#not to mention how it would alter the original plot and character dynamics | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lesbianrobin · 3 years

Note

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

84 notes · View notes

purplecookie1313 · 3 years

Text

The Many AUs of the Ghostbusters Franchise

When Dan Ackroyd sat down and began to write the very first page that created the beloved franchise that we all know and love, he had an idea that these paranormal investigators would travel around the multiverse saving the day... and that didn't happen, but what we did get was the start of the never ending multiverse of the Ghostbusters. And for many years people argued about what was the canon universe and what wasn't. As one who watched the cartoon as soon as it came out, before the second movie, things were quite confusing for a ten year old to figure out. And as the years rolled by, many new ideas and creativity began to trickle into the main flow. However, we will not be going into ships or other internal topics, we're just sticking to the main canon lines. So make a drink, have a seat, and let's go through as much of the canon alternate universes, shall we?

Let's start with the beginning, the first movie, Ghostbusters. This is where the majority of the AUs began, with a few exception. As we all know, June 8th of 1984 changed the lives of many people, including this little geek right here. Ghostbusters came to life and blew us all away. This is the PRIME CANON line.

In September 1986, Sony released the beloved cartoon show, The REAL Ghostbusters. Besides the visual differences between the movie and the show, the characters' personalities were also altered to reflect the new AU. Also there is absolutely no mention of Dana Barret in the cartoon... Louis was added to the Show after the 4th season.

In March of 1988, came another AU, the REAL Ghostbusters's comic book. The biggest difference in the carton and the comic was mainly simplifying the vocabulary, character traits were a little tweaked towards a younger audience, and Egon's sea-foam green uniform. These Ghostbusters seemed to be less about ghosts and more about other forms of supernatural and paranormal plots... It's the beginning of 1988 and we now have 3 AUs so far... there's a LOT more...

June of 1989 came the anticipated return of our live action heroes, Ghostbusters 2 is the official sequel to the blockbuster first movie. It strictly follows the continuity of the first movie. In the cartoon, season 5 episode 6 “Partners in Slime”, it's mentioned that it's been a year since the RGB crew defeated Vigo and Egon collected a few canisters of yellow slime, not pink as in the second movie. Both are canon to their respective AU.

In 1997, we saw the Return of the Ghostbusters. Well, not all of them... the Extreme Ghostbusters plot was that Egon stays alone in the firehouse with Slimer as his only companion for ten years before he acquires a new crew of misfits and the return of Janine. Immediately, we were all under the impression that this new show was the continuation of the REAL Ghostbusters, however the IDW Comics had discredited it and set it up with it's own canon.

In 2009 the Ghostbusters Video Game came out. Now, there were many other smaller games released much before this one, however, this was the first game to not only be interactive with the player, but used the original voices of all the actors as well as gave us that conclusion to the Shandor plot. Many fans and some GB Officials, and Dan Ackroyd, this video game was declared as the official 3rd Ghostbusters movie. This game also introduced the canon that Egon has a nephew named Ed, which many fans believe this was a shutout for a character in a fan made GB movie named Ed Spengler. In the movie canon, it has been confirmed that Egon has a twin named Dr. Elon Spengler, a environmental scientist.

In 2011, IDW released the Ghostbusters new Comics based off the first two movies. In the GB Multiverse, this is the PRIME dimension.

2014 Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. A completely different AU, this one has an all female team with different dynamics than the main canon. Regardless of how one feels about the movie, they are canon. Period.

2014 also introduced The X-Files/Ghostbusters AU. In this AU, the Ghostbusters live in the same universe as the Lone Gunman. The 3 FBI agents investigate the Ghostbusters and their claims of spirits. This AU also has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many other IDW titles in the same AU. We also see Egon as a strawberry blond.

Ghostbusters 2020 is an AU where the guys have sort of retired and set up a new fresh team of young Ghostbusters to take over the fieldwork capturing ghosts.

2021 (hopefully) Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the final movie for the main canon line, where we are introduced to a new cast of future Ghostbusters including Egon's grandchildren. In this AU, Egon has passed away and left his legacy to his grandchildren.

In the IDW Crossing Over series, we are introduced to many canon AUs, including 'Slimer!' the cartoon designed for small children and others not mentioned before. The Ghostbusters Universe keeps expanding, from canon writers to fan fiction writers and artists.

Which AU is your favorite?

#ghostbusters #the real ghostbusters #idw ghostbusters #ghostbusters answer the call #ghostbusters au #ghostbusters multiverse

126 notes · View notes

dontcallmecarrie · 3 years

Text

Replying to @kine-iende [hope this works and you see it, still trying to get the hang of how tags work] who said:

Thank you, author-person, for this incredible detailed answer. (Also i don't mind being tagged - or not) With Tony being so aware of the dynamic between those rivals, Justin ending as a villian is less going a betrayal from almost-family and more of a 'natural phenomen' he should have seen coming. Because as always:rivals ^^

To be completely honest, if this AU were a tv show the ‘Justin Hammer accidentally founded Cabal’ reveal would’ve been the huge plot twist revealed at the end of either Season 2 or 3, and it’d be a major shocker for the Avengers...but not Tony.

also just realized I somehow made an AU where the protagonist basically becomes a villain out of Spite™ and I’m not sure if that’s the weakest origin story ever, or what

After all, if this were a tv show, it’d be centered around the Avengers, and the main season one conflict would be in seeing how Tony fits in the team— which would get resolved eventually, but not before the audience gets a good look at their dynamics. Like, the chemistry between Iron Man and Captain America, how easily and seamlessly they work together without needing more than a word or two because they’re on the same page, or Tony’s cordial yet distant academic respect for Bruce [which gets contrasted with Iron Man’s uncharacteristic instant bromance with the Hulk], or... well, the list goes on.

Not to mention that having a common enemy alters their dynamic as time goes on, because while if this’d been a one-off things would’ve still been rocky between Tony and the team, whereas having to constantly coordinate because new intel indicates that their last enemy was actually connected to something bigger and that means even more teamwork...

So by this point they’ve got a good idea of their characters, how they roll, how they react under pressure and during downtime and throughout all this, Justin Hammer would make cameos because he’s SHIELD’s main weapons supplier [...among other groups, which in and of itself foreshadows some of his shadier connections later on] and between him and Tony, they’ve basically cornered the market on experts in that field— which comes in handy when we’re talking about alien tech.

Justin wouldn’t get much screentime compared to the others, but enough for the Avengers [and the audience] to see he makes for a very good foil for Tony, with their differences being highlighted all the more due to the similarities. After all, both come across as good people: Tony’s very friendly to anyone who isn’t on his shit list, and Justin acts very polite and gentlemanly to strangers [and is 100% a mom friend to anyone he cares about]. Tony’s a hero, though, while Justin’s long since made it clear he was a businessman first and foremost.

Through all this, Justin and Tony’s dynamic is intentionally kept vague— one moment they’re perfectly friendly, the next they'll be at each others’ throats and, again, sometimes can get misinterpreted as something else.

Then the Reveal happens, and suddenly all those past encounters and hints come up and it’s so obvious in retrospect but—

Who would’ve expected it?

Tony.

Tony’s the only one who’s not surprised by what the latest intel’s hinting at, obtained from an intel broker who turned up dead not long after [...because said broker’d also been messing with HYDRA, but that’s the plot twist that comes up in the next season]: nothing specific, nothing concrete, but something that ties a good chunk of the previous Villains Of The Week together to reveal a far, far greater threat.

The Cabal, and while some of its members have long since become familiar names— e.g. the Fantastic Four normally are the ones who have to deal with Victor Von Doom, but not always— its founder had been a mystery for the longest time. A mystery that has just been ended, except nobody could have expected to see the name on the file.

Everyone else’s caught flat-footed and going through several permutations of ‘oh shit’, meanwhile Tony just leans back, scrubs a hand down his face, and looks out the window with a low whistle.

“Well played, Justin. Well played.”

Which is when the audience learns more about their very strange dynamic, which gets revealed to have started out a rivalry during their childhood [and has now basically escalated to the most high-stakes game of chicken there ever was, but shh].

Here’s the thing: if Tony were to call their rivalry off, Justin would stop.

But...

Tony can count on one hand how many positive constants he’s had in his life: Jarvis’ [and, after his heart attack, JARVIS’] presence, and his rivalry. Those are the two things that’ve been there for him through thick and thin, the only two safe places where he knows where they stand, knows they won’t try and tear him down and that means something.

