#a character written by a woman to be a redeemable asshole who take out a petty schoolyard resentment against a kid’s dad ON THE KID | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shesamreads · 2 years ago

Text

Ok, first of all, "Finding God, that mischievous imp. Hiding where we least expect it. Not in a church, not on a slap, but inside us. Right there, next to our hearts." How dare you write this absolute banger in a monster romance.

There's so much that reminds me of the movie, obviously, but it was interesting to see behind the movie. I enjoyed seeing more of the characters, and their motivations and thoughts. Everything was written with care, and even if you didn't like the character (looking at you, Strickland) you still find them intriguing, and you understand them.

Giles retelling the Tantalus hurts, but hurts even more knowing what happens next in the movie.

I would HATE being married to Richard. What a dick husband.

I don't really drink, but now I'm a little interested in a Bandy Alexander.

I was told, from one of my facebook book groups, that we'd get more background about Strickland, that' he'd get more fleshed out and we'd have more sympathy for him.

And we do get background, and he does get fleshed out. But I really don't have any more sympathy for him.

NOPE. Still a garbage person. Interesting, but garbage.

I like Eliza's some of dreams. They seem soothing? I like water.

God, I love this movie. I love the interactions between the Amphibian Man (the asset?) and Eliza.

You know what Strickland needs? THERAPY.

(what is likely PTSD, the attraction to things that repulse him, the anger, the possible addiction. The general *gestures at everything*)

"All feminine minds were fragile."

Get fucked, doc.

You know who else needs therapy? Timmy. Good god, Strickland. What are you doing to that boy? What are you doing to this family?

"Accepting a woman's lure is like taking an enemy's bait."

Goddamn, Strickland. This is your wife! It's not gross or weak to be attracted to your wife!

Once again, Strickland:

"Maybe she can learn to like it, too." Baby, you don't deserve this. You deserve a better man. I'm so sorry that this is your life. I'm so proud that you got that job.

"She looks around like this is a trap. Why would she think that?"

Because it is, asshole.

"If she's not wearing them for his enjoyment, then whose?"

Women enjoy things, you know. Even shoes. All on their own. It's true!

Strickland went from "I'm gonna park here to show off my car." to "Oh shit, my car!" real quick.

oh no, it's The Asset's point of view. 😭😭😭

the narrator has been great this whole book, but goddamn she is FABULOUS as the Asset.

I was driving when this part happened so I don't remember the exact words but "his parts, right where they should be. her parts, right where she left them" is my absolute favorite.

"Finding God, that mischievous imp. Hiding where we least expect it. Not in a church, not on a slap, but inside us. Right there, next to our hearts."

How dare you write this absolute banger in a monster romance.

It's weird to see Strickland redeemed and not redeemed at the same time. I'm glad that he felt at peace for once, and that the Creature helped him move on.

"Yes, she has arrived! She is full, she is perfect. She reaches out to him, to herself. There is no difference. She understands now. She holds him, he holds her, they hold each other..."

One last time as The Asset, The Creature, The Amphibian Man, The Devonian.

"we welcome you. come with us."

What a dreamy, lovely ending.

I absolutely adored this movie.

1 note · View note

beyonceisstraight · 2 years ago

Text

So I watched Wednesday and

1) ppl are loving her quirks and bluntness

2) ppl are rightfully pointing out autistic ppl are bullied for these same things

There’s an intersection here where neurotypical ppl enjoy both spectacle and being mean to ppl, which she does and is. And autistic ppl can be not nice to be around for others without that being their intention.

Let’s make one thing clear, Wednesday is a bit of an asshole but she has a strong sense of justice and it flows along what she personally believes vs what the world views as justice. The more I watched the more I thought god I wish I could behave the way she does sometimes bc my lens is similar but i don’t do this bc I’ve learned that you can’t just say anything to anyone. Its really only while on meds that I have a sorta functional filter. Bc without meds living is so taxing there’s no room for my brain through brain fog and spiraling to be filtered.

And the more I watched the more I realised, she’s not really a nice person but she’s also a 16 year old girl. Mortitia does say teenage girls can be mean and kinda, thats whats going on. She sees a man pouring a cup of drip coffee and says it loud enough that he can hear that ppl who drink drip hate themselves and have nothing going on in their lives. And he just stops and puts it down. That’s an awful way to be towards strangers and its also very 16 year old girl who thinks she’s better than others behaviour. If wednesday wasn’t an “outcast” but a blonde hottie type doing the exact same things ppl would actually genuinely hate her.

Here I want to present you with the sansa stark argument, because as I live and die i will defend sansa stark. My sansa stark argument is that when a teenage girl is written as what’s perceived as normal but with the addition of some social power by being pretty according to the beauty standard, people will hate her. They will hate her even if she’s 13 and being manipulated by adults well over 30 and accuse a 13 year old girl of having been able to stop a king from killing her father if she’d simply resisted the grown woman she looks up to manipulating her.

Children are ours to protect. End of.

But no one is hated more than the teenage girl, be she pretty, fat, short, tall, smart, dumb, promiscuous, prude etc. What is a teenage girl to the world but someone to hate who is also a porn category.

Wednesday is “emotionless”, cold, “logical” and ppl like that. The less of a human a woman is and the more that she embodies what patriarchy rewards the more ppl like her. Her assessment of Weems is deeply incorrect. Weems is doing her job. Weems covers the death of a student bc if she hadn’t all hell would reign down on Nevermore. She chose an evil. Weems also sees Wednesday for what she is. Impulsive, impatient, uncooperative if you’re not doing what she wants. I’m an adult well past 16 and if I came across a girl like Wednesday, and I have, I would simply not take her seriously in the least. Because it would just be me interacting with a teenage girl who will spit my flaws at me like I don’t know that already. Do you know what kind of behaviour that is? its disrespect. its rude. its just unpleasant to be around. I’m not this kid’s parent I’m just going to ignore her and go about my day.

Wednesday actually is extremely normal. Like I said I’ve met teenage girls like her. A lot of children behave exactly like she does. But the thing is children are emotional and more transparent. And children aren’t respected. In the real world there’s nothing exceptional about this girl beyond how she doesn’t flinch at darkness like killing or maiming anyone. In the real world that would land her in juvie. In the real world a girl like Wednesday would be actually scary and I don’t imagine you’d want to be around her. But also in real life I would feel deep concern about this girl. I’d want to know she was ok.

But ppl can’t see this character like a person because Teenage Girls are spectacles, hated unless redeemed through a patriarchal lens. Ppl love to hate a flawed teen girl character, like Korra. However we’re presented with Wednesday as though she’s ineffable.

The proof of a patriarchal lens is that even though Wednesday experiences her deepest development with WOMEN her love interest is a boy. She depends the most on WOMEN but the end of story love interest is a tim burton self insert (different argument) who has done fuck all besides get framed and run when Wednesday tells him to because the WOMEN handle the bad guy. This is the love interest and not the roomate who respect her boundaries and FIGHTS TO THE DEATH TO DEFEND HER. This girl is naked, bloody, only a coat on her shoulder but her only concern is Wednesday. She hugs Wednesday and is hugged in return. Bitch I cried. They have such a meaningful relationship. Bianca does more and shows up more as a better person than either boy who shows interest in Wednesday.

We were robbed of goth lesbian and rainbow lesbian. I liked the show, and the character and I love exploring the theme of teen girls in media bc well, someone has to show love to and defend these girls.

#wednesday

5 notes · View notes

eolewyn1010 · 4 years ago

Text

Warning: This is a rant.

So, there’s someone in the Charité fandom with a few, eh, interesting(?) ships. Namely, Anni/de Crinis as a romantic ship or, more recently, Anni/Christel. Which, whatever. I don’t shit on your ship, you leave my boats alone and all that; I guess the person in question is just into villain/protagonist ships. You do you. But I do have an opinion and I’m gonna elaborate on it now. (It’s a history- and canon-oriented breakdown; feel free to ignore.)

First of all, Max de Crinis was a Nazi. I’m not sure inhowfar the person in question is aware of that because they only ever seem to be talking about the character de Crinis in the Charité show (more on that later) and I don’t think they’re German; thus they might not have the cultural background to take this with the same queasy feeling I do, but yes, we’re talking a real-life Nazi who gave his expert reports on which people were to be “sorted out” in Aktion T4. Meaning, he actively participated in the mass murder of disabled people, adults and children alike. And no one can tell me he didn’t know what he was having part in. That man was influencial, way up in the hierarchy. He lived the superiority ideology of the Nazis, he preached it. We are shown that in the series. We hear the way he talks about people, about the Dohnanyis, about a traumatized woman who thinks she has lost her child, about homosexuals, and I think it’s not far-off from what we know of historical de Crinis. He was a monster, responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands and not sorry about it. He’s not shown as a redeemable antagonist in the series, and I don’t see him at all with Anni, a character who is very much shown to be redeemable. Anni is passive and complacent, which is another category of bad, but she is, to some degree, unaware. It is at least partially a willful unawareness, admittedly, but she is young enough to have been raised unaware. And once she overcomes this, she realizes that what happens around her, what her highly adored mentor preaches and practices, is nothing she can morally justify. That’s when her redemption begins. With her breaking down crying eventually as she can’t cling to her worldview anymore, we know it’s a painful process, and it’s supposed to be.

De Crinis is at no point unaware. He is a Nazi, and we’re never shown at any time that he wants to change that. We’re never shown him in pain, up until it’s about his own life. Because there was never any indication for that in the historical person and this is a historical show.

Secondly, the character we are shown in the series. He’s married, y’know? Admittedly, his wife is extremely non-present, showing up only to die by his side, but it’s one of the things that make de Crinis behave in that condescending mentorly way toward Anni instead of being actually flirty with her. So, the ship would have to do away with the wife. Then, it’d have to away with Artur because - oh, right, Anni already has an irredeemable Nazi asshole she’s married to. From what we’re shown, she and Artur are very much in love initially. It’s not an easy separation for her. Easiest solution? Make them both single from the get-go, I guess, have de Crinis be Karin’s father; he’d conveniently be protective of his own child and stuff... and wind up as Artur, basically. Who’s all, “yeah, other people’s children, but not mine, of course”. To overcome that, de Crinis would have to realize that all human life has inherent value. Which means, he’d have to renounce his work, his loyalty to the Nazi realm, everything his life and ego consists of. All the things he’s built his reputation on, might I note. There are others who watch him. He’d be dead in no time. And if we say he was like that from the get-go, then he never gets into a position of power in the first place. Scientist? Even several of his contemporaries thought his work was worthless. (We’re shown that in series-canon, too, with Sauerbruch and Jung grinning at his self-adulation.) His hostility with the Dohnanyis / Bonhoeffers? Wouldn’t be there; he’d be fighting for their cause. His psychological torture and persecution of Martin and Otto? Why would he hunt down homosexuals if he had internalized that all human life has value and Nazi ideology is wrong?

There would be nothing left of his character. What point is there in shipping Anni with de Crinis when the latter isn’t de Crinis anymore? Just make a new character then?

