charles-simmons-fanfiction

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

if you want to create but feel intimidated and overwhelmed, you're forgetting something: good art doesn't exist. all art is terrible. every story and song and movie and picture is worse than the one before it and all artists should be in prisom

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

oh take me back to

the night we met.

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

Tell me I’m not the only one who sees this please

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

I'm on break !!!

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

Something something every time Charlie isn’t fighting to be the center of attention, he is always looking around to others to gauge their reactions and silently observing them all something something he is searching for connection, to fit in and be loved but he doesn’t know how to ask for love so instead he gains their attention by acting out in ways he knows they’ll notice and tries to pretend their attention and love are the same thing

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

my friend has been calling matthew patel "mat pat" and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

Scott Pilrgrim Takes Off is one of the best adaptations I’ve seen. It’s so clearly made by people who still love the source material, but have thought about it over years and have asked the question, “what happens next? What does this mean for these characters in the long run?” And because it has a much longer run time than the movie, it has time to explore those questions while also playing around with the source material while also giving us the amazing visuals and humor we expect from Scott pilgrim. It’s like someone asked “we have a great premise, that’s already been played straight before, what can we do with it now?” And then made the absolute most out of those 8 episodes that they could. Utterly magnificent. Also knives chau joins sex bobomb and becomes friends with Stephen and Kim and it’s perfect, 100/10

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

I know this discourse is going to start flaring up again because Takes Off just released, and I've seen bits of it already, but the point of Scott Pilgrim as a series is not that Scott has to go through character development and stop being an ass in order to 'win' the girl of his dreams.

It's that Scott and Ramona are two fundamentally very similar people with a long list of exes who they hurt in very similar ways and they both need to stop that and grow as people in order to have a healthy relationship with each other.

This is highlighted mostly in Books 4-6. Volume 4, Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together, has Scott and Ramona's relationship hit a low point because they both mistake the other for cheating. Ramona thinks Scott is getting too chummy with Lisa, and Scott thinks the same about Ramona and Roxie, and they nearly fall apart because of it.

Volume 5, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, contrasts Ramona finding out that Scott two-timed her and Knives and becoming outraged by it, and Scott being told that Ramona did the same thing to Kyle and Ken. In fact, Scott almost loses to the Katyanagis, and only manages to pull out a win because Kim lies about Ramona having off-screen growth to give him enough motivation to fight back.

And it's in Volume 6, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, that this finally gets hammered home. In the aftermath of his and Ramona's breakup, Scott slips into a self-destructive depression where all he does it sit around the house and play old videogames, until Wallace convinces him to go into the wilderness to find his feet again. After Ramona returns, she reveals that she attempted to go into the wilderness and find her footing again, but all she did was sit around her dad's house and watch old TV.

They're so similar to each other that they even mope in the same general way.

They're both hot messes who did some dodgy stuff, the major difference between them is that most of the people Scott hurt were, y'know, relatively normal, while Ramona's exes are mostly crazy people who decided to join up with a "League of Evil Exes" whose main goal is apparently "Murder any of Ramona's future partners and take her back by force."

The books are relatively light on details for how the League actually worked, but it's clear from the second episode of Takes Off that all of them besides Gideon believed that whomever killed Ramona's new partner would automatically be with her again, and they're shocked when Matthew tells them that she rejected him. Meanwhile, Gideon's overall objective wasn't elaborated on in the show, but it's presumably the same as it is in the books: Cryogenically freeze his own seven exes, Ramona included, and use the Glow to brainwash them all into being his girlfriends at the same time.

In Takes Off, Ramona is able to mostly resolve her issues with the Exes herself, over the course of her investigation into who took Scott and faked his death, but the overall difference between the book timeline and the show timeline is that one spotlights Scott's growth, and the other spotlights Ramona's growth.

They're perfect for each other, and it's because they're both hot messes who need to grow the hell up before they can have healthy adult relationships.

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

scott pilgrim takes off is a subversion of expectations overall but i still think the single craziest thing they did was have wallace hook up with todd during a movie production and heavily implied that wallace was only into him when he was dressed up like scott and just saw this as an opportunity to live out a temporary sexy fantasy because he didn't give a shit about the movie to begin with. and this was all happening under the assumption that scott fucking died. like i still can't believe that was real

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

You know… the bait and switch of Scott Pilgrim takes off was needed.

Scott Pilgrim was meant to be a subversion of tropes, and it got picked up by a bunch of nice guys, myself included at one point, who turned it into their anthem.

The original comic was about Everyman Scott Pilgrim having to win a woman by fighting her evil exes, and on the surface that’s what it was. Between the fanbase and the movie, that’s as shallow as anyone goes…

Except that Scott didn’t win her by defeating her evil exes. Scott was troubled and problematic. In the end he wasn’t abusive but he was neglectful and took Ramona for granted to the point that her abusive and manipulative ex managed to convince her to go back to him… mostly out of fear of what would happen to dumb, hapless, Scott.

Scott was an exceptional fighter in his videogame world… he beat like… one of the seven. The rest of the time he was saved by complete dumb luck, by his friends, and by Ramona.