JARVIS will never leave him [not this Jarvis, at least], but... this rivalry’s been a thing since before he met Rhodey, since before his parents died and Tony’s not entirely certain just how much it’s shaped him, but he can count on one hand how many people give a damn about him and want to see him succeed and—

Tony’s not sure he has it in him to call it off. Not at this point.

Not when part of him knows why he did it, because— well, every superhero needs an adversary, don’t they? For a moment, he’d been surprised Justin had the guts to do this, but it makes complete sense the more he thinks about it and Tony knows just how little respect Justin has for the others, of course he’d be the type of guy who’d go “ugh, fine, if you want something done right, gotta do it yourself”.

also, before this all seems very one-sided, I think I forgot to mention that Justin’s really benefiting from this rivalry too— not as obvious early on, but it gives him something to focus on and work towards.

Something that kept him from depression when he thought too much about his past life and discovered just how much he’d forgotten, was still forgetting, something to keep him from being bored when he looked up one day and realized— he didn’t actually have any goals in this life, did he?

Not when his life thus far had been dictated by his parents, and he’d been okay with following along to their script for him because if it wasn’t him, it’d be his sister or an innocent child who’d be forced to live up to their impossibly high expectations as the heir to Hammer Industries... but it was something he was resigned to at this point, not something he was particularly happy about.

This time, he... didn’t know what he wanted in life. Nor did he remember what he’d wanted last time— had they wanted to be a doctor? Teacher? Writer? They didn’t remember anymore— and it’s startling to realize that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled if he wasn’t talking to his little sister.

Justin’s never been one to seek out the approval of the adults in his life— the fact that he was surrounded by Parents of the Year [note the sarcasm] probably had something to do with that— and remembering a past life means he sees everyone his physical age and lower as kids, so he doesn’t see many people as equals.

...and then Tony decided he’d like having a rival.

At first, yeah, it was confusing; even as an adult, Justin didn’t entirely get why, but it was. Something.

Something good, and gets even better because this is something they both decided, that had nothing to do with the meticulously-annotated plan his parents had for his life, and while at first it was weird, Justin found he was actually enjoying himself [for once].

To the point where he found himself actually getting honestly, genuinely invested in said rivalry, and if he sometimes found himself trying to drill self-care into Tony sometimes, well, those bags under his eyes made them look bad, okay? It was self-interest, nothing more, really!

Really.

So when Tony went and became a superhero, Justin found himself taking a step back for a moment as he paused to consider his actions.

Paused before taking the plunge, because this was it, was serious, was pushing the limit and going past the point of no return. Was he really willing to do this?

A moment to consider things, deliberate on the possible consequences and what could happen— then he gave a sharp, decisive nod.

“Yes, we’re doing this.”

#No Hero [Downward Descending]#replies #Naught replies #character study of sorts #My writing

64 notes · View notes

rollflasher · 3 years

Text

Another Sonic ramble

So once again I’m here with one of my rambles about my incredibly subjective view of how the Sonic series should be handled! *Beat*

...anyway.

So, one of the more recurring opinions on the fandom is that Sonic games should be written by Ian Flynn, I have talked before about the gripes I have with his writing and why I disagree with this but this post is not entirely about him, but rather a more general topic that has been bugging me for a long time.

The other day I was watching a video speculating about the upcoming Sonic Rangers, there’s not much to write home since it was pretty well made but there’s a particular part that inspired me to do this post and talk about it with other fans to discuss it.

See, at one point the video critisized the fact that Sonic Forces was written by a Japanese writer because they have to re-write the script in English and that can cause problems with localization, and that it would be better to have western writers from the get-go since Sonic’s main demographic comes from there, while making an off-hand suggestion that Ian Flynn could be a main choice. While I can see where they’re coming from, my response was a simple:

‘‘Absolutely, not’‘

See, I have a lot of issues with this to put it bluntly and I’ll try to break them down and explain them the best I can since they’re pretty subjective in nature, but I’m bringing this up because I want you guys to share your thoughts as well.

So, why does it bug me so much the idea of Sonic being handled by western creators?

In my case, the main reasons are because Sonic loses a core part of it’s appeal because of this, the fact that SEGA of Japan seems to have a better grasp of the franchise’s tone and characters and there’s the very subjective point that, in my eyes, American versions of Japanese franchises were always nothing more than dumbed down products of the source material.

To start with my first point, whenever someone talks about Sonic’s creation, a lot of people are quick to point out that our favorite blue hedgehog and his games were inspired by western pop culture and cartoons, and that is true, however oftenly they forget to mention a core thing that not only inspired, but also formed part of the core identity of this franchise.

Sonic is very inspired on anime, and at heart this franchise is a shonen.

(This image by The Great Lange expresses more clearly what I mean)

Generally, the most acknowledgement anime gets on it’s hand on Sonic is the mentions of Sonic being inspired by Dragon Ball, particularly the Super Saiyan, but there’s so much more than that, as Sonic blatantly takes inspiration from Studio Ghibli films specially in games like Sonic 3, which draws a lot of inspiration from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, this great post shows proof that this is not a coincidence.

And it doesn’t stop there, Shiro Maekawa himself has stated that SA2′s story (and in particular, the characters of Shadow and Maria) draw a lot of inspiration from the manga Please Save My Earth.

Even Sonic’s character design resembles shonen protagonists moreso than the main characters of silent cartoons, don’t believe me?

Sure, Sonic has a cartoony anatomy, no one can deny that, but he also exhibits a lot of traits from shonen characters such as spiky hair/quills (?), dynamic posing, a confident, courageous and energetic personality and most importantly, fighting spirit.

If you compare Sonic’s personality and more specifically, his abilities and moves to, say, cartoon speedy characters like the Road Runner, there’s a pretty big disconnection between him and western cartoon characters. Hell, this disconnection is even just as present if you compare him with a character like The Flash from DC.

Simply put, Sonic acts, moves and more importantly, fights like a shonen anime character. He doesn’t just go Super Saiyan and that’s it. Here’s even a quick comparison if necessary.

And this is important because this doesn’t apply just to him, but the whole franchise as a whole and when it takes a more western approach, all of these details are kinda lost or more downplayed, of course this depends on the artists and there’s YMMV at hand, but I think my point is clear.

My second point is...SoJ has consistently proven they have a much clearer grasp on how Sonic’s world and characters are compared to SoA.

Hear me out, yes, Sonic 06 and ShtH exist and yes, SoJ is not perfect by any means. But hear me out...when did the characters start to get flanderized and turned into parodies of themselves? In the 2010s...and when did SEGA move from Japanese to western writers in the games?

Of course it was more then that since there’s a whole tone shift that came with this decade and the new writers, but it’s not a coincidence that when writing in Sonic started to decay, western writers also happened to get on board with the games.

Besides that, SoA has a wide history of not getting Sonic’s tone and characters, from how they made media without much of Sonic Team’s input, to altering how characters are seen in the west. (Such as how they amped up Sonic’s attitude in their media or how the English scripts of the games featured things like Sonic seemingly barely tolerating Amy while the JP scripts portrayed this as Sonic just not understanding girls all that well instead, or for more recent examples, the addition of the ‘’torture’’ line in Forces). Not only that, but even ignoring obvious infamous writers like Ken Penders, even the ‘’best’’ writers from the western side of Sonic are still not above of giving us Pontaff-esque gems.

Like this one.

Or alternatively, I feel like sometimes western writers on Sonic rely a bit too much on their personal vision about Sonic which may or may not be a good thing, clear examples of this are Ian Flynn himself and Pontaff.

