#I think she was the only option that narratively made sense myself

[real-reulbbr-band]

I’m gonna stop letting others influence my opinion and straight up say I think the wrong cat died podcast is good and more informative then most of the wiki pages

[banamine-bananime]

ok embarrassing myself thoroughly admitting i just block out important questions about my favourite character while rotating her in my mind because thinking hard. but i think i need to finally come to a Decision of what tex knew before ct redpilled her (sec. Matrix not MRAs). what paralyzes me is the multiple angles that need to be considered

what makes sense given any narrative clues we've gotten? what makes sense given how she was created and what we know of other fragments? what makes sense for tex's character to think and act/react in the ways she did? what makes sense for the the director to have told her in explanation of whichever memories she does have/if she knew she was in a robotic body? what is most meaningful thematically with tex's arc? what makes the most interesting story, more broadly?

IT'S A LOT and i shortcircuit and instead say 'well it was definitely fucked-up. whatever it was. anyways now she's a cowbuoy messing around having adventures in space free of pfl yayyyyyy :))'

did she know she was an ai in a robotic body? whether that be thinking she was a typically-made smart ai or knowing she fragmented from alpha but not knowing about what happened to him afterwards. (i do not believe the later is possible but i could very much see her thinking she's a non-fragmental smart ai)

did she remember being allison/think of herself as allison before developing a separate identity when she lost faith in pfl? or did she have fragmented memories she filled in with a totally different life?

did she remember dying and know she was, in some way, brought back? whether she thinks that's as a smart ai, by some other wild mad science, or that she had instead been comatose

did she remember allison's relationship?

if so, did she know the director was that guy?

did she remember allison having a child?

if so, did she know carolina was that child? (for me this is the only other one i say a definitive 'no' to, but maybe some of you feel differently?)

i'm very interested how other people think about these. i have a couple i feel make the most sense but please please tell me your texas thoughts

[thelittlecrookedtalecomic]

Wow, Ariel was only 34?! Poor thing sure didn't age well 😔 Sorry, maybe you're tired of questions about her, but I'm just curious: you said there were many plotholes in the original movie, what are they? (I must sound dumb 😂)

Alright, this is going to be a LONG answer and I hope I can explain myself good enough 😁

The Little Mermaid is one of those scripts you have to completely flip because you're changing the original idea in an opposite way. In the original story, the mermaid is not an exemplary character, but rather proof that we cannot force someone to love us just because we have become infatuated with them. No matter how much we self-sacrifice or try, "no means no." She is a selfish and reckless character who shows growth in the end by letting go of these traits and choosing to sacrifice herself when she had the option to save herself and crown her greatest selfish act.

In Disney's case, the premise was obviously that Ariel had to be a heroine, carry a moral message, and triumph over evil. To do this, they chose the path of victimization. Ariel had to be a misunderstood social outcast who fell into a trap set by a very evil figure who was then defeated. But the resources employed were insufficient, as they kept too many elements from the original script.

Demonizing the figure of the witch was an obvious step, turning her into a deceitful character with "I want to conquer the world" ambitions to quickly cast Ariel as the victim. The problem with this is the initial premise: literally everyone in the ocean knows Ursula can't be trusted, and she proudly displays her victims in her garden. This makes Ariel look like a foolish character for making a deal with her and downgrades a lot of the "I’ve always wanted to leave the sea" narrative into just a "teenage tantrum." Sure, she’s an impulsive teenager, but the point of this narrative device was to victimize her, and it achieves the opposite. Personally, I would have made Ursula a more discreet and manipulative character, someone Ariel saw as a victim, which could later trigger a sense of betrayal in Ariel.

Then there’s the often-discussed aspect that's always used as an argument: Ariel's fascination with the human world. It’s a great nuance to add to the story, moving it away from being solely about a romantic interest. Ariel needed her own background, hobbies, and goals, like exploring that unknown world. The problem is its execution—it’s insufficient and tedious. Ariel is a fanatic about the human world, with an oversized ego about what she thinks she knows, and her extreme idealization is used as if it were irrefutable evidence against her father. I always use the same example for this: in neutral terms, Ariel looks like someone who idolizes and defends an extraterrestrial way of life she knows only through the garbage she collects, while everyone else knows these beings hunt humans. Essentially, she comes across as an crazy and obsessed person.

This fascination with the human world is sold to us in a propagandistic and absurd way, focused on "we, the audience, are humans, and Ariel says we’re great, therefore she’s right. Her father keeps giving us a hard time, so he’s a tyrant." By the end of the movie, Ariel becomes the "superior species" because her father bends for absurd reasons. During the first half of the movie, Ariel’s love for the human world is heavily emphasized, but it falls flat when the weight of the original script lands on us. It all turns into a race against time for the woman to win over the man, and all the prior development becomes mere decoration that could be removed from the plot without affecting it at all. If Ariel hadn’t met Eric, she wouldn’t have left the water. This is also shown when it’s not until Triton destroys Eric’s statue that Ariel is devastated, unintentionally showing in the script that the rest of the cave treasures (and her character’s corresponding nuance) were mere additions. You can literally erase all the first part of the movie until Ariel meets Eric and there's no difference in the script development. In the end, what matters is the man, and that’s what moves the story. It’s Eric who makes Ariel seriously want to leave the water, and his statue is the crown jewel of her collection. Eric's cracked stone face is what pushes Ariel to take the step, as Flotsam and Jetsam don’t tempt her with exploring the human world but with winning over "her prince," just like Ursula does later too. Everything in the deal and the song, revolves around seducing Eric.

Personally, on this point, as I said, the script had to be completely changed, and that’s why they could have taken more risks by simply eliminating narrative elements that doomed the story to follow its original course. Ariel shouldn’t have fallen in love until she left the water. There are tons of stories they could have told about a mermaid being deceived by a witch to fulfill her dream of becoming human, and then introduced the romantic interest after she achieved her initial goal. This would have not only affected Ariel but Eric as well, who also loses out in Disney’s version. Originally, he was a prince who at least knew he had no romantic interest in the protagonist. Here, he’s a puppet obsessed with a voice while also being attracted to a mute stranger, despite being "in love" with the owner of the voice, and then goes on to marry a third woman who, no matter how much they try to sell us the idea that she "hypnotized" him, her physical appearance raises serious doubts in a realistic context about how much of a womanizer and fickle person Eric is.

Then we have poor Triton, the real victim of this script. He’s the most logical character in the film, battered by forced scenes where he loses control of his temper to demonize his perfectly logical ideas, and suffers absurd accusations of patriarchy against the protagonist (because we can all see how Ariel is locked in her room with no freedom, having tons of real obligations in her privileged underwater bubble). He’s also used as a cheap tool to emphasize human supremacy over the marine world.

Another aspect that should have been more balanced is the presence of animals. Ariel is by far the most dependent protagonist on others because of this. The supporting characters do absolutely all the work for Ariel, whose only accomplishments in the movie boil down to dodging a shark, saving a man from drowning (which was already in the original script), jumping into the water to swim after the wedding ship (for which she also needs help), and grabbing Ursula by the hair. One could argue that Cinderella also relied on her friends to escape her confinement. The difference is that Cinderella herself took the initiative by ordering them to bring Bruno, a course of action that made sense due to the development they had, making it a logical resource to use as a consequence. We are shown how Cinderella built relationships with her friends, so these friends help her in her moments of necessity. But in Ariel’s case, her friends act and solve things without communicating anything to her. Ariel controls none of the situations, and everyone else solves the problems for her.

Considering the decades that had passed, I’m still surprised at how all the nuances of the film end up making Ariel a much weaker woman than her predecessors, who didn’t navigate their plots pretending to be heroines like the case of the Little Mermaid. Ariel doesn’t learn or reason through anything during her experience. She doesn’t control any of the events around her or discover anything for herself, doesn’t apologize for her mistakes, and conveniently gets a rather undeserved happy ending. She doesn’t adapt to circumstances (the circumstances and characters adapt to her needs), she suffers no disappointments from the human world she so idealized because she walks on clouds as the privileged guest of a prince, and nothing happens to pull her out of her comfort bubble.

Essentially, it’s a script that not only retains 80% of the original nuances but also worsens them by making the mermaid’s actions affect more people due to her recklessness, and on top of that, rewarding her for being the most problematic and useless character.

[antianakin]

Okay, another dumb Star Wars comment I heard in my journeys in Star Wars YouTube. I was reading through a bunch of comments people had made hating on the Kenobi show (and that show is my entire heart so I was mostly doing it to entertain myself by seeing the terrible Jedi takes) but aside from all the unfortunate hate for the show I came across one person who claimed that it should have been Luke if the show was going to involve one of the skytwins, because Leia doesn’t react when Obi-Wan comes for her in A New Hope, and because Obi-Wan and Luke “SEEM TO KNOW EACH OTHER PRETTY WELL LATER ON” so they should’ve talked about how they became close.

like…… did you not WATCH A New Hope?

That’s…. That’s how they become close. 😭 (also Leia was super excited when she found out he was there so)

I think you can make a solid argument that it might've made more sense for it to be Luke instead of Leia just by simple logistics I guess. Leia doesn't really SEEM to know Obi-Wan super well within ANH, it's Luke who grieves Obi-Wan more openly and Luke who yells out Obi-Wan's name on the Death Star right before he dies, etc etc. Luke is the person that Obi-Wan has been most connected to at this point while Leia's knowledge of Obi-Wan seems to have primarily come through stories told to her by Bail and little else.

