#and it's not necessarily a tragedy but an adaptation

[auseyre]

Pride Month: Noah's Arc -2005

Little primer because I feel like it's probably not that well known.

Noah's Arc was the black QAF, the gay Living Single/Sex and the City/Girlfriends. Short-lived but notable and groundbreaking for focusing on black, queer men. For me, the characters were more mature in some ways than the multiple series it mimicked -the show was less about growing up and more about finding your way as a grown-up. And also about hot bodies.

This is Noah - the Carrie. Noah is a wannabe screenwriter (because as we all know, writing is *that* job.)

This is Alex -The Charlotte. (The cutie getting brushed off is Alex's longtime/long-suffering boyfriend). Alex is an HIV/Aids educator, which is awesome because the show gets to direct focus on something that has been and remains a major problem in the black community.

This is Ricky -The Samantha. Ricky has a little bit of an unrequited thing for Noah. And later hooks up with Wilson Cruz(lucky man).

This is Chance -The Miranda. Chance is a professor whose first and strongest love is and will always be academics. Which is a problem with his newly domestic life.

They are Noah's ARC(get it, look, I love puns and whatever this counts as okay). And this...this is Noah's Big.

On the one hand, it's definitely hilarious watching Wade protest how straight he is when stuff like this happens.

On the other hand, he's an African American, macho, man's man having a bi-awakening as an adult and the show doesn't flinch away from what that means.

There are two seasons and a movie that gives everyone a happy ending.

[aq2003]

I've had a vague urge to get more into Shakespeare for years; what are the top 3-5 plays you'd recommend that AREN'T Hamlet or Much Ado? And what version of each is your favorite?

(sorry for omitting two god tier ones but I've already seen David Tennant in each of those and I surmise that you're insane about both so I'm looking for some new plays)

gonna be some basic bitch answers but here:

macbeth - the tragedy of macbeth (2021) movie adaptation starring denzel washington. this movie is fucking stunning and the way they did the witches was SO good. also i have the throne of blood (kurosawa's adaptation) also on my watchlist since i've heard REALLY good things about it

richard ii - 2013 rsc production w/ david tennant (link). he gives me catastrophic gender envy, i need to become more masculine to become more feminine etc. ben whishaw in the hollow crown series (link) is great too

romeo and juliet - romeo + juliet (1996) movie adaptation directed by baz luhrmann. this is like, the most well known romeo and juliet and you might've watched it already but i'm listing this anyway because there will never be a better mercutio and the way they did the setting is SO fucking funny and inspired

twelfth night - so far only saw this one Outside On The Grass Where They Performed This At My College but i liked it a lot... reccing the 2012 globe production with mark rylance (part 1 / part 2) (his hamlet was one of dt's favorites as an aspiring actor) (i'm putting my faith in letterboxd and david's taste for this one)

coriolanus - 2014 donmar production w/ tom hiddleston (on archive.org). this is directed by josie rourke, who also directed dt/ct's 2011 much ado! the staging and the effects are fucking awesomeeee (also peter de jersey and elliot levey are in this, i love them)

also shoutout to the ones i want to watch:

the 2016 production of a midsummer night's dream w/ ncuti gatwa (i have found nowhere to pirate it and i might just crack and pay the 10 dollars to watch it)

the 2015 production of the love's labour's lost w/ edward bennett (he played laertes in hamlet (2009) and he's REALLY underrated, i love his benedick SO FUCKING MUCH even if that production overall was a little dull)

either hollow crown's or greg doran's henry iv (it's two whole plays i need so much time to watch that. and ideally i want to watch both lol)

kurosawa's ran (1985), an adaptation of king lear set in 1500s japan

vishal bhardwaj's omkara (2006), an adaptation of othello set in india

[ay-asterisms]

designing a set for an orv musical would be a challenge, but I have a couple ideas rattling around

[blairwaldcrf]

@lyinoptimist On why Louis is a better character with a richer story because of the way they brought race into the show:

[captioned: I agree with his Interview with the Vampire take, and it's not just that I care more that they're black, it's that I care more that they are black in a world where the creators know that they are black and write the story accordingly.

I remember when they cast Jacob Anderson to play Louis in this story a couple years ago and people were confused and nervous and a little bit angry as to why they cast this black man to play a character, who at least in the original story was a plantation owner that owned slaves & let them go I think eventually, but still it's like "what is this choice that you're making?" and the creators were like "no, no we know what we did".

And so now Louis like owns a brothel instead, and it's like Creole and like down in Louisiana 1920s, and you're like, "Oh, that's a pretty solid adaptational choice."

And I think ultimately the decision makes Louis look a lot more relatable, and also makes the story a lot more relatable because at least it would be harder for me to recommend this story if old Louis was the one I was telling you was in this really great show. It's like, "yeah... but he owned slaves...", you know what I mean?

It's just one of the things where it's not something I have to get into with other black fans who are really into like fantasy stuff who maybe don't want to engage in that sort of like problematic content.

Beyond Louis and Claudia being black and then Armand being like South Asian, it also gives us a really interesting look into different readings of the text now that the characters playing it are adapted in this way. This happens a lot in season one remember... like, because Lestat makes both Louis and Claudia he can no longer read their minds, but Louis and Claudia can still read each other's minds. And so in this kind of familial dynamic they've established for themselves, Louis and Claudia have this literal telepathic understanding that Lestat will just never be privy to and you can kind of read into that. It's like a metaphor for their relationship being with two black people in the household and then moving through the world and understanding the world in a way that is just different from Lestat. There's an underlying racial anxiety to Louis and Lestat's relationship that makes it, you know, more complex and like more fun to watch.

Season two there's less of it, but you have things like racialized trauma being used as the backbone for the trauma that the characters are experiencing to both highlight how horrific the things they're going through actually are.

Like Armand and his like, being sexually abused as a child in that specific way very much has the connotation of like, this happened to him because he was a vulnerable brown child and this very powerful white vampire came--presumably, i don't know who they're gonna cast but i was reading into it--came by and did this to him. And it's like, okay yeah, that complicates that dynamic a bit more.

Same thing with the execution that happens to Louis, Claudia, and Madeline at the very end of the season which is very reminiscent of, like-- Claudia even calls it a stoning but I would also argue that there's, like, elements of, like lynching to it, right?

Like, it's very horrific in a very relatable way to Black people, which I think it's drawing upon that but it's not necessarily like glorifying it in that way in order to like make the point that it wants about like, the tragedy that these characters are going through and I think it just makes the story that much richer and allows for a lot more interesting new perspectives because these characters are people of color now and that's what you can do with a good adaptation and like, these creators they understand that. ]

[cephalofrog]

been playing rain world and thinking about saint again recently

full rain world spoilers below

I hate the "saint is the triple affirmative" interpretation. hate even more how it appears to have become the accepted truth in the fandom

first off, my dislike for this interpretation is not logical. it isn't something I can be convinced out of using canon evidence, because my reason for not interpreting the story this way is not evidence-based, it's because I don't find it to be a satisfying conclusion to the entire story of rain world.

but here's some rambling about logical reasons why it doesn't make sense anyway

if saint was created as the triple affirmative by sliver, that makes them extremely old - they came into existence LONG before spearmaster's campaign even started. if they came into existence with the purpose of ascending iterators, they sure took a long time to ascend any iterators - like okay, travel time and whatever, but you'd think they'd get at least one or two more before all the iterator comms break down entirely post-spearmaster. SM and hunter managed to get from SRS and NSH to the pebbs/moon area pretty quickly.

they also have fur, which seems to be an adaptation for the cold judging by the lizards in the campaign, despite the world not being cold at the point at which they were created. this could be easily explained by sliver just being very forward-thinking, but...

if sliver created saint, their entire triple affirmative thing comes across as incredibly thoughtless, which imo contrasts with sliver being forward-thinking enough to make saint immune to cold. like they finally created the magical rat that will ascend them all but didn't even think to send out a message beforehand like "hey guys I'm trying something new if I send out the triple affirmative and die right after this it worked and you should be visited by a flying green dude with an ascension beam at some point in the future"

there's also the thing of... wait so how does this whole iterator ascension work again? cause saint's timeline loops. after they ascend, they end up back in sky islands, with the iterators back where they were. this could be explained by "later playthrough loops aren't canon and pebbs and moon are ascended if you got em" but there's literally a specific gameplay mechanic - carrying stuff in your stomach between campaigns - meant to make it clear that the campaign is a loop.

anyway. the real reason I hate the theory isn't related to any of this - it's that it absolutely destroys pebbles and moon's story, thematically speaking.

sliver of straw's triple affirmative/death is a random event that could mean basically anything. the futility pebbles felt around trying to solve the great problem caused him to assign meaning to sliver's death that wasn't necessarily there - they found the solution, and it was self-destruction. that's what they were trying to tell everyone. it wasn't a random event, the triple affirmative was real. one of the bugs in the maze found the way out, and he's going to prove it to everyone by following them and escaping.

and that's what leads to the events of the main story. this random event - this horrible tragedy, the death of someone who seemed to mean so much to so many people - was assigned meaning by someone desperate to prove that his entire existence, and the existences of everyone around him, are not futile. the ancients created the iterators without knowing whether the answer to the great problem could ever be found, and this is the result of that.

a nihilistic, hopeless person, abandoned by his creators to work forever on an unsolvable problem, assigns meaning to a random tragedy, and tunnel visions on what he has to believe is what he's been looking for - because it is an unimaginable understatement to say that the alternative would be worse than death. and then, in his self-destructive desperation, he kills his sibling* and dooms himself to the slowest, most painful death imaginable. this is the legacy of the ancients' dead society, the result of all of their stupid ideals and obsession with karmic perfection. (*as far as he knows)

but saint being the triple affirmative undermines all of that. not only does it make sliver's death less of a tragedy and more of a noble sacrifice - like yeah, sure, they were loved, but solving the great problem was far more important - but it also makes pebbles look less desperate and more just kinda stupid. like you thought that the solution was self-destruction? nah, it's a magical flying rat. in this version of the story, pebbles wasn't striving for something that didn't exist, he was just not smart enough to figure out the real solution.

