#or really sympathetic characters who fall to bad stuff

[onesidedradiostatic]

Real talk

Im sooooo tired of Vox always being portrayed as the victim and Alastor the only one 100% responsible for their friendship falling apart

Did we all suddenly forgot that Vox is a terrible person too? He brainwashes his audience, he supports Val, he is willing to offer his lowest employees for Val to kill, he's also prob abusive to his employees as well, he stalks pretty much everyone, he has like 5 cameras inside Angel's dressing room, also it's like implied he's jealous of Angel because he gets Val's attention, him being jealous of Angel for being a victim of abuse is pretty messed up if you ask me. Oh he also told Sir Pentious to fucking kill himself and he also gets hard of seeing people in pain and get hurt! (Sure it was Alastor but still messed up)

" he looks so sad at the end of stayed gone when Alastor threatens him I feel so bad for him:(("

Really ? Well maybe if he had just kept his little hate boner for Al to himself instead of feeling to need to start publicly slandering him it wouldn't had happened. Just saying. Also I don't see how people feel bad for him. If anything he looks so extremely pathetic it's laughable I want to kick him

Okay this is kinda out of the point I want to make it's just many people who make him the victim seem to forget he's a terrible person so I just wanted to friendly remind everyone that he's as awful as Al ^^

Anyway

I think, we should acknowledge, that it's a complicated, and probably tragic, situation. What if, maybe, they're both as equal at fault for shit going down hills for their friendship. Vox because he doesn't respect others wishes and cannot take no for an answer, he prob tried forcing Al to move on with recent technology, which Al hates. ((His request to Al to join the Vees also prob meant catching up with the nowdays stuff and new technology, like the rest of them)) and Al because he was prob unnecessary cruel and brutal with his rejection.

I don't think Al was just using Vox like I've seen many people say. He allowed Vox to take a picture of them together. For Al to do that I think it confirms their friendship was genuine. "Ah but it's Alastor so that means it was fake cuz he's an evil manipulative bastard who only cares for him-" You're wrong, but also right lol. He's an evil manipulative bastard, but , he's also capable of genuine friendships with others (( did y'all forget Rosie lol? )). What I think happened is that, time passed , things changed. Vox became obsessed with new technology and tried to force Al to follow in, Al didn't like that, but instead of communicating with eachother and solving their problems by talking it out and respect eachother's wishes, they had an unnecessary argument and fight. They're both to blame for this, they're no victims in the situation and it's okay you can still sympathise with eithers side

Also people who make Al the villain for like not returning Vox's confession and feelings in most One sided Radiostatic videos/fics I've seen-- yikes.. I really hate that I have to literally say to PLEASE don't villiantise the aroace character for being aroace and rejecting confessions. It's extremely ace/arophonic (and yes I get to have a say to this, I'm a replused aroace videos/fics like this genuinely make me feel negative emotions) even if he was extremely cruel with his rejection -- villiantise the fact that he's an asshole- not his rejection.

yes I agree!! this is essentially a consolidation of points I've made before ksdlfglg

like yes, alastor's an absolute shithead but I think there are some people who forget that vox is also... not a good person. I don't think there's anything wrong with there being sympathetic aspects to vox but I feel like there's such a huge amount of fanwork where he's the only one portrayed sympathetically without showing his own bad points in their relationship, and I absolutely hate it when alastor is fully blamed for how vox is now and vox is seen as

yeah

vox got pissy at a rejection, that's not being able to take no for an answer, that's incel behaviour LMAO

feel like there's something to be said about people feeling the need to sympathise with the one with unrequited feelings compared to the one who has to deal with someone expecting romance from them when they don't feel the same. does it have to do with society's expectations about romance that unrequited feelings are more sympathisable?

but yeah I am glad that at least the "complicated" part of the description of their relationship implies to me it won't be as simple as "vox was the poor victim and alastor was just using him", I think it is much more interesting if there's no clear victim and both were at fault in a way

#ask #osrs.txt #I'm gonna avoid heavy tagging because I don't wanna attract discourse #onewaybroadcast #okay to rb if you want though

[i-lavabean]

I don't go here (yet) but here's Bode as a Firebender

#my art #lavabean art #bode akuna #atla crossover #Star wars crossover #Jedi Survivor #don't give me the spoilers I'm trying so hard to not see the spoilers #noshir dalal #has like an even mix of either playing really sympathetic characters who overcome bad stuff #or really sympathetic characters who fall to bad stuff #and i don't want to know which this one is yet #Firebender #because hearing the names Appa and Momo in that AMA threw my brain all the way back to marathoning the show #and Avatar is on The Brain now

[frenchgremlim1808]

Why Midori is such a breath of fresh air or how to actually write a Villain.

So the awaited essay, the winner of the FrenchGremlin polls of laziness finally has come! It took some time but it’s finally over. If your choice didn’t get chosen that’s okay! I’ll repost a new poll with old and newer options. Please reblog this one i put a lot of time in it, it's like, five pages long over a silly goose. Also sorry for the grammar i sucks and i'm not native. So let’s begin:

(also here is the link to the video format)

So first let’s make things clear, What IS a villain?

“A villain is a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.” That is why I do want to make a difference between a villain and an antagonist, an antagonist is a character who are a plot devices that creates obstruction to the protagonist. That means that a villain is forced to be an antagonist while an antagonist is not forced to be a villain. For example shin is an antagonist but not a villain, he is driven by selfish desires which are themselves fueled by fear anger and loss, he is the protagonist of his own story and is a sympathetic character despite it all, and Midori is just a bitch. Midori falls under multiple stereotypes of villains. Such as “the mastermind”, “evil incarnate” (lmao),”related to the protagonist” etc. Midori is evil, there is no denying in this, he is purely evil, and he doesn’t have a sad weepy backstory, he doesn’t feel empathy towards other, he is a despicable piece of shit who ruined so many lives. I won’t list everything but here is a list of his crimes, murder, assault, domestic abuse, grooming, verbal abuse, and torture, crimes against humanity lmao, stalking, violent crimes, and participation in a cult. And his worst crime is being a pussy bitch of course. So now that we have put the bases up let’s really begin.

Hollywood has a hate boner against villains and I hate them for that.

Recently Hollywood decided that pure evil bad guys is actually a bad thing, so now they decided to do stupid side story with them, to give them ”””depth””” since I guess how could we like those villains since they are bad. A great example of this is the Disney remakes which I loathe so much oh god I hate them. So first they did a maleficient it was okay honestly, then they did a freaking cruella movie where her mom gets killed by Dalmatians, that’s not a joke, in the peter and wendy movie that nobody saw they decided to have made the captain hook be a lost boy who was abandoned by the lost boys and peter, oh also they decided that PETER CUT HIS HANDS OFF AND LEFT HIM TO DIE BECAUSE HOOK WANTED TO SEE HIS FAMILY. They are going to do a freaking mufasa movie, in no time I can’t wait to have a Ursula movie where it’s discovered that ariel killed all of her family in cold blood or something’s. So you might say what’s the problem? I mean isn’t that supposed to make the story more interesting. No, no it doesn’t, because first they take all of the character personality traits and throw them in the bin, second they are supposed to be the vilain in a musical animated movies, I am not against complex villain, I love them, but by doing this, the original character doesn’t exist anymore. Just create original content with new interesting characters instead of doing stuff like this. Also it’s kind of funny than in all of those interpretation they take all the fun and sucks it out, what do I mean by fun, the gayness, Disney vilain are fun because they are camp, they are fabulous extravagant extra in all the ways possible, and that’s the reason we liked them. Not every character needs something super deep, like “my family was burned down at the stake and my dog was eaten by my ex”, sometimes we just like bad fun people, they are the story, and Hollywood hating them so bad just bothers me a lot. Also now the new thing is to not have a villain at all which can works in some narrative but not all of them, it gets boring after a while. In the past people were angry that villains are bland, but now I kind of miss it. While I will critique villains who have no purpose outside of being evil that’s dumb, like for example Voldemort is bland like white bread because his only motivation is being evil, but evil people do exist compared to what some Hollywood writers think, they should know. So that’s why I will put a difference between evil villains and villains whose only purpose is being evil; we loved Disney villains but they still had motivations, goals, reasons that to them a least were worth everything. World domination isn’t enough, why do you want world domination, what is the true reason deep in your heart, is it an inferiority complex, is it a savior complex fuelled by xenophobic beliefs.

