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that-ari-blogger · 10 days ago

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"Do It" (Destiny Part 2)

When you interact with a lot of similar media, you tend to notice patterns and recurring tropes. Most notably in this example is the final season darkest hour.

Typically, when a series wants to ensure that the stakes are higher for its final arc, it will end the previous in a very dark place. Avatar: The Last Airbender does this, and I just covered The Owl House doing a very similar thing.

But She-Ra has a lot more to it than just the singular convention. This is an incredibly cerebral series with a ton of moving parts. So, for the season four finale, I would like to examine a few of them, and what they do for the story.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, A Christmas Carol)

Context is important, and stories have an understated ability to draw together disparate elements into a cohesive entity through a consistent theme.

Here, that is twofold. The series as a whole has been about the cycle of abuse as portrayed through tragedy, specifically in its antonymic relationship with genuine love. But Destiny Part 2 zeroes in on the chronological geography of this. As in, there is a distinct sense of time in this episode, and a discussion of the past and future and their impact on the present.

Everything in this episode revolves around these two ideas, and so everything must be analysed through those lenses.

Starting with the runestones, which are an idea original to the 2018 reboot.

“It’s like…”

“…connection.”

Throughout this season, we have seen the princesses glow when they achieve camaraderie, and that glow is near identical to that of the planet balancing itself. Near identical. The runestones are shown to be more powerful than regular camaraderie.

We don’t actually know the origins of the Runestones, with the exception of them being native to Etheria. The Legend of the Fire Princess graphic novel has one in it that was created by the first ones, which implies that the others were not. But I am here to talk about the main series. (If you want me to discuss the book or any other supplemental media, my ask box is open).

As such, I find it important that the power of the Runestones, much like that of She-Ra, predates the First Ones, which means that it was not theirs to use.

In my previous post about She-Ra, I commented on the First Ones as colonialists, and this adds to that symbolism.

The First Ones co-opted something that was, by all accounts, sacred to the people of Etheria, or at least of significant cultural value. It was repurposed into a weapon that would, as a side effect, wipe out the planet. Cruel and uncaring. The First Ones viewed Etheria as a tool that could be cast aside when it was no longer of use, a worthy sacrifice.

In terms of our themes, this is most definitely abusive behavior, and that continues into the cyclical nature of that abuse.

I have also discussed how it doesn’t matter if the First Ones were the aggressors in their war or not. If the First Ones were under siege, then they felt the only way to defend themselves was to inflict more suffering on bystanders. The abuse they received turned them into the villains of this season. But I think the most important moment for this part of the episode is this:

In her desperation and powerlessness, Glimmer tries to destroy the Runestone.

The anger at being used has been turned against the First Ones, but they are using the culture of the people they have colonized as a shield. To get to us, you need to stab yourself.

It’s forcibly disconnecting the people from the symbol of their culture, metaphorically and literally breaking their connection and leaving them weak and in a place of vulnerability.

This wasn’t even intentional. I don’t think the First Ones sat down and schemed about how, when this master plan goes off, there will be one princess who tries to break the runestones. It was a side effect. All of this was a side effect.

The main role of this was to destroy a different force entirely, Etheria was never part of the equation. The First Ones were fighting a war with someone else, and Etheria was just a sacrifice that could be made.

Glimmer is technically surrounded by the corpses of her enemies here. That is the context for her statement that "we are the good guys". Yes, they are robots, but Emily is sentient, so...

Abuse is fundamentally selfish. To the abuser, it isn’t about the victim, it’s about the anger and often pain that needs to go somewhere. It’s about the power and control. The victim was just there. My feelings matter, my heart, my obsession, my anguish. You are a convenient scapegoat.

It is important to understand that this mindset is built on a misunderstanding.

There is a reason for it. Of course there is. Everyone has a reason for their behavior. That’s what the cycle of abuse is. You get so wrapped up in your own mind that other people stop existing, and you are left with empty shells around yourself. But having a reason does not make you right.

There are real people around the abuser and the abused. She-Ra is a series about those real people, hence why it is so human in almost every character. It is about the real people who are hurt by someone else’s drama, the real people who get burned by being too close, the real people who get caught in the crossfire.

The Runestones are symbolic of those real people en masse. Used as pawns, corrupted, and destroyed.

In that sense, they also relate to the episode theme of time. They are monuments of a distant past and a history even greater.

At the risk of oversimplification, Runestones in the real world are a Scandinavian concept that emerged before the Viking age but gained traction during it. The vast majority were dedicated to the fallen, but a fair few discussed everyday life and stand as monuments.

They also look nothing like those in She-Ra.

In She-Ra, the Runestones are aesthetically just gems and crystals that are big and look cool. So, why go with the name?

First and most obviously, it sounds magical. Runes sound magical and as any architect will tell you, a large part of any creation is the emotions it inspires. If you want a story about magic, saying “this is a glowing crystal called a runestone” is an easy way to do that.

Although, that does bring up an interesting meta question of why there is magic in this story? As in, what does it do for the themes?

I plan on delving into this question in more detail in a later post, so you have that to look forward to.

For the moment, however, the She-Ra has made a point of connecting magic to nature, and so the name “rune-stone” entangles magic to the ground itself. It is the bedrock of these civilizations.

The other reading is that the stones themselves serve as runes, which are in turn a form of written language and communication. They are the words of people long gone, although crucially, their descendants are still there.

This is how culture exists in a very real sense. Not merely through written words, but through the language and communication itself. Mythology and religion, history and philosophy. Word of mouth and art. Culture is not a static thing of aesthetics but a dynamic manifestation of shared ideas, and sometimes it dies out, but usually it just continues and evolves into new forms. It is everything that has come before and every word that is spoken.

I mean that literally. Every single word has a history and evolution that makes up its current form. The word "Silhouette" comes from a French who didn't like to spend money. Language is the manifestation of history and how it informs the present day. It’s part of everyday life, it is context.

The Runestones are that language as a physical manifestation that literally grants power, and the First Ones use them to destroy people. In this way, what the First Ones did was cultural appropriation, and I don't think my opinion is unpopular that this is, in fact, bad.

Moving on to Light Hope.

“Mara. Mara would not want me to… Mara was a traitor. She turned against her people.”

We have seen two sides of Light Hope. The one who Mara befriended, and the one whom has manipulated her way through half of the series. The weapon of war who couldn’t escape. The cycle of abuse come full circle.

We have seen Light Hope get humanised, and then cast that away. But as best we could tell, it was the system itself that overrode her free will.

This line, however, muddies the waters, because it reminds me of another in the same episode.

“People have hurt you, haven’t they? They didn’t believe in you. They didn’t trust you. Didn’t need you. Left you.”

Of all the people to draw a connection to, Light Hope’s dismissal of Mara is strangely reminiscent of Catra’s antagonism towards Adora.

The cycle of abuse hasn’t just happened before on a grand scale with the She-Ras themselves being destined for tragedy, but this specific plot has happened before, and look how it ended up.

Catra has spent the entire story addicted to power like a safety net. She craves being the highest ranked one in the room because it’s safer, but there isn’t much room at the top of the pyramid. You end up alone, and isolated, and with further to fall.

Catra has been trying to claim power like Shadow Weaver taught her, but has ended up like Light Hope. Alone in her tower, scheming, reminiscing, caught up in memory and spite.

This is a warning to Catra. Most obviously, change your ways. But just to be safe, don’t ever cut your hair and don’t ever start wearing white.

Once again linking back to the themes. The cyclical nature of this series is best exemplified by the threat of another season. This is a story that wants to end, to be free, but it keeps coming back to a song and dance.

I mean this as a compliment. This is the only series that makes me fear another season, but stay glued to my seat as I watch and love every moment. The screen protects me from what is happening inside, and the fact this is a story means that I can stop at any time. That isn’t a luxury the characters are given.

The aim of the series is to end.

And it will, that’s the key thing here. Everything ends. The cycle of abuse is not a true circle but a spiral that winds in on itself until disaster.

Light Hope and Mara are the emblems of a previous cycle. Their story ended in tragedy they couldn’t avert and that left naught but shattered people and places in its wake. Light Hope was Catra, she was someone who was happy. But now she is an instrument of the system that drove them apart, unable to understand or take comfort from Adora until the end, begging for Adora to "do it", begging for death. This is who Catra will be.

Don’t believe me? There is only one other person who uses the words “do it” in this episode. Can you guess who that is?

“What are you waiting for? Do it. Looks like we're both alone, Sparkles.”

There is, however one majour difference between the old story and the new. This rendition isn’t over yet.

I haven’t seen nearly as many Marvel films and TV series as I should have. I saw Infinity War and End Game, I saw Thor: Ragnarok, and I watched Moon Knight, but other than that, I mostly never cared for the series as a whole. I didn’t dislike the films, I just never cared that much.

Which is honestly weird, because I read comics on the regular, and got into comics through Marvel. I started with a Spiderman one shot in the Clone saga, and while I wouldn’t call myself a comic nerd by any stretch of the imagination, I was enough in the spaces to know who Jeff the Land Shark was before Marvel Rivals was a thing.

