#and at a certain point even if you know that there are doyalist reasons for why some things are the way they are

[vashti-lives]

After vague blogging about fanfic and YA I will say that the issue of media for teens mixing poorly with all ages and adult media is not a problem exclusive to fanfic writers. 90% of the conflict in the star wars fandom stems from the fact that star wars’ YA and children’s media is to some degree canonically and philosophically incompatible with the mainline movies. In the movies the Jedi are unequivocally the heroes and we’re supposed to respect them even as they get backed into a terrible corner. They’re wise heroes doing their best.

In the media made for kids by necessity the adults of the Jedi order have to make absolutely wild and absurd decisions in order for the kid protagonists to get chances to do heroic stuff actual kids would find fun and exciting. This naturally puts their behavior at odds with the goals of the movies.

Add in that the movies don’t hold up to close reads because they’re intended to be fun summer blockbusters, and the fact that the Jedi are based on a fairly shallow understanding of a non-western collectivist lifestyle without nuclear families which is extremely foreign to western audiences and what do you get? Decades worth of discourse over whether the Jedi are actually good guys which can never be resolved because they're based on completely different ways of analyzing media. Worse, nobody can agree on what parts of star wars should be counted in the first place so even if you're analyzing things in the same style you might still be doomed.

[buckybarnesss]

This is probably the most inflammatory thing I've said in a while, but

Something really bothers me about the insistence that Deaton is a benevolent force of good, when the proof is that he is helpful to Scott.

And he is helpful to Scott. Just like Peter can be helpful to Derek. The problem with both of those is that, generally, they are ONLY helpful to Scott and Derek, and always have plans and schemes of their own.

Scott had no choice in who his emissary was. He didn't know WHAT an emissary was. Deaton positioned himself nicely there. He showed Stiles how to use mountain ash and then was like "actually, nevermind."

Does this mean Deaton is an evil sleaze? No. But that doesn't mean he's aboveboard. He lies and manipulates, he just happens to favour Scott.

As I write this out, I think it's the insinuation that Derek is just an untrusting asshole and not someone who is more attuned to recognising an adult man who is pushing a teenage boy to do things that maybe he wouldn't do normally. IE, the mountain ash thing at the end of Season 2. It didn't help in the fight against the kanima. It didn't even kill Gerard! It just... was a shitty thing that happened.

I know people say that it's fanon that Deaton had any involvement in that, but uh. Scott didn't pull mountain ash out of his ass and distill it into pill form.

Sadly, I think that moment + the true alpha thing happening in quick succession kind of made us divide into different camps, and now we're fighting the same war forever, but I think there's wiggle room here.

Deaton isn't evil but he isn't a paragon of virtue. Scott is lionhearted but self-righteous. Derek is slow to trust, but once he does trust, he's loyal. No one on this show is perfect.

I will, however, always support Derek Hale's wrongs.

you are so right.

fandom tends to divide it self into these all or nothing dichotomies that does such a disservice to the story and characters.

the whole scott versus derek debate should've been left behind in season 2. season 3 spent so much goddamn time on them moving past it. the entire episode of frayed was dedicated to the scott and derek relationship, you know.

derek wasn't even like mad about scott becoming an alpha either. scott merely wasn't his alpha just like he was never scott's but they had accepted that by that point. if anything derek was proud of scott.

besides scott becoming a true alpha and derek giving up his alpha status to save his sister was them both being at different places in their character arcs but also when you look at the hows and whys of it all they both were manipulated into it. for different reasons.

peter and deaton mirror and foil each other in interesting ways.

deaton is such a fascinating character and a prime example of doyalist versus watsonian perspectives.

he is so enigmatic in-verse because he was used mostly for exposition and lore drops by the writers but in turn this made the character very reserved, careful and calculating. he keeps his own counsel.

early in season 1 stiles is jealous of derek acting like scott's "yoda" but all the while deaton slips into the position of being scott's mentor. he becomes the obi-wan without either derek or stiles noticing. deaton definitely shares old ben's "from a certain point of view" philosophy.

i know people have been weird about deaton over the years in unpleasant and let's be real here racist ways which is unfortunate and dumb. he isn't evil. he just has his own motivations and agenda which is a good thing because characters are flat and boring otherwise. like yeah it's frustrating that deaton didn't tell derek he was talia's emissary but wow look at that character conflict, look at the added depth to deaton and to the lore in one decision.

i really am looking forward to my rewatch so i can dissect his character and pay more attention to him because i have thoughts about him and his sister marin.

i think one of my favorite things about deaton is that he chose scott to be the chosen one in a way. look at currents when deaton tells scott what a true alpha is.

deaton: it's rare-- it's something that doesn't happen within a hundred years. but, every once in a while, a beta can become an alpha without having to steal or take that power. they call it a true alpha. it's one that rises purely on the strength of character, by virtue, by sheer force of will. scott: ...you knew this would happen. deaton: i believed. from the moment I knew you were bitten, i believed.

and i love the contrast to marin saying in alpha pack:

"and I sent her to do what I've always done-- maintain the balance"

to deaton's regression of the mean:

deaton: gave you ever heard the term "regression to the mean?" scott: no... deaton: it's a bit of a technical way of saying things will always even out. scott: like, things will always get better? deaton: more like... things can't always be bad. scott: so, no matter how bad things get-- deaton: --or how good-- scott: they always come back to the middle.

they both want balance but don't seem to agree what balance looks like or how to achieve it.

i cannot wait to pick his character apart.

