#all the characters are really well written with their own complicated motivations and goals

[thevalleyisjolly]

Andor is so fucking good, the best Star Wars media since the original series in my opinion.

[ultfreakme]

What makes me more angry about the whole "Jon needs to be a child again" is that it doesn't really make any sense to do that now, like?????? how would that even work? he is almost 18 now, he has a boyfriend, that would be super creepy, and the most annoying part is that this is more about Damian than it is about Jon as a character, I'm so fed up with Damian fans, I'm sorry guys, but DC is not going to make Damian queer and make him date Jon, it's not happening, and I would love if DC stopped making this one shots stories of them in the past, it only fuels this people, It's time to make stories of them in the present, My dream story is to have a double date of JonJay and Damian and his girlfriend, I think it would be super fun.

Yessss say it!! This is all so true. Jon being aged down is more about Damian than Jon. Jon gets nothing out of being younger, all of his plots as a 10 year old was dependent on Damian or Clois. He never had a solo story like Damian back then, there was never enough investment in him alone, and frankly he wasn't bringing anything new to the table despite being the kid of a superhero like Superman, his backstory and motivation were just Clark's and his interest in journalism was all Lois(Which btw, never got utilized well so what was the point?). Now though, he's carrying two solos and has a character arc and supporting cast that is specific to Jon. His goals for being Superman are more complicated than "dad's doing it so I'll do it".

Controversial; I don't think people who want Jon aged down are fans of Jon as an individual character. When they do talk about him, they never mention the conflicts he has on his own(Goldie the cat dying, Eradicator & General Zod outright calling him and abomination, being seen as a future threat and weapon) He wasn't some chipper sweet sunshine baby all the time who 'helped heal' Damian amd is the light of his life or whatever. He was just as argumentative as Damian and they were bickering kids. I think the only part people miss is his dialogue with Damian. Jon genuinely loves Jay and they're compatible, Jay's literally made for Jon and they work well.

I wish they'd stop with the kid Jon stories too, the only one that I enjoyed was the Belle Reve one, because it showed exploration of his queerness a little and his introduction to it. Otherwise, the rest are pointless and are reiterating things we already know. Chances of Damian being queer are next to nothing, he's never had any queer coding intentions by his writers(unlike the other Robins, maybe not Duke, I don't think he's been written with queer coding either). On top of that, you can't have Superman dating a middle schooler.

And yeah Damian and Jon are still friends. This time, I think they're better, proper friends. Back then all they did was argue, now they're having deeper, meaningful conversations and helping each other's missions. We see them have conflicting views; Damian saying Jon being Superman is inevitable when Jon had talked about his hesitance as a Super, Damian and Jon disagreeing on how to approach facing the dark army in dark crisis).

I think right now, Jon's the most interesting he's ever been. I would really love a double date issue too! Sorta like a homage to batcat and clois's double date issue would be cute.

[burinazar]

under the cut, many words of an Ebil pondering whether it’s writing Wazukyan well or might be flanderizing the character by making him Care Too Much, in an attempt to overcompensate against readings where he Doesn’t Care At all:

i spent most of my initial viewing of s2 not particularly trying to understand what Wazukyan was 'really up to' as far as the motivations behind his actions bc i was too busy worrying about The Other Two Sages (as points of comparisons, i loved Vueko from episode one and liked Belaf from the same point but didn’t glom on to him SO hard until after ep7/8 and now I love them both so excessively much that it’s ridiculous.) But after finishing it and looking at the story as a whole it became clear analysis of that character was really rewarding in the context of the other ones i already liked, and now that i have/do try to put effort into 'getting’ him and became more interested in depicting the character as a result...lately I’ve become concerned that I risk adding to Boring Silly Readings Of Him. 

there’s two interpretation that i think are not very interesting: ‘common fan take #1: he’s completely ruthless and uncaring, gives zero craps about Vueko, Belaf, Irumyuui, and likely the rest of the Ganja-tai, and only prioritizes his own wish to continue the journey’ (because this is simply not that interesting to think about and risks turning him into Bondrewd 2.0; though i also feel it is contradicted by some canon, but there is room for discussion there. feel free to throw an ask or message my way if this piques your interest or you’d like to Argue Politely over it) and ‘common fan take #2: LOL Wazuchad did Literally Nothing Wrong’ (this is mostly an attitude thing, and is distinct from ‘after consideration of the situation I personally believe his actions were justified’ or something. what i mean is people who meme about ‘Wazuchad’ are generally sweeping away the idea that there might have been any moral consideration to make at all and that is, again, boring. the entire arcs of all four characters (five actually, Fau too) fall apart as compelling if you aren’t even willing to consider the questions involved or accord any validity to not wanting Irumyuui to suffer.) 

Readings i think are interesting tend to deviate from both of these either a little or a lot by adding complexity to how one views his goals, actions, and motivations, so that even if they may still land in the general category of ‘bad guy and did an indefensibly bad thing’ or ‘not a bad guy, did a bad thing but for compelling and human reasons’, he hasn’t been totally condemned or totally absolved on the way to either conclusion. Both of the flatter readings obfuscate the possibility he harbored genuine fondness for the other characters, and that’s what I want to push back on. I especially like thinking he cared about them a lot but this was counterbalanced by the need to save the rest of the crew (I always bring this up but it’s way too easy to forget 90% of the Ganja were already dead and drowned when they hit the Abyss, he can’t not have had thoughts about that?) and, of course, also his own ambition and desire (and yet in my reading his ambition was directly linked to the idea of a home for his people, not merely himself; the sense of homesickness and desire to journey on that Wazukyan articulates seems to be thematically linked to all of the characters in Ganja and be a cousin to the desire to see what’s at the bottom of the Abyss that most of the entire show’s cast feels). It’s complicated and sad and great. 

BUT LIKE. 

i’m afraid of accidentally creating  ‘boring reductivist fanon #3′ if my depiction accords TOO charitable an interpretation to the guy and paints too rosy a picture of how much he cared about the others. 

Like am I going too far in the other direction when I make him goofy and silly and a bit bumbling and genuinely caring, especially if I haven’t written all caps front and center in the same piece of fanwork that I understand the character has notably dark aspects to his actions and interactions with the others and the grim things his choices and his influence on them others’ choices ultimately lead to?

i don’t want to erase that he did stuff that makes your blood run cold, I just think it’s compelling to read the character as someone who did that while being very human and caring a lot about the others in the situation, because that’s a lot more interesting. I’m wrestling with this bc in the thing I want to finish next Vueko is thinking about how he was like a surrogate guardian to her at points in her life, and since it’s Vueko she obviously hasn’t forgotten anything he did towards the end of their time together and what it meant for her and her family and that comes up directly afterwards but I feel like someone could think ‘what is this story even doing, what is this apologism and flattening of Waz into some kind of friendly grandpa’. As much as I don’t want to see people Bondrewd him or Wazuchad him, I don’t want to Friendly Bumbling Grandpa him, which risks being boring and reductive in its own way. Alright that’s all, just wanted to ramble, input and comments from other san ken likers welcome tho.

[linagram]

Hi, hi, Lina! I read your recent post and I'm going to share my knowledge of enneagram with you to try and understand your characters and their personality better. So please don't take this in a demeaning way! At least we both get to learn something new!

Firstly, an instinctual variant can be written like this: (sp/so) This means that self-preservation is the most dominant instinctual variant of that person's enneagram type, and social is actually the least dominant variant. So if Aimi's self-preservation instinct is non-existent for example, her instinctual variant should look like this: (so/sp) instead of (so/sx) like what you wrote. Just pointing that out for you! /gen

3w4 is very accurate for Akio, I must say. But his instinctual variant... If I remember correctly, a self-preservation 3 is focused on accomplishing goals and material success for their own sense of security. They have an ideal version of themself in their head, and they're constantly working towards that ideal. A social 3 is also prioritizes success, but mostly out of a desire for others to admire them. Basically, they do it for social status. A sexual 3 is less concerned with social status, but still strives to be successful in order to project an attractive image of themselves. They also focus more on their personal relationships and seek to feel wanted by their loved ones. All 3 of them actually seem to fit Akio quite well, so hopefully this can help you to type him better? (Also, just wanted to add that the sexual 4 has a tendency to lock onto someone they perceive as "better" than them and aim towards "dethroning" them somehow. This has me thinking that Akio should actually have his sexual variant higher in his typing. But you know him best. Maybe this website can help you.)

Also, this ask is getting really long, so I'll send you more stuff on the other characters when I have time. :00 Tell me what you think!

OHHH I SEE SHSJSKSSK again, i really don't know much about mbti and enneagrams this is what i get for being an astrology girlie so i kinda thought that you're supposed to write, like, their two main instincts like that :'D i'll fix that when i have the time!

and yeah, about akio, all those types sound a lot like him, his motivation is actually surprisingly complicated, since it's a mix of wanting to protect himself, accomplish his goals, keep his social status and look better in the eyes of others. i like to make fun of him for being a silly boy with a god complex who killed someone only because they were more popular than him, but really, his reasons are actually deeper than that.

thank you sm for sending this, i think I'm starting to understand this whole thing a bit better!

[daysincetheindefinatehiatus]

Ok ok ok I gotta pitch Hello From the Hallowoods or else I will throw up. Do you understand?

If you like, horror, and are queer, this is honestly a great podcast for you.

The story is told to you by a god, who’s partner made humanity and is now dead. His heart is somewhere up north in the ice caps essentially bringing humanity closer to their own doom than they were naturally bringing themselves. The world is ending but this god, called Nikignik doesn’t want the world to end because as insignificant as humans might be to his kind, they were the last thing his partner made. A good part of the overall story, while not about Nikignik is also still tied into him deciding to not just be a passive observer of what’s going on, into someone who takes action to get what he wants. He essentially goes from someone documenting human existence to in small ways, trying to preserve it.

Every night, Nikignik tells us dreamers 3 stories from the perspective of a large scoop of characters. As well as an interruption from your friendly neighborhood evil corporation trying to hasten the end of the world for profit.This is where things get complicated, especially in the beginning, because although; everyone’s story is connected in the big picture, thats not immediately obvious in the first few episodes. Also each characters has their own personalities, goals and motivations. Even the characters you think are just one off tend to be expanded on later. In the beginning I really do just recommend choosing like one character to pay special attention too (tm).

This is the aspect though that also provides a whole hell of a lot of diversity, and you can tell that Mx. Wellmen notices a gap in said diversity, they tend to try to remedy it as best they can in realistic ways that don’t hinder the show in any way. A lot of the shows diversity is also intersectional too, which is always good to see.

You get elder crossbow wielding lesbians, a hijabiwoman who also does magic, witches who are various flavors of queer including but not limited to gender-fluid, aromantic and werewolf (?). There’s a non-binary Frankenstein’s monster and a transmasc ghost too (they’re my favorites) as well as an absolutely lovely amount of found family. You also get the undead learning how to read!

The villains also tend to be compelling in really personal ways. You get a lot of religious zealots thinking that the end times are near and God is testing his creations so they must do their best to rid the world of sinners, and monsters, even at the expense of their own children. You also get evil corporations motivated to greed. This also means that when the bad guys are defeated, it’s extremely cathartic. Mx. Wellmen also does a great job writing religious trauma, and extremism.

Death, even of evil characters doesn’t get written off as trivial either. It’s never just a way to move the plot along. It does deeply effect the other character’s emotions, actions and goals. You really can see the way it affects them throughout the rest of the show.

You can also normally expect for horror podcasts to lean rather hard into the doom and gloom aspect of the end of the world, and while that does happen for sure, there’s also this sorta underlying twinge of hope to it. Like yeah, things as they are currently are certainly are ending, but that doesn’t mean that humanity can’t rebuild and make things better on a systemic level.

For a horror podcast it is just remarkably hopeful in a way that is super amazing for my dumbass brain to make the stupid happy chemicals instead of wanting to die and feeling like the world is gonna end all the time. There is a good deal of social commentary in it, but never in a way that makes the dreamers feel like nothing we do, in the pre apocalypse world matters.

