#I think her arc this season will be about regaining that power and agency - but not in the way she had it before

[probably-a-human-being]

On a more important note, SHE LIVES

[theerurishipper]

How would you like to see Adrien learn the truth? What would the consequences be?

Hi!

I honestly haven't thought about it. I think ideally that Marinette and/or everyone else who is hiding the secret should come clean to him. If it does end up happening, it should be in a way that prioritizes Adrien's perspective first and foremost. So none of this "Marinette having a breakdown about having to keep this a secret and Adrien finding out this way" business (cough cough Strikeback) that this show loves to pull. That would place more focus on Marinette's pain than Adrien's valid hurt, because Adrien would once again put aside his own feelings to comfort her. Marinette should be telling Adrien because she's realized that she shouldn't keep secrets like this from him and that she should respect his autonomy, and she should make that choice with thought and care, not because she's having a breakdown about it and just blurts it out without thinking because she can't take it anymore.

Marinette has the tendency to think she knows best and to make things about herself (not in a malicious way, it doesn't make her a bad person). Like when she confessed to her mistakes in Strikeback, it was less because she was apologizing to Chat Noir and more that she was berating herself. The same thing happened in Kuro Neko, where she was more focused on her failure as Guardian than Chat Noir. And like in Illusion, when Gabriel pulled Adrien out of school and Marinette's first thought was about how she is a curse for Adrien and that she should stay away from him rather than about Adrien himself (again I want to make it clear that this doesn't make her a bad person, it's a realistic flaw). And I don't want any of that here. She and the narrative should focus on Adrien first and foremost. That would be the character development that she needs, to learn to listen to the people around her, and maybe this time it will stick.

I don't want any of this "Lila tells Adrien" business either even though I know that if the show does deal with this, the Lila thing is how it will go down because it would make Adrien's problems all about Marinette once more. And I don't want Adrien's right as a human being to be just another part of the Lila-Marinette feud that is used to cause conflict between them. If Adrien finds out, the focus should be on him.

As for the consequences, I've said before that I think Marinette and Adrien should break up, and I still stand by that. Canon has proved that Marinette and Adrien can't heal and grow if they are around each other. Marinette will just continue making decisions for him because she wants to protect him, and Adrien will just continue to forgive her over and over because he puts his feelings last. I think that growth for Adrien would be to realize that he doesn't need to accept poor treatment from anyone, even if they love him, and that his feelings of hurt matter and deserve to be validated. I think that him wanting space from Marinette and everyone else in his life who lied to him and not forgiving them instantly would be the best way for him to regain control of his agency. Because what they are doing to him honestly isn't something that can be forgiven immediately, not without losing so much trust in them. And their actions are actively preventing Adrien from healing, and I think he needs to leave so that he can heal before he tries to rebuild and heal his relationships. And this is also time which Marinette can spend healing from her traumas so that she and Adrien can mend their relationship.

That's what I think, anyway. In terms of plot, my ideal Season 6 would have Adrien go back in time, beat Gabriel's ass, use his powers of destruction to sever the link between him and his amok thereby making him a real boy, and smashing the Peacock Miraculous to bits. But that's just wishful thinking. The other thing I'm thinking is that it doesn't matter what happens after, because Adrien's arc was ruined the moment he was denied the opportunity to face Gabriel, and that I think it's bad writing that his arc about breaking free of an abusive father is reduced to being a conflict between him and his girlfriend, because Adrien doesn't get to have anything that doesn't involve Marinette in some shape or form, because he doesn't exist as his own character so much as he exists to meet Marinette's needs.

Anyway, I hope that answers your question anon. Thank you for your ask!

[sailormoonandme]

Usagi’s Evolution as a Healer Goddess

The other day I saw a post discussing the evolution of Usagi’s fuku and it occurred to me how Eternal Sailor Moon’s costume was her first Senshi uniform to ditch the tiara. 

That in turn led me to consider how that kind of makes Usagi weaker as it removes a very useful weapon for her. After all, if you include the movies, Usagi uses some variant of Moon Tiara Action in practically every season prior to Stars.

However, dwelling more upon it I realized how this tiny change was all too appropriate for Usagi’s character development.

Firstly, by supplanting the Tiara with her Moon planetary symbol, Eternal Sailor Moon more closely resembles both Queen Serenity, her own Princess Serenity form and her future self as Neo-Queen Serenity. 

Since all three are objectively more powerful than Usagi typically is as Sailor Moon I think the change emphasises how she has ‘levelled up’ in her Eternal form. When combined with the angel wings, Eternal Sailor Moon shifts Usagi visually closer to her future self as NQS, which in the anime is implied to be her most powerful incarnation.* It is almost as though the visual was communicating that the Divine Miracle Magic that she’d previously drawn upon as Princess Serenity in Classic-SuperS had now become ingrained in her standard Senshi form and thus was more accessible to her. 

It was in thinking of her previous efforts as Princess Serenity that I inevitably recalled her duel with Metalia/Beryl in episode 46 and realized that Eternal Sailor Moon was the first time since Classic that Usagi’s default attack was a healing  technique not a destructive one. 

Moon Healing Escalation was Usagi’s first healing technique but until Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss (and it’s later upgrade, Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss) it was also her only healing technique. 

Between regaining healing techniques and ditching her tiara/other destructive attacks/weapons, I think this represents her subtle growth in both her power and status. After all, it is a sad fact of life that it is easier to destroy something rather than fix it, thereby making the latter far more impressive.**

This skewing towards healing power rather than destructive power is also (arguably) thematically appropriate given the nature of Sailor Moon as a female power fantasy as (rightly or wrongly) the act of healing is typically coded as feminine. 

We can even take this further by examining things from the ‘opposite direction’ as it were.

Consider that in the climactic final episodes of Sailor Stars, Eternal Sailor Moon’s healing technique actually fails her when used against Galaxia. In later episodes, upon adopting her Princess Serenity form (complete with larger and more obviously angelic wings), she uses a sword to duel Galaxia.

Obviously a sword is, at least predominantly, an offensive weapon and can therefore be viewed as symbolic of aggression; let’s leave any Freudian or gendered interpretations alone for today. Her use of the sword is highly uncharacteristic (in the anime). Even her explicitly offencive weapons (like the Cutie Moon Rod or Spiral Moon Heart Rod) weren’t as clearly aggressive nor obviously violent. Desperate times calling for desperate measures? Perhaps, but we might also speculate it was her subconsciously reacting to grief. Not only can grief make you act in ways you wouldn’t normally, but a sword after all was a weapon wielded by her lover in his Prince Endymion incarnation. Her lover whom Usagi had just learned Galaxia had murdered. In other words, amidst her grief she reacts by going too hard in the other direction after healing her enemy proves ineffective.

However, when all is said and done the sword fails her.*** Ultimately is simply escalates the conflict by prompting Galaxia to become Chaos Galaxia and thereby make Usagi’s chances of victory all the slimmer. If we wished to stretch things, you could perhaps say that this is a commentary about how war and violence ultimately begets yet more war and violence.

Even if that is an over extrapolation though, it still served to emphasis the point that a sword is not befitting of Usagi, that she was doomed to lose if she continued to battle with destroying her enemy as the end goal.

In fact, her road to real victory begins when she not doesn’t attack Galaxia but makes it easier for herself to be attacked. In the end, Usagi doesn’t confront her most powerful enemy as the God-Queen of the future, the demi-goddess Princess of the distant past, the sailor-suited soldier of love and justice in the present, nor even a humble school girl.

She does it by literally stripping herself of all those things, of stripping herself of everything in fact.

Her weapons? Gone.

Her other items, like her Tiare? Gone.

Her comrades? Gone, and they’d be powerless against Galaxia anyway.

And finally, even her clothes? Gone!

Beyond the Silver Crystal (an outward visualization of her heart/soul) and the angel wings (symbolic of her role as a saviour) she is completely (but tastefully) naked.

Usagi visually and quite literally is more vulnerable  than she’s ever been, even more so than on her first night as Sailor Moon.

And yet this is Usagi at her actual most powerful.

It is her distilled to her absolute essence as a person, all other trappings removed. She’d just one person showing another they will categorically not harm them, that they bear them no malice and they have nothing to hide. That openness and compassion is what ultimately enables her to connect to the good within Galaxia and pull her away from the darkness that had corrupted her.

Usagi in this moment completely fulfilled her character arc.

·      In the Dark Kingdom arc Usagi destroys (or seals away depending upon your POV) Beryl/Metalia.

·      In the Hell Tree arc, Usagi resolves the over all plot via a healing technique (although it is functionally similar to a destructive attack). However, that only happens because the Hell Tree both instructs Usagi to do that and because it lets her. It is the equivalent of a sickly doctor instructing a nurse on what to do to make them better. The nurse might have the power but their agency as a healer is limited.

·      In the Black Moon arc, Usagi, with help, destroys Wiseman/Death Phantom. 

·      In the Death Busters arc, Usagi does save Hotaru and ‘purify’ her. However, like the Hell Tree, that was something Hotaru wanted. Additionally, her purification functioned as a way to heal the body of someone sick and who wanted to sacrifice themselves, not someone actually evil. The evil in question was Pharaoh 90 and it is presumed that Usagi destroyed him (although it might’ve been Hotaru or the pair of them together). 

·      Forgive me for skipping the Dead Moon Circus arc as Chibiusa is the real protagonist there, and Usagi’s role is chiefly as a rescuer. It therefore doesn’t really apply, although the Nehelenia mini-arc from Stars is a different story. There, Usagi was a healer again, but she did it with the help of her loved ones and with the aid of her Tiare device. Nevertheless, we can see by this point Usagi’s capacity as a healer heroine had been gradually growing until we get to the battle with Galaxia.

By the end of series, Usagi has successfully healed Galaxia and it is neither with the aid of her comrades, nor with the power of a weapon or device, nor with any instructions from her ‘patient’ or any other third party.

Additionally, Galaxia (unlike Hotaru) wasn’t someone’s who was saved from a noble self-sacrifice or had a physical ailment that needs to be addressed. In Galaxia’s case, her very soul had lost it’s way and become corrupted. She had lost who she was supposed to be and her purpose in life had been perverted.****

When combined with how powerful Galaxia always was, how Chaos and the Star Seeds empowered her further, Usagi’s victory here cannot be understated.

Her ‘patient’ was more powerful than all her other adversaries, was in need of more healing than her other ‘patients’ and was more resistant to being healed. Not to mention, since she’d directly murdered her beloved friends (and indirectly aborted her future daughter), Usagi would’ve been forgiven for not  even trying to salvage Galaxia 

And yet, with no weapons, no backup and just the power of her heart and soul basically, Usagi succeeded. 

After Stars the idea that Usagi could heal the entire planet after a global catastrophe and reshape it into a fairy tale crystalline utopia was all too believable.

What’s healing one planet when her ability to empathise had already healed a whole galaxy?

Who needs a tiara to reduce evil to dust when you can simply convince evil to be good?

*This is arguably symbolized by baby Hotaru’s vision of NQS transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon in episode 1 of Stars.

In fact, we might argue that a low-key subplot running through all of Stars (both the Nehelenia and Galaxia portions of it) is gradually transitioning Usagi closer to the person she is destined to become as Neo-Queen Serenity, hence why the first episode features the most explicit reference to her fate as Queen since R. 

**Personally I am an atheist, but nevertheless I and others like me can grasp why  deities in most major religions through history weren’t simply capable of mass scale destruction, but also of essentially manipulating reality to create  things too.

By that same token, it’s little surprise that perhaps the widest spread religious figure in history was Jesus Christ who rarely (if ever) engaged in aggression or destructive acts, predominantly employing divine healing powers.

I suspect the attraction of such figures to human beings lies in the fact that on some level we know that, given the right time and resources, we mere mortals would be capable of destroying anything. Given time it’s all but certain we will develop the technology to even destroy planetary bodies. On the flipside, I think we also intuitively grasp that  reversing  such damage, of reattaching a limb, of stanching bleeding, etc, is far more difficult if not impossible. Hence we attributed the ability to do such things to larger than life Divine Entities.

*** Now that I think of it, it’s also poignant that Usagi tries and fails to defeat Galaxia with a sword when we take Sailor Uranus into consideration. 

Uranus is of course associated with her weapon, the Space Sword and, like Usagi, tried and failed to use such a weapon against Galaxia.

Giving Uranus a sword is symbolically appropriate given her role as the leader of the more aggressive branch of the Sailor Team. Having her fail against Galaxia and Usagi consequently fail by in some way ‘mimicking her tactics’ is equally symbolically appropriate. Not only because of their ideological conflict in Sailor Moon S but also their tensions in Sailor Stars itself. In both situations Usagi’s more open, less aggressive, ideology was ultimately proven correct. 

Thus in using a sword against Galaxia it represented how Usagi was always doomed to fail by taking the aggressive/destructive route and how she was arguably not being true to herself in that moment. 

****It’s not to dissimilar to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker now that I think about it. 

[drivingsideways]

Hey talk to me about your top three favourite kdrama women. What makes them special? What's a fic you would like to write about any one of them?

Mystery anon! :D What a lovely ask. 

I’m going to cheat a bit and divide my answer into characters I loved a lot, but do not want to write fic about, because I think the canon gives me what I need; and characters that I loved a lot but NEED TO BE RESCUED ZOMG.  (My fic writing impulses are 50% spite and 50% fix-it )

Caveat being that I’ve still watched only maybe a dozen kdramas, so I’m pretty limited in my knowledge!

Characters that I love a lot, but have very zero fic impulses toward:

Han Yeo-jin from Stranger/Secret Forest: What a delight! What an iconique character! Is there anyone like her? NO. LSY-nim gives us a delightfully complex character, and Bae Doona knocks it out of the park in every single scene, so I’m just happy to be along for the ride. I think what makes Yeo-jin special for me is the intrinsic place of empathy that she operates from.  I think “righteous” is a word that often comes with negative connotations (self-righteous, for eg), but I do think she’s one of the most righteous-in-the-good-way characters I’ve watched in kdrama or any drama. I’m tired of stories that portray goodness as “boring” , as unworthy of narrative breadth or depth, and I love that Han Yeo-jin comes to us like a breath of fresh air in our particular dystopian narratives hellscape. She’s good, but never naive. She’s righteous but never cruel in her moral certainties.  I think that LSY nim, in the second season especially, gave Yeo-jin the kind of arc that character deserved when she’s forced to really dig deep into herself to figure out how she’s going to live in the world in the face of a deeply cutting, deeply personal disillusionment, and I’m really hoping for an S3 to see how that plays out further. 

