#i thought the whole estranged brothers storyline fit really well | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 4 years

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You know... i haven't read the original teen titans but i saw the cartoon, i remember i thought dick and beast boy should have a close relationship, as brothers or something like that, but never happened in the show, it was like that in the comics?

Hmm, yes and no? I mean, there have definitely been times in the comics where Gar and Dick were pretty close, particularly in the NTT era where the core team was Dick, Raven, Vic, Gar, Kory and Donna. But I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as ever having been….like, they were never the closest of the bunch, for lack of a better phrasing? It wasn’t like they didn’t like each other, trust each other, or have one on one moments with varying degrees of emotional weight. Its more just like…..of the various team members, neither of them are like….the ones I would immediately associate with the other as having an especially close bond. Rather than just you know, being good friends and teammates.

I think the key thing is, both Dick and Gar at various points in the comics and different adaptations have very similar light-hearted and even goofy mannerisms and behaviors at times…..so it seems pretty natural for them to gravitate towards each other and be best friends or particularly brotherly. And I mean, its not hard to headcanon a time or place in which they do kinda sync up their prankster/jokester personalities and just goof off together.

But, that said……for most of the time period they were teammates, Dick was team leader and like….overall….more characterized as being pretty serious and feeling the weight of responsibility during that period in DC history. So as a result, I think they never quite matched up while on the team together, as like….as natural a fit as they might have been at other points in their lives.

I’ll always default to viewing Gar’s best bud/platonic soulmate/would totally be boyfriends if DC weren’t COWARDS, ahem, where was I…oh yeah, for me, that will pretty much always be Vic (Cyborg). During most of their time as NTT, Vic and Gar were like Dick and Roy often are in the comics, or like Dick and Wally were in the Young Justice cartoon.

Whereas Dick during the same periods typically spent most of his time with either Kory, as they were dating most of that period, or with Donna, as she was his oldest friend among that lineup, or with Joey, as the writers tended to put a particular emphasis on Dick and Joey growing close due to the existing rivalry and issues between Dick and Slade.

Which is also where another particular wrinkle comes in…..due to the time dilation effect that is later readers reading issues that took place over a period of months and years, like…in a pretty condensed period of time or just off of wiki summaries or in adaptations…..this tends to create kind of a skewed impression of how big a deal or how little a deal various story elements were…at the time.

What I mean by that is….pretty much everyone knows the general story of the Judas contract, and how Terra was secretly a mole for Slade the whole time and betrayed the team. But reading that in hindsight and in greatly condensed time frames doesn’t always capture the extent of how much the effects of the Judas Contract lingered at the time, if that makes sense?

And the thing was (at least in my impression from reading those comics and the years of aftermath as a kid)……the Judas Contract, for all that its upheld as a hugely iconic Titans story, isn’t often regarded as having as big of an impact as it did on the various characters involved. At the time of that story, like…..it was the Teen Titans version of the Dark Phoenix storyline. It was HUGE. The idea of a team member that readers had followed and rooted for over a period of years, just as the characters had related to her as a friend, a comrade in arms, someone they trusted with their life….turning out to have never cared about any of them all along, like, had gleefully plotted and planned for their deaths the whole time? That was pretty much unprecedented in superhero comics, at least to that degree.

So as much as thirty plus years later we tend to regard it and refer to it as an iconic, but singular story…..back then, it was a narrative well that was constantly being dipped into or referred back to or just kinda…hanging over everything like a constant presence.

Like, I talk a lot about how Dick was affected by his estrangement from Bruce at the time, his insecurities about not being adopted and being replaced by Jason, etc…as well as the responsibilities of leadership. But IMO its equally true that on top of all of that, a lot of how serious and driven he was during the NTT era and aftermath….like, it traces directly back to the Judas Contract. Because Terra’s betrayal was just…..none of the Titans of the time had ever really experienced anything quite like it, with the exception of Kory due to her past with her sister. And for Dick….a huge part of why Slade has always been viewed as Dick’s archnemesis in particular, rather than the Titans as a whole, even though Slade initially targeted all of them….

