#personally I think it's very flat when villains who do terrible things have no love for anything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bestworstcase · 29 days

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I have a question about some of your Salem thoughts

If Salem is 110% certain that she can take down the Gods (assuming that's her goal since we don't actually know), why wouldn't she communicate her plan to Oz? Especially if she truly doesn't want anyone to die like you say. Oz would jump at the bit if Salem said "Hey I want to stop fighting" since that would mean their shadow war would stop. I really don't think Oz likes the Gods either, and even if he's afraid of them, if *Salem* is that confident she can stop them (she's far from an idiot), I'm sure he'd at least hear her out (which would tell Salem a LOT).

If she's that confident and truly doesn't want to fight, why wouldn't she tell Oz her new plan? And why would she kickstart her plan by attacking the kingdoms/Academies? Surely she could find a way to steal the Relics without flat out attacking them (like sending in double agents to take the Maiden powers)? Like... she would've known she'd get people killed, including children and innocent people. Even if she did damage control (which I think is just strategic, why bother going after people if she's focusing on the Relics? She's not gonna waste precious time and resources), she surely knew people would get caught in the crossfire.

Don't get me wrong, I like what you bring to the table!! Your posts are thought provoking and unique. But I can't see Salem being somehow secretly good. I don't think the show is setting her up that way, and I think she's a fantastic villain, so from my own perspective, doing that kind of twist would be a disservice to her character. I don't think she's inhuman or a complete and total monster who should go, but she's definitely not a good person especially if she can't communicate that she supposedly doesn't want people dead. She seems to be an "the ends justify the means" kind of person, and the show I think has stated that that isn't a good mindset i.e. Ironwood.

Sorry, I rambled and completely strayed from my point 😅 I don't mean to be mean if I come across that way. I hope my ask is interesting or thought provoking though :P

my position is that salem is right, not that she’s secretly good—that is an important distinction. i think she sees the gods clearly for what they are, thinks the divine ultimatum repulsive and unjust, wants remnant to be free, and believes that humanity is transcendent over their creators; she also, quite plainly, does not have any compunction about doing whatever it takes to achieve her ends and while i do think she is still fully capable of and driven by love, she is so TERRIFIED of being hurt again and so CERTAIN that no one could ever care for her that when she does care for someone else it comes out in very, very twisted and often cruel ways. she’s not good, she’s not nice, she’s just right.

equally the heroes are good but not right, because they have yet to really grapple with the premise of the divine mandate (that humanity as it exists right now does not deserve to exist) or their own role in upholding it (their immediate goal is survival, but when they envision the ending of this war they imagine salem driven back and the relics squirreled away again in hope of at best everlasting stalemate). the point of structuring the narrative this way is that neither side can get to the proverbial good ending alone; they need to work together, salem’s ends with the heroes’ means.

like. she’s evil. lol. that’s not in question and i think it goes without saying that she is doing evil things so i don’t feel the need to make a “but she’s still evil though” disclaimer every time i try to tease out what’s going on in her head. notice how my reaction to salem razing vale was OH GLINDA LAYS SIEGE TO THE EMERALD CITY, WE’RE REALLY IN IT NOW and not, like, shock or dismay that salem would do such a terrible thing. brgdfjs

(i DO think she has mostly been trying to avoid ozma and not reciprocating the shadow crusade against her prior to about fourteen years ago and that she isn’t about wanton destruction or killing for the sake of it; and in that sense i think she’s not as bad as the general fanon reading. but that comes with the territory of thinking she has actual reasons for doing what she does as opposed to being, like, a genocidal lunatic.)

anyway. to your questions. the short answer is she’s just as scared of oz as he is of her.

“but he’s the good one!”—think about this from her perspective for a minute. set aside your opinion of her and oz, presuppose for the moment that i’m correct on her motivations, and consider what everything ozma’s done in the last few thousand years looks like to her.

she knows that the gods were monsters. she witnessed them slaughtering the whole world and she saw how little it mattered to them after. she was alone for millions of years, and then hated and feared for thousands of years because she didn’t look human. all that suffering because the gods are punishing her for praying to them. yes?

then ozma returns to her, somehow. he doesn’t explain how or why—maybe he tells her he just doesn’t know—but that’s alright. what matters is that he’s here. he asks what happened to her, and she tells him the truth: the gods ended the world. cursed her. killed everyone. she was alone for so long. (maybe not the whole truth: there are things she’s afraid to say, because the gods did it all to punish her, and it’s her fault, and she’s so scared that he’d despise her if he knew everything. the only reason for her to fear ozma would reject her is if she blamed herself. you don’t hide things out of shame if you don’t feel ashamed of them.)

they learn each other again. fall in love all over again. things are finally okay. they fix up her house. they’re happy together. one day ozma tells her that he’s worried about how divided people are. she wants so badly to make him happy; she would move mountains for him. salem herself has no interest in ruling over people as a god—if she did, she wouldn’t have been living alone in a rotting shack in the middle of nowhere—all that enthusiasm is for him. to support what he wants.

they build a following, found a prosperous kingdom, start a family. four children! how long do you think they were married—ten years? twenty? and the whole time, the whole time, ozma was keeping these secrets from her. that the god of light, who’d condemned her to eternal suffering for praying to his brother, who’d shown utter indifference to the deaths of millions, had sent him back to redeem humanity FROM HER SINS, from what SALEM did. that the point of all this is cleansing humankind of her defiance and inviting THAT MONSTER to remnant to judge whether this world deserved to be subjugated under the brothers’ tyranny again or else be put to death.

imagine how she must have felt when ozma finally told her the truth, knowing that the first thing she told him was that the gods ended the last one. imagine the sickening realization that their whole marriage is built on a lie, because she would never, ever, ever have agreed to help him unite the world if she had known what he sought to unite them for, and ozma knew she never would. that he deceived her! manipulated her into serving the will of a god she knows to be a monster!

and even then—even to the very end—she loved him enough to try. she was willing to forgive all of that and figure out a way to move past it together, and the only thing she asked was that he walk away from his task of submitting this world to the judgment of THAT MONSTER. and he wouldn’t do it.

there’s a gap we don’t get to see, in between ozma backing away from her and salem catching him leaving with the girls, but we can infer that ozma walked out of that room and salem didn’t. imagine how she felt. ten years, twenty years, however long it was, and he was lying to her through it all, and he left her with hardly a moment’s hesitation when she refused to help him enact THAT MONSTER’S retribution against herself. because that is, ultimately, what this is all about; humanity is found guilty by association with her.

imagine how she felt. used. worthless. duped. like a fool for ever trusting him. did he ever love her at all, or was that a lie, too?

when she caught him in the hallway later that night, they both attack each other in the same instant. ozma remembers her attacking him first, but their volleys meet in perfect symmetry and right before salem throws her first bolt of magic, her eyes flicker down in surprise as she tracks the motion of his staff (which we see in the previous shot)—salem remembers him attacking her first.

because they were both so tense and scared and angry at each other that they snapped in exactly the same moment.

their battle is so intense they blow up the castle, and when the smoke clears, salem is a pile of ash. ash! he incinerated her! imagine how enraged you have to be to burn someone to ash. that level of fury, of absolute hatred of her, is literally burnt into her memory as the last thing he did to her before she managed to kill him, inextricably twisted around the guilt and unbearable grief she feels for her children.

he’s dedicated all but a handful of his lives since then to getting rid of her. finding a way to destroy her. (how far is he willing to go? what would happen if salem tried to move on, find community and solace somewhere far away from him? would he come after her? would he follow his god’s example and go after the people she cared about to punish her? is she willing to risk that he might?)

do you think salem understands why ozma did any of this? she doesn’t. she doesn’t get the luxury we do of jinn narrating his side of the story and showing us the anguish he felt, wanting so desperately to be with salem but eaten alive by terror of dooming the world for his happiness. she doesn’t know.

all she knows is how he treated her: the secrets, the deception, the manipulation, the immediate and absolute rejection when she told him no, the explosively violent anger at the end, then centuries upon centuries systematically erasing her from history and enforcing her exile whilst searching for the relics he needs to summon his god for the final judgment. which she knows will inevitably end in the annihilation of the whole world and yet more torture for her with no hope of reprieve, because if all of this was not enough to satisfy the god of light’s grudge against her for, again, just praying to his brother, nothing ever will.

salem feels about ozma now the way blake felt about adam. why did he lie to her, why did he use her, why does he keep coming back, why won’t he just LEAVE HER ALONE, hasn’t she suffered enough, hasn’t she been punished enough, when will it be enough—and intertwined with that, she is being EATEN ALIVE by the conviction that no one could ever truly care about her or feel for her or want to help her or think that she deserves help or even just see her as a person, because if ozma—ozma, the one who saved her from her father’s tower, who knew her and loved her before all of this happened—if ozma thought her so worthless that he would rather serve a god who ended the last world and promises to condemn this one too than suffer her to exist at all in this world, why the fuck would anyone else be any different?

