#accidentally wrote an essay

[somebluemelodies]

really really really long ramble ahead about q!Foolish's federation situation bc i have thoughts. you've been warned :'D

(below the cut!)

i cannot get over how much shit could hit the fan with this whole q!Foolish situation. literally so many relationships could hinge on how things play out

firstly, we have no idea how q!Pac and q!Mike are going to react to q!Foolish when they see him next (likely tomorrow, as per what cc!Pac said at the end of the Tazercraft stream). they might get mad and take revenge, maybe try and use him to find and rescue Walter Bob... etc, etc. q!Foolish wants them to be released (little does he know...) and he hopes to still be friends with them even tho they may not want the same, but he really has no true idea what he's gotten himself into...

i don't think their relationship will ever be the same regardless of what info comes out, but that's essentially just the tip of the iceberg

what i'm most curious about personally is q!Cellbit (and q!Forever) finding out about how he lied about Richas's life being on the line. because i already know that ain't gonna end well. both q!Cellbit and q!Forever are fiercely protective of Richas. q!Cellbit absolutely despises liars and he already threatened q!Foolish while interrogating him

q!Cellbit places a lot of trust in q!Foolish. we saw that in how they bonded when q!Foolish was constructing the castle, and how q!Cellbit wanted to have him build something else for him just so they could spend time together. and it was really solidified in q!Cellbit telling q!Forever today how he has a hard time believing q!Foolish would lie and use Richas’s name to do so. he doesn’t find q!Foolish “capable” of betraying them somehow

q!Cellbit finding out the truth could seriously fuck with him and their relationship. so could him finding out about q!Foolish's actual federation job, but more on that later

q!Cellbit himself killing q!Foolish has potential problems of its own, namely with q!Roier and their relationship. i mean, that's his dad. but at least for me, it's hard to really gauge how q!Roier will react, especially now that him and q!Cellbit are married. i think its circumstantial, but i'm not too too worried about spiderbit

q!Foolish dying also has the potential for some major problems with q!Vegetta if/when he comes back. and i fear for Richas's life if q!Vegetta were to find out, but i digress, let's not go there-

i think a lot of people won't see q!Foolish the same way, at least for a while, if they find out he lied, but i think the bigger problem now lies in his job with the federation

if that gets out, that could burn a lot of bridges. i'll say when actually, because as much as i love q!Foolish, i don't think he can keep this a secret forever. i don't think q!Jaiden will say anything, but who knows, honestly?

unlike q!Cellbit's infiltration to rescue q!Felps and learn more about the federation, and q!Fit using his janitorial job to try and find the player data he wants, q!Foolish is doing this for himself and the federation. unlike both of them, and a majority of the Ordo Theoritas he's technically apart of, he's not anti-federation, he's not anti-Cucurucho, and at that, he's really not neutral, either

i find q!Foolish to be such an interesting character. he knows what he wants a majority of the time and he's willing to do pretty much anything to get what he wants. in this situation, he's aware of his actions having consequences but he does it anyway because it's what he believes benefits himself the most, regardless of what others may say or do. and that's such an interesting character trait, but it can be such a detrimental one, too

did q!Foolish get manipulated tho? to an extent, yes. Cucurucho called him "unique," and i refuse to believe that was out of genuine belief. he's never expressed major interest in q!Foolish until recently. i also don't think Mr. Mustard is alive anymore, quite frankly, if what was said about them eating said capybara is anything to go by. but q!Foolish is so desperate to become Cucurucho's friend and also save Mr. Mustard. he said it himself: he's willing to do just about anything. that leaves the door wide open, doesn't it? Cucurucho is playing a game, and q!Foolish is playing right into it

and if q!Foolish doesn't ultimately go on a traitor arc and he does in fact get used, it kinda sucks for him, really, bc we saw what happened to q!Felps thinking Cucurucho was nice and his friend, and q!Jaiden is probably getting used in a similar way, rather for the fact she's willing to do anything for the eggs

if q!Foolish does get used, and the others catch on to that (mainly q!Cellbit), i think that could be the saving grace for q!Foolish and his relationship with the other members of the island. because it wasn't all his fault, and i think people could see it through

but if not? that's a lot of irreparable damage, be it intentional or not. i'd love to see where that coud lead

that's really it tho. sorry for the word vomit :') if you made it this far, congrats!! what're your own thoughts about this situation? i'd love to see some other people's perspectives :D

[riddlerosehearts]

thinking about how people who watch the emperor's new groove and somehow come out of it shipping pacha and kuzco, or thinking yzma only became evil when kuzco fired her and that she would've been a better ruler than him, are both so wrong in so many different ways and are also missing one of the things that i absolutely love about the movie. which is that, the way i see it, pacha and yzma are counterparts. as parental figures to kuzco.

like, just to get this out of the way first, yzma was a dismissive asshole to a peasant whose family was starving. and yeah, if kuzco had been in her place he definitely would've also done that, which... is why she would not be a better ruler than him. she'd just be the same because they're both horrible people in the exact same ways. her reaction to being fired is to plot murder, and as soon as his funeral is over she sets everyone to work on replacing paintings of kuzco with paintings of herself and covering the palace with imagery that makes it clear that it's all about her now. i'm not even sure why this is a discussion tbh.

and also, kuzco is literally a teenager. he's barely 18 years old. source: in the movie, yzma says at his funeral that kuzco was "taken from us so tragically on the very eve of his eighteenth birthday." she also claims in the movie to have "practically raised" him, to which kronk replies "yeah, you'd think he would've turned out better". and sure, she could be exaggerating, but what evidence do we have that she is? we learn absolutely nothing of his parents, who are never mentioned even once in the movie, or of anyone else who could've raised him, and she's his advisor who for some reason sees no problem with attending to royal duties in his place. most likely because she's his regent. also, i'm not exactly a fan of the sequel tv series "the emperor's new school" but it does have something that backs up my point: kuzco is revealed to be an orphan and just before his father went and got lost at sea, he asked yzma (who was also his advisor) to take care of kuzco if anything happened to him. so, yeah, the writers who worked on the series clearly thought that yzma genuinely did raise kuzco, and nothing in the movie contradicts this.

and i find the idea of her being his only parental figure for pretty much his whole childhood incredibly interesting because, and this also goes back into why she wouldn't be a better ruler than him--she mirrors him as a reflection of what would've become of him if he'd never met pacha. they're both incredibly arrogant, power-hungry, selfish, and cruel, with a tendency to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. yzma was even originally going to have her own reprise of kuzco's theme song "perfect world", which i really wish had been kept:

[ID: Lyrics that read:

I'Il be the sovereign queen of the nation And the chicest chick in creation I'm the cat with all the cream and ooh-la-la This deadly concentration Will put an end to my frustration Now this perfect world begins and ends with moi

What's my name? Yzma, Yzma, Yzma Yzma (what's my name?) Yzma, Yzma (What'd you say?) Yzma (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Yzma. End ID]

(this song can be fully heard in "the sweatbox", the documentary about the making of the movie, and is also on youtube btw)

anyway, i'm sure yzma would not exactly have been the most nurturing or hands-on guardian, especially given that she and kuzco don't exactly treat each other like family. but it makes a lot of sense to think that her behavior influened kuzco's throughout the years. and for the entire movie, she remains determined to kill him. when he tries to reason with her and admits that he should've been nicer, she says the same thing to him that he originally said when he fired her. she never grows or changes and in the end, she hurts the one person who was willing to stand by her (and even then, kronk had never fully been on board with her plan) and he ends up trying to crush her with a chandelier. kuzco on the other hand is able to realize the error of his ways, come to regret who he was in the past, and start taking steps toward being a better person. his theme song gets a reprise where it's changed from a song about one person being the center of the world to a Power Of Friendship song. why? because, as i've already mentioned, he has pacha.

