need to get Jason in at some point but it wasn't until she watched ye fight and recognized vaggi that she knew it could help her too and brought Jason to the hotel exited for a second chance at heaven for them both.

(shades drawings below)

#hazbin hotel #hazbin oc #hazbin original character #art #oc #hazbin characters #fandom

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docholligay · 3 years

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The Green Knight: A Ramble Through the Field of Honor

So I talked in an earlier post very glancingly about the line “Why greatness? Is goodness not enough?” and how it fits into the idea that Gawain has no idea what true greatness looks like, and I think, dovetailing into that, we kind of have to talk about how Gawain is...not a great guy.

And I’m not even talking about the way we begin the movie with him in a brothel, though I am going to use that to spring off here and talk about his conduct toward Essel. Knightly stories are full of these ideas of chivalry particularly around women, and I think Lowery is using Essel to make the point that Gawain is not doing that, not even remotely. Essel is a working girl, sure, but she’s also, as its shown throughout the movie, devoted to him, and cares for him far beyond his ability to provide for her. She even tells him that she has his gold, when she asks to be his lady, but she wants very simple things--to sit by his side at the fire, and have his ear, and be his lady. In full fairness to Gawain, I suppose, he never pretends even for a moment that he has any intention of doing that. Gawain is not interested in whatever he might owe her, because in seeking his greatness he utterly passes by this goodness.

We see this again in “A Kindness” where he repeatedly tells the scavenger that he is “Just passing through” when asked if he is a knight, not dodging the question, exactly, but allowing the scavenger to think this untrue thing. The scavenger talks about how he has brothers out there, the wide field of bodies like the fallen trees, showing us the lumber that Camelot is built upon, but Gawain does not have a moment for sympathy or pause. He fails to see this kid as a human being, and the narrative allows us to glance over it too, fixated in the same way Gawain is on the destination and not the journey.

Even when he is given instructions about how to get to the Green Chapel, when it’s been shown he has only the roughest sketched ideas of the way--and we can argue that the instructions may be false, but I’m not sure I think it matters--all he offers this scavenger, this BOY, is his thanks, despite being told he’s lost his family, was almost lost himself. He has to be shamed into offering a single coin, when Excalibur itself was offered to him when he needed the help.

This goes back to the idea of a test, and of Gawain’s repeated failures to have honor, to be great. He can’t see that mercy and generosity are a part of what it means to be a knight, to bear that mantle of goodness that I would argue underlies the knightly ideal.

This is why, when he’s captured and his things taken from him, he asks for the GReen Chapel and is told, “You’re in it.” This is a test as surely as kneeling before the Knight himself, and he’s failed, not only the test of generosity, but of courage, as he pleads with them that he’s not a knight, and he never said he was, and it’s true, that he isn’t, and so he’s stripped of all the trappings that make him a knight--his horse, his arms, his shield--because if he will not behave a knight, if he will not meet the world with the courage and honor he’s meant to have, then he may as well have none of it at all.

Gawain is pretty much a world-class fuckboy until the Tale of St. Winifred, until he truly connects with the natural impulse within him in the form of the fox (More on this in a much longer later post)

The tale of St. Winifred is his chance to begin his redemption, really the first time that he’s been willing to take any real instruction on the nature of becoming a knight--he sure as shit could not be bothered to listen to Arthur--and so this is where he earns back the axe. He earns back the right to even have this quest in the first place.

I don’t know how much the audience knows about the tale of St. Winifred, but the details are changed from the usual telling of the story in order to support the themes of the film. St. Winifred is also, in one sense, a tale of beheading and of virtue. That in upholding her ‘purity,’ she lost her life and her head. This is why I think it’s not actually a foregone conclusion that Gawain is spared at the end--I think Lowery makes the point that sometimes our values must be paid for in blood.

The flexible nature of honor is addressed directly in Winifred’s story. From the beginning, when she tells him not to touch her, that “a knight should know better,” there’s a sort of restarting the clock on his ability to be that knight. He just failed the last test, but as people, we are not who we are in one moment, whether that is terribly virtuous, or terribly cowardly, but the accumulation of who we are in all the moments. Each story is the chance to start again, and that’s why you’ll see so much menton of his being a knight at the start of each ‘section.’ It’s his chance to begin this anew.

In that way of, just tell the audience what’s going on, when Winifred is telling her story, of a man who came and desired to lay with her, and says, ‘Perhaps he was thee,’ that’s not just speaking to the sense of circles and repetition of nature in the movie--though not unrelated--but the idea that Gawain could be that man, could still, in a sense, choose to be that man. That he can always fail this test, too.

“If I go and get it, what will be my reward?”

It takes you aback, just for a moment, when he asks her that, until we realize that we were all asking ourselves that too. Reading into the traditions behind knights and saints, I think we’re used to the idea that a boon will be received for dong the right thing, and Lowery asks us to evaluate all that in Winifred’s reply:

“Why would you ask me that? Why would you ever ask me that?”

Harkening back to when he didn’t give the kid more than just a single coin, and telling him, “my thanks”--does he really have the right to ask for such a thing when he couldn’t manage to reward kindness himself-- but also the idea that honorable tasks should be taken up for their own sake, and not in order to have a reward. Can you truly be said to be acting with chivalry and honor if you’re doing it for a reward, or even notoriety?

Going back to my larger theory that Lowery is trying to bring forth the idea in all of this that there is no such thing as being a “knightly” sort of person at rest, while still holding that the decisions of a moment can cement the sort of person we continue to be, it makes sense that he would ask if we can say Gawain passes this test, if Winifred regards him.

“Now I can see thee,” she says, because this is a baptism of sorts, and being a saint, she can only see a soul in clarity. This is the direct opposite to the moment that Arthur tells him he has mud on his face, this is in direct opposite to his behavior with Essel, this is him doing the right and kind thing for a woman, without a thought to reward, and in that, he is cleaned, and Winifred can see what’s underneath, the sort of man he can be under what he’s accumulated.

ANd this is why he gets back the axe. It gives him leave to continue his quest, even though just a bit earlier, when asked where he was going, he simply said, “home.” But the show of the axe let him know that honor was not yet lost to him, that there was still a chance to be the sort of person he might have been.

WHich, by the way, does not makes things clear to him still. Life is not that simple, and I am very very resolute on my idea that a lot of what this movie is about is about the journey of our own lives to meet death and live with honor inasmuch as we can overcome our own cowardice and shitty behavior to do so, and even at the end of it all, about to meet the Green Knight, asked why he’s doing it, expressing that honor is why a knight does what he does, and then, pressed, says:

“Honor is a part of the life I want.”

This is Lowery pretty firmly taking aim at the old Arthurian texts, wherein honor very often good be a sole raison d’etre, saying that for most of us--and I would argue the whole reason Gawain is a fuck up is that he’s meant to represent most of us--that isn’t enough. There needs to be something more.

I also don’t think, for all I’ve talked about tests, that Gawain’s cowardice with the Green Knight had to be the end of the story. I think Essel’s pregnancy, and his cruelty, was a test. I think lying about what happened in the Green Chapel and accepting a knighthood was a test. I think there are multiple tests in that little interlude, but you see, the problem is, the more you do something, the more you’ll do it. As he makes these choices, this more and more becomes the man he is, as these choices stack up like stones, it gets harder and harder to knock down that wall. This is why his green sash--his cowardice--has become a physical part of him by the end of that interlude, bleeding as he draws it out.

Honor isn’t set, and it isn’t enough. Life is a confusing journey, rife with difficulty to do the right thing with consistency not because of outside influence so much as ourselves. Gawain’s great antagonist in al of this is not the Green Knight, but himself. Such as it is for all of us, as we TRY to be good people, and risk sometimes redefining honor, or greatness, what it means to be “a knight” in order to convince ourselves that it might be true.

“Is this all there is?” Gawain asks, before the axe is laid down, and I want to give Dev Patel a lot of credit here, though I’ve mostly been focusing on imagery and story. I’m not sure this would work as well if he hadn’t made it feel quite as human as it does, when he says it. It’s the question I think all of us ask, as we contemplate our own deaths, our own struggles to even up with what was right. Is there no way of knowing what comes next?

Life is a series of tests. A measure of honor. And what else ought there be?

On Doc and The Green Knight

#Green Knight shit #hi please enjoy two thousand words where I'm still not sure I said all I wanted to

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themandylion · 3 years

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97 & 41 jaytim

Oh wow, this ended up long. /o\

97 (Time Travel) + 41 (First Kiss) + JayTim

He's boosting tires in the Bowery when the thugs find him. Crowd him up against a wall and threaten him with bodily harm for horning in on their territory, even though this part of the city is a free-for-all, with no one reigning supreme. There's three of them to his one, all of them full-grown men with bulging muscles and nasty tempers and Jason knows he's in his final moments, that there's no way he's escaping this. Still, that doesn't mean he's going to go down without a fight. He squares his shoulders, plants his feet, raises the tire iron in his hand, and—

Between one blink and the next, the back-most thug is on the ground, groaning and clutching his crotch. There's a blur of red, and then the next one's down on his knees, the crowbar he was gripping half a block away and the hand that was holding it pinned to the wall by a slim, sharp-edged disk.

Silver flashes through the night, and the final guy collapses in a heap, just sprawled out on the pavement like he's not even human anymore, just a pile of discard clothes over something lumpy and unmoving. Someone lands on his back, light and nimble and impossibly tall. "You okay there, kid?" the new person asks, crouching down so he's at Jason's level and smiling.

"…Batman?" He's only ever seen the Bat from a distance before, but he's heard about the cape and cowl, and this guy has both.

The guy shakes his head. "Nope, not him. I'm his partner, though."

"Robin wears green," Jason feels compelled to point out, because he's definitely seen Robin before, though always on the TV, when the Teen Titans are fighting really scary bad guys elsewhere in the world.

This time, a shadow seems to pass over the man's face, sad and unhappy. "I'm a different kind of Robin. Red Robin. I'm pretty new, it's not surprising you haven't heard of me." He leans back on his heels and glances around at the thugs, frowning. "I've got to tie these guys up and leave them somewhere the GCPD will find them. Do you think you can get home on your own?"

Jason gulps, staring up at him, at the way all that tight leather and spandex hugs his body. Gee whiz. "Yeah, I. I can take care of myself. Thanks!" He surges forward, practically smacking his mouth against Red Robin's cheek, before running off into the night. Maybe not headed home, but to as close as anything gets, these days.

---

Two weeks later, Batman catches him boosting tires on Crime Alley. A week later, he's going home with the man. Jason asks about Red Robin and gets a confused, clueless look, which is strange. With everything else happening, he forgets about the man in the black cowl with the silver staff, but he still finds himself drawn to that one particular shade of red.

---

He forgets until the memory is jarred out of the deepest depths years later on the other side of the multiverse, when he's bound to a chair and staring down the barrel of gun. A gun held by another Batman, a different Bruce. One who did all the things he thought he wanted his Bruce to do, only to end up a broken man as a result. Jason tries to explain himself and his presence, but it's hard to when he keeps seeing that suit in the case over this Batman's shoulder.

They reach an understanding, a kind of peace. Both of them, finally, for the first time in ages. This other Bruce offers him the suit, and Jason doesn't think twice before putting it on. He's traveled across the multiverse, seen places where dead people live again, where evil people are good and vice versa. It's not too far a stretch to believe that somehow, he's going become his own childhood hero.

When he finishes pulling on the last piece, Bruce looks on him with pride and announces, "Red Robin lives!"

"Red…?" Jason murmurs, more than a little startled. It's been so long, he'd nearly forgotten the name, but it fits, it makes sense. Finally, he's back on the right path, back to being someone the boy he once was could be proud of. Will be proud of, when their paths cross again, which he's sure they will.

---

The other Batman dies.

---

They get back, finally done traveling across the multiverse, fleeing across Apokolips, running from plagues and maybes and might-have-beens. Donna and Rayner return to wherever they call home, and Jason... He thought he finally found himself when he put on the cowl and became Red Robin, but with everything that happened after that moment, all the contrition he gained has been too long stewing in a half-broken heart. He isn't sure who rescued him when he was a kid, but it wasn't him, and it wasn't the long-dead Jason of another world. Maybe it was no one at all, and he made it all up and convinced himself it was real.

He runs back to Gotham, strips off the cape and cowl, the bandoliers and leather. Throws it all in the trash and goes to knock some heads and blow off some steam, anything to escape from what the rest of the Justice League brought with them—a sob story and a broken, days-old body.