thousands of years later, she still flies off the handle when anyone lies to her. (except cinder. but cinder is always the exception, to every rule.) there’s a reason she recruits the kind of people she does—desperate, broken, angry people starving for something she can promise to give them if they make themselves useful to her—and it’s because she does not believe that she can get anything better than strictly transactional relationships with people who have literally nothing and nowhere else to turn. and when she actually cares about someone? she fights herself tooth and claw over it because she desperately doesn’t want to open herself up to more heartbreak. look at how erratic and cruel she is with cinder.

it’s not rational. salem is smart and very, very tactically shrewd but she is making all of her plans and all of her choices from the assumption that she is and will always be alone in this, because she is unlovable, because she is worthless, because she is the reason this world is damned. and she’s terrified of ozma because to her everything he does suggests that his conviction and dedication to the god of light has never wavered. she cannot see his doubt. she cannot see his misery. she cannot see how much he misses her and desperately wants to make amends. all she can see is that he’s zealously guarding the relics and spreading his god’s word and training children to fight and die in the name of keeping her exiled.

why doesn’t ozma just go to her and tell her he wants to make amends? because he’s terrified she’ll never forgive him and terrified that he’ll damn the world to annihilation if he follows his heart. they’re the same. they’re exactly the same.

but this is also what makes it so possible—even easy—for salem to undergo a villain-to-hero arc, because the only thing that needs to happen is a spark of real hope. that someone, anyone, could really care about her. like. the things she says in her soliloquies about the transformative power of hope? “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change,” and “it’s true that a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary…”—that’s her. one small reason to hope. that is all she needs to change.

she doesn’t want to be razing kingdoms to the ground or cutting a bloody path through children to get those relics. she is willing to do it because she truly, genuinely, from the depths of her soul believes that it’s the only way to free herself from the torture she’s been subjected to for millions of years. she’s driven to this by desperation. she won’t keep doing it if she’s given a reason to feel less desperate.

but she does need to be given a reason, first. she’s hemorrhaging. this is why the winnowing of her inner circle and the split between everyone else in vacuo versus salem + cinder + summer in vale is important; Those Two are the ones she cares about—technically we don’t know for sure regarding summer yet, but the level of trust she has for the lieutenant holding beacon is suggestive—and that being reciprocated is what ignites her hope.

#she IS a fantastic villain #but what makes her so compelling as a villain is all the contradiction and tension in her character #how deeply she loves vs her deep conviction of being unlovable. not wanting to hurt people vs believing it’s the only way to free herself.#everything she does is so intensely personal and so circumscribed by the fear of rejection #these opposing forces drive change because they are pushing and shoving against each other inside her mind and the moment of culmination #occurs when one triumphs over the other. and then she changes in what i expect will be a startlingly dramatic fashion #(that doubles as writing advice btw if you want to write dynamic character arcs put unreconcilable contradictions in your characters)

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belit0 · 9 months

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AND IF THE SCENARIO WHERE READER TESTS THE LIMITS OF INDRA UNCONSCIOUSLY... DO YOU DO IT NSFW??? (i know, i'm a genius......or a masochist)

i really love how you write the personality of the characters (ESPECIALLY INDRA 💞💞💞) and you also give me good vibes and confidence AAA i love you, marry me

Thank you for your beautiful words, they reassure me to be doing the right thing with the kind of space I am trying to create on my blog, AND YES, WE ARE MARRIED IT'S OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL, PERIOD.

When I saw this order I literally screamed out loud because I thought it was amazing (but I couldn't do it right away because I had to give some love to Itachi 😭)

However, I don't know if this is… too much. Indra is the biggest villain in all my writing, and in this one, it's very evident.

nsfw version of this.

Huge TW: this is straight-up S,A (noncon) please, if you don't like this type of content, avoid this piece. It's raw.

(Y/N) feels real terror, almost as if his words were releasing an icy blast running through her body anxiously, a sudden emptiness in her stomach even worse than what she felt when seeing him enter the room. Time seems to stand still, as if Indra is waiting for a reaction, a misstep that will lead to her ruin.

"They forewarned you what might happen should you not listen to their advice, didn't they?" his words evoke the memory of the only woman who deigned to look her in the eye throughout the house, the only person who spoke directly to her when she arrived on the scene.

(Y/N) was wandering through the vastness of the home, and when she entered the library to browse through the myriad of books kept there, one of her personal maidservants dared to warn her regarding her alleged husband.

"Miss (Y/N)..." she had spoken, looking all around, afraid that someone would hear her, that someone would see her trying to communicate with the girl, "do not underestimate Lord Otsutsuki, he is a fearsome, ruthless, cruel man... please do not pursue him, you wish not to meet him!". She looked terrified, trembling from just putting his name in her mouth, as if trying to look small in size and hide among the objects in the room.

After finishing her admonition, she had run away, disappearing down one of the building's many corridors.

Her statement had stuck in her mind, etched in her memory, and after that occasion, she had never seen the servant again. Assuming that the woman had been assigned to some other task, or changed in position or responsibility, she now understood the terrible consequences the poor woman must have suffered just for trying to help her.

Indra is a monster.

"Perhaps I ought to taste how capable of a woman my wife is? It's about time, isn't it?" One of his hands releases her hair, sliding down the flat of her back and down to her waist, holding her and resting what looks like a hard object against her bottom.

"After all, we never had a wedding night." He lifts the robe (Y/N) is wearing, the Uchiha garment she was forced to dress in from the first day in her new home, and with both hands this time, effortlessly rips her underwear off.

"Please... Lord Otsutsuki, not like this..." She cries disconsolately, surrendered to the situation and knowing what is about to happen. Her only possible escape is to try and please his ears, to sweeten his being with obeyed orders and flattery to free herself from this. Never had she imagined her first time in such a way, let alone with the greatest tyrant on the face of the earth.

Finally understanding her poor servant's warnings, she sends a silent apology to the woman, wishing to think she still preserves her life.

"Lord Otsutsuki... please, (Y/N). My dear husband, if anything." She can hear the mocking tone in his voice, the sarcasm, as if he had a smile made up of pure evil on his face while pulling down his pants and readying himself for her entrance.

"The madder you quarrel the madder you will hurt, I hope now you comprehend there is no use wishing to move against me." He spreads her legs with terrifying force, and (Y/N) has no will to close them again. Trying to save herself from this would involve fighting, and what would the strength of an ordinary woman do against the most powerful man in the world? To want to avoid her bitter fate is buying a ticket to hell, with Indra being the one sending her there.

Completely dominated and with no escape from the bed, she listens as he spits on what is probably his hand, preparing something that will glide enough to enter her. Her body will not cooperate under these circumstances, totally blocked and without the slightest desire for what is about to happen to her.

"Isn't this preferable, (Y/N)? I overheard your whining about how little attention you were receiving, your prayers of how it would please you to have someone speaking to you, seeing you, listening to you. Here you have it, someone providing all you asked for, the least you can do is beg for it." Without thrusting in but resting the head against her buttocks, she can feel Indra touching himself, preparing to outrage her in the worst possible way.

"Please... don't..." She follows his orders, hoping he will have the slightest mercy not to proceed in this way, not to take her as if she were an object under violence and threats. They could have a splendid marriage, full of love, but the Otsutsuki chooses a path of disgrace and darkness, something she cannot understand no matter how hard she tries. Between tears and sobs, not daring to raise her head and face him, she pleads for her integrity, for her husband not to snatch away her first time in such a cruel way.

She hears him laugh, and knows it is all in vain.

Without warning, he opens her thighs with both hands and enters ferociously, penetrating her roughly and burying himself into her deepest point. The mixture of pain, physical and emotional, makes her cry out helplessly, wailing at the top of her lungs at her inability to do anything to protect herself.

He moves inside her, without concern for her body or mind, using her as he wishes, "Remember this, remember this for as long as you live. You are nothing, (Y/N), no... worse than nothing, at least nothingness itself has value. You? No... I will show you what value you have to me, I will give you a reason to be." He speaks as if she were his worst enemy, as if she had killed his entire family, as if she had betrayed him in the worst possible way.

Her body transforms under Indra's motives, using it as releasement regardless of consent or desire, regardless of what she intends, what she wants. She is nothing more than a piece of nothing in his eyes, a hole to use when he deems necessary, a container to procreate what will be their terrible children.