By contrast, while SoJ has it’s own share of notorious inconsistencies when dealing with writing (The 2000s era is a big offender), it seems that for them Sonic hasn’t changed much and this is visible not only on the JP scripts of the Modern games which are for the most part better than the ENG ones, but also things like the Sonic Channel comics and the recent one-shots they made with Sonic interacting with the cast show that for all intents and purposes, the Japanese’s staff vision of Sonic is much more clear and consistent compared to the west. Because of this, I’d rather have a good Japanese writer on Sonic games with the localization being focused on being faithful with the original script than have a more western writers dramatically changing the characters. (I don’t mention the tone since either way, SEGA is the one in charge of that and the writers have to follow that)

My last and very subjective point is that, at least for me, everything SoA does with Sonic involving the writing and canon feels like a dumbed down version of the source material. One of the reasons it bugs me so much that in the latest decade Sonic has taken a more western direction is because a lot of what I pointed out gets lost as a result, even if some of those elements are still there, you can tell they’re more downplayed with products like the Tyson Hesse shorts having a more predominant cartoon direction. If any of you have been following my blog for a long time, you should be aware that just because I prefer the Japanese Sonic content doesn’t mean I won’t give the western products a chance, my enjoyment for Mania, the Tyson Hesse shorts and the movie should be a testament of that, but at the same time I can’t help but being sour about the fact that because of these products, we don’t have stuff like a new anime for Sonic or even a serialized ‘’main’’ manga as an alternative for the comics, and my hype for these products is generally more subdued as a result since I’d wish SEGA rather spent that money and resources on more Japanese content than just merchandise.

In particular, because Sonic is a Japanese franchise with a notorious inspiration from anime, what I get from this is a pretty big contradiction. I know Sonic is much more popular on the west but...is it really necessary for his game or products to be handled by western creators to keep their appeal?

For instance, imagine if Dragon Ball’s manga and anime got replaced by western comics and animated series because of it’s world-wide appeal, would that really be the same?

Or imagine the same thing with Fullmetal Alchemist, a pretty aclaimed anime that has a lot of western influence. Would it really not matter at all if it’s Japanese products were replaced with western ones?

At least for me, it wouldn’t.

And what I said about American versions of Japanese franchises being nothing more than watered down versions of the source material? I have that view because of countless examples.

Mega Man and how the English manuals removed a lot of important information about the story of the Blue Bomber’s game and world, causing a lot of plot holes in the process.

American remakes like Godzilla 1998 or Dragon Ball Evolution being an in-name only version of the source material.

Or the many censored anime English dubs from the 2000s, for instance, whenever I see the Yu-Gi-Oh! dubs, I only see a very dumbed down and childish version of a show that was originally a shonen.

And I know that all of these things don’t have to necessarely get lost since every creator is different and there’s franchises like Avatar which are made on the west but draw a lot of inspiration from anime and I’m aware of that, and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to say that American writers are not allowed to work on Sonic, what I’m trying to say is that inevitably there’s always gonna be some culture dissonance and clash when writers from another culture handle a foreign franchise. And even with examples like ATLA, I think being made by one culture while being inspired by the other is actually a big part of these franchises appeal and it’s something that can’t simply be replicated by handing it to creators from that specific culture they draw inspiration from.

I think James Rolfe’s quote about the same thing with the Godzilla franchise sums up how I feel about this.

‘‘It’s like champagne, anybody can make their own and call it champagne, but unless it’s from Champagne France, it’s not real champagne’‘

So, this last part was very subjective, but I think this post in general sums up why I dislike so much the idea of Sonic having western writers specifically in the games or just focusing more on that side in general.

But what do you guys think? I guess I am too biased so that’s why I wanted to ask for opinions and discuss this topic.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic musing #opinion

27 notes · View notes

firelxdykatara · 3 years

Note

kitty i can't wait for your thoughts of Shadow and Bone asdfasfaw

Ok well I just finished and I have so many fucking thoughts. Most good! Some, less so. Part of it may just be my bias because I’ve only read the Six of Crows duology and have little interest in actually reading the original trilogy, because I know how it ends and Leigh clearly hates me personally and doesn’t want me to be happy (/j), so I was already predisposed to be far more invested in the Crows and Darkling/Darklina segments (genuinely, the Mal/Malina scenes/storyline bored me to tears, and while I appreciate that the show went out of its way to change Mal’s character to make him much less of a toxic douchebag [I’ve read enough excerpts and explanations of his actions in the books to really loathe book!Malina], it isn’t enough to make me ship them when Darklina is right there), but I also don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the Crows absolutely stole the show.

It’s actually kind of funny, because I’d assumed they were only being so heavily marketed to hype the show up even more, since while there’s a lot of TGT/SoC fandom overlap they are also two fundamentally different genres and I’d wager there are a lot of people who are massive fans of one but not so enthused with the other, while remaining fairly insignificant to the overall plot. Turns out, they make up fully half of the show’s runtime (much to my delight). Which is part of what I think will help this series stand on its own, both as a book adaptation and simply as a fantasy TV series.

I’ll put more of my story-specific thoughts under a cut, so there’s lots of show spoilers to follow!

I know that a lot of early reviewers were saying that Alina’s motivations and storyline revolved too much around Mal, and that really held true for me. It made sense in the beginning--he was the only constant in her life, she was thrust into something new, terrifying, and completely unfamiliar, and they’d developed an unhealthy codependence as a coping mechanism for their childhoods and the traumas they faced, the lives they lead growing up in a war-torn country. But she started coming into her power, falling for the General--not just his power and charisma, but what she felt when she was with him. The way he helped her summon the sun, the way she felt free in a way she never had before.

Until it all went to shit--but the Darklina make-out scene in episode 5? Fucking iconic. Poetic fucking cinema. The way they were quite literally about to have sex on that wartable (and someone better write fic of that moment, what if they hadn’t gotten interrupted), and the General left, but then he ran back just to kiss her one more time... this is what OTPs are made of ok.

I think what really bothers me overall is that Alina ultimately lacked agency in her one storyline, pretty much the entire way through. She did make a few choices, but they were mostly incidental, and a lot of it was Alina desperately trying to get back to Mal rather than seizing her own power and destiny and running with it. The most prominent example is the end of episode 5--Alina is having happy make-outs and almost bones the General in his own war room, and then he leaves, and Baghra comes in and infodumps to her about how evil he is and how he’s only using her and she needs to escape.

I recognize that a lot of this is probably because that’s essentially what happened in the book and Leigh is an executive producer for the show so she has a lot of shot-calling power. However, I really think that even in the book this plotline would’ve been better-served by having Alina make these discoveries on her own.

For example, imagine that the letters which were used as framing devices for episodes 2 and 3 were vitally important to the plot, rather than being one-offs that are mentioned a few times but not really affecting much of anything. Alina begins to get suspicious when she doesn’t receive word from Mal, and she starts wondering if her letters are even reaching him--so she starts snooping. She finds ashes in the war room hearth, late at night,, and recognizes a fragment of Mal’s signature and larger piece of her own. She now knows that someone--possibly the General, but maybe that creepy priest guy, or someone else in the palace--is keeping her and Mal from contacting one another. So she starts snooping around even more. She asks the General leading questions, trying to figure out what the truth is of his intentions. She still feels this pull--this connection to him, and she hopes she’s wrong, but she’s not willing to just sit around and wait for the other shoe to drop.

The Winter Fete still happens, she still gets the hot make-out session with the General, and then when he’s called away, she snoops through his papers, looking for anything that can tell her the truth. She finds a hidden compartment filled with journals.

She reads about Aleksander’s past (and, incidentally, wasn’t that supposed to be a huge moment in the books, him revealing his true name to her in private? kinda wish it had been kept that way in the show but who knows where they’ll go with it in the future)--that leads to the flashbacks in episode 6. She feels for him, but she also reads further--she gets a firsthand look at his desire for power, something that began as a noble desire to save his people, but was twisted by a lust for vengeance (for his lost love and all the Grisha who were killed) and shot through with greed, the realization that if he found the Sun Summoner he could control the Fold, rather than just destroy it. He could create a new world where Grisha could live without fear--where Grisha could rule.

Alina is terrified. Whoever the General used to be--whatever humanity she saw flickering in his eyes, the way his heart fluttered when they kissed--she can’t trust that it’ll be enough to save her from plans centuries in the making. So she goes to Baghra, the woman who helped her discover her power, learn to channel it--the woman who always seemed to know much more than she ever let on. Baghra gives her side of the story--Alina got it from the General’s perspective first, now Baghra is telling her something framed much differently. She isn’t sure what or who to trust, but she knows that Baghra seems willing to help her escape--but rather than trusting her ‘loyal Grisha’, she makes the choice she made in the show, to choose the other path, and winds up with the Crows.

Idk how Mal and the Stag thing would fit into this (if it isn’t obvious by now, Mal just... doesn’t interest me), but Alina’s story and her character arc would be so much stronger for it. And she’s supposed to be the central character, so her story being weak and her agency so frequently being compromised ultimately hurts the show as a whole.