That is how to write a pure evil villain, evil people exist all over the world, but I have never seen one who doesn’t have they own reasons to be so bad, it doesn’t excuse their actions nor really explains them. We do not want justifications we want explanations. If you are justifying evil behavior then do it, but don’t claim that it is a pure evil character. A pure evil character can be fun, can be interesting, he can be deep, it’s all about balancing all of their traits to truly make them greats. Which is why midori succeeds while current villains fail. Current stupid remake/spin off try to justify the behavior because they feel like this is what the audience wants, but it’s not what we need. So I will defend to the grave evil villains.

Creating an evil villain doesn’t make them boring guys.

Why the heck does big budget movies have either the blandest protagonist or the blandest villains sometimes both, like I said evil people do exist but comically evil character only works in satire not in a serious multiple millions of dollar movie. Example that boring ass avatar movie, the one with blue people, none of the characters are interesting the villain is one note. The lords of the rings also suffers from that, but I don’t care because the protagonist are so awesome that sauron being personality less doesn’t matter. Also sauron is more of a force of nature villains so it’s not the same. The recent kingsman movie has a bland one note villain, there is nothing entertaining, funny, about him he’s just evil, borrrrring. Every Disney remakes depiction of the characters are boring. I just feel bored out of my mind. Atla one of my favorite shows of all time has a main villain that’s kinda one note, Ozai, but he is actually intimidating guy, azula is the superior character, but I wouldn’t consider her a villain she is an antagonist though. I honestly don’t get why Hollywood thinks that just creating a character with no personality and whose only goals is to be evil is good.

So back to midori for a second, here is my question, when midori was on screen did you ever feel bored? Never right! Because despite midori being an evil character he has an actual personality, he’s fun, you want to punch him in the balls. Because midori has other personality traits than evil, midori is petty, childish, extremely intelligent, controlling, a natural manipulator, he is a trickster, he doesn’t seem to get some social norms, he is narcissistic, easily angry, and fears death etc See how I counted a lot of traits, traits that in other character would works, midori has positive traits, and I think that is the best thing nankidai could have ever done, midori has traits that a regular person could have. Which is why if I put midori in any settings his character would work.

Example, instead of a death game the cast is under the sea to discover the insane wildlife and supernatural stuff happening, what would midori do in this situation? Well he would very passionate about finding all of what’s happening, he’ll do anything to find out, even sometime sacrificing others, not only will he try to find what’s happening, but he is also going to try to find a way to make this discovery favour him in the end. Or let’s imagine it’s a vampire situation, where a vampire attacks  the city, midori would try to stop it, not because he cares, but to experiment on them to get their biology and finds the real secret of immortality since he fears death.

Here is my second advice, after creating your character try to imagine them in another completely different situation, like normal life, or a fantasy world, ask yourself the question what would they do in that environment? If you can find a real complete explanation of their actions then yes your character has multiples dimensions if not try thinking about it again. Some example of questions I do want to point out are some like “if my character had all the power in the world what would they do first or”, “if my character had only a day left to live what would they do”

Why is Current media incapable of creating good threats like bruhhhh.

Okay so first of all let’s talk about stakes in a story, let’s say you are watching a slasher movie, slowly the cast gets slimmed down and people die in horrible ways, that should set stakes right ? Well if the villain is an absolute buffoon who makes the stupidest actions and decisions in the world, you wouldn’t feel intimidated at all because despite what the filmmaker might try to say the plot armor will NEVER make a character intimidating. It’s just like a detective character who just seems to know everything without a thought, well you won’t really fear the character failing. Worse is the the final girl, who is for some reason always escaping the slasher guy by pure luck every time, she is shown as incompetent but still she survives, which make the villain seem completely incapable so now you feel nothing.

To avoid this filmmaker often use techniques such has unpredictability, I mean good I mean good ones, for example instead of immediately seeing whose going to survive because the black guys always dies first and the virgin white woman is the last survivor, change the status quo, make us think that this character is obviously safe while they actually aren’t at all. Or actually make them menacing by SHOWING to the audience how horrible dangerous they can be. Which is why SHOW DON’T TELL is so important, telling us how dangerous someone can be only to see them get beaten to death at the end of the movie makes us feel nothing.

Midori felt like a impossible person to beat, he is smart, had twenty plans in advance, even in situation where the cast felt like they might have a chance he was always armed, just like the gun he promised to use or the rocket punch. When they felt like they were finally advancing, he put obstacle in their ways, such as the collar game or the moment he put the collar on explode mode for  ranmaru. The entire point in the murder game was to make time pass, it took a long time for the cast top realize that this whole time they were losing precious time not realizing that the dummies were the real problem. The characters that made you feel the most hopeless were the dummies, if you won by killing midori they would die, but if you lost you might lose people you love (keiji or gin). It felt hopeless because they were no solutions in the end. That creates tension so that creates stakes. If we were told how dangerous unpredictable sou was then it wouldn’t hit the same, we are shown that he is that terrible. There is a scene ingame where bbg shin ai tells us that midori tortured and like to destroy people. That’s exposition so TELL, but do you why it works, because we are SHOWN before his behavior. Midori felt unbeatable, so the fact that we were shown his weakness such has his petty behavior, hatred of minors, and fear of death, for the first time it feels like there is a chance that we might survive this. And still after he isn’t shown has an incompetent buffoon, he is one, but the narrative doesn’t show us that he is.

What is also consider is good to make the audience feel actual stakes is to first really develop well the main characters, how can we feel worry for a character if we don’t know them, the audience need to feels emotional connection to the main cast to actually care. You can use things such has moments where there is nothing special happening just character talking getting to know them. Make us feel why we need to care about them possibly losing, instead of being indifferent. Or I don’t know maybe make an entire spin off game where we get to have the cast talk to each other and seeing dynamics between character that died early to get them a chance to shine and make their death even more tragic, or even make mini episodes of characters who only got a single chapter to show off their characteristic, to get us to know them better? But that’s just a silly idea of course, wink, and wink.

My favorite thing about Midori is that he is actually pathetic, like really pathetic, but weirdly realistic?

Midori is the most pathetic character in the cast, yes more than shin, shin is leagues less pathetic. No I’m not saying that midori is not intimidating or scary, I would piss myself if I saw him. He’s a scary guy. But if you look at him more closely you can see that he is a baby brat in a big boy suit.

So let’s start by something clear, Sou Hiyori clearly displays antisocial behavior, or in common terms he is a psychopath/sociopath, this illness is very badly seen in medias, I am not saying that people who lacks empathy like him are inherently bad, he is, a lot of people with antisocial behavior actually suffers a lot and have a difficult life. Sou real issues is not his antisocial behavior, it’s his narcissism and god complex. Sou feels the need to HAVE CONTROL over others, he like the feeling of being in power, he sees the rest of the world has beneath him, toys for his pleasure. He says that he “really like humans” because despite it all he seems to put himself in a different categories than regular people, they are beneath him. When he loses control his calm and cool behavior disappears and we see his true face, a grown man who has throws a tantrum like a baby. One of the best representation of this is midori views on the cast:

Midori hates kanna, like no jokes he has beef with her, a fourteen years old, actually he has beef with a lot of people in the cast. Midori views emotional people has weak, people who are loving optimistic as beneath him and useless. He preferred when sara was cruel and horrible, that’s what he loved about her, he liked seeing her scary emotionless side. But Kanna, kanna is everything he hates. A crybaby who not only puts the group in harmony, is a source of hope in general, is the reason he near got to have closure with shin (killing him), he views kanna as “not fun shin”. We have many proofs for this, if you type the word kanna kizuchi he says this: “Poor Kanna'd weep! I think a more worthless name would be better for someone like me” He mocks her, but also himself (I’lll come back on this later), he calls her worthless. Also in the electric charge minigame, when he can choose who to shocks he chooses two people in particular, kanna who he hates and hinako who ruined his fun by giving the cast a chance in saving ranmaru. But he does also says mean spirited stuff to other people, qtaro and gin. He also says some sarcastic comments about nao and joe, saying that it’s such a shame that they died so young. But you might say why kanna especially? Because he is a petty baby who is jealous of kanna, Yes jealous, of kanna, a fourteen years old. Because he feels like she stole his hubby wubby shin away from him…. God I hate him. And you know what that make him a pathetic idiot, after the scene where kanna beats his ass, he’s all mad and like “uhh I’m going to pout I wanted you to cry like a lot, now I’m gonna cry”. An that’s actually god, because it humanize him, he wants need thoughts, he isn’t one note, and that’s the most important!