In shock, she no longer even records how the tears stream in droves down her face, causing her hair to stick to her cheeks and her skin to burn. She ignores all physical sensation, detaching herself from the situation and looking at it as if outside her body, in the third person. (Y/N) becomes a spectator to her own rape.

She sees herself moving her mouth, presumably pleading for her own sake, but cannot hear what she utters, unaware of her words, "Please... you don't have to keep doing this. I can't-"

"You're right. I don't have to stop. I don't wish to stop. You don't have to do anything though. You can lay there; scream and cry for all I fucking care. You'll get me off faster." He interrupts her abruptly, answering her attempts at liberation with harder movements, driving into her even more brutally.

All she feels is an overwhelming heat between her legs, a thick liquid that seems to keep pouring out and staining the sheets, generating a circle composed of a warm sensation under her pelvis.

The only thing she senses is the blood that Indra forces her to spill, painting everything with an intense red color, just like the one in his devilish eyes.

#indra otsutsuki x reader #otsutsuki indra x reader #indra x reader #otsutsuki indra #indra otsutsuki #indra #naruto shippuden #naruto imagines #naruto #uchiha clan #naruto x reader #otsutsuki clan

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jeweled-blue-eyes · 1 year

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I think the reason why I'm so fascinated with LP Jennette is because she is raised inside a constructed narrative. Roger and Rosalia created conditions under which becoming the crown princess is the only reality she can see, maybe the only one possible.

Nothing inside her was not created by them. Her father wonders which parent she resembles. The answer is none. Jennette was raised to seek out Claude - to seek his love. But only because no one at home gave her that strong bond that is, ‘familial love’. Without them (without love) she feels useless. The reason why Jennette's personality feels flat is because she wasn't allowed to develop her personality organically. Her yearning for love, her romantic idealism, her naivety are all traits that nurtured in her by the Alpheus/Judiths. Her personality feels artificial and fake to some readers because her personality was modelled after a classic Cinderella stereotype. Storybook princesses aren't allowed to have any flaws. Or any depths.

Children are smart, much smarter than adults give them credit for. Jennette does what Roger wants because deep inside him she senses that he wants something from her. I think Jennette realized early on that Roger isn't the type of person that would be taking care of an orphan like her out of the pure kindness of his heart. She feels a debt towards her caretakers that she has to pay. Her total obedience might not only be the result of her isolated/sheltered childhood in which Roger and Ijekiel were her only source of warmth, but also the result of her wanting to show gratitute and the fear of disappointing him and losing everything. And when I say everything I mean everything. Ijekiel won't marry a nobody like her if she isn't accepted into the royal family and can guarantee he becomes Emperor consort. If she cannot give Roger what he wants, if she won't become the crown princess then she would be nothing but a disappointment, a waste of time, a failed project. Would he cast her aside? Who knows. She'd even lose the small scraps of affection on which she survived since childhood. There is no future for her except for the one in the Imperial palace. If a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant like Claude won't accept her as his daughter what other ending would await her except for death? Especially novel Jennette who knew she was not Claude's real daughter had no choice but to uphold this lie lest she be executed for being the child of her cheating mother and Claude's dead brother.

When she rejects the throne and says she only cares about her family she is punished by the narrative and loses the only thing she cares about: her family. I think what differentiates Jennette from other heroines the most is that she is forced onto the throne against her will. Her life is a tragedy disguised as a happy ending. Her wishes are granted in a very monkey pawn kind of way. She gets her father's love but her sister gets his scorn and is executed. She gets the throne but for that her father has to die. She ends up marrying the most desired man in the entire Empire but it is the boy who was her foster brother and saw her as nothing but a family, who she was never allowed to see as a family since Roger always intended for her to marry him. LP Jennette has no real personality or wants or dreams. I think it was always other characters projecting on her or doing terrible things for her sake, for what they think will make her happy without asking for what she really wants.

I love the concept of the A Lovely Princess novel. It looks like a tacky romance novel but actually hides a shakespearean tragedy underneath with the heroine secretly being the daughter of the villain and killing her own family unknowingly throughout the novel. Jennette is introduced as a cliché of a heroine when in reality she would have been the most interesting heroine ever. She isn't an overpowered genius, doesn't even want to rule. Even though she is a designated heroine and destined for the throne in her own story she doesn't even have the name of immortality that is meant for the heir.

The side character Athanasia had originally all three things: the Imperial blood, the Imperial magic and the Imperial mana but she is killed off screen. Jennette is loved by everyone except she's not. She is surrounded by people who either envy her, want to use her or are brainwashed by her magic. The people that claim to love her the most are actually unbelievably selfish and do the most unhinged things in her name. Like poisoning her and framing someone innocent just to make sure she will be the only in line for the throne when she has never expressed an interest in ruling. It's just very interesting how these people who claim to care for her consistently ignore her wishes for what they think will make her happier and only make her more miserable in process.

I'd love to read a oneshot that is sort of an epilogue of the Lovely Princess. How does Jennette cope with the loss of her loved ones and the truth that her family is partly responsible for that? What kind of Empress will she become? How can she survive the court intrigues without Claude's protection?

#wmmap #who made me a princess #sbapod #suddenly became a princess one day #jennette margarita

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weirdlizard26 · 5 months

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ok hello hi in honour of me finishing season 6 of dr who i will write out my impression of it before starting s7! that there WILL be spoilers so im putting it under the cut!

first things first, it was definitely a HUGE improvement from s5 in my opinion. like it was in general just a lot more enjoyable for me, though still not quite satisfactory. i think matt smith finally got properly into the role too which is nice.

still. this season was deeply unsatisfying. there were so many interesting threads that i feel just didnt go anywhere or didnt get nearly enough development.

1) i thought the "youre my best friend" scene btwn amy and the doctor was very very sweet but i felt it just came out of nowhere? she spent the entire s5 having to "choose" between him and rory and i do appreciate their friendship but i wish they had more time to really develop that kind of relationship

2) i was honestly so happy to see 2 companions throughout this whole season! i think it makes up for a really fun dynamic :]

3) i love rory with all my heart hes such a sweetheart but i feel a little weird about his character development? it definitely makes a lot of sense seeing as how hes 2k years old at this point but it just feels to me like that was done at amy's expense? it feels like shes denied the same development time and time again and i dont like that. i will be honest i don't like her as a person and that in part is due to her behaviour in s5 (i will never fucking forgive them for that scene where she confessed to the doctor it was so dumb and so deeply unpleasant but i digress) BUT i think shes an interesting character and wasnt done justice. like!!! the way i see it, she is contrasted with all the previous companions by the fact that shes not that great of a person. which isnt a bad thing! she had such a huge potential for growth but it felt like every time she learned a lesson she forgot it the very next episode or it just felt like it just didnt matter in the grand scheme of things. which i blame on the writing, in case that wasnt clear. great potential, terrible performance

4) and now for the loose threads.

4a) madame kovarian was such an intriguing villain and the sneak peaks we got of her only hyped it up but then i feel that just went nowhere? she served cunt for one whole episode where she wasnt even the main focus and then died. and im assuming she didnt REALLY die given this is doctor who after all but her participation in this season specifically was deeply disappointing to me.

4b) in the same vein, i really wish we could see more of melody and more specifically her upbringing and training. all that teasing of "the woman who murders the doctor" only for her to try to kill him for half an episode and suddenly become "one of the good guys" as soon as he makes sad wet puppy eyes at her?

4c) in the same vein (again) all the teasing of how river and the doctor meet and fall in love and then when she meets him for the first time they dont even get to spend any time together to bond and actually develop any real feeling for each other? and then they just get married for no reason other than it was teased? "i love you more than any living being in the universe" bold statement for a girl who met him ~twice~! it was all so intriguing but it just fell flat in the end.

4d) now dont get me wrong. i fucking hated the ending scene of mid season finale. "um actually all of this horror is your fault because you did too good of a job saving people so now people who want to do fucked up shit are scared of you and want to kill you. if only you didnt save all those people so good we wouldnt be in this situation!" like do you realize how ridiculous that is. even so! that literally didnt fucking go anywhere. was it just supposed to be a one-off guilt trip that never gets addressed again and doesnt change anything other than anger me? what was the purpose of that. it was said as if it was leading up to some huge character discovery moment for the doctor but then it just. didnt. he just left to look for melody.

4e) "i didnt want you to die without making you see how much people love you" yeah and. yeah? go on? oh? we're just leaving it at that? no old friends coming together to save his ass and yell at him abt how much they care about him? other than the justice whatever that we saw in ONE episode and who didnt even get any help from the doctor lending him their robot suit? ok.