I know I’ve gone on and on about Alina and the Darkling (look, I’m a slut for enemies-to-lovers, and also lovers-to-enemies-and-back, so Darklina and Helnik are where so much of my investment is rooted--plus Kanej, but that almost goes without saying), but the true standouts of the series were the Crows. Inej, Kaz, and Jesper, and Nina and Matthias in their episodes, stole the show (along with the Darkling, Ben is far and away the best actor in the cast and I love that for him, but Freddy, Amita, and Kit are also amazing, and Danielle&Calahan were fucking phenomenal as Nina and Matthias--I do have to say, though, that the whole cast is really solid and has amazing chemistry).

They worked together so perfectly--Freddy and Amita communicated so much with their eyes alone, especially together, and a whole lot of their relationship dynamic is rooted in how they exist together, which really came through. The show altered the Crows timeline considerably (I’m pretty sure Kaz would’ve been 14 during the original trilogy lol), so Inej is still at the Menagerie, but things like Kaz putting up the Crow Club for Inej’s freedom, the way Kaz needed her but could never bring himself to say it (until the end of the season dklhfgdkjfgh i SCREAMED)--the way Jesper played off the both of them, and it’s so obvious they all love each other even though they’re criminals and thieves and murderers, and Kaz would never admit it (out loud--which actually feeds into my theory that his love language is acts of service; Kaz does things for the people he cares about, he never announces it and he will almost always try to downplay it, but the way you know he cares is if, for example, he puts his entire life, everything he built, up as collateral for your freedom), but they’re a family.

One thing that I was kind of iffy about was Inej’s refusal to kill--but I thought it might be something they were planning to work into her overall character arc, and they did. It was the one line she hadn’t crossed--in the books, I’d imagine that it took a while for Inej to wind up at that point, being willing to kill on top of everything else. So I actually like that they worked that into the Crows plotline, and Inej killing for the first time was to save Kaz’s life.

Just like Kaz’s first selfless act was to save her.

(He’d deny it, of course. He protects his investments. He needed her for the job. But the truth is, he did it for her. And he’d do it again. Even if he’d never admit it.)

Meanwhile, Nina and Matthias’ storyline was pretty much note-for-note according to their backstory as it was revealed in Six of Crows, and I loved every second of it. Their chemistry was perfect, their journey from enemies to begrudging allies to friends to maybe something more (Matthias’ stomach cockblocking them when they were about to kiss had me fucking SCREAMING AT THE TV, and then of course the whole ‘betraying him to save him’ thing happened and I sobbed), and then suddenly right back to enemies.

Because from Matthias’ perspective, he trusted a witch--believed in her, liked her, wanted her--and she turned on him. He has no idea that she wasn’t the one who knocked him out in the first place, and no reason to believe her, because as far as he knows, she just confirmed everything he’d ever been told about Grisha. That they are deceitful and treacherous, would turn on you as soon as look at you, that they are dangerous and not to be trusted. It wasn’t revealed in-show but I imagine Matthias’ backstory is largely the same, which means that his entire family was slaughtered by Grisha when he was a young boy, and then he was turned into a brainwashed child soldier by the witch hunters and never knew anything else.

They are perfectly primed for their SoC arc next season and I, for one, am so stoked to see the rest of their journey. And if I slip Netflix a couple twenties, maybe they’ll let Helnik have a happy ending please please please.

Anyway, yeah! I have a lot of thoughts but things are still percolating in my head so I’ll probably float around the tags for a bit and let things settle. This is just a preliminary overview of my thoughts in the immediate aftermath of bingeing the entire show in one night kldfjghdkjfhgkjgf

EDIT TO ADD: I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THE TRUE STAR OF THE SHOW, M I L O

MILO BEST BOY. MILO THE MVP. MILO DESERVES ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD AND I HOPE HE LIVES A HAPPY AND HEALTHY AND FULL LITTLE GOAT LIFE.

#shadow and bone #kanej #helnik #darklina #sab spoilers #alina starkov #the darkling #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #jesper fahey #malina salt #asked #cobraonthecob

45 notes · View notes

quartings · 2 years

Text

College Adventures Special Episode VI: Interview with Jeremiah Cortez (Dogs in Space)!

A bit more of a casual entry this time, but I 100% had to talk about my Writing for Animation class professor and creator of the amazing Netflix cartoon Dogs in Space, Jeremiah Cortez! Spoilers for S1 of Dogs in Space btw! (Please watch it, it’s great)

(Btw, his class is the setting for College Adventures Season 3 Parts 7, 8, and 11!)

· For most of the semester he was under NDA about his series, so it was really tough hearing him say stuff like “Oh man, there’s the joke/character/scene in the show that’s SO good! I can’t tell you about it right now, but can’t wait for you all to see it!” so much.

· Nevertheless, he showed us a ton of character sheets for the show, and they were super-extensive!! There was so much detail in them for how every character dynamic in the whole show should play out, and it was really fun to see!

· Netflix really wanted him to cast a big-name celebrity as Cpt Garbage, but he managed to fight against that in order to find the right person instead. Some names thrown around included Seth Rogen and Will Ferrell!

· For the same reasons, Netflix was also very against hiring no-name David Lopez as Chonies, but Jeremiah insisted he was right for the job (and I agree!)

· Loaf was originally written to have a British accent, since he’s a British Bulldog!

· Apparently while recording her lines for Kira in the finale, Debra Wilson actually broke into tears! That’s dedication!

· Also, Kira wasn’t even going to be the antagonist of S1 at first! It was originally going to be an alien that the crew of the Pluto found. And his “evil” plan was to steal the dogs’ gene-alteration tech to splice himself and become strong enough to get revenge on the evil aliens who conquered his planet.

· One of the other producers went to Jeremiah and told him he wanted the S1 villain to be Laika instead- an abandoned dog with an anti-human agenda. Jeremiah initially turned him down because Laika wasn’t gene altered and would have died of old age long before the events of the show, so after 2 days of back-and-forth, they settled on changing Laika to Kira so her life would fit in the timeframe of the series. Honestly one of the best examples of writing compromise and cooperation I’ve ever seen!

· Not going to lie, seeing him come to class every week with his notebook covered in cute stickers he drew himself was super-nice to see!

· In his lecture about color schemes, he accidentally gave away the twist about Kira’s heel-turn, but the writing on the show is so good anyways that I didn’t mind at all while bingeing!

· On a lighter note, the Dachshund magician character is called The Magnificent Chipolata, and was originally created by one of Jeremy’s storyboarders as a joke! He liked it so much that Chipolata became a recurring character!

· Jeremiah also confirmed the fan-theory that Ed conned his way into the position of ambassador for the Pluto, forcing the original holder of that role to be a hot dog cart worker on the M-Bark.

· The puppies episode was one of the first ones written for the show! Jeremy said it was important for season 1 to have episodes with the creative freedom of fillers while still having plot advancements.

· Sailor Moon & DragonBall parody episodes were also considered for those same reasons, but had to be cut for time.

· The show’s production was hit pretty hard by covid. Even though voice actors can hypothetically record from home, some people don’t have a good enough setup to record non-echo-y audio. Kimiko Glenn recorded all her first takes in her kitchen with a low-quality mic and it was all pretty much unusable!

· Jeremiah also talked about some future shows he was thinking about pitching! Out of courtesy, I won’t say exactly what they were, but I will mention some rough trends about what he likes!

· Pretty obvious from Dogs in Space, but he likes the contrast from putting genuinely cute wholesome characters in horrifying dark situations. (I wholeheartedly agree with this! If adult animated protags actually had nicer art styles, I would empathize with them more in dire situations)

· He also wants to make a musical series like Centaurworld or Phineas and Ferb, but is unsure of the logistics behind making one as of now.

· He thinks up character arcs first, then creates worlds and characters that match them, rather than the other way around (Which I think is a really cool and useful writing technique!)

· He’s upset with Netflix’s strategy of cancelling most shows before 3 seasons, citing Parks and Rec as an example of shows that get much better when given more than 2 seasons to grow.

· Finally, he gave us an exclusive sneak peek at the first episode of season 2! I promised not to spoil anything major, so all I will say is that I like the direction they’re taking and hope they’ll update the opening sequence to match it!

· Season 2 should hopefully drop around next spring!