pacha, who similarly to both yzma and kuzco is in a position of authority as the leader of the village but unlike either of them is gentle and humble. who isn't afraid to stand up to kuzco and be honest with him even though he's the emperor, who agrees to take him back to the palace but has no obligation to be so helpful, kind, and caring toward him--and just about every reason not to be--and still chooses to be anyway. pacha who is 45 years old (also stated in the sweatbox documentary) and can see that kuzco is practically still a kid, not a single day over 18, who has time to grow and change. pacha, who already has a wife and two kids with another on the way, but practically treats kuzco like one of his own. who acknowledges that if kuzco dies all his problems will be gone and then still worries about him and goes out of his way to rescue him after he wanders into the jungle. who sees kuzco shivering at night and covers him with his poncho, who carries him when he's genuinely too weak to keep walking, who refuses to give up on him even after repeatedly being betrayed by him because he believes there's good in everyone.

also, while yzma ends up repeating kuzco's harsh words of dismissal as she tells him of her plans to kill him, kuzco had previously repeated pacha's words that "nobody's that heartless" after he saved pacha's life. and as the movie progresses kuzco and pacha's relationship becomes more and more equal and is constantly contrasted by moments of yzma being cruel and unappreciative of kronk's kindness. a good example of this is how kronk is constantly being forced to carry yzma everywhere on his back while yzma literally walks all over him and steps on his hands when she gets down, whereas when pacha briefly carries kuzco after the latter collapses he tells him he'll have to walk the rest of the way later and kuzco doesn't even protest.

idk if i'm even explaining well what i'm trying to say here. but basically, if yzma actually raised kuzco and contributed to his current behavior, then she and pacha both are figures who guided him and helped him grow. only yzma helped him become the tyrant that he was at the start of the movie, who was selfish and callous and saw everyone else as beneath him. whereas pacha helped him see the value in being selfless and considerate of others. and in the end, yzma is stuck as a cat and nobody is concerned about her. kronk has found a new job that makes him genuinely happy, while kuzco has decided to build a hut on the hill next to pacha's and effectively joined his family. in the sweatbox documentary it's even mentioned that chicha and the kids were at risk of being removed from the film, but it was decided that they needed to be there because having just pacha as a single guy who lived alone wasn't interesting enough--kuzco needed to go from having basically an empty world where he had nobody to being able to come together with pacha's whole family. and i just think that's incredibly satisfying and beautiful. it also leads up to one of the few things i really do enjoy about the emperor's new school, which is the fact that during the show kuzco moves in with pacha and chicha and pretty explicitly thinks of them as basically his parents while he's like a son to them.

idk. i feel like my mind went in a million different directions while i was writing all this. but i guess i just think that for all of the praise the emperor's new groove gets for its comedy and for how hilarious yzma and kronk in particular are as a duo, the movie also has a lot of genuine heart that gets overlooked. kuzco's character growth and his unique dynamic with pacha is, for me, really what elevates the movie from just a funny movie that i like to one of my favorite disney movies. and i wish more people appreciated that aspect of it and saw it as a found family story in the same way that treasure planet, brother bear, and lilo and stitch are all found family stories.

[moghedien]

lae'zel, permission, and what she actually wants

the thing about Lae'zel is that she's always looking to someone to give her permission

basically her entire life up until the beginning of the game has been a fight to be allowed to live. she has to prove she's better than her peers. she has to prove that she's worthy of fighting for Vlaakith. hell, even when she was an egg, she would have had to prove she was worthy of hatching because if she'd been a bit late she wouldn't have even been allowed a chance.

she doesn't really do anything unless its what her goddess and her society allows and she'll do exactly what is prescribed. she bristles at any attempts to find a cure for the tadpoles that aren't going to the creche because that is what she is supposed to do as a good githyanki. anything else is a deviation from what is allowed, even if it might work.

so you look at her romance through that lens, it really sort of pulls everything together.

In the act one scene, she's still following the rules like a good devoted of Vlaakith. She will sleep with you one or two times if you ask her to, but will bristle at anything more than that. She's a totally typical normal githyanki after all (she isn't), and it isn't normal for githyanki to have any kind of serious romantic relationships. "love" isn't even a real thing, and is just a strange mental illness that cowards use as an excuse (all of these are things she actually believes at the beginning of the game based on various bits of banter and dialogue where she's reflecting retroactively on her previous beliefs). Straight up, anything beyond casual sex is not allowed, so she doesn't even question it as an option.

Then by the time you get to the Act 2 romance scene, Lae'zel's entire world has been upturned for unrelated reasons. She did everything as she was supposed to and nothing she wasn't and Vlaaktih betrayed her. Her entire culture and society betrayed her despite her never doing anything without their permission.

It seems like she is somewhat quick to accept that and switch her allegiance. Her entire existence was because Vlaakith gave her permission to exist, and then Vlaakith betrayed her no matter how devoted she was. So Vlaakith is a liar and she learns that Orpheus is a possible answer to solve the Vlaakith problem, so now she's committed to Orpheus.

It seems like a quick turn, but if you look at Lae'zel as someone who needs permission, then it makes more sense. Vlaakith can't give her that anymore, so she needs someone else to tell her how to live, so that becomes Orpheus, who of course conveniently isn't there to actually tell her to do anything. So she does as Voss says to try to save him and that becomes her entire life motivation. Because what else can she possibly do? She needs someone's permission to decide how to move on now.

By the time you get the Act 2 romance scene, Lae'zel is on this path, right? If you look at the actual Act 2 romance scene, its basically her asking for permission again. Not in the way you'd immediately expect, because while she is asking like, your permission to develop your relationship into something further, its not just you she needs permission from. She needs her societal expectations to give both of you permission.

To elaborate, you're a fucking wrench in all her expectations of what is right. You were supposed to be a one or two night casual fuck, and then she went and got fixated with you. She calls it an obsession. She says its bothering her more than Vlaakith's betrayal, more than her people hunting her, more than the worm in her head. Those are all problems that she has some instruction on how to address. You, she has no fucking clue what to do about. Rebel githyanki aren't exactly giving instructions on how to pursue romantic relationships with people while planning on how to take down Vlaakith. Even if they are more lenient and accepting of those kinds of attachments (which we have no idea if they are or not), she hasn't been around any of them long enough to figure that out.

In her feelings for you, she's confronted with feelings that to her culture are perverse and which she has no societal context for. Even if there was someone who might give her the go ahead to pursue that relationship, she has no idea who they might be. She's someone who's entire life has revolved around what she has permission to do within her society, and she finds herself drawn to do something that she has no way of even figuring out how to approach in an acceptable way.

And despite all of that, and all the complications around what asking more from you would mean from a githyanki standpoint, she still gets to a point where she wakes you up in the middle of the night and begs you to do something about it.

She's frantic and confused and its clear she doesn't even really know what she wants from you, so she asks you to prove yourself and fight her. Its not because she thinks you're too weak for her. She admits she finds you strong the first time she comes onto you. Alternatively, she basically negs you after having sex with her by calling you weak and a coward and she is more than pleased to have sex with you again after doing so. Strength or weakness has nothing to do with why she needs you to fight her.

She needs you to fight her because that's how she's always had to prove herself worthy of existence. Her entire life has been a series of peers and comrades she had to fight in order to prove that she could go on. So when she doesn't know what else to do about you and there's nothing else to tell her how to proceed, she needs you to fight and prove that you (and her) can go on.

But the thing about the duel you have, is that the outcome doesn't actually matter. Regardless, it does give her what she needs to know to go on your relationship, but not in any ways she expected. Regardless if you win or she does, she gets overwhelmed and realizes that she wants you and she wants you to want her. Something definitely starts to shift in her mindset after the fight.

If you win, she's alarmed by the contradiction that she should feel ashamed for having lost. If you lose, she's alarmed by the contradiction of feeling no joy in having beaten you. She realizes that she doesn't want to be doing the thing she's supposed to do (fight to prove her worth) and instead wants to protect you. She also says that she wants you to protect her, which is something that she only says if you lose the fight, which I think is notable and makes the shift a bit more obvious.

