#The arc is both ooc and sucks ass there's nothing more to be said about it

[terraco-07]

I find the posts claiming that Rose and Jade were in character for their current series of actions interesting to say the least. Personally I can't help but see them far and away out of their original characterization, but I'll focus primarily on Rose here. I think it's really easy for us to forget the original comic when looking at subsequent works and forget the foundational information that informs us of who a character is. I'm sorry but less than a thousand pages of Epilogues and HS2 isn't going to tell you as much as 8k and the writers SHOULD be looking at the original and plotting off of that even if they were teens in it. When writing a sequel (Whether canon or not) the original matters! That all said when I look back at Rose on the meteor I see someone who let her nerves and her fear of failure and being alone propel her forward at all times. This girl got so nervous about impressing Kanaya that she was wasted and missed their first date. She's insecure and fearful that Kanaya might break up with her on the meteor as well. The way that scene went down and Kanaya yelling no to me reads as this wasn't the first time Rose has asked that. Regardless you take all of that and you add the fact that candy Rose was talking to John about how happy she was and how much she loved her wife and kid and we go from that to well I knew you'd forgive me and honestly I just wanted to see what would happen while Kanaya is actively going "You do remember you said a kid between those three would be horrible and you didn't like Jade right?" We have no reason to believe that Kanaya is an unreliable narrator here, if anything Rose more than likely is. The idea that Rose just went oh man my good bestie Jade wants me to cheat on my loving wife of over 10 years and went yeah sure anything for my friend is laughably bad I'm sorry. If that's actually a course of action being taken by the writers I genuinely question if we're writing this for a 5th grade reading level. HS2 has at times been a series of flatting characters into their most basic forms and I'm so tired of seeing this parroted by fans who take the most surface level shit and run with it without thinking a little deeper. I feel like I've gone over this before but making Rose into this sort of cold emotionless villain type is so uninspired while we're at it. We're creating problems for her when she had ten other things she could have been shitty for. The knew you'd forgive me line is especially egregious for some shallow anime villain type. I will say Rose is bad at communication I agree with those points, but that ignores the main issue. She's bad at talking about her feelings but she isn't bad at caring about Kanaya's. The idea that she would throw away or risk her relationship EVEN with the visions is kind of insane to me. Her fear of losing Kanaya would overweigh the trust in her powers. I think that Rose like a handful of other characters is just chronically misread and people are excited about an evil plotline but this is so half baked and the idea that she was always like this or this makes sense with her previous characterization is just actually insane to me. Look HS2 fans you can have your new Rose, but that's a different person I think we can all play nice under that assumption.

[tipsygnostalgy]

"It was never that serious," said Rose Lalonde calmly. — a deranged rant on update rose + philosophy

now that rose has officially hopped onto the "nothing matters" track of things i'm inclined to believe faux-absurdism is a sleeping agent in the strilondian neuroticism paradigm moreso than a real plot point but yeah anyway i have mixed feelings

on one hand i can definitely see why people don't like her / think she's ooc. the classic process of "cause major change in a character" goes inciting incident -> development -> big blowout moment demonstrating the change (appropriated + bastardized from mr freytag himself), and in my personal opinion the comic jumped the gun on this one? we get the inciting incident (candy timeline's irrelevancy) and both irl timeline and character arcwise are plunged straight into the blowout with very little time in between. there's a tiny hint with the light symbol playing a role (more on this later) but for the most part it feels sudden and unjustified if you're insane about rose + understand sufficient epilogues metaphilosophy + and are coded specifically to like this type of shit you Get Exactly What's Going On and fucking dig it. if you don't, you think they've put her through a meat grinder and i can see both

on the OTHER. dear god i'm sucking on the sweet teats of knowledge and absurdism like a baby at the bath. her swapping her constant need of "why" to "why not" and both rose's constant struggle with Light mixing with the irrelevancy of candy and coalescing in one big idgaf war except.

except on the third hand it's worth mentioning that she's also half-assing absurdism so bad that it gets pathetic. her last line "I knew you would forgive me anyway" actually solidifies this arc as one big tantrum that they plan on developing into Not A Thing (hopefully) because she doesn't tell kanaya "I knew it wouldn't matter." the forgiveness is what she focuses on. the forgiveness matters. kanaya still matters to her whether this dumbass light player is consciously aware of this or not and i think ironically KANAYA knows this better than she does which is part of her saying she refuses to mediate this one. on a rosemary level this is jaw-dropping on a character level BOOOO