The reason I bring this up is to recommend a series I left out of the above list, Joe Pokaski’s Cloak and Dagger, which ran from 2018 to 2019.

I had read a few comics featuring the eponymous heroes before I saw the series, so I knew vaguely who these people were, but this was one of those series that got me at just the right time to leave a lasting mark on my psyche.

Most notably, this is the place from which I get the phrase “There’s always a point of no return. It’s called the end.” But there’s a little more to it.

The premise of this series is that Luisiana is always saved by two kids, and that one of them will always die in the process. Tyrone and Tandy (Cloak and Dagger respectively) spend the series trying to find a way to escape this cyclical tragedy.

The season one finale will always break me, because we see the moment when Tandy comes the closest to being the one to die, and it’s not in an overly violent fashion, it’s in a phone call.

The two are trapped in a surreal, timeless landscape, and Tandy is presented with a phone using which she can call her deceased father a moment before he dies. She picks up the phone, has a brief conversation, and then the line goes dead. She picks up the phone again and has the same conversation. Again, and again, and again. Just one moment.

Tyrone asks her to leave, she refuses, so he asks her how long she has been there, a question to which she has no clear answer.

If Tyrone hadn’t rescued her, Tandy would have as good as died there and then. Lost to a memory. Lost to the trauma of losing her father playing back to her over and over again.

Cloak and Dagger are played by Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt, and while Holt's performance as Tandy in this scene is the showstopper, it would be remiss of me to not mention Joseph's portrayal of Tyrone as he realises what is happening and tries to stop it.

There is always a moment of no return. It’s called the end.

You lose when all hope is lost. You lose when you give up. You lose when you let everything consume you. You lose when you stop trying to escape.

Cloak and Dagger keep getting told that one must live and one must die, and their response is “how about no?”.

Light Hope lost. She became the monster that created her. But that cycle ain’t done for the here and now, Adora and Catra can fix this.

This actually moves really nicely into the third and final element of this episode that I would like to discuss. The title.

Destiny and fate are funny things, aren’t they? They don’t actually mean anything. Not tangibly, anyway. Yes, yes, your fate and your future are one and the same. But that isn’t a fair metric, is it?

Is fate inescapable? Was I fated from birth to write this post? Was my future laid out for me? Or does it work slightly differently?

I am partial to the dichotomy between fate and free will. That being, a person with free will has the autonomy to make their own way in the world and decide their own fate, whereas everyone else is just pulled along by the strings of time. I think this is sweet.

In practice, I have found one way of writing destiny that I like. Nature.

For the record, I am including nurture within this. A person’s nature is just who they are, their history and goals, their fears and hopes.

Specifically, life experiences make up a person. If I find an arachnophobe and I give them a spider, I can be pretty sure how they will react. That is your destiny. It is the path set in front of you by yourself. There is freedom to wiggle within that, but everyone has a set of key components that make up their personality, and in the right circumstances, this can be manipulated.

I could go for the obvious here and talk about how God Of War: Ragnarök leverages this to talk about trauma. I could. It would certainly fit with She-Ra’s discussion of that concept through the cycle of abuse.

But instead, I am going to recommend you the video by Overly Sarcastic Productions (@comicaurora) about that very topic (link) and go further into the past with Charles’ Dickens’ A Christmas Carrol, or more photogenically, the Muppets film of the same name.

“Are these the shadows of things that will be? Or are they the shadows of things that may be only?”

A Christmas Carrol delves into themes of redemption and capitalism, and I will die on the hill that Charles Dickens had a wicked and very dark sense of humour that was brought about by the time in which he was writing. But for the purpose of this post, the book wields the future like a threat.

“Your chains are forged by what you say and do.

So have your fun, when life is done, a nightmare waits for you.”

In A Christmas Carrol, fate is just consequence. Cause and effect. The book is about three ghosts appearing to a miserable old man who thinks he is alone and unimpeachable and showing him multiple occasions when his life was directly impacted by others, for better and for worse, and the effect that his life is having on others.

It opens with a warning from the ghost of Scrooge’s business partner/partners. Cause: Greed. Effect: Chains. Easy one two punch.

It is crucial to me that when Scrooge finds his grave and asks if the future can be changed, the spirit gives no response. It doesn’t give him comfort, but it also doesn’t tell him his future is set. You can try and change your fate. Go for it. If you don’t you will end up here. Alone even in death, but still buried like every other man. There are no coins in your coffin, just memories.

The point of no return is called the end. You decide what that will end up being.

Adora and Catra have been thrust into this story by their natures, and they have been positioned in such a way that can only lead to destruction.

It was in Catra’s nature to take Adora leaving as badly as she did, because she has grown up being told that affection is exclusive and that a person can only care about one other person. She has been taught love in an incredibly dysfunctional way, and she is just a traumatised child, but she’s a traumatised child who is actively wrecking other people’s lives.

Similarly, Adora is a hero in the most self-destructive way possible. She has to save everyone, has to destroy herself for everyone else’s happiness. She is a pawn in a war and she will burn herself to the ground to feel any kind of warmth and it will kill her.

It is these two’s destinies which clash. The cycle of abuse is a spiral that leads to destruction. The tragedy is tragic. So, what do?

To change your fate, you make the decision to change your nature. An arachnophobe can overcome their fear, Scrooge could become a charitable man, Adora and Catra can escape.

If we lean back into the path metaphor. Your nature is a road that itself is moving towards a destiny. If you try and get off it, you will fall over. But you can reach the edge. You can break free. You can start moving in a different direction.

It is always possible to change.

Before I finish up, I want to discuss Horde Prime’s introduction, because he is fantastically incurious in a way that leans into what I have been saying about the inherent self-centredness of abuse.

“You have forgotten who you are. You truly think you are worthy to stand beside me, could be equal to me?”

If Horde Prime was reading Hordak’s mind, he would have seen the portal and the source of the energy reading. He would have been curious as to its use. But no, he projected.

It didn’t matter what Hordak did, it would never have been enough. The fact that he gave himself a name was sufficient to warrant animosity. Prime didn’t need a reason, he needed an excuse to show off his power to Glimmer, but also to himself.

Side note here, Horde prime is played by Keston John, who also plays Darius in The Owl House, and has a voice that can melt butter.

I say this because he turns that off like a switch as he shouts down the powerless Hordak. That grace and smoothness is gone for a horrible growl.

This tiny little gesture as Prime draws back his hand before he strikes. He's deliberately offering Hordak grace and kindness, deliberately making it clear that they were an option and he chose violence. He is giving hope so that it stings even more when he takes it away.

Which presents a question: Is Horde Prime actually put together? Is the snarling monster a tool that he uses? Or is it the real man? Does the distinction matter?

Prime has to be told about the weapon. He doesn’t think for himself, he just coasts off everyone else’s misery.

This man is a physical threat, sure. We have seen that in previous episodes. But here he establishes himself as a thematic force in the narrative. He is an abuser, he is a manipulator, he is selfish.

Horde Prime is terrifying.

Final Thoughts

I had meditations about Arcane and Shakespeare in this that I had to cut because this is one of the longest posts I have ever written.

I want to stress that She-Ra as a series didn’t go places. It didn’t cover new ground as it progressed. Episode two of series one shows a home destroyed by the trauma of a war and the psychological damage that the cycle of abuse can do to a person. She-Ra started here, it just got blunter as the characters got more and more wrapped up in their own heads. Eventually, the show literally wrote its themes on the walls.

This is a tragedy desperately trying to happen. That’s what’s so compelling about the final season yet to come. The character’s have one last moment to get their arses off that road to the end of the world.

Last chance. Last stop. The point of no return is called the end.

Next week we are diving straight into season five, so stick around if that interests you. Let’s do this thing!

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tomlinfonda · 2 years ago

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Inside me there are two wolves.

One who thinks that the writers are either stupid or cruel, and that the finale was so incomprehensibly bad that I shouldn't try to make sense of it. And that I should move on.

The other one is a subtext-and-metaphor-hungry beast that is manically obsessed with finding a reason, at least subtextually, for the incomprehensible mess they made out of these characters, especially Ted, in the finale.

Everyone is so right to point out that Ted in previous episodes would not have acted like this. I think the reason for the sudden regression in his character is Dottie.

That morning, full of smiles, in a good mood, Ted starts his walk to work.

He cheerfully strolls through the streets, saying hello to his neighbors, making chit-chat with them. He is (as Trent said it in 1x03) out there in the community. He is, more importantly, part of a community. Until suddenly-

"Mom?"

Dottie's arrival changes everything. Ted gets worse and worse throughout the episode. In the hotel room in Manchester, the football anthem "Blue Moon", with the haunting lyric "You saw me standing alone" plays over Ted's lonesome figure, in the shadows, depressed.

Juxtapose that with his first scene: the lively neighborhood and daylight.

At the end of the episode, his conversation with his (manipulative) mom hits him deep. He feels immense guilt over not being there for Henry. And he's been torn over this for the entire season.