---

The suit disappears from the can where he threw it, and he thinks good riddance to bad rubbish, but the person who's wearing it now doesn't understand the significance, the legacy. Doesn't know what it symbolizes, a last chance at redemption, a final loss of innocence.

The new kid distracts him, muddies the water and still Jason doesn't see it, doesn't realize what's happening. Even when the kid takes the cowl, adds it to his green-free suit, he doesn't see it.

Jason's too busy fighting, too busy screaming, raging, being angry at himself and the world to realize how things are swirling tighter and tighter, closing in, twining together, weaving themselves in an intricate, impossible mesh that's new and old and always existing all at the same time. The three of them—him and Dick and the new kid—push and shove and fight and scream and grieve in their own ways, trying to figure out who they're going to be now, what the world is without Bruce.

He ignores overtures of friendship, leaves the kid broken and bleeding out and thinks nothing of it, still too busy hurting and too busy denying he hurts.

Thinks nothing of Robin back on the streets in red and green and black and yellow, a different boy, an actual child.

---

Bruce comes back, but he's just as stubborn as always, and Jason burned the last of his bridges while the old man was playing possum. There's nothing left for him to do but lurk in the shadows and grit his teeth and watch Drake bounce around the city in a costume that isn't his, telling himself he doesn't care, that it doesn't rub him the wrong way.

Doesn't actually realize what's happening until one day he's watching as Drake races across the city, ready to step in and stop him if he dares to cross into Red Hood's territory when suddenly—

There's no one. The roof's empty, not a soul in sight.

He swings over, investigates. There's a strange acrid smell in the air along with the faintest traces of sweat and exhaustion, but there's no clue to where he's gone, no hint. Minutes pass and the sky is getting darker as evening turns into night. Just when he's given up, Drake reappears, but still, unmoving. One hand grasping his staff while the other touches his cheek and he stares into nothing, dazed and unfocused.

His attention snaps up, and Jason is too startled to move, still standing there in the middle of the roof, the two of them locked in place.

"Holy fuck." He can't. This isn't—

He's tried to kill Drake multiple times over the years. They've barely had a conversation that hasn't ended with Jason drawing a knife or a gun, and more often than not he comes out on top. Leaves the guy knowing that he's alive at Jason's mercy.

But now he's standing there, finally grown into the Red Robin suit and name, filling it in all the right places, all the right ways, grasping a staff that Jason somehow failed to recognize until this exact moment.

"I never—" He never thought to make the connection, always assumed it had to be someone else, some one huge. Big enough to match the larger-than-life figure that dominated a half-forgotten memory.

"Huh." Red Robin collapses his staff, clips it his belt. "Random time blip? I didn't even realize."

Which would explain it. Of course he didn't realize—no way would he have helped that other, younger Jason if he'd known who it was. Why save a boy who's going to grow up to become a monster bent on destroying him over and over again. "Sorry," Jason says, startled, confused, unable to wrap his head around it all as he stumbles backwards, tries to do what he always does when he's confronted with too much, too fast—run.

Red Robin—Drake—tilts his head to the side and then does something completely unexpected. He shoves back the cowl and studies Jason with cool, clear eyes. "I have a feeling this has been a weird night for both of us. You could stick around. We could figure this out together."

So help him, Jason hesitates. "Time travel is pretty weird."

"I was thinking more being kissed by my childhood crush. But yeah, that too."

"Your… what?"

"Come on," he says, holding out a hand. "I think it's time we finally talked. Maybe without the death threats this time?"

Gulping, Jason takes that hand in his.

It's not much, but. It's a start.

(The Fanfic Trope MASH-UP is still open for asks!)

#JayTim #time travel #Red Robin #ask meme #anonymous #themandylion writes #my fic #weirdly canon compliant in its own special way 🤔#trope mash up

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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years

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This is similar to one of my previous posts, but it has some new elements so I’m copying it over. This is the second of my posts on the core themes of each book in The Stormlight Archive. The first, on Rhythm of War, is here.

This post contains Rhythm of War spoilers.

Stormlight Archive Themes - Redemption in Oathbringer

If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means I can’t have grown to become someone else. It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.

Redemption is a theme running through the entirety of the Stormlight Archive, but it is strongest and most central in Oathbringer- not only in Dalinar’s character arc but also in Szeth’s, in the start of Venli’s redemption arc, and - in a negative manner - in the arcs of Moash and Amaram. Oathbringer also, to my mind, encapsulates the philosophy of the entire series regarding redemption in one scene of striking symbolism.

The idea of redemption is Oathbringer is often paired, in analyses, with that of accepting responsibility for your actions - indeed, I almost titled this essay “redemption and responsibility.” And that is absolutely a necessary element that distinguishes the successful redemption arcs from the failed ones. But in thinking about it I realized that I had things in the wrong order - for both Dalinar and Venli, mercy is is what enables them to take responsibility, not the result of them doing so. They are both able to grapple with their actions and take responsibility for them, and this is what enables their redemption arcs, but in both cases it is a consequence of them already having been shown grace before they exhibited any change in behaviour.

When Dalinar visits the Nightwatcher, he has been a brutal conqueror for 23 years and then a drunk for the last five and a half. His sole redeeming characteristic is that he knows in his soul what he needs and it isn’t power or strength or to return to the man he was before Evi’s death, or the ability to blame someone else for his deed. He knows he’s guilty, and he begs for forgiveness. And what Cultivation gives him is not precisely that, but the chance to become someone better. It is crucial to remember that, while he forgets his actions and forgets Evi, that is not what asked for; his goal was not to be free of the knowledge of what he did, but the chance for it not to be the end of his story; the chance to be something other than the monster he knew he was.

When he rejects Odium’s offer to take his pain, on the battlefield outside Thaylen City, it is without any expectation of forgiveness or of freedom from his crushing guilt. Evi’s forgiveness is not something he has remotely earned or deserved, by that action or any of his actions; it is pure grace. When we talk about redemption arcs, “deserving” has nothing to do with it. Dalinar didn’t remotely deserve his. He knows this, and it’s why he’s ready to hold out the possibility of redemption to Amaram and, in ROW, to Taravangian - because if Dalinar can be redeemed, then the door is not closed to anyone. The difference is not in worthiness of redemption, but willingness to accept it.

And this is also seen in the beginning of Venli’s redemption arc. Timbre finds her and stays with her long before she’s demonstrated any positive qualities that would subgest fitness for being a Radiant. In the context of ROW, knowing that Eshonai bonded Timbre just before her death, I believe it’s because Eshonai asked her spren to look out for her sister. As with Cultivation’s gift to Dalinar, it is Venli’s bond with Timbre that enables her to become a better person, to make herself accountable to her people for her actions, to begin taking personal risks to do what is right.

Something similar is also present in Elhokar’s arc. Kaladin saves him before he’s done anything substantive to change, when Elhokar has only shown the first beginnings of recognition that he is not the person or the king that he should be or wants to be. He is capable of the change he exhibits in Oathbringer, the genuine humility and desire to serve his people, because Kaladin’s rescue gave him the chance to become that person. It’s not truly a failed or prevented redemption arc. He died, but he died trying to be better, and that matters.

The difference with Amaram, that prevents his redemption arc, isn’t that he’s uniquely evil. (Dalinar has also killed his own men, in battle-lust rather than in cold blood.) What prevents it is the rejection of the truth he knows in his soul: that he has done something horrifically evil, that he is in the wrong.

“No, he’ll never forgive me.”

“The bridgeman?”

“Not him.” Amaram tapped his chest. “Him.”

Amaram’s rationalizations during his fight with Kaladin are the consequence of him refusing the knowledge of who he is, or trying to escape from it. Ironically, Amaram previously put up quite a good pretence of willingness to accept responsibility for his own actions - he told Dalinar that after the war was over he’d be willing to stand trial for what he did to Kaladin and his men. I believe he meant it - but what he wanted, like Taravangian, was to be seen as, or see himself as, some kind of martyr, sacrificing his morality for the greater good. Which is a very different thing from the recognition that you’re wrong.

Moash’s arc is also one away from accepting responsibility - in his first chapter in Oathbringer, he feels terribly guilty for betraying Kaladin and recognizes thst he was wrong, and then he moves further and further away from this in every subsequent chapter, until Odium’s whispered lies - What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn’t my fault. I was pushed into it. I can’t be blamed. - begin to take hold. When he gives up his pain to Odium, he remains driven by the desperate need to hide from his guilt, and his campaign in ROW to drive Kaladin to suicide is driven in large part by the need to prove to himself that giving up hus pain was the only possible decision by driving Kaladin to make the same one. As long as Kaladin lives, he is proof of an alternative path. (Yes, a twisted death wish that regards this as mercy is also part of it.)

Moash, like Amaram, and Dalinar, and Venli, does receive an offer of redemption undeserved, not in Oathbringer but in the first part of ROW, in Renarin’s vision of him as someone who protects rather than destroys. He responds with terror - it can’t be possible, it needs to not be possible, because if another course is possible then his actions are not inevitable and he is responsible for them. (I know this vision has been compared to part of the magic system the Mistborn books, but to me it’s far more intuitive for it to be the Surge of Illumination, which we’ve already seen used by Shallan in a similar way in her drawings of Bluth, Gaz, and Elhokar, among others.) He spends the rest of the book trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to extinguish that possibility.

And finally we have Szeth’s redemption arc. Szeth has never been in doubt that he is morally responsible for his actions, even when he did not concieve of himself as having a choice about them. I see his arc in the prior books as something much more nuanced than “just following orders” - that’s an excuse used by people who want to get out of making hard decisions, who prefer comfort and complacency. Szeth very much did not want to be in his position as assassin - he loathed it, and himself, and was willing to do anything within his power to avoid it; after killing Gavilar, he actively seeks out a life in obscurity as menial slave, concealing his abilities as far as he can, because that means he won’t be used to kill. It’s a life Kaladin spent years trying to escape from, and it’s Szeth’s idea of a best-case scenario. Szeth is in the position of desperately wanting choice, but conceiving of it as a privilege that he no longer possesses. I thimk this is connected to the meaning of Truthless - the underlying concept/rationale for the oathstone seems to be that literally anyone - any random person in the world - is capable of malimg better choices than you, so they, and not you, get to decide what you should do with your life. It’s near the end of his arc in Oathbringer - But it had always been nothing more than a rock - that he at last recognizes that he did have a choice about his actions.

Szeth, in his arc in Oathbringer, is very much motivated by the desire to do what is right and make right decisions, thpugh he is very out of practice at making any decisions at all. In the first test of the Skybreakers, he perceives that there’s something more important going pn that just chasing after wretched criminals, and that the warden’s immiseration of them is the worst crime of all. But it’s the second Skybreaker training session, with the practice fight using the balls of coloured dye, that gives us what I think is the heart of the theme of redemption both in Oathbringer and in the Stormlight Archive as a whole.

The contest feels a little out of place and low-drama - the recruits’ first test is killing criminals, and their second one is a game? But I believe it is absolutely crucial via the metaphor it communicates. Szeth starts out diing very well in the game - no one has hit him yet - and is actually enjoying himself for the first time in many, many years. And then he thinks this: He could not be happy. He was only a tool of retribution. Not redemption, for he dared not believe in such. If he was to be forced to keep living, it should not be a live that anyone should ever envy.

Other characters either accept both responsibility and redemption, or reject both. Szeth accepts responsibility, accepts guilt, tries to do right, even without the belief that redemption is possible.

And immediately after thinking that, he gets hit with the dye for the first time. He was doing well in the game when he was enjoying himself; now, when he rejects the possibility of redemption, he stops doing so well, and ultimately loses. Almost as if the universe were trying to tell him something.

And then, when he is bombarded with dye, runs out of Stormlight, and falls into the Purelake at the end of the exercise, he realizes something. It’s not actually about how many stains you have. He washes them off in the Purelake. And he wins the game.

To me, especially knowing Brandon’s religious background (and being a Christian myself), this is extraordinarily powerful symbolism of baptism, of the washing away of sin and entry into new life. It is stating the theme of redemption for the whole series. How many stains you have, what you’ve done in the past, doesn’t matter for redemption; what matters is whether you’re willing to accept redemption, accept the mercy that is offered, choose to be a new person. There is no such thing as being beyond redemption. The heroes of the story are not some perfect ideal, not the ones who manage to pick up very few stains. They are the ones who are willing to recognize that they have them and to wash them off; to recognize the wrong they have done and to change.

#brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #rhythm of war #row spoilers #rhythm of war spoilers #dalinar #szeth #venli #moash #elhokar #redemption

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blankd · 3 years

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Thoughts on The Mitchells vs the Machines

I watched it a while ago and kept forgetting to post my thoughts on it, but some posts here on tumblr recently reminded me.

I disagree with the majority takeaways I see but is that not the spice of life?

As a standalone movie its inoffensive and the writing of it will likely exit my brain in a few months. However I can appreciate that the visual style was different from the typical fare and the mixture of 2d elements for visual embellishments were mostly enjoyable and well-suited for Katie as the POV character.

It's a bit "hyper" for my liking, but that's fine, it's likely intended for an audience that's accustomed to the flood that is the current norm of the internet. It was probably made with GIFable moments in mind and that is the most frequent content that is shared about it, so it certainly succeeded in that regard.

My more critical take is that jokes are delivered at the expense of what could be more authentic themes. Quips are made that draw attention to character flaws or undercut questions the movie should try to answer, but inevitably they are ignored to move onto the next joke or story beat.

The rest would fall more into spoiler territory, so read more for that.

--"They Were Both In the Wrong"

I personally disagree heavily with the thrust of how "both sides" were wrong when the degrees are disproportionate.

I've seen claims that Katie was "as in the wrong" as her father, but she's incredibly patient to the man who does her material harm.

I've yet to have seen someone say specifically what Katie did *wrong* to her father that is at all on par with the *years* he at best hasn't been able to interact with her or worse, actively refused to engage with her interests.

I would generously venture that her flaw was that she was more willing to communicate her feelings to strangers, but she easily talks to her mother and brother- her brother even helps her with her movies and she happily engages him with his own interests, which pivots the point back to how her father is physically/emotionally unavailable and led to the erosion and distance between the two of them.

Due to this, MvM comes across more as Kaite having to do so much more to guide her father rather than a more mutual learning experience for the both of them.

--"Technology that [Dis]Connects"

It's probably beyond the scope and intent of the film, but I was surprised there was no examination about why technology can be more alluring than interacting with physically present people.

For better or worse, the internet can be used as a means of supplementing the validation and acceptance of family. It can also lead to no longer connecting to people around them because of the validation high of appealing to a constantly 'awake' sea of strangers- the spotlight is warmer than the cold reality that they are not the internet image they have cultivated.

For example, the rival 'perfect' family was never revealed to be a carefully constructed highlight reel that Mrs. Mitchell envies, they really were actually that perfect- because that provides an easier punchline than an examination or acknowledgement of how the internet can create unhealthy expectations.

I also can't expect MvM to acknowledge the reality that LGBTA+ people who are rejected by their family resort to seeking a new one through the internet because it would be much harder to redeem/rehabilitate a man defined by being tethered to "old values" if he was homophobic instead of "overprotective" and apprehensive at his daughter's departure from home and her dubious art career.

But hey we got that quick line at the end that Katie likes a girl, so that's a diversity win or something.

(To be clear I'm not expecting a whole parade or even an A or B-plot dedicated to it, but I think it should be acknowledged that this kind of "surprise inclusion" is very easily erased with a change of audio and would be completely unsurprised if this were the case for countries that are homophobic. People can be happy about it, but it is dishonest to pretend that this is a bolder statement than it is.)

In that sense, I do and don't hold MvM to taking a "safer" route about how family always has your back, but this still feels like an important omission considering the focus on technology and its dynamic with the Mitchells.

I will also say that it was also bizarre, to me at least, that the obvious route that her father sees the value of home videos didn't become an active point between him and Katie. Or that Mr. Mitchell's carpentry never really amounts to anything despite having a sentimental wooden moose.

Lastly, I think it's an unintentional, but it's interesting that Katie going to college to pursue her passion is viewed as a Terrible Thing by her father even though if he had his way, he'd be ostensibly living in the woods away from everyone else except his wife.

This isn't a problem, people are a collection of contradictions, but It's fascinating to see what the *narrative* treats as a difficult sacrifice while simultaneously pulling at heartstrings when PAL cites how children ignore their mothers. There's an unexamined comedy that Mr. Mitchell's losing out on his 'passion' to live in the woods away from people is treated as tragic despite the movie's insistence on staying connected with your blood family.

--"The Inconsistent Personhood of AI"

PAL is rightfully angry at being discarded for something new; it's provided as a glimpse of what Katie will do when she finds 'her people' at college.

This in of itself is a good hook, because there is no one universal answer to when a flawed relationship should be mended with compromise or if it's better off being broken for the wellbeing of the ones involved. Family and relationships are not programming, it's a choice and a gamble for whatever it brings but is nonetheless something that must be mutually worked upon.

Initially I thought that PAL was being set up as an exaggerated parallel to Mr. Mitchell. PAL and Mr. Mitchell did their best to provide for their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell are in different stages of being 'discarded' by their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell both retaliate at their lack of power in the scenario by using the power granted by their roles to infringe on the autonomy of others for selfish reasons.

PAL even gives a 'chance' for her plan to be halted with, I had assumed this was being set up as the thesis of the movie, about humanity and the value of family, relationships, etc. being used to help someone who is already hurting.

But despite Katie looking at the camera and explaining herself, it is never actually directly resolved or challenged because a punchline was deemed more desirable for this narrative climax.

This begs the question of why PAL bothered with the pretense that she could be reasoned with, especially since this is not some question leveled at all of humanity, just two people.

I'm curious how the writers came to the conclusion that this was the best execution of the scene or if Katie's speech was considered immune to any challenge from PAL. Would anyone have accepted this outcome if PAL were not an AI but instead a person?

It's not necessarily bad writing they went this route, but I doubt anyone would consider this good writing either.

By the end of the movie, PAL is no longer a 'person' who was betrayed and is lashing out, she is an object to be destroyed because the movie has to wrap up. No compassion or chances are spared to this AI that did literally everything asked of her except take being discarded quietly.

Did PAL deserve a redemption arc? For this length of movie, probably not. But it could have concluded with a commitment to doing no further harm. Instead it is an accidental glimpse at how easily the pretense of compassion can be quickly discarded and mostly unexamined with the right framing.

A likely unintentional example is the conditional humanity given to Eric and Deborahbot who are adopted as "family" while the rest of the robots are mowed down without another thought. Some are even beaten and broken while begging for mercy, because again, it is a funnier punchline.

Far be it for me to advocate that the murderbots needed 'a second chance uvu' but for a movie whose conceit rests on 'sticking by family' and 'giving chances', the writers certainly made a choice in deciding which AI get honorary humanity and spared violent death- perhaps PAL had a point about humanity's callousness after all. Bad robots are discarded, good robots get to live.

Even the CEO who realizes he enabled this mess (easily the most unrealistic part of the movie, honestly) is given another chance and he manages to take away a completely wrong lesson.

Speaking of-

--"Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used Tech Like This"

There's a particular image/gif set posted about MvM with the CEO apologizing for the machine uprising, attributing it to unchecked technology and monopolies. I've always seen it accompanied by people congratulating the scene as if any of this is at all relevant to the movie.

Charitably, these are people who haven't watched the movie and don't know that PAL is a phone AI single-handedly doing this, but most take the stance that this scene is proof the movie is not saying technology is bad, only corporations are.

The speech isn't technically wrong but it is so utterly divorced from what happens in the movie that it's surreal to see people congratulate it as anything but a moment of soapboxing.

None of the datagrabbing was used at all as part of the takeover. It's all magical kid-friendly terminators with no relevance to what anyone's browsing history is. If the company was one that produced robot assistants instead of a being a super tech monopoly, there would be no narrative difference.

The closest to a predatory tactic that is used in MvM is the offer of free wifi which is used to lure most people into their cells which they happily comply with. Curiously this... commentary of people’s mindless addiction to technology is not acknowledged by the Tumblr Court with the same intensity as the CEO’s speech.

But more constructively, I do feel it’s a missed opportunity that Katie who's supposed to be an extremely online person apparently never said any bad things about her family or made any petty vent films for PAL to weaponize. Instead an in-media audio at one of the outskirt locations was used to accomplish its Traitor Revealed moment.

IN CONCLUSION

MvM is a movie that involves topics that ought to be touched on and explored properly in media and chickens out on all of it due to possible concerns with age-appropriate handling or because it was more committed to its comedy than whatever it has to say about family, change and how technology affects people.

It also reminded me that I hope media will finally graduate from the trope that if you spec into any ‘outdoorsy’ hobby you are incurably afraid of technology.

#the mitchells vs the machines #let me ramble to you #text post #hot takes probably

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trifle-of-doom · 3 years

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The Hawk X Demetri Manifesto

Okay, here is the thing. Despite being well past my teens, there's a particular ship of Cobra Kai that has drawn my attention, this ship being Hawk/Eli x Demetri. When I first watched the show, I was actually more invested in the adult characters storylines than the teens. I immediately rooted for Johnny and Carmen, and I was always hoping for more interactions between them. But then I saw episode 2x05, in which the atmosphere between the Binary Brothers becomes way more dense, and that's when I started to see some potential for them. Not because I'm a deranged person who fosters abusive relationships, but because I immediately caught the hurt/comfort dynamic of the duo, which is something that works really well when it comes to fictional relationships. However, it wasn't until 3x10 that I said, "Ok, that's official, I need to see more of these two! I totally support them!" And I was quite surprised to find a fairly large amount of people who are very committed to this pairing, to the point it's caught the attention of the screenwriters/producers as well. Honestly, I don't know if the showrunners will ever have the guts to make them an official couple, and chances are their supporters will have to keep reading between the lines of their bromance, but in any case, here is my take on why Hawk/Eli x Demetri is an option worth to be considered.

#1 - The Bromance

If there's something that many years of navigating the Internet taught me, is that the main driving factor for fan-made ships is the presence of either a solid relationship based on mutual brotherly love or a bitter rivalry that may or may not flow into hate/obsession. If you consider anime fandoms, there are thousand examples that fit into either of these categories: Yugi and Jonouchi from the Yu-Gi-Oh series (yes, that's how old I am), Yugi and Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh, Sakuragi and Rukawa from Slam Dunk, Light and L from Death Note, etc. And our Hawk and Demetri fit into both categories. When we first see them, they are the stereotypical nerdy friends (possibly childhood friends?) sitting at the losers' table, who have no one else but each other. When Eli is at his most sensitive and fragile, you can tell he feels comfortable being with Demetri by the genuine smile he has on his face as Demetri is joking with Miguel at the canteen table. Through his sarcasm, the mouthy kid acts as a catalyst to deviate the attention from Eli, speaking for him, reprimanding Johnny when he makes fun of his lip and trying to make him feel safe. Besides, you can see a certain degree of frustration in Demetri when Kyler and his gang are harassing Eli, and he's unable to do anything to defend him. And they even have a jingle for their friendship with a robot dance, I mean, how cute is that? But of course, a solid friendship between two helpless nerdy guys is not enough to spark a ship to be rooting for. In order for the magic to happen, another key ingredient is needed, i.e. a little bit of angst. Which brings us straight to the next point.

#2 - The Angst (aka the Hurt/Comfort Dynamic)

Even though I never liked the Twilight saga or any similar urban fantasy young adult works, I can easily see where the appeal comes from; the attraction to a charming, dangerous person who could either protect you from any harm or crush you like grape. Although with different franchises, I wasn't immune to the bad boy trope either (Yes, I'm looking at you, my teenage self drooling over Grimmjow from Bleach). If we can appreciate the genuine, brotherly friendship between nerdy Eli and Demetri, the shift that Eli makes as he transitions into Hawk and becomes more aggressive and dominant gives their relationship a totally different flavor. Attrition sparks a certain tension that, in the viewer's eyes, could either flow into a brawl or into passion.

During the mall fight, Demetri comes to the realization that his former best friend is actually someone who can crush him like grape. We see Hawk intentionally harming him for the first time, and Demetri's heartbreaking expression as he drops the line: "You'd actually hurt me?" And if that line gave us a pang in our hearts when we first watched Season 2, imagine rewatching it now that we know what happens in Season 3. Demetri is chased down the mall, running for his life, and then he's locked in a grip, as his best friend menacingly advances towards him. Demetri appears as the damsel in distress, however his friend is not the one who will fight to protect him, but rather his tormentor.