4f) all that build-up to accepting your fate and being at peace with death (which like. we've already done all that with ten and i loved that arc but whatever ok lets do it again i guess) only for him to not die was. a little disappointing? i mean dont get me wrong im glad hes ok but it just felt empty bc it didnt lead to anything. and like again i LOVED the solution to that particular puzzle! of course the doctor lies and of course he'll find a way to cheat death again thats what he DOES but its just upsetting that that whole build-up was virtually for nothing

ok thats all for now. in conclusion, s6 was much better than s5 for me but still disappointing. hoping s7 will pick up!

as always i welcome any and all comments and discussion just be niceys to me

#wl26 #watch log #dw log

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pillarsalt · 2 years

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What personally peaked you? Was it one instance or several instances over time? Or were you always critical of the gender movement from the beginning?

This is a tough one, had to really go down memory lane. I've been disillusioned by gender ideology since I was about 17 in high school, and it's hard to remember exactly how that happened. I think the very first thing was hearing about the cotton ceiling concept shortly after it was first coined. Just the idea that lesbians MUST be open to sex with males... yeah I could never accept that, it was clearly homophobic to me immediately and it allowed me to see that maybe the most "progressive" stance was not always the right one.

I've been on tumblr since I was 14. I remember learning about terfs and feeling cool like I was fighting evil villains when I would make edgy performative posts like "terfs chew glass", but then immediately deleting them when radfems would reply. I wasn't prepared to confront the fact that evil terfs were actually real people and not just cartoon nazis like they were made out to be. There was a certain radfem whose url I really wish I could remember, someone made like a "block to stay safe" post about her but I was curious wanted to see what evil insanity she had to say... I hate-read for a few weeks, and slowly I came to realize she was making really good points, exposing things that I just couldn't ignore. I felt like a terrible person for even considering her point of view, I decided I just "needed to be nice" and start listening to trans voices like everyone says. And that peaked me more. Coming to the realization that transwomen weren't all just tragically misunderstood innocent victimized people who feel like they were born in the wrong body, but mostly just the same as usual men with extreme entitlement and intense fetishization of women's bodies. Additionally, I saw my own struggles with compulsory femininity and hatred of my body in transmen. All I had to do was read what they wrote themselves and apply critical thinking. It just never ever added up. And the cognitive dissonance was too much.

I have loved science since the age of four, especially biology. The last straw was the denial of biological sex. I couldn't turn a blind eye to it any longer, it was the same to me as creationism or flat earth. To assert that women's oppression throughout the world and throughout history was based on no real reason at all... well that made me fucking angry. Actually it still makes me angry! And here I am today.

#also i cut my hair short for the first time in high school and was asked by multiple people if i was a transman #that also contributed lmao i was like you think my fucking grandma is a man for having short hair too? wtf?#anyway thanks so much for this question I haven't really thought much about this subject #ask

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martianbugsbunny · 2 years

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OUAT Thoughts Pt.42--Episodes 20-21

I have watched through S4E21; spoilers DNI. Also, spoiler warning for those further behind than I am.

—Zelena weaponizing her pregnancy is infuriating to me. But she knows what she’s doing. She’s basically given herself plot armor, because what hero would kill a villain at the cost of her unborn child?

—I get that the Apprentice felt like he had to make it up to Lilith somehow, but maybe telling a person who is literally full of darkness who to seek revenge on isn’t the best idea?

—Alright, so the Sorcerer exists. One small step for me. But I bet he’s never actually gonna show his beardy face.

—Emma and Regina going on a roadtrip in Emma’s semi-ugly little bug is awesome.

—I love how Rumple has just stopped pretending to be plotting in secret. He’s chilling, with the Author, in Granny’s in plain sight.

—Also, I love it when somebody is sitting in a booth at Granny’s and somebody else squishes them into the wall to sit down in the same booth. Hilarious.

—I can only assume Robin thought having another baby would fix what was off between him and Marian, because he obviously chose obligation over love this time and if he wasn’t shooting for a baby what would the point be?

—That bit where Belle got her heart back kills me. Rumple gave it to her (which, duh, is symbolic of him returning her metaphorical/figurative heart to her) (or maybe not really, cause I’m not sure I believe he’s just gonna move out of the way like that), but he also told Will Scarlett to take care of her heart. That’s quality writing. Though, I really do want him to have actually stepped aside, because otherwise a perfectly lovely moment has no meaning.

—Bringing Zelena back to Storybrooke is one of the worst ideas Regina has ever had.

—And bringing Lilith back wasn’t much smarter on Emma’s part. This girl is full of darkness, is a chronic liar, and makes very bad choices—and oh yeah, she has a vendetta against Emma’s parents! She wants to destroy all of the good things in Emma’s life! That can’t possibly end badly!

—Ugh, Cora. She’s already dead, can’t she just be gone? I 10/10 hate her. Very bad mother, very bad person.

—Maleficent’s hair is pretty. And although I like her makeup better when she’s not wearing that red lipstick, I do like that her lipstick and her nail polish match.

—Cruella got buried in a plain wooden box! Just what a dog-killer deserves. (And, yes, I have hated her more since her origin episode, because they hadn’t really said if she was a dog-killer in this show before then.) She can rot.

—I adore how salty Regina is now. She’s got a pretty dry sense of humor, but it works, and it plays pretty well off of Emma.

—I have a love-hate relationship with how the Author doesn’t care about the actual stories, he just cares about whether or not he gets to write. And the way he sees people as their story elements I just flat-out love.

—The new book is stunning. But make no mistake, I don’t want every villain to win. Just Rumple, Regina, and Maleficent. And I also don’t want it at the heroes’ expense.

—I’m touched by how proud Maleficent is of her dragon daughter. But their stories are both incredibly sad. Possibly some of the most tragic material in the entire show.

—I don’t really want Emma to be a badguy, and it looks like it won’t happen—but it would be so cool if Emma was the dark magic lady and it was Regina who had to save her.

—Regina taking away her own ability to have kids to keep her mom from having power over her is terribly depressing. (I don’t believe for half a second that Cora was actually trying to do Regina a favor.) She didn’t know she wanted to be a mom yet. And it makes what Zelena did even worse. But Regina does have Henry, and probably also Roland now that she and Robin are back together, so she got to be a mother anyway.

—Seeing Emma reconcile with her parents did my heart some good. It’s kinda weird how she was more angry with Snow than she was with David—but come to think of it, David has consistently had a bit of a darker streak than Snow, so maybe it wasn’t quite as huge of a shock.

—Longer hair is incredibly fetching on Regina.

—Very cool that Rumple is not dead. I wouldn’t care about the Dark One—actually, I would hate his guts—if Rumple wasn’t part of him anymore. Although now I live in fear that it’s still gonna happen.

—Taking blood from Lilith was genius. Regina has a very good brain.

#once upon a time #ouat #zelena #the Apprentice #the Sorcerer #lilith #Emma swan #regina mills #maleficent #Robin Hood #rumplestiltskin #belle #Will Scarlett #the Author #Cora mills #cruella de vil #martianbugsbunny reviews

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fluffywolverine · 2 years

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sooooo moon knight finale innit? at the beginning i must say that sadly, this wasn't my favourite episode :(

it wasn't as bad as i feared though, difinitely better thannthis awful wandavision finale, so at least there's that. ofc spoilers under the cut. you have been warned

starting with the things i loved - relationship between marc and steven grew to be extremely wholesome and comforting. i love how visibly good they feel with each other and how they can cooperate e.g. in combat.

oscar isaac. that's it, you know what i mean.

i also loved layla, how strong she stayed and how she didn't let khonshu enslave her. her suit looks EPIC, not only it's pretty, but also it looks very comfortable. comparing it to, let's say, black widow from 2012 avengers, i appreciate how mcu changed over the years. although internet kind of spoiled one scene for me, the one when she says that she is an egyptian hero. someone told that it's basically just tokenism, and frankly, it is. i don't think we needed it, being violently put so deeply in our throats.

did you notice how khonshu said "i will release you both". BOTH. meaning marc and steven, but nothing when it comes to jake. touche, marvel. touche.

i also liked how marc was given a choice and how well he used it. he chose himself to be a better person, which was a nice turn for him. kind of a new beginnig one could say.

and, ummm, that's pretty much it, i'm afraid.

when it comes to what i disliked, first thing that striked my eye was how quickly written it was. what i mean is that it resembled me of how i often write my own stories. when i start, i write slowly, carefully, i savour small details, i like doing it. but when i'm close to the end i get tired, i just want to finish this, so i start rushing, don't pay attention to details and it's visibly worse than the rest. here i felt the same, especially at the end. i had a thought that it should've been about 10 minutes longer to close everything nicely. because what happened with layla? how are things between her and marc? what was the thing with the psych ward? too many questions without answers. and whereas i'm a huge fan of comics, which are very chaotic as well, a cinematic/tv experience is different, it should be different. it leaves much less space for understatements.