Goo Hae-ryung from Rookie Historian: Ok, I will admit this may be rose tinted glasses view due to this show being my gateway drug into kdrama, but c’mon! She’s a reader! and a Thinker! And loves her wine! She’s plucky! She’s cute! She’s got a wry sense of humour! She’s got principles! She’s got a solid common sense to her that somehow doesn’t get in the way of her dreaming BIG! Oh dear, doesn’t she sound like the Mary-est of Mary Sues? Good for her.gif,  I say! Anyways, Shin Se-kyung is unutterably charming in this (AS IN EVERY SHOW OMG GIRL) and I just have a huge fondness for free-spirited heroines who get to tramp through the narrative changing the world as they do! 

Lee Ji-an from My Ahjussi: I’ve never had my heart broken more OR restored by any single character. IU is *phenomenal * in this, I think she really stepped up to what the script demanded from her. Ji-an’s weariness, her fear and vulnerability, her prickliness, her anger and her bitterness, and how, despite everything, she fights : GOD. Just. Again, what I love about the writing in this show is that it’s deeply empathetic without being cloyingly sentimental. I think a less, hmm, imaginative writer/PD might have focused on the Lee Ji-an the victim, and while the show definitely tells you in no uncertain terms that she is one,  of both circumstances and a cruel society, I think it refuses to take away her agency over her own life.(Lee Ji-an when we meet her is too busy hanging onto life by tooth and claw to indulge in self-pity, but we also see the toll it takes on her not to be able to say “this is too heavy a burden for me to carry myself and it isn’t my fault”; the show I think approaches Dong-hoon from the opposite side- his emotional isolation is partly a result of his own choices, but he doesn’t see it yet, and so his journey is also about letting people in and sharing the burden, but also recovering his own agency over his life. It’s an interestingly gender-bent arc, which is one of the things I love about this show. )

Ok, can I please add one more?

Hwang Han-joo from Melo is my Nature: She just felt SO real to me. She’s someone who doesn’t have the spectacular brilliance of either Jin-joo or Eun-jung, and struggles with accepting her limitations but not allowing herself to be defeated by them? I love her struggles as a mother, as a working woman in a sexist industry, a woman who’s perhaps having to rethink and reimagine what she wants from romance. I love that she’s a little silly, a lot kind, and an optimist, and just. I just think she’s the bravest of the three, tbh, and I LOVE HER AND I WOULD WATCH A SPIN OFF ABOUT JUST HER (i shouldn’t have faves among the three i know, BUT I DO, IT’S HER, IT’S HER.)

Ok! On to the next section! And I’m going to cheat again because I can’t stop at three. SORRY. NOT SORRY. 

Characters I love and SHOULD write fic for if I weren’t such a tired and lazy bunny:  

Song Sa-hui from Rookie Historian: Oh, girl, girl, GIRL. I love how she fights to snatch her freedom from the jaws of the patriarchy. I love that she unapologetically centers herself while doing that, because she knows that nobody else will.  I love that she’s prickly and calculating. I love that she’s smart and knowledgeable. I am SO HAPPY that she got to carve out a little bit of freedom for herself, even if it also is exile to some degree. She *should * be Emperor Jin’s Prime Minister and steering the ship of state, while also carrying on a tumultous affair with Queen Min Woo-hee, while ALSO commiserating with Emperor Jin about his boyfriend Historian Min Woo-won’s regrettable tendency towards Principles (TM) and masochism-but-not-in-the-fun-way. (This takes up much of his time which is why Song Sa-hui is running the country, of course. It works out well for all concerned, well, except her dad, of course.)

Song Ga-gyeong from Search:WWW: What’s NOT to love about our brilliant, beautiful, emotionally tortured gay icon? Nothing, absolutely nothing. I loved how the show allowed her to be flawed and make bad decisions, and then allowed her to make better decisions and regain control of her life. What I do need to do, of course, is see the CANON LOVE STORY between her and Cha Hyeon through to the end. It must, of course, include at least one baseball game, a lot of tequila and messy beach kisses. 

Oh Ji-hwa from Beyond Evil: Oh boy, this year’s runaway hit cleared the extremely low bar for standard crime/ thriller shows by leaving more than one of its female characters breathing and with all limbs intact, and got called feminist for it BUT it didn’t do justice to any of them in any meaningful way and that never hurt more than in the way they sidelined Kim Shin-rok’s talent by not giving Oh Ji-hwa anything much to do. She’s a tough as nails cop, a loving sister, a devoted but unsentimental friend-and by rights SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE HEROINE OF THIS SHOW. My secret fic fantasy is to rewrite the show entirely by making her , and the two other female characters in non-antagonist roles- Yoo Jae-yi and Im Sun-nyeo- as the central characters, as they investigate a serial killer who targets women.  It’s the only acceptable version of this done-to-death (ha!) genre, I have no idea what the Baeksang jury and tumblr fandom is smoking when they hype the show so much, I want none of it. 

Jung Sun-ah from The Devil Judge: I love her rage, her spite, her passionate defense of women, her style, her sexiness, her rage, her rage, her brilliance, her tenaciousness, her smartness, her clothes, her refusal to hate herself for everything she is and chooses to be, her ambition, her comfort wielding power, her EVERYTHING. Dead, her? NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. Here’s what *really * happened at the end of canon- she gets out of the building by planting that lady-like but still deadly gun against Kang Yo-han’s temple and making him lead her through his own “secret escape route” or whatever the fuck it was the show wanted us to believe. From there on out, it’s all sunshine and beaches, and scheming and waiting for the right moment to strike again-though of course, this time around, she also has to reckon with vigilant, tenacious cop Soo-hyun -another character who REALLY didn’t die for manpain reasons and had the good sense to leave her gay best friend to follow his psychopath boyfriend to Switzerland or wherever it is that star crossed lovers in kdrama land meet up on the regs these days- anyways, Soo-hyun and her are in this catch-me-if-you-can epic transnational honest and cute cop-and-beautiful sexy villain chase and yes, they WILL kiss (and more) AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS. 

*whew *

Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.

[macgyvertape]

Castlevania kinda had a pacing problem

spoilers for all of Netflix’s Castlevania. I haven’t seen much analysis for the show on tumblr, im honestly curious if discussions I had with irl friends mirror what fandom talks about

tldr: Castlevania seems inconsistently paced from season to season, and within season as well, leads to a lot of characters motivations feeling unclear so characters repeatedly explain why they are doing something while they’re doing it

overview of the seasons:

S1 I know somewhat of a test for Netflix but it has good main trio character establishment and sets the scale of the conflict

s2: pretty complete emotional arc for most characters and resolves the plot of killing Dracula while setting up additional characters to continue the story. Isaac, Hector, Carmilla all established with the audience as characters whose story would continue

honestly I would bet this is the most popular season

S3: s2 did a bit of worldbuilding, but this season really fleshed out the world with both a wide range of locations and exploring the question of “what now, Dracula is dead but vampires and night creatures remain”.

There were basically 4 plot threads: 1) Sypha/Trevor investigating the cult & Saint Germain; 2) Hector & Carmilla (also introducing Lenore, Striga, Morana); 3) Isaac’s journey of revenge & self discovery; 4) Alucard sits around the castle and is betrayed.

overall characters roughly feel like they are in the same place if not worse. A big criticism I saw at the time, which hold up after rewatching this before s4 is nothing felt resolved for the main characters

I would say this season is where the pacing issues start to become apparent, juggling 4 plot threads that lack a central theme or even mutual character connection. If there was a central theme it would be “humans are awful to each other”. The Judge doing Hot Fuzz style murders, The Wizard in the tower, Sumi & Taka

S4: it starts with the same 4 plot threads, though upfront it is made clear that the plot theme is “people are trying to resurrect Dracula”, and the progression of the plot works to resolve unrelated plot threads until the main trio reunites for the boss fights. To me and my friends watching it was obvious that the show would reunite the main trio, the question was how and how far into the run time.

Season 4 is why I’m writing this essay, for the past 2 days I’ve been like, yeah that character sure explained their motives repeatedly maybe with some philosophical discussion, but it’s just such a weird place considering where they were in s3

Alucard’s arc:

Where he was left in season 3, it was after killing people he had trusted in self defense and impaling their corpses. It was clearly meant to parallel Dracula’s dislike of humanity. However overall his character lacked a proactive motivating force.

Honestly the most interesting thing I found in s3 was Alucard clearly misses Sypha and Trevor, however they don’t miss him or refer to him

One reason Sumi & Taka betray Alucard is for the secrets and power of Castlevania. After inviting the village including St Germain who Alucard was warned of into the Castle, Alucard makes 0 effort to secure anything, not even his personal childhood room. Guess he really learned nothing

Discussing St Germain, I think it’s funny that they had a several minute flashback sequence for his lost girlfriend (who doesn’t have a name or a voice actor), to remind the viewer of who he is, and to justify how he’s suddenly back and down for murder.

In s4 there is the call to help the village, and the walk back to the castle is a montage of Alucard opening up to Greta and becoming friendly literally overnight. He laughs off the impaling, and basically all of the darker things he went through in season 3, which has me asking what was the point of his season 3 arc then? 

Honestly writing this I realize the biggest parallel he has with Dracula is the call to action from a bold woman with a dramatic entrance speech which then leads to a romance

Isaac’s arc:

in s3, with all the other themes of “humanity sucks” I was always unsure if the townspeople were meant to appear irrational while attacking a larger force instead of letting him pass through an leave, or him not caring about how he’s provoking them is meant to show his insanity

ive seen the discussion elsewhere, curious about the Discourse here

is s4 Isaac has the whole monologue about how he now has agency but him gaining that agency was his s3 arc. In s4 he’s already at the point of accepting it. By the end of s4 he’s one of those who comes the furthest from his first character appearance to his last.

s4e5 where of Isaac attacking Carmilla in Isaac’s 2nd appearance had him resolving like 4 plot threads at once (Carmilla, Striga& Morana, Hector, and Isaac himself).

but i do wonder if Trevor, Sypha, or Alucard even know any of these people exist. I think not

I was honestly confused if I missed a scene from his dialogue about building something and what is inherent nature, to “My plan has evolved, my plan is now conquest” because he only conquests the one castle and the rest is left unclear

Upon rewatch the connection there is “killing [the wizard] felt just ... I liked that feeling”, so the show says that Isaac in the end attacked Carmilla for the sake of justice and not revenge.

Isaac in his last conversation expresses the theme of s4 “build something new on these old bones, where people can live for the future”

however, his arc honestly feel scenes were cut, and then dialogue was written around it. He’s the only living character who doesn’t show up in the epilogue and the sentient night creature “what if I could empty hell” dialogue was some of the most interesting worldbuilding. Night creatures with sentience and possibility of regaining memories!!!!

The Council of Sisters & Hector’s arc:

oh I’ve already seen s4 discourse about Lenore/Hector while searching for character analysis, a chunk of it seems to be rationalizing the absolute difference between how s3 ended with these characters and s4. It was extremely confusing for me and my friends; wondering if 1) was Hector showing more emotional intelligence than before and putting on a facade to cover up hatred? Nope 2) did more time pass than 6 weeks for there to be some kind stockholm syndrome? No, Hector seems fine to let Lenore kill herself

The slave control ring: played up in the climax of s3 and easily solved s4. s3 Lenore says if he tries to harm them, flee, or take it off it would cause crippling pain, in s4 Hector just easily cuts off his own finger.

for a control ring that they take time to show a version being on the Rebus, it doesn’t do much controlling of Hector

also guess the definition of “do harm” just refers to direct action

Lenore in s4: has no purpose in conquest, has that useless remarked on by multiple characters, is imprisoned, then kills herself after a genre aware philosophical discussion. This essay is long enough, but what the fuck happened to this character who ended s3 clearly physically and sexually abusive? Seriously this was one of the biggest writing changes to the point where she was treating Hector as an equal. Compare her last words in s3 “shh the real people [vampires] are talking”. The change in the relationship is actually something I would have taken being shown, or atleast told of what exactly caused this change other than the vague “you adopted him”

Striga&Morana get the best arc of the Council. 3 scenes: the tent argument, Daybreak armor fight & argument resolution, declaration of feelings and turning away. You could argue Castlevania is plot to be connective tissue between fight scenes, but for all the dialogue about human resistance in different seasons it was nice to see it. Overall the scenes were short but had a lot of showing what their relationship is not just telling,

unlike Carmilla. For as much hyping up as they did with her, and as much power as she had, she only appeared in 2 episodes and no other group except Isaac knew about her military conquest.

the map scene where she states her motive for conquest of wanting to take things from old men is the key example of how characterization became tell not show. How interesting was that monologue compared to the past seasons flashback to her murmuring the old vampire lord, or all her repeated insults of men/man-children that shows how she judges people??

That monologue had to carry the weight of justifying the Sisterhood bonds falling apart as well as why her motivation changed from building a human pen from Styria to Braila to world conquest. I think it did so poorly

Sypha & Trevor

really Sypha & Trevor have the main plot in the show. I checked and post season 1 the only episode they don’t appear in is s4e6, which is entirely devoted to the Isaac, Hector, and Council of Sisterhood arc. Their partnership and adventures are the main plot of the show.

Its easy to see what Trevor’s arc was over the show: coming to peace with the deaths of his family, taking up the mantle of being a Belmont, and starting a new family with Sypha.

With Sypha I actually had to scroll through tv tropes for what is her character arc, and I guess hers is disillusionment from adventure and life outside the speakers? My friends joke that Sypha’s magic is what the plot demands to look cool in a fight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tangent: the ending of their arc was easy to guess: as soon as Trevor went to fight the final boss alone I literally said “oh i bet Sypha’s pregnant, Trevor’s doing a heroic sacrifice, theyll use the unexplained magical dagger mcguffin, and 60/40 odds that he goes through an infinite corridor to outright come back vs just the implication he might come back”

I guess my final thought of the show, was overall the SUPER Final Boss got my by surprise. It was a good twist I enjoyed. Not that Death appeared, I had guessed that from the heavy foreshadowing, but I was surprised by who it was, because I had thought I thought the characters involved feeling shoehorned into the plot was just more bad writing. The Alchemist who put St Germain on the path or murder for no discernible motive for helping? Sure gotta move the plot along. New Dracula court member Varney who has a whole introduction with almost every character he meets and banter about his smell? Sure thats basically how all characters talk with a snarky and acerbic voice.