And while obviously ANH is supposed to stand on its own in building Obi-Wan and Luke's relationship, they really only get a few days together and a lot of Luke's connection to Obi-Wan seems to come from this desire to be a Jedi and the connection to his father he craves so desperately as well as just the fact that he loses everything else so his only real option IS to go with Obi-Wan. It's a different kind of connection than the one we see built between Obi-Wan and Leia in this show that feels more personal. I LIKE Obi-Wan and Luke's relationship well enough, but I am brought to literal tears by Obi-Wan and Leia's. So for people who like Obi-Wan and Luke more than I did and picked up on the extra emotional depth of the relationship given to Obi-Wan and Leia, I can understand the wish for it to have been applied to Luke instead of Leia, to bolster the already existing relationship rather than creating a new one.

So I GET IT. I don't feel the same way, the Obi-Wan and Leia relationship stole my whole heart and was a large part of why I loved that show, but I can see the reasoning for why people might feel that way.

That being said, Luke's had his turn to shine. He got an entire trilogy of films dedicated to HIS STORY and his growth into being a Jedi while Leia was primarily there as a supporting character in his story. The Kenobi show HIGHLIGHTS Leia and the growth that allowed her to become the person we know from the OT. We get to see that development happen for her and how Obi-Wan helps jumpstart it. We get to see more of what being an Organa means to her and her relationship with her parents, we get to see her love of ships and droids (clearly inherited from Bail), we get to see her passion for helping people and sparky attitude (also inherited from Bail), and the unbridled optimism she has in the fact that goodness and selflessness still exists in the world and it's worth believing in and fighting for. We got SO MUCH for Leia in this and it's about damn time something in high canon focused on her instead of her brother anyway.

So I think you CAN fit the events of the show into canon relatively easily, especially Obi-Wan and Leia having had this relationship, but I can understand people wanting more of Luke and feeling like the Obi-Wan and Luke relationship was usually more narratively relevant prior to this and was an easy place to flesh it out and explore it more in depth in a way ANH just isn't really able to do.

[strqyr]

Me just chewing on the Summer working with Salem theory. Just... As someone else pointed out Summer is the only stepmother we've seen in the entire show about fairytales. And very specifically Yang has both abandonment issues and the family absolutely imploded when Summer died or "died". Bonus that's messed up points: Raven at least occasionally visits as a raven. I'm all for this theory because oh it makes sense and it finally puts the spotlight on the family implosion.

More on the whole Summer Rose possibly joining Salem makes the whole STRQ situation stupidly complex - Yang and Ruby nearly ended up Grimm chow because went looking for Raven. Qrow saved them - but given Raven's semblance she possibly could have also. Or what I'm saying is that I'm considering the option that Raven's reintroduction to the narrative is her bailing out RWBY after they come across Summer working for Salem. Because Raven is extremely set up for high powered evac from nowhere.

my mind always goes back to red like roses part ii bc with every new revelation that make the picture just a little bit more clearer, the more relevant it becomes. i made a sacrifice but forced a bigger sacrifice on you is often read as "summer took a risk going against salem and died trying to end this war once and for all, and thus the weight of being the simple, more honest soul fell on ruby" but reading it in the light of summer working with salem, and it becomes "summer made a sacrifice by essentially faking her own death and never making any contact with her family, perhaps hoping that one day she could return to them when it's all over, but in doing so forced ruby, the little girl with silver eyes, her own daughter, into the spotlight" which i find 100x more interesting characterwise.

and god is the reveal going to have an impact on the whole family; the comparisons between summer and raven are apt bc so far, they could have not been spoken more differently about, but the more the curtains get peeled back, the more similar they become (not the same, never the same, but i do think summer and raven are more similar to each other than even they themselves may think). and it's so interesting bc we know how the family was affected after summer's alleged death (at least from yang's perspective) but nothing after raven left other than they all eventually moved on and what tai said about it doing a number on their family (which rings odd when the focus has been more on how they were handling things post-summer's 'death' rather than raven's departure).

the bridging of the gap between heroes and monsters is already well on its way; a world is a lot more complex than a simple black-and-white morality might suggest, being a hero and doing good doesn't equal never failing, people you trust or don't trust can both be right about one thing and wrong about another, everything that ruby is going through mirrors plenty of villains, it's just a matter of perspective, etc; finding out that summer, the best of the heroes the world has to offer, is working with salem is definitely going to speed things up even further.

i'm not willing to try and predict when raven is going to come back properly (i.e. excluding potential summer flashbacks) bc, well. she's kind of unpredictable. like, her first appearance was 'foreshadowed' by yang talking about her family to blake, but that was as much about summer as it was about raven, and what it left us with was "yang is searching for her mom", not "her mom is going to drop in out of nowhere to save yang."

like the setup is there, the warrior in the woods made it clear—"next time you enter the woods, you're on your own." -> "i knew you'd still come to my rescue." is not being subtle—but it could also do with summer potentially going to ask for raven's help during her final mission that took a turn, and. ya know. "promises are like birds; they taste great, but always escape." or something like that. idk.

i jinxed myself not so long ago by saying that i don't think any of my long running, serious theories are going to get proven or debunked this volume and now i've been told to buckle up and the strq brainworms are having a unannounced party that has kept going way past into the quiet hours.

like. ten years of waiting and i might actually get all of team strq in the same episode this saturday? trying to keep my expectations in check but also i might just cry.

[loquaciousquark]

I finished my Durge run! Got that Tactician achievement too, hoorah. Lots of thoughts about the Dark Urge/Astarion romance under the cut.

My final thoughts now that I've finished it - it's fine. Honestly? It's fine. I think there are some interesting parallels drawn specifically for his backstory with Cazador compared to the Dark Urge trying to resist the urges, but I didn't come out of the romance feeling like it was the end-all be-all One True Romance version for the character. I think there are some interesting dialogue lines ("is today a 'wed you with a delicate veil of blood staining your white curls' kind of day?" made me laugh every time), and it's definitely fun to see some major hurt/comfort vibes play out on screen in the attack-the-romance scene, for sure. That said, I didn't feel like there wasn't anything in that romance I couldn't get for myself with a dominate spell and 4k words of fic with a Tav I like much more.

And like, there's nothing at all wrong with the Dark Urge background! I think it's really interesting to have that internal struggle kind of flavoring the run, and of course it makes sense to have strong Bhaalspawn ties in this particular canon. I think the stuff that's added with Isobel and Scleritas and Orin is very interesting and it definitely added depth to to the Sarevok interactions, and even the conversations with Withers had a lot more nuance! I can definitely see why some people call it Tav+, because it is a customizable character with a lot of extra dialogue options that a regular Tav doesn't get.

That said, the particular type of character that Dark Urge is is one that's not as compelling to me, and setting that up against Astarion's arc felt correspondingly less compelling than the Tav arc I made on my first rogue run. I've played amnesiac characters with a twist before (KOTOR) and in that game I found myself similarly uninvested in the character to the point that I went full Dark Side with her very early in the narrative. To date, she's the only evil main character I've ever intentionally played! There's just something about that blank slate background that doesn't appeal - I find that my characters are generally very strongly shaped by their histories and backstories, even if the details of those backstories develop over the course of the game. They make choices because of who they are and what they've experienced and who they've lost and loved, and I find it hard to create a character with a consistent internal moral needle when there's no backstory to guide it.

And I guess that's part of why the Resist path for the Durge just makes me internally go ???? Because realistically, if I've spent my entire formative life being excitedly murderous, ritually necrophiliac, gleefully cannibalistic, and generally not very nice, why does the amnesia change that? Why would that character want to become something else? How do I internally justify a character making that sort of MASSIVE ethical and moral shift just because of a brainworm and a knock on the noggin? I get that it's fun as a player to try to play a good character with these unexplained evil urges, and I totally get why it's narratively satisfying to see good arise from the ashes of corruption, but I just can't find a way to make the character want to be good in the first place! I had this problem with Revan and I've had it again with the Durge, and that foundational schism was just something I could never really overcome enough to buy into the immersive fiction of the character.

Plus, as far as the Astarion romance goes, I think the Durge arc generally pushes into that similar need to resist the uncontrollable commands given to you by an outsider. It's very much the same space. The thing is, Astarion tells you he knows how important it is to resist those compulsions in the night attack scene, but--we KNOW he couldn't! We know he tried for two hundred years and never once could defy Cazador, and it broke him so badly he gave up resisting at all. And there's some interesting parallels there maybe, that he wants so badly for you to succeed that he's willing to ignore two hundred years of his own personal history, but it puts a pretty despairing tinge to the whole first half of the romance arc. And honestly, that makes me very sad for him.

I think it's just again a less riveting pairing. The Durge/Astarion romance is about both of them overcoming external compulsion through inner will and good choices and white-knuckled defiance, except the timescales of those compulsions are vastly different. And maybe there's a little bit of needing to depend on each other's support to do that, but it's not really so for Durge; you can do the entire Bhaalspawn questline without having Astarion in your party once and you only lose out on a few lines of dialogue. He definitely cares about you, sure, and he can talk to you about how worried he is for you, and that's nice--but there aren't a lot of times where his emotional support is directly critical for you to overcome your urges. On the other hand, I think it's arguable that your friendship (and relationship) with Astarion are directly responsible for his success against Cazador with that last persuasion/insight check combo. If you could have his emotional support be more directly impactful in terms of your ability to resist the urges or Bhaal in Orin's temple, I think I'd be more on board.

In addition, I find two characters going through the exact same narrative arc at the same time not as interesting. Like, if Astarion already had beaten Cazador before the Durge stuff happened and he could directly talk about what was successful for him and help you along the way, I think that might honestly have interested me a bit more. The mirrored arcs we have instead are a little less fascinating than complementary ones. And honestly, there's something about Durge trying to relate to Astarion's centuries of struggle with their own, like, two days of fighting that compulsion, that feels just a little pfeh to me.