#college adventures #dogs in space #jeremiah cortez #grizzlyjerr #q speaks #positivity

11 notes · View notes

bereft-of-frogs · 3 years

Text

loki series discourse thoughts dump: (I’ve been hanging onto them)

- honestly, I’m not touching the selfcest=problematic discourse because I think you can guess my feelings (who cares, it’s hot tho right? hahaha also not the worst thing I’ve ever shipped so) and also I vehemently agree with the twitter thread that’s like ‘....y’all know this is not a scenario you will ever have to face in real life, right?’ like, this is the ultimate fantastical ship, it’s been around for years before this, I do not care that people are upset about it

- I think one of the problems, for me, with the ‘is it objectively good or bad’ discourse is that the negative takes are so negative sometimes that it genuinely makes me question my perception of reality and my ability to critically view television. like, I’m talking about the ‘the effects are the worst and amateurish and it sucks’ sort of hyperbole. (I thought for the most part the effects were quite good, which is why the couple times they were bad really stuck out to me). or ‘they had no chemistry!’ (I actually thought the chemistry was great, particularly in their first episode together, I was really surprised by how quickly I was like ‘oh but I like this dynamic). things like that where they’re either of a subjective nature or they are problems, points if I were inclined to write a larger critique I may have mentioned as well...but they’re perhaps not as big a problem as some people are making them out to be, which is what’s throwing me off.

- this also I think, comes from ‘contextual reviewing’ or in this case the lack thereof. like when I talk about it being good, I’m not saying it’s prestige television. but I’m placing it against its direct competitors - the disney+ series: The Mandalorian, Wandavision, Falcon & Winter Soldier most directly, but also its similar genre shows. for me, the series was right up there with The Mandalorian and a bit better overall than Wandavision, but was it Dark? Was it Altered Carbon? No, but if I want those things....I’m not going to the MCU for that. I was entertained, which is about as deep as I expect out of it. And yeah, the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig for those buried themes, but I’m also not super bothered because I think Loki fit really well into the MCU

(*and if you think this is just me bootlicking disney or whatever, accepting mediocrity from the mouse, I think this problem of contextual reviewing is something that exists even not talking about the mouse. like, I have different standards for a show if I know it originally premiered on SyFy or the CW, versus HBO or AMC, versus Netflix or Amazon, and I have a whole longer post to be made about why some shows are struggling in the age of prestige tv, because we’re flattening the context and holding shows that would have been perfectly well-received on SyFy to HBO standards and I do think it’s sometimes unfortunate and perfectly fun shows get raked over the coals because they’re not performing to prestige TV’s standards)

- I’m starting to see a potential evolution of my predicted conspiracy. still not as intense as tjlc just the rumblings but I gotta say. Cut it out. it is inappropriate to speculate on the personal relationships of actors. It is doubly inappropriate to with no evidence make vague accusations of an intensely personal nature. leaving this one vague. but just...speculating on accusations of a personal nature because you are disappointed in a tv show is inappropriate. stop it.

- that being said I’m also operating on the assumption that the ‘let’s get a protest mob to tom hiddleston’s house’ anon is trolling but still. stop it. seriously. it’s inappropriate. the show was perfectly fine. it may have disappointed you and you have absolutely every right to be disappointed but you do not have the right to attack people who were doing a job, even if you didn’t like the end result. they pitched a show. their pitch was accepted. they made the show. that’s it.

- speaking of, an interesting observation I’ve had throughout the show’s run is how the fandom seems to feel we’re at war with the creators. a lot of putting them down like ‘[theory] but they wouldn’t be smart enough for that’ or bitching about ‘Michael Waldron’s OCs’. Michael Waldron’s job is to write OCs. he has to make characters for Loki to play off of and to further the plot. There is no reason to assume that fanfiction writers are better or smarter or care more than original content creators. in general, canon content creators are held to different parameters than fic writers. honestly, even calling them OCs feels weird to me because creating new characters and worlds is the literal job of the canon creators? but I guess it also makes sense in a way because they are creating new characters in a world already establish but...I don’t know. it’s different somehow. further articulation on this point required.

I think that’s it for me - I probably have some more episode-specific points to contend, but I think that’s it for my general discourse opinions, just to know where I’m standing at this point. I was really entertained, I hadn’t looked forward to a weekly airing of a show this much since the second season of The Mandalorian finished up. As I said last night, looking forward to the multiverse fallout and season 2 and the other films in the lineup!

#loki series discourse #<<a reminder you can block that tag if you'd prefer to avoid this sort of thing!#loki spoilers #(spoiler tag to be safe)#ok that's it for now #the discourse (tm)#long post

30 notes · View notes

mxdotombra · 3 years

Photo

Bloom! So I am indeed rewriting season 1 and honestly Bloom is one of the more changed aspects so to suit her I changed her style! This is not set in stone at all, well her fairy form at least.

More notes on outfits and how I’m portraying her under the cut!

Bloom is a very flat character to me, or season 1 really. While yes she is a good character, she seems to respond to situations weirdly to me, her whole returning home and just abandoning school comes out of nowhere to me and I literally had to read about her tendency to run away from the wiki. As well, hobbies are mentioned in ep 1 and a little in ep 2 and completely abandoned! Like?? My rewrite is sticking to the plot, so I changed her to make it make more sense.

Bloom is incredibly family oriented, its her everything, especially in a town that slowly began to turn against her for how strange she seemed to become over the years. She’s anxious but curious, willing to face the world yet is seated deep in a pit of fear and only willing to open up to those she trusts. Even than, she is compassionate and protective of her friends, and can grow angry and emotional when those she cares for is threatened. She’s also incredibly stubborn to a fault, strong willed and willingly to get angry if she trully thinks its whats best for her family, friends, or herself though is often strangely a mediator between friends. She’s a fish out of water and afraid of the world of fairies, largely due to her obsession with traditional folklore and belief of them being like traditional fae, and as well, she’s afraid of herself.

Still, she’s an artist true and true and adores her strange little friend who looks like a rabbit but acts to smart to really be one. She once preferred to spend her time in the woods drawing where the people of her town who hated her wouldn’t find her, yet now she just adores being with her friends, who, while she is deathly homesick, become her home away from home.

Bloom is based in issues of identity and family connections.

ALRIGHT SO AS A NOTE: Bloom is a bit tanner because she spends more time outside in my Fanon! She also has a bunch of freckles because of this! Also she has lizard eyes, and I’m not going into detail with this cause spoilers for ch. 1 lol though its not big. Her hair is still long and that red thats so shocking into almost impossible, I like to think it moves like fire in the sun. She’s also got sharp teeth! She isn’t very used to them and bites her tongue a lot and its just generally annoying in general. I think this is also pretty obvious, but I have a big issue with the original body types of the characters/how they’re drawn. Now, I won’t go into it today (I may one day because reasons), so I’ll go into the reason for her specific type? I like to think fairies are generally lighter in order to keep airborne and have less strain on magic, BUT I also think that their kind of magical attacks can affect their body type. Bloom is large shocks of power and getting away. She also draws a lot, bikes, helps in her mom’s shop so she is also active but apparently she also really likes baking? So idk. She needs to get hit a lot but I also wanted to display that and her having a softer frame, obviously having meat on her bones, especially one who isn’t acrobatic or working out constantly. I hope that makes sense?

Her outfits reflect her past really, she isn’t the richest of families so her clothes are supposed to be interchangeable yet still comfortable. She just likes feeling safe.

Outfit 1 is what I wanted for ep 1 really, the sweater is handmade from her grandmother and yes she wears it in the summer. The little hair pin I like to think is from Stella who decided it matched Bloom’s eyes. Mainly I like Bloom wearing pants because she literally bikes everywhere in my fanon and chases Kiko in the woods.

Outfit 2 is just what I wanted for fun! Her favorite colors are white, blue, and pink and gosh dangit she can wear her favorite colors! The locket (not that you can see it lol) says Daphne as a small nod and honestly I just like baggy shirts.

Fairy Form? I had no idea what the fuck I was doing with this. I wanted a more armored princess effect with shorts because. She. Is. In. The. Air! Gosh dangit! She also has scales (thanks fuz!) because dragon motif, they offer armored resistance because she hits hard and takes hard hits, she’s a tank basically. I wanted to keep a few key points, the jem on the chest, the crown (symbolism lol), and arm pieces, but I altered them a bit and darkened the colors because it looked weird originally on my design. Her wings are meant to mimic the bones ones of dragons and I like to think they’re stronger than an average fairies but she can’t fly as quick with them. She gains a bit more gold in her eyes.