During the party at Moon's, Demetri manages to briefly go through Hawk's mask and reach out to Eli, thanks to a casual conversation about Dr Who. But then the beer incident happens, and Demetri defends himself with the only weapon he has – his loudmouth. The situation is reversed, and for a brief moment, he gets to be the dominant one as he discloses all Eli's most intimate secrets. Demetri is now actively contributing to the Hurt/Comfort dynamic; he's no longer just a target, but he's doing his part to enlarge that gaping hole that has formed between them. And Hawk didn't take it well.

From this moment on, Demetri becomes a sort of obsession to Hawk, who hunts him down the school, teasing him and taunting him sadistically, like a serial killer from a horror movie, during the big fight. Of course, in real life, this would be completely insane, and the police/a social assistant/psychiatrist should be called, but in ShipLand, these situations are pure gold. Okay, we get it, Hawk wants to get revenge for the humiliation at the party, and he wants to crush that nerd part of himself he sees in Demetri, but he does it with such an intensity that it borders on ridiculous. It's like this is his twisted way to acknowledge Demetri's presence. Eventually, Hawk ends up smashed into the trophy case, and I confess I felt a little disappointed when Demetri broke that hug to give Hawk a roundhouse kick. I mean, it was a great comeback, but I was sincerely hoping for a "No hard feelings man, let's get outta here!" scenario.

Getting back to the sick and twisted way Hawk acknowledges Demetri's presence, he destroys his science project after he got jealous due to him being confident in his nerd self and laughing around with his ex girlfriend (whom the writers insist he still has a crush on). Speaking of Moon, I have a feeling she likes Hawk mostly based on his badass appearance. Remember when she goes "I like this (mohawk) and I love these (muscles), but I'm not dating a bully"?

Then the football match happens. Okay, let's break this down. Demetri trips Hawk and acts all sassy, and a fellow Cobra Kai is immediately ready to take him down, but Hawk stops him. "Fight smart, he says". Too bad that literally 5 seconds earlier he had shoved a kid to the ground just because his ex girlfriend (again, duuuh~) ignored him when he winked at her. And then, as he's trying to intercept the ball, BANG, Hawk hits Demetri, sending him to the ground, pretending it was an accident. So, what does this tell us? That Hawk has some serious anger management issues? Yeah sure, but also that he cares about fighting smart only as long as it serves as an excuse to leave Demetri for him, because he's his designated target. Again, this is all but romantic, and it doesn't necessarily have to be interpreted as him lusting after his friend, but it's undeniable that this dynamic offers a lot of ship fuel.

The arm breaking thing is just too painful to even analyze. We see a completely helpless Demetri begging for mercy to his ex best friend, who has made No Mercy his life motto. And that scream, oh that scream. All I wanted to see was Hawk realizing what he had done and throwing himself on his knees while begging for forgiveness. But I'm glad that at least we get to see he feels awful for what he's done, and I like to think that, as he got home, Eli cried out all the tears he had in his body thinking about poor Demetri at the hospital, with a swollen broken arm, all because of him. Of all the situations, this is undoubtedly the most deranged and extreme, and if something like this happened in real life, the wrongdoer would deserve to be punished and would definitely need to be sent to therapy. But in ShipLand, this opens the road to many, many different scenarios, in which the bully understands his mistakes and shifts back to the good side, or the two share a tender moment after they reconcile, or the traumatized character has to to learn to trust the other one again, or the bully becomes overprotective of his former victim, etc.

#3 - A Rewarding Reconciliation

Finally, we come to the reconciliation, in which Hawk makes his heel-to-face turn. While we've seen him torn with doubt for an entire season about his sensei's teachings, his actions and the people he wants to surround himself with, the key factor that drives Hawk's redemption is the sight of his best friend being held down for him to beat. And with an epic stunt and his awesome KEEEH screech, Hawk jumps to the rescue of his friend. Like many of us, Demetri thought this was still part of the "Only I Can Torment Him" dynamic I discussed earlier, as he steps backwards a little concerned, but then he understands that action was actually meant to save him, and the two begin to fight side by side, in sync, watching each other's back. You can see Demetri's eyes sparkling at the thought of having his friend back.

Also, not only Demetri stands up to alpha bitch Tory in defense of Eli, but he also speaks for his friend when he's faltering, just like he used to. So kudos for Demetri.

#4 - The Red Oni, Blue Oni Dynamic

Binary Brothers are two sides of the same coin and complete each other with opposite character traits, visually expressed by the color red and the color blue. Being the color red typically associated with violence, rage, passion and irrationality, as opposed to blue, which is associated with calmness, melancholy and rationality, red is clearly the dominant color. Again, this opens many interesting scenarios for shippers.

#5 - Body Language

Besides the situations I described above, which may or may not be read from a romantic/attraction standpoint, there are also a collection of small gestures I noticed when rewatching the series with a more attentive look on their relationship.

- Demetri's heart-broken expression when Eli shamefully covers his lip during the anti-bullying announcement.

- The smile Demetri gives when Hawk responds "Hell yeah!" after Aisha proposes to crash Yasmin's party, implying he's learning to embrace this new wild side of his best friend

- The astonished look with which Demetri watches Hawk at the tournament and the way he's pissed no one knows his real name.

- How deeply hurt Demetri is when Hawk belittles him by saying: "Five against three. More like two and a half." He even tries to reply, but he's caught so off guard that words die in his throat.

- How Demetri takes a step towards Hawk during the mall fight, before Sam makes him back off, and how sadly he looks at Hawk's nearly unconscious body after Robby defeated him.

- How Demetri smiles and nods when he briefly connects with Eli at Moon's party, despite the mall incident.

- How Hawk watches Demetri juggle with the cleaning product from behind his bike helmet (how did he stuff the mohawk in there by the way)?

- Hawk's psychotic/sadistic faces when he smells Demetri's blood, and how he likes to hunt him down like he's his prey.

- Hawk's secret impulse to comfort Demetri after the arm breaking (I hope you get nightmares of Demetri's howl of pain for the rest of your life, Hawk).

- The way Hawk twitches his upper lip when he sees his friend Demetri in danger.

- How Hawk and Demetri are so absorbed in their new-found friendship, that they're caught off guard, and Demetri swings Hawk to allow him to deliver a kick using their handshake as a lever. And how they keep fighting together, shaking each other's hands even when they're out of focus and the attention is on Miguel vs. Kyler.

- How they're standing so close at Miyagi Do, in comparison with the other Red/Blue partners.

In conclusion, this kind of relationships are engaging and entertaining to watch, and they make us wish the best for the characters. They make us hope that, in the end, as Miguel puts it, love really conquers all (and what is friendship if not a form of love?), despite all the hurt they did to each other.

So this is it. I hope you enjoyed my Ted Talk. Feel free to share it with whomever you want, especially if you need some solid reasons why this ship has got some good potential.

And remember: the ship is in the eye of the beholder.

#HawkMeat #Hawk x Demetri #Cobra Kai #Eli Moskowitz #Demetri #binary brothers

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agentrouka-blog · 3 years

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I think both Arya n Jon will be part of assassin attempt on Dany. Maybe Jon could distract her and Arya may kill her given chance. Or maybe only Arya kill her if Dany threaten Jon. But why would Jon will take blame as killing Dany shouldn't be punished as she is a monster everyone knew.

Hi anon!

After digesting all these recent awesome meta-posts about Arya killing Dany, I actually think if it’s Arya who kills her, Jon will not necessarily be directly involved.

But if he is, it might play upon the theme of mercy.

Given how much Ygritte (*spits*) foreshadows Daenerys and we look at her ending, it’s NOT Jon who kills her. In the books, he tries during the battle but can’t bring himself to do it (because he is not a remorseless killer), then later finds her with someone else’s arrow through the chest.

He found Ygritte sprawled across a patch of old snow beneath the Lord Commander's Tower, with an arrow between her breasts. The ice crystals had settled over her face, and in the moonlight it looked as though she wore a glittering silver mask.

The arrow was black, Jon saw, but it was fletched with white duck feathers. Not mine, he told himself, not one of mine. But he felt as if it were.

(ASOS, Jon VII)

A black and white arrow. That is and isn’t “one of his”.

Black and white is associate with Arya and her Faceless Man training, who were themselves founded in opposition to the Valyrian slavers. It’s also the color of the deadly Naathi butterfly that kills invaders.

Ygritte does live long enough for some parting words about returning to a cave.

Both Jon and Dany have caves in their past. What’s Dany’s cave?

There, amidst broken boulders, razor-sharp ridges, and needle spires, Drogon made his lair inside a shallow cave. He had dwelt there for some time, Dany had realized when she first saw the hill. The air smelled of ash, every rock and tree in sight was scorched and blackened, the ground strewn with burned and broken bones, yet it had been home to him.

Dany knew the lure of home. (ADWD, Daenerys X)

While Jon’s cave has him giving Ygritte a special kind of kiss. Which might mean...

"Kiss her?" Ser Barristan repeated, aghast.

"A steel kiss," said Littlefinger. (AGOT, Eddard VIII)

When Ygritte dies in the Show, it’s a vengeful child shooting her. The kid is named Olly, an orphan boy. Sweet Polly Oliver. (By the time Olly aids in murdering Jon, I think, his role has shifted away.) Olly shoots Ygritte with a bow and arrow. Now, who is introduced in the Show as shooting an arrow dead-center after sneaking out of needlework class..? A currently very vengeful child.

In either case, no one particularly blames Jon for Ygritte’s death. He feels some guilt himself, but I don’t see that happening for Dany post-Burning KL. The question of who killed her is relevant to his conscience, but other than that no one seems to care very much:

"Was it you killed her?"

"My brother." Jon had never learned which one, and hoped he never would.

"You bloody crows." Tormund's tone was gruff, yet strangely gentle.

(ASOS, Jon X)

I expect it to be the same in the books with Dany. She will have commited mass slaughter. Who will stand up and go “Woe be upon them who ended her!”

There will be a conspiracy but Arya willl probably be the one mainly responsible for Dany’s death.

What follows Ygritte’s death at the Wall is a siege, and imprisonment, a negotiation, the arrival of a helpful monarch, the birth of a royal child, redemption at the hands of said monarch, Jon rejecting an offered position of rulership based on blood, a big complicated election, and Jon reuniting with his wolf, choosing the Tully-colored heart tree and his identity as a Snow. Out of which Sansa builds a castle in the following chapter. Which would vaguely fit a political and otherwise reasonably happy ending for the Starks, which Bran elected King in the South and Jon eventually heading North with Queen Sansa.

It might be that Jon is with Dany when she dies, it might be he kindly finishes her off if she’s dying in a slow, agonizing way. Maybe he just witnesses the event. Being there might cause him trouble at first, but it won’t be something he needs to take the fall for, long-term, I don’t think. But Arya may want to take some time off to recover on a swan ship journey after so much killing.

All this is just vague speculation, though.

I’m just absolutely thrilled how much evidence points at Arya killing Dany. It’s Queen Nymeria howling for Dany’s entrails, not Jon. She has a much better thematic fit for punishing her war crimes, and it removes all those unpleasant “Man kills tryannical mass murdering woman = misogyny” aspects that popped up after the Show.