Third, his points of redemption potential? ...there are none. His favorism of Anni? Based on her being a good little sheep who looks up at him with her wide, Aryan eyes and admires him. His soft spot for kids, shown in his disgust with Magda Goebbels’ planned murder of her children? He’s appalled that the virtuous paragon of the Nazi model family is shredding yet another bit of his pretty, pretty worldview; that’s all. He doesn’t give a shit about children. He doesn’t try to stop her or talk her out if it. He tells her where she can get poison to go through with it. When Anni mentions that “Karin has been evacuated”, he doesn’t even blink. And he knows what “evacuating” means for a disabled child. He doesn’t care. He has the point of view of Nurse Käthe, of Prof. Bessau: That child’s no good; make new ones. His taking flight, knowing that he has committed crimes he will be prosecuted for? Yeah - but he doesn’t seem to suffer from it. When Anni acknowledges herself as guilty, she breaks down and lashes out, realizing what she might have been and was capable of. De Crinis? Takes flight. He’s not a bit shaken, not a bit surprised by what he has been up to. He has always known that what he participated in is wrong; he just didn’t care so long as there were no consequences for him personally. The one and only thing that made de Crinis watch-worthy in the series is that Lukas Miko is a damn fine actor who gives one hell of a chilling performance. That doesn’t make his character any less of a piece of shit, nor does it diminish my urge to go take a shower after the de Crinis scenes. I wouldn’t mind watching Miko play a de Crinis anthithesis, but that definitely wouldn’t be de Crinis.

To make this ship work, there are exactly two possibilities: Give up all of de Crinis’ character - or roll with him being the evil bastard that he is and that we are shown he is, and give up all of Anni’s character. That’s it. Just... don’t act like there’s canonically anything good about de Crinis.

Same goes for the Anni/Christel ship, btw. “Everything is the same, but Christel is not in love with Otto but with Anni”. That... means nothing is the same. It means everything changes thoroughly. Christel was always the only real threat for Otto and Martin - if she isn’t, there’s not much for them to fear in their own ranks. They’re careful; they wouldn’t have been found out without a denunciation. Means, they don’t get arrested, Otto doesn’t have to save Martin, Otto goes out to war, Otto dies before the war is over because those last months of battling were desperate and ugly (even more so than the earlier, I mean). So, we’d get a new gay at the cost of killing another? Eh. A Nazi accepting homosexuality, coming to terms with herself as an adversary of her own creeds and abandoning Nazi ideology to Do The Right Thing is not “missing dramatic content”, either. It’s Anni’s arc. And it’s a character arc that Christel, with the way she’s written, with “too much compassion is a sign of weakness”, is not capable of.

The scenario doesn’t only include Christel accepting herself as a lesbian; it also includes her helping Anni with Karin. Which brings us back to the same problem as with de Crinis: She’d have to abandon everything she’s convinced of. Accept the value of all human life. And I think her definition of a “worthy life” is even narrower than that of de Crinis; that’s why he recruits her in the first place: Because Christel is a very passionate Nazi. Much more so than de Crinis. She has a backbone, he’s an opportunistic chickenshit. He takes flight. She fights. To the very last second, she clings to her idea of the Nazi realm. When she breaks down, it isn’t for realizing that what she believes in is wrong; it is because what she believes in is lost. That’s one of the things that make me be more shaken with her than with de Crinis, even more in awe of Frida-Lovisa Hamann than of Lukas Miko: Christel never knows that she’s in the wrong. Like Anni, she’s young enough to have been raised unaware, and different than Anni, she very decidedly declines the chance to break out of this. If she’d been brought to court for her deeds, she wouldn’t have been able to defend herself, and she wouldn’t have denied anything, because in her worldview, she never did anything wrong. Realizing that would be, again, an extremely painful process and, again, it wouldn’t leave anything of her character. Why would she go on a date with Otto and propose to him? Why would she tattle on little Emil? On Hans von Dohnanyi? On Martin? Why would she be in conflict with the Sauerbruchs? Why would she lead Volkssturm kids into the hospital if she wants to protect Anni? Why are there any conflicts at all instead of all of the Charité staff being morally upright and good and a united front against the Nazis?

They aren’t. There’s a story being told, and if they’d change out these chilling, well-written antagonists for lukewarm knock-off protagonists, they’d have to make up new antagonists to make any of the story work. It’s a historical series, dealing with living amidst Nazis; inside this framework, the characters won’t function as theirselves if their core values are flipped.

Conclusion? There’s only one legit ship in there, and it’s de Crinis/Christel. I can totally see that; it’d leave both their characters intact. He could rush back to tragically die by her side - BAM, there you’ve got your Nazi-apologetic drama. Or make it Magda Goebbels/Christel, if one wants to go for psycho lesbians. Personally, I don’t care much for finding a happy end for obvious Nazis that were written as Nazis and have absolutely nothing that would turn them away from being Nazis. And I don’t see Anni being either’s romantic partner. Why on earth would she want to? Isn’t Artur punishment enough?

#Charité #Charité at War #got this out of my system #I'm a CHARACTER writer okay?#so this is the character-driven take #but the apologetic take on a historical Nazi still pisses me off

20 notes · View notes

normal-thoughts-official · 4 years ago

Note

What’s ur opinion on the treatment of Maia’s character on the show??

it was shit and antiblack and the sh writers can come fight me any day. i absolutely hated the way a lot of the time she was written as irrationally angry when actually she was RATIONALLY angry, and the fact that they made j*ia (both stances of it, actually) happen was a punch in the face to me

like maia was such a breath of fresh air for me because she was the ONLY one who was actually addressing what a racist piece of shit jace was, and calling him out and making no excuses or coddling him. it was so great and nice. and then they had her hook up with him, which means one of the two:

it was just pent up sexual frustration the whole time

the fact that he was hot overrode the fact that he was a racist piece of shit

both of those are fucking terrible and i can't even pick which is worse. first one implies that woc being mad at white men for their bullshit is really just them "wanting" said white men, which is a gross, racist, mysoginistic trope meant to shut them up when they complain about the shit they face. it is belittling, unfair, and dismissive to all the shit white men put them through, just like going all "you're so cute when you're angry" when someone is pointing out your shitty behavior is a condescending asshole move designed to make the other person's complaints seem like whiny spoiled child attitude, when they are not. it's fucking disrespectful and sh going with that trope is shitty as hell

and the second one basically implies that being racist is nbd. it's like, oh, they had their differences, but ~desire~. like sorry but no woc on their right mind would want to hook up with a racist white men who was deliberately being racist to them all the time, and even if they DID, taking that narrative choice is inherently different from a real life woc making that decision because it is supposed to convey a message. and the message i get from that is that being racist is alright as long as you're hot, or that racism is not going to be a dealbreaker for A BLACK WOMAN when it comes to attraction. or worse, that it was just banter

then we have the saia breakup which was every level of bullshit on the book. i'll never forgive the way the narrative basically villainized her for needing time and space after going through something traumatic because "simon needed her" or whatever, like simon doesn't have a lot of other friends who could support him, or like MAIA HERSELF didn't need support either. but of course a black woman wouldn't need support, she just needed to deal with everything on her own, but also fuck her for needing that because even that is not enough of not-a-nuisance to make her desirable. fuck u sh writers. and it was ooc and bullshit anyway because they wanted to make the sizzy bullshit happen

and THEN there is the jordan thing which is every level of the worst thing that's ever happened. jordan. was. abusive. i'm not even talking about the fact that he literally turned her against her will out of JEALOUSY, i'm talking about the fact that she explicitly said that he was controlling and jealous and had been stalking her. the fact that jordan didn't respect her no when she broke up with him and kept trying to force her to come back, making her uncomfortable and disrespecting her wishes, made him abusive, end of story. the fact that he then PUNISHED her for it by turning her makes him even worse

there is no world in which it is a good narrative choice to make someone go back to their abusive relationship for whatever reason, mUCH LESS A BLACK WOMAN, because black women are already told that they should endure any bad treatment they get x5981758931751. fuck sh for romanticizing a black woman not only forgiving but GETTING BACK WITH her abusive ex and never even addressing what made their relationship abusive and wrong and acting like the only problem was that he left her, and not the fact that he treated her (a black woman!!!) as property or as if she owed him affection. and their relationship was basically written as maia redeeming him and it's not anyone's job, ESPECIALLY NOT A BLACK WOMAN'S, to make people who treat them like shit a better person. it's just not

and also generally we never got to see maia being vulnerable or getting taken care of, it was always the other way around, which again, racist trope. when things got hard for her the writers just yeeted her, and then, as if that weren't bad enough, villainized her for going away and taking care for herself. her plotlines were never treated as important (then again, no one's but jace and clary's ever were). LUKE, A BLACK MAN, KEPT CHOOSING CLARY OVER HER. she was treated as evil, mean and irrational for having a realistic approach under which violence was sometimes necessary as a means of self defense (see: being willing to kill clary and then killing heidi. both were the correct choice. like, sorry) even though whenever she resorted to violence it was NEVER overly violent or without reason. they basically villainized her for fighting back racism, and that is so fucking shitty and ughh

i love her as a character and she owns all my uwus and she's never done anything wrong ever in her entire life but the sh writer's room (and cc because i know most if not all of the narrative choices i mentioned up there were directly taken from the books) can eat shit

#ask #anonymous #salt #racism tw #abuse tw #anti sh writers #anti cc #anti tsc #anti tmi #anti jaia #anti jace herondale #anti sizzy #anti jordan kyle #jordan kyle is an abuser

24 notes · View notes

thegayhimbo · 4 years ago

Note

I saw your reblog about Alcide, if you don't mind answering what are your personal thoughts on him?

Hi there. Sorry for the wait on this. I actually thought this was going to be a simple answer, but I realize there's a lot I wanted to say about the character in relation to how the fandom perceives him as opposed to how he actually comes off onscreen.

When I first saw the show, my feelings about Alcide ranged from okay at best to indifferent at worst. I didn't hate him, but I didn't care for him. He wasn't my favorite character on the show, and I found most of his story (and the werewolf plots) to be boring. I was actually surprised when I came online and found out he had a following with certain fans.

Upon rewatch, I'm still mostly indifferent to Alcide, but I lean a little more towards mildly disliking him now. And a lot of that has to do with how the fandom (especially people on Reddit) treat him vs how he actually comes across in the books and on the show.

I’ll start off by saying that I never liked Alcide in the books. He was an asshole, and most of the time he used Sookie to advance his position in the werewolf pack. What little relationship he had with Sookie felt one-sided on his part. It also doesn’t help that he unfairly blamed Sookie for stuff that was out of her control (like the death of Debbie in the books or the death of his father.) His attraction to Debbie in the books is also something that doesn’t reflect well on him. Contrary to the show’s portrayal, Debbie in the books was written as a one-dimensional psychopath with a jealous streak and no redeeming qualities. She’s basically a cartoon villain with no depth to her. The result is it’s hard to understand why Alcide got into a relationship with her in the first place, and it makes it look like he was just thinking with his dick. In other words, Book Alcide was nothing to brag about.

As for the show, like I said, I’m mostly apathetic to Alcide’s character (with a few exceptions that I will talk about in a minute) and I thought he was pointless. I know he was suppose to be a vehicle to introduce Sookie to the world of werewolves, but the way that was executed didn’t work. Common consensus in the fandom seems to be that the werewolf plots in both the books and the show were tedious and forgettable. It’s ironic because I know there are Alcide fans out there, but whenever I’ve asked them about what they thought of the werewolf stories, their responses range from “I don’t remember them” to “They were bad.” A lot of fans didn’t care for them. They could have been cut from the show without affecting the main story. That’s a problem because Alcide was usually involved in those stories, and the result is it was hard to care about him because of how non-compelling they were.

As for the character himself, I wasn’t impressed with him for a number of reasons.

First, there’s his relationship with women. I didn’t pick up on this the first time, but a rewatch has shown me how sexist Alcide came off during certain moments on the show. Case in point: His relationship with Debbie. One of the big conflicts between Alcide and Debbie on the show is that they both wanted different things. Alcide didn’t want kids and was fine not being in a werewolf pack. Debbie was the opposite where she did want kids and wanted to be a part of a community. Nothing wrong with that, but it was pretty clear from the get-go that this relationship was never going to work out. The problem though is that Alcide never seemed to recognize that, and kept trying to force Debbie to be something she didn’t want to be: A housewife who didn’t have kids, who was isolated except for her and Alcide, and who spoke softly and cooked meals for him. Basically the opposite of what Debbie was. And yes, I get that Debbie had a lot of problems and made really poor choices, but Alcide’s method of imposing his idea of what she should be was not the way to have handled that. It doesn’t help that he didn’t really seem to care about what she wanted because he thought he knew what was best for her. Like I said, that’s pretty sexist on his part.