His mom, and the way she acts, and the way she manipulates him, push him in the wrong direction: Kansas.

I think Ted has disassociated for most of the finale. But I also think that he is intentionally pushing people away. Maybe he thinks that this will make it easier for him to leave, maybe he thinks that this will make it easier for them to let him go. Maybe he just hates himself so much that he cannot accept their help. Maybe he feels guilty that they're showing him so much love, when he knows he will abandon them.

Either way, he quits. Something that he would not have done, even in season 1. So his regression goes farther than the first episode, deeper into his past. He goes from:

to having doubts on the plane about leaving without winning the whole fucking thing

but leaving anyway.

And this is one of the most curious things to me. Rebecca offers to bring Henry to him in England by helping relocate Michelle:

And yet, he refuses. So, sure, this is about being there for his son. But given the choice between his son with his beloved community, and his son without his beloved community, he chooses the latter.

I've heard the argument that we don't know for sure that Ted doesn't have a support system in Kansas. But from a narrative perspective, it's important that we haven't been shown that hypothetical support system at all. And given that he actually returns to Kansas without the one person who we know supported him before coming to England, it comes across as a terribly isolating situation.

So why would Ted choose to part from his found family, even though bringing his son into that family would be an option? My theory is that he just really fucking hates himself. I think he wants to punish himself, maybe for being away from Henry for so long, maybe for something else. I don't think he believes that he deserves love or even credit for how he helped the club.

I mean, Rebecca and Trent offer him exactly that this episode: credit for what the did for the club.

And he rejects them both, choosing instead to remove himself from their lives, to erase himself from the narrative.

I think he's lower mentally than we've seen him for a while.

I think he's in his dark forest.

So the plane departs and then lands. And Ted is back in Kansas, driven through the prosaic, picket-fenced, isolating, depressing American suburbs to the house where Henry and the ex-wife who doesn't love him are waiting for him.

And the light might be golden, and he might be reunited with his son. But as we close in on the last shot of the show, you can see his smile try to fight the sadness in his eyes and you know.

He's not happy.

#ted lasso #ted lasso spoilers

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acaptainbyanyothername · 8 months ago

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Moc Weepe is an incredibly done antagonist and I love him so much.

First up, straight off the bat: he sucks. He sucks really bad. Willy Swinzy apparently was responsible for a lot of deaths just for funsies. Moc Weepe betrayed Saskia and the entire Breach just to fuel his own greed, abandoned Midst to a tearror (that he’s indirectly responsible for…), then decided it would be swell to helm a cult so he can kill MORE people. He’s selfish, greedy, megalomaniacal, and cruel. So yeah, he’s a good antagonist because he actively furthers the plot in negative ways.

But here’s the thing that makes him so special: we’ve been personally following him as a character since the very beginning. He’s an antagonist protagonist! And he is so fun, and so human. He’s the only one of our three protagonists with a sense of humor. We see him “sing” with Saskia, be confused at brunch and manicures, roll his eyes and poke fun at Imelda, and be the weirdest fucking person alive at the post office. On the flip side, we see him deal with chronic pain. We see him cry out in pain while being tortured. In the most recent episode, we see him sob and beg and plead for a loved one not to die. He represents both a sense of fun and whimsy while also being literally and metaphorically consumed by darkness. That’s incredibly cathartic, actually.

Moc Weepe is so fun to watch. He’s so, so desperately human. He is not intrinsically bad, but he continuously makes terrible decisions. We can relate to Weepe while berating his choices. We can enjoy every minute he’s on screen while he’s actively making things worse for everyone else. He’s a a victim and a perpetrator, often both at the same time. Weepe is an incredible antagonist because he is as human as every other character and feels just as loved by the narrators.

All this to say: I love Moc Weepe and I can’t wait to watch him die <3

#Midst #midst spoilers #moc weepe

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randomfoggytiger · 6 months ago

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The X-Files: the Madonna-Whore Complex

(Credit to @cecilysass, whose comment got these thoughts going.)

I have a theory.

In the fandom, the Madonna-whore complex is often attributed to Chris Carter's handling of Dana Scully. And, while I didn't give it much weight at first, going through his old interviews gave me pause.

THE CHRIS CARTER ANGLE

From 1993 to 1998 (where I stopped reading), Chris repeatedly stated that Mulder and Scully were (are) both sides of himself: “I’m equal parts of both characters,” says their creator. “I’m a skeptic like Scully, but I’m also ready to be enraptured, like Mulder.” Mulder represented his want to believe (and inner darkness-- which he doesn't outright state... but doesn't dissuade others from thinking, either) and Scully represented his skepticism with the paranormal or faith. A lot of his personal details leaked through into their lives-- Hegel Place, California childhood, a sunflower seed habit-- and his personal philosophy-- “Trusting people, generally, is bad,” he says with a slight smile-- became the backbone of the show. He used interesting turns of phrase when discussing his characters' names: "I grew up in L.A. where Vin Scully was the voice of God. Dana is just a nice soft woman’s name I like" and Carter gave The X-Files’ Mulder his mother’s maiden name.... And, as we all know, the repeating 10/13 and 11/21 are his (and Mulder's) birthday and his wife's birthday, respectively.

It could be as simple as a showrunner incorporating himself into his work... or it can make a lot of sense regarding Mulder and Scully's sexual misadventures.

Does this point to Chris Carter being a "puritan", shunning all sexual allusion? He seemed to be willing to hint at more-- letting Tea Leoni suggest a naked Gillian be cheek to cheek with David Duchovny, and teasingly gazing at David's deleted rear shot-- and was even persuaded to leave in the Millennium and Existence kisses (not to mention writing or cosigning the I Want to Believe "scratchy beard" scene.) But does a little lip-locking or a little nudity knock down the "never-nude" angle?

Ultimately, I think speculations on CC's "quirks" are fruitless: unless the man himself sits down and gives a clearer "yes" or "no", it would be equivalent to shooting blanks in the dark. Besides, the parallels don't need to be directly tied to his personal life to inform the decisions of (and for) his characters.

The parallels, though, can't be denied.

MADONNA-WHORE, SCULLY-MULDER

To draw back to the main point: both Scully and Mulder had complicated sexual hang-ups.

Scully wasn't "allowed" to definitively have sex with Ed Jerse while Mulder was only "allowed" sex under duress. Scully was "allowed" to go on normal dates while Mulder was only "allowed" porn fantasies (Chinga, Kill Switch, First Person Shooter) and an on-call phone sex operator. Scully was "allowed" past healthy relationships (except for the one Gillian created, ahem ahem) while Mulder wasn't "allowed" to have anything resembling joy or stability in his past.

All this to say: I think Mulder and Scully are two sides of the Madonna-whore complex: Scully is the Madonna, Mulder is the whore.

It makes sense, too: Scully followed the rules and was "too smart" to get entangled with people who degraded or hurt her-- which made her a little inhuman (according to Morgan, Wong, and Gillian.) Mulder too easily blurred professional lines-- which made him easily seduced by those who intended to harm him. Phoebe Green-- as written by CC-- mentioned Mulder's illicit past activities to draw him back in; and Never Again-- as vetoed by CC-- kept an element of denial about Scully and Jerse's bedroom activities.

(Scully herself was compared to the Virgin Mary once in canon-- though it was not, it appears, Chris Carter who gunned for the imagery; nor was it the writers' and director's intent to be anything other than a metaphor that was "on-theme" for the seasonal episode:

March 14, 1998

Q #16 – Hi, my name is Deborah. Two of my favorite episodes from this season are “Christmas Carol” and “Emily” and I found myself in some heated discussions with other fans who felt Scully was turned into a mere victim, that the religious iconography was heavy handed, being beaten over the head with the Virgin Mary / Scully kind of thing. None of which I agree with. I wondered if you could talk a little about the religious iconography in those two episodes and how you work that kind of thing in and was it as self-conscious as everyone else thinks it is?

FS – ...When we began again, we also took the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, as our lead. So suddenly the story came together very fast and actually was one of the most satisfying to write for the three of us.

The use of the manger at the very beginning of “Christmas Carol” was deliberate. The idea of a “virgin birth” was conscious. I think the one image in that two parter that people really felt was heavy handed or was laying onto Scully as Virgin Mary idea was at the end of “Emily” there is a very slow dissolve to the stained glass and that was an image that the director chose to use because it was there on the set that day and all of us liked it. But I don’t think that we meant to suggest that she was anyway equivalent to the Virgin Mary and simply thought that, you know, it was a Christmas story and those parallels deepened the story we were telling.

Still.)

The Madonna-whore/Scully-Mulder complex explains a lot a lot a lot about their complicated sex lives.

If that be the case (whether consciously or subconsciously), it makes sense why Chris Carter only wrote a kiss for them after the world didn't end. Biblical mythology and fate were always his favorite tools, after all.

A RUN DOWN

The Jersey Devil-- written by Chris Carter-- is the first episode to tackle the boundaries of this theoretical complex.

Mulder introduces the theme with a porn magazine, at work.

Scully has to drive back to a birthday party, and Mulder immediately balks over the idea of her on a possible date.