Like, that’s because Dick MADE Slade HIS archnemesis in particular. All the Titans were targeted, impacted by Slade’s actions and plans….but Dick made it personal between him and Slade in specific, because for Dick, it WAS personal. In his eyes, it was HIS team that Terra had infiltrated. It was HIS responsibility as team leader, to vet each member, to be sure that every one of them COULD trust the others to have their back.

Dick, I think, has always viewed the Judas Contract as his failure in particular (and I also think a large part of that has to do with him feeling that if he’d somehow maybe have given Terra more of a reason NOT to betray them, she might have sided with them instead of Slade….but that’s the danger of hindsight and not an expectation anyone could reasonably have - not that I think that’s ever stopped Dick from having it for himself).

And again, something that I’ve always felt deserves more focus in regards to Dick and Slade’s dynamic, is I think Dick has always been crucially aware that Slade only knows all the Batfam’s identities…because he knew Dick’s first. And he only ever knew Dick’s identity….because he got it from Terra, his mole. After Dick gave it to her, along with the rest of the Titans. Entrusting her with it, and by extension, everyone in connection with him.

But anyway, my point with that whole tangent is like….the Judas Contract was life-changing for all the Titans of the time, and Dick and Gar felt those changes more strongly than probably any of the others….given that Gar was her best friend on the team (or so he thought), and off-and-on love interest, and Dick was the team leader and felt responsible for them having been infiltrated and betrayed to that degree in the first place. It was hugely impacting on both of them as despite how they conduct themselves a lot of the time….you could very plainly see how both of them became more withdrawn, less trusting in the aftermath of it….because all the Titans got burned by Terra’s betrayal, but none moreso than Dick and Gar in specific.

And I think part of the fallout of all that is that ever since the Judas Contract, there was always this….awkwardness between Dick and Gar. It was never really a thing where either of them blamed the other for what happened with Terra, I don’t think - more just them both having a mutual awareness of how much what happened with Terra was constantly in the background of their minds, if that makes sense?

Like, the ghost of what happened there was kinda just always there in between them, even if it wasn’t actually either of their fault. Ever since then, Dick was always just slightly more reluctant to be the first one to Gar’s side when he was in trouble, not because he didn’t WANT to be, but because like…he kinda felt like it shouldn’t be him, or something like that. And Gar was always just a little more….cutting in his jokes to or about Dick, even though he almost always felt bad afterward, it was like an instinct, a kneejerk reaction. Like he blamed Dick even while knowing Dick wasn’t really to blame, and Dick wasn’t ever going to call him on it because Dick felt he SHOULD be blamed, and so it was just….messy.

So the end result is Gar and Dick were never like, each other’s first go-to guy, but also just, they were never as close after the Judas Contract as they were before it. And you always got this sense that they were both kinda aware of that, but neither really knew what to do about it, because the thing was, it was never either of their faults, so there wasn’t really anything that COULD be done about it. They were just the two closest to the damage the Judas Contract did to the team as a whole, so inevitably, their relationship was what caught the biggest fallout from the blast radius of that storyline, and ended up like, the biggest collateral damage to it.

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kylermalloy · 5 years

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My Official Unofficial Ranking of The Originals Seasons That Literally No One Asked For

So, these rankings turned out hilariously chronological. It’s not that I think each season just got progressively worse—it’s just that when I laid out the good things about each season, and the bad things that outweighed them... this is the order I ended up with.

MAJOR SPOILERS for The Originals ahead! Also, as a disclaimer: this is all opinion-based, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

5 - Season 5

So...I kind of hate the last season. Part of it is my bitterness about how the writers messed up the character dynamics, and part of it is amazement that the (mostly) same team of writers wrote the masterpiece that was season 1.

