#and it would even be a perfect s2 to add to the story of your [redacted] anime. you can even have chuucon duet doutankyohi for a special ed!

[deus-ex-mona]

[snek-panini]

As promised, I've got more books to share and they are all fic binds. Have a look at this new one:

This is Among the Stacks by MeinirRhos, and it's one of the few post-s2 Good Omens fics that I've liked enough to bind. It's canon-compliant and full of pining, fluff, angst, and a memory loss plot and I knew before even finishing it that I wanted it on my physical shelves.

I kept it pretty simple on the outside, with Library Summit book cloth and white HTV for the title. Large parts of the fic have to do with libraries and library books, so I thought it would be fun to make it look like a library rebind, something that looks innocuous and blends in to the shelves but it's actually going to be your new fave once you open it up and start reading. I wanted very badly to have the titles hand-written in embossing inks but I couldn't get a clean enough line with the textured cloth, so this handwriting font saved the day.

More photos under the cut; I'm really proud of the typeset for this one!

Top view, with pre-made end bands and a ribbon bookmark. Going with the library rebind aesthetic, I didn't think it ought to have handmade end bands, so these were perfect. Honestly I'm not sure the ribbon bookmark fits the theme, but you can pry that from my cold dead hands. All my books have them and I love them too much to leave it out. The endpapers are cream-colored cardstock, and while they look plain they feel nice. I tried out a new-to-me corner style, the library corner, where you don't trim off the excess material at the turn-in. It's supposed to be more durable than other styles and is common in rebinds. Library Summit is stiffer than most of the other book cloth I've worked with, so it was a little challenging to get it to lay flat while drying, and it's a bit bulkier than I'm used to, but it's perfect for the theming. Unrelatedly, it also holds a hinge crease really well.

Title page. I could not be more pleased with this title page design. I showed it to my husband after I finished the text block but before I had the cover on it, and he didn't realize at first that it was one of mine. I have cracked the code of professional title pages. The graphics were, at the time I put this together, available for free on rawpixel. I'm in love with it. It is sexy as hell and it will never be equaled.

Couple more interiors. The chapter header font is called Book Ends and I found it on DaFont. You add in the little plants and stuff with symbols. I haven't done much with custom fonts until this batch of fics, and in some of the others I've got in the pipeline I went a little nuts with them, but I think this one's my favorite for how well it fits the story. I also started experimenting with formatting text messages in this fic, and I'm very pleased with how those came out as well. The Renegade Bindery discord has resources on this kind of formatting, so check them out if you haven't already. I'd never have gotten them so professional-looking otherwise.

And that's it for this bind! I started working on it back in April and I'm thrilled to finally be able to show off the finished product. Thanks @rhosmeinir (Hi! It's Amberfly from Ao3!) for giving me permission to bind it nearly six months ago.

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

I love your TMA swap AU so much and love seeing posts about it

do you like, have any more info on it you haven’t shared yet?!? you don’t have to share if you want to, it just kinda consumed my mind 👉👈

CRASHING IN AT LIGHTNING SPEEDS

I absolutely have info and I love talking about it — It’s consumed my mind as well!

I realise I haven’t really talked about one of the key aspects of the AU which is Elias and his slow descent into becoming a vessel for Jonah Magnus, albeit with a twist.

I’m always particularly fond of Swap AUs that really play around with the idea of characters in different roles, and for Elias, that meant he couldn’t simply be the Archivist. While Jon’s story revolves around humanity, Elias’ story in this AU is more an exploration of identity and how the lines blur.

I had to play around a bit with canon, give reason as to why Jonah hasn’t just taken Elias as his vessel yet or taken someone else, and is having to retreat to his old body, using the last few years it has left in it. The idea I settled on was that his vessels need to be specific, preferably someone already touched by the Eye, and a body who he Knows can withstand the shift. These potential vessels aren’t as common but he knows one will been drawn to the Institute eventually.

The problem with Elias Bouchard, is that he still has people left who would notice the change, people he’s close to - Sasha, Tim, Gwendolyn, etc. I have mentioned before that this is why he was made Head Archivist. The Archive is the most dangerous place to work and the easiest place to set Elias on the course of becoming an Avatar himself, making him even more suitable, and isolating him, whether it be through his friends dying, or him isolating himself due to the stress and/or paranoia. Anything like that really.

And, while he isn’t the Archivist, he does develop his own set of abilities, more centred on Watching, similar to Jonah. In late s2 for example, his eyes have started to adjust to Seeing, and he becomes distinctly aware of Not-Sasha, hence his attempt at attacking her with a metal pipe.

He doesn’t view these abilities as negatively as you’d think really, namely because they give him a sense of purpose, a feeling of importance and power which he has longed for his whole life. He often believes he deserved better than what he has, deserves to be respected, stemming from his relationship with his father. He only realises a little too late that what’s happening to him isn’t a good thing, and that he’s losing the people he cares most about.

It’s during his coma in s4 that the identity aspect truly comes into play.

Jonah decides this is the perfect chance to take Elias’ body, and Martin is left with the task, mainly due to Jon being in jail and Martin’s ability to go unnoticed. This is one of the things Martin would really rather avoid doing but Jon asked, and so he obliges.

It doesn’t… work out though. He’s only able to replace one eye — very clumsily at that — before someone walks in, and while they don’t see Martin, they do see the mess he’s left behind.

Elias unfortunately wakes up not long after, and Jonah decides to put the other eye on hold for a short while. He’s… curious, really. He wants to Know what will happen, what this will feel like for the both of them.

S4 is probably my favourite era of the AU solely for the exploration of Elias and Jonah and how the other characters interact with that. They don’t know what’s happened to Elias, a man who had looked an absolute mess for months, suddenly looking pristine, with his hair cut short — he’s always hated short hair — and an eye that definitely isn’t his own. I should add, before now, he’s never gone by Elias. He never liked it, mainly due to the disappointed or angry tones it was often said in by family. He insisted on being called Eli, but, in s4, suddenly he’s rather insistent on going by Elias.

It’s disturbing, to say the least, and the thing is, he’s aware something is wrong, aware he’s acting differently, that his dominant hand has changed from right to left, that his wants and beliefs are being clouded by something else, but he doesn’t know what’s happening anymore, and he doesn’t know how to convey his own distress. He’s acting in ways he otherwise wouldn’t, and it just comes naturally to him. Anytime he even considers breaking down, begging someone to hear him, to recognise he’s just as scared as they are, he’s struck with the thought he doesn’t want to do that.

Everyone tells him he’s changed, and he knows, and he can’t do anything about it.

I’ve wrote a lot already so I’ll probably go more in depth on that another time, but for now, I did actually start writing a Transcript Style thing for an interaction with Gwen, who’s convinced her brother has been replaced entirely, so I’ll share a snippet of that!

I am so very normal about the Swap!Siblings <- lying so badly

[matan4il]

I just wanted to add to the conversation on Connor and Buck. For me 2 things can be true at once and think all interpretations of their past and initial meeting are pretty accurate.

But for me I totally agree with your assessment of their initial meeting. Also though for me Buck has always screamed the very motto of love is love. He looks for human connection in any forms (why I fall on the sword of pan sexual). And when Connor kept it friendly feels he was like cool bro. Had Connor been down for cuddles, cuddling it would be

But the thing that was funny is Connor in no way hurt him. He clearly had no problem meeting Conor and his new wife and showing a genuine interest in their love story. When it came to asking for his sermon there was absolutely no heartbreak over a former crush asking a favor for his new love.

And sorry for this ramble because it brings me back to my original point. Eddie is the only one that can genuinely hurt Buck no matter of the status of their relationship at any time because that is his true love. I truly believe over the years his love for Eddie has become just a comfortable second nature and he will take Eddie in any capacity he can because he just loves him that much.

It's almost why Taylor was the perfect partner for him in a sense had nothing ever changed with Anna (Eddie's gay awakening) . She was a warm body on lonely nights but she never brought anything emotional to the table and didn't require any of that from him. She was in a sense a cactus. Needs occasional watering but can be ignored for the most part .

Hi Nonnie, thank you so much for your ask!

And especially for this bit - “For me 2 things can be true at once and think all interpretations [...] are pretty accurate.” I couldn’t agree with this more, which is why I always say that I’m giving you my interpretation and my reasoning for it, but I more than respect other ones, and think everyone has the right to disagree with me! (I’m also a bit tempted to write a post about how one of the most brilliant texts ever, the story of David and Bat Sheva in the Hebrew Bible, intentionally invokes different interpretations to force the readers to reach more than one conclusion)

But even so, it’s still really nice to hear you agree! XD It’s always good to know one’s not alone, right? I absolutely agree that I don’t think Buck has a lot of heteronormative reservations when it comes to sex and relationships. But yeah, I believe he saw Connor wasn’t in the same place and let it drop. Not even in the moment was there too much hurt. I just don’t think Buck had enough time to grow attached to Connor enough for that to be the case. Which is, exactly as you said, so different to how he reacts to Eddie. Buck saw Eddie and within two seconds, the new guy was already getting under his skin. Eddie was so awesome in Buck’s eyes that he could never remain indifferent to him. Initially that was a negative while Buck saw him as competition, but then it turned pretty quickly into a positive (because Eddie IS awesome, and he managed to easily sneak in under Buck’s walls, too). Either way, it was always intense. It was bound to be. So I agree, I think Eddie is the person who always had the power to hurt Buck more than any of his friends or romantic partners.

Def more than Taylor, which is so interesting. We saw Taylor abandoning Buck in 208, and then we saw Buck breaking up with her in 518, and in neither case do we register any long lasting heartache. Buck might have liked her a bit for his ego in s2, and a bit for being there while Eddie was less available (first with Ana, then being shot and dealing with the aftermath of that), but despite being his longest romantic r/s to date, the biggest emotional impact Taylor had on Buck was never in hurting him, it was in giving him the opportunity to choose himself, and that sense of relief he had when he finally did.

But just to go back for a second to Eddie? With all of that power that he has to hurt Buck, amazingly, I think no one has ever made Buck feel as seen, loved and appreciated as Eddie has. I’ve written about this before, and if I need to, I will again! That’s the power of true love, if you ask me.

I hope you have a great day, lovely! And here is my ask tag! xoxox

[anon-8518]

List of Writer's Tips that I made (will be updated frequently)

Through out my time working on City Bleats and various SITBC fan-fics, I had learnt a lot about writing and I decided to share knowledge as tips so people can learn from them and grow better as writers.

#1 - Cliff-hangers

There are two types of cliff-hangers that I came up with: Conclusive and Continuative

Conclusive is when you end your story here and leave the audience to think about what's going to happen next, especially if you don't have a sequel planned. Your best bet if you don't know what else to finish your story with, and you can change it to a Continuative one easily if you had made a sequel.

Continuative is when you add hints in an ending that leave the audience thinking that a sequel is going to be made and be excited about what's happening next. Only use it if you have sequel in the works AND if you're confident it's going to be finished, and you cannot change it to a Conclusive one at all. Too many works have fallen victim to this.

My advice: Be careful on what you choose.

#2 - Clichés

Despite what many think, clichés aren't inheriently bad. It is their usage that counts. Don't feel ashamed if you have to use a cliché if it actually helps the story and it isn't overused.

#3 - Importance

If something is not important, there is no point including it (jokes are excluded). It just waste the audience's time and makes something longer than it already needs to be.

#4 - Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

It doesn't matter if your character has done good deeds before or is even heroic, if they do something that is considered evil, they don't get a free pass. They still did something that is considered evil. You should be focusing more on their redemption or even write-off rather than their excuses.

