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sorcerersofnyc · 4 years ago

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The Last Thing Left (Zemo x F!Reader) 1/9

Ghosts weren’t enough to hold two people together.

While they wait for Torres to locate Donya Madani, Zemo reflects upon his relationship to you, his only tether to his wife and closest friend.

Slow burn, previous relationships, angst, various mentions of death & mourning. You both lost your spouse. You're a regular civilian person. Zemo's wife's name is Heike because of comics.

Note: Main Character is neutral in most regards but the story was written with my own cultural background in mind. (In other words, I won't say what she looks like but I envision her as being black.)

I meant to write a one-shot but, as it turns out, I have feelings for this man.

I'll have part two by the end of the day and hope to update steadily.

***

He looks forward to coming face-to-face with Karli, the girl responsible for the birth of a new faction of Super Soldiers. His plan for her was simple really: He would find her, and then he would end her—just as he did Nagel.

Sam and James lack the conviction to do what needs to be done, and it’s that weakness that makes Helmut invaluable (that and he’s the one with the private jet.) So he bides his time and waits.

Helmut would put an end to Karli and her acolytes. He would make sure of it.

But it’s night now, and he’s tired, so instead of plotting, he prepares a meal in the little kitchen near the cockpit.

James relaxes on the couch and Sam sits across from him in the lounge area, discussing something not meant for his ears. So as he does his work and delicious aromas permeate the air, Helmut decides to let their food cook a little longer than he usually would. By the time he decides to turn off the heat, Sam is contacting an associate—someone he hopes can help them locate Karli’s mentor, Donya Madani.

It isn’t a bad plan, enlisting the help of others, but Helmut knows how strenuous locating displaced persons can be; locating the dead was a much easier feat.

Sam’s associate wouldn’t find Donya as long as she’s alive.

“Now what?” James asks, his voice and disposition bitter as Helmut hands him the plate. He eyes the meal with suspicion.

“We wait” Sam can barely withhold his frustration with James, but he accepts the food with a nod.

“For how long?”

“For as long as it takes.”

Helmut has no burning desire to listen to Sam and James argue on and on about symbols and shields. It’s clear whatever they have between them is fraying—ripping at the seams.

If it wasn’t so painfully ironic (and hilarious to watch,) Helmut would find the relationship between Sam and James a little sad.

Ghosts weren’t enough to hold two people together.

“I know of a place we can go until then.” He says, settling down into his chair. Helmut doesn’t give them a moment to ask questions, instead, he asks Oeznik to adjust their course towards Spain.

He’d know exactly where to port.

And though the journey would be long and annoying, he would handle it as handled every arduous thing: with patience and a glass of whiskey.

Besides, his impending headache will be well worth it; he’ll get to see you again.

***

Before she was his wife, Heike was his girlfriend, and in those days, she longed to see the world outside the trappings of nobility. So she studied abroad for University and adventured out into the world. But despite her dazzling personality, she never expected to have met a friend so quickly. (She confessed as much to him the day after she arrived.)

So when she ran into you—quite literally—while searching for her class building, she was overjoyed. You were headed to the same lecture (as Heike would recount later,) and decided to share a bench as you looked over a ridiculously simplified map.

Heike couldn’t wait to tell him of the ‘lovely Fine Arts major’ she met that day (and every day afterward.)

You were all but joined at the hip ever since; you were there for all their important dates — their engagement, their wedding, the birth of their baby.

But despite your somewhat frequent presence in his home and in his life, Helmut never thought to consider you a friend, not really.

You were his wife’s friend, someone who came to town, swept her up, spoiled Carl, and left days later.

But when Heike hosted dinner for one of her milestone birthdays, your life became entangled with his further. Because on that day, you caught the eye of his closest friend, Dominik.

Dominik had no title. His family had been nobility once, many years ago, but their words no longer held sway in politics or court.

So society wouldn’t care if Dominik married a Sokovian woman or if his partner came from old money. There would be looks, of course, and there would be whispers, (Sokovia was a fairly homogenous society, after all, and with that came many old-world sensibilities,) but most were content to let him be.

Dominik was free to live his life with impunity.

So he might have married anyone he liked—in fact, he might have had an easier time courting a woman more easily swayed by his charm and vast amounts of money—but you enchanted him from the beginning, he didn’t want anyone else.

“They would make such a cute couple, wouldn’t they?” Heike asked that evening, her large eyes filled with mischievous glee. They both had the misfortune of watching Dominik flounder as he spoke to you and Helmut often wondered if she set you up on purpose if she somehow knew that love would run its course.

Helmut remembered one particular day; it was hot and he found his friend tucked away in the stuffy library of his family’s estate. He looked studious, thoughtful, things he rarely expected Dominik to be.

The annotated books were arranged in neat piles, obscuring Dominik’s tired eyes.

“What are these?” Helmut asked him, inspecting the pile with curiosity.

He said your name with a sight, almost dreamily.

“She said she likes to read, so I asked about her favorites,” he told him, gesturing “She told me these were ‘essential reading.’ ”

He was never meant to read them all at once, but he was determined to impress you.

Endlessly curious and amused, Helmut decided to read them too. (He found the one on Pre-Columbian art extremely insightful, as was the one on the political importance of diasporas, and of course the one on Marvin Gaye.)

But it wasn’t until a year later, when EKO Scorpion was deployed, that he realized the true depth of Dominik’s feelings for you.

Because usually, when Dominik received one of your amorous letters, he would grin and gloat and parade himself through camp.

“Look,” he would say, waving the envelope around as if it were your banner, “I have someone waiting for me.”

But then one night, after a back-breaking mission near the border of Lithuania, Helmut watched his friend pull your letter from the pocket of his uniform. The night was damp and cold, but he read the letter quietly, thumbing at the wrinkled page.

And he was happy for him, he was happy for you.

It was nice, Helmut remembered, watching your courtship from afar and offering advice where he could.

He was proud to stand beside Dominik on the day of the wedding, proud to watch see your love take root.

Though it took a great deal of compromise for you to move to Sokovia (you didn’t like the idea of living in a country so bloodied by war, you were worried about exclusion and monotony, and you found the film culture’s lacking,) but once you did, he and Heike entertained you on the holidays.

There had been no children between you and him, but there was plenty of love.

There was so much love, in fact, someone found your letter in the pocket of his uniform the day they pulled him from the rubble of Novi Grad.

“Does anyone know where his wife is?” An officer asked.

“Does anyone know where anyone is?” Another replied.

It was an endless cycle of death and sorrow as people dug soldiers and civilians from the wreckage and debris.

Some were alive, most were dead.

People cried.

Families broke apart.

People begged and fell limp in the streets.

Helmut buried his entire family.

You buried your husband and his father.

You had no one left.

You made a beautiful speech at the service, one that spoke volumes of love you both shared.

“I loved him,” you said, “and he loved me.”

But when the service was finally over and you stood at the site of his freshly dug grave, you lingered almost absentmindedly, at a loss for something to say.

Helmut joined you, after a while, standing in silent solidarity. You’d done the same just a few days prior. He waited for you to speak.

You keep your eyes cast down as you do.

“I’m standing here and I... I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe they’re gone.”

All because of the Avengers, he thought. They took everything from you both.

“What will I do without him?” When you looked at him, your eyes filled with tears, Helmut knew better than to say what he was thinking. He couldn’t tell you he longed to watch the world burn, that he wanted those so-called ‘heroes’ to have died in the place of those he held dear, that he wanted revenge.

So he said the next best thing instead:

“I’ll take care of you,” he promised.

“Thank you, Helmut. But… I…” You wanted to tell him you’d be alright, but the lie lodged itself in the back of your throat and a sob pushed forward instead.

“Please…” He beckoned softly, “It’s what they would have wanted. Heike and Carl… they adored you. I can do this much at least.“

You were the only thing he had left of the ones he loved.

He didn’t want to let you go.