even outside of canon evidence, that sucks. it causes pebbles' story to go from being about how you should value the people around you over the impossible striving that life always seems to expect from you or you're gonna end up hurting them and yourself to how you should just be smarter to find the right solution to all of your problems.

anyway as for my own interpretation of saint, I think that the campaign is just a representation of what it's like to be an echo. reliving the moments that led up to your failed ascension over and over, reaching maximum karma and gaining superpowers because you're just that karmically pure - you are a saint, after all - and then letting your ego consume you at the crucial moment of ascension, over and over again, cycling into infinity. (I don't think they actually had superpowers prior to ascending, I just think that they kinda thought of themselves so highly that they thought they should have those powers.) then contrast this with the world as the age of the iterators and the rain finally ends, and you have an unchanging echo reliving the same few cycles over and over contrasted with a world that is, at last, changing and moving on.

yeah it doesn't make sense with the joint iterator dialogue in rubicon (at least, the final line doesn't make sense). I don't care. it's what makes me happy as an interpretation. you can pry my morally dubious hypocritical ego-driven saint from my cold dead hands

[thirrith]

A guide to Dream of the Red Chamber for English speakers

I've been posting about a book called Dream of the Red Chamber for a while. I'm kinda obsessed with it but the tags here on tumblr are pretty much barren. I want to get more people to be interested in it, so here's something more informative with minimal screaming.

Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) is a 18th century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin. It isn't very well-known outside of the Sinophone aka the Chinese-speaking world, whereas where I come from it's considered a masterpiece and classic and is so well-known and holds so much cultural significance even the people who haven't necessarily read the book make references to it - like, basically everybody knows about the book. It certainly deserves to be known and loved by more people - that's why I'm making a post about it. This post is NOT going to be an attempt to cover everything, though, because there is just so, so much to the book; instead, I am creating a guide to make it easier for people to get started if they are interested.

What is Dream of the Red Chamber about? Why do people love it?

The best way to sum it up is calling it a family saga mixed with a bit of fantasy. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a big and powerful family, focusing on the story of the young girls, the maid servants, and the wives that all live together and run the household. The only male main character Jia Baoyu is a young heir of the family, who grew up among these women and girls. He loves and understands them, loves being surrounded by them, and deeply identifies with them. My dad, who is also a fan of the book, loves saying that Baoyu 'has the heart of a maiden'.

The book is funny and full of drama, and at the same time it's also poetic, tragic and profound, and the tragedy of the characters is written in such a kind way, as if the author wants you to love them and remember how wonderful and alive they are despite the fact that a gloomy fate will claim them all.

The book is also so queer in a way that no other Ming/Qing dynasty Chinese novels can compare. Obviously there are no modern queer labels because it was written in imperial China, but there are characters who are interested in both men and women, characters who are interested in no one, and affairs between boys and between girls; many main characters have the kind of relationships with their gender that make my Chinese transgender heart sing with empathy.

If you want to hear from English speakers who fell in love with the book and learn more about the context and literary/cultural value of the book, I recommend starting with 'Why is China’s greatest novel virtually unknown in the west?' by Michael Wood on The Guardian and 'Why you should read China’s vast, 18th century novel, Dream of the Red Chamber' by Josh Stenberg on The Conversation.

Dream of the Red Chamber is a long novel with many different versions and possibly hundreds of adaptations. How should I begin?

There are two translations that I know have received good reviews:

A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. My partner is reading this version. It's a very faithful translation with footnotes to make up for the language and cultural barriers. (Note: the Yangs finished their translation in prison in China during the Cultural Revolution.)

The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and John Minford. It's a translation that takes more artistic liberties than the Yangs version. For example it differs in the way it translates character names and its writing style. Hawkes wanted to recreate the experience of reading the novel in Chinese for English speaking readers, but it may also be harder for you to talk to those who read the book in Chinese about certain characters and details.

There is also a public domain translation by H. Bencraft Joly, which was first published in the 19th century, and you can find it on Project Gutenberg.

The 1987 36-episode TV adaptation Dream of the Red Chamber is well-loved and considered by many Chinese people to be the best adaptation of the book. Every later adaptation would be compared with the 1987 one and found lacking. I personally love this adaptation a lot, and I think out of all the adaptations I've seen (including TV series, films and Chinese opera) it has the best interpretations of the book and the characters. It also has the best songs, which were adapted from the poems in the book. You can stream the series with English subtitles on the Internet Archive.

If you want something shorter that covers the main romance plot line and includes a few iconic scenes from the book, I recommend the 1977 film adaptation The Dream of the Red Chamber casting legendary actress Brigitte Lin as Jia Baoyu (she also portrayed an iconic classic wuxia character as a trans woman in another film franchise, but I digress). You can find the film with English subtitles on Youtube.

This is not all, but it's a good start. If you ever decide to give it a go, it doesn't matter if you watch one of the adaptations first or read the book first. Don't stress, take your time, and enjoy the ride!

[suzannahnatters]

Having shared my RINGS OF POWER s2 eulogy, and while assuring you all that I am also mourning the loss of one of the best things about the show, I would also like to take a moment to defend the decisions being made by the showrunners and writers here.

Before I get started, I just want to acknowledge the members of my writers' group. This post owes much to our discussions. Anyway, when it comes to Adar's death, there are three reasons why I'm not calling his death pointless, or blaming the showrunners for bad writing. The overall reason is this: Adar represents the show's efforts to treat Orcs like people. In this sense, his character was a blazing success. Look at us all, with a hopeless crush on an Orc? Success.

But let's go a bit deeper.

SIMON TOLKIEN'S EXECUTIVE MEDDLING

The fact that Simon Tolkien made an EXCELLENT call in asking the showrunners to keep Adar around for an extra season...still doesn't stop what he did from being executive meddling, or from causing tricky ramifications in the second season. Adar was a first-season antagonist, brilliantly well-written, but ultimately only intended to be a supporting character. The decision to keep him on, suddenly made him more charismatic, more mysterious, and more sympathetic. Given how he'd been set up as a warm-up baddie...season 2 suddenly turned around and made us think he was here to stay. The writers had cornered themselves: on the Tolkien Estate's behest, they had a dark horse who was about to run away with the show. I'm not going to fault them for going ahead with their original plan, because they would have had to retool subsequent seasons massively in order to fit in an Adar redemption arc, and you can't necessarily do that when the whole arc of your story is already planned.

JRR TOLKIEN'S LEGACY

All of us have written things we're not proud of. JRR Tolkien wrote a story world with something problematic hard-baked into the foundations: an entire race of beings for whom genetics determined ethics. Can you even imagine what it must have taken for him to get to the end of a long life spent in the dedicated pursuit of this story world, and to have the courage to admit that he might have been wrong? That really isn't something most authors are capable of. When Peter Jackson went to make LOTR and HOBBIT into movies, he did nothing to scrutinise this issue. His Orcs are flat: monstrous, comic, but never people.

TROP challenged that, and exercised significant skill, care, and wisdom in doing so. But they are still attempting a faithful adaptation of Tolkien's source material. We know where this story is going. Galadriel will end up in Lorien with her elf wifeguy. The Orcs will fall under Sauron's dominion and become his tools, enslaved to his will with the Ring. I did fantasise about Adar being Celeborn, and possibly some of his "children" getting to nope out of Sauron's dominion or even be turned into Elves. But we now know that was never on the table. The Orcs were always meant to fall to the Enemy. But here's the point: for the first time in the history of Tolkien works and adaptations, TROP allowed them the dignity of a fall. Going forward in the show, the Orcs won't be monstrous cannon fodder: they'll be people we knew, people we were pulling for, people whose deaths matter. They are, not a waste, but a tragedy.

TOLKIENIAN TRAGEDY

Look...there's nothing more Tolkienian than a beautiful disaster of a man who dies far too early.

And yes, I know that it's something we've seen before and wish storytellers would move away from - the Moment of Grace that never becomes anything more than a Moment. The villain who has a five minute redemption, then dies conveniently so that the heroes never have to work through the messy business of forgiveness and accountability (although I always did wonder how it would play to see a redeemed Adar, possibly Celeborn, living the rest of his life as a redeemed Uruk among people who hold an undying enmity with his children). It's happened so often that when I, Suzannah Rowntree, sit down to write a six book series where the irredeemable villain has to live and build a new and more accountable life for himself, there's startlingly little template for it, at least in Western media. We live in times that are starved for happy endings and genuine redemption arcs. I wanted so badly for Adar and his "children" to be blessed, and not cursed, by this narrative. So I get the rage. I get the grief.

But tragedy is still a valid art form. Again, all this is a function of the show successfully making the Orcs matter. And the reason the Orcs needed to matter is because they are about to be enslaved to Sauron. They were so close. They genuinely could have been good. Adar could have led them into an alliance with the Elves against their enemy - but instead, just like Celebrimbor, just like Galadriel, they are deceived by him. They turn to him out of fear that their father figure is treating them like cannon fodder, and now they have no one to advocate for them. And that's the tragedy of their situation.

We might all be a little tired of tragedy, but it's still valid, especially insofar as it never, ever forgets to treat its characters like people. Did the writers have to choose tragedy? No. Adar might have lived and undergone a redemption arc.

But the writers didn't have to give Adar a redemption arc, either. Any more than they had to so deeply humanise the Orcs and their father. It's not perfect writing, but it's not bad writing, either. Indeed, for a Tolkien adaptation trying to both honour the author's work and scrutinise his failings, in my opinion it's doing brilliantly.