And then there’s Sookie and how she factored into Alcide’s relationship with Debbie in seasons 3-4. I find it telling that when it comes to how this situation was handled, fans are eager to blame Sookie and Debbie for the whole mess that resulted in Alcide abjuring Debbie and Debbie getting killed by Sookie, but people rarely call out Alcide for his part in all of this. Personally though, I think Alcide bears some of the blame here for what happened.

Something that’s been pointed out is that during seasons 3-4, Alcide has only known Sookie for a brief period of time. Season 3 for instance takes place over the course of 9-10 days whereas season 4 takes place over 10 days (October 21st-October 31st). That’s about 2-3 weeks at best. And yet, despite only knowing Sookie for about a week in season 3, and despite having been in love with Debbie for a number of years, he’s already pining for Sookie:

youtube

Now maybe you could argue that he saw Sookie as a replacement in season 3 because his relationship with Debbie deteriorated and he was heartbroken. However, that excuse doesn’t hold up in season 4 when he’s supposed to have repaired his relationship with Debbie during the year Sookie was gone in faerie-land, and yet he’s still lusting for Sookie despite only knowing her for a short period of time.

It’s so telling to me that only a few days after Debbie’s death in season 5, Alcide tries to have sex with Sookie when they’re both drunk, and he tells Sookie “I’ve waited so long for this.” It really puts his relationship with Debbie in a negative light, and calls into question whether he actually loved her at all.

I’m not saying that Debbie was blameless in this, and it doesn’t excuse her cheating on Alcide with Marcus or trying to kill Sookie, but it’s not like she didn’t notice Alcide was eyeing Sookie for some time. This was a woman who had hitched her sobriety onto Alcide and felt isolated and alone, and the man she was depending on was emotionally cheating on her. And rather than owning up to that, Alcide tries to gaslight Debbie into thinking she’s crazy and it’s all in her head. He literally says that to her when they’re in bed together, and it’s nasty.

What’s frustrating is this usually gets overlooked in the fandom when people talk about Alcide’s character, and he’s usually referred to in a sympathetic light whereas Debbie is blamed for being an unstable, violent whack-job whereas Sookie is blamed for being a house-wrecker, even though she was in a relationship with Eric at the time.

This is also one of the reasons I never liked Sookie/Alcide as a pairing, and why them getting together at the end of season 6 felt forced: Putting aside how their only sexual interaction up to that point was Alcide trying to have sex with Sookie one night when they were drunk and Sookie vomiting all over him, it was basically Sookie getting pigeon-hold into the role of domestic housewife for Alcide. And I’m sorry, but I find it unbelievable that they were together for 6 months and Sookie never once picked up on any unkind or dirty thoughts from Alcide during the time they were together until the season 7 premiere when that suddenly was a problem.

But even putting aside his relationships with Sookie and Debbie, the biggest problem I have with Alcide is he’s not a compelling character. He’s a character whose motivations and personality change when the plot demands it, and most of the time the writers didn’t know what to do with him and just stuck him in different stories with no rhyme or reason. It doesn’t help that he has no character development during his time on the show. There is no difference between the Alcide we meet in season 3 and the one we end up with in season 7. The result is I don’t care about him.

It’s funny because I’ve seen plenty of fans project these kind of criticisms onto Jason, but I actually think they apply more to Alcide than they do to Jason.

Jason actually had character development. He learned to become more responsible and be someone others could depend on. He began to move away from his womanizing behavior in the later seasons and eventually settled down and had a family. He re-evaluated his stance on supernaturals, and actually became an ally for them in several ways. There is a big difference between the person he was in season 1 and the man he became by season 7. If people missed that, or chose to ignore it, that’s on them, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Alcide on the other hand..............what was his character development? How did he grow as a person? What did he learn from his relationships with Debbie or Sookie or Rikki? Or even from the whole werewolf pack nonsense? Cause I’m drawing a blank here. Was it suppose to be that pack life wasn’t for Alcide because it would turn him into a power-hungry asshole? I never got the impression that was a problem for him in the early seasons, and it was a contrived conflict that was manufactured for season 6. The show never did a good job fleshing out what his arc was suppose to be.

Also, say what you will about Jason’s stories, but at least they were memorable: Amy and Jason’s relationship. The Fellowship of the Sun. The werepanthers. Becoming a cop with Andy. His relationship with Jessica. His hunt for Warlow. I would also argue that each of these stories added something to Jason’s character, and helped him grow as a person. Alcide’s arc on the other hand.......................not so much. When I was rewatching, I had to take notes just to remember what was going on with the werewolves, and even when I was rewatching, I felt the overwhelming urge to hit the fast-forward button. That is how boring those scenes were. It says something that even Alcide wasn’t able to carry them.

TL;DR: I’m apathetic to Alcide (with a few moments where I find him unlikable), and I don’t think he was a good character. The werewolf plots were tedious at best and irritating at worst, and Alcide’s arc on the show wasn’t compelling or interesting. I don’t hate him the same way I hate characters like Bill, Hoyt, and Violet, but I don’t like him either.

#true blood #tgh opinions #alcide herveaux #debbie pelt #sookie stackhouse #jason stackhouse #happylittlepuppydog #the southern vampire mysteries

11 notes · View notes

theviscountbridgerton · 4 years ago

Note

Why do you dislike Benedict so much? I think all the guys except Colin act like a$$holes during their books including Anthony so why is Benedict the only one you have a problem with?

I don’t want to be negative and I’m certainly not trying to make anybody else hate Benedict. If Benedict’s your favourite character, that’s great. To each their own.

And because I am harsh on Benedict, here’s three things I like about him.

1. He steps in to rescue Sophie from a terrifying and horrible situation when he doesn’t know her at all, and he brings her to a safe place and gives her shelter. She’s a nobody to him at that point and he is kind and generous to her and protects her in a way nobody else ever has. (Which is why I find the way he acts afterwards so infuriating.)

2. We’re told that he most often dances with the wallflowers and the overlooked girls, the Penelopes of the Ton because he prefers them to the more popular girls. We don’t actually see it happen in the books, the only time is when he abandons Penelope to chase the mystery lady. I think if it had been mentioned in Penelope’s book that Benedict often danced with her that I’d probably like him a lot more. I hope the series highlights that part of his character.

3. When Anthony is hungover and depressed and Benedict starts cracking walnuts by smashing them with a book. That’s the kind of asshole behavior I can get behind.

So he does have good points, and I did like him initially, but I thought he behaved like such an asshole to Sophie that it outweighs the good and I couldn’t get over it.

So three reasons I don’t like Benedict. (Under the cut because it’s long, spoilery and I’m pretty critical of Benedict so don’t keep reading if you don’t want to see that. I have no interest in turning people against him.)

1. Benedict is the epitome of privilege. Every privilege that exists, he has it. He’s a straight, white, wealthy, landowning, able-bodied, cisgendered aristocrat. He’s a member of a powerful and well-connected family. Now, that pretty much applies to all the men in the series. But Simon, Philip and Gareth all have abusive parents and traumatic childhoods and Michael is an orphan. It doesn’t excuse their dickishness but it does make them more sympathetic. Anthony carries the trauma of his father’s death and the massive responsibility of being made head of a large family at 18. Benedict doesn’t have any kind of struggle to offset his privilege. He has no responsibility, never had to work for anything. Colin’s in the same position, but he does something with his privilege - he travels and writes and doesn’t act like an asshole. Benedict just mopes around for years. He’s apparently a really talented artists but he never works at it or trains for it. But then when decides he wants to be an artist, he takes up watercolours and becomes a celebrated painter within a few years.

He’s literally had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Then, the one time he doesn’t get his way, when Sophie says no to him, he is furious, he calls her stupid, blackmails her into doing what he wants, puts her in a position where she can’t get away from him and harasses her until she gives in. He doesn’t listen to her when she gives her reasons for saying no.

There’s a power imbalance with all the couples because of the way society treated women in the 19th century. But the imbalance is the worst between Benedict and Sophie. Sophie is the least privileged person we meet in the series. Not only is she not a member of the aristocracy, but she is completely alone. She has no money, no power, no family, no friends, so support. She is abused by her stepmother until she escapes. She gets a job working for a nice elderly couple in the country, it’s the best job she can hope for in her circumstances, Then their awful son arrives and tries to rape her. Benedict tells her she’s stupid for putting herself in that position. He doesn’t listen to her. He doesn’t respect her wishes or her decisions. He uses his power over her to force her to come to London with him and work for his mother. Sophie is completely vulnerable and Benedict uses that to get his own way. At least when Anthony is being a dick, he’s aware he’s being a dick. During the scene in the study with Kate, when he’s at his most dickiest, he knows and feels shame for it. Benedict thinks he’s entirely in the right the whole time. He does eventually see the error of his ways and apologises but I felt it was too little, too late.

2. It’s not just that Benedict keeps pressuring Sophie after she’s said no, it’s what he’s asking her to do. I don’t even judge him that much for asking him to be his mistress, Sophie is a servant and he can’t marry her, but having a mistress was somewhat acceptable for a man in his position. (Although just because it’s acceptable at the time, doesn’t mean I have to like it.) Yes, Anthony pretty much intends to do the same thing, and he’s an asshole for it. But once he falls in love with Kate there’s no question of him having a mistress, he’s a one woman man. When Benedict asks Sophie to be his mistress, he still intends to get married and he’s hoping it will be the mystery lady. He intends to have his cake and eat it too. He loves Sophie and wants to marry this other lady he has feelings for. He wants to marry this lady he claims to have feelings for, while keeping a mistress on the side. He really only gives up on the idea of finding his mystery lady when he realises that she’s Sophie. I think that’s another reason I can forgive Anthony more easily than Benedict. That scene in the study is Anthony’s worst moment and he improves from there, while Benedict doubles down on his worst moment for several chapters afterwards and his redemption comes very late in the novel.

3. The third reason is not really anything Benedict does, but it’s how he’s written. Because he doesn’t really feature in any of the other books, we don’t get to know him as well as the other characters. Anthony and Colin feature heavily in The Duke and I, and I liked both of them by the end of that book, but didn’t have any thoughts on Benedict. The scene with Anthony and Eloise in Philip’s study during To Sir Philip With Love is one of my favourite moments in the whole series. Colin pops up in other books being charming, funny and sweet. We don’t get that with Benedict. So when I say he has no personality, I’m not really being fair to Benedict as he doesn’t get the same chance as other characters do to show different sides of his personality, and that’s a fault with the writing not the character. But it means the only impression we have of him is from An Offer From a Gentleman and sadly, I think he was too much of an asshole for a large part of that book and wasn’t properly redeemed.

The sad thing is that it could have been very easy to write him not being an asshole. Instead of being angry and throwing a tantrum when Sophie says no, imagine that while Benedict is upset, he accepts her decision and then brings her to London and gets her a job working for his mother to help her without ulterior motive as he did when he rescued her the first time. They encounter each other at number 5 and fall more in love but they can’t be together (the pining!) until he decides he doesn’t care about bowing to social expectations anymore and asks her to marry him before finding out who she is, and before his mother finds a way to make it acceptable. Add in a few scenes in the other books that show him paying attention to Penelope and the wallflowers and that’s a Benedict I would have loved.

PS. Anybody looking for a band name, Penelope and the Wallflowers is free for the taking.

