#and of course there's also this thing: the narrative compels it

[lesbiansforboromir]

Anyway um. The general narrative position of Orzammar in Veilguard makes me want to throw up blood <3

And like the argument can of course be made that it is being percieved through a very biased lense, Kal-Sharok has held this grudge for nearly a thousand years now and therefore obviously are going to percieve themselves as the more morally pure culture in comparison. And Lace is a surface dwarf who really knows nothing about Orzammar except for the discrimination she has encountered when interacting with it. Okay, sure, Dragon Age has always somewhat awkwardly attempted to be an entirely unreliable-lore tale, nothing can be taken without a grain of salt etc etc.

So I suppose my main grief and agony is more with the DECISION to make these people the only ones who get to say anything about Orzammar in this, the final reveal of the true crushing extent of the Dwarven tragedy!!!! I have spent literal decades within the understanding that Orzammar is living on borrowed time, like pretty much every codex entry written by a dwarf about themselves mentions the 'long struggle' that will eventually be lost, the darkspawn will someday claim Orzammar too and with nothing of the Deep Roads left to conquer they will finally surge to the surface and begin the endless blight. Orzammar was made the unwilling blockade for the surface against the darkspawn.

And now we find out?? That the thing that was going to be the death of them, that has been eating away at the dwarven people for millenia, the cause of a thousand thousand horrors and griefs and terrible choices and screams in the lonely dark- That was the very thing they were begging to protect them!!! Stone protect me, Stone keep me, Stone's blessings to you, she encircles us and we must protect her here where darkness meet's light- but they were not protecting her!! And she wants them all to be consumed by the tide of her righteous retribution, for forgetting her, for using her, for building their civilisation upon the wreckage of her and leaving her trapped and alone in a purgatory between life and death, between existence and absence, cut off from they who made her whole and yet they thrive and she is left behind.

But they didn't know! They don't remember! All the dwarves have been doing for generation upon generation is unconsciously trying to clumsily recreate that lost soulful feeling of being part of a cohesive whole, Solas literally calls them 'the severed arm of a once mighty hero, lying in a pool of blood' (biting him biting him biting him b-) but the point is they were also traumatised by the loss and have spent ages and ages just trying to figure out how to exist without like... THEIR CONTEXT!! Their dreams!! Like Dwarves ARE STILL part of the Titans, evidenced by the fact that when the Titans lost their dreams so did all the dwarves, even those born post the calamity, they just are disjointed, disassociated!!!

... But Orzammar is just a stupid, hidebound, oppressive, politically-putrified, 'immoral' city of people whose perspective on all this is ergo completely superfluous, uninteresting and unimportant. And Kal-Sharok (who are just sooo morally pure they're making all the GOOD choices and don't have any prejudice in them at all and their own tragedies only drove them towards good things so I guess it was good Orzammar cut them off after all???) Well they apparently already know most of it anyway and they're ready to move on and grow and learn and it's all just so neat and clean and no dwarf who venerates and loves the Stone has any catastrophic or ugly feelings about this whatsoever! Orzammar APPARENTLY doesn't even care so yaaay how cool wow that's so cool an entire culture just doesn't care about their religion and it's origin? They just don't care? Haha! They just don't care! They're probably even suppressing it for evil oppressive reasons, completely ignoring the fact that even the Casteless have a relationship to the stone, wow! That's so compelling haha! I hate it when societies have to actually struggle with something or when religion is important to people, booo imagine... imagine......

[crownedwithstars]

Why doesn't Thingol just give the Silmaril to Fëanorians?

One thing I find curious about the discourse around the Silmarils and their ownership issues is how it seems to often simplify the Sindarin and especially Thingol's perspective. I mean, Thingol giving the Silmaril Beren and Lúthien stole from Morgoth's crown to the Fëanorians is framed as somehow easy and obvious option. But I don't think it really is?

It's not even about whether Thingol is right or wrong to act as he does, it's about why his actions are justified from his point of view (and why it is more believable than him being compliant to Noldor).

1. Noldor disrespected and antagonised Thingol from the start. They have given him little reason to be nice or helpful.

When the Noldor arrive in Beleriand, they immediately start to do their own thing, and disregard Thingol, the local sovereign who is regarded as the overlord or at least respected and revered by the Elves native to this region. But Noldor (and Fëanorians) do not attempt to gain his friendship and alliance, they don't establish diplomatic relationships, they bring no gifts (which would be expected in this kinda medieval based society) and neither do they ask for help as Exiles, they don't let Thingol know where they are going to settle down or ask whether it's convenient but grab lands whether the locals like it or not, they don't recognise his position even as a friendly gesture, they don't disclose the nature of their expedition, withhold important information, and most of all, they bring violent trouble to his backyard. This must seem deeply and outrageously insulting to Thingol, especially because these princes are children and grandchildren of Finwë, Thingol's close friend - and yet they treat him without an ounce of respect.

Thingol is no less proud or particular about his position than Fëanor or Fingolfin is. He probably has not had it challenged or ignored by anyone except Morgoth's servants. Also he may see it as indicative of general Noldor prejudice/disdain against Sindar.

Whether Noldor had justified reasons for the way they act upon landing in Middle-earth, you can't deny that they don't do even the bare minimum to win the locals over. Yeah, you could argue that bringing reinforcements at the time when Morgoth returns and becomes active in Middle-earth again is something, but this is still not a way to treat potential friends and allies.

2. The Kinslaying of Thingol's people and kin at Alqualondë and the burning of their ships.

Obvious, really. He may see himself as standing in for Olwë, and regards the Silmaril as weregild for slain relatives and friends - people he himself probably knew before Teleri were sundered. Also why would he respect Fëanorian property rights when from his point of view, Noldor don't give a damn about Teleri or their rights?

Thingol may also judge that the Kinslaying and burning of the ships disputes the Fëanorians' right to the Silmarils and their moral high ground to a degree where anyone brave and cunning enough to reclaim even one of them becomes a rightful owner. Obviously he is biased in Beren and Lúthien's behalf but it would be weird if he was not? After B&L's efforts and their suffering, and quite literally achieving the impossible, he may be of the opinion that they have more right to the Silmaril than Fëanorians who seem more invested in competing Morgoth for land than for the Silmarils. Thingol may share the same attitude as Dior has in one of the drafts: there are two more Silmarils in the same place where the one in his possession came from, so why don't the Fëanorians go get them first?

3. Celegorm and Curufin.

I mean, after the way Lúthien was abused and attacked by the two brothers, Thingol could be holding on to the Silmaril out of pure spite. His daughter never gets any apology for how she was treated, and Thingol has no reason to believe that C&C's actions - and the attempt to force Thingol into an alliance - were not sanctioned and approved by the rest of the brothers. These people have been consistently terrible at everyone Thingol loves and cares about, so why should he help them in any way?