[staygoldaj]

Analysis on the MHA Girls

(Part I: Uraraka & Momo)

I know that the fandom tends to dislike these queens and push them aside, and I know Hori doesn't really know how to write women, but what he has given us is great and I wish the fans would appreciate these awesome ladies more. So here's an analysis for my girls, I wanna do an analysis on the three musketeers (broccoli, popcorn, & candy cane) so that'll be posted soon too :)

Uraraka

BEST. GIRL. I love Uraraka so much, she is the reason why I started watching MHA and she's such a sweetheart, I wish she wasn't so hated amongst the fandom.

We first meet her as this wholesome, bubbly girl who saves Midoriya from falling, and it's pretty clear that she's gonna be the main love interest. Honestly, I was a little disappointed during her first few scenes. Like I said, she was the reason why I started MHA, and she turns out to be the typical sweet girl the main dude has a crush on. I didn't have high hopes tbh. What first intrigued me was when she admits her reasons for becoming a hero. You would never expect the innocent girl-next-door love interest to be doing something for money. Even she herself says it's "such an unwholesome motivation" in comparison to Midoriya's and Iida's reasons, and she gets praised for "looking out for herself." This is the first misconception I see often on her character; she wants money for herself because she's poor. If you look into her reasons, she just wants to make money for her parents, not for her, so that her parents can take it easy. She is just as selfless as Midoriya and Kirishima, but I don't see her get praised for her selflessness nearly as much as for those two or other characters. I also really like the small flashback they included; her father tells her to not worry about them and to follow her dreams. Whether at the start Uraraka truly wanted to be a hero or solely did it for the money is up for interpretation. I personally think she started solely for the money, which I'll get into after I talk about the Sports Festival.

Uraraka vs. Bakugo is one of the most emotional fights in my opinion, and it's one of my favorites. EVERYONE in that stadium underestimated her. I'm not going to say that the reason was because she was a woman, but rather, Bakugo is pretty ruthless and powerful, where as she is not, and people knew that. The fact that she was a "small young girl" just added more fuel to that, if that makes sense. And this best girl did what she could to prove EVERYONE wrong. This is where Uraraka proves that she isn't a typical sweet shonen love interest and I wish people took notice in that. People think of ambitious, determined, driven, cunning, and powerful women as dark and mysterious, femme fatale so to speak. But this fight shows that Uraraka, a pretty extroverted, kind, and bubbly person, is all of those qualities, just as ambitious and determined as the strongest male characters in the show, such as Bakugo and Todoroki.

And when she loses the fight (after basically passing out btw, queen didn't stop until the very end), she doesn't just mope and quit and wait for encouraging words from her love interest, she 1. GIVES the encouraging words TO her love interest and 2. she understands that her quirk alone isn't going to be enough to get her to the top, so she carefully chooses a hero agency where she knows she will be taught combat, AND SHE LEARNS. The next time her class is attacked by villains, she single-handedly takes down one of the more dangerous members without a quirk, just with the fighting skills she took the time to learn.

Back to what I said earlier, Uraraka started her hero journey solely for money. This plays directly into her development in seasons 3 and 4, which is criminally underrated. She sees her entire class working harder than ever, and even though she's dealing with unfamiliar emotions, she decides to push those emotions aside to not fall behind, determined to be a good student and hero like her classmates. During the events at Shie Hassaikai, Uraraka finally learns the true environment a hero works in. Failing to save Nighteye, she realizes that what she truly wants for herself isn't money or Midoriya, it's being a hero who saves people. I believe Nighteye's death directly ties into the "who protects heroes when they need protection?" line. This recent chapter in the manga makes me think that she's gonna do something big and go through a character arc. I said this on Twitter and I'll say it here, I want Uraraka to become a hero who protects heroes (whatever that could mean, it has a nice ring to it lol). Honestly, her character has sm potential, I'm excited for what Horikoshi has in store for her.

Momo

God is a woman and that woman is Momo Yaoyorozu. I'm tired of people calling her annoying because of one episode, as if you've never had self-esteem problems before 🙄 so now I'm going to talk about why she's amazing 😋

My initial impression of Momo was the typical smart girl, stern, formal, and aloof, but still caring. And as I rewatch the series, I believe this is what Horikoshi was going for at first. I think her voice was deeper in the first season too. As much as I love the Erza type of characters, I love where Horikoshi ended up going with Momo. As a teenage girl, I find the arc she went through during season 2 very relatable. It's obvious that Momo was raised to have full confidence in herself. While she may not show it like Bakugo does, I think it's obvious that she's not used to losing, she was probably praised for having an amazing quirk growing up, like Bakugo, but is a way more humble about it because she was raised differently. So at the Sports Festival, she experiences losing, seemingly for the first time, in a place where she just can't afford to lose. But she does. And this takes a huge toll on her.

She's rich, pretty, the top student in class, and admired by her peers, but obviously that's not what mattered to Momo. What mattered to her most in that moment was looking good in front of agencies, what mattered most was to be a worthy hero, and she feels like she's failed. She seeks guidance from a female hero, hoping to have a female role model guide her through issues she has as a 15 year old girl, but instead finds herself being used for her looks. Again, Momo doesn't care about any of that, she just wants to be considered a worthy hero, and her defeat at the Sports Festival made her completely lose the confidence she needed to accomplish that goal.

Now we have the Yaoyorozu Rising episode. Fans who hate her often refer to this episode as "evidence for Todomomo", "her being annoying by not knowing what to do," etc. etc. etc. 🙄

I like Todomomo. It's a cute and healthy ship. There are WAY more Todomomo scenes, not in this episode. Todoroki is a side character in Momo's story in this episode. This episode is MOMO'S. Sorry but she’s not sharing the spotlight. I know that seems a little aggressive, sorry, but this episode shows a lot of development in Momo, and it just gets brushed off as Todomomo content when it's not. She did know what to do, btw, she has a plan. She didn't know how to communicate that. She didn't want to communicate that. She was scared that her plan wouldn't work. She was scared that she'd fail. All of that stems back to her defeat at the Sports Festival, she has lost a major amount of confidence, and Aizawa and Todoroki notice this. Aizawa even says that her actions are of a normal 15 year old girl's, and even though he wished to help her, he couldn't, so Todoroki does it in his place. This is something I notice about Momo that is one of the most relatable things I've ever seen in a teenage girl in not just shonen, anime but just in fiction in general: she knows she has a good plan, but she doesn't have confidence in it until someone else gives her the validation. Upon seeing that others trust her, she regains her confidence and fulfills her plans with excellency. She is a REALISTIC 15 YEAR OLD GIRL which is honestly SO refreshing to see in a work of fiction. It's what I love about her character: she represents many teenagers, girls, boys, and theys alike.

And yeah, it might've been annoying if she had stayed the "has good plans but only executes them if she gets the validation from others" type of character. But she doesn't. By season 3, she has shown a significant amount of growth. She is shown to be more of a leader now that she's more confident in herself, and she's still dealing with it (that one scene with Sero & Jiro 💀), but she's gotten a lot better after realizing her worth, after realizing the trust others have in her, after realizing that others see her as an intelligent leader. So in the forest, she quickly comes up with a plan and executes it quickly. Had she not done this, had she not thought and acted quickly, who knows how long it would've taken before the heroes found Bakugo.

Another thing I want to mention before I finish Momo's section- at the hospital, All Might calls her a worthy hero because of her actions. It was her inability to act quickly at the Sports Festival that made her doubt her worth, and it's her ability to act quickly that makes All Might see it. I think this plays a major role for her character, maybe why she ultimately decided to go on the mission to save Bakugo. She's gonna have some of the spotlight to herself during the Joint Training Battle.

I also want to mention something from the manga, if you don't want spoilers then don't read this part.

Some of Midnight's last words in the manga are "Yaoyorozu's going to make a fine leader someday," which shows how her peers and mentors alike notice her potential. Additionally, she proves this statement right by quickly coming up with a plan to stop Gigantomachia. I'm very excited to see how Momo develops into an even more inspiring leader as the manga continues.

[callioope]

Continuing my reactions to Avatar: The Last Airbender

This post is about Book 3. See my overall impressions and thoughts on Book 1 here. See my thoughts on Book 2 here.

ETA: crap i forgot the keep reading line initially SORRY if anyone saw this before i edited. anyways. please see the tags as a disclaimer before reading. gosh it’s late i need to go to bed.

General

Starting S3 now and dang Katara & Toph have gotten so powerful!!!!!

I literally recorded ZERO reactions from Chapter One through Chapter Twelve. And my first reaction is basically my excitement that Zuko is finally with the Aang crew! But let me try to skim through an episode list to recall my reactions.

You may have already seen my post expressing shock that MARK HAMILL voiced the Fire Lord. Still not over that revelation.

So, ultimately, I binged this show in less than a week. I think I started on Monday? And finished Saturday afternoon. That alone should speak to how much I enjoyed it! 

Aang

Okay, a bit weird to have barely any thoughts under Aang when he’s literally the protagonist, but I think (since I wrote other sections before this) that I touch on some of my thoughts on him under other characters. 

I will say, his journey really intensifies in this season. First, when he awakens after being unconscious for several days and has no idea what’s going on, and is still healing and more helpless than he’s probably ever felt in his life. I did really like his arc in this season, but what a stark contrast to the Aang of Book 1. He has to grow up so fast. I gotta say, a lot of Aang’s journey reminded me just a little of Ender in Ender’s Game. 

I do say this later, but his final decision about how to handle Ozai was amazing. I loved every second of his journey to get there, and I was rooting for him to find a path that felt true to him — and not what everyone else kept telling him he had to do. 

There was one small thing that bothered me, which was that his eventual regaining of the Avatar state did not really seem to come about through intentional action of his own. After he goes down at the end of Book 2, sorta feels like they never even talk about him going into the Avatar state again and he doesn’t until the final moment. That moment doesn’t seem a conscious choice on his part; the scar on his back collides with a rock jutting out and seems to jolt him into the Avatar state. I would have liked to see a little more agency on his part in regards to the Avatar state. 

Sokka

My boy! My boy Sokka! Truly the mother of the group. IDK why they pretended in the beginning that Katara was the mom because it’s definitely Sokka. His maps! His scheduling! He is ridiculous and I love him for it. 

I adored that he got his own training master episode! He got to learn some sword stuff and even got to make a fancy space sword! Everyone else got super powerful with their bending and I’m glad Sokka got his own arc of self-improvement. He has come a LONG way from episode 1. He couldn’t really hold his own at all that early, and now look at him! Planning battle strategies! Taking down the Fire Lord’s air fleet! He’s come so far and I’m so proud!

Oh, you know, I just realized that I didn’t really talk about ships with Sokka in Book 2 but he did continue to have the most active romance arc. It was nice to see Suki return in Book 2, and I am glad we found out what happened to her. I liked Sokka and Suki, I have nothing against it. I was very surprised that so little happened with Toph and Sokka. There did seem to be moments where it seemed like Toph might actually harbor a crush on Sokka, but nothing came of it and she certainly didn’t say anything about it. That felt a little odd to me. Why hint at something but then make nothing of it? 

Katara

Sigh. This is early in the post, but probably one of the last parts of it that I’m actually writing. I’ve definitely been putting it off. Unfortunately most of what I have to say about Katara is about shipping, and I’m really not happy about that, but then it’s what comes to mind over anything else. Which is sort of ironic considering some of her lines in the theater episode...

So in the theatre episode, Aang confronts Katara about how nothing has happened in their relationship after they kissed. She responds by saying she is “confused.” I had some issues with the script here, to be honest. It seems to imply that she’s confused about her feelings for Aang. But she also says that she’s been more focused on the war, and that totally makes sense. I really would support this moment if that’s where they left it: “I don’t have time to think about romance, my mind is preoccupied with the war.” 

But no, they say she is “confused.”

This is pretty baffling to me, and honestly seems to come out of nowhere. Book 1 it was very obvious that both Katara and Aang have feelings for each other, and Book 2 might have backed off a little from that but then we get moments where Katara is so keyed in to Aang’s struggles with the Avatar state and also the only one who can bring him out of it. Now, all of a sudden, she is saying she is confused? Where is this coming from? 

I could definitely see people argue that it’s because she has feelings for Zuko. If I shipped them (I don’t, but I also Get It), I could point to numerous moments in the series as ‘clues/support’ for this ship. Zuko and Katara have a moment at the end of Book 2 where they talk about the loss of their mothers. (“We’re both sad about what happened to our mothers!” not really a foundation for a relationship, but Katara is the most betrayed and distrustful of Zuko when it comes to the idea of letting him join their crew and it is because of this moment. She obviously begins to feel some kind of connection — I’d argue platonic but ship and let ship.) 

And yeah, Zuko and Katara have their bonding adventure, but again I don’t think this has to be read as romantic. Clearly the idea here is that Zuko “understands” a part of Katara that Aang doesn’t — except that in the end, Aang is the one who is right about her. She cannot give in to revenge. It’s not her, and Aang knows that. I mean, they’re both right — Katara had go to on the journey to learn that about herself, and it was important that Zuko was the one who helped her. But still. 

Finally Zuko and Katara go together to face Azula. Again seems like plot is pushing them together for Tension. They definitely work together here and Katara heals him and all that but she’d have healed anyone. (Like yeah if you ship it of course you’re gonna be excited over those moments.)

But.

Like. The thing is. When the dust settles? Zuko and Mai return to each other like moths to a flame. I could believe that Katara might have had feelings for Zuko, but I don’t think he ever returned them. I think it was always Mai for him. 

I don’t really want to fan the flames of ship wars — I’m trying to walk a fine line of “I totally understand why people ship this, but I don’t,” and hopefully I’m succeeding, but I’m sorry if I’m not. 

My main gripe is how the show handled this dynamic. It seemed like they half-heartedly thought about creating a love triangle, but then they didn’t follow through. I don’t particularly like love triangles, so I’m not actually mad that there wasn’t one. But what bothers me is that the Aang and Katara moments are so heavy handed in the beginning, that a sudden subtle take on how Katara feels in Book 3 feels strange. It feels like if she was having feelings for Zuko, it should have been more blatant. The depictions are inconsistent — if the writers were even ever intending for Katara to have feelings for Zuko in the first place.

Like, I really can’t tell if those moments implying Zuko and Katara were intentionally trying to start a love triangle OR if it was just sort of a mistake OR if it was maybe creators trying to address and then negate Zuko and Katara as a ship? I mean it’s weird because the play episode really emphasizes Zuko and Katara but then that play is really supposed to be all levels of inaccurate and get under the characters’ skins. 

