#it's not even really an issue of the whole 'protagonists can be bad guys/antagonists can be good guys' thing (ex. death note)

[mihai-florescu]

Putting a message i sent earlier under a read more, it has some thoughts ive expressed before tho. ES, of course

My thoughts as an EichiP... i view ! and !! as different stories in the way they're approached tbh, what i fell in love with enstars for was the character driven storytelling of one event seen through different perspectives, where you see the antagonist in one perspective become a protagonist in another story and can empathize with the entire cast like this. I fell in love with eichi's story of second chances, getting what you want and regretting your actions in the process, redemption, desperation, overcoming fate and asserting one's self into the story, saving a school in a dying industry that saved your life by giving you a dream; i consider it an arc fulfilling to the reader at the end of ! era. But we still had to continue... and it's not like we didnt get inklings of eichi's dreams of idol utopia, the idol soldier idea goes back to main story 1, but !! loses the charm of the original series through expanding the worldbuilding so much and shifting to a plot driven story that opens 10 cans of worms instead of offering resolutions. There's not really room to breathe if the stakes just keep getting higher and higher...

As for the colonisation plotline, it's been here since the beginning of ES2. The SS arc makes it obvious, but i remember even before, the talks about ES taking over from local businesses, trying to be seen as the standard, it was always the direction ensemble square as an institution would take. But the "antagonist in one story, protagonist in another" approach doesnt work anymore with such subjects. The guys responsible for this are your coworkers you share dorms with. I read the stories but cant empathize anymore, so i've been feeling disconnected from eichi for a while. I see enstars with eichi at its core but i didnt care for his center event, i read it, didnt like the ending, and overall felt off. Eichi becoming the villain of ! to attone for the war kind of loses significance if a year later he is a cartoon villain idol colonialist you can't even sympathize with anymore because of the magnitude of events. However i do think !! has done good things for some characters pushing them further or developing them in a way ! didnt. But for others...

I also have my issues with sci fi elements becoming the norm, even taken metaphorically or as hyperboles, when one of the central themes i love about enstars is humanity. Then again, i am a war era fan that relied on manipulating human desires and perceptions, and the fact that there were no monsters or gods, just humans framed as such, playing on people's fears and beliefs, it's a bit jarring to me to have them introduce AIs forming from escaped comatose brains (im minimizing the switch climax rn, i didnt even hate it as a whole, just this resolution im unhappy with)

It also feels like we've lost some of the meta aspects of the writing i liked, a certain awareness of being characters in a story and there being an audience. But im still struggling to word my thoughts on this matter. I felt it present in main story 2, even if it annoyed me at parts in its obviousness ("good thing we're not protagonists, no one would want to read about us" youre right aira you are not interesting to me. And yet i'll read your story to try and empathize nevertheless. I have other thoughts on aira too, perhaps for another time). I wish we explored a bit more what it means to no longer be the central protagonist, from trickstar's perspective...and brought back the successors topic. But i havent read every ts story yet so i'd be foolish to complain before really making sure i've checked everything. To me ! ended satisfyingly with room left for elaborations and imagination, but i dont feel like !!'s ending is really ending anything at all. Not necessarily bad since it's not like the game is shutting down, but overwhelming worldbuilding wise while underwhelming character wise...

Let's see... im not sure how to end this. Just a bit of a stream of consciousness as a ! fan who still loves enstars despite my critiques. Mainly, well, no one's gonna take away the stories that already exist that i do love and impacted my life greatly. And i do think !! had some really good things too it brought, or at least stories i hold dear too. Change is scary and i don't think it's always for the best, but it's also fun to see where it goes next...

#enstars

[kisskissgotohell]

i just wanna point out that, like. it's okay to disagree with the main character. just because they're the pov of the story doesn't mean they're infallible or that their word is law? you can like that character that tried to kill the mc. you can think the mc made the wrong choice. you can forgive things that the mc would never forgive, or choose not to forgive things that the mc does, because you're not the main character. you are the reader of the story, and just because you can't change it (and it's not the author's responsibility to capitulate to fans) doesn't mean you can't form your own opinions about it. it's fictional! that's the point! have fun with it!!

#sometimes.... main characters....... can be wrong #of course authors will generally try and make you like or agree with the mc (in some way at the very least) but like. #even the most perfect 'good guys' have flaws or else it's not usually a very well written story. and it's okay to acknowledge that! #it's not even really an issue of the whole 'protagonists can be bad guys/antagonists can be good guys' thing (ex. death note) #but like. even if you 100% root for the mc and think they're totally in the right you can still..... like the character that betrayed them? #nothing you say or think about them will make them NOT betray the mc in canon. so why does it matter if you like them despite it? #it's fiction - you can like multiple parts of the story simultaneously. it's okay. i give you permission. #on a similar note. it's okay for people to have different opinions about the same thing #to continue the analogy: maybe your friend doesn't forgive that guy for the betrayal but you do. that's great! #everyone can have an opinion about that guy and just bc someone disagrees with you doesn't mean you can harass them to change their mind. #while im down here #sorry about all this. im procrastinating on a project and ill do anything to stop thinking abt it so im thinking abt this instead #take death note. i do NOT agree with light but i also don't necessarily agree with L either. and i like both of them! #light HATES L and yet he's one of my favorite characters. i hate everything light does and yet i really enjoy reading from his pov. #its not black and white! #have opinions! change them after two days or think about the same blorbo for years! critical thinking and personal enjoyment can coexist! #anyways.

[wanderingswampbeast]

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

#dnd #dnd lore #rant post #it’s also incredibly funny to me that the duergar are a near exact copy of the drow (but with dwarves) #and they somehow manage to be more interesting than the drow

[thegeminisage]

i decided to make a list of 15 of my favorite plot devices

i think they're mostly in order but all things are subject to change. time to explain my passions

1. asexuals - self-explanatory. the best number one joy of all time is when there is an asexual person, canonically, and not just in my mind palace. so far no show has managed to do this except fucking shadowhunters (and bojack horseman ig but it's not my thing). i know there are people out there who can write way better than the shadowhunters writing room but i don't know why they aren't getting on this. tick tock. example: raphael shadowhunters

2. amnesia - notably different from dementia, which is depressing and bad (thinking about you, dean winchester). amnesia is only good because eventually they get it back. the best thing about amnesia is that it shows you who your Little Guy (gender neutral) is with everything stripped away from them including their sense of self. do they still go for the same kind of coffee? do they still click with the same people they used to love? can they still fight? what do they stand for? it's very rewarding when your little guy acts the same way without knowing why. it's also especially cool for action heroes bc they'll still be able to win a fight and it's like wow <3 fight scenes with emotional stakes!! also i love that it gives us a mystery to solve. sometimes a partially amnesiac character is amnesiac because they did a terrible crime. and they've got to solve it while accidentally working against their past self. fun! examples: fang from ff13. wolverine. why, who did you think i was going to use

3. brainwashing - for the same reasons as amnesia. it's the same concept: take away everything and who is your little guy? the real little guy is in there and they are working so hard to get out. also they will be sooo sad about all the crimes they did later. example: fenris dragon age. d'avin killjoys. and okay fine one other guy we're not talking about

4. enemies to lovers - what's better than two people wanting to murder each other until they don't......always a good side of bickering with this as well. main draw tho is the process of simply two people getting to know one another in the way that you can tell strangers things you can't tell your friends. it's more work to love someone when you hate them and with more work comes a better reward. also, sexual tension. example: so many. fenris/hawke. fenris/anders. botw link/zelda. john/aeryn. bonnie and damon if the cw weren't cowards and i don't even like damon i think he's unforgivably horrible (derogatory)

5. monster under the bed character - i don't know if this has a real name. it's like the One Guy (again, gender neutral) who has shaped the protagonist's whole life who is threat number one in any given situation. Primal Fear of this guy and all they represent is similar to how little kids are scared of the monster under the bed hence the name. it's not JUST an arch enemy or an antagonist it's like. the only enemy that matters. not a bad guy but THE bad guy. if you can boil someone's issues down and stuff them all into a single person and then also make that person scary. and then also they can fight!! fuck yeah fight scenes!!! if you're really lucky this will overlap with either somebody's parent or somebody's ex. examples: AUGH SO MANY. for dean winchester it's yellow eyes. for sam winchester it's lucifer. for fenris it's danarius. for jace wayland it's valentine. for dutch killjoys it's khlyen. for anakin skywalker it's palpatine. for derek hale it's kate argent. going nuts just thinking about it

6. reluctant assassins - crucially if they don't care about being assassins it doesn't work for me (sorry kassandra asscreed). i went into this in more detail here but your assassin simply Must be compromised in some way so they can regret all their little crimes later. otherwise what's the point?? this overlaps so thoroughly with brainwashed iedk if it should count as its own entry but whatever. examples: fenris dragon age. dutch killjoys. d'avin killjoys. elliot leverage. and the other one

7. two-person love triangle - this is a very specific sub-example of secret identities in general which ARE good except they're usually in superhero media and i am really just so totally fucking over the entire CONCEPT of superheroes. anyway it's when one person has a secret identity and the other person forms a relationship with their "real" identity and their "secret" one. and then they feel conflicted about loving two people at once and having to choose but SURPRISE it's the same person! i like this because it has anti love triangle energy. lots of romantic tension and none of the dumb fucking YA bullshit. (apologies to YA.) example: arthur and merlin (who is also "emrys" at least in fanfic)

8. 4th wall shit - when the piece of media is in your house with you. i don't feel i need to clarify further than this because dr gaster is probably spying on me as we speak. examples: everything toby fox has ever made. s*pernatural, sometimes. i also had a deeply haunted experience with final fantasy x.