4. The Silmarils mess with your brain.

It's clear that the Silmarils have an unwholesome effect on almost everyone who possess them. Time and again Tolkien describes how characters fall prey to this greedy, possessive lust for the Silmarils. I mean, Fëanor and his sons are ready to spill blood again and again just to get them back. There is something about the jewels that, if you desire them for their own sake, kind of enslaves you to them. Thingol won't give up the Silmaril to Fëanorians because he can't.

5. The Doom of the Noldor compels him.

It's explicitly stated in the Doom that while the Oath will drive the Fëanorians, it will never yield its objective, and the Silmarils will elude them. As soon as Thingol names a Silmaril as a bride price for Lúthien, he becomes involved in the Doom and what it dictates, limiting his control of the situation. Because of the Doom (and the effect the Silmaril has on him), Thingol is not free to give it to the Fëanorians.

[aspacewar]

I am,,, feeling so incredibly normal today, about my imaginary D&D dude and their train-wreck of a life

Sorry mutuals & followers I’m gonna be Worse than normal today I swear I’ll shut the fuck up soon

Need a separate blog for D&D shit honestly

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

EA & Bioware honestly did an incredible job at killing any enthusiasm I had for a new Dragon Age. Fucking hell, man, I've played the first two games so much I could probably go through them with closed eyes and still pick all the right dialogue options to get My Exact Personally Canonized Plot. And the only reason I didn't do the same thing with DA:I is because it was made after EA completely gave up on optimizing their shit so the fucking thing takes up like a billion terabytes of disc space and takes 10 hours to download and install. I honestly think it's the best-written cRPG franchise to ever have a budget that doesn't involve a list of Kickstarter backers or getting an eccentric Estonian billionaire fixated on the project. And the gameplay is also there, I don't really care about that part.

Then they proceeded to fire all the talent that made me love those first three games, and scratch and restart the production twice, and be suspiciously cagey with any details or gameplay footage for a fucking decade, so my hype consistently went down and down. And yet I still managed to hold out some hope that somehow, by some miracle, it wouldn't fucking suck.

I kept that hope until the trailer dropped. You know the one. The one where we see a bearded Varric. This, I think, was the exact moment when I lost any desire to play fucking Veilguard.

Like, first of all, Varric being there at all is already an issue. Leave the man alone. His presence was already kinda forced in DA:I. And after DA:I and Tresspasser, his story couldn't be more finished if he got killed, eaten, shitted out, condemned to hell, redeemed by divine sacrifice, bathed for eternity in the everlasting light. There is no point to Varric anymore. Whatever arc they've given him in Veilguard, and I don't even give a shit enough to read the spoilers before writing this post, it has no business existing. Fuck you. The only reason he's there is because he's a recognizable IP, and when you're a certain kind of soulless corporate moron, you think there's nothing more important than putting a recognizable IP in whatever new bullshit you're trying to peddle. Maybe if you didn't fire every decent writer in your trash fucking company, you'd have someone to tell you about the importance of Ending The Fucking Story When The Story Fucking Ends.

But that's not even the core of the problem. Beard? they gave Varric a Beard? Varric I fucking hate everything that's even tangentially connected to dwarven culture with a passion which is why I've made a point to shave my beard all my life to spite anyone who gives a fuck about it Tethras? beard? you gave him a beard? He changed so much offscreen in the goddamn timeskip between these two games that he got a motherfucking berd? fucshhfdbeard? feadsgfsvarricafgfdh BEARD? yyousftoiuslyhhabevarricasgsfucningbeardandthivkimgosabedineditit?beard????

PS. (edit after finding out spoilers) I've gone to TV Tropes to read up on Varric's role in DATV after writing this (just in case I'm wrong and dumb, and there's actually a deeply compelling narrative reason for his presence), and, well, this shit is cheaper than I thought. And more importantly, just as I thought, there appears to be no justification for the beard beyond "adding a beard is a cliche way to show that a bunch of time has passed, and we didn't care enough to think this shit through". I'm fucking tired, man.

PPS. (edit after reading the rest of big spoilers) This is so much worse than I could even begin to suspect. This is worse than the final season of Game of Thrones. This is the final season of Game of Thrones if they straight-up fired GRRM, burned his notes and hired a showrunner who's only read a one-page summary of the first six seasons. This is fucking depressing, man. I'm genuinely fucking sad. So many subplots that were started over the course of these three games, that were clearly going somewhere, scrapped in favour of a simplistic good vs. evil story that would get rejected by fucking CD-Projekt in 2007 for being too basic. All because the artists who poured their hearts and souls into this bullshit franchise got thrown out like trash by its "owners". Morrigan's kid, the Well of Sorrows, all the implied complexities of Tevinter politics, the Crows, the Old Gods, Andraste. All went to shit. Death to capitalism.

[perseidlion]

The Interview With the Vampire TV show is a perfect example of how adaptations do not have to follow the source material closely to be an excellent adaptation.

(This is a spoiler-free commentary, but it does discuss the dynamics of the characters in general.)

I read the books back in the day, and of course, saw the original movie. Despite a laundry list of big changes, the series still feels extremely true to the books because it captures the spirit. It gets the characters and their fucked-up dynamics right. It doesn't shy away from them being melodramatic monsters. It keeps to the rules established in the source material. The show also makes sure to preserve key moments and key scenes, but always with a twist.

Since they did that, they were free to shift things in time, amp up and adapt certain dynamics, and change the race of characters in a way that deepens the story and complicates already extremely complicated power dynamics.

The original movie stuck more closely to the era and the appearance of the characters as described by Anne Rice, but I don't think the story loses anything by changing those two elements. In fact, it gives it modern relevance and room for political and social commentary.

I have never ascribed to the idea that an adaptation has to be slavishly accurate to the source material to be a good adaptation. It just has to be smart enough to identify what to keep and what can change. An adaptation adapts. Honestly, I find it boring when I see exactly what was in a book up on screen with no surprises. Where's the fun in that?

The difference between a good adaptation and a bad one is not how accurate it is to the source material, but how well the adaptation respects what made the story compelling to begin with.

What's important here?

Lestat is dramatic and powerful and a monster who is deeply charismatic, but also manipulative.

Louis is overdramatic and self-hating, but oddly drawn to Lestat.

Claudia is fierce, but bitter about her eternal childhood.

Their relationship is deeply toxic but with true affection. They are monsters, but monsters capable of intense love and devotion - to the point where it has the power to destroy them.

THAT is at the core of this story. THAT is what they keep intact. This frees up all sorts of avenues for play around a few key plot beats.

This room for play also gives opportunities to expand on thinner characters or rewrite them entirely. It's been a long time since I read the books, but I don't recall Daniel standing out as more than a framing device, especially in earlier books. But in the show, he's one of the best parts. Not only does he take a much more active role in the story, he delivers some of the most hilarious and cutting lines of the entire series. If the show had stuck closely to the source material, we wouldn't have this Daniel.