Beyond the plethora of amazing representation for LGBT, poc, and disabled communities. There’s also just cool stuff for your avid horror fans. We’ve got references to classic literature out the wazoo. We got Frankenstein, we got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: we got the Monday’s child reference. We get eerie twins and ghosts. It’s just… amazing.

To top it all off, the podcast doesn’t have ads. Every now and then Mx. Wellmen will shout out other podcasts, usually when their cast voices for hallowoods show as a treat, but those aren’t payed for slots. Mx. Wellmen is entirely funded by their fans, and they create the entire show from writing to producing. It’s truly amazing that the quality of this show is as good as it is, when it’s being made in its entirety by 1 person, and funded by the audience.

I just love this show so much. Go listen to it before I cry about it.

My favourite way of choosing podcast to listen to is seeing people being batshit crazy, extremely enthusiastic, writing serious interpretations and silly posts about it, posting fanart, etc.

So, audio drama folks, please reblog this and write me some amazing stuff about your favourite podcasts. It can be honest recommendation! Maybe some blorbo thoughts about your fav character! Or deep reflection about themes and motifs! Whatever you would like to share with someone but didn’t have a chance to. Don’t worry about me knowing what you talking about, just pure your little podcast heart for me, pretty please. (And of course as always official podcast accounts are welcome to join!)

[myfanficreviews]

Here's Looking at You Kid - Review

Author: MesserMoon Platform: Ao3 Fandom: Harry potter (Golden trio era)

Main ships: George Weasley/Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Genre (personal opinion): Smut, Hurt/comfort Status: non-complete Current chapters: 12/?? Total word count: 126,730

WARNINGS: Explicit smut, PTSD and I'm pretty sure homophobia and transphobia (Blaise is trans FTM)

Summary (SOME SPOILERS): The first part of fanfiction follows George Weasley and a few other characters after the war is over, George Is struggling to deal with his own grief. He meets Blaise at a gay bar after accidentally wandering in and they work towards becoming friends and eventually lovers, the fanfiction then shifts to focus more on Harry and Malfoy. The two have unresolved feelings and their piece of the story mostly explores those feelings. The two most recent chapters have been switching between Blaise and George's story and Malfoy and Harry's.

Total rating + personal opinions: 10/10 rating, I love this fanfic so much and I'm excited about the next chapter. There is a reference to Choices by the same author within this story and I liked that connection, it did give me a good amount of tears I won't lie. The characters are written really well, they all have their complicated trauma, motivation and goals set out very well and I enjoy reading stories whose characters feel like they could be real. The author does an amazing job of showing grief and loss in different people and how they each cope with it and honestly this is one of my favourite fanfictions.

Let me know if I missed anything from this review and if you like you can DM me a fanfic you think I should read, I won't read any Non-con or pedophilia and I may be uncomfortable with other stuff.

[the-crimson]

With Dream’s new lore video I hope people will stop trying to excuse c!Dream’s actions or calling him “morally gray”. This boi is evil. Full stop. And you know what I LOVE THAT for him. This is a post I’d been considering making for a while and the new lore drop gave me the motivation.

All discussion about the character not the content creator.

The Dream SMP is a story filled to the brim with morally gray protagonists and antagonists who are the heroes of their own stories. That is awesome and gives for a lot of really in depth discussions between the fans and interesting conflicts between the characters. However, when creating a narrative like this with so many morally gray characters, there is one plot device that is necessary to highlight just how grey these characters are: A Pure Evil Villain. Which is the role that Dream has grown to fulfill after Shlatt hit the bucket.

Now, I’m going to say this here. Watching Dream be evil and run around the server causing chaos is my favorite thing. It’s the same reason why people watch Death Note or enjoy classical Disney Villains. Sometimes... watching fictional characters do unapologetic evil... is fun.

What gets unfun is when people try to justify his actions or call him “morally grey”. No. He isn’t. He is my evil little meow meow who enjoys committing war crimes. You are allowed to enjoy watching fictional villains do their villainy. A lot of villains are written specifically so that the audience is enthralled by them and enjoy watching them reap chaos- but you are not supposed to root for them or justify their actions (unless the heroes are really insufferable lol)

In my mind, Dream is equivalent to a classical Disney renaissance villain. He certainly has the villainous pinash, charisma, and queer coding for it. These villains are extremely enjoyable and have a wonderful stage presence but in the end, you can’t wait for them to hit that third act breakdown and fall apart.

All the apologists trying to justify his actions are missing the point of Dream as a character. He, a pure evil villain, is meant to highlight how morally gray everyone else is. Every single person on the server has committed war crimes and hurt other people so how do you determine who is good and who is bad? Well, you put them up against someone who consistently and unapologetically abuses, manipulates, tortures, and straight up murders people for his own goals with no tragic backstory or sympathetic motivation in sight.

That is why you have duos like Azula and Ozai in ATLA or Hordak and Hord Prime in SPOP. You have an extremely complicated and morally gray villain working right next to a pure evil villain to highlight just how complex one is, and how evil the other is. In the case of the dsmp, that duo has changed over time but right now it seems to be Punz and Dream. Punz, a morally gray character who we have seen waver but remains loyal to Dream and his goals.

In the end, Dream is my favorite* character because he is a pure evil villain and that is incredibly FUN to watch. Stop worrying about morality and sit back to enjoy the ride.

*I love many of the characters equally but evil Dream squeaks ahead by a sliver because he is just so fun to watch and I can’t wait to see what fucked up evil thing he does next.

[13eyond13]

Sooo, what's your opinion on the way Death Note shows interaction between characters?

I mean, I was thinking about how we have very little (or none at all, depends on how you look at this) relationship development between Light in L in the manga, although both L and Light are very interesting well-written main characters, and they literally are written to be equals. Also, they had very interesting situations and scenes together (i mean, they were chained to each other for several month, have you seen characters in this situation before??), but Ohba just ignored the potential, i guess??

Now that I've mentioned it, he kinda ignored all the relationships, right? The only relationships we are shown is one between Misa and Light (which is one-sided and also doesn't have any development so it's not that interesting 😐), Rem and Misa (which goes out of nowhere and feels like not a relationship but a way to move the plot forward, because Ohba needed motivation for Rem to kill L) and i guess between Light and Souichiro (which would have been very interesting to investigate in terms of Light growing up with such father and thus having similar understanding of what good and evil is, but in one of the interviews Ohba literally says that Light is evil and Souichiro is good, so we don't understand how Light and Souichiro ended up so different, if they are a father and a son :/)

It looks like Ohba tried very hard not to make Death Note about characters themselves, but about investigation instead? Because all the characters don't look like human beings — they look like chess pieces. Yeah, they interact on the chess board sometimes, but they don't feel anything for each other, because in the end their goal is to win the game, even if they have different motivations.

I think a great role also played Ohba's desire to make Light as unlikable as possible. He literally gives him no good qualities, apart from intellect and charisma. I guess he did it because he didn't want us to question the morality of justice system, because it's really easy to hate/dislike Kira and his actions when we know that irl Light is a dork. And if the author showed Light caring about someone or falling in love with someone, we would like him more.

I hope I was successful in expressing my thoughts. Hope you give some thoughts on this matter :)

Hello!

I think that Ohba has some major strengths as a writer, and when he focuses on those strengths and avoids being lazy or clichéd he writes well. Death Note seems to be the best example of him focusing on his strengths and avoiding his weaknesses. I think he's great at coming up with well-structured and organized fast-paced plots, and adhering to his own world-building/complicated rules. He's seemingly passionate about exploring specific aspects of Japanese culture and society that he finds interesting, great at writing haughty privileged people, and he is excellent at being sly, cynical, dark-humoured, silly, and cruelly ironic. He seems to value emotional detachment as both a writer and in his own characters, and though I think it can be a strength at times (like when it comes to how ruthlessly he will do away with his beloved characters to further the DN plot in interesting ways), it also seems like he struggles to depict tender and vulnerable and kind interactions. Most of them I've seen in his other manga series do not feel believable or compelling in the same way the cold and cruel and sarcastic ones that normally populate his works do. Especially when it involves female characters and genuine romance, as I think he looks down on women in real life and struggles to empathize with them and write them as well as he writes men. The most heartfelt mutual attachments we see in DN are probably amongst the Yagamis and the task force, and I'd guess that Ohba is perhaps more comfortable with depicting familial love and devotion to work and to colleagues than something like a reciprocal romance or nuanced friendship. I find that even in his other series like Bakuman and Platinum End the development between characters always feels a bit unnatural and sudden if characters develop positive emotions and attachments to other ones. Like they are "leveling up" in a video game in an abrupt/mechanical sort of way simply to benefit a new development in the plot, or to create a new motivation. I know it's pretty difficult to write stuff like relationship development naturally, and that he wasn't really concerned with writing a personal drama as his main focus in this series so much as showing how far Light would go to achieve his vision of a new world. That said, I think the interactions between characters in DN are still often emotionally compelling to fans because a lot of what's going on between the characters is ambiguous, layered, tense, and intentionally left up for interpretation and speculation. There is so much you can pick up just from watching their mannerisms and expressions and guessing about their emotions and true motives alongside what you can get from what the characters explicitly say and do. But you're right, it's definitely a fictional world that leaves me feeling a little starved for human connection and warmth after living in it for a long time. If it didn't work so well with the pessimistic, ironic tone of the story I would definitely find it more offputting and dissatisfying than I do.

[livingbythewords]

I’d like to add my two cents as well.

I also had a problem with writing Scott, at least I though I’m gonna have before I decided to write him - until I really sat down and put myself in his shoes and tried to see the world through his eyes. Then I realized he is actually as far from bland and uninteresting as one can be. On the contrary.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to focus on Stiles with his witty one-liners and over-the-top energy, because in the show he is written with very thick and broad strokes. He is also an extrovert, and they are always easier to write. Same with Derek - there’s nothing more common in fiction than dark, brooding character with traumatic past, which is often put against the extrovert and forced to communicate with him through the “witty” banter. In this matter, Sterek as a dynamic is the most generic thing in fiction and demands almost zero effort, at least in terms of popularity within fandom.

With Scott it’s different, because he is an introvert, and most of his thought process takes place in his inner world. Just because a character doesn’t communicate with banter (which is often a disguise for being openly mean) it doesn’t matter they don’t struggle, or don’t have difficult decisions to make. it’s not true that Scott doesn’t make hard choices; on the contrary, he has to make hard choices in almost every episode, and unlike Stiles, he doesn’t settle for easy solutions - because that’s what thinking in black and white means. If Scott was thinking in black and white, we wouldn’t have a six-season show, because he would either kill or let others kill everyone who was an obstacle to his goals (like his relationship with Allison).

We don’t see much of Scott making decisions or his thought process, because that would involve watching a lot of Scott sitting in his room and thinking, and that wouldn’t make a very good show. But his development and his growth was shown beautifully in seasons 5 and 6, where at first he was desperate and overwhelmed by his world crumbling around him and his friends abandoning him - and STILL did the right thing in the end - and then he grew to be a real leader, with his former antagonists and enemies following him to fight the war which he worked hard to be as bloodless as possible.

To be a good person in a bad world full of evil people will always be much harder and therefore much more interesting than being a villain who only wants to hurt people for their own selfish needs. Especially when a good person questions himself all the time, which Scott often does - it’s a huge part of his personality. Bad people don’t consider themselves bad; Scott always asks himself, did I make the right choice? was it the right thing to do? was it the right decision? what if people get hurt because of me? It’s something that we don’t see with Peter, or Derek, or even Stiles or Sheriff Stilinski.

Scott has also a big sacrificial streak, which we can argue is a trait that can be both good or bad, depending on the perspective. He is always ready to sacrifice his own well-being or even life for the good of his friends, but he has to be careful not to become a martyr. That’s also a great motive to play with when writing Scott.

Scott is a great and complicated character with rich inner life, and to write him one cannot choose an easy path. You need to make an effort - and if you do and manage to give his character justice, it means you are a good writer.