***

Thanks for reading! Look out for part two! The reader will have more interaction with Zemo.

#baron zemo #helmut zemo #zemo #zemo x reader #well that was pretty nerve-wracking #its been so long since I wrote a fic lmao #i never wrote for the mcu but for some reason zemo just...does it for me #he’s so interesting

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obligatory-shirt · 4 years ago

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I just finished watching the last season of the Clone Wars and I have some things to say about it. Mainly me gushing abt how Anakin and Ahsoka's relationship was done but be warned: spoilers ahead, so go away if you don't want those (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

I will preface this by mentioning that I am one of many siblings, with multiple younger and older siblings, so I have some sense of what it feels like to be the older sib and the younger one.

First thing that i went hecc yeah at was when Ahsoka called Anakin her older brother in I think s7e5, Gone with a Trace. Looking at how they are there for one another and especially how f i e r c e l y Anakin defends Ahsoka during the last arc of season 5, there is no other word that could describe their closeness. That intense, roaring platonic love they hold for one another is utterly undeniable.

My biggest talking point is s7e9, Old Friends Not Forgotten. This is the episode we've all been waiting for where Anakin and Ahsoka finally meet up. The sheer joy and amazement at seeing Ahsoka again renders Anakin speechless. There is so much he wants to ask, so much he wants to know, so much he knows he's missed. Most of all? He's missed her. Her company, her wit, being able to see her every day and just have her around. The security that came with her presence and that friendship was lost when she left the Jedi order, but now that she's come to him? There's nothing more he wants to do than to assure her happiness and her security.

Ahsoka comes to the ship, and due to the circumstances, Anakin cannot truly talk to her for a short while. Once business is out of the way, however, Anakin pulls out all the stops because Ahsoka is his little sister and there is nothing he won't do for her. A similar level of comraderie could be extended to Captain Rex and the men of the 501st—just look at their helmets, for crying out loud. Think about how much time and care was put into painting all their helmets in Ahsoka's honor to celebrate the return of the life of their crew.

Anakin, though. His little sister's come back. He's been holding onto her lightsabers and he can hardly wait to give them to her, to see the look on her face when she gets them. While I was watching the episode, I half expected that Anakin would have to give Ahsoka the case with the lightsabers and run off, but I was so happy when he took the time to present them in person. Not only does he arm her, he ensures that the reason she came to him and Obi-Wan does not go dismissed. Anakin bends the rules to help her in such a way that she won't be held responsible, should anything go wrong.

Anakin gives Ahsoka Captain Rex.

This cannot be understated. Rex is Anakin's closest friend, second only to Obi-Wan (he's married to Padme so she doesn't quite count, and feck Palpatine, honestly). All matters of friendship aside, Rex is one of the most skilled clone troopers in the Republic Army. He's the leader of Anakin's troops for a reason, so with an impending battle, Anakin should in theory have his Captain with him. Instead, he sends Rex with Ahsoka.

Only with Rex can Ahsoka legally operate as commander, though it's Rex who holds the rank. Anakin cares so much about Ahsoka that he's willing to give her his best friend and captain of his troops. (It is worth noting that Rex and Ahsoka are very close as well, and another reason Rex went with Ahsoka was to give them more time to catch up, but that's for another rant.)

Another point for the powerful sibling bond between the two: Anakin does all this without a second thought. btw

Now, look at the events of the next few episodes, largely focusing on Ahsoka's response to Maul's prophecies and visions. When she first hears about him wanting Anakin, one of her main concerns is making sure her older brother is alright. Someone is plotting and Anakin could get caught in it so she needs to know that he's okay, that nothing's happened to him. Time and time again she asks after him, wanting to speak with him. While I know narratively Ahsoka cannot interfere because we know Darth Vader, it still hurts every time she tries to talk with him and either can't reach him or just barely misses him.

In the final episode, Maul shows Ahsoka what Anakin will do and is doing, the darkness he will fall into, and it shakes her. The majority of the episode is based around the execution of Order 66, so we don't get to see much of Ahsoka ans Anakin's relationship manifest itself until the very end.

I kid you not, I sat reeling after the episode ended. Holy. Feck.

Ahsoka and Rex, after burying the clones who died in the crash, look out at the makeshift graveyard, and Ahsoka holds one of her lightsabers, the shorter of the two that Anakin gifted to her, loosely in her hands. It teeters forward, the balance lost, but Ahsoka holds it on the edge of her fingers for the briefest of moments before letting it fall to the ground, and she leaves. Maul showed her what mistakes Anakin would commit, and that s h a t t e r e d her faith in Anakin. This second lightsaber Anakin gave her, she can't hold onto. For lack of a better phrasing, it's too painful.

From a different perspective, Ahsoka might not know the full extent of what Anakin will become. Perhaps she assumes that Anakin died with the execution of Order 66 and leaves the lightsaber at the graveyard in memory of him. He was her brother, after all, and she'd want to do something to honor his memory.

The next scene shows us what looks like Hoth, a vast area ridden by a blizzard, snow billowing across the field. Darth Vader crosses the snow to stop before a crashed Imperial warship, an orange trooper helmet in the snow. The distinctive pattern of the helmet make it unmistakable: this was the warship Ahsoka was on when Order 66 was given. Leaning down, Vader brushes aside snow to dig out a lightsaber. Turning it on, he stares at it.

This. This was Ahsoka's lightsaber. Is she dead? Did she survive? He has no way of knowing. Anakin has lost his wife, his limbs, his brother—everything he held dear, and now, he has lost his precious little sister as well. She's gone, whether escaped across the galaxy or buried somewhere beneath the snowdrifts. With resignation and sorrow, There is no turning back now, he supposes, turning to the sky as if she'd be there sitting in a starship. Everything Anakin Skywalker had is gone. Only Darth Vader remains. He turns off the lightsaber, and walks away, leaving a damaged clone helmet, the front of it painted orange and white in the image of someone Vader no longer knows, behind him in the cold, unforgiving snow.

#star wars #the clone wars #anakin skywalker #ahsoka #big bro anakin #lil sis ahsoka #rant #final season #anakin #ahsoka tano #they're siblings #fight me #@disney wtf i didnt ask to get my heart torn to shreds like this #darth vader #captain rex

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starwarsnonsense · 5 years ago

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Best Films of 2019 (So Far)

It’s that time of year again! As most of my followers probably know, I’m an avid cinema-goer beyond Star Wars. I also quite enjoy making lists, so what’s better than a combo of the two? Below, I run down my top 10 films of 2019 so far - please note that this list is based on UK cinema release dates, so some of these films were 2018 releases elsewhere.

What are your favourites so far from this year? Let me know in replies/asks!

Honourable mentions: Toy Story 4, Long Shot, Aladdin, Alita: Battle Angel & The Kid Who Would Be King

1. The Favourite, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

This completely wowed me - it features a trio of magnificently compelling female characters (played by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone) operating at the court of Queen Anne (Colman is Anne, Weisz and Stone are courtiers), and is focused solely on the shifting sands of the power dynamics between them. The script is savage without sacrificing poignancy, witty without ceasing to be genuine. And while I’ve seen some react to this film as a comedy (and it certainly has laughs, most of which are closely tied to shock), for me it was very clearly a drama about the inscrutable and complicated relationships that exist between women. Specifically, it is about how those relationships run the gamut from sincere affinity to ruthless manipulation. This is an amazing movie, and it also has the best use of an Elton John song in 2019 (sorry, Rocketman!).