So, I don’t know. Obviously we all bring different interpretations to a piece of media and I am by no means saying anything here is a “correct opinion” (because I hate that attitude when it comes to story interpretations). Sorry if you don’t agree, hope I didn’t make anyone mad. Ship what you like! You do you, man. 

On that note, please see further disclaimers about shipping and canon at the end of the “Zuko and Mai” section below.

Toph

Loved how Toph was the first to warm up to Zuko. It made a lot of sense. I mean obviously they were looking for a fire bender to teach Aang and it was like “Hello, powerful fire bender on a silver platter!” but also, Toph is someone who joined the crew later on. The group had to adjust to her, and she probably knows what it feels like to be an outsider. Now, granted, she was never alienated from the group in the same way that Zuko (rightfully) was. But she can also understand Zuko’s position as someone who comes from a wealthy family, the sort of pressure that comes from that. None of this was really addressed explicitly, and it might not have really fit then and there, but it was what I was thinking as she was standing up for Zuko.

Um, and also, on that note? Huge bummer Toph did not get her special bonding adventure with Zuko. Toph, I’m with you on that one! Why did Sokka get two episodes for his? 

Zuko

No “& Iroh” on this post because — Iroh spent much of this season in jail, and then the next half just ??? who knows where. 

So, I believe I stated in the last post how shocked I was at Zuko’s betrayal. Knowing he eventually joins Aang’s crew, it seemed like his time in the prison with Katara would ultimately lead to that, and then NOPE! He has this nice heart to heart about his mother, and then… it really shocked me.

But.

As I watched this season, it became clear that this has to be Zuko’s journey. He has to go back to the Fire Nation. He has to win the approval of his father. He has to get everything he wants in order to realize that it really isn’t what he wants. This is integral to his ultimate revelation and redemption and he couldn’t have stayed truly good without verifying and knowing how empty the win of his father’s approval is.

Realizing this, I loved it and appreciated the moments we get. Zuko’s visits to Iroh. Even when Zuko is being cruel, you can see how hurt and lost he is. And Iroh gives him the cold shoulder he deserves, even though of course this is breaking Iroh’s heart, too. 

Now, I absolutely must discuss the Fire Kids Beach Party episode! Because as ridiculous as parts of it are, it provides such an important and necessary insight to all four characters (Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee). You see the privilege that they’re all used to, it’s good that no one knows who they all are. (although maybe a little surprising because Zuko’s scar certainly reveals who he is but anyways.) 

and it’s funny how you almost end up rooting for them before you’re like “no no no. they are bad people doing some bad things.” I mean, almost rooting for them. And sure, the campfire scene is a bit Breakfast Club-y but I do think it’s important. And I just loved the moment Zuko admits he’s angry at himself, how his burst of fire as he says it almost covers it up, it’s so hard for him to say. Fabulous character development going on here, fabulous. 

[Uh, side note, so apparently Zuko is descended from Avatar Roku! This is ridiculous but can we get Zuko calling Aang great-grandfather, mainly to get on his nerves?! O:-) this would amuse me greatly]

And GOSH the catharsis when Zuko finally realizes his father’s approval is not what he wants and not worth it! It’s so well earned. It’s so satisfying. I was so excited and just like, so anticipating Zuko going to meet up with the crew. Zuko practicing his speech in the woods to the frog? Amazing. Endearing. I love him so much. 

And despite that and because of it, I also loved how difficult it was for him to earn their trust. It had to be difficult. It would not be believable if it wasn’t. Every character regarded him exactly as you would expect them to, exactly as he deserved. And Zuko tried so hard to be sincere and contrite, and it was hard for him, but he was doing pretty well all things considered! And still, they distrusted him. Yes. This was good and right. And I loved it. 

AND ANOTHER THING I LOVED was that once that initial barrier was surpassed, Aang actually warmed up to Zuko pretty quickly. This is not surprising; he’d reached out to Zuko in the past. First when Zuko (masked) rescues him, and Aang says they could have been friends. Later, at the end of Book 1 when Zuko again kidnaps him, there’s just a moment… I think when Aang spares him. It’s like, my impression is that Aang can sense that their destinies are connected, and he’s not really sure how but he knows that Zuko is important. Also, I mean, Aang just doesn’t kill people and revenge is not his way. 

Each character getting their own side story with Zuko was also integral to his arc — perhaps moreso, theirs, though. Because it was necessary for them to overcome their distrust and forge the bonds necessary for the Avatar’s crew to function. Bummed he didn’t get one with Toph. Toph was robbed.

And side note, but I really would have like an Aang and Sokka bonding episode? Like, Book 1 is all Aang and Katara and Sokka, but some 1:1 time would have been nice. There was almost a chance when Aang flew Sokka to his father and the water tribe (and at the time I was like, “Oh? Aang and Sokka bonding?!”) But then it was really only a few minutes. But yeah, that said, it does make sense to focus on carving out 1:1 time for Zuko and each member of the crew to ease him into the group.

Sokka: You happy now?

Zuko: I’m never happy.

This made me sad. And also made me go “classic Zuko.”

Every time Zuko was like, “What would uncle say?” And then say the most ridiculous thing? Fantastic. Amazing. Fuel for the fire that was my love for this show.

Zuko and Mai

Mainly the Beach Party episode was important in helping me warm up to Mai. Once Zuko is back in the Fire Nation and they’re together, I was of the mindset that Mai would have to do something pretty big in order for me to enjoy seeing their relationship become canon. This episode is not that episode, but it is an important insight into Mai’s character that explains some of her actions. The fact that she’s basically internalized apathy because she’s been forced to repress her emotions. It wasn’t enough for me but we get more later, this is an important stepping stone. 

It’s also important in establishing just what Zuko and Mai’s dynamic is. It’s a bit shaky in this and they end up breaking up but then they just get back together like immediately (moths to a flame…) In hindsight, I just think they’re behaving like normal teens who care about each other but are still navigating what it means to be in a relationship. At this moment in time, their relationship is not good, but by the end of the show I can believe as they mature that it could be a good relationship.

So the actual moment that I was like, “Okay, officially supporting Mai and Zuko now” was when she helps them escape Boiling Rock. I don’t think we’re ever told the full contents of Zuko’s letter to her, but considering what she says to Zuko earlier in this episode, it doesn’t seem likely he explains himself very well. At least not for Mai to understand. And he still isn’t able to explain himself well to her as they talk face to face. Then he locks in a cell and flees! He leaves her again. 

You wouldn’t blame Mai for hating Zuko. You wouldn’t blame her for actively working against him. But is this what happens? No. Not at all. She helps them get away. She betrays Azula for Zuko. Azula!!! Azula who is very powerful and very scary! This is a clear and distinct line in the sand, and … it almost comes out of nowhere, but what it demonstrates is how she really feels about him. She’s decided to trust him and put her faith in him when she really would have been justified in not doing so. 

I’m also going to say that despite some rather odd implications of Zuko and Katara in parts of the series (namely with other characters who really don’t know them), I never feel like Zuko is interested in Katara. I would buy interpretations that Katara might have considered Zuko, the way some parts of her story are portrayed, but I don’t get anything on Zuko’s side and that is all the more reinforced by how he acts around Mai, especially in the end of the series when they’re reunited. 

(Now, that said — because I don’t abide ship wars, ship and let ship, and power to multi-shippers — I can totally 100% see the appeal of shipping Zuko and Katara, and I would contend there is even some canonical implication of it. And I can’t blame people for not totally loving Zuko and Mai. Now, I do think the canonical implications are sort of muddied and confusing, but though I have actually not written it yet, you’ll have read my thoughts there in the Katara section already. OH, and OF COURSE, MORE IMPORTANTLY — ships being canon should not matter! Ship what you love! Who cares if it’s canon! Finding canon justification for ships should not be necessary for shipping! It can be a fun exercise but should never ever be a reason for approving or disapproving of a ship, it’s just a cherry on top!)

Azula

We get some pretty interesting insights into her character this season. I’ve already mentioned the Beach Party episode, and there was some good stuff in there for her. I particularly appreciated the moment that she admitted she knew her mother thought she was a monster, that she even admitted to being a monster, and then admitted that it still hurt anyways. Honestly that’s probably her best moment.

I also thought her breakdown at the end was well done. Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal just broke her. She probably knows her attitude puts people off, but those two were the only ones she ever really got on with. And it turns out, she really didn’t get on with them, they’d only ever been intimidated and manipulated into being her friends. She has no one, she pushes everyone away. Literally — and it is ultimately her downfall. 

It’s an interesting contrast to her brother. We literally get an episode “Zuko Alone,” and then it turns out the theme of “Azula Alone” is such an integral part of her arc, as well. The last person she has is her father, and he leaves her, too. Sure, he tells her it’s because she’s to stay behind as the new Fire Lord, but honestly Ozai was never truly close to anyone, either. But yeah. Iroh spends a lot of time and effort trying to help Zuko redeem himself. He never tries with Azula? I think, maybe it would have been nice to see him try with her, and be just utterly rebuffed. Now, Zuko also rebuffed him a lot, too. So Azula’s rejection of Iroh would really have to be something. This is the kind of stuff I’d look for in fic. Speaking of fic: I mean, I’d really love Zuko to find his mom, mom to come back, and then maybe some kind of attempt at reparations between mom and Azula. It doesn’t have to work, I just want to see the effort, you know?

Final Thoughts: Ending & Denouement

I loved Aang finding a different way to defeat the Fire Lord. I loved how every past Avatar he talked to was like “no dude just kill him.” And I loved that that was not enough for Aang. He’s pushing himself and ultimately the spirit of the Avatar to think harder, to try harder, to seek a different way. And that mercy was so integral to Aang’s character, and important to his arc that he struggled so much with it. And he’s just a kid! Oh, Aang. And I loved that he was able to find the answer he needed, the fact that it was taking away Ozai’s fire bending. Yes. Perfection.

I was a little disappointed by how little we got post-Ozai’s defeat. I was hoping the epilogue might have shown a little more in the years and decades following. It would have been nice to see glimpses of everyone prospering as they got older. 

Also, as I was watching Zuko’s coronation, I was sorta like, “uhh wait that’s a little too easy.” Now we don’t know when that happens so it’s possible some bit of time has lapsed and I’ll take that. But I thought there would have still been some trouble with some of the Fire Nation troops. Some of them would have remained loyal to Ozai. Many of those general had probably committed war crimes and would have needed to be rounded up and put on trial and put in prison. There’d be so much work to do!

That said, I do understand that we want to see our heroes with a happy ending, ultimately. I guess just a simple like “X years later” before the ending scenes would have sufficed for me to be satisfied that enough time had passed for those things to have been dealt with. IDK, I can probably suspend disbelief enough to headcanon that myself. I’m just saying. Some acknowledgement of resolution and reconstruction as a *process over time*, albeit unnecessary, would have been nice to have!

On that note, we don’t actually find out what happens to Azula. Presumably she is also in prison with her father. 

More importantly, we were Robbed of a Zuko and Ursa reunion scene!

[cassyblue]

☕ seven of nine (god if I got the numbers wrong I'll die bc I am too lazy to google it)

good news you got it right otherwise i would have texted you and been like, giselle, GISELLE. 

Ok so this is going to be kinda long because there are three points I am going to touch on: The way that Seven of Nine’s agency is depicted, The dynamic between Seven of Nine and Janeway, and Finally the romance written for seven of nine. 

1) Agency

Seven of Nine was assimilated in the borg collective when she was around 8 or 9. By the time that Voyager finds her, she is in her 20s. She has been in the collected for pretty much all her life. She is used as an representative for the borg queen when the crew of Voyager encounter her. Uh I think that’s right, The last time I watched voyager was in 2016. 

The Voyager crew, particularly Janeway, decide to rescue her from the borg collective without her say in the matter because you know she’s assimilated by the borg so surely she has no agency. Which is pretty much the same thing essentially since she is not given the choice by the crew of Voyager to join them or stay with the borg.  There is this focus on Seven reclaiming her humanity which I honestly fucking hate. 

So basically, the Crew of Voyager separates her from the collective and basically figures out how to deborg her which they do. All this time, in the brig Seven is begging for them not to do it because it hurts her. It is essentially torture for her to be unassimulated. It could kill her. But despite Seven’s cries of pain and begging for it to stop and for them to let her go, Janeway refuses. This is painted as some heroic act of saving this girl from the horrible horrible borg and teaching her to regain her humanity and culture. But it’s not that. It’s literally conversion therapy. 

They remove most of Seven of Nine’s external nonorganic parts and the only things they leave is literally the hand veins, the thing on the side of her face. Not only that but they put her in a cat suit that’s supposed to mimc the borg nonorganic parts that were removed so that Seven doesn’t get sick? This choice honestly can be blamed on Rick Berman because everything is LITERALLY his fault. Seven wasn’t given any choice of clothing to wear regularly basically. They completely take bodily agency from her in choosing how she presents physically. 

Seven is treated as a child in many occasions because she is learning to be human again. Despite the fact she is human and a capable being. It’s infuriating that they are basically trying to recondition her. 

Did the borg do wrong? Yes, they forcibly assimulated Seven of Nine as a child. Did the crew of Voyager do wrong? Abso-Fucking-lutely. Neither groups fucking gave Seven agency over her body.   The two episode arc was so upsetting that I cried during it because it was horrid and disgusting the way the writers treated the matter.

2) Seven of Nine and Janeway dynamics

Seven/Janeway shippers you are not going to like my thots in this section. One, I know that Seven of Nine and Janeway was an huge ship when the show was running and fans were lobbying the writers and RICK BERMAN THE EVIL for it to happen because you know in DS9 there was the girl kiss in reunion. But yeaaaah Rick Berman being the giant piece of poop from a dumpster he is, was like nope never happening. So that’s the context. It remains a popular ship. 

So here’s the thing. There is a huge power imbalance between Janeway and Seven that makes the ship really squicky for me. As you see above in the agency section, Janeway REFUSES to listen to Seven when she’s literally crying and sobbing and asking for them to stop the process. Janeway is so focused on this idea of saving this girl instead of fucking listening to the girl. Furthermore Janeway takes on this teacher / mother role for Seven. She gives Seven lessons on how to regain humanity. She is always acting as a guide or older more experienced source that knows best even if it is not the best for Seven. Seven quite honestly was her most vulnerable after the deborging and Janeway stepped in the teacher/mother role. Seven also turns to Janeway for emotional support which completely baffles me. Like this is the thing, I literally do not understand how Janeway and Seven have this positive relationship dynamic. Janeway literally ripped Seven away from her family and her life. It just ugh bad WRITING. 

