#anyways I should be writing story not complaining about the potential of the story not being read and commented on

[jadehaven]

OP is smart. OP is reading between the lines.

In regards to the brother/sister bond, erm, I think JD and Patrick would’ve made it clear if that’s where it lies by

A) not giving them a literal kiss on the mouth and

B) describing their bond as “family love” rather than just “more than best friends love”

For example, Rob has described it as love, but also said she’s like a “family member he loves”. Which, get w the program Rob, cuz I don’t kiss my siblings like that (brb gonna go barf at that thought now).

Remember cast members are NOT the writers and although they can provide feedback and input during filming, they do not dictate how the story goes and likely are just as oblivious to potential foreshadowing as we are.

To add to my case, when Payne and Mckay were asked about the dark wizard being Saruman, they gave a firm “No” to the possibility. They don’t want people’s wrong conclusions to cause a bad rap on their story and therefore are doing damage control.

But for Elrondriel? Tell me where is The Damage Control, for I much desire to know IF IT EVEN EXISTS.

Every interview they’ve done with a question regarding the nature of Elrond and Galadriel has been a chance to confirm or deny their intentions. They have done neither. If anything, they’re doing damage control the opposite way by not having Robert and Morfydd in any interviews together in order to avoid mix up of intentions. Seriously— they paired her with Sam Hazeldine. Not that I’m complaining, but it seems to me like they’re trying to scoot around any romance allegations.

The only interview I’ve come across is one that was posted by Nerd of the Rings I believe, where JD says that Elrond loves her platonically. But even that sentence would still fall in line with the “forced to kiss” trope, because it’s meant to serve as an awakening. We really won’t know until season 3. Though if it weren’t for that ring scene, I’d be more skeptical. Foreshadowing doesn’t get any more obvious than that IMO.

Looking back at season 1, there’s so many obvious lines as to who Sauron is. It’s clearly intentional. I predict many viewers will be able to do the same later on with Elrondriel, though not until after there has been confirmation on screen of their romance.

Final thought, Arwen being Galadriel’s mother would solve the problem yes, though you’re right, it would make purists go mad. But also, majority of TROP audience are either new tolkien fans like myself, or more familiar with the movies than the source material. That means that the majority of viewers have only had a handful of minutes to get to know Celeborn, and none at all for Celebrian. What they have seen is Elrond rescuing Galadriel, Elrond and Galadriel communicating telepathically, and Arwen choosing to forsake Valinor when she had the chance, with Elrond being the one who tried to convince her to go in the first place, but ultimately gave her grace for staying and choosing what she believed was right. Ring any bells, anyone?

To be honest, I see this as the safest and smartest way to go about the timeline fix. Really that’s what it comes down to, I believe, because they’re still working within the lines of Tolkien lore. If people are upset about Celebrian not existing, then they should be equally as upset with other inconsistencies such as Isildur being alive while the elven rings are made. Technically they’re skipping multiple generations in order to do that, we just don’t get to physically see it.

Anyways, I wanted to share because I keep getting flack from redditors saying that I’m just “overthinking the kiss and it meant nothing.” Let this brief essay be my case and point. I’ve seen it from season 1– they’ve followed all the predictable plot points for a slow burn friends to lovers trope, just as they followed all the reluctant allies to (almost)lovers plot points in season 1 for Haladriel. This is actually something that has made me appreciate the writing team all the more— they clearly know what they’re doing when it comes to the relationship arcs. The story on its own makes sense. The original-to-a-T-lore does not(Not saying I don’t agree with the lore or don’t appreciate it, but that it’s somewhat separate from TROP in itself, as it is in ways with the PJ movies and every other adaptation ever made).

Remember that everything we’ve seen so far has the stamp of approval from the Tolkien estate. If that isn’t enough for purists, well, they’re just going to have to raise Tolkien himself up from the dead and get him to put it right. Smh. Tolkien ain’t Jesus y’all.

Elrondriel is real. Its happening. Might as well join the club now because most inevitably will. I mean look at them— how could you not love it? Gahh. If only Tolkien could see them now 🥹.

Interview of JD Payne and Patrick McKay, about Elrond's decision to put on Nenya to save Galadriel :

Am I the only one who doesn't understand "best friend is maybe reducing their relationship too much. Say the person for whom he has so much love (...)" as the show runners saying that Elrond loves Galadriel romantically ?

Idk, it's like when anti Haladriel shippers take Charlie's comment that what Galadriel and Sauron have is "more than a romance" as a claim that it's not romance at all.