#Bridgerton #Benedict Bridgerton #asks #spoilers and speculation #loveisharderthanitlooks

32 notes · View notes

houseofsannae · 3 years ago

Text

A Fistful of Munny - Extended End Notes

Notes for A Fistful of Munny that don’t fit within the character limit under the cut!

Please, read the fic before reading this post

All right! Welcome to the extended notes, in which I go into excruciating detail over a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, because I like the sound of my own voice!

Let’s start with some more broad stuff that didn’t make the exclusive end notes space. To do the Fistful of Dollars homage, I needed a place where I could have two villainous factions intersecting for Strelitzia to play against one another. After some brainstorming and asking for help from other people working on the Entwined in Trine Sorikai zine (and ultimately ignoring all their very good suggestions (Sorry, guys!)), I eventually realized that the Wasteland from Epic Mickey was a perfect place for this story, both in the sense of having mooks to destroy without Strels committing actual murder, and in the thematic sense of forgotten characters. There was just one issue.

I hadn’t played Epic Mickey.

And that is how I spent my summer, playing both Epic Mickey games. Both, because I was looking for a good location to set the story in in-world. Since the Wasteland is based on the Disney theme parks, I was hoping to find one based on Frontierland, their Western section. Such a location did exist – Disney Gulch – but only in the second game. Which meant I had to play Epic Mickey 2, as well. (The first one is a better game, but that’s not really the fault of the developers; they were not given the time they needed to make it as good as the first one. Here’s a video with trivia about the series that goes a little into the development.) I also needed to learn the Mad Doctor’s ultimate fate, since I wanted his Beetleworx/Blotworx to be one of the two villainous factions. In the game, depending on whether you chose the Paint (Paragon) or Thinner (Renegade) path, the Doc is either redeemed… or dead. Neither of which was helpful, so I had to invent.

But let’s talk about characters and why I picked them in order. The short version for why these choices, at least on the Final Fantasy side, is set-up for later. Obviously I can’t go into detail why. Before that, let’s talk about the Beanie Baby.

Chi is, as I hope you were able to guess, Strelitzia’s Chirithy. I’ve brought it up several times, but I personally do not like mascot characters. There are a few exceptions, but Chirithies are not one of them. Like I said, KHUx isn’t what happened in this AU, so you’ll have to wait for in-universe answers on why it’s a cat now. Out-of-universe reason is this was the only way I could make it palatable for myself. I arbitrarily decided on a gender for it because as a real cat, it would have a sex. Canonically Chirithies appear to be genderless, and in Japanese refer to themselves with the gender-neutral (but masculine-leaning) boku. I would’ve left Chi that way, save for the fact that he’s a completely normal cat now. (And before you ask, no, not every real cat that appears in KHΨ from this point on is a Chirithy.)

As for Strelitzia herself, it’s hard for me to pick up a character’s voice when they’re… not voiced. Intonation and cadence do a lot for me mimicking the way a character talks, so it’s a bit more difficult when they don’t technically speak. I tried for a mix between Sora and Kairi, while still keeping her defining character traits of being shy, but also impulsive.

You may notice that while she’s started remembering faces, if not names, the Player’s name and face still eludes her, despite her (canonical. Deal with it.) crush on them. There is a story reason for this, and will become clear once Luxu takes centre stage.

The name “Jane” was chosen with more consideration than just “Jane Doe” being the standard name in (at least my corner of) the English-speaking world for a woman of unknown identity. See, the Man With No Name actually has three names. In A Fistful of Dollars, he is referred to (by one character in one scene, once) as “Joe”. “Joan” might have been a more clear homage, but I figure Jane makes sense. And as you might guess, in the next fic, Strels will be going by a different name, still not her own. She’ll remember her name… eventually.

One might think I could’ve picked any old Cid, and one would be wrong for reasons I can’t explain yet. In fact, I can’t explain much of anything surrounding him yet. What I can say is no, Cidney Aurum is not dead, she’s just not related to Cid Sophiar in this fic verse. An unfortunate consequence of where I wanted to put each of them in the narrative; making them not be related was the only way it made any sense, geographically speaking.

Hyperion on the other hand, I can talk about. He’s one of the Gremlins in Epic Mickey, and… wait, first things first. Gremlins are from an abandoned Disney film based on a Roald Dahl book, itself based on the cryptids that supposedly haunted airplanes and caused them to malfunction, the earliest known written-down mention of the concept being from the 1920s. The film never got made, but the designs Disney would have used were adapted into a second printing of Dahl’s book, and they were later used in Epic Mickey. Hyperion is, like the publishing imprint that Disney owns, named after a street that Walt Disney used to live on. In-game, Hyperion is in Bog Easy (based on the Haunted Mansion), not Disney Gulch, but his name stuck out to me as being particularly fun, so I picked him instead of trying to figure out what Gremlins actually are in the Gulch (they have names in the files of Epic Mickey 2, but not in the actual game, so it would have been a hunt).

Regardless of where the setting ended up, for the second villainous faction, I was always going to plop down the good old Don. More things I can’t talk about. For everything FF7, know that I’m always going to be pulling from a mix of the original game, Remake, and Machinabridged. Hence, Corneo’s outfit is a mix of his original and Remake designs (which basically just means he’s wearing blue jeans instead of brown). I didn’t think bringing in his three lieutenants from Remake was necessary, especially since this was supposed to be a kind-of small operation.

Leslie is picked up and dropped from Remake pretty much unchanged. I needed someone to do the murders Strels couldn’t, and even if he’s not a complete asshole, he’s still mostly an asshole. Have we ever seen small, Materia-like balls used to cast magic before…?

Onto the fun bits, which is the Disney characters. We’ll start with Percy, who is from a Goofy short called “How to Ride a Horse”, from 1950. And that’s about it. The conceit in Wasteland is that all of the Toons there were basically actors, and they wound up in Wasteland if they were forgotten (that’s not exactly correct, but I’m generalizing). This is interesting, since two of the Toons in Epic Mickey are Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, both of whom… are residents of Disney Town in Kingdom Hearts, having shown up in Birth by Sleep. So that’s an interesting continuity snarl that I’m going to just ignore.

Persephone and Pluto, on the other hand, are from an earlier short called “The Goddess of Spring”, from 1934. It was one of the projects Disney tried as practice for Snow White. If you’re about to protest that his name should be Hades, not Pluto, then you’re going to need a time machine so you can tell them back in the 30s. The Goddess of Spring is a musical, in the sense that every single line is sung. Watch it for yourself. There’s a video with better quality floating around YouTube, but for some reason it’s the French dub. And that’s why both of them sing most of their lines. I tried matching the meter of their actual parts, but Persephone’s doesn’t actually follow a syllabic pattern that I could make out. I eventually gave up and just gave her the meter from the start of the short. Pluto’s was easier to manage (and more consistent).

The skeletons are Disney veterans, presumably the same ones from “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), but more specifically they’re mimicking what they did in “The Mad Doctor” (1933), the first appearance of our other villain. They’re fun.

The original Mad Doctor was supposedly named “Dr. XXX”, according to the name on his door. This was before the modern film rating system was put in place; it was a different time. In the original short, the Mad Doctor kidnaps Pluto (the dog) with the intent of cutting him in half and putting his front half on a chicken For Science!, and Mickey follows him to his castle to rescue the purloined pooch. The short wasn’t a musical in the same vein as “The Goddess of Spring”, but… the Mad Doctor’s only spoken lines were a song (aside from evil cackling). While I had already decided to do the “Toons that sang in their short can only communicate through song” with Persephone and Pluto before starting on Epic Mickey 2, I hilariously discovered that the game developers had done the exact same gag with the Mad Doctor, most of his lines in the game being sung. (In Epic Mickey there were no fully voiced lines, so he speaks as normally as anyone else does). Which made it easier to write his songs here, since I could just rewrite his songs from the game. I used to write alternate lyrics for songs back in high school, so this was an interesting trip back in time for me. They were stuck in my head for weeks afterwards, but it was worth it.

I believe that’s everything for the characters. Let’s talk about Keyblades.

It irks me that three people in KHUx have the same Keyblade. Ephemer, Skuld, and Strelitzia all have variations of Starlight. Now, in KHΨ, there is only one Starlight, and it belongs to Luxu, so I’m going to have to decide on different Keyblades for each of them. (Ephemer’s has already been decided, and I haven’t started brainstorming for Skuld yet. No I do not need suggestions, thank you). Pixie Petal bears a noted (by KHWiki) resemblance to one of Marluxia’s alternate scythes, so that tangential connection was enough for me. Both siblings have flower-themed Keyblades – it makes sense to me.

You might notice a few disparities in the magic. These are on purpose, and will eventually make sense. And that’s all I can say on that at the moment. ;)

Oh, yes, one important thing I probably should have said on the main notes: I’m not going for a realistic depiction of amnesia here. Anything I got right was entirely accidental, and I’m fairly certain there’s not much. There might be a story reason for why it works the way it does… and it might be the same reason why other people from KHUx have or had amnesia in the present day…

You know what’s funny? Although Orcuses look more impressive than Invisibles, their stats in Days are actually worse. I’m fairly sure that this is because the only time we see an Orcus, it’s actually an illusion cast over Xion so that Roxas will fight her to the death. There are no other stats for them (according to KHWiki), since they’ve never been used elsewhere.

A friendly reminder that Apprentice Xehanort invented the term “Heartless”, which was why Aqua didn’t know what to call them until Mickey told her. Thus, nobody from the era of the Keyblade War should know the term “Heartless” without being told by someone in present day. “Darkling” was the term they used instead. I’m fairly certain KHUx ignores the continuity on this (so why should we trust its continuity for anything else, hmm?)

I think that covers everything! Or at least everything I’m willing to share at this point. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your dedication! ^_^

#kingdom hearts Ψ #fanfic #kingdom hearts #strelitzia #fic notes #a fistful of munny

4 notes · View notes

princesssarcastia · 3 years ago

Text

we’re tunneling under rock bottom, lads.

alrighty then. ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who know better: here it is. just laying bear the incredible shame which is my current descent back into hp. I’ve been reading lots of fic, and now i’m having a lot of thoughts about it. putting them under a readmore because I’m morally opposed to even accidentally subjecting people to this if they don’t want to see it. in the immortal words of groucho marx, these are my principles thoughts, and if you don’t like them....well, i have others.

ugh. oh god. here we go.

i’m frankly disgusted with the way james potter is frequently cast as this HIMYM-Ted-Mosby-like character, who meets a woman—no, doesn’t even meet her. just sees her. and decides this is the woman he’ll marry, and then continues to pursue her even though she makes it clear she’s not interested...FOR YEARS...sort of casts himself as a wounded, sympathetic party...and then eventually succeeds!! which is some Narrative Bullshit, because it implies that’s a way to get someone to go out with you, Which It Isn’t. like, I don’t think this interpretation even has any canon grounding, but that’s beside the point because canon is a roast and I am carving off only the bits I want to eat for consumption.

the mindset i’m using to justify this to myself is that. look. tmi hour with princesssarcastia. these books actually do mean a lot to me. they were the books that made me like to read! they opened a whole world for me; not just the world of HP but countless others, some better written, some much much worse. it was like they flipped a switch in my head and suddenly i had this glorious form of escapism that had been in front of me all along but that I could now take advantage of. I would literally not be the same person I am today if I hadn’t read them. i know everyone says that but I really do mean it. hell yes I should, and WILL, be more critical of the source material and the fan material now, compared to when I first read them. I should not only be more critical, but I should also openly criticize it and its author, JK Rowling. But it’s like with lovecraft, okay; he was shit and JRK is shit, but they laid out the bare bones of something more spectacular than their tiny, bigoted minds could fully flesh out. so now, fleshing it out is our job, especially so we can rub it in their racist, transphobic, antisemetic faces that we’re way better at it than they ever were.

still hate snape! really, really do. he’s a bigot and a bully and he never changed, and the fact that he was poor and his father abused him doesn’t change that or make him redeemable somehow. It makes him more interesting, sure! More fleshed out, more three dimensional. But as a person he still sucks. He was Neville’s boggart! And not in the way that McGonagall was Hermione’s boggart; not like some face or representation of a more abstract fear. It was Literally just snape that Neville feared more than anything else in the world, and I will not abide that. Snape is bad for the same reason Umbridge is bad: your teachers are supposed to be people you can trust, they are people entrusted with your welfare, they are supposed to broaden your horizons and introduce you to the world around you in increasingly complex but ALWAYS, ALWAYS KIND ways. Snape does not do that. And I always thought the idea of him still loving Lily decades after he inadvertently sent Voldemort on the path to murdering her, and spending those decades doing something he hated and making the children in his care as miserable as he was, was much more sad than it was romantic. That’s not a romance, that’s a tragedy that he walked into with his eyes wide open, and karmically deserved.