So, the overarching story for this season is...? “We’re making a spinoff with Hope next year so we have to get rid of all the characters who are close to her who don’t want to be in yet another dumb vampire show”? That’s my impression of the writers’ goals when they planned this season. Although there are a few pertinent themes about hatred and prejudice (the irony of the Nazi-esque bad guys opposing Klaus when Klaus himself had a Nazi-esque crusade back when he first showed up on TVD is not lost on me) none of the themes have a lasting impact. They’re not developed in a memorable way. We get these purist losers to serve as villains for the first half of the season, then they’re unceremoniously taken out after they’ve killed a sufficient amount of main characters.

Then the rest of the season is just...wheel-spinning. A game of hot potato as we speculate who’s going to die at the end.

Don’t get me wrong, there was some powerfully good stuff in this season. I fully support the ending, even though the majority of fans didn’t like it. I loved it. I thought it incredibly fitting for the show to end as it began—with Klaus and Elijah side by side. Facing death together as they faced life. Dying for Hope. Their family’s legacy.

HOWEVER. A few good moments at the end of the season doesn’t make up for all the crap the writers pulled throughout the season. They had NO RIGHT to kill Hayley. They had NO REASON to separate Elijah from the family—the entire show, basically—for over half the season, or to make him complicit in killing Hayley. And that darn time jump from season 4 to season 5 is just...I have no words. Klaus and Hope were jipped out of so much time together, just because the writers wanted a teenage Hope. So many sloppy decisions were made in this season, both storywise and character-wise. It really calls into question the writers’ understanding of the characters they’re writing. So much of this season undercut what the last four seasons of the show were working toward. And the regressions we see in this season have no lasting impact—like Klaus’s murder relapse, or his estrangement from Hope. They’re nothing more than cheap excuses to make the plot happen.

(Clearly I have feelings.)

What this boils down to is that the narrative in season 5 has no structure. It’s a patchwork of lazy storytelling and fanservice—a few good moments between characters we already know and love doesn’t excuse that. Although the series ended with a bang, it’s clear that this final season was nothing more than the scattered, picked-clean bones of the show I fell in love with.

4 - Season 4

So this season is much better in terms of plot—the story is tightly paced and clearly planned out.

The problem is that it’s boring.

The narrative that the writers presented this season required lots of moving around and doing things and characters talking to other characters, and hardly any of it was interesting. Klaus and Elijah spend most of the season separated in one way or another. Freya is separated from her family for a large part of the season, and I’ve only just recently rewatched the entire show—so I can definitively say that Hope and Elijah don’t have a single conversation in this whole season. Elijah, the one who first believed in and fought for Hope—before Klaus, before Hayley even, really—Elijah isn’t important enough to talk to Hope. Elijah gets shunted off to his dark arc mostly with Vincent—all to facilitate a completely unnecessary breakup with Hayley.

The one thing I have zero complaints about is Klope. Klaus and Hope were flawless in this season. They were everything I wanted. Klaus’s unsure parenting, his determination to make this change-for-his-daughter thing last, his SOFTNESS around her...that part of the season was stellar.

Klaus’s arc of healing his relationship with Marcel was also good. I don’t think it got enough screentime, and by the end of the season it wasn’t fully resolved, but I liked how it was actually addressed. (This show has a tendency to brush off Marcel sometimes)

The other thing I really appreciate about this season is that Klaus, the main character, wasn’t given a love interest this season. After his major love interest died the previous season, the writers did not try to give him a new one, or even try to pair him up with his baby mama. His relationship with his daughter was his main focus for the season, and it was beautiful.

So, season 4. Not as insulting as season 5 in terms of plot, but this plot...and this’ll surprise everyone...took too much focus. We spend more time learning about the Hollow this season than developing Mikaelson family relationships, and that’s honestly a crime. Any story that doesn’t develop the Mikaelson family dynamics is dead in the water.

3 - Season 3

At a glance, this season is awesome. I know a lot of hardcore fans liked it. I also know a lot of fans hated it. Me, I both hate it and love it. I think the idea they were trying to accomplish was a good one, but the cost? Very high, too high. The story, though it has great stakes, is actually quite shaky in places.

Personally, I never liked the Trinity storyline. The idea of the Originals facing their first sired was not interesting to me, especially when Tristan was boring, Lucien overstayed his welcome and became annoying, and Aurora turned out to be nothing beyond a silly soap opera plot device.