It was also smart of them to make Claudia a few years older. The eternal child element is preserved, but the layer of arrested teenaged hormones and womanhood that will never blossom adds an extra layer of angst and sadness. She is stuck forever in a state of rebellion, never allowed to settle and come into her own.

Having her be a young Black woman also deepens her attachment to Louis, visually, socially and symbolically. They are different from Lestat and they understand each other in a way he never can. She's still very much the Claudia from the book but with layers added to deepen her character and add new, fresh dynamics and complications.

It's also delightful to see the show take the homoeroticism that was subtextual in the early books with Louis and Lestat (and in the original film) and making it unapologetically text. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have always been incredibly queer and subversive, but it's amazing to see that side of it fully embraced and stated plainly with no ambiguity or qualifiers or hints. It's queer and that queerness is woven into the fabric of the entire narrative. Louis and Lestat are the toxic beating heart of the Vampire Chronicles.

It's also important because we need messy, dark, fucked-up queer narratives. Sweet, coming-of-age stories and romances are of course, important - especially for younger queer people. But us older queer folk not only want to see ourselves in multiple genres, we want permission to see imperfect, messy, and yes, even evil characters. It's a way of reclaiming the monstrous queer that was villainized for so long and making it our own. We want to find something beautiful in the dark.

If we all thought about it, we could probably think of dozens of examples where a show or movie went far off-script from the source material and was still an excellent adaptation.

Interview With the Vampire is just the most recent and one of the best examples of a stellar adaptation that respects the source material but also builds and expands on it.

I look forward to seeing how they surprise me next season.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Oh no. Sir I believe I'm going to need you to explain that Dragon Age 2 opinion, that is a BLAZING hot take

I really don't think it is. Although of course all of this is personal opinion, not some sort of divine proclamation on high about which video games people are allowed to prefer, so take please it in the spirit it is offered.

Origins is a worldbuilding walking tour as much about explaining its own in-universe lore and fantasy history as it is about either its characters or the actual story that is happening in the game. It's a cool world! With some great lore! But also it is built entirely around Generic Fantasy Plot Structure #1 and never particularly seems interested in innovating, or surprising the player. On top of which, a lot of its setting and lore is pretty weakly sketched and doesn't really get developed into something either visually or narratively compelling until it gets built out in later games.

And while Inquisition has some genuinely fantastic characters, everything else about the game suffers very badly from the plague of BioWare Magic™, i.e. the production was an absolute mess up until the last minute when five hundred extremely overworked and underpaid creative geniuses somehow managed to wring a functional experience out of the trainwreck. It was made with fucking Frostbite of all things, jesus christ, it's holding together with spit and duct tape.

Now, Dragon Age 2 shares a bunch of the problems of Origins and Inquisition. It too bears the hallmarks of "our executives couldn't plan a healthy game production cycle if their lives depended on it" with a lot of unfinished content, half-assed sidequests and a truly frustrating over-reliance on a combat system that isn't half as engaging to use as it needed to be.

But Dragon Age 2 also has something neither of its siblings could ever even hope to match: an actual compelling protagonist.

Like, listen, I know people adore their headcanons about their Wardens and Inquisitors, and it has made for some truly amazing fanworks, but Hawke is literally the only actual character out of all of them. Hawke has conflicts, problems, needs and drives that actually inform and push the story forward, they have a family and a history and a reason to give a sh** about the central conflict of the narrative.

In Origins and Inquisition both, your character becomes the main character of the story entirely because of fate and random chance. You are the Chosen One and you are the only one who can Save The World because you're the last of the super special elite fantasy Hero Squad, or because you got some green magic stuck in your hand by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because the character is a complete blank slate onto which the player is expected to project themselves, random chance and circumstance are the only tools the plot can use to position them as main characters. There is no character to drive them to it.

In Dragon Age 2, Hawke becomes the champion because they're trying to build a new life for their family in Kirkwall, and end up embroiled in the chaos and politics that befall the city as a natural consequence of living in it and dealing with the conditions of it. Hawke and their family's needs and wants drive their actions, and push them to engage in endeavors that influence the course of history. They have agency (in the conceit of the narrative, at least) over how their life turns out, they make choices that have consequences, rather than being dictated into the position of Main Character by a literal looming apocalypse that permits no other course of action.

And I'm not about to sit here and claim that Dragon Age 2's story is perfect or that every character is a masterpiece or that every plotline is amazing. No, there's plenty of scuff and jank and things that have aged poorly and unresolved plot threads and all the rest of it.

And I am definitely not forgetting the godsdamned DLC where BioWare threw it all overboard by inventing a Special Bloodline Plot where oops it turns out Hawke actually IS a special chosen one specially chosen by a special fate to have a special role in Saving The World because they're special because of fate and destiny and blah blah, I still think that was phenomenally stupid (especially when Corypheus wasn't even Hawke's goddamn main villain to deal with what was any of this supposed to add to their character ffs BioWare)

But even with all its problems, the simple fact that Hawke is a character you can give a shit about independent of your own projection as a player - the fact that Hawke isn't just an empty bland blank slate with no personality, no traits, no wants or needs or drives - that has made Dragon Age 2 infinitely more memorable to me than either Origins and Inquisition. I think about it to this day. I think about Hawke to this day. I care about what happens to the character in a way that I just simply could never bring myself to do with either my Wardens or my Inquisitors.

[hestzhyen]

Sunken Ships and SoRiku

Hi internet void. I went feral and maybe you'll read the result.

KH has made a lot of choices around SoRiku from a narrative perspective that, in isolation, wouldn't amount to much. A heart-to-heart here, a questionable line there, and so on. The usual things that one would do to court a queer shipping audience in an otherwise het or unromantic work. And SoRiku circles have painstakingly documented every instance to show something that looks more like a consistent and intentional effort rather than a few dollops here and there to keep shippers engaged. There's... a lot. But one stupid, insignificant thing really shook me up and made me a believer in SoRiku Endgame, Actually.

Silly as it is, it's Nomura's reaction to people shipping RikuNami that gets me the most.

Generally speaking a writer doesn't want to interact with fandom shipping unless it's to urgently course correct. As in it would be catastrophic to the narrative if the fandom had the wrong idea. Otherwise it's best to just take note of how people are interpreting things and adjust the next installment accordingly, or live and let live. Keep distant and don't risk accusations of retconning/bad writing/queerbaiting in bad faith. So the normal reaction from Nomura seeing people get excited over RikuNami would have been to just do nothing. But instead, the scene was patched to downplay the smile, and Nomura went on the record to clarify that it's not a setup for a romantic relationship between Riku and Namine.

That's insane.