9. last guy (gender neutral) standing - part of a team or group that got tragically mcmurder prior to the start of the story and this person is so terribly sad about it. crucially this has to be a side character whose relationships with dead people are more important than or equally important to their relationships with the current living cast members. character deaths you almost agree with because then at least they can be with their fallen buds. examples: auron from ffx, noel from ffxiii

10. immortal characters - for the same reasons as above but also they CAN'T DIE EVER so they don't even have that to look forward to. also sometimes they wind up being science experiments. examples: jesse turner from @cambionverse (sorry jesse)

11. evil doppelganger - usually this is in video games where they just take the sprite or the polygons and recolor them to be black but also you have some mirrorverse/au shit going on sometimes and then there's evil twins, and shapeshifters, and clones...i love when everybody gets tricked into thinking somebody is doing crimes but actually theyre just out here and it's their evil double causing problems on purpose and not even being the one to go to jail forever because of it. also, when the evil double has mind-reading powers or whatever b/s to 1. make them a better trickster 2. to make them better at precision-point roasting of whomstever they look like. also acceptable: when you little guy just suddenly turns fucking evil and/or gets possessed and you have to cure them to get them back. idk maybe that should go under brainwashing. examples: dutch and aneela. link and dark link. zelda and the puppet. soulless sam. demon dean. hullen johnny.

12. fire powers - WHO doesn't love a little arson...i feel like this is the same concept behind werewolves which boils down to "fear of anger" bc with anger comes the loss of control and the devastating fallout... your fire guy (gender neutral but idk any fire girls) has to have a lot of self control or they'll fuck everybody up. they're very dangerous! not unlike assassins. also, fire is pretty. bonus if they have done crimes before either on purpose or on accident. examples: jesse turner again, roy mustang aka the OG fireguy, prince zuko

13. big damn reunion - when two people are split up with little to no chance of ever seeing each other again and then they do anyway. this is why i'm never mad when they bring characters back from the dead. examples: i'm actually totally blanking on these, i feel like it tends to happen in fic so much more often. also i've been writing this list awhile

14. time travel - i love! time travel! i love when people see an apocalyptic future and go back and fix it (chrono trigger, ff13). i love when there's a stable loop (tears of the kingdom) or a paradox (song of storms in ocarina of time). i love visits to the ancient past (skyward sword). i love when there's just an actual fucking timeloop (s*pernatural). it's really good!!! examples: oops i just listed them all

15. body swap - last but not least i think it is so fun when two people wind up living each other's lives. it's more fun in tv when people get to switch which character theyre playing but it's good in any form because what a way to get to know someone and also the endless potential for shenanigans. examples: dreamless (webcomic), your name, various episodes of tv shows many of which are bad (s*pernatural's was extremely bad).

ok, that's the list. originally it was 10, then 13, then 15, so i think i'd better stop here.

#personal #liz loves writing #i guess #it's stupid to post this at midnight but if i stick it in my drafts for later i'll never see it again #i'm mostly talking to myself anyway lol

[goingrampant]

The Boys Marketing

Similar to issues surrounding The Hunger Games as a profitable franchise, the Amazon series The Boys critiques the excesses of modern capitalism and then Amazon reproduces them in marketing The Boys merchandise. There are numerous toys, T-shirts, and costumes paying homage to the various characters as well as general series logos stamped on whatever they can sell. In some cases, the satirical nature of a framework glorifying these awful figures is retained, but some are more ambiguous. The use of the character Stormfront as a Nazi antagonist serves to clarify the satirical nature of some of these products, but there also appears to be an active effort to obscure her nature as a Nazi to make her more marketable.

When it comes to depictions of The Boys, the protagonists, the merchandise accurately captures the sentiment of rebellion against Vought as an evil capitalist organization. We can critique this at a meta level--Amazon selling "fight capitalism" merch to make money from a "fight capitalism" show subverts the point of a "fight capitalism" show--but it is, at least, consistent with the message of the show.

Things get rockier when it comes to depictions of bad guys who act as part of the evil capitalist organization.

The most overt satirical product they have, in my opinion, is the "Brave Maeve" critique of rainbow washing:

The use of the rainbow-washed Claddagh makes it clear to any queer people what's being invoked here, and it has a very sneering tone at the whole concept--true to the show's satirical nature.

The Homelander merchandise presentation is largely ambiguous in nature, marketing both to people who appreciate him as a villain and conservatives who like him as a character they can relate to: a conservative American patriot just trying to stumble his way through life.

This Homelander costume is completely neutral. Someone might buy it because they like villains and want to portray a horrible person. Or, maybe a MAGA type would buy it because they identify with the figure as a beleaguered hard-right American just trying to keep America great, like the fellow who wore this costume at the Million MAGA March (2020-11-14 demonstration by conspiracy theorists claiming Trump won the election and Biden stole it).

In this Homelander and Stormfront shirt, the use of Stormfront as an obviously evil Nazi antagonist clarifies the satirical nature of the image:

You'd be hard-pressed to find any actual American fascists who like the vibe of this shirt. It is overtly about the show's villains and reads like it should be worn by people who like villains and/or the critique of American nationalism as equivalent to Nazism. I think even actual Nazis would be turned off by how obviously evil the Nazi character looks. (TBH, they were already alienated by the casting of Jewish actress Aya Cash, in the tradition of Colonel Klink.)

On the other hand, this shirt just looks like edgy patriotic fashion favored by conservatives. Even the metallic text lacks the hammy villain tone of the "Homelander & Stormfront" shirt and just looks vaguely intimidating in-line with such fashion. It would be really easy for a hard-right Homelander fanboy to wear this shirt unironically, in full support of Homelander as a patriotic figure. It could be said that this shirt was perhaps designed with satirical intent, but this is not clear at all from its presentation. In context, it looks like Amazon wanted to market to some of its known consumer demographic: hard-right unironic Homelander fans.

Meanwhile, on the official Gen V merchandise page, the lead actors simultaneously act as satirical figures hawking merchandise like the wacky capitalist institution the show criticizes and are the lead actors hawking merchandise for the capitalist institution producing the show:

Self-aware irony only goes so far.

In the show, Dawn of the Seven (a spoof of Justice League with elements of The Avengers) is used to criticize superhero movies in our universe (e.g. they're tropey, can be sexist, have questionable themes, etc.). In Amazon's merchandise, it's used to unironically market the superhero figures as these cool characters.

Is this a critique of Homelander or marketing at all? I'd argue no. It is unironic pro-Homelander, pro-marketing, pro-consumerism, and pro-superhero-fandom theming to appeal to the lowest common denominator of fan, likely to be a conservative fan of Homelander.

The worst part of this is with the use of season two's Girls Get It Done, a critique of superhero movies (particularly Avengers: Endgame) pandering to women with an all-woman team-up that purports to be feminist but doesn't back it up with any actual feminist writing surrounding it or understanding what women want past a simplistic disingenuous argument that women are better than men. The three female superheroes of the Seven--Starlight, Queen Maeve, and Stormfront--are arbitrarily teamed up and paraded around as a faux-feminist marketing gimmick. This is a clear satirical element in the show. However, the Amazon merchandise uses it unironically as a woman-targeted gimmick for the show's female fans.

It is weird as hell that someone thought this piece of satire depicting a literal Nazi antagonist would make a good "girl power" piece marketed to women. Again, possible satirical intent is nerfed by unironic capitalistic greed.

Let's talk about Stormfront. She's a likable villain, and it's fairly reasonable to sell merchandise representing the figure as a villain. Her only T-shirts are the ones I've posted above. "Homelander & Stormfront" effectively depicts her as a villain in a critique of American fascism. However, "Girls Get It Done" is ambiguous in the manner of the Homelander shirt that seemingly panders to conservative unironic Homelander fans. Stormfront is just there, alongside two heroic figures, looking cool alongside them. You'd have to watch the show to know she's a villain.

And here's another thing: her Nazi signifiers are all obscured. Her arm bands are seen from a weird angle and somewhat blocked by Queen Maeve; her imperial eagle belt buckle is hidden in artificially generated shadow, and she's not printed in a high-enough resolution to see her swastika fabric pattern. All that's left is her skinhead-evocative Skrillex hair, which is far from overt. Skrillex isn't a Nazi, after all. Amazon essentially did the same sort of thing they did with the Billy Butcher merchandise in censoring the swear words to make them friendlier wear around in public and removed hate symbols from a character who is innately a political figure as a means of critiquing racial hatred in America. In the process, they made a Nazi more palatable without the corresponding political critique.

The one other way they marketed Stormfront merchandise was with a limited-edition collection of themed Nike sneakers, available only through sweepstakes. Several of the main heroes and villains in season two got their own sneaker color theme, including Stormfront (top right).

Here, Stormfront's Nazi crap is retained with an allusion to her belt buckle--the Nazi imperial eagle--printed on the side under the swoosh. Other characters get their own symbols in the same general area, so it's in theme with the others but also questionable given its authentic Nazi imagery in absent of a context of critiquing modern America. People are expected to just don Nazi imagery as fans of the show. The Homelander, A-Train, Black Noir, and Kimiko sneakers are decorated with blood imagery, at least signalling "edgy show", but Stormfront's are without even that limited context. (Please do not take this as endorsement of people harassing Aya Cash for playing a Nazi. It's okay to portray a Nazi as an actor on a television show, just not out of context in the real world like this.)

