#(i barely have a concept for this but it's half commentary on hero society half me raging against fuck up trash policies my city has)

[durzarya]

"I have an opportunity to do more good if I'm giving up the way I wanted to do it. Giving up my ideals."

"Are your ideals more important than the lives of others Problem Child?"

"Maybe not Aizawa-san, but I would be giving people hope. Even saving less people I would be giving hope!"

"Hope doesn't stop a villain."

"Hope stops people from turning into one. Isn't that better?"

[rappaccini]

Mmmmm how about your movie gw!les hate (altho i am interested on the taking miles side hate too)

honestly i've probably gone on about this elsewhere so apologies if i regurgitate a few things.

first of all, it just doesn't make sense that they're In Love (tm).

i buy that miles would be hung up on her, since she's his first big crush and he's isolated from all other spider-people, but gwen? by the time they reunite she knows pav and hobie better than she ever knew miles. if anything, her angst about not being able to fall in love with spider-man should be directed at hobie, who she knows far better and spent literal months looking after her.

but for some reason, it's miles. i do not believe that a teenage girl would be this in love with a boy she spent one afternoon with after a year and a half of no contact and five months of friendship with other guys, including one she has chemistry with. (especially given she's suddenly into him as she's getting older and her mental image of him, a 13-14yo she said was too young for her, has stayed the same. uh. gwen?) like, all those little mentions of how gwen's been telling everyone about miles all this time? how. what the fuck could she have been talking about for months? the entire history of miles and gwen's relationship could be discussed in literally one sitting and then there'd be nothing more to say. is she just repeating the same conversation over and over? isn't that weird?

they could've fixed the timeline issue by setting atsv a few months after itsv, when it'd feel reasonable for gwen to reevaluate her feelings about miles and think 'hm maybe something could've happened there', or if they joined the society at the same time and had time to establish a friendship without pav and hobie having better dynamics with gwen...

but even then, it doesn't matter. sure, they have cute chemistry and the age gap is appropriate (the bar's so low), but the relationship's fundamentally bad for their development, and it only works when you frame it as such: miles and gwen aren't in love. they barely know each other and even their friendship is more of a concept than a reality. they're infatuated with the idea of each other.

which could be interesting! if the writers understood that was what they were working with!

[cut for length]

the metanarrative of atsv is that miles and gwen's treatment by the spider society are a commentary about the roles we allow the marginalized groups they represent to have in our stories. for miles, black and brown boys; for gwen, [white in particular] girls. gwen's metanarrative is about being the love interest in a story made for, about and by men, and miles's is about being an afrolatino boy in a story built for white guys. it makes sense that they'd latch onto the idea of each other-- a girl seeking belonging and protection in a male-dominated space by getting an impressive boyfriend, and a black boy seeking approval in a white-dominated space by getting a white girlfriend.

assimilation versus self-determination is a theme their stories have in common. it is important for their characters to be tempted by the easy way out. but. they both have to choose self-determination.

and if they become a couple and that's framed as a good thing, that won't happen.

instead, the metanarrative goes rotten. all the black and brown boys in the audience are told they deserve to be the heroes, they should get to define their stories without having to play by rules written by/for white guys, they shouldn't have to be boxed in, stereotyped or traumatized… but hey, some of those rules are okay! you don't have to break the system, just make it work for you! and all the girls in the audience are STILL being told the most important thing they can be is Some Guy's Girlfriend.

that's the problem. atsv frames gwen and miles as this epic sweeping romance that breaks the narrative and liberates them... except it doesn't. miles is the main character, the protagonist, the hero. gwen's the girlfriend. there's nothing groundbreaking or subversive about the main character getting the girl.

and how can miles redefine what it means to be the hero, if he just ends up cherrypicking tropes made for stories about white dudes, and keeping the ones that give him what he wants? (especially if said tropes benefit him and harm her) how can he show the other characters how to redefine their narratives if he doesn't let gwen do the same because it might mean he won't get what he wants from her?

how can gwen get her autonomy if she's stuck being the girlfriend, with every line, thought, feeling, action, relationship and opinion she has being filtered through 'how does this benefit her man?'