3)Seven of Nine and Romance

Seven of Nine is probably one of the MOST sexualized star trek characters. The costume required Jerri Ryan to not only wear a skin tight suit, but also a corset (badly made at that), and stilletos. The costume took some time to get into and it caused Jerri Ryan back pain (because the corset was TOO TIGHT. They normally do not if they are probably fitted).  This once again Rick Berman’s fault. 

So first off we have the emh doctor being incredibly creepy to Seven of Nine because he has romantic hots for her. Seven has to tell him she only wants a friend but he doesn’t stop being creepy until a big fight between them. So That romance subplot sure doesn’t make any sense. 

Then there were the special borgs that could maintain individuality outside of the collective, there was one that Seven had a crush on. Honestly that part really wasn’t that badly written. 

Then the fucking final straw, the complete out of the blue, no previous writing support, pairing of Seven of Nine and Chakotay. Backgroun, Chakotay was Janeway’s love interest for the first couple seasons and it was quite good chemistry until I guess the writers just completely dropped it. And then the lobbying of the Seven/Janeway shippers got really intense toward the end of the show so you know what happened? Seven suddenly gets shoved with Chakotay which is the most what the FUCK out of all characters. Seven had never viewed Chakotay as an romantic interest or anything beyound colleague until the second to last episode of voyager when she starts to have like fantasies about him and turns out he is into her which like was never written in any of the other plots. It just was like WHAT THE FUCK where did this come from. Answer: Rick Berman cockblocking the femslashers. It was a bad decision and honestly made the finale arc disappointing. Like Star Trek ending arcs tend to be lackluster (don’t @ me tng, tos, and VOY fans). DS9 was probably the most decent one because at least it had followed the previously established relationships instead of bringing this out of the fuckin blue. 

So tdlr: Seven of Nine’s character was treated pretty crappy despite all the interesting angles that could have been pursued. I am hoping that the writer’s Star Trek Picard treat her character better, which may be a really good possibility since Patrick Stewart was heavily involved in the story writing. Historically he has stood up for his female colleagues when they had to deal with sexism from the producers (RICK BERMAN). However, If I hear Seven of Nine utter, “My husband Chakotay” I will literally drive to Rick Berman’s house and egg and tp it. 

Anyways I also have lots of parallels that can be talked about Seven of Nine, Breq, and Murderbot but I already probably wrote like a thousnad words at this point and its midnight and i have early morning work tomorrow. 

[stl29tide]

Season 1 Thoughts

There were a lot of creative decisions (storylines, editing, pacing) that I didn’t agree with when it came to Roswell, New Mexico, but instead of focusing on the negative I’m going to go over what I did love about the first season. (Rest assured that if they’re not renewed for a second season, I will then make a post to roast the shit out of everything I didn’t agree with, including the events of the finale).

Things I loved about the various characters/storylines (omitting all of my gripes):

Liz - Jeanine gave such a powerhouse performance as Liz. She’s so strong and smart. Half the things that needed to be solved on the show were solved by her. She’s warm and kind. Throughout the series she’s given so many opportunities to be bitter and not do the “right” thing - but she does it anyway. Liz is a good person and I’m so glad she was able to open her heart up to love again. With that said, I love that so much of her storyline was focused, not just on Max, but the love she had for her sister. Sister love is POWERFUL and unless you’re a girl who has a sister, you might not fully understand what kind of sacrifices they would make for each other but this show got that love right.

Isobel - Isobel is a person who has been used and abused since she was a young teenager. Her abuse may not have been physical and known like Michael’s or Alex’s, but it was mental and present. She allowed herself to love and she was ultimately betrayed for it more than anyone else. She may not have made peace with the situation yet, but she was able to stand up for herself in the end and now she’s going to start exploring her own abilities. For someone who always just wanted to be “normal” she’s accepted who she is. She’s going to figure out exactly what she can do and become stronger than ever.

Max - Max loves with his whole heart. He makes mistakes (BIG ones), he carries guilt for those mistakes, but in the end he tries to make up for them. His love for Liz and his want to help correct his mistakes ultimately cost him his life. For someone who is largely deemed as selfish, it was a selfless act. He didn’t try to save Rosa to be a hero. He tried to save her because he thought he could, because he wanted to give back a life that was stolen, because he wanted Liz to have her sister again.

Jenna - Badass with a heart of gold. Another great example as to the profound amount of love one can have for their sister. The show could have turned Jenna in to a villain, but they didn’t. She had feelings for Max but she recognized that Max’s feelings for Liz were greater. She knew what they were to each other and instead of inserting herself in the middle, she removed herself from the situation and wished them well. She could have helped Jesse but instead went to Alex. She protected the aliens, she protected Max, at her own expense. She wasn’t used. She always knew what the deal was between the two of them. She had the bravery to tell Max that, that would be the last favor she ever did for him because she knew it’s what would be best for her. I hope we see her back one day.

Michael - Michael has been through A LOT. Despite everything he’s been through, he might love more deeply than anyone else on this entire show. I also think that terrifies him. He closes himself off to accepting other people’s love because of his trauma and it’s realistic and valid. Despite what he says, Michael’s actions and behavior always speaks more to what he’s feeling. He says he doesn’t have family, but he loves Max and Isobel like they are. Michael will never have a relationship that works until he reaches the point where he accepts that other people can and do really, truly love him. It’s that age old “you can never really give love until you’re ready to receive it” thing and that’s so fucking relatable to me because I’m the exact same way.

Kyle - Kyle, like Jenna, they also could have made into a villain and they didn’t. He loves Liz, he supports Liz, even knowing she loves someone else. He didn’t try to insert himself into their whole thing or try to get back together with her. Instead he basically stepped up and asked what she needed from him. It took him on a journey that changed his life and his view of a parent he idolized. Even at the end when he was breaking down, he had every excuse to revert back to something ugly, but he still took the higher road. Kyle may have used to be a homophobic bully, but he’s the proof that we all look for when we ask if it’s really possible for a person to change. Kyle changed and I’m proud that he continues to surprise me.

Maria - Maria’s love for her mom is so beautiful. Watching someone you love slowly lose themselves is one of the MOST difficult things, and seeing them show just how much stress it really puts on her life was wonderful (even though it was difficult to watch). I loved the little insight we got regarding Maria’s feelings of growing up in a town where everyone was white and how it was her mother that taught her to love her skin and her voice. The scene with her and Liz sitting on the billboard was so important. I also love that we know Maria’s family is involved with the aliens in some way (we just don’t know how yet). Also, on a more shallow note, Heather Hemmens is crazy beautiful so I’m grateful to the show for introducing me to her.

Alex - I mean....I honestly don’t know what to say about Alex. At this point I feel like I could write a dissertation about him. Alex has affected me in ways that I was not expecting. I didn’t really understand him at first. I was intrigued, but it took me a while to really see him. To truly see him. Alex is smart. Ridiculously smart. Remember when I said that Liz solved about half the things on the show? Alex solved the other half. He’s kind. He’s so freaking kind, and loving, and loyal. He stands up for his friends and calls them out when need be. Seeing his relationship with Kyle this season has been a blessing. They may not be “friends” (yet) but he’s willing to not look at how they were shaped by the past to instead concentrate on the present because it’s what’s needed. He has this capacity for love that’s so deep which is all the more amazing given by the fact that the two people who should have loved him unconditionally didn’t. He was abandoned by his mom and left to be raised by an abusive, homophobic man. He had every reason to turn out hateful like his dad, but he didn’t. His trauma cost him so much of himself, but this season he’s started to regain those pieces that had been chipped away. He confronted his abuser, he stopped running away from the man he’s in love with. He wants to be free. Free to live and love the way he’s always wanted to. Alex has spent this season regaining his agency, and it’s easily been my favorite character arc.

Extras:

The fashion choices on this show (at least regarding the women) are A+. Maria’s outfits were my favorite. The song selections were also amazing. Nothing makes me happier than some quality 90’s music so it was basically a fantasy brought to life to have a show that showcased it every episode. I even loved all of the cover versions of popular songs. I also had this idea of “what if they end the season playing Here With Me?” and they did, so I’m glad that at least everyone agrees that it was the only song choice that made sense. The show had a lot of great one liners, especially from Michael, Alex, Kyle, and Isobel. I truly believe they’re the snarkiest characters and lord do I want to see more of that.

So those are my positive thoughts on Season 1. Will I watch Season 2 if it’s renewed? Yes. There are a lot of things I wish I could change, but the one thing that the show did (relatively) well is create a multitude of characters that were easy to love in different ways and I *want* to know what happens to them next. So, hopefully, we’ll all get to have our weekly freak out moments again next TV season. We’ll see. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[wild-aloof-rebel]

an inexhaustive list of things i love* about "meet the parents":

david throwing this party and continuing his season-long arc of going out of his comfort zone and doing things he wouldn’t otherwise want to do, all for patrick’s benefit

“i had to quarantine the camels for a month” (in case you ever forget how ridiculously rich this family was once upon a time)

johnny’s just SO proud of david and how well his relationship is going!

“there will be tears, even if they’re just my own” thanks, dan, for writing this line knowing full well you’re about to make all of us weep

*i was tempted to say “things i love and one thing i have incredibly complicated feelings about,” but that just wasn’t as catchy. but honestly i don’t love johnny outing patrick to his parents. i don’t. i probably yelled “oh no” at my laptop about fifteen times during this scene. i don’t love it and it will forever break my heart a little bit when i watch it. BUT. i also understand why you might choose to write it this way, and i love the places it leads. without giving david a reason to confront patrick about whether or not his parents know about them, you don’t have that whole conversation in patrick’s apartment. in an ideal world, that’s a discussion that would happen in a different episode, but if you’re going to try to tackle all of this in one go, there has to be a way into that particular conversation. if you think about the episode without johnny making what was really an honest mistake, david has no reason to panic and therefore no reason to tell patrick his parents are coming, they don’t have their conversation about patrick’s fears and we don’t get david aware that he needs to at least initially play it cool at the party, and in an episode where that doesn’t happen, then patrick shows up to the party, where david is expecting that his parents already know about them, david probably leans in to give him a big ol birthday kiss or something right in front of his parents, and any agency patrick could have had goes entirely out the window. and even if david doesn’t do that, patrick is put in a place where he has no time to prepare for the conversation he obviously is going to have with them; it turns it into something much more immediate and stressful and uncomfortable, and no one wants that. so if you’re going to go this route that patrick’s parents don’t know about their relationship, you have to have a way for patrick to know they’ll be there in advance so that he can choose if this is the situation in which he wants to come out to them and have time to work through that himself. so you have to have that conversation in his apartment, which means you have to give david a reason to tell him his parents are there in the first place. so while i’ll never love this scene itself, i can appreciate why you would choose this as the way into the rest of the episode, and i love the space it provides for important conversations to be had, for david to be so fiercely protective of patrick and his ability to actively choose whether or not to do this now, and for patrick to regain control he otherwise might not have had over such a personal moment. like i said, i’ve got [long and] complicated feelings about it lol.

alexis literally putting her foot down

johnny full-on sprinting to the cafe to correct his mistake. he at least took what he did very seriously and tried to start fixing it as soon as possible

“romantically in business with each other” “ew”

david talks to patrick’s parents on the phone at the store. that’s real cute. even if they didn’t know. (and i think that’s a fairly valid reason for why david would assume they knew without patrick expressly saying so. who puts their parents on the phone with their business partner???)

FLOWERS! he brought patrick a big beautiful bouquet of flowers for his birthday. he’s so sweet, and i love him.

noah’s acting. noah’s acting. NOAH’S ACTING!

that little hnng patrick does after he says he knows his parents are good people. it breaks my entire fucking heart

this whole conversation is SO REAL. so real. like i can’t think about it without tearing up. it’s what makes this episode what it is. it’s important and beautiful and respectful and resonant, and i’ll forgive the setup that got us here because it gave us this.

david’s mm mm mm mm mm as he wraps patrick in his arms

that david never once thinks patrick hasn’t said anything because he’s ashamed of him

the fucking closet joke in the middle of this conversation, GOD

the offer to be just his business partner if that’s what patrick needs

patrick’s smile thinking about telling his parents about david

all these touches and kisses and hugs. so. much. intimacy.

david groaning and taking a big deep breath on the walk to the brewers’ motel room. he’s so nervous. he wants so badly to fix this for patrick

“oh no i very much am” he isn’t apologizing for their relationship. he isn’t sorry to love patrick

“and... it’s his birthday” that little bit of pleading made me sob

wiping away the tear. dan levy, i hate you.

johnny still trying to fix it. he’s a good dad. he’s such a good dad.

“75 for one, 150 for the pair”

clint kissing marcy’s temple just before patrick arrives at the party

moira still says happy birthday, despite david just telling them all that they’re saying surprise

“i thought you guys were out of town” “well we are” they’re cute! they’re a cute family, and i love every one of them

every single time david calls them mr and mrs brewer makes me smile so hard

HE WORE THAT SWEATER. he wore that sweater knowing full well that the power of love made this party, that it saved this party. that his love for patrick and clint and marcy’s love for patrick were going to make this the night it needed to be. how can you not believe in the power of love after that? hell, i’d proclaim it on my sweater at that point, too.

clint giving david’s arm a squeeze

the way david reassures patrick they’ll get through this together and his soothing little thumb rubs on patrick’s shoulders

the world’s tiniest i love you (my new 100% favorite moment of the entire show)

marcy the overenthusiastic ally

“david is my boyfriend. and i’ve never been happier in my life.” my sweet button-faced son!!!!

clint gets teary-eyed, and i could just die

“i like him. i like him a lot” “me too” what a cute moment for patrick, already joking with his parents about loving david!!

“you will in time” patrick’s thinking about their future and i’m never gonna stop screaming

SLOW DANCING AND NECK KISSES

patrick knows. i’m so glad that it’s something that doesn’t have to be a secret between them and that he can see how much david tried to make it right for him

the watery way david says “a very messy day.” again, dan levy, i hate you. so much. by which i of course mean i love you for giving us all of this.

love burns brighter than sunshine

DID I MENTION THE SLOW DANCING??

AND THE NECK KISSES???

AND THE SLOW DANCING????!!!!!!!