Why is it so important that Riku remain romantically uninterested in a girl he'd have a natural connection to, huh? What about accidentally implying RikuNami was so detrimental to the story that it was changed and explicitly addressed like that? Even if it wasn't meant to be, surely letting it play out like AkuRoku did would be enough. Just gently clarify and move on with the story (which pretty much sunk the ship on it's own anyway). You don't wade into fandom shipping and launch nuclear warheads like Nomura did against RikuNami unless you want to leave no room for doubt.

Torpedoing RikuNami also doesn't help them keep up appearances in terms of straightness at this point. Leaving it intact would only help the case of Riku and Sora being bffs with the strongest bond 5ever- a huge boon for the writing team if they wanted to avoid things looking too gay. Nomura et. al. are absolutely aware of the impressions and jokes about how gay KH is. And KH definitely would not be the first series to play in to queer ship teasing for the lols until it's time to pair everyone up at the end.

But they did the one thing you're not supposed to do if you're just aiming to queerbait: undermining the plausible straight ship. You don't eliminate the only straight option for your character like that for the sake of "he so gay" jokes! Having a straight option available is vital to make the bait; they don't have to be compelling or important to the story, they just have to exist. Yet at this point, Riku's only option is Sora. They went out of their way to ensure we wouldn't think anything else makes sense for him.

Holy. Shit.

[fae-morrigan]

A Thing About Jon that keeps getting hammered in, over and over, is that he's not really his own person. He always belongs to somebody else.

In most comics, that someone is Clark, his father. He's Clark's Son first and Jon second. Hell, its even in the title of his solo: Superman, Son of Kal El.

In Supersons, its Damian. He's largely treated by the narrative as Robin's Sidekick, being under Damian's wing. This, notably, is also not because of any decision Jon made, but rather because Damian at the start of the series decides it is so:

Even Lois, on occasion, leans into this jon-as-object mindset.

And of course. Well. The most obvious example.

His literal first words in the presence of Jon are "he's mine!"

And this is only hammered in later, in Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent:

To most narratives, Jon is not his own person. This, largely, is something Jon himself seems to be aware of. He's unable to escape the shadow of the people who made him what he is. Constantly, he is viewed by others through the lens of how they view others around him. He accepts this, and takes it in stride. He doesn't complain, or attempt to assert his own personhood.

And I feel this model of relationship really influences Jon's general clinginess with Jay. If he can't be his own person, if he has to belong to someone, he's gonna choose to belong to someone he knows is good.

The thing I find particularly compelling about this is that Jay definitely doesn't see it this way. You can really tell Jay sees Jon as his own person outside of the mantle and seeks to guide, not push. From their very first proper conversation, and later on as well, you can see Jay has no interest in making Jon do anything he doesn't want to do- he presents information, and then lets Jon make choices around it.

In Jon's acceptance of a sterile, static existence of forever belonging to someone else, he found someone who instead seeks to inspire him to be his own person.

(This is a great time to mention, if you pay close attention, Jay is the first person to directly call Jon Superman in Son of Kal El.)

[thewertsearch]

He asks if you have a good winter hat. You nearly drop the radio in excitement.

Dave’s on his way too, so they can all play in the snow together.

Plus, Jade'll get to reunite with her 'grandson's' bunny, and we might finally get some movement on that plotline.

You wonder if it will always be like this. What sort of future does a new god have to look forward to? Will this malaise follow you for eternity? Will you be perpetually tempted to destroy everything you see, knowing that in just a few moments of recklessness, you will be left with nothing else to destroy forever? What will eternity feel like when a single moment of boredom feels like an eternity unto itself?

Some introspection here from the Sovereign Slayer, as Noir seems dimly aware that he’s under some sort of compulsion. He was created to be a violent murderer, and he's programmed to play that role in every session – which is fine by him.

But he was never meant to be a superboss. For hours now, he’s been operating entirely outside his normal parameters. He's wielding a power transcending this and every session, but he's stuck with the programming of a mid-level NPC. He's built to kill, as usual - but his destructive potential is too great, and he's killing too much, too fast.

There’s a mismatch here, and he can feel it.

You wish you could consult the clouds for answers. But they never show you anything.

More evidence that only Prospit-aligned beings can use Skaia's clouds.

Sorry, Jack. They're not for you.

You are now future Jack Noir. Presently, you are trapped in a single moment, which increasingly feels like an eternity. Your boredom is surpassed only by your all consuming rage and contempt for existence itself.

There's that bloody arm again, and it might be time to talk about it.

Now, technically, it could have come from almost anyone in the kids' session. The Carapacians all have red blood - but the thing is, all the notable Carapacians will escape the session safely. I think it's a pretty safe bet that the blood belongs to to one of the four kids - so who's our most likely target?

Well...

John was unharmed immediately before the Scratch, but that doesn’t preclude Jack from attacking him during its activation. It feels narratively climactic for the kids' semi-official leader to be mortally wounded while saving the session, and I think there's a decent chance that something like this will go down in the Act 5 finale.

Rose, of course, is soon to fall into the Blackout. I've been speculating that it could potentially hide her from Jack, but it's also possible that he could cause it himself. If he does attack her, she might be compelled to use more of the Horrorterrors’ power than she can control - and I can see that going south fast.

Dave's tied up in several days' worth of time loops, and it'd be hard to take him by surprise. We've probably heard from versions of Future Dave who know what caused the blood, and I think if he was about to be maimed, he'd be a lot more on-edge. Dave tries to hide his nerves, but he's not actually that good at it.

Jade can’t be harmed by Jack, which makes her the most interesting choice of all. I don't know how Jack could conquer the remnants of Becsprite in his heart - but if he does, we'll have lost the biggest advantage we have.

I'm honestly not sure. Right now, I think John's the most likely target - but not by much. Really, it could really be anyone.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

Thoughts on Bonney and her situation? I feel so bad for her… :[

oda has always been really good at introducing information about characters through their backstories that recontextualizes a lot of their behavior in hindsight, and i think bonney is maybe one of the most skillfully done examples of this in the whole comic.

i started suspecting some time before reaching her backstory that she might be younger than she generally appears, because it struck me as consistently odd how everyone on egghead seemed to mention knowing her as a child and how fast she’d grown up, but having that information confirmed in her flashback completely changes her as a character in a way i find really compelling and fun.

like, throughout egghead i have been mentally comparing bonney a lot to law. from the start she’s playing a similar role as he does in the dressrosa saga, as the arc’s supernova ally-of-circumstance, and the similarities between them only grow deeper as we learn more about her history and motivations. bonney is really similar to law in a lot of ways; she aligns herself with the strawhats while on a revenge quest for the death of her adoptive father, who sacrificed himself in order to cure her of her childhood terminal illness.

the main difference, of course, is that bonney is twelve.