The grey portion at the toe resembles Stormfront's arm bands and may, like the arm bands, depict a desaturated American flag like that worn by American conservatives. In the context of the show, this is used to critique American conservatives as fascist and embracing Nazism. Removed from context, it would suffer the same problem as the Homelander shirt aping conservative fashion.

The decision to make Stormfront's sneakers dark with white laces is another interesting choice. Neo-Nazis often signal to each other by wearing black boots with contrasting white laces. It's unclear if this was intentional.

I'm honestly unsure which is worse, merchandise obscuring that she's a Nazi to make her more palatable or merchandise retaining her Nazi characterization in a context completely absent of framing her as a deplorable villain.

All these bad marketing decisions come together in a weird capitalist kerfuffle aping at being a satire of capitalism while being outrageous in itself. It unironically showcases why the kind of stuff the show parodies is bad.

#the boys #the boys tv show #consumerism #late stage capitalism #tw nazis

[flightfoot]

The thing that's kind of annoying about Marinette not having a strong connection to Gabriel is that it didn't have to be that way. Marinette could still be a great protagonist to Gabriel's antagonist. The writers had a really easy in there: Gabriel Agreste is her fashion designer idol.

Not to mention the writers purposefully draw comparisons between Marinette and Gabriel, in their backgrounds, their lovers, their careers, their cunning, their obsession, and their 'logic over heart' manner of thinking.

I personally think they should have kept with the fashion idol story thread and had moments where Gabriel acts as a mentor/support to her throughout the series. His advice and ideologies would likely be very control-centered and Machiavellian, almost mirroring Hawkmoth's, but in a milder, seemingly harmless way. Which is important, because Marinette, being who she is, would be vulnerable to that line of thought. It might even affect some of her decisions as Ladybug.

Adrien and Marinette could even come to conflict over this and she'd ultimately find herself having to choose between following in the footsteps of her idol or his son and it would be a MUCH harder struggle for her than it was in Pretension.

Not to mention that the reveal would knock her off of her feet mentally. This man that she has looked up to for so long and even let influence her mindset and decisions is Monarch?! And of course he'd use that against her once he knows who she is, going the whole "You and I are not so different!" route.

Ah, it could have been great. The writers really fudged that up.

Yeah, Gabriel serving as one of Marinette's career inspirations could definitely have been used more than it has been. It's come up a few times, but it would be useful in order to give her more of an "in" with him, to make the eventual revelation of his evil more impactful. Though there is still the issue that it still just doesn't matter as much to her as Gabriel being a supervillain matters to Adrien. Marinette can go home at the end of the day, can escape his grasp. While Adrien, meanwhile, can't escape the consequences of Gabriel's actions, no matter what happens.

I do like the idea of him being a sort of evil mentor and prompting friend-or-idol decisions! That would definitely give things more weight. It's not just that Marinette would find out that someone she'd looked up to was evil, but that she'd personally staked things in his words, maybe even having done things occasionally that didn't entirely sit right with her. It would turn it from "oh crap this guy I looked up to was a bad guy" into a more personal betrayal, and would give her reason to even be angry at herself for being fooled by him even a little.

#ask #ml analysis #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #gabriel agreste

[cleromancy]

actually. still thinking about the stuff i mentioned in this post about like. people getting disproportionately mad at jason for mia compared to. like. any other supervillain that is *absolutely* also supposed to be somewhat sympathetic. like, thinking of two-face here in robin: year one (the dixon/beatty version).

because harveys role in the plot is adjacent to what Jason's is. he poses a clear danger to robin that makes the guardian/mentor reconsider the wisdom of having a kid sidekick at all. jason's actually there to make mia think about it, moreso than ollie, but their role as the antagonist of the story raises similar questions.

and i get that with comics in particular, your emotional reaction to what you read will always be influenced by what you see the fandom doing, and you do have... like im fairly sure the harv apologists are just like "i dont care who he hurt he looked good doing it" (and tbeyre so valid for that). and by comparison the jason legion, for we are many, are this whole scatterplot range of--some people only like him as a villain/think hes "unredeemable" (🙄), and some people want every bad thing hes ever done to be whooshed away by "pit madness" (🙄), and some people who. i have no ill will towards them but theyre fans of the new guy, the prime earth guy, and thats just a different character from my guy to the point that hes not even really relevant to ga 69-72 when we talk about it-- but nevertheless theyre in the same fandom, and the guy they like has the same name. so that can color peoples interpretations of whats on the page jf, for example, any of those factions really grates their cheese.

anyway. all that aside i do still feel like people get very angry at jason for being the antagonist--being a supervillain, even--maybe because he's so sympathetic by comparison in under the red hood/lost days (or i guess stuff the new guy's been in, if thats more your speed). like why did he terrorize mia! why did he scare her and beat her up!

and while i think the answer to that, from a character motivation perspective, is so obvious as to be. fucking asinine to need it spelled out-- the real answer is because as the storys antagonist he is there to challenge the protagonist. and in this case the challenge is not only the physical fight, its also a challenge to the question of whether or not plucky teen sidekicks should still exist in a post-death in the family dcu, where the baddies are badder and anyone can die.

r:yo was never asking that *specific* question, so lets just set it aside. thank you for your help harvey.

jason is a much easier target for reader anger than ollie because well. jason is absolutely doing something *wrong,* and he knows it, but he also has a fucking point, *and he knows it.*

ga01 was ABSOLUTELY engaging with and exploring aspects of the kid/teen sidekick trope that we know and love--mia kills a man on her test run, and the responsibility for mia being in a position where she felt like she had to do that, and the resulting trauma, is placed squarely and correctly on ollies shoulders. mias origin story meant she was never safe in her fucking life until she moved in with ollie, and now she finds out its left her with something permanent and life-changing--shes HIV+. what is safety? what is childhood? what does she want out of life, faced with her own mortality? she wants to help people. she wants to be a hero. and the way this unfolds, in the context of the dcu and how it works, you can see why ollie says yes this time. (and im so so glad he did.)

and jason shows up 20ish issues later when shes good and established to be like, "hi. you sure about that?"

and this is a chicken or the egg kind of situation where jason would not have done this to a civilian. shes a superhero. shes in uniform. there is an inherent danger to doing that and while you know that--both you the reader and you, speedy, green arrows junior partner and teen titan--nobody demonstrates it like jason "trolley problem" todd, both as the first notable dead sidekick and an incredibly dangerous, incredibly *terrifying* person. one who is *hell-bent* on *proving* it to you.

and when i say chicken and egg i mean while jason's responsible for his own actions, Ollie is explicitly responsible for mia's safety. imo blowing up the school wasn't to scare mia--it was to scare ollie. jason took the stakes of what it means to be speedy, or to *have* a speedy, and made them concrete. and that takes the concept of a plucky teen sidekick and makes it uncomfortable again because, god, she's just a kid. should she really be fucking doing this? (should her guardian really be *letting* her do this?)

(and people forget this, or purposely ignore it, but jason cant be more than 2 years older than her in this continuity, using tim as a benchmark. and i say this not because i want to emphasize that he would see mia as a peer rather than a child--though he would--or to imply he wasnt responsible for his actions--he was. i say this bc what was he doing in the supervillainy, he should have been at the club)

what i was getting at was i think rather than allowing the concept to exist in that gray area it is so much easier, so much more comfortable, to instead just be like. Well jason shouldn't have done that. he could have done it a different way. if he never put her in danger she wouldn't have been in that danger that night. and yknow all of those things are true but they don't negate the point he was making (and he was also doing more than that yk but this post is already Long lol), which was that that uniform puts a target on her chest. are you prepared for what that means?

and the difference between jason doing this, and Harvey, aside from the relative annoyingness of the people who want to condemn or exonerate them, is that. jason is not just a supervillain. he is a victim of *exactly* this thorny question. and he became a supervillain directly in response to this. you can not separate his actions here from the part where he knows what the fuck hes talking about, because it happened to him. and to make that less thorny, less uncomfortable, the focus turns away from the point he was making back to. Well he shouldn't have done it like he did it. while also ignoring that...... he did it like he did it because he knew how it felt, what it meant, to be a hero. if he didn't do it like he did it, would it have gotten through to them at all? would we still be talking about it like 20 years later?

anyway jason did such a good job posing uncomfortable questions in the narrative 🥰 im so proud of him for all his hard work!

#dc #text #he doesnt get a gold star though. only good boys get gold stars

[anneangel]

Your post on the lack of complexity regarding the morality of the characters in Tolkien’s works was really interesting, and I definitely see your point. But, wasn’t there some ambiguity over who was right or wrong in The Hobbit, before the BOFTA? Both sides had selfish and selfless motives, greed and care for their people simultaneously, as well as pride and anger. I think Tolkien intended for the readers to sympathise with both Thorin and Bard.

I have to ask you a question: have you read my mind? I read and reread my post and was thinking of adding this moral issue between races, which is a much "looser and more flexible, more ambiguous" moral issue than “Good versus evil”. I think, your point is super valid.

I have to highlight your other point here: “Tolkien draws a hard line in the sand though. Regardless of how far people are willing to go, no one decent or honorable in the slightest would ever side with orcs. That's the ultimate sign of who the good guys and the bad guys are” by @queenmorganlafay

I agree with all your statements, have no doubt; and I'm so glad you said it so clearly. Just allow me to add my endless monologue about it all, and I know it's going to be boring but I can't hold back:

I was thinking about this, that I have friends who admire elves, some admires hobbits and others the dwarves. But I don't know anyone who really admires and wants to be like an orc. Yes, precisely. You are right: In fact Tolkien drew a line on the ground, there is a marking of how far his characters can be on the side of the “benign” and how far they can be on the side of the “evil”.

