having a lot of thoughts right now at 4am about chay being ruthless
there’s a specific animorphs quote i’m thinking of:
"People don't understand the word ruthless. They think it means 'mean.' It's not about being mean. It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It's about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it." — Marco, The Reunion by K.A. Applegate
specifically the bit: It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B.
now, i dont think chay from season 1 is ruthless. but i very much see him as having the makings of it. chay has a very simple and direct approach to things; he sees something he wants, so he pursues it (he asks his idol for lessons their first meeting, he doesn’t let kim skip out on tutor lessons, he confesses twice because he had a homework goal and then a personal goal, he wants the truth so he confronts kim that same day, etc). and we see this theme of ‘chay has a goal, chay pursues goal’ most often with kim because they specifically foil each other in this. kim has a grand speech about making sacrifices to achieve your goals, but he’s stagnant between the world he was borne into and cant fully leave because of his brothers, vs the soft bright world he wants to be in but cant because he comes bearing blood. this directly contrasts with chay, who pursues his goals fullheartedly and recklessly
now, chay's not ruthless. not...yet. but there’s also these little...hints of a ruthlessly practical mindset to him. the most standout point for me in this regard was episode 1 when porsche is worried about his uncle. he’s sent arthee away, but he’s still planning “how do i get uncle out of trouble, and how do i maximize it?”
but chay? chay’s straight up like “uncle’s problems aren’t ours, lets just runaway to go live your dream of owning a bar on the beach”
i love this scene between porsche and chay so much. not only is really heartwarming, but i think it rly solidifies who they are as characters right off the bat. porsche is a caretaker. he takes care of everyone around him, whether he has an obligation to or not. but chay is fully ready to just leave their uncle behind. uncle interferes with brother’s and mine’s future plans? then no uncle in future plans. chay doesn’t even seem to mourn nor care that his uncle, one of his two caretakers left, is just gone from his life after ep1. like...that’s a really cold assessment for a teenager to make about one of his two living family members (that he knows of)
for me, what holds chay back from tipping into any sort of ruthless so far is mostly his naivety. not innocence (chay is not innocent yes i am still fighting on this hill), but he has certain expectations of the world that don’t necessarily match what the world is. to me, this shows most clearly when he sees warning flags (”...how do you know i have a brother?”) but is fully willing to ignore them in favor of pursuing his original goal(s) instead of taking the warning flags into account. and since he doesn’t plan for them, when some of those flags grow into actual problems, they really trip him up in ways he’s not prepared to handle. but he doesn’t have that any more at the end of season 1
if we do get a second season, i would be v curious to see where chay’s character develops. im apparently the outlier lol, but i actually really love where kim and chay ended in s1. they were on a trajectory to crash in the middle and instead they missed and landed where the other started. kim, the kid running away from the things he’s always wanted, puts himself out there with zero expectation or surety that chay will reach back. chay lingers over the video, unsure if he wants to respond to it or block it, so he throws his phone away to deal with it another time. and it’d just be really interesting to see how these two characters would react following the same trajectory the other one originally did, but coming at it with a very different background/development. and for chay specifically, i would just rly love to see how his ep1 “lets just abandon uncle to the debtors and go live our dreams on a beach” hints might come back/come into play in a mafia world setting
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Shou's selflessness issues got to be his fatal flaw and it's literally so funny to me cuz it's not the stereotypical "I'm a hero i should die for all the strangers i dont even know" or smthing so noble and beautiful like that nooooo. It's the way he's so content with all the shit he's been thru, the way he just rolls with the punches, makes peace with the difficulties, and even if he ever decides to make a change it's never really "this is bad for me so it must change" it's just the " im responsible for this this is something i should do", his standards for what he deserves and what he doesn't has long since been kind of fucked up by how little anyone made effort to keep his best interests in mind, he has been bossed around and pushed into corners and limits over and over without a choice, he has never been truly seen and understood and taken seriously, and he ended up ignoring his own feelings for the sake of doing things he believed he had to do even if he never wanted to.