Because she only says it if you lose. You lost. You just showed you were weaker than her. And she still wants you to protect her. By all githyanki standards, you shouldn't even be worthy of living if you couldn't win the fight, but she not only doesn't want to see you hurt, but she wants you to see that she doesn't get hurt. Not only should this not make sense because you lost, but it is maybe the first time Lae'zel has admitted she doesn't want to have to rely only on her own strength. She wants to rely on you, even if you're weaker and couldn't beat her in a fight. That challenges everything she has ever believed in her life probably as much as being betrayed by Vlaakith did.

If you win the fight, she doesn't admit that, but I think the sentiment is still there. It just isn't something that she has to directly confront in the moment because you proved that you can protect her. In that instance, she's coming to terms more with the fact that she should feel weaker or ashamed but isn't. In either instance, she was asking for permission from her ideals on how to deal with the You problem. In either instance, she's confronted with something that challenges that. Either you fail to meet the expectations she thought she had, and she finds out she doesn't care, or she fails to meet the expectations of a githyanki soldier and she finds out she doesn't care. Because either way, she figures out she wants you more than she wants to be the good githyanki that does what she's supposed to and act like she's supposed to act. Being "obsessed" with you should be perverse and wrong, but she embraces it whether she has permission (from her society) to do so or not. That is an extremely big deal.

And even before we get into Act 3, there are some interesting beats here about Lae'zel's romance in Act 2 still. One of the two things I want to discuss is the kissing. After the main Act 2 romance scene, you get new dialogue options, including asking her to kiss you.

This is kinda where we get into my opinions on the best choices to make with her romance, and I'm aware that these are my opinions and people deciding to do other things isn't incorrect. I'm pointing this out because I'm gonna start talking a lot about choices soon and which ones I think are the best thematically and from a character standpoint. They are my opinions. You are allowed to disagree. I will however be defending and arguing my opinions here. You don't have to get angry or defensive if you did something else or don't agree with my conclusions.

Now, back to kissing Lae'zel. The notable thing about asking Lae'zel to kiss you is that her initial reaction is embarrassment. It's somewhat of a turn from how she is open about talking about your sexual encounters before this. The entire fight scene, which may have ended up with the two of you making out in the middle of camp until it faded to black, was seemingly in front of everyone and she had no concern about that.

Kissing just out of the blue though? She's shy about that.

Because just kissing for no reason is soft and pointless, really (and if you watch the Lae'zel kissing animations, they are all in fact very soft and sweet). You don't really need to do it. Before hand with the sex and whatnot, she fully has arguments about why that was ok and even beneficial for the overall task at hand. Soft little kissing though? There's no reason to do that unless she wants to. Hence her embarrassment.

Now, she won't kiss you in Act 2 when you ask because of her embarrassment. Not unless you persuade her to do it. You only have to persuade her once and if you succeed, the first time she is clearly nervous and looks around uncomfortably. In all honesty, it seems somewhat uncomfortable to persuade her especially given her initial reaction. I do, however, think its the best thing to do for her.

Yes, she's uncomfortable. She's uncomfortable with your entire relationship now because she's has no experience even knowing about a situation like this and from a githyanki standpoint, affectionately kissing in public for no reason is basically outing yourselves as being perverts. She also very, very clearly wants it. The way you persuade her, is by pointing out that she probably wants this. And if you succeed in pointing that out to her, she is smiling and afterward when you ask her to kiss she is clearly happy and very soft about it all.

If you don't persuade her, I believe you can still kiss her without the check if you wait until after the Act 3 scene, so she is clearly comfortable with it at some point. Persuading her might seem like you're pushing her past her comfort zone. That's honestly why I didn't do it for a while. But looking at how she reacts after the fact and what happens after, I do feel like its not so much pushing her out of her comfort zone. Its more challenging her to push against her initial ideas of what she thinks she should do and instead encouraging her to do what she wants. More on that later.

The other romance beat that happens in Act 2 occurs some time after the main scene in camp, when she get about as vulnerable as she's been yet. She asks you for softness. She wants to be with you and she doesn't want the rough, passionate, hedonistic type of night that has been all of your relationship up until this point. She asks for gentleness, softness, and she's terrified. She says outright that its terrifying for her to ask this and she's been working up the courage to do so.

This is meaningful in multiple ways, because its not only a sign that your physical relationship is becoming something more than just sex. Its a sign of how much Lae'zel has changed. Because Lae'zel is someone who needs permission in everything. Up until this point, we haven't seen her ask for permission, she simply waited for her betters to give it to her and denied herself if they didn't. When it was someone who isn't above her, she makes demands. She doesn't ask permission. Ever. Now she outright asking you for permission to be gentle and soft. She didn't just need to build up the courage to be soft. She needed to build up the courage to ask to be allowed something she wanted.

As I stated before, I think Lae'zel's instinct is to not take into account what she actually wants, but to just go ahead with whatever she thinks she's supposed to do. That's how she was raised and indoctrinated after all. Gently pushing against her first reactions to things allows her a chance to push against that instinct of behaving how she was indoctrinated to behave. I think her asking for a softer touch is a sign of this changing for her. The Act 3 scene is even more so.

The Act 3 romance scene is sort of the height of Lae'zel's character growth. One thing that makes me sort of sad is that I feel like you don't really get to see the fullness of her character unless you romance her. That's true with other characters I've romanced so far to some extent, but not as much as with Lae'zel.

But here you romanced Lae'zel, so you get to see her admitting how much her perceptions have changed because of you helping her see things differently. She has different perspectives and she finds beauty and bliss in things she used to find dread in. She loathed the sun, and now drags you to a roof top just to stare at it coming over the horizon (please don't stare into the sun). She finds herself liking Faerun and the colors in it. She admits all of this before she brings up what she actually wanted to talk to you about.

Lae'zel has no terms in which to describe your relationship. She doesn't know about dating (or courting) or marriage and she doesn't actually even know what the word love means. She doesn't ever say the word until six months later in the epilogue, but what she's describing to you on how she feels is without a doubt love and what she's asking of you is more or less marriage. She doesn't have the terms or any cultural context to make it easier to ask, but she wants you to stay with her, whatever happens. That's the only way she can really describe it. Staying with her. Because even if you've only actually known each other a short time, you might be the most constant thing she's ever had in her life, and she's probably terrified of what it means when the Absolute is dealt with and there is no mission keeping you together. She isn't asking for permission now to stay with you, but is asking for you to stay with her. Where you might be and doing what, who knows, but she is for the first time just pursuing something she wants that she hasn't been given explicit permission for beforehand.

And then, we get to saving Orpheus.

This is where my thoughts might get controversial, but as I said, you're free to disagree but I'm arguing for my ideas here.

I'm not sure how any of this changes if you go a different route in the final parts of the game, so I can really only speak on the options you get if you saved Orpheus and he became Illithid.

So you do the thing that Lae'zel has been lead to believe she needs to do and free Orpheus. I personally cannot blame the man's attitude given his being imprisoned for who the fuck knows how long and the fact that he is still willing to sacrifice himself. However, it is clear that he is perhaps not quite as understanding as Voss lead you to believe he would be. Given that he tells you that you should have let his guard kill you if you were actually on the same side as him, which notably would have doomed everyone and lead to the Absolute's victory. But again, centuries of imprisonment, we cannot blame the guy.

The point I want to make with bringing that up at all, is that, even in these little bits of conflict that don't really amount to anything in game, its a crack in the ideal of Orpheus. He isn't every grand thing that Voss promised you and Lae'zel he would be. He's not bad here and gives us no reason to think he is, but its a crack. Lae'zel didn't have any reason to doubt Vlaakith or see her imperfections until it was too late, after all. I'm not saying the two are equals, but Lae'zel went from worshipping an evil false-goddess to holding up that goddess's enemy in similar reverence in a shockingly short amount of time. The girl jumped from a cult that worshipped one powerful figure to a radical rebel movement that held up another. And we immediately see little tiny cracks in the facade of Orpheus.