Sou is a villain but before that he is a character, a fully developed character, and THAT’S WHAT MAKE HIM GREAT, Sou works because he works realistically, I mean if you forget the robot part, it’s easy to imagine a narcissist man child who needs to feel in power towards other, so his main prey are young vulnerable people.Which leads me to my next point:

Sou is a failure like really, and we aren’t sad for him.

Sou failed everything he worked on, he failed to get the paper from alice, he failed whith shin since he had to leave earlier than he thought he would leave, because of his mistake he lost his position in the death game, then he failed to kill gin or keiji, and then he died like an idiot losing his cool and acting like a toddler. And he knows it that why he is a bit self-hating (he should be). And yet none of us feel any sympathy towards him, why? Because sou is one of the most despicable guy in existence. He is a disgusting pervert, sadistic asshole, and abusive narcissistic cunt who thinks he is better than everyone. From the bottom of my heart I hate him sooooo much he is literally the character I hate the most in existence. He abused shin, ruined keiji’s life, traumatized the entire cast, literally assaulted sara like he physically assaulted her. He mocked nao and joe and kugie life as useless. He is an obsessive jerk AND I HATE HIM. And you know what…… It’s good. Like I actually feel a lot of emotions when I think about him, he fuels me with anger and disgust, and if your characters can make me feel that much rage then you did it, you created an actual perfect character. Hiyori is such a shit person that I think about him a lot, writers shouldn’t be scared to make a character such hittable assholes, example bojack horseman in bojack horseman is the vilest man on earth and I love it, because I genuinely hate him. Just like I genuinely love kanna, like really I really love her, I in the same time despise midori so bad. We hate him because he is horrible to good people that WE KNOW AND CARE ABOUT, not random npcs. There is a lot of… disgusting implications in his story with shin that I will not talk about it makes me really uncomfortable right now. SO HERE IS A VERY TACKY TRANSITION TO TALK ABOUT WHY I HATE JUNKO FROM DANGANRONPA.

Junko is boring, that’s it, she is boring, not funny not interesting, she is a fetish, she is the biggest Mary sue on earth, she is a gross character made to make fun of people with disabilities and queer people. Her only traits is being crazy, that’s it. I wouldn’t call midori that crazy actually, he’s methodical calculated, and precise. Crazyness is a term for people who aren’t in control of their actions and delusional about reality, sou is not crazy, he knows what he is doing, he is in full control, while characters like shin should actually be consider crazy, like shin is actually crazy but sou isn’t.

Conclusion:

Sou is a breath of fresh air, because nankidai had the balls to write an actually interesting deep and threatening character AND make him a villain. He didn’t fall into the trap of making him have a sad backstory or good motives, sou is just selfish, that’s all he is. He make him a fun entertaining guy who you absolutely hates, he made him threatening and at the same time a complete doofus. He made him humane and pathetic.

But the thing that make me love nankidai the most is this

The fact that he actually killed him that takes courage as a writer to just end a character THAT WAY, which is why midori will never come back alive he is forever dead. And that take a lot of talents as a writer to just take one of the most important characters and just get him drilled to death in the anus, like dammn nankidai you are a savage. That fact alone makes him one of the best characters in game, I hate him as a person, but has a character he is a masterpiece.

Though Kanna could solo him

this was posted as a video on my blog this is mainly so people who don't want to stay there reading a 24 minute video of my stuttering can have a bit of quiet

#yttd #your turn to die #kimi ga shine #shin tsukimi #kanna kizuchi #sou hiyori #midori yttd #cna you tell i have no life #i spend a part of my short existence writing about fucking midori #yttd analysis #frenchgremlim polls of laziness

[ewingstan]

any strong opinions on amy dallon

Feel like answering this is the equivalent of inviting a vampire into my home.

If this is just asking how I personally feel about Amy Dallon the character: I'd say she's among the strongest characters wildbow has written. She was used exceptionally well throughout Worm; in her initial interactions with Taylor, her smugness and petty insults help convince the reader to doubt the use of hero/villain as absolute markers of moral standing. As it goes on, and we see more of Amy's home situation, it becomes more clear how much Amy's haughtiness towards the villains comes from her insecurity; a desperate attempt to differentiate herself from them so that she can feel more like she belongs with the Dallons. It humanizes the heroes—stopping Ward from becoming a simple palette swap story where all the heroes are ontologically evil and the villains are brave noble freedom fighters—while making the hero/villain conceptual framework seem all the more ridiculous and destructive.

Later, around the same time Taylor is talking to Sabah and Lily about how "hero" and "villain" are just labels that don't determine one's morality, Amy is having the same realization—and panicking about it, because it means that being a hero doesn't mean she can't be the horrible person she fears she is. Because while she's figure out that hero/villain doesn't necessarily have any metaphysical weight, she's still sure that good person/bad person are clear ontological categories. And if being a hero doesn't just mean you're a good person, then she might really be the person her parent's treatment of her implies she is. She might actually be in danger of acting on those troubling thoughts that surely no good person would have.

In terms of her Ward stuff, I haven't gotten to the big things people had problems with so I can't comment too much. I think Ward Amy is effective as a villain in Victoria's story, but all the plot points of her allying with Goddess and taking command of the prisoners make sense only for a character whose the villain of Victoria's story, and don't make sense for Amy as we saw her in Worm. These plot points are working off the "person who thinks in terms of good and evil and is convinced she's evil" thing without addressing how by the end stage of worm, we'd seen her attitude had changed and that she'd started to move towards seeing people as not being inherently anything. Moreover, the writing kind of reaffirms the belief that some people are just bad people. I might not have that critique if there was more framing like "Amy is behaving this way because she's been told by everyone that she's villainous and so is falling into the expected role," but that's not really a thing in Ward. Hell, its less of a thing than it was in Worm.

There are shitty things Ward Amy does that I can get behind and say "yeah Worm Amy would do that," like going along with Carol's reconciliation plan and then running after Victoria when she leaves. Sure, she wants to resolve that, that's consistent with the original motivation of the wretchening incident. But most of the Amy writing after that, nah. I'm sympathetic to the "That's a different character" claims for everything past arc nine or so. That's her Noelle clone or something palling around with Goddess. Have Amy step out of the plot after the Dot interlude and ride off into the sunset, and let WB do a compelling pathetic-yet-very hatable villain with some other character.

If this is about recent intra-fandom stuff:

You can point out how a character is described in kinda racist language, both to criticize the text and to analyze what the story is doing with that character. Don't see how that's controversial, not sure how that got turned into "you're saying she's black". Authors making a white character read as bad or degenerate by describing them as sharing traits with black/brown stereotypes is a pretty common trope historically, its worth noting it when it happens.

And while I can see why people could get inspired by some aspect of how Amy is made to feel like a degenerate, and run with it by depicting her as literally dirty/pest-ridden or writing her with more taboo kinks, I don't think such depictions are beyond criticism. I might defend some of them on the basis of alternate readings of the character. If you're doing something with it, using Amy to explore something you're really interested in—there's at least a discussion to be had, and maybe something interesting would come if it. But you can't meet an honest critique of the ideas in your work, or a claim that they make already bad parts of her original depiction worse, by saying "its just a joke." Its art about Amy, there's gonna be ideas and messaging that goes along with it, even without you meaning to put them in. Don't fight that, embrace it! We'll all be better shitposters if we consider our shitposts worthy of critique.

#amy dallon #wildbow #parahumans #wardblr #wormblr #leo reads worm #leo reads ward #leo says

[bkatlips]

Ranking and explaining my rankings of Mike Flanagan’s shows and how they make me feel in honor of spooky season and just finishing Usher!! Why not!! Everyone else is doing it!! I’m also going to give it a gay score based on how gay they are (which also includes how big of a role gay characters played).

Disclaimer: Every one of these shows is well-made in one way or another and deserves to be watched based on whether someone else finds the premise interesting and not whether I liked the show. Too often I see “that show was bad to me therefore you shouldn’t watch it” and I disagree with that line of thinking.