2. Midsommar, dir. Ari Aster

I went into this film with reservations, since I wasn’t a huge fan of Hereditary (by the same director), which I found to have extraordinary moments but iffy execution overall. This movie, however, wowed me, and I am still uncertain as to whether this or The Favourite is my top film of 2019 so far (fortunately, this gives me a good excuse to watch Midsommar three or four times in cinemas). While marketed as a freaky cult horror film, the director has described it as a fairy tale, which is the level on which is spoke to me. Midsommar follows Dani (an incredible Florence Pugh), a young woman who has suffered a terrible loss, as she travels with her boyfriend and his friends to a pagan festival in the Swedish countryside. Dani is painfully isolated, and her grief is hers to shoulder alone since her boyfriend is un-receptive and distinctly unprepared to help her. Over the course of the film, destruction and creation are conflated in ways that are frequently beautiful and horrific at the same time - this film spoke to me on a profound level, and the way it ended gave me a sense of incredible catharsis. This won’t be for everyone, for I found it to be a deeply special film and I can’t recommend it enough.

3. One Cut of the Dead, dir. Shinichirou Ueda

While I went into The Favourite with high expectations given the talent involved, I went into this with no expectations whatsoever - and what a treat it was! One Cut of the Dead is easily one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in ears, taking what initially seems like a trite concept (a crew is filming a zombie movie at a desolate location ... only to discover that the zombies are real!) and twisting it in a truly ingenious way. The comedy is often of the broad variety, but it is consistently delightful and always manages to avoid becoming crass - the movie even has some really sweet family dynamics at the centre of it, which gives it some real emotional heft. The success of this film is heavily reliant on a major twist that occurs part-way through, so the best advice I can give you is to stay as far away from spoilers for this one as possible - go in blind, and you will be amply rewarded for your faith.

4. The Farewell, dir. Lulu Wang

I saw this following a wave of festival hype, so while I was excited I was also a bit apprehensive (since I have been burned by the aforementioned festival hype before). Thankfully, my doubts were blown away as this turned out to be just as wonderful as the early reviews had suggested. It’s a personal story about a young Asian-American woman (Awkwafina) struggling to reconcile her heritage with her current situation and values - specifically, she is tested when her grandmother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and the wider family make the decision to hide the truth from her. The Farewell does a fantastic job of generating empathy for all the different perspectives and positions in play, but it’s truly anchored by Awkwafina’s amazingly nuanced and tender performance - basically, anyone who’s ever loved a grandparent should leave this feeling incredibly moved and inspired. The themes of The Farewell are both specific to the Asian-American experience and general to anyone who has struggled with maintaining bonds over a vast distance, whether physical or cultural.

5. Booksmart, dir. Olivia Wilde

God, how I wish I’d had this movie as a teenager! While Booksmart has a cliched premise - two high-achieving teens decide to have one wild night before graduation - it tells the story in an incredibly charming and impressively creative way (I won’t spoil it, but let me just say this - that scene with the Barbies!). As someone who was an awkward nerd with no discernible social life in high school (as you Americans call it), I found this portrayal of that peculiar limbo period very sensitive and thoughtful - it doesn’t mock or shame its heroines for being studious, and it allows them to have limits and step back from situations that make them uncomfortable. It also serves as a beautifully honest portrait of a friendship, depicting the qualities that bring people together in friendship together in the first place, as well as the forces that can break people apart. This is a very accomplished debut from Wilde, and it makes me very excited to see where she goes next as a director.

6. A Private War, dir. Matthew Heineman

This was a very suspenseful and tightly focused film about an extraordinary woman, and the film soars on the strength of Rosamund Pike’s incredible performance as Marie Colvin. She provides piercing insights into the psyche of a person so driven to pursue truth and enact change that she loses all concern for her own wellbeing - it’s simultaneously a portrait of heroism and obsession, and it’s impressive for how it handles the ambiguity inherent in Colvin’s choices. She’s exceptionally brave, but the film is unflinching in depicting the costs of her bravery. It left me feeling inspired to learn more about Colvin’s life and work, and I still need to watch the documentary Under the Wire to get more insight into the real story behind the film.

7. Fighting With My Family, dir. Stephen Merchant

This is the year of Florence Pugh - she killed it in Midsommar, and she is just as fantastic here. If anything, Fighting With My Family and Midsommar make great complements as they serve as fantastic showcases for Pugh’s range as an actor. While her character in Midsommar is fragile and vulnerable, Fighting With My Family is a platform for her strength and comedic skill. As Paige, Pugh is instantly likable and compelling - I don’t give a damn about any form of wrestling, but this film (and Pugh specifically) did a fantastic job of drawing me in and making me root for Paige’s struggle to prove herself as a legitimate force in wrestling. This is a real underdog story, and Pugh did a wonderful job as the Cinderella of the WWE.

8. Apollo 11, dir. Todd Douglas Miller

My dad has always been crazy about the space program, but I hadn’t picked up the bug myself. That changed after I watched this extraordinary documentary, which brought the Apollo 11 mission to vivid life. The footage that’s used for this documentary is extraordinarily crisp, and some moments are vividly powerful - the crew getting into their spacesuits, the swirl of fire surrounding the moment of takeoff, and the journey of the spacecraft towards the moon. It left me feeling moved and touched by human potential, especially when you remember that this all happened 50 years ago when the available technologies were so fragile and primitive. I also loved how the footage was allowed to speak for itself, with no voiceover or exposition - it’s a must-see for anyone who’s ever looked up at the stars and wondered about reaching them.

9. High Life, dir. Claire Denis

This movie is second to only Midsommar in terms of how weird it is. I saw this in a Hungarian cinema while on holiday, which made for a disorientating experience in itself. While the meaning of the film is quite elusive and I’m sure that many people will find viewing it a uniquely frustrating experience, I appreciated how it created a hothouse environment that brought out some of the ugliest aspects of humanity. Robert Pattinson was great as what comes closest to amounting to our protagonist, though he is as inscrutable and inaccessible as the film itself. I can’t quite pin down why I liked this one so much, but I know I did and it made me want to seek out more of Claire Denis’ work.

10. Free Solo, dir. Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

It’s tragic that most people will only watch this documentary on a TV screen (or, so much worse, a laptop!). I was fortunate enough to see it in its full IMAX glory, and it’s rare to see any film - let alone a documentary - take such full advantage of the format. The woozy spectacle of this film is the real star, though the subject - mountain climber Alex Honnold - is also fascinating with his unnerving detachment from the magnitude of what he is setting out on. It is clearly a necessary detachment for him to be able to achieve what he achieves, but I appreciated how the filmmakers questioned it and explored its impact on his girlfriend. This is a compelling documentary, and is worth watching even if you’re not usually a fan of the genre.

#films #cinema #films 2019 #midsommar #florence pugh #the favourite #one cut of the dead #free solo #high life #apollo 11 #fighting with my family #a private war #the farewell #booksmart

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thesleepykuma · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on She-ra Season 4

A lot of interesting stuff happened this season. A lot of it was good. Some of it not so much.

The introduction of a Horde spy was a genius addition to the story. Double Trouble is so fun to watch too. They absolutely stole the show for the vast majority of the season.

The story, with one notable exception I’m about to mention, was very strong. You can cut the tension with a knife throughout the season and it ends in what is clearly meant to be the climax of the entire show. It was really well done.

The episode “Boys’ Night Out” should have been cut or completely rewritten. It’s too dramatic of a tonal whiplash from finding the spy and having Salineas taken by the horde, and the actions taken by said male characters makes all of them but especially Seahawk seem terrible for going off to god knows wear when the Horde is winning and the alliance needs all the help they can get. I feel like this could have worked as a comedy episode in season 2 when the tone was lighter and the stakes were a bit lower, but with the tension that’s clearly building throughout the rest of the season it feels very out of place. The few parts worth keeping (mostly Glimmer and Adora’s argument at the end) could have been moved to other episodes

As much as I rag on Seahawk, I think he would have been a very fun and likeable protagonist... in a different show. It feels like the protagonist of a lighthearted comedy about piracy on the high seas somehow got transported into this show and cannot seem to get his head wrapped around the fact that this is a real war, people are dying, and he needs to start taking this seriously. That’s probably supposed to be the joke, but I’m a bit too invested in the serious bits to find it funny. There is one good thing that the his presence in the season did though, and it was show some moments where Mermista seemed to enjoy having him around. I can believe that Mermista wants to be friends with Seahawk in this season, while in season 1 that was very.... debateable.