But it is curious how characters and races are free to show a multitude of emotions and attitudes that range from “peaceful” to “that lead to war”, where morality is dubious and we cannot define with absolute certainty “who is the good guy”. As in BotFA (Battle of the Five Armies).

And you know what's more curious? That the book considered “most childish” is precisely the one that does not establish pre-defined moral parameters between “who is right and who is wrong”.

I remember, while reading, of:

- 1) Agree when Thorin claims he will not converse with armed besiegers (after all, what kind of “dialogue” is assumed when you are surrounded by an army? The kind of “dialogue” that is peaceful only as long as the besiegers terms are accepted, other wise will attack).

- 2) I enjoyed that the Elves bring supplies to the wounded of the lake-town, but bothering me when they take an army to fight the dwarves because of an ANCIENT feud (as a peacemaker king it would be wiser to wait for that kingdoms establish themselves helping both humans and dwarves. Then use diplomacy and take back what was theirs in the past. But Thranduil chooses to take an army, intending to take back what is his at the worst time and on the basis of blackmail and numbers tatics in your favor).

- 3) Bard is the one who has the most sensible terms, as heir to Dale and Dragonslayer, he deserved his share, his reward and Lake-town deserved support. (But I remember being annoyed at how unhappy he seemed to see the dwarves alive, in book).

The “villains” in the book also made me think: Trolls and Spiders kill and are antagonists, but they do it to eat (this is food chain, not entirely nefarious). Smaug is terrifying and villainous, but he has been "hibernating" without further cruelty for a long time as many in Lake-town claimed to have never seen him in decades.

- Again, the villains that gave me the most chills when I read were the Orcs/Goblins, who are the only ones who were really willing to burn the protagonists for fun and revenge, the song they sing when the 15 protagonists are up in the trees is the most frightening of the whole book. It is undeniable that the orcs are "the line" between "good and evil", since everyone has them as enemies in the end, and even races that despise each other can unite in order to defeat them.

But even though the morals are much more “flexible”, ambiguous and complex in The Hobbit, each character and race still has to deal with the consequences of their choices, they are still good or bad/evil choices. It doesn't mean that you will declare war on another race and walk away completely unscathed and as the "undoubtedly correct side of the situation". Remember what Gandalf told Thorin in Unfinished Tales:

- “If you disregard my advice, you will be headed for disaster. And you will no longer receive advice or help from me until the Evil one befalls you. And control your pride and your greed, or you will fall at the end of whatever path you take, however much your hands are full of gold.”

It's as if evil is an entity that puts the characters' moral choices to the test. So characters "full of light" can be corrupted to evil, whether humans, elves, or anyone else. Where individual needs, pride, greed, anger, hatred, desire for revenge, obsession with objects, need for power and knowledge, among others, are feelings that, depending on their intensity, can become harmful and corrupt them for the "evil". I have a feeling that Tolkien's characters are "good light", if dont corrupted by selfishness.

What I liked the most when I read The Hobbit was:

A) The Hobbit is a light, unpretentious read, promises nothing and delivers everything, the journey has the right tone and pace, without being so tiring, it is focused on a single protagonist, dear Bilbo, who is not the hero archetype conventional "strong and badass", but still charming in his actions, he is comical, grumpy, brave and sensible all in a single character, which makes him multidimensional, showing his growth along the journey.

B) Despite being a more "soft and childish" adventure, it still teaches us a lot about launching ourselves into the world even if everything is uncertain, about friendship, about greed and its evils, about the journey being important to define who we are, that it changes us but that we must not lose the essence.

C) The plot is not that "cliché" of the "young hero who has to struggle and sacrifice himself for a good cause of good against evil", here it all started just as a adventurous "treasure hunt".

D) The protagonist is only one, but he is enough in the plot, which teaches us: not to be afraid to explore the world around us, to care for friendships, that gold is not more important than life, to value the people who we have on our side, that everything in life is ups and downs, that despite the journey bringing some suffering we can still choose to see the beautiful side of life and continue living. Also, Bilbo is not someone who becomes a "winner" in the end, he just grows stronger and discovers who he is throughout his adventure, changing the fate of everyone around him in the end and in the future. With Bilbo, we discovers that “having it all” shouldn't be the goal, that greed corrupts everyone around us and that money doesn't buy everything. That it is better to value life, simple things and friendships and that it is not worth wasting such things at the expense of petty wars.

The Hobbit is a light and deep book when it has to be, makes you laugh and cry, in addition the "world" where the plot takes place is incredible without Tolkien having to make long descriptions of the environment and add various information about the world that created. This added to the fact that Bilbo is a very active/proactive and charismatic character makes the book a delight.

That's why I find it curious that it is precisely in the Tolkien “children's book” where there is greater moral flexibility, but in LotR and Silmarillion an even more visible "line" is created in the plot where there is "the undeniable and good side versus the nefarious and undoubted side of evil".

I understand why I liked The Hobbit more (more focused on a single protagonist and the central plot has nothing to do with "saving the world from something nefarious evil") besides that I get attached much easier to characters instead of the plot, I prefer individuality of the characters and I like books that give primacy to psychological factors, thinking, aptitudes, interests, desires, inclinations, feelings, sensations, emotions, flaws, defects, learnings and intuitions of the characters, and Bilbo stole my heart in the approximately 300 pages of which he is the protagonist.

It revolts me to be insulted by fans of LotR's books - and movies - just because I prefer The Hobbit. I think respect should come above all, besides the fact that demeaning a book because it is more "childish" is silly, it's as if people are saying that there is no learning and excellent lessons in children's things, like being "for children" were inferior.

I think children's books need to define much more what "is right and what is wrong" since their target audience are children without much sense of discernment, while "adult" books don't need much of this because it is assumed that their audience is more enlightened.

- Hence my surprise to see that morals are more “flexible” and exists ambiguity  in The Hobbit, while in LotR there is an obvious “line” of who “are the good guys and who is the evil side” (I swear, have you seen my post from a mother who came to ask me about using The Hobbit at school because her think it is not appropriate for children because Bilbo is a thief? You see it's a "children's book", but it leaves room for questioning, the narrative has a very "Flexible" moral in The Hobbit, which I think is unusual for children's books).

So I'm always get emotional with  who see this book as more than "a silly childish narrative" and I love talking about The Hobbit. I thank you, for giving me this opportunity.

#the hobbit #bilbo baggins #JRR Tolkien #lord of the rings #LOTR

[fuckedupwizard]

some of my thoughts on saw x (i saw it yesterday so i might be forgetting some things, i have issues wrt memory), spoilers obviously:

i saw someone say "despite the feelgood ending of them walking off into the sunset, this is not a happy movie for amanda" and i completely agree. i think saw x works really well at showcasing a younger, more compassionate amanda - obviously she's not at the level of compassion an Ordinary Person would be at since she can watch extreme torture and death without batting an eye - but she's not totally corrupted yet, or totally disenchanted with john. she believes in him, but she's not at the level of fantacism she will later be, or at the point where she decides his philosophy doesn't actually work. amanda at this point still thinks people's souls can be 'saved' and that hers was, but she's also kind of resistant to the idea of testing gabriela because i think she still remembers how what she personally went through was torture (and, tragically, she's gonna be tortured/'tested' like, twice more in the future not counting what she goes through in this movie), and obviously feels empathy towards another person who did bad things because they were deep in the grip of drug addiction.

i think this movie is good at explaining why amanda becomes disenchanted. john is kind of set up as the 'good guy' of the movie by virtue of being the protagonist and facing off against an antagonist who is also extremely evil in ways that break even his 'moral code' - which is also REALLY proven to be hypocritical here, as much as you might want to cheer for john (and i was totally like Go Grandpa throughout the whole movie). when he thinks he might be getting his life back, he throws away his plans for future traps, which shows that under all the bluster about wanting to help people and give them a new lease of life, he really is just... punishing people for having the one thing he desperately wants and can't have, a future. even the people who ARE some level of evil don't deserve to be put in a saw trap. obviously though he has a Giant Tumour In His Brain so expecting rationality from him seems silly, but still. similarly, i might be remembering wrong, but i feel like every other victim got an opportunity to NOT do the test? like if they didn't, they'd be stuck in the trap and die there, obviously - there's no getting away scot free, but he wants at least one 'subject' to start the trap themselves and give themselves the opportunity to be tested. but gabriela wasn't allowed that - she tried to throw the tape away and say no, and john started the trap anyway.

then gabriela DID pass her test, and obviously was killed by cecelia, and amanda was absolutely outraged by that - and then cecelia 'passes' her test and is allowed to survive. she is punished by knowing she was outsmarted by john, and having all of her money taken, but she lives, and in a way the test was almost designed to let her do that. valentina, matteo, diego and gabriela - all people who partook in this extremely awful scam, but people who were still kind of pawns to cecelia - went through insane levels of pain and, in gabriela's case, would be disfigured for life even if they lived. cecelia's test was to fight someone she proclaims to love to the death. john knows the kind of person she is, and that she doesn't love anyone except herself. i almost feel like putting her through something physically painful/deforming would be more of a test for cecelia? and i think amanda will look back on her time in mexico and be like, that's utter bullshit. people like cecelia are completely incapable of change.

wrt to john and carlos - people pointed out that he seemed appalled that cecelia would put an innocent child in a trap, but one of the tests he gave an earlier subject was to kill an innocent woman and child. but i don't think it's that much of a surprise, i think john was really angry because carlos wasn't one of his planned test subjects. not so much that he's an innocent child, more that he was dragged into it when john hadn't planned for that. he'd planned for the bloodboarding trap to be used on either parker and cecelia OR him and amanda, but not carlos. and also, i think he genuinely liked carlos, the way he genuinely cared for jill and gideon. he cares for amanda, but in a way that he made her his apprentice. it's different to the way he cares for people he wouldn't want to involve on that level.

none of this is actually a criticism of the movie, i think it's really smart in terms of amanda's arc! part of me wishes cecelia was a bit less of a cartoon villain, but she was a lot of fun and isn't that what saw as a franchise is all about.

one last thought - some people pointed out that, looking back, cecelia seemed to be deliberately sabotaging her associates on purpose while attempting to cheer them on? like apparently gabriela breaking her foot before her hand was the wrong choice because breaking her hand first would have dropped her to the floor and given her some range of movement to crawl further away from the radiation. i think i'd have to rewatch it again to see, but if it's on purpose it's a really clever addition.