[sirenalpha]

I haven’t actually watched the last season of game of thrones but I’ve certainly seen enough memes and summaries to have a good idea of it

I think people comparing Daenerys to Anakin aren’t right in their comparisons

or at least, not based on the arguments I’ve seen which is essentially that Anakin’s fall to the dark side was out of left field and baseless which isn’t even an accurate analysis of the prequel trilogy even if you hate them and think they’re bad

the only similarities Daenerys and Anakin share are that they both started off as victims and both fall to the dark side

differences include:

a) while Daenerys started off as a victim she did eventually gain power and become a leader whereas Anakin began life as a slave and despite becoming physically powerful/powerful in the force he was never a leader and remained a victim/servant until he killed the emperor

b) they had completely different character arcs, Daenerys’ arc was focused on regaining power and breaking abusive cycles both in her own life and on a historical/cultural level until bad writing derailed it, Anakin’s arc was about lack of agency and falling and eventual redemption

c) Daenerys though a series of circumstance involving people pulling away from her and bad writing chose to set her dragon loose on a city as a conqueror, Anakin was manipulated into falling to the dark side by Palpatine and the Jedi on a whole individually and in their creed failed to help or protect him

like Anakin did make terrible choices but everything was set up by Palpatine to make him fall from orchestrating the war pushing him to ethical and emotional limits to portraying himself as an advisor concerned for Anakin’s welfare whose advice actually isolated him from his fellow Jedi to ultimately setting up Anakin’s choice between light and dark to be between saving Mace Windu who had never liked or respected him and saving Palpatine who claimed to have knowledge to save the wife he loved, there was no choice, Palpatine would have always manipulated circumstances so that Anakin would fall

d) Daenerys had no set up to her fall to the dark side and family history of madness doesn’t count, Anakin had 3 movies setting things up for his fall and if you think it was abrupt you weren’t paying attention, in the first movie they set up how the Jedi won’t ever quite accept Anakin, the potential he has for falling to the dark side, and how Palpatine will have an eye on him to manipulate him going forward

So yeah, Daenerys got shafted in the finale season and people compared it to the prequel trilogy because everyone thinks they’re bad, but Anakin’s fall actually had time and effort put into it not to mention completely different circumstances between the two characters’ fall

it even shows in how they died with Daenerys being killed by Jon killing her character arc (and also misogynist) whereas Anakin sacrificed himself to save his son and satisfying his character arc

[yvvaine]

Even tho the writing is sloppy, I feel like they should remember to never take anything the characters says at face value. Like you said, when people use the “I’m not here to be queen of ashes” excuse, they forget that Tyrion was the first to say it (advice: pls watch that scene). So when she said it, it felt empty and insincere to me. Visual storytelling is also important, there was a thunderstorm in the background when she talked about Viserys burning KL if he had 3 dragons

You and me nonny might read into it, and I think there is a WHOLE bunch of people that saw Dany’s arc coming, but a lot of the GA is well.........not that critical of thinkers 

Dany has been a fan favorite since season 1. A lot of that has to do with her freeing the slaves etc. (but that was in s3, so her support started before), or for women the fact that she was an abuse survivor who regained her agency, but i also feel like a solid faction of her support (re: freefolk for example) has more to do with the fact that she used to show her breasts a lot and shes young and pretty with cool ass dragons. Just reading their discussions, seeing how they talk about other female characters, and reading their “theories”, I really dont think they were as interested in her as a complex, thought provoking character like you or I. They weren’t thinking about how GRRM wrote her as a philosophical warning on the dangers of willful ignorance, imperialism, and power.

So for that part of the fandom, which makes up a good chunk, I think it needed to be spelled out more explicitly bc as long as there were some positive scenes to point to they’d disregard or justify any hints or darker aspects of her character. Like those “queen of ashes” scenes for example. They needed those debates on her character - with examples - to happen on screen, not just implied by “im worried for her”. They needed to be shown and hear why. Lead a horse to water and all that. 

[kcwcommentary]

VLD1x02 – “From Days of Long Ago”

1x02 – “From Days of Long Ago”

(Note: With the large amount of characterization/Lion-lore in this episode, the following is kind of long.)

With the second episode, we get the actual opening sequence. The sequence that never changes at all despite significant changes in the show that should have resulted in it being revised (the Lion pilot switch, Zarkon’s death, the destruction of the Castle of Lions). It’s good for now, but they really should have changed it, or at least the relevant shots within it as the show changed content.

The group bickers a bit during the descent to the planet’s surface, most notably Lance and Keith, until Shiro, again demonstrating his authority to be leader of the group, tells everyone to focus. Shiro uses appropriate team management skills by recognizing the division of labor and asks Lance, in his capacity as pilot, where they’re heading. Lance can’t help getting in another joke before turning back to being serious.

We arrive at the Castle of Lions. Shiro, ever the protector, advises caution. The Blue Lion roars open the Castle’s doors. The Castle eventually reacts, saying “Hold for identity scan.” This is very much a minor complaint but how does the Castle’s systems know English? Space shows with aliens all have this issue; sometimes shows handwave it with a quick line or moment about the use of technology or other methods allowing for instantaneous translation, but this show gives nothing. If this was my only complaint about this show, everything would be golden. But I still would have liked it addressed, or at least have something that indicated that the producers and writers of this show realized the challenge of language and communication that comes with the setting of a story in space with aliens.

Our team wanders through the Castle until they get to the stasis pods holding Allura and Coran. Allura emerges first, and the first word she speaks is: “Father!” The presence of patriarchy in this show begins early. Her focus on her father is literally the first word we ever hear Allura speak. Lance then can’t help himself but to try to flirt with her (learn some timing, man). She doesn’t return his interest. Allura does display some prejudice by being disgusted by human ears. She’s bound to have seen plenty of non-Alteans before, so why recoil so significantly over someone having slightly different ears than she has? She’s really not making the best introduction of herself.

Shiro, the one with any sense, tries to get Allura to recognize that they are as much in the dark about what all is going on as she is, and that they need her to provide answers but are also willing to work with her.

Out comes Coran, and immediately shows himself to be in charge of the department of comic relief on the show. “How could you do that when I’ve already come at you like this: Ha! Ha! Hai!” I laughed.

Allura introduces her and Coran’s 10,000-year time gap. Having reflected on this detail over the course of watching the show in the past, I think 10,000 years ended up being a ridiculous, overly large time frame. That our major antagonists now (Zarkon, Haggar) are the same as the antagonists from 10,000 years ago, it’s too much.

Flashback to King Alfor, who has a disagreement with Allura over whether they should fight Zarkon. Alfor uses the magic of patriarchy to touch his daughter on the cheek and render her unconscious. Nothing says that, as a father, you love and value your daughter like depriving her of agency and knocking her unconscious indefinitely.

The sides of this conflict are clearly established. Team Voltron, our heroes, and Altea versus Zarkon, Haggar, and the Galra. Haggar introduces herself with her cryptic behavior. Her being cryptic now is okay because this is the beginning of the story, but that behavior from her becomes more and more bothersome, distracting, and disruptive of the development of the narrative the more seasons of the show we get. We then get the introduction of Sendak.

We also have the introduction of the mice, who have more presence and significance in the show than Shiro’s “significant other” Adam or his last-minute husband ever got.

Lance and Keith continue to bicker, and Shiro again uses his authority to get them stop. I miss Shiro as a leader.

“Good, let them come!” Allura declares. At this early stage of the show, Allura’s prejudice depicted earlier and this angry, brashness now feel like the show is setting her up to be naïve now but to grow in wisdom as the show progresses. By the end of the show, she’s not naïve, but she’s not the beacon of wisdom that it feels like she was supposed to become.

Allura gives the team, and thereby the viewers, a major presentation of the show’s lore. She tells us, “The Lions choose their pilots. It is a mystical bond and cannot be forced. The quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his lion. Together they form something greater than science can explain.” This is the establishment of rules on the show’s system; this is a promise the show is making to the viewer that this is how things work. I’m not personally fond of the mysticism “greater than science” aspect though, especially since the Lions were built by Alfor and the Alteans of long ago. This lore from Allura, until revealed otherwise later, made me think that some other super ancient and very powerful aliens built the Lions and that the Alteans had only acquired them. How Alfor could build the Lions without understanding how they work defies the nature of the process of engineering and construction. Also, if Alfor created the Lions, then where did their consciousness and personalities come from?

That last line aside though, the premise that the pilot and the Lion mirror one another is intriguing. It creates a narrative framework that allows us to understand the characters through their bonding with their lions.

“The Black Lion is the decisive head of Voltron. It will take a pilot who is a born leader, and in control at all times. Someone whose men will follow without hesitation. That is why, Shiro, you will pilot the Black Lion.” I do object to the idea that anyone is a “born leader.” Leadership is a skillset; you learn and practice and grow as a leader. No one is born a leader. That aside, this proclamation cleanly assigns the position of the leader of the group to Shiro (until the show decides to unceremoniously take it from him in later seasons to shove him off to the side as no longer a member of the team). The qualities Allura ascribes here – decisiveness, leadership, self-control – those are all qualities we’ve already seen demonstrated by Shiro in the first two episodes of the show. Shiro’s discipline is what gives him the authority to tell Lance and Keith to stop fighting. His decisiveness is what prompts Lance to ask Shiro for orders at the end of the first episode, and it is what enables Shiro to diplomatically manage Allura’s initial freak-out when she comes out of stasis. Shiro is the leader of this team. The Black Lion says so. (The show never gives us a reason for Shiro to not be in the position of Black Paladin and leader of Voltron despite his removal in later episodes.)

“The Green Lion has an inquisitive personality and needs a pilot of intellect and daring. Pidge, you will pilot the Green Lion.” And we���ve totally seen this in Pidge. She’s clearly inquisitive as shown by her constructing her own equipment so that she can gain transmission and observational data from Kerberos toward her goal of busting the GG’s lie about the Kerberos mission. We saw it in this episode in a quick, subtle two-part moment where she first sees the computer interface in the stasis pod room, expresses a wonder how it works, and then, once Allura activates and uses the terminal, declares, “That’s how that works.” It’s a small moment, but it’s one of Pidge’s in the first three episodes that really gets to me. It’s not just about intelligence for her, but also curiosity. Also identified in this proclamation is the need for daring in the Green Paladin. That’s definitely a quality we see very prominently in later episodes, sometimes much to my annoyance (because in those moments it makes Pidge incredibly short-sighted).

“The Blue Lion…” Allura’s interrupted. Lance makes a declaration of his own. He’s cocky. Allura’s annoyed and moves on without providing a description for the Blue Lion’s preferred qualities. This gap in the lore is never actually filled in, so we, as viewers, can only ever make suppositions ourselves. I wonder if the Blue Lion might like what we got from Lance in this very moment. Rather than allow Allura to make a proclamation about his qualities, Lance engages in an act of self-definition. With Lance’s story arc (at least before this show ceased to understand its characters) set up as him struggling with his sense of self-worth in light of the skills and reputation of others, I could see the Blue Lion with a value of self-determination as setting Lance up to come to terms with his insecurities through the process of self-definition.

“The Yellow Lion is caring and kind. Its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above his own. His heart must be mighty. As the leg of Voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together.” This makes it seem the show is setting Hunk up to function as best able to ensure the team remains unified or regains unity in stressful, fractious situations. It also suggests Hunk can be self-sacrificial, with placing others’ needs above his own. Unfortunately, I’m not sure any of this ever really manifests narratively for Hunk as the show goes on. Maybe in a few, smaller moments here and there, but never anything narratively significant. While the show does retain Hunk’s skill with engineering/technology, I mostly feel he’s reduced to an ongoing joke about food. There’s nothing wrong with loving food, of course, but that should be a comparatively minor detail in defining Hunk’s character. Most of the description associated with him proclaimed here feels forgotten/lost as the show goes on.

“The Red Lion is temperamental and the most difficult to master. It’s faster and more agile than the others, but also more unstable. Its pilot needs to be someone who relies more on instincts than skill alone.” Keith’s the hothead, the aggressive one. Yup, definitely have seen that in him so far. The declaration that Red is difficult to master implies that Keith has an aspect of himself that he isn’t in control of, part of himself that he hasn’t mastered yet. The problem with the show abandoning the lore that there are qualities each Lion expects of its pilot is that Keith no longer has to master himself as part of being the Red Paladin. Lance replacing Keith in Red does not connect Lance to the qualities ascribed here. It also invalidates the idea that Lance in Blue is about self-determination; rather than finding his own value, Lance always remains a substitute to Keith – he only got into the fighter pilot program because Keith was no longer in it, and he only got into the Red Lion because Keith was no longer in it. Keith in Red was about him learning to harness himself, to hone his instincts (aka his wildness) and find mastery over himself. Any of that kind of character growth happens for him offscreen and never as a result of his piloting the Red Lion.

The team splits up to track down and acquire the other Lions. The Green Lion is in some jungle environment. There is a really nice peacefulness to this location. “I’ve been locked up by aliens for a year. This is nothing,” Shiro says. I love this line. Shiro has been through some severely traumatic events in the past year, so his calmness here in the face of an expedition to another planet, it’s all good to him. Can someone let Shiro have two weeks of vacation on this planet please?

Lance and Hunk have less easy of a time getting Yellow. Lance literally throws Hunk out of Blue, further demonstrating Lance as being an instigating influence. We saw that in how he was responsible for the group coming together in the first place. I love Hunk’s little monologue while he’s trying to hotwire the platform: “Oh yeah sure, just drop me off on an alien planet. That’s cool. It’s only occupied by big, mean, purple aliens that want to kill me, but whatever. Just ignore them and go connect with a big, yellow, mechanical cat.” This is a moment of Hunk’s voice acting that I really love. The sarcasm, the quick-fire delivery. It’s fun.

Shiro’s retelling of Commander Holt’s comment, “If you get too worried about what can go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great” is so nice. Shiro’s so supportive. Can I have one of him in my life please? The quiet calmness of Shiro’s voice in this part is so nice; I could listen to him talk like that all day long.

Lance ends up in a precarious situation and Hunk and the Yellow Lion come to the rescue, though apparently by accident. Conveniently, Allura’s ability to hold the wormholes open begins to fade just as the Lions are acquired. Also conveniently, they’ve located Red. Inconveniently, Sendak issues his threat. How does communication systems for the Castle Ship work? Sendak establishes communications and makes his demand without anyone in the ship having to activate the system; really?

Part two of what functions as a three-parter complete.