1. The Haunting of Bly Manor-I can already hear people screaming “Hill House is better!” In some ways, yes! In some very important ways, however, I disagree. The biggest being Bly Manor emotionally resonated with me a lot more. The themes, the found family (as someone who is an only child), and of course, the lesbianism. Dani’s story of compulsory heterosexuality may be one of if not the best in media and her love story with Jamie ended up being one of the best media has to offer, too. And really using a horror story and turning it into a love story is kind of brilliant (and annoying for the people who were just there for the jumpscares I guess). Don’t get me wrong the show has flaws (why the FUCK do Peter and Rebecca have so much screentime? was that eight episode really the best placement?) but the stuff that lands, really really lands. I’m still thinking about Dani and Jamie 3 years later. Hannah’s episode was very well done. The kid actors little Amelie and Ben were phenomenal. Upon rewatch you notice most decisions and dialogue in the show were made with some purpose and it usually relates to something thematic. Some people may say it doesn’t really have one defining central thesis therefore making it messy, but to me the fact it has many themes actually makes it more fun to think about. Gay score: 100000/10

2. The Haunting of Hill House-A horror classic that got me into Flanagan! This is Flanagan’s best series as far as making you pee your pants. That hat man is just scary! The character work is nice. Those first 6 episodes are incredible. Perfect. The thing that brings it under Bly Manor for me is honestly the ending. It left something to be desired for me. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but it just did not conclude in such an emotionally resonant way as Bly Manor to me. Shout out to the Newton Bros because the music on this damn show (and Bly too but that’s basically Hill House music continued) is so so good. Also the character work is masterful because Shirley Crain is kind of a bitch but you do come to love her. In fact, there wasn’t a Crain I didn’t feel for. They’re deeply fucked up, sympathetic people. It’s a great show with some great thematic work but it just doesn’t speak to me quite as much as Bly, that’s it. I know that’s unpopular but it is what it is. A great good show nonetheless. Gay score: 8/10

3. The Fall of the House of Usher-This show is wild and honestly I couldn’t decide between ranking this one or Midnight Club third. I went with this one because the acting and technical stuff was so phenomenal. I’m not really into gore horror so this wasn’t like my thing on the surface but I do appreciate what a homage to Poe it is in the very limited knowledge of Poe’s work that I have. It was fun to see all the cast from previous shows back again especially T’nia. One of the downsides to this show is it doesn’t really make you feel a lot and so compared to the Haunting shows for me that makes it inferior for sure. But it’s a fun watch and honestly I need to rewatch the final episode because I had a hard time paying attention for that one. Gay score: really fucking queer/10

4. The Midnight Club-Ah Flanagan’s little dud. This one is really not very loved compared to the others, seems to be just about nobody’s favorite, however personally I liked it. I think people are a little unfair to it and while it may not be Flanagan’s best, I don’t think it’s awful. It doesn’t really tackle anything new when it comes to themes. There’s some death, grief, stages of acceptance, and cult stuff. I think the way it has these kids telling stories to deal with their reality was really brilliant in a way. There was one episode (six I think) that dealt with depression and suicide that made me sob and I thought was super well done. That one stuck with me.I think it would have benefited from a more likeable main character and also from the second season that was planned! Gay score: 6/10

5. Midnight Mass-To be honest, I probably could have gone without watching this show. It just didn’t really resonate with me and didn’t really entertain me save like the very last two episodes. It’s technically well-made and I appreciate what Flanagan was trying to do and convey with the danger of cults and religion. It was obviously a very personal project and was him working through his own experiences but it wasn’t for me. It had a few too many monologues and I don’t think monologues make an interesting character piece. However, it’s a critically acclaimed work so I recommend anyone who wants to check out Flanagan’s work still check it out! Especially if you like weird vampire stuff I guess. Also the acting especially from the priest was phenomenal. So there’s definitely pros to this show, but it didn’t add anything to my life for me! Gay score: 3/10 :/

Also, shout out to Mike because every single one of these shows is queer to one degree or another. He loves the gays! Ally! Bisexual wife probably helps too!

#the haunting of bly manor #the haunting of hill house #mike flanagan #the midnight club #midnight mass #the fall of the house of usher #bly manor #hill house #thobm #jamie and dani

[dr3amofagame]

forgive me my demons but i see this take so much and it drives me a little crazy . c!Sam is stupid, obviously. He has no self-awareness, he somehow completely misses on the fact that his actions have social ramifications, he has a sense of entitlement a mile high and thinks that everyone automatically should fall in line and agree with his authority just because he decides that he has it. he navigates conversations with the grace of a wrecking ball because he assumes that everyone will agree with him being In The Right and therefore doesn't actually go for much more convincing half the time than "do what i say or you'll end up locked up in an inescapable prison." his moral compass is a roulette wheel and his justifications incomprehensible.

but at the same time, c!Sam is far from unintelligent. like, not just anyone was going to CREATE and then RUN pandora's fucking vault. he made a world eater ?? if there's like anyone on the server that could reasonably create shit to cause mass destruction across the server other than like the literal fucking nukes, then yeah it'd be him, see the world eater again. sure, he makes the craziest fucking assumptions off the fact that he's Right And Justified And The Ultimate Authority And Everyone Should Agree With That, but he's also able to lie and manipulate and gaslight and coerce and threaten pretty much without breaking a sweat if he ever deems doing so necessary for his own goals, and it's not like the methods by which he does so are like, all that clumsy either. like people absolutely bought his whole deal early on in the prison arc, believing him to be a well-meaning, burdened Warden doing Whatever It Takes for the good of the server, which did in large part have to do with how his character talked about the prison to others and such, etc. just because c!sam is crazy bonkers and expects his ex to forgive him chopping their arm off doesn't mean that he's completely incapable of being pretty damn convincing at some points.

and like, even more importantly, his being dumb really didn't make him ANY less intimidating. i'd argue that it made him A LOT WORSE, honestly! just because his moral bullshit is twisted up in knots doesn't mean that he's any less dangerous for it. c!sam is, honestly, from the top of my head, one of the most casual about being violent on the server, purely because he believes he has a Right to it. he believes that people owe him obedience by virtue of who he is. he threw several people into pandora's vault WITHOUT LIKE, ANYONE KNOWING just because he decided that they deserved to be put in prison. he kidnaps a toddler??? c!Sam really doesn't bend himself in half trying to justify things according to someone else's moral system; as he literally does in that one scene with c!Bad during the stream where they investigated Sam Bucket, he literally just. is the epitome of the guy that lets himself do shit because he has a self-written permit that says i do what i want. the only thing getting in the way of c!sam's bullshit is c!sam, and i think that people honestly chronically overestimate how much he holds himself back from horrific violence. he stabbed a teenager to Make A Point about his authority? he repeatedly threatens hannah, one of his own employees, because of things she did while being mind controlled--and then like, uses this to excuse himself of? workplace harassment? in the stream after techno escapes with dream, he literally MAKES UP A REASON to be really fucking angry at dream and then threatens TO TORTURE HIM over it. when new people joined the server he would threaten them with a sword for asking questions about the prison in a way that seemed too 'dream sympathetic.' and he regularly tells people that he would commit all the atrocities again, including ponk, because he's entirely 100% convinced that everything he does is justified?

and a lot of the stuff people hold against him, like. sure, his plan to contain technoblade didnt work, but it SURE DID WORK BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE THAT TRIED, DIDNT IT? like techno would've been decently screwed if he didn't have a statis chamber set up. and well, the situation with dream speaks for itself--he was stuck in there for ten months. a lot of what people attribute to c!Sam's stupidity really does very little if anything to make him less scary--less effective, maybe, but for every time his moral bullshit gets in the way of him getting something that he wants there's probably a few other times you can find where his ability to justify himself out of anything makes him do something fucking ridiculous . anyway i dont even have a point to all of this except c!sam is scary as fuck bro

#c!Sam critical #c!Sam neg #like he's bonkers. #also like the times he fails are like well his TNT plot didnt work against the eldritch egg like that's HIS fault #and then stuff like well he let tommy die like that was just about stupidity and had nothing to do with him showing the fuck off #i feel like he gets underestimated a lot in fandom lmao which like. i mean. #honestly c!sam's victim complex 'oo i had to do it im not a bad guy i just didn't have a choice' copium is off the damn charts #so it's a little funny to see i think the way his pathetic paper bagisms end up reflected in fandom attitudes about him #also people way underestimate c!sam's ability to manipulate like for real #just because he's weirdly and terrifyingly earnest at the craziest moments because he thinks he sounds perfectly normal #while saying like the craziest bullshit you've ever heard in your life #doesnt make him incapable of lying and shit when he thinks he has to #anyway #i love him your honor

[rovingotter]

I don't actually think there was AI involved in the creation of Wish, or at least, not in the writing or the song lyrics or anything like that. Studios generally use AI to save money, and this movie had a huge budget. Overinflated, even. Why would they bother to pay all these people if they were just going to use AI?