The best fics are the ones that understand that Ron Weasley was harry’s first friend, that he was kind, and that his jealousy and temper didn’t make him any less those things. Ron Weasley is a ride-or-die bitch with, frankly, more emotional intelligence than hermione had sometimes, and I respect the hell out of him.

There really must have been more to the wizarding world than Harry ever sees, and that makes it fertile ground for fandom to grow its own ideas in. For instance, to fight a war against all the death eaters, their families, the bigoted ministry employees, and the snatchers, there simply MUST have been more order of the phoenix members than were named, the first time ‘round and the second.

When you think about it, the concept of the Order of the Phoenix is actually fascinating. because on the one hand, it’s kind of a private paramilitary group? It’s basically a militia populated by some government employees, INCLUDING cops, and schoolteachers, and healers, and sometimes your neighbors. That’s sort of a scary thought in the abstract, though it does literally happen in the U.S. allll the time. But on the other hand, it’s a group of people dedicated to taking direct action against rising fascism in their government and society. punch nazis 1995, amirite?

Very excited because today, for the first time, I read a harry potter fic where someone (hermione, of course) mentions human rights. [dead men have no tails, by DuskGlass] and it’s very offhand, narratively; there’s not deep exploration of it. But it leads to some wider questions I’ve been musing over...

...which is, even though the wizarding world is separate from the muggle world, how does that work out historically? specifically when it comes to shitty stuff, though there are certainly nicer areas of this to explore if you’d like to. For instance, How involved were british wizards in colonial efforts? Did british, french, and dutch colonists in the americas participate in the genocide against native people there? In the atlantic slave trade? How involved was the british wizarding world in colonizing India? And, were native american wizards and indian wizards involved in that conflict? I mean, i can’t imagine they weren’t. And if they weren’t, and the european forces still succeeded anyway, they the european wizarding world would have to have been involved in that, right? when exactly did wizarding and muggle society start splitting far enough apart that muggle wars were not wizarding affairs? Are there wizards in every country on the planet? Is there the same level of disengagement in every other country as there is in Great Britain? These are questions i’m sure Hermione must have gotten answered for herself at some point. I’d like to know the answers as well.

In retrospect, a lot of Hogwarts classes seem centered around defense and offense; in training people in combat, even if that’s not explicitly what they call it. not in any fudge/umbridge esque “they’re training the kids in combat to take over the government!!!!” way, but in a “this world is actually very, very dangerous, from creatures to rogue magical objects or rogue magical people who mean you harm.” That’s a fascinating mindset to have; it’s a fascinating paradigm to shift to, I imagine, especially for muggleborns. Sort of prudent in canon, given the whole Voldemort thing, but it makes you wonder if the wizarding world then just always has some kind of asshole trying to take it over and kill a bunch of people along the way.

I’ll probably have more thoughts at some point, but that’s it for now. feel free to discuss these, or any other, harry potter thoughts with me further. I gotta get my enrichment somehow.

#hp #meta #history #world building #im so sorry #but also if you're interested in these plz do talk to me #harry potter

4 notes · View notes

themisadventuresofmomtiri · 5 years ago

Text

I know everyone’s really invested in Cassandra’s redemption, but you know what? I don’t know if she really deserves redemption at this point. Every single time she’s presented with even the slightest chance to not be an asshole, she decides to do the exact opposite and dig her hole deeper.

And yeah, you can argue “Oh, that’s just because Zhan Tiri’s manipulating her,” and you know what? Fine. Let’s go ahead with the idea that some random ghost/spirit manages to totally undermine Cassandra’s relationships with Rapunzel and Eugene and everyone else in life including the man who fucking raised her in some unspecified (but arguably brief) time frame. If all it took for Cassandra to go from mild prickishness to being the full blown cactus was a couple of carefully planned words and a flashback to Gothel abandoning her to literally kidnap, imprison, and enslave an infant, then what does that say about the person Cassandra was to begin with?

What does it say about her that she’d rather cling to the fantasy that Gothel felt even a shred of affection for her and blame Rapunzel for...what? Cassandra being abandoned by an awful person and getting adopted by a guy who may have made plenty of mistakes in raising her, but honestly loves and cares about her? Oh no, what an awful fate. Someone really should’ve stepped in and made sure Cassandra found her way back to her total gallstone of a mother so she would’ve been spared the absolute tragedy of being raised by someone who actually cared about her.

There isn’t even an honest comparison between Cassandra as a villain and Varian as a villain. When Varian became the bad guy, it was because he’d had all other options closed off to him. He was a fourteen-year-old with no parental guidance or adult guidance in general left to him. No one seemed to give even half a shit about him; even Rapunzel, our heroine, focused more on her art block than checking in on the extremely distraught teenager who ended up tossed back into the worst snowstorm in Corona’s recent history. Which only makes sense because we know they had to make things happen so that Season 1 would play out the way they wanted it to; if Rapunzel had been kept true to character, she wouldn’t have needed to go on a goddamned scavenger hunt just to prompted into checking in on him. Varian didn’t need her to save Quirin right then and there; just Rapunzel making the effort to follow through on her promise would probably have been enough to keep the kid from spiraling.

Varian’s choices once he got desperate were entirely his own, of course, but the point of all this is that he never should have been pushed to that point at all. Preventing his downward spiral would have been ridiculously easy, and well within the limits of Rapunzel’s original characterization. Varian was a good villain because he never should’ve been put on the path to become one. His motives were solid, relatable, and understandable. You could get exactly why he did the things he did, you could even empathize with him in some regards. You might not agree with his decisions, but you could understand how he got to that point. How, in his mind, his actions were justified.

Cassandra, on the other hand? If her villainy was even half as well-developed as Varian’s, I’d probably love the plot twist. If she’d discovered she was Gothel’s daughter and her villainy was focused on her inner conflict about whether that heritage means she’s just meant to be the villain or if she could be more than her lineage, that would be interesting.

Instead, we get to watch a grown-ass woman throw an extremely destructive hissy fit because “Mommy didn’t love me.” This dumbass grew up in the fucking palace. Are you really trying to tell me she had no clue how much damage Gothel’s selfishness and vanity wrought? That her initial reaction to learning that her mother was the reason a family was destroyed for eighteen years was anything other than revulsion and an internal conflict regarding her own nature is just absolutely revolting to me. There’s being upset because someone keeps upstaging you, and then there’s taking victim blaming to a whole new level.

Cassandra becoming a villain certainly had an impact, there’s no doubt about that, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Cassandra has made the choice to idolize a literal dumpster fire of a human being and burn every other bridge in her life for the sake of maintaining this delusion.

None of her actions since Destines Collide make any goddamned sense. I understand breakdowns. I understand being pushed to your absolute limit and cracking under pressure. I can understand learning a dark secret about your family’s past and reacting horribly to it. But the way her face-heel-turn was written was just horrifically sloppy and leaves no room for sympathy. There is no grey area here. There is no blame to share between Cassandra and whose who she thinks have ‘wronged’ her.

Cassandra got to grow up with a parent who honestly loved her and cared about her. Rapunzel got to grow up with a parent who was abusive and narcissistic and honestly didn’t give a shit about Rapunzel as a person beyond ensuring she’d stay meek and obedient and Gothel’s walking spa treatment.

So yeah, I honestly don’t want Cassandra redeemed. I think she’s way past the point where a redemption is warranted. The key to a feasible redemption is a willingness on the redeem-ee’s part to take responsibility for their shitty actions and work to make amends. Cassandra has brought a shovel and started digging every time someone put the bar on the ground. There are only three episodes left and that is NOT enough time for Cassandra to make up for this level of bullshit.

#tts #rta #look if i seem overly salty about the way cassandra's been handled #it's because i've been long since pushed past the point of forgiving shit writing #there is literally so much good about this series #but whoever signed off on this arc for cassandra should never be allowed to green light villain arcs ever again #and i get that a lot of this probably stems from Disney jerking around their T.V. show department #but Disney hasn't given a shit about a coherent narrative since Moana so that's not a shock

126 notes · View notes

doopcafe · 4 years ago

Text

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Seasons 1--6), Final Analysis

Well, I made it through.

Let’s be absolutely clear: The Clone Wars (TCW) is not good television. For the most part, it’s not even watchable television. The show suffers from serious fundamental issues in nearly every aspect of storytelling. Characters are underdeveloped and inconsistent; the dialogue is expository and contradictory; the tone is disjoint and jarring; and most episodes serve no greater purpose than to be a twenty-minute vessel to house lightsaber fights.

So I want to put this part of the show to rest before I move on to Star Wars: Rebels (and before returning to watch season 7).

With two exceptions, the show poorly handles twists and reveals. In the earlier seasons, reveals were spoiled mostly due to telegraphing: Captain Sleaze in Cloak of Darkness, Senator Clovis in Senate Spy, and Yolo (?) in Senate Murders come to mind, but there were others. In later seasons, telegraphing was supplanted by “small universe syndrome” as the primary cause of spoiled reveals. In The Academy, a cloaked figure was seen doing shady, back-alley deals, but his identity could only have been the Prime Minister. During the “Ahsoka framed” series, Barriss was obviously the traitor, simply because her character suddenly reappeared after four seasons and there were no other candidates.

Probably the most successfully executed reveal was that of Krell, as his assholeness was at least initially masked as military rigidity. But even so, it was so over-the-top that when the reveal finally came to light, it felt more like an overdue disclosure than a dramatic twist. It didn’t help that, by that point in the show, the format of “asshole = upcoming reveal” had been firmly entrenched into the show’s DNA.

I would argue that the most effective plot twist of the entire show was when the dancer/singer girl shot and killed Ziro the Hutt in Hunt for Ziro. Although irrelevant to the greater story, it was an actual twist because it was strongly implied the opposite would happen (i.e., Ziro would betray the girl). If there is to be a second place, that award would go to Ahsoka’s decision to leave the Jedi Order at the conclusion of The Wrong Jedi. But this leads me into my next point...

Who was the main character of The Clone Wars? If we go by the logic that whoever had the most screen time was the main character, then Anakin probably wins over Ahsoka. But if we go by the logic that the most developed character was the “main character,” then this is a show about Ahsoka. Ahsoka---more than any other character---grows in a noticeable way (from impatient, violent child to impatient, slightly less violent teenager). In contrast, Anakin in Rising Malevolence is the same character as Anakin in Voices (only a little more violent and angry for some reason).