[nerdylittleshit]

Thoughts about Spn 13x22

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

This was… an episode. I don’t really have an opinion on it. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t outstanding either. And strangely enough I got the feeling that not much happened. Or rather the things that did happen were to be expected at this point in story. The one thing however that I noticed is that Bucklemming still have a problem with the pacing. And something that keeps happening with all of their episodes, that I never noticed with any other writer, is that their episodes always feel incredible long, and despite the fact that they try to cram in as much plot/characters as they can at times also incredible boring. Or maybe it is the fact that most of the screentime went to Lucifer, doing what he likes best, talking about himself, but somehow I couldn’t warm up with this episode.

The other thing I noticed is that we end the episode in a relatively happy place. The family is reunited, everyone is safe in the bunker. Last year the penultimate episode ended with a Winchester family hug. We all remember however how season 12 ended, so if there is a pattern to be seen, 13x23 will leave us in tears. I’m scared.

Until then though let’s have a closer look at this week’s episode.

Make Room For Daddy

The meeting between Lucifer and Jack has been inevitable all season long. And though Lucifer has been the one actively looking for his son it makes sense that Jack has an interest in meeting his father as well. So far he has only heard stories but he wants to form his own opinion. Naturally Sam, Dean and Cas want to avoid this. They know that if anything Lucifer has his way with words and can be very convincing. We have seen in the past the way he was able to bring several people to say “yes” to him. But with trying to keep Jack away from Lucifer they only play into his cards. Lucifer portrays himself as the victim, the way he always did, and by trying to keep Jack away from his father they confirm this story. I think that Mary, who by now has spent several months with Jack, is right here. It is impossible to keep Lucifer from Jack, and Jack has a right to get to know his father after all. She trusts Jack however to come to his own conclusion about the true nature of Lucifer. Mary knows Jack, knows his good heart, and that Jack in time will see right through Lucifer.

One of the problems is that Sam, Dean, Cas and Gabriel tell Jack how truly evil Lucifer is, but they leave it at this very vague point, without giving him concrete examples. Lucifer has (seemingly) killed Gabriel, killed Cas, tried to kill Kelly, has tortured and abused both Sam and Rowena, and of course killed the later even twice. I’m sure I forgot something, but the point is does Jack know about this? Did they sanitize the stories about Lucifer for Jack, keeping them as vague as possible? Because somehow I doubt Jack would have had an interest in talking to him if he knew about all of this.

I also think we can officially stop worrying about Lucifer getting a redemption arc. There are quite a few characters who did get a redemption arc this season: Ketch, Gabriel, Rowena. What they all have in common is their will to change. Ketch redeemed himself in the other world, risking his own life to help strangers. Both Gabriel and Rowena stopped running away, both stopped acting selfish. And that is exactly what Lucifer is incapable of doing. The entire time he only talks about himself. He never shows responsibility for his actions. Instead he blames humanity, who in his eyes is flawed and weak, and asked to be corrupted. He blames his father. He plays the victim because that is the only role he knows.

In the end it is Gabriel who tells him who he truly is. Someone incapable of love and empathy, a cancer cell that ruined humanity forever. We see that Gabriel’s words do affect Lucifer; he starts crying. But by the end of the episode he once again proves that he has learned nothing. He is willing to let Michael destroy another world, not caring about the humans in it, just to be reunited with his son. And it shows that he doesn’t know a single thing about his son either, because all Jack wants is to keep these people save that Lucifer has now doomed.

Speaking of Michael I still wonder what his goal here is. Does he want to destroy another world? What for? I hope the season finale will give us an answer what Michael really wants. The only way I see Jack working together with Lucifer is also because the two together could be powerful enough to kill Michael.  But will they? Say we get Michael!Dean that could be a reason why Jack won’t kill Michael yet, because he would kill Dean as well. To be honest I rather see Lucifer gone and Michael as the big bad next season.

And then of course there is also heaven’s current situation that will play a role in the next season. Cas suggested Gabriel as a new leader, but it is possible AU!Michael will be in charge next season. He and Jack are the only two powerful enough to create new angels (besides God, but I wouldn’t count on him). The question though is not the power but the “how”. It’s not that a manual for creating new angels is lying around.

I am also not surprised that we saw Gabriel dying again. I’m still not sure why they brought him back in the first place to be honest. His entire arc has been in the end very similar to how his story once seemingly ended in season 5. He stopped running away, took humanity’s side, faced one of his brothers, and paid with his own life, all to help the Winchesters. It is a repeat of his season 5 storyline (minus the torture & abuse), but then again so much about the apocalypse world is a parallel to season 5 and especially 5x04. So much that even Sam & Dean said “We’ve been where you are. Hell, we are you”. We will always end up here.

There must be some kind of way outta here

Right at the beginning of the episode Sam and Dean have to face a moral conflict they haven’t really thought about yet: the fate of the people in the apocalypse world. Until now their plan was to get Mary and Jack and bring them back to our world. What they didn’t consider was the fact that by now both Mary and Jack have become part of the resistance, found their purpose in that other world and are not willing to leave their friends behind.

Because I have already seen some hate towards Mary for her decision to stay: she doesn’t act selfish, rather the opposite. She gives up the chance to be reunited with her sons because she couldn’t live with herself if she would abandon the people she fought with over the past months. She gives up her own chance of happiness in order to help others. Which is basically what Sam & Dean have been doing their entire life. Giving up their own chance to live a normal life, to be safe, so that others can.

It is interesting then how different Dean & Sam react. Because Dean is tired of giving up, tired of sacrifices. And we can’t blame him. This season alone he has lost Cas, his mother, Jack, and minutes ago Sam. He sees everything they have lost and it doesn’t match up. This is also another instance of want vs need. Dean says they need Mary, but the truth is that they don’t. They are no longer children and they have lived the biggest part of their lives without a mother. He wants his mother, and that is the difference. Wanting something or someone for your own, acting selfish for once, is not a bad thing, at least not for Dean, who always prioritized everyone else’s needs over his own. It is okay that he for once wants something for himself.

Sam on the other side sees Mary’s perspective. He has been the one suffering the most under her loss, finding her was his win. He should be devastated to learn that she doesn’t want to leave, yet he comes up with a plan. (And you can see Dean doing the maths, coming to the conclusion that with so many people in the bunker, he has to share a bed with Cas now, there is no other way) Overall this has been a positive episode for Sam. Dean takes the blame from him for bringing Lucifer to the camp, telling him there is nothing to apologize for. And he regains some agency towards Lucifer, as he is the one in the end making sure Lucifer won’t come back with them. He also for once wore some nice clothes, so that’s another bonus. And he got to hug Charlie, before he remembered that she doesn’t know him, resulting in one of the cutest Sam scenes we have seen lately.

The other thing that by now was kinda inevitable was that we would see an alternative version of Cas. There had been already some speculation after 13x18 if one of the angels we saw could have been Cas, but it makes sense that Cas has the same vessel, given that Jimmy Novak was a devout man. However… the accent. Which I honestly don’t get? Why would this Cas speak with another accent than our Cas? My first thought was that he sounded Russian, but the term that I have seen the most on my dash by now is “Nazi Cas” (which basically means Hitler’s speaking pattern, with a huge focus on the “r” because the normal German accent doesn’t sound like that). So maybe the accent was used that we would associate the angels in the other world with Nazis? Making a political statement as the US becomes more right-winged every day. I would love to know if this was mentioned in the script or if it was Misha’s choice. Still, I think they could have done without the accent. Different outfit, different behaviour, we would have already knew that this wasn’t our Cas. And remember 4x20? Within seconds we knew it wasn’t Cas talking to Sam & Dean. Misha is a good enough actor that he can do without the accents.

What I love is that they did keep consistent with the AU characters. Bobby and Charlie are pretty much the same as the ones from our world, because the Winchesters didn’t influence them as much. Bobby was already a hunter when he met them (and John), Charlie was always a rebel. Kevin and Cas however were influenced a great deal by Sam and Dean. Cas has fallen in every way imaginable, has rebelled against his angelic family and chosen the Winchesters as his new family time and time again. However we did learn in 8x21 that Cas has always been a rebel, that he never did as he was told. He has never been in fact a perfect soldier. But in that episode we also learned that Naomi brainwashed him multiple times and it is possible that exactly this happened in the other world. Cas was always a rebel, but it took Sam & Dean for him to finally break free from heaven.

The one line that stood out to me was AU Cas saying “Don’t think you are better than me” in reference to Cas supporting humanity. Which is odd considering most angels see humans as weak and flawed. So why would AU Cas think of our Cas as someone above him, knowing our Cas is helping humanity? Is it possible that AU Cas was jealous of our Cas? That he wished he could have been strong enough to step away from heaven as well, to help the humans in his world? I like to believe that AU Cas had some rebellious nature as well, but that centuries of brainwashing resulted in the cold torture machine that we saw.

And AU Cas torturing Charlie by invading her mind mirrors of course the scene where our Cas does the same with the traitor in the camp. The only difference is that our Cas stopped before the damage would be too much. But looking back at 13x14 we know how far he is willing to go to protect the people he loves. AU Cas says they are the same, and in some ways they are. They are both ruthless when it comes to their individual cause. In the end however Cas killing the other version of him, the angelic soldier Cas, was a huge metaphor for Cas killing his old self. Not subtle but nevertheless satisfying.

And that is all for this week. So long and good night.

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

Lotor?

ngl, i squealed when i saw this. i get to talk about My Boy!!!

thank you for the ask

(send me characters and i’ll give thoughts on them!)

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

sorry, anti-lotor half of the vld fandom, but i love this guy to pieces and nothing y’all say can change that because 1. y’all’s attempts at critically saying he’s Bad are poorly done imo lmao, 2. i’m not so preoccupied with morality and purity culture that i stick my thumbs in my ears and try to shove plugs into other ppl’s ears, and 3. opinions are subjective.

like personally, i love complex characters set up as parallels and foils to major protagonists that are inherently anti-imperialist, archaeologists, and conservationists; are representative of a not-so-palatable reality of abuse survivorship; have issues of trauma, paranoia, and interpersonal defeatism; and are clearly being set up for a future arc that will be closely intertwined with said major protagonists—as well as driven by a deep, internal conviction and strength that has persisted against absolutely ridiculous odds—

but idk. your loss, i guess.

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

aesthetically: gorgeous. but i am very ace.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

don’t harangue me for not calling lotor a slytherin in case you support that side lol, but i read a really good meta on this a while ago that i agreed with here.

(gonna put the rest of this under a readmore since this gets to be A Lot.)

essentially, one of lotor’s core traits is the search for knowledge and scientific advancement for its own sake. there’s no way he doesn’t love learning—he spent centuries studying a culture that was extinct, a culture that by any imperialistic measures was worthless and weak because it opposed the empire and it was destroyed. one could hardly believe he began searching for the last remnants of altea for power or ambition. he studied them because he wanted to, for the sake of it, to connect to something that’s part of him.

in a lot of ways, he does exemplify slytherin traits—he can be exceptionally ruthless when he believes he or things/people he cares about are threatened, he is unusually preoccupied with a need for power and control, and his goals could be considered lofty and ambitious. however, much of these traits and desires can easily be linked to his trauma. one might make an argument that he’s still similar enough to honerva to qualify as a slytherin, but personally i think the story sets him up as opposing haggar without hypocrisy in too many ways to be persuaded.

(honerva wanted to continue her research despite the risks, endangering an entire planet and potentially the universe, because she saw the research as empowering. she saw her research—her own ambitions—as more important than anything else, and abandoned ethics like some burdensome shackle. but lotor is seen multiple times as unwilling to endanger people and planets for his goals without either being reasonably assured of their survival (such as voltron) or their consent. he despises cruelty and the taking away of others’ agency.)

in an ideal world, i think lotor would be an obvious ravenclaw. but his trauma has encouraged him to act like a slytherin.

best quality:

superficially: HIS NERDINESS. as soon as lotor started talking about ancient ruins, learning other cultures’ customs, and rattled off an entire poem he memorized off some old-ass cave wall he probably saw like 3 centuries before, i was absolutely done for. i had been trying to maintain my skepticism of him for skepticism’s sake, but god. you can’t just throw a goddamn archaeologist in my face and expect me to not fall deeply in love.

more seriously: i love lotor’s conviction. lotor has a strong sense of self, morality, and personal drive, especially for someone with his experiences.

he accepts and embraces both sides of his heritage as defining parts of who he is. in an empire that despises altean blood, he wields an altean broadsword, spends centuries studying what’s left of the culture, and openly admires the peace, people, and traditions of altea past. and in a castle of paladins and alteans, he demands to be judged “by [his] actions, rather than [the] preconceptions of [his] race,” knowing full well that team voltron perceives him as galra, and failing to inform them of his altean blood despite the clear benefits that would’ve come from doing so.

he has a code of conduct that’s repeatedly shown in sharp contrast to the ideals of the empire—even from his very introduction, when he stands in front of an entire arena of galran soldiers and refuses to compromise his own morals for a more rhetorically effective argument. lotor’s small, four-person team of generals (compared to the typical galran fleet) seizes an entire planet while killing no one and causing virtually no destruction.

he is also incredibly self-motivated. lotor has lived for centuries relying almost completely on himself, and he will ruthlessly protect himself and his own.

his inner strength is ridiculously admirable, and i love his self-assurance.

worst quality:

idk? usually ppl say flaws or some such here, but the problem is that flaws are more complicated than just “they do dumb things because of this adjective.”

also i love flaws. they’re born of the essence that makes a character who they are. hating their flaws is ridiculous.

with that said……..

fucking hate lotor’s hair. seriously, wtf? he can tuck all of it into his helmet and have it all fall back out nice and neatly. HOW. it’s the biggest lie of the entire show alongside allura’s bun. it’s just not possible and i hate that lotor defying reality just to look beautiful is Canon.

his butt cape. like akjhdkhgkghjgk,,, a genuine BUTT CAPE. for what purpose?? preference??? drama???????? i’ve seen comparisons to honerva’s own butt cape back when she was a normal empress-consort scientist on daibazaal, which makes sense since lotor loves making Fashion Statements, but god. a butt cape.

what on god’s heavenly green earth is up with his swordsmanship? the acrobatics and the flourishing are positively ridiculous. who the fuck actually tries killing a powerful emperor and their abuser by smashing them from above with a purple final fantasy sword like they’re the hammer and zarkon is a nail. lotor is unrealistic.

ship them with:

:)

recovery and happiness.