I definitely get why people think that though, because the movie has a vibe that is simultaneously generic and very strange and dreamlike in the way that AI-generated stuff sometimes is.

This is a movie with Care Bears physics. This is a movie where people defeat the antagonist by singing about how indomitable their spirits are and making their chests glow. It seems like it should feel so over-the-top as to be enjoyable, yet somehow, the moment falls flat.

I think that vibe is also just what you get, though, when there are too many people and too many conflicting visions and interests involved and the thing has gone through too many rewrites.

I can't find it now but I saw a post recently on how Disney didn't really pick a "direction" with Magnifico, villain-wise, and showed a bunch of other villains who did have a clear "direction": there's the classic Maleficent-style villain who knows she's the bad guy and is comfortable with it, there's the tragic sympathetic antagonist like Abuela, there's the goofy, catty, wisecracking villain like Hades, etc.

I think Disney ultimately couldn't decide what direction they wanted to go with him and tried to do it all, and as a result, almost by accident, he feels like the most complex character. The way he's presented is inconsistent, but it kind of gels into someone who (for me, at least) feels like a real person, with all the messiness and contradictions of a real person. And he's polarizing because of that. As with real people, how you see him depends on what facet of him you home in on.

Similarly, Asha sort of feels like what you might get if you put every Disney protagonist into a blender. She's "adorkable" but also a badass but also big-hearted and sweet, she's a rebel but also just wants to make people happy, she has a dead parent, she has an "I want" song that is about as vague as can be (she wants "something more than this"), and she vibes with the forest creatures. But she doesn't quite gel into a real-feeling human in the same way. There are people who love her or hate her but for the most part the reaction to her seems to be "meh."

I think she does have the ingredients for being a real character, and maybe there's some incarnation of her in earlier drafts who is, which makes the end result feel kind of tragic.

#disney wish #wish 2023 #artificial intelligence #king magnifico #disney villains #princess asha

[decepti-thots]

do you wanna talk about your opinions re: Drift in fanfiction, maybe?

I think fanfic Drift is something of a game of fandom telephone tbh. There's a core that has been steadily whittled away by fanon repeating itself enough it seems shallow. The thing is that a lot of IDW1 canon has been subject to this directly, because it wasn't of much interest to folks writing fic while the MTMTE stuff was ongoing, tbh. When Dratchet became a focus in the LL run, stuff got reevaluated about Drift in shipping terms, rather than as character analysis, I think. And it became more abstract through that, and it encouraged Fanon Drift TM.

A lot of fanfic-Drift does not incorporate pre-MTMTE canon for him. This is understandable, because in its own right, that stuff is not very good tbh. But much of what we see now in fandom is... a clear reaction to fanon that sprung up independently, and so is trying to pose a counterpoint to things that only exist in fanon, and the whole thing becomes a mess of self-referential shit if you take it only on its own terms. Drift often only exists as a discussion of those issues in fandom, and where the writer falls on them right now, or when the fic was being written. (Much early Dratchet fic treats Drift as something of an afterthought and Ratchet as the obviously identifiable protagonist, lbr.) Fanfic-Drift is more a litmus test for fanon than a character in his own right, even when he's being written more strongly in canon, I think. He's a cipher. What fandom decided to make that cipher mean is interesting.

I have a whole post I could make about how people's ostensibly anti-regressive takes on 'was Drift a [metaphorical] sex worker, and if so what are our ideas about that' are still fundamentally bound up in anti-SWer ideas and fandom conversations more than canon, because it's all just a reaction to fanon fundamentally based in terrible ideas about what sex work is. (By which I mean I have one post idea I have repeatedly junked bc uh. Don't want to listen to people get shitty about sex work.) But at base level, a lot of fandom's idea of Drift is basically rooted in this idea of the 'theoretically sympathetic addict who has extenuating circumstances we need to articulate for him to be sympathetic, but who is still Abject bc of all that' which I think go so against what we see of him in pre-MTMTE media. Here are some things I think fanfic is bad at engaging with: Drift is an addict, and not the kind of addict a lot of fanfic wants to talk about. Drift is isolated in a way that is not easily explained by people being unfair to him. Drift has strong political opinions that inform both him joining and defecting from the Decepticons. If Drift was a sex worker, metaphorical or otherwise, that is clearly the least important thing in any shame he has.

But more important than those nuances, I think, is that Drift just isn't... allowed to be based on his canon stuff period? It feels honestly slightly irrelevant in the face of just. How much fanon Drift stops being based on extrapolating from his canon actions and starts being a character who exists purely to serve other characters. I think a really interesting take on him needs to do something with that sense he is someone who has deliberately buried what he wants to get what he wants. If you don't go a little meta with it, you get nowhere; and if you do you get something far more interesting than the 'ummmm sad SWer ig, ratchet kindly saves him' idea. See also: his most interesting canon relationship, and I say this as a dratchet shipper, is STILL Drift and Rodimus, because it dictates way more of WHAT THEY DO that Dratchet doesn't manage. Dratchet is great but canonically mostly exists as a culmination to a plot we are filling in behind the scenes; Rodimus and Drift exists as an ongoing discussion outside that. tbh.

tl;dr: sex worker drift would be great if anyone writing fic understood it has Zero to do with canon and approached it as such. it's not canon and people only think it's canon bc of bad opinions about what sex work is. either way i love drift. none of this is coherent sorry. we have discussed some of this before, and i have sharpened my opinions ig?

[heretherebedork]

All of your insights on wedding impossible feel so spot on to how I’m also consuming the drama. I haven’t gotten to the press conferences and stuff since I’m only on episode 8, but I’ve seen posts about it and even those frustrated. It just feels insane to me that anyone can think Dohan is the selfish one. I know we’re kind of beating a dead horse and preaching to the choir here but it’s just so baffling. Jihan who tried to get his brother’s fiancee not to marry Dohan so Jihan can build a mall. Jihan who tells Ajeong to her face he doesn’t like her but he’s going to seduce her and she’s not going to be able to resist bc he’s just sooooooo handsome and charming (which gave me a huge ick, how lowly does he think of this 32 year old woman that he assumes she’ll fall for someone who says he doesn’t like her??? But then she does???). Jihan who then does try to seduce HIS BROTHER’S FIANCEE. Jihan who tried to stop another woman from getting married by saying he should’ve hit on her instead (I also feel bad for CEO Chaewon in this show). Jihan who then strings Chaewon along to get things he wants (like breaking up his brother’s marriage that he thinks is real). Jihan who takes zero time to worry about Dohan after he’s outed by a crazy ex before immediately getting angry at Dohan and then again telling Ajeong not to marry him. Jihan who did all of this because he wants money. He’s the selfless one? Why, because he held an umbrella?

The writers are resting on the assumption that viewers will just ignore how awful Jihan is because he’s the male lead and is supposed to be the ideal man we all fall for, so they aren’t putting in any work to actually make him sympathetic. The worst part is it’s apparently working for the vast majority of viewers. You’re also so right that the show keeps telling us Jihan and Dohan are supposed to be close, but doing absolutely nothing to show us that. They might as well be strangers sharing a lease at this point. I had never watched a (het) romance kdrama before this (I always stuck with mystery and thrillers which korea does quite well imo), and I’m not sure I ever will watch one again if this is considered good. Also do we ever find out wtf happened to the ex? It’s been a couple episodes since we saw him all beat up but there’s no indication of what happened. Did they really use a gay bashing to create an evil ex boyfriend who could out Dohan to Jihan and stalk Ajeong for a bit and nothing more?