It’s unfortunate that her major character moments were never capitalized on. Intentionally sacrificing herself for the greater good in Weapons Factory apparently led to no lasting repercussions on her character. Her impatience and disobedience led to the deaths of thousands in Storm over Ryloth, but was similarly forgotten immediately afterwards. Even Ahsoka’s major character moment at the end of The Wrong Jedi resulted in her walking away from the show, never to address the implications of that decisions (although I suppose that’s the subject of Season 7).

On a different note, the show was riddled by a shameful amount of “references” and fan service, for reasons exclusively external to the story. These “nods” ranged from the obvious “Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” (or whatever Senator Jimmy Smits says in Cat and Mouse) to the innocuous design of a droid or background device.

These “references” are objectively problematic for at least a few reasons. (1) They contribute to the sense that the universe is a really, really small place. Is the Mos Eisley cantina really the only place in the Outer Rim where shady deals go down? Is carbon freezing really the only way to store a person in stasis for transport? How long do Rodians live for anyways? Greedo’s gotta be what, like 80 when Han shoots him in A New Hope? It’s ironic that ultimately, this incomprehensibly large, diverse galaxy actually feels much smaller after watching this series because we keep going to the same twelve places...

(2) “Fan service” is tricky to get right because different people have different memories and impressions of the source material. In result, copying material will oftentimes comes across as a blatant misunderstanding of the original content. For example, to me, Vader put Solo into carbon freeze because it’s what Lando had lying around. It’s not a galactically established method of transporting people. Obi-Wan trained Luke with those laser balls aboard the Falcon because Han had them lying around and Obi-Wan needed to improvise a training exercise to kill time.

(3) "References” and “nods” usually are just a band-aid for a lack of creativity. Some of the better episodes in the initial seasons were just direct rehashes of famous movies. Seven Samurai, Godzilla, Stray Dog, The Most Dangerous Game, King Kong... I mean, it’d be pretty impressive to mess-up stories like these, but it’s concerning that there were just so many episodes made from other people’s stories.

These “references” even seep into the most innocuous of scenes. When Prequel!Wan lands on Mandalore to attempt a rescue of Satine from Darth Maul, one of the Mandalorians takes aim at him, only to have their blaster pushed down by their companion who’s shaking their head. This is a direct reference o the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine when Luke went after R2 in the desert. Even if this scene served an important plot purpose (it didn’t), there’s undoubtedly a multitude of ways to communicate the same thing. Instead, a small reference to the OT is interjected into the show, deimmersing the audience from the events shown. Unfortunately, this is just one (very small) example of hundreds over the whole show.

Let me say something positive. The episodes that worked best (especially early in the show's run) were ones that focused on mortal people, usually the clones. Innocents of Ryloth was one of the first watchable episodes, simply because we didn't have to sit through twenty minutes of unlikable, unrelatable “Jedi” and instead followed around a pair of troopers helping a little girl using their limited abilities. Likewise, Pursuit of Peace was way more enjoyable than it probably should have been, simply because the story was understandable, the consequences clear, and the drama real. Plan of Dissent (when the clones actively rebel against Krell) was also noteworthy for similar reasons: clones we liked must subdue a “Jedi” we’ve learned to hate.

This isn’t to say that episodes focused on the major characters were inherently unenjoyable, it’s just that none of these characters had any room to grow (with the exception of Ahsoka). Dooku, Grievous, Anakin, Prequel!Wan... They were the same characters as portrayed in Episode II and III. As presented, there was nowhere for these characters to go. Dooku was literally identical at the beginning of the series as he was at the end, and the same can be said about the others.

But these are false constraints the writers imposed upon themselves. Grievous was not in Episode II and was introduced in Episode III. TCW could have started him however they wanted and then illustrated his change into the character he later becomes. Who was he? What was his motivation? Why did he hate Jedi so much? The show was handed a completely clean slate to deliver a character from scratch, but instead we were immediately shown “Episode III General Grievous” with zero introduction because fans were expected to already know who he was.

This is partly why the backstory episode to Grievous was so compelling, at least in premise: viewing his home was personal to his story and it represented a chance to learn a bit more about the character and where he came from. Of course, it was mostly mishandled by a reliance on meaningless action, but the high ratings of that particular episode suggest there was room for quality television here, it just was never capitalized on.

Instead, we have completely static caricatures, especially for minor characters from the movies. Admiral Tarkin, Admiral Ackbar, Greedo (among others) were written out of cardboard and their roles in the plot could have just as easily been played by anyone else (there was nothing unique about their roles that required them to be these characters).

This is a shame because a lot could have been done with the established premise to really focus on Anakin, his motivations, and his relationship to his Padawan. I would have been okay with a lot of backtracking if it meant I could begin to grasp his “fall” to the Dark Side. Instead, I’m honestly more confused than ever about his motivation.

One argument is that Anakin joins the Dark Side because he like, “loves” Padme (or whatever). However, what we’re shown in this show---consistently, clearly---is that Padme and Anakin have a toxic, dysfunctional relationship. He is uncomfortably jealous and rarely trusts her. They argue nearly every time they’re together. Their “love” (or whatever) must remain secret, equating their relationship to something “wrong” or even “illegal” that must be kept secret, even on the verge of death. In a later episode, Anakin orders Padme to listen to him because he’s the “man” and, as his wife, she doesn’t have a say in the matter. This is clearly a broken relationship and the best result is the one that actually happens: They stop seeing each other. Anakin wants to save this woman from a vision? Why?

This brings up a second point, which is that Anakin can’t stand the pain of losing someone. His desire to protect those close to him may be Anakin’s only redeeming trait. He has a single selfless scene (in the entire show) during the opening of Jedi Crash where he sacrifices himself to delay an explosion and save his companions. I want to stress that any other scene where Anakin saves or helps someone isn’t done because he’s a good person, it’s done because he’s a broken person. It’s done because he, personally, would struggle with the emotional toll of knowing he allowed someone close to him to be hurt or die. In other words, he’s doing nice things for selfish reasons.

As far as I’m concerned, Anakin has always been Darth Vader. He is given choices between being a Jedi and allowing a lot of people to die, and he enjoys choosing the second. In Ghosts of Mortis, we’re shown that the threshold between “Anakin” and “Darth Vader” is disconcertingly low, requiring only a few choice words and less than a minute to convert him. In short, what I’ve learned from TCW regarding Anakin Skywalker is that he was an unlikable dick, and his “turn” to the Dark Side was just a long-overdue reveal.

While the later seasons worked towards the events in Episode III in a way that at least made a bit of sense, earlier seasons were focused on adult-themed wacky hijinks. In a way, the show almost would have worked better as a kid’s show, but this was clearly meant for adults: politics, war, slavery, and lots and lots of horrific violence. In comparison, the silly adventures of Star Wars: Resistance worked well because the show didn’t take itself too seriously. It was very clearly, from the start, a lighthearted show about kids going on fun adventures. In contrast, TCW suffered because its themes were adult in nature, but was portrayed as a Saturday morning cartoon show. The humor was misplaced, the tone disjointed from actual events, and the violence excessive.

Let me say a few words on the “Jedi.” Initially I labeled them as overpowered (OP), because in earlier episodes they seemed invincible and dissolved tension in every scene. Later, we see a slew of them get cut down as plot fodder, even against widely different situations. We see Luminara and others push through hoards of droids only to see “Jedi” Master Yoda-like dude get taken down by a dog. We watch as Fisto *heh* powers through entire battalions and the cone-head guy counting coup against an army, only to watch as pink girl gets shot in the face by a single clone who stands in front of her for several seconds before pulling the trigger.

It’s nearly impossible to feel tension in these scenes because the metrics for judging the true strength of a “Jedi” keep shifting as a function of the plot requirements. Anakin suddenly forgets how to use the Force when the plot needs his help to fake some drama. Prequel!Wan pointlessly fist fights with a slaver cat for an hour until the plot needs him to get back up again and OP everyone in the room. Even their ships are only as strong or weak as the plot needs them to be. Plo Koon’s fleet is devastated in seconds in order to portray the Malevolence as being a threat; Anakin’s fleet powers through a larger force three times its size because Anakin’s like, really mad about something.

Secondly, the “Jedi,” in general, were unlikable assholes. They were consistently portrayed as violent and ignorant and I struggled to understand them as real people. Frequently, we witnessed them torture victims, default to a lightsaber to solve problems, and enjoy death to the point of counting coup against sentient life forms defending their homes. Anakin threatened civilians with his lightsaber. Ahsoka was annoyed when she’s asked not to murder a defenseless creature in Jedi Crash. Prequel!Wan and Anakin team up to hurtle enormous rocks into a beaten monster in Dooku Captured. A trio of Jedi Masters mentally gang bang a shackled Cad Bane. They supported state terrorism when it suited their needs, but agreed to abandon their friends for political reasons.

I mean, these are not good people...

This is a shame, because my impression of true Jedi comes from Luke, Yoda, and Obi-Wan in the OT, as well as the expanded universe novels that take place afterwards. It always seemed to me that being a Jedi was about conquering oneself, one’s fears, and learning to use the Force to selflessly help others and let go of all worldly attachments. You know, like the Buddhists they were originally inspired by. I always had the impression that the Force was extremely powerful and that Yoda was only showing Luke a portion of what was possible. That the Emperor was only using Force lighting to toy with Luke. That Vader only Force choked his officers because it was visually intimidating and kept them in line.

Instead, we’re treated to some garbage about how a “Jedi” is nothing greater than an actuator to swing around a lightsaber. When Luke enters Jabba’s palace in Jedi to rescue his friends, it’s not with lightsaber swinging, cutting shit up, flipping around like an acrobatic monkey. Imagine Anakin and Ahsoka in the same scene. They’d blaze through the palace corridors before Force choking Jabba as the Darth Vader theme plays. Forget the rancor, these are demigods. They have lightsabers. Have you seen them? They go “woosh woosh.”

In short, there was little to look up to in terms of a “hero” character. I can see how children can look up to Luke as a role model, someone they want to emulate or play with as a toy, but looking up to Anakin? Ahsoka? Hey kids, wanna learn to become a psychopath? First, you use your power to abuse those who are weaker than you. Then you need to get really really angry and uncontrollably choke someone, preferably your sister or one of your cousins.

And so, for a Saturday morning cartoon show, it is very unclear who we’re supposed to care about. I liked when Ahsoka went against Anakin because I hated his character so much. I liked everything with Hondo, a pirate. I liked Ventress a little, because she was actively seeking to kill the main characters. I liked some of the clones, but I don’t know which ones because they all looked the same. I cared about Darth Maul because I’m honestly a little worried about him, especially after the loss of his brother. I kinda liked General Grievous just because he hates the “Jedi” and was therefore relatable (even though the reasoning was never explained). And... that’s it.

At no point did I ever “look forward” to the next episode. I painfully died a little on the inside hitting the “watch next” button every single time.

This “review” is already way too long, so let me summarize by applying my five-star rating system (developed for movies) to each episode. In review:

5. Amazing, classic, culturally important. Something everyone should watch. 4. Great; very well done, no significant flaws. 3: Entertaining with only minor gripes/criticisms. 2: “Watchable,” but suffers from flaws and has some poor parts. 1. Uncomfortably bad; suffers from serious flaws. 0. Painfully bad, would actively fight against being forced to watch a second time.

The 3-star episodes were:

Hostage Crisis

Lightsaber Lost

Pursuit of Peace

Carnage of Krell

The Wrong Jedi

Hostage Crisis was the introduction of Cad Bane, Lightsaber Lost was the remake of Stray Dog (and the only episode to include a real Jedi), Pursuit of Peace was the random Padme/politics episode that was strangely well-executed, Carnage of Krell was the reveal of Krell as a bad guy and his clones working to apprehend him, and The Wrong Jedi was Ahsoka leaving the Jedi Order (and the only episode to include a true character moment).