Genuinely struggling to write Scott. He's just such a bland character like a piece of white bread. An unseasoned chicken breast. Pisses me off

I found every character's voice except Scott's. Every time I write him speak I immediately want to reach through my screen and bonk him on the head like shut UP. Maybe that's because he's an antagonist (who's actually a protagonist bc of the unreliable narrator and the moral greyness of the plot) but still, he's so frustrating.

Fellow writers, how do you write Scott? What's he like in your fics? How do you like to portray him? Or how do you like to read him?

[emilyoracle]

@onmywaytobe #this btw is why anything past a first draft is so intimidating#however I do think I’m decent at planning out the development ahead of time?? idk#i hate the idea of a second draft or third draft#i hate the idea of rewriting unless it’s really bad#the last couple steps are fine I’m good at line editing and copy editing#but the development is what’s so intimidating to me

@froggyfroo #incredibly based post#this is fenuinely something ive been struggling with - I've never really got past a first draft before#even tho for a few of my written eorks I'd rly like to - i feel like Idk anything about writing sometimes so this is i valuable to

You guys are SO valid haha developmental editing is also the bane of my existence. My advice, which you can take as you want (or not at all), is to seek out a betareader and/or do things step-by-step.

Finding a betareader is difficult in itself, but once you do, simply tell them you need developmental editing, that you want to look at the story as a whole and ask them specific questions relating to that goal. Does the plot progress too slow? Too fast? Does it make sense? Is the trajectory building in a satisfying way? Etc. Then wait for their feedback and use it to inform your own opinions and decisions. If you vehemently disagree with something, then you know you disagree and whatever they wanted to change you prefer to leave the same! Even that alone is invaluable help, because otherwise you might have not been able to form an opinion at all and/or waffled back and forth about it for ages. More betareaders are better, of course, but sometimes you gotta take what you get. Ideally, your betareader is not a family member or friend. They cannot be trusted to give you the full and unfiltered truth. Find a stranger. There are forums on Goodreads and Reddit dedicated to seeking out a beta, and surely you can put out feelers on Tumblr for betareaders as well.

Step-by-step is admittedly more complicated, I hope to compile an "editing masterlist" of sorts that's basically a checklist of the entire editing process but as I have yet to do that, here's my simplified (coughItriedtomakeitsimpleokaycough) break down of the stages of development editing: 1. Scan through your manuscript and create an outline. Whether this is just writing the chapters and the most important plot point in that chapter, or more in-depth summary of each scene is up to you. This allows you to look at your story as a whole with a quick(ish) glance. Even if you have an outline from before you started writing, it's best to pretend that one doesn't exist and make a new one off the manuscript to be sure it accurately represents it. Now you can track plot progression, see if there are stale chapters or scenes (or unnecessary ones), make sure the plot builds in a natural and satisfying way, etc. There are a ton of different frameworks you can compare and contrast against (like the most famous "Hero's Journey"), so you can certainly look for specific beats of such tried-and-true formats and conform your story accordingly. Personally, I don't think perfectly matching the cookie-cutter molds is necessary for a good story. If you feel confident enough in your own criteria, judge it by that! 2. Do the same thing, except with your important characters' arcs. Again, it's up to you to decide what the important characters are, it doesn't have to just be the protagonist(s) if there are involved side characters, and antagonists can get in on this too. This should be a different outline from the first, and each character should get their own. Really what you want from this is to track the progression of your characters (upward or downward) and see how it lays out. Is there a sudden change too soon or too early? Is the change justified with an inciting incident? Does the arc make sense? Are you satisfied with how the character changes, and who they end up being by the end? Look specifically at: motivations, internal and external goals (I want to be the best warrior vs. I want to save the world), biases, attitude/behavior, virtues, and flaws. Not all of these need to change, and what does change doesn't necessarily have to change drastically. It's up to you. But if the character is important, it's generally good storytelling for something to change in them, for the consequences of the story to have had some kind of effect on them. Keep in mind, an upward character arc generally takes flaws and improves them or turns them into virtues (e.g., an angry, bitter character becoming confident and resolute) and a downward character arc generally takes virtues and turns them into flaws (e.g., an extremely loyal and law-conscious person becoming ruthless and cruel in order to maintain their loyalty and the order of law). Again, this isn't OBLIGATORY, as nothing is in writing, you're allowed to do whatever the heck you want!

3. Consider the changes you want to make. Do this whatever way suits you best. If brainstorming/daydreaming is best for you, then go for it! If you like writing things down, do that. If you need to brainstorm and bounce ideas off another person, find someone to help! Unlike a betareader, this can be a trusted friend, because you might not necessarily need harsh truths, but only a fresh or second pair of eyes.

4. Once you've figured out what you might want to change, add, rearrange, or delete, get back to writing and implementing those edits!

If anyone else has any advice or ideas, feel free to chime in! I am by no means the authority on this, because, as I said, I also hate developmental editing lol.

[repetitionsings]

Sorting Cabin Pressure

I return! Briefly, because tumblr still hates me, and yet triumphant, because I’ve spent the last week re-listening to Cabin Pressure, and I want to talk about sorting the MJN crew. So let’s do some Sorting Hat Chats!

As usual, my view on these characters may not be yours, and if you have different thoughts, I’d love to hear them. :D Discussion spans the entire 27 episodes, so let’s say spoilers just to be safe.

Martin

Despite probably having the biggest, best-defined character arc, I'm finding Martin the main character I'm least set on. 

Secondary-wise, I'd say he's definitely a built secondary; very little of Martin's improvisations seem to come comfortable to him. His insistence on doing things right and by-the-book feels fairly Badger, but his ability to be lured into shortcuts and moments of unprofessional behavior feels to me like a Bird who thinks that Badger hard word and toil is the best option. It also seems to fit with the way he becomes calm and confident once something works out for him, and then immediately loses it once things go wrong and he feels unprepared again. The few episodes where he really gets to be confident and succeed particularly feel Bird-y to me: relying on knowledge in Johannesburg especially stand out.

(That said, Badger also seems to ring consistently with the way he handles a lot of things -- his dedication to his job, his hard work, even the way half the time he does get confident, it's either because Douglas isn't there to bring him down, or he seems to be pretending to be him.)

Primary-wise, though, that's where I get tripped up. Not a Snake, I think; even his hesitancy to leave MJN is half about his own goals and issues, not fully founded in caring about others. Badger doesn't quite seem right either -- "being loyal and true to things or people that exist is more important than sticking to grander but more abstract ideals or concepts" does not sound like Martin at all. My first thought was Lion, just one that's still struggling to be as decisive as they usually are -- despite his hesitancy, and his instincts being 'follow the rules written by others', a lot of the Lion stuff seems to apply to him. "They are willing to sacrifice their safety, social harmony, and a certain amount of logic to do what they feel is right." "There is right and there is wrong. Things are black and white. Shades of gray are places where people go to play games, twist the truth, and to be cowards."

But... he does bend the rules, or sit back and let Douglas do so. If nobody who makes him feel like he has to put on the act is there -- see Newcastle and Qikiqtarjuaq -- he'll bend them pretty far. Trying to drop candy on a kids' birthday party (Johannesburg) and lying to a passenger about where they're flying (Timbuktu) levels of far.

So who's around seems to be a big part of it, which maybe could point back in a loyalist direction. I think in the end, though, I'm going to throw up my hands and say, maybe a Bird whose system is in progress from something fairly immature and black-and-white to something more complicated? Martin's devotion to his passion and his job above all else feels pretty Idealist to me, and this seems a little more fitting than him being an extremely malleable Lion.

Douglas

Douglas "at any given moment I never have fewer than seven ulterior motives" Richardson? Douglas "did something clever and now everything's fine" Richardson? Douglas "pretending very hard not to care about anything, actually cares very deeply, but only about specific things and specific people" Richardson? Is there even any point to considering an answer besides double Snake here? Douglas might as well be the model of it. Trickery is his first language. He schemes, charms, adapts, and lucks out in order to achieve anything in his sights, whether that's as small as a relief from boredom or as big as saving the day.

Motivation is trickier -- but it becomes clearer and clearer as time goes on how far Douglas is willing to go to save MJN, and outside his own desires to be the captain again, that seems like the biggest thing that ever drives him. Combine that with his hedonism, and the way he's happy to lie, cheat, and steal to accomplish most other things with no notable guilt or shame, I don't even see hints of a model or structure built over it; the things that matter to him are his own reputation and status (and even that in very specific, particular ways), and saving GERTI and her crew.

(That said, the more I think about it, I do think you could make a solid argument for Douglas as a rapid-fire Bird Secondary. Mostly built around Zurich -- his confession that his confidence started, not just as a mask, but wholesale imitating somebody else. There's also this excerpt from Finnemore's Farewell Bear Facts: "Douglas prefers to hang back, let other people make mistakes, work out the 'something clever' he's going to do in secret, and then present it with a flourish." While that could be Snake-y, I could see it as a Bird's planning working for someone whose very invested in his own reputation. That said, I still think Double Snake seems the most applicable overall.)

Carolyn

Carolyn's drives are a kind of mirror to Douglas', which is interesting to reflect back on. The two things she cares most about are how she's seen, and -- even if she sometimes shows it in her own strange way -- Arthur. Then Douglas and Martin start to rank in there over time, and eventually so does Herc. (Martin moreso than Douglas -- speculation, but I think it's probably because everyone knows Douglas will take care of himself first, so he doesn't need to be worried about so much.) Money matters to her of course, but several times it comes down to show that if money was the most important thing, she'd probably have given up GERTI a long time ago. We get it set out plainly as early as Douz: "Because I am the Chief Executive Officer of MJN Air. It’s a good thing to be. It’s better than... a little old lady."

I think it's possible to read Carolyn as an extremely burned Badger; there's something in how she reacts to her sister that makes me think I can see it. But in general, I'm more inclined to say Snake Primary. One that isn't fully burned -- Arthur's never really out of her circle, I think -- but does have a hell of a time opening up her circle to new people by the time of the series. Just look at the trial Herc goes through before he gets there.

Lion Secondary, I think. She's the immovable object to Douglas' unstoppable force, and Martin is the thing unfortunately trapped between them at times. She's stubborn and honest, hates playing at being nicer than she is and only does it when absolutely necessary, and cares about her rules being followed but not the rules in general so much. She's whip-smart, but she doesn't actually tend to be tricky or slippery in the same way as Douglas -- and in fact, the one time we really see her try to be actively tricky, in Timbuktu, she loses. She's more likely to ignore opposition or tell someone else to solve it, and even when she pulls something, it's usually pretty straight-forward. (For example, calling Hester's fans in Cremona -- it's an underhanded move against someone who's earned her ire, but not really a complicated scheme.)

Arthur 

I think Arthur shares his mother's Lion Secondary. He's a force in his own right as much as she is, even if he's more of a tornado to her steel barrier. He's honest to a fault and very much always himself, no matter what the situation, or how much better it might be to try and do something else.

As Primary goes, it's hard to tell if this is just Arthur's optimism shining against everyone else, but my first instinct is Badger. He wants to be helpful, oftentimes too much so, and he likes them so much it tends to be notable when he doesn't like somebody. His focus tends to be the people in front of him at the time, but that does extend to include other people when they're there -- it's not just the crew at all times. While I think it's possible to see him in other lights, Badger seems to make the most sense and work with what we see of his wants through the series.

Herc 

While most of the other minor or reoccurring characters don't show up enough for me to have even an idea, I think we do get enough of Herc to narrow it down some, if not make a completely secure conclusion.

My first instinct is that he's yet another Snake Primary in the mix. It works with his role as a foil for Douglas, and with his willingness to give up his position to be with Carolyn by the end of the series. (That said, I feel like his speech on why he's a vegetarian in Ottery St. Mary could point towards Bird Primary as well, and would make sense with everything we see of him.)

He seems straightforward in a way that doesn't line up with a Snake Secondary to me -- that could be a matter of the situations we see him in, but I still just don't see it in his conversations with Carolyn. I'd say maybe a Lion Secondary, in the way the two of them clash and he stands his ground. Bird Secondary also makes sense, but admittedly I'm having trouble pointing to anything specific that made me think so; there's just something in the way his manner bounces off the others, and in the way he seems to almost take on and off All-Knowing Air Captain mode.