A few fun facts?:

-She runs at a hotter temperature and isnt affected by hot temperatures, as well cold doesn’t bother her as bad.

-She can’t see auras but she is an empath.

-She’s bisexual in this, because my friend likes the alliteration of Bisexual Bloom.

-She has a few hobbies! Drawing and reading mainly though appreciates baking.

-She likes the little magic creatures around Alfea that are more like the traditional folklore, even if they are a bit more cutesy and strange. She’s friends with the brownies and little sprites and such!

-She and Sky would break up Season 2 fight me. They also wouldn’t bond with pixies because I hate them with a passion.

- A lot of her clothes have burns on them and she refuses to let anyone magically repair them, especially her favorite sweater which she’s waiting to get her grandma to get.

Oh and you should know in my rewrite she somehow becomes really attached to Tecna? Like they bond a lot? And I’m so down because its Stella, Bloom, and Tecna and its an odd dynamic but I adore it.

#winx #winx bloom #winx club #winx club redesign #winx redesign #character redesign

115 notes · View notes

anintriguedintrovert · 3 years

Text

KC Fic Rec - Spotlight Sunday

Resilience - A Klaroline Fiction by B-MINA / b-mina.tumblr.com

Summary: After a dangerous spell backfires, the gang of Mystic Falls is sent running for their lives. Years later, Caroline and Alaric have left the supernatural drama behind, but their newfound peace is disrupted when they find out that Bonnie is in trouble. Prompting Caroline to turn to New Orleans in search for help, only to find more challenges ahead... (Set from 7×12 of TVD and somewhere between 3×13 - 3×14 of TO)

I highly recommend reading the author’s note on the first chapter for more information. There is quite a lot of content available in the story (21 chapters of pure intrigue) but it is a Work In Progress.

Trigger Warnings: This story contains sexual themes and adult language. More importantly, the story also includes mentions of depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harming tendencies and anxiety attacks. If the latter are heavy or sensitive subjects for you, the story maybe tough to read.

Why you should read it: It has got everything you love and more. The fic is driven by a compelling plot thread and the alternating timeline pattern in which the author chooses to execute it is bloody brilliant in keeping up the suspense. It is set in the canon world of The Originals with all its elements still intact that is inevitably going to be turned on its heard with Caroline Forbes’ arrival (the one we love who would have left Mystic Falls and Stefan behind to actually live her life if the writers of the show were true to her character development). I absolutely adore the way the author deals with Klaus and Caroline – they are cautious and heartbreakingly tentative around each other – afraid that a nudge a little too far would send them running the other way. Nostalgic overtones blending in with their easy banter, the Klaroline interactions in the story are to die for. Another thing that the author managed to get right is the treatment of Camille in a Klaroline story keeping in mind that she is an important part of his life in the canon universe. Caroline and Camille are treated as independent of each other and Klaus seems to adopt this mentality too which, I think, is how things would have played out if Caroline had visited NOLA. We have yet to see how their arc will progress but I am sure the author will do justice to the story and the characters because she has been nothing short of amazing in dealing with them as of yet.

If the obvious allure of Klaus and Caroline isn’t enough, this fic has everything that I (and hopefully you) have been carving for – BADASS! Caroline on a mission (hint: slipping back into her little blonde distraction act) – Bonnie being her amazing self - Carenzo BrOTP – Bamon BrOTP – Bonenzo - Caroline interacting with the Mikaelson clan (which the author has managed to capture convincingly and it will leave you wanting more) – the TVD members – well, I have lost count of all the things I love about this story. Something that came as a pleasant surprise for me was the dynamic that the author crafted between Caroline and Marcel and now, she has got me mourning a beautiful friendship that we will never get to see on screen.

The story is pretty heavy on Delena and there is some Steroline in the first few chapters but it helps to set the tone of the story as we delve into the psyche of these characters whose lives have been altered beyond comprehension after a series of events and how they navigate through the trauma of it all. The NOLA arc picks up from Chp 11 if you want to dig right into the meat of the plot but I would highly recommend reading the whole thing.

I would like for everyone to give it a shot and support the author by leaving reviews since this is a fairly new addition to the amazing fandom and deserves all the love in the world.

@klaroline-event

#klaroline spotlight sunday #klaroline fanfic recs #klaroline #klaroline fanfic #kc events #klaroline fanfiction #klaus and caroline #the originals #the vampire diaries #klaroline events

36 notes · View notes

jerichomere · 3 years

Text

MBS EPISODE EIGHHHHT

weak. I hate to say it but I could feel it in my heart from the start. It had good moments but this episode just didn’t bring it home. I’m going to break this up into my usual notes and then some general evaluation. Notes: What is the deal with curtain and food? He has so many weird scenes with meals.. there’s probably some hidden meaning here but I don’t know what it is And they didn’t get to chuck-root the school :((((( Constance? Wants to pour acid on curtain’s feet Haha I liked Kate’s little “Nyoope” when the recruiters found her Martina redemption and the fighting tetherball team, sure Jackson and Jillson get even more unhinged. they terrify me We got Kate yeeting Constance up the tower, but her bucket had a built in rope motor somehow WE GOT KATIE-KAT but we didn’t get Sorry it took me so long And Milligan’s still moody instead of joyous Go Constance, break the thing, yay Number Two and Rhonda had some real shippy energy in this episode and PLEASE they are SISTERS Two more close profile shots of curtain in this episode, one where he is physically shorter than Milligan but dominating the interaction, and one where he’s physically looking down at Reynie but Reynie’s getting to him. Reynie has a heart to heart and curtain passes out. That’s different. Sticky even said, “it’s anger” and he was like “no, it’s vulnerability” oooooookay then. The whisperer is not an intercom/loudspeaker. sheesh. So the kiddos leave and the twins talk, resolving nothing, then curtain escapes REYNIE AND MISS PERUMAL NO COMPLAINTS HERE *sobs* Kate and Madge at the end <3 Constance refuses adoption!?!?!?!??! And no age reveal obviously rip Sticky’s family redemption he’s going to the totally not made up Boatwright Academy now Mr Benedict is like, I love you all, no snowball fight, the end. SIKE Curtain, SQ, and a totally real engineer lady are on a BOAT. You know, I felt bad for the engineer this whole series, as she is portrayed as kind of doing the technical work hoping it’ll be used for good, while curtain abuses its practical application, but her mood really shifted in that last scene. She was like heheh hey guy that I know is definitely is evil, howabout this mysterious blueprint... are they really trying to set up the sequel. Some tree branches will have to get pretttty bent.

Evaluation: keep reading! (sorry it gets long)

To recap what I’ve said from the start, I think the casting is fantastic but the tone is wrong. The darker, more saturated filter, the isolating camera shots, and very understated music make things colder and stilted. This is a constant throughout the whole series. The book was warm, messy, and full of charm, which I didn’t feel watching the show.