#saw #if i missed out or misunderstood anything obvious DON'T come for me #i'm a fan just for the traps and amanda

[protagonistheavy]

Really wish that JCA episodes were listed in the right order, it's such a peeve that the season finale can happen but then there's extra episodes that should've been watched first. The worst offense is season 3, where I was really convinced that the season was losing out on tons of potential -- namely that the noble animals were never utilized outside their one episodes -- since it was getting to the finale so quickly. No, turns out there WAS an episode EXACTLY what I wanted before the finale... but it's listed immediately afterwards.

This compounded aspects of the finale I didn't like. I specify "compounded" because these issues would still be issues regardless if the episodes were in the right order, but the fact that I watched the finale thinking "this is the finale (<- dumbass)" the flaws just stand out more.

I quite enjoyed the power-up of the Dark Hand goons this season, and I was pumped to see Hak Fu eventually get in on it -- a nice way to raise the power levels and threats to the protagonist. But Hak Fu comes waaay too late in the show, only getting a couple episodes to even be around before he's returned to normal. Really would have liked to see Dark Chi Warrior Hak Fu get a little more use, especially since Dark Chi Dark Hand quickly became underwhelming.

This is made worse by the fact that everything happens so abruptly to end this season. Daolong literally turns around in his own evil lair, only to find Uncle casting a spell that just automatically reverts the Dark Chi Warriors into humans -- literally moments before they get supered up in magical armor, hyped up for a big battle against Shendu. All that gets dropped, because Uncle just finally happens to know the spell that makes Dark Chi Warriors turn to normal..... ughhhhhhhh

Uncle in particular is REALLY annoying this season, because almost all the conflict gets resolved by him and some bullshit magic that he just pulls out of his ass. He ruins so much tension by just having magical answers to everything, and its way too convenient how he just happens to know these spells when it matters -- and also immediately has a way to cast it. I like Uncle's magic shenanigans when there's some sort of obstacle in casting the spell, such as finding the right ingredients or getting the execution of the spell correct; it isn't fun when Uncle and an entire army of chanters just appear out of no where to stop the bad guys, which they do twice this episode, holy shit. In general it also just feels awkward that Uncle is now just fully equipped with magic lasers and shit this whole season, he goes from being a vulnerable bystander with a martial arts tricks, to a full-blown wizard that constantly equalizes the antagonist. It's just too much for Uncle, makes him a more important character than anyone else.

The plot with Shendu's rebirth was also a let-down, he just doesn't get to do anything meaningful before he's beat. By the time he gets his powers back, Uncle is already there with the spell lol. It would have been much, much cooler if Daolong and the Dark Hand had to help Jackie Chan beat Shendu, but nope, Daolong's only input is providing Uncle the sealing spell off-screen, for seemingly nothing in return except the vague idea of vengeance. Bah, stupid plot, it is what it is.

All in all this was a bit of a clunky season. Hunting for the talismans again was made more interesting by putting the powers into living animals, but not enough is done with the concept by the time it's over. Daolong sometimes poses as a credible threat, but he too often gets humiliated post-battles, and too often gets foiled by stupid shit that makes him less engaging as a villain -- but I do really like the evil chanting/vocalizing he does, aesthetically he's on-point. The finale really deserved to be a two-parter for a more satisfying climax. But otherwise it's still been good JCA fun.

[septembercfawkes]

Getting Passive Protagonists to Act

Many beginning writers struggle with protagonists who are too passive. The plot seems to constantly be happening to him or her, but the protagonist doesn’t take an action to make the plot happen.

Ideally, when an event happens to a protagonist, the protagonist responds by taking an action that influences the next event, which then influences the protagonist, which then influences an event—and on and on. But that can be easier said than done. Especially if you have a protagonist who prefers to live life passively.

This could all get confusing, though, because in story structure, almost all protagonists will more or less become more proactive. But for the sake of this post, I'm talking about protagonists who are characteristically passive. A protagonist who may want to kick up his feet in a hammock with a glass of lemonade and watch the world deal with its own problems. How do we write a story about that guy?

Many people will tell you that you can't--you must change the character.

But that is not wholly true.

It's true in a good story, we need the protagonist to act--especially at key moments--but that doesn't mean he innately yearns to act.

Often the best solution in dealing with a passive character is to strengthen the stakes. Let me explain.

Anyone will Act with the Right Stakes

The stakes are potential consequences; they are what are at risk in the story. We often think of them as negative things (someone's life may be at risk), but they can also be positive things (the opportunity to be taught by a professional in your ideal vocation).

Stakes are important because if there is nothing at risk, then what happens, doesn't really matter, which means what the protagonist does, doesn't really matter, because it doesn't change any outcomes. The story only matters insomuch as we understand potential outcomes. The protagonist's choices only matter if they affect the outcomes.

For example, we only care about Frodo destroying the Ring because we know doing so could rid Middle-earth of Sauron’s evil. If we didn't know that, what happened with the Ring wouldn't really matter. And what Frodo did wouldn't carry any weight. (You can learn more about stakes in my article "How to Write Stakes in Storytelling.")

When struggling with getting a passive protagonist to act, (almost) always look at the stakes.

No Stakes

Make sure that you’ve at least laid out stakes. Sometimes writers feel like the stakes are obvious, so they don't mention them. Just as bad, if not worse, the stakes may be too vague. And definitely worse: nonexistent.

If the protagonist doesn't have anything clearly to gain or lose, why would she act? If what happened to the Ring didn't change something, why would Frodo go to Mount Doom? Why would any of us do anything if it didn't make some kind of difference?

In a case like this, clear stakes need to be on the page.

Let's look at some examples of what one might consider passive people within the context of their stories.

Shrek wants nothing more than to live alone on his swamp. If there is nothing at risk, is he really going to go on an adventure to rescue a princess? Probably not.

In The Edge of Tomorrow, I think it could be argued that the protagonist, Bill Cage (played by Tom Cruise) is somewhat passive in relation to the main conflict. The story is about him fighting in a war against aliens, but he has absolutely no desire whatsoever to enter combat--in fact, he's a coward. You think he would sign up to be the first in combat out of the goodness of his heart? No way.

In Trigun by Yasuhiro Nightow, protagonist Vash would rather spend all day, every day eating donuts, playing with kids, and helping out the person down the street. He'd rather live life under an alias than face the fact he's the only one capable of standing up to the antagonist and saving the human race.

If none of these characters ever had anything at risk, then they would have never taken the actions they needed to, to move the story forward. They would have been forever passive.

In short, they only acted once there were stakes.

Wrong Stakes

If there are stakes on the page, and the character still isn't acting, then chances are they are either the wrong stakes (things she doesn’t care about) or the stakes are too small (the potential consequences don’t pose a real threat or a meaningful gain).

If they are the wrong stakes, you need to think about what the protagonist cares about and put it in jeopardy. We all care about something--whether that’s a reputation or a pet.

For a passive person, you might need to dig deeper and brainstorm longer to figure out what it is. And if you are having trouble, keep in mind that it's also possible the passive protagonist wants something for someone else or his environment. Maybe she's satisfied drinking lemonade and getting picked on, but she's not okay with her kid getting bullied--that's not something she can let happen.

Shrek mostly cares about living alone on his swamp. If his distant neighbor is at risk of dying in loneliness, Shrek's likely not going to do much about it. The best way to get him to act, is to put his home and lifestyle at risk. He will be willing to take action to save that.

Bill is afraid of dying (it's part of what makes him a coward). If he's put in a situation where he could die, he'll be forced to act.

Vash is obsessed with saving people. Children, friends, innocents, criminals. It doesn't matter who. He doesn't want anyone to die. If no one is at risk of dying, then it's unlikely he will be drawn to fight his antagonists. Almost always he is led to act because someone's life is at risk.

Small Stakes

If the stakes are too small, you need to make them bigger by making them broader or more personal.

Even the most passive person is unlikely to feel passive with a gun pointed at them. Unless they have a death wish, in which case, you could have the gun pointing at a loved one, or you could threaten torture. Even people who have a death wish don't want to be tortured. Almost all of us will act if the stakes get big enough.

Alternatively, you can promise an opportunity that is too good to pass up. If all I want is to live out my life on a hammock by the beach sipping lemonade, then maybe the best motivation is the promise of getting that. Maybe I'd be willing to act, if it ensured that.