And maybe that's why I liked my original Tav so much? As I developed the romance with Astarion, I could shape elements from her backstory (and the way she changed and grew from those events) to make a character that I felt resonated complementarily with Astarion's arc and emotional needs. I could create a character whose defining trait was hope and had always been hope her whole life, because I feel like that's a useful trait to have against an LI who explicitly lost all hope in any rescue. A character who has stubbornly clung to hope throughout a miserable broken life and a miserable broken family paired against a character with a similar background who's lost that hope and has to relearn it--I like that! I like that the characters can teach each other things and can learn from each other. I like that they can make each other better by sharing aspects of themselves that the other person doesn't have.

Having a hopeful Durge doesn't feel the same, because first, that hope is incredibly recent and only comes out over the course of the game because right before the game started, they were still full murderbaby. It's not as longstandingly stubborn despite setback after setback over many many years the way I can have Tav be. And second, again, I can't figure out why an otherwise perfectly content murderous bastard would ever want to hope for anything else after taking a fall off a skyship. I guess that's my biggest problem, that I can't get into the fiction of the character at its baseline well enough to build anything of substance on top of it.

So now, having gone through both the Tav/Astarion romance and the Dark Urge/Astarion romance, I can definitively say I prefer the Tav version. I think the extra stuff you get in the Durge run is fun, and I think the Durge material itself is great and wonderfully tied to the lore outside of the romance, but in terms of the Astarion romance itself, it's just not as captivating. Too similar in the wrong ways and too disjointed in the ways that matter most, and I'd rather have a Tav I can build to fit what I want, someone I can shape to draw out the elements of his character I'm most interested in exploring.

I will say that at one point my Durge sorcerer did roll a 44 on a persuasion check at one point, which was extremely exciting. But I think I'll be going back to my "canon" rogue Tav on my next game to figure out that exact story now that I know her much better, and that'll almost certainly be the one I stick with for future fics.

[madara-fate]

About this: https://www.tumblr.com/madara-fate/764428238627995648/hi-madara-i-wanted-to-ask-you-something-about?source=share

I think your answer is correct but I think that here you wouldn't have much input because you're not familiar with spoilers so you can only judge as a reader who doesn't interact with fandom and you can't give a honest answer to this question. I do see the spoilers and since you don't see the official account spoiler page, you can't be hyped about the chapter. Here's the issue.

It's true the spoilers released by the official account generate hype and anticipation but the Sakura stans here are correct.

The monthly spoiler (sometimes it's one page and sometimes they release 2) is about the chapter contents.

I'm gonna give you a two examples.

When Himawari became jinchuriki, the spoiler was the biju-dama and it was the key element of the chapter.

When Hidari and Jura infiltrated Konoha the spoiler was both at the library and it was the plot of the chapter.

All spoilers are the center piece of the plot of the chapter.

Here, I can't blame the Sakura stans as well as the Boruto stans, both are equally right. As much as I agree with you that we can't hype ourselves from 1 page of 40, the nature of the spoilers the official account releases is the opposite.

The spoiler page chosen to be Sakura confused fans because we thought that was what the chapter would be focused on.

The issue at hand is that once the chapter was released, the spoiler didn't mean anything because Sakura's input in the chapter was so insignificant and disconnected to the plot of the chapter, so it didn't make any sense to attract fans of a character missing for 4 years to tune in into a chapter that had little to no input of that character.

Sakura healing Inojin didn't have a narrative weight in the chapter because it was focused on Shikamaru's trust put on Boruto and Boruto's interrogation. Sakura's page can be easily removed from the chapter and it wouldn't affect the focus so it is strange to see as spoiler.

I think that the best option would have been not to choose Sakura as a spoiler (and so you avoid that the fans get excited) and to leave her as a surprise element part of the chapter; and later when Sakura really does something worthwhile that has to do with the plot, to take her as a spoiler.

I think that, Kishimoto having spoken about Sakura in August in the Paris interviews and knowing that Sakura's fandom is the biggest and has a lot of online presence, they tried to attract that part of the fandom to give more clicks to the chapter.

Having said that, obviously the spoiler did its job and appealed to Sakura fans, but regardless of whether she had appeared, her mere presence in the chapter would have generated quite a bit of buzz because she's a very popular character, she is Sakura Haruno.

Hope I made myself clear.

I think your answer is correct but I think that here you wouldn't have much input because you're not familiar with spoilers so you can only judge as a reader who doesn't interact with fandom and you can't give a honest answer to this question.

That was definitely my honest answer. Whether or not that answer is backed by experience with spoilers is a different question, but the honesty shouldn't be questioned. I know you probably didn't mean to imply that I was being dishonest, but I just wanted to clarify.

Here, I can't blame the Sakura stans as well as the Boruto stans, both are equally right. As much as I agree with you that we can't hype ourselves from 1 page of 40, the nature of the spoilers the official account releases is the opposite. The spoiler page chosen to be Sakura confused fans because we thought that was what the chapter would be focused on.

I understand the Sakura fans feeling that they were misled based on previous patterns with the nature of their spoilers, trust me I get it. But that doesn't change the fact that generally speaking, spoilers are not and should not be used to give an overview of the chapter, they should only be used to spoil exactly what was shown, nothing more, and you even reiterated that you agreed with me on this. That's just the harsh reality of it.

The issue at hand is that once the chapter was released, the spoiler didn't mean anything because Sakura's input in the chapter was so insignificant and disconnected to the plot of the chapter, so it didn't make any sense to attract fans of a character missing for 4 years to tune in into a chapter that had little to no input of that character.

Spoilers should never mean anything though, because they can very easily be taken out of context and give readers false impressions. Only the chapters themselves mean something. People just tend to give spoilers far more significance than they actually warrant. But I'll reiterate that the spoiler did its job in getting fans hyped for the chapter. Was it underhanded? Probably, but it is what it is.

Sakura's page can be easily removed from the chapter and it wouldn't affect the focus so it is strange to see as spoiler.

Perhaps it was strange specifically in this case because you're telling me that their spoilers are usually more in tune with the contents of the chapter. But generally speaking, whatever is included in spoilers for a chapter is fair game.

I think that the best option would have been not to choose Sakura as a spoiler (and so you avoid that the fans get excited) and to leave her as a surprise element part of the chapter; and later when Sakura really does something worthwhile that has to do with the plot, to take her as a spoiler.

Perhaps, I'm not gonna argue with that. My only point in all of this was just that the spoiler did its job, and that fans shouldn't allow themselves to get carried away after seeing 1 page from a 40 page chapter, regardless of previous patterns.

I think that, Kishimoto having spoken about Sakura in August in the Paris interviews and knowing that Sakura's fandom is the biggest and has a lot of online presence, they tried to attract that part of the fandom to give more clicks to the chapter.

Probably yeah, and they certainly succeeded. Let me reiterate that I understand the frustration regarding that, but it is what it is.

Having said that, obviously the spoiler did its job and appealed to Sakura fans, but regardless of whether she had appeared, her mere presence in the chapter would have generated quite a bit of buzz because she's a very popular character, she is Sakura Haruno.

💯

[the-present-is-a-gift-au]

Chapter 5: In Which a Nickname is Given

Over the following days, Twig swiftly learned that Darkrai was shockingly clingy. She would stand up from a spot she'd settled in and he would rise as well to follow her to her destination, and he would only leave whatever room she'd stepped into when she left it herself. With the fact that he'd politely turned down her offer to stay in the guest room, and Twig subsequently facing the options of either sleeping in a linen closet or keep sleeping in the main room where he'd set up shop, this was awful for her nerves. If she thought trying to sleep around Dusknoir the night the Future Trio returned was bad, trying to catch any winks with Darkrai in the room was infinitely worse. She kept jerking awake from nightmares, much to her bewilderment. 

Didn't Darkrai lack his memories? Why would he send nightmares to torment her in the night when he had no reason to? She intended to confront him about it in the morning, but his level tone cut through the silence one evening after she bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath after a dream of being buried alive. 

"Apologies," he said, monotone, clear, and deliberate. "I'm afraid I don't have much control over my… peculiarities."

She dragged a hand down her face. Yeah. Cool. Okay. She probably should have anticipated the fact that the guy who was once bent on throwing the world into eternal darkness had an aura of bad vibes that sent you spiraling into nightmares if you slept around him. It made sense in hindsight. 

Speaking of hindsight, she should have thought up a cover story before now. 

Darkrai clearly knew something was up with her. It took her forever to think up a false origin story for him, and her nervousness as she brainstormed all the details and tried to memorize them, keeping everything in her head and never daring to put them on paper, all made her look suspicious. She must look sketchy beyond belief as she wrung her hands and fidgeted in the corner across from Darkrai, glancing up every so often and then looking askance. But she finally had a cohesive narrative in mind, so she finally broke the news.

“We used to know each other,” Twig said over dinner one evening, “before you lost your memories.”

Darkrai looked up, but didn’t speak.

“I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, because, uh… well, it seemed like you didn’t mind not knowing? That was the sort of energy I got, at least!” She forced out a nervous chuckle. “But, um. I figured it’d kind of be a jerk move to keep it to myself, you know?”

He made no move to respond— just stared at her unblinkingly.

“You used to be a sort of traveling do-gooder. You’d go from place to place, and you’d help however you could. We crossed paths a couple of times when my exploration team was on expeditions.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. She fixed her gaze on the tabletop and continued, “What you did meant a lot for a lot of people. I know lots of folks wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for your help.”