I think my verdict on the horse is that it’s a delicate balancing act to keep his strong personality without making him irritating, and whether it works depends on who is writing him at the time. They did a good job with him this season with the exception of Boy’s Night Out, but that episode was kind of an outlier so I won’t hold it against him.

Glimmer acts absolutely horrendously but I can’t say it’s bad writing because it’s absolutely in character for Glimmer. She’s acted like this since Season 1. The difference is that while in Season 1 she sort of had a point, even if she went about making it inappropriately often, and her reckless and often selfish actions mostly just affected her and whoever had to rescue her, in this season she’s objectively wrong throughout the season and has authority now, so her actions are hurting the entire planet. And at least this season she’s mostly portrayed as in the wrong instead of in Season 1 when at the end her mother basically let her have her way when a lot of the things she was doing really were dangerous and stupid. So it’s good storytelling, I don’t really have complaints there, but that isn’t going to make me like the character.

They brought King Micah back. I usually have a dislike for bringing back characters that are established to be dead in principle, because it makes death have little weight in your story, but Micah is badass and a cool dad character so I don’t mind as much as I usually do. They also needed a replacement ruler figure since Angela is gone and Glimmer is utterly unsuitable

Entrapta continues to be best girl.

Catra has had her emotional breakdown and moment of realization. It was really well-written and now we’re starting to get to the actual redemption part of the redemption arc. She also saved Etheria during that conversation with Horde Prime at the end of the season, and I’m willing to accept that as a good deed of an equivalent magnitude to the magnitude of her actions with the portal to cancel a lot of it out. However. She’s still responsible for the death of Queen Angela, and the show will lose points at the end if it decides to conveniently forget that and not have her take responsibility for what’s essentially a murder when it’s time for everyone to become friends (I suppose they could take a third option and bring Angela back, but I personally hope they don’t do that for the reasons I stated when I talked about Micah)

There weren’t enough moments of Hordak being genuinely kind to Entrapta when they were together for me to really buy the way he’s reacting to her absence this season. The closest they get is the “Any who discounts you are fools” comment, but that was one moment in between him either shouting at her or tolerating her because she did something useful for him. Him suddenly acting like he had this deep affection for Entrapta seems a bit forced to me

Horde Prime is the menacing villain that he needed to be. Him walking up to Hordak and mind wiping him like it was nothing is a really good way to set the stakes for the next season. Combine that with the sword being broken and it makes you really, really want to see how it ends. The ending in general was great all-around.

Best characters: Entrapta, Mermista, Adora, Double Trouble

Worst Characters: Shadow Weaver, Seahawk, Glimmer

OTP: Eh let’s wait for the dust to settle after season 5 then I’ll pick

BroTP: Mermista and that guard that really likes those mystery books.

NoTP: I realized a bit after writing my thoughts on season 3 that I don’t actually know how old Huntara is and she’s one of the most ‘adult sounding’ out of the cast so forget the Adora x Huntara ship, at least until I can get a confirmation that they’re the same age and Huntara’s voice is just like that

My favorite part of the season was Mermista hamming it up during the mystery episode, it was hilarious

On a scale of 1 to 10 where a 10 is the scent of lilacs and a 1 is the sent of rotting meat, this season is an 7.5 with Boys’ Night Out and an 8.5 without it. It’s up to you to decide whether that episode is canon. I choose to pretend that it isn’t.

We’re in the home stretch. The show has been consistently good so far, but the ending is what will decide how it will be remembered. Hit a home run, She-ra. I know you can do it.

#she ra #spoilers #she ra season 4

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itsnotresilience · 4 years ago

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How I Talk About Trauma

Inspired by early 2010 essay “why me and why now”

I recently mentioned to friend that I have nearly 30 years worth of memoir essays stashed mostly in expertly hidden journals and spiral bound notebooks throughout my home. I hadn’t ever really mentioned to anyone, really, ever. I have/had no intention of ever doing anything with my often rambling stories mixed with poetry and observation. This friend gave me just enough encouragement and expressed just enough curiosity that I decided to go back and see if I had enough to cobble together a cohesive creative memoir piece.

I’m not the sort of gal who thinks people are all that interested in reading about my life. I’m afraid of their judgment and wonder how easily my style of oversharing and conversational prose will sit with them. I do know that people are interested in hearing my stories. I’ll often make some self-deprecating comment in passing, only to find myself explaining my comment through some story about a personal traumatic event. In these moments, I’m at my most vulnerable, letting people in to see behind the curtain, hoping for their empathy and secretly desiring that they find inspiration in the “Meghan then versus Meghan now” of it all. There’s an additional must mention element to sharing our stories that didn’t exist to the same extent when I wrote the essay that inspired this one and definitely was an issue for the vast majority of my other still-buried writings, social media. The proliferation of social media and the encompassing issues around what we share, how we share, who sees it and any potential impacts can’t be ignored. The fear of the judgment and ugliness of the keyboard armies can’t be understated. There are people who will define you by what you share and their are people who will use your vulnerability to their advantage for whatever perverse enjoyment they get out of destroying the lives of other for attention. This is a very real fear to me as I write this now, trusting the reader with my feelings and saying always with an asterisk, this is my life as I was/am living it. This is my perspective, interpretation/reinterpretation of events that in some cases happened 30 years ago. Anyone who says they remember something exactly how it happened even 5 years ago, especially a traumatic event, well- I wouldn’t call them a liar, it’s an important piece of my thinking I’m sharing here- but I would say it’s likely someone else from their life remembers it slightly differently and recalls a drastically different set of outcomes and experiences. It’s important I mention that because so often when people publish personal essays or memoirs the colloquial “that didn’t happen that way” or “that’s not what I remember” comments almost always occur. So I say with an asterisk that this essay discusses events and feelings as I remember them, colored by my perspective then versus now and altered by my overall ability to be subjective or objective about what was going on. You may remember me differently. You may have seen me a different way than I actually felt. I may have lied to you (more on that later). I may be lying to myself (lots more on that later). I may be remembering different timeframes and my reactions and confusing them, so let’s talk about that now.

When we talk about trauma, communally, socially or even in mass media, we often hear it, see it, experience it, as a story arch. The beginning is the traumatic event/s, the middle is either the present or the immediate outcome, and the ending is either the present or the big reveal of why present person is who present person is. In the sneakiest depictions, we may not know what the real trauma story is until the very end and you find yourself pointing at the screen ( I did this last week myself) and saying, “I knew it! I knew all along that’s what really happened!” This is called the unreliable narrator. The story is told first person subjective so you are experiencing the events as the narrator remembers and experiences them and possibly not the way they happened. This leads us to feel mislead but there’s an important aspect of how our brains operate at work here. Our brains are designed to help us survive. It’s a hard wired evolutionary instinct. What that means from a trauma aspect is that the brain often finds a way to cope with trauma, whether it sudden or long-lasting trauma. That coping mechanism, often defined in the most simple terms is flight or fight. I’m not a fan of either term because experience tells me it’s not simple to know if your brain is “flighting or fighting”. You may not physically run away and you may not physically fight back. Trauma response just isn’t that simple, it’s hard for me to understand, even years later what my brain was doing and somethings I don’t recall at all or come to me in the most obscure or totally in-opportune times. I will say that what I’m about to share and most of what I share is a form of flight and this flight always makes me an unreliable narrator. Those closest to me have heard me say, likely way too many times, I do not trust myself as the narrator of my own story. That’s a sad and scary place to be. I do think my brain remembers thing in ways that make them easier for me to deal with. Repression has a way of creating a false sense of yourself and the way things were. That’s why we feel tricked as an audience. We feel we weren’t showed what really happened. The truth is we are shown almost always what some observer think happened from their perspective. We can often collect similar observations and determine a set of common descriptions and then say, we now have the factual actual occurrence but it’s still really not what happened. If we had some omnipotent recording system that was unfiltered and unedited by any human then we could potentially see what actually happened all the time but I guarantee at least one person would still pipe up and say, “that’s not what happened at all”. Anyway, as you’re reading and if you see anything that you do think happened some other way, I want to hear from you. Not so we can argue because as I just explained, I’m more likely to believe YOU than my own memories, but so we can share how we both experienced that same event.