#asoiaf #asoiaf speculation #arya stark #anti daenerys targaryen #jon snow #anti ygritte #tyrannicide #wolf howling for dany

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sanktagenyas · 3 years

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ok so i finally watched those last three episodes. i said buckle up it’s time to suffer and by the saints did i ever suffer. i just knew the darklina scenes were gonna be rough to watch. it was already rough reading the scenes as they were written in book one. i mean the darkling just shines with his intelligence in that chapter, doesn’t he? threaten the man she loves? well the other man she loves? check! tell her she betrayed you when the reality is you’ve been telling half truths all along and didn’t trust her to make her choices? check!

buddy this isn’t how you apologize. in the show itself it’s pretty much the same back and forth that leads nowhere. you lied to me! you ran off because my mother told you i’m not who i say i am without giving me a chance to explain! you’ve been lying or bending the truth since we met! YOU TURNED YOUR BACK ON YOUR COUNTRY!

by that point i was just like chill the fuck out man you’re about to decimate many many countrymen and you know it. i loved that the stop they made was all about him getting revenge on the man who attempted on alina’s life, that was very unhinged of him and i was HERE for that shit but everyone else in that port? every other woman and child and man on that port? not all of them played a hand and he just went ahead and had them slaughtered without batting an eye. and it’s not like he has some kind of safeguard for grishas does he? how does he know there’s no grisha wherever he’s expanding the fold? some could be in hiding because they fled, because they didn’t want to serve the king. oh well he doesn’t really care about those people does he? we all saw how he spoke about those deserters to arken.

also he could NOT handle alina’s harsh truths about how his own actions are harming grisha close to him even though he claims that every choice he’s made was to protect them and empower them. when she brought up genya i was like yes you better look down you motherfucker! you did this to her, you delivered to her abuser over and over.

we saw his backstory, some of it and he acted out of grief and rage. he toyed with magic he did not understand and of course he didn’t intend this but his reaction to the fold once it was all said and done was definitely foreshadowing what he was to become. i created something he said defiantly. you created something you don’t have control over. and now he’s done it again somehow, he’s got brand new creatures following him at the end.

i actually felt for young aleksander for losing the woman he loved but the arrogance and the recklessness he showed there is still the same arrogance he has now. he thinks he has thought his plan through but that’s just working off the assumption that no one opposes him ever otherwise he went ahead and put a target on grisha’s backs. he definitely put a target on alina’s back although i know that was never the plan. the fact that when he has a perfectly good remedy to the fold, a chance to actually fix his mistakes once and for all he turns its back and decides to make it ten times worse, chooses ruling via fear over hope is jusr a sign of how far he’s gone. and he didn’t waver once not even when alina was pleading with him that he could have made her his equal, that they could have stayed together and made ravka safe together if only he gave her a choice, he was still manipulative and lied to her face.

at this point i just don’t think his love for her outweighs his belief that he knows what’s best for ravka, what’s the best way to protect grisha. because he doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t grisha at all. he was persecuted like so many others. he won a war for a king centuries and that king turned on him. i’m sure he’s looking at the current one knowing that once grisha have exhausted their uses that king will turn on him too. the fold is just a different kind of war and if he wins that one for the king the darkling already knows what the outcome will be.

so to summarize this whole darkling commentary here i understand where he is coming from, i understand the fear and the rage and the desperation. it’s not working out for him though. he’s feared but he’s alone. for every ivan there’s a zoya. for every man who’s blindly loyal to him there’ll be someone rising up to oppose him eventually. and if it’s not his own people it’ll be non grisha folks. he has the second army working for him still, but he is alone. and that’s no one’s fault but his own because alina was willing to work with him.

speaking of alina i loved every second of her rising up to oppose him telling him she never needed him. she may have fallen in love with him but she never actually needed him to be powerful, she only needed to free herself of the restraints she’d put on her powers out of fear. i also thought that the way she freed herself of his control made more sense than it did in the books.

i have hope for darklina still despite all that’s happened despite how positively full of rage ans resentment she is because she still loves him, she still listened when he pleaded with her that they needed each other if they wanted to deal with the fold. of course there’s the slight issue of him lying directly and manipulating her to do his bidding and of course the fact that he took her power from her. the only thing that was her and he perverted it for his own gain. i think it just might take more than a year for her to forgive him i’m afraid. i don’t necessarily see a path to redemption right now but reconciliation? alina can be merciful, she can be forgiving. i think all it would really take is just one selfless act, one show of good faith. if he keeps pursuing her and mal and keep trying to rob her of her agency however i don’t see them ever having any kind of closure.

i don’t think i need to expand much more on my thoughts on malina. i’m not feeling what the show wants me to feel. i’m not seeing them as these soulmates that belong together. to me they’d be better of as best friends. the darkling didn’t make her strong he tried to steal her strength for his own use but mal doesn’t make her strong either, she relies too much on him. mal actually was pretty damn resourceful when left on his own. i unfortunately couldn’t say the same for alina. co-dependant love is not better than toxic love and darklina’s toxicity (most of it) comes from the lies and from the darkling repeatedly choosing for alina. he’s not brave enough to just tell her what he intends to do and let her decide whether to align herself with him so he lies and he deceives instead. not much he can do to undo it now but he could help actually destroy the fold if he wanted to. i don’t know if he’ll ever come around to it though.

the darkling visiting mal with the sole purpose to rub it in his face that alina and he are immortal and so eventually mal will die and then he could just swoop in was just peak comedy. the way he delivered that line too you’d think he was talking to an insect not another human being. it was brilliant. mal echoing that same line but ending it with “the past will do it for me” was pretty good, nice quip i’ll give mal that but also terribly ironic when you see the ending.

team crows remains the highlight for me. kaz and inej and their unspoken love for each other is just killing me. i can tell there are personal traumas there that i don’t know about (gotta read those damn books and quick) what with kaz not being able to help tend to her wounds and the fact that there were moments were i could see there was maybe a kiss about to happen or an embrace (at the end when kaz let alina go free and made a deal not to rat her out) and it just didn’t happen. there’s a story there about kaz and his distaste for being touched/touching others. jesper is just here to look pretty, shoot shit and be the most charming person in any crowd. i’m in love. also someone give him his goat back for the love of god.

nina and mathias were entertaining for sure. with all that banter and all these jabs i should have really seen them falling for one another coming. i felt like it was perhaps a bit rushed but i guess there’s nothing like almost freezing to death together to make you reconsider your views. you know the whole saving of lives thing can really bond you. the waffle date was adorable. was not expecting nina to just brand herself a traitor for him and she’s damn lucky fyedor came on that mission because i’m pretty sure ivan wouldn’t even have offered to keep her name out of the report. she and mathias ended their story both heartbroken and separated. i really hate that he thinks this was all intentional. really hope she’ll join the crows on their next con job. and i also cannot wait to see the look on heleen’s face when kaz buys inej’s freedom.

i was not at all expecting zoya to turn against the darkling. that’s what happens when you turned down one of your fuck buddies, aleksander they get bitter and then they leave you to be eaten alive by volcras. ok but in all seriousness she did the right thing and i hope she finds her family even if they’re not alive so she can say her goodbyes.

oh and completely unrelated but since i talked about heights of comedy before i really need more sassy! darkling in my life. he is everything. that quip about his speech. the way he said adorable like he was gagging on the word. him just letting david be his dorkiest self and raise his hand before speaking, that little put upon sigh. i love sassy! darkling almost as much as jealous and petty darkling which is saying a lot. just more of that. it humanizes him, i’m tired of villains who are forever stoic and stone face.

i think i about covered everyone and everything that happened in those remaining episodes. all in all shadow and bone is an amazing adaptation, really faithful to the first book. they made some changes to the characters which in turn changed some dynamics (alina actually admitted she wanted to be with the darkling. out loud. to his face. book!alina would never and book!darkling would never cry in front of her.) but it made for surprising viewing. it also made me become even more attached to some characters (the darkling let’s be real) which made me care more which is why i was livid when they started making a lot of terrible no good choices.

i was just really blown away by this show and the way the grishaverse was brought to life and above all major props to the actors who all just seemed to be born to play their respective roles.

#shadow and bone spoilers #sab spoilers #darklina #alina starkov #aleksander morozova #inej ghafa #nina zenik #mathias helvar #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #zoya nazyalensky

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years

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Reluctant Allies: Enemies Team Up: a reading list

Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger

Four destinies collide in a unique fantasy world of war and wonders, where empire is won with enchanted steel and magical animal companions fight alongside their masters in battle. A soldier with a curse Tala lost her family to the empress’s army and has spent her life avenging them in battle. But the empress’s crimes don’t haunt her half as much as the crimes Tala has committed against the laws of magic... and her own flesh and blood. A prince with a debt Jimuro has inherited the ashes of an empire. Now that the revolution has brought down his kingdom, he must depend on Tala to bring him home safe. But it was his army who murdered her family. Now Tala will be his redemption—or his downfall. A detective with a grudge Xiulan is an eccentric, pipe-smoking detective who can solve any mystery—but the biggest mystery of all is her true identity. She’s a princess in disguise, and she plans to secure her throne by presenting her father with the ultimate prize: the world’s most wanted prince. A thief with a broken heart Lee is a small-time criminal who lives by only one law: Leave them before they leave you. But when Princess Xiulan asks her to be her partner in crime—and offers her a magical animal companion as a reward—she can’t say no, and soon finds she doesn’t want to leave the princess behind. This band of rogues and royals should all be enemies, but they unite for a common purpose: to defeat an unstoppable killer who defies the laws of magic. In this battle, they will forge unexpected bonds of friendship and love that will change their lives—and begin to change the world.

Deception Cove by Owen Laukkanen

Former US Marine Jess Winslow reenters civilian life a new widow, with little more to her name than a falling-down house, a medical discharge for PTSD, and a loyal dog named Lucy. The only thing she actually cares about is that dog, a black-and-white pit bull mix who helps her cope with the devastating memories of her time in Afghanistan. After fifteen years — nearly half his life — in state prison, Mason Burke owns one set of clothes, a wallet, and a photo of Lucy, the service dog he trained while behind bars. Seeking a fresh start, he sets out for Deception Cove, Washington, where the dog now lives. As soon as Mason knocks on Jess's door, he finds himself in the middle of a standoff between the widow and the deputy county sheriff. When Jess's late husband piloted his final "fishing" expedition, he stole and stashed a valuable package from his drug dealer associates. Now the package is gone, and the sheriff's department has seized Jess's dearest possession — her dog. Unless Jess turns over the missing goods, Lucy will be destroyed. The last thing Mason wants is to be dragged back into the criminal world. The last thing Jess wants is to trust a stranger. But neither of them can leave a friend, the only good thing in either of their lives, in danger. To rescue Lucy, they'll have to forge an uneasy alliance. And to avoid becoming collateral damage in someone else's private war, they have to fight back — and find a way to conquer their doubts and fears.

Kingdom of Exiles by Maxym M. Martineau

Exiled beast charmer Leena Edenfrell is in deep trouble. Empty pockets forced her to sell her beloved magical beasts on the black market—an offense punishable by death—and now there's a price on her head. With the realm's most talented murderer-for-hire nipping at her heels, Leena makes him an offer he can't refuse: powerful mythical creatures in exchange for her life. If only it were that simple. Unbeknownst to Leena, the undying ones are bound by magic to complete their contracts, and Noc cannot risk his brotherhood of assassins...not even to save the woman he can no longer live without.

Winter of Ice and Iron by Rachel Neumeier

In this gorgeous, dark fantasy in the spirit of Jacqueline Carey, a princess and a duke must protect the people of their nations when a terrible threat leaves everyone in danger. With the Mad King of Emmer in the north and the vicious King of Pohorir in the east, Kehara Raehema knows her country is in a vulnerable position. She never expected to give up everything she loves to save her people, but when the Mad King’s fury leaves her land in danger, she has no choice but to try any stratagem that might buy time for her people to prepare for war—no matter the personal cost. Hundreds of miles away, the pitiless Wolf Duke of Pohorir, Innisth Eanete, dreams of breaking his people and his province free of the king he despises. But he has no way to make that happen—until chance unexpectedly leaves Kehara on his doorstep and at his mercy. Yet in a land where immanent spirits inhabit the earth, political disaster is not the greatest peril one can face. Now, as the year rushes toward the dangerous midwinter, Kehera and Innisth find themselves unwilling allies, and their joined strength is all that stands between the peoples of the Four Kingdoms and utter catastrophe.

#fiction #fantasy #mystery #thriller #enemies to lovers #enemies to friends #teamwork #book recs #adult books #adult fiction #reading recommendations #recommended reading #to read #booklr #tbr #library #romance

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ladyfantasy98 · 4 years

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Danny Phantom Fanfic Idea -- Danny, Vlad, & Dan (+ Dani!)

I’ve been thinking way too much about Danny Phantom lately. Oh well.

But a story idea that came to me a while ago was a possible Vlad redemption arc. I’m fine he didn’t get one in the show, and it’s a little hard to imagine after how he treated Danielle and all those clones -- but the idea of Old Vlad in The Ultimate Enemy (and even his mini realization in Phantom Planet after Jack flies away) shows that Vlad is capable of realizing and regretting his mistakes and possibly fixing them.

So, the story idea -- Dark Danny/Dan Phantom escapes from the Fenton Thermos and travels to Danny’s current timeline (whether that would be after Phantom Planet I’m not sure, I had mixed feelings about the movie, but anyway) and seeks out Danny and/or Vlad, causing untold destruction in Amity Park.