He didn’t react— didn’t say anything, didn’t incline his head, didn’t even flinch at the supposed reveal of his past. He just sat there and stared at her. Did he know she was lying? Did he remember his past already and had caught her in her bluff? Was he going to kill her? Was he—

“Interesting,” he said, and went back to his meal. 

She blinked, surprised. She wasn’t too confident in her skills at lying, but he wasn’t calling her on her bluff, not yet… Mission accomplished? Maybe? Hopefully?

***

Twig couldn’t hide away in her home for forever, much as she wanted to when faced with the thought of explaining her sudden multi-day absence from appearing in Verdant Village. But no matter how she would have loved to spend the rest of her life rotting in secret within the walls of her home, her lack of preparation for cooking for two meant the pantry was practically empty. She needed to go to the market and get some staple ingredients so that she wasn’t just roasting apple slices— and even those would be gone eventually, so she probably should just face the music and stop putting off the inevitable grocery run.

Darkrai, of course, made to follow her out the front door. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?” She asked, forcing a smile that wobbled far too much to be convincing. 

“I believe a bit of fresh air would do me some good,” he answered. 

He didn’t comment on the way her hands twitched around the strap of the shopping bag she’d slung over her shoulder or the way her smile wobbled even more. Twig had no idea whether that was a good or bad thing. 

Twig bought everything on her shopping list in record time and managed to escape the market before it was even remotely crowded. Darkrai trailed after her in eerie silence, just a few feet away at any given time, and it was messing with her head to have him so close by. Her safety net of routines was already up in flames which meant that she was floundering emotionally, and having the guy behind roughly eighty-five percent of her collective neuroses practically attached to her hip was not helping. Thankfully, she was on the final stretch of road to reach her home, and she could enjoy the greater amount of space he offered when they were in the same room. She couldn’t wait to collapse into her bed, unwanted spectator be darned. She could make the excuse that she wasn’t good with crowds or something like that. Nevermind that the market barely had a handful of other shoppers while they were there— she was too tired to think up another reason. 

But of course Gardevoir and Gallade had to be out in their front yard when they passed.

“Twig!” Gardevoir called from where she knelt in her garden. She dusted herself off and swept over to the roadside to meet her. “We haven’t seen you in quite some time. Are you alright?”

“Yep! Just peachy.” Please don’t let her notice that my smile isn’t reaching my eyes. Does that mean a charmeleon is faking their smile like it does for a human? Frick, fudge, heck— “I’ve just had some stuff come up that needed some attention.”

She hummed, then glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, pardon me, who is this fellow with you?”

Darkrai began to introduce himself, and it was in that moment that Twig processed two things— first, that your average pokemon wouldn’t recognize a Legend based on sight alone. They didn’t have photographs or really any sort of mass-produced images in wide circulation, if in circulation at all, which meant they didn’t have pictures of the physical manifestations of the functions of the universe handy. All of that was to say that Gardevoir didn’t recognize Darkrai. Yet. Because her second realization was that your average pokemon would absolutely know the names of any given Legend, which meant she needed to cover her tail, and fast.

“My name is D—”

“Ark! Ark. His name is Ark.” She could feel herself vibrating out of her own skin with nerves as all eyes turned to her. “He’s staying with me for a while. And, um, I’m sorry, but I need to get to my place to put away some groceries.” 

“Oh!” Gardevoir nodded. “I’m very sorry for stalling you, Twig. Glad to have met you, Ark! I hope we see each other again soon.”

“Well met,” Darkrai replied, and had to swiftly pick up the pace to return to his place in Twig’s wake as she bolted to the house.

She didn’t speak as she stuffed all the groceries into their proper places in a linen closet-turned-pantry. But it eventually occurred to her that she should. “Sorry for butting in back there. Um. I forgot to say that everyone called you Ark. It was kind of your thing to not go by your species name.”

He loomed at the end of the hallway, his shadow blocking the light from the windows of the main room. The brightest light in the hallway was the chilly glow of his eyes as he silently picked apart her every move. She felt like she was being dissected with how he took in everything she did with a clinical gaze.

He hummed quietly. A noncommittal sound that didn’t indicate his thoughts whatsoever. “Interesting.”

Twig was going to have a heart attack one of these days, she knew it. 

***

Twig broke out an old journal she had only ever used for kindling on rare occasions. It wasn’t often that she pulled it from its place on her nightstand— which was really more of a small floor table than the nightstand she had as a human— but she found herself needing its services as she woke up from another nightmare. Darkrai stared out the window from his place across the room, the picture of serenity despite the nightmare Twig had to claw her way out of seconds ago. Her resolve was wavering, and she needed to bolster it up fast. She scratched out a quick pair of lines with a piece of charcoal she kept at the journal’s side— one line long and vertical, dividing the page down its center, the second line closer to the top and horizontal. She scribbled out a pair of words in English in either of the topmost boxes she’d set apart. Darkrai couldn’t read English, could he? No pokemon she’d encountered could. She was in the clear— if he ever went snooping, he wouldn’t know she was writing out a pros and cons list on why she should or shouldn’t keep watch over him. 

The pros for kicking him out and going about her life were numerous. She would actually sleep through the night once in a while, she wouldn’t have to constantly police what she said for fear of awakening the memory of some motivation for starting the literal apocalypse, and she could actually get some time to herself so she could cry in peace every now and then. There were a host of other pros, but those stood out as the most appealing right then.

The cons— or rather con, singular—  meanwhile, outweighed everything she could summon. Stop another apocalypse before it happens made all those delightful reasons to give Darkrai the boot shine out in just how selfish they were. No, she wouldn’t let herself buckle in this. It was just one job. One thing for her to do to save the people she loved and the world at large. She could handle that. She had to handle that. 

She felt tears prick at her eyes from how overwhelming it all was.

Darkrai cast a glance her way. He seemed nearly worried.

Twig snapped the journal closed and rolled over in bed, musing on how familiar it felt to write out the letters she had studied over and over as a human, even if her hand didn’t quite hold a pencil right any longer. 

***

There was a knock at the door. Twig staggered out of bed to answer it.

“Hi Twig!” Lyra said, beaming. “Mom and Dad thought that you looked kinda sad the other day, and they said that they wanted to make you something nice, so they cooked a big pot of stew for you, and I helped a whole lot! I peeled the potatoes by myself. And I didn’t miss any peel-y bits. Dad said you don’t have to peel potatoes for stew, but I still did it because I don’t like peels, so you probably don’t either.”

The girl held out a large covered pot, little arms shaking with the effort. Twig caught it when it slipped from her hands. “Ah— careful! You don’t want to drop it.” She frowned. “Did your parents send you out to bring the pot here on your own? It’s pretty heavy.”

Lyra put her fists on her hips, puffing out her chest. “No, Dad said he would bring it on his way to get some firewood, but I said I wanted to do it! Did you see how strong I was? That pot is as big as my head, but I still carried it all the way to your house, and I didn’t spill a drop!”

Twig found herself smiling despite her exhaustion as she shifted her hold on the pot, noticing points where the broth had sloshed out on its journey here. Gosh, this kid’s enthusiasm was precious. “You didn’t, did you? Nice work, Lyra.”

“Who’s that? Is he your exploration team partner?” She gave a little gasp. “Is that Kip? Oh, wow, hi! I’m a big fan!”

Twig frowned, confused, and nearly dropped the pot herself when Darkrai’s voice sounded from directly behind her. “No, I’m not a partner of hers, nor am I named Kip. Though it would be fascinating to be on an exploration team, admittedly.”

Lyra chattered excitedly about how she wanted to be an explorer when she grew up, and Twig could barely hear the familiar rambling as she realized something. Kip. Oh, gosh, if he knew about Darkrai… Ever since the battle at Dark Crater, he’d gone from being scared of Darkrai to shaking at the very mention of his name. If he knew about her new roommate and the looming threat of Darkrai’s returning memories, his heart would give out on the spot. She’d sent him a letter recently, so she had time to figure out a cover story, but Arceus, she was not looking forward to the thought of him learning of Darkrai’s return. 

Kip wouldn’t be on his expedition forever. Eventually, he’d come back to Treasure Town, and he’d want to know why Twig was so jumpy. He’d already started suspecting something was amiss when her memories returned and she was back to refusing hugs or handshakes from everyone but him, but he'd never confronted her on it. She didn’t want to think about how she’d juggle keeping both Darkrai and Kip from finding out about each other. She’d rather die. 

She thanked Lyra again, cutting her rambling about exploration teams short, and asked her to thank her parents for her. “And thanks for all your work peeling the potatoes, I’m sure you did amazing! I need to put this on the stove now, see you soon, okay?”

Lyra pouted. “Aw. But I’m having fun talking to Ark.”

Darkrai gave Twig a brief, appraising glance out of the corner of his eye, then turned his gaze back to Lyra. “I’m afraid there’s work to be done for me as well. It was nice to meet you, miss… ?”

“Let’s talk again later. You’re cool. Bye Twig! Bye Ark!” She turned and started down the road to her house, half skipping and half running as she hummed to herself. Twig and Darkrai both watched her go. 

“I prompted her several times for her name, and she never seemed to recognize any of them,” Darkrai mused.

Twig was jolted from her swirling panic by his quiet frustration. She almost laughed at how frazzled he sounded. “Her name’s Lyra. The gardevoir and gallade that live over there are her parents.”

“I gathered as much. She’s… very familiar, isn’t she?” 