Lae'zel won't. Lae'zel doesn't know how to be anything but utterly devoted to the highest figure of authority she sees as worthy to follow. Lae'zel won't know to be wary. But you should be wary as fuck about what Orpheus is going to ask of her.

Cut to the end. We win, the absolute is defeated, yay! Mind Flayer Orpheus is asking Lae'zel to kill him and take up his mantle and lead his rebellion against Vlaakith.

In that moment, you have really two options. Technically there are multiple dialogue options, but really there are two. You can let her go (and potentially go with her) or you can persuade her to stay. If you tell her to do what she wants, she and you will leave on dragons to fight the rebellion against Vlaakith.

I do not think this is what Lae'zel wants.

When Orpheus is giving her this duty, she doesn't look happy about it. She just finished the single most traumatic event of her life, which turned everything upside down and completely shook who she is as a person. Now she is being handed what she had said she wanted. The means to free her people and defeat Vlaakith. She has a silver sword. She's being given not one, but two red dragons. And she just looks fucking sad. She looks exhausted as Orpheus is commanding her to do this.

She is someone who has never lived a life where she was able to want her own goals or life. She was Vlaakith's. Now she's being ordered to carry Orpheus's legacy. And I do believe she wants to stop Vlaakith and save her people from her control. But she is being given all of the burden of doing so and commanded to begin immediately upon completing her previous ordeal.

Lae'zel has been following orders her entire life. She isn't one to even consider what she actually wants and instead does what she thinks she's supposed to do. So when Orpheus tells her to do this, she is going to obey the authority figure like she was been indoctrinated into doing. When you ask her what she wants, she will say you're coming with her because she's at least broken away enough to do that but not to consider that she doesn't want to go.

Gently pushing against Lae'zel's immediate reactions, as I said, is I think the way to get her honest, genuine desires. If you persuade her to stay and disobey Orpheus, she does seem suddenly energized. She will then say that her destiny is not for Vlaakith or Orpheus to decree. Her destiny is hers alone. Neither Vlaakith nor Orpheus will give her permission to do that, but you can. She doesn't obey you. You aren't an authority figure and you have probably shown yourself to be weaker than her at several points in the game. But you still give her permission to choose her life and she accepts that.

And this, is how you break the Lae'zel out of the cycle that she finds herself. in. The only way she isn't perpetually bowing down to some authority figure is if she stays in Faerun. Because she escaped the authority of Vlaakith and immediately went to Orpheus, who now she can't even escape because he's dead and she is the one holding up his legacy on his behalf. She can't choose to leave once she's accepted that responsibility, and she frankly does not look like she wants to accept that responsibility.

If she stays on Faerun, she is still fighting Vlaakith. Not only because she is literally hunting down and murdering Vlaakith's forces, but she's living completely free of Vlaakith's influence in a way she couldn't otherwise. She isn't living under Vlaakith's rules, nor having to live in direct antagonism to Vlaakith's rules by forming a new society from scratch for the githyanki. She's just living. Occasionally going and massacring Vlaakith's soldiers as a means of survival, but otherwise just living how she wants and with who she wants. And in theory, she could go and join the rebellion proper any time in the future. If she stays, her future isn't certain, and that, I think, is the best thing for her.

In the epilogue, if you are with her on Faerun, its clear she doesn't really let herself rest still. She busies herself (and you) by tracking down Vlaakith's forces to eradicate, and she tells you of another one she found, noting that she can't rest for long. You have the option to push against this gently, suggesting taking some time off. No persuasion needed. She not only agrees to take some time off, but she immediately has a vacation suggestion which she has clearly been looking into and is excited to check out. But Lae'zel is not someone who is going to consider what she actually wants. She's going to suggest what she thinks she should be doing, but with some gentle push back, will let you know what she actually wants.

Because you're not really rejecting her ideas when you push against the instincts that have been indoctrinated into her. You're giving her permission to decide what she wants to do, and Lae'zel is always someone looking for permission.

[keferon]

sentinel x himsekf because rhe bastard is too self-absorbed to give a crap about anyone else (this is affectionate what an asshole <3)

Yep! If I would decide to assign some poor soul to be his love interest I would pick someone who could knock him off his feet you know? Make him spiral into fear or envy or some crazy level of competitiveness. Make him feel that he isn't the center of the world. Kick him out of his self centered balance.

Because yeah he doesn't think about others at all if they aren't threatening his ego. Which is. No bot in the movie fit that criteria. Sentinel is simply too powerful to care about (let's say)Megatron. And too egotistical to even notice everyone else

[stars-and-leather]

Ok so I know everyone’s talking about the choice to use ‘Logical’ by Olivia Rodrigo for Sally Jackson but it actually fits so well:

First the word logic is derived from Ancient Greek

Fell for you like water/ now the currents stronger- He’s literally Poseidon, god of sea (or water)

I couldn’t get out if I tried- she’s already in too deep because she had a child with him

I’m the love of your life- Poseidon’s immortal, he doesn’t have a life per se, and she knows all the myths, she knows he’s had so many affairs and will continue to do it

'Cause if rain don't pour and sun don't shine- believing in the Greeks means that rain doesn’t pour because Zeus is the one controlling it and the sun doesn’t actually shine, it’s Apollo or Helios, so everything she’s believed in up til then is wrong

Changing you is possible- even Hermes said it the gods are stuck in their ways, changing something that has stayed the same for millennia is really hard, she knows deep down she can’t

You built a giant castle, With walls so high I couldn't see- he has a castle under the sea, and unless he helped her get down there she physically couldn’t see him, he technically held the power

The way it all unraveled- I’m pretty sure Sally didn’t know about the Big Three Pact or she wouldn’t have had kids with Poseidon in the first place, she had no clue and he never told her

I'm sure that girl is really your friend- again Sally knows the stories, she knows what he’s like and as much as he loved her in the moment he literally had a wife at the same time

I know I'm half responsible, And that makes me feel horrible- it’s about Percy saying he’s a troubled child, and she knew he wasn’t but she couldn’t tell him til he was older because then the monsters would find him

I know I could've stopped it all, why didn't I stop it all?- she blames herself just as much as she blames Poseidon for the trouble Percy would have to go through, she should’ve stopped as soon as she knew he was a god

And bonus ‘I’m reading in to this too much’ point:

Olivia repeats logical three times, but on the third she repeats the ‘love is never logical’- Poseidon is part of the big three, and also what cabin is Percy? Number three

[eyestrain-addict]

I just realized why lestat marked Tom, like the big stupid idiot I am

(I know everyone else probably already figured this out, but this is MY blog and I get to post whatever deranged thought crosses my pea brained mind.)

When I watched that scene in episode 5 where they're at the bar talking to Tom, I was confused as to why exactly. Why does Lestat mark Tom? If he's marked to kill, why does he wait almost 2 decades later? Well I realized, as all realizations come, in the shower.

Lestat has been planning on killing Tom the whole time.

(Warning before you click read more, this post is a lot longer than I first intended holy fuck)

Well not the whole time. Just right when Louis realized that Anderson and Fenwick had screwed him over. Maybe even longer if he knew it was a trick ("ridiculous of you to mix human and vampire business it always ends poorly"). Notice how he's upset with louis when he kills the guy who's microaggressive with him, cus lestat wasn't there (even if he was there I have my doubts Lestat would understand microaggressions, but he would have definitely killed him for touching Louis.) But tells Louis he's proud of him for killing Alderman. I think this has to be because he witnessed the disrespect first hand. He didn't give a fuck about the money, what he DID care about was that those two disrespected not only him, but Louis.