#5 - Dumb =/= Entertaining or Funny

Even if the world the work sets in is dumb, just because something is dumb doesn't make it entertaining or funny. The reason some dumb stuff is funny is because there is either a good reason, joke or logic behind it, not just because it's dumb.

A perfect example of a wrong way of doing this is "An Officer and a Gentle-Lamb" from Sheep in the Big City (S2 E10). The world of SITBC is considered dumb in some areas, but it mostly works because there's good reasons and logic behind it (like Sheep being wanted by a secret military organization because he is needed for a sheep-powered ray-gun that only he can fit in). This episode fails at that because there no logic, reason or even joke behind the decisions made (like Sheep getting fired from his job because the SMO keeps raiding his boss' shop despite it being out of his control, or how Sheep joins the SMO despite being the same organization who wants to capture him (even the show makes fun of it)), and expects the audience to laugh. Instead, the audience is frustrated at it, and you don't want that.

#6 - Post-Credit Scenes are Not Your Friend

If you're going to put lore into a work, never (and I mean NEVER) put them in post-credit scenes. The audience often don't stay for them and would miss out, especially if the lore in question is important and not all the episodes/parts/etc. have post-credit scenes at all. If anything, putting lore in the background is more likely to get noticed.

#7 - Less IS More

You can make many signs towards something you want your audience to notice, but they'll always notice something else if there are a bunch of important factors involved that are not present in the former (e.g: Is it more enjoyable? Is it logical? Is it better overall?).

#8 - First Impressions or Cancellation

When you're making an introduction or pilot to your work, you better make sure that it grabs the audience's attention and interests them. If the beginning is too boring, then they would leave and not continue the work further, missing out on any excitement that lays beyond.

#9 - Last Impressions or a Waste

Like tip #8, you better make sure all the backstory, build-up, anything really (with the exceptions of jokes), ends up not going to waste and being essential to the ending of the work. If none of that is ever brought up or is important in the end, then your audience is either going to forget about it or even despise it if it's constantly hinted at, therefore, making it a waste.

#10 - About Fan Service

Fan Service is like sugar. Very little, if none at all, could make the audience assume that you are not listening or acknowledging them. Too much could make it notable, distracting and off-putting to some.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Someone gift me baby karasu with a bow that’s the only thing I’ll ever reply with when people ask me what I want LMAOO

I def wanna see them pro but something about seeing the pro would also feel bittersweet to me somehow?? Idk like now that they’re pro we KNOW it’s over but errrr idk I don’t have a better solution HAHA im ngl I was into kuroko no basket for awhile but it was way after it ended and I almost died with how the fandom was kinda inactive and lack of content im just glad that since BLLK is ongoing now it won’t be as barren lolol

I would tell you to search it up but you’re gonna wanna burn your eyes after…I only heard of it via booktok (Idek how I landed there because I don’t rlly read that much now either nor do I interact or follow any book accs? Thank god I’m out now I wonder if maybe some ppl just went viral) but oh my god why would you think of writing such a thing??? I honestly don’t have an issue with dark content either since I think it allows more exploration of deeper topics sometimes but idek the door and pillow thing wasn’t even dark topic it’s just..??? ???????? ????? I don’t know what to say but you’re on the dot with weird smut

Im hopeful that s2 will def get things going again!!! Like pls fill up Ao3 too like why’s there nothing there.

You’re so right….a very good choice on your end LMAO he def doesn’t fit the arranged marriage trope as well and his canon ninja background was the perfect set up for this!!!

OOOO IM EXCITED LMAOAOA can’t wait to see tabieitaken hollyhock au style…

OOOOOO WAIT THATS SO COOL?!?! On my toes waiting for the next installment o7 (also for whatever reason I think it’s so funny when people go [redacted] I laughed so hard maybe my humors broken)

Oops I meant the cursed child trope in the sense that everyone (or those around them) believe in it LMAOAO I think it’s more interesting when people around them buy into that myth and make their life hard as opposed to just flat out actual misfortune whoopsie

KARASU APPEARANCE no because I was thinking too like…is Mira gonna add Karasu…or are we omitting for the sake of keeping karasu a main lead type of thing…LMAO can’t wait though!!!

-Karasu anon

BABY KARASU W A BOW all i want for christmas is HIM!! he’s just a princess fr i love him sm

watching a fandom slowly die after the source material ends is the WORST at least the anime/epinagi are much further behind from the main manga so it’ll be a while before it’s over!! some series do stay generally popular even afterwards so hopefully bllk is one of those 👆🏻

HELP I JUST LOOKED UP THE PILLOW ONE WTF 😭 that’s not even dark that’s just bizarre…where are these people getting their ideas from 😔

i feel like jjk also blew up heavily with season 2 coming out (although tbf it was already hugely popular) so i think (hope) bllk will be the same!! obv not to the same extent as jjk because whatever is going on there is like unprecedented levels of popularity but for sure i do think more people will get into it now that more characters will be there and there’ll be more content

YES like otoya being a lord or highborn just doesn’t have the right ring to it!! he’s too unserious i could not see him being dignified or dutiful esp not in an arranged marriage scenario where he doesn’t even care abt his wife that much. karasu or yukimiya 100% (more so yuki but karasu could make it work i think). ninjas tended to be lowborn/peasants too so it’ll be interesting to juxtapose him and y/n + show him interacting with a lot of the characters who ARE more noble (y/n, yuki, etc).

TABIEITAKEN HOLLYHOCK AU MY FAVORITE MORALLY GREY ASSHOLES 💖 there is not one good person in that fic (except maybe anri) just some characters you do root for and some you don’t HAHA i’m excited for all of the reveals and character development i think it’s going to be sooo fun

YESS it’ll be clearer once i finish the story where i got my inspiration from. i love drawing from history as an inspiration!! like ofc i’m not going to go word for word but it’s nice to have something that i can reference if needed and build my own plot off of. i def think it makes hollyhock unique…like a) it’s a fic w OTOYA as the main love interest (not the usual suspects itoshi bros) and also it’s set in a relatively unusual setting + is engaging with a generally overlooked aspect of that time period. like forget being a weak lady who falls in love w her arranged marriage husband 🥱 y/n is scheming plotting killing etc etc (or at least she will be eventually). i love mcs who are just a little Not Normal and i really think this y/n is like that!! as shown when she was completely willing to sacrifice her half brother if it meant living. like yes 100% he’s an ass but also girl that’s still an entire life you do NOT gaf abt 😭 omg and otoya when he heard her say that…bro realized he had finally found someone to match his 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴 💖 truly the otp we all never needed

ooh yes i do think y/n is a victim of that trope while she’s staying w the hiiragis!! although as much of it is just them hating on her because they hate that she’s such an embarrassment to them…i’m excited to show how other characters (otoya and co) react to the circumstances that make the hiiragis hate her!! it’ll def be interesting (and also a lot of it is based in actual japanese mythology/tradition…despite my disclaimer i actually do enjoy researching and sprinkling in details like that!! i just had that in there in case some historian type of person came to my comments freaking out abt how something or another isn’t accurate 😭)

i feel like karasu HAS to be there HAHAHA it truly wouldn’t be otoya if his bestie isn’t present especially since yuki exists in-universe too!! he’s also going to be super important to the story but it will break my heart knowing that things w him will never be romantic 😔 though honestly “romantic” is a stretch even for y/n’s eventual relationship w eita 😰 it will be intense and passionate and pining and many other such things but unfortunately with all of the political nonsense they’re up to (unifying the warring states and whatnot) there won’t be too much time for a healthy proper relationship. long story short expect a slow burn 😈

ALSO BTW I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE INVESTED IN THE STORY writing fics for random characters is sooo hard sometimes because there’s usually not a lot of engagement/feedback 🤒 as long as i have even one reader who likes to yap w me i can usually manage it though so i am very grateful for you bae 🫶🏻 doing the otoya nation a great service

[sukibenders]

Who gives a shit about ~privilege~ in Bridgerton. It's a fucking Regency Romance. Go watch something else and ruin that fandom by crying about the imagined privilege in your head. Marina was a hoe who tried to baby trap a man, Kate was a bitch who stole her sister's fiance by being a fucking hoe, and Edwina deserved better. Go cry about it.

"It's fuckin Regency Romance" and "Go watch something else" and yet, even in the show and Bridgerton universe itself, it calls out the privilege that exists in the world, around some characters. Is it perfect? No because, a lot of time, it's surface level, but it still makes a point to call it out, even with romance added to the plot from Eloise and Theo to even Anthony and Kate (unless you haven't been paying attention). Telling me to "go watch something else" even though you are clearly missing the points of the show, and then believing that me criticizing things is "ruining the fandom" is quite sad because that's all it takes for something to throw you off from a fandom? Please, my criticisms are way more light than what others have said, but go off on a tantrum about it I guess, and say it's all in my head (the Regency Period was known for its wealth and privilege, historically and any adaptation featuring it, so it's a brain dead take to act like it's not. Like do you really think someone who's poor would be at those balls? Think, please).

Also, I take your words with very little grain of salt because the way you were so quick to call female characters, especially woc, derogatory and misogynistic names says a lot about you. And you throwing in "Edwina deserved better" last minute falls flat because how are you going to say that but then turn around and say privilege doesn't exist in this world, as if that literally isn't the reason for Edwina's whole introduction to the show? Due to her family running low on funds and having poor social standing, to the point where her livelihood depended on her marrying an Englishman (the show made sure to point that out during the Sheffield dinner scene) in good standing. If privilege didn't exist, then a big chunk of the show would not have happened. And shaming Marina for getting pregnant when, again it's the Regency era, she probably didn't know about how children came to be or wasn't taught proper sex practice, and to add on, literally thought she and George were going to marry and run away together. You know, something that is romance.

Kate and Anthony's love story, though I have my criticism on how it was handled, is an enemies to lovers (in some way) storyline, and while Edwina deserved better than to have Anthony string her along and then having the plot have a man come between two sisters, Kate did everything to not fall in love with Anthony and try to get him to be a perfect man for her sister (not in the best ways a lot of the time, but you can't say that didn't at least attempt to consider Edwina's feelings). S2 showrunners fumbled with the writing and did a lot of back and forth, but Kate never intentionally "stole" Anthony like you believe and you're really gross for calling her a hoe and a bitch (knowing damn well that Edwina would not want to associate with you for disrespecting her sister like that). Also, you believing a man can be stolen is another way in which you ignore how privilege does exist. Anthony is a man, not only that but a Viscount from a well off family, and Kate and Edwina had no male figures present during s2, so already Anthony holds a lot of power and, key word of the day, PRIVILEGE. He was wrong for pursuing Edwina knowing he had feelings for Kate, for nearly putting Kate's honor on the line, and many other things. While I can admit that he was going through some things, he ultimately played a role that you are so conveniently denying while placing it all on Kate. That really says a lot.

The two women you are hating on are a part of romantic storylines, whether you like it or not. Or does your definition of romance--- let me stop. In the end, it seems like you're the one who needs to cry, so go take your misogynistic takes and rose colored glasses somewhere else.

[jeekyl]

Motherland Fort Salem ft Warrior Nun ?