“F-Familiar?” She worried that he was referring to his past, even indirectly, but then remembered his strangely dated vocabulary. “Oh. Yeah, her parents have tried to get her to be more well-mannered, but the lessons don’t stick. I’m not exactly a good example, and she kinda puts me on a pedestal, so that doesn’t help either.”

“Hm.” He followed after her as she turned back inside. “You do have a particular way of speaking, come to think of it.” 

“Um. Thanks, I guess?”

“I mean no offense. Only that your speaking habits are dramaticized when compared to your neighbors.”

Twig narrowed her eyes as she spat a small flame to light the stove and start to heat the stew. “Yeah, uh… I’m not exactly from around Verdant Village.” 

“From where do you hail?”

“Way off from here. I don’t even know what it’s called— if it had a name.” That wasn’t a complete lie. She didn’t know the name of the area she had grown up in beyond its numeric bunker designation. The name for the plot of land on the surface above it had never been revealed to her after her escape from the underground. 

Darkrai hummed a low note. "Curious." 

Twig didn't like him asking so many questions. She needed to start expanding the cover story, and fast.

[the-epic-hiram-lows]

Part two! Jughead time.

Again, I will go top to bottom, L-R for clarity.

I debated if this was textual Jughead enough. It is absolutely something that rings as Jughead-adjacent to me, but his concerns on the show are with smaller power structures. I do think this reflects him, but I worried it wasn't close enough to a 1:1 ratio of his screen time. Ultimately, I liked it for superficial reasons I will get into later. I knew I wanted graffiti because it is exactly Jughead's type of protest- in fact, he does spray paint at least one wall in the series. Jughead is a firm believer in art (more on that later) and a firm skeptic of societal norms. Why is art on the wall of a museum worth millions, but art on the wall of a local staple an eyesore? This particular graffiti also has Jughead's unwavering frustration towards public perceptions of politeness, especially when they exist to silence individuality.

This one's pretty straight-forward. Jughead's vice of choice is binge eating. I had to represent it with at least one visual, but so many options were too neat (tables topped with prepared food, junky or not,) or social in context (remnants of a party.) I needed to capture Jughead's no frills, rough-around-the-edges nature. He is not a 'social eater.' He is an eater. The grunginess of the photo implies this mess has been sitting around- on the floor, in a trash can, whatever. My only regret is not photoshopping the can to remove the 'diet' over Dr. Pepper.

I have regrets about this one, because it seems redundant when picture 8 exists (more on that later,) but my intention with it was less literal. It represents a night owl who hangs around rough areas. Someone willing to climb fences to do whatever their Night Tasks are. Something about this picture just screams rebellious youth from the wrong side of the tracks. The photo also has all of three of the trademark Riverdale aesthetics I listed, though some more than others.

A nod to Jughead's original outrage du jour. You'd be forgiven if you don't remember this campaign to keep the movie theater up and running. The Twilight also served as a home to Jughead in more ways than one. He, not unlike us fangirls (gender neutral,) finds kinship in fiction. He also has a larger appreciation for the arts in general, in a highly specific Jugheadian way. But let's not forget the literal home he found in the local theater. This picture, like the one before it, is a representation of home. More on that later.

I noted this in my tags, but when I made Penelope's mood board I told myself it is cheating to use actual photos of the actor/show. Try as I did, I had to fold. I added motion blur to the photo and cropped it so he is largely out of frame- exactly what Jughead prefers.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This is a typewriter (Jughead-approved!) that fit in the mood board's color scheme (me-approved!) While searching for the perfect typewriter picture, nothing felt right until this one. On top of having an ambiguous era of origin, I love that this one is outdoors. Jughead, as narrator, is an outsider and a voyeur. He is part of the atmosphere. The photo also gives a sense of the typewriter being discarded, which resonates when thinking of Jughead.

Yet another mention of home! She can't keep doing this to us! And, yet, I do. As for the photo, I searched a billion sentiments like the one written in it, but this was the only contender. More graffiti! The shadow of a cell phone taking a picture- trying so hard not to become part of the image it's documenting but leaving an indelible effect on the narrative in which it is framed- is a perfect little touch.

What I am about to say might shock you... this picture is a representative of home. Let's finally talk about this. Jughead is a nomad in many ways, including (sometimes) literally. The truth is, for many people, home is not a place but an amorphous concept. It is the promise of a private place that feels like love, safety, and belonging. In terms of literal places, Jughead does not have that. He has tried to find it under bridges, in an all-but-abandoned theater, and in the trailer with FP. For Jughead, no structure has ever made good on the promise of home. The only home he has ever found was in other people (see previous photo.) That is why I didn't show the inside of any of the settings- theater, trailer, vague liminal location between a house and outdoors. Once again, Jughead is an outsider. He sees these places as places, and not as home.

Self-explanatory. The boy uses a pocket knife.

Broad notes now! Unlike my first mood board, I had zero idea of what color palette it should be. I stressed over it, then told myself to let the photos dictate what they want. Within the first two pictures (8 and 1, in that order,) this proved to be a good tactic. As you can see, I ended up choosing a faded peacock/terracotta kind of deal, which does feel appropriate. It's grungy, rugged, nostalgia, full of contradiction, but not without hope.

As I said earlier, I feel 3 and 8 might be redundant in the same mood board. They are meant to portray different things- 3 is more conceptual, while 8 is literal, but I do worry having both of them paints Jughead as an outdoorsy type.

8 was nearly the Rod Serling photo I found for this ask, which seemed like an incredible coincidence to find in that context. Firstly, I told myself it was cheap to re-use it (especially because I just stumbled on it, so it isn't the fruit of actual labor.) Secondly, I did not feel like heavily altering it to suit the colors. Thirdly, it just doesn't work for Jughead unless you know the Cole Sprouse lore. Yes, Jughead is the narrator, but he is not the kind to be front-and-center behind a camera in a suit.

This one was difficult because I had lots of nebulous ideas that were not easy to translate into Pinterest searches. For many of these, I had at least 15 picture options, but the semifinalists for this one were very scant. I think, for the 9 squares, I had 2 options I didn't use.

[phffuntimes]

I reread a portion of PHF for another post I’m making and realized smth interesting… When Sheila kicks Fugo out of the car, the conversation they have prior, and then when she floors it to hit Volpe, it sounds like… she actually plans to RUN AWAY. As in, thinks she’ll most likely win (Volpe doesn't power up until the very last second and looks very nonthreatening), and will then get to flee for good, which would honestly fit with her tendency to run away from what haunts her than face it head on [stay tuned for my upcoming post about her (not) dealing with grief].

Evidence 1 and 2:

To me, this reads as her giving up on her role in Passione – resigning on her following Giorno and scramming. I haven’t gotten to evidence 2 yet where the point is that she believes she actually CAN take care of Volpe, but going off of that, this sounds like her basically doing Fugo a solid. “You stay here and do what I no longer can (follow Giorno), and I’ll take care of this thing for you so you don’t have to risk your life.” But it’s also a selfish thing on her part – bc by doing this solid for Fugo, she ensured he wouldn’t intervene with her plan, nor her subsequent escape bc she has him pegged as a coward who WOULD accept that offer if it meant ensuring his own safety, which she later learns isn’t all that true.

Evidence 3 and 4:

I’ve seen takes (and even subscribed to it at some point myself) that Sheila purposefully threw herself in danger here for ReasonsTM, but she doesn’t sound all that careless here, nor worried – she’s still trying to be strategic about this, not reckless, like she DOES want to survive, and her “refusing to believe any of this had happened” makes me think she genuinely did not expect Volpe to win this and not this EASILY at that. It’s like she expected to just run him over and then speed off, away from all this to God knows where.

What I adore about this reading is that it gives a more concise direction to Sheila’s arc, while also giving her more narrative power as a character. Something I absolutely loathe about the Volpe fight is how once Sheila rams into him, she loses all agency and gets subjected to what genuinely feels like torture porn with how unnecessarily brutal it is and she doesn’t get to say anything, doesn’t get to fight back, and is only used to lure Fugo in which. doesn’t even make much sense in-universe bc Fugo and Sheila r basically strangers and Volpe considers Fugo as someone incapable of making friends and a coward or whatever so using Sheila to get him to come doesnt sound like that good of an idea… it’s all really unnecessary and gross. 

If you consider her throwing Fugo out and solo-ing Volpe to give herself the option to disappear afterwards bc she underestimated him, then what Volpe does to her, although still unnecessary in its extent, serves as a narrative consequence to a mistake she CONSCIOUSLY made, and Fugo coming to save her feels less like a prince in shining armor moment and more as her being granted another chance, on top of being yet another proof that she was WRONG in her beliefs somewhere.

Fugo coming back to save her is incomprehensible to her bc it shows her assessment of his character was wrong and so is her view on people and interpersonal relationships by proxy, and I’d like to think that THAT is what gets her to stay post-phf, since she survived and her worldviews have changed but now there’s something new ahead of her that could help her grow and change.

[pagesofkenna]

The ending to BG3 is sloppy, rushed, and underwhelming. if burnout on this game hadn't already lead me to decide not to replay it again anytime soon, that nonsense ending would have been the nail in the coffin. instead, it just convinced me I have no interest in replaying this again ever

BG3 is a fun game to play, but not a fun game to finish. I like finishing games

thoughts on the nonsense ending (major spoilers):

I chose to free Orpheus because I was romancing Lae'zel, and even without that I really like the Githyanki and was pleased to participate in any action leading to Vlaakith finally dying (she's overdo). On the other hand, I didn't outright disobey The Emperor until that moment (I even did his sex scene, which is hindsight was such an obvious manipulation)

Consequently, The Emperor seemed like a suspicious and untrustworthy ally for the entire game right up until he decided to ditch me and... fight for the Netherbrain?? You know, the thing we were working together to fight this whole time??

there's no attempt to rationalize his actions. the game needed to punish me/pay off for me discovering this 'ally' is actually not one, but his actions in that moment don't make any sense. the most logical thing would have been to say 'since you're freeing Orpheus, who will want me killed, my only options now are to die, run away, or be subjugated by the hive mind again' but he doesn't say that!! he seems to be saying that he's joining the Netherbrain cause of his own volition, and during the fight (which also includes a subjugated red dragon... for some reason?) The Emperor does not indicate that he's subjugated or that he's joined the hive mind. he's just here to be petty!! i guess!!