I may be stupid, but as far as I'm concerned, if you tell me that Galadriel is "more than a best friend" for Elrond, I interpret it as you saying that their bond is extremely strong, almost like a sister/brother bond. It's even stronger than a classic friendship. Stronger than his friendship with Durin, probably.

If you tell me that Galadriel and Sauron's relationship is "more than romance", I will interpret it as you saying that it goes beyond anything I can imagine in terms of earthly romance, and not as you saying that there aren't elements of romance in it.

I don't know where this generally admitted that "romantic love" is superior to "platonic love" comes from, but I'm tired af of seeing it. "They're more than best friends" = "they're in love". Why ? Why would romance be the superior step ? Some people have friendships that last all their life, while they had multiple romantic partners because romantic love almost always fades at some point. How is romantic love superior to friendship then? Why would a romantic partner count more than a best friend who you knew most of your life.

THAT SAID, LOL, I wonder how I can still kid myself. These people are probably right, as there was definitely an Elrondriel agenda behind Galadriel and Elrond's relationship in season 2. There was nothing platonic about *that* kiss, and it can't have been a pure esthetic choice, after *that* kiss, that Elrond acted as if he was marrying Galadriel in the finals.

He's even got only one ring, on his left hand, so this picture gives even more wedding vibes lmao.

It could even be said that it was foreshadowed in season 1, even if their interactions seemed very platonic to me. I'm quite certain that Elrondriel would have been a much more popular ship if Elrond wasn't supposed to marry Galadriel's daughter.

Will it lead them to erase Celebrian from history and make Galadriel Arwen's mother ? It was Tolkien's original idea, after all. It would make certain very agressive fans of the bland NPC mad, which I wouldn't be against tbh, and it would resolve the "wtf do we do with the NPC problem, at least. Because, it's definitely a problem. 8 episodes per season, a character who has no utility in the story except to be the main character's husband, but who has to be introduced in a way that the audience understands why he was presumed dead and suddenly shows up... Make Elrond Galadriel's husband, and you solve the problem !

I'm only half-joking, folks. It would considerably break the lore, but would it be a big deal, really ? I'm not sure I'd be against it, tbh. Anything's better for me than "Elrond's secretly in love with Galadriel, they will never act on it but since he can't have the mother, he'll settle for her daughter" future the show seems to have set up.

[allisonreader]

Laundry is done for now. We'll see if any writing actually gets done.

[forest-hashira]

Lucky Shot

I'M BACK AGAIN i have just been on a roll with writing lately but you know what? i'm not complaining lol. anyways, this is my second entry to @kentopedia's "Love Through the Ages" collab! you can find my first entry here, but be sure to keep an eye on the masterlist for the other entries!!! this is the first time i've written solo suguru/reader so. be nice to me pls. also plese check out this art by @/diosaurr! i had already started writing this fic when they posted it, but three separate people tagged me in it knowing i was writing the fic so i want everyone else to see it, too!

read on ao3 here | wc: ~2.7k | cw: fem! reader (i know who am i???), outlaw!suguru, saloon girl!reader, gun violence, mentions of blood/injury, mentions of death. if those things will upset you i suggest you give this one a pass!

Maybe you should have listened to your father after all.

He’d told you countless times that traveling west, especially without a family or close group to help you out and keep your best interests at heart, would be difficult at best and dangerous at worst. Especially for a young unmarried woman such as yourself. 

But you had always been headstrong and stubborn, and your father had always been a worrier, so you assumed he was exaggerating to discourage you, his eldest daughter, from following your dream and going out west. You secretly saved up money for months, and at the first given opportunity to leave your family and head west, you’d taken it, leaving only a goodbye note for your parents and younger siblings when you slipped from the house in the early hours of the morning. 

Turns out, your father wasn’t exaggerating. Joining a party as a solo traveler had proven even more difficult and dangerous than you could have anticipated. You managed to make it out west, just like you wanted, but you had no money to your name, only the clothes on your back and two other outfits in a bag as you walked through the town, wandering from business to business, asking for work; you’d nearly wept with relief when the saloon owner said you looked like you could have some potential as a saloon girl, after you cleaned up. 

He’d provided you a boarding room above the saloon and a new outfit – the ones you had weren’t up to his standards – up front, and while you appreciated it, you also knew he’d be taking that out of your pay until he decided those things were covered, which you could only guess would be never.

