Is there a cat in cannon who got a good death who you think didn't deserve it? Especially if they committed crimes?
Tom the Wifebeater and his redemption death. No question. It's not even close.
Not only do I reject to the "redemption death" on the grounds of it being Tom the Wifebeater who is bullying others until his dying breath, even taunting Thunder about Turtle Tail is dead and the kits must be very torn up about it, but I reject "redemption through death" entirely. I don't like it in stories. It's a theme I deeply object to.
And again it's fucking wild that every time a character is a father, even if they are a wifebeater or a child abuser, the writers think that it bestows a glimmer of goodness into them which every abused child is forced to appreciate and cry about. Breezepelt, Thunder, Tallstar, Tom's children, all of them forced to reconcile and admit how much they wuv their papa.
Abusive dads in WC regularly get redemption deaths, too. Clear Sky dies saving his grandchild, Sandgorse died saving a rando in a tunnel, Tom the Wifebeater saving his daughter.
But Tom the Wifebeater is the worst example of it. Hands down.
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I played Alttp & LA HD for the first time this year and they were both GREAT!
When I picked the first one up I was kind of worried that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the classic. I’ve played 2D games before but it’s been many years since I’ve touched one. I’ve also primarily grown up with 3D games, especially where Zelda’s concerned. Ironically though, that’s probably why the experience it created for me felt so special. It’s old with it’s own brand of challenges, and yet I really wasn’t expecting how much it would move me all throughout my playthrough. I was already giddy by all the charming details and character, so discovering just how deeply this game and it’s sequel has obviously inspired all the Zelda games I grew up playing with? I was floored. It all suddenly clicked and it was like discovering something old and completely brand new all at once.
I enjoyed both games so much. There’s so many characters and scenes that caught my imagination and that has been calling me to draw. For now, here are some illustrations of Link in the mountain regions of the first game. The Bully and Gumball in particular (and as I like to call them) were some of my favorite character encounters. It must of been so surreal for Link to run into them only briefly after getting turned into a rabbit. They were a really amusing pair, and it was really fun trying to reimagine them!
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We all know I shouldn’t be allowed to make Tumblr posts after 1 AM, but here we go again… This has been in my brain for so long so now I am going to ramble about it (shoutout to the Hamlet Discord server for joining in the Thinking)
Surveillance Hamlet!!!
(Or, rather, the theme of surveillance in Hamlet and some fun and exciting ways I’d like to see it portrayed on stage assuming this mythical theater program has unlimited money)
(Warning- this thought is undercooked. This is going to get rambly…)
Surveillance is a major theme in Hamlet. Nearly everyone in the play engages in some kind of spying or scheming or is the victim thereof (or both). I love plays as a medium for the fact that each individual performance has the opportunity to completely change which themes get the most emphasis and surveillance is a theme I’d love to see take center stage with Hamlet specifically!
Hamlet is a pretty meta play. It ends with a message on the act of storytelling within the specific context of the story the audience has just watched just after it calls out the “mutes and audience” to the ultimate tragedy for their inaction during the runtime of the play. It’s also been performed and adapted plenty of times with a modern lens. Grief, depression, existential anxiety, and gay people are, apparently, universal pieces of the human experience, but if anything looms larger than ever over today’s society, it’s surveillance. Hell, I’m typing this on a device that is for sure selling my data to the government and probably also scam artists! So give me a performance where extreme surveillance heightens all the other aspects of the play, where Hamlet’s paranoia is exceedingly justified.
First, choose a good venue. Outdoor theater is almost always my favorite, but in this case, choose a massive indoor theater with a movie theater style sound system. Hang massive screens above the stage like you’d see at a big concert.
Now, these actors are going to be doing some major method acting. Put cameras above the stage at all angles. Put cameras in the wings. Put cameras on the crew. Put cameras in the audience- maybe some employee plants instructed to stream the show to the screens from their view or even to obnoxiously take photos and video throughout the show. No matter where these actors go, so long as they’re in character, there’s a camera on them. Put mics everywhere too, so even low whispers are heard from the backrow.
I want this play to start with an attempt at secrecy. The ghost appears, Hamlet begs his friends not to speak of it, but he can hear his whispers echoing right back to him and he knows it’s useless. The curiously missing line where Marcellus, Horatio, and Barnardo do finally swear upon Hamlet’s sword isn’t implied to be there as usual. It doesn’t exist. The ghost is only “satiated” by the coming of dawn, even this first, simple wish remains unfulfilled.
Hamlet spends the end of act 1 wavering between a genuine breakdown and an acted portrayal of madness. Pretending shields him from showing legitimate emotion on those screens.
To be or not to be is performed offstage, but on camera. Hamlet seems to think for a moment that he’s truly alone or perhaps it’s all part of the facade. Either way, emotion gets the best of him eventually and he realizes he can’t escape the cameras (or mortality). He comes on stage for get thee to a nunnery, frantically trying to get away from his ever-echoing voice, only to find a spotlight on him. The lines come across as cruel as they are pathetic. Ophelia is also being watched. Ophelia didn’t decide alone to speak to him. In some ways, she has far less privacy than he does, but Hamlet isn’t looking for solidarity in the watched. He wants to be alone. He wants to not be seen.
When he stabs Polonius, Ros & Guil track him down on the cameras. There’s no need to run, but he tries.
The only time Hamlet is truly outside of surveillance is on the ship to England (and then with the sailors who return him to Denmark). Maybe Claudius doesn’t want the world to know he has sent the prince to be executed, but it is clear that he too has lost any real control of this surveillance system. You saw him praying. Or was it a publicity stunt? Hamlet returns and simply tells Horatio (and by proxy, you) what happened on the ship, maybe resentfully. The only time he gets privacy, he doesn’t need it.
By the final scene, he no longer wants not to be seen. He isn’t sure you see him at all. No, you mutes and audience look right through him as if you know infinitely more than him, as if he hasn’t proven that he knows he is a sparrow that will fall. But you know the lines and he doesn’t.
He asks Horatio to tell his story. Maybe there’s something personal about being told a story rather than watching one play out. Maybe you can’t look through a storyteller.
Hamlet canonically knows he’s being watched. He uncovers Ros & Guil’s spy mission in the span of minutes, kills Polonius in the act of spying on him, and comes to mistrust the people around him because almost no one seems to be genuine with him (besides horatio). But it’s not just the characters, it’s the audience. In his darkest moments, he looks out for just a second, almost begging for help, only to discover that no one is coming to his aid. When he tries to exit, the spotlight follows him and so do the cameras. It’s inescapable. When he delivers the “mutes and audience” line, it should be as accusatory as it is pleading. You, the audience, have seen his life projected on massive screens, you’ve heard his every word and whisper, you know him, don’t you? Yes, you know him better than his closest friends. He’s spilled his soul to you because he knows you can’t be escaped, that you, rows upon rows of darkness to this actor blinded by spotlights, are always watching. Will you help? he asks, one final time. The answer is an obvious no, not because you’re heartless but because that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to see a play.
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