characters were.. compromised? Mr B starts off with a LIE about test winners going to Boatwright Academy. That undermines EVERYTHING he does from then on. “Regrettable but necessary” DOESN’T cut it. He’s also just so anxious and jittery instead of his gentile, kind, strong book self. Just from the show, they didn’t frame his genius very well. He seems more like a fool. Not really confidence-inspiring. In the same way, Being directed to cheat is one thing, but Reynie should NOT have lied to SQ to manipulate him into seeing the forest or whatever. Yeah reynie felt bad about it and SQ called him on it, but this is like the core values of our protagonist team, the strong love for truth. Also, I feel like in the show Reynie’s leadership isn’t highlighted. Like, everyone else has their thing but you almost wonder why he’s framed as the main character. The girls got bonding and the boys got bonding but there was hardly opportunity for him to really bring the team together into a cohesive unit Also, as much as I love Number Two’s life of crime (because it’s funny), she too should have that love of truth, but instead regularly does unlawful things. AND they never explained her eating, and even stopped having yellow clothes :( Additionally, the side story of her and Rhonda’s friction (entertaining I suppose) also really changed the character dynamic. In the book, the adult team was unwavering and wise, a sturdy basis for the perilous missions of the children. But their internal strife, while adding drama, makes them seem unreliable and less absolutely good and trustworthy. And I think trust and integrity are key parts of the book’s solid narrative. Constance’s refusal of the adoption felt wrong too. She was like, “Respectfully decline, but. I’ll stick around here.” I think they were trying to keep going with her contrariness, but it just comes across as foolish pride? Constance is a LITTLE GIRL. She DESERVES a FAMILY. SHE DESERVES A LOVING PARENT (and two wonderful sisters). Yeah family doesn’t have to be by blood OR lawful paperwork, but her actions in this scene really just. cuts off the feels at the knees. We KNOW she’s strong and independent but that doesn’t mean she HAS TO BE or even necessarily WANTS to be all the time. Over the course of the series we see her warming up to people, a kind word here, a little smile there, but this adoption refusal is.. harsh. Then we’ve got Sticky. Yes, he struggles with the comfort of the whisperer. And he overcomes it. BUT in one of the earlier episodes, they had him fighting with the team, defending the whisperer, dismissing his friends... and I count this as betrayal. It may be extreme on my part, but I think he went too far. The Society is the Society. In the book he bested his fears for them and with their support. Yeah he desperately wanted to just give in but he had PRINCIPLES and knew why he couldn’t. His honor, his responsibility to stop curtain, and his loyalty to his friends got him though. But in the show he just dumped them. And then was like, oh oops jk I’m back. (I knowwwwww the book has the privilege of being able to explain characters’ thought processes and emotional states, while shows have to work with more tangible actions and words but stilll I did not Like That) And finally, curtain wasn’t smart. He had hired people doing all the work. He just used it to his ends. Less evil genius and more manipulating creep. But this? I’m more ok with. As an villain, he got the job done. But this makes him less of a foil for Mr Benedict and more of an antagonist, if that makes sense. In the book they never knew each other, but were both alone in the world and greatly smart, and they chose verrry different paths. Whereas in the show he and B were always kind of opposites, warring in motivation and method from the start.

Let’s talk about the boss battle (such as it was). I said it was weak and I meant it. The book is heart pounding. There is so much going on, and so many people in play, the narration jumping all over the place in real time, all culminating in that clash at the top of the tower. Now, the show... the highs weren’t the highs. It felt more like checking off story points. Kate and constance outside - check. Resist the whisperer to stall for time - check. Milligan reveal - check. Reynie starting to figure out narcolepsy triggers - check. Constance shouting then you are the greatest fool of all - um, no, that didn’t happen. Constance defeating the whisperer - check. Curtain escapes - check. We got zero action. No good fights. I know Emmy Deoliveira is a kid and I’m not mad at her for not being able to do action sequences or run with Constance piggyback. But there was almost no physical conflict on-screen, and that’s Kate’s real time to shine. Also they had Number two and Rhonda in the tower ready to fight and then they just didn’t. All this build up for nothing. Furthermore, and I think this is the biggest problem, there was no momentum. Yeah they cut from scene to scene, but the music and tone cut scene-to-scene too. So there was like, dramatic music, Kate’s ready to fight! Get hyped! and then cut to absolutely silent, mr curtain staring at someone. feel mildly disturbed. and then cut to Rhonda and Number two being friends and ready to fight! Aww! And yay! Get hyped! And then cut back to Sticky sitting in a chair, dead silent. It goes on like this. The music, the urgency, should have carried throughout, building in intensity and desperation as the kids come together and curtain unravels more and more and then BAM! curtain down and OH NO! the whisperer and finally Constance’s “I... DON”T.... CARE!!!” and then the madcap escape from the island. Watching, I just couldn’t get swept away. Storywise, they tied it all up and logically it made sense but the emotional culmination just wasn’t there. It was over and done too quick. It fell flat. I didn’t feel the struggle, the suspense. And then they gave us a fabricated Mr B and Curtain conversation that didn’t really help anything. And then the falling action had some nice moments but as I mentioned, the things with constance and sticky kind of made it feel less relieving, joyful, and sweet. I know a snowball fight is elaborate to set and film but I would have loved to see it.

Final thoughts I can’t help but love the kids. I’ll say it again, I sure liked this casting. And for all the changes they had to make, the original central plot was there, and most of the characters were recognizable even with all the alterations. So I did have problems with some of that underlying integrity, as well as the overall tone and execution, but I also laughed at the little funny things, jammed to the title theme, and was excited to see this, my favorite book in the world, get more recognition. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to adapt a work of prose into an audiovisual medium, and considering how outlandish the book sometimes got, they gave it their best shot. I didn’t love it but I can recognize the accomplishment. In terms of faithful and well-made adaptations, on a scale of Percy Jackson to Harry Potter, I’d give The Mysterious Benedict Society a 6.5/10.

#mbs #The Mysterious Benedict Society

14 notes · View notes

felassan · 4 years

Note

What is your opinion on Flemeth? I see so many fans praising her for being a bamf grandma, for saving Hawke and it confuses me. Didn't she abandon Elves? Didn't she abuse Morrigan? According to them not, because she was hurt and sad during their confrontation or that she actually never planned to possess her body. Her supposed friendship with Solas is iffy to me too.

Hi Nonnie! This answer is under a cut for sensitivity as it mentions abuse, and for length.

I think there’s nuance here. Liking (or appreciating the storybeats from) a fictional character, in the context of them as a character, doesn’t mean liking them as a person or agreeing with their actions. It also doesn’t mean that you’d endorse such actions happening in the real world, or that you’d like, support or spend time with such a person in real life. We separate the two. It’s okay to like her character and it’s okay to not like her. Certain things can also be true simultaneously - for example, like many characters in Dragon Age, Flemythal has done things that have had good impacts (such as saving Hawke, although it should be noted that she did this for her own benefit and in pursuit of her own ends), and she’s also done things that are questionable or even bad.

I like Flemythal as a character in a fictional setting. I find her very interesting. Mysterious, complicated, cryptic, plot-integral. I like that she’s powerful (she is pretty badass) and clearly has her own ends and agenda. That’s agency. Her voice casting is second-to-none and I find her involvement to have been one of the intriguing (and arguably iconic) staples of the series. She generates a lot of speculation and theorycrafting given that a lot of questions still remain about her, her past involvement in events and possibly her future involvement also. It’s also nice to see a visibly older woman in a prominent role, as they are often underused or underrepresented in media.

That said, she wasn’t a good mother. I don’t think she’s a good person, and multiple elements of her relationship with Morrigan do read as abusive (in several different ways too, as abuse has several forms). Morrigan compares her to Kalah Brosca, which is self-explanatory. Morrigan recounts times when Flemythal broke her possessions, taught her harsh lessons, told her horrifying stories, punished her or only gave her gifts which came at a cost. Morrigan’s Fade nightmare in the Circle Tower consists of the spirit/demon emulating her mother hitting her and saying horrible things (and such Fade-scenarios do in a way reflect what happened or what was perceived to have happened by the ‘experiencer’ in ‘the real’). Flemythal was manipulative, insulting and told half-truths to her. Morrigan’s personality is also in large part due to her background, Flemythal’s influence, treatment and teachings; it’s why she values survival and power above all, thinks that love is a weakness and makes some off-color, heartbreaking comments about love as a concept. It speaks of both the reality of what the Evanuris were like (compared to the Dalish conception of them as the Creators), the impact the murder of Mythal had on her as a being and of the further impact functionally fusing with the intensely aggrieved/angered human Flemeth, that this is the kind of parent that Mythal the Protector and All-Mother, goddess of love and patron of motherhood, was to Morrigan. Thinking of it in those terms makes it seem sadly ironic and puts me in the mind of the perversion of spirits of Justice away from their purpose towards Vengeance (not literally exactly, but thematically?).

Prior to the murder, Mythal in her fullness was the “best” of the Evanuris, according to Solas’ account, but even then... The best of a bad bunch is not exactly much of an accolade, and although she cared for and protected her people and was often a voice of reason compared to other Evanuris that would mitigate the worst of their whims and excesses, she was still... a false-god divine-pretender, and essentially the queen of their extremely classist empire system. She may have had slaves marked with slave-brands. She struck down some Titans and gave their “land” to the People, and did “something” ominous-sounding to the Titans and/or the dwarves. She was a patron of vengeance as well as justice. Some accounts paint her as dark and vengeful, and Solas admits that she was “both of these [both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ versions of her from the tales] and neither.” (“It’s more complicated than that”!) To add, Mythal being the best of them is Solas’ opinion, no doubt partially colored by his personal history with her. It’s difficult to comment on Mythal in her fullness and the Evanuris in general though, as all we have are partially biased accounts and scraps like misremembered tales and Codex entries which each come filtered through the respective lens of their writer.