Ok Ok, hear me out before strating a war on my ass. which no one will do because yeah..  TL;DR : Ava is Raelle, Beatrice is Scylla( I have an twist feeling about them both, but then again, they flip flop so..) , Camilla is Tally and Lily is Abigeal. Same story different time and period, different stories same outtakes. they’re a gay mess but more importantly didn’t ask for extra power but love it - Ava/Raelle, Have a mission and have past trauma Beatrice/Scylla, is innocent but will cut you and destroy your very soul Tally/Camilla, Think higher of herself look like a bitch but is a softy if let being so Lilith/Abigeal. Raelle didn’t and never ask for the mycelium to bound with her. But the mycelium choose her, because she “isn’t seeking power”. The mycelium, all the dead witches agreed to save and protect Raelle at all  cost because she is the one who will be able to defeat the Camarilla.  I didn’t made the parallel until well, today as i rewatched from another account, from s1. First scene, Lilith told Shannon that she is sorry, ( with a smile might i add), which Shannon answered with “ we both know you’re ready”. Do i need to go about who Lilith is or.. ? And it’s when Mary said “ it’s beautiful Shannon, so beautiful “ that my brain decided to do whatever it decided to do while on my way to be drunk, i remember that Ava got the halo “ on accident” ( just like Raelle). Ava never wanted it, never asked for it, and didn’t want the burden coming with it. Yet, she ended up accepting it - just like Raelle, and might i add that Raelle lost her mother to a war and Ava’s parent died in an accident caused by Vincent, whatever you want to think, clues are there and he was the driver that killed two person and made their child quadriplegic along with an orphan, the irony is laughing in irony there.  IF - that’s a big if, - the halo have a mind on it’s own, - like if Ava or any halo bearer have a trouble mind the halo start dysfonctionning, kinf of like Flash or spiderman or any show about superpower basically - It mean Ava was supposed to get the halo, with or without Vincent’s “help”. And you can argue “ yeah but if he didn’t made a trap to kill Shannon it wouldn’t have work. Remember Vincent is - and in my mind and for a lot a people - is the reason Ava ended up quadriplegic. without him she would have lived with her parents, and who know how or where they would have been. From what we’ve gather they weren’t exactly religious. A religious person would have prayed, hence giving Adriel’s strenght, like Camilla did. Nothin against her but she is way more naive than Ava could ever be and that’s why we love her. She’s a naive girl with a gun. Dangerous. I hated s1 for a good time but rewatching it ? It explain so much, it give so much, her journey ? and i love it so much. For once it isn’t someone who know that at some point they are going to do is asked for them. Ava’s journey is about discovering herself, along with everyone besically. Beatrice, Lilith, Camilla, Mother superior, even Mary and Vincent. I think they had 5 to 7 season already in mind is because each season is about one character. S1 : Ava, S2 : Beatrice, possibly S3 : Lilith or vincent, S4 Mother superion, S5 Camilla.   I know the halo give extra.. everything, but don’t you think that maybe she got it from her inner strengh ? Like someone we know ? Like i don’t know? Raelle? I’m rewatching both, and i wonder why even is the midst of Raelle and Abigeal being at war at each other, they made the perfect harmony, yeah yeah i know because they have in them the first original song, but at the time ? Why ? Each one of them are pare together and they the strengh the other need. Another things we see in Warrior Nun with Ava as Raelle, Scylla as Beatrice, Lilith as Abigeal, and Camilla as Tally. Bonus point for Anacostia as Mother superior. Tell me you don’t see it and i will ask you to reawatch both, for the sake for Sapphic hell. Why Beatrice as Scylla ? She as one job and failed miserably because she fell in love with her “ target”, risked everything to save the person they love, and both ended up losing this person at one point. Raelle because of the spree and Ava because of Reya.  Question of the hours is : How did no one asked Vincent how he know so much about the tarask ? yeah yeah he is a priest so he must know everything but still.  It makes sense at this hours. Might add more later or not.

[stayarmytinyzenmoa-l]

Prominence [WCh. 2.61]

Social Media AU ; Idol AU ; Added Unit AU CW/TW: Language Genre: Comedy, Romance Pairing: NCT x Idol!Reader, Seonghwa x Reader Y/N Pronouns: Female (She/Her) Word Count: 3.4K

(WCh. 2.61/?) [First] | [Previous] | [Next] [NCT Masterlist] | [Other Groups Masterlist] | [Prominence S1 Masterlist] | [Prominence S2 Masterlist]

Notes: Huhu, I was able to squeeze in two characters I've been wanting to hehe Disclaimer: Please remember that this is an AU and a work of fiction, obviously the idols mentioned/written about in this story would never partake in these actions. The idols mentioned in this work are meant to be seen more as face claims rather than the actual idols themselves.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!! Thank you for reading!

25 February 2022

Seonghwa woke up as soon as Mars had licked his face.

"Urgh... Mars, don't do that," Seonghwa wipes his face with his hand and sits up. Mars barks next to him and Seonghwa rubs his eyes, watching Mars stand up against his nightstand, he pushes his phone towards him. Seonghwa picks it up, squinting to read the message on it. "Yangyang? What does he want?" Seonghwa yawns.

Night Bowl. Tonight. 10 p.m.

Seonghwa's brows furrowed, naturally, he knew the location, he'd been to your aunt's restaurant a number of times before, but what could he possibly want? Mars barks next to him, as if to answer him.

"Working as a double agent, are you?" Seonghwa asks. He looks at the time, it was still early in the morning. He had a few schedules to get to beforehand. "How is she?" He asks. Mars tilts his head to the side. "Oh, come on, you know who I mean." Mars seems to smile as he hops onto the bed, resting his head on Seonghwa's lap. Seonghwa moves to pet him, and Mars responds by lightly biting him, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep Seonghwa's hand in place.

"Yup, you definitely deserve that," Hongjoong chuckles from the other side of the room. "Mars, bite him harder." Mars barks and applies more pressure. "Looks like we know which side he's on."

"Mama's boy," Seonghwa glowers. Mars rolls off of the bed and leaves the room. "Do you think he's going to run away again?"

"Probably, just hope he doesn't find a way to snitch on you to (Y/N)," Hongjoong sits up in bed to face Seonghwa. "I'm happy for you, really," he says, "it's not easy to be in a relationship as an idol, let alone with one."

"We're not on shore yet," Seonghwa sighs. He couldn't help but notice the strange foreboding feeling surrounding him. Something is going to go wrong, he knows it will. Nothing ever seems to go right with you two. Your first date, even the second one, meeting his parents and meeting yours, your relationship being exposed, and now this.

"Hey, don't overthink things too much," Hongjoong speaks up. "I have a really good feeling that everything will work out fine."

"I hope so."

"I know so," Hongjoong confirms. "You're tenacious, (Y/N) is stubborn, you're perfect for each other. Whatever is coming your way, I know you'll both get through it," Hongjoong adds. Seonghwa could only glance at him.

Despite their words, Mars trots back with a shirt in his mouth, now spotted with saliva, but it was clear what it was nonetheless. It was a white blouse with an undone ribbon in front.

"Now, where did you get that?" Hongjoong asks. Mars barks, as if to answer.

"I threw it in the laundry, figured I could give it back to (Y/N) next time I saw her," Seonghwa clears his throat. Hongjoong could only laugh.

"Well, well, when was the last time (Y/N) stayed over?"

"Never, it got mixed up with my things when we went to..." Seonghwa's voice trailed off. "When we went to Rome."

"Rome, wow, I still can't believe that the company sponsored that."

"I mean, we did have to make content," Seonghwa shrugs.

"It's still a trip regardless," Hongjoong scoffs. Whatever he said next fell on deaf ears. Seonghwa only picked the blouse up and folded it nicely.

He'll make things right again, he knows he has to. One step at a time.

"What are you going to do in the meantime?" Hongjoong asks. "Plan your strategy? I know your parents already want you and (Y/N) back together, what about hers?"

"I'm meeting an old friend of mine, actually, he recently moved to Seoul so he's been wanting to go out," Seonghwa shrugs. "Besides, I know (Y/N)'s parents will be supportive regardless, or at least I hope so. We'd only met the one time they came over here to visit from the States, but even then, they were just glad that she found someone she really liked," he adds.

"(Y/N) and her parents aren't that close?"

"No, or at least, not as close as I am with my parents." Then, suddenly, his expression grows distant. "I think... I think my real problem would be with her brothers." At this, Hongjoong sits up. Mars' ears also perk up, as if this was the first he'd heard of them too.

"(Y/N) has brothers?!"

"Yeah, she doesn't talk about them much though, but when she does it sounds like they're close," Seonghwa leans against his bed frame. "Either way, it's not important right now. Her younger brother's in the States and her older one's... somewhere, I've never met them, actually. From what I hear from (Y/N) he's a bit of a homebody," Seonghwa frowns and stands up. "I'm going to go get ready now, don't wait up for me," he walks over to the closet and the conversation ends there.

~

"Yangyang!" Your voice was shrill in the WayV side of the dorms. Kun only stared at you when you walked in after he said the door was unlocked. "Where is he?"

"What did he do?" He spoke with a voice of a thousand tired men.

"I can't find Mars anywhere, have you seen him?" You crossed your arms.

"Mars? No, I can't say that I have, Yangyang's in his room though, if you want to ask him."

"Thanks, Kun, I'll be in and out!" You smiled and walked down the hall. You knocked on the door quickly and opened the door. "Yang, have you seen-" your words got caught in your throat. Yangyang was staring at you with wide eyes and you matched his expression. With a razor pressed to his leg and a can of shaving cream in his other hand, you both stood frozen for a few seconds longer. "Uh..."

"God dammit, woman, can't you knock?!" Yangyang shoves you out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"I did knock!" You shout back. "Who the hell shaves in their room?!"

"I do!"

"It's disgusting."

"It's practical."

"Oh my god," you hit your head against his door. "Whatever, have you seen Mars?"

"Mars?"

"Yes, Mars."

"No? Why?"

"I can't find him anywhere!"

"I get this is like an emergency," the door opens and Yangyang, now wearing a pink hoodie and orange shorts, a horrid combination no doubt put together just now, leans against the frame. "But could you not have texted me about this?" He asks.

"I was going to text the chat, but my phone died and I can't find my charger- Ooh! Before I forget, can I borrow yours?" You smiled. Yangyang leaned to the side and handed you his. "Thanks! I'm going to check the Dreamies next. Just, let me know if you've seen him."

"Yeah, yeah, I will!" He closed the door and you were on your own again.

"Any luck?" Kun takes small sips of his coffee.

"Not enough," you shook your head. "Mind if I leave my phone here to charge for a bit?"

"Go ahead," he nods his head toward the outlet, not looking up from his phone. "I'll let you know if I see Mars wandering around here."

"Alright, thanks again," you plugged your phone in and stepped out, walking over to the Dream side of the dorms. One knock was all it took before the door swang open.

"Hi, (Y/N)," Jeno took heavy breaths and had a nervous smile on his face.

"Hey, Jen, just came back from the gym?" You asked, looking at the time.

"Yup!"

"That's early, even for you," you hummed.

"Yeah, yeah," Jeno nods his head. "I've been wanting to work on myself lately, you know? You should come with me next time! I'm always more productive at the gym when I go with someone!"

"What about Jaemin?"

"Too early for him! Come on, (Y/N), it'll be fun! So fun, in fact, that I'm going back right now to get more reps in, you should come with me!" He steps out of the door and closes it behind him.

"What are you hiding, Lee Jeno?"

"These massive guns," Jeno rolls his hoodie sleeves up and flexes, earning an eye roll from you.

"Have you seen Mars?"

"Mars? No, but I'm sure he'll turn up after we go to the gym!" Jeno nods.

"Huh?"

"I mean, Xiaojun hyung is over there right now, Mars and Bella usually play a lot, maybe he knows?" Jeno insists.

"That's true! Good thinking, Jen! Alright, I'll go get ready and we can head over there!"

"Yeah, yeah!" Jeno nods his head exaggeratedly just as the door opens behind him.

"Lee Jeno! What do you mean you lost Mars?!" Renjun shouts. At that moment, all the color in Jeno's face drained. You leaned over to the side.

"Mars is missing?" You ask.