Also, I scaled the IMDB ratings of each episode to my ratings and then detected outliers in their overlap. In other words, I wanted to answer the question, “which episodes did I rate the most differently from others?”

Turns out, I rated every single episode lower except for seven. Those seven were:

Mercy Mission (+1.853) - R2 and 3PO discover an underground world with ents. This one is universally panned by “fans,” but was a competently handled episode apart from the disappointing resolution.

Pursuit of Peace (+1.382) - Padme struggles to win support for a Senate bill. Another competently handled episode that focuses on Padme and politics and is ranked low by “fans.”

Lightsaber Lost (+0.6471)

Weapons Factory (+0.4118) - An average episode with a dramatic scene of sacrifice by Ahsoka and her “friend” Barriss.

Shadow Warrior (+0.3824) - Grievous is captured during some dramatic moments on Naboo.

Hostage Crisis (+0.3529)

Front Runners (+0.0882) - One of the rebels episodes, I don’t remember which.

In conclusion, Star Wars: Rebels is next and I am somehow still alive.

#pie211-tcw #tcw #clone wars #the clone wars #star wars

16 notes · View notes

zombie-renji · 5 years ago

Text

Can I please have a romantic story involving a jock who isn't aggressive nor stupid?

Like seriously.

I'm tired of seeing a protagonist get together with a jock, talk about how she loves him despite of him not being smart and then completely discard his personality

WHY DID YOU FALL FOR HIM THEN? WAS IT HIS LOOKS?? If so then man isn't that just the most stupid reason ever. Also I pity the jock because a girl/guy who only sees your abs and repeatedly points out how stupid you are sounds like a dangerously toxic relationship

Give me a jock who's smart and passionate, whose whole personality isn't "hnnnnngh abs, bara tiddies and sports"

Give me a jock who likes also "nerdy" stuff and watches movies with his friends

Give me a jock who's not a stereotypical American quarterback in American football team of the school

Give me a jock who isn't aggressive asshole

Give me a jock who knows about things like cooking, who has street smarts, common sense and academic smarts and DOESN'T get that part of him be played off as a one time thing for laughs and shock factor

Give me a jock who's shown to care about his team mates AND show concern for the rivaling team's players when they fall badly

Give me a jock who I can relate to

Just give me a god damn jock who's human

Does it show that I'm getting real tired of the sports guy being stupid? I sure hope so because I'm tired of seeing that trope and I'm extra tired of male characters being either stupid to the boot, violent or super smart which somehow makes them unappealing to people as opposed to the violent and stupid guy

I'm also tired of the trope where the MC (who happens to be a woman) is clearly exhibiting toxic traits and nobody confronts this, it really makes me feel like it makes people think that girls can't be sexist towards men too

Seriously, I want for once to have the MC be confronted about them talking about their damn crush/boyfriend as if he was a lower being with no brain

Bonus points if the jock also has a bi or gay awakening because I really need that, I need to see jock who I can relate to

I also need to see women who are written as humans with flaws and personality and I especially need books and movies to add character development, badly

Stop writing women as if their whole personality is "girl", "innocent", "pretty" and "has a crush", give me full rounded characters who I can cheer on and remember later on

Give me women who I'll remember for being horrible

Give me women who I'll remember to be human

Give me women who can fight, who can take care of themselves and won't put up with shitty people and toxic environments

Give me women who are attractive and have diverse body types, wear glasses and aren't always fashionable

Give me girls who like to dress in baggy clothes and soft fabrics

Give me girls from different backgrounds

Give me girls who are smart and use what they have at their disposal to solve things

Give me girls who aren't conventionally beautiful (seriously, I want to see women who aren't "beautiful" and have spouses who worship them like in Addams family)

Give me girls who miss behave, give me girls whose way of acting depends on the group they are in at the moment

Give me girls who are kind but aren't naive and stupid

Give me girls who have hobbies

Give me girls who know random trivia

Give me women who aren't pushed to the side because they are women

Give me women who get to decide how things play out

Give me women who are also sexist (towards both other women and men)

Give me women who won't go along with what their spouse tells them

Give me women who will run to the aid of their friend no matter the situation

Make a character who's toxic and gets confronted about it and changes their ways but also give me villains who aren't redeemed, give me good villains, give me disgusting villains, give me unexpected villains

And for the love of God, give me good characters who can be friends without it being turned into a romance plot! Is it too much to ask to get a story of two characters being friends and supporting one another without the whole "Boy and Girl? They must be romantically involved" "Two guys/gals are friends? Must be gay"

I am

Tired

Of these tropes

Just once give me a book or a movie or a comic or an Anime or a manga where I can see characters being human and have fun without making it all awkward with forced plot lines

#personal rant #rant #Writing women #Writing men #Writing boys #Writing girls

25 notes · View notes

theres-a-goldensky · 5 years ago

Text

BL Show Review Series - My Engineer and 2gether

I am new to BL series, having only discovered them thanks to being stuck at home in quarantine. However, I’ve now watched enough of them that I feel like I have a lot to say and nowhere to say it. So I decided to write some reviews, talk about some issues that I had, and mainly get all of these feelings out of me.

Disclaimer that these are my own opinions, and I don’t know where the BL community as a whole stands on these shows. If I disliked a show you loved or visa versa, no disrespect is intended!

First up, then, are My Engineer and 2gether

MASTERLIST OF BL SHOW REVIEWS

MY ENGINEER

Rating: 4/10 (Revised score: 6/10)

Main Pairing

The premise of this show is silly, but I was willing to let that pass if it was cute enough. It wasn’t. Not for me, anyway. The main pairing was very lackluster, and their courtship started off weird, with freshman Duen inexplicably feeling obligated to care for the older Bohn. Duen accidentally punches Bohn, but that interaction spirals into Duen letting Bohn bully him into buying Bohn flowers every day for a month as recompense.

You get it from Bohn’s perspective. He clearly is interested in Duen from the beginning, and this is his inept way of flirting. But Duen going along with it at first, when he dislikes Bohn, is baffling. I thought there must have been something I missed. Was it because Bohn was his senior?

The parts I found most charming about their story involved them interacting with their younger siblings. In particular, Duen’s love of his little sister was genuinely heartwarming. There’s a date scene late in the series that is the highlight of their story for me.

There is a ridiculous, drawn out arc about which one of them is going to top, which I was super done with before it even started. It ends with the message that, hey, anyone can be a top or a bottom and it doesn’t matter, but man did the story take its time getting there. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Side Pairings

There are three additional side pairings happening here, which was at least one too many. However, the relationship between King and Ram quickly became the best thing about the show for me. The two of them together are charming, particularly the patient way that King enjoys Ram’s oddities and works to find a way to communicate with him anyway.

Ram, despite being a side character, is the most developed person in the show. We see a lot about his family life and his interests. He’s fiercely loyal to his friends but also very shy. Over the course of the show, you see him feel hurt and scared and angry and in love, and all without him saying much of anything at all.

The next side pairing is Mek and Boss. They are best friends and Boss calls himself Mek’s wifey. Mek is in love with Boss, to the point where he has a shrine of him hidden away in his room. It’s very sweet, even though you’re left kind of wondering, uh...why? What has Boss done to earn Mek’s undying devotion? It’s unclear.

Bafflingly, the actor who plays Mek was not speaking Thai in this. All of his lines were dubbed over -- very, very poorly -- and you can see that the words he’s speaking don’t match the words he’s supposed to be saying. I have no idea why they cast this person, though he did well given the circumstances. He has a very soulful stare that worked to demonstrate his pining. Watching him decide to help Boss get a girlfriend just because he wanted him to be happy was tough.

If I were to recommend this series, it would be to follow these two side stories. You may enjoy the Bohn/Duen romance, but I had a hard time getting attached to them or believing their chemistry.

The final pairing was between Frong and Dr. Thara. I have nothing to say about them, honestly. It could have been completely taken out and nothing would have been lost. The actors did what they could with the roles. Both were charming, both were very, very attractive, but that couldn’t save this side story for me.

The acting was just so-so, though special mention should probably go to the actors who portrayed Mek and Boss, since they spent the majority of their scenes acting with someone who was speaking an entirely different language.

There was very little tension and almost no stakes in this series, except between King and Ram.

(Update: 9/27/20

Time sometimes changes feelings on a series, and in the months since I wrote this review, I’ve come to look more favorably on this drama. My love for Ram and King has only grown, and I’ve come to tolerate Bohn and Duen’s story more than I had before. Some of the early parts are even cute, though the back half still bugs me.)

***

2GETHER THE SERIES Rating: 5/10

Main Pairing

Win and Bright, the actors who portray the main characters of Tine and Sarawat, are both just...startingly good looking. They’re tall and broad and handsome. Tine has the sweetest smile and Sarawat can sexy brood with the best of them. I think the natural charisma of both leads did a lot to paper over the cracks of a thin story where the characters made nonsensical choices just to drive forward the plot.

This is a fake dating story, which should be my JAM, ok? Straight boy freshman Tine wants to curb the attentions of Green, a gay man who is pursuing him. He decides to ask Sarawat, the campus dreamboat, to pretend date him so that Green will back off. It all makes sense so far, in terms of how these convoluted romantic comedy set-ups go. Sarawat refuses, and Tine starts up a charm offensive to get him to agree. Still makes sense. But then, once Sarawat commits to this plan, scene after scene goes like this:

Tine: Sarawat, here comes Green! Pretend to be my boyfriend! Sarawat: [pretends to be his boyfriend] Tine: Oh no, what are you doing? People are going to think we’re dating!

Like, bro, he is doing what you have explicitly asked him to do! Often just moments before! What is HAPPENING? I get that this is supposed to be Tine feeling confused about his burgeoning feelings for Sarawat, but then show that by Tine being nervous or embarrassed. Having him lash out at Sarawat made no sense and got more frustrating as the series went on.

And look, I’m just going to say it: Win and Bright seem like they didn’t want to touch each other. They have major bro chemistry, but zero romantic chemistry. It got to the point, in the last few episodes, where I thought there was a translation error and I was misunderstanding the status of their relationship. By the tail-end of the series, former playboy Tine still looks a cross between confused and horrified whenever Sarawat tries to touch him. We never once see Tine happily kiss Sarawat. I don’t understand the choices that were made by the actor, director, and writers here.

Every problem that occurs between Tine and Sarawat could be solved with a few clarifying words, but instead they get dragged on for the sake of drama.

Furthermore, I know that BLs are fond of the “I’m not gay, I just like you” trope, but for the first 11 episodes of this show, Sarawat is coded as gay. Not bi. Not straight-except-for-you. Gay. He has a literal harem of women surrounding him at all times, showering him with gifts and attention, and doesn’t once appear interested. When his mother asks him when he’s going to get a girlfriend, the look that both he and his brother give her clearly reads, “Are you fucking kidding?”

And yet, in episode 12, we are supposed to believe that his first and only other great love was a woman. It’s the way the book was written, I get it, but it rang false for me.

Side Pairings

There were two side pairings. All four of the actors involved are BL vets who performed their duties well.

Man and Type are interesting, but their story gets pushed to the side until the end of the series. However, while Tine and Sarawat’s story was floundering in the latter episodes, I was more than happy to watch this develop. Mike, who plays Man, has become one of my favorite supporting actors in these shows. He’s workman-like, bringing natural charm to his performances and always getting the job done. Seeing Man try to win Type over was fun even while it barely toed the line between sweet and creepy.

Mil and Phukong though? I was not here for any of it. Mil was a jerk and Phukong was a doormat. The way they ended the series was insulting to Phukong. I’d say he deserved better, but his insistence on going after Mil even though Mil was a genuine asshole to both him and his brother did his character no favors. The show wanted Mil to be redeemed by the end, but no thanks, I’ll pass. Phukong may not have deserved better, but Drake and Frank definitely did. I hated it.