Even with Lestats little understanding of race relations of the time in America, he did understand hierarchys. He's from 1700s France for God's sake. It's no coincidence wanted to be king of mardi gras. Lestat came to New Orleans and saw himself as the king, even if no one knew it. And he wanted Louis to be his queen. Honestly I could make an entire other post about how Lestat almost literally saw himself as if he was a King and Louis his beloved Queen, which is why he thought it was okay for him to sleep with other women (mistresses and playthings of the king should mean nothing compared to the queen in lestats eyes) but that's getting off topic. I only bring that up because I'm trying to paint a picture of how I think Lestat sees disrespect done to Louis. To him that goes beyond disrespect or rudeness, it's irreverence.

You begin to notice if you watch scenes with them together. Because while I wouldn't say lestat is good at controlling his anger, he's definitely great at concealing it until it erupts (props to Sam Reid have to be given here) lestat is always on the verge of fury when talking to Tom. It starts as a distaste then as he begins to fall more in love with Louis and become more protective of him, his anger builds. Claudia was wrong about one thing, it was no petty slight that was the reason Lestat killed Tom first, it was a loooonng time coming.

I could list every detail I think supports this but I'm sure you get the gist by now. My main point is really the layer of complexity this adds to not only the story, the characters, but also lestat and louis' relationship. Consider it for a second, Lestat saw all his violence as justified, everything he did one can see it through the lense of him punishing the disrespectful (take a shot every time I say disrespect in this post jesus christ). "I bring death to those deserving" indeed. Lestat has a god complex out the wazoo, and every attack, torture, and death he caused was righteous to him and thus enjoyable. Louis on the other hand didn't see himself so highly. He may seem confident but if you look through the cracks it's apparent Louis's self worth in near nonexistent and he's horribly insecure. I think lestat thought when Louis was made a vampire he would see himself as Lestat saw himself, and as Lestat saw Louis. But again, another post for another time.

Despite Louis' insecurities (or perhaps because of them) louis revels in the violence lestat commits for his sake. That's probably why louis is so quick to forgive lestat about the priests. For a brief moment Lestat truly said the truth to Louis and Louis could forgive him because of it. As lestat says, he doesn't kill the priests to intimidate Louis, nor does he do it just because he enjoys it. He does it because he sees them as humiliating Louis, charlatans that don't deserve Louis' sorrow. Louis didn't want the priest's to die, but he could understand why lestat killed them, simply because for once in his goddamn life lestat told the truth, and louis loved that truth. That truth being that lestat killed and mutilated and committed such horrors not just because he liked it, but because he did it out of a fucked up sense of protection. Him killing the priests was essentially a knight killing a dragon to earn the princess' hand in marriage.

The worst part is that Lestat doesn't even realize it. Not fully anyway. Let's be honest with ourselves, lestat doesn't understand Louis. Obviously there's the race, background, culture differences that lestat doesn't understand nor seems inclined to try, but there are better posts about that made by smarter people than moi. I'm mostly talking about lestat doesn't understand louis' mind itself (louis' mind in a vacuum I suppose you could say) he understands Louis' desire for violence sure, but he doesn't understand the core of that want. Honestly I'm on the fence of if he ever understood that Louis loved it when lestat was protective in the first place. I guess it can be dumbed down to Louis wants Lestat to kill to protect Louis and to protect the family (and anyone who deeply disrepects them), lestat perhaps understood a little at one point, but since he sees everyone as a threat and everything is a slight to him, he has no trouble and qualms with delighting in the torture of people Louis views as innocent. Louis' heart is a bit dark, but ultimately human, so he's disgusted by lestats violence towards the undeserving. Lestat can no longer read Louis' mind and even if he could, Louis doesn't quite understand the difference himself (that's why he tries to hunt for criminals briefly) so the cracks of miscommunication starts to form, and neither of them even realize there is miscommunication.

Therein lies the importance of Tom Anderson for season 1. Not much of a character, more of a plot device in human skin. Claudia can see that Lestat hates him, but doesn't understand why, nor does she care to get to the depths of that. (*Mr house voice* understandable) I think it's notable that Louis rarely brought him up, he didn't understand the depths of lestats love. Nor did he know about Lestats 3 decade long grudge, all because Tom disrespected Louis.

Now I'm not excusing Lestat's actions, I just think it's interesting how this one throwaway character reveals a whole level of complexity to the relationship between him and Louis, and better sheds light on not only Lestats personal philosophy but louis' as well. Even Claudia to a degree.

Anyway, uh. End of essay. Bye.

[yamisamuel]

Haikyuu and it’s characters have such a special place in my heart. I should have watched the show sooner, but I am happy that I watched it back when I watched it.

I relate to the characters so much and can’t help but be inspired by them. Characters like Yamaguchi, Sugawara, Oikawa and Kenma all are characters that I desperately needed. Their characters teached me so many things.

Yamaguchi, who teached me to be more confident. He teached me that just because I am not as great at something as my friends, doesn’t mean that I’m useless and I can always find ways to improve.

Sugawara, who was ready to give his place as a starter setter to Kageyama, who is seen as a volleyball “genius” and “king”. Yet he was not bitter, but instead helped him. Sugawara showed Kageyama what he can do better, even though it meant that he himself wouldn’t be the strongest setter of the team anymore. Suga teached me that it’s more important to just help others out and push them to improve, instead of feeling jealousy. And sometimes what my friends need is someone to count on to help and support them.

Oikawa never got into nationals in high school, yet after time skip he’s playing in the olympics, his coach being the man who inspired him to become a setter! He didn’t make it as far in high school as some of the other characters, but he still made his dream come true.

And Kenma, the character who I relate the most. He was the one who truly pushed me. He is a lot like me, not the most athletic or social, rather playing video games, but easily bored if he falls into a full routine. He doesn’t play volleyball because he likes it, but rather because his friends do and it became a routine to him.

He sees the world like a game, but when the game is too easy, he becomes bored and depressed, yet there isn’t a reason for him to push himself to try harder, to take the harder path.

But when he is pushed into giving his all, forced to make an effort, he starts having fun. He learns that sometimes taking the harder path and actually making effort can make the end reward better, fun and more satisfying.

His story of learning to have fun while playing volleyball is something I relate to, both in volleyball and other hobbies. Volleyball was the first just a sport that I liked the most because it forces you into team play, but when I actually started playing seriously (or well, half seriously since I don’t play professionally), I noticed that it was more enjoyable to see my team win. Like Kenma, I don’t have the plans to become a professional player, but I will now continue playing it for fun.

Kenma clearly didn’t know fully what he liked and unlike everyone else he knew, volleyball didn’t immediately suck him in, but with time he learned to enjoy it.

This accidentally turned into a Kenma rant, but I don’t give a fuck. These characters teached me so much and make me actually fully push myself to do what I enjoy!

This is (partly) why Haikyuu is my favorite series and why I really needed it in my life. I don’t think I would be who I am if it wasn’t for the whole cast of characters inspiring me.

[cerulean-renegade]

I really loved Series 14, but i'm gonna put on my constructive criticism glasses for moment because it is fun.

Looking back at the series 14 story arcs from a doylist perspective, I feel that RTD struggled to connect the two main recurring storylines this season.

I'm ignoring possible future continuations of Ruby's story and just taking this Series at face value, with the things we know now.

In one storyline, we have the return of Sutekh, the Pantheon and the Harbingers (like the Susan Triads). In the other, we have the mystery of Ruby's bio mom and the mysterious things happening around her, like the snow, the goblins and 73 yards.

The only connections that these two threads have is supernatural elements (which is a theme this entire season), and Sutekh taking interest in Ruby's mystery, which probably caused the strange events around her.

Sure, this explaination works on some levels: It connects Ruby's story to the threat in the season finale and subverts our expectations of Ruby herself being connected to the supernatural.