"Well, Jisung's been crying about it all morning, so yeah," Renjun sighs.

"Uh... hold on a second, could I borrow one of your phones?" You ask. Renjun hands you his and you type in the first number you thought of.

~

"You know what, Yeosang? I'm sick of your shit," Wooyoung huffs. Yeosang rolls his eyes.

"Oh yeah? That makes two buddy."

"Wait, that doesn't make sense," Mingi shakes his head. "Yeosang are you also sick of your own shit or Wooyoung's shit?"

"Why would I be sick of my own shit, Mingi?" Yeosang scoffs.

"I was just saying! You're the one who said it wrong!"

"Okay, okay, break it up," Hongjoong steps in. "What are you two arguing about now?" He looks between Yeosang and Wooyoung, who are each holding pet food.

"Yeosang thinks that Mars likes beef but I know that Mars likes chicken more," Wooyoung explains. Yeosang groans.

"That's not true! Mars always has leftovers when you feed him that crap!"

"I just give him a lot so he doesn't starve!"

"Why don't we just scoop each into a bowl and see which one he eats first," Hongjoong sighs. He pauses when his phone starts ringing, seeing an unknown number. "Hello?" The other members of ATEEZ stood in tense silence.

"Hey, Hongjoong! I'm glad you answered! It's (Y/N), I'm using Renjun's phone."

"Oh! Hey, (Y/N), what's up?" Hongjoong immediately relaxes.

"I was going to call Seonghwa but I had a feeling that he wouldn't pick up after the whole fiasco, you know? But, anyway, hey is Mars there? No one's seen him over here."

"Yeah, Mars is here- Hey! Since I have you on the line, let me put you on speaker really quick," Hongjoong moves the phone from his ear and taps on the speaker button. "(Y/N), does Mars prefer chicken or beef?"

"Hm? Neither, Mars likes pork."

"What?!" Wooyoung and Yeosang's voices were overpowering. The group could hear your laughter through the speaker.

"Why didn't you ask Seonghwa? He knows that too, I'm sure."

"Hyung said that he had to step out for a bit!" Wooyoung walks up to Hongjoong and speaks into his phone. "I think he mentioned that he was meeting a friend."

"That's good! He needs a break from you guys every now and then," you chuckled, "well, I have to head out too! I promised Jeno I'd go to the gym with him, so I'll see you guys sometime soon!"

"Bye, (Y/N)!" The group shouted out before Hongjoong hung up. He put one hand on his hip and looked at Yeosang and Wooyoung.

"Well, we know what kind of food to get from now on," Hongjoong says. "Just finish up those two first and then we'll get the right one."

"I can't believe we never considered pork," Yunho frowns.

"He always ate the beef one," Yeosang grumbles. Mars' ears shift downward as if he felt guilty. The look in his eyes were enough to show that he wanted to head back to the NCT dorms, right away, preferably. Maybe if he was lucky, the one they call Johnny would throw him a pork chop. Mars whimpered, his brain filled with thoughts of food.

"Mars! You're drooling!" Yeosang grabbed a paper towel and wiped Mars' face. Mars spots the bag of dog food in Yeosang's hand and a cry slips out of him. If he didn't miss them so much, he'd have ran back to you in a heartbeat. The life of a dog is hard.

~

Seonghwa adjusted his mask carefully while he waited in front of the café. He stared at the message on his phone, he was slightly surprised that Kyungjae still had his number, considering that they exchanged it so many years ago. They were both in the same club in grade school, and Seonghwa being Seonghwa he did his best to help the younger members out with getting adjusted to club duties and activities. Kyungjae just so happened to be the one of his dongsaengs that he really got along with. They were close up until Seonghwa had graduated, and after that, their interactions were very sparse. They hadn't seen each other in person until that day about a month ago.

"Hyung! Hyung! Hey, I'm over here!" Kyungjae grins. Seonghwa's expression lights up and he waves at him.

"Kyungjae, how have you been?" Seonghwa asks.

"I've been good! Let's head inside," Kyungjae holds the door open for him and Seonghwa steps in. They spot a table near the back and set their things down first. "Hyung, I hear their strawberry tarts here are really good, should I get you one?"

"It's alright, I can-" Seonghwa's hand was on his wallet already but Kyungjae shook his head.

"No way, hyung! I've got this one, I got this great new job and you always spotted me in school, let me get this one!" Kyungjae was off before Seonghwa could argue. Seonghwa sighed instead, watching Kyungjae speak to the worker. He leans back against his chair, letting his mind wander.

You had only mentioned your brother's once to him, and it was after he introduced you to his older brother.

~

May 15, 2021

"He's nice! You told me he was scary," you nudged Seonghwa's arm just as his older brother walked off. Seonghwa had told you earlier about how intense his brother could be, a natural response to growing up together, of course, but you'd almost too confidently shook off the fear. You'd told him that he didn't have to worry and, lo and behold, you both hit it off almost too perfectly. "See, I told you that you didn't have to worry. I have brothers too, you know," you laughed.

"You never mentioned it," Seonghwa says. You'd been together for a while now, he was surprised that you'd kept it from him for so long.

"Yeah, well, we're not as close as we used to be, but we still check up on each other. My younger brother's a pro-gamer! That really set my mom off, oh my, that's a hard job, you know? He's in the U.S. right now training or something like that, so I doubt you'll meet him any time soon. Even I can't get him to take a break and come over here," you sighed.

"Gaming? Does he stream?"

"Every now and then, yeah," you nodded. "I haven't had time to check in on those, though, I'm being run to the ground," you sigh. "But, actually, my older brother lives here! Daegu, I think, but uh... he doesn't really go out much. Plus, he's always busy with his job too, he works in Foreign Affairs," you shrugged. "Mostly from home, but yeah. He practically raised me and my younger brother though, I owe him a lot! I'll try to get him out of the house to introduce you one day, promise!"

~

25 February 2022

Needless to say, you never did convince that older brother of yours. But he took your word for it then that he didn't have anything against the relationship. Then, he felt a slight vibration against the table, he flipped his phone over and, well, nothing. He looked over to Kyungjae's instead, seeing an incoming call from a contact titled 'J'. Soon, the vibration stopped, and a simple missed call notification remained. But it wasn't that that caught his attention. It was something that got him to sit up straight. He cleared the notification and, sure enough, he'd recognize you from anywhere.

He knew this picture, it was straight out of the previews for Photograph.

Was he just a fan of NCT? He wouldn't be too surprised, your group had hiked in popularity over the past year, and he knew it was normal to have pictures of your favorite member as your home screen or lock screen, but he was sure that he was justified in feeling a little weird about it. He moved away just as he noticed Kyungjae on his way back with the pastries in hand.

"Sorry that took a while, hyung! They were taking way too long to get our orders out," Kyungjae placed the tart and coffee in front of him before taking his seat. "So, how are things with ATEEZ? Being an idol must be so time-consuming," Kyungjae sighs.

"It is, a little bit, but I find time for the people I love," Seonghwa says. "How about you? You're a stylist now, right?"

"Yeah! I got accepted into my dream company and now I'm working with my favorite group. You know, a lot of my classmates told me to stay away from my favorite group if I wanted to keep them as my faves, but if anything it just made my appreciation for them more," Kyungjae gushes.

"NCT, right?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I still talk to some people within that group, you know," Seonghwa slides his coffee closer to him. "They told me that there was a new stylist, so I figured it was you," he says. Not really, he just put it together now. All of the pieces had finally been put together, it must have been the man in front of him that you were trying to tell him about before.

But he could hardly believe it, he knew Kyungjae well at some point, and he didn't think that he'd ever do something so uncomfortable to another person, but times really do change people. He felt uncomfortable himself now. There was no doubt in his mind, Kyungjae had to know that he had been in a relationship before, and if he really was your stylist then he was certain that he had some idea that you were talking again. He looked down at his coffee, it was a ridiculous notion but he didn't feel comfortable drinking it anymore. Without another thought, he shot you a text.

'Call me.'

In no time at all, his phone rang.

"Sorry, that's the company," Seonghwa took it before Kyungjae could look at the screen. He holds his phone to his ear, making sure to keep the volume low enough so only he could hear it.

"Hey, is everything alright?" Your voice sounded tired, maybe a little strained. He wanted to ask you that, but he had to keep the charade on. "Sorry, I'm at the gym right now and my arms feel like jelly, but I'm taking a long break so I have time." There you go reading his mind, he didn't think you'd be able to that still.

"Really? Now?" Seonghwa speaks.

"Huh?"

"Just have Hongjoong do it."

"What? Seonghwa, did you mean to have me call you?"

"I really have to go in today, huh? I'll be there in half an hour," Seonghwa continues.

"Here? In the gym? I mean, if you want? I'm with Jeno right now though and I think he's trying to get me to dead lift but forget that! I think my arms are about to fall off!"

"Alright, thank you for letting me know. I'll call later."

"Okay then? Alrighty! Stay safe!" Seonghwa hung up and shook his head.

"Sorry, I'm going to have to head out early, could we raincheck this for later?" He plasters on his idol smile and Kyungjae nods.

"Yeah, that's no problem, hyung! Just let me know."

"Thanks, Kyungjae, I'll talk to you later," Seonghwa slips his jacket on and walks out of the café.

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[thespoonisvictory]

ok so firesnap made this very good post earlier today about the problems with niki and wilbur’s dynamic, and I have so much brain rot over it it’s getting it’s own separate post.

my general thesis for it is that I don’t mind niki having less going on as a character in s1, it’s that it’s not expanded on in s2 that’s the kicker.

In s1, even pre election, we get a lot more for Niki than is generally credited. Her relationship with Wilbur is central to her character, but that makes sense, because that’s her hook into the story: Wilbur wants her to join because they are friends. Cool! While it’s initially a bit awkward, their cc dynamic immediately gives a sense of warmth and closeness to their relationship that Wilbur doesn’t really have anywhere else. He’s close with Tommy, sure, but in a more mentor/sibling way, and it fleshes him out a bit more to see him bond with someone else. Leading up to the election, we also get more key traits of Niki’s character

1. She’s kind and compassionate, shown through her general demeanor, but also through the creation of her bakery and her deep care for Fungi.

2. She’s very independent, and doesn’t rely on others to form her opinions. We can see Wilbur is probably her closest friend, but she befriends Eret and basically demands that Wilbur be ok with it because it’s her choice, and literally runs against him in the election. It’s an interesting depth to her character that doesn’t really get brought up, and while it is related to Wilbur, it’s still individual development and characterization

3. She’s very vocal about her beliefs, even at a cost to her safety. She is the one to make the giant flag showing her alliegance, she is the one to be most vocal and aggressive towards Sapnap during the pet wars, she’s vocally against Schlatt before nearly anyone else.

None of this stuff is dependent on Wilbur, or is weakened without it. Wilbur is the catalyst for her joining, but her character is still well established without him and enriched with him. This isn’t your typical “woman only exists in the context of a man” to me, because, well, Niki is a strongly characterized firecracker of a character who has strong individual moments and arcs (in s1 at least...). 

Throughout Pogtopia, while there’s definitely room for her to do more, especially post festival, I’m not mad about her character then, either. We see strain placed on both Niki and Wilbur as he’s forced to leave her behind, her anger with her treatment under Schlatt, and her stress upon seeing Wilbur’s deterioration. We’re reminded that she’s close to Wilbur, and Wilbur’s kindness to her serves the narrative purpose of reminding us that he is very much still the same person from before, and maybe could be again. It’s not the show stopping arc that other characters have, but it isn’t trying to be. s1 is very much Wilbur’s story with other arcs added in, and Niki being less “important” doesn’t bother me.