The entire point was slowly realizing how silly the situation was, and how he wasn’t a white knight… he was set up to be a white knight only to knock that idea down and have Ramona and friends help him.

They learned, they grew, they were both toxic and broken people for different reasons, Scott through ignorance and a lack of experience and Ramona through trauma and abusive relationships…

And in the comic… they don’t exactly break up but she ghosts him. Horribly… and he ends up fighting Gideon anyway, and rescuing her… by gaining the Power of Understanding. That’s right, not self-respect. Understanding…

And the last page they decide to try again, but we don’t know what that means… everyone moves on to a better place in their lives, a lot of them move on from Scott and Ramona romantically… and Scott and Ramona get to just… see where this goes…

and that’s a sweet note to end on. Two people who didn’t know how to be healthy partners growing up, and timidly trying it all over, with no confirmation of how it works.

Movie? Movie came out before book 6, audiences didn’t like the ending where Scott chases after Ramona (differently from the books like he literally chases after her) so Scott earns the power of self respect, and gets back with Knives…

And intended or not, it just sets up this idea that Ramona was the bad guy. Ramona, the abuse victim, was friend-zoning Scott; the nice guy…

And for a decade, the fandom has kinda devolved into that mentality; Scott Pilgrim is the savior of the nice guys. Ramona is the unobtainable girl. Knives is the victim…

O’Malley’s original point, that relationships are hard and trauma is hard, and nobody can do it alone… lost.

To the point that we are so deep in this nice guy culture that making a sequel disguised as a reboot (will not spoil more) was necessary. He had to make the point more obvious, that the story was always about Ramona working through her relationship trauma… Scott was the house husband. He was always meant to be.

Everyone I see complaining about the twist… does not get the point of the comics… and I’ve been bitching about the movie for more than a decade so I’m sorry… it’s not a *bad* movie… but it’s clear most of the fanbase only watched the movie. And it’s clear most of the people complaining are Gideon in denial… no… Future Scott in denial… which is in fact the point.

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

starting the scott pilgrim comics thinking "ramona's way above scott's league lmao, she's too good for him" and then coming to realize that, "oh, there is something deeply wrong with both of them actually, deeply, incredibly wrong. they deserve each other" only to be hit with the gradual gut punch of "oh, they're both crummy, but through their relationship, they come to terms with their past mistakes and poor choices and strive to be better. for themselves, for each other and the people they've hurt along the way. it was never a matter of deserving the other, but about the process of becoming a person who CAN be in a healthy loving relationship with the other. they have their ups and downs, but they push through it regardless because they want to be with each other. because they love each other" can be such a personal experience

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

Word of mouth really kept me away from Scott Pilgrim for like a decade cause I was told it's this shitty book aimed at incels and he's a pedo and then I read it recently cause of the netflix anime and it's like "this guy sucks and all his friends barely tolerate him and he's trying to feel like a big man by leading on a 17 year old girl he's not actually interested in and everyone including the narrative acknowledges that that's pathetic and he should grow up. anyway let's explore how men see women as a means to their own self actualization but fail to acknowledge that they have lives of their own" like wow this is the book yall were talking about?

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

So I finished Squid Game…

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

Okay I'm not done talking about this scene actually and feel free to call me insane but to me there is something so intensely intimate about the whole thing. Just the fact that in-ho is unmasked at all is remarkable. He is the frontman and keeping his identity a secret is the most important thing but he still chose to unmask here, and no gi-hun cannot see him but in-ho still allowed gi-hun to hear his real voice in this moment, without the mask distorting it...

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

If, in another universe, Gi-hun and In-ho were to play the games for the first time together or even meet outside of the games, I've got to admit I really don't believe they would fall in love or even form a particularly deep connection.

Let me explain. Even in canon's universe, their relationship feels more one sided (In-ho), because Gi-hun actually has other friends and connects with people genuinely. Now, I'm not saying In-ho wasn’t like that before the games, quite the opposite, I believe he was. But that bring me to my point, that In-ho's obsession towards Gi-hun happens a lot because of how much he sees himself in him and how they dealt with that similar trauma.

That's what both of them have in common, the shared trauma and a feeling of "no one could truly get it". In this second season, even with other players going through the horrors, they can't really understand how terrible the games are and its dimensions, not how Gi-hun and In-ho do. And that feeling can be extremely lonely, even if you're surrounded by people that care about you.

Since Gi-hun doesn't know about In-ho being a former winner, he doesn't have the same feeling of "he gets it" like In-ho seems to do. That feeling when two people went throught something so traumatizing that no one else could know how they feel unless they went through it too. No one could get them like a winner of the games could, someone that finally won all that money they desperately needed, stained with blood with 455 people.

Their connection heavily depends on that. If both of them had been first time players together, or never been players at all, they would be as friends as Gi-hun is with any random person he met there. Could have genuine care, could become something, but probably wouldn't.

They're bounded together by their pain, even though they're completely different people with completely different views. And that's why they're inevitably drawn by the other, but also doomed by the start.

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

love that toxic old man yaoi