But there is very little thematic connections between those two. Ruby's storyline is not really about death. Sutekh has very little to do with family or adoption.

The Doctor is confronted with both of these themes, but again, only seperately. Him killing Sutekh is not thematically connected to his adoption storyline or his friendship with Ruby.

My best guess would be that these two storylines were written seperately and only connected in the end. It feels like this Season's Sutekh arc could've happened with a different companion. (For example, I saw some people asking why Sutekh wouldn't be interested in Clara's mystery arc too).

Other RTD finales have been much more connected to the companions' story: For example, Donna's fate in the Series 4 finale is directly connected to her struggles with self worth and her character growth.

It feels like a missed opportunity to not do something similar for Ruby's character arc.

[gaybearwedding]

hi hi hello i have been gone forever due to various reasons such as “work” and “mental illness” and “having developed a kpop hyperfixation that has been occupying most of my attention recently” but i need everyone to know that i saw off book live twice last week (in philly with a friend and then in nyc with my girlfriend) and it was truly so everything. i didn’t get many pictures but i did get a few and none of them are very good but one of them is of jess’ amazing stool balancing act and that’s all i need really

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

Glorfindel and Erestor for the ship alignment chart?

Glorestor is so funny because of course it compels me, can you not tell from my blog and entire shipping, even pre-AO3 career? I have been shipping these two for 20+ years, but whether they make sense or not depends on who you ask and what you mean by “makes sense”. I am very aware that Glorfindel and Erestor are shipped literally by virtue of them standing next to each other—twice, mind you, which in the 90's and heydays of shipping, was plenty. (Once, after all, was enough. 🤣)

I can write (and have written lol) entire essays about why I love this ship so much. Glorfindel is my one true favourite Tolkien character—my one true favourite fandom character, period—and have devoured every lore available for him to come up with pretty solid headcanons for the guy, if I do say so myself. Erestor, on the other hand, is pretty much a result of my by now life-long quest to give Glorfindel the most delicious happy ending an absolute Best Boy™ can deserve. These two characters on their own are individually compelling. Glorfindel easily just is, because how good must a person be to be returned from death, to be released from Mandos early, to become an emissary of the Valar, to be reborn better than before, equal to the Maiar? And Erestor—who even is he? What does it take to become the chief counsellor of one of the wisest Elves of the Third Age, in Imladris where Elves who have seen the light of the Trees still dwelt? I even read in a forum (lol omg remember forums) once where people wondered who even had the higher rank: Glorfindel or Erestor. Imagine being at a level where one could potentially be Glorfindel's superior—it blows the mind. But also personally for me, I love the idea that someone like Glorfindel could get quite lonely returning to an unfamiliar world—not only is Gondolin gone, but it's not even Beleriand anymore. I also imagine that returning from Mandos comes with its own grandeur that would set him apart from younger Elves in Middle-earth. It comforts me to know he would still have equals in a world like that, who would not be intimidated by him and with whom he could forge a trusting friendship.

The other thing that works for this ship is the setting with which they could meet. I have said in the Russingon post that the First Age is a painful age to me. Not only that, it's comparatively short; Glorfindel was “Glorfindel of Gondolin” for a mere 400 years (even less) before he died. Meanwhile, assuming he returned to Middle-earth c.a. 1600 in the Second Age (which is the most likely among all “canon” possibilities), the Second Age spanned for a good 3,000+ years; the Third Age, another 3,000+. Lindon under Ereinion Gil-galad’s reign saw the longest peacetime, and Rivendell once made and ruled by Elrond is arguably the most comforting Elven realm ever made. There is simply much more one can do in a setting like this, with characters like this who have so much history—or, in the case of Erestor, potential history. It's that ✨ potential ✨ that I find most compelling, and honestly I have been writing for these two for years and I feel there is still so much one can do and unearth with them.

[astarionass]

im just saying how fucking pissed would viago be if he lost not just one but TWO crows to the dellamortes. TWO separate de riva’s who are so horrendously down bad for two different dellamortes. sorry viago. the comedy here is insane and teia knows it

[naupactus]

"weight shaming" rant under cut bc i came out the shower with thoughts

tbh i dont think skinnyshaming is a real thing. this noon my family told me i looked anorexic as if worried and told me i had to eat more which yeah it was bad and made me feel shitty about my body for a moment (i imagine it wouldve had more of an impact if i wasnt already very secure) but i dont think id equate it to the shaming fat women endure. because these same people who tell me i look sick when they look at my back and my arms also tell me theyre jealous that i have a flatter stomach than them.

the difference is when you get comments about being skinny they're based on a false and shallow sense of worry while comments about being fat are always framed as a personal failure. and thats what makes it "shame" and not just negativity. even though the occasional concern is voiced about health, that's not the kind of comment the majority of the population receives and rather just for people who are visibly obese. and still then, from actually obese people to someone with love handles, it's somehow framed as something sinful that not only impacts you but the people around you even though this is bullshit. there's this underlying hatred of fat people and belief that their weight is tied to recklessness and gluttony that has to be shamed and called out to be fixed, i think

on the other hand what fuels negative comments towards skinny people, from what ive seen and experienced, doesnt come from a place of blame and hatred but from stigmatization of mental illness. the only times ive received negative remarks about my body it's been from people who saw me and saw something a little too similar to a drug addict or a person with an eating disorder, and that triggered a disgust-pity response, even if they know im healthy. the comments never include something about convenience or ugliness, only health. it sometimes also transcends into comparisons to physical illness and poverty, but when these comments are made within a middle class context it's always with the implication that it's self inflicted and something to have pity on.

for negative views of both cases, in women as well as in men, it's i think triggered by the fact that both fail to fit into the social standard for what a healthy person should look like. someone who associates body weight to health, health to beauty and beauty to personal worth, feels the need to subconsciously justify their shock and disgust at seeing someone who deviates that standard by lying to themselves and saying the reason why those people look the way they do must surely be a personal flaw to be treated

[threewaysdivided]

Hey ! i'm a longtime follower of your blog and I've read a lot of your YJ analysis and why the latter seasons totally flopped. I haven't seen you comment on Young Justice Phantoms, although I guess your opinion remains the same. However I'd love to read it one day.

PS : I do think Greg Weisman is a decent writer, but not that good at characterization and desperatly needs editors and not enablers *sigh*

Hey nonnie!

Glad you’ve found my YJ writing critiques interesting. 

The reason why I haven’t commented on Young Justice: Phantoms (or the final Targets comic) is that I haven’t watched it, haven’t read a synopsis and have no plans to ever do so.  My interest in the series went pretty cold as far back as Invasion but at the time I was willing to give the showrunners good faith on their claims that they had a plan to bring things together and that the problems were mostly production issues.  However, after how bad Outsiders was (and having seen similar awfulness from Greg Weisman in other franchises) I don’t have any good faith or trust left to give them.

I talked at length about how Outsiders left the show with no compelling narrative as part of this big Invasion breakdown (grumpier TL:DR version here), but here are the most relevant sections:

In terms of the Central Conflict, the Light are proved utterly correct: by Outsiders the Original Team are callous, hollow husks of their former selves, who have replicated a worse version of the same status quo the Team originally formed in response to. Dick, Kaldur and M’gann’s Anti-Light are a new upper echelon of older heroes who keep even more secrets from the next generations, who exclude the new generations far more strongly from knowing their plans, who give them even less reason to trust or communicate with them, and who do so for less just, less honest and less narratively justified reasons than their own mentors’ understandable (if condescending) desire to shield the proteges from the parts of the Life they may not yet have been equipped to face. Not only that but their constant lying with the intent to control others, and refusal to hold themselves accountable for those actions goes directly against both the League’s stated heroic ideals of “Truth, Liberty and Justice” and Red Tornado’s conclusion that caring is “the human thing to do”. By the end of Outsiders, even the existence of the Team itself is undone; decommissioned into the exact kind of safe training space that the Season 1 characters were desperate for it never to be. […] With Outsiders, any actual narrative set by Young Justice Season 1 is over. By their own standards the Team have lost, and lost entirely.