Flemythal did seem to express sadness or regret in her DAI encounter with Morrigan. This is another one of those situations with nuance and where two things can be true at the same time. Flemythal was a bad parent and was abusive towards Morrigan. Flemythal also seems to care for her, in a way. I make no comment on other peoples’ experiences or on the majority of cases, and in no way would Flemythal’s treatment of and dynamic with Morrigan be acceptable in a real life situation, just, speaking from direct personal experience, there are sometimes instances where the abusive relative did care about their respective family member at the time, and later felt sad and regretful about the things they did to them and the impact it had on them. And she did intend the essence of her godhood as a gift for Morrigan, not hostile possession.

Her abandonment of the elves is something that can come up both with Lavellan and other Inquisitors in those scenes: “If Mythal is a part of you, why haven’t you helped us? We’ve called to you, prayed to you.” “[looks away and looks sad] What was could not be changed.” “What about now? You know so much.” “You know not what you ask, child.” // “If Mythal is within you why not reveal yourself?” “And to whom should I reveal myself?” “To the elves, to everyone!” “Hah... I knew the hearts of men even before Mythal came to me. It is why she came to me. They do not want the truth, and I... I am but a shadow lingering in the sun.” I do wish she had interacted more with the elves in Thedas, especially given the lot of modern elves there and especially considering Dalish tales of and reverence towards her as Asha’bellanar (Merrill bowing to her in DA2, how Marethari sought her out in 8:82, the clan that turned Maric and Loghain over to her, the way Lavellan can mention their people speak of her legend).

The writing in that conversation is kinda frustrating in that it’s intentionally vague and more of a non-answer than a sufficient explanation to the question posed. But there’s some Thing we don’t know yet, something we’re not supposed to know about Mythal right now. It sounds like the truth of why and of the matter isn’t simple or... pleasant (“You know not what you ask” - that sounds like worshipping her, the reality of her, wouldn’t be good). In DA2 when Merrill bows, Flemythal asks her if she knows who she is beyond the title Woman of Many Years. Merrill replies that she knows only a little, and Flemythal says “Then stand. The People bend their knee too quickly.” It sounds kinda like “If you knew I was Mythal, and if you knew what Mythal and her compatriot gods and by extension our society was like back in the day, you wouldn’t be bowing to me and wouldn’t want to worship me.” sefesjfesfeksj this gap in our knowledge is maddening lol. Or perhaps she thinks that the elves wouldn’t want the truth, would reject it or would feel worse after learning it? The revelations in DAI that the gods are false and were actually jerks, that vallaslin were originally slavemarkings, that an elf caused their downfall (not humans) and that their ancient society practised slavery and all that - it’s a lot. If so, I do wish she would’ve let them make up their own minds about it though.

There’s also the question of whether the Dalish would believe her claims if she came forth with them. Some would, but her appearance is outwardly-human as the Inquisitor can note, and Solas didn’t make any real headway with most of the Dalish he encountered when he tried to talk about some of his knowledge with them before joining the Inquisition, and that was without including the undoubtedly seismic “btw, I’m one of your gods” part. Would she even be capable of doing much to help them in her current form? A shadow lingering in the sun sounds like she’s barely a fragment of what she once was, and only has a fraction of her old power. In the modern day she’s a powerful mage who can shapeshift into a dragon and cheat death with a Horcrux, sure. Is that enough to, say, destroy the human kingdoms, or radically alter the social position of elves in Thedas? To add, if you subscribe to the belief that there’s a connection between Flemythal and Andraste (with Shartan) and/or Tyrdda Bright-Axe (with her “leaf-eared lover”), it seems that she’s tried to change things before in the past along these lines and failed.

Who are “the elves” to her, anyway? She mentions to Lavellan and Merrill how they are of the People, but we can see a back-and-forth on that subject with Solas during DAI, who at times says modern elves are his people, and at other times says they are not. Who’s to say who “the elves” or “The People” are to Flemythal in her mind, millennia later, really? If her conception of her people is ancient elves, not modern elves or both... Recall Abelas, one of Mythal’s lead acolytes: “'Our' people? The ones we see in the forest, shadows wearing vallaslin? You are not my people.” Maybe that’s why she hasn’t done much to help modern elves? If her people are the ancient elves, and if Solas’ plans don’t include modern elves, perhaps that’s why she didn’t do much for modern elves all this time but /does/ help Solas power up so that he can carry out his plans to help the ancient ones (along with the fact that her desire for vengeance depends on his success, of course). She knew he would come after all. An alternative reading is that his plans do include modern elves, but in order to save the People (and again also to get her revenge) she needed him (to gift her power to and do The Thing), and so until he woke up from his many years of slumber, all she could really do was wait for that moment? Their respective natures in the modern world are different; she’s just a spark of a dead goddess in a formerly-human vessel, a shadow lingering in the sun, and he’s still his proper full self, albeit temporarily weaker than usual. He specifically says in Trespasser that his situation isn’t comparable to Flemythal’s - “Are you a fragment of what Fen’Harel once was, like Mythal?” “No, this is all I have ever been”. It’s a stark difference in their two conditions, and it ties back to the question above of whether Flemythal’s abilities in the modern age would have been Enough to do anything concrete. In this reading, Flemythal’s nudging and influencing of history along a certain course through time, which she’s been doing in order to line up events just so so that the Evanuris will be unleashed again by Solas, take on a secondary motive too: lining up events just so so that Solas will be able to carry out his plans and in so doing, save the People.

Mythal’s relationship with Solas is another one of those things that’s difficult to comment on, as we only have hints and pieces. They were close, that much is clear from the intimacy and familiarity on both their parts in the post-credits scene, from how he speaks of her in Trespasser, and from his desire to subject the Evanuris to an eternity of torment as a fitting punishment for the crime of murdering her. Fen’Harel statues in the Temple of Mythal, which Morrigan says is a thing that seems like naked paintings of Andraste in the Chantry. Wolf ‘guardian-like’ statues on either side of her Altar. The eluvian in the post-credits flanked by both a dragon and a wolf. Statues in the Deep Roads: “Many of them are for Mythal, though. And Fen'Harel. Not in a spot of honor, but guarding, attending. Protector and All-Mother, why are you honored here, so far from the light of the sun? And why was the Dread Wolf at your side?” Cole’s words, if they’re about Solas and Mythal: "He did not want a body. But she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face.” Legacy dev notes stating that he was once her oldest friend. These are fragments and we can only try to infer. Were they involved? Was he her second-in-command, her spymaster, her consort, her enforcer, her confidant, the leader of her ‘kingsguard’, her right hand, her advisor, the ‘guardian wolf’ to her ‘Emerald Knight’, what? Was he once a spirit and he manifested a body at her behest? What events led to him burning her vallaslin off his face? Did they have a disagreement? To what extent was she using him? The specifics of their relationship and their respective positions therein aren’t, but what’s clear is that once, she needed him, he was in her service, and that there was fondness between them.

(For the record I don’t believe she possessed him in the post-credits, or that he absorbed her essence/Mythal-spark and now the Well-drinker is bound to him. I think she passed her godhood through the mirror to Morrigan and allowed Solas to take her power/strength, that’s all.)

There’s an undertone that Flemeth may not really have full autonomy in what she’s doing (or was doing), at least where her broadstoke actions and goals are concerned. After her angry rant about vengeance, [worldstate dependent] she looks up at the statue of Mythal. In both scenarios her expression then becomes kind of sad, and she looks to the side. “Alas, so long as the music plays, we dance.” That sounds kind of like she has no choice? Like something’s fated or she’s bound to her cause? Before Flemeth’s end, Mythal was to her as our hearts are in our chests. They are intrinsic and carry out their function - beating - no matter what, until death. Given the dichotomy of Justice and Vengeance as explored by the nature of spirits and demons, and the ‘spirit-adjacent’ nature of elves, it feels like she’s compelled to do what she’s been doing all these centuries, in pursuit of the goal of getting that all-important revenge. “Our destinies are not so easily avoided.” She gets so incensed when she rages about her vengeance, it’s like she’s consumed by it. The burning desire for revenge is what kept her wisp alive through the Ages, after all.

#dragon age #bioware #abuse #abuse mention #abuse cw #morrigan #queen of my heart #solas #cole #spirit boy #mj replies #anonymous #video games #mj meta

79 notes · View notes