MAKE HER ABSURDIST! make her sit there and do things not for the sake of kanaya but literally only to do them. make her sit there and genuinely believe the only obligation in reality is to live it. dirk fails at being a true absurdist too he starts injecting meaning into life like there's motherfucking nothing and rose actually acknowledging there's zero meaning whatsoever but living anyway and in that process learning to love life (juxtaposes jake's adventurer) would juxtapose her to him but NOOOOOO she has to sit there and go Well there's no meaning to Life. It was Never that serious. Fuck you. but then refuse to kill herself (thereby proving camus right once again) then now what. now What. Ohhhh "nothing" matters cool then die. dirk's suicide was meaningful because he broke that formula okay he went There's no meaning to life? Ok. then immediately hung himself he DEVOURED that sequence he subverted absurdism back into existentialism which is cool but ROSE COULD PERPENDICULAR THAT!

[jules-writes-stories]

Im enjoying JEL but have been feeling isolated from Azris as a Mor fan lately. Every fic lately has her being OOC. A villain, cruel, psycho to the point that she's hated. Writers can do what they want, of course, it just sucks bc I like her but I also like azris. Am I the only one?

I guess im wondering if Mor will having some kind of arc? no spoilers, I know . just wonder what you plan for her. you always give your characters a lot of love, even how you treated mithras was with kindness. Just curious. thanks for reading. really enjoy the story too.

Hi anon,

First of all, I hate that you’re feeling isolated, especially from Azris. To me, this ship is about being low key and inclusive. That said, your feelings are so valid, and I see where you’re coming from. I’ve given this a lot of thought:

I think some of the “Mor vs Eris” dynamic can be overcome by accepting that two hard truths can coexist. Mor is a victim who was used by a power hungry and cruel father and so was Eris. They don’t have to be pitted against each other in that situation. They were terrified, abused kids who acted out of terror and a lack of agency.

I can’t speak to other writers’ stories— but I think OOC can be subjective? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read someone else’s interpretation of a scene in a trad pub book and been like, wait? Did we read the same thing? I think we bring so much personal stuff to a character that they become more of a spectrum and less of a fixed quantity? So two readers could experience the same character, but focus on opposing aspects of said character/value certain traits over others. And while they seem contradictory, both are true.

Example: Mor: She was a freedom fighter who liberated human slaves in the first war on Hybern. She rescued Feyre when she was trapped in Spring. She’s so loyal to those she loves. And she kicked ass in Adriata. She’s a High Fae who loved a mortal woman, and lost that love. No regrets.

She also does nothing canonically to liberate those who are queer, poor, or female in the Hewn City, even as third most powerful High Fae in Night. In fact, she actively works to keep the courts segregated by keeping them from Velaris. And there are still innocents living under Keir… have been for 500 years. So: I want her to do something. I want her to step into her power.

For me, (I only speak for myself), I want Mor to be a banshee and a queen— a liberator and a leader. I think she ran so fast, so terrified, and slammed the portal door shut, and now she’s haunted by all she left behind. I want her to go back, open that portal and step into her Truth and Power and liberate her Court.

Without giving too much away, I hope to give her some of that in JEL. I don’t hate Mor. (I’m assuming you read the more recent chapter so I’ll say)— I have her save Mith in that flashback scene for a reason. She was a little girl screaming at sadistic Darkbringers. She saved her best friend. She’s defended so many. And she will again.

I want to see her heal her wound, so she can heal the wounds of an entire Court. There are dreamers down there waiting for her!

Sorry this is so long— you can tell I care about a character when I write this much. (Keir: I’d just be like, WHY is he still alive? Lol)

And thank you for noting my love for my characters. I do really care for them, especially my OC monster baby Mithras 🖤🐍. I hope I at least sort of addressed your answer in this ramble!