In conclusion --

Martin: Double Bird with a Badger Secondary model Douglas: Double Snake Carolyn: Snake Primary/Lion Secondary Arthur: Badger Primary/Lion Secondary Herc: tentatively Snake Primary/Lion or Bird Secondary

or, as they say in Limerick... But for Arthur, they're all quite constructed With the Snakes bickering interrupted By a worrying Bird From the Captain's chair heard Til the newest of Snakes is inducted

Carolyn's Lion is strong and won't coddle Martin's Bird, leaning against his model Or the Lion she raised By the Snake she's unfazed And thank you all, for reading my twaddle

[kitkatopinions]

(Rabbithole Anon) Y'know, I was going to send in an ask about just they could have made a compelling way to show how some people may have become hunters through pressure rather than an age excuse if they wanted to say some people weren't ready (joining to protect a friend who wanted to be one, wanting to travel for a variety of reasons, it being a general expectation but the person being hesitant) but it led to me wondering wait, would certain careers require a hunting lisence?

Okay, I love this rabbit hole. XD It illustrates a couple of RWBY problems here and it's the fact that they often are lacking in the character development/character journey department, and that they're often lacking in the world building department.

We actually have plenty of characters that can serve as examples for people who maybe should've thought twice about entering the Academy (when they did.) There are people who entered the Academy for the wrong reasons/not noble reasons, people who entered the Academy during a time they might not have been ready, and people who would be full on dangerous with a Hunter badge, and most of our mains fall under one of these categories (though mostly the first two.)

Ruby - Two years below the standard age of her class. Whether or not she was at the skill level of a first year (she was,) and whether or not she'd received special training from Qrow (she had,) Ruby was still essentially a kid, and her mind and body both hadn't developed completely. Ruby should have been traumatized after the Fall of Beacon and been allowed to show that more as a character, she should've had straight up PTSD, she should've been allowed to have emotion in Volume 4 than Jaune's sidekick who makes sad eyes when she sees him grieving. Weiss - Her main motivation for joining Beacon was to reclaim her family legacy. Yes, her desire was to reclaim it and use it for good, but it was still arguably more about personal and familial glory. On top of that, Weiss has been blatantly anti Faunus and has never so much as addressed that. Weiss's character journey should have reflected more personal growth, and either her unlearning much of her Faunus racism and clearly changing priorities from her name and family legacy and onto the actual people in need, or her flaws should've led her into being more of a morally gray character who displays her selfishness and pride (in a way that's actually addressed and treated like a flaw.) Yang - She expresses admiration for people like Ruby who want to help people and be kind, but her main point in becoming a Huntress was getting thrills and going where the wind takes her. She didn't join Beacon for any sort of serious purpose, and even when she rejoined Team RWBY in volume five, it was to be with her sister and not because of her own morals (not that I think she's lacking in morals, just that her main motive was different.) This could lead to her having to figure out a lot of what she actually wants, being unsatisfied with being a Huntress in Atlas, being in over her head when things get serious, being more mentally exhausted than the others after long days, etc. Jaune - Wasn't ready to enter Beacon. Idk if he just wasn't allowed to go to a lesser combat school like Signal or if he flunked out, but he wasn't up to scratch to get into Beacon and cheated his way in. On top of that, he lacked in the emotional maturity department as well when he entered. Jaune was a little more invested in his own appearance than Ruby was, but still seemed to have similar good reasons for wanting to be a Hunter. And he did grow a lot. But he was much less prepared, skilled, or equipped to deal with the training or the career and it's a miracle he didn't die in the initiation. Granted, Jaune was handled arguably better than anyone else, since a lot of this was addressed, but these days it feels like it isn't actually playing a part in his character anymore that he's way below the people around him, and I feel like it should still be impacting him. Penny: Honestly, Penny seemed very newly born during the Beacon Arc. She might have been combat ready, but she also started spilling secrets to the first person who was a little bit nice to her, and was clearly naïve and childlike. Imagine if it had been Emerald that had befriended Penny instead of Ruby. Penny dying and then getting resurrected should've been deeply traumatizing for her and it should've made her undergo some major changes and been treated with importance in the show. Qrow: Literally wanted to be a Hunter in the first place to try and learn how to murder Huntsmen. He might have changed later and it’s not exactly relevant, but he arguably shouldn't have joined when he did either. Meanwhile, Nora's just one big mystery, because we don't know why she joined, and Ren likely joined for good reasons, but neither of them have ever actually talked about their motivations. The only character we can safely say joined for noble reasons and who was up to scratch and ready when she entered is Blake, who also had good reason to not fully trust the system she was working with, so there could've been complications and character interest there as well.

Please don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't think the others should've been in school, I love that they were! I just think the writers should've explored the various ways they might've been not fully ready, not completely well suited to the job they took. The characters are allowed to be flawed and to flounder and it'd make them more full, nuanced characters imo.

On top of that, we have other Hunters to look to as well, outside of our main cast. Cardin, for example, was a terrible person, still in school and already abusing what little power he had to target a member of an oppressed minority group and blackmail other kids into doing his bidding, while plotting revenge on someone for correcting him on his anti-Faunus answer to a question. People like him should not be Hunters, and he was arguably our first sign (of many signs) that the position of Hunter can and will be taken advantage of and misused by bad people. And although the After the Fall/Before the Dawn books aren't canon, while reading BTD (I haven't finished it yet,) Coco and all her team members but Velvet also struck me as people I wouldn't want to be Hunters and wouldn't want to wield any sort of power. Coco is proudly described by one of her friends as sadistic, lets her unfounded opinions of people cloud her judgement, shows respect and admiration towards criminals, and enjoys her classmates being afraid of her. Fox is self-described as sadistic as well and is a bully who tried to use a classmate's phobia against them in a brute-like interrogation. And Yatsuhashi is leagues above the two of them, but also bullied Neptune despite saying the words 'I don't want to be a bully' and threatened him.

There are so many ways the writers could've explored people who went to Beacon too soon, weren't ready, or entered for the wrong reasons. Instead, outside of one conversation in season two about the girls’ motivations and Ren exploding that Jaune cheated his way into Beacon all the way in season eight, it seems like the only take away we're supposed to get is 'all these kids are officially the thing they wanted to be in the beginning and they're all amazing at it, woo!' No acknowledgement of the fact that they could use higher education still, that some of them are still immature or naïve, that some of them are still below the combat level they should be in, that some of them kinda haven't done super well since they left Beacon (cough Ruby cough.) It's all just... Flat, lackluster. And meanwhile, characters like Cardin were written out of the show easily. We've had plenty of examples of corruption in the Hunter business, but the show hasn't paid any attention to that and still is treating being a Hunter like the only true noble goal and the only good and non-corruptible way to defend people, despite the fact that it clearly isn’t. Being a Huntress is not better or safer or more noble in-universe than being an Atlas soldier/Ace Op/Atlas hunter. I’m not saying that all of this needed to be featured, but exploring the differences in motivation and how the Hunter lifestyle affected the various mains could really flesh out their characters. Instead, by the time everyone is heading to Atlas in volume six, they all pretty much have the same reactions to everything and the same motivations and the same beliefs. The rare deviation - like Ren in volume seven and eight - is treated as bad and a mistake that must be rectified, rather than... A natural consequence of the group being full of different people with different upbringings and different motivations that result in different opinions. That sort of thing is only ever explored as a problem that makes someone lacking, and it’s really weird and it makes the show feel... Juvenile, and lacking in nuance or depth when it comes to the characters, which is a really big shame, since the characters have a huge amount of potential and exploring the differences between them and their reactions to being in way over their heads would be - I think - the natural place to take their characters? Especially because so far their storyline has been... Not the highlight of the show.

But, as for how semblances and Hunters should impact the world building, there’s a lot to say about that! They don’t explore a lot in RWBY outside of what’s relevant to the mains, leaving the world building feeling flat and like the world itself doesn’t matter much. RWBY often feels more like a video game world than anything else, which I believe @why-i-hate-rwby-now has pointed out, so credit to them for helping me realize it. There’s one large location per continent and a couple small villages where they only really talk to a town leader and village blacksmith, or encounter a fight, relevant NPCs and characters only going to certain locations that can further the plot, characters only mattering through the ways they interact with the protagonists and seemingly getting benched with nothing to do if they aren’t currently plot relevant, health bars that can be monitored over scrolls, every weapon and semblance has a name even if that name isn’t ever mentioned in show or might not really make a lot of sense, frequently encountered enemies of various threat levels who the characters can plow down without remorse because they’re not sentient or don’t have souls... The list goes on. But one of the ways that it feels very video gamey is that the magical powers actually don’t seem to impact the world.

We know people can have auras even if they don’t have semblances (Mercury, Torchwick, Watts,) and we know lots of even grown people don’t have auras (the citizens of Mantle in danger of dying of cold while our aura having mains aren’t,) but also that auras can be unlocked, by well trained seventeen year olds (Pyrrha,) and we also know that semblances can be unlocked from a very young age due to trauma (Ren, Neptune in EU) but some people are born with their semblances (Qrow and notably Blake use language suggesting they were born with their semblances,) and some semblances are passed down or hereditary (the Schnees.) Semblances can be passive (Qrow, Clover, Ironwood in word of author,) and uncontrollable, or active (almost everyone else,) and some semblances have carried personal negative effects like in the case of Qrow who was even named for being bad luck and Robyn who said people were on edge with her because she can sus out the truth via skin contact when she wants to. Also Mercury’s father was able to somehow take away his semblance.

That’s... Pretty much the extent of our knowledge and it doesn’t tell us much. What RWBY does is give each character abilities that make them iconic and different from each other as fighters, with a shield function that wears down slowly to explain how they can take certain hits and keep going while also allowing them to eventually suffer higher damage when that shield wears down. They had a character get this shield ability unlocked to explain the existence and function of it, and featured some characters who didn’t have the super powered abilities like Roman, an early enemy meant to herald in new, harder enemies who are more plot relevant, and Mercury, who makes up for it by having higher speed and functions exclusive to him through his prosthetics. And then they seemingly built a regular world unaffected by these powers. It sounds like a video game. Civilians just don’t have this power or the shield because they act as non-playable characters. In a way, it almost makes sense to me in conception, because when RWBY was originally created, it was high on visual appeal, fight choreography, and character design. The plot elements were small and the character stories seemed to be pretty simple, the only real complication to this being the White Fang plot, which has always been a major blight in RWBY. But one of the reasons why this video-game feel kinda worked at the start of RWBY was because the story and characters weren’t meant to be the focus of the story, so although the world building at the start was definitely lacking, the audience knew that things like auras and semblances were meant to hype up and add interest to the main highlights of the show: Design and fight choreography. At least that’s what I assume. But in volume three, they started to lay the groundwork for more, bigger plots, more focus on the story, the characters journeying to the outside world, undergoing personal arcs, and that’s what V4 and onward started focusing on.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I started really liking RWBY for its potential and concepts after getting through the first couple episodes of V1, but I actually really enjoyed quite a bit of V4 and V5 even though the design drastically changed and the fighting had gone way down in quality because I found some of the new focus on characters and the plot to be compelling, interesting, or to also have a lot of potential (though I was let down over and over in regards to pay off later.) However, with the new focus on the characters and storyline rather than design and fight choreography, they really needed to do some legwork on fixing the aura and semblance systems and paying attention to world building and making sure the world felt well put together, nuanced, and real. And I don’t feel like they ever did that.