i also didn't like how neither marc nor steven acknowledged there is a 3rd alter. they saw a bunch of dead bodies and where like "that's weird, but nevermind!". there could've been 2 or 3 lines of dialogue, something simple like "marc, there must be another one" "ok, we'll get it sorted later, now there are more important things", and then something similiar in the flat like "ok, now we've got time, we need to go to a real psychiatrist". i know this would be a lot of telling instead of showing, but at least we would've got something.

next thing is jake himself. first of all: why spanish?? that's not important though, what i didn't like is that he was being hinted thorughout the entire show (e.g. in episode 1, there were 2 independent reflections in museum), and then we see him appear in the mid-credits scene. yeah, i am salty, because i was really hoping for something better than appearing only as a plot device, to get rid of unnecessary characters.

next thing: two cgi monters fighting each other. sigh. i don't think i have to explain, i'll just say that this was completely unnecessary and just wasted precious time.

and the last thing - the villain himself. i really like how harrow is shown not as a cynical persona, who just wants to hurt people. i totally bought that he was doing these terrible things, because he actually believed he was right. the rest though... i'm a fan of this trope of a villain with similar motivations to protagonists, but only when it's well executed. here it was just stated, that punishing people before they do something evil is bad, and that's basically it. one can even argue, that ammit was the one to be right - given that she knows everything, even the future, she is sure that person A does something evil, right? she sees that it's certain, correct? so why others have to suffer, why not punish before? i'm not saying that i agree with that, i don't, but there can be seen some logic in that thinking. i also didn't like how harrow himself ended. first he was knocked out off-screen, then there were some spells (honestly, it was that easy? and it hadn't been possible earlier?), he's in a hospital,and then BAM he's killed in the mid-credits scene. it felt like they didn't know what else to do, and just decided to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

and that's it.

this seems long and complicated, but when you think of it, i only hated small details. that actually makes me even angrier, because it was so easy for this show to end great, to finally have a good marvel show from start to finish. so close, and yet so far.

well, gonna go watch daredevil again, and cry at the thought of how they will eventually massacre my boy.

#moon knight #marc spector #steven grant #jake lockley #layla el faouly #oscar isaac #may calamawy #marvel #mcu #disney+

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mesmerium · 3 months

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Dont mind me just dumping my 2.5/5 star review of s1x of cr0w5 here because i need to get this off my chest 😭

I consider myself a very average person in the sense that i, more often than not, like what’s popular. Usually i agree with the majority and even when i don’t, i still see the appeal and just go, “ok, not for me.” But this book was terrible. I fail to see what people actually like about it…… and it’s not like i picked it up because of the rave reviews, my sister let me borrow it because she liked it. I didn’t check other ratings or reviews at all, so when i finally finished it (a feat in and of itself) and went to log it onto my goodreads, i was shocked by how much love it received lol. Yes i am 27 but i still do like YA, so that wasn’t the issue here

Starting with the good: i think b4rdug0 did decently with her prose and worldbuilding, settings and people were described well enough that i wasn’t TOO confused. That and w¥lan and j3sp3r’s banter were the only things i liked.

Getting it out of the way that although i would’ve preferred them to be aged up, it’s not really something i cared about much. A lot of the people who didn’t like the book complained about this, but other than them having too much experience for the years they have lived on this planet, i just shrugged it off because eh, it’s YA. Ofc there will be some sort of power fantasy involving teens.

For the plot, i was so excited for it because heists are fun and it’s amazing when the tension is set up right!!! Alas, everything was too conveniently resolved. Just as you think the tension can finally be built, the scene is over. Or something is happening omg, and then you’re hit with a flashback that completely takes you out of it. Don’t even know what the stakes were for this operation. It sucks how predictable a lot of the conflicts were :’) the appeal of a heist is when you don’t know what will happen, when you’re a hair’s breadth from getting caught but you don’t.. didn’t feel that at all here. It almost felt like they just waltzed in and out

The characters felt SO flat to me. Some of them felt like caricatures while the others were simply trying too hard to be edgy, and some felt like an afterthought (ahem, w¥lan). None of them are likable, which is fine i don’t need to like characters honestly, but unlikable to the point of me not being invested in them at all. I didn’t care what happened to any of them. Their relationships with each other don’t feel important enough, and then they’re all paired up… huh? I don’t care enough about nin4 x matth14s, the author didn’t care enough about j3sper x w¥lan. In3j and k4z would’ve been ok if the author set it up well enough. It would’ve been nicer if it were a bit more of a slow burn, perhaps their relationship picking up in the second book. WHY did she have to force it to happen in the first?????? It felt so out of character honestly, like you set up k4z that way and then you tell me he acts like this…… if there were moments prior wherein k4z would act contrary to how people thought he was then it would’ve been believable. But legitimately his behavior blindsided me lol.

Nin4 being plus sized could’ve been handled better too. Oh i like eating, i’m indecently round (LIKE WHAT IS THIS), my jugs are big. What in the world

The use of foreign language feels… kinda forced and clunky? I’m all for worldbuilding, and it’s great that there’s diversity in this fictional world, but the foreign languages aren’t used in any way that furthers the narrative. It’s jarring, like when someone is speaking in an american english accent and then says croissant as cwahsahn. D

Anyway i’m surprised i finished it. Had to skim the last 50 pages because i just wanted to see how it would end. Kinda expected the “twist” unfortunately. Also i cannot take anyone named p3kk4 r0llin5 seriously as a villain lmao

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izzythehutt · 2 years

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Why such CaptainSwan hate? And do you ship Regina x Hook? Because, personally, I like Belle x Hook.

Look, Hook was great as a villain henchman. He was a fun character for what he was: someone who really wanted to kill Rumple, was constantly getting knocked out, and didn't understand technology.

My problems with Captain Swan were many:

I never bought Emma as being romantically interested in him (or in a villain in general), I didn't think the actors had very good romantic chemistry, and the whole relationship was such an obvious direction change born from Colin O'Donoghue's popularity on the show and was basically it's "jump the shark" moment.

Neal was very obviously written to be Emma's original end-game love interest. Emma's character was so grounded in the real world compared to the rest of the cast, and that was what worked for me about her relationship with Neal—who, despite being from the EF, also had that gritty, real-world quality. The two of them and Henry were the show's flagship original characters. I loved that they could bond over the shared absurdity of their magical bullshit dysfunctional family all trying to kill each other with magical mcguffins every five seconds.

They made Neal a series regular the same season they killed him off, and that was entirely because the executives at ABC wanted Hook to replace him as the primary love interest. When I lived in LA I met someone who had interviewed Kitsis and Horowitz and flat-out told them that was the reason. I had always suspected this was the case so learning that provided some closure, tbh.

Neal and Rumple was my favorite storyline of the show, so naturally that plotline getting ruined by Hook's relationship with Emma, which I didn't find in any way compelling, soured me on the show altogether.

I didn't say I shipped him with Regina, but if the show had wanted to keep him around as a regular cast member, I think that relationship would have made a lot more sense. Regina and Hook had parallel story arcs of wanting revenge for the death of their significant others, and because Regina had also been a villain and done terrible things, I think I could have bought her falling for someone like that. With Emma it just felt wildly out of character.

But I also only dipped back into the show occasionally in S4-7, so I saw very little of their relationship. What I did see I hated.

#anti captain swan #swanfire #ouat #once upon a time #emma swan #neal cassidy #baelfire #asks

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lesbiansanemi · 2 years

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You got me curious so, top five Bleach villains?

Oh god fuck yes any excuse to talk about Bleach villains. I actually had a really tough time narrowing it to just my favorite five, and I already talked about Ulquiorra, so I'll leave him out of it this time around, despite loving him, and I'm also just focusing on Aizen and the Espada, leaving out Yhwach and the Sternritter for now, but anyways, yes yes yes

Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez

So surprising absolutely fucking no one, putting Grimmjow in that first spot. I love Grimm, and I think he's so neat because it can be... difficult, to have a villain who genuinely just relishes in violence and destruction without much else motivation. They can feel flat, or pointless and forced. But Grimmjow had so much personality, and beyond that, when he eventually develops, and finds a motivation in Ichigo, that's also really interesting! Also, after he gets his little "redemption arc" (if you can consider that, considering he technically didn't really change at all, just changed priorities lol), he gets even more fun to watch. So yeah, love Grimmjow

2. Sosuke Aizen

So like... you can't really talk about Bleach villains without talking about Aizen? A lot of people consider him one of the best anime villains, and yeah, I kind of have to agree. For one, he's fun because he's got the whole "mad scientist" thing going on, which is always neat. And I'm always gonna love any character whose entire motivation is killing/surpassing God. He's so overbearing, that he can even make the audience uncomfortable at times. He has no morals, and only cares about overtaking the natural order. He experimented on countless individuals (of course, most people think of the Visored, the arrancar, and Ichigo), but there were many nameless Shinigami that he just straight up murdered in his endeavors. I also think it is hilariously ironic that one of Aizen's main roles in the series was the foreshadowing of the Soul King, and a lot of what happened with Yhwach, because he would hate that. But yeah no, he's super interesting, and had a lot of cool dynamics with other characters. And god don't even get me started on how he counters Urahara, and serves as a reminder to him for what he can never become, because without a reminder, it's plausible Urahara would stray down the same path. Ah, parallels. So yeah no, Aizen is a very good villain.