(literally it makes me breathe fire how all the gwen hate for this movie revolves around how people are mad that she isn't worshipping at the feet of some boy she barely fucking knows.)

gwiles is Not Good for miles's story arc no matter what medium it appears in. it's a shallow infatuation that keeps him stuck picking up peter parker's leftovers and denies him the ability to find something unique to him and resonant to his arc. but if he and gwen get together, he still gets the broad strokes of what he wants-- a superpowered girlfriend, a team to lead, the respect of the audience, and he keeps his status as the protagonist of his own story.

it's worse for gwen. it's actively destructive to her character. it betrays the single most important thing about her narrative, and makes it impossible for her to be her own person or have her own story. the most she gains is a pat on the head and a 'hey, maybe we won't kill you this time!'

making the ship happen required gwen's backstory to be watered down and sanitized, and her character to be yoinked back into the male gaze. sure, she has a perspective and a plotline of her own, but it all circles back to Being Miles's Girlfriend. gwen's storyline in atsv is 'i miss this boy i hung out with for 8 hours total 17 months ago despite having made several deeper friendships and a possible romance since then. i am somehow in love with him despite not knowing him at all, and i need to prove i am worthy of him. even when i break free of the oppressive system, i'm only doing it for my boyfriend. even when i reconcile with my father, i'm only doing it because i wanted to get a photo of my boyfriend, and it isn't as important as me defending that boy to his parents. even when i'm going into battle and assembling my superteam, it's for my boyfriend. sure i'm homeless and doomed to die and have no control over my fate because of this relationship, but this boy i barely know is still the most important thing to me.' what the fuck?

when gwen's death inevitably becomes a big plot point in btsv, even if she survives, even if miles isn't the one who saves her (oh GOD fucking imagine if miles gets the big hero moment where he saves gwen), her survival revolves around being his girlfriend. it all comes down to how special miles is, and how saving gwen and obtaining her as a love interest proves his specialness.

them getting together undercuts the theming about defining your own story... and it should be noted that miles hasn't actually come to that conclusion yet. when atsv ends, his stance is that he 'beat' the society because he's better than them. he hasn't realized that the idea of canon itself is the problem-- he just thinks he's the exception to it. if btsv doesn't involve him expanding his perspective to realizing that everyone else should redefine their narratives too, and encouraging them to do so (including gwen, even if it means he won't get what he wants from her), then that'll be the note the trilogy ends on-- not that everyone deserves the freedom to be the hero of their own story and miles is simply the first person to realize this and convince the others, but that miles morales is special enough to do what he wants, but the rest of you aren't. not good!

... all this being said, they could change this all around in btsv. they have everything they need to let gwen and miles resolve their infatuation, admit it wasn't what they needed, and support each other as they move on with other people. but i really doubt they will.

and finally the thing that really fucking bothers me is the potential sv gwiles has to ripple out into all other depictions of them individually.

spiderverse gwen is now the spider-gwen the general public knows about. meaning, the writers had the chance to introduce the narrative about her being her own person, and chose to throw it out in favor of making her The Girlfriend again. which means now the general public still thinks gwen's purpose is to be the love interest.

which could be catastrophic for her character everywhere else. gwen's future is in flux in the comics right now and i'm real fucking concerned that marvel's answer to 'what do we do with gwen' will be 'make her miles's girlfriend' instead of 'let her go back to her world and tell interesting stories there.'

[thornsickle]

Does your opinion or thoughts still stand regarding where things end in IX?

I would say the priority concerning IX is the Force, so in terms of story, I believe to create a cohesive story that joins I all the way to IX, you have to deal with the issue of the Force and give it some kind of conclusive ending. Whether the Force as a form of magical power available to humans will disappear, I do not know, it is a bit vague and abstract for a main stream audience and I have no idea how they would do it, but to me I think it gives the whole saga the best ending. From what I have heard on the set, don’t worry, no spoilers, the Force does play a major part for Rey and Kylo. I think the return of Palpatine also lends credence to the idea of the Force as a power being a major issue in this film, becoming more solid and present than ever before. Also, I think JJ’s focus has always been on the Force. He named Episode VII ‘The Force Awakens’ after all.

As far as Rey and Kylo are concerned, I stand by the idea that Ben Solo, if not Kylo Ren, will survive. But by taking away their powers, Rey and Kylo will in essence be able to live in peace, and Ben will no longer be burdened with this gift, which is almost a curse upon his family. Yet the reason his family had to endure all this pain and suffering was because they were the only ones powerful enough and ‘grey’ as far as the spectrum of the Force is concerned, to deal with this issue somehow and ultimately bring true balance by setting the Force free. I don’t know if you have ever watched ‘The Dark Crystal’ but a very similar ending is applied there as well. It would also mean the whole story of the force-sensitive Skywalkers ends, and they reclaim their anonymity within society.

Now, the second half, concerning whether they will be together? I don’t know honestly but I will give it a stab since you asked. Once the Force is free, if that is indeed what happens, who knows, but then I think their fates could be left unclear. The fact that they were separated after TLJ, makes me ponder though and look back at what I wrote. In my post I stated that the ‘yin yang’ concept is where the two characters can no longer be together because they have finally found their respective identities. In a way, this is what Rian Johnson did at the end of his film; Rey finally embraces her status as a jedi “I will not be the last Jedi” and Kylo is the Supreme Leader, finding his identity by rejecting his mentor and doing what he said he wanted to do, building something new (will he though?).