Why is Pyrrha able to unlock auras? Well, because the writers wanted to explain the concept of auras and used Jaune - the unprepared - to do it. But now, auras are actually an important part of the story - for example, the people of Mantle don’t have unlocked auras, so will die of cold, but it doesn’t affect our heroes because they do have unlocked auras. So who can unlock auras? Is it a learned skill or is it hereditary? If it’s a learned skill, why isn’t everyone eager to learn it especially in places where it’s life or death if they don’t like in Atlas? If it’s a hereditary skill, why aren’t the people who have that skill put on a pedestal and being pressured into using that skill to save civilians in places where having an aura is the difference between life and death? In either case, why aren’t there people who professionally unlock auras? Why aren’t they on the pay roll in Atlas and Mantle? If it’s a skill that all powerful hunters have, why aren’t our heroes (who we’re supposed to think are now more powerful than Atlas’s best) unlocking auras for dying children in Mantle? Why don’t specialists and longtime fighters with Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James have this ability if it comes with skill, time, or talent?

Why are semblances unlocking or morphing in times of trauma so rare? Why didn’t the Fall of Beacon unlock loads of new semblances and new semblance abilities? Why didn’t Ruby get a new semblance upgrade when she saw Weiss getting stabbed? Why didn’t Weiss unlock a new semblance ability when her plane was crashing? Why didn’t Pilot Boi unlock his semblance during the same occasion? Why is it that Jaune didn’t get a semblance upgrade when the light bridges were disappearing? Why didn’t Blake get a semblance upgrade when Yang fell into the void? Why did Ren get a semblance upgrade because he was upset while with the Ace Ops after Oscar got captured, but Nora doesn’t get an upgrade while she’s electrocuting herself? If semblances sometimes unlock in times of truama, why is it that some characters like Oscar and Torchwick and Jaune pre-V5 who we know have encountered lots of trauma just still don’t get semblances? If you can train your semblance into upgrading, why is it that we don’t see long time hunters and fighters unlock more semblance abilities, like Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James? It just doesn’t make any sense! And I get that stories always have things happening just because the writers want it, but in RWBY, the hand of the creator is so obvious that it’s ridiculous.

And then there are other questions. Do people avoid bad labor practices out of fear of causing a semblance awakening? Well, from what we see of the SDC, the answer is no. So why not? Why weren’t they worried about an uprising? Work rights becomes a lot trickier when you have to add in tons of qualifiers. Maybe it’s illegal to use a semblance at work, but the SDC also has a history of child workers like Adam who can’t always control it (like Neptune couldn’t control his,) so are there laws protecting child laborers? Perhaps not, since you know, they were already child laborers, so were already suffering unchecked. Are there laws forbidding the use of semblances in government buildings, non-combat driven schools, or parks and libraries? And meanwhile, how would any of this apply to people with a passive semblance? How do you figure out that someone has a passive semblance? How do people know if they’re born with a semblance? Are there people that spend their whole lives having semblances that never get discovered? Do people have semblance detection... Semblances, that they get paid to use or do so out of charity? Did the Schnees rise to power due to their powerful and hereditary semblance, perhaps? Are people discriminated against if they don’t have semblances or pressured to become Hunters if they discover they do have semblances? Shouldn’t civilians in Mantle and Atlas be joining combat schools in droves in the hopes of unlocking an aura so they can better survive? And shouldn’t there be discrimination against people with certain semblances? Outside of Robyn saying she’s personally experienced mistrust, and Qrow’s self-hatred, we don’t see any real prejudice against certain semblance types, or for that matter, any praise or extra significance pointed to certain other semblance types. It would go a long ways towards world building if there were things like people having to divulge their semblance or lack thereof before entering Beacon, or for people to have to register a semblance evolution, or for Emerald to have lied about her semblance because “everyone knows illusion semblances automatically draw suspicion,” or for Qrow to comment that he’d never seen Clover in a Vytal Tournament, only for Clover to say his semblance was deemed ‘cheating’ back when he was in school so he hadn’t qualified. And on the flip side, you could have things like semblances being judged as better and more powerful based on how useful it might be, Pyrrha keeping her semblance on the DL because it’ll just bring more unwanted admiration on her, Sun keeping his own semblance on the DL too because it always make people put a lot of expectations on him, while Neptune’s semblance leaks and he deals with people treating him like he’s selfish and cruel for not wanting to use his own “gift of a semblance.” And people like Jaune could be bullied extra because he doesn’t have his semblance yet, and people in the stands at the Vytal Tournament could be chatting about “when are they gonna pull out their semblances?” and get annoyed and pouty when people don’t. To be fair, we do get things like Mercury’s father having declared his semblance a crutch, but... Still. why isn’t there more of this?

And we see the need for Hunter protection in villages like Kuroyuri and the village that Team RNJR stops to help on the way to Mistral. Small villages outside of the four kingdoms fall to Grimm, or are in danger of falling to Grimm. Ships get attacked by large and dangerous Grimm, we see (corrupt) Hunters on the train to Argus, accompanying for safety, and we see that with a rise of Grimm activity in Mantle, Hunters are dispatched to help kids travel to school. In a world like RWBY, fighting is essential for survival outside of the Kingdoms, and became very essential in the kingdoms as well once schools started going down. You’d assume there should be Hunters accompanying everyone traveling outside of the Kingdoms, resident Hunters living in villages outside the Kingdoms as their on-hand protectors (and more than one Hunters seems to be needed.) Hunters also could be extra protection for anything that’s definitely going to increase negativity, like hiring Hunters to bodyguard funerals seems like something that could be normal in the world of Remnant, and for visiting graveyards (we see Ruby get attacked by tons of Grimm when she visited Summer’s grave in the red trailer.) On top of that, celebrities and rich people hiring Hunters seems like it’d become pretty common. But all that we see outside of Dee and Dudley are traveling Hunters stopping to help people out of the goodness of their heart while they go place to place, and Kingdom Hunters who are assigned to things like border control, clearing out Grimm near or in the Kingdoms, and things like that. What we see is a Kingdom-centered morality complex our protagonists are one hundred percent invested in, Hunters are Kingdom driven and anything outside of that is a kindness, a job they can take or leave in passing. And on top of that, it seems like there aren’t a lot of people in the Hunter profession, and I feel like there should definitely be more. There are people like Jaune who didn’t make the cut but accepted that, we can only assume that there are drop outs too, so like... How many kids are there actually in a year at Beacon? I mean, look at where the Relics were found in the forest during initiation at Beacon.

This gives us a rough idea of how many people are in each year at Beacon. Assuming everyone graduates school and there’s no drop outs and no deaths, that’s a graduating class of twenty. That’s a very small number, comparatively. The job of a Hunter is dangerous. We know of Hunters that died (Summer, Pyrrha, Amber.) We know a lot of Hunters that have other jobs that take a lot of their time (Glynda, Ozpin, Robyn,) and lots of people who quit being Hunters too (Maria, Tai, Raven,) and Hunters who aren’t always on the field like Qrow who was a teacher for a stretch and acted as Ozpin’s spy, the Ace Ops who became part of Ironwood’s inner circle and therefore had a bigger picture, and even all of Team RWBYJNR, who got their Hunter licenses but are also more concerned with bigger picture stuff (if you don’t believe me just look at volume eight where JRY stopped defending Mantle to go rescue Oscar, and Team RWBN + Penny, who were involved in big picture stuff like launching Amity and then saving Penny the Maiden/their friend.) So out of a class of twenty, how many of them are even staying on the field? For a show pushing the narrative that Hunters are the ultimate saviors who are the only true good defense for the world, that condemns even the notion of an army... Like they villainized sending Team FNKI onto the battlefield while also treating it like proof of Ironwood’s evil when he didn’t want to stay and fight when Team RWBY said to, and also made Ironwood’s desire to move into having a robotic army to get soldiers off of the battlefield part of his... Over reliance on machinery, which is full on suspicious considering their ableism towards Ironwood and the fact that he literally has to rely on machinery, but that’s a topic for a different post and this one is already so long. But yeah, my point is that we’re meant to see the army as bad. So if we’re meant to see Hunters as the only true and pure form of defense (which is already off because we know it’s corrupted,) there ought to be way more people in the Hunter field.

As for the schools, we only know of a couple of schools that exist outside of RWBY as combat schools that seem to act as basic training before people go to Beacon. We know of Signal, the school Ruby and Yang went to that Qrow was a teacher at for awhile (I have lots of teacher Qrow headcanons, but sadly Qrow being a teacher wasn’t very well explored,) and we also know of Sanctum in Mistral and (in the EU) Oscuro in Vacuo, presumably one of these existing in Atlas as well. I personally headcanon that there are a lot of these smaller combat schools littering the whole of Remnant (but then again, I also headcanon that the Kingdoms of Remnant are bigger than just one very large city, lol) and that a lot of people attend these schools even if they don’t go on to join one of the Hunter Academies, but this isn’t necessarily supported by canon, I think. But as for other schools...I think it’s fair to assume that there are at least elementary schools, since everyone can read, write, and presumably do basic math, and what we do know is that Ilia went to a prep school in Atlas (which was info dropped in Blake’s pre-V5 trailer, not even stated in the show proper,) so we can probably safely say that people who don’t go to the Huntsman academies go to some form of high school, but you’re right that we don’t see this actually in action. I personally always headcanon that Whitley had a tutor, since Jacques wanted to avoid too much outside influence.

I am so sorry that this response got so away from me and I myself got into so many rabbit holes as well. XD I just have a lot to say about the world building in RWBY (or sometimes lack thereof.) Although I admit that I’m not as into or as good at analyzing as blogs like why-i-hate-rwby-now, but yeah, this is... A very long post. Sorry!

[imaginariumpod]

Studio Ghibli; and the aesthetic of comfort and the mundane.

When it comes to animation movies, Studio Ghibli movies are still some of the long standing staples of the genre, and for a good reason. A lot has been said about these films, their thematics, their characters, their stories and the studio that made them, as well as one of their elusive and yet most well known creators : Hayao Miyazaki. I will try to focus on the ways Studio Ghibli views comfort as well the coziness in these little slower moments that fill the universe of Ghibli films. These movies are generally universally loved by the public, despite the fact that they are aimed toward a younger audience. These movies are definitely created with the goal of showing it to a public of children and families, and yet they still are very complex and layered pieces of art and animation that all audiences can appreciate. These movies also do not look down on their audiences, they do not shy away from touching upon more difficult themes such as war, loss, and fear, in a manner that’s adequate for the public it is targeting. With this article, I want to write an extension on the article I have already written on the subject of slowness in cinema and that has been asked by one of my subscribers on patreon. If you haven’t read that article yet, you can read it HERE on my blog. 

 The films that have been created by Studio Ghibli, are, and with reason, a cornerstone of the animated movie industry.  Despite the fact that these movies are definitely intended and made for a younger audience, I think we can all agree that these particular movies can be appreciated by everyone, at any age, and that anyone can find meaning and solace within these movies. Studio Ghibli movies are truly an excellent example of filmmaking that manages to capture a slower pace in media, slowing down the action to just offer a moment to breathe. Between all of the grand adventures and events that are happening in those movies, there are always moments of slowness to be found. Of calm. Of quietness. The characters of the Ghibli universe are permitted to simply exist sometimes. 

The concept of slowing down in media is one that I deeply appreciate for the way it brings depth and serenity in stories. This is a very personal point of view of course, I find the modern pace of capitalist life deeply alienating at times, and sometimes I think we just need a moment to slow down and enjoy simply being. Doing nothing is a very anti-capitalist thing, in my opinion, and I greatly appreciate seeing this concept in books and movies. While being productive is always a nice feeling, and god knows I always enjoy being busy and having things to do, it is always in these moments where I feel submerged by everything I have to do that I yearn for some peace and quiet. While it is not always possible to have this, it is always possible for me to simply … start a movie, and try to escape a bit the weight of the world.

I personally think having these moments to be able to just breathe and be truly enriches a movie. Those moments of simple mundanity and ordinariness ground the story in reality even when the story is about a wizard living in a moving castle. Studio Ghibli movies are the epitome of films that can focus on fantasy and the imaginary and telling incredibly original stories, while also including this measure of the mundane, the routine and the ordinary in between the louder and more action-packed parts of the film. This way of constructing these films, makes it so that the universe feels more lived-in, real and comforting, the characters feel more grounded and rooted in reality. 