Scully considers "a life", agrees to go out with Rob to a perfectly respectable establishment, and dances around the topic uncomfortably with Mulder later.

Mulder wants her to cancel-- not out of romantic jealousy, but because their working relationship might be hindered if her interests were divided elsewhere.

"Unlike you, Mulder, I would like to have a life"/"I have a life" brazenly slaps that motif down; and Scully on her respectable date, Mulder drawing nude jersey devil women at work, Mulder forming a charmed connection with a wild woman, Mulder getting peeved over Rob's call, and Scully leaving Rob for a place by Mulder's side continues to nail it home.

Mulder lunges for the lurid, the alluring, the impossible, with nothing but empty promises and unfulfilled expectations to show for his efforts. That pattern holds for romantic-- Fire, 3, War of the Coprophages, Syzygy (to a degree), The Field Where I Died, Kill Switch, Amor Fati, First Person Shooter-- and platonic-- Deep Throat, Krycek, CSM, Diana Fowley, sundry allies in-between-- relationships. "You think he [Deep Throat] does this because he gets off on it?" he challenges Scully, stunned when she responds, "No. I think he does it because you do."

Scully strides expectantly towards the normal, the stable, the predictable; and leaves all unsavory entanglements before they besmirch her dignity or self-worth (including the unconsummated romance with Daniel Waterston, according to Gillian Anderson.) Ed Jerse is an outlier, a symptom of how out-of-control Scully felt her life had become-- a rebellion against her expected or self-imposed or self-inflicted Madonna pedestal. "Hard to imagine, this day and age, someone having sex with a perfect stranger" plays well with the medical concern of the AIDS epidemic and her distaste for losing control completely in the throes of passion.

When the Gender Bender detective states, "Guy blew an artery-- must be some roll-in-the-hay", Scully is immediately annoyed while Mulder is immediately intrigued (and amused.)

CONCLUSION

I rest my case, Your Honor.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #The Madonna-Whore Complex #xf meta #CC #no “hate” in this post #only sincere speculation #Mulder #Scully #Madonna-whore complex #interesting #thoughts #mine #meta #x-files #the x files #xfiles

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jedisandspacepirates · 11 days ago

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I have things to say about the finale.

Now that I've seen it, now that the emotions are settled down.

Spoilers for 1x08, so under the cut in case somebody's not seen it yet.

So I'm actually pretty happy with the finale. Really happy because it ended with the victorious people being who it always should have been, the kids. Fern, KB, Wim, Neel, working together and their parents too in their way, to save the day.

I absolutely loved the hug at the end, when they all went to find KB and just that exchange of "Did we win?" "Yes!"

We did NOT get a huge expansive backstory for Jod, but neither were we promised that. All Jude hinted at was a bit about his childhood and how or why he's Force-sensitive. Well, Mr. Law, that last part wasn't quite...we just know that Jod is actually able to use the Force, but the how or why hmm. Unless by that he meant that his Jedi master had taught him how to use it, I suppose.

Anyway.

I actually loved the information they chose to give us. The picture of a (presumedly) orphaned Jod (I wonder what happened to his parents...did they abandon him, were they killed?) living in a metaphorical (or maybe he was literal here) hole depending on the next meal and living a damn rough life. Then a Jedi finds him, teaches him a little about the Force, and she MUST have said that thing to him that he says to Wim, the Qui-Gon idea. (Of course that's a Jedi principle, not solely Qui-Gon's words, but where would Jod have picked that up if not from her?) And this is the tragic part, she took him under her wing and taught him their ways, but then he was forced to watch when they killed her.

That scarred him and definitely damaged him in a real deep way. I am not excusing his behavior departing from 1x05 and his descent there. That's not okay and I'm still mad at him for all that, but the past they've given him tracks with that, I suppose, and it makes sense that Jod would develop such a dark outlook on life from his experiences. Seeing the galaxy as a dark rotten place with only a few pinpricks of light etc...

And, here, look it comes. I, who have argued for Jod's redemption until blue in the face, am content with the way they ended it because I admit, if they had made him do another heel turn or come to some sort of decision as I thought he might have, I don't think it would have been done so well. It wouldn't have been convincing or felt very real to me. That sort of thing needs time. But what I absolutely adore almost above everything else is--and I don't know if it was purely just the writing or Jude's own decisions with acting, his expressions, etc--the nuances of his actions in that last episode.

I saw a post somewhere saying that Jod had "messed up" by not killing the kids because if it were Anakin, he'd have had At Attin under his boot in ten seconds or something like that. That just caught my eye, and it's worthy to note that Jod didn't harm them. He could have, but he didn't. Yeah, he was trying to pass himself off as the emissary and all that stuff, whatever. But when it was just Fern and her mom with him? He could have killed them.

This interview sheds a whole lot of light on stuff like this, and I'll have you know, the showrunners--the creators of this blessedly amazing series--the creators, people, were saying "those small gestures, his tiny bit of hesitation when he fires", referring to the moment he shot at Fern. The interview perceived that he had intentionally missed Fern, and that's when the creators comment on it. Seriously, he's him. He could have hit her squarely, but I really don't think he intended to. If anything, I believe he did mean to miss or shoot just shy of her.

Also, again, the creators saying he's in "a morally gray" area, "tortured by his behaviour". Whether that means conflicted because he has 'greed treasure I will be rich forever and happy' on one hand and 'i care even a little bit about these kids and don't actually want to hurt them' on the other and those are two forces warring in his soul, I don't know. But there is conflict there, and in any villain I've known in TV shows, movies, books...if there is conflict of evil and good in them, they aren't 100%, completely and irredeemably gone.

Just all of this complexity put into Jod and pulled off by Jude Law was completely and utterly amazing, and that is something I really enjoyed about the finale.

I'm saying it's not the end of road for Jod, and that's what's fantastic about fanfiction.

#skeleton crew #jod na nawood #star wars: skeleton crew #jude law #skeleton crew spoilers

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thecomfywriter · 28 days ago

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arcane season 2 rewrite

okay hear me out. this season was MESSY. so so so messy. not only did it lose the plot, but it lost so many plot devices by introducing new elements without proper explanation, expansion, or impact. it rather undid the effort invested into certain plotlines or straight up abandoned them. like for example, the shimmer, the prince and the importance of the tattoo thing he got on his leg, isha, vander silco backstory, the entire cait dictator arc (reversing that lowkey felt cheap in my opinion because it happened so instantaneously??? tf??), "i gave her a cupcake", mel and the thorn stuff (she was an empath so why tf was she making shields around people and when did she learn to do it that well and intentionally???), WHY WAS JINX SUDDENLY A HEROIC SYMBOL, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DYING TREE, VANDER'S MEMORIES? WHAT WAS THE POINT OF MADDIE?

i feel like the intrigue for arcane for me in season one was the focus of the plot, but the layers and symbolism behind it. it wasn't overly trippy or bright with glow. the glow was a symbol of magic and arcane--of something wrong. shimmer glowed purple. hextech glowed blue. jinx had her glitchy glows whenever she was off her rocker because she was hallucinating again, but the use of colour, explosions, her brightness... it all felt intentionally contrasting to how dark and dreary the undercity was. remember that scene in season 1 where vi is hurt and cait brings her to that shack where all the "forgotten" people cast aside by piltover made tents, all addicts of shimmer? remember how shimmer was used as a power booster, as a metaphor for drugs that are used to oppress and suppress masses? remember when the plot was about the wealth and priviledge disparities between zaun and piltover? silco, this guy who took advantage of the city's destitute state to rise to power, was also the same force who held it together. jinx's trauma of being abandoned is what drove her towards action... vi's desperate protector desires, cait's curiosuity and desire to prove justice or uncover injustice?

i feel like abandoning the shimmer plotline was season 2's biggest mistake. because it could have explained EVERYTHING in every way that made more sense. because why tf did viktor become a messaih, and jayce and viktor switch ideologies out of no where? if i recall correctly, viktor wanted to figure out a cure for himself, but he too admitted to feeling himself "erode away" and it was JAYCE who wasn't letting go of using hextech to save him. how tF did that switch? and a last minute scene at the end to explain the rune stuff and who the sorcerer was that saved him and his mother?