Danny, in the middle of a battle with Vlad, of course recognizes him immediately and is terrified/infuriated. Once Danny and Dan reveal who he is to Vlad, Vlad is shocked and horrified at what the combination of him and Danny/their ghosts -- something he’s always wanted -- actually is, and begins to question how much he’s let his ghost side influence his schemes and desires (not that I’m excusing Vlad’s own actions or saying he was possessed or anything, but Dan’s existence has given him food for thought)

Eventually, Danny and his friends manage to trap Dan again, probably with Clockwork’s help (who may or may not have been meddling in things...), maybe with Vlad’s. Then he talks with Vlad, revealing to him how his older alternate self regretted his past actions, put aside his hate & lust for Jack and Maddie, and helped Danny fix the timeline. Based on this, Vlad decides he wants to try and be better & have a healthier relationship with Danny.

Which eventually leads this exchange:

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Vlad breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. He spoke his next words slowly, carefully, trying to order his thoughts.

“I...I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About myself. Self-reflection, I should say. And I’ve...realized something. Likely the very same thing that my other future alternate self did before he had his change of heart.” Vlad began to pace in front of his desk, not looking at Danny. For his part, the teenager seemed less suspicious; he had extinguished his ecto-rays and his posture was less rigid. He watched Vlad go back and forth, back and forth.

Vlad continued, his voice rising in pitch, “I looked at Dan Phantom, who is, who was, you -- me -- us. I looked at him and I - I saw the truth. The truth that -- me, stripped of my vanity and selfishness and ability to lie to myself -- and you, stripped of all compassion and hope and - and childish innocence -- Well. There was nothing left but hatred. You hated me and I hated myself. That was the truth.”

Vlad stopped his pacing abruptly and spun to face Danny. Full of raw emotion, he cried,

“But I don’t want that to be the truth, Daniel! Danny! I - I - I want to be better! I don’t want that to be my future! I know this is asking for -- for too much, really, but I...if you could...would you...” Vlad trailed off, struggling to get the words out. The back of his neck was wet with sweat -- he hadn’t realized how hot he’d gotten, whether from his pacing or his emotional distress, he couldn’t tell. Danny watched him, arms crossed, an inscrutable expression on his face.

Vlad took another breath to calm himself, and finished weakly,

“Would you give me another chance? To be...good? To truly be your...Uncle Vlad?”

Silence. The hands on the wall clock ticked by slowly, painfully, the only sound in the room. Even with Vlad exerting himself, his and Danny’s breathing, as half-ghosts, was barely perceptible in the quiet room. Danny simply continued to stare at Vlad, his bright blue eyes trained on the older man’s. Vlad’s heart beat painfully -- yet slowly -- in his chest as he awaited an answer.

Eventually Danny sighed. He uncrossed his arms and said, in a quiet voice, “Yeah, I get that. Seeing what you’ve become...learning how your choices changed you for the worse...and seeing that and wanting it to never happen...I get it. I do. Dan did for you what he did for me -- he scared you with what you could become if you don’t change your ways.”

The younger half ghost fell silent once more. Vlad stayed quiet, not wanting to interfere with or influence the other’s thought process.

“I’m not ready to forgive you,” Danny said finally, a thoughtful frown on his face. “And I’m definitely not ready to trust you.”

Vlad nodded, accepting this. But he couldn’t help the hope that sprouted inside him at the unsaid, implied Yet in Danny’s words.

“But...” and here Danny’s gaze softened. His mother’s gentleness and his father’s joyful friendliness, never mind the color, were evident in his eyes. How had Vlad never realized before what a beautiful combination that was? “But you’ve clearly thought about your actions and you’re asking me for a second chance. So...I’m willing to give you one.”

The sprout shot up into a full-grown plant. Vlad let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Th-thank-you, Daniel. Danny. I - you don’t know what that means to -”

Danny held up a finger, cutting Vlad off. “Hold up. Not so fast. I’m not God; I have conditions. I have to make sure you’re not tricking me.”

Vlad sobered up at that. He nodded solemnly. “Yes. Of course. I understand. What are your...conditions?”

“Don’t come near my family,” Danny answered firmly. “No showing up unannounced, no sabotaging airplanes, nothing. I see you around my parents or Jazz, and this...experiment is over. I’ll come to you, you don’t come to us. Understand?”

Vlad nodded again. He had much to make up for to Jack and Maddie as well, but honoring their son’s wishes was the best way to start atoning. “I understand.”

“And don’t you dare do anything or come close to Danielle,” the boy added, practically spitting. His eyes glowed green for a split second, punctuating just how serious he was about that particular condition. “You’ve done far worse to her than to me, and I don’t want you even thinking about her, you got that? If she wants in on this forgiveness/redemption thing, than it’ll have to be her decision. We go at my pace, her pace, not yours. Got it?”

Vlad met the boy’s protective fury with an understanding sympathy, and regret. “Yes. I understand. Anything you need me to do, or not do, and I will listen to you, Danny. I am completely at your mercy. And about your pace, I understand that, too. It’s alright if I do all this and you don’t ever forgive me. I don’t deserve it.”

He sighed, and finally looked away from the boy -- almost a man, really; he would be eighteen soon, never mind all the growing-up he’d done in the past few years as a superhero -- and stared up at the white ceiling.

He could still feel Danny’s eyes on him, however. And when the younger half-ghost cleared his throat, Vlad glanced back at him -- widening his eyes a little at what he saw.

Danny was holding his hand out to him. “Yeah, well, fruitloop...you know what they say. The journey of a hundred miles begins with one step. Or, something like that.”

Vlad smiled and grasped Danny’s offered hand.

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So...yeah. That’s how I imagine a Vlad-redemption-arc would begin.

Whether or not Dark Danny would also get a redemption arc...I don’t know, maybe. Perhaps he could bond with Danielle (who I don’t think existed in Dark Danny’s timeline, because if Vlad took Danny in after his family and friends’ deaths, then there would be no need for a Clone program) over the fact that they both wouldn’t exist without a (unnatural, unequal, immoral, but still) combination of Danny and Vlad.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this! Comment or DM me.

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parasite-core · 3 years

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You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆

What influences your character's morality more - their own moral code, or the moral code of the people around them?

Thank you for the ask 😊 I’ll throw in pretty much all my characters into the mix for this one because I love thinking about their morality or lack there of.

Umbrolus: Umber’s moral code is very simple because of his sheltered upbringing. You’re either nice or mean, and either bad or good. You can be mean and good, or nice and bad, but if you’re bad you have to be stopped, and are fair game to be fought against. If you’re good he can work with you and maybe even be friends, even if you’re not always nice (see: Celeste sometimes). If you hurt Kleio, you’re automatically bad. Or his other friends, but Kleio especially. And it is very hard to move from that category in his mind, he holds a grudge. He does tend to look to Kleio for moral guidance to a certain extent because he’s aware he doesn’t really know what’s socially correct in many situations, so he tends to trust their judgement on if someone should be labeled good or bad.

Kaius “Hawke” River: Kaius doesn’t so much care about morality as he does debts. You do something to hurt him or his family, and he’ll hold a grudge and seek vengeance. You do something to help him or his family, and he’ll owe you. Do something to protect his daughter and he’ll lay down his life for you. The closest thing to morality for him outside of that is that he has a soft spot for young people who made bad choices because of their situation in life but who can still turn their lives around. He very much believes in people ability to recreate themselves and to become better, especially young people, and he highly encourages it. As far as who affects his morality...just himself, and maybe his daughter. He’ll definitely try to put a little more effort into doing the ‘right’ thing if she’s around. Usually. Unless he’s teaching her to lie and steal. ‘Because those are useful skills in the real world.’

Roland Terrasold: Roland is pretty set in his ways about his morality, he follows his moral code, which is based on the teaching of Sarenrae, and changing his stance on moral questions is anywhere from difficult to impossible. He believes in redemption, and the ability for anyone who truly wishes to better themselves to do so. He believes a second chance should be offered to those who sincerely seek to atone. He also believes those who do evil gleefully and who can and will never seek to be better deserve to be destroyed before they can do further harm. He believes in protecting the weak and defenseless, and in seeking out evil and corruption and stopping it before it can spread and fester and do more harm. He’s opposed to excessive and gleeful violence, preferring to subdue an enemy or kill them in the most quick and merciful what possible, even if the enemy in question is a particularly vile person. He doesn’t believe in an eye for an eye, vengeance begets more vengeance and doing excessive harm just leads to you being more okay with violence it doesn’t solve any problems or help anyone to be sadistic or take joy in killing. This might have a lot to do with the sort of person his extremely sadistic ex Ashton was. Also due to Valoria’s teachings after Sarenrae’s death, Roland also believes that the use of necromancy is not necessarily evil by default, if used on willing volunteers and towards noble ends.

Kiyo Alvara: Kiyo is extremely set in their way about their morality. Like Roland, they believe in doing the least amount of excessive harm, although unlike Roland they don’t have any qualms about revenge. They don’t believe in harming someone who’s helpless, even if the person in question was a vile person. Although they might make an exception if Rolth Lamm were helpless in front of them. I don’t know if they’d feel bad about it afterwards. That’s pretty personal. They believe in honesty unless a secret or lie is vital to someone’s safety, or the safety of Korvosa as a whole (ie they have no problem with keeping Blackjack’s identity secret since that’s vital to keeping Korvosa safe). They are slow to trust again when their trust has been betrayed, they’ve lived for so long and seen so few people change their innate nature, that it takes a lot for them to believe someone’s changed their ways.

Sai Gwenn: Her morality is extremely black and white, and extremely influenced by Hayden. There are good people and bad people, and the bad people need to be taken care of before they can harm the good people. Failing to get rid of a bad person is itself bad, because it enables bad people to harm more good people. Sometimes good people are in a bad situation which makes them have to do bad things, and those people should be given a second chance to be good in better circumstances. Who is good and who is bad is entirely based on Sai’s perception of them. Her morality is a little fucked up honestly. She’d forgive an assassin despite trying to kill her and her friends because she was conditioned into her position her entire life, but was so angry at a gargoyle for harming her friend that she polymorphed it into a bug and kept it in a jar until her friend was healed, then released it into the wild to inevitably live a short and terrified life trapped in the body of an insect with the mind of an intelligent creature.

Lucien Anasia: Part of me wants to say Lucien doesn’t have a moral code since he decides so much on the flip of a coin due to his worship of luck. But he does have some moral qualms. He believes in helping people suffering in front of him. He believes in sharing, and trying to help people to feel happy, and in leaving people’s lives a little brighter. He wouldn’t feel comfortable doing excessive harm to people, although that’s exactly what his cursed starknife does.

Haruki Himura: Haruki’s morality has been shaken to the core recently. He used to follow the teachings of the Nameless Father, but since being turned into a drow and the Nameless Father turned His back on him, Haruki’s been unmoored. Without something to believe in, he’s pendulum swung in the opposite direction, being willing to assassinate people he doesn’t like, violently slaughter creatures with his crystalline curse, and all around give into his anger and desire to make others hurt the way he currently is. He draws the line at harming innocents. He does harm to those who did harm first. Random civilians deserve to be able to just live their lives.

Khazrae Kulata: Khazrae is an erinyes devil, and as such she doesn’t have much in the way of a moral code. She gets her morality 90% from Maxwell and 10% from the rest of the Shadow Slayers. Her morality typically boils down to ‘if I do this will Maxwell be upset I did’. She sincerely likes the party and she owes them an eternal debt for how they saved her from a millennia of torment, so despite very much being an evil creature by nature, she does sincerely want to do right by them. However since she doesn’t always have a firm grasp on human morality, she does make the wrong call on occasion and does something evil without thinking it’ll be a big deal to everyone else, such as when she helped Claudia to kill a helpless prisoner to help another devil get revenge.

Eccardian Drovenge: Eccardian’s morality is a bit grey at the moment. He spent much of his life manipulated and possessed by his infernal father Mammon, so now that he’s finally free he’s feeling out how he actually feels about things without a literal devil whispering in his ear. He takes a lot of cues from Erik on how to be a better person, and considering whether Erik would be disappointed in a choice does go into his decision making. He’s okay with grave robbing and is gleeful about getting revenge on those who have harmed him. He has no qualms about killing to remove a threat to him and his organization. However he’s not going out of his way to do harm anymore, and is actually trying to funnel his resources into doing good for the city and the country as a whole, to help make things better for tieflings like him and ‘lesser’ citizens as a whole.