 Studio Ghibli: a brief history

Even though Hayao Miyazaki started working as an animator in the 1960s, working in TOEI animation and learning the tricks of the trade, it is only later in 1985 that he established Studio Ghibli as we now know it, with the partnership of Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki. It is with that previous working experience that he got to truly construct an identity as the type of animator he wanted to become, and the type of movies he wanted to produce. Before Ghibli, Miyazaki got involved with different animation projects such as Heidi (1974) , and Anne of Green Gables (1979) and a project that would never see the day : Pippi Longstocking. This project is quite interesting in how it simply … never got made, its a bit like a lost part of history, a what-if. Despite the fact that Hayao Miyazaki had drawn a lot of concept arts as well as storyboards for this project, they never got the green light from the swedish author Astrid Lindgren.  

Nonetheless, it is obvious how all of these projects forecast how Miyazaki and his business partner Isao Takahata will more often than not try to center young girls as the main protagonists of their movies. A trend that will continue on for the most of their careers to this day. They will continue to focus on young girls and women as the main characters of the stories they are telling in such a complex and intricate way, all of their female characters are different from each other, with their own complicated inner lives, dreams and goals. It seems like such a basic requirement to request from our media, and yet even now, it is still not something that… will be guaranteed in the stories we consume. It is not to say that ghibli’s portrayals of women is perfect, but I do appreciate their very complex heroines and their adventures. 

I will not try to pretend that I can totally understand the type of person that Miyazaki is, he’s a complicated figure at the helm of Studio Ghibli, the man behind the curtain. He is definitely a hardworking and self-critical person, but also deeply critical of others as well, wanting to set up very high standards of work that can be extremely difficult to achieve in a very high pressure environment. Thus is the complex personality of Miyazaki. I do not want to pretend he is a perfect man, and I do think some of his choices are things i don't quite agree with. There are some very valid and legitimate criticisms to be made about him, some by the closest people he works with as well as his own sons, especially Goro Miyazaki, who say that his father was always very distant, working long hours even by the era’s standards, and whose heart was obviously more into his work than his home life. Hayao Miyazaki valued work and putting in the time and effort into his art and job, pushing for very unhealthy job practices and work culture.

 He is far from perfect, and seek perfection in his work, both from himself and the people he works with. There’s a lot to be said on that aspect, and yet I still very much think that he is that he is still a very fascinating person to reckon with, someone who brought very important and beautiful stories and revolutionized the world of animation in a really significant way. The universes he created are some I keep coming back to times and times again. I also highly recommend the documentary A Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)  if you have not seen it, as to have a glimpse of the way this animation studio functions on a daily basis. I find it always so very inspiring personally, each time I watch this documentary, I feel hugely motivated to create and to make something, no matter how small. Sometimes, it is simple about the sheer act of creating something, of spending some time away on the roof, looking at the skies while a cat is sleeping next to you. 

His involvement with the Union during his early animator years left him with a leftist tendency that will continue on during his career and seep through the themes of his movies.From the very firmly anti-war stances to the pro-environmentalist and anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist themes, Ghibli movies are a proof that you can tackle these subject matters in a very conscientious way even in children’s media. It can be seen in the movie Grave of the Fireflies (1988), a heart-wrenching movie about two children trying to survive the last months of  World War II.  Even though Isao Takahata, who directed this movie, says the movie was not made out to be an anti-war movie, this stance is still very much woven in the very fabric of the movie, from its beginning to its ending. 

This specific theme is very important here in terms of the experience of the mundane and the ordinary in Ghibli movies. Even within the most devastating of events, smaller moments of slowness can be found, and appreciated. Quiet moments of peace that feel even more poignant in the midst of struggle. Despite everything, I think we have all come to the conclusion that even when world-shattering events are happening, life truly must go on. And it does find a way to go on, and it feels mind-boggling that we all have to do our groceries, cook dinner, wash our laundry while terrible events keep happening, and yet, these mundane moments still occur. It is still possible to find a moment of respite and peace in the midst of uncertain times and terrible events. 

But also, as Marco says it in Porco Rosso, « I’d much rather be a pig than a fascist » and I think this really does say it all. 

The aesthetic of comfort 

Despite being usually  an animated movie set in a very obviously fantastical universe, Studio Ghibli movies tend to be very realistic in the way they portray the characters, their complexity, and also what are the real underlying conflicts. For example, in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) «The primary conflict isn’t about magic—it’s internal and invisible and wholly human: Kiki’s brief period of lost motivation and artist’s block. She gets it back when she wants to help Tombo, whom she loves. Simple as that. She doesn’t have to wage an epic battle to prove her worth»  The stakes might seem lower in this movie compared to other stories, very mundane and ordinary, there is no war, there is no significant conflict, but I think this is what makes it so special in the end. 

One of the particularities of Ghibli movies is how they deal with the notion of childhood, a notion that few animation movies have approached with such delicateness and seriousness. One of the things I really appreciate from Ghibli movies is that it does not shy away from treating children as complex beings. It does acknowledge the fact that children are also able of complexities and of understanding more than we think they do, and yet creating media that is easy for them to comprehend and appreciate, which I think is no small feat. 

There is definitely also a definite focus on working class characters instead of the more “prestigious” ones in Ghibli movies, there is a desire to center normal people, whatever that means, in their stories. Most of the characters have to work for a living, earn their lives, and the value of hard work is definitely something that is highlighted in the Ghibli universe. In Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), the baker’s wife tells the young witch that work is work no matter how small and insignificant you might think it is,  and all work should be paid, and it is a truth that should be remembered.

In that movie, here is no world shattering events, no wars or massive destruction, only a young witch trying to make something out of herself, losing her will and creativity and gaining it again. That particular theme is one that resonates a lot with people on a very basic level, especially in this current day and age where so many of us are trying to monetize our creative work. So often, trying to capitalize off a hobby and enduring the bone deep dreary weight of capitalism is what will make artists lose their original inspiration and will to create, when a hobby turns into labor, and this is, at its core, the journey that Kiki went through. 

As Robert Ebert told Miyazaki, during an interview with him « I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.» 

And he was right, Ghibli movies have these moments where the action is not something that is strictly essential to the plot of the movie, and yet it is essential to the essence of what Ghibli movies do. Miyazaki then explained what this concept for him meant for him : 

  «"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."» 

Those slow moments between the actions are thus very deliberate, they mean to slow down the story and to slow down the pace. Unlike the generally accepted school of thought in modern Hollywood cinema, where every single scene and dialogue needs to move the story forward, Miyazaki lets his story and movies breathe and exist. This way of building a story does give it an added sense of calm and soothingness, but also it gives it a sense of realism. Instead of following a strict narrative outline, this fluidity makes the story feel more real and relatable.

These quiet moments and details that might seem innocuous and useless at first glance, and maybe look like they would slow and hinder the pace of the movie in itself, are ultimately what gives it this feeling of genuineness, of sincerity. It lets the characters as well as the plot have the space to breathe, evolve and grow. 

« Although these scenes may seem slow or unimportant, they give space to develop the characters and to heighten dreams or feelings the characters are having such as feelings of isolation, wonder, or anxiety. It is in these moments of stillness that the audience can contemplate with the characters and feel what the characters are feeling. These moments remind the audience the importance of stillness in such a fast paced world and highlights the beauty of a slower paced life»

Studio Ghibli movies insert those slo

wer moments in between their more faster paced and action packed scenes, but also in the midst of world-changing events such as wars, as shown in Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). This demonstrates how people still live on during those crises, even with the danger looming over their heads. This kind of media gives me hope that we can live through this, that moments of happiness and peace are still to be found even within the madness of our very fast capitalistic and  hyper consumerist life.

From visibly established routines to a focus on the mundane, the daily.  the ordinary, Ghibli movies will definitely bring these seemingly unimportant acts and integrate them as essential to the general experience of the movie. You see the characters inhabiting the Ghibli universe working, studying, sleeping, eating, in a way, you see them being alive. In a manner of speaking, of course, these are fictional characters in fictional universes, but it is obvious that the universe and the lives these characters lead extend beyond what we’re seeing on the screen. They have whole lives and experiences that we might not be privy to, as the audience, but it is apparent that these characters are fully formed. They are going on and about with their lives, and it is this emphasis on the ordinary that makes them appear so realistic. 

Falling and getting up again. Jumping and stumbling. So often, Ghibli’s characters are not perfectly graceful beacons of dexterity and elegance, quite the opposite even, their demeanor and posture will inform the character and their place in that world, and yet it is not always perfect and flawless. Sometimes, the characters will run and stumble and trip and fall and this mundanity of being.  

This representation of the realness of what it is to be a person, that sometimes we trip and stumble, that we fall and get up again and yet, we continue to walk or run. It’s also a way of defining the different characters, of imbuing them with their own personality and mannerisms and be able to distinguish them even with such small details as the way they walk and carry themselves. This is definitely not exclusive to Studio Ghibli, animation as a whole uses movement and mannerisms as an essential tenet of character, but it is  still very rare to see this sort of flailing included voluntarily in the films. Since the medium that these movies are created in is two-dimensional animation, it means that every single frame had to be carefully planned and executed, before being drawn and painted frame by frame.  These movements could have been easily not included in the final cut of the movie, they could have been considered superfluous to the film, and yet they were. These imperfect moments are what ultimately makes it better. 

Ghibli movies do that, not only in terms of physicality and concrete elements, but also when it comes to feelings and emotions. Emotions that we all feel and experience, from the feeling of restlessness to loss and  fear, to love and courage. Ghibli movies really do showcase all of these feelings that we all feel, even though in a manner that is easy to understand for all audiences. 

 “Only Yesterday does not hit the dramatic highs of Miyazaki’s work, but that’s partly the point. It’s less concerned with presenting a grand thesis about the nature of being human than it is navigating the heartbreaks, triumphs and regrets that make us. But it’s still comforting for a film about the relentless march of time, the title even invoking both the speed with which childhood can pass us by and how close those memories stay with us.

It’s immensely relatable in how it evokes these little tragedies: the feeling of being a fraud; of missing out’ of wondering if you’ve left your childhood self behind; idealism; dreams and all. It asks us not to mourn what might or might not have happened, but to keep those memories close, and use them to move forward. That Only Yesterday makes this feel as wondrous as a castle in the sky or a land of spirits is nothing short of miraculous, and why it ranks among Ghibli’s best.”

The act of eating is one that is heavily emphasized in Ghibli movies,  one only needs to read all of the articles dedicated to the mouth-watering food that fills its universe to understand that this simple act, of eating and of preparing food, is one that is very important. Countless of people have made videos on how to recreate some of the most iconic dishes and meals of the Ghibli universe, from Howl’s Moving Castle’s tempting breakfast to Spirited Away’s feasts, both the one that Chihiro’s parents eat at the beginning of the movie and the ones served to the bathhouse’s guests, and the simple snacks that are eaten throughout the movie, from the onigiri Haku gives Chihiro or the food she shares with Lin. Ghibli movies are very well known for how pretty and appealing its food looks, and simply taking the time to showcase the act of preparing and eating food, thus slowing down the pace and creating a break during the plot of the movie. There’s a certain type of media that does put a lot of importance on the act of slowing down, taking the time to cook, such movies such as Little Forest : Summer & Autumn and Little forest : winter and spring, for example. A lot of media that’s just about not doing much and preparing some food, which somehow has a very soothing effect. The act of eating and cooking is part of the greater character narrative and storyline when it comes to Ghibli movies, but also the act of sharing a meal and of eating together. 

Food, the preparing of food as well as the sharing of a meal, is a love language in itself, in my very humble opinion, taking the time to prepare all of the ingredients and then a dish for someone else or for one self is an act of care. And it is definitely one of the ways it is used in Ghibli movies, from My Neighbor Totoro (1988) in which the eldest daughter is often seen having to prepare lunch and food for her younger sister and her father, since her mother is sick and hospitalized. I will not be talking here about eldest daughter syndrome here, but it is very much a Real Thing™️. It is simply in this representation of the act of cooking, and the care she puts in it, that we can understand not only the love she has for her younger sister and father, but also the very real responsibilities that she has to shoulder as such a young age. 