Despite the strings that came attached to your new job, things weren’t all bad. You got to know people in the town pretty quickly – the ones that frequented the saloon, anyways – and you were always in the loop about local “news”, most of which was just gossip. 

One character of particular interest in the local gossip was a man named Geto Suguru. When you’d asked what was so interesting about him, you’d gotten some questioning looks, until you’d said you had only just recently moved out west. After you were shown his wanted poster, though, you began to understand. 

He was one of the most – if not the most – attractive man you’d ever seen. Dark hair that fell past his shoulders; thin, almost cat-like eyes; and even in the poster, there was a sly look on his face. 

Not only that, but he was wanted for robbing stagecoaches, stealing money and jewelry from rich people who gave into his – apparently – intimidating presence. He was also known for spending that money generously in towns all over the west supporting local businesses; plenty of women from across the state also bragged about the jewelry he would gift them, simply because he thought it looked good on them. 

After spending weeks hearing stories – that you were certain had to be at least a little exaggerated – about this pretty outlaw and staring at his wanted poster, you resigned yourself to the fact that you would never see him with your own eyes. 

So you couldn’t have been more surprised when you watched the man himself walk into your saloon without any sort of fanfare or dramatics and sit at the bar. 

You stared at him, eyes wide, until he gave you a small smile. 

“I’ve heard you’ll catch flies if you leave your mouth open too long,” he said, smooth voice lilting with amusement. 

Realizing he meant you, you quickly snapped your mouth shut, your whole face burning with embarrassment. “You try meeting a living legend when you’ve only lived in the area for a couple months, see how you react,” you snapped back. When you realized what you’d said, you opened your mouth to apologize, but stopped when you saw the way his eyes sparkled with interest, one perfect brow arched in your direction.

“Feisty, aren’t we?” he chuckled. “I think I like you already, new girl.”

“What do you want to drink?” You turned away from him to grab a glass, hoping he didn’t pick up on how flustered you were over the nickname. 

“Surprise me.”

You straightened at that, and now it was your turn to arch a brow as you looked him over. His expression never wavered, his head tilted slightly as he waited to see what you decided to serve him. 

With a quiet huff, you turned your back to him, looking over your selection of liquors. Part of you wanted to serve him the cheapest, nastiest drink you carried, just to see if he would actually drink it or demand another drink, but ultimately you decided against it. Instead, you reached for the top shelf, grabbing the unopened bottle of some fancy imported scotch your boss had just gotten in a couple days before. 

“Opening a bottle just for me?” Geto asked, still with that playful tone. “Well now I feel special.”

“Don’t make me change my mind,” you threatened, turning as if to put the bottle back in its place. 

He held up his hands, as if in surrender, and you set the bottle down on the bar to grab a glass, though you took a brief moment to admire how strong even just his hands looked. 

Setting the glass in front of him, you broke the seal on the bottle, then intentionally poured him about three times as much of the amber liquid as you were supposed to. Your boss could yell at you about it later. 

Geto lifted the glass, tipping it towards you slightly in thanks, before taking a sip.

Just as you were about to speak to the outlaw in front of you again, the saloon doors swung open in your peripheral vision, and you looked up to see the sheriff walking towards the bar.

“Afternoon, sheriff,” you greeted him, glancing briefly at Geto to see what his reaction was, and you were only a little surprised that he had no reaction at all. “Your usual?”

The sheriff tipped his hat to you, sitting down at the opposite end of the bar from the bandit. “Please and thank you.”

With a nod, you placed the bottle of scotch on the counter behind the bar, then grabbed another glass and the brand of whiskey the sheriff always drank. You walked down the length of the bar, setting the glass in front of him and pouring his drink – the expected amount of liquor for him, unlike the bandit down the bar – before you walked away to put the bottle back. 

You felt hyper-aware of the two customers at the bar, worried that any second now the sheriff would recognize the outlaw and all hell would break loose, especially when the other patrons at the tables in the building were always itching for some sort of fight, just because they thought it was entertaining. 

In the end, though, it wasn’t the sheriff that recognized Geto, it was another customer that walked up to the bar to get another drink.

“You look familiar,” the man drawled, narrowing his eyes as he analyzed Geto’s face as best as his intoxicated mind could manage. 

“I get that a lot,” the outlaw answered evenly, not sparing the man a second glance.

“No, I’ve definitely seen you somewhere before…” he trailed off, scowling, his gaze wandering until it landed on the handful of wanted posters hung on the wall beside the bar. His eyes lit up with recognition, and you swore you felt your heart drop to your stomach.