Ok. So recently I’ve been doing some pretty deep work on managing my response to trauma. After 20+ years of therapy, I feel like an expert patient who’s finally having an “aha” moment. That moment isn’t refreshing or relieving, it can take weeks of introspection on a tiny realization for me to get anywhere with it but I guess, unluckily, I have lots of time for isolated introspection. This is another important point for my long term friends who know I have a deep fear of alone time. Not the few hours at the end of a work day alone time, but weeks or months of mostly alone time. These kinds of alone time usually send me on the dark and anxious paths of my mind and I start doing whatever I can to avoid the paths and avoid the dark, mainly because when I allow myself to live in the dark and anxiety- very bad things happen. I know that sounds ominous, but it will make much more sense later. For now, just know that being alone means putting my sanity at risk. This year made being alone unavoidable and finding a peace with that, a way to introspect, to accept my darkness and then force myself to sit with it has been my challenge.

Fairly recently, friends have been sending me podcasts, books, meditations, TedTalks, and even virtual webinar recordings focused on mental health issues. I love all of it to be frank. Not the material itself, sometimes it doesn’t really speak to me, but I love that I have that community, one that I know I fostered just by being vulnerable and shining a light on my own struggles with mental health. I wasn’t always receptive to these suggestions- I felt criticized and judged- like am I that crazy people think I need more help? Eventually I realized it’s love. Someone is sharing something that helped them and frankly that’s what inspires this essay on an essay too. This helped me. You may not write but maybe just reading it will help you.

The first line of my early 2010 essay which isn’t dated until page 3 (this tells me I wrote an entire section much earlier based on content, then came back and finished it) was “why me”. This is a common thought pattern well established by a seeming luck to be unlucky. There’s years that I’ve said, maybe next year so much bad shit won’t happen, most of the time maybe slightly less shit happens but I’m likely to remember it all as constant shit anyway. I’ll remember a slightly more nostalgic time frame, only to remember, oh but XYZ happened too, so that wasn’t a good time. The difference in 2020 is everyone had a “shit what else could happen” year so it was the first time I didn’t feel so alone in that. There’s an exhaustion in one crazy whatever happening after another that I felt less alone in. That’s doesn’t mean I’m happy we are all sharing in a long term trauma event but it is less isolating to know we are in this together, even if our individual situations are different.

Any hoo, back to why me. The why me of 2009 to 2012 was cervical and ovarian cancer. The why me was quitting my MBA program. The why me was my marriage falling apart. The why me was finally, my career falling apart too. It’s still hard to talk about how I felt during that time. Most of the time, I felt nothing. In fact, I say that over and over in my 2010 essay. I felt nothing for no one, not even myself. However I know some of my friends from that time, just read that line and thought, no you were all over the place, all the time, emotionally. I felt nothing. It was like I was a walking emotion that didn’t actually exist inside. Let’s call it dissociation or flight from trauma. Things were happening, I was a walking talking person but my soul, my sense of self, were somewhere else. Without even knowing it, I glassed myself off from what was happening and didn’t feel genuine pain or sadness. I did, but really I didn’t, I really wasn’t there for it. I couldn’t today tell you what my body experienced as I just remember the raw emotional expressions but again I didn’t actually feel them. I know if you were there, you remember them too.

I spend several paragraphs talking about how much I’m hiding from everyone and how afraid I am I’ll be found out ( yup! That happened). What’s odd is I’m not sad that I’m clearly isolating myself. I see that so clearly now. My fear of rejection and abandonment created a situation where I was extremely isolated and feeling- rejected and abandoned. I read all the things I thought were good ideas in order to keep up appearances but also know all that was a total failure pretty much the entire time. I had many epic public breakdowns. There was no charade at all. I didn’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes . Absolutely zero people thought I had my shit together. So why? Why did I hide so much that could’ve helped me get through this?!? Why did I lie to my friends and family? Why did I not ask for help, and in lots of cases, refuse help only to drop my ignored broken life shit on someone else to manage? Because I was lying to myself too.

I’ve always believed there’s a “most people” and excluded myself from this category. Not because I think I’m some extraordinary soul, just the opposite. I often think “most people” have this shit figured out and wouldn’t act this way. Well, maybe but probably not. How someone reacts to any given set of circumstances is related to how many and how bad the circumstances they’ve managed have been. What if nothing else bad had happened in my life and I had just gotten cancer in my early thirties? Hard to say how I would have managed if that had been my only big bad thing ever. Maybe I still wouldn’t have coped because I had no learned coping skills. It wasn’t my first rodeo with a big bad thing though and the coping skills I had “learned” were super effective for short term, violent trauma, but completely ineffective for long term can’t check out from life trauma. No one tells you that, by the way, no one tells you that your coping skills suck. When we hear about trauma we are so focused on outcome we rarely talk about the way there.

Page 3 of my essay is pretty bad. I’ll likely edit it out of memoir existence but a few things are clear. In January 2010 I wrote, I can’t do this anymore. Until I read this I recalled my last suicidal expression as being in 2003. This makes me doubt my narration that I only expressed suicidal depression during isolated timeframes. I want to say it’s because I didn’t want to remember I was there in 2010. The other thing very clear on page 3 is desperation. Knowing that I spent another two years in that state isn’t comforting. I wrote, “I feel desperate for love. Desperate for understanding. Desperate for stability.” Just the other day,I said that again, I just want to be and feel normal. But normal is subjective to your perspective and what I’m living could be a good and acceptable life for a good number of people. I haven’t yet learned flipping that mindset. That sense that, god damn it, this isn’t normal. If anything, social media has only made that comparison syndrome worse. The glossy beings we all present on FB and Instagram all have little bearing to our inner selves. I can never win in a comparison to a manufactured brand of someone else. That doesn’t mean I think you’re fake. It means I know I sanitize my life for public consumption so I’m fairly certain others do too. This comparison takes you out of what you’re living and into what you could or should be, so it’s also an escape, a flight from what is happening.

By page four, I’m planning, I’m planning on burning every bridge, breaking every perceived enemy, and leaving my life in ruins. I’m fantasizing about how everyone will regret how they treated me. I remember this feeling. It’s probably the only one I connect with from that time-rage. I was grieving so many things in that space but not working through it. I clearly am mad because I wrote, “fuck this life. I’m sick of all of it.” At this date, I knew I needed a plan to try to get out of everything. It felt like an emergency. I spent the next two years making every bad decision I possibly could. It’s like when there’s a fire but there’s nothing but lighter fluid, so you desperately use lighter fluid. There’s lots of things I know are in another essay for another time about 2010-2012. We have time to talk about self-hatred taking the form of destructive behavior. It’s clear my self hate was already at play here,

And this is the part I wanted to share, I forgot about this until it came up in therapy the other day. Late 2009 I had an abortion. I didn’t forget that I had it, but I told myself, and likely you a different story. A story that felt safe and relatable but I so convinced myself of that story that I knew I was lying when I talked about it to my counselor. The story is there though written on page 5 and it’s most likely the truest one. When I got pregnant, I wasn’t thinking about my diagnosis. If I told you at all that I was pregnant and lost it, I likely said it just like that. I was pregnant and miscarried. However, none of that was the truth. The truth is, I knew my marriage was over. I knew I hated my husband and our fake shared life. I knew I didn’t want to deal with him for the next 18 plus years of my life. I was also plagued by the knowledge I was too fucked up to be a good mom to anyone, likely ever. I was 100% convinced I should never have kids. In a fit of rage, I scheduled to get the pill and then purposefully planned it when my husband was out of town, I went through that by myself as some sort of sick means of punishment for all the bad things I felt I was. So here I am writing this 2010 essay and I write, “I’m a horrible human being that has no soul”. It’s important that you know, reader, I didn’t tell my husband. There’s a part of me that believes I saved that information to tell him at the moment it would most hurt (yes, I did that). That kind of rage, I don’t wish on anyone, ever.