[pyroreadscomics]

Jeph Loeb's is the best or one of the best Selina writers. When in Rome is some of Selina's best and true to character characterization. New52 was amongst the worst times to be a Catwoman fan, most times she was unrecognisable to anyone who had read her prior to that reboot.

This ask gave me whiplash the amount of times I alternated between agreeing and disagreeing with you. (read more to save your dashboards)

Jeph Loeb is indeed by some measures one of Selina's better writers, but more specifically I'd specifically consider him as being the best at writing Selina as a supporting character in a Batman story. Hush features a pretty solidly well written Selina as love interest, and in Long Halloween despite being a minor character in the grand scheme of that story she gets a bunch of good moments to set her up as a potential Holiday suspect. Dark Victory even, despite Selina just being a love interest and a minor character uses her pretty well from the point of view of furthering Bruce's narrative. It's a damn sight better than say, Tynion IV who gives the impression he's only wrote Catwoman on sufferance or out of obligation, or King who's very enthusiastic about a character he keeps insisting is Selina Kyle and I keep not believing him. And even comparing him to the better "Selina in a Bat book" writers, Loeb's only real competition is Ram V and Gotham Nocturne: Intermezzo and despite loving Ram V's work I'm still willing to give it to Loeb on quantity. However, I've come to the conclusion that there must be a world of difference between writing Selina as the main character and writing Selina as a side character because that's the only way to explain why Loeb is good at one and not the other. Because When in Rome is ass, and I hold that opinion strongly. strongly enough that I wrote the first half-ish of an essay or the subject (only half because at a certain point I went "wait, I can just move on to better stories" and then I did) Still I shall try (and likely fail) to condense all those thoughts into 3 paragraphs, here goes: When in Rome doesn't care about Selina for anything other than her looks and her ties to Batman

Look at how it's presented vs how it is. "A Catwoman Murder Mystery" is written across the cover of every issue and the back of the collected edition, the blurbs about the series always put focus on Selina's quest to find the truth about her family. And yet the actual content of the book instead of putting focus on these theoretically interesting elements (Selina as a murder investigator was and still remains very unexplored territory for the character and you could easily wring an entire maxi-series out of the question of what does family mean to Selina Kyle) has a plot that's all about Batman somehow despite him not even being on the same continent as the plot and pads it's runtime with scenes centralized on the fact that Selina's not wearing much and Riddler being a creep about it.

Selina truly does not spend any time investigating the murder mystery the tagline insists is so important to the series. She spends fewer panels investigating her parentage, the reason she came to Italy, than she does naked. Instead the plot (the bit of it that's not contriving reasons why Selina should be half dressed or less in as many scenes as possible) is about a frankly idiotic plot by the Riddler to expose Batman's secret identity by means of fear gas. A plan that could never have worked in the first place, because Selina didn’t know Batman’s identity. A plan that could have gotten Riddler killed were it not for Selina being a complete idiot throughout all of this (recall this is pre all of Selina’s character development and early Selina had killed for less that the shit Eddie pulled here). And a plan that in the end only achieved turning a story that was supposed to be about Selina and her family into one about Selina and Batman. (though of course, that’s the in-universe reading of what happened. From a Doyalist angle I suspect this story started out with ideas about putting the focus on Batman and Selina and then Loeb worked backwards to justify it).

The core problem with When in Rome is ironically a strength of Loeb’s other Batman works. He’s really good at writing Selina as a supporting character to Batman, that balancing at of presenting Selina with enough nuance to pass as three dimensional while she fundamentally only exists to look pretty and further the story, but he can only write Selina as a supporting character to Batman. Even here, in a story where Batman isn’t on the continent, where the central focus should either be on a murder investigation he’s got no ties to or a quest to find a family he’s no part of, Loeb only knows Selina in the context of Batman and so we get the fear gas dream sequence plot points so that Batman can still be central to story. (Truth be told, I suspect Loeb hasn’t read much of Catwoman’s solo series, or frankly any story Selina appeared in that didn’t have “Batman” branded across the cover.)

Also not mine but this post has a lot of criticisms I agree with expressed better than I can. Moving on. Genuine question, was anyone not done dirty by the New 52?