she’s twelve! and she was ten before the timeskip. which means she’s about as old in the present of the story (10-12) as law was in his flashback (10-13), or as ace and sabo were in the post-marineford flashback (10); that’s the age and maturity level she’s at. she’s twelve years old and she misses her dad. her tragedy is fresh and recent and she hasn’t quite grown around it yet, and she still has her whole future ahead of her.

i really liked the reveal that her devil fruit basically relies on her being a kid with a big imagination full of infinite possibilities. it’s very thematically resonant with her role as the emotional and narrative core of the arc set on egghead, the island of the future. any future she envisions for herself she can make real!

related to this, she also relates to religion and myth like a child does, where it all may as well be real because anything still could be. when kuma tells her about nika, she envisions someone who’s really somewhere out there in the world who she could find. the sun’s in the sky- maybe they’ll find him up on the sky islands?

and the thing is that she’s right!

bonney is a kid and the futures she dreams become real, because her ability to imagine the impossible hasn’t yet been beaten into submission by the horrible weight of reality. saturn tries to break her spirit and depower her before he kills her by crushing her ability to picture any future for herself, and it almost works.

and then there’s nika, and everything becomes possible again.

[lakesbian]

i have had like 10 friends rec worm to me but nobody’s given me a good like, gist of its vibe and what its abt because ‘its best blind’, could u please give a like brief summary and vibe check of it 😭 it’s so long i dont wanna try and invest that much time without knowing much abt it

so, worm is a 1.7 million word long webserial written in 2010. 1.7 million words seems like a lot, but it was also written over a relatively short period of time, which means the writing style is very easy to parse--the ideas aren't without complexity, but the language itself isn't intimidatingly dense. you can get through it at a very decent pace. i agree with your friends that there are vast portions of worm that hit best when you're unspoiled, but the thing is that worm is long enough that giving you the basic plot pitch is in no way spoilers for any of the things that i wouldn't want to see spoiled for someone. i'm actually kind of baffled they're not telling you Any Thing, because it is in my estimation one of the best books i've ever read, but it also Needs a briefing before you get into it for like five different reasons. which i will now provide. i swear to god this is brief by my standards it's just that i am very thorough

worm is a story about superheroes and supervillains, set in a world where superpowers are traumagenic--rather than appearing randomly or innately, some people gain powers after a traumatizing event happens to them. the protagonist is taylor hebert, a 15yo girl who has the power to control insects and desperately wants to be a superhero. and then accidentally finds herself scouted by a team of teenage villains instead. who's to say how she's going to react to all that!

one of the most compelling things about worm is that the superpowers in it serve as visceral, hyper-literal metaphors for the trauma and traumatized coping mechanisms of the characters with those powers. each power is incredibly specific and thematically relevant to the person who has it, and it's incredibly interesting and evocative. it feels so natural and well-done that it comes off like how superpowers are just meant to be written.

the fact that superpowers stem from trauma also means that worm is fundamentally a narrative about trauma. specifically, about traumatized teenagers and the relationships they form as they cling together while struggling through growing up traumatized & mutually coping with an increasingly intriguing, intense, and far-reaching escalating plot. worm's depictions of trauma + mental illness--including unpalatable trauma responses, including traumatized characters who are allowed to be complicated and nuanced and messy while still receiving narrative respect--are deeply real-feeling and impactful, and they're placed in the context of a well-spun + engaging story.

i really do have to stress how excellent the character writing is. worm is fully deserving of being as long as it is. over the course of 1.7 million words of character development, the average reader's reaction to the main characters goes from "sorta interesting" to "okay, i want to see where this goes" to "augh...really likable" to "i am now on hands and knees crying and these characters are going to stick around in my brain forever." wildbow has incredible talent for efficiently conveying complicated, real-feeling, and viscerally evocative characterization. many of the interlude chapters (chapters written from the perspective of different characters other than taylor) are so interesting, fleshed-out, and emotionally affecting that they make you wish you could read an entire novel about just the side character being featured. with that level of characterization for just the side cast, it's not surprising that taylor (& co) are genuinely just downright iconic. and i do not say that lightly--taylor is truly one of the best-written protagonists i've seen in anything. ever.

the other main pitch-point for worm is that it's a fascinating deconstruction/reconstruction/examination of the conceits of the superhero genre. it answers the question of--what would the world have to be like, for people with superpowers to act the way they do in classic cape media? and it does this well enough that it's interesting even if you have only a passing familiarity with cape media. i am not a big superhero media fan, but worm addresses virtually every aspect of cape media that was under the sun around 2010 in a way that's so interesting i still find it incredibly engaging. the approach it takes makes the narrative very accessible even to people who aren't usually cape media fans.

and speaking of the narrative: the end of the story is coherent and satisfying and deeply thematically resonant*. the way worm follows through on all of its main mysteries & plot threads is excellent. you don't have to worry about getting thru 1.7 million words and being dissatisfied by the author shitting the bed at the end, or anything like that. he does an amazing job of weaving together plot events in a way that makes each successive one feel rationally, thematically, and emotionally connected to what came before. there's really only one part where i feel the story stumbles a bit, but i think it was the best option he had for the narrative, and it's by no means a dealbreaker. it's in fact really impressive how cohesive and satisfying worm is for such a long webserial released over such a brief period of time.

*this is subjective ive seen some people who didnt love it but ive never seen anyone who downright Hated it who didnt also demonstrate egregious misunderstanding of literally everything worm is about. so thats a good sign

as for the downsides of worm/things that might put you off:

there is a very long list of trigger warnings for it. if you have any trigger warnings you want you should ask your friends to let you know about the relevant parts, because the fact that it's About Trauma (& about typical cape media circumstances presented very seriously) means that traumatic and violent things & their realistic aftermath are constantly happening and/or being discussed. i would not classify worm as needlessly dark or spiteful to the audience by any means, but it is intense and covers a lot of heavy topics. i do assume if your friends are all recommending it to you, they think none of the material would be too much for you, though!

worm was written in 2010 by a white cishet guy from canada. it's typical levels of 2010-era bigoted, it has a deeply lesbophobic stereotype character, it has some atrociously racist stereotype characters, the author really hates addicts, It's Got Blind Spots. i think worm is generally fully worth reading despite these, but very fair warning that it can get bad. i think what exacerbates this is that worm is generally extremely nuanced & sympathetic regarding ideas such as "crime is a result of systematic circumstance vs people just being inherently evil" and "mentally ill people who are traumatized in unpalatable ways are still deserving of fundamental respect as human beings" and so on and so forth, so it's extra noticeable and insufferable when you get to a topic the author has unexamined biases on and all that nuance drops out. the worst part is that a lot of this is most concentrated in the early arcs, so you have to get through them without being super attached to any of the characters yet. it is worth it though.