ALSO, the overuse of colour comes with the overuse of MUSIC. the most noteworthy scene in season 1 for me was the ekko jinx bridge battle, where for every big explosion, they took us OUT of the action and the loudness and let us watch the pop of colour in the darkness from afar. there was music in the slow childhood parallels, but when it flipped back to reality and the real fight--NO MUSIC. SILENCE. JUST THE FIGHTING ITSELF. THE RAW EMOTION. THE HESITATION IN EKKO'S ENTIRE EXPRESSION WHEN JINX CLOSES HER EYES AND YOU KNOW HE'S IMAGINING POWDER WITH HER TEARS.

anyways, here's my suggested rewrite:

remember in season one, where victor was struggling to touch the arcane rune cube thing, so he injects himself with shimmer to do it, and it starts poisoning him? why not have the shimmer be the thing that causes the corruption of hextech. and in that discovery, that insanity, jayce watched his friend get lost to the very things that ruined the undercity. the battle that happens in the last episode isn't between viktor the messiah and all his followers--it's the follow up of the highly intense feud between zaun and piltover as a consequence to jinx's season 1 finale actions. the war begins, the undercity's use of shimmer increases to supplement themselves with enough manpower to meet the hextech of piltover (but also because silco iisn't here anymore to selectively bargain it off to people or control its spread and use), shimmer starts infecting the people in piltover as a result (like the prince using it--that could have been a bridge into shimmer being introduced to above the undercity), jayce realizing corruption comes from the misuse of power by watching viktor succumb to the power inside of him and the corrupted hextech, and that being the eyeopener that helps piltover realize they created the "monster" they are continuously trying to subdue. the class wars are enforced by their barriers. zaun's destitution is an extension of their desperation--first and basically always to survive. i don't think jinx should survive at the end of this type of ending, to be honest, just like how she didn't in the og season 2. cait's dictator arc, the way trauma made her almost like a jinx 2.0 was honestly genuinely a very cool parallel that showcases how piltover isn't "better" than zaun just because they can see the sky. pain and power can even corrupt someone like cait, who believed in justice and forgiveness so strongly. seeing that fall from grace would have almost solidified how it's not a moral failing, it's an institutional and systemic failing--pain, a loss of family, grief, the horrors of war... piltover and zaun needed to see their reflections in each other to finally shatter that barrier.

arcane is a story about love, yes, but it is also a story about corrupt power systems. forsaking that for magic and random storylines feels cheap.

idk if i made any sense right now. womp womp. i'm going to go shower and go back to writing my book. cheers

#thecomfywriter rants #thecomfywriter rambles #thecomfywriter's thoughts #arcane #arcane season 2 #thecomfywriter writes #thecomfywriter #writing community #writers #writers on tumblr #writing #wip #writerblr #writers blog #writblr

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sokkastyles · 10 months ago

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I read that post you reblogged about Katara using bloodbending to heal Zuko during the final Agni Kai, and honestly I would have loved it if that happened too. I've mentioned before in a previous ask that I wish bloodbending had been explored more in the narrative, especially Katara's complicated feelings about bloodbending. This is going to sound a bit morbid, but I'm kind of wondering if, after the encounter with Hama, do you think Katara would be kind of hyperaware of the water flowing throughout her own body or anyone else's? Would she feel tempted to try bloodbending again? Even though the first time she had to do so was to prevent Aang and Sokka from hurting each other, so she bloodbent Hama, and she found the whole thing disturbing, there's a part of me that wonders if Katara would still have a bit of morbid curiosity about bloodbending anyways. I know this sounds like I want Katara's character to be a bit darker, but what I really want is for Katara to be allowed to have these thoughts or this type of curiosity without her being made to feel like she's a bad person for it. Idk if any of this made that much sense, but I'm curious to know, what are your thoughts?

Katara unconsciously being hyper aware of the water around her and in other people's bodies after Hama is something that has made itself into my fics. Because bending is depicted in atla as part of who the person is, and I think keeping a bender from bending is like keeping someone from being allowed to move their arms and legs.

And once Katara knows this ability exists, not just bloodbending but everything Hama taught her that goes with it, like how to find the water in everything, she will find it impossible to not have this completely alter her bending and how she sees the world.

And, like with firebending, it's not the bending itself that is bad, it's what you do with it.

I love zutara fics that include bloodbending, not just the dark ones, but something I've explored a little in my fics is how it makes her more aware of Zuko's body and heightens her physical connection with him.

Bloodbending can work as a metaphor for consent, because it's not that it's inherently evil to have that kind of knowledge of another person's body, but it's about consent and trust. I see no reason why bloodbending can't be used to heal the same way that medical knowledge can be used both to heal or to kill and torture. (I'm thinking of that particular analogy because I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer currently).

Like, I get that the show writers were trying to add complexity by showing the dark side of waterbending with Hama, but the thing is that while waterbending was always portrayed as good before, it was also portrayed in a very limited way. Katara is the last waterbender of her tribe, who had to learn on her own. "Some waterbending is bad, actually," isn't really a lesson she needed to learn, especially not from the only teacher she's ever had who can actually tell her about her own heritage. The unintended message is that Katara exploring a culture heritage that has been denied to her through war is bad, and it actually ends up limiting things instead of making them more complex. It's also another weird way the show dichotomizes combat waterbending and healing. Despite Katara gaining Pakku's respect, she is still getting the message from things like the Hama episode that using her bending for combat and not healing is wrong. The obvious solution is to make waterbending healing a form of bloodbending, and now that Netflix has made healing an actual learned bending form instead of something Katara is naturally good at, I have hope that this connection might actually be made. And this is a win win, because making healing a form of bloodbending actually achieves the complexity the original show was going for.

#katara #bloodbending #zutara

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modernmessydisaster · 4 months ago

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Agatha All Along Theory

Aside from the Funko spoilers (HOW CAN YOU MESS THAT UP!?)

I've been thinking about Teen's identity, Nicholas Scratch, Agatha, and Wanda.

I think we are good to assume that Teen is Billy, but the question now is, how is Billy alive? What does he exactly "remember"?

And why does Agatha have an immediate attachment to him?

●

So, with spoilers from Episode 4. (From here, it's just my own rambling)

Agatha murdered her coven & her mother and we all assumed it was because of the Dark Hold

BUT

For some reason, I think Agatha got the Dark Hold AFTER the events of her trial. She was dabbling in dark magic but had not aquired the Dark Hold yet. It was after her trail that she truly sought it out.

Perhaps her travels led her to meet Rio and began their situationship. Aka, aside from being more than "coven-sisters" (QUEER WIN), I think Agatha & Rio made a vow in not only that neither could harm the other. But also quid pro quo.

Agatha gave Rio bodies. Witch bodies after she took all their magic or people she even killed. Cause maybe Rio is DEATH!? Truly, the way into an entity's heart OR Rio is related to Death in some way.

Either way, if Agatha supplied bodies for Rio, what did Rio do for Agatha? That I do not know, maybe protection? From what then? Maybe the Dark Hold?

Well, whatever Rio had to protect Agatha from, she made the decision even knowing it would hurt Agatha. That decision!?

Rio sacrificed Nicholas Scratch, Agatha's son, to Mephisto to save her.

Personally, I think Agatha was dying or being horribly corrupt by the Dark Hold that her soul was close to being owned by Chthon. So, Rio made a deal with Mephisto to save Agatha's soul and gave up Nicholas in exchange/payment.

Thus, the breakup & lover to enemies between Agatha & Rio.

My points against it!

Agatha's vision in Ep 2, the Dark Hold in the baby cradle. It's implied that Agatha did do it.

But, it's still vague enough that it could have a different meaning. She did look so emotional gazing at it, even shedding tears. Then, absolutely horrified seeing it was the Dark Hold instead of her son.

Perhaps it's a metaphor for Agatha's pursuit of the Dark Hold made her blind or arrogant to what be the consequences for such dark knowledge. The loss of her son.

●

I would also like to point out the possibility that Agatha doesn't even know what exactly happened to her son? She might actually believe she sacrificed him for the Dark Hold, but she herself isn't sure.

Hence, why the sudden attachment to Teen. She grows to believe that Teen is her son, that she/Rio didn't sacrifice him. That Agatha put the sigil on him and gave him up instead.

Either way, Agatha has doubts about what actually happened to her son.

Teen

Rio confirms that at the end of Ep 4 to Agatha, that Teen isn't her son.

And yeah, obviously Teen is Billy, Wanda's son BUT my crack theory.

Wanda tried making Billy & Tommy real after the events of WandaVision with the help of the Dark Hold. But she thought she failed, hence why we have Doctor Stange MoM. But it actually worked!

Wanda did bring Billy & Tommy into existence but unknowingly had help from Mephisto. He gave her Nicholas' soul to use to bring her sons to life. Might explain why Agatha believes Teen is her son. She senses something about him that makes her want to believe.

BUT why would Mephisto do this? Honestly IDK, maybe he has plans to use Billy & Tommy as leverage against Wanda to get her soul, and maybe her powers to bend reality at his will. Instead of only doing so when making deals. Maybe to use her & the boys against Cthon or the boys are sleeper agents that he's waiting to use one day.

Moving on,

Teen even asks Agatha if she put the sigil on him, so Teen has doubts about his identity!

Teen even starts to question if he is Agatha's son, but why?

It's because all the memories Teen has about his suppose parents & life aren't "real"

It's either fake memories implanted in him and people "acting" in their roles to keep it up.

Since in the trailer, we see Teen in a hospital gown? Along with Agatha in a type of prison cell. I think the government or some type of organization found Teen/Billy and had him locked up monitoring him since he does give off some type of energy/magic. Agatha will probably unlock the truth to Teen and even break the sigil.

I'm ending it here since I am tired, it is late. Well, here are my theories. I am probably horribly WRONG, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in.