3. Gin Ichimaru

So like... okay, there's some debate over whether Gin was really a villain or not. But in my opinion, he absolutely was. He did awful things for personal reasons. Was his ultimate goal to get close to Aizen and kill him? Sure. We can admire that conviction, but that doesn't change that he killed countless people, led them into traps to be experimented on, and put Rangiku through hell regarding him. And as sweet as the whole "I'm glad I apologized to you" thing was, it doesn't change what he did to her. Him being sorry or maybe, ultimately, having a good conviction doesn't change what he did. But I think that's what makes him such a good, tragic villain. He wanted to stop Aizen, so he became something terrible, and ultimately died without even being able to accomplish the goal he sacrificed everything for. He's a very good tragic character, and villain, and as important as they were to each other, it's kind of unfortunate that so many people reduce him to his relationship to Rangiku, and nothing more.

4. Tia Harribel

Listen, I can't really say more than just "Harribel is a badass bitch." The fact that she, canonically, is one of the only people who can keep Grimmjow in line (along with Nel) is so fucking good. Her want to protect her Fraccion was so interesting, especially considering she was meant to represent "sacrifice," but she could only do that so long as she was sacrificing herself. She didn't want anyone else to sacrifice themselves for her (as we saw with her Fraccion). Beyond that, I love that she took over as the ruler of Hueco Mundo after Aizen's defeat and forced all the other arrancar to submit to her and follow her lead. She was so badass. Also hot, and I am but a simple lesbian

5. Szayelporro Granz

Honestly, most of what sticks out to me about Szayel is his death. We were given another "mad scientist" character (which Bleach has no shortage of those, and I really have to thank it for that. As I mentioned above with Aizen and Urahara, it was very interesting how they all countered each other, and posed the question of "how far is too far?" regarding that kind of thing. Aizen and Urahara were the checks for each other, and Szayel and Mayuri proved to each other that there was no limit for them). Szayel was actively torturing Renji and Uryu before he died, and was having an amazing time doing it, so it's very easy to surmise that he did the same to others. He was horrible. But with the way Mayuri decided to kill him (AKA, slowing time down from Szayel's perspective, so that the single sword strike it took to kill him felt as if it last ten thousand years and left him begging for death and reprieve), it leaves the audience feeling almost... sick, and wondering if that was too much, even for a monster like Szayel. Are characters like Mayuri allowed to do whatever they want, with no repercussions, even to reprehensible people like Szayel? Idk, I just like that Szayel (and to be honest so many of the Bleach villains represent the darkest parts of the 'heroes' like with Aizen and Urahara that I mention above ^^ Grimmjow does that with Ichigo, Ulquiorra with Orihime, etc etc).

But yeah no, fucking adore the Bleach villains. The series has its flaws, but the villains certainly are not part of them. They're all so interesting, and genuinely serve their role of challenging the protagonists, not just in the war, but their ideals and what they stand for and what they represent, and show that the "heroes" are genuinely just one or two wrong moves from having the exact same thought processes as them. So yeah, love them. Love them so much.

#bleach #grimmjow jaegerjaquez #sosuke aizen #gin ichimaru #tia harribel #szayelporro granz #thank you for this i love the bleach villains #asks #kaz rambles

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sketching-shark · 3 years

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LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.

I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading.

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you.

But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens.

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona.

#lmk macaque #monkie kid macaque #6 eared macaque #monkie kid #lmk sun wukong #qi xiaotian #lmk monkey king #sun wukong #monkey king #journey to the west #jttw #fandom criticism #lmk

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worstloki · 2 years

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Have you read Loki’s MCU wiki page and if so What do you think about the personality portion?

I assume you refer to this one ?

It was fine till it started parroting off the show. Loki's intentions in my opinion aren't ever to hurt his family to prove he's in control. Nor is he a narcissist which means I disagree on principle with most of this:

Because he is a narcissist, Loki loves being praised and be the center of a show. For this reason, he constantly enjoys making long speeches, performing extravagant entrances, showing off his intelligence and living in luxury while others serve him. In the end, this need for attention also comes from his fear of being alone.

The way the entire page tries to make him sympathetic by saying he cares despite everything he's done makes it sound as though his actions weren't a direct result of that.

This and the following explanation I have many questions for:

But they eventually reconcile and, after the Ragnarok, Loki demonstrates that his brother matters to him more than his own ego and quest for power, as he lets Thor assume the throne of Asgard and is content in just standing by his side. This also leads Loki to ultimately sacrifice himself out of love for Thor.

This entire section I would like to stab personally:

In an alternate timeline, Loki is set in another path of redemption after he was captured by the TVA. This time, he is deeply affected by seeing the events in his predetermined future, realizing that his quest for power and "glorious purpose" will not lead to a throne, just to suffering and death. He becomes disturbed knowing about the death of his parents and that his final fate is to die at the hands of Thanos. Seeing himself and Thor together in the future also helps him understand that he would have his brother's acceptance by becoming a better person. Loki also changes considerably after falling in love with Sylvie, who is himself in another reality but, at the same time, a very different individual from him. He admires her for being so determined but motivated by a distinct goal other than power, despite being a Loki herself. He is impressed by her achievements as she managed to survive on the run since she was a child and successfully plot against the TVA all by herself. This admiration is result of his narcissist side as he sees a lot of himself in her, thus the way Loki finally finds his self-acceptance and love, but it is also because he recognizes Sylvie as her own person. His love for Sylvie also makes him selfless, because he starts to care about her even above his own desires, refusing to leave her side and wishing to protect her. He ultimately casts aside even his wish to have a throne, just so he can be by her side and makes it clear that the most important thing to him is her well-being, also implying that she is his new "glorious purpose".

Ultimately this attempt at analyzing him falls flat in my opinion. It attempts to paint him as finding goodness within him despite all the terrible crimes he has committed, failing to take into account context AND deciding that Loki was always in the wrong.

It accepts him as a villain that begrudgingly is capable of doing good if he wishes, when from what I've seen it's the inverse of that the MCU follows him through.

(And I say this while including what we are shown in subsequent retcons in Ragnarok and the Loki series.)

#the MCU is a mess but even with the retcons trying to say Loki believes he deserves a throne is only true for... Avengers 1?#Loki in the series didn't attempt to get any throne though he did keep saying that was his motivation #the MCU's inability to be consistent and their failure at storytelling has somehow managed to still throw Loki under 'good. except when--'#while convincing people that it is the opposite way around because that is what we are told #it's wild #the Loki show

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ablogthatishenceforthmine · 3 years

Text

What I liked and Didn’t like about 3x07

Liked

Kory and Kom Dynamic: I am really liking what they are doing with this. It is the most nuanced and emotional affecting stuff of the episode, and of the season. Of all the dynamics in this season, there’s is the one with the best development. I found Kom’s story to be really heartbreaking, and I completely buy that Kory would start to come around on her. I do think Kom is telling the truth. I think in these moments she is being sincere and doesn’t have a larger plan at play. If she does betray Kory, I think it will not be a planned things, but something that may come up in a moment. And I love seeing Kory reckon with her this season, and past mistakes that she is made. I found it incredibly touching that Kory owned up to not being there for Kom in the past, and says that she is going try to do better now, and give Kom a chance now. Her telling Kom to join the team and giving her her suit was just really touching and heartwarming, and most of all, it felt earned. Their relationship has a real arc to it, and i am excited to see where it goes to from here. I know a lot of people are disappointed that Kom isn’t really a villain (although she may yet be, we don’t know), and I get that. But I think I might like what they are doing with them now better. It’s more intimate and character driven. What I will say, what I am upset is Kory not having her own villain to face (if Kom in fact never becomes a villain). And I definitely feel that loss bc it would be great for Kory’s character to have a villain that is so personal to her, where the conflict between them would be the emotional drive of the main plot of the season. I don’t have much hope that they will do that in later seasons with another villain for Kory. But if they would do both, that would have definitely been the ideal for me.