And...honestly, I'm kind of happy that they left me wanting more, and better, for Adar. Because now I get to write that story myself.

[sciderman]

sorry I’ve been getting back into my Spider-Man hyperfixation And I kinda need to infor/opiniondump…

I always hear people calling Peter an “Everyman” because yes, he is. Most hero’s are made to be half relatable and half ‘impossible’

the only problem I have is that, when saying that about Peter— I only ever hear comparisons about how he’s broke or how he’s just a regular guy with a regular life trying to do some good in the world. While yes, that’s true, I don’t think people draw enough attention to more obvious parts of Peter’s character that can also happen to everyone.

Uncle Ben for example, not enough people talk about it. Peter and his family live in New York, and that state is pretty dangerous, especially in a populated area like Queens. Uncle Ben got shot and died, leading Peter to sink in on himself with grief and thinking that it’s his fault. That exact thing has happened to people before, close family members dying and leading to the person mourning on a downward spiral because they don’t know how to handle all that grief they feel, especially if they were as close with the family member as Peter and uncle Ben were.

I feel like more people should acknowledge that, you know to be silly and all

why do so many of you guys put sad and not very silly things in my inbox and tell me they're silly. they're not silly goofy funny!!

i don't think spider-man's story with uncle ben is necessarily about grief or a downwards spiral - i was going to say "in the comics" but i don't think it's the case in any adaptation of spider-man either. and it's very rare in spider-man media to even spotlight how close peter and ben were. i think this it probably just your personal reading into it - and i hope it's not to do with your own personal experience, but holding you so tenderly if it is.

maybe the closest to what you're talking about is the raimi films - they lean into the ben mythology heavier than any other spider-man adaptation, and they dig more into peter's guilt and grief. i think that's why people have the ben-fatigue now. but actually ben is not something very heavily focused on in the early comics - ben's death is more of a springboard for peter to realise that, now that he's the man of the house, he has to take on more responsibilities.

i don't think peter spirals out of grief when it comes to ben. more that - ben's gone. peter needs to make money to help may. the story is more about the financial trouble that the parkers have been put into with the loss of ben. peter puts on the tights. tries to join the f4 to make money. starts selling photographs to make money.

i think that's a very real down-to-earth sort of struggle, too - the financial hardship that families face after losing a father, and the financial hardships they face particularly with may's declining health. the parker struggle was more to do with financial stability than grief. (sorry ben.) i think there are other losses in peter's life that are more thorough explorations of grief than ben. gwen, for example. we spend a lot of time following peter's processing his grief. but ben? peter is back on his feet and trying to make a buck ASAP PRONTO because he doesn't have TIME to grieve. he can't afford to grieve. and that - that's the most relatable thing about peter parker, i think - the thing i admire about him so much - is that he's constantly faced with earth-shattering losses and tragedies and just - hits to the head and knocks to the teeth that would put any man down for the count, but he gets up and keeps going.

there's so many days in my life lately where i'm faced with things that make me feel like "wow. and you expect me to just. keep going?? after that??" but that's what peter does. and i love him. that kid just keeps getting back up after all the punches life lays on him. he just keeps going.

[chickenstrangers]

Bad Buddy, Tragedy, and Queer Futures

I want to take a closer look at Kwan & Riam and Romeo & Juliet, and the intertextual methods Bad Buddy employs with those narratives. Bad Buddy is an extremely self-aware show and comments on and subverts tropes and expectations of the genres it employs, putting itself in conversation with other BLs, but also romantic comedies and romantic tragedies more broadly. @shortpplfedup has done a much better job than I could do in her excellent Romeo and Juliet analysis series (which was very helpful in getting my thoughts in order), so instead I want to focus on how Bad Buddy plays with the idea of tragedy and explore it through a queer theoretical framework.

Bad Buddy straddles the line between comedy and tragedy. While, as a romance, the audience is primed to expect it will end happily, there is a thrum of tension behind all the jokes and banter. Specifically in the first half of the show, which feels the most rom-com like to me, there's sadness underlying Pat and Pran's interactions. Every time Pat makes a flirty joke, there's a spark of hope in Pran's eyes that he quickly pushes away, knowing or thinking that Pat doesn't feel the same way. It feels like the characters are on a knife's edge, and every little misstep cuts deeply.

The smiley face is an external representation of Pran's feeling (for example, he switches its direction on his door depending on his mood) but it also signifies a choice. He chooses to surround himself with icons of happiness and he chooses to turn the frowny face into a smiley face. People often don't have that much control over the big external things in their lives, but the important thing is adapting and making choices within their circumstances. The idea of choosing happiness is at the core of Bad Buddy.

Pran knows that this will probably not end happily for him. That even if his feelings are reciprocated it might not work. In some ways, his reactions can be read as genre-awareness, part of all the little signs that the show is putting out that this is not your typical rom-com, that it might not have the happy ending that the audience expects. He may not necessarily know that he is in a story, but he anticipates its trajectory. But then Pat comes in and breaks through these genre walls. He's in a rom-com! He's got all the tropes! He falls second but he falls hard and he doesn't have the years and years that Pran has had to build it up in his head.

This is exemplified so beautifully in the rooftop scene and the aftermath of the kiss. For Pat, this feels like the culmination of the story. All good rom-coms end with a kiss. After they kiss, Pat has such a blissful expression on his face, it's pure happiness and belief that things are working out all right in the end. But this isn't the end and Pran knows this. When Pat sees Pran's devastated face, he starts to realize this too.

The post-kiss episodes have a different tone, especially once Pat and Pran actually get together in episode 7. They feel a lot lighter now that Pat and Pran know how each other feel. There's a sense of domestic happiness once they're dating. But the buzzing of potential tragedy and heartbreak doesn't come from Pat and Pran anymore, but from nebulous external forces. This is also when the show starts to signal more and more explicitly that it is a tragedy.

The clearest case for this is the introduction of the school play. The inclusion of Kwan and Riam led to a lot of speculation that Bad Buddy might not get a happy ending, along with P'Aof's comments that they had taken liberties with the source material. Kwam and Riam's story is from the 1936 book Plae Kao or The Scar. The 1977 film adaptation was Thailand's highest grossing film up to that time and it's legacy continues, with two other adaptations in the twenty-first century (for more information and links, see @fiercynn's very helpful post). It tells the story of two star-crossed lovers whose families separate them, and it ultimately ends with both their deaths. Kwan is killed by Riam's brother, and Riam takes Kwan's knife and stabs herself to die alongside him.

Bad Buddy explicitly emulates Kwan and Riam's story. Pat and Pran's story is essentially the BL retelling of the story that the architecture faculty is producing. With the Kwan and Riam narrative shedding new light, we now see that Dissaya sending Pran to a different school mirrors Riam's father sending her away (though it is much darker in the original). Bad Buddy also has direct references to Romeo and Juliet, especially with the balcony scenes and the intense longstanding familial rivalry.

From this point on, Bad Buddy toes the line between whether it will end happily or tragically. But, crucially, the successive near-misses all hint towards the show's final message of queer futurity and queer possibility.

The first act of near disaster comes at the end of episode 8 when Wai pulls back the curtain on Pat and Pran on stage. The fact that this takes place on the set of the play puts it into direct parallel with Plae Kao. Kwan and Riam's story gets transposed onto Pat and Pran's story. They become the actors playing out the story in real life. After this point, we don't see much more about the play at all, other than the curtain call of the performance, we don't see Pat acting as Riam on stage, but we do see them playing out this narrative in real life.

This is the first real test to their dating relationship, but they do not break up. Their friends turn on them, especially Wai, who won't even talk to Pran. Pat suggests they pretend to break up and continue dating in secret (foreshadowing), but that is ultimately unnecessary. Pat's friends only put on a show of abandoning Pat, and Korn quickly reveals he still fully supports his friend. This is the first of a series of misdirects.

The next crisis seems completely anticlimactic, but maybe that's the point. In episode 9, Pat gets shot. It comes seemingly out of nowhere, and then is quickly resolved. We once again have a fake out: the audience is misled to think this is a dramatic event with the way the hospital scene is shot, and Pran is misled by Pat's friends, who play up how hurt Pat is. But Pat is complete fine, the bullet just grazed him. This incident feels very out of place in the narrative of Bad Buddy. Yes, it is an important step in reconciling Pran and Wai, but couldn't this have happened some other way, that didn't involve a random guy who we'd never seen before and a level of violence that the show hadn't prepared the audience to expect?

But what if this was a deliberate allusion to Kwan and Riam/Romeo and Juliet? Here we get the physical injury from those stories' conclusions, Kwan's fatal shooting. Except...its not a big deal. With this scene we get further hints that something else bad might be coming, but we get another sign of tragedy being forestalled. This is further emphasized by the following confrontation with Pat's dad, who is unhappy to see Pran at the hospital, but in the end shows grudging respect for Pran getting Pat's name cleared. Disaster averted.

Then we come to the true brink of tragedy: episode 10 and 11. Pat and Pran find out the real reason their families hate each other, the reason why they are meant to hate each other. At this point they both know that they're not going to be able to stay together and have their families' approval. Running away to the beach feels like a delay of the inevitable. On the beach, they are in a liminal state, a state of paralysis. They have their "honeymoon" but both know there's no happy wedded life to follow.

This calls back to the moment of death in Plae Kao, when Kwan flees into the water after being shot and Riam follows after him, taking his knife from him and stabbing herself while they're both underwater. The waves obscure their death in the film, suspending them in the moment of transition between life and death. This liminality carries over onto Pat and Pran's retreat, which echoes the water motif. This is the scene where Juliet takes the poison, creating the effect of death, though not death itself.