The meta-narrative of Young Justice Animated is that of a show that started with a promising initial season and strong sense of narrative identity, only to discard every part of that identity.  With Invasion the show discarded its original characterisations, themes and ideologies; replacing them with contradictory and often antithetical ones.  Outsiders would then shed even the surface trappings of its aesthetic (in favour of the more generic “modern DC” art-style) and mission-based narrative structure. ��There is nothing left, save for some superficial proper nouns and call-back references: the textbook definition of an In Name Only Sequel.

I didn’t bother with Phantoms (and am frankly a little artistically insulted by its existence) because I knew it was doomed from the start to be a narrative stillbirth.  Having actively abandoned its original identity, Young Justice was left desperately scrambling to forge a new one, by clawing at the one thing it had left: people’s nostalgic attachment to the Season 1 iterations of the cast.  But this could never work because every season since has been engaged in a performative pretense of not acknowledging the character-breaking contradictions and hypocrisies forced upon the original cast by the poor writing decisions.  Phantoms would have to thread an impossible needle: wanting to be about the “journey” of the original cast for nostalgia reasons, while not being able to acknowledge that the last two seasons (and attaché comics) have resulted in all of them either actively failing or being tragically soft-locked out of their explicit character arcs without breaking that kayfabe of performative ignorance.  And, in trying to tell a story without engaging with that story's content or how broken it had become, what would they have left but to fall back yet again on canonical filler, sidequests and references held loosely together by contrivance? 

It could only ever be a zombie-fic of itself: having long-since concluded or abandoned any remaining character or plot threads, driven forward solely by the stream-of-consciousness compulsive-writing of a production team desperate to remain present, relevant and profitable.  And from the feedback I’ve heard from the general community and fandom friends who kept watching, it seems like Phantoms did indeed pull down the curtain on that empty, directionless, hollow-automaton-filled narrative for a lot of people.

As for Greg Weisman himself, while I agree that he is a particularly poor character-writer, I will respectfully but firmly disagree that he’s otherwise decent.  I think the fact that we have to caveat “he’s a decent writer” with the condition “so long as he’s surrounded by a team of strong editors and directors to keep him from being awful” kind of reveals that he isn’t.   I also don’t really accept the premise that the main fault lies with the people around him for not stopping that.  They certainly haven’t helped but he’s a grown adult who can make his own decisions. Enablers don’t generally induce behaviours; they simply amplify or become complicit in the behaviours that are already there.

In the video Plagiarism and You(tube), Hbomberguy did a great job of laying out the difference between “honest mistakes” – which can be easily cleared up by good-faith apologies and explanations – and “dishonest behaviour” – where the person(s) is aware that what they are doing is not appropriate and falls back on reputation-protecting deflections and “non-apologies” to avoid consequences when caught.  Weisman would not so-frequently disrespect his colleagues’ work with contradictions, or write patterns of misogyny, queerphobia, casual racism/ableism and abuse apologism into his stories if he did not fundamentally feel entitled to do so, was not comfortable and in agreement with those beliefs, or did not think he could get away with it.  And the way he has routinely responded to even gentle, good-faith comments by fans expressing frustration/confusion with inconsistent characterisation/structure indicates someone who knows he has done the wrong thing but resents being questioned or held accountable.  And then we see him continuing the same behaviours.  A “decent writer” should not need an editor to hold their hand and explain why directly contracting explicitly-stated characterisation is bad practice.  A “good ally” should not need someone to tell them that disproportionately subjecting queer/non-white characters to shock-value violence, writing minority characters to be dirty/dangerous/less valid in their identities, erasing/demonising/misgendering AFAB trans and bisexual identities, rewriting strong female characters to need motherhood or men to “tell them who they are”, writing gay men to be secretly misogynistic/racist, and framing victims as being equally responsible for their abuse is offensive.  All of which he has either directly done or tacitly allowed under his lead.  Multiple times.  Across multiple series.

These are not isolated incidents of “good-faith mistakes” from a newcomer learning the ropes (if they were, it wouldn’t bother me like this).  Weisman has had multiple seasons - multiple franchises even - and decades to show himself to be the kind of sincere ally and visionary artist of integrity that myself and his fans wanted him to be… and that he has so benefited from presenting himself as.  He has chosen not to. Say what you want about their stories, but you can’t claim that marginalised creators like ND Stevenson, Rebecca Sugar, Dana Terrace and allies like Neil Gaiman didn’t push back hard against their own publishers and make a lot of careful compromises in order to tell those stories in a way they felt was respectful. Weisman is in a very privileged position, with a resume that carries a decent amount of clout. He could have held himself to the creative standards he publicly expresses; could have worked improve his craft, could have examined his own biases and actually learned from the communities his stories speak about/over.  But he didn’t – because obviously it's easier and more comfortable to keep being lazy, keep relying on his colleagues to carry him, to not question his own biases/privileges and then lie when caught.  And with the money he makes, and all the second chances and new jobs he keeps getting handed, what incentive does he have to change that behaviour? 

So, personally I don’t buy his attempts to position himself as an UwU Nice Guy Ally whose haters are taking him out of context and whose nasty publishers keep forcing him to do incoherent bigotry.  He’s a grown-up, who can own his own behaviour.  And, even with a generous reading, this is at best the behaviour of a fair-weather sell-out who is willing to abandon his principles at the slightest hint of pressure from above.  That is not what respect looks like.  I wanted to give him good faith, but in light of all this, I find I can no longer trust him to keep his word or be honest about his intentions.

This is kind of the other reason why I choose not to support or engage with YJ Phantoms (or the revival in general): on top of being utterly disinterested, I just don’t want to incentivise this kind of creative behaviour with more money or attention.  I also can’t ignore what could be a pattern where Weisman makes grand promises that he likely never has a plan or intent to fulfill, then deliberately leaves holes/timeskips/inconsistencies in his narratives in order to generate ongoing demand for separate-purchase side content which promises to “fill those gaps”… but which never does because there isn’t actually a plan to facilitate that (thus creating an endless cycle of demand and profit).  To me that cuts a little too close to the potential for a privileged creator to be exploiting their clout and the good-faith belief of their fanbase in order to grift those fans out of their time and money.  I don’t find that acceptable.

So, yeah.  Not to deploy the GIF again but:

It'll be a big, fat doughnut on YJ Phantoms content from me 🍩. Sorry!

[impetuous-impulse]

Wellingtons Sieg: Aesthetically Pleasing or Populist Potboiler?

This is a post responding to @empirearchives on this question: "Was Wellington’s Victory popular in Vienna because of the quality of the music itself or because of the political context (Austrians celebrating the defeat of Napoleon)?” I examine the background of Wellington's Victory and its audiences in reference to Beethoven’s heroic aesthetic and in comparison to the Eroica. In my final paragraph, I also attempt to engage with this post by @diagnosed-anxiety-disorder. (Hi! I love your enthusiasm for classical music and Napoleonic history! It’s just that Idk how to socially interact djflskdjf,,,) WARNING: LONG.

To answer the question, Wellington's Victory—or, in German, Wellingtons Sieg—was entangled with its political context in the outset, so judging its popularity by separating its context from its aesthetic qualities is impossible. Let me touch on the political and aesthetic qualities of the piece in turn.

Wellingtons Sieg was comissioned by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (aka. the guy who gave Beethoven his ear trumpets) for celebrating Wellington's success in the Battle of Vittoria. It was, further, made to be played on Mälzel's panharmonicon, which was a mechanical orchestra based off of barrel organ technology. At the very same time, real barrel organists would have been in the streets playing lowbrow pieces that celebrated Wellington, so the piece had common themes with the popular music of the day. Thus it is unsurprising that Beethoven wrote Wellingtons Sieg was "nothing but an occasional piece" [nichts als ein Gelegenheitsstück], but he did not mean it pejoratively; he was acknowledging its historicity.