Chammady Drovenge: Chammady is a pragmatist. Her morality centers her family—which in this case means her brother and the Shadow Slayers—and anyone outside of them is fair game. She took the lessons of both nobility and the thieves’ guild to heart, and is willing to do what has to be done to protect herself and hers. She is skilled at the double talk of nobility, and the necessary manipulations to navigate politics. She’s good at making others underestimate her, playing the role of vapid noblewoman and leaning into people’s expectations and biases, although she’s done that less since becoming mayor as now she has a position of true power, where a different sort of face is both expected and necessary. Like her brother, she has no qualms about killing those who might obstruct her goals or harm her inner circle. She is fiercely protective of her inner circle.

#long post #oc asks #random oc questions fairy #Umbrolus #roland terrasold #kiyo alvara #Sai Gwenn #lucien anasia #haruki himura #Khazrae Kulata #Eccardian Drovenge #Chammady Drovenge #ok so the last three are more like step-ocs #they’re almost totally different from how they were in the book at this point #so they’re OCs in all but name #and I felt like talking about them—especially Khazrae #I love her morality just being WWMD—what would Maxwell do

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kekeslider · 4 years

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I’ve been holding on to this one for a while because of sheer laziness, because I knew it would be long as fuck, but I continue to see people saying that Shadow Weaver was redeemed at the end, via one act of good before dying, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I believe at the end she may have escaped.

Here’s my biggest take on SW, obvious as it is: she is primarily concerned with power and control at all times. It’s consistent through every bit of her story. She recognizes power in young people, Adora and Micah specifically, and seeks to control them. She’s nice to them, affectionate, at first. In her own super messed up way she cares about them. But never more than herself, her own desires and interests.

The common belief after the finale is that Shadow Weaver’s last act before the end was an attempt by the writing to give her a miniature redemption through death. And other people have said it but one of the purposes this actually serves is to show that despite all her efforts, SW never really controlled Adora and Catra, she never turned them into the things she wanted them to be, because they anchored each other. Adora and Catra crying over SW’s death isn’t to show that she was actually not so bad, it’s to show that in spite of everything, Adora and Catra still care about the life of others intrinsically.

Shadow Weaver knew this before her sacrifice. The fact that Adora could not continue on to the Heart without Catra was proof enough that she had lost control, if you could even argue that she ever truly had it. You might view SW’s decision to stop the beast and let them go as an acceptance of this fact, or that she simply did what had to be done to save the whole universe, or that she had a genuine desire to do one good thing in her life. But I’m going to argue for two different alternatives.

1. Shadow Weaver sacrificed her life here because she realized that she had no way out after this. She no longer had sway over Adora or Catra, and throughout the season, and some specific scenes in prior ones, both characters repeatedly call attention to SW’s abuse of them. They’ve reached a point in their journey where they’re both completely aware of her manipulation, her abuse, her two-sidedness. They never believe during this season that SW is a good person now, or that she repents for what she’s done. There’s a recognition that Shadow Weaver is helping the rebellion because she’s chosen to be on the side of the winners because that’s how she’ll guarantee her survival and maintain her control over the situation. She tried in the previous season to control Glimmer like she had the others, but Glimmer was too wise to actually trust SW, potentially because she knew what real love and loyalty was and recognized that that wasn’t what Shadow Weaver offered. In a genius turn, Glimmer uses Shadow Weaver rather than the other way around.

All attempts to guarantee her position after the war have failed. She has no control over Micah, Adora, Catra, or Glimmer. She can’t get Adora to the Heart without going back for Catra, so even if they somehow pull through without it she can’t claim herself a hero for her role in it. She is at the end of the road, she’s run out of tricks, and she makes a decision. She decides that dying in one last act of manipulation over the two girls she almost destroyed is her final way to secure her place in the narrative as a Hero. It’s about the legacy, it’s why she says “You’re welcome,” so they will be forced to believe she did it for them, and that would solidify her life as meaningful. It’s her last attempt to retain some of the power she craved, fought for, and stole throughout her life.

But I don’t think the writers actually intend for her to get what she wants here. Shadow Weaver is an interesting character, she has a lot of pull over events in the story, but there’s no sense that she’s beloved. Not by characters and not by writers. I’m eternally sorry to fall back on one of the most tired comparisons in the universe, but bear with me for a moment. In thinking about all of it, I noticed certain similarities between SW’s death and that of Severus Snape. One final moment before death that they want the child(ren) they abused to see that will justify everything. But that is where the similarity ends, and why I think it’s so different on the writing side of things. Snape’s death was intended by both author and narrative to excuse and forgive him for countless misdeeds. And over the years we’ve become far more critical of that. I don’t get the sense that the writers of She-Ra want us to forgive Shadow Weaver because she was oh so complex. I don’t think there’s a future catradora kid named “Shadow Hope Prime.” I think they wanted us to see this act of desperation for what it was: a last ditch attempt to retain control by a person that can’t care about anything but herself.

2. This is where we go straight into theorizing and headcanons so I’ll try to keep it shorter. My suggestion is this: Shadow Weaver did not die in her final scene, she made a grand escape.

At this point she has no friends, no allies, no one who believes she’s anything but dangerous. She has 4 people in positions of power she has personally and extravagantly harmed. She abused Catra and Adora throughout their lives, she manipulated Micah as a child and eventually sent him to Beast Island for at least 10 years, making him miss his daughter growing up, and never to see his wife again, and while SW never had the sway over Glimmer she did the others, she still was directly responsible for taking away her father, turning her mother into a, to be harsh, cowardly and ineffective leader for years, and indirectly responsible for the strife between Adora and Catra that took the war to new extremes.

Shadow Weaver has no one, and no options, and at that point in time the most likely outcome after it’s all over is prison, and she may not be lucky enough to be treated to Brightmoon’s cushy prison again.

You may ask at this point, Catra, Hordak, all the clones all get a redemption without threat of imprisonment, why not Shadow Weaver? And the answer is simple: Shadow Weaver has not redeemed herself in the eyes of the writers, viewers, or other characters. Catra saves Glimmer in an act of selflessness and love for Adora, and then becomes an instrumental help in saving Etheria. Not to mention Adora’s personal relationship with her and the recognition that they come from the same place and lived much of the same hardships. Hordak and the clones get a second chance because it is now known that they were all effectually mind-controlled and enslaved by Horde Prime, and their lives, as individuals with free choice and no strings holding them down, is only just starting. Not to mention Hordak and Wrong Hordak both have Entrapta on their side, and she’s a princess with her own kingdom and could just grant them asylum and bet the other princesses wouldn’t do anything about it lest they risk a civil war, but that doesn’t seem like a realistic issue for this new post-Horde planet anyway. The point is, the other antagonists from the show have made meaningful connections with other characters for the sake of them, not to be self-serving. Shadow Weaver continues to be manipulative up until the very end, no one will give her another chance at this point.

And she knows this. She’s a smart lady, and there’s a great big universe out there full of people that don’t know her. If Adora saves the day and the universe is saved all she has to do is get off planet, and if Adora fails they all die anyway, so why not have a go at it? My theory is that she uses her great big show of magic as a distraction and a disguise to make her escape. The world will believe she died, they may even celebrate her for her role in saving the universe, and she’ll be free.

You think there’s a hitch in this theory right? Because we see the room after she’s gone and all that’s left of her is her mask. Obviously she was completely destroyed, right?

But this specific scene reminded me of something else

If you’ve watched Teen Titans you know that the mask-wearing Slade was one of the major antagonists throughout the series, was also quite inclined to use and abuse powerful youths, and at the end was at the mercy of one (arguably two) of the children he had hurt. She kills him, he falls into lava, and the last thing we see of Slade is his mask. The next season picks up with Robin obsessed with the search for Slade, believing that he couldn’t really be gone that easily, and driven by this single remnant of him. Only to find out later that while Slade did die, he was resurrected and was once again back to be a massive asshole.

I think Shadow Weaver’s last scene does what it is meant to at first glance. Audience and characters believe she’s dead, which makes for a tidy ending, the death is non-explicit so kids don’t get too traumatized, but the ambiguity of it also means that if they wanted to, Shadow Weaver could return for a future installment in the series, be it comics, a movie, or another season. Whether those things are likely to be produced isn’t my interest in arguing here, it’s the possibility.

There’s still a lot of potential for Shadow Weaver to be used as the primary villain, and facing her again could be used any number of ways to shake up a domestic bliss the characters end up in, to have them, older, more mature, having spent time healing from how she hurt them, no longer be affected by her in the same ways. Or the complete opposite, they may still be affected by her, seeing her again could tear open old wounds, but in the end show that while hurt remains, they still carry on.

#spop #spop shadow weaver #spop adora #spop catra #catradora #meta

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dereksmcgrath · 3 years

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Nosu Koshu’s return combines the Black Mercy from Superman with a Dragon Quest isekai plot that doesn’t really deliver much in the way of innovative gags and, in terms of plot, only perpetuates vague hints at larger schemes by Uneras. But maybe Ren’s sister Rin is going to get to be more relevant, so that’s good.

“Nosu Koshu of Illusions,” Magu-chan: God of Destruction, Chapter 56

By Kei Kamiki, translation by Christine Dashiell, lettering by Erika Terriquez

Available from Viz

Spoiler Warning for the Dragon Quest animated film.

Nosu Koshu, the dream god, is like the Black Mercy from Superman mythos. First appearing in the comic “For the Man Who Has Everything” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, then adapted for Justice League Unlimited and Supergirl, it is an alien being that lets you dream of your most ardent desires–but usually with some catch, not just that, to remove the Mercy from yourself is to lose that perfect dream, but because even within that dream, like any utopia, there is always some dark side behind it. When Nosu Koshu popped up first in Magu-chan, she gave Ruru the dream of being reunited with her dead father, at the cost of being with Magu and living a healthier life of coping with loss and finding new opportunities despite that loss.

Nosu Koshu gave Magu-chan the best arc it has had up to this point–so bringing her back now for a parody of Dragon Quest and isekai storylines is tiresome. Hell, I hated that Dragon Quest animated film for its twist at the end regarding isekai stuff, so unfortunately that example tainted my appreciation for where this chapter was going.

I’m not being entirely fair to this chapter: there were details I liked. I admit some of those details were gags that I should have seen coming: Magu being reduced to a Dragon Quest Slime monster, or Uneras being shown as the final boss (which, as I’ll talk about in a moment, is potential foreshadowing to her being the Big Bad all along for this series). And I laugh heartedly when Ruru said they’ll just skip the maze level and thanks Muscar for the warning; as repetitive as their dynamic is, I do like the groove the series has set, Muscar struggling to be fearsome and intimidating and Ruru, not out of simpleness but kindheartedness, looking on the bright side and taking Muscar’s remarks as helpful rather than intimidating.

But isekai storylines have been done to death. “Magic technology goes out of wack” like Uneras putting Izuma to sleep, then having magic eyemasks to put the others into Izuma’s dream, are plot details I expect from some of the worst manga that repeatedly persist with that trope. If I want the mad scientist who keeps making magic-like objects that cause wacky hijinks, I’d get back to writing Mei Hatsume fanfiction, not sitting through G-rated To Love-Ru.

I’m trying to judge the series by its own previous examples: if you’re going to invoke a certain type of video game, even if it is an RPG, I am stuck comparing how this same series handled the fighting game tropes, offering a funny version of Smash Bros while also having more clever gags that invoke the invitation envelope from that franchise as well as even designing a bulkier headband-wearing Magu to look like Ryu from Street Fighter.

But even still, I think how another series would handle this kind of plotline about Dragon Quest-style RPGs and isekai plotlines–because I’ve seen Gintama do it, not only to parody the same content but to do the exact same plot, that being to get into someone’s body (more specifically for Magu-chan, someone’s mind) to help them through a health-related problem. And when there are so many isekai stories out there, it is ripe for parody–and there have been enough of such parodies in other series, or even isekai that are parodying their own genre and undermining their own narrative conventions.

The gags in this chapter also felt less impressive than those in previous chapters. The problem the series has had since depowering Muscar has been Uneras, and I hate saying that when she is, for better or worse, a character who resonates for manga and anime fans like us, someone portrayed as ostensibly a Western fan whose fixation on the tropes of Japanese comics and animation shows an outsider’s perspective that just gets details wrong and invokes cringe. Maybe it is naive for me to think this is all innocent: as a fan in the United States, who is going to misread cultural aspects of works that are created in cultural contexts outside of where I am, I really try to be aware and not make claims I cannot support.