What is perplexing and quite honestly throwing people off I think, is that as a story arc, this is a form of conclusion. In any other story concerning opposites, like those I mentioned in my post (His Dark Materials, Spirited Away, Casablanca, Princess Mononoke), this would be the end of the story. They cannot stay together though they care for each other, because they understand they are opposites and don’t belong in their respective worlds, after having defeated some form of evil and found their identities (in this case Snoke).

But this isn’t the end of the story. The point which is unresolved, is Kylo Ren. This is where we deviate and something else I think should be seen as a reference point, other than the ‘yin-yang’. Ben Solo, as depicted in TLJ, is more than simply the ‘monster’ in Frankenstein, more than the shadow figure. He is about as byronic as you can possibly get, right down to his costume. The scene where Rey rejects Kylo’s offer, screams of ‘Jane Eyre’. Jane also, the main heroine in this book baring her name, rejects her Byronic Hero, Mr Rochester, half way through the novel. Not because she does not love him, but because of her morality. The same can be said of Rey; she cares about Kylo, she understands why he is the way he is, she wants him to make the right choices, but she cannot make them for him, and also recognizes the corruption within his mind, just as Jane does with Mr Rochester, who states he loves her more than any form of morality. I won’t go through an entire analysis of ‘Jane Eyre’, we would be here forever and I am sure someone out there has done one already with links to what we are talking about, but the point is Mr Rochester has to reform and pay sacrifices in order to finally earn Jane as a partner in life. He has her love, but it is only when he understands his own faults and selfishness concerning his hunger to have Jane as his own, that he can finally be able to walk through life with her in peace and harmony. I would say Ben Solo will ultimately have to do the same and reform therefore his ideas concerning his past, his moral compass, and ideas concerning power. It’s possible this is what Rian Johnson sowed into his story. Not an ultimate conclusion, but a barrier, something unresolved between them because they have still not reached the end of their journey together. If so, and if JJ agrees, then I think it was actually possible and not ridiculous, to suggest Rey and Kylo could end this story together, since they were apart at the end of TLJ. But who knows.

Now, as far as the film is concerned, it’s possible it will remain unclear even to the audience what they fates will be. They could simply slip away into myth, a bit like the end of ‘Phantom of the Opera’. There you have an antagonist who also happens to be a Byronic Hero (at least in the musical, a mixture of ‘the monster’, as he was in the novel, and the more romantic hero, much like Kylo Ren is a mixture of the two) who kidnaps his heroine and kills people. Pretty damning right? But at the end, we hold sympathy for him but you understand he can never be part of the real world. That’s the grain of realism which I really appreciate about that story. He slips away, only leaving his mask behind, a symbol of his past, a legacy, a myth, and he escapes literally, but becomes for the audience something else, like a ghost, slipping into the mists of time, never to be seen again. I would be very satisfied to see something similar with Ben Solo, taking the legacy of his family with him, but putting an end to their story by returning it back to where all these things must return, the pages of a book, a story, a myth, a fairytale. He is no longer important to that legacy because it can now take on a life of it’s own. I think JJ very much is interested in the ‘fantasy’ element of Star Wars, if his commentary on TFA is anything to go by. His use of terms like ‘castle’ Princess’ and ‘Prince’ are pretty telling, as well as the dialogue he gives to Rey, as she states “Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth!”

And after all, this whole thing started with a very telling line.

‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….’

[rwdestuffs]

Done dirty: Worldbuilding.

Not pictured: Actual worldbuilding.

In all honesty, I don’t know how to start this post.

Yeah, I have the image that’s there to help inform people about the subject at hand, but it’s hard to do a post about something that’s practically nonexistent.

Like, doing a post about how Yang got mistreated in certain volumes, and not getting development from facing the stigma from her Vytal Festival incident is one thing. So is pointing out how Sun is literally just there to be eye candy for Blake’s arc with little to no development to his character whatsoever. Same with how Pyrrha is just a prop for Jaune and a plot device to set off Ruby’s plot device. Same for the grimm in general, or dust.

Talking about writing concepts is hard because it has to be there for a person to talk about. Most mediums that take place in fictional worlds at least understand how to properly world-build.

There’s a show from the 80s that had better worldbuilding in it. And that show has a half-naked superhero cheap action figure as their main protector from an ineffective villain who needs a friend so that he could feel good about himself!

Joking aside, other worlds also have very little issue with worldbuilding. Like the Legend of Zelda games. Thanks to interaction with NPCs, the bits of lore that are scattered around, and the ways that it’s made, you can get a good idea as to how the world works. Hell! There are different species, and they all have different cultures and societies that are unique to them!