Like I said, the actors are so likable and gorgeous, and the fake dating trope is such a classic, that I really wanted to like this one. The first few episodes were sweet and had potential, but the awkwardness between them that I assumed would go away by the end never did.

MASTERLIST OF BL SHOW REVIEWS

(Send me an ask if you have a show you’d like me to review - with the understanding that I will be completely honest - or if there’s anything you think I forgot or got wrong in this review.)

#bl series #2gether #bl review series #my engineer #saratine #sarawat/tine #king/ram #gmmtv

15 notes · View notes

scuttleboat · 5 years ago

Note

I was firmly in the camp of reylo is misogynist, that it sucks that little girls look up to Rey and her and countless other media are glorifying shitty men. But seeing tros mildly made me ship them. I think it helps that he’s dead, but I feel like him saving Rey, literally giving his life to Rey at the end feels like adequate “redemption” to me. I mean he was irredeemably evil, but he died so I feel like it’s an ok fictional arc. Do you think his portrayal was sexist?

SPOILERS

Over time in fandom I've noticed that there's a lot of overlap when someone talks about if a character is sexist. For example

Is the character intentionally written to be a sexist person?

Does the story itself seem to consciously or unconsciously advocate a sexist view or ideology?

In a binary good/bad fictional universe does one character do sexist things but seem to not be suitably "punished" to the moral standard of that universe? Or criticised, but insufficiently so?

Is the overall arc of the story or characters evocative of tropes that are widely seen as sexist or regressive?

Any or all of these can get lobbed at a franchise or a character, but they mean pretty different interpretations, and the listener (or fan) may take some as a personal attack of their entertainment taste, or even their personal integrity. So it really helps to be specific, as much as reasonably possible, when you enter fan discussions you know will be emotionally loaded.

Before we get into my opinion, I first want to tell you that it's okay to like a pairing that makes other people uncomfortable, and it's okay to like a pairing that lands on any of the 4 ways listed above. Liking asshole characters, or wanting the asshole and the hero to kiss--that is what entertainment is for. While fiction certainly can affect us, for 99.99 % of adults, shipping has zero affect on our IRL behavior. If you have children, especially 13 and under, then I think that it's worth it to examine the media they consume, and have discussions about the complexities of human attraction, and what is safe. If you are yourself a young person, I think it's okay to ask an adult (hopefully a wise one) to talk through what you see on screen, and how it makes you feel about relationships. Hell, I'm an adult and I like to talk about it.

Now I'm jumping to the assumption for the rest of this that you [reader] are at least an older teen or an adult, and capable of consuming fiction with reasonable distance and judgement.

Re: shipping Reylo in RotS - sure, if you want to. The movie certainly puts A LOT in that basket and while I did not like watching it or the in-film circumstances that brought it about, they put that pairing in there to entertain people and if you were entertained then JJ & Disney's goal was achieved. That is no judgment for or against your morals. It's just stuff that happens in the movie. (And by far not even the worst part of the movie. At least it means someone's relationship had an arc of some kind that resolved.)

Now going back up to my numbers--I think Reylo definitely fits #4, but personally I have shipped plenty of bad man / good woman tropey relationships, as has almost anyone who's ever been active in fandom. So who cares. In the last 4 years I've definitely joked about reylo as a garbage ship, or the people doing it having bad taste, but that's just an opinion. I've even eased off of that kind of humor (though i still will shittalk kylo) because, well, shipper trash talk is a lot less fun when people become obnoxious cyberbullies.

For my personal opinion, I liked Reylo in ep 8 because I saw it as a case of the hero getting involved with a dangerous, selfish person. And over the course of the movie she tries to pull him out of his violent cycles, but he shuts her down. So she dumps him and moves on. I like that story, and I thought it was pretty bold to go against the bad boy romance trope in that way. I also thought it was important for Rey to try to save him in that context, and that it was okay she failed. Both characters were interesting and their dynamic was interesting.

Unfortunately, ep 9 is a whole different basket of kittens. The story swings back the opposite way, and Rey unlearns her lesson, and even though he'd been given an incredible number of times to repent before, suddenly Kylo repents now for a frustratingly unexplained reasons. Is it because Rey touched his chest? Because his mom died while contacting him? Because he had food poisoning? I don't know, and bc the movie didnt care, I don't care either. In RotS, actions have zero consequences, characters don't have visible emotional responses to things, and nothing matters.

Looking st the whole series, what do I personally think of Kylo switching sides? I think it's horseshit, because we don't know why he did, and because he's already genocided at least two planets. P.L.A.N.E.T.S. Not to mention killing his family and torturing the other main characters. It's hard to compare Kylo to other fictional "reformed" bad guys because the scope of Star Wars is so beyond anything else. About the only comparable thing for me would be Vegita in Dragonball Z, and his change was waaaaaaaay better because it look years and it was never about his moral alignment in the first place. Unfortunately, in SW everything is about moral alignment. And looking at his crimes, Kylo was as far gone as someone can be. I wasn't interested in seeing him saved, let alone redeemed, and I wasn't convinced by how it played out. I rolled my eyes a lot. So I guess I land on #3 as one of my chief complaints about it. Except that's not really sexism so much as me not liking genocidal characters. And I guess somewhat about the violence he does to her personally.

One last thing:

BEN SOLO KYLO REN WAS NOT "REDEEMED."

HE WAS, AT BEST, SAVED.

HAVING YOUR SOUL "SAVED" AND BEING BROUGHT TO A MORAL AWAKENING IS NOT REDEMPTION.

REDEMPTION REQUIRES SERVICE. BOTH VADER AND KYLO WERE SAVED BEFORE THEIR DEATHS. THEY WERE NOT REDEEMED.

This is still worthwhile--if you believe in an afterlife, then saving a soul for heaven or the light side or whatever, that has significance. But don't say Kylo or Ben was redeemed. He wasn't. There is a difference.

#Reylo #rise of the Skywalker #star wars #star wars episode 9 spoilers #sw episode ix #episode 9 #jj abrams #kylo ren #anti kylo ren #ben solo #rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker #rise of Skywalker spoilers #star wars spoilers

28 notes · View notes

madsciencestudent · 5 years ago

Text

5 Fave Male Characters

Tagged By: @pandoramusicbox09

Tagging: @enelle2890, @paper-doodle, @sleepy-shark, and anyone else who wants to do this.

(Oh geez, here we go. XD)

1. Steven Universe

Okay let’s get the show that ripped my heart out last out of the way first. Steven is the pure cinnamon roll on this list, and why he’s my favorite. Steven in the original series was the compassionate male hero I always wanted but never realized I wanted! I did have an issue with him always putting others before himself, but then the creators turned around and BAM! Addressed it in Future with a poor 16 year old who’s trauma finally caught up to him and manifested. Steven is a newer character, I’ll admit, but his stories and development into a hero and then a struggling young adult just... Sticks with me.

2. Orochimaru

Smart, mysterious, dangerous, a ‘mad scientist’, even if it’s for selfish gains he takes in the lost, abused, and abandoned, cynical and wanting to watch the terrible world he lives in burn, an Asexual Icon even if the homophobic and transphobic fans like to say otherwise (all those jokes about him being ‘gay’ or ‘wanting to be a woman’ were NOT meant to be empowering but derogatory-I was there I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE), and with absolutely BEAUTIFUL hair and eyes, awkward weeby teenage me was obsessed with the best character in Naruto. And never really got over it. I stopped following one of the most popular manga and anime the first time the Sell Out of an Author tried to make it look like asshole Sasuke was better than him, and thankfully the character was never ruined for me like I know he was for others and the series as a whole was the longer it was milked for money. So Orochimaru remains the same dangerous and well written villain he was when he first pulled off that face in front of Anko all those years ago to me.

3. Alastor

Another newer character, Alastor is one of those fun yet deadly villains that is also layered. He was a serial killer in life- which if properly written can be interesting in his development and spiral down the path for becoming a serial killer- and a powerful demon in death. There is a lot of potential there for him to develop into a fascinating character as well as a mysterious one. Everyone else in the series seems like they can be redeemed and actually change their after life, but Alastor is the one who seems like he’s going to drag all of them back to Hell and is going to be there true threat of the series. Yet, he also seems like the one who is necessary for the others to access the resources they need to turn their afterlives around. So there’s more conflict there. Are the resources they’re receiving from him actually what they need, or is he undermining them at every turn disguised as aiding them? He’s fun and impossible to get a decent read on!

4. GraveRobber

The character that gets things rolling in Repo! The Genetic Opera, and mostly acts as the narrator in the final cut of the film, GraveRobber is exactly what his name says. One of the poor souls who fell into Geneco’s debt trip and now works as a drug dealer and grave robber (in order to actual get the drug from corpses’ brains) to get by in the world built on organ failures and capitalism! GraveRobber doesn’t have a lot to do in the final film, but his songs and guidance of the main character are an excellent touch. He also adds what I think is a main undercurrent of the film- none of the characters are truly ‘innocent’ or ‘pure’ like most media portrays; they all have some undesirable parts and ways to get by.

His actor is also one of the writers and performers of the indie stage shows that inspired the film (who did in fact write the film) and whom I’ve met in person, and he was very nice when we interacted.

5. Sweeney Todd

Well, since he IS the title character of my all time favorite movie, I better mention him here. Also fun fact he’s the inspiration behind the one black streak I have in my hair which sort of became my own brand over the years SOOOO- Tragic and vengeful, Sweeney Todd is just... A complex character who’s been kicked around by the corrupt system and world enough that he gives into the darkness and wickedness of it all to become his own monster at the end. (He killed the woman he loved and who he thought he was avenging the whole time!)

Honorable Mention Since I’m Not Sure Where This One Fits Anymore:

Cell

(I can hear @paper-doodle from here and @sleepy-shark calling me out for the Weeb I am. XD)

So... Cell is a favorite all time character of mine without a doubt, but given my thoughts and headcanons I had developed for him when I used to RP him on here and still use to this day.... I kinda don’t entirely classify him as a ‘male’ character anymore? I mean I kinda do but- IT’S COMPLICATED. It is pretty well established that in the manga Cell is referred to with ‘he/him’ and ‘it’ pronouns (even more so in the English dub of the anime I first grew up with because MANLY ANIME IS MANLY and woman can NEVER be that buff right that’d just be ugly (I’m being sarcastic if you can’t tell)) but it’s mostly other characters using those pronouns when talking about Cell. And because Cell technically is classified as ‘female’ by human definitions when it comes to reproduction (if an multicellular or macro organism is capable of asexual reproduction- like Cell is (see Cell Juniors)- then they’re usually classified as female), and at least in the manga Cell doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about anything that isn’t fighting related, I kinda got to wondering about whether Cell does view themselves as male or female or both or neither. Eventually I developed the headcanon that Cell honestly doesn’t care one way or the other; people can call Cell whatever pronouns they want and Cell will just roll with it (so basically Agender with no pronoun preference), though Cell will pull out the ‘you know, by human definitions, you know I’m a female, right?’ line whenever a sexist is mouthing off near them because the dawning fear and back tracking fuels Cell. Cell has mostly gone with the male pronouns though since those are the ones used the most when applied to him, but like I said, Cell can change gears pretty quick based on the other person.

Sooooo, yeah. Canonly and a majority of fandomly speaking, I guess Cell is still classified as a male character, but since I developed a different view on him.... Eh? I guess I’m in the Cell is Nonbinary Camp so maybe Cell shouldn’t really be on this list. But again, Canon and a majority of Fandom and his own flexibility in my headcanons makes it complicated so Cell gets a special mention.

#meme #that last one got complicated fast because..... MERGH!

5 notes · View notes