I did like the ending, though. Marcel finally reaching his last straw. Rising above his creator and finally showing us what would happen if the power dynamics were reversed. It’s sick and scary and exactly what I want from a monster soap opera.

But there’s a lot of things I don’t like. I don’t like that Cami was killed. Double-killed, actually. Davina’s arc was in complete shambles the entire season. Hope was out of focus for most of the season. And the werewolf drama that had caused Hayley so much grief last season wasn’t even background noise—it straight-up didn’t exist.

Like I said, I liked what the show was trying to do, but I think the writers chose an ending and forced it to happen instead of letting the pieces fall organically. There were probably some outside factors involved too, like the fear of not being renewed, actors wanting to leave, etc. My personal theory is that, out of worry that season 3 would be the final season, the writers killed Cami in an attempt to push Klaus to glorious redemption mode (don’t even get me started on how dirty they did Cami’s arc) thus giving us the conflicting death/vampirism/permadeath Cami arc in the back half. Which makes sense—but it’s still messy from a storytelling perspective.

But despite all that complaining, there were some things I truly loved about this season. The Klelijah rebuild was solid, organic, and completely earned. They began in a fractured place, seemingly beyond repair, then forced to band together in the face of threats, and ended the season possibly closer than they’ve ever been. (their hug in the finale still messes me up, y’all. I’m weak!)

Elijah got some truly interesting stories this year. While Tristan and the Strix were both duds, I actually really enjoyed Elijah’s relationship with Aya. And his relationship with Freya! Let’s be real, season 3 was really the season of Freylijah. As weird and incestuous as the Mikaelsons come off sometimes, Freya and Elijah are the most married. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and give a shoutout to Freya altogether. A hitherto unexplored Mikaelson with a sketchy-at-best history with her brothers moves into their house full-time? This could have been an epic disaster, or at the very least could have turned Freya into Rebekah 2.0—but somehow neither happened. Freya held her own, and her addition worked very nicely.

*deep breath* I have so much to say.

2 - Season 2

(Yes this list is shaping up exactly how you think it is!) Okay. I’ve got so much love for this season, even though parts of it drive me up the wall.

I’ll start with the positives: the family feels. Almost every part of the family drama hit home. The resurrections of Finn, Kol, Mikael, Esther, and the surprise introduction of Ansel were all superb ideas, storywise. The recasts of Kol, Finn, and Esther (and eventually Rebekah too!) all worked VERY well—a special shoutout to DSharman for making me truly care about Kol for the first time! And having an old family member as the main villain works SO well for this show. Dahlia was really awesome—and in the end, almost underutilized. But Freya! The addition of Freya to the family brought forth a whole new tidal wave of emotions.

And do I even need to say it? Klope, y’all. They just give me all the feels. The midseason finale will always have a special place in my heart.

That’s not to say I don’t have my problems with this season. The narrative structure comes from a very bold place—in typical TVD fashion, the terrible threats we started out fearing are soon rendered obsolete by this much huger looming threat. Alliances are formed, backs are stabbed, hearts are broken, and the end of the season leaves us and the characters picking up pieces of our hearts off the floor.

I very much like the idea that Klaus, obsessively paranoid and fearful, would turn on everyone he loves to protect his child. However, I don’t think the necessary steps were taken in the narrative for us to actually reach that point. There was too much werewolf drama—for Hayley to care about them so much, shouldn’t we know more than three of them by name? And speaking of Hayley, I kind of hated the back half of her arc. As she ascends to werewolf queen, she loses all the braincells that got her this far and decides to trust Jackson and her new family over the Mikaelsons, the oldest, most ruthless and feared supernatural beings in the world. Huh?

Altogether, I just don’t think Elijah, Rebekah, and Hayley all turning on Klaus was well-deserved in the writing—especially considering how well they all worked together in the beginning of the season. I think it was another case of the writers establishing an endpoint far ahead of time, then pushing all the characters and events to fit their plan. Still, I liked this season a lot. Not as sloppy as season 3, but still not as masterful as season 1. And without further ado...