We are back to the beginning. Pran knows this is a tragedy. He's the one who first thinks about going home, even knowing they will not be able to go back together. Pat wants to cling to this little slice of possibility for just a bit longer, but Pran knows that this can't work forever, and Pat knows this too. While Pat is more willing to delay this looming conclusion, they both know they'll have to go home.

Okay, and so what? Romance stories often have a third-act breakup, there needs to be some sort of conflict. What makes this any different from a traditional romance narrative?

When the show was airing, there was a lot of worry that the show wouldn't have a happy ending, or if Pat and Pran did end up in a relationship, it would be after an extended breakup. The show definitely tried to cultivate this response with the inclusion of the Kwan and Riam play and the preview for episode 12. But the show also had put out all these little signals that things weren't as they seemed, and that disaster would be averted once again.

It is important to note that there isn't actually a third-act break up. They never break up! There's not even really any miscommunication. Bad Buddy has been laying clues for the audience, with the multiple bait and switch tragedies, from the curtain to the gunshot. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, but a key element of that tragedy is the deception: Juliet taking the poison to fake her own death so that she be with Romeo. But Romeo doesn't know about the lie, and he is tricked as well. Pat and Pran, alternatively, are together in this deception, lying to their families and most of their friends, and in turn, the audience.

They take control of the narrative. They choose what details to share and with whom. When they finally let the audience in on the deception, they do so directly, breaking the fourth wall by narrating their own story.

This is where I'd like to bring in the idea of queer futurity and queer temporality. Queer temporality addresses the idea that queer time operates outside of and in opposition to linear normative institutions and chronologies, and that experiences of the past, present, and future can feel different to queer people. For example, coming of age milestones can take place on different timelines for queer people. Queer futurity looks specifically to the future as queerness's domain. It allows us to imagine a possible world beyond the present, a future that is not yet here. (Shoutout to @shannankle who brilliantly applied this lens to The Eighth Sense and got me thinking about this topic).

Bad Buddy plays with the idea of queer time with the realization of the queer romance. There are two time skips in Bad Buddy (between episodes 6 and 7 and between 11 and 12). Already this creates the sense of delay. Much of Pat and Pran's relationship is characterized by waiting, from the three years when Pran was sent away before university to the four years where they hide their relationship. It wasn't the right time for them then, and it isn't even really the right time for them now. They are waiting for a time to be free, a future that is not here yet, but on the horizon.

Nevertheless, there is an optimistic turn to this waiting; they are facing this delay together. Discussions of queer futurity creates the impression of separation between the present and the future, but here they are holding hands, creating a continuum between these temporalities. This optimism is in direct defiance of the expectations of tragedy, especially as common as it is in queer narratives. So much of queer media does not end happily; however, Pat and Pran do get a happy ending and their story does not end in tragedy like Kwan and Riam's or Romeo and Juliet's.

But its a nuanced ending. The parents don't reconcile; although they are starting to thaw towards the idea of their sons dating, the show ends without the parents talking. But that's not what it's about. It goes back to Uncle Tong's words. As Pat says, "We might not be able to change the people around us, but they couldn't change the two of us either." All they could do was "adjust to it and live happily." They are looking towards a world beyond the present, but while they are waiting, they can still be happy.

Pat and Pran make the choice to have a happy ending. They have a lot of agency in this decision, thwarting familial and genre expectations. It all goes back to the smiley faces Pran surrounds himself, putting himself in a sea of optimism when he isn't necessarily a very optimistic person. It's about the ):) face. That face is also about choice, its about perspective, and how close happiness and sadness are to each other. But Pran chooses to have it be a smiley face instead of a frowny face. Pat and Pran choose to stay together.

Bad Buddy takes two straight romantic tragedies, combines them with audience expectations of queer tragedies, and subverts all of it.

In both Romeo and Juliet's and Kwan and Riam's stories, the lovers die alone. Pat and Pran live together.

Bibliography

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Halberstam, Judith. A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

Helmsing, Mark E. "Queer Futurity." Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education, ed. Kamden K. Strunk and Stephanie Anne Shelton. Leiden: Brill, 2022, p. 518-522.

Muñoz, José Estaban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Plae Kao. Directed by Cherd Songsri, Cherdchai Production, 1977.

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

Peace | Harvest Moon Collab Oneshot

✧ word count ➼ 1.5k ✧ notes ➼ A little post-war oneshot of you and Levi attending a Fall Festival while adjusting to normal life for @postwarlevi's Harvest Moon Collab Event! ✧ content/warnings: canonverse, post-war, gn!reader, some spoilers for the manga

Adjusting to a normal life after a lifetime of war and tragedy was a challenge. Similar to how nothing could truly prepare you for war, nothing could have prepared you for suddenly being thrown into the expectation of living a "normal" life while your survival instincts were still stuck in a place where you had to be on guard 24/7.

It was a few months after the events surrounding the Rumbling. Things were slowly getting rebuilt, and both you and Levi found yourselves trying to adjust. The two of you settled down in an apartment close to the downtown area of a moderately-sized village. It was peaceful enough while still providing you access to services you'd need, given his bad knee and the lasting effects of the war on your mental health.

Adjusting was getting easier, but the fact that you didn't have to be prepared to fight a horde of Titans at a moment's notice was still hard to adjust to. Most days were okay, with just a minimal amount of discomfort for the both of you that you could easily adapt to.

Today was not one of those days.

You were shaken up and had barely gotten any sleep. Your nightmares were bad, and you could tell that Levi was struggling to get himself to get up to regularly expose himself to walking as his bad knee slowly began to heal.

He had to live with a limp due to his knee, but could walk in small increments, which was encouraged as some form of physical therapy—but he was required to actually get up and move around. Given the fact that you didn't know anyone in town and that there was still some stigma and gossip regarding the Eldians that resided on Paradis Island, going outside was not necessarily the most rewarding thing to do to pass the time.

Thus, when you heard from the locals that there was going to be a Fall Festival and saw that the weather was nice, you figured it was a good time to drag Levi out of the house in the hopes that everyone would be too busy enjoying the food and events without shooting you those wary glances.

Plus you needed the fresh air.

"How's your leg?" you asked as you pushed Levi's wheelchair forward while walking next to him, matching your pacing with his.

He scoffed at the fact that you even asked that question.

"Feels like shit," he grumbled, which resulted in a small amused smile forming on your face at his standard harsh commentary.

You had brought his wheelchair in case the pain started kicking in, but he seemed to be doing okay today. He was just walking on it for short periods of time to give it time to heal while also letting him adjust, although he hated having to depend on you to bring his wheelchair in case it got too painful for him.

"Thought you said there weren't going to be a shitton of people."

"There's not!" you exclaimed, although you knew he was right. The plaza wasn't necessarily packed per se, but it was definitely crowded enough for the both of you to feel uncomfortable wading through the crowd.

"Bullshit."

"You're so dramatic," you said with a sigh as you rolled your eyes before they fell on a stand that was set up for the festival.

You nudged Levi and motioned your head towards it.

"Come look at these pumpkins with me."

In addition to the music and art stands, there was a small area of the festival dedicated to some of the local farmers. There was a stand of freshly picked apples, all neatly sorted by color, right next to the pumpkin stand that had sizes of the squash ranging from around the size of a baseball, up to being even bigger than the tote bag you were currently carrying around.

"How many fucking pies are you planning on making?" Levi asked, slightly bewildered at the amount of apples and pumpkins that you were buying. You had mentioned something about making pastries, but neither of you were that into sweets.

"As many as I need to keep busy, I guess," you commented with a shrug.

Levi didn't respond with a sarcastic retort like he usually would. He knew what you were referring to—baking helps keep your mind busy. He understood it, and even tried to help out sometimes, although you would consistently complain about how he was usually too much of a pain in the ass over how to do things, which just resulted in you kicking him out of the kitchen on most days.

Your eyes flashed up as you saw a group of kids run by you and towards the plaza. They had come from a Halloween face painting stand, so their faces were covered in various shades that were supposed to resemble some well-known Halloween-esque character that you couldn't recognize. They were running over towards a live band that was playing, joining some of the other locals in dancing to the music.

As much as you felt like an outsider sometimes, the liveliness of some of the locals still brought a smile to your face. It was a glimpse into what human nature was when you weren't burdened with the weight of war.

You saw that Levi's pace was slowing down a bit and changed your direction so that you slowly headed towards a bench that seemed to be a bit further out from the crowd.

You could barely hear the music from here, but you were still able to watch the camaraderie. It was nice to experience even a little sense of peace after the horror that was the Rumbling.

You watched as the sun began to dip below the horizon, which prompted the street lights around you to flicker on. Even the music began to calm after a while as people began to trickle out of the plaza and vendors began to pack up for the day.

"You think it gets easier?" you eventually asked.

Levi glanced over towards you, watching you as you fixed your gaze on the setting sun.

"Depends on what you're referring to."

He saw your eyes flicker down, with a hint of dejection showing up in your expression.

"Adjusting to...normal life," you eventually whispered.

Levi directed his gaze back towards the sunset, his lips slightly parting as he began to formulate an answer to your question, although he wasn't quite sure what that answer was supposed to be. He didn't know if adjusting would get easier. You both still had your nightmares and were ready to jump back into survival mode at a moment's notice. It felt agonizing.

After a few seconds, you looked over at him, watching as the breeze drifted through his raven locks, making them subtly rise and fall over his forehead. Your eyes drifted down towards his damaged eye, noting the scars that ran down his right cheek. You were tempted to reach out and run your fingers over his scars. They added to him in a way that was hard for him to see himself, but you were able to see. You were always able to see his worth as more than a soldier. To you, he was just Levi.