Shou never wanted to fight his father, he neved wanted to face that fear, he never wanted his father to be taken away from him in any way, but he believed that he had to fight because he has powers, he has to do things this way because it's what his father deserves, because Shou has this brilliant disfigured sense of morality that only he can understand where hurting everyone and himself to a degree is excused as long as his father gets what he deserves, it's a duty! a responsibility! and the only way he knew how to do things, because no one has ever told him that it's ok to not face all of this, it's ok to escape when it gets bad, to think of yourself, to run away.
And it's the same sense of selflessness that doesn't allow him to think too hardly of something he has with someone, he's so ready to look past red flags as long as he's content, and he's so .. easily contented ... he is genuinely so forgiving and rarely holds grudges, it's not something he works on, it's something that comes naturally, especially when he really loves, but also in general regards to almost anyone and everything. He may get hurt but he forgets, let him love and he'll forgive, he's just simple like that, there is not much more to it. And it only gets worse when his sharp senses of intuition and perception and survival instinct just get yeeted outta the window when he gets attached.
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📽 action!: rank all six of the films (or three if you're a hater)
Answers for this LotR ask-game.
Ahh okay so at this point I have to confess something terrible: I still have not seen the third Hobbit movie. I'm sorry! I just couldn't do it. The fuckery of it all, especially in the second movie with Mirkwood and Thranduil and Legolas ("a lowly Silvan elf" what the FUCK what the fuck PJ WHAT THE FUCK), was just too much for me. Character-assassination is one thing, and I thought after Denethor I knew what I was going to be getting with Thranduil but NOPE! It was literal world building assassination and I just CANNOT.
Don't get me wrong, Lee Pace did an amazing job and actually seeing Mirkwood was amazing and it was genuinely delightful to see Orlando put those ears on again; but the OuTrAgE that filled my heart at the yeet-ing of what minimal canon we even have for the Mirkwood elves was just intolerable, and while I did mean to go see it, really I did, I just...couldn't actually get the motivation to go before it was out of theatres. I've heard the EE are better (less studio fuckery) so I'll watch them someday! Honest! I just...haven't. yet.
And as to the Lord of the Rings trilogy...man, I don't even know how to do this. In terms of which is the best film, or in terms of which one I enjoy watching most, or in terms of which on hits me in the heart hardest or...? I don't know if I can objectively rank my feelings about these movies even in my own brain because RotK ends with Into the West and I have FeelingsTM about the Undying Lands and Sea Longing okay. So the last scene of RotK at the Grey Havens is a fucking spear through the heart every time and I can't even describe the knot of feelings it engenders, and I think overall TTT may be my favorite but also it has Plot Issues that piss me off even more than the Plot Issues in RotK I think,...yeah, we're going to do this in terms of Film Crafting rather than personal favorites because I'm having too many feelings lmao. So! In order of most-well-done-movie to least:
Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
Return Of The King
The Desolation of Smaug
An Unexpected Journey
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when it comes to my Bleach/Silmarillion crossover where Maeglin dies, loses his memories and falls into Hueco Mundo (subsequently becoming a hollow)– one of the fun things to come up with is what the FUCK is going on in Arda while Maeglin is gone.
Of course, the second age and third age go as planned, the lord of the rings happens unchanged, because Middle Earth is divorced from the dead. Elves reembody into Aman, not Middle Earth and so no one in ME has any idea that Maeglin is lost to Arda (nor would this fact really change,,, any events).
But in Aman? Tolkien doesn't really talk about what's going on in Aman. In that way it's sort of a blank slate because– are the Feanorian followers allowed to leave the Halls and if they are, how are they settling into society? Who are they giving their loyalty to? Has the system of government changed over the years? What are Teleri-Noldo relations like, several Ages after the First Kinslaying? What is the balance of authority and power like with so many kings, queens and lords stuffed into one land? Who has reembodied and who refuses? How does the absence of well known figures (Finwë, Míriel, Fëanáro and his sons, Celebrimbor, Maeglin, entire generations preceding Finwë) shape politics and healing? Who forgives, who tries to forget, and who holds onto their grudges?