1 - Season 1

Here it is! The masterpiece. My baby. The year of television I can rewatch at any time and enjoy so thoroughly I forget the other million times I’ve seen it. And I can wax poetic about it for days, much to the dismay of my followers.

I’ve heard some people—fans, even—call season 1 unfocused or disorganized, cluttered, still figuring itself out...but I disagree very strongly. Since TO is a spinoff, and the three main characters were already well-established by the writers (well, as consistent as the writing on TVD ever was) I never saw TO as a show that had to figure itself out. It knew who its characters were, it knew exactly what it was trying to do, and it did exactly that. It just was never what the audience expected, and it took a storytelling route that we as viewers aren’t quite used to.

This show took on the monumental task of trying to redeem one of the biggest, baddest fantasy villains on television. A thousand year old mass murderer who had long since lost any drops of humanity. A tortured soul, sure, who’d made a few cursory steps toward semi-goodness, but still damaged beyond repair...or so we think.

Klaus’s redemption comes through this child that he fathers. But it doesn’t come for free. I often say that Klaus is both the protagonist and the antagonist of season 1, because no one is working harder against his betterment than he is. We as viewers have to learn quickly that Klaus accomplishing his goals is not necessarily a good thing. We expect his struggle with Marcel to end in triumph at the season finale, because that’s what generally happens with pilot plotlines. But instead, Klaus wins the Quarter in less than eight episodes, and his rule falls apart multiple times before the season ends. (I’m especially grateful for Marcel’s character not falling into the trope of “Klaus created a monster who ended up being worse than he is!” because that’s stupid— and why Lucien, who does fall into that category, fell so flat for me. It just doesn’t work with a character like Klaus. Nobody out-monsters him.) We expect him to get everything he wanted—because he’s the main character and things work out in the end, right? No. The entire season is a slap-in-the-face wake up call for Klaus. He can’t be worthy of this child that he can’t deny he wants unless he changes who he fundamentally is. He expects to rule the Quarter through his sleazy condescension and his larger-than-life threats, but he finds himself challenged and even overpowered at every corner. He expects to mistreat his sister, walk over her and rage at her like he always does, and ultimately win her inevitable forgiveness—but she can’t take it anymore, and she leaves him.

He expects to be able to control everyone around him, placing himself at the center of everyone’s universe, and that ought to create a suitable environment for his child to grow up in. But when she’s born, he can’t even keep her safe on her first day of life. And that’s when he realizes he can’t do this anymore. Despite being a master strategizer, this can’t be how Klaus lives and acts as a father. The season finale is a beautiful culmination of this realization, as he does what he’s never quite been able to do, and trusts the people around him—release control.

Of course, this realization isn’t the one-and-done redemption story. The walk back is long and arduous and full of setbacks, as the subsequent seasons prove. Klaus’s old temperaments get the better of him over and over and over again. He learns and unlearns and learns again. And I could just go on and on about how much I love this season.

Now, after all that gushing, I still don’t know how much of the season was planned, or if outside forces (actor contracts, availability, etc.) had a hand in shaping the story, but either by tight plotting or happy coincidence, the stars aligned and this season is darn near perfect.

There are definitely flaws and shortcomings, but the overall story is just so good that I can easily overlook them. Catapulting off TVD, which relied so heavily on shallow drama, TO did what most spinoffs can never do, and surpassed their parent show. This first season? It’s to die for.

(I realize this was far too long, and I don’t really care. I’m aware of my inability to move on from shows that have ended, and I also do not care.) I’d love to hear thoughts, discussions, opinions, anything!

#the originals #original groupies #another example of ‘why we shouldn’t let kyler nightblog’#i get incredibly long winded and emotional #i always say tired-me is what drunk-me would act like (if i ever got drunk)#there’s so much i didn’t even talk about #this show is just so darn BUSY #kylerrambles #also yes I am still working on rankings of spn episodes #i just had to get this out first #rankings

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