So let’s talk about rage and trauma before I wrap this up and you all walk away disappointed at the resilient image you may have had of me until today. I don’t know if rage is fight or flight. Rage feels like an escape to me, but I was also fighting for my life. Everything felt so out of control and “happening to me”. I felt desperate to escape that and BE IN CONTROL. The lies we tell ourselves are to survive. We tell ourselves this isn’t so bad, it justified, or it will pass. What if I hadn’t lied? I will live with that regret for a long time, along with questioning my basic human decency. I am choosing to not excuse my behavior beyond saying, if you’ve ever felt that scared, desperate and full of rage you may see the desire to lash out or the desire to run away as explainable.

This last little bit may redeem me, so hold tight. You may wonder why talk about all this now. Because then is now. Not on that level of crazy messed up shit, but that girl/woman is still inside me. We are all living through a trauma, a shared one. Many of us read that sentence and think, that’s so melodramatic. It’s really not. If any of the following things happened to you in 2020 raise your hand:

Job loss/furlough/early retirement

Relationship status change

Relocation

Financial hit from work/ revenue loss

Loss of social circle

Loss of a friend/family/significant other

Severe illness/surgery/ injury/medical issues

Isolation

Not being able to go to restaurants/gyms/ or other spaces that give you joy

Anxiety over job/finances

Fear of a pandemic

Difficulty in relationships due to politics, religion or pandemic

Anxiety about the future

Cancelled/rescheduled/reimagined vacations, celebrations, holidays, life events

We really are in this together. We’ve all experienced some level of change and trauma this year. What if we chose compassion? What if I told you we can learn from our trauma? That resilience isn’t just about where I am now and everything I’ve accomplished. What if the trauma story arch finished with me, saying to you, it may take a long time to get better? What if I shared my stories with more people and told them that there’s a more successful way then just getting through and overachieving to compensate for trauma? Do you have to have some major come back to be the hero of your own story? Trauma healing is a journey. Some things take longer than others, some things you cope and have to deal with the outcome later, but it’s not punishment. It didn’t take me 10 years to rebuild my life because I deserve punishment. It took me ten years to rebuild my life because I had and still have other traumas that have come along and forced me to confront my coping mechanism. There’s no hiding and running away from me, I’m always there, getting in my own way. It’s not enough to live, I want to thrive. Thriving is about accepting and forgiving all those younger selves who did the best they could with the tool set I allowed them to have. If you give a young child a new tool, do they know how to use it or do they poke at it and bang it on things trying to figure out it’s purpose? You parents know the answer. Children are innately curious but depending on age, also short of patience. They will move on to something else if they see no use to a tool. What’s required is instruction. We learn to cope by watching those around us and I’m gonna be frank and say American culture sucks at coping. Again, it’s not about the outcome! The journey. The journey. Everyday I get up and I continue the journey. I get pissed off, saddened by setbacks, I fall into old familiar brain paths, I vent, I introspect,I forgive myself and keep trying. Stick with me, we’ll get stronger.

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graciecatfamilyband · 7 years ago

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I truly hate to put myself at risk of the label of “shit-starter”, but I couldn’t disagree more about the way forward- possibly because I think we have very different perceptions of what has occurred in the recent past. In general I prefer working things out via PM but this whole thing has been dragged out pretty publicly and I feel I must respond in-kind, especially since I don’t think I’m the only person feeling the way I do. And if other people get to put themselves and their thoughts out there like this, I do too.

It’s ironic to me, because on Sunday night I went to bed deliberately refraining from posting something I thought was innocuous but that I feared could be taken as inflammatory regarding an issue that was dying down. I awoke Monday to see that other people had no such hesitance, and some of them felt very comfortable directing their statements at me. I mention this because I am continually finding no benefit to staying silent except perhaps avoiding labels like attention-seeker or shit-starter (literally among my top 5 fears lol), but I am also finding that people will think what they will think, and I have very little control over it. I still feel some views are more welcome here than others, and that some people can behave far less charitably without any consequences while others have to crawl on the ground to make sure their statements aren’t taken the wrong way and then are still expected to apologize when people willfully twist them. When I point this out, I’m told that I can’t understand because I have only been a fan for 20 years, and that’s not long enough to understand people’s attachments and emotions and reactions. It feels like my behavior is something I’m held accountable for under a critical lens, while older fans cannot help themselves and should be given a pass. Older fans will be older fans, as it were, despite the vast majority of them being kind and affable people who don’t engage in this kind of pearl-clutching behavior when other people have different opinions. And when this dynamic finally makes me feel so bad that I speak up, thats suddenly the time for us all to unite, pretend no individuals bear responsibility or that everyone has engaged in the same behavior- and to create rules about what we can and can’t talk about! Which is frankly in my view what started everything in the first place- some headcanons being seen as outright offensive, off the table, inherently diminishing of our favorite pairing, or indicative of not being a real fan. To me this has never been about which headcanon is “right” or “best”- obviously all headcanons are valid!- but about which headcanons are allowed a voice. To me, “I don’t give a fuck” therefore misses the point (I hope very, very few people actually give a fuck); it becomes downright baffling when it is used to justify telling someone to STFU about their own headcanons or thoughts. This began far off Tumblr but has finally reached our shores and I know the bad feelings from elsewhere are one of the things that have poisoned and amped up this discussion beyond what seems (or is) reasonable. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the things that have occurred here that have in my view deliberately fanned those flames.

I am still raw, and hurting, as you see. That hurt is not the kind of thing I usually share publicly or even privately outside of my closest friends. Creating that post about how I was feeling was exceedingly difficult for me. But I was frustrated with the sense that I should suck up everything and be fine while other people get to play the victim, and genuinely shook by the idea that perhaps many, many people felt I was violating our norms of respectful fandom behavior in pretty drastic and mean-spirited ways. Yet other people who, in my view, have clearly been treated the same way and who did not make public posts have been left with nothing but the comfort of anons who also recognize shitty behavior when they see it. They’re left just as alone and unsupported as they were before because they didn’t want to appear to be calling anyone out. Where are their hugs? Heck, where are their apologies?

Shit got stirred, and I don’t particularly feel like swallowing it.

Of course no one should call out individual fics or fic writers during fandom discussions, and I believe our community largely does a good job of this. Not a perfect job, certainly a job that could be improved upon. Based on my personal observations, I think where we do struggle is in issues of word choice or squicks as much as anything related to anything socio-political (though obviously there is a real feeling about the latter being a major struggle at the moment). Major issues have come up in the past related to what baby names Han/Leia writers “should” or “should not” use or what canon they “should” or “should not” be writing in that have not been very empathetic in nature. I think for the most part people have been largely respectful on this issue though. I think the sense of tension has been related to real or perceived disagreement even when that disagreement has been polite, as disagreement is always uncomfortable for people by nature as a potential threat to harmony, and I think a very small number of few people have been very willing to fan those flames either within themselves or publicly, largely going off on interpretations and assumptions that are in fact wrong.

I take issue with the idea that no one can speak generally about fic because they must be talking about one of ten or twenty “current” writers, as there are far more people publishing Han/Leia stories at present than that, and a backlog of fic that is actively read and generally treasured (some of which admittedly ages better than others).