“You’re that stagecoach robber!” the man exclaimed, turning back to Geto; out of the corner of your eye you saw the sheriff turn to face the commotion.

Shit, this is bad, you thought, placing the man’s beer on the bar in front of him, though he was far beyond caring about the drink anymore.

“I’m pretty sure you have no proof of that.”

“That’s your face on the poster,” the man insisted, then turned his attention to you. “Don’t you think?” 

“It looks like it could be a lot of people,” you replied lamely, grimacing at how obvious of a lie it was.

The man scowled at you. “Shoulda known better than t’ask a whore,” he spat, slurring his words a bit. “Whores always lie.”

Almost before he finished speaking, Geto grabbed the man’s collar and slammed his face down onto the bar. “Apologize to her,” he said, voice calm but eyes sharp with anger. 

You blinked in surprise at what had just happened, and once you processed what had been said to you, you found that you were quite offended, and also quite pleased that this outlaw had taken up for you so quickly. 

“Like hell!” the man protested, struggling against Geto’s hold. Even with his head forcibly pressed to the bar top, though, the man managed to pull his gun from his holster. 

The scene before you seemed to slow impossibly for a moment: the sound of the gun cocking, seeing it aimed at Geto, the man’s finger going for the trigger. Then suddenly everything was back to normal speed, and the outlaw used his free hand to shove the gun to no longer be aimed at him just as the trigger was pulled. 

You turned your head to see where it landed, and you watched in horror as a wound burst into existence in the sheriff’s shoulder, blood soaking into his shirt in an instant. He let out a shout of pain, clutching at the wound with his hand.

“You rat bastard!” the man shouted, working to cock his gun and aim it at Geto again, but the outlaw was quicker, pulling out his own gun, pressing it to the man’s ribs, and shooting him almost before you could process what he was doing. 

There was a wet gasping sound from the man, and when Geto’s hold on his collar was finally released, he dropped unceremoniously to the floor, his gun sliding out of his hand. You couldn’t tell if he was dead yet or not, but he certainly wasn’t making any effort to get off the floor.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see the sheriff draw his own gun and aim it, but it was in his non-dominant hand, so the bullet did not hit the robber as the sheriff intended; instead, it shattered the whiskey glass on the bar in front of you, and you dropped to the ground in fear.

With your hands over your head, you kept as low as you could. You couldn’t see what was happening anymore, but from what you could hear, at least half of the other patrons of the saloon had joined in the gunfight. Stray bullets hit the wall behind the bar, shattering multiple bottles of liquor, including the fancy bottle of scotch. My boss is going to be so pissed, you thought, an oddly practical thought to have in the midst of hiding and praying you weren’t accidentally shot.

Almost as if summoned by your thoughts, a bullet tore through the front of the bar, sticking in the cabinet about six inches from your head. With a shriek, you scrambled aside, towards the end of the bar; maybe if you were lucky, there would be time for you to slip out of the building without being caught in the crossfire. 

You scanned the building as quickly as you could while keeping yourself hidden, not wanting to make yourself any more of a target than you already were. Bullets were still flying, leaving no chance for your escape, and you cursed under your breath; you were going to be stuck here until everyone ran out of ammo. 

As you looked around, you noticed the first man that Geto had shot, a pool of blood slowly growing beneath his torso. His chest still rose and fell slightly, but his eyes were glassy; he was alive, but he was not long for this world. Suddenly, you remembered that he had dropped his gun when he had fallen, and you scanned the area around him for it, finding it a foot or so from his outstretched hand.

Deciding to run the risk of getting shot, you lunged for it, gripping it tightly in your hand once it was in your grasp. You’d never held a gun in your life, much less shot one, but having this one in your possession made you feel a little less cornered, a little less helpless.

Daring a glance upward, you saw that Geto had turned so that his back was to you and another corner of the saloon. Another patron had somehow managed to sneak around into the outlaw’s blind spot, and was clearly gearing up to shoot him in the back of the head. Knowing you couldn’t just sit there and watch it happen, you fumbled with the gun, your sweaty hands failing to pull back the hammer twice before you succeeded. With no clue how to accurately aim the weapon, you pointed it at his leg, squeezing your eyes shut as you pulled the trigger.

A shout of pain a moment later indicated that you had hit… someone, and you quickly opened your eyes again to make sure you hadn’t somehow hit Geto by accident. Thankfully, you hadn’t. The man you’d been aiming at had taken the shot to his knee – which actually had been what you were hoping to hit when you fired – bringing him down to the floor on one knee.