When discussing musical merit, the arbiter of a piece's aesthetic qualities are always its audiences. Austria in 1813 was a police state that censored anti-Royalist sentiments and lauded pro-Royalist ones, so Wellingtons Sieg, commemorating an Austrian ally's victory, would have inavariably been well-received in terms of aesthetics and political content. Laura Turnbridge, in chapter six of Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces (2020), points out that Wellingtons Sieg "premiered in the University Hall on 8 December 1813, at a charity concert in aid of Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in the recent Battle of Hanau.” Turnbridge continues:

Wellingtons Sieg was enthusiastically received and played again and again, including at no fewer than five benefit concerts in which Beethoven participated, on 2 January, 27 February, 29 November, 2 December and 25 December 1814. At the first of these, at the Großer Redoutensaal, Beethoven played up the piece’s spectacular potential by having the French and British bands advance towards each other down long corridors on either side of the hall. The hall seated up to a thousand people and the orchestra was unusually large for these concerts, numbering 120 players, an aspect that Beethoven noted with glee in his diaries [...]. Beethoven attempted to add a further patriotic spin to the January concert, trying to arrange for a statue of the Kaiser, which stood in the hall, to be revealed from behind a curtain on being summoned by Zeus in his incidental music for Die Ruinen von Athen (The Ruins of Athens). The Russian Emperor Alexander and other leaders were invited to attend his academy on 29 November, which also included the Seventh Symphony and a new cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick [...].

The sovereigns and soldiers that Wellingtons Sieg was made for certainly loved its aesthetic qualities, but said qualities had different qualifiers to our aesthetic preferences of Western art music today. This means the overtly political nature of Wellingtons Sieg makes it impossible to be judged by modern aesthetics. Nevertheless, it cannot be said Wellingtons Sieg was only popular with the public, for it was appreciated for its artistry, or at least for the composer behind it. In these contexts, Beethoven was lionised as much as Wellington, the subject of his piece. The following is from Nicolas Mathew, in his 2006 article "History under Erasure: Wellingtons Sieg, the Congress of Vienna, and the Ruination of Beethoven's Heroic Style”:

Shortly after attending the Akademie on 2 January 1814 while in Vienna, the Romantic poet and Beethoven fanatic Clemens Brentano, brother of Beethoven's friend and correspondent Bettina, sent his hero the “Vier Lieder von Beethoven an sich selbst" (Four Beethoven Songs to the Composer Himself) and an effusive, barely coherent covering letter. The third poem resounds with a confluence of archaic musical and military imagery, taking the transposition of Beethoven and Wellington, Leyer und Schwert [lyre and sword], as its central conceit. "Du hast die Schlacht geschlagen, Ich habe die Schlacht getont" (You have fought the battle, I have set the battle to music), it begins, eventually reaching this exhortative finale: Die Rosse entspann' ich dem Wagen Triumpf! auf Tonen getragen, Zieht mein Held ein, der Ewigkeit Pforten Rufen in meinen Akkorden, Wellington, Viktoria! Beethoven! Gloria! [I slacken my steeds from the chariot Triumph! Carried upon tones, my hero moves into the Gates of Eternity Summoned in my chords, Wellington, Victoria! Beethoven! Gloria! ]

There was more fanboying, but you get the idea. Nor was the popularity of Wellingtons Sieg limited to the Congress of Vienna—it was celebrated long after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1824, the highbrow musicians and music lovers who begged the increasingly reclusive Beethoven to put on a concert in Vienna (to combat the dominance of populist Italian opera) referenced only one of his compositions: "For years, ever since the thunders of the Victory at Vittoria ceased to reverberate, we have waited and hoped to see you distribute new gifts from the fullness of your riches to the circle of your friends.” Beethoven was evidently comfortable with the popularity his ode to Wellington’s victory earned, as he alludes to the piece when writing to Count Franz Brunsvik on 13 February 1814 about the progress of war: "no doubt you are delighted about all the victories—and mine also.” It is implicit that Wellington’s victory is also Beethoven’s triumph—while Beethoven's heroic image was constructed in Napoleon's Eroica, his heroic credentials are equally prominent in Wellington’s Sieg. 

To me, the Eroica and Wellingtons Sieg are two articulations of the same heroic theme (regardless of how “bad” they sound). A. B. Marx, a Berlin critic that Beethoven admired, compared both works in a dialectical analysis. Aside from defending the unsutble tone painting of Wellingtons Sieg, he posited that Wellingtons Sieg was an external realisation of the internal Kampf-und-Sieg of the Eroica—two sides of the same coin. As Mathew puts it,

Wellingtons Sieg—with its fanfares and marches, its battle, its realism, its extrinsic historical derivation, its sheer explicitness—offers a perspective on the poetic content of the Eroica. By turning the Eroica toward the world—by providing a concrete realization of its guiding poetic idea, as Marx would have it—Wellingtons Sieg becomes a hermeneutic key, a kind of musical exegesis.

While Marx toned down the narrative foiling of the Eroica and Wellingtons Sieg in a later biography of Beethoven, he cannot deny that both works spring from the same heroic seed—Beethoven’s struggle-and-victory model of composition. Their popularity as of 1813 in large part came from its famous composer, whose name made it part of the Viennese repertoire. From an artistic perspective, rather than being partial to either side of the political conflict, Beethoven's heroic approach to music simply found the next Great Man to eulogise. In doing so, he transcended the “greatness” of both his subjects, a greatness that is only beginning to be deconstructed by scholarship.

It was only when the Napoleonic era grew increasingly distant that Wellingtons Sieg was seen as problematic by critics. Mathew points out that while there were mixed responses to the piece, it was a more than decade later that "contemporary critical misgivings about Beethoven's imitative music prompted a fully argued polemic against Wellingtons Sieg" (notably, Gottfried Weber's 1825 review of it in his journal Cäcilia, who Beethoven responded to with his profanity-laden quote). Weber’s opinion shaped musicology’s indictment of Wellingtons Sieg. It was certainly aesthetically pleasing to the shell-shocked veterans of 1813, and continued to delight highbrow and lowbrow audiences until political and musicological circumstances pushed it into obscurity. Finally, let’s face it—Wellingtons Sieg simply didn’t fit the image of apolitical, isolated artistry that Beethoven enthusiasts wanted to elevate him to, by conveniently forgetting that Beethoven had to eat too.

Serious analysis aside, here’s a hot take: I think Napoleon would have enjoyed Wellingtons Sieg a lot more than Beethoven’s famous works. According to the article @empirearchives has linked for us (a good starter guide), that man’s music taste was so out of line with what we think is the Western canon today! Paisiello certainly isn’t being revered as the Italian genius of the 1790s by the general public. And which average classical music enthusiast has heard of Jean François Le Sueur, much less broadcasted the music of Napoleon’s coronation on the radio? The musical hegemony of Beethoven, apparent sympathiser of Napoleon, has ironically shoved the pleasant, simple melodies and the opera that Napoleon liked out of the spotlight. And that was exactly the type of music a great number of Beethoven’s contemporaries liked—give Napoleon catchy motifs based on war marches, easy melodies, and some tone-painting, and he’s a happy audience.

I hope my response isn't too confusing and that it shed some light on the question. If you want any further sources or proper citations, please ask and I will reply accordingly!

[hecatesbroom]

Thinking about how the combination of comedy and drama works so well when done right, because humour is an intrinsic part of human connection and when we laugh with a character, we'll be all the more likely to cry with them too. I think humour plays into a part of our connection to characters that "pure" drama simply can't, and it can make all the difference during emotionally charged scenes

[tamaharu]

get me out of my beautiful mind i need to do homework !!