It's bad enough for Shrek to have a few creatures come on his swamp, but the fact that countless numbers of them will be exiled to his swamp, is even worse. This is a big enough issue to get him to act--he decides he must visit Farquaad, which moves the story to the middle.

It's bad enough to die once, but it turns out for Bill, that he has to die over and over and over again. He also has to go on the battlefield over and over and over again, too. He keeps repeating the same events. This is enough to get him to try new tactics (and really, what other choice does he have?).

It's bad enough that Vash can't save everyone. But when it turns out the antagonists plan to destroy the whole human race, well, he can't live out life in donut-filled peace, playing cops and robbers with tykes. He has to act.

Inaction Stakes

If your passive character still really does not want to act, it's worth keeping in mind that inaction is an action--it just needs significant stakes. There needs to be negative ramifications for the protagonist not acting. Ideally, eventually these negative consequences get so big or so personal, that the protagonist has to do something about it.

For example, at one point, Vash decides to live under an alias and do nothing. He decides to be inactive. Unfortunately, this results in an entire town getting wiped out by the antagonist. Doing nothing has steep consequences. He needs to at least try to do something.

This can become a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation--where "damned if you do" at least carries a small chance of success over "damned if you don't."

At one point in Edge of Tomorrow, Bill decides to do nothing. He even goes to a bar to drink in the middle of the day. Guess what? He still has to repeatedly die. Whatever he does, he ends up dying, and having to repeat that time frame. He can either be endlessly in a tortuous loop where he dies, dies, and dies, or he can keep trying to fix the situation. On the surface, it seems like he has a lot of options, since he gets to make different choices each time he repeats the day, but 99% of them lead to the same outcome. So in reality, he has very few choices. Act and maybe die. Or don't act and keep dying.

Limit Options

Related to the last one, one way to push a passive character to act, is to limit her choices and the outcomes. In fact, if we want to take this to the real world, studies show that the more options people have, the less likely they are to make a choice--or even make a good choice.

Like Bill, when there aren't really any options, the protagonist will be pretty much forced to act. Either keep reliving the same torture or try to do something about it.

Add to it some kind of countdown or convergence, so that the protagonist has a very limited window to act, and she'll have to do something.

Stakes Reveal Character

How the protagonist acts when there are things at risk, will reveal what kind of person she is.

In this sense, one might argue, that by strengthening the stakes to get her to act, you are changing her character after all.

Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that you are now revealing who she truly is.

Whatever the case, it can become an argument of semantics.

Similar things can happen with the term "passive."

Just understand the concepts and the tools.

The Reluctant Hero

In most, if not all cases, a characteristically passive protagonist will create a reluctant hero. Shrek doesn't want to save Fiona. Bill doesn't want to win the war. Vash doesn't want to confront the antagonist. They just want something to not happen, more than they want to do The Thing™️.

In this sense, while the passive protagonist will ultimately still be acting within the plot (which is necessary to write a good story), he or she may still yearn for passivity.

Of course, the character's arc may possibly shift that yearning by the end.

And it should go without saying, that pretty much all these same tricks will work for passive side characters, as well--when you need to get them to act. For example, in The Office, Stanley is characteristically passive. He pretty much sits in silence and does crossword puzzles. But when pushed far enough, he will back talk his boss. And when he wants something bad enough (like a free pretzel on pretzel day), he'll actually act.  

#Writing tips #writing tips and tricks #writeblr #writer problems #writing reference #protagonist #fanfic

[ponett]

hi i watched the new my little pony movie and it was... pretty good! it was very cute, i like the new cast a lot, there were some nice heartfelt moments that had some surprising depth, all the locations were really pretty to look at, the poppy musical numbers were fun, the character animation is really lively. it's a solid little fantasy adventure flick for kids. i do have mixed feelings about the story though. here are some casual-ish thoughts. (i posted some of this on twitter last night but i have even more thoughts now. i'm sorry. i'm so sorry)

spoilers below the cut

okay so, i liked it a lot when it was just letting the new characters play off each other, but unfortunately my fears came true and almost the entire movie is laser focused on the oversimplified extremely on-the-nose trump era racism allegory plot. i do have to cut it some slack for their good intentions, and this is a 90 minute animated movie for 5-year-olds, so there's only so much they can do. it did also have a bit more nuance than i expected at points. (it's more nuanced than zootopia, for what it's worth. not that that's hard.) and hell, friendship is magic also screwed up its attempts at similar topics, and y'all know how much i still love that show. so it's not like i hate this movie. but it has such an oversimplified "we should all be friends!" take on real issues, and it frustrates me that it completely dominates the film, being the main focus of almost every single scene

there's some interesting stuff where they show how those in power are stoking peoples' fears to maintain their own power. like the big factory in the earth pony town is essentially an arms manufacturer capitalizing on the fear of outsiders, the cops mainly exist to uphold the laws segregating the ponies, the pegasus royal family pretends they still have the ability to fly and this lie seems to be the only reason they're in power (the queen literally gets arrested the second the truth comes out lol). but then they all just kind of... see the error of their ways shortly after meeting other types of pony, and there are no repercussions? not saying this toy commercial cartoon for little girls needs to fuckin kill the bad guys or throw them in jail or whatever, but we don't even get like a "they made them turn the arms factory into something else" type resolution, and no one even really acknowledges that these characters did anything wrong. no one is considered an oppressor, the movie takes for granted that these people in power who derive their power from bigotry were just misguided, and that they'll totally change their beliefs as soon as they're presented with new information. society is fundamentally unjust, but none of the individuals maintaining that unjust status quo are at fault for doing so

i also don't know if it's a good or bad thing that there's no explanation for why the ponies hate each other now. like on the one hand at least there's no historical backstory that inadvertently justifies the prejudices (like zootopia and its story about how the predators used to eat the prey). but on the other hand... how the hell did they get from g4 to here in the intervening centuries? at my most uncharitable it feels like this whole story about how equestria used to be this land where everyone got along and now everyone is divided is a heavy-handed metaphor for The Sudden Division Of America In The Trump Era as it's perceived by a lot of liberals. history didn't logically lead us to this point, no one is really at fault, everyone just arbitrarily started hating each other at some point and we just all need to put that aside and get along again. it's almost the FiM episode about how the cowboys and the natives should just learn to share all over again. (again: i will admit this is an uncharitable read of the film)

(sidebar with BIG SPOILERS: the very end also really bugged me, but that's more just a personal taste thing. in the leadup to g5 i was excited to see them make an earth pony the protagonist. i thought that was a nice change of pace after nine seasons of twilight. but then in the end of the movie, after sunny delivers the moral, she's magically turned into an alicorn... like oh we're just doing that again huh. okay. it also doesn't really gel with this story where the different types of pony are being used for a racism/xenophobia allegory)

i feel a little bad hyper-focusing on the way the allegory falls apart like this, but like. the allegory is the entire fucking movie lol. they are constantly talking about it in every scene, the first song mentions "building a wall," the main antagonist (who may or may not be intended to evoke trump???) manipulates the earth ponies' prejudices to make them all go full fascist, etc. it is not subtle. of course, this story isn't ALL bad - the adventures along the way were fun, i was relieved when everyone realized that the macguffin wouldn't magically make everyone get along again (although realizing this DOES make the macguffin restore everyone's magic which seems to mostly fix everything, so... lol), and a message about looking past stereotypes and misinformation to befriend people who are different from you definitely isn't a bad one for a kids' film. and obviously a story with this target demographic is ALWAYS going to have to simplify reality a bit. it's just extremely obvious that they wanted to go for a nuanced topical political story that would surprise the parents in the audience and maybe teach kids a thing or two, and it turned out messy

but again, i liked the characters. it was nice to look at. it was cute. i'll gladly watch a new show with these characters. i hope the inevitable show focuses less on this political allegory though lol

anyway there's a shot of fluttershy and rainbow dash in the opening scene so 10/10

[itsclydebitches]

re: that ask you posted a couple days ago about the male and female representation in RWBY, part of what makes RWBY's whole 'girl power' thing ring exceptionally hollow to me is the fact that there are like... no women in positions of real power in remnant. like at all. except the big bad.

winter is second in command to james. glynda is second in command to ozpin. all of the headmasters are men (for no discernible reason, imo; why theodore and not dorothea?). the leader of the ace ops was a white man (and then winter seemed to take over clover's position instead of either of the women of color on the team, and she was still second to james). RWBY is an all girl team, but JNPR was led by a boy despite a girl arguably being far more qualified (pyrrha). the happy huntresses are all women, and robyn had no real power to speak of--she didn't even manage to win the election, because jacques rigged it, and then the council ceased to matter. there was one (1) woman on the council, but she was so inconsequential that i can't even remember her name. (i suppose we're lucky it was the guy and not her who james shot lol) jacques controls the SDC instead of willow, even though he's not even a schnee by blood and actually married into the family for power. (and we don't even know how he got it over his wife.)

and then there's the white fang, which ghira led and not kali--and it's ghira who leads menagerie itself, while kali seems to be a housewife. sienna had five minutes of screentime before being brutally killed and her position assumed by adam, a man. cordovin is basically a one off lackey we haven't even thought about before or since. neo was second to roman. you have cinder, sure, who is a second but to salem, a woman, and raven as the leader of the branwen tribe--but what does it really say about your 'girl power' narrative when the only women with genuine systemic power in your world are villains or antagonists with massive bodycounts??

atla has the same sort of problem--a couple great female characters, but all the leadership positions are men (except the kyoshi warriors, an all girls group, and even then the leader of their island is an old man) and the one female mentor figure also turns out to be evil--but it at least has some great writing to help overlook that fact, and it came out in the mid-00's and so has some sort of excuse of being a product of its time. but rwby didn't even start until 2013 and it's still going and still making these kinds of decisions well into 2021.

where is this supposed girl power, exactly? am i really supposed to overlook the very patriarchal worldbuilding just because the title characters are girls?