Like I’ve never met any fan who’s claimed the New 52 was good for their favorite character.

Because you'll find no argument from me that Winnick (speaking of generally acclaimed writers who failed at writing a Selina solo series) or Nocenti's run were anything better than warmed over garbage. Plus there was that entire JLA thing Selina got dragged into which was simultaneously completely pointless and wasted potential. All around a bad time for Catwoman fans.

Also, I have something else in drafts which is an analysis/dissection of the first three years of the New 52 for Catwoman which... lord if I ever finish that it'll probably be 10k words minimum. Maybe I should finish that up as well. But... I'm hesitant to throw the entire New 52 era under the bus indiscriminately because Genevieve Valentine's run on Catwoman (the first half of which still had the New 52 branding) was and is among the best the Catwoman runs ever. I get that some people dislike it for being an atypical Catwoman story, (what with Selina not being Catwoman, but also there being a Catwoman who's not the main character, and also the whole thing being a mob story) but it remains one of the half dozen Catwoman I've been struck with the urge to reread more than once. It's the only New 52 era story that really cares to explore who Selina is, what about her would change in these new circumstances and would remain unshifting and why. And this is helped by Eiko who in addition to be a standout character on her own merits is an excellent foil for Selina. So, in summary, I about half agree with you.

[semperty]

So this post originated from a message I sent to @rainhadaenerys regarding the Chekhov’s gun that is the wildfire in King’s Landing. Like a lot of things regarding future events in TWOW & ADOS, fandom has taken certain speculation as facts. Dany, whether intentionally or by accident, burning King’s Landing is one of those events. There have been so many metas written about why it makes sense thematically and how it’s a classic GRRM twist of cruel irony. I want to focus on why Dany accidentally igniting the wildfire in King’s Landing doesn’t work for me, and why it seems to be a pattern by GRRM of setting Dany up to fail intentionally. 

From a Doyalist perspective, it really seems like GRRM is creating scenarios that doom Dany intentionally. Now, I know that sounds silly because as the author every situation is manufactured by him, but Dany’s (possible) eventual downfall just seems less organic. Take the wildfire for instance; since Aerys planted it the city has been sacked, Tyrion orders the creation of new wildfire and uses it in battle, and you have a major POV character (Cersei) in the city who has the means, potential motivation and literally fantasizes about using it, but it HAS to be Dany who ignites it, albeit unintentionally, because... reasons? 

Why is it that the only way that Dany can come to terms with who her father was and recognize the type of person she wants to be is through the destruction of King’s Landing? If the argument is that thematically it works then I would expect Dany to actually learn something from King's Landing going kaboom. Except, GRRM has already spent multiple books showing that Dany fundamentally cares about people and doesn’t want to harm innocents. So, again, what does Dany learn from these events? She’s going to go from someone who protects the innocents and has used her dragons in about the most responsible way one can to... being the exact same person she was before she accidentally sets off the wildfire? If it’s about Dany coming to terms with how evil her father truly was then I’d argue that it makes WAY more sense for Dany to survive and spend the rest of her days fixing the lasting legacy of her father (and now herself). 

It all seems less like some brilliant turn of characterization and more about finding a way to ruin Dany’s reputation in Westeros so that she never gets the chance to rule. Which brings me to my next point...

fAegon. We see that a long lost Targaryen heir would actually be relatively well received. This is reinforced through fAegon - and I’d argue through the show as well since they cut fAegon so everyone was flocking to Dany. Yet, GRRM creates this character as ultimately a plot device (imo) to tarnish Dany’s reputation in Westeros since she has to slay the lie that he’s the true-born heir of Rhaegar. 

Hell, take her parallel Jon Snow. There is no shortage of people predicting he’ll go darker and that most of his TWOW arc might actually be about his INACTION due to bitterness about his murder and his identity crisis after finding out about his parentage. Yet, no one suggests that his inaction will lead to the WW’s destroying Winterfell and rampaging through the North. He’ll brood for a little bit but he won’t need to be the root cause of a cataclysmic event to pull him to his senses. It’ll be his own self-enlightenment. 

You can honestly make the same arguments for Jon as you do Dany. At the height of his existential crisis and as the threat of the WW’s breaching the wall is on the precipice, Jon has to come to terms with the fact that he was essentially “created” to be a prophecized hero to fight off the very threat he was already fighting. His darker moments lead him to accidentally play a part in the wall coming down. It’s every bit the same cruel irony of Dany accidentally burning King’s Landing. We don’t want that to happen though because we don’t want to sully Jon’s reputation too much. He is the Big Damn Hero after all... 

With Dany, however, she could only ever fulfill her destiny by becoming the worst version of herself (even if it’s only for a time). As if she needs to blow up King’s Landing to realize that she cares about people. It’s already a core aspect of her character.