worm like. Does have a central straight relationship in it. and it's a very well written straight relationship for the most part and i like it quite a lot. but worm also passes the bechdel test with such flying colors that it enters 'unintentionally homoerotic' territory. which means a lot of people were shipping the main character ms taylor hebert with her female friends while the story was being released. which caused the author to get so mad he 1. posted a word of god to a forum loudly insisting that all of the girls are straight and 2. inserted a few deeply awkward and obvious and out of character scenes where he finds an excuse for the girls to more or less turn to the camera and go "i'm not gay, btw. this is platonic." This is fucking insufferable, and will piss you off immensely, but then you will get to any of the number of deeply emotionally affecting scenes between them, and at that point you will be too busy sniffling piteously and perhaps crytyping an analysis post on tumblr to be mad about all that other shit. also they're only a couple tiny portions out of an entire overall fantastic novel

overall: if those points don't sound like dealbreakers (i hope they aren't they're really massively outstripped by the amount of devastatingly good moments in worm, worm still has a thriving fandom over a decade later for a reason), you should absolutely give it a shot and see what you think. my final note is that you have to read up until the end of arc 8 to really see where what makes worm Worm kicks in, so aim for at least there to see how you feel about it if you're just thinking about dipping your toes in vs fully committing. i hope that was helpful and not too long :)

oh and don't go in the comments section on wordpress if you don't want spoilers. or anywhere else in the fandom at all. you will be spoiled. quite possibly for things you could not even have imagined were topics to be spoiled on.

[galacticlamps]

ok I have A Lot of thoughts about the staircase confession (well really about Edwin's whole character arc, but all roads lead to rome) but for now I just wanna say that, yes, I was bracing myself for something to go terribly wrong when I first watched it, and yes, part of me was initially worried its placement might be an uncharacteristically foolish choice made in the name of Drama or Pacing or Making a Compelling Episode of Television but at the expense of narrative sense--

But I wanna say that having taken all that into account, and watched it play out, and sat with it - and honestly become rather transfixed by it - I really think it's a beautifully crafted moment and truly the only way that arc could've arrived at such a satisfying conclusion.

And if I had to pinpoint why I not only buy it but also have come to really treasure it, I'd have to put it down to the fact that it genuinely is a confession, and nothing else.

That moment is an announcement of what Edwin has come to understand about himself, but because it takes the form of a character admitting romantic feelings for such a close friend, I think it can be very easy, when writing that kind of thing, to imbue it with other elements like a plea or a request or even the start of a new relationship that, intentionally or not, would change the shape of the moment and can quickly overshadow what a huge deal the telling is all on its own. But that's not the case here. Since it is only a confession, unaccompanied by anything else, and since we see afterward how it was enough, evidently, to fix the strangeness that had grown between him & Charles, we're forced to understand that it was never Edwin's feelings that were actually making things difficult for him - it was not being able to tell Charles about them. 'Terrified' as he's been of this, Edwin learns that his feelings don't need to either disappear completely or be totally reciprocated in order for him to be able to return to the peace, stability, and security of the relationship with which he defines his existence - and the scale of that relief a) tells us a hell of a lot about Edwin as a character and b) totally justifies the way his declaration just bursts out of him at what would otherwise be such a poorly chosen moment, in my opinion.

Whether or not they are or ever could be reciprocated, Edwin's feelings are definitively proven not to be the problem here - only his potential choice to bottle it up - his repression - is. And where that repression had once been mainly involuntary, a product of what he'd been through, now that he's got this new awareness of himself, if he still fails to admit what he's found either to himself or to the one person he's so unambiguously close with, then that repression will be by his own choice and actions.

And he won't do that. Among other things, he's coming into this scene having just (unknowingly) absolved the soul of his own school bully and accidental killer by pointing out a fact that is every bit as central to his self-discovery as anything about his sexuality or his attraction to Charles is: the idea that "If you punish yourself, everywhere becomes Hell"

So narratively speaking, of course it makes sense that Edwin literally cannot get out of Hell until he stops punishing himself - and right now, the thing that's torturing him is something he has control over. It's not who he is or what he feels, but what he chooses to do with those feelings that's hurting him, and he's even already made the conscious choice to tell Charles about them, he was just interrupted. But now that they're back together and he's literally in the middle of an attempt to escape Hell, there is absolutely no way he can so much as stop for breath without telling Charles the truth. Even the stopping for breath is so loaded - because they're ghosts, they don't need to breathe, but also they're in Hell, so the one thing they can feel is pain, however nonsensical. And Edwin certainly is in pain. But whether he knows what he's about to do or not when he says he 'just needs a tick,' a breather is absolutely not what's gonna give him enough relief to keep climbing - it's fixing that other hurt, though, that will.

Like everything else in that scene, there's a lot of layers to him promising Charles "You don't have to feel the same way, I just needed you to know" - but I don't think that means it isn't also true on a surface level. It's the act of telling Charles that matters so much more than whatever follows it, and while that might have gone unnoticed if anything else major had happened in the same conversation, now we're forced to acknowledge its staggering and singular importance for what it is. The moment is well-earned and properly built up to, but until we see it happen in all its wonderful simplicity, and we see the aftermath (or lack thereof, even), we couldn't properly anticipate how much of a weight off Edwin's shoulders merely getting to share the truth with Charles was going to be, why he couldn't wait for a better, safer opportunity before giving in to that desire, or how badly he needed to say it and nothing else - and I really, really love the weight that act of just being honest, seen, and known is given in their story/relationship.

[natequarter]