"I like to think that it will," he eventually said, "for their sake, if nothing else."

Your eyes flickered down as you brought up your memories of the people that had died for this peace that you were currently living in—the ones that didn't make it to the end: Erwin, Miche, Hange, and even Levi's original squad.

You hoped that you'd be able to find that peace they had died for.

You rested your head on his shoulder, scooting closer so that your hips were touching.

It was going to be hard to adapt to that peace after a life of nothing but fighting. You knew it was going to be hard, but you also knew that what Levi said wasn't just blind optimism. He's known grief for nearly his entire life, experiencing firsthand how easy it is for that grief to swallow you, and how to drag yourself out of it as you learned to make room for it.

At least you had Levi next to you on this journey. Even after all that loss, at least you still had him.

Levi wrapped his right arm around your shoulder, pulling you in closer and planting a quick kiss on the top of your head.

You looked down towards his hand that was now resting on your shoulder and noted his two missing fingers. The war had left the both of you scarred—for him, it was his eye, hand, and fingers; for you, it was a particularly nasty gash on your shoulder that you sometimes still felt the phantom pain of.

It was going to be a hard journey and there was no changing that—but at least it will be a journey that you'd be able to take together.

#: @chaotic-on-main @romantichomicide95 @levisbrat25 @leviismybby @moonmalice @averysmolbear @cathybarn @tclbts @emiwhore @bejewelledd @sad-darksoul @ackermendick @aomi04 @apolloshaiku @laraackerman @pulpolicia @raenacreates @nube55 @roseofdarknessblog @saenora @noctemys @sixpennydame @sleepyfairyxo @heichoucleanfreak @svftackerman @catskze @nixie-writes-aot @la-undercover-latina @v4mp-wife @levis-squishy-cheeks @dumbfound-princess @deepzombieyouth @evas-leslas join my taglist! as always, please let me know if you want to get taken off! :)

[finelythreadedsky]

I know this is a very broad question and I apologize in advance for it, but do you have any recs for someone who wants to get into Greco-roman classics? Both in terms of literary works (and specific translations I guess? Like I've seen ppl talk wonders about Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey so maybe I could start there?) and perhaps more uuuh non-fiction readings I guess? Anything you think it's interesting/basic reading I guess. I know the easy answer would be to just pick one classic and start reading, but I sometimes fear I'd be missing a lot of info/depth since I don't really have any knowledge of this kind of lit, nor its cultural background, but idk if that's something that actually matters or just me drowning in a glass of water :')

my best advice would be to read the introductions to translations actually! often the translators provide a pretty good broad overview of what's going on with the text, some of the reasons it's interesting or unusual, and some of the major issues that scholarship has been concerned with. translators' notes also can often give you some insight into what the translator has done in order to get the text to you. emily wilson and richmond lattimore, for example, have really good and extensive introductions to the odyssey and the iliad respectively (although i would not recommend lattimore's actual translation of the iliad-- maybe wait for emily wilson's translation to drop or check out my thoughts on iliad translations here). and of the two homeric epics i do think the odyssey is a lot more friendly to newcomers to ancient literature.

i would also highly recommend the greek tragedy in new translations series for great introductions as well as great translations of the greek tragedies. i think aeschylus' oresteia (agamemnon, the libation bearers, and the eumenides), sophocles' oedipus rex and antigone, and euripides' medea and bacchae are probably some of the best plays to start with. i've found that reading a good introduction before starting the play sort of shows you how to read it and primes you to pay attention to certain aspects that you might not necessarily pick up on as a modern reader of a work from such a different culture so long ago.

and i do think that adaptation/reception is a great way to get more into ancient literature and the ancient world. i've recommended a bunch of things here but i'm also loving mary renault's historical fiction at the moment for what it does to really immerse you in the realities of life and politics in the ancient world.

but honestly reading and missing a lot of info/depth is totally okay! a lot of ancient literature works on many levels. whether you know nothing about it or have have a ton of background, there's always some new angle to see, and the things you pick up on or find weird as a first-time reader with minimal background knowledge are also super important.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

“I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter”:

The Awkward Meta-Tragedy of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

In which I thoroughly (over-) analyze the ending of this classic work in seven parts, with perhaps gratuitous references to 2000s pop music thrown in. The introduction and links to subsequent posts are below:

[Note: a link to a google doc containing the whole essay will also be at the end of this post, if you'd rather read it in that format instead of clicking links to the separate pages]

Introduction

                I was warned that Neil Gaiman’s book series The Sandman was a tragedy.  A post on tumblr, circulated not long after the successful Netflix adaptation’s first season released, warned new fans to not get their hopes up, to understand that the books were a Literary Tragedy to be taken seriously, and not to get carried away with fun cutesy shipping without the knowledge of what the source material would be like.  However, the post carefully, and helpfully for those hoping to avoid spoilers, did not say in what manner the books constituted a tragedy.

                So, when I first came to the end of the final installment of the series, I was shocked.

                This was not like any tragedy I’d expected.  And it felt… icky.  It felt incredibly, shockingly, pessimistic.

                Needless to say, massive, MASSIVE spoilers from here on out—you have been warned.  Also content warning for discussions of depression, suicidal ideation and suicide, mentions of misogyny, and mentions of transphobia.

                Also note that this isn’t intended as necessarily negative towards the original work, but more about the common fandom interpretation of it, as well as acknowledgment that, for better or worse, it is “of its time” and doubtless going to come across differently to a modern first-time reader.  Also, this is just my own interpretation, I’ve been told I tend to interpret things pessimistically, and I’ve only just read the books as of 2022, so I in no way position this as a definitive analysis, nor even necessarily a correct one.

Continue to:

Part 1: Tragic, but not a Tragedy… Unless you get weird about mental health

Part 2: Hob Gadling—How to win by doing nothing?

Part 3: ���Façade”—So much foreshadowing, so little time

Intermission: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Part 4: Damn Daniel, Back at it again with the (symbolic) white vans

Part 5: “It sure is exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero”: Should We Even Care?

Part 6: “I reject your reality, and substitute my own”: Maybe There is Hope After All

UPDATE: I have also written a "bonus chapter" of this, focusing on Season of Mists, HERE

Tagging those I believe interested: @duckland @roguelov @notallsandmen @lizajane2 @ambercoloredfox

@serenityspiral not sure if you want to read this before you finish the books, because this is literally about the ending and it might kinda ruin the experience if you're completely spoiled

@onehundredandeleventropicalfish I'm gonna be bold and tag you and hope I'm not completely wrong

[linkspooky]

Hi! I saw your tags about Tara in Teen Titans comics--I'm only familiar with the cartoon series. How do your feelings about Tara compare in the show vs. the comics? I ask since I noticed you mentioned that Tara never really cared about BB, which I think is obviously changed in the show, and I wonder how you feel about that.

They're both good? They're both good! I think one thing people forget about comic book characters vs. adaptations of comic book characters, is that comic books were always intended to be a collaborative medium that builds on itself through the work of multiple authors and interpretations. Thus, you can have multiple versions of the same character who have the same core but don't really have to be exactly the same. This is why it is kind of silly when people get upset animated adaptations make changes from the original source material because that's kind of the point, in a collaborative medium, you're going to get another author's take on the same character.

Since you asked I can give you an analysis on the core ideas of Teen Cartoon Terra vs. Comics Terra, and also her relationship with Beast Boy in both versions.

1. GWEN STACY

So, I once talked about how Terra was always intended by her creators to die, but that's not necessarily offensive or fridging her character because Terra's still a character with a lot of narrative agency. Terra is the main character of her story, it's just her story happens to be a tragedy. That is true for both versions.

Before the start of the story her fate is sealed. This is what you call doomed by the narrative. George Wolfram and Glen Murakami have both given interviews explaining as such. Albeit, for different reasons.

Comics Terra was essentially made to deconstruct a lot of comic book tropes. I lovingly call her "Asshole Kitty Pryde." From conception she was going to be the spunky new kid with mutant powers who joined the titans at fifteen and immediately became friends with everyone... except she was evil all along.

George’s strength was he also understood the characters 100 percent as I did so there was never any question. He knew. We had talked enough about the characters to know we were exactly on the same page with them. So I said, “Everyone keeps complaining that we’re like the X-Men” and the X-Men had just gotten Kitty Pryde. I said, “Why don’t we really screw around with them completely?” — this is the fans — “…and make them think we’re stealing Kitty Pryde only she’s gonna be bad from Day One.”

Of course this is where authorial intent differs from like, what actually ended up happening in the story. Worlfram's intent was to always make Terra have no reason for her actions, the tragic backstory she feeds the teen titans is kind of embellished and made up, she decided to become a mercenary all on her own, she wants to work with Slade and is even trying to seduce him. However, Terra still comes off as horribly tragic despite their intentions and other authors have since then picked up on their subtext.

Like, I genuienly think the intention was to just write her as pure evil, but instead what they got was writing her as a bad victim. That is, the kind of victim that presents incredibly unsavory and unlikable reactions to their abuse instead of either being kinder than their abusers, remaining pure and chaste like Cinderella or just waiting to be saved. Terra's not a passive victim nor is she waiting for sympathy, she hurts people the way she has been hurt, she maipulates the way she has been manipulated. Terra's been beaten down and now her goal is to come out on top. I believe the reason why she came out this way has a lot to do with Perez and Wolfram sticking to their guns and never giving her a redemption arc.

The very first time we see her, she’s trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. It’s just that all the fans assumed because we went out of our way to make her cute — but not too cute, with the buck teeth and everything — everyone would assume that she was gonna become good by the end and that was never the case.