What s1 is for Niki is good setup. It’s quite common in media for side characters to be introduced earlier in relation to main characters, and to be more strongly developed later. The best example I can think of is Nico Di Angelo from the Percy Jackson series, or Jaime Lannister from asoiaf. If you left Nico after the third/fourth book, or Jaime Lannister after the first, they would come off as incomplete and a bit one dimensional, but when they start to shine, they really start to shine. Jaime in particular comes off as a plain villain until we get his pov in the third book, and suddenly he’s getting development galore.

s1 sets Niki up perfectly for that: she’s got a strong personality, a set of beliefs and distinct worldview, and a close relationship to a key player who just died, not to mention the beginning of her building her Secret City to keep refugees safe. It could’ve included her more, for sure, but what’s there is a solid base.

In the beginning of s2, we have a Niki forming new relationships (Puffy, namely), navigating the world without her narrative crutch (Wilbur), and generally being in the perfect spot to begin coming into her own as a character, espeically with the Secret City stuff. I’ve talked extensively about the opportunities for her character: being part of the egg arc, getting involved with Eret, being in the new l’manburg cabinet, actually exploring a spiral arc.

But instead, it’s all just... dropped. Call it cc!niki being busy, not being communicated with, etc etc, the fact of the matter is there. Niki as a character completely drops off, and has been kind of fumbling since to find her footing as a character. Unfortunately, that leaves her relationships with Wilbur as the only throughline of consistency, and suddenly Niki goes from a character who started off Wilbur-centric but was veering off in her own direction... back to Wilbur-centric again.

I don’t hate what’s shown! I think it could really work, but the issue is that Niki and Wilbur’s s1 relationship was never built up to carry Niki through three seasons, it was a catalyst for the existence of her character and a nice grounding bond for both of them to have. It’s not that the s1 stuff is bad, it’s that the follow up offered was never carried out, so instead of:

s1: Wilbur heavy with relationship to Niki in the background and s2: Niki heavy with relationship to Wilbur in the background

we get:

s1: Wilbur heavy with relationship to Niki in the background and s2: Niki’s barely there and it’s mostly central to Wilbur.

There’s something very sweet about the Wilbur Niki dynamic that really appeals to me. I like the way Niki’s confidence contrasts with Wilbur’s insecurity, the idea of loyalty to a place through a person, the intimacy of being the last person someone trusts and of course the concept wearing each other’s clothes. The festival scene alone is one of my favorites ever (just like the brain rot over Niki defending Wilbur on inauguration day vs him defending her at the festival... chefs kiss). It’s a good relationship that sets up Niki to be a strong solo character, as well as s1 lore in general setting her up. 

But that relationship never should have been the entirety of her character, and that’s why it feels lopsided. It all comes back to s2 failing to deliver on Niki as a character, but I don’t think it’s the fault of the Wilbur Niki interactions or dynamic

tl;dr: s1 Niki, and Wilbur and Niki’s relationship is good and should be kept, we just needed to add more solo Niki in later seasons

[justminawrites]

Tower of Doors arc Where Everything is the Same Except..

..now it takes place after the auction with Rei, once all the votes have been redistributed, as a final game between Yumeko and Sayaka, and they end up betting not their own lives, but the lives of Kirari and Mary instead.

A common theme throughout Kakegurui XX is that the Momobami Clan has a tendency towards using incredible violence to solve their problems. And though they are skilled gamblers, they lack any kind of gambling spirit that both Yumeko and Kirari seem to thrive in. There’s usually failsafes and poison and mistrust running so rampant through the family that not one of them is enjoying the actual game itself more than they’re trying to reach some kind of outcome.

It was why the “ battles“ in S2 felt so lacklustre and devoid of enthusiasm— the game isn’t half as much fun if your opponent is just trying to kill you the whole time.

When you consider the Tower of Doors arc it’s safe to say it was entirely a Sayaka-centric plot point. We watched her turmoil, her confusion, her dedication, her loyalty, and her love for Kirari really shine through, all of which was very well done but seemed kind of flat when it came to the aftermath of it all.

Bluntly put, though Yumeko and Sayaka both had their lives on the line, it didn’t feel even the slightest bit Risky.

And why was that, I wonder.

I think it’s because the value of what was being put on stake was completely unbalanced. Sayaka didn’t just put her life on the line, her money, her worth as a person, she put her relationship with Kirari on the line too.

When all was said and done, through the imminent promise of death, all Sayaka would think about was wether Kirari truly cared about her in any way shape or form. Not her own life, but Kirari.

In contrast, Yumeko didn’t bat an eyelash or break a sweat, which was unsurprising to say the least. We’ve already seen firsthand just how little self-preservation that Yumeko has in S1, wether that be in terms of pride, money or even her career choices in life.

Therefore, her risking her life doesn’t have the same kind of emotional gut punch it would if it was Mary in her stead. Mary who puts her pride above anything. Mary who has valued herself from day one.

This would make the stakes even enough and provide some actual tension to the story in terms of the finale.

And it would make sense story-wise too because as far as we can see, the only person who’s ever asked Yumeko to take accountability for the people she’s hurt with her gambling, is Rei Batsubami; someone who knew her family and her past, someone who’s witnessed a version Yumeko we have yet to learn anything about.

Rei is someone to whom she explicitly admitted that her only assurance of guilt comes from not being as guilty as she should be.

It’s finally a gamble that would make Yumeko sweat, providing the perfect narrative parallel to how Mary risked her life to protect Yumeko from Miyo and Miri, despite establishing that the two know very little about each other.

Even if we don’t get an insight into Yumeko’s psyche (as we often don’t) this would be a great way to see her through the eyes of someone who cares about her but isn’t convinced of that care being reciprocated. Mary, the perfect foil to Sayaka.

Not only does she want to replace Kirari as President of the Student Council, she most likely wants to upend the status quo and turn this illegal gambling ring back into a normal, sensible school.

Essentially, this would mean that not only is Yumeko’s and Mary’s relationship being put at stake with the gamble, it’s also the one thing that Yumeko has relied on throughout her life: her gambling addiction!

Will Yumeko forego the thrill of gambling to safe her friend from imminent peril.. or will she simply add Mary to her list of people she’s affected with her compulsive behaviour?

Now, onto the logistics. Would Kirari agree to all of this? Well I think she would accept without a second thought.

Not only has Miss President stacked the base of the tower with the Emergency CrashPad, assuring her of no risk or attempted manslaughter charges whatsoever; she’s bored out of her mind at school. She hates the gambling ring she’s created because it simply isn’t fun anymore, being weighed down by all this responsibility. To have so much to lose but not a big enough risk to stake it all on.

[It’s why she finds Yumeko so interesting. In her eyes, Yumeko has the exact same mentality as her, despite not having nearly as much responsibility.]

Now we’ve seen in S2 that Mary is steadily pulling away from Yumeko, for reasons unknown. She wasn’t nearly as interested in gambling for council elections, only doing it out of bare necessity when Yumeko’s life was threatened, and doesn’t begin to amass votes like a hoarder either. She simply sticks with her 101 before declaring that she now wants to become student council President.

Ever since Yumeko walked into Hyakkaou Private Academy and won her first game, Mary’s life has been inextricably tied to hers (often against Mary’s will), so wouldn’t it be poetic justice to have her literally wager herself in this dangerous tower of cat and mouse?

Furthermore, we would’ve gotten some kind of reaction to Yumeko’s unique way of solving said tower problem— Sayaka’s doing her level best to save the President, trying not to make a single mistake in her reasoning while Yumeko’s.. staring at the moon? Does she even care about Mary????

Either way, the game would have ended the same, with Yumeko as the winner. Sayaka would rather throw herself out the window than hurt her beloved Madame President, Kirari jumps out after her, the whole bed of lilies scene, etc, etc, all is well that ends well..

Unless.

With all the talk of side bets throughout the season, it would a miss if there wasn’t one at the finale, so I think Kirari would challenge Mary into an under the table bet. Whosever champion reached the first floor first would win the other’s Election Votes.

Sayaka reaches the first floor first, but ultimately loses the game. Therefore Mary loses the 101 votes she amassed trying to protect Yumeko to Kirari, and has to start from square 1; and symbolically loses her trust with Yumeko as well.

I assume that Yumeko’s roundabout methods would frustrate and confuse Mary (as it usually does) who, in a fit of panic, breaks her friendship with Yumeko once it’s all over.

The gamble paid off, sure, but at what cost?

We end the season with YuMary in tatters, Yumeko hating (or at least mildly resenting) her gambling habits for the first time in the show, and Kirari Momobami now 101 votes richer than she was before, (still elusive and mysterious in her intentions as ever.)

A fittingly climatic ending where a compulsive gambler finally realises she has something left to lose after all..

Now wouldn’t that be exciting?

[nonbinarykai]

Ok since two people asked

Why Lloyd is my least favorite ninja and how I rewrite him

Notes:// you know the rodeo by now, long post so it’s going to be under a read more, and I’m not gonna tag this with Lloyd because of the criticisms I have against his character, if you don’t want to hear Lloyd be critiqued then don’t reas the post

Why I don’t like Lloyd

Maybe it’s because I’m a Kai kinnie or maybe it’s because I have a bias agaisnt the younger sibling but Lloyd has never really been a favorite of mine

He was enjoyable in s1 but after that he kinda lost all personality for me and I stopped enjoying him

I think this is mostly for two reasons:

1. His screen time

2. His “character arcs”

I’ll go ahead and knock out his screentime here because it pretty much speaks for himself

Lloyd takes up so much screentime in the show that it’s actually jarring, he’s the character with the most seasons, having s1-2, s4, s8-11, and finally s14 ((the island special)). Which I think makes lloyds writing flaws all the more noticable

A big reason, albeit a bit of a petty one, for why I don’t like him is because he constant hyjacks other characters plots and makes them about him, this happened with Kai in both s4 and s11

Even if he’s not the main focus of a season, he always has a side plot focusing on him like in s3 and s12

The writers need to include Lloyd in other seasons is making it harder for the other main characters to actually have enough screentime to grow and develop on there own

And as a side effect of this, Lloyd gets to become the most important character in every season he is, taking roles from other characters who needed them

My best example is Cole being leader, he was set up and established as leader in the pilots and s1, and he did pretty good in it! Cole being a leader is a interesting concept that I would have loved to see been developed

But after Lloyd grew up they threw that plot point into the trash so they could have the mystical green ninja be leader even though throughout s1-7 he hardly actually talks to the main cast and him being leader doesn’t add any interesting dynamic like cole and kais rivalry despite Kai being a sort of right hand man to Coles leadership.

And in s1-s7 especially everything literally revolves around Lloyd to the point where his existence is more important than everyone else’s, and everyone’s motivations are to protect him.

Again I understand he is important, he’s the green ninja, but you have to let your other characters grow and develop, Lloyd is not the only main character in your show

Like for fuck sakes I don’t need 3 arcs about Lloyd and his dad, can I finally have another Kai season

Lloyds character arcs honestly kinda suck

Im going to be honest with you

Lloyds kinda an ass

The reason I like jay more then Lloyd even though jay has been way more mean spirited then Lloyd throughout the entire series is because you can atleast make the argument that jay doesn’t know when his jokes can hurt. And the show doesn’t portray jay as in the right, he gets what he deserves for some of the meanier things he says.