Zoras are prideful and are often talented musicians. They pride themselves on their sense of duty and order.

Gorons are prideful of their strength. They feed off of rocks, and they greatly enjoy competitions that show off their strength.

Gerudos are terretorial, and don’t like strangers. They’re a warrior race, and are proud of it. They only have one male child every hundred years.

This is from a Video Game. Admittedly, a Video Game with over twenty-five years of history and other mediums, but still! They managed to have distinct races and cultures despite their limited medium.

Look, the primary reason I’m avoiding the subject is because… there’s is no subject. There’s hardly any worldbuilding, and whenever there is, it’s often contradicted in a later episode, or through the director’s commentary. The same could be said about character traits, but I think I’ve covered that pretty well in other Done dirty posts.

Take the thing about gods, for instance. Qrow says, in the same scene I might add, this:

Which is it, Qrow?- Are people not religious, or have they made gods of their own?- Like… You have literal relics from the past that definitively proves one single religion. Sure, you’d have a few holdouts, but still!

Now that I think about it, uniting under a single religion would probably be enough for dickhead god 1 and ass-face god 2 to say “Yeah, humanity’s united. Okay, you’re all good.”

But we don’t get that.

Even in Marvel, where a literal Norse God regularly visits New York, there are a few skeptics. Here’s an article that details that storyline: https://arousinggrammar.com/2013/02/19/life-questions-with-thor/

Like… All I’m saying is that when you place something extraordinary into the real world, people tend to take the effort into thinking how society would adapt to it. Some people would adapt by thinking nothing is wrong at all, some would adapt by obsessing over it, some would make statues, some would resent the extraordinary, and so on. There are also ways in which the government could adapt. Like in the X-Men series, where the subject of mutant rights is often brought up so often, that you kinda want to see how other countries are handling it (Sidenote: Someone send this idea to Marvel so that the aren’t recycling and reusing the same storyline over and over and over again).

And if it doesn’t have that big of an impact on the ‘real world’ then they tend to find a way to showcase why. In Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Stands are invisible to normal people, so there is no reason for society to have adapted to their presence. In American Dragon Jake Long, the magical world is kept secret, so there’s no reason for there to be big societal adaptations for their presence. Same thing with the show The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (Does anyone remember these shows?- They were pretty good). And when the “fantastical world” does get exposed, like in X-Men or in Danny Phantom, there are societal adaptations. People and society adapt to what is new and not normal. It’s ultimately an interesting way to create a world based on the real world, but still feels separate from ours.

So yet again, we circle around to how the show fails at this. We don’t get the little interactions that make it easier to understand the world. We don’t get the moments that detail how dust changed society. The faunus racism is hardly a thing, and we don’t know if there are clothes specifically designed with faunus traits in mind. There are no societal protections against the grimm like walls around the cities or more emphasis on the importance of Hunters. Apparently the maidens have been around for a long-ass time, but there’s no recorded history of them despite the selection process being random at certain times.

Like, what?- Was there never news about sweet young Olive suddenly summoning the winds without dust or aura consumption?

And speaking of aura, does that cut down on accidents or murders?- What about semblances?- do they cut down on death caused by accidents or murders?- Do they contribute? We don’t know. And that’s because the writers didn’t want to create a. fantastical world that makes sense. They just wanted to get their characters from point a, to point b, and have a few fights along the way to build up tension that ultimately goes nowhere because the fights have no real stakes to them. Because the heroes always win. The only times they didn’t was the fight where Yang’s trauma got fixed the moment she put on her arm and the one where Qrow’s poisoning got fixed thanks to a Deus-Ex-Machina airship to Mistral.

Without stakes, the viewer is left to try to make sense of the world. Which they can’t do because there’s hardly any worldbuilding at all.

We know jack shit about Vale culture or how the society works, and what we do know came from Qrow’s biased review on the continent in the WoR video. Same with Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, and even Menagerie.

No worldbuilding. Just a travel pamphlet.

And I don’t want no stinkin’ pamphlet. I want a freaking book or website that details all the attractions, and the history of the place. What the people are like. What are the main means of trade. All the things that you could get out of good worldbuilding.

If I can’t have that, then at least build the actual overall world of Remnant. Like how dust effects society and makes it different from ours.

But we also don’t get that.

We get just some generic talks about how “Jaune used to go to a certain town with his family” or Generic backstory about the village that Ren’s family was slaughtered in.

Nothing special. Nothing to make me actually care about the towns.

Just some generic stuff that is never brought up again.

And I for one, am really sick of the world not actually feeling like a world.

I’m not asking for worldbuilding or made-up cultures on the level of Star Trek, but I am asking for is a bit of effort so that it doesn’t feel like the bare minimum was put into it.