Me on a date: The Sarah Jane Adventures lures you in with a closed-off and paranoid single woman living alone who slowly opens up to her much younger friends in an obvious parallel to the Doctor, particularly the Third Doctor (alone and miserable on Earth, which she cannot leave, unwilling to open up to her friends but slowly coaxed out of her shell); Sarah is the protagonist of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but she is not its hero. We see hints at her trauma, emotional repression, and paranoia over the course of the show; she repeatedly lies to her charges, to the point where they essentially have to stalk her to keep track of her, and she’s fundamentally incapable of relating to ‘average’ people, because she never really adapted back to life on Earth, emotionally or psychologically, and never learnt to grieve. All of this is a compelling, if implicit, storyline on its own, but it hits much harder if you’ve listened to the Big Finish audio series Sarah Jane Smith, in which Sarah is explicitly depicted as an antihero who willingly and recklessly endangers herself and her friends because she’s miserable without the adrenaline of danger and saving the world. Her heroics more often than not cause more harm than good; she cuts herself off from her friends just to solve mysteries (to the point it puts her life at risk), she throws herself into situations that nearly kill her multiple times, and many people die because of her intervention, some of them innocent. The only way she can rationalise the Doctor leaving her to herself is that there was some higher purpose. The artifice of prophecy pervades the entire series; time and time again it becomes clear that any instance of ‘coincidence’ or ‘fate’ are actually down to the machinations of time travel, Sarah, or the cult that has dedicated itself to fulfilling its doomsday predictions. Sarah in The Sarah Jane Adventures is an obvious Doctor stand-in for the narrative, but in Sarah Jane Smith it goes further than that: Sarah embraces his manipulative behaviour, his darker side, his tricks and bluffs. She pretends to be blind to outwit her enemies. She defeats her enemies through words and kills a villain through intentional inaction. At one point she’s forced into a moral dilemma reminiscent of the conflicts that the Doctor faces, where she must choose between the lives of thousands of innocent Londoners and her friend. In the end, it’s no question to her; she chooses to let her friend die. She’s willing to let both her friends die, if it comes down to it—and one of them ultimately does. Sarah is an unusual character; unlike most ex-companions, she’s fundamentally incapable of readjusting to normal life, and has pretty explicitly spent her life since leaving the Doctor isolated, miserable, and in constant peril. But she also doesn’t fit in with the companions who ultimately meet their doom travelling with the Doctor; unlike, say, Clara Oswald, she’s given the chance to back out before it’s too late, and she takes it. But it’s clear that she never recovered from leaving the Doctor, because the Doctor’s lifestyle is the only thing that makes her feel like life is worth living. Sarah Jane Smith clearly portrays Sarah as someone transformed by the Doctor into the Doctor. But this is not a good thing, and the series occupies itself with deconstructing the damaging psychological effect the Doctor has on both people in general and Sarah specifically—Sarah is not a nice person. She is not a better person for having known the Doctor; in fact it’s only made her worse. She’s a danger to the people around her. She’s irrational and obsessed with getting what she wants to the exception of all else. She’s sometimes outright cruel. It’s a fascinating play on a usually much kinder (if imperfect) character, and personally, I love it.

My date: What the hell?

[divorcedfiddleford]

You made a post saying “it has been zero days since our last alex hirsch hates ford so much bullshit” and i know it was mostly hyperbole, but you have some really good takes that I would love to be elaborated on in terms of how ford is written

it really wasn't hyperbolic. over the years he's just really shown a lot of hatred towards this one character.

content warning: discussion of abuse

i want to start with this clip from the commentary which i think of as a microcosm for how the writers and especially alex think about ford.

transcript:

rob renzetti: i mean he [mcgucket] should've basically knocked ford out, and... and destroyed the... you know, tied him up, and, destroyed... and... alex hirsch, speaking over him: yeah he should've beat ford with a wrench and taken this thing apart piece by piece! he's the one who understood how to built [sic] it, but...

... so that seems like a pretty violent course of action. shall we unpack that?

ford is a character who's pretty explicitly written as a victim of abuse, and who now has c-ptsd as a direct result of the abuse he experienced. alex hirsch believes that ford deserved everything bad that happened to him, that it's ford's own fault, and that he also deserved worse things to happen to him. this is why, given every narrative chance, alex hirsch has piled more suffering onto ford's plate. the biggest example of this i can think of is in the journal, when he wrote that fiddleford was actively erasing ford's memory (despite this being a massive timeline contradiction which i still refuse to accept). because god forbid ford even have one remotely healthy relationship with somebody. that would be too good for him. ford was manipulated and lied to by bill, but alex repeatedly compares him to icarus, a teenager whose demise was the result of his own ignorance. this comparison is still so fucking offensive to me. the sun did not lie to icarus, did not guarantee icarus all of the happiness and success and sense of belonging which he had been denied all his life, did not actively shut out the voices of those around him who would try to help him.

alex in general has a very strange relationship with abuse. he seems to get really upset when people read his characters as victims of abuse. the strongest instance of this is actually not with ford, it's with pacifica - especially in the nwmm episode commentary. the episode says "pacifica's parents have conditioned her to respond to a bell" and alex says people got "the wrong idea" about it. like. dude. what the fuck. you wrote abuse. even if you didn't mean to, that's what you wrote. you can't say people got "the wrong idea" just because you didn't think about the subtext of what you were writing. anyway, back to ford: i believe this extends to him as well. alex wanted to write a character who's a foil to stan and who was a selfish unlikable victim of his own arrogance. however that's not what he wrote. he somehow seemingly accidentally wrote a really compelling and relatable awesome autistic guy who had to fight for every good thing he he ever had in his life only for it to be taken from him every single time. but alex can't let go of seeing ford as just "the opposite of stan". when he talks about "how someone as smart as ford could fall for bill's tricks", he refuses to realize he wrote a situation in which a man was being psychologically manipulated and tortured.

it goes back further, too. people repeatedly theorized that filbrick was... not a very good father, to say the least. on top of the very explicit and canon fact that he threw one of his children out on the street (seriously, there is no defense for this), people pointed out that stan would flinch at filbrick, that ford seemed upset by things filbrick said but dared not talk back, that filbrick was mad at stan not for hurting his brother, but for "costing the family potential millions". but alex can't have people seeing ford as sympathetic. ford can't have it bad like stan did. ford had to have everything and he lost it all because he sucks so much. so he wrote the graphic novel story where ford is filbrick's favorite child and filbrick also is not even a bad parent you guys he's just stoic. ignore the whole thing in dreamscaperers where stan perpetuates the abuse that filbrick did to him. ignore the fact that ford was shouting at stan and then completely shut up as soon as filbrick entered the room and did not say another word for the rest of the night. ignore all that because i just made up this story where he cries at a present from stan. filbrick loved his boys for sure you guys!!!

i'm not even touching on how alex repeatedly villainizes traits commonly associated with mental illness and neurodivergence. ford's hypervigilance becomes arrogance. his passion for knowledge means he's a know-it-all. his difficulty socializing and making friends means he's a misanthrope. his lingering resentment for the way he was raised means he hates his brother and is the worst human being to ever have lived. i could go on, go even further into how the finale reaffirms this, but i feel weird talking about this too much.

[umberpath]

On one hand I'm shocked mouthwashing exploded so fast, and it's especially surreal seeing it go through the process of fandomization wherein ships and stickers and such start cropping up. Though, I have to hand it to Wrong Organ, it's a compelling experience.

I think part of what lends to its spread in fandom is its concise cast and potent imagery. The game gets a lot of mileage out of its metaphors, visual and otherwise, and people latch onto that HARD. If you can convey an emotionally heavy concept with a symbol alone (a bottle of mouthwash, a pony, a hibiscus, an axe...) you're recontextualizing the mundane. They're going to think of your story when they see mouthwash. When they see birthday cake. The conversation of a dead pixel, of all things, will ring around in mouthwashing player's heads for a long time. And these symbols are tied to the characters in different ways. Characters which have such strongly differing actions and motives behind them. Memorable characters, memorable visuals, memorable narrative—you're cooking the perfect storm for a fandom to spring up around your game because it's not only a good game, but it's a spreadable game. It's extremely fanart-able. Theory-able. People who haven't been introduced to mouthwashing will see the imagery and feel a sense of mystery. Why is that guy so severely burnt and bandaged? What's with the mouthwash? What does any of this have to do with ponies? It seeds intrigue. Then, people familiar with the themes get the satisfaction of being in-the-know and Getting It. They might introduce others to the game so they can also understand and discuss the themes together.