Unity is great but I don’t think my behavior is the problem and I don’t think those who have, in my view, made this discourse so toxic have made serious amends or see themselves as anything but victims. The current calls to banish certain kinds of discussion from fandom seem to me to be misguided; “apolitical” views really just mean the status quo- which is very much political. The reality is when you write any fic that goes against this grain (and I am expanding way beyond virginity discourse here), you do get pushback, and criticism, including from the same people who I’ve seen saying that we should never engage critically with a trope or a trend- yet who are very comfortable publicly saying that fics that involve certain real-life elements that are underrepresented in fic are “politicized” and “agenda”-filled! And how that’s off-putting thing to see in fandom!!! And people should just stick to telling stories without dragging that stuff into it! (And again I want to stress I’m expanding far beyond virginity discourse here.) Leia making one decision is “apolitical”; Leia making the opposite decision is “political,” regardless of how realistic that decision might be, and you’ll be publicly taken to task for that. I know you’d probably agree that’s wrong and I would too, but it’s the reality. To say we can’t talk about “the political” really means that we can’t talk about that environment in fandom in which certain views are actually uncommon or marginalized and people’s diverse reactions (some positive, some neutral, some vehemently opposed) to their being written in fic. It means we cant say, “it was so nice to see this done so incredibly differently or to see a character make this choice for once.” It means we can’t talk about why we prefer our own headcanons when they go against the status quo, or talk about our own controversial choices in stories- simply because no matter how respectful we are, someone who wrote a different story in which different choices were made might take it upon themselves to get hurt. That is… beyond frustrating to me.

I think it’s also worth noting that some of these same people seem all too happy to talk about the politics of pairing Rey with her kidnapper and torturer, or of Finn’s erasure from fandom, or of fetishistic portrayals of gay relationships, or of minor white male characters being more popular than leads of color and/or female leads. Real issues! That deserve discussion! I understand wanting Han and Leia to be sacred because they’re so special- they are incredibly special to me- but they aren’t inherently different from any other character or fandom issue.

At the end of the day, refraining from certain topics out of fear of being bullied and refraining from certain topics because engaging in them puts you at risk of being called a bully seem like the same thing to me. I really can’t see it another way, and believe me I’ve tried. I would rather see us united in our willingness to extend olive branches and engage with each other politely than in an agreement not to talk about certain subjects. The latter seems to me to be both superficial and incredibly unevenly applied. I intend to continue to conduct myself the way I have always done, which includes openness to respectful discussion. I love discussion, I’m here for discussion, including public discussion that remains within respectful bounds. This is a great way to connect with people I might not otherwise connect with, including with those who don’t have a tumblr for fear of how they might be treated here or for any other reasons. It’s a great way to exercise parts of my brain that I don’t get to use in other facets of my life. While I am not perfect and I do make mistakes, I don’t believe I have violated those bounds of respect in any of my recent discussions. Others may disagree, and they are free to disengage from me or my blog as they will. Those who don’t wish to see such discussions in general may unfollow me or blacklist the discourse tag (and I will do my best to tag)- or simply not read those posts. I will also never stop reading many different iterations of these characters rendered in many different colors and shades and choices, or encouraging authors to write what’s meaningful and true to them, or to just write, period- getting something, anything on the page is a huge victory for a new (heck, for any) writer, and one I would never seek to diminish.

I look forward to continuing to share fandom spaces with those of you who wish to share them with me in a courteous and kind way, and I promise to do my very best to extend the same to you. I am open to PMs about this but I am incredibly stressed out and also sick and may not be able to respond to them in a timely manner. The support that I have received has been truly appreciated.

#fandom drama #discourse I guess

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xb-squaredx · 8 years ago

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review: The Joy of Discovery

By now, most everyone has heard about how amazing Breath of the Wild is, if all the acclaim and 10/10 reviews are any indication. I’m not exactly striking while the iron is hot or likely telling anyone anything they don’t already know, but I’d like to take this review to express my thoughts on this wonderful game all the same. Most of my reviews are somewhat…clinical, I feel. I dissect something piece by piece. The story was good, the gameplay was bad. This is why it was bad, etc. But for Breath of the Wild, I want to try something a little different and talk more about how I felt during the game than focus on all of the stuff in the game. Partially because there is a LOT of stuff in this game and we’d be here all day if I went at it like I usually do, and partially because this game fills me with the kind of joy and wonder that I haven’t felt from a game in a very, very long time.

This game is many things: it is a massive 3D open world game, a game that deliberately defies the conventions of the Zelda games that came before it, and a game that emphases the joy of discovery. Constantly throughout the game I am seeing and learning new things about the world and rules that govern it. Cries of “I could do that?!” have been constant in my time with the game, alongside excited (and sometimes terrified) squeals of “What’s happening?!” Breath of the Wild is a game that is constantly giving, secrets abundant. In the past, open-world games have been called “sandbox games,” games that drop you off in a big ol’ sandbox to play and shape the world around you, and that’s a great way to describe Hyrule this time around. Ravaged by a being known as the Calamity Ganon for 100 years, by the time Link gets around to saving the day, much of Hyrule has been largely overtaken by wilderness, not to mention monsters. It truly is a vast world, larger than several other high-profile open-world games out there, but Breath of the Wild doesn’t just go for scope; it goes the extra mile to make it a world worth exploring.

From forests of many different shapes and sizes, to snowy mountains, volcanos and deserts, there’s plenty of variety within the vast reaches of the game. After what amounts to the tutorial section is completed and players are given all of the tools needed to survive the rest of the game, you are given the option to go wherever you want. It’s even possible to make a beeline straight for the final boss, but good luck beating it that way. Link starts with nothing, in his underwear at that, and from moment one you’re basically on your own. Hyrule is treacherous and while it’s true you can go anywhere…if you aren’t prepared for what lies ahead, you’ll end up dead.

Breath of the Wild is unquestionably the hardest 3D Zelda yet, and that’s due in no small-part to the fact that everywhere you go, there’s something trying to kill you. From the many enemies you fight, to nature itself, it’s quite dangerous to go alone. I learned the hard way that enemies don’t just move fast and hit hard, but they’re also relatively smart too. My first encounter in the game with the common Bokoblin enemies didn’t go nearly as smoothly as I planned. Armed with fragile tree branches, I came upon a group of three. I successfully snuck up on them and attacked, but was only able to dispatch one before my weapons broke. I was able to snag one of their bows, only to discover I hadn’t gotten any arrows. My options were limited, so I ran away. I ran away from what amounted to the basic Goomba of the game. Constantly throughout my adventure, the enemies have proven clever and I’ve had to step up my game to best them. Think you can cheese them out by bombing them when they give chase? They’ll kick your bombs back at you so they blow up in your face. Fighting near a campfire, they might light their wooden weapons on fire for an extra edge. Should you catch an enemy unarmed, they’ll make for the closest weapon they can find and use it to good effect, and quite a few will improvise if no weapon is available. And so it becomes apparent that good tactics win the day.

When approaching any given enemy encounter, there are tons of ways to deal with them. I could just run in guns blazing and beat them all down, or I could pick them off from afar with my bow. Better yet, use a well-placed Fire Arrow on some exploding barrels to take them all out at once. Or I could light the dry grass on fire and let that do the work for me. Or push a rock down a cliff and have it stomp them flat. And on top of all of that, I could choose to be stealthy and run in, steal their weapons (and maybe the treasure they’re guarding) and run off before they even know I’m there. Keep in mind there’s likely ten other ways I could tackle the same scenario I’m not even thinking of, and that should give you an indication of how open-ended a lot of this game is.

This extends to exploration too. I could run through the entire game, or I could tame a wild horse (among other things) to ride through areas a bit faster. You can sail on rafts, or use your Cryosis rune to make ice pillars to cross watery sections. You can climb on almost anything in the game, provided you have enough stamina and then use a Paraglider to get down safely or cover large gaps in no-time. The world design is top-notch in this regard, giving you plenty of ways to get to most locations, and giving you plenty of locations to visit. At almost any random point on the map if you pan around, you’ll likely find something of interest to travel to, and you’ll likely get lost when something else catches your attention on the way to your destination. Breath of the Wild is the kind of game where it’s FUN to be lost, to let yourself be distracted. Some of my favorite moments in the game have often been on the journey to places, and not where I ended up.