First thing, we made a promise that day that we would never renege on our view that she’d never become good. It’s sometimes hard to do that with characters you like. You want them to become good or something like that. But we never liked the character enough—because we knew what we were doing with her—we never allowed ourselves to fall for the character. Because that’s bad. That’s bad storytelling. You’re doing what you want as a fan at that particular point, not as the creators. The fans had to accept what we were doing and not do the same stories that they had read 14,000 times before. You know, at Marvel, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were villains who became good guys and I could go through a whole list of ’em.

Their commitment to the bit meant that Terra’s story became what was essentially Greek tragedy at that point. Terra was always fall and because of that, Wolfram and Perez dedicate a lot of time in the story showing the audience exactly what all of her flaws are and why those flaws are the reason for that fall. They committed to their creative decisions when writing this character, which is why Terra ends up being such a strong character, especially for the time. Of course there were female villains, but they weren’t really allowed to be complex victims to the degree that Terra is, have her entire range of negative traits, have her flaws fully on display and then still have it be a tragic ending when she does not get saved. 

Gwen Stacy was always going to die, and Terra was never going to be redeemed. I do not believe either of those cases are fridging because sometimes characters die in fiction, and sometimes they contribute more ot the story dead than they do alive. Terra’s the first real loss for the Teen Titans, it also came on the cusp of a time in DC where teenage superheroes and sidekicks started to die (Cough, Cough, Jason Todd). Under the Red Hood and Judas Contract are such effective and lasting comic book storylines because they are such tightly written tragedies  yes... both of them depict a bad victim who does not get saved (even though that is the whole point of both arcs). 

Terra is in fact, probably more comparable to Under the Red Hood Jason than she is Gwen Stacy because she is number one a teenager with problems who probably should not have been made a superhero in the first place, and two a trauma victim who copes by manipulation and violence to try to reclaim control of their lives. But, to bring the Gwen Stacy comparison back. Gwen Stacy was always going to die, Terra was always going to die, but unlike Gwen Stacy Terra is not anyone’s love interest she is the protagonist. Peter Parker fails to save Gwen because the Green Goblin attacked her, she was killed to hurt Peter Parker. Terra pulls the arena down on herself and buries herself alive in Samson and Delilah-esque fashion at the end of her own personal tragic arc. 

To get to the real differences between the two characters though, characterization wise, I think both versions start with the same central concept, this is a troubled teenager who should never have been made a hero. 

Terra is a deeply troubled teen, however the way she copes in both versions are wildly different, almost opposite. I like to say cartoon Terra has like, at any moment five different personalities, while comics Terra has no personality. 

2. Runaway Girl

To elaborate on this, cartoon Terra’s entire character revolves around how unstable her sense of self is, due to never having any stability in her life. The cartoon is actually very purposeful in showing in both imagery and metaphor Terra’s splintered sense of self. The first few lines of dialogue introducing her are this. 

“She’s not in trouble, she was leading it into a trap.”  “Question is, who is she?” Slade: “Don’t get too attached my young friend, I saw her first.” 

Said by the Titans and then Slade. Even in the first lines introducing her, not only is the question of who she is asked, but Slade immediately tries to claim her from the titans. Later on in the show, the way Terra acts around the Teen Titans as a group, the way Terra acts when she is with Slade, the way Terra acts when alone with Beast Boy, the way Terra acts when alone with Raven are all wildly different versions of herself, to the point where it’s hard to believe she’s the same girl sometimes. 

This is even apparent in the first episode before Slade even gets to her. Terra insists that she enjoys sleeping outside, she enjoys running from place to place, she doesn’t really want a place to stay for the night, she’s presenting herself as some sort of self-reliant and worldly traveler instead of what she really is, a homeless runaway kid. Terra is attempting to appear calm, cool, and responsible and she is absolutely none of these things, and she’s pretty transparent about it too. She cool girls herself so people will like her. The second she is alone in Beast Boy and loses control of her powers for 30 seconds, she immediately crashes, starts berating herself and her self esteem sinks to the bottom of the ocean. 

Trust, is something constantly brought up again and again with Terra’s character though I would say Terra despite literally being the main character of an arc called the Judas Contract, despite betrayal being the one thing she is known for... always sees herself as getting betrayed first. Which is why she overreacts to the perception that Beast Boy broke a promise to keep her powers safe in the first episode. Terra doesn’t trust people at all. Though, to trust people and form healthy relationships with them, you actually have to be a fully developed and well-rounded person which Terra is not. Terra is basically a foster kid who has been through several families before this, waiting for her current one to dump her. She has interanlized the idea that there is something wrong with her that makes this rejection happen, but she doesn’t know how to fix it, or how to be better the kind of person that can have those healthy friendships so she dedicates herself into hiding those flaws instead. 

Terra: You don’t belong with the Titans. Terra: You don’t know anything about you. Slade: On the contrary Terra, I know everything about you. I’ve been watching you for some time. I know why you’re always running away. I know your secret, little girl.

This is also why she runs from the Titans to Slade. It’s a question I see commonly asked about cartoon Terra, if she’s meant to be more sympathetic than comic books Terra why does she willingly go to Slade instead of staying with the Titans? Which is a silly question, because you might as well be asking why do grooming victims get groomed? Why don’t they just know that groomers are bad people?

Teenagers are not grownups. Especially not Terra, a bastard child rejected by her parents who has been on the run for however many years. Terra is a teenager and a severely underdeveloped teenager at that, and she has learned to survive on the streets yes, but that’s not really the same as learning to be a functional person, who can have healthy relationships with people, and control their emotions. Children actually require parents to nurture and teach them and raise them up to be more functional adults, and they also require the stability adults in their lives provide them. 

Terra goes to Slade because he is an adult who is promising to be there for her, and give her control and stability which are things adults in her life have failed to give her. She can’t trust the Titans to give her these things because they are children one as Slade needles her into believing they cannot understand or help her, and two the way Terra has lived her life up to this point a transactional relationship with Slade makes more sense to her head than the found family the Teen Titans have based on love and trust because Terra is a stranger to both of those concepts. 

Terra is also someone who has little control over her life in general, which is why cartoon Terra is so passive in comparison to comic book Terra. In the episode Betrayal itself, Terra keeps her foot in the door about the actual betrayal the whole way, and seems to change her mind on what she wants several time. Because Terra has five different personalities. Ginger Terra, Sporty Terra, Posh Terra, Scary Terra, and Baby Terra. Terra doesn't have a cohesive sense of self so she's entirely reactive, she just does what she thinks will keep her safe in the moment. Terra wants safety and control of her powers so she goes to Slade. Terra feels guilty about what she does for the Titans so she tries to run away from Slade for the moment. Beast Boy asks her out on a date, but because Terra's betraying the Titans that night Terra says no. Five minutes later, Terra says yes. She is constantly changing her mind and contradicting herself like this.

Which is where we get to the greatest contradiction this episode, Terra betrays the titans and clearly feels guilty about it,b ut instead of say telling the Titans what she did or coming clean she just runs away. Which is where we get to the extremely subtle imagery of Terra in a house of mirrors.

Terra can't face her reflection over and over again, because she can't face herself, because she has no sense of self. She doesn't know why she does these things, but she's done them now, and she's stuck with those choices.

Terra: Beast Boy, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. Beast Boy: Then why did you let it? Terra: I don't know okay, I don't know. Slade he helped me. He saved me from myself. He said I owed him. Beast Boy: So, it was all just a game. You were just pretending. Terra: No. You said you'd be my friend no matter what, remember?

This is also Terra's most honest display of remorse, and the exact moment Terra gets rejected, crying and begging for forgiveness for what she's done and after that is the point where she goes full villain. Terra goes from baby Terra, to Scary Terra. A lot of who cartoon Terra is born from fear of moments like this where she is rejected. Terra was the one who tricked Beast Boy and Beast Boy is rightfully upset of course, but in Terra's mind only able to see her own hurt feelings Beast Boy is the one who broke the promise to her. Terra internalizes the fact she cannot be forgiven at that point and seeing no other recourse goes full villain and insists she feels no guilt, she wanted to destroy the titans to begin with, it was all a lie. The complete inversion of how she acted in the betrayal episode. Terra is manipulative, spiteful, hungry for power and yes she's capable of being all of those things but one important thing is.

The second, the second Slade starts mistreating her and beating her Terra immediately wants out. It turns out it's not power or control Terra wanted at all with Slade, but the idea of safety he provided her. The moment it becomes unsafe for her she tries to leave again, because Terra is a child desperately seeking safety in a world that feels unsafe for her, and she'll find it by crushing people she perceives to be a threat if she has to.

That is Terra in a nutshell, she doesn't feel safe anywhere, or with anybody. She has no stable foundation. She is the human embodiment of the tower card in Tarot. No matter how hard she tries to trust others and trust in return, because those are basic human urges we all have, she ends up falling down. It's interesting for a character who is so famous for betrayal, how much of her arc shows she clearly wants to be accepted and trusted by others, and gets hurt at the idea of their rejection. Even the day she literally betrayed Beast Boy before taking him out on a date she asks him this.

Terra: Do you trust me? Beast Boy: More than anyone I've ever met.

I would say Terra's inability to trust doesn't come from the fact she's a bad person or a bad victim, but because she doesn't have the tools to form healthy relationships because of how seriously neglected a child she is. A part of the tragedy of Terra is because Terra cannot save herself, because she is a child. Just like how the Titans have such difficulty saving her, because they are children too and they're not really emotionally prepared to save a person as morally grey and as in need as Terra, and the only adult in the situation is Slade who is there to take advantage.

Transitioning too. Comics Terra, while cartoon Terra has too much personality, Comics Terra has too little. She was written to be a sociopath, and that's not really my term that's how the writers describe her though I can dig up evidence she shows clear signs of being capable of having attachment to people. I'd say rather than a sociopath she's more written as an enigma. Terra's motives are spurious, her actions are inconsistent, she seems to be driven by spite. She is an incredibly angry kid with a chip on her shoulder who seems to be capable of anything.