The ex was so underutilized and basically amounted to nothing except him forcibly outing Do Han to Ji Han to make the plot move. That's really all he does. Well, maybe he does more in the finale. I haven't watched yet. I'm working up to it.

But, yeah. This is my dead horse to beat.

Ji Han was the single most selfish character in the show and anyone who tries to claim otherwise is trying to sell you something.

Or trying to salvage a romance that ended up just generally unpleasant to me because, seriously? The entire romance started with him trying to steal away his supposed fiance and then ended with him getting pissed off about Do Han being gay and supposedly manipulating Ah Jeong and then was him just destroying their supposed sibling relationship.

Which I guess they don't have anymore? Or something?

The show gave us zero closure on that and I hate it so much. Because it's so stupid. Because there was no sibling relationship. None! The show refused to give us anything. Nothing but Ji Han being selfish and Do Han having to feel like the worst person ever for even remotely trying to protect himself.

Ah, but the show isn't going to show any homophobia. Why would they do that?

Instead, the show is just gonna give us nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Not even a goddamn glimpse.

No one seeing this would ever believe these brothers loved each other.

#wedding impossible #seriously it doesn't feel like they love each other at all

[miraculousdeservesbetter2024]

Ships:

Chlonette

Adribrina

Lukalix

Characters:

Miss Bustier

Andre

Rose

Hmmm…🤔

Ships:

Chlonette

👍👍👍

My favorite Chloe OTP! On the surface, Chlonette might just look like your basic cute crackship or possible redemption/reformation story for Chloe, but thanks to this Chlonette server I'm in (with these awesome people I might add), Chlonette is a lot more complex and has more layers than you think. My reasons for shipping it are a possible Chloe redemption/reformation, Chloe can of course treat Marinette better, enemies to lovers (though in my case, it’s enemies, to hesitant friends, to friends and THEN to lovers), they generually look interesting together, and Chloe already has (or did have) a crush on Ladybug, so that's to assume if she had an crush on Ladybug, she might be her type.

Also, before S4-5, I saw Marinette (other than Miss Bustier, Sabrina, and possibly Adrien) being really the only one who truly understands Chloe. I feel that Mari being Ladybug is more prominent when it comes to this. Also, I feel that Marinette and Chloe are a lot alike when you really think about it when you take away their different upbringings. People dislike these two together for obvious and understandable reasons (the way Chloe canonically treats Marinette, Chloe's a bully, Marinette gave up on Chloe etc.), but I personally think it has potential (or at least it did, until canon/Astruc ruined it).

Adribrina

👍

Adribrina isn't a bad ship. Two friends of mine got me invested in this ship (and it also comes from the fact that I also ship Lukabrina). From what I’ve gathered, people ship because it’s “cat and dog” shipping and the lack of interactions these two had in the series. So basically it completely resonates from potential, which is understandable. I also think it would be a bit interesting to see these two interact.

Lukalix

👍

I prefer this ship as a strong friendship, but I’m perfectly fine with people shipping it. It has some potential and the two are holders of time-related miraculouses 😄

Characters

Miss Bustier

Eh…

👍👎

Sorry. I know it’s a copout, but I legitimately feel REAL indifferent on Bustier right now. Her teachings at first came off as wholesome and understandable, but once you really look into it, not only she’s an enabler to Chloe’s bad behavior, but throws her actual good student under the bus and doesn’t even bother to take up for her against Lila (Ladybug episode). Then later ends up throwing Chloe under the bus too once she starts to “finally understand Chloe’s true nature”. Which I GET the intent behind this, but I don’t like it because SHE’S one of the many adults who enabled her in the first place, but now she wants to give up on her!?

“BUT Chloe got her fired even though she’s pregnant!” It doesn’t matter? I’m not trying to sound cruel here (because that really is messed up), but I just think as the grown adult who choose to enable Chloe and gave her the benefit of the doubt (compared to what she did for her other students btw), does she really have the right to bail on her now??? I’m not trying to sound insensitive or unsympathetic of Bustier’s situation, but I just think it’s not all on Chloe. I don’t think Miss Bustier is a bad person, but some of the stuff she does is seriously questionable.

Andre

👎👎👎

I didn’t necessarily “hate” Andre in the past, but now? He’s a corrupt politician and a bad father who gave up on his own daughter AND replaced her with a girl who’s not even 💯 his. I also hate how he’s somehow more sympathetic than the 14 year old girl who he failed to raise property. It’s so dumb that it’s constantly said that Chloe is “evil” because she doesn’t want to lose her privileges, but who GIVES HER those privileges in the first place??? So that automatically falls on her PARENT.

Rose

👍

I like her! She’s not my favorite character, but she’s a sweet character who represents jubilation well. 

#a lot to say on this one I suppose #miraculous ladybug #ml #mlb #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #miraculous #miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #miraculousbeezcentral #chlonette #lukalix #adribrina #rose lavillant #andre bourgeois #caline bustier #rant #vent #chloe bourgeois

[fights4users]

Just you? | The page, Alan and clu

Someone said this ages before me but the page was meant to get Alan at the arcade, Alan inside the grid. Clu wanted him but settled for Sam. I want to dive a bit deeper into that, especially after reading betrayal (really the novel does wonder for his character and providing additional context for legacy).

Backup plan—

Contacting Alan was the last desperate attempt to find a normal way out. I can imagine Kevin would have talked about him quite frequently, about how good he was and maybe even admitting to clu he was the one to originally write tron. So, clu figures out a way to contact this “great user” and make him fix everything. Maybe he could finally give the grid a purpose from the outside or do some work on the inside to stabilize everything. I don’t even think clu knows what all needs to be done to fix everything- he’s been lost and a bit power hunger for a while now I’d imagine he’d be forceful with Alan but have good reason to be.

I think having Alan rewrite and fix the grid from the outside (or in if possible) would make the most sense. What the hell use would alan have otherwise? He wouldn’t have a disk! Sam only got one once he was put into the games, additionally alan wouldn’t have the knowledge of the grid to use his disk as a key after receiving one. So getting Alan in the first place had nothing to do with “out there” or “world domination”.

Last resort—

I saw a theory a while ago which I wholeheartedly believe that said, Clu only did all of this (the army, the world domination plans) to give the grid a purpose. It really makes his authoritarian decent into madness all the more tragic, as stated before he never had a chance to be good. He can’t create new programs he can only rewrite what’s there— he’s slipping and out of ideas because endlessly building in a overheating system is a absolute nightmare. A mindless army works great as it takes up as little energy as possible, you can conserve what remains and give your citizens something to actually do… now mind you it’s not a good something to be a mindless drone. After Alan falls through he goes on with the first plan. I also believe the world domination thing also comes about because he’s a reflection of Flynn’s  arrogance back when he made the grid— this is so his speech can almost identically match Flynn’s “in their is our destiny!” -> “out there is our destiny!”. More that for a character motivation that makes sense.

Clu is a dangerous line. As the more you read into things the more sympathetic he becomes the more you understand his motivations and what lead him down this path. You almost forget how horrible his actions are from how badly a hand he has been dealt. He is fascinating and so unbelievably sad that he saw this (Dictatorship, mind control, genocide ,etc.) as the only way out. He is the antagonist but not the villain.

Sam—

No one was expecting Sam to be the one to arrive at the arcade. Clu didn’t take Into account Alan’s care for him,  probably because clu had his own issues with Sam since he was a baby. It’s interesting as Sam is basically the crux that sets off the film. Plan B didn’t work so we’re going for the crazy world domination plan, let’s use you to lure your dad out of hiding. To me it sort of comes through as the backup plans of backup plans to him- if Alan had come would he have concerned himself with Flynn at all? This god is helpful, this god sticks to his words and thinks things through…oh god the absolute angst potential in that. (Again keep in mind that Clus hatred is for a Flynn who didn’t go through 20 years of  philosophy lessons).

This is all me just theorizing anyway, my own way at picking through legacy trying to understand it. 🤷‍♀️ Clu is such a fascinating character that you really have to feel bad for, and again it’s a little concerning? Because you forget how much bad stuff he really did just because they fumbled Flynn SO hard. The Kevin Flynn who made the grid does not feel like the same Kevin Flynn who broke into ENCOM with his buddies one night and I don’t know how to explain it.