When journeying to an important plot-related city, I was suddenly in a small bit of forest and unknowingly in the midst of an enemy camp. A camp filled with archers armed with Shock Arrows. From the darkness streaks of lighting came at me from all directions. Too many archers to count, no way to know where was safe. I could only run and hope for the best. Then there’s the time my horse and I tag-teamed an enemy in a moment that can probably never be replicated. Or the time I took on a skeleton monster while riding a bear. That was on fire. This is the kind of game you can get together with friends and gush about, trading stories. It might just be the only way you can find out about some of the more nuanced systems in the game or learn of an NPC’s existence. Having a game that doesn’t just completely bare itself is kind of…refreshing, as I feel a sense of elation every time I learn something new.

Breath of the Wild seems to be designed with the approach of a Zelda game, but following real-world rules when possible. So physics and common sense rule all, and mastering those rules lets you do some cool or funny things. Most of the time. In superhot areas, for example, you can just drop food on the ground and watch it get cooked. Or discover that a Bomb Arrow instantly detonates in your face when it’s that hot. You can use your Magnesis rune to control metal objects in a variety of ways, like using a metal door that’s been ripped off its hinges and make a walkway to a treasure chest…or use the rune to bring the metal treasure chest to you. If you can imagine it, often the game will let you do it. This leads to some comical workarounds, like making makeshift catapults, and in a lot of cases you can completely trivialize puzzles, combat challenges or platforming if you’re smart enough.

Speaking of puzzles, they’re a big part of the Zelda series, and some might be wondering how this game handles them. Outside of the few major story missions (which are still optional anyway!), traditional dungeons are largely absent in favor of Shrine Trials. Scattered all across Hyrule are shrines that house various trials within. Rarely you’ll find a combat trial or, rarer still, shrines that give you rewards straightaway, since getting to said shrine was enough of a challenge in the first place. Most of the time, though, they’re bite-sized dungeons, usually one or two rooms dedicated to a single puzzle or theme. As with the rest of the game, you can approach most of these puzzles in any variety of ways, some of which might not be intentional but were left in the game anyway. With more than 100 of these things, some aren’t all that fun or memorable, but they usually make me feel clever when I’m done with them, so they’re alright in my book. Acting as fast-travel points doesn’t hurt either, and you don’t even have to SOLVE them to warp to them!

Combat is a fairly chaotic experience, quite messy at times, but in a good way. You often have to adapt, and even when you think you have a plan, it can go awry, so you best be flexible. Link can use a bunch of different weapons now: from swords to spears, hammers, axes and more, with the bow and arrow being incredibly useful. You can find weapons anywhere; some are in chests, others can be found out in the open, or swiped from enemies. Generally, any weapon an enemy can use, Link can use (and vice-versa, so watch out!) But don’t get too attached, as they all break eventually. The weapon durability in this game is pretty much love-it-or-hate-it. For what it’s worth, I think as a concept it’s fine, but can be a tad extreme. It makes every weapon feel brittle, and often I dislike getting weapons from a treasure chest as a result. Coupled with this, you don’t have a lot of inventory space for weapons at the start and though that can be GREATLY alleviated later on, the actual process of upping that inventory can be kind of tedious and hard to figure out…or rather, hard to find the NPC that’ll let you do it. But the game, again, has weapons EVERYWHERE, so I never had to worry about being left defenseless. The Bayonetta-esque Flurry Rush attack is great, a reward for dodging at the perfect moment, and add to that a satisfying parry and combat’s solid.

Exploration makes or breaks these types of games, but Breath of the Wild largely nails it. I already mentioned how the game’s world is designed to almost always point you in the direction of something worthwhile, but it bears repeating. From interesting locales, to treasure, to enemy camps, there’s always something going on. At times, I’ll even stumble upon NPCs out and about when they get attacked by a pack of monsters, so I’ll divert from my route and help them out. There are a variety of sidequests you can engage in, some even unlocking shrines that are otherwise hidden. The areas you visit often have such life in them, so many small details coming together to create a genuine world that I loved exploring and being a part of it all.

That attention to detail shows real craftsmanship at work with Breath of the Wild, and those little touches often impressed me, endearing the game to me even more. From the fact that Link stubs his toe if he kicks open a chest without any boots on, to the NPCs having set routines you can follow them on, there seems to be no limit to the variables in this game. This extends to the weather too, and the time of day. At times it can be kind of annoying though. During rain storms, surfaces become slick and almost impossible to climb. In a game where climbing is pretty much THE way to get around places, sometimes the only way, it really is frustrating when some rain rolls in, usually right when you don’t want it to. Thunderstorms, while rarer, are also causes for concern. Lighting will strike down at times, and if you have on anything metal, you’ll get shocked too…and it’ll hurt. It’s not so bad if you have some wooden weapons or non-metallic armor to switch to, but there have been times I’ve had to pretty much become defenseless due to the rain and lightning. You CAN wait it out, or go a step further and make a campfire to pass the time, but that isn’t always ideal and leads to frustration more often than I’d like.

On the subject of story…it’s kind of a mixed bag. What’s there is genuinely interesting; we’re experiencing a Zelda story dealing with the fallout of the bad guy winning, for one. The characters you meet during the key quests of the game are often interesting and some (including a certain prince) have already endeared themselves to fans. And yet, there’s barely anything to them. This largely comes down to the game mostly giving you breadcrumbs of story, strewn about various landscapes that will trigger a memory in Link, and a cutscene for the player. These memories are the primary way we see Zelda fleshed out as a character, and her interactions with Link are great, right up there with Skyward Sword’s own Zelda (my personal favorite at the moment). And yet, there’s not a lot there to work with unfortunately, which makes it all the more confusing why THIS is the Zelda game that decided to use voice acting. I’ve seen a lot of people bashing the English voices, but I honestly don’t understand the complaints; the delivery seems fine and the voices are fitting enough….my sole complaint is that there’s so LITTLE of it. A character will be introduced, speak a few lines of dialogue…and then go back to the text boxes of old. Major cutscenes get spoken lines, but again, they are few and far between. Considering you can skip pretty much ALL of this if you really wanted to though, I can see why there wasn’t that big of an emphasis on it, but it’s still a shame.

And lastly, as fun as the game is, as much as its game world design is a triumph and the way it rewards creativity is to be commended…it does have some technical issues. No matter which version you play, there are some frame drops here or there, especially in more hectic scenarios. For the record, I’m playing the Wii U version and from what I’ve read, the Switch version isn’t all that different, so if you’re desperate to play it and don’t want to get a new console to do so, you’ll be fine in the Wii U’s corner. That said, the fact that the game can stutter and freeze whenever I fight a Moblin is worrying, as is the 10-15 second loading it has to do if you ever hit the HOME button and go back again.

With all of this said…and I said a lot more than I intended to…these flaws don’t really bother me much. The game’s high points are so high, these come off more like nitpicks than general problems. That won’t necessarily hold true for others (like say….a certain Mr. Sterling), but that’s the case with me. I won’t ever call it some flawless masterpiece; the durability issues, the annoying weather and the fact that you can’t pet the adorable dogs ARE flaws…but they’re miniscule imperfections in a beautiful gem of a game as far as I’m concerned. My time with Breath of the Wild has been…magical. A breath of fresh air (I just HAD to say it!) for the Zelda series and for games as a whole. Few games have gripped me as tightly as this one has. It’s the kind of game you can play all day and forget to eat, a weekend gone in the blink of an eye. As it stands, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a fantastic game I can’t recommend enough. Just like A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time before it, I have a feeling it’ll be fondly remembered for years to come and will likely heavily influence the Zelda games that come after.

Until next time.

-B

#xb-squaredx #blog #review #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #link #zelda #ganon #wii u #nintendo switch

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