Once free Orpheus says the netherstones can only be wielded by a mindflayer...........? for some reason? for plot railroading reasons. Not like Netheril or Karsus were mindflayers, or even abberations at all. not like the Dread Three weren't wielding the netherstones separately just fine (for a time)

so sure, I'll allow that it has more to do with the brain itself having 'evolved' (thats not what that means) and trying to wield all three stones against it at once. but why a mindflayer?? why specifically the one type of being most vulnerable to an Elder Brain's influence??? why can't Orpheus, the one being in the world that we know is naturally immune to mindflayer and Elder Brain manipulation, wield the stones as-is??

plot reasons. because.

because I need to be made to make a Difficult Choice here in the eleventh hour; either Orpheus dies or I do. because, sorry, being turned into a mindflayer is not a 'transformation' its a death. I love mindflayers I think they're a cool enemy, but The Emperor was not Baldur. he was a mindflayer whose first victim, whose first memories he obtained, was Baldur. maybe this is a fault in me being a GM and knowing too much about the mechanics of this world

except that Withers himself literally appears out of nowhere to make sure you know that mindflayers don't have souls! way back at the end of Act 2! there was no point to that other than to make sure the players knows how this bit of the world works: a mindflayer is like a robot made from a dead person's brains. it might act and think like the dead person, but the person is dead.

I actually saved, and had Orpheus transform, and saved that as one branch, then reloaded and took the transformation myself, and played through the rest of the ending on that branch. I transformed, we saved the city (mostly), my girlfriend told me she thought I was ugly but she loved me anyways and would overlook it, then I told her to go save her people and after she left I killed myself

I'm glad I at least got the chance to kill myself because otherwise there were almost no narrative consequences for letting my brain get eaten and my corpse transformed into a monster. allies were like 'its weird, but youre awesome! huzzah!' even Orpheus says 'you'll be remembered fondly as the mindflayer who withstood the hivemind' until I specifically told him not to remember me that way (I'm only a mindflayer because you told me I had to be one!)

there were like 7 options for that final choice on what to do about yourself. options 1-5 were variations of 'sure I'm a mindflayer now but that's not a big deal! not all mindflayers are evil!' option 6 was 'they probably shouldn't trust me, i should be in prison.' option 7 was 'the narrator is literally telling me I can already feel my sense of self slipping away. I know what Baldur turned into. I know what mindflayers do. I need to be dead, for everyones safety'

I wish someone else could have killed me. it would have been so heartwrenching to have Lae'zel kill me but I would have loved her for it!

then Karlach burned to death and I got no other scene for literally any other companion and roll credits

nothing. for anybody. poor Karlach is dead right now, we gotta rush and get this product out for shipment, we're spending more money on the overloaded graphical effects and textures than we are paying the line-writers and voice actors

like, you didn't play this game for the ending, dear customer, did you??

I truly think Larian did an amazing job for what they were asked to do, and I'm very curious about their other work. but it feels sometimes like game devs spend so much time making satisfying middle-game experience that they really drop the ball on end-game experience. I dont know if they fell into this trap because they were working with a major IP with not enough creative control, or time, or resources, or if even with better circumstances they still wouldn't have put much effort into trying to stick the landing

[overfedvenison]

I’ve been pushing through a blind unfair playthrough of Wrath of the Righteous... Still chaotic evil. I’m finally done Chapter 1! Lets see... My unusual actions have put me on a few strange paths, I think. Among other things:

After the intro, the goal of the first chapter is to retake the Grey Garrison. Interestingly, you get a bit of a preview of this area at the start of the chapter, as you fight your way out of it. I lost the paladin you get, Seelah, here. As in-narrative, she would have had her body lost, I elected to leave her dead for the foreseeable future. You end up held out around a tavern, which serves as the base of operations. From there, I had to go out and recruit allies and become powerful... There was also notably a recruitable Tiefling Thief locked up in the basement. But, I figured... I get the vibes of a petty thief and general troublemaker from this guy. I don’t need him right away... Lets let him rot for a bit :3c I began exploring to the south, to an abandoned tower I learned about, and then to the old market square. I believe at the time, I mostly went out with myself (Kitsune Nine-tailed Heritor, going into Assassin) and Wenduag (A spider girl focused on single, powerful shots.) I also had Camelia, but brought her back only once my party began to fill out. There is a character, Ember, you can find some crusaders attempting to sacrifice to bathe their blades in her blood for magic powers. I picked the evil option, which is like, “Yes, do it! Bathe your swords in the blood of the innocent! For Iomadae!” Iomadae being like, kind of the generic ‘good’ good of the setting. I expected hearing it being said would stop them, but they actually did it! His sword basically exploded, and you get a sense that this goddess was NOT pleased. Amusingly, I encountered this when battling some demons and leading them over for their help; this crusader was forced to fight demons with his bare hand. Well... I decided to live with that decision, and proceed into the game lacking a party member I explored more. There was a drow, there, who an elf wanted me to hunt down. She seemed a tragic figure, with more to her story... But I was going into Assassin, so I killed her. She dropped an incredibly powerful (for this point) composite longbow, so I gave that to Wenduag. She became my MVP by FAR, able to one-shot most enemies after I gave her a pair of levels in Rowdy (Which gives her Vital Strike, and lets her Vital Strike also double sneak attacks.) Mooost of my strategies relied on using her as a super-weapon, so this prize was well-worth it. I found this crusader with a portrait who appeared to have killed several Mongrels who had climbed up the side of the crack in the earth he was guarding. The man had a portrait, and looked important, but also seemed like a knight templar type that would cut down a woman who he mildly suspected of witchcraft. The more I learned, the more I had this confirmed; he lead the previous crusade, in fact. For the time being, I left him alone, but once I had more of a party I killed him - And in doing so, gained the favour of some Desna followers, and eventually unlocked a hidden Azata path. These games always surprise me at how hidden some options are, and how it rewards you for niche choices - If I had sided with this Obviously Important guy, I wouldn’t have found that. So, cool. I went elsewhere, and poked back periodically. One area allows you to recruit Daerun, who is... An aasimar that is transparently evil in that way only a beautiful man with flowing hair could be. He amuses me a lot, and he is reintroduced having a party/orgy while demons invade and occupy everywhere. Just, ABSOLUTE hedonite. So like... DEFINITELY going in my party.  Daerun is pretty interestingly a dedicated healer with very low strength. That’s a super interesting direction to take that class. However... I noticed he joined at a rather low level, and so decided to take him in a different route. First, I made him a Cavalier (Fearsome Leader;) his horse, which I named Ashe, allow him to get around his Oracle Curse of only having one action in the first round. Now he can move and act, and make use of his high Initiative.  I could have just stuck with a level of that and made him a very mobile healer, but I decided to stick with this a bit. Weapon Finesse, a point in Constitution, and Slashing Grace on the next level up? That 7 strength can become irrelevant, as I can swap him between a light crossbow and... Well, something sabre-like; I’m still a level away from that. I gave him the Order of the Shroud. Cavaliers gain a “Challenge” ability, which lets you battle a single enemy and gain bonuses against them. I like this; Pathfinder is very much obsessed with rounds-per-day abilities, and this is a flavourful and fun ability you don’t have to micromanage with rounds. This order, in particular, gains the unique ability to add Charisma to AC against that target in particular - And Daerun has a Charisma of 20. Additionally, his Fearsome Leader will allow him to use Dazzling Display better, and he gains this as a bonus feat - it is an AoE debuff keyed off his Persuasion, as well, further making use out of his presence. And as a bonus... Well, he’s rather Griffith-like, now. And, you know, that’s cool. Lacking other party members, I also spend most of my gold on a mercenary... Simply named “Warrior” Warrior is also a cavalier, but this time a Beast-Rider. I gave him a Mastodon, War Elephant, who will take a time to get online and is still only Medium-sized at the moment. Warrior has maximum strength, and uses a glaive that inflicts Fear - Very strong for when I got him, I specifically recruited him as a frontliner who can help mitigate enemies using this and the war elephant. He did respectable damage, albeit not as much as Wenduag, and kept enemies away from us as we battled back enemies Along the way, we also got a mad scientist named Neino; she’s an Illusionist-focued Wizard. That’s a really good thing to have, so nothing super notable with her build save for building up her stealth a lot to help out Wenduag and my main character, Silver. With this party, we explored the rest of the area; recruited the Thieflings (a street gang,) Desna’s followers, some Crusaders, and tricking a bunch of would-be cultists into killing each other and helping us later at the Grey Garrison. Etc. Around this time, we found that our inn was under attack by Demons! I went to recruit Wojiff, the tiefling below the inn. Interestingly, I actually lost my chance. He says something like, “Hey, what’s going on?” and I can’t get him anymore, as far as I know. So we proceeded without him, and defended the encampment from an enormous minotaur demon. Daerun... Was quite good with a crossbow, here. And Warrior made an enormous You Shall Not Pass stand, forcing his enemies to flee while supported by arrow fire. It took some doing, and the battle was long, but we eventually won after a few tries. I think this took me, like, a day. Wojiff escaped in the chaos, never to be seen again. Well, I’m down three party members, now. After a time, we assaulted the Grey Garrison. It was a long, dangerous dungeon crawl, but I got near-permanent haste going in. Some areas were VERY rough, but I slowly and meticulously cleared it out. Some areas, I had to lure enemies out and bring them down one by one. Others, I snuck past until I found ideal positions. But, there were areas here where I was, at last, pretty powerful. In the end, we got to our goal - the Wardstone - and learned of it’s corruption with the help of an aeon’s fading soul I had discovered in the market square. I unleashed demon energy, and destroyed it, scattering those beings inside away... And retaining the aeon’s knife, for later use. For this, and the battle we fought after, we gained a mythic rank. Wenduag one-shots enemies regularly, and is my main source of DPS with a bow. I gave her a feat that procs an AoE if she kills an enemy. I gave Daerun Inspiring Leader, mostly because it seemed thematic but also because it gives in Initiative bonus which works well with him Warrior, I gave an ability that upgrades his War Elephant; as he is now level 7, this should now be pretty viable as a combat creature Camelia, I gave a second class feature too. She now has the Life Spirit, which allows her to channel energy as a cleric. Since Daerun is no longer a healer, I needed some healing support. Neino, I have 4 additional spell slots from levels 1-3. Aside from the obvious use, it allows me to use Magic Missile a lot more; she also has Bolster Spell for a similar purpose. And finally, my main character Silver... I gave her the Danse Macabre ability so she can channel negative energy, and gave her the capstone of her bloodline (Elemental Body; she is immune to fire, critical hits, and sneak attacks. Which... Very useful.) These seemed like the most “Kitsune” choices.