So, maybe Uneras is a warning for people who think they are being reasonable and having good intentions but whose misreadings are doing actual harm. It’s not that difficult a way to measure her, given her other problematic behavior: her reaction in this chapter of thinking “hawt” upon seeing Izuma oppose her, after the series has already presented Uneras as a pseudo-maternal figure to Izuma, is all kinds of Oedipal squick that, no, ew, stop, please.

When you keep making Uneras’s behavior the instigation for the plot–creating the problems for the characters to solve–her role as the trouble-maker, as the troll, lacks the same complexities we saw earlier. When she first appeared, her antics inadvertently caused problems: if she had told Ruru that the cookies she ate would make her too powerful, then Ruru would not have accidentally blasted Izuma and Magu. In her subsequent appearances, she was carefully placed in alternative positions, sometimes purposefully trolling the characters, sometimes unintentionally causing problems that thankfully were harmless enough to be corrected by story’s end with minimal ramifications and no malice. Then she depowered Muscar, bringing the story back to square one in terms of giving him a potential redemption arc, and invoking colonialist imagery that shows her cultural ignorance is not necessarily amusing but dangerous.

If we don’t want to read something deeper behind Uneras’s behavior, within the plot of the manga itself, there is an easier understanding for why she is trolling people, tricking them, and now pulling such a dangerous Black Mercy god like Nosu Koshu into her ranks–and it’s been obvious since Uneras’s first introduction. When she premiered in unlucky Chapter 13, she made it clear that she is playing the humans and gods against each other, that she sided with the humans against her own kind to keep the gods in check. She is not the traditional notion of a hero, she is not a good-hearted cliche like Ruru: she is a puppetmaster, and that opens up more potential for what to do with her in this manga, and I tense up either because she will emerge as an antagonist in this story or because I am now attached to this idea and will feel disappointed if my prediction does not pan out that way (which, seeing as I am wanting to see every tiny cute creature as a potential villain–e.g., Nezu in My Hero Academia–may be my problem and not that of the stories’: “When you’re a hammer, and everything looks like a nail…”).

That leaves us with what the story does with Nosu Koshu. Since her introduction, she has been a passive character, fitting for a god whose ability puts people to sleep in the dream that best serves the reality they want to enter. That power gave Magu-chan the kind of storyline even the goofiest gag manga needs, one that showed how Ruru has mourned her father’s death and gave joke characters like Naputaaku a chance to rise to the occasion. But now that Nosu Koshu’s threat has been diminished, the manga is trying to figure out where to position her–and the conclusion they reach is to give Ren another god to look after. I had enjoyed how Magu-chan added more gods but made sure to give those gods their own human Pokemon trainer, so introducing Nosu Koshu but not giving her her own unique human is retreading whatever characterization we could get from Ren without developing a currently present human or a new human character we could add. It’s like when Transformers Prime introduced Smokescreen and gave him Jack as his human partner: Jack already has Arcee, and that choice diminished opportunities to give Arcee the spotlight, as her storyline faded more and more into the background while Smokescreen’s role got larger and larger. Diminishing the only woman-coded Autobot to the background didn’t help either.

But speaking of sidelining women characters, if we are going to have Nosu Koshu at the Fujisawa restaurant–and, as they do have a beach stand, it does make sense to apply this god’s talents there after Mother Fujisawa exhausted herself in an earlier chapter–pair Nosu Koshu with Ren’s sister Rin. While I have enjoyed Rin’s dynamic with Naputaaku, he is already Ren’s god partner, and Rin’s schtick has been rather stale: in the beach stand chapter, we did learn she desires to rise to the occasion to run the family business, belying her slacker demeanor. But if we’re going to move beyond the tiresome slacker schtick, having her be the partner to a literal sleepyhead like Nosu Koshu makes sense and could help both characters, contrasting how Rin’s passivity differs from Nosu Koshu’s, and showing that Rin has actual dreams she is trying to reach in her own way while Nosu Koshu has been content to force other people to literally dream without having any goal of her own. Like I just said, I tend to write ideas that I hope a story will take, then I feel disappointed when they don’t go there, and that unfairly influences my reviews. But I hope I got this one right, because after the previous chapter and now this one, it feels like Magu-chan needs an emotionally impactful chapter to give more direction to where the gags should go.

#magu chan: god of destruction #manga review

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 4 years

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Oh, you biscuit

https://princeescaluswords.tumblr.com/post/189395661420/mercy-withheld

Let’s take a look, shall we?

You know what always amazes me?

Every fandom has its Villain Stans – people inexplicably attracted to and favoring murderers, thugs, autocrats, and bullies – who always end up saying the same things. They always say “We know that Character X is a terrible person; we embrace it for who they are.” Yet they always turn around and then say in very loud voices that the heroes didn’t treat them right after they lost.

They seem to forget that one of the hallmarks of a hero is ‘protecting the weak’ not ‘protecting the criminal who preyed upon the weak.’ They seem to forget that we celebrate a hero sparing the villain because it shows the virtue of the hero. Mercy isn’t something you’re owed. It’s something you’re given.

It’s always the same. They’re attracted to these powerful, skilled, often rich, often privileged individuals who decide to take out their personal tragedies out on other people. When and if they’re defeated, they began to immediately scheme for their redemption or at least their rehabilitation, desperately demanding that the villains be given a chance to grow and change their ways.

You know who often don’t get to grow and change? Their victims.

All these people clambering for Kylo Ren to not only survive but find love with the blood of his own father and ten billion innocent people on his hands, even though he’s been offered redemption twice.

I don’t care about Kylo Ren, but I would like to remind Prince that he’s entirely fictional, and the ten billion innocent people he killed are also entirely fictional, and that until fandom starts standing Kim Jong-un, this really isn’t the problem Prince thinks it is. In fact, it has zero bearing on real life at all.

In my own fandom, it’s almost the entire story of the fandom. On Teen Wolf, if you presented a character who assaulted, violated, manipulated, or literally murdered the main character, he’s (the gender is important) immediately given the benefit of the doubt and an army of justifiers. Derek Hale was immediately absolved of all his terrible, brutal decisions, but when he actually started making it up to the people he hurt, he had to be a clone.

Derek Hale, the victim of a rapist who also murdered his entire family? The family of whom the “hero” said, “Maybe they had a reason [for being burned to death]”. That Derek Hale? Gosh, I can’t quite put my finger on why most of fandom’s sympathies were with him there, and not with Scott.

Take Peter Hale. Peter Hale was given a second chance after he resurrected himself. He killed eight people, three of them innocent, and he repeatedly violated two others. He was killed by his nephew to stop his rampage, but when he resurrected himself, no one drove him out of the city. The people he hurt didn’t welcome him with open arms, but they gave him a chance to be pack. In return, at the end of Season 4, he plotted with the woman who killed his family to murder the lead, while getting the lead’s friends to do it. When he was defeated, instead of being executed, he was placed in a mental health facility where his roommate, a sinister psychic, caused him to scream.

Suddenly, his stans are in a uproar. “He’s being tortured!” They cried, uncaring of the way he arranged for the lead to have his personality stripped into a mindless killing machine and regardless of the idea that he was shown later to be Just Fine and Not Being Tortured. Post after post and story after story aver that Peter doesn’t deserve to be imprisoned for the crimes which he committed, which included stapling a man to a wall with a piece of rebar and manipulating his own daughter into committing murder.

It’s hilarious that Prince thinks Stiles throwing lacrosse balls at Scott is literal torture, but Valack doing whatever exactly it was that Valack did is somehow not? It’s also hilarious how Prince ignores the fact that the reason stated for putting Peter in Eichen House was because he was the Benefactor--something that happened when he was out of his mind and in a coma.

And sure, Peter tried to kill Scott. So did Gerard, who Scott let go. So did Kate, who Scott let go. So did Deucalion, who Scott let go. Twice. Weird how Prince never brings that up... but more on Prince’s exact problem with Peter lately, and--surprise!--it has nothing to do with his crimes.

I have to ask them. If Peter had won, would he have made sure that the innocent pawns of his plan were well cared for if everything had gone according to plan. He obviously didn’t give a damn about his nephew, running to get his murder on with only a single sad-eyed glance behind him. I think it’s entirely possible he would have killed every single member of Scott’s pack present (Kira, Stiles, and Liam) and Braeden was on borrowed time. Malia might have survived at least until they tried to kill Kate Argent and his berserkers.

But that’s who they stan. That’s who they wanted to win, no matter the wreath of dead teenagers around him.

What wreath of dead teenagers, you stale week-old scone? The ones that exist only in your headcanon? Scott was responsible for the deaths of more teenagers than Peter was.

(Also, a wreath of dead teenagers? Edgiest Christmas decoration ever!)

Listen, Prince, here you are blaming fandom again for what canon did. Canon gave Peter a redemption arc when they decided that he should stay and connect with Malia, and help in the final fight. That’s not fanfiction. That’s canon. If you have a problem with Peter getting a redemption arc, then you should be complaining about it to Jeff Davis, not the fandom.

Which brings me back to Prince’s real problem with Peter Hale’s redemption arc. He doesn’t give a fuck about who Peter Hale killed. He only gives a fuck about Scott, as always.

Oh, and who made it clear that Peter’s goal was to be a part of Malia’s life? Was that the fandom? No, that was canon again. I suggest you direct all your further complaints there, Prince, you spanker.

#pew #Scott mccall delusional squad

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magicbeardpowers · 4 years

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Rise of Skywalker spoilers

Remember that two things can simultaneously be true

1. Redemption is always an option- no matter what you’ve done or how far you’ve fallen, you can always change your path.

2. A movie portraying positively a romantic relationship between what is undeniably a villain and his victim where the victim holds out for the abusive villain to change his ways is not a great message.

General discussion because now that I’ve started typing my thoughts are flying away from me: I’d say that Ben’s redemption at that moment really should have been a) more explicitly about how his mother would no doubt have accepted him back and was calling out to him with her dying breath and b) about Rey having mercy on him as a Jedi rather than because she was romantically interested in him. Jedi guiding a fallen brother back to the light because there is always hope is way, way less ProblematicTM than a person holding out hope their abuser can change and putting themselves and others in harms way for the abuser’s sake, which is definitely an easy way to interpret what happened. The main thing they could do to fix it is just not have Rey and Ben kiss.

HOWEVER: In a somewhat different direction, I think there’s an argument that it’s more complicated than “Kylo Ren is Rey’s abusive boyfriend she wouldn’t leave”. For one thing they’re not in a relationship, they’re on opposite sides of a war. Like in a different world of a SoulmateAU, running into someone on the enemy side who you suddenly feel an incredible Force given connection with would be prime angst material, and that first meeting happening during surprise close quarters combat where one hit another in the face doesn’t make it an unhealthy relationship once all is said and done. For another thing, to cast Rey as a victim there is to take away her personal agency, I think. For instance Rey is absolutely tempted by both the Dark Side and Kylo Ren, and rejects them every time. If you’re interpreting their relationship as an abusive romantic one, isn’t that Rey’s clear refusal to “go back to him”? Rey not only refuses to be with him, but is determined to face him down at every one of their confrontations. He’s around and a threat, but Rey didn’t risk any parts of the mission or anything to offer him additional chances that I can remember and while she felt their bond she was never actually forgiving to Kylo until casting Spare the Dying on him (likely more related to having felt Leia pass) and after his return to the light. With that in mind you could interpret it as a woman moving on with her life to the best of her ability after leaving an abuser, but being willing to forgive him once it’s clear that has genuinely changed (which Rey can tell cus the Force). So it doesn’t seem like she held out hope for him, like I said earlier, but rather was pleasantly surprised when he did reform. Which just brings us around to redemption being always possible, which is pretty much THE core theme of the Star Wars franchise because it’s how the bad guy loses in Episode 6. Darth Vader almost definitely had a hand in as many or more deaths as Kylo Ren did, but people aren’t upset about Luke forgiving an abusive parent.

This post has basically been a stream of consciousness for me, but I’ve wound up at this thought: It would’ve been better without the kiss, but it’s ultimately not as terrible as many people seem to think, even if like everything about this trilogy, and the prequel trilogy, and probably the OT too, could’ve been more clear and consistent on it’s message.

#star wars #rise of skywalker #Reylo

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