Kory making mistakes: And big ones at that! We know that she made mistakes in the past with her sister, and it’s great to see her recognizing that and growing. It may come back to bite her, but I think giving Kom and a chance and trying now to be the sister that she never was is the right thing for Kory to do. Regardless of outcome, I think this is something Kory needed to do for her own growth and morality. I also like that she makes a huge, terrible, deadly mistake in this episode by bringing the mobster’s son to her. The scene where the mob lady killed her own son was shocking and upsetting. And Kory is partially responsible for his death. Which i’m glad for. She was the one who brought him here, even though he didn’t want to. And though Kory was nothing but honest with him, there was some element of manipulation to her convincing him to go to this mother. It’s important that characters make mistakes that have consequences, and i’m glad they are doing this with Kory. What happened was truly horrifying. I’m also glad we get to see Kory crossing the moral lines, first with working with the mob, and then killing the mob lady out of anger. These moments make her a richer, more well-written character.

Titans have a win!: The show needed the titans to have this victory. For 6 episodes, Red Hood and Crane have been one step ahead of the Titans, always meeting them. Stories need rises and falls, peaks and valleys. It needed the titans to have a victory to give the plot momentum and more dramatic tension. So this was great! Although I have no doubt that there

51% Idea: I also really liked the 51% idea and the show exploring morally complex situations, and having characters struggle to find where the line is. You can see this in Kom’s story, in Kory teaming up with the mob, and in Dick and Barbara using oracle.

Didn’t Like

Not seeing chaos in Gotham: We get told that Gotham is in chaos, but we don’t actually see it. We are told about the attacks, but don’t see them. This is a major problem in conveying the stakes. We know the titans are trying to stop Gotham from tearing itself apart, but we don’t actually see Gotham tearing itself apart. We are being told the stakes instead of feeling the,

Confusion about drug: Seeing gotham and the attacks would also help the effects of the drug more clear. We are told about the effects, but don’t really see them. I also have some questions about this drug. So it apparently turns normal people violent, where they can’t help but attacking other people. So are they completely out of control? Do they have any control over who they attack, or is it just whoever’s near? Is this the same version of the drug that Jason is on? Because he doesn’t seem out of control. Violent yes, but his violence is targeted. He doesn’t have the urge to just attack whoever is near him. He seems to have some control over his violent impulses. Is it the same for the others? Or is Jason’s drug different. This may get cleared up later, but I think it would have been better explained in this ep.

Exposition/procedural elements: A lot of time is spent this episode, and this season, just figuring things out. Figuring out locations of things, etc. But they are often figured out through such boring methods, such as computers, or going to a warehouse where nothing much happens. It’s very boring! Just too much time spent trying to learn info! Kory’s plot showed how to do this better, going to the mob is a more interesting awya to find out info than just looking it up in computer. It just feels like way to much energy and time is spent trying to figure out pieces of information, and not enough time spent on the titans taking action after learning information.

Dick and Barbara: Look I’m a dickkory shipper, so I was never gonna like Dickbabs. But man, I think there relationship is poorly written. I wasn’t even upset during the final scene where the kissed in the present day because I just found it so boring. The romance stuff between them feels awkward and forced. They have more of a friends chemistry than a romantic chemistry. So yeah, I just think the romance stuff between them is flat and boring. And their scenes are so repetitive! It’s just the same scene over and over and over again. They have a difference of opinion, they argue, Barbara tells Dick no or to go home, Dick doesn’t listen, and does whatever he wants to do anything, often behind Barbara’s back. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again. I thought that after 3x06, this would at least change. That we would see them work together better. But no, it’s still the same thing over and over again. It’ just really repetitive, and is getting tiring and boring. And their romance feels like it’s just going through the motions.

The writing of Barbara’s character: I like Barbara’s personality and she does have an internal life that the show cares about. The show explores her thoughts, feelings, issues, and point of view. Except the mechanism through which this is being explored is her relationship with Dick. She only just barely exists outside of him. She has her own drives and goals and baggage, but again it is only being conveyed through her relationship with Dick. She doesn’t interact with any of the other characters, except for that one scene with Kory. So much of her character revolves around Dick. It’s very disappointing. And I want more than anything for her to interact with and form bonds with the other titans. Even in this episode, when the team is celebrating together, she mostly converses with Dick in the few lines she has during that scene. Another problem I have with her character is that she is getting focus over some of the other characters. She is the third most prominent character this season (after Dick and then Kory). And it’s frustrating that this is the case when she is most likely a one-season character and there are long-lasting characters (Gar and Conner) that are getting shafted. Gar doesn’t have an arc (at least so far), and Conner’s arc is being minimized, only playing out in these a few, small moments per episode.

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azulaang-chakras · 2 years

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Would love to see you go off about Zukka mah guy 👀 (and then idk Zukaang 👀)

Oh, you want me to go off on tumblr, comrade? ON TUMBLR!?

Okay.

First, let me start by saying to my followers that I'm a very mellow kind of guy. If I dislike something you like or even love, there's nothing wrong with that. Live and let live, whatever floats your boat. So long as no one goes out of their way to be a dick to people, no one should be getting hate or harassment for what they enjoy. Just because I'm not in your lane doesn't mean I'm going to throw a molotov cocktail over to see if someone crashes. My parents raised me better than that. Plus, if I find posts I don't like, I block them. If I find people who annoy me, I block them. These are good pieces of advice, my friends.

That all being said, I'm not going to hold back when I decide to speak my mind, and zukka is fucking terrible. If it was a rarepair with only a small audience, I wouldn't care. It wouldn't rustle any of my jimmies, it wouldn't grind more than a single nerve if at all. But because it's so fucking popular I have to see that shit so frequently. I see talented fanartists use their talents on that ship and I frown cus that energy should be spent on better outlets.

Zuko and Sokka ain't got nothing to build a romance on from canon. The deepest their conversation goes is, "I love my girlfriend." "My girlfriend is awesome too." "Sucks that yours turned into the moon, my dude." Zukka is only as popular as it is because they're both almost 18 and they're conventionally attractive and masculine. The funny (and infuriating) thing on that last part is that a lot of zukka shippers want to feminize the ship by putting them in soft colors, softening their features, and/or putting them more in touch with their emotions and feminine side. This is bad because they will flat out ignore their canon personalities/aesthetics and also badmouth Aang, a man who is canonically in touch with his feelings and feminine side and is super confident in his softer side. This boy will wear a flower crown with a smile. Your fave will canonically never.

(I don't have time to get into why fandoms will feminize masculine men instead of thoughtfully engaging with men who are canonically in touch with their fem side, but the point is there. I will also say that a lot of zukka content is clearly not created by actual MLM. No disrespect to real MLM zukkas, but your club is full of straight girls and also your ship is terrible)

Zukka content, from what I've seen and heard of, is full of bad characterizations that ignore the show and flat out make shit up, and shippers will also make shit up to badmouth other characters. Zukka is so bad that it harms both of them and everyone around them. Just for an example on the two boys themselves:

.Zuko is not an uwu soft boi, this man used to terrorize villages on a weekly basis. If you ignore or try to minimize the parts of a redemption arc where the character was a fucking villain/antagonist, you are doing the character a disservice.

.Sokka is intelligent and it's great that he put in the work to unlearn sexism, but he's not Stephen Hawking and he was pretty sexist. He GREW over the course of the series, but stans and zukka shippers (which is a venn diagram with a huge middle) try to pretend that he was actually perfect from the very beginning. Also, if you honestly think that scenes of Sokka being the butt of a joke (which are 9/10 hilarious) are abusive on the writer or the other characters' part, do yourself a favor: never hang out with Irish people. Google may describe slagging each other as abusive, but it's really not. Slagging is a treasured past time of our people between family and friends.

If every cringey incorrect quotes post was a ship, it would be zukka. Zukka is overflowing with jaded klance shippers who took their bullshit from Voltron and fired it upon ATLA en masse like Persian archers at Thermopylae. Zukka is a notp. I will never write for it, I will never willingly seek out content of it, and if any pissbabies want to start shit over this 100% accurate argument, I will laugh at anything you send me.

As for zukaang, that ship do go deep. "If he's your love interest, why is he my narrative foil?" Protagonist/deuteragonist is top tier shipping, as is enemies to lovers. Their relationship, both on a micro scale as individual people and on a macro scale as the avatar and fire prince, is the cornerstone of the plots of some of the best episodes in the series, including The Storm, The Blue Spirit, The Avatar and the Fire Lord, and the Firebending Masters.

I sadly haven't read much of it, and I raise my eyebrow at just how much abo there is of such a relatively small ship, but I think zukaang is a great ship.