#tron #tronblr #tron legacy #kevin flynn #clu 2.0 #clu #the grid #sam flynn #theory #tron theory #writing critique #meta #tron meta #alan bradley #tron lore #tron betrayal

[cometcrystal]

i’ve realized what a good litmus test is for the quality of a branch of monster high media: HOW WELL IS CLEO WRITTEN? her character’s writing is a great litmus test for the rest of the writing.

g1 diaries - give cleo the most nuance, is one of the most well-beloved mh canon sources that has super fun worldbuilding, character development, and lore not seen in the animated stuff

g1 webisodes - cleo starts off pretty shallow in s1 (the worst season) but she’s more fleshed out by the time season 2 comes around. another well-done series that is fun to watch

g1 movies - cleo’s 2nd most sympathetic portrayal that has some of her best character moments of all time. these are the Classics of mh. these are the big guns.

g1 ghoulfriends books - cleo is very one-note. not a huge fan of this cleo because im 100% certain the author has a deuchelle agenda. all this cleo does is scream and complain about things. but the books are pretty simple overall. a few interesting things happen but they’re easily skippable if you’re not a completionist

g1 lisi harrison books - the 2nd worst cleo. has her moments of depth but it’s all for naught when she is just straight-up cruel to people she cares about. reflects how the rest of the series has so many moments that COULD be something better but it’s overall just a bad, BAD series for innumerable reasons.

g2 movies - the #1 most sympathetic portrayal. she’s really not that mean she’s just kinda impatient. very enthusiastic. reflects how g2 was less edgy overall but still had lots of heart. iEnjoy

g2 ghoul squad - cleo’s fun but kinda bland. same as the series. nothing to report on either of them

g3 live action - the #1 worst cleo. whitewashed and not written with a single ounce of nuance. not even deuce wants to talk to her. frustrating on all accounts. both her and the movie itself have one saving grace. cleo’s is her pajamas with the scarab brooch, and the movie’s is Frankie’s Existence

g3 nick show - the kookiest cleo yet. love that for her. she’s got the most monstery traits/abilities out of all the cleos, showing how mh is branching out of its normal comfort zone to make something fun. give her some convos with deuce and this might be A Favorite Cleo for me. i’m liking the show a lot too, it’s fun!

g1/g3?? haunt couture diaries - this is a cleo written by someone who has taken 1 feminism class in their entire life and didn’t do any prior research before writing these stupid things. hollow and doesn’t match g3 canon, but also falls out of line with g1, where i think it’s supposed to be. stop giving cleo (and monster high in general) to people who can’t write beyond a “tween drama movie aimed at 12 year olds who think they’re outgrowing dcoms” level

#monster high #cleo de nile #deadcanons #monster high 2022

[nottoofondofgaypeople]

In Regards to Gene

Content warning: abuse, r-pe, and light discussions of World of Warcraft

In a previous post that I have since taken down, I discussed the idea of the Shadow Knight Polycule and their victims in Laurance and Vylad. And in this discussion I really got away from myself and wrote some stuff that seemed... well not great at the time, but fitting for the characters and the story I wanted to tell. This reading wasn't very kind to Gene, but I've never been kind to Gene. I've been treating Gene like a punching bag since I first had to suffer through Phoenix Drop High Season 1, and it only worsened when I had to suffer through Lovers Lane.

As a result I hadn't thought about MCD Gene in a more sympathetic light until after that post went up. It was after that post went up that I started doing more ruminating on the Nether, The Shadow King, and the absolute horror of a Shadow Knights existence. It was after this ruminating that I realized that what happened with Gene was that I was treating him well...

Like Arthas Menethil. For a bit of context for those of you who haven't lost brain cells over World Of Warcraft, Arthas is basically the biggest evilest villain in WoW, but he's a villain the player can see the entire rise and fall of. The first campaign puts you in his shoes as a young paladin, and you watch as he constantly makes the worst, most violent, most evil choices through the entire campaign. Arthas is just an absolute and unapologetic monster who creates so many victims through his entire miserable existence that he keeps mementos of them.

And a lot of WoW fans try to characterize Arthas' story as a hero's fall thing? Like he was a good person who was corrupted by bad forces, even though you're shown him being a vile evil person before Frostmourne and the Lich King start fucking with him. Arthas was just a monster looking for an excuse. And I think I let that color my perception of Gene because he really is similar to Arthas in a lot of ways. He's pretty evil, manipulates people like nobody's business, uses magic to do so a lot, has a tense bitter relationship with an old companion, harasses one particular woman with white hair and an association to the color purple a lot, and the actual text of MCD never encourages the viewer to take a sympathetic look towards him, just like WoW.

As a result, I wrote him a lot like Arhtas, which in hindsight, might have been too harsh. Gene does have some redeeming qualities, and honestly with enough work he could possibly have been redeemed at some point. The tragedy of Gene in my rewrite is that said point in time has long past. Anyone foolish enough to try doing so now won't succeed.

Gene was not a good person before the Shadow King found him. A person worth understanding? Yes. A person with a chance of redemption? Maybe, depends on how Dante feels. A person who was also a victim of the Shadow King? Yes.

And that's where I changed my tune on Gene. While I hold the belief that Gene was far from perfect before he got turned, he still had a chance to be a good person before said turning. And the process of being broken down from the person he was into essentially an extension of the Shadow King was not kind to the remnants of a good person left in Gene. So, I want to be a little kinder to Gene.

Cutting the idea of him using Laurance I think it happened exactly once, and the context of it changes the scene from being outright r-pe into a dub-con territory. My previous characterization was dangerously close to the territory of "abuse victim becomes abuser", which I never want people to take from my work. I think that whole thing happened partially out of Gene's control and was really one of the moments that made him doubt what he was doing. These doubts are really too little too late though.

The degrading of Gene's relationship isn't entirely his fault either. While he still clearly loves Sasha and Zenix, the Shadow King calls on him more and more, pulling him away from them. And when the Shadow King breaks Zenix it only gets worse. Gene and Zenix are pitted against each other because the Shadow King realized they were both having silly little thoughts about free will and would turn against him. This polycule was never going to last because if the three of them got along and were normal and without the Shadow Kings influence for like two days they would have started a rebellion before Laurance ever even entered the Nether.

I think Gene struggles to show affection while around others. If Sasha or Zenix flirts with him around other shadow knights, he gets really tense and uneasy about it. But the minute they're alone it's endless kisses and apologies and reassurances. Despite having a skewed understanding of love, Gene is very good at showing it. Gene feels like someone who loves in an overwhelming sense, you feel like you're drowning in his love, for better or for worse.

Gene is not going to get redeemed in my rewrite. But he will be humanized. People will try to call him a violent thoughtless monster, and Sasha will gladly assure them that he is a violent calculated monster with thoughts and emotions that's being tormented by the voices of the departed. Gene will never be seen as a hero by his family, but he will likely never know if he has a family to begin with. Gene is a character who deserves better, but has lost every chance at it he possibly could have had.

#minecraft diaries #mcd rewrite #minecraft diaries rewrite #aphblr #mcd gene #mcd sasha #mcd zenix #character rewrite #character comparison #world of warcraft #really sorry I made you guys think about WoW #mcd laurance #mcd vylad #they're just mentioned though #mcd shad #god I hate that his name is that #shadow knights

[claireverlasting]

41 and 12 for the ask game?

41. What are some lines from musicals you really like?

Don't be afraid of death, Winnie. Be afraid of not being truly alive. You don’t need to live forever, you just need to live - tuck everlasting

Try to walk all over us, we'll stomp all over you - newsies (this makes me wanna bang my head against the table/pos)

To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now - hadestown

You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right - into the woods

How can you soar when you're nailed to the floor? - tick tick boom

But when you’re gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story? - hamilton

12. Worst stage to screen adaptation?

Short answer: Dear Evan Hansen, no one asked for a movie why didn’t they give us a proshot with the obc

Long answer:

Oh boy, ohhhhhh boy *crack knuckles*

It has to be Dear fucking Evan Hansen. For a show that has the og team in the writing room I don’t know how on the fucking earth they missed the whole story completely.

They did not realize the original plot has already walked on the edge of That Is Fucked Up and was on thin ice from falling into the Problematic Cringe Theatre Hell. They were like oh it’ll be fineeeee we can totally remove these import parts and it’ll be fineeeeee. Like bro. BRO.