[halogenwarrior]

I wasn't saying the Cassie letting the box be taken into Yeerk hands as an example of her being wrong, actually the opposite and citing it as an example of why people think she is always proven right by the narrative, though I think the better argument for that is the affect on the Yeerk and Taxxon resistance and the fact that they still won the war + after that Yeerks and Taxxons had better prospects. If Jake could recover from knowing he had to kill Tom to win to the point of willingly doing it I think it's very plausible he could have also recovered from having killed Tom earlier.

Edit: I looked on your account and saw your post criticizing this aspect in terms of how the Taxxons will be extinct and the Yeerks will be miserable having to be solitary animals when they are a social species - to that I would argue that the Taxxon ambiguity is completely intentional, it continues a running theme that is first explored in the Ellimist Chronicles with the Ketran's dilemma - is it better to preserve a species' unique qualities and experience or improve the lives of individuals of that species in a utilitarian manner? With the Ellimist's speech in #26 and his actions in the Ellimist Chronicles opposing Menno, showing he generally values spreading the diversity of intelligent species with different experiences so they can all share their discoveries and culture with each other over how much those individuals are actually enjoying their life, while Cassie tends to care about how sapient species can transcend the evolutionary incentives and lifestyles they started out with (that might incentivize things like war, etc), sapience has to mean there is something better than that that they can create, even if that means destroying the individuality of the species. And a lot of Taxxons choose Cassie's solution of their own free will which makes sense because they were already established as desperate enough to choose the horror of being taken over by Yeerks over the even worse horror of their hunger, when you are suffering that much the last thing you care about would be "but I should not save myself just to preserve my species". As for some of them being solitary animal nothlits, well that scenario certainly sucks for Tobias where he's the only hawk nothlit around but Yeerks still have their own brains and there is no reason they cannot just choose to hang out together they are not forced to follow the behavior of the original animal, which is why a lot of Yeerks + Taxxons chose that of their own free will. You might say that it will harm the ecology of their environment if they don't act like the animal they became but the same can be said for humans congregating in far larger groups and different types of habitations (i.e cities) than their ecological niche originally entailed, yet we aren't saying humans should forcibly separate into small groups for ecological reasons barring a few fringe anarcho-primitivists.

So yeah while I think it's far from clear that the "sparing Jake" aspect turned out to be a right decision in the long run, the "giving Yeerks and Taxxons another choice" part definitely did. Which connects to another post I recently made where people were discussing whether the aspect about giving Yeerks/Taxxons other options was intentional on Cassie's part, such that even if in the heat of the moment she hadn't quite worked out the chain of logic she had a sense of it, or if that was a rationalization she made after the fact. And I contended that while the books are ambiguous and it could be interpreted both ways, I think the first way is far more interesting from a thematic sense in terms of Cassie's arc of moral reckoning, and makes it look far less like she is just being author-favored by being right when she has no justification for it, so I prefer that interpretation.

--

And I guess your argument for the crystal is that using threats is something that would have only worked once, and that after helping the Animorphs kill Erek no longer wanted to be reprogrammed, but Erek isn't the only Chee in existence. We only see the perspective of him and one other who was doubtful from the beginning, but if Erek was willing to do it before being traumatized by doing violence himself and was considered appropriate for him to speak for his people while he did support it, I doubt he was the only one who felt that way; there likely would have been others who did it willingly which would have led to them having Chee allies in many other circumstances and, in the final battle, having some Chee they could use who they did not have to threaten into helping them, and as a result who they had the goodwill with so they would not betray them at the last moment leading to Rachel's death and Tom's ship's escape. If it even came to that final battle; they might have just won the war earlier in that case, either way the tragic events of the ending don't happen.

Just to be clear I'm not trying to criticize Cassie so you need to defend her I'm actually doing the opposite, defend her from criticism that she is poorly written because the narrative makes her always right even when it's implausible.

I posted this as a reply to someone else's post but I want to make it its own post because the original didn't get any likes or reflags, maybe because it didn't show up in the tags.

My take on the hate for Cassie Animorphs that you see a lot is that the perception is that Cassie makes decisions that are questionable or flawed but always turns out to be right in the end because of author fiat/favoritism, which I don't think is accurate when you analyze things deeply though I can see why people say so.

The thing is, how it usually works when the Animorphs are having an argument about morality is that the "failure mode" (the consequences of the action if it doesn't work out) of Cassie's suggestion or decision is that the war is completely lost and all of humanity is enslaved or killed by the Andalites, while the "success mode" is that a small amount of beings are saved and/or there will be a long-term ripple effect that leads to benefits for a lot of beings, both in terms of making the war more winnable and benefits that extent outside the war entirely. For example, letting Tom have the blue box would have led to the loss of the war if the gamble didn't pay off, and does have negative consequences for the war that could have easily led to them losing, but its positive impact is in both Yeerk and Taxxon defectors helping the Animorphs in the war and in, from a "humanitarian" perspective, Yeerks and Taxxons being offered a better choice besides war and conquest or the personal consequences of having to live in their standard bodies.

Meanwhile the "failure mode" of following the plan of someone like Marco can also sometimes be that the Animorphs will just lose the war, or sometimes that they will be back where they started (which is still a difficult and hopeless position with the Yeerks' greater numbers and more advanced technology), while the "success mode" is that they get that much closer to winning the war, such that if they continually forego opportunities like this they will have no chances of winning at all.

And for this reason, it is true that generally, when the others decide to go with Cassie's decision despite those risks, or Cassie acts on her beliefs anyway without the permission of the others, she turns out to be right and they don't all get killed or become Controllers. The plot armor and narrative conventions that they can't have the main characters just lose there, which is usually what will happen if they listen to Cassie and she is wrong. BUT the narrative shows the balance between Cassie's perspective and someone like Marco's both having their places in a different way; by showing the situations where the others don't go through with Cassie's plan, and Cassie is unable or unwilling to do her own thing or sabotage them. Such as blowing up the Yeerk pool in #52, which she explicitly opposes morally. But the others don't agree with Cassie and do it anyway, and it works, and it's clear they would have just lost the war there if they had sided with Cassie. Due to the restraints of the narrative, Cassie being wrong is usually indicated not by the others listening to Cassie or failing to stop her from taking action and her failing, but of them doing the opposite of what Cassie wants and succeeding. It's not as flashy and obvious, the other Animorphs don't sit there and say "wow we are so glad we didn't listen to Cassie or we would all be dead and humanity would be enslaved, isn't she dumb", but it's clear from the consequences of the narrative that she was wrong in that case.

The only exception where they were able to illustrate Cassie being wrong in the opposite way, where they take her side and do what Cassie wants and it's wrong, is with regards to throwing away the device to reprogram the Chee (initially what Cassie wanted and the others did not). This leads to consequences in the last book where it forces Jake to get the Chee's participation by threats and force instead, leading directly to Rachel and Tom's death and the escape of Tom's ship. And this comes down to the consequences happening in the last book of the series, meaning that while it doesn't lose them the war the narrative isn't as restricted to keeping all the main characters alive that it can't demonstrate permanent consequences to following Cassie's idea. But in other cases, Cassie isn't always right but her being wrong is demonstrated by the implications of what would have happened if they listened to her rather than what did happen when they did.

Overall I think her character is treated in a pretty balanced way between her perspective being right and wrong, although the narrative framing (out of necessity due to having to write within the constraints of not having the main characters lose and be killed/enslaved) drawing more attention to the times when she is right makes it look otherwise!

[tangledbea]

So I’ve been craving for some hurt-Eugene fics and somehow I found myself wondering about the “confusion” that Rapunzel mention in "If I Could Take That Moment Back". I mean I know the reason why she said no to Eugene’s proposal is because of her just being new to the world and wanting to explore everything before settling down and not because she does not love him. So I’m not sure “confuse” is a right term to describe it unless she’s having second thoughts about him. I love to hear your thoughts about it.