The shout was enough to alert the outlaw to the threat behind him, and he wasted no time spinning around and drilling him between the eyes. He slipped his guns – you saw now that he had two, rather than one like you had first thought – back into their holsters as the last man’s body dropped to the floor.

Once there was no longer another person blocking you from his view, Geto blinked in surprise, smiling as he stepped over the body and crouched down in front of you.

“You shot him?” he asked, his eyes glinting. The sight made you realize you’d been wrong before, when you’d thought his eyes were catlike in his wanted poster; in person they were foxlike, sharp and intelligent and clever.

“I-I, uh… yeah, I shot him.”

“Have you ever fired a gun before?”

“Not until just now.”

He glanced over his shoulder, taking in the bulletwound squarely in the side of the man’s knee. “You’re a good shot,” he observed, turning back to face you.

“Uh… thanks?”

He chuckled then, a low, smooth sound that made your stomach cartwheel. “You’re welcome.” A beat passed, then another, as he examined your face, though you were unsure what he was looking for. 

“What?” you demanded, scowling at him despite the way your hands were still shaking.

“You should come with me.”

“Huh?”

“You should come with me,” Geto repeated easily. “I think you’d be a good addition to my crew. Besides, it really won’t be a good look for you if people come in and see you here with a gun after I get the hell out of here.” There was a slight smirk tugging at his lips, and despite the fact that you probably should have taken his words as a threat, you didn’t.

“What the hell,” you sighed. “It’s not like I have anyone keeping me here.”

“Wonderful,” he said, offering you a hand up off the floor, which you readily accepted. “Get what you need from your room and meet me outside. Be quick, my guess is that someone will come to investigate all the noise sooner rather than later.”

You nodded, brushing broken glass from your dress and your hair as you hurried towards the stairs, unable to hide the grin tugging at your own lips.

Maybe not listening to your father had been the right decision after all.

tagging: @kentopedia @kentohours @mitsuristoleme

[skribstalksfandom]

Alrighty spoilers for tsams (10/29/24-11/2/24)

Okay so Nexus arc over for now. My thoughts? Mid as hell. He didn't do anything??? Idk the end of this arc felt super rushed and just like filler. Ofc i'm not complaining too much, it's an internet series run by two dudes chilling.

Nexus was a cool concept but there was soooo much wasted potential. Like with KC and Solar Flare. And we called that Ruin's thing that he put into Nexus' chest was a different thing than what he said. So we saw that coming. But Still. Wasted story arc in my opinion.

As for Dark Sun, I feel like his whole existence was unnecessary. Nexus could've been a standalone villain. Yeah, he indirectly caused Nexus' spiral, but he was overall unnecessary. We have no clue what his motives were, no clue about him in general, and just- why is he here again? He was a character from a what if episode. I feel like he should've stayed there.

Now I did enjoy that this arc is over because it's arguably my least favorite but Moon right now is just-

MOON. WHAT THE FUCK.

Yes we know you're not good with emotions but we know you are at least capable of an "Are you okay?" Solar should not be the only one there to comfort Sun after what happened with Nexus!

You said it yourself, you know how bad it is when you've murdered someone, the least you can do is go up there and talk with Sun so he's not so lonely!

I feel like they're doing the thing where a character gets written in a way that doesn't fit what we've seen in the past. This time with Moon. And arguably Solar but we know he and Sun are a bit closer now than before.

Anyway TL:DR: parts of this arc made no sense, i'm not particularly happy with how it ended, and Moon's writing rn makes no sense. AKA "Moon, why?"

[shiny-jr]

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH I literally cannot put into words how much I loved the latest Damnation au chapter- I was literally seconds away from putting my phone down to get back to work but as soon as I saw a glimpse of the fic, I just couldn't help but put everything on hold

I was really impressed with how you included Epel into the story in a way that just about correlated to Epel in canon (like how he was actively opposed to hit position in the castle). Like taking into consideration of the time period and the possible reasons why Epel would be relevant there in the first place despite not being in the original tale- SO WELL DONE!! Not to mention Vil going out of his way to find potential successors really emphasizes his hatred for Neige (poor guy😭) Also the way you write about Rook??? I knew he'd be creepy but gyat damn your writing only increased the feeling of it ten-fold. Especially in that scene after he climbed through the window and interrupted MC and Vil- Literally foaming at the mouth i was like