A huge part of the story relies on a) Evan’s connection towards Connor, and b) The story acknowledges how Not Okay Evan’s actions are. And what did they do? Butcher the script until it highlights the worst possible part of the story. I don’t even give a flying fuck about Ben Platt being too old for the role or whatever, I can’t tell people’s age anyway, but not even the most talented and 17-years-old actor can save that monstrosity of a script, and that’s the same guy that wrote the musical one! Like how👏did👏you👏not👏see👏it👏

The thing that motivated Evan to do all the stuff in the story is that he saw himself in Connor, and you can see a lot of his action was based on “What if I’m the one that was dead, what would I want people to do”. You got Anybody Have a Map, Disappear, and ghost Connor, you cut those, you cut the connections between the two characters and Evan’s inner struggles. And they made Alana the one to suggest a Connor Project as an attempt to make Evan looked more blameless in the whole ordeal. I can’t believe I need to spell it out but it did😑not😑work😑like😑that😑, you just make Alana looked manipulative, and the whole thing can be avoided if you didn’t cut Disappear. And there are Jared and Good For You, without someone that is boinking Evan on the head like “Dude please stop”, it just looks like the story is excusing his actions.

In conclusion, they thought it’ll work better if they make Evan more out of control of his situation and overall more “Opps shit happened around me and I just went along with it”, I saw a post somewhere that said that making the character directly responsible to the thing that happened makes them more sympathetic (or smt) and it applied to this situation so much. In the musical we see a teenager that make terrible decisions as an attempt to make things better, but in the movie we just see an opportunist that is manipulative and did all of the stuff to get into a girl’s pants

#and cut!! #that got out of hand #do send me askes about how much deh movie fucked up #I need motivation to talk about that #ask game! #cam :) #tuck everlasting #tuck everlasting the musical #newsies #hadestown #into the woods #tick tick boom #hamilton #dear evan hansen #deh movie

[theminecraftbee]

Hi your fic idea sounds fantastic, and you're absolutely right, Scar lends himself really well to moral corruption character arcs? I think it has to do with the charisma. He sounds so happy and genuine [he is, in fact, both of those things] and it's so easy to condition yourself into thinking Happy And Genuine also mean morally upstanding? It was an interesting thing I found myself falling into during the Mycelium Resistance stuff. Because while Grian was also very transparent [its the principle of the thing!], Scar was transparent for very sympathetic reasons [I'm cleaning up the shopping district!]. And people are helping him fight the resistance, because they want to, and people wouldn't help someone they think is evil, so that gives him even more credibility really! And then suddenly there's a lazer by the HEP building, and you're nodding at it going "Right because he's looking for the Resistance". Until you really squint at it and go, "No wait.... that's a villain move. That can't be good. But it's Scar."

It feels like his nature encourages the bystander effect, almost?

Anyway, I could totally see a world where Scar begins his decent with, "I'm helping these people defend themselves!" Which then turns into, "I'm working both sides, because I need to have allies if I want to survive this too!" Which then turns into a very deliberate, "I've got to make a profit here, and really it's not my fault all this is happening. I wouldn't have to supply if there wasn't already a demand."

Scar should have more villain arcs. He'd be good at it. It's only his love of wholesome hijinks and his wonder at the beauty of the world and what his friends create that holds him back.

[Brought to you by someone who actively plans on giving Scar a villain arc in their current fic].

YOU GET IT. scar is so good at just being affably, cheerfully the villain, it's a role he loves playing clearly. and normally he's sort of goofy about it, and it's an act, but like. right up until it's very much not one. and its GREAT its one of my favorite scar things and i'd love to write something that plays with the fact that scar doesn't mind making himself the bad guy for other people to play off of... and then finds himself actually the bad guy and perfectly willing to continue to be so.

and like. YEAH you have the right sort of descent here that's exactly right. he should have more villain arcs. he may be silly and goofy but he's also perfectly capable of being A Villain. he loves his friends and he loves cool trees and also one time he had an alien who ate people, also possibly etho, and then everyone just sort of moved on from that. WHAT I'M SAYING IS THAT THE MAN HAS RANGE,

#answered #silverskye13 #and i am SO EXCITED to see more scar villain arc in your current fic #...i need to actually catch up on said current fic

[nellie-elizabeth]

What We Do in the Shadows: The Roast (5x08)

Oh my god, this was an AMAZING episode.

Cons:

I feel bad for continuing to harp on this, but The Guide continues to feel like such a wasted character! I like the performance, I don't think it has to be this way, there could be some really funny stuff here! But instead it's the same joke again and again. It's like she's the Jerry from Parks and Rec or the Toby from The Office. But this show didn't really need that, they're all a bunch of losers, and there's already the vampires treating Guillermo like he's disposable to fall back on as a joke? I don't know. She had plot relevance this week, but it feels like we could have done this without her.

Pros:

Lazlo's ennui was really funny, the way he keeps dismissing everyone's attempt to snap him out of it... one of the funniest exchanges was right at the top, when Nadja and Nandor were talking about Lazlo lacking interest in his old hobbies: Nadja - "We are down to like sixteen fucks a week." / Nandor - "We're down to three". And Nadja reaches out and puts a hand on Nandor's arm, in horror and sympathy to hear something so terrible! That really made me laugh.

Honestly, this episode was laughs all the way through, I can't even pick favorite lines from everyone. But I loved Colin's failed roast of Lazlo, I loved Nadja saying that maybe dying wouldn't be so bad, and Nandor being like "wtf" and then Nadja being like "I've just been going through a lot lately."

The main plot here is that the Baron discovers that Guillermo was the one who accidentally burned him up a few years ago, and he wants revenge. As ridiculous as all the antics were, I was also genuinely moved by Nadja and Nandor both begging for Guillermo's life and trying to dissuade the Baron. But at the same time, they're all worried about Guillermo killing the Baron, because he's the origin of their line of vampires, and his vampire descendants might die as well! What a fun and twisted web of allegiances. Guillermo doesn't try and kill the Baron, in part because it puts his friends at risk. And yet his friends can't let the Baron kill Guillermo either!

Things are... sort of resolved... when Guillermo tells the Baron that he has renounced his vampire killing family legacy by becoming a vampire himself. The Baron finds the whole situation with Nandor not being the one to change him kind of hilarious and he's also sympathetic to Guillermo because of it, so he calls off his vengeance. And then... Guillermo accidentally burns him in the sunlight again.

Genuinely, the sight of Nandor clutching Guillermo's sweater, and then his grief when he sees "Guillermo" dead on the ground in front of him... I'm sure the whole fandom is celebrating hardcore. It was so much. Pair that with the utterly callous way that Lazlo guts the corpse, to show everyone that it's not really "Gizmo", but one of his clone experiments gone awry... this show is utterly ridiculous in the very best way.

The sweet Guillermo and Nandor moments don't stop there. When Nandor finds Guillermo hiding in his coffin, after thinking he has fled never to be seen again, he asks him questions to make sure it's the real him. One of them is, what's in the card you gave to me the first day you were my familiar? And Guillermo quotes it exactly, with Nandor mouthing along. "To be a vampire is my dream, but to be your familiar would be my honor." What the heck kind of high romance? Amazing. I can't believe next week we're going to see Nandor find out about Guillermo at last. Everyone's been building up again and again how Nandor will be forced to kill Guillermo and then himself. I wonder what's going to happen!

Turns out, Lazlo's strange mood was just because he was trying to figure out how to alphabetize his books. I love this gag as like... a fun example of what longevity and immortality might really be like. You can afford to just space out for a couple weeks to make a decision if you like! There's so much time stretched before you.

It was so funny to see Doug Jones as the Baron, sans any weird crazy make-up or prosthetics, only for the episode to involve him getting all burned up and disfigured again. I guess he's back to untold hours in the makeup chair any time he's on this show! I love it. I also loved how the Baron accepted Guillermo as a vampire right away, in a way the others who are in the know haven't quite done. He's all-in for his fellow vamps, and now he's got a bunch of Guillermo animal clones to hang out with at his place!

I'm not ready for this season to be over, it all happened too quickly! This may be the best episode of the season.

9.5/10

#review #wwdits #wwdits review #what we do in the shadows #what we do in the shadows review