I imagine that at first, no one is looking for Maeglin. Why would they? He just betrayed Gondolin and caused the deaths of a good chunk of people. Those newly-dead aren't going to want to even look at him. Those that survived and sail to Valinor (like Idril) are glad to not see him among the reembodied. They aren't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth and ask questions.
The only ones who would want Maeglin back are his parents.
On the topic of Eöl, I personally find it more interesting if he wasn't evil and his and Aredhel's relationship was happy and healthy for a time. The progression of a paranoid, traumatized parent and husband trying his best to what Eöl ended up doing just. makes a bit more sense to me, especially because I keep the bit of canon where elves can't have kids accidentally. I imagine Eöl passes through the Halls in a matter of decades instead of centuries, not because he is fast to heal, but because being in the domain and under the mercy of a Vala is doing the opposite of helping him. And since he's out before Gondolin falls and lives in solitude, he even doesn't know that Maeglin has died until Aredhel reembodies and personally hunts him down to interrogate him on whether his curse (his prophecy) consigned their son to fading.
It didn't. (With where their son is now, it might have been kinder if it had.)
On Aredhel's end: she searched for her son for years within the Halls before Námo came to her, troubled, and told her that Maeglin is not in his Halls, nor reembodied in Aman, nor wandering Middle Earth– that by all accounts, Maeglin is not in Arda at all. So her son is gone, and her brother is too upset to see it, and Gondolin's people hate him enough that they would celebrate this, and when Aredhel reembodies, her niece tells her she is glad that Aredhel is freed from being bound to evil (her husband) and having borne evil (her son). Her mother embraces her but cannot forgive her for leaving her, her father sees the daughter she was and not the daughter she is, and her other brothers think she grieves having been controlled and misled. No one in her family knows her son and husband as anything but a traitor and her killer– no one in her family knows her as she is now, the Aredhel who left Gondolin and courted a elf who carried grief entangled in his every step in the dark, beautiful forest he claimed as a home. Who lived there of her own free will and had a son of her own free will, and loved them, for all that it ended horribly.
Aredhel has been mistranslated her entire life. She has borne it with what little forgiveness she has. She finds, now, she can bear it no longer.
As time goes on, some members of the family that never met him nearly forget Maeglin ever existed. Reembodied elves of Gondolin write histories of their city and Aredhel stops visiting Tirion entirely for all the stares she receives. There is still no understanding of Aredhel among the Nolofinwions for all their love and she tires of it quicker and quicker. She ends up repairing and renewing her marriage to Eöl (there is much Aredhel can forgive for understanding) and it is not the same as before everything fell apart, but it is theirs.
Maeglin will be gone six Ages before his parents succeed in calling him home. He'll be different too, older, sharper, traumatized, his body strange, but still their child.
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Before the DLC drops I'd like to say my fav part of the base postgame is def the epilogue story bit of Team Star bosses...
I'm biased towards Team Star (I love them a lot ok) but it's just heartwarming to see them trying to adapt to their school again and get along with other students despite formerly being in a ""villain"" team (also because...they WERE bullying victims, remember)
And it's not like a typical cliche story of the crowds bowing down to the rebel team after they got called out for it. It's Team Star who were the ones standing on their own feet and making an effort /by themselves/ to fit in with everyone despite the scars they have gotten (and may have caused) from the past in the very same school... Building that courage is NOT an easy feat, after all... 🥲
Idk. I'm just glad this story existed and they were given a proper happy ending like this... 😭 And the fact that such a topic is handled in Pokemon at all haha
PS. Eri is such a big sis to everyone I love her oh my god
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