[sketching-shark]

Bangs head on my desk. Its sooooo fucking hard I have literally most of the LMK fandom blocked and I still can’t fucking escape that mid ass pairing I want to explode. Honest to god it sucks because I actually like analyzing LEMH and Sun wukong’s dynamic when it comes to the original story and like the idea of a character trying so hard to be this other person they just fundamentally erase any aspect of who they could be. That shit is interesting (especially if you interpret the two as actual family bc there’s a level of. Tragedy there) but NOOO mfs wanna focus on shipping clones/siblings together instead and painfully writing both characters ooc instead of just making an oc good fucking god. ( that being said I really like the art you draw of LEMH. It’s really cool. Keep up the good work 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾)

fregarewargtfds I once saw someone describe the LEMH & SWK ship as jttw retellings's reylo and. hm. yeah.

BUT YEAH YEAH YEAH to this day one of the things I find most baffling about the western monkie kid & jttw fandom is this widespread refusal to even recognize LEMH's actions in the og classic. Because it's like: here we have what could very well be one of literature's first instances of the "evil twin" trope and it's being done SPECIFICALLY in a way to create the maximum amount of conflict and uncertainty for SWK!

Because on one hand the false monkey of the true and false monkey king arc is essentially the very embodiment of everything that SWK ever wanted; LEMH, in copying SWK so completely, does it in such a way where he gets to be both a yaoguai warlord with a loving family AND a holy pilgrim bound for glory at the exact same time, whereas SWK is constantly being forced to choose between the two! But LEMH's also doing it in the worst way possible! He beats Tang Sanzang into unconsciousness, steals their stuff for his own use, and in so doing drives a serious rift between SWK and the pilgrims!

He clearly doesn't give af about the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys outside of how they can serve as his personal tools to fulfill his own aims! He just wants them to use their own powers of transformation so that they can serve as his own obedient group of pilgrims! He even eats one of them as part of a merry feast he throws for himself after a violent encounter with Sha Wujing, and immediately has that monkey replaced with another! And he's doing ALL of this wearing SWK's face and adapting SWK's mannerisms! EVERYONE thinks that it's SWK doing these things! It's like LEMH's very existence is throwing it in SWK's face how this horrible version of himself is closer to achieving ALL of SWK's desires than SWK ever was, and that no matter how much SWK tries to change for the better even the two sides of his beloved family automatically think even this version which would inflict such violence on them is the "true" him! No wonder SWK hated him so much!

And AUGH the possibility of LEMH either being a manifestation of SWK's worst impulses or of being his brother just ramps the tragedy and horror of this situation even more! Like if it was part of SWK inflicting all this pain on the people SWK loves most, well there is truly something messed up about this situation where even if it's not technically "you" going along with your worst impulses they will still hurt people! Could you ever trust yourself again? Should you? How much of the blame for this situation lies with you? And can it be enough to fully acknowledge you have violent impulses but don't act on them?

And yes @the-bitter-ocean even in interpretations where LEMH is some random yaoguai who decides to commit identity fraud the story from his point of view of him throwing away his identity so completely that there's basically nothing left of him is just...goddamn. In his ambition he literally reduced himself to one part of SWK's story, just one more obstacle for the Monkey King to overcome.

And SCREAM if LEMH was SWK's brother? Imagine this situation where for SWK he's confronted by what is essentially the culmination of his failures to protect his family, where his beloved brother (I'm saying beloved because SWK loved all members of his monkey family very much) ended up despising SWK so much that he has essentially destroyed everything that he was or could have been in his bid to be the "real" monkey king and bring glory back to that name, but does so in the worst way possible to the point where SWK feels he has to take down LEMH himself. And then for LEMH, you can see how love and admiration for his brother would be twisted into resentment, envy, obsession, and hatred due to the series of atrocities the Mt. Huaguoshan simians faced in large part as a consequence of SWK's challenge to the heavens and his own sense of entitlement, so that eventually he convinced himself he would be a more "true" monkey king than the monkey king himself, and thus completely discarded his own identity to take on that of his brother, and in doing so basically tossed his own morals given how his "version" of the monkey king cares for no one but himself.

Sorry for the rant! But all the pieces for a whole series of interesting tragedies are! Already! Right! There!!!!! Why are we all so hellbent on ignoring/rewriting them!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!