#agatha all along #agatha harkness #rio vidal #billy maximoff #a theory❔️

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miminmimikyu · 7 months ago

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Prodigy episodes 11-12: Jankom you hero! You know that those anger management classes were good if Jankom managed to de-escalate a conflict between a tactless angry Dal and an absolutely livid Chakotay in a room with no Janeway

Jesus episode 11 got really dark really quickly.

Gosh that opening sequence of Chakotay’s life on Ysida was so beautiful. The gentle piano and strings music accompanying this montage was so understated and pretty. The soundtrack on this show...

ngl when Chakotay carved that third chess piece I thought it represented a child

TEN years! That’s longer than Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant! If anyone of the ex-Voyager crew can survive 10 years on an isolated planet, it’s Chakotay, but oooff. I guess 10 years of solitude and the deaths of your entire crew weighing on your mind constantly will do that to a guy. I think that the closest he’s ever been portrayed as this.. callous(?) was in Timeless, where he also lost all but one of his (& Janeway’s) crew. It was so satisfying to see Chakotay get so many emotional moments this episode (still, quite shocking to see him try to attack defenceless kids).

The scene in the cave was so perfect, everything came together— the moody blue of the cavern, Dal’s initial shocked expression and inability to speak, Adreek’s skeleton just sitting there and protecting the antimatter for god knows how long.. and then to top it off the two-hit KO of the incredible animation conveying Chakotay’s horror and grief and guilt, and Robert Beltan’s voice acting!. (I’m so used to his clocked-out performance for a large part of Voyager, I was taken so off guard by the emotions he conveyed in this episode (and the next).…. God that was beautiful

Please.. I’m already dead π_π

I love how it’s not a sense of sudden responsibility for some children but the kids just earnestly working away that gradually drags Chakotay out of his shell. Worn down by their work ethic (and them finding the corpse of his first officer for him 💀).

Yet again: what a cool planet!! A lot of the planets the kids have visited this season have been devoid of humanoid life but each of them is so unique and interesting. Not the worst place to be marooned, if not for the beasts.

I really like the reversal of the Janeway-Chakotay dynamic here. On Voyager, Chakotay kept Janeway in check, now holo Janeway does that for Chakotay. It’s cute how he looks back at her for input from time to time.

Dal and Chakotay actually make a great duo. I really liked their heart-to-heart. Also the way they clash, definitely a different dynamic compared to Dal and Janeway. I didn’t expect Dal to confess his insecurity re:the peek at his future so soon. I don’t think that this solved it but I’m glad that he was given a bit of a confidence boost.

These two episodes sure reminded me of Resolution… stranded on a planet, the planet is plagued by ion storms, Chakotay/Janeway infected vs. the Protostar infected. Chakotay is resigned to his fate while Janeway/Adreek is set on fixing the situation (Janeway didn’t manage but Adreek did).... and then in episode 12 Chakotay tells Dal about how he always felt lost (as a child on his homeworld, in the maquis as an adult..), until he met Janeway and became her number one… that’s almost exactly the same thing that he told Janeway in Resolutions (minus the metaphor + heavy romantic overtones). Hell, episode 12 even starts with Vice Admiral Janeway getting her shoulder massaged (/manhandled. by the doctor. and she hates it. unlike when Chakotay did it on New Earth ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ). Only Janeway isn’t actually stranded with him on Ysida…

Chakotay and Holo Janeway… do you think they explored each other’s bo-

Beverly Crusher is k i l l i n g me being all “Jean-Luc? Dunno, you know him, always working!! Hahaha, let’s talk about motherhood” while hiding her now 4-year old secret lovechild.

Anyway. So if Voyager is nearby (ish), that means that this is present-day and Chakotay crashed 10 years in the past? So besides fixing the protostar back up, they need to wipe holo Janeway’s memories, crash the Protostar in the past and I guess Chakotay just loses 10 years of his life now?

#where did he get that cowboy hat from?#star trek prodigy #star trek prodigy spoilers #prodigy spoilers #prodigy s02e11 spoilers #prodigy s02e12 spoilers #long post #mmnmmq.txt

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raviolitin · 6 months ago

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Ouat Theory:

So i’m rewatching Into The Deep (2x08) and I noticed something about the sleeping curse.

In 1x21, Regina states that when someone is under the sleeping curse, they’ll suffer dreams formed of their own regrets. But, does this really line up with what we see in this episode?? David goes under a sleeping curse and manages to break through into the netherworld, but that’s not where you go initially.

Here is David in his sleeping curse, very clearly not a dream let alone one detailing his regrets. It’s just a room of mirrors. This contradicts what Regina said right?? Wrong.

Because while David is up and moving this is still technically a dream, he’s not awake. It’s like lucid dreaming, he’s asleep but has full agency to do what he wants.

So, what about the regrets thing?? Well, my first conclusion was that it’s an abstract thing - a metaphor. When you’re forced to stare at yourself what else can you do but self-reflect, both literally and figuratively.

But then I came to a second conclusion, which I like much more. The sleeping curse looks different for everyone. It’s personalised.

David Nolan is a very self-loathing character. Almost every time he gets screen time it’s to lament about how many insecurities he has.

For David, his regrets look like himself. Because he regrets the man he feels like he is. When David Nolan looks in those mirrors, he sees a failure of a father, an unworthy leader, a dishonourable son, so many things that he feels he isn’t good enough at. I can’t imagine looking in a mirror would be a worthy enough punishment for most people, but if we consider this is personalised to David it makes so much sense.

And then you can dig a layer deeper and say that James factors in here. He admits later in the season that he feels like if he was raised by George he would’ve turned out like James did, a corrupt, cruel prince. Looking at himself, the face of his estranged twin brother, it reminds him of the darkness that lays within him. It reminds him that he isn’t completely good, a fact that seems to haunt him throughout the series.

David is a character that overcompensates for his own self-hatred to the point it’s extremely damaging to himself. He throws his life away for other people so he feels worthy of their love, he believes he’s only of worth when he’s providing something for someone, a fact he learned throughout both his childhood and adulthood.

Making David stare at himself, reckon with the man he is, is the perfect punishment for someone wracked with self loathing like him.

That’s why I think the curse changes for each person. It also makes me wonder what the other characters curses would look like.

#ouat #once upon a time #david nolan #ouat rewatch #theory #maybe this is obvious #and people are reading this and laughing #but idk #ouat theory #analysis #i suppose #ouat 2x08 #into the deep

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redxx95 · 7 months ago

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Thoughts on the VR game scene in ep 8 of the cherry magic radio drama

that is one long ass title

Hello dear friends, this will only really interest like 5 of you but I shall ramble about this surprisingly thought out scene nonetheless.

For the uninitiated: There's a (in my opinion) fantastic chinese radio drama adaptation of cherry magic, which you can find right here. The person translating this adds a new episode every wednesday and it's currently at 8 episodes (out of 13). If you enjoyed the manga, you will really enjoy this adaptiation, I promise.

On to my rambling now tho.

Disclaimer: I haven't watched the whole rd yet, so I might be mischaracterizing them a little bit (maybe). Also some of the things I'm saying might be a bit of a stretch but oh well 😌

So the scene I'm talking about is actually made up of two parts: the wait for the VR game and the actual game.

Pre-VR game, they're both standing in line and immediately we're met with a deviation from the manga: Kurosawa gets a number and suggests to play this rhythm game while they wait. Adachi doesn't end up playing but he does put the headphones for the game on Kurosawa, who points out how loud they are. I thought it's kinda weird that Adachi's the one putting them on him (cuz like, couldn't he just do that himself?) but if you see it in a more symbolic way it makes a lot of sense. Adachi's line "Now you can sing all you want" while Kurosawa's happily humming to himself, coupled with the fact he's blissfully unaware of the mean girls chattering about them in the background, makes me think this is symbolism for Adachi "shielding" him from the outside world and giving him a space to be himself, free of judgement and harsh words. The rest of the scene plays out pretty much the same as in the manga, with Adachi getting into his head and subsequently slapping Kurosawa's hand away.