In every single Studio Ghibli movie, this pattern appears, someone will make food, and it will be obvious how much time, effort and love it takes to prepare this dish, or someone will simply take a break from whatever they were doing and take a bite of a small but tasty snack. Somehow, the usage of food in the Ghibli universe is central to the way the characters will experience and move through the world. 

It is in these small moments of respite and calm that the characters, and by extension, us, are allowed to breathe. Moments that are quiet, where two people will share a meal and just be. I always terribly appreciate whenever a movie, or any piece of media really, simply takes the time to let the story expand and move at its own pace. Studio Ghibli movies are always ones I love to go back to whenever the world feels overwhelming and slightly unbearable. I hope that we can all have more moments of peace and quiet, that things can slow down enough for us to catch our breath. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Hayao Miyazaki interview | Interviews

The Magic and Artistry of Studio Ghibli's Films

The Low-Stakes Pleasure of KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE 

Wings and Freedom, Spirit and Self: How the Filmography of Hayao Miyazaki Subverts Nation Branding and Soft Power Shadow 

Miyazaki’s Magical Food: An Ode to Anime’s Best Cooking Scenes 

Food in Spirited Away: Consuming with Intent

Grave of the Fireflies: The haunting relevance of Studio Ghibli's darkest film

NAPIER, Susan. Miyazakiworld : a life in art. Yale University Press, 2018. 

[nomoregoldfish]

I Promised You The Moon rant

Just binged it and this was from the episode by episode reaction/discussion with my partner in crime @glossyboy.

First of all, Oab stole the show, singlehandedly, which he's not supposed to. I don't think anyone expected it including himself. In the very top post when I searched his name on tumblr, he said this lol

But the truth is he played one hell of "villain" that required a very nuanced performance and he delivered it in a believable and graceful manner. Jai became the catalyst of the entire season and his rather complicated relationship with Teh was the highlight of part 2.

EP 1

From the very beginning it's clear that part 2 is very much a Teh's story rather than a balanced story about two young people's journey as a couple in the next chapter of their lives. It makes me uncomfortable they made Oh-aew clingy and pessimistic without giving him any character development.

The best part is probably the opening scene where they went paper-rock-scissors to decide who's gonna buy condoms. It felt authentic, the expectation, the hesitation, the mischievous act, all fits their characters well. Other times ep 1 was more like two adult kids playing house, literally in an empty giant ass upper middle class apartment.

EP 2

It's great that they poked the femininity vs. masculinity issue through Oh-aew, but stopped right there at the surface. Missed a perfect opportunity to go head-to-head with the controversial topic, start a debate, crush the stigma of femininity, bring something new, be a real game changer of the BL genre, and most importantly give Oh-aew some concrete character development. Part 1 showed us a gay character that's very comfortable with his sexuality and femininity, that's almost revolutionary in Asia, not as a comic relief but a leading role. Oh-aew questioned his own sexual identity once in that bra wearing scene, it's straight out of comfort zone, BOLD, and transgressive. So I expected more from part 2.

That's it? And they're already sophomores? Can't believe Oh-aew's character has been marginalized like this. It's pathetic.

But I love the brutally honest conversation at the end where Teh vented his rage and despair regarding his frustration of acting. He was acting like a dick because he's disappointed, and scared. Teh again was not afraid of showing vulnerability, making the reconciliation very realistic and touching.

EP 3

Dare I say I freaking love ep 3! The unresolved (partially sexual, but not entirely) tension between Teh and Jai was over the roof! And the built-up to their kiss was very authentic, which paled Teh and Oh-aew's much sidelined storyline, including the long anticipated sex scene (still can't believe it happened right after Jai explicitly instructed Teh to do it after the two spent a whole night bonding, like wow! Totally TRANSGRESSIVE and to some extent, kinky.) Teh looked up to the senior, idolized him, wanted to be good for him and make him proud, thirsted for the validation from him, which was mixed with affections. The workshop diary was a brilliant idea to let them open up to each other and eventually bring them close. This was what a meaningful arc of a story looked like. By contrast, there isn't a single moment between Oh-aew and Teh in part 2 that made me go "Damn it's soooooo hot!"

I know Jai/Teh wasn't the endgame but I appreciate the storyline so much. It's a very bold move considering it broke the over-glorified "one true love in one's life" fantasy of its target audience, mostly young cis women. The popular narrative of "you can only love one person through your life/one true love" in romance fictions/chick flicks was totally smashed. And it wasn't written just to stir up things between Teh and Oh-aew, it wasn't a silly fling. Instead, it's meaningful, complicated, natural, and realistic, delivered by nuanced and excellent acting from two young actors. It's hilarious that fans hate Jai with a passion and call him names.

And big news, Jai is bi?! Bravo! He's radiating bi vibes since his first appearance.

I kind of gave up at this point, the season wouldn't do Oh-aew any justice. Like my partner in crime pointed out, the costume design literally threw some "incongruous female fashion pieces" on Oh-aew, made him dye his hair red, without...making any actual point of his personality or his character development. Wardrobe was supposed to make a point in storytelling. Yes, PP wearing pink is cute, and? There's nothing else for Oh-aew. Unfortunately he's reduced to this sulky, crying, and wronged partner in a failing relationship.

EP 4

Oab again was killing it. The tension between Jai and Teh...from the rehearsal in front of Oh-aew to the dressing room pep talk, was incredibly intense and hot AF.

Was it a manipulative relationship after all? Oab was so good at conveying a character with many faces. Jai's a mentor to Teh, also a good friend, their relationship was genuine. He's also ambitious with his own goals, he used, challenged, provoked Teh in a way that benefited them both. It made sense the title of part 2, I Promised You The Moon, was from Jai's script. He promised Teh what the junior wanted the most, a bright future in acting. Teh's unconventional and unspoken feelings for Jai was the best part of the entire season in terms of creative writing, it's complicated, fragile, delicate and completely heartbreaking.

The after talk in the hallway was so well-written. It's funny (Teh joking about playwrights always write about their EXs is gold), intimate yet meticulously controlled, no one lashed out or wept. Both knew what they signed up for and Jai particularly made it clear about his motive and the purpose of the "special workshop" beforehand (or right away.) Yet it's no one's fault that Teh got carried away. He's younger, he's immature, he's more into it, it's totally natural. It's so romantic when Teh's singing karaoke in the bar with Oh-aew, yet he couldn't help but desperately staring at Jai on the floor, knowing he and the man who just turned him down were never gonna happen, they were done, but he's still madly attracted to him and his talent. He fancied Jai, at least the idea of Jai, a playwright, a director, someone knew him better than himself. That hurt beautifully.

EP 5

Teh/Oh-aew endgame at this point was pretty meaningless. Oh-aew as a leading character never got any solid character development over a span of four years. What happened between Jai and Teh wasn't just "cheating", though they surely made it look that way, like Teh's empty promise of "I won't see him again after the show ends". No matter how Oh-aew and Teh eventually reconciled, there's no emotional connection, no sparkle anymore between the couple.

But I knew for a fact they had to. Otherwise it's too much of a risk financially for the series. The creators had to take the easy way out like most traditional romances—one of the most contrived and formulaic trope where the male leading character made a mistake (usually cheating) and realized he's wrong, he deeply hurt the female leading character (Oh-aew was merely a girl substitute in part 2), then he completely changed for hell knew what reasons, started doing every nicest thing in the world to try to "win" the female character back. It has been feeding the emotionally-deprived cis female readers/audience who are frustrated with heterosexual relationship irl for decades. The formula that made romance outsell other genres of fictions combined in the 60s and 70s still sells today, under the name of boys' love. It's pathetic to see Oh-aew confess to Bas that he always "lost" to Teh. Love shouldn't be some kind of game or competition, there isn't winner or loser in love. Love is spontaneous. Oh-aew didn't lose because Teh developed feelings for someone else, and he didn't win when Teh begged him for reconciliation. People change, people move on.

And as predicted, they went for it. The ending was so absurd and tedious.

Overall, Jai's probably the hardest villain to play, he needed to be REALLY GOOD to be "the bad guy", to make his role conceivable. Oab absolutely nailed it with his talent and experience. He's not even my type or extremely good looking yet I'm 100% SOLD. I immediately re-watched the scene of him kissing Teh back hungrily at the end of ep 3 like I used to re-watch Teh/Oh-aew's steamy make out session at the end of episode 3 part 1. Coincidence?

I like some parts of both seasons for the same reason, each challenged and tried to break some outdated/contrived narratives in the BL genre. Part 1 took on the sexuality taboo by showing two same sex characters sexually attracted to each other, no more "I'm not into boys, I just happened to fall for someone of the same gender" or "pure love" bullshit. By staying true to the characters' sexuality and actually showing it with explicit, intense (and beautifully shot) scenes, the gay characters were normalized. They weren't just pure and innocent, no one was. And it created two of most unconventional gay characters in Asian pop culture, Oh-aew, a beautiful boy who's very comfortable with his own sexuality and femininity, not passive at all, taking initiative to pursue what he wanted; and Teh, a sensitive, caring and vulnerable boy who cried a lot, he's confused but also sweet and brave.

Part 2 tackled the "You can only love one person through your life" trope with a very nuanced story of "cheating". Yet neither carried out what they started. Part 1 fell short of a revolutionary piece that stayed true to "adolescent sexual turmoil", dismissing bisexuality and becoming a typical unrealistic BL fantasy in the end. And Part 2, ugh, forced a "happy ending" that almost no one digs. I understand it's extremely difficult and risky to disrupt the established norms of a genre. But sometimes being transgressive and progressive could be the same thing. A story, an artwork, has to challenge something in order to create something new and compelling.

[maxwell-grant]

You are your top 5 Shadow agents

I don’t talk about the Agents as much as I should, even though I constantly try to stress their importance, because I’m working on essays for them individually. To be honest, I think about the Agents practically every day to the point I have a hard time separating my headcanons from the actual canon material, but I have to stay true to it, and the lack of material regarding them means that the only way I can truly talk about their characterization is by diving deep into the novels and taking notes, which I don’t have much time to do, and then finding the right books or moments to talk about, which is even more difficult. 

This by no means constitutes my big thinkpiece on them, but it’s a start, and ultimately narrowing it down was a lot harder than I expected. This order is by no means final, if you asked me this question next week or next month I’d probably have a different answer, but it’s the 5 that I find myself thinking on the most. 

Honorable mentions: Jericho Druke and Myra Reldon, who are incredibly awesome characters conceptually and who have great moments each, and whom I definitely think deserve big turns on the spotlight if the Agents ever get put on the spotlight again, but are held back by issues with their presentation and lack of prominence. Margo Lane, whom only just narrowly missed the cut because, as much as I like her and think she gets an underseved bad rep and definitely has great things going for her, I sadly have to concede isn’t as consistently great or well-written as she should be. Clyde Burke, whom I definitely like a lot based on what I’ve read and consider an integral part of the line-up, but haven’t read enough of the novels he’s in to really solidify him as one of my favorites just yet. And Slade Farrow, who is a bit too complicated to talk about superficially.

Allright, so here they are

Number 5: Burbank

As the center of all communications within The Shadow’s network and the only character in the series who is even more mysterious and elusive than The Shadow himself, Burbank is fascinating and the kind of character who simultaneously seems to be both begging for an in-depth exploration and yet who also should be dead last on the list of mysteries about the series we want spoiled, because nobody wants the mystery ruined. He’s a bit of cipher personality-wise compared to the other agents, but he kind of has to be, and I think it helps to illustrate the many forms the agents of The Shadow can and should take, that one of them is this total mystery whom we know nothing about and yet is so vital to the whole thing. And it’s interesting also because, for all the many variations we’ve had on The Shadow’s life and thoughts and feelings and etc over the years, Burbank has stayed more or less the same. Whatever variations he’s had in design aside, Burbank just is. 