It rings familiar with NOPE's popularity. NOPE was great, of course that's why it's popular, but what I'm getting at is that it too made use of the power of symbols and metaphor to make its concepts really stay stuck in people's heads. And the artwork that fans made echoes this! The streamer trailing from the mouth of Jean Jacket, clouds and horses, the vertical shoe, the ufo imagery... If you've seen NOPE fanart you know what I mean! The mundane transformed! The most prominent afterimages bounced back and forth until they represent the whole.

And this isn't derogatory, it's fucking fascinating to me. How stories can impact schema. How powerful an image can be once you tie it to a feeling or an idea or a person. This goes deeper than fandom popularity or youtube analysis videos. Does that make any sense? I'm rambling but this pattern repeats so much and instead of being cynical about the predictability this time I want to appreciate the phenomenon itself. There's probably something to be said about symbols being extremely powerful throughout human history and culture but that's out of the scope of my unplanned "woah mouthwashing, am I right?" post here.

I leave you with these pictures, make of them what you will

[flower-boi16]

The Problems With Charlie As The Main Protagonist

I've spoken about my thoughts on Charlie as a character before a few times on this blog, but I think it's finally time to discuss why Charlie isn't exactly the best protagonist. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much wrong with her, she's likable and endearing enough and she's easy to root for. But...once you look deeper, the problems begin to rear their ugly head.

1. Charlie Never Grows

The first major issue with Charlie as a character is how she never really grows over the course of the first season. The show never really gives her much of an arc...? Like, by the end of the season, what does Charlie really learn by the end? The only thing I can think of is that she was right about sinners being redeemed and...that's it.

And it doesn't really make Charlie that particularly compelling as a character, she's entirely stagnant. She does have a conflict with her father, which, while executed fine, isn't enough to make her a developed character. She only gets small tinges of development and that isn't really enough for me.

Charlie doesn't learn anything or grow as a character, which makes her pretty underdeveloped as a character. The show never really gives her any real character flaws to grow from and become a better person, she's always portrayed as in the right anyway and never challenged once. Speaking of that...

2. Charlie is Always Right

This more or less ties back into the "Charlie never grows" point I've said before and I've talked about this several times before, but it's still an issue with Charlie's character; she is ALWAYS in the right. Charlie's "everyone can be redeemed" mentality is never once challenged by the narrative, and anybody who does oppose Charlie in any way is considered as wrong by the narrative.

The reason why this is a problem is because Hazbin Hotel heavily preaches about being against black-and-white moralities, as seen with Heaven and especially Adam. Heaven is meant to be seen as bad because of its black-and-white mindset of "Sinners can't be redeemed and never will". This is put on full display with Adam, and his song Hell is Forever, to the point it literally includes lyrics like "the rules are black and white there's no use in trying to fight it".

You Didn't Know further pushes this with this line "the rules are shades of gray when you don't do as you say and you make the wretched suffer just to kill them again".

So the show wants to push a message of "black and white morals are bad", but...it's rendered moot by the fact that Charlie is purely portrayed as in the right. Charlie is completely correct, everybody can be redeemed, everyone even the most evil people who did the worst possible things can still be good, and anyone who opposes her is wrong cuz she's completely in the right...gee, for a show so heavily against black-and-white moralities...doesn't this all seem very black and white in it of itself?

Charlie's "everyone can be redeemed" mentality is just as black and white as Adam's "nobody can be redeemed", they are both extremes leaning in opposite directions, that are also both wrong in their own ways, yet the show portrays Charlie's extreme as the right one and Adam's as the wrong one.

I've already talked about this before but Adam is a pure straw character; he only exists so Charlie can prove him wrong, he cant have any real character depth beyond being a generic asshole or have a real point because the show is so dead-set on making Charlie purely in the right no matter what; the narrative never challenges her and anyone who opposes her is portrayed as automatically in the wrong.

This is not the only time this happens btw. In episode 5, Lucifer is also portrayed as automatically wrong for opposing his daughter’s goals. He himself says that “Our people are AWFUL. They got gifted free will and look what they did with it!”, and the show…never counters this, despite what Lucifer is saying…being true. The people in Hell ARE awful and it's their own fault, many of them ARE deserving of death because…well, their shitty people.

Charlie is never challenged once throughout the show and its a problem because not only does it fly in the face of the show being so anti black and white, it also wastes an opportunity for the show to develop Charlie as a character; with her learning that some people can't be redeemed because they either are incapable or uninterested in changing.

That would fit more with the show’s anti-black-and-white themes and also have Charlie go through real growth as a character as she learns that not everything is all sunshine and rainbows. But sadly, we can't really have that.

So Charlie's ideals are never challenged by the narrative and thus it not only flies in the face of the show's themes it also wastes an opportunity for Charlie to grow as a character. Now it's best to get into the next issue with her...

3. Charlie is Barely Focused On

Another big issue with Charlie as the show's main protagonist is that the show doesn't really focus on her that much, especially the first half. Now, shows don't need to focus on the main protagonist at all times, obviously giving some screen time to other characters is definitely something shows should do.

But the problem is that Charlie gets very LITTLE focus in the series despite being the main protagonist, and this contributes to the problem of her being underdeveloped. The first half of the show is especially bad at this; episode 1 Is the only episode in the first half that focuses on Charlie, but even then it's overtaken by the B-plot involving the other characters trying to film a commercial.

Episodes 2&3 are entirely dedicated to what characters like Alastor or Angel Dust are doing and episode 4 is completely focused on Angel and his arc. It contributes to the issue of the show not being able to develop Charlie that much as a character because she's constantly being overshadowed by other characters. The second half is better in this regard for focusing more on Charlie but still, for the first half of the show, it feels like Charlie is overshadowed by other characters which is embarrassing because, well, she's the main character, yet she feels like she's barely gotten any actual spotlight.

4. Conclusion

I want to love Charlie as a character. I really do. I mean, she's a part of one of my favorite character archetypes. I always LOVE over joyful optimistic characters because I just find them a joy to watch on screen, but sadly, Charlie doesn't have much depth beyond that archetype. She isn't that developed making her fail to be much of a compelling protagonist, her ideology is never challenged by the narrative wasting an opportunity for her to grow and contradicting the show's themes, and she's heavily overshadowed by other characters despite being the main protagonist.

So ya, that's why Charlie isn't that great of a protagonist...bye.