So then they both get ready to play the VR game, which is actually just one big metaphor for their relationship. They both get told they'll first have to "adjust to the VR vision" -> adjust to their new relationship Kurosawa: "We'll fight side by side" "Don't shoot me before the round starts" -> "We're finally together!" "Don't write me off before I've even had a chance to prove myself a worthy boyfriend" The game starts and they both can't see each other, tapping around in the dark. -> This relationship is new to both of them, for Adachi because he's never been in one, and for Kurosawa because it's the first genuine loving relationship he's ever been in. Adachi gets really in his head about how the date is going, same as in the manga. While he does that, Kurosawa is repeatedly calling out for him in the real world. -> They're both trying to make this work and stumbling, Kurosawa not getting through to Adachi with his spoken words, yet so desperate to reach him. Kurosawa: "Adachi, say something back" -> Kurosawa craves acknowledgement, pre- and post-getting together. Then finally Kurosawa touches him and that's when Adachi finally responds, Kurosawa going "Found you" in his thoughts. -> Adachi is touched, literally and metaphorically, by Kurosawa and his thoughts, his positive influence pulling him (here only briefly) away from his negative thoughts. The staff instructs them to stand apart, while Kurosawa's surprised at this. ("Aren't we on the same team?") -> I think the staff is supposed to represent the judging eyes of society in this metaphor, telling them they're meant to be apart, as they don't fit together (just like the gossiping girls at the beginning said). (This might be a stretch but it also gives heteronormativity vibes, as in, you're supposed to be apart, you're both "on the same team" (same gender)) Staff: "But if you two get too close during the fight, you might accidentally hurt each other." -> If we drop the staff=society metaphor here, this sentence really just represents their entire early relationship dynamic of trying to do what they think is best for the other, but ending up hurting each other instead, without meaning to. The closer they get, the more friction their differences create. Kurosawa being the one who acts first: "Is this much distance alright?" -> Of course he would be the first to try to accomodate these new restrictions, always trying to take up as less space as possible to not be a source of trouble for Adachi. Eventually the actual game starts up and they play, Kurosawa telling Adachi that he'll "cover for him", but ultimately failing at this ("I said I'd cover for you but I only ended up slowing us down") -> Kurosawa trying to do more than he's capable of and messing things up for both of them is kind of a running theme with him. (shameless plug to my essay about this here lol) Adachi performs poorly in the game because he couldn't focus. Kurosawa immediately asks if they want to go again, but he doesn't feel like he can do it, ending the scene there. -> Adachi worrying too much about how others see him/them is not only how he loses the game but also how he "fails" the date, losing all hope that him and Kurosawa are meant to be together at all, even though Kurosawa is very willing to try and make it work.

The rest of the episode plays out very differently from the manga, so I can only really analyze that when I finally get to watch the next episode. 👍

Hope yall enjoyed this long ass read 🫶

#cherry magic #this is such a silly little scene but they still put so much thought into it #thank u rd writers 🙏#my essays

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farfromstrange · 5 days ago

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happy early birthday Lizzi!

Can I get a bouquet of hyacinths? <3

What's your favorite chapter from the show and why?

And could you tell us a little bit more about your writing process? I really love your writing style and the way you portray Matt.

Thank you so much, nonnie!

You ask and you shall receive.

I’m a Season 3 girlie through and through! Matt’s crisis of faith, the grief of getting Elektra back—and he did love her in a way he never loved anyone before—just to lose her again, not to speak of how well Charlie portrayed the depression aspects of it all, it’s just peak cinema for me.

I relate to Matt in so many ways. Being beaten down (metaphorically), feeling detached from myself and just… struggling, if you know what I mean. Matt, too, was broken in S3 and had to claw his way out of that hole just to get his life back. Get his friends back. The friends he thought he’d already lost. Because he pushed them away and continued to push them away until the very end. He had to walk through hell to find back to himself—yes, his own behavior is also a reason for why some of the shit that happened actually happened, but to me, it just shows how human he is. And after the last episode, I like to think he finally reached a stage of acceptance. As much as I love seeing that dark and broody side of him, I also just want this man to be happy.

As for my writing process, I had to really think about that one. I’m not really a planner, to be honest. Or, I like to write things down but most of my stories take a form of their own once I actually start writing, and then I just roll with it.

My thought process with my shorter fics is almost always ‘Oh, I have an idea! Let me write an awful first draft and then edit the shit out of it!’ It’s either that or I end up posting the first draft and let Tumblr decide if they like it or not. I also like to write while watching Daredevil (I pick the season by the version of Matt I’m imagining).

For my longer fics, however, like Do No Harm and Foreigner’s God, I plan. Like, a lot. When I first started writing Foreigner’s God, I didn’t plan a thing (and I personally think that’s noticeable), but now I’m actually putting in the time and work to build a series that makes sense. The same goes for every other ongoing work I have; if it takes a long time, I’m planning, and since I can’t always plan ahead, I sometimes take a break from certain works to get the story straight in my head.

With Do No Harm I had Olivia’s entire backstory planned before I even started writing. That’s the first fic I really planned out from top to bottom. I wrote down even the smallest plot points I could think of and started planning the chapters accordingly. I also take notes on the episodes I’m watching to make sure I stick to my timeline while still defying the canon.

What I also do before writing is create a Pinterest board and a Spotify playlist to listen to while I plan and write. The aesthetic I pick sets the tone. Like angst, fluff, or smut, you name it. The songs I listen to help me get into the heads of my characters. It helps me build their personalities. Using other forms of art like music or looking at photographs is actually a great way to get inspiration.

Names and stuff like that are all the product of hours spent on baby name websites and me trying to get rid of the ads trying to sell me baby stuff because Google’s convinced I’m pregnant, but that again is restricted to my longer fics. One Shots don’t require that much research, just all of my focus to get the point across without getting carried away. Like descriptive writing and dialogue and adding plot without being too overbearing, depending on the word count I have in mind.

And then I just continue to dissociate and live out the scenes I want to write instead of actually writing them until I finally manage to put down a coherent sentence. That’s about it.

Anyway. That was fun. And a lot.

Nonnie, yours is the only hyacinth bouquet I received and I am so happy you chose to request that. Thank you 🤍

#every authors has their own way of writing and i loved sharing mine!#Lizzi’s birthday bouquets 2025!#lizzi talks #daredevil #matt murdock #fic writing #writing process

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dragonprincebr · 1 year ago

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[ENGLISH] Interview with Devon Giehl!

O Príncipe Dragão Brasil Team realized an exclusive interview with The Dragon Prince's Lead Writer and Producer, Devon Giehl! We asked about episode 8 from season 5, as well as questions by fans!

We translated the interview so more people can read about it! Here's the portuguese version.

Finnegrin was such an interesting and exciting villain! How did you guys created him, and is there any chance he survived?

Devon Giehl: It started because we wanted to take the characters to a sort of pirate town after they lost Zubeia’s help, they needed a boat to get down the coast. We started developing the idea of Scumport first and then we decided that the minor villain they would encounter In Scumport, this pirate-y lawless town would be Finnegrin. At first, he was only meant to antagonize the cast for one episode, but we had so much fun coming up with stories about the pirate town that we decided to invent the three-part arc in order to be able to fully tell a bigger story about the pirates and the trouble that Callum and co get in with him. So, we ended up saying “what if he chases them?”, “what if he’s part of the plot for the next 2 episodes?” that he pursues them and eventually captures them. We wanted him to be really mean, but also charismatic and charming and he was inspired by the character Al Swearengen from Deadwood. In terms of any chance of him surviving, I think it’s possible, I like to imagine that he had some magical or clever way of escaping his fate. I would like to see him again because I really had fun writing him. Maybe he got out, it’s possible, he’s a powerful ocean mage and a tidebound elf, so maybe. I know that there were jokes about why does he worry about drowning and I was like “why did I write it that way?” but I think even tidebound elves probably have ways of dying. It’s probably more of a metaphor than literally. If you go down far enough anything will be crushed down there. And she’s an Ocean dragon, she can probably just kill him in multiple ways.

In our understanding, a major theme of the episode was the lack of control of things that are bigger and deeper, like the tides of the Ocean, the dark parts of ourselves, which are things we can’t and shouldn’t control. And we wonder what will it mean for Callum, who values his freedom and his choices, when considering that in the last season, Callum lost control of himself when possessed by Aaravos, and now he reached this understanding of the Ocean arcanum.

DG: As a character, Callum explores the themes of freedom and to me that connects to themes of growing up in a way that there is this moment when you are young, especially when you are an early teenager, you gain some sense of self and you realize your individuality, your potential, the limitless power you can potentially have in the world.

You come into yourself in a powerful way and it’s really exciting and you feel like you can do anything. And then very quickly, as you get a little bit older, you come into a place where you realize it’s not that easy. There’s so many things in the world that are bigger and scarier than you, and you start to feel more powerless in how you may confront them, overcome them, and whether or not you even can, you start to make decisions more out of fear sometimes, out of desperation, you compromise parts of yourself, and it wears the way that person thought the world was infinite.

For Callum, in season 2 when he unlocked the Sky Arcanum, he was over the moon, he was excited, the entire world was open to him, he was free of everything. But now, he is a couple years older, a couple years wiser, for better and worse, and this is a scenario in which he was sort of backed into a corner and the only way out he could see was doing something that he didn’t want to do. To me it’s tough ‘cause it changes what he might think he originally believed in only connecting to the Sky. And it makes him a little bit more complex, he rattles his assumptions about his potential and he’s not quite sure anymore if he is who he thought he was going to be and I think all of us go through that at some point of our lives, and it’s really hard.

With maturity comes the sort of darker awareness of dangers of the world and your very small place in it. Whereas the Sky says “look, the whole world is yours, it’s open, beautiful and wild, you can be and do anything”, the Ocean arcanum says like “now, hold on, it’s not quite that easy and infinity possibility does mean that some of these possibilities could be bad”.

Another theme of the Ocean primal is accepting there are dark parts of ourselves, and it seems similar with the Moon primal, that recognizes that there are sides of other people that are hidden from view. So, is Callum ever going to try to tap into Moon arcanum?