The same can’t be said about Lloyd

Lloyd says things to the other ninja that is honestly so mean spirited it’s jarring to hear it from him

Best example being when Lloyd told Kai to get over his shit when Kai was grieving in s4

But what makes it so frustrating is that the show always portrays Lloyd like he’s in the right which is why a lot of his character arcs feel flat or uninteresting

The only time this doesn’t apply is in s2 and in s3, in s2 the show paints Lloyd as being unfair to Misako when he RIGHTFULLY gets mad at her for abandoning him, I’ll get back to this later

The second time in s3 is when he’s traveling with Garmadon and having to be taught to balance his powers, which is actually one part of s3 I really liked, it was nice to see these two bond and have Garmadon teach Lloyd something that wu would other wise not teach him. And it’s a real shame the season cut it short AGAIN

The biggest example of the show making Lloyd seem in the right no matter what is in s4, Lloyds whole arc there was to learn how to view things from a different perspective and appreciate the things others have done for him. And this is would work if the show decided to do the same.

Again back to that scene with Lloyd and Kai in s4, the show treats Lloyd as if he’s in the right and it’s never addressed after this. Even though this is supposed to be the beginning of lloyds arc where he’s supposed to learn to view things from a different perspective

This scene would have worked if

1. The show didn’t paint him in the right for this, either by having Lloyd apologize or having the show acknowledged how it might have hurt Kai

2. If the plot Lloyd has remained a side plot instead of taking up the entire focus

Seriously, s4 could have been the ONE season where you can have a Lloyd side plot thats not forced and yet they fucked it up and made it the entire focus of the season thanks a lot.

To quote what I said in my Nya anayalsis awhile back

“I’m not upset that he has a flaw, just that it’s not recognized as one”

Lloyd would work way better as a character if the show just let him have consequences for his actions

Ever since he grew up and got the green ninja role he’s been treated like he can’t do no wrong which is clearly not true

But since we’re already on this topic

Hurting Lloyd doesn’t make him a good character

I feel like Tommy ((and sometimes the fandom)) really misunderstand what the use of suffering for in a story

There atleast 3 reasons writers make there characters suffer

1. To undergo a arc and realize where they have been wrong or to give a character a lot more depth to expand upon

2. If the story is a fallen hero one and the character suffers because of his Huberius

3. If the story is a tragedy

Ninjago is neither a fallen hero story or a tragedy and his pain doesn’t develop him as a character

A lot of writers don’t understand that suffering isn’t what makes a character good, it’s what pushes them to become good, you can’t just throw a character at the wall and expect them to instantly be a well written fleshed out character

A lot of the suffering Lloyd has to endure is mostly for no reason and it’s really mean spirited because it adds nothing to the plot, it’s just there to hurt him

Let’s bring up s11 as an example, Lloyd didn’t HAVE to fight the ice emperor from a writing standpoint, if anything it should have been kais battle because his lose of power and Zane going evil would have been a perfect reflection of s4 and tie it up after it ended kais character a bit open ended

But no let’s have Lloyd do it instead because haha isn’t trauma COOL and HIP

Now to be clear, I’m not saying that all of your stories have to end on a happy ending or anything like that, if your a writer then your allowed to do whatever you want with your personal writing

What I am saying is that ninjago is an actual SHOW made by PROFESSIONAL writers and they can’t understand the concept of a story structure

And the lack of actually addressing his trauma is really bringing down Lloyd as a character

Because it comes to a point where you understand why Lloyd is sometimes mean or distrustful of other people and it’s frustrating because you know that it’s flaws of him that are never going to be fixed because there writers want there trauma baby

How I would rewrite him

I’ve seen a lot of people suggest Lloyd become a villain in a future season and you know what, I sort of agree

But not in the way you think

I feel like it would be way more compelling if Lloyd was a villain but is still a ninja, instead of Lloyd switching sides, the show is switching perspectives

More or less I want Lloyd to be a reflection of the “true” villain, which is how wu ((and subsequently Lloyd)) put small Victories as more important then the ninjas life, passion, and desire, and how there black and white thinking of good and evil ends up to a lot of problems because there’s a lot of grey area there choosing to ignore

I want Lloyd to start of being loyal to wu’s philosophy and the protagonist, for random example let’s say Kai, sudden turn on these ideas in order to look outside the box to find if there truly is a better way to protect people without harming himself

I want Lloyd to be upset over what he thinks is a turn to the dark side when in reality, it would make his motivations make sense and not make his turn to “villainy” be out of character.

And over the course of the season he starts to realize how wus and subsequently his leadership has hurt the others and himself, and have him reflect on if all the pain they suffer through just to clean up wus mistakes is really worth it like wu says, or if there’s a better way like kai says

As for Lloyds actual character himself, I’d like for his flaws to be more noticeable

Have Lloyd be a gifted kid who gets praise when he doesn’t deserve it but still kinda acts like a brat because he’s still mentally like 10

Have him be a control freak who follows the rules way to strictly and is all serious when they have to do missions

Have his idealization of wu be realized and critiqued because honestly wu sucks ass

Would this make his character less like able? Maybe, but then he’d actually have depth and something to improve on

He can still have his s3 and s4 arcs, it’s just now they’re more important because he’s actually learning to be better

AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS IM PURPOSEFULLY MAKING LLOYD WORSE SO THAT KAI LOOKS BETTER

ILL HAVE YOU KNOW AWHILE BACK I MADE A POST SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT KAI AND HIS FLAWS SO THERE (/hj /lh)

[redvanillabee]

Heyo! Hope you're doing well! We became mutuals not too long ago because I responded to Jack Thompson post of yours.

Being that he's such a minor MCU character it's hard to find anyone with anything interesting to say about him. But he is an interesting character.

SO I just wanna know if you've got any Jack hcs!

ALSO if you watched all of Agent Carter what do you think happened to Jack after that finale.

He is isn't he? Okay so here we go:

Can I interest you in my aroace headcanons (angsty version) (happier version)

He’s terrified of Angie, and this has nothing—well almost nothing—to do with the gam gam thing. She’s so frank and sees through his bullshit so effortlessly, his usual defences never work around her.

He’s not a morning person. Far from it. (He’s definitely one of those ‘don’t talk to me until I’ve had my third coffee’ people)

Probably played some posh-ish sports in uni. Idk if lacrosse is a thing in 1930s America, but definitely think a lacrosse kid in modern shorthand.

For all that he dreads going home for Christmas because of his overbearing father, he loves the holidays. The holiday atmosphere, the presents, the decorations, the food, the carollers, the soft chime of the bells—he loves them all.

He has some lovely sweaters that he wears at home—not that he has a lot of time to laze about. His favourite sweater is one made by his grandma; of course it is. It’s soft, it’s a nice, rich, navy blue, it’s very warm, perfect for a snow day in New York. He would even wear it out when he knows he won’t be seen.

(He wore it once for a quick grocery trip, only to run into, of all people, Peggy. Neither ever mentioned that incident again.)

For the amount he drinks (at least in fanon), he really can hold his liquor. When he’s not drinking to feel sorry for himself, he is a silly drunk. Eventually, when he becomes better friends with Peggy and Daniel, he lets his guard around them, giggling and laughing at the worst jokes. It’s nice.

I really like the idea of him as just, the walking embodiment of contradictions, always putting up a front in front of others, only allowing a very select handful in, and that extends to literally every facet in life. So say, if you ask anyone at the office they'd tell you he only drinks his coffee black with maybe one sugar. But outside of work, he doesn't really drink coffee much; if he does, he heaps cream and sugar into it by the spoonful. He only drinks it so that he can function in the morning, really.

(In a modern AU I'd imagine he's someone who orders those not-coffee coffees in Starbucks, like, a peppermint mocha that's honestly more syrup than actual caffeine.)

Post S2 headcanon

HE LIVES. This is just as much sentiments talking, as it is that from an analytical angle, him dying wouldn’t really add that much to the story had the narrative continued. It probably would say much more if he lives.

I presume his assailant in 2x10 is Michael Carter, and it is CRUCIAL to me that these two face off at some point. Jack has spent too much of S2 being like an annoying brother not to face off his literary foil. I also really, really need to see that parallel—both similar looking, both have done questionable things during the war. For so long we are led to believe that Michael is a good guy, but now he might be working for HYDRA; Jack has been shady the entire S2, seeming to be in the pocket of the Council of Nine, but now he seems to be good after all. I just really need that to come to a head.

In general I just really like people and characters who have 'off brand' traits, and Jack is really the perfect character for that. That's not to say everything he does is just a front—for instance, I think to some extent, he genuinely enjoys appearing put together and invincible at all times. It's not entirely a facade if you like it and choose to do it, right? But there are so many things about him that are hidden away.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

Jet and Yue’s Deaths: Were They Necessary?

Two of the most common ideas I see for aus in this fandom are the Jet lives au, and the Yue lives au. I’ve written both of these myself, and I’ve seen many others write them. And while yes, fanfiction can be a great way to explore ideas that didn’t necessarily have to be explored in canon (I’m mad at bryke for a lot of things, but not including a Toph and Bumi I friendship is not one of them, even though I wrote a fic about it), it seems to me that people are mad that Yue and Jet are dead, to varying degrees. There’s a lot to talk about regarding their deaths from a sociopolitical perspective (the fact that two of the darker-skinned characters in the show are the ones that died, and all the light-skinned characters lived, is ah... an interesting choice), but I don’t want to look at it that way, at least for right now. I want to look at it as a writer, and discuss whether these deaths were a) necessary for the plot and themes of ATLA in any way whatsoever and b) whether it was necessary for them to unfold in the way that they did, or if they would have been more impactful had they occurred in a different way. 

(meta under the cut, this got really, really, really long)

Death in Children’s Media

When I first started thinking about this meta, I had this idea to compare Jet and Yue’s deaths to deaths in an animated children’s show that I found satisfying. And in theory, that was a great idea. Problem is: there aren’t very many permanent deaths in children’s animation, and the ones that do exist aren’t especially well-written. This may be an odd thing to say in what is ostensibly a piece of atla crit, but Yue’s death is probably the best written death in a piece of children’s animation that I can think of. That’s not a compliment. Rather, it’s a condemnation of the way other pieces of children’s animation featuring permanent character death have handled their storylines. 

I’ve talked about this before, but my favorite show growing up was Young Justice, and my favorite character on that show was far and away Mr. Wally West. So when he died at the end of season 2, it broke me emotionally. Shortly thereafter, Cartoon Network canceled the show, and I started getting on fan forums to mourn. Everybody on these fan forums was convinced that had Cartoon Network not canceled the show, Wally would have been brought back. And that is a narrative that I internalized for years. Eventually, the show was brought back via DC’s new streaming service, and I tuned in, waiting for Wally to also be brought back, only to discover that that wasn’t in the cards. Wally was dead. Permanently. 

So now that I know that, I can talk about why killing him off was fucking stupid. Wally’s death occurs at the end of season 2, after the main s2 conflict, the Reach, has been defeated, save for these pods that they set up all over the world to destroy Earth. Our heroes split up in teams of two to destroy the pods, and they destroy all of them, except for a secret one in Antartica. It can only be neutralized by speedsters, so Wally, Bart, and Barry team up to destroy it. It’s established in canon that Wally is slower than Bart and Barry, and it’s been played for laughs earlier in the season, but for reasons unexplained, the pod is better able to target Wally because he’s slower than Bart and Barry, and it kills him. After the emotional arc of the season has wrapped up, a literal main character dies. There’s some indication at the end of that season that his death is going to cause Artemis to spiral and become a villain, but when season 3 picks up, she’s doing the right thing, with seemingly no qualms about her position in life as a hero. In the comics, something like this happens to Wally, but then he goes into the Speed Force and becomes faster and stronger even than Barry, in which case, yes, this would have advanced the plot, but that’s probably not in the cards either. 