First of all, I always feel the need to state the case on this: We tend to think of that as another failed proposal, but he wasn't proposing to her, he was practicing proposing to her, and she barged in on him. He hid the ring. He never asked. Granted, the first proposal was a genuine proposal, and I suspect she'd been harboring those feelings since then, but I digress. Here we go!

She was definitely confused. She was confused because she does love him and she does want to marry him eventually, but her gut instinct was to say 'no' to marrying him at that time. She was confused because, despite Eugene being supportive of her in every way, she felt like he didn't understand her in that one, and kept pushing for something she wasn't ready for. (Yes, as viewers who ship them hard, we realize that these two events were six months apart, but if something is stressing you out and someone brings it up multiple times, it's easy to feel more anxious about it and put upon by them.) Rapunzel's confusion stems from the narrative of her life not aligning with her feelings about him proposing.

At the initial proposal, she was absolutely thrilled until he started talking about never leaving the palace or Corona. Rapunzel didn't understand how Eugene of all people could make her feel trapped. He was her freedom. He was her fresh air and the wind beneath her wings, and so how could that same person be (unintentionally) putting her in a cage? She was confused because these two realities didn't make sense together, yet she was feeling them at the same time.

Notice that, after that song, finding out that she was going to lose him was all she needed to decide she was ready to marry him. Because if the options were marry him or lose him, she knew which one she chose. And it was only Eugene starting to really understand her and her position that made him stop her and reject her proposal, which, in turn, cleared up all of her confusion. Because Eugene was no longer that weight, that pressure. He was now giving her free reign to decide when she was actually ready, and assuring her that he'd still be there when she was.

In fact, when you flash forward to "Cassandra's Revenge," you can see that he thinks they're in the right place, now, to propose again, but he's still really unsure, because he doesn't want to put that pressure back on her. And the only thing that stopped them from getting engaged by the end of that episode was realizing that their lives were still too chaotic at that time to add an engagement to it. (They were wrong. XD I'd have loved to see them be an engaged power couple for the rest of the season, but then we wouldn't have gotten the absolutely perfect proposal from the epilogue.)

Anyway, I hope this clears it up!

[scorpionyx9621]

Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

[highfaelucien]

While on the topic of wishing sjm had done something different for her characters, I really wanted something more for cassian. For example, cassian’s wings going from being completely ruined in the end of acomaf to being 100% healed in acowar made no sense to me. I think it would’ve been an opportunity for the growth of cassian’s character to see him go through the loss of losing the ability to fly and instead retrain himself to be a warrior in other ways and find other things about himself that prove his own worth to himself. Given the fact that cassian’s confidence is aligned with his ability to protect and serve others, it just would have been sooo good to see him overcome his grief and become even stronger of a character. And how wings, in general, are a sense of male pride among illyrians. I think this would’ve been the perfect way to write cassian and have him break away from his own idea of masculinity. He could have redefined what it meant for him to be a Man ™. Ugh, it just could have been so GOOD, imagine the character we could have gotten from him.

Listen, after ACOMAF, when this happened, EVERYONE was buzzing about this. Most people thought he wouldn't outright lose his wings permanently, but there would be a LOT required.

And then ACOWAR came and approximately nothing happened whatsoever. Oh he had to be healed. the healer had to rebuild his wings. he had to do strength training every day. But fundamentally: not a sausage.

Personally? I think Maas chickend out. I think she was unable to commit to taking Cassian's wings, or figuring out how to write him as anything other than what she's established him as: fun jock man who likes to hit things real hard and make dick jokes sometimes.

Having to see Cassian vulnerable? Having to see him broken, and struggling, and having to reevaluate his entire life and self-esteem and sense of masculinity would have been an incredible option for a character arc.

Most of the theorising/Nessian fics involved Nesta helping him. The two of them being broken/fundamentally altered by their experiences in Hybern - she being killed and Made with a dark power, Cassian losing his wings.

There was expected bonding over that, peeling away the masks they both wear to discover the softness underneath. The two of them being able to reach one another, because of their bond, in a way the others could not. It produced some pretty epic stuff, honestly.

And how badly I wanted that I didn't FULLY realise until the disappointment of ACOSF, when it hit fully.

Because instead of stripping Cassian back and seeing the tactician, the strategist, forcing him to put his other skills to use, to develop those skills, rather than 'smash with sword and ask questions later'. This man is a General. All the combat training in the world doesn't let you be good at this job if you can't command, if you can't use tactics, if you can't strategise.

And THIS is where I wanted to see Nesta. Nesta, the woman who calculated how many ships would be needed to save the humans of Prythian. The woman who looked at Greysen's manor and assessed its capabilities and saw a prison. The woman who devours history novels, who has a tactical, cunning mind. Who has never been a warrior or a creature of brute strength or physical abilities.

THIS is how I wanted to see Nesta evolve. This was how I wanted to see her develop. I didn't want her taken out of lady's dresses. I didn't want her forced into fighting leathers, to basically become another copy of her sister, and follow down that path.

I wanted her to take her own. I wanted her to finally be in a place where she could learn, and strategise, and contribute. And I wanted her to work with Cassian on this - who was grounded because of his wings, who couldn't command on the frontlines anymore, or even fight. Who had to stay back, and see how he handled this. How he maintained his authority. How he maintained his sanity without his wings.

We could have had so fucking much. Such a powerful narrative about survival. I wanted her in the library, with the other survivors, (and with fucking MORRIGAN - not sidelined, not dismissed, not being bitchy and catty for the sake of it. But someone who visits the library frequently, who interacts with the women there, and sometimes just is a woman there herself, because there are still hard days.)

But no. No instead of something nuanced, and original, and actually tailored to Nesta's strengths as a character, we got Yet Another Weapon's Trainng Montage.

We got the narrative that the only way to heal from abuse is to be able to beat the shit out of your abusers. Because that's #GirlPower, right?

It makes me so furious I almost want to just. Just fucking rewrite the whole damn fucking thing myself the way it SHOULD have gone.

And I know you talked about Cassian and not Nesta, so I do apologise, but they were tied together. But I agree.

We all wanted Cassian to evolve from that 'Lord of Bloodshed' / "savage brute" because reading between the lines and forcing some nuance from these books, which is the only way to survive: Cassian has a lot of layers. There's a lot of trauma there. A lot of insecurity. A lot of angst. A lot of heart. A lot of fucking INTELLIGENCE. (I'll fight on that point, I really will. Cassian is not a dumb himbo who can barely add 1 and 1).

But sjm was too busy writing him having a hard on for Nesta to explore....anything about himself. Or his relationship with Azriel, and Rhys, and Mor, and everyone else.

The removal (even temporarily) of his wings would have allowed for a LOT of that exploration.

Firstly, the fact that he injured them by CHOICE, saving Azriel's life. That would have been such a deep connection and bond between them. The guilt that Az would feel - but the potential for Cassian to step in, even with his wings gone, and say that he'd do it again.

Because Azriel is his brother. He loves him. And it was worth it. It would be worth it a hundred times over to save him. Because he's worth saving. And he's worth sacrificing for. And what that would have done for Az as a character, too. Who always offers himself up first for dangerous missions, puts himself in peril to protect the others.

And having Cassian join Feyre and Az's flying lessons? Because Cass having to relearn how to fly once (if) his wings healed to that extent, means letting Azriel train him. Because those old instincts aren't enough. And he has to learn how to strengthen them, and train with them. And how this affects his perception of himself and his masculinity, as he said. But also deepening his understanding for Az, and the bond the two of them share, in having this experience together.

Bonding with Rhys, who FINALLY fucking opens up to someone and has some nuanced therapy-like conversations about what happened with Amarantha. The sacrifces they've made for their people. How they'd do it again but it still hurts, and changes them, and how they have to learn and grow and move on from that and heal together.

Rhys working with Cassian on his other talents, using him as the skilled strategist and tactician he MUST be. Helping him to develop that, keeping his brother from losing his mind while he can't fight or use his physicality to solve problems, as he usually does.

Mor personally healing and tending to Cassian. Mor being there at his bedside every day while he was bed bound. Mor becoming as possessive and overprotective of both him and Az as any mate ever has been.

Mor speaking to him about her own rehabilitation after what her family did to her, the physical toll that took on her. Mor's heart breaking because she nearly lost both him and Az and she couldn't handle that at all. Mor reiterating how much she fucking loves him, and how she needs him.

Mor helping him through the darker days of his depression because she's been there. And she knows what it is to put on a front. To always be laughing, and joking, without the seriousness of life -leave that to the others. But sometimes it's too much and he needs to break down. And be angry. And furious. And hopeless. And scared. And that's what she's there for. Because she understands.

Mor winnowing him to his favourite spots that he can't fly to anymore, just so he can be there. The two of them spending time, and bonding, and developing that relationship we got in ACOMAF beyond 'we bicker constantly and drink together and make sexual innuendos'.

Even Amren showing up and doing her part. Snapping at him to stop brooding so much. But also bringing him some of her puzzles. Some of her favourite military history books (which she has anotated and edited to highlight the bits that have been incorrectly reported). Spending time with him to stop him going mad. Exhausting herself those first few days personally attending to Cassian's wings, and snarling at anyone who tried to interfere.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH.

IT COULD HAVE DEVELOPED SO MUCH WITH THE INNER CIRCLE. AND CASSIAN. AND NESSIAN. AND JUST. EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER BUT NAW. IT WAS BASIC ASS AND BORING AND I'M GONNA DIE MAD ABOUT IT.