Cartoon Terra is trying to play along with other peopel's expectations to her, while comics Terra rejects everyone's expectations. She loathes cute teenage girl superheroes. She finds dressing up in costumes and fighting crime to be ridiculous in the first place. Though, I would say despite saying she clearly hates the titans, literally the next panel she displays some affection for Kid Flash.

Comics Terra isn't completely unfeeling, she's capable of forming connections to people, she has a fondness for Geo-Force her brother, Kid Flash, and sort of for Beast Boy she just never fully forms relationships with them.

Terra's not really even maintaining much of a cover with the Titans, because both with Slade and the Titans she is a rude, belligerent raunchy kid who is trying to constantly get into other people's faces. Terra is all of those things, she just when she is alone with Slade also pretends she is an adult, in an adult relationship with him. (Cough, cough, grooming victim. A victim of sexual grooming in this sense too).

Terra's written to be a sociopath yeah, or at least her writers tried too but I'd say she's more a character who the audience has little to no idea what is going on in her head. A lot of her is left ambiguous. Considering her backstory though, the rejected bastard of a king, someone who is working as a mercenary at fifteen, she clearly has not had a good life. Just like cartoon Terra she is lacking a sense of self.

However, instead of eschewing her agency, Terra takes her agency from other people. Cartoon Terra is good at manipulating when she wants to be, but Comics Terra sees the world in terms of every relatonship is transactional and based on manipulation, the world is winners and losers, the world is about who is on top and who is on the bottom. Terra lacks no real goal, or purpose, no friend, no home no loved ones she really only wants to crawl up on top of others if she has to.

Which is exactly why she gets into a relationship with Slade. Comics Terra seems to think her and Slade are equals, and that she is manipulating and using him as much as he is using her. The tragedy in this case arises from the fact that you know, Terra is a fifteen year old girl and Slade is three times her age.

There's an entire chapter where we follow around Terra montiofring people with contacts, and she's going about the titans daily lives just, telling Slade how much she hates them the whole time, but then she stops to ask Garfield why he's constantly being rude to other people and seems genuinely interested in listening to him talk about his feelings.

Terra's only out for herself, she is out to define herself and not let anyone else tell her who she is and who she should be. Terra's selfishness makes sense though considering the situation she is, she's either made to feel nothing like how she was with her family, or she is being sexually groomed by a guy three times her age. Her response to that, her extreme self interest and only caring about her own survival really is her way of fighting back against a world that she sees as trying to wear her down.

And that's a key part of her character Terra is a grooming victim who is also a bad victim. She's being groomed and her way of reclaiming her agency is to insist she wants sex, she wants to hurt people, that actually she's the one manipulating Slade. It's all Terra trying to assert control in a situation where she has none. I don't know if you know this, but a fifteen year old can't manipulate a guy in his fifties who has been doing this for years. Terra also, projects a lot of her hate for her situation and her lot at life at the Titans.

They did not do anything wrong to her, but at the same time she's pretty cosntantly unhappy with them, she complains none of them like her, she complains about their lack of trust, I believe that's less Terra trying to infiltrate them and more Terra herself either believing she cannot fit in anyhwere or as a person who only believes in transactional relationships and manipulation just not understanding how family works.

Terra also acts like dangerously unstable at all times, there's a point in the comics where Beast Boy gets way too aggressive with his flriting, that he full on triggers what resembles a PTSD response in her and she tries to bury him alive.

At times like this when Terra is made to feel she's either not the one with the power here, or being looked down upon she asserts herself with violence to desperately try to regain control. It is not healthy by any means, but it is still the behavior of someone who is coping incredibly poorly. Terra relies on fear and control to make herself feel safe at times like this, because she's not been shown love early on in her life and by this point she genuinely does not understand it. And also I cannot emphasize this enough as a victim of sexual grooming, Terra is pretty much not ever safe, or in a situation where she has bodily agency or control.

Terra in the cartoon dies in a heroic sacrifice, whereas Terra in the comics dies because she loses control of her power and essentially suicides. If anything the tragedy here is that Terra is someone who never learned to be a girl properly, nor was she appreciated as a human being and because of that she formed her entire sense of self around her powers. She is a child, and never having been allowed to be one, and not knowing how to live in this world, form relationships with people, trust and be trusted she dies as a child. Terra once again has nothing solid to build herself on, and because of that the tower falls down.

3. Terra and Beast Boy

In the cartoon Terra and Beast Boy are clearly meant to be in a relatoinship, in the comics Terra claims to have hated him all along, but arguably she could have been fond of him.

In both versions the relationship is entirely wrong headed from the start. A lot of it has to do with Beast Boy's flaws as a character. I wrote on and on how immature of an individual Terra is, and Beast Boy as the youngest on the team shares many of those immature and selfish traits. IN the comic itself that seems to be the reason why Beast Boy and Terra are paired together, they are the closest in age, she is the new girl and the trope Terra is made to deconstruct is the cute comic book love interest.

Comic book Garfield is almost more immature than cartoon Garfield, and on top of that is a full blown male chauvinist. A lot of people do not like Wolfram/Perez Beast Boy, I kind of love him because he doesn't understand woman's boundaries and thinks he desperately needs to get into a relationship and makes them uncomfortable because he sees his flriting as harmless to them... you know like a teenage boy. Unlike most characters like this that appear in media, this quality of Beast Boy's is something that gets called out on all the time.

Terra and Beast Boy do have something in common in that they are both outsiders to the group, they are the youngest so no one takes them seriously, they are almost always stuck together, there's a scene where they're both getting tutored by a tutor Garfield's rich father hired and they're both such ADD kids no one wants to be there. She does have at least one genuine moment of connection like this one.

Their immaturity is what makes them the most similiar, but they go about the inferiority they feel towards other people in opposite ways, Terra sets out to try to prove that she is better than other people by asserting herself, while Beast Boy tries to bend over backwards to win their love.

Terra sympathizes with Beast Boy because they share the same root cause of the issue, but they cope in opposite ways and because of that she looks down on him as just another kid. Which is something Terra is desperately trying to prove she is not. Terra genuinely does go out of her way to kiss him which shows this conversation at least affected her, she has moments of being genuine around Beast Boy, but I think this and every version of Beast Boy is too immature to ever reach her. Because to return to the male chauvinist aspect of Beast Boy's character, not long after this scene he full on triggers Terra by coming on way too hard to her.

Beast Boy wants a girlfriend, to validate his feelings, to make him feel special when he feels like he is the only kid, and the one most often left behind in a group of adults. He tries to make Terra into his love interest and Terra does not want to play that role at all. There are moments where Terra is genuine with Beast Boy, and he might have been able to reach her, but Beast Boy is so obssessed with the image of Terra he has built in his head and the idea of having her he's never able to even come close to her.

Beast Boy cannot understand Terra with any sort of nuance whatsoever, because she's a woman who doesn't really want to play along with any image of her in his mind.

Their cartoon relationship is much less destructive, but really suffers from the same fundamental problem. Both the episode "Terra" and the episode "Betrayal" feature Beast Boy trying to make Terra a promise that he cannot keep. The first time he promises to keep her powers a secret, he actually keeps that one but the perception that he's betrayed her is what makes Terra run. The second time Beast Boy promises to accept her no matter what she does, only to reject her when she is openly weeping and apologizing at his feet out of remorse.

Like, if you wanted to save Terra. To convince her to turn back to the side of good there was never a time more ideal than that but Beast Boy spits in her face. Because while he's a hero he's also a fifteen year old boy feeling hurt and betrayed. This is Beast Boy's Orpheus turning back to look at Eurydice moment.

Terra: Beast Boy, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. Beast Boy: Then why did you let it? Terra: I don't know okay, I don't know. Slade he helped me. He saved me from myself. He said I owed him. Beast Boy: So, it was all just a game. You were just pretending. Terra: No. You said you'd be my friend no matter what, remember? Beast Boy: Slade was right, you don't have any friends.

Beast Boy's attraction to Terra is sort of instant and a kiddie crush, but any relationship they might have had is broken by the time Terra runs away at the end of their first episode together. Afterwards Terra has already betrayed the Titans, and Beast Boy is clinging to the girl Terra appeared to be the first time they met.

Beast Boy doesn't really fully comprehend Terra, which is why the literal last episode of the series is Beast Boy stalking Terra all day long and insisting that he knows her best, and he knows certain things about her and acting confused when she tells him that she was never that way, she never liked sleeping outside, she wasn't the girl he thought she was.

I went to great length to show how Terra's emotional immaturity results in her constant flip-flopping and contradiction, but Beast Boy shows the exact same behavior. Beast Boy in the cartoon tries to play roles to Terra that he is not emotionally mature enough to play. While at the same time. The first is he tries to be the one protecting her, the one guaranteeing her stability. In the first episode he is the one who stays with Terra and calms her down after Slade triggers her into nearly causing an earthquake.

At the same time by the end of that episode he's unable to make Terra stay because she's so hurt at the idea he betrayed one secret. Beast Boy is also the same person who one episode ago told Terra that she didn't have any friends to her face when she was crying and apologizing and just left her there, and the very next episode gets angry when the titans say Terra is irredeemable. Beast Boy that was you. You said that, to her face.

Beast Boy: Terra, you're our friend. Terra: I don't have any friends, remember?

Beast Boy wants to act like a hero saving Terra, but he's not that great of a hero, nor is he emotionally mature enough to do that. Which is why we get this behavior of Beast Boy, first reaching out to save her, and then resorting to victim blaming when he feels like he can't save her. He jumps between I am Terra's best friend, I know she was there all along, to just Terra doesn't have any friends. Terra you wanted to do these things, it was your choice. There's no consistency in Beast Boy's actions, because Beast Boy doesn't really know what to do he is vulnerable and desperate, because a person who he cares about has hurt him, and is also hurting.