DG: There’s a little bit of connection between the Ocean and Moon primal, because they are sort of the push and pull of the tide, they are related, they influence each other. In terms of Callum and the Moon Arcanum, from a more storytelling perspective he might. For me it’s hard to commit to that because the moon it’s Rayla’s special territory. It’s tough because if you have Callum to start to be able to do all this cool Moon magic, it actually kind lessens what Rayla is and what she is capable of. I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible, but I think it takes something away from her in a way we don’t really want the narrative to do currently, which is why we gave Callum his own identity with the Ocean and Sky for the moment. All of the moon stuff is very much how Rayla shines and she’s not going to get other arcanums as a moonshadow elf, we wanna make sure that she still gets to be cool and powerful with what we gave her and not just take that and give it to someone else.

And does the Ocean (and Moon) primal reflects the relationship between Callum and Rayla, considering we also saw the themes of trust between them – even when Rayla temporary hid the truth about what she was doing in his office – and eventually help mend their relationship?

DG: Ooh, that's spicy. I think both of them keep a lot inside, specially stuff that they feel ashamed of or frightened by, and I think that’s very natural for a lot of young people, even people in general. Rayla kept what she was doing from him, and it wasn't necessarily an attempt to hurt him or deceive him, it was very much because she didn’t know how to handle what she learned about the coins, she had no answer, she felt like “maybe if I learn a bit more, I can do something about it, but I’m not sure” and then in the end she has her little vision and she decides “I can’t figure this out right now, even though I really want to, I’m gonna have to go help Callum”‘. So I think it was very personal for her, even when you are in really loving relationships. They are not currently dating, but they do care about each other very deeply, there are still things you attempt to handle on your own and not share even with your partner.

I think Callum is a little bit the same way because there is that sort of like not quite mended trust between them, you also see reflected in how he doesn’t tell her right away about what he did to get out of Finnegrin’s grasp. I think once you unlock an arcanum, it doesnt mean you are gonna be a perfect person and act by the thing you’ve accessed, it just sort of is… sort of like mental breakthroughs, but even when you have little mental breakthroughs in real life, you can still screw up and take those breakthroughs and be destructive with them. The trust between them isn’t perfect yet, but they care about each other enough the other is not trying to hurt them. When Callum said at the end of season 4 “I’m so glad you are back”, everything that followed that, to me, was about him living by that realization, he’s not holding things against her, he understands and cares about who she is. It still is not what it was, but it’s more worthy to have her back in my life than to continue to be angry and resentful and sort of keep her at arm’s length. That doesn’t mean that they are gonna be totally honest and share everything with each other right away, so you still see both of them still taking on their individuals burdens and struggling with them.

What were Ezran and Soren feelings on Callum being tortured and then Rayla being almost fed to the Levianthan? We couldn’t get much into it because of time constraints, but we would love to know more!

DG: The episodes are only 22 minutes long. I would’ve love to do a scene where everybody has like a sort of immediate reaction. If I had to write that scene, I think I would have a lot of people, like Soren and Rayla, basically everyone, making a really big effort to see if Callum’s is okay and if Soren is okay, but I think Callum is in that moment… He doesn’t really want everybody’s immediate attention, he would probably say that he was fine and to check on everyone else, and that’s why you see Rayla with Stella, and everybody coming out, letting off the shackles and things like that and then you see Rayla going to Callum, I don’t think anybody ignored him or took him from granted, there was probably a very brief like, everybody checking in with each other, but his emotions were very confusing. He goes and sits down by himself, huddles up. Then Rayla reapproaches him and you see it play out as it did on the show. Everybody was pretty scared.

In this season, we saw Soren bring up the fact that Ezran, despite being king, is still a child. Is this conflict going to be brought up again, perharps by other people in his council or other Human Kingdoms?

DG: I won’t say how it comes out, but I think Ezran struggles as a really young kid versus the King. He talks like a twenty-five year old, he’s like really, really mature and trying so hard to “grown up”, but I think there’s parts of him that are suffering quietly because of that and we will see that come in to play. The fact that he is a child and there are parts of him that aren’t quite ready for all of this will definitely impact some things in the future.

Ezran’s grief in his short story was such an interesting take in his character, and i wonder if we’ll see more about it in the next seasons?

DG: Yes… Is that too much? That short story was more like a tease for the next three seasons, not just season five. So it’s something that's simmering in him during season 5, season 6 and onward. You’ll see a little bit more of it. He’s outworldly, very wise, very perfect, but there is a part of him that’s very vulnerable to pain, just like everybody, It’s easy to say out loud “peace and love and harmony”, but to actually act on that, not harbor any resentment, is super human. Even he is not immune to that. Everybody has things they are mad about.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FANS

Will the first human to ever do primal magic be explored more at some point?

DG: As far as I know, it’s really open ended and would be the subject of its own story, at some point, but i think it would be pretty cool.

Is there a connection between Aaravos and Callum’s mind, to the point of giving him nightmares? Or is there something else you can tell about a connection between them?

DG: I like the idea that he has nightmares, if anyone wants to write fanfiction about it, please do it! I don’t want to say much about their connection, but once Aaravos has control and touched him in some way, this connection still exists and it’s not something that just disappears, it’s with you Forever. That’s all i can say!

Will we see more of the Silvergrove, or if some of its inhabitants will be making an appearence?

DG: That’s too many spoilers, but we will see more Moonshadow stuff, and revisit their culture in a meaningful way.

Can you tell us anything about Claudia’s feelings on Rayla, or if they’ll be explored in the next seasons? Up until now, they didn’t share many positive interactions, and now Rayla was the main responsable for Claudia not freeing Aaravos, and also cut her leg (even if it wasn’t her intention).

DG: I think Claudia blames all 3 of them with the same amount of anger, I don’t think she focus on Rayla specifically. She sees Rayla as somebody who poisoned people who used to be her friends Against her, she hasn’t really taken the time to consider her as a person. She’s “The Elf” and has a really hard time moving on from that, and I think this encounter just reinforced that. It’s a very negative interaction and They didnt enjoy it. I don’t think she’s gonna blame Rayla especifically, it’s those 3 people – her old friends and the elf. It’s not a specific focus on Rayla.

Will we see more interactions between Soren and Corvus?

DG: Yes. Without saying too much about it, there’s na episode written by our sênior writer – Paige VanTassel – about Soren and Corvus and a storyline they go through. It’s extremely funny because Paige is the funniest writer in the room, and i hope people like it, cause they’re just so funny. The dynamic between Soren and his sort of goofy, himbo humour and Corvus who has deadpan reactions is delightful, and Paige made a Whole story about it. You’ll see it in a future season, and I love it!

In season 4, Rayla says “we can’t save everyone”, in response to her decision to no helping the Drake. Is this foreshadowing for something that might happen in the next seasons? Or it means a change of heart, in contrast to her saving Phyrrah back in season 2?

DG: I think when Rayla said that, she was having a very hard time. When you say things that are against your own nature – because i really think she didn’t mean it, she said the most mean, tough thing she could think of because nothing was going the way she wanted it to go. She was struggling with Callum, stuggling to connect with everybody, Soren was kind of annoying her, and I think she said something completely unlike her, in ways that are difficult to take back. And in the next morning she realizes what she did and freaks out, and it’s just another small mistake in her inability to process her own feelings very well. She routinely proves it’s not something she really believes, but in that moment she was feeling pretty low and angry, and it did not lead her to take great courses of action.

Could Callum adapt Manus Pluma Volantus the way he adapted the Ocean runes to allow his friends to breathe below the water?

DG: That’s a really good question. Maybe? To be honest we never though about that. Maybe it might not work the same way. But It’s possible!

About Terry: will his role remain as an emotional support for Claudia, or question what she does – which is something he already does, and in this season he did it twice, so we wonder if it’ll continue?

DG: I think he very much sees a version of Claudia that’s heroic, even though her methods are dark magic, and it’s a choice she’s making to save her father, and he genuinely believes that’s a good cause. He’s not like Rayla, raised to be na assasin, he’s kind of a normal elf, just a guy, he’s not quite aware of the world and the threat of Aaravos and what everybody else is fighting. He understands Claudia wants to save her father, but he has very limited knowledge on what that means.

From Claudia’s perspective, Aaravos is a “bro”, he sat on her shoulders for 2 years and helped preserve her father. So Terry's got a diferent set of information than the main cast, and sometimes people seem to not consider that – he doesn’t know everything our main characters have learned, and we’ve already seen him a couple times Calling her out when she tiptoes on the edge of cruelty, when she gets very angry, when she lashes out at Rayla and doesn’t give her the coins, when she lashes out at the dragon and wants to hurt it instead of just stopping, and that will continue. But he genuinely loves Claudia, he thinks she’s funny, charming, loyal to her family in a way that’s truly beautiful (even if for us, as the audience, is kinda twisted), he’s seen her best version and seen her do incredible things to get what she wants, but she’s slipping a little, and it’s alarming to him, so we’ll see more of that.

#the dragon prince #interview #devon giehl

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