In summary, Wally’s death doesn’t work as a story beat, not because it made me mad, but because it doesn’t advance the plot, nor does it develop character. Only including things that advance plot or develop character is one of the golden rules of writing. Like most golden rules of writing, however, it’s not absolute. There is a lot of fun to be had in jokey little one off adventures (in atla, Sokka’s haiku competition) or in fun worldbuilding threads that add depth to your setting but don’t really come up (in atla, the existence of Whaletail Island, which is described in really juicy ways, even though the characters never go there.) But in general, when it comes to things like character death, events should happen to develop the plot or advance character. Avatar, for all of its flaws, is really well structured, and a lot of its story beats advance plot and develop character at the same time. However, the show also bears the burden of being a show directed at children, and thus needing to be appropriate for children. And as we know, Nickelodeon and bryke butted heads over this: the death scene that we see for Jet is a compromise, one that implicitly confirms his death without explicitly showing it. So bryke tasked themselves with creating a show about imperialism and war that would do those themes justice while also being appropriate for American children and palatable to their parents. 

The Themes of Avatar vs. Its Audience

So, Avatar is a show about a lone survivor of genocide stopping an imperialist patriarchal society from decimating the rest of the world. It’s also a show about found family and staying true to yourself and doing your best to improve the world. These don’t necessarily conflict with each other, and it is possible for children to understand and enjoy shows about complex themes. And in a lot of cases, bryke doesn’t hold back in showing what the costs of war against an imperialist nation are: losing loved ones, losing yourself, prison, etc. But when it comes to death, the show is incredibly hesitant. None of the main characters that we’ve spent a lot of time getting to know die (not even Iroh, even though he was old and it would have made sense and his VA died before the show was over--but that’s a topic for another day.) This makes sense. I can totally imagine a seven year-old watching Avatar as it was coming out and feeling really sad or scared if a major character died. I was six years older than that when Wally died, and it’s still sad and terrifying to me to this day. However, in a show about war, it would be unrealistic to have no one die. Bryke’s stated reason for killing off Jet is to show the costs of war. I’ve seen a lot of posts about Jet’s death that reiterate some version of this same point--that the great tragedy of his character is that he spent his life fighting the Fire Nation, only to die at the hands of his own country. Similarly, I’ve seen people argue in favor of Yue’s death by saying that it was a great tragedy, but it showed the sacrifices that must be made in a war effort. 

Yue

When we first meet Yue, she is a somewhat reserved, kind individual held back by the rigid social structures of the NWT*. She and Sokka have an immediate attraction to one another, but Yue reveals that she is engaged to Hahn. The Fire Nation invasion happens, Zhao kills Tui, and Yue gives up her life to save her people and the world, and to restore balance. Since we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know Yue, this is framed less as Yue’s sacrifice and more as Sokka’s loss. Sokka is the one who cares for Yue, Sokka is the only one of the gaang who really interacts a lot with Yue on screen, and Sokka is the one we’ve spent a whole season getting to know. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Yue a prop character (i.e. a character who could be replaced by an object with little change to the narrative), she is certainly underdeveloped. She exists to be unambiguously likable and good, so we can root for her and Sokka, and feel Sokka’s pain when she dies. In my opinion, this is probably also why a lot of fic that features Yue depicts her as a Mary Sue--because as she is depicted in the show, she kind of is. We don’t get to see her hidden depths because she is written to die. 

In light of what we’ve established earlier in this meta, this makes sense. Killing off a fully-realized character whom the audience has really gotten to know and care about on their own terms, rather than through the eyes of another character, could be really sad and scary for the kids watching, but not killing anyone off would be an unrealistic depiction of war and imperialism. On the face of it, killing off an underdeveloped, unambiguously likable and good character, whom one of our MCs has a deep but short connection with, is the perfect compromise. 

But let’s go back to the golden rule for a second. Does Yue’s death a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to the first is yes: Yue’s death prompts Aang to use the Avatar State to fight off the Fire navy, which has implications for his ability to control the Avatar State that form one of the major arcs of book 2. The answer to the second? A little more ambiguous. You would think that Yue’s death would have some lasting impact on Sokka that is explored as part of his character arc in book 2, that he may be more afraid to trust, more scared of losing the people he loves, but outside of a few episodes (really, just one I can think of, “The Swamp”) it doesn’t seem to affect him that much. He even asks about Suki in a way that is clearly romantically motivated in “Avatar Day.” I don’t know about you, but if someone I loved sacrificed herself to become the moon, I don’t think I would be seeking out another romantic entanglement a few weeks after her death. Of course, everybody processes grief differently, and one could argue that Sokka has already lost important people in his life, and thus would be accustomed to moving on from that loss and not letting himself dwell on it. But to that, I’d say that moving on by throwing himself into protecting others has already shown itself to be an unhealthy coping mechanism. Remember, Sokka’s misogyny at the beginning of b1 is in part motivated by the fact that his mother died at the hands of the Fire Nation and his father left shortly thereafter to fight the Fire Nation, and he responds to those things by throwing himself into the role of being the “man” of the village and protecting the people he loves who are still with him. Like with Yue, he doesn’t allow himself to dwell on his mother’s death. This could have been the beginning of a really interesting b2 arc for Sokka, in which he throws himself into being the Avatar’s companion to get away from the grief of losing Yue, but this time, through the events of the show, he’s forced to acknowledge that this is an unhealthy coping mechanism. And maybe this is what bryke was going for with “The Swamp”, but this confines his whole process of grief to one episode, where it could have been a season-long arc that really emphasized the effect Yue’s had on his life. 

In the case of Yue, I do lean toward saying that her death was necessary for the story that they wanted to tell (although, I will never turn down a good old-fashioned Yue lives au that really gets into her dynamism as a character, those are awesome.) However, the way they wrote Sokka following Yue’s death reduced her significance. The fact that Yue seemed to have so little impact on Sokka is precisely what makes her death feel unnecessary, even if it isn’t. 

Jet

Okay. Here we go. 

If you know my blog, you know I love Jet. You know I love Jet lives aus. Perhaps you know that I’m in the process of writing a multichapter Jet fic in which he lives after Lake Laogai. So it’s reasonable to assume that, in a discussion of whether or not Jet’s death was necessary, I’m gonna be mega-biased. And yeah, that’s probably true. But up until recently, I wasn’t really all that mad about Jet dying, at least conceptually. As I said earlier, bryke says that in the case of Jet’s death, they wanted to kill a character off that people knew and would care about, so that they could further show the tragedies of war and imperialism. Okay. That is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. 

My issue lies with the execution of said idea. First of all, the framing of Jet’s original episode is so bad. Jet is part of a long line of cartoon villains who resist imperialism and other forms of oppression through violence and are punished for it. This is actually a really common sort of villain for atla/lok, as we see this play out again with Hama, Amon, and the Red Lotus. To paraphrase hbomberguy’s description of this type of villain, basically liberal white creators are saying, “yeah, oppression is bad, but have you tried writing to your Congressman about it?” With Jet, since we have so little information about the village he’s trying to flood, there are a number of different angles that would explain his actions and give them more nuance. My preferred hc is that the citizens of Gaipan are a mix of Earth civilians, Fire citizens, and FN soldiers, and that the Earth citizens refused to feed or house Jet and the other Freedom Fighters because they were orphans and, as we see in the Kyoshi Novels, Earth families stick to their own. Thus, when Jet decides to flood Gaipan, he’s focused on ridding the valley of Fire Nation, but he doesn’t really care about what happens to the Earth citizens of Gaipan because they actively wronged him when he was a kid. That’s just one interpretation, and there have been others: Gaipan was fully Fire Nation, Gaipan was both Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation but Jet decided that the benefits of flooding the valley and getting rid of the Fire Nation outweighed the costs of losing the EK families, etc, etc. There are ways to rewrite that scenario so that Jet is not framed as an unambiguously bloodthirsty monster. In the context of Jet’s death, this initial framing reduces the possible impact that his death could have. Where Yue was unambiguously good, Jet is at the very least morally gray when we see him again in the ferry. And where we are connected to Yue through Sokka, the gaang’s active hatred of Jet hinders our ability to connect with him. This isn’t impossible to overcome--the gaang hates Zuko, and yet to an extent the audience roots for him--but Jet’s lack of screentime and nuanced framing (both of which Zuko gets in all three seasons) makes overcoming his initially flawed framing really difficult. 

So how much can it really be said, that by the time we get to Jet’s death, he’s a character that we know and care about? So much about him is still unknown (what happened to the Freedom Fighters? what prompted Jet’s offscreen redemption? who knows, fam, who knows.) Moreover, most of what we see of him in Ba Sing Se is him actively opposing Zuko and Iroh. These are both characters that at the very least the show wants us to care about. At this point, we know almost everything there is to know about them, we’ve been following them and to an extent rooting for them for two seasons, and who have had nuanced and often sympathetic framing a number of times. So much of the argument I’ve seen regarding Jet centers around the fact that he was right to expose Zuko and Iroh as Firebenders, but the reason we have to have that argument in the first place is because it’s not framed in Jet’s favor. In terms of who the audience cares about more, who the audience has more of an emotional attachment towards, Zuko and Iroh win every time. Whether Jet’s actually in the right or not is irrelevant, because emotionally speaking, we’re primed to root for Zuko and Iroh. In terms of who the framing is biased towards, Jet may as well be Zhao. So when he’s taken by the Dai Li and brainwashed, the audience isn’t necessarily going to see this as a bad thing, because it means Zuko and Iroh are safe.

The only real bit of sympathetic framing Jet gets are those initial moments on the ferry, and the moments after he and the gaang meet again. So about five, ten minutes of the show, total. And then, he sacrifices himself for the gaang. And just like Yue, his death has little to no impact on the characters in the episodes following. Katara is shown crying for four frames immediately following his death, and they bring him up once in “The Southern Raiders” to call him a monster, and once in “The Ember Island Players”, a joke episode in which his death is a joke. 

So, let’s ask again. Does this a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to both is no. It shows that the Dai Li is super evil and cruel, which we already knew and which basically becomes irrelevant in book 3, and that is really the only plot-significant thing I can think of. As far as character, well, it could have been a really interesting moment in Katara’s development in forgiving someone who hurt her in the past, which could have foreshadowed her forgiving Zuko in b3, but considering she calls Jet a monster in TSR, that doesn’t track. There could have been something with Sokka realizing that his snap judgment of Jet in b1 was wrong, but considering that he brings up Jet to criticize Katara in TSR, that also does not track. And honestly, neither of these possible character arcs require Jet to die. What requires Jet to die is the ~themes~. 

Let’s look at this theme again, shall we? The cost of war. We already covered it with Yue, but it’s clearly something that bryke wants to return to and shed new light on. The obvious angle they’re going for is that sometimes, you don’t know who your real enemy is. Jet thought that his enemy was the Fire Nation, but in the end, he was taken down by his own countryman. Wow. So deep. Except, while it’s clear that Jet was always fighting against the Fire Nation, I never got the sense that Jet was fighting for the Earth Kingdom. After all, isn’t the whole bad thing about him in the beginning is that he wants to kill civilians, some of whom we assume to be Earth Kingdom? Why would it matter then that he got killed by an EK leader, when he didn’t seem to ever be too hot on those dudes? But okay, maybe the angle is not that he was killed by someone from the Earth Kingdom, but that he wasn’t killed by someone from the Fire Nation. Okay, but we’ve already seen him be diametrically opposed to the only living Air Nomad and people from the Water Tribes. Jet fighting with and losing to people who aren’t Fire Nation is not a new and exciting development for him. Jet has been enemies with non-FN characters for most of the show’s run at this point. There is no thematic level on which the execution of this holds any water. 