I hate that I spent so much time trashing a bad ship and so little praising a good one, but that's how it be sometimes.

#asks #lady tortilla chip #anti zukka

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kinatalks · 3 years

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Let’s talk about DiaLuci.

Look, this isn’t a judgement call. This is merely a flat out explanation and something that should be recognized. There will be a few S2-3 spoilers, but it’s mainly vague, not going into details.

Be aware: This covers sensitive topics regarding the ship, toxic behaviors, abusive relationships, and the angel event.

Firstly, if you support DiaLuci, good for you! I’m not here to shame someone for their ships. But this fandom has a habit of attacking others who aren’t so fond of this ship. Someone can like Diavolo, and not support Dialuci. You can support Lucifer, and not like Dialuci. Or hell, you could dislike either/or both characters and fucking love the ship! No matter which character or ship you like or dislike, you are completely valid.

But this is a post, about the issues with the ship that I personally see, and why it should be more outspoken.

Now lets get to the point of the subject, shall we?

I fairly like Diavolo. He’s charming, joyous, and someone who would be the star of a party. Someone cheerful and bright. However, the way that this fandom persecutes anyone who doesn’t like Diavolo or feels uncomfortable around him is not ok.

In my opinion, Diavolo has shown signs of immature and insensitive behavior. I.e. the way he treats others like toys. Yes, he cares about them, but often doesn’t consider their feelings in things he considers ‘mere pranks.’ This may be because Barbatos constantly assures him that the future will be fine, since Barbatos can manipulate and choose timelines.

He wants the best for the people around him, but doesn’t exactly take criticism or resistance to his advances kindly. “Well duh, he’s a ruler!” So? Yes, he’s a ruler, but that doesn’t mean he should be inconsiderate about others around him. The fact that he disregards others opinions unless it fits his agenda, is a sign of his childishness.

Which means, that over time, Diavolo doesn’t hold much regard to his actions, as Barbatos is always there to catch him. Now that doesn’t mean he constantly is reckless. When it comes to official Devildom matters, Diavolo is an apt ruler, who makes decisions for the Devildom’s best interests.

The problem is, no one has told Diavolo about his less than savory behavior. Because they fear him, and fear the punishments he could inflict upon them. So I can’t really say that he’s a completely bad character.

He wants Lucifer to be his equal, and acknowledge the fact that Diavolo sees him as an equal. Diavolo’s lonely, and it’s explicitly stated as so. He envies the closeness the brothers have. So, he goes about it in the only way he knows how. Which we’ll get to a bit later.

As for Lucifer, I can’t deny I’m quite fond of him. He does his best to overcome his pride for MC, and gradually (in S2-3), he becomes more open with his feelings. Yes, he’s a deeply flawed character, but he’s not a complete villain. The world simply isn’t as black and white as some would like it to be.

Yes, his relationship with some of his brothers is toxic. The way he treats Mammon at times is unacceptable, and possibly abusive in my opinion. The fact that he acts cold and distant to his brothers at times isn’t ok. But one thing I’ve seen others overlook, is that Lucifer is the Avatar of Pride. Does this excuse his actions? No. Does it explain some of his habits? Yes.

Don’t get me wrong, he still has a lot to work on. But he’s getting there, and actively trying to get better.

Now for the ship.

You do not need to like a ship, just because a character from that ship is constantly seen with the partner. Like I’ve said above, you can hate or love Diavolo or Lucifer, and dislike/like the ship.

As for the oath, I won’t delve too deep into this, as it would take essays upon essays worth of information. But we all know that, Diavolo had given Lucifer an ultimatum. Save Lilith, at the cost of Lucifer’s unquestionable loyalty.

Which as we’ve seen, Lucifer had agreed to the terms. And so, he is now Diavolo’s most trusted advisor, his right hand man.

Even though Diavolo says or implies that he sees Lucifer as an equal. He doesn’t always seem to show it. The power imbalance in between both characters is evident, throughout the plot of the story. If Lucifer denies Diavolo’s advances, Diavolo will continue. Why?

Well, you could argue that his behavior is due to him being royalty. Which is true, he’s royalty, and has never been told no. Barbatos has always been there, fixing his mess, so why would he need to worry?

Diavolo praises Lucifer, in a manner that is clearly uncomfortable to the latter. It’s evident that Lucifer despises being praised for his beauty, and just his looks. I’ve seen blogs see it as ‘just a joke’ or ‘being playful’. But time and time again, Lucifer has denied these advances, very obviously disliking the attention and focus on his looks.

But Diavolo continues, and in his defense, you could say, ‘because Lucifer doesn’t say that he’s uncomfortable!’. It’s very obvious that Lucifer isn’t an equal to Diavolo, no matter how much the latter insists he is. We’ve seen Diavolo brush off other’s discomfort at his actions, and we’ve seen him continue.

Diavolo is not evil. This is quite clear, even though he may be suspicious to some. However, his relationship tactics and methods of relationships have toxic, and quite possibly abusive effects.

For example. The angel event.

We all know, that the bangles controlled the 7 avatars, turning them all into angels. Their outfits, and minds, were taken over. The brothers, (excluding Satan.) had gone through traumatic events in these outfits, that’s for sure.

The celestial war, and losing Lilith, all were incredibly traumatizing events forever affecting their mindsets from that day forward. The bangles attempted to brain wash them, and we can see it when Satan states that he doesn’t feel like himself, that he felt calm.

But you might think, “But being calm is great! Isn’t that what he always wantd?’. Not quite.. All Satan had known before was wrath, and being calm completely took away an important part of him. Even though Satan had always resented his wrath, his sin, he had felt like a part of himself was miserable without it. He wasn’t himself, and felt as if he were being forced to be calm, something he loathes.

In all of the brothers, we can see that they are clearly distressed, and may come out of this situation traumatized.

Lucifer is no exception. We saw how visibly upset he was, the fact that the snow-white wings on his back gave him a constant reminder of the war and Lilith, throughout the entire ordeal.

What was Diavolo doing this entire time? He was being provided entertainment, and reveled the sight before him. He enjoyed seeing the brothers in their angelic uniforms, where they had fought with tooth and nail for their sister, and who knows what else. He enjoyed the fact that the brothers were having angelic ideals forced inside their heads.

And when someone speaks up against him? He’s passive aggressive about it, until the person opposing him gives up, begs for forgiveness, or embarrasses themselves.

While criticism of any of the characters is deemed valid and peachy in this fandom. I haven’t seen any criticism of Diavolo that wasn’t met with backlash and intense hounding. Lucifer, Satan, Belphegor, have all been criticized, but has the majority really deemed those opinions as invalid? No. We can all see why those arguments are valid, and people have their own reasons.

Hell, we’ve all seen people Lucifer left and right. And you know what? They’re completely valid! Some people may have triggers/squicks in regards to his behavior, and it’s completely understandable.

But the moment someone criticized Diavolo, we see fighting and targeting. The person who speaks up gets pushed down and insulted, until they either give up, or agree. If you like Diavolo, good for you, you’re valid! If you don’t, you’re completely valid!

Now back to the ship. Apologies for getting off topic, but oftentimes, when Diavolo and Lucifer are mentioned separately, they’re roped together.

Abusive/toxic relationships aren’t always one where the abusive/toxic partner is an outright terrible person. Oftentimes, they come with charm, a dazzling smile, and friends that would fight tooth and nail for them.

Diavolo has Lucifer in an....uncomfortable position to say the least. In power dynamics, that is. Lucifer is constantly embarrassed publicly and privately by compliments, and Diavolo knows this. He’s demeaned by the oath, and as for work, Diavolo often adds to it, just for fun. I.e, leaving the Devildom to come to the human world, leaving his responsibilities behind.

“But he’s lonely!” Yes, and? He is lonely, yes, but there is a time and place for fun, and time and place for work. He is going to become a King, and if he puts all this responsibility and stress on Lucifer, it simply isn’t right.

They have their good moments, but that absolutely does not make up for the state of the relationship as a whole. Just because someone has their good moments, doesn’t mean you accept and forgive them. That’s like saying that someone who physically abuses their S/O, is a good partner because they occasionally make them dinner. It simply isn’t correct.

Majority of the time, Diavolo is fine with Lucifer being reduced to a pretty face and belittled. In public, which very clearly hurts Lucifer’s pride and reputation.

Many people can resonate with some of these behaviors, having seen them in their past.

So please. Tag your works as DiaLuci for others uncomfortable with it, stop attacking others who dislike the ship, and for fucks sake, enough with hating people who dislike a character and/or ship.

#obey me #obey me diavolo #obey me lucifer #obey me ship #obey me dialuci #dialuci #obey me ship discussion

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