brotp them with:

his generals. DUH. it’s clear that they’ve had a strong history together, and it’s impossible to have their relationship end here without any sort of resolution or confrontation about narti’s death. let them reunite under conciliatory terms. let them be friends again. (and let sincline return.)

allura for sure!!! their relationship development has been beautiful so far and i want to see that continue.

coran. they’re both Nerds. plus, one of them got to experience a full and long life on altea. let them talk.

the paladins in general. it might be difficult, slow-going, and hesitant/full of suspicion on both sides, but god—just imagine if they were friendly. (plus it would do worlds of good for lotor. he’s a lonely man, and it would even more clearly distance him from comparisons to zarkon.)

the blade of marmora (and keith). the show has said nothing so far, but i refuse to believe that in the past centuries, lotor and the blade have never interacted or crossed paths before. i can imagine why they would’ve been uninterested in alliance with each other, but i can also imagine what would make each appeal greatly to the other. let them interact. (as for keith, he and lotor have a lot of similarities. it’s real funny how similar allura, keith, and lotor all are to each other, really. hm.)

needs to stay away from:

haggar. she’s fake as hell and evil to boot. some ppl think that she’s reawakened some kind of dormant love in her for lotor after regaining more memories in s5, but that’s far from the case. someone who’s become and lived as she has for 10,000 years doesn’t suddenly care well about someone she’s abused horribly because she realizes she gave birth to them, and doesn’t suddenly become sympathetic in the good way because she’s “motherly” now. (not if the writing’s supposed to be decent, anyway.) she realizes lotor’s about to die and does absolutely nothing else except turn on the magic shiro television in her lab. she only finds out after the black bayard exchange has already happened, and she’s haggar. if she really wanted to stop what was happening, she could’ve done a lot more than just watch through shiro’s eyes. she’s a horrible person, folks, and lotor would do best to never see her again. (unfortunately, it’s much more likely that she will fuck his shit up some more next season. rip.)

zarkon. hopefully he actually stays dead this time, but i’ve seen some good points on how sketchy his ability to stay dead is. nevertheless, all memory of him deserves to be banished to the nether realms. lotor should never have to deal with that asshole’s legacy again.

misc. thoughts:

anyone who talks about lotor getting/not getting/deserving/not deserving a redemption arc makes me lose my shit because he hasn’t even done anything to warrant a redemption arc in the first place like tbfh. evil deeds whomst?? trying to kill voltron when?? where are these receipts of malice??? he’s never done an evil damn thing but y’all humoring the concept anyway. smh.

anyway, lotor needs a therapist, healing, and some good fucking friends. @dreamworks give lotor a recovery arc 2k18.

[owl-eyed-woman]

Attack on Titan Season 2 Episode Analysis - Episode 5 (Episode 30)

This is it, the culmination of these past 4 episodes. It’s all been building up to the resolution of this first arc and the explanation of Ymir and Christa’s relationship and undeniable connection. It’s as satisfying as it is devastating. Let’s get right into it.

AOT is frequently praised for its story and thrilling action, but what often gets overlooked is just how well done its characterisation is. Initially conventional characters reveal hidden depths and a fundamental humanity and practically every main character contains some genuine complexity or nuanced character development. I think this is why AOT has spoken to so many people in so many ways – it’s not just a great action show, it’s a legitimately great character drama, contending with the nature of our humanity and the way war changes us. There are some genuinely heavy character moments in this show and they all emotionally resonate because we actually care about these characters and empathise with their struggles. Behind all that gore and viscera, AOT hides a pulsing brain and a beating heart

This masterful characterisation is nowhere more apparent than this episode’s focus on Ymir and Christa’s relationship. We could basically rename this episode to “Ymir and Christa psychoanalyse each other” and it is truly a glorious thing to behold.

Thus, in the first half of this episode we finally get to discover that mysterious promise Ymir alluded to, as we flashback to their cadet snow training. Lost in the snow and isolated from the group, Ymir and Christa find themselves in a dire situation, as Christa drags Daz’s incapacitated body through the snow, determined to get all of them out alive. On the surface, it’s an admirable, altruistic act, which Ymir, ever the pragmatist, simply must question. She bluntly confronts Christa with the reality of their situation: they can either leave Daz behind and ensure their own survival or they can try to save Daz and die with him. Christa, unwavering, reaffirms that she’ll stay with Daz and that Ymir should just go on without her.

But then Ymir asks a question that cuts to the heart of Christa’s actions: why hasn’t she even thought to ask Ymir for help? The answer literally stops Christa in her tracks – she hasn’t asked for help because she ultimately doesn’t intend to save Daz. Though Christa desperately wants to be a good person (and she is one!), she also wants to be seen as a hero and gain all the respect that comes with such a classification. In this life-or-death situation, it doesn’t matter if she and Daz die; she’s already accepted their deaths. What matters most for Christa is that she is able to understand herself as someone who has done something worthwhile and thus matters in this world.

But this isn’t all Ymir knows about Christa; she also knows Christa’s true identity (dun dun dun). Christa is, in truth, the daughter of a high-ranking noble and his mistress. As an illegitimate child, she was seen as little more than a nuisance and actively wanted dead. In order to survive, Christa was forced to change her name, renounce her title, and live life as a commoner and a soldier.

With this backstory it becomes abundantly clear exactly why Christa wants to die in the first place. Her desire for the validation of a heroic death isn’t because she’s secretly a selfish person who only does things for herself –AOT is much more nuanced than this. All her life, Christa has been told that it would be better if she didn’t exist, literally forced to erase her identity to survive. With no one to show her otherwise, Christa has come to believe that they were right, that she is worthless and that it would be better for everyone, and for herself, if she were dead.  

Paradoxically, in Christa’s mind, a heroic death is the only way for her to deal with this belief that she is worthless; in this act, Christa is simultaneously conceding to these forces around her and, in a messed up way, challenging it. By specifically seeking out a heroic death, she is choosing a type of death that is inherently valuable and noble. If she sacrifices herself for the greater good, she can re-envision herself as a hero, as someone important, as someone who is needed in this world. Thus, she can ensure that her worth won’t be denied.  It is, tragically, the only way Christa believes she can regain any agency in her life after being completely disempowered and robbed of her identity

After all this, we mostly understand Christa’s destructive view of herself, but we still don’t know why Ymir is so invested in Christa and what she ultimately wants out of this. Christa hits the nail on the head though as she realises that Ymir specifically joined the cadets to find her after she overheard her story.

The question is though, why was she so compelled to do such a thing? Ymir prides herself on being the type of person that cuts through any and all bullshit but she refuses to give a clear answer to this question. She even gets a bit flustered, aware that she’s not being honest to Christa or herself about her intentions.

Now it’s Christa’s turn to psychoanalyse Ymir as she correctly intuits that Ymir joined the cadets because she wanted to be friends with her. There’s something very earnest and innocent in the way Christa describes Ymir’s motivation, but it does capture the truth of the matter. Ymir isn’t being motivated by any type of morbid curiosity or coercive plot. Rather, she was motivated by a genuine sense of kinship with Christa’s situation which, upon actually meeting her, has morphed into an undeniable connection and concern for her wellbeing – basically, they love each other and it’s beautiful.

This deeper connection and hidden similarity between Ymir and Christa, thus far only hinted at, is now finally explained by Ymir. In a moment of unusual candour, Ymir essentially outlines her life’s philosophy as she gives us a sense of how they reflect and contradict one another.

Both Ymir and Christa were born into a world that that immediately rejected them. Spurned and shunned, they were told that the world would be better off without them. In this hopeless situation, they were given a choice: they could find a modicum of acceptance within society by renouncing their identity and place in the world, essentially surrendering to this destructive perspective in order to live a ‘normal’ life. Or, they could reject this society entirely, reaffirming their identity and self-worth but being ostracised as a result.

Ymir chose the latter, remaining true to herself and using her continued existence as a type of fuck you to those who tried to deprive her of her personhood. While Ymir has been marginalised because of this decision, forced to live on the outskirts of society and, by necessity, conceal the truth of her origin, she has still retained her agency and pride in herself.

Christa, however, was forced to yield to these external forces and literally renounce her identity in order to survive. While she is alive because of this choice, she has essentially participated in her own marginalisation, surviving on the peripheries of society rather than fully living her own life.

In the end, there was no correct choice for Christa. But by resigning herself to this fate rather than fully affirming her identity and worth, Christa is trapped in a cage of her own making, unable to empower herself to change her lot, except, in her mind, through death.

Still, Christa desperately wants to reclaim her identity and defy those who want her dead with her own power. But ultimately, she is unable to make this desire a reality on her own. Suddenly, in the middle of this character confrontation, Christa shifts her focus to the situation at hand: she won’t be able to save all of their lives.

This isn’t a transparent attempt to change the subject. Rather, this immediate conflict needs to be seen as symbolic of the Christa’s internal conflict and Ymir’s attempt to empower and liberate Christa. If she can’t even save Daz, how can she possibly hope to save herself and change her fate?

But Ymir says there is a way. To save Daz they need to throw him off the cliff so he can be retrieved by the others. Christa of course objects to this ridiculous idea, so Ymir roughly throws Christa into a tree. In this moment of disorientation, Ymir transforms into a titan to take Daz to safety.  

On the surface, Ymir uses her power as a titan to enable all of them to survive. But on a symbolic level, this shows us that Ymir is willing to put her identity, her secret and even her life on the line, just to prove to Christa that her seemingly impossible desire for freedom can be made a reality. Even Ymir seems shocked at what she did for Christa, at once happy, pained, conflicted and incredulous. By the end of the episode, Ymir will show us just how far she is willing to go for Christa (and I will cry).

In the real world though, Christa, of course, wants to know exactly how Ymir and Daz made it back alive. With the sun rising behind them, symbolising the hope they have found in each other, (it’s super romantic you guys), Ymir agrees to tell her the truth if Christa will promise her one thing: when Ymir reveals her secret, Christa must re-assume her true identity and live for herself –proudly, fearlessly and free.  

Transitioning back to present, we return to Ymir jumping off the tower, but this time, we experience it from her perspective. As she falls, perhaps for the first time, we hear Ymir’s internal monologue, really highlighting that Ymir is being truly open and honest in this act. She, like Christa, was told that it would be better if she didn’t exist. Forced to deny a part of herself, she wants nothing more than to live for herself as herself. Now, Ymir is going to give Christa that second chance.

Now, that was a lot of time spent on character analysis, I can admit it. But without it, AoT wouldn’t nearly be so powerful or effective. Because AoT consistently sets up its characters, themes and emotional through-lines so well and so comprehensively, the big action-y pay off never gets bogged down in wordy explanations or internal monologue. It can simply let the scene play out and trust that the audience will get it. Because we truly understand these characters, we can absorb the action, understanding the ways it’s playing Christa and Ymir’s relationship, needs and motivations.  And, we have all the information we need for my heart to be ripped out at the end.

Ymir as a titan is both fierce and goofy. It’s a great design, with her relatively small stature belying a terrifying strength and ferocity. This titan battle has a different feel from Eren or Annie’s, as Ymir uses her agility and viciousness to her advantage, jumping and biting and scratching. It’s scrappy, it’s mean and it’s super fun to watch.

Well, for the other characters watching from the tower, it’s more confronting than fun. As they look down upon this abnormal scene, more pressing questions come to mind – is Ymir their enemy? Did she know she was a titan? Could there be others who don’t know that they are titan shifters? What is her motivation?

True to form, it’s pointless to attempt to understand Ymir’s motivations purely from the way she presents herself. She’s just too good at concealing the truth. What matters are her actions and what they say about her. As Christa deduces, Ymir could easily escape if she wanted to. Instead she is trying to fight and protect them because she cares about them (but mostly because she loves Christa).

Realising that Ymir is doing exactly what she herself would have done, sacrificing herself to protect the one’s she cares about, Christa is almost indignant. Their typical roles are suddenly flipped, as Christa begins to scold Ymir, angrily ordering her to live for herself, not for others, and survive!

In this act, Christa is actively endorsing Ymir’s selfish philosophy that prioritises oneself over everyone else. This is a turning point for Christa, and, I believe, truly shows us that she is emotionally ready to reassume her true identity and assert herself in this world.

As we saw in the flashback, Christa destructively believed that she didn’t matter, that as an individual she was essentially worthless. This is why she was able to so easily give up her identity, and, implicitly, her right to personhood. Ymir’s hyper-individualist philosophy is the exact opposite of this self-abnegating belief and dangerous willingness to yield to the needs of the group. Yes, it is often a selfish view, but it is also an empowering philosophy that grants the individual agency over themselves and affirms their place in a world that seeks to repress them.

In this moment, as Christa yells from the tower, Christa truly understands this mindset and philosophy; she just needs apply it to herself. Essentially, Ymir has succeeded in showing Christa how to liberate herself and reclaim her pride as an individual. Simply by being with her and challenging her, Ymir has impacted Christa and helped her grow into someone who is willing to selfishly live and truly believe in your right to exist. So too, has Christa changed Ymir into a person who is willing to selflessly do what’s best for others to save the people you love. This is why their relationship is so, so important and so, so powerful. Simply by being together, they’ve made each other stronger and helped each other to grow as people.

So of course, Christa orders Ymir to destroy the tower. Epic.

Without the height advantage provided by the tower, though, Ymir begins to tire and is overpowered. Horrifyingly, the titans begin to devour Ymir in her titan form and Christa runs to her, crying out that she still wants to talk to Ymir and tell her her real name. They love each other so much, you guys, I just can’t handle it.

When all seems truly lost (for the umpteenth time), the scouts arrive, just in time to save Christa and the others from the titans surrounding them. With sweet, sweet victory finally in sight, the tone shifts from despair at the once seemingly impossible odds to triumph as they slay titan after titan. There’s even some jokes! I quite literally screamed with laughter when Eren finally got his first titan kill as a human and then proceeded to trip and fail.

This joy is short-lived though as we see Ymir’s horrific injuries and gaping wound in her stomach; it doesn’t look like she’ll survive. As Christa cradles Ymir in her arms, holding her in her final(?) moments, Ymir opens her eyes. Teary but smiling, Christa finally reveals what she has hidden from Ymir this whole time: her real name is Historia. It’s a beautiful, quiet scene, filled with meaning and emotion that words can’t necessarily express, and AoT just let’s this moment play out.

In the end, this episode tells the story of two girls who truly understand and love each other. It’s a truly beautiful and touching episode.

I guess in the end all I can really say is YUMIKURI 4 LIFE!!11!!