The reason I got to thinking about this, really analyzing what Jet’s death means (and doesn’t mean) for the show, was this conversation I was having with @the-hot-zone in discord dms. We were talking about book 2 and ways it could have been better, and Zone said that they thought that Jet would have been a stronger character to parallel with Zuko’s redemption than Iroh and that seeing more of the narrative from Jet’s perspective could have strengthened the show’s themes. And when it came to the question of Jet’s death, they said, “And if we are going with Jet dying, then I want it to hurt. I want it to hurt just as much as if a main character like Sokka had died. I want the viewer to see Jet's struggles, his triumphs, the facets of Jet that make him compelling and important to the show.” And all of that just hit me. Because we don’t get that, do we? Jet’s death barely leaves a mark. Jet himself barely leaves a mark. His death isn’t plot-significant, doesn’t inspire character growth in any of our MCs, and doesn’t even accomplish the thematic relevance that it claims to. So what was the point? 

Conclusion

Much as I dislike it, Yue’s death actually added something to atla. It could have added much, much more, in the hands of writers who gave more of a shit about their Brown female characters and were less intent on seeing them suffer and knocking them down a peg, but, in my opinion, it did work for what it was trying to do. Jet? Jet? Nah, fam. Jet never got the chance to really develop into a likable character because he was always put at odds with characters we already liked, and the framing skewed their way, not his. The dude never really had a chance.        

*multiple people have spoken about how the NWT as depicted in atla is not reminiscent of real life Inuit and Yupik people and culture. I am not the person to go into detail about this, but I encourage you to check out Native-run blogs for more info!

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

[bestworstcase]

I like your thoughts on how Rapunzel was handling things wrong in “Rapunzel: Day One.” The episode tries to imply that Cassandra is wrong for not sharing her feelings with Rapunzel, but is a Rapunzel really the person Cassandra should be opening up to? Rapunzel never respects Cassandra’s boundaries. Cassandra’s a private person. Rapunzel doesn’t respect that. And just because Cassandra doesn’t want to open up to everyone doesn’t mean that she’s bottling things up.

ok so this is gonna be a long one bc tbh i like. fundamentally disagree that RDO, the narrative of RDO, in any way positions cassandra as the one at fault for the emotional conflict between her and raps.

to digress a bit - while tts is not immune to Aesop Episodes (e.g. rapunzel's enemy or you're kidding me) wherein the characters close out the story by talking about What They've Learned, ultimately i don't think tts can or should be read as a morality play. it's a story where sometimes characters just... fuck up and the narrative doesn't waste its time on hand-holding or spoon-feeding us the moral.

anyway, i submit that RDO is what i'll call a False Aesop Episode. it follows the basic structure of an Aesop Episode (protagonist acts badly -> protagonist learns a lesson) but the lesson rapunzel learns is a bad one. it's like if you took... say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as an aesop, the False Aesop here is rapunzel confidently eating a rotten apple and then being blindsided a few months later when the doctor who kept begging her not to eat food with maggots in it steals the moonstone from under her nose and runs off into the night with her new demon pal--

and that metaphor got away from me a little bit but you get the idea.

#1: constructing the conflict

the episode opens with cassandra. she's training; we see the sword fly out of her injured hand; lance suggests she take a break, and she answers, "thanks to rapunzel's little trick at the great tree, i have to relearn everything using this hand, so breaks aren't really an option."

she isn't harsh about it. her demeanor isn't all that different from her normal self—she even segues into a very typical concern (that the woods are dangerous and they should all be on their guard) and banters with lance a bit.

what this communicates, immediately and succinctly, is that:

1. cassandra's injury is severe. it's disabling. she's either in immense pain or she's lost all the strength in that hand or both.

2. cass is really upset about this, and not happy with rapunzel.

3. nevertheless cass is keeping her feelings more or less in check; the worst anyone could say about her is she's being a bit more curt than normal.

which is to say, she's acting quite reasonable. she's not taking out her hurt feelings on anyone else or being mean or lashing out, and she's not hiding her injury either. the most concerning thing about her behavior here is actually that she's focused on training so she can do her job instead of on healing or resting or taking care of herself.

then there's a pan over to rapunzel, who is angrily watching this play out while venting to pascal. "i get why cass is mad at me," she says. "she told me—" huge disdainful rolling of eyes here "—not to use the decay spell back and the tree, and i did, and she hurt her hand. but if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it, this all could have been avoided! and i feel like we could work things out, but she refuses to talk about it!!"

line this up against cassandra's behavior and spot the differences.

cass is focused on her injured hand. cass is upset because rapunzel accidentally mutilated her in the great tree. that's what this conflict is about for cass; her injury, and how she feels about being injured.

by contrast, rapunzel thinks the conflict is about them not listening to each other. she does acknowledge that cass was injured, but 1. she puts the blame on cass, and 2. has shoved the fact of the injury to the periphery of the conflict. it's not important, it's just a natural consequence of the real conflict, which is cass being mad and petty and refusing to talk to her about how she's unfairly blaming rapunzel for something that wasn't rapunzel's fault.

[i will add here that this behavior from rapunzel is 100% not knowing how to handle guilt and externalizing it as anger, and this thread of rapunzel burying her guilt gets picked up again in rapunzeltopia; it isn't that rapunzel doesn't care that cass is hurt, so much as she's just not emotionally equipped to process these feelings in a healthy way so it mutates into...this.]

and where cass handles her feelings in a pretty reasonable way, rapunzel rants and raves and draws cass as a literal monster with fangs and claws—she's stewing in her out of control emotions and concludes that she just has to find a way to force cass talk to her, which she does shortly thereafter by ordering—not asking—cass to come with her to search for parts to fix the caravan.

#2: the breakdown of communication

i've said it before but it bears repeating: cassandra might not be perfect, but she's a good communicator. in s1 and the front half of s2, she shares her feelings with rapunzel readily and frequently. when she tries to set boundaries with rapunzel, she's able to be clear and specific about what she needs. when she expresses frustration with eugene or her dad or rapunzel, she's very articulate about exactly what she's frustrated about. she can recognize when politer, softer refusals are being ignored and become blunter and more specific to ensure the message is getting across.

the moments when cass struggles to communicate are noteworthy because they're not normal. they signal that she's in acute crisis. think of how her unhinged rant about adira in RATGT heralded a complete emotional breakdown. she clams up in RDO because it's the only thing she can do to protect herself. because rapunzel is an inexperienced nineteen year old who learned all her social "skills" from a manipulative, egotistical abuser and nowhere in the series does that show more than in RDO.

rapunzel knows cass doesn't want to talk about the great tree, so she isolates cass from the rest of the group with the intention of forcing her to talk about it anyway. she's passive aggressive at first: chattering about inanities and trying to bait cass into 'opening up,' and acting vexed and guilt-trippy when she finds out cass brought owl along. she broaches the subject by going "too bad there's not an open-up-to-your-best-friend-about-the-thing-you-guys-are-fighting-about wand, huh?"

then she leads with "i know you're mad at me, but i did the right thing. i didn't have a choice," which... what can cass even say to that? she acknowledged cassandra's anger in one breath and followed up with "but you're wrong tho" in the next. that statement makes cassandra's feelings about her debilitating injury into an argument about Who Was Right.

this is a game that cass tries very hard not to play. "look, if you feel that way, then it's fine. we're good," she says, which is a statement that is not true at all on its face but - what it means is that if rapunzel wants to turn this into a debate about Who Was Right, cass will concede because that's not an argument she's invested in. cass does not want to put her feelings on trial so rapunzel can pick them apart and decide whether she deserves to have them or not.

so she disengages. the sun sets. they camp. rapunzel pokes her again, this time with a more direct approach: "cass, i need to talk about what we both know is going on between us."

and that's when cass throws up a WALL. prior to RDO, when cass is pressed on her feelings, she either: 1. opens up and explains to the extent that she's able (e.g. under raps or RATGT), or 2. flatly shuts the conversation down (e.g. cassandra vs eugene). but in RDO?

"there's nothing to talk about."

"i never said i was upset."

"what makes you so sure that you know how i'm feeling?"

this is cass falling off the end of her rope. this is a cass who spent the last year and a half with rapunzel running roughshod over every boundary cass exhausted herself trying to set. this is cass maybe a few weeks out from rapunzel screaming at her in front of all their mutual friends and then telling her "i am going to make decisions you don't agree with and i need you to be okay with that" when cass tried to open up about her deepest insecurities. this is cass spiraling into despair because she's seen that her best friend cares more about assuaging her own guilt and exerting her authority as a princess than she does about cassandra's feelings.

this is the moment when the friendship dies.

#3: the memory wipe, cassandra's apology, and the false aesop

the details of the tangled-but-cass shenanigans are not super important for the purposes of this discussion. suffice it to say that cassandra lashes out in the heat of the moment, seriously harms rapunzel by mistake, and spends the rest of the episode trying to repair the damage, then apologizes to rapunzel for hurting her. this is, obviously, the correct thing to do when you hurt someone, even if it was an accident.

you see the parallel here, yeah?

rapunzel hurt cass with magic by accident, and then made cass's hurt feelings all about her, blamed cass for the injury, twisted the facts to justify her own indignation, picked a fight about Who Was Right and invalidated cassandra's feelings, and pushed and pushed and pushed until cass blew up and lashed out at her.

cassandra also hurt rapunzel with magic by accident, and then she set aside her own hurt feelings from the argument they were having before to focus one hundred percent of her energy on brewing a cure and keeping amnesiac rapunzel safe, readily admitted her fault, and offered an earnest apology for losing her temper as soon as she could reasonably do so.

if RDO were a true Aesop Episode, this would be the lesson, and rapunzel would of course learn from cassandra's good example and reciprocate by apologizing for the accident in the great tree and her abysmal behavior afterwards—and in a reflection of how cass shared how bottling up her anger allowed it to erupt in a catastrophic way, rapunzel would probably confess that her demanding, selfish behavior came from a place of feeling awful about what happened and terrified that it would ruin their friendship.

but RDO is a False Aesop Episode. rapunzel isn't emotionally equipped to handle the intensity of her guilt, and she lacks the social insight and empathy to draw comparisons between what she did to cass and what cass did to her, so she can't connect the two situations in her head to understand what she's doing wrong. the true aesop flies right over her head, and instead what she learns is this:

1. she was right about cass being upset

2. backing cass into a corner fixed the problem

3. friends really do "just know"

4. being pushy and forceful was the right thing to do.

because the thing is, when cass apologizes for the accidental memory wipe, she truthfully explains why she acted the way she did—she's furious and she didn't want to talk about it, so she held it in as long as she could and then exploded when the pressure became too much—and for rapunzel, i think the explanation and the actual apology get conflated. meaning, cass says "i'm sorry for what i did out of anger" and what rapunzel hears is "i'm sorry for being angry."

and because of that misunderstanding, from rapunzel's perspective her own indignation has been validated and her behavior justified, because she was right all along and cass shouldn't have been angry with her in the first place and now everything is fine--

but it's not fine.

we're not supposed to share rapunzel's perspective here, because she's flat out wrong. nothing is really better and nothing has really changed, except that rapunzel got the talk she wanted and stops putting this intense pressure on cass. so as we enter the house of yesterday's tomorrow, rapunzel is taking it for granted that things are fine with cass, and meanwhile cass is still injured, still angry, still as aloof as she can be without getting rapunzel breathing down her neck again... and then she meets zhan tiri, who gives her everything she needed and couldn't get from rapunzel.

like, to my mind, this is the entire point of RDO, that rapunzel makes this catastrophic mess of trying to patch things up after RATGT and comes out of that mess wrongly thinking she succeeded. the episode is presented through the lens of rapunzel's perspective, but the lines are very wide and i absolutely think the intention is for the audience to read between them and understand the reality that rapunzel has sort of blinded herself to.