That's an excellent summary of the situation, anon, and as with so much in RWBY, it comes down to the full context. Any one of these examples isn't necessarily going to mean much on its own. It's when you look at the pattern that you can start making a case for those conclusions: Why is the show marketed on "girl power" set in a world where men hold the vast majority of that power? And, more importantly, why is that setup not the point? We could easily have a story where that lopsided gender dynamic is the problem that the girls are looking to fix, but... that story doesn't exist. Like the problems discussed with Jaune, the supposed point here exists only on the surface. Dig just the tinniest bit — the above — and you hit on a lot of structural problems with this "girl power" world.

To add just a few details to what you've already said:

Salem indeed has power, but she's never allowed to fully use it. Each volume the frustration with this grows as Salem accumulates more abilities and then just sits on them. From literally hiding out for a thousand years to worries that she won't use the Staff in Volumes 9-10, Salem really isn't allowed to be the threat she's presented as on the surface. And yes, this is absolutely due in part to the "She's too OP and the writers don't know how to let her be that powerful while still having the heroes win" issue, but again, context. That problem doesn't exclude others occurring simultaneously.

Same double explanation with Summer. Yes, dead moms are an incredibly common trauma to dump on a protagonist, but it still left Yang and Ruby with Tai as their primary influence. And Qrow. The uncle becomes the extended family influence while Raven is the absent one/eventual antagonist. It's personal power as opposed to political power, but Tai, Qrow, Ozpin, formerly James... most of the mentors are men. Maria, a key exception, has been ignored in that regard. The story announced that she was Qrow's inspiration, setup her being Ruby's new mentor, and then... nothing. Nothing has come of that. She disappeared for a volume and then went off to Amity and was literally forgotten by the story when evacuating everyone was the finale's whole point.

Like that Endgame moment I mentioned, the Happy Huntresses feel a little too forced to me. Yes, it's the same basic idea as in ATLA, but ATLA, as you say, has a lot more going for it. The Happy Huntresses feel... on the nose? Idk exactly how to explain it. Like, "Here they are! Another team of all women! Isn't this how progressive storytelling works? Just ignore how this is a one-off team of minor characters compared to the world building issues discussed above." And if you're not paying attention, you miss just how insignificant they are, with a side of Robyn being, well, Robyn. The Kyoshi Warriors, at least, are based off of Kyoshi. A woman avatar who is a significant part of their history. That is, presumably, why they're an all women warrior group (but who notably still teach Sokka). The Happy Huntresses are all huntresses because...? There's no reason except that meta "We want to look progressive" explanation. Just like having all the women superheroes team up for a hot second so people get excited and ignore the representation problems across, what? 21 films? Don't get me wrong, I love that May is among the Happy Huntresses. I think including her in the explicitly all-women group was one of the better things RWBY has done in a long time, but the rest is still a mess.

RWBY is arguably about these smaller groups as opposed to systematic power (despite the writers trying to work that in with things like the White Fang and the election. Not to mention the implication that everything in Atlas is fine now that evil Ironwood has died and taken the symbol of wealth (the city) with him. We saw a human holding hands with a faunus after all. Racism and corruption solved, I guess.) So yes, our group is dominated by women... but Whitley is the one saving Nora, helping to defeat the Hound (plus Willow), thinking of the airships, and providing the blueprints they need to escape. Salem is our Big Bad, except Ironwood is the one the volume focuses on. Ruby is our leader, but Jaune is the one leading the group into the whale and getting praised for how heroic he is. Ren does more to shake things up, even if he's painted as the one in the wrong. Oscar gets to confront Salem and destroys the whale threat. Ozpin provides the information they need to evacuate. Meanwhile, when the girls do things in Volume 8 it's almost always followed by a long-stint of passiveness. Nora opens the door so she can be unconscious for most of the volume. Penny keeps Amity up so she can also be unconscious for a good chunk of time. Ruby sends her message and then sits in a mansion. Blake fights so she can tearfully beg Ruby to save her. Weiss, as said, takes a backseat to Whitley (and Klein). They forward the plot, absolutely, but comparatively it doesn't feel like enough.

It's that pattern then, no one specific example. More and more the personal power, not just the systematic power already built into Remnant, seems to be coming from the men. Not all the time, but enough that scenes like the tea drinking moment feel like a part of a much larger problem. Pietro taking control, Watts hacking, and Ambrosius literally remaking her when Penny is supposed to already be in control of herself and her fate. Winter being presented as the active mentor to Weiss, only to turn around and claim that Ironwood was actually responsible for everything. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and May straight up commenting on how awful things are out there while Yang, Jaune, Ren, and Oscar lead the charge against Salem — with the latter three doing the most to forward that mission (no fear, semblance, cane). As others have only half-joked, Yang's supposedly badass moment was bringing up a mother she's ignored for six volumes and briefly blowing up the immortal woman for a couple of seconds (with Ironwood's bombs). Even Marrow is arguably the most significant Ace Op after Clover. Vine isn't actually a character, Elm slightly less so, Harriet is there to go crazy and try to drop a bomb (notably before admitting to never-before-existed feelings for Clover), but Marrow? He's the one who breaks out. Who is meant to heroically stand up against Ironwood. Who comments on how awful it is that teenagers are fighting and, regardless of how messed up the moral messages are, is supposedly pushing for active change while all the women in his group, including Winter, insist on maintaining the status quo. Look at all these choices as a whole, it makes throwaway worldbuilding choices like "All the Maidens are women" feel pretty hollow. Why does it matter if Amber is a Maiden if she dies in a flashback so Ozpin can struggle to pass on the power? If Pyrrha dies before becoming one so Jaune can angst about it? If Raven is one and then disappears from the story entirely? If Winter has enough power to break Ironwood's aura, but supposedly had no power throughout every other choice she made getting here? If Penny is one, but is continually controlled by men and then asks another man to help her die? It's just really unconvincing, once you look past the surface excitement of a woman looking cool with magic powers.

When you do consider the whole of the story — both in terms of our world building and who is forwarding the plot in the latter volumes, getting the emotional focus, being proactive, etc. — there are a lot of problems that undermine the presumed message RT wants to write. They say, "girl power" by marketing RWBY with these four women, but too many of the storytelling decisions thoroughly undermine that, revealing what's likely a deeply ingrained, subconscious bias.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

[iamnmbr3]

love how much mental gymnastics you guys have to do to make out that mobius is a bad person. he is literally the only one who believes in loki from what we've seen and is putting his job on the line to help him. as someone who has adored loki since 2012, he has committed a lot of hideous crimes, his anger was only influenced by the sceptre (he was not mind controlled), and he was literally about to assault mobius. should mobius have just let loki hit him?? you guys are mental lmao

1) “You guys”?? Last time I checked I was one person. Are you under the impression that I am a colony of super-intelligent bees stacked on top of each other under a trench coat? Well. I suppose since I’m a stranger and you know nothing about me, technically that could be (bee?) true.

2) Given your behavior I can certainly see why you aren't able to understand why what Mobius is doing is wrong since you seem unable to behave in a moral, ethical, and kind manner and seem to feel compelled to be cruel and to try to control others. Perhaps you should consider a career with the TVA.

3) Seriously though. Regardless of whether my interpretations are correct or not, this isn’t an appropriate ask to send. You need to learn to cope with strangers on the internet having different opinions from you on a range of subjects. I’m not attacking anyone who has different opinions from me because that would be stupid and also not nice. This is a fictional tv show. It’s not even that serious. Why would you think it’s ok to send harassing messages filled with insults to a stranger because they posted something online about a fictional character that you disagree with? I really hope you wouldn’t do that in real life. It’s abominable behavior. If you truly find yourself unable to control your anger over insignificant things like someone having a different opinion from you about a character in a comic book movie, I do suggest you see a professional.

4) I don’t really have to do much mental gymnastics at all. From his first appearance in the first trailer Mobius has mocked and humiliated and denigrated Loki. He’s also made a lot of incorrect and insulting statements about him - that he likes to talk (not true, from his first appearance he is defined by his silence), that he likes to lie (also not true. his deceptions work because they are unexpected) and that he frequently stabs people in the back. He doesn’t believe in Loki. He believes that Loki can be useful to him. We have seen no evidence of Mobius showing sympathy or empathy towards Loki, advocating for his rights, having any issue with him being ensalved or hurt, or caring that he ws just recently tortued by Thanos. He also has no compunctions about shocking him or hurting him. Mobius is Loki’s captor and just because he doesn’t want him to be killed doesn’t make him his friend.

5) What should Mobius have done? Gee. I dunno. Maybe not be complicit in an organization that routinely murders people and is currently enslaving Loki. Loki is a prisoner who is being held against his will under threat of death and forced to labor without compensation. He has every right to fight back. Also he’s not lunging at Mobius. It looks like he’s trying to leave.