The pulps did often have moments where we would get to see moments that told us a little more about Burbank, gestures he did, capabilities he had and didn’t have, little details Gibson would sprinkle in to keep people fascinated. Several scenes with Burbank are almost presented like you’re watching a movie, in the way Gibson keeps describing his face being mysteriously blocked from view by objects or lighting, like not even in your mind you are supposed to know what he is. And it’s all the more fascinating because, unlike The Shadow, as far as we know, Burbank is just some guy who’s good with tech, who was only recruited in the 2nd story but apparently knows The Shadow from before it, and whom The Shadow entrusted with virtually every secret necessary to keep his operations running. 

It’s kind of a sign as to how utterly neglected the agents are that, to this day, few writers who’ve ever touched The Shadow has ever come close to giving us any sort of explanation or backstory or anything on Burbank, and I refuse to believe these people had that much self-control. Of course I have my own ideas for Burbank, but even I would hesitate to put them on a story, because Burbank epitomizes that double-edged sword that comes with a solid narrative mystery. Burbank just is, and hopefully he will stay that way. 

Number 4: Dr Roy Tam

Mention of Dr. Tam meant much to Sayre. He was acquainted with Roy Tam, the Chinese physician. He knew that Tam was a power in Chinatown; one who worked for good

Unrolling a map, Tam showed the entire Manhattan area, studded with tiny dots in districts quite remote from Chinatown.

"These represent my outposts," he said soberly. "They are places, owned by Chinese - restaurants, laundries, curio shops, other places of business. In each of these places, I have a friend."

The Shadow understood. Dr. Tam was the motivating factor among the Chinese who adapted themselves to American ways. His mission was to create good will among races, to put an end to prejudice and superstition.

A newer and more sober spirit had replaced the old and dangerous festivities. Feuds in Chinatown were a thing of the forgotten past. Dr. Tam and his associates had done much to bring about the present sentiment; but there were persons - even among that group - who felt regret at the passing of old traditions.

Dr Tam is a remarkably layered character for one that only appears in about ten stories, and he’s one of the agents I’m most eager to discuss in-depth. He’s another one of those agents that Gibson introduced by tricking you into seeing him as a villain, as a Yellow Peril cliche, until he is revealed to be in fact a good man. Not just good, Roy Tam is presented as a powerful, influential and cunning Chinese man with a lot of assistants secretly working for him, and who is consistently presented as a progressive, pacifistic, benevolent civic leader and ally, even friend, of The Shadow. 

Tam is very much westernized and the stories paint that mostly as a good thing, and this is one of the areas that I think could very much result in an interesting story that looks at the ramifications of his role, because of course not everyone is going to agree with his viewpoints, of course him being an advocate against superstition and tradition isn’t necessarily a good thing (and it’s not how Yat Soon, The Shadow’s other major Chinese ally, works, which puts the two at odds), and of course it’s a complicated situation, but the fact that Tam invites this kind of debate at all I think is something very interesting

Largely because of the movie, Dr Tam is one of the few agents of The Shadow who’s managed to sustain appearences in modern stories, and none of them have ever really went with his original angle as a powerful civic leader. Instead he’s been largely painted as either a scientist, like in the movie, a general practitioner, and a psychiatrist, and his age has been all over the board. 

I prefer him in his original form but I also very much like the idea of Roy Tam being, like the Chinese supervillains he was created to be a subversion of, an incredible genius who’s got skills in all fields that can fit under the “Dr” part of his job and is also an incredibly capable leader able to unify splintered communities under a cause of unity and cooperation, someone who absolutely could be the adventuring genius so many other pulp heroes are, except he dedicates himself wholesale to his community and the fight against prejudice and the betterment of lives, even if he’s misguided or wrong at some of the causes he takes up. I really think this character could partake in really great stories if ever brought back.

Number 3: Cliff Marsland

(Fan-art by @cryptixcreations)

Cliff may have actually been the first agent I really fell in love with based on concept alone, even before I read the stories he was a part of and started loving all of the others. He’s one of the few agents who has prior history with The Shadow and we get ever so tantalizing hints at his background that we ultimately never get to learn about in full. He’s the resident tough guy and underworld contact of The Shadow, which in any other series might have made him the biggest badass and a loner action hero who’s too cool for things like thinking and relying on others for help. But here, trying to be that only gets Cliff into trouble, and circumstances gradually morph him into the series equivalent of a Team Dad. 

He was one of the agents who we got to see develop as a character. As he appears more frequently past his introduction, he grows from a headstrong, careless jackass, mostly interested in the action parts of the job, who “resigned himself to an adventurous career with violent death as its inevitable termination”, into one of the most reliable and capable agents, taking the lead during action scenes but otherwise fully defering leadership to Harry, and being the agent most likely to partake in gunfights and rescue The Shadow out of trouble, joining in missions like infiltrating circuses or high-society clubs and forming very strong friendships with Harry, Clyde & Hawkeye, who almost kills a man with his bare hands when he thinks Harry’s been killed. He’s the hardass, square-jawed ex-con who plays the reputation of a brutal killer, and is in reality a great friend, ally and husband (Arline has sadly only been mentioned in three stories), on top of being an invaluable fighter and secret agent.

Cliff could have easily been the protagonist of a long-running series all his own and that’s one of my favorite aspects of The Shadow’s agents. They are people with agency, goals and dreams and relationships and lives beyond the roles they play, they all have strengths and weaknesses and faults and positives that bring them much closer to us than The Shadow could ever be, with no end to the variety of roles they can take, and Cliff in particular is a character I’m very attached to. 

I do hope that he eventually found peace in a quiet life with Arline once his business with The Shadow was over.

Number 2: Harry Vincent

The Shadow as a franchise has been vastly worse off as a result of Harry Vincent being completely sidelined and mischaracterized in virtually every adaptation since, and the sheer love that Shadow fans hold for Harry purely may be the closest thing to a true universal opinion in the fandom. 

Harry is a lot of things: the audience surrogate, the protagonist of much of the early stories, the leader of the agents in field duty, the dude in distress who gets kidnapped far more than even Margo, a hopeless romantic, an action hero, the one who gets sent to recruit agents because all The Shadow has to do is send Harry on an assignment and wait for him to come back with a new friend. He is a competent, resourceful, strong, extremely kind ball of sunshine who's got the potential for greatness, even if he can't see it. 

And for this post I’m going to highlight this: Harry is, on top of all that, the ultimate embodiment of what The Shadow strives to protect, help and uplift. He is the living proof that The Shadow's mission has a good, positive effect in the world, long after criminals are brought to justice and plots are failed and victims are rescued, purely by the fact that he’s alive and helping others who were once like him. Someone who, despite having so much to offer, could have easily been swept away by the world’s callousness and cruelty, if The Shadow wasn’t there to rescue him and uplift him.

I liked The Shadow pretty much at first sight after seeing the character’s design and listening to episodes of the radio show, and my appreciation for the character grew after reading The Shadow’s Shadow, but it wasn’t until I encountered @oldschoolcrimefighters and her brilliantly informative writings on The Shadow and Harry that I not only fell in love with the series, but decided to do everything in my power to try and get other people to love it too and see the potential it has. I think a lot more people should at least be aware of why Harry matters. 

Number 1: Moe Shrevnitz

I was honestly a bit surprised when I rounded up all of the agents to make this list and Shrevy here ended up in Number One, but in hindsight, it may have been obvious all along. 

My reasonings as to why Shrevy is my favorite agent do get a bit too personal, especially because of something that happened to me as I was writing this post, so I’m putting it on a separate post here. 

[yusuke96universe]

In need of more Turles content

Why I want more 'Turles' Dragon Ball content.

Background: TURLES' RETURN | ZtoS | Off-The-Cuff and MasakoX's "What If Turles Turned Good" series are both great

Both provide interesting avenues to reboot ideas that a modernized Turles could have.

One links Turles to both retconned Bardock as his estranged brother that unlocked the False SSJ form missed out on a chance at redemption when Planet Vegeta was destroyed. So this can provide Goku a direct connection to his family lineage again.

The other links Turles up with the Heaters organization that competes with the Frieza Empire. This actually provides a method to connect a lot of the contradictory backstories within supplemental materials.

I am a fan of MasakoX's DBZ 'What If' series. I don't always agree with his takes on certain concepts, but through a lot of the community, I can cherry-pick what I like and make my own take on certain subjects like I did with his What If Nappa or Cell turned Good series for example. I often make super long, well-crafted comments that hardly ever get attention, and here is one I made

The comment was about how interesting a character is in the Dragon World

I think Turles should best be used as a means to complicate a plot or storyline. He can fit in many types of stories. He easily can fall under the Magnificient Bastard trope (a.k.a. the Charismaniac), a potential ally, antagonist or something else entirely that makes things difficult for all involved. He can best be used like how Law was introduced in Sabaody Archipelago, a seductive danger that pulls you in. You know he is probably going to stab you in the back or you're being played, but you just can't say "No" to his offers for one reason or another. Either he is charismatic enough to win you over or he's got something you want, bad.

Any character from any alignment good, evil, divine, or even Demonic should have something interesting to say about Turles because he is such an outlier to the rest of the characters. He just offers so much potential fun dynamics and storytelling.

A smart and methodical Saiyan, who still loves to fight and isn't a coward? In fact, he is willing to take on just about anyone, he was introduced while he was preparing to take on Frieza of all people. As smart as he is, he has to know how outmatched he is compared to Frieza's Empire, but he was going to do it. In their interactions within games and such, Turles isn't even nervous, on the contrary. He's pumped!

A fighter who prides himself on his strength, but isn't totally blinded by it to overlook the forest for the trees. He has been shown to have foresight determine his actions. He does get arrogant and that makes him vulnerable, but he can quickly recover by allowing his pragmatism to take over.

A Dragon Ball villain that can respect his enemies? He is open to potential partnerships and underlings joining his side, in fact that is how he recruited his Crusher Corps. (so he could potentially be written to have his own Power of Friendship moments) And he may be willing to ally with the good guys if their goals ever align. He also knows how to be a team player as shown in Xenoverse 2, where he is quick to play mediator with the villains.

A deserter that still has pride in his race, but felt wronged by the caste system that discredited him which acts as a motive for his current actions. So a political plot can be on the table. (he fits a usurper plot to a T)

A drifter whose experiences have led him to blaspheme against the established Divine hierarchy because his Tree of Might that he is known for, is the property of the Gods.

He's pure evil so other pure evil creatures like Devils and Demons who directly oppose the Angels and the Gods could recruit him to be direct counters that contrast the good Saiyans.

While Turles is known for being an 'Evil Goku clone' meant to contrast his characteristics, in doing so, he has contrasted a lot of his own Saiyan race's characteristics as well which puts him in the same boat as Goku who he is meant to contrast. They are both outliers of their race in one way or another.

Anime Goku Black is a sophisticated and elegant Kai on a Multiverse level Crusade compared to Goku's outdoorsman simplicity.

Manga Goku Black contrasted Goku's gentleness and innate goodness by being one of the most vicious villains the series ever had. Zamasu was being taken over by the Saiyan body's base instincts for destruction and violence transforming him in to a ferocious monster.

Turles on the other hand can display traits of both the smart and elegant Zamasu and the Saiyan's natural savageness and societal cruelty while being similar to Goku in that he is an outlier of their race because he reels those traits in opening himself to many more options and avenues to potentially walk down.

I am not even getting into the fact that Turles looks just like the main character so he could be a surviving relative. A cousin, an uncle, half-brother, even a Grandfather with how Saiyans age. Heck a straight up counterpart isn’t even out of the question. 

Personally, I am a bigger fan of him being his own person, and his shared looks are only used to highlight how he contrasts with Goku, but also how they gain similar things like leading a group of strong loyal misfits who admire his power. It’s like the two take their own paths, but arrive at practically the same destination and that is what fascinates me about Turles the most when compared to Goku.

My point is that Turles has a lot of storytelling potential for involvement within What Ifs and even the future of the Dragon Ball Super, but what do you guys think? Do you want to hear my thoughts on how I would reboot Lord Slug as well because I can do that next?My take is a bit different from others but I think it's really interesting. Also, wouldn’t a False Super Saiyan line of forms for Turles be really interesting?