Beast Boy is once again trying to put Terra into a simple and easy to understand box. He is acting like the hero of the story, and she flips between his villain and his love interest when that's not the case. Terra's more focused on Terra herself, she cares about Beast Boy but she's also just trying to survive. Beast Boy is a little bit too focused on his relationship with Terra, and like the validation he wants to get from her that he can't look at Terra as a whole person, or realize from an outsider's perspective she's a kid in dire need of saving. Well he does at times, but like I said he flips between advocating for never giving up on her, and victim blaming her because Terra is not easy to understand and he cannot make up his mind.

Terra is the main character of her own story and Beast Boy doesn't know how to comprehend her that way, or set himself aside to look at things from Terra's perspective because he's fifteen and stuck inside his own head with all those adolescent feelings and hormones.

In both versions, I think Beast Boy mistakes what could have been a strong friendship for romance because he is obsessed with getting into a relationship without really understanding what that entails. Beast Boy not being a good boyfriend at fifteen is actually perfectly understandable, the whole tragedy of the Judas Contract in general is that just like Terra is too immature to save herself from her situation, the Titans also just being kids are too young to save her.

They also both try to jump into a relationship without building a solid friendship first, because they both need love and stability and have no idea how relationships are supposed to work. It's like they both fell in love with the people they were when they first met and the relationship never evolved. They are similar and there is a connection, but rather than the things they have in common bringing them together, it drives them apart.

[khan-crete]

tagged by @unstablerate!! tyty <3

Last song: tragedy by the bee gees

Favorite color: OURPLE BAYBEEEEEEEE

Last book: well. i'm reading I'm in Love with the Villainess vol. 4, which, well... okay so i watched the anime. thought it was fun and liked the characters (plus it actually talks frankly about gender and sexuality which is nice, more so in other adaptations tho) so i read the manga. got pretty into it but the light novels are way ahead of it in the story. turns out the writing is not the best. but i'm persisting and enjoying it in spite of that lmao. kinda the epitome of the idea that just because something has lots of lesbians and some trans people doesn't mean it's necessarily good

Last movie: i think the last one was the new beetlejuice! it was fun

Last TV show: fringe!! watched a few episodes a couple weeks ago and it's p fun! it's got some neat if gross body horror scenes and concepts, but it's also silly even when it doesn't mean to be. peak 2009. plus, watching a show with someone you like is always fun <3

Sweet/spicy/savory: OOOO uhhhhhh i think savory. all are good tho

Relationship status: single but i'm bi and (theoretically) poly so like. hmu 😘

Last thing I googled: kissing face emoji LMAOOOO

Current obsession: probs it's i'm in love with the villainess? i've gotten p invested lmao. i've also made a lot of posts about half-life 2 lately but that's kinda a baseline, constant obsession

Looking forward to: extended time off work i think lmao. gonna have a four-day weekend for thanksgiving! also next time i can hang out with friends!!

tagging: too many friends to tag you all but i'll try lmao

@lord-of-the-bi @miss-morland @theladysherlock @ahawkmet @mothmansbigfatass @abyssal-gaze @basicallyaturtle @paleo-maniac @eggtimeiguess @mattibee

@butch-snorlax @rabidvampdude

[the-hype-dragon]

Books I Read in October

Books I finished:

The Starry Rift by James Tiptree, Jr. aka Alice Sheldon - 4/5

Collection of three short stories, loosely connected by setting and the overarching theme of self-sacrifice. Much less cynical than anything in the other Tiptree collection I've read, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (which I thought was excellent). Overall I enjoyed this, though the third story dragged in the middle. "Good Night, Sweethearts" was the only one without non-human aliens and it was also the weirdest, but I liked it the most.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - reread, 5/5

(I say this is a reread, but I don't think I really understood it the first time I read it, years ago.) Tragic story of repressed woman who gets possessed by a haunted house. As I was reading this I could tell Stephen King really liked it, The Shining has a pretty similar premise and conclusion. It's scary but I view it as more of a tragedy. Has two adaptations, both called The Haunting, from 1963 and 1999; I don't think either movie really does the book justice but the '63 version is worth a watch. But also: just read the book.

Chalice by Robin McKinley - 4/5

Beekeeper-turned-sorceress Mirasol saves her demesne and her love interest from evil opportunistic politicians from elsewhere. Very weird and whimsical in a way I think I've only ever seen McKinley pull off. Kind of meanders in a way I didn't like at first but once you get into the flow of the story it's easy to follow, plus that's simply how McKinley worldbuilds so I can forgive it. Ended up enjoying it but thought the resolution was a little too convenient.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris - reread, 5/5

One of my favorite books ever. Been meaning to reread this for a while and decided October was a good month for it. Still love it. Dolarhyde's a great monster, utterly contemptible while still being sympathetic (to an extent; Harris never lets you forget what Dolarhyde has done). Another legitimately scary book. If you like thrillers I recommend just reading it since neither adaptation does it justice (though imo Manhunter is worth a watch).

Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz - 3/5

If I was a kid I would have unironically loved this. As an adult I found it clumsy and amateurish but I had a good time reading it. The villains are silly but great. Entertaining in the same way a Terry Goodkind book is. Kind of reminded me of Redwall and Warrior Cats. I've seen reviews that take issue with the two (lmao) important female characters but I liked both of them a lot. Wouldn't necessarily recommend to anyone over the age of 20 tho unless it was strictly to see what all the fuss is about. Kurtz has written a billion Deryni books and iirc the most recent one was published ~2014. Not sure if I will give the series another try, this first book was okay but not good enough to get me interested in the rest. Oh well.

Spindle's End by Robin McKinley - 4/5

A retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The first half focuses on the protagonist's (Rosie's) foster mother, Katriona, and the second half on Rosie herself as a young woman; heavy emphasis on female friendships and female relationships in general (mother to daughter, aunt to niece, etc.). Very funny but ends on a bittersweet note. I liked Rosie's friendship with her BFFL Peony. There is a weird age gap romance that I wasn't a huge fan of, tho I liked Rosie's love interest. I just wish he wasn't like twenty or whatever years older than her lmao. Otherwise a good book, the ending made me cry.

Books I did not finish:

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch -

Lumping these together because I dropped both of them for the same reasons: I thought they were boring and I couldn't stand any of the characters. Neither author seemed to want to let their stories do the talking and the action kept getting broken up by paragraphs upon paragraphs of info-dumping and exposition, and none of it done in a very engaging manner, either. For being marketed as exciting thrillers I didn't find either one of them particularly exciting or thrilling. I could not take any of the 2cool4me characters seriously either, both books felt very juvenile in the pursuit of being edgy and """mature.""" Also did not like the way the female characters in either were written - I dropped Lies about seventy pages in, and in all that time there was precisely one female character with a speaking role, and she was introduced just to flirt with the protagonist and so that we the readers would know what his type is, pleugh. I understand liking these books if you're a teenager going through an edgy phase but as a 30 something I didn't find either very engaging, not even in a corny so-bad-it's-good way like Deryni Rising lmao

[the-antiapocalyptic-man]

What are your thoughts on the lack of attention Lara Lor-Van gets in comparison with Jor-El?

On one hand, it's frustrating seeing how underdeveloped Lara is as a character over eighty years into Superman's history. One of my favorite parts of Pennyworth was seeing Martha Kane fleshed out and given a personality, even if the viewer knows she's ultimately fated to die relatively young for no real reason than to spur her child onto becoming Batman.

Lara's got it worse, in that while Martha's death specifically influences a lot of Bruce's personality as an adult (moreso than than his father's), Lara feels largely incidental. Clark has a dead biological mother because--despite being an superpowered alien being--the metaphor of Superman necessitates he have a mother, the tragedy of Krypton's destruction heightened for the typical reader with the tragedy of a young family being ripped apart. It underplays the tragedy of Krypton's death as a culture, something that's only gotten worse as modern reimaginings and adaptations have focused more and more on Krypton's social stagnation sterility and imperial past.

All that said, on the other hand, I think Lara presents a good opportunity to explore Krypton as a living culture in a way that can't really be done with Jor. Jor-El's an outsider and an ideological extremist who happens to also be a scientific genius and correct about the planet's rapidly approaching death. While the circumstances that brought him and Lara together is a whole story in and of itself, Lara can believe in her partner without necessarily having to share that "Fringe Scientist" archetype he's pigeonholed in even his most heroic interpretations (and pushed to "Mad Scientist" in his least heroic).

My personal interpretation of Lara--with no real canon basis--is that she was a member of Krypton's Artist Guild. While the Science and Military Guilds are heavily represented in Jor-El, Zod, and many of the Phantom Zone detainees, the Artist Guild doesn't get much attention. Which is understandable--a thesis on Kryptonian Art History doesn't really suit any kind of monthly action comic one could reasonably sell--but nonetheless disappointing. Having Lara be an artist gives a strong reason to actually explore this group and the questions that come with it, while also giving a reason for Lara to be open to Jor's ideas. As an artist, she's always looking for stories and narratives to inspire her creativity. The tragedy of Jor-El's Sisyphean attempt to save his world falling on deaf ears becomes a romantic notion: they can't save everyone, they can't even save themselves, but they can spare one life. Their child.

I was working on Kara's Kryptonian history recently and it gave me an idea to flesh out one of Lara's works--her final work, maybe the final major artistic artifact of Krypton's history--and I thought it'd be appropriate for her to be composing a full sensory immersive visual opera-novel about a child in a strange and distant land, made strong and invulnerable under a golden sun. Lara Lor-Van's final major piece: "The Superman."