6) If Mobius is intended to be an antagonist then he’s a brilliant one and as of the latest trailer that seems to be more the intent, given the sinister framing and music. I hope they continue to go in that direction because that makes for a much more interesting narrative. As the protagonist Loki should have threatening antagonists to deal with

7) Where did I say Loki has never done anything wrong? I like him because he is a grey character. Also why do you single out my liking for Loki? I like Thor too because I also find him an interesting character. Thor has killed way more people than Loki and yet you don’t assume that I am ignoring that. Actually a lot of the Avengers have done sketch things, but only Loki seems to provoke people to swarm into others’ inboxes going ‘but you know he did bad things right??” Also Loki's whole motivation in Thor 2011 was to prevent a war and STOP violence, despite the fact that he comes from a warrior society where warfare is considered glorious. He is raised in a society that has genocidally hateful attitudes towards the Jotnar. Loki is actually much more reserved in his opinions (unlike Thor who openly talks about wanting to wipe them out, and receives no correction, indicating this is an acceptable attitude in Asgardian society). Only once Loki becomes consumed with hurt and self-hatred after he learns his own origins and has a suicidal mental breakdown does he try to destroy Jotunheim. Thor meanwhile murders dozen of Jotnar over an insult (something that is considered totally cceptable in his society). So why do you single out Loki? Loki then is captured, tortued, mind controlled and indoctrinated by Thanos and forced to attack New York. And that’s really it on the horrible crime front. Pretty mild by his society’s strandards. This is not to say he’s done nothing wrong, but it’s kind of weird of you to single him out when so many other characters in the MCU are also grey. And again. Why do you need to come into my inbox about it???

8) Ultimately these are fictional characters and I can enjoy them and interpret them however I want. To me Mobius is very clearly evil and part of an evil organization. I also prefer him that way because I find him much more narratively interesting as a clearly framed antagonist and villain. So I certainly hope that's the intent. That’s my prerogative. Similarly if Loki were irreeemdably evil and I just wanted to woobify him and engage in the fandom that way and excuse his every bad act that would be ok too. I can have fun however I want. It’s not healthy or appropriate for you to come in my inbox and try to police that.

#I feel like 'shocking someone and enslaving them are bad and not nice' is a pretty straight forward take.... #asks #this is wild. I wasn't even criticizing the show. I was criticizing a character in the show...who as of the recent trailer was definitely #being somewhat villain coded. we don't if he will be a villain or not in the actual show- I hope he is tho. #like what? #you're harassing me because I found the scene that's framed in a way that clearly shows the writers want us to feel sorry for the protagonis #t to be very effective in making me feel just that #what???

[ihopesocomic]

Is it true that you don't like Helluva Boss? I really don't like it because I find the humor very dull and I'm not a fan of demon/hell stuff lol, but what's your reason? :0

tw for helluva boss mention

-

Our views on Helluva Boss are essentially the same as My Pride: we like the sheer amount of effort that goes into it as an indie project completely done via Discord but we're not fans of the writing.

Mainly because we're confused on whether we should be rooting for these characters or not. We're meant to feel sad for Blitzo but he's an ableist, abusive and generally unpleasant character? Yes, it's set in Hell but when you're giving prompts for your audience to feel any emotion for him other than disgust or second hand embarrassment, that kinda interferes with the setting and atmosphere a tad.

The same goes for Stolas. The show portrays him as somebody who doesn't respect Blitzo's personal space and outright intimidates/frightens him sometimes but oh, we have to have feelings for him because he sings lullabies to his daughter and he's going through a messy divorce (which is entirely of his own making, arranged marriage or not - which is also not even clear nor developed enough for us to sympathise with him) and he actually legit loves Blitzo even though it's a bit late in the hour to turn it into an healthy relationship when you tried to portray it as creepy and inconvenient to Blitzo at the beginning for what appears to be comic effect?

We love the relationship between Moxxie and Millie, however. If the show had been purely about them and had been a sitcom where they're loving couple with an adopted hellhound daughter who also happen to be be professional assassins, we would've been all over that. Blitzo just seems to be there to be as obnoxious and rude as possible (an Eric Cartman-esque figure, if you will) and we just don't think him being the main protagonist with protagonist problems fits into that very well.

It appears to have the same issues as My Pride where it doesn't have a very good sense of identity. While it's entirely possible, it's very difficult to combine genres like comedy, musical and drama, especially when the comedy is very obviously adult-based. Because what can happen is that the genres can collide and conflict with each other if you're not careful and that's what we feel has happened with Helluva Boss. It started out as an adult comedy series but it also tries to be a complex, emotional drama whenever it simply feels like it and, unfortunately, that is not how these sort of things work. There has to be structure for these sort of things, or the characters and their motivations can come across as confusing and inconsistent.

Not saying these things should never be combined ever. They totally should and they can work together. It is possible to have an adult based comedy drama that's also a musical but you still have to have an identity first. Like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend kind of does that and it does have its more serious moments but it is still ultimately a comedy. It's like they we're trying to do a South Park/Ren and Stimpy combo but make it a musical but then try to pull it off as Bojack Horseman (which, based on a cameo of Bojack's heroin in Hazbin Hotel, is probably an inspiration) and Charlie's Angels at the same time.

There's also the fact that it's also only the first season and we've had six or so antagonists with their own storylines so far? It just feels kinda crowded at this point. Like the whole set up with Striker is interesting but then we completely forget about it for two whole episodes? It's a shame because him and his motivation as a bad guy has been the strongest of what we've been presented so far.

#ask #ask us stuff #tw helluva boss

[sebastianshaw]

Anon, for some reason Tumblr isn’t letting me reply to your ask so here it is!

“Anonymous asked:

yeah duggan's writing is my pet peeve cuz he keeps using the "female character goes against male character and wins" trope but has the win not reached through sheer skill or legitimate cunning. it only happened because the male character, who had been known to be very competent, gets nerfed to the ground. that win only happened because the writer had to nerf the guy so he'd be on the same level as the girl and let her have a chance at winning. it's the most insulting thing for both characters”

 I have beat this dead horse into glue at this point, but due to my English lit essayist major background, I have to make a lengthy reply to anything on the subject of writing. I'm putting it under the cut for the sake of my followers, because my GOD the poor dears don't need to put up with me yelling about this on their dash again---



I've said it before and I'll say it again, Duggan is a lot like those angry dudebros who angrily criticize a version of feminism as THEY understand it, which is that all women are perfect and always win and are always right and never challenged and all men are either useless at best or mean stupid sexist strawmen for them to prove wrong effortlessly. Which. . .ain't it, or at least it's not supposed to be, but that's what they think. And I think Duggan thinks that too. He just treats it as a GOOD thing and writes his "feminist" take accordingly. His understanding of how to do a "girl power" book is about the same as mine at the age of nine when I didn't even know the word "feminism" but definitely already had those leanings. But Duggan's not nine years old. I wish I could give him credit for trying, but when the result is such a poorly written mess, I wish he hadn't. And ironically, really sexist and racist? The characters of color are sidelined egregiously for the lead white women, the trauma of queer men, including men of color, is brushed under the rug for the sake of retconning in Much More Important trauma for wealthy white women who didn't have it before, the white saviorism reeks with the Madripoor bit, Lourdes had ironically LESS agency in this take, and even Duggan's fave, Emma, is damaged by this---her complexity is greatly reduced in his effort to sanitize her past so she was Always An Ally to Women and did good deeds for no return even during the height of her villainy, and he disrespects her completely with that "I need to flash four men to influence their minds more easily despite the fact I controlled whole crowds without effort in the past" pervy bullshit. Like. Just gross. And bringing it to a politically-neutral issue, even if he WEREN'T trying to be "feminist" and failing, this is still just Bad Writing because a VERY basic rule of writing is to challenge your protagonist. A story is only as good as its antagonist at the end of the day. The antagonist doesn't need to be a person---it can be a situation, the environment, or the protagonist to themselves---but whatever it is, it has to challenge the protagonist. If a hero just overcomes everything with little or no effort, there's really no tension or stakes, which makes for a poor story. When I read a book or watch a movie, I know LOGICALLY that the hero is going to survive and win (unless it's a tragedy) but I need to wonder HOW. Even children's stories understand this. And in order for these stakes to exist, the antagonist has to be competent. You can certainly have a comical antagonist, but unless you're actually writing a comedy where the joke is the antagonist constantly failing, they still need to present a threat. Like, Don Karnage in TaleSpin is funny as hell and really ridiculous and I love him, but he also genuinely has the heroes on the ropes a few times. And Shaw is a character that, though he is really funny, also has a history as extremely cunning and capable and powerful, as well as having been mostly or wholly immune to telepathy for YEARS now. Which makes him a great foe for Emma. Giving her a foe who is as cunning, manipulative, influential, and ruthless as she is, whom her psychic powers and diamond form are useless against, is a GREAT challenge. And a challenge would force her to really pull out all she's got. We'd get to see her at her best, because she'd have to work her hardest to combat him at his best. If a master martial artist is attacked by a common street punk, the fight isn't really interesting or impressive, because the master doesn't have to do much to win in a second. If the master martial artist has to face another master, then we get to see them struggle, and they're forced to display their best moves, which is far more impressive. In robbing Emma of a capable opponent, Duggan ironically screwed her too despite obviously wanting to elevate her at Shaw's expense, while also disrespecting the characterization of one of the X-Men's oldest foes who was a major player in their most iconic story. It's bad feminism. It's bad writing. Even if you're NOT a feminist or looking for a feminist story, it's shit. And if you ARE, then it's also shit. I really don't know who liked this except for fans who think like Duggan, which unfortunately I think there are a lot of right now; feminism has gotten more popular, but a lot of people's understanding of it is a lot more shallow and watered-down as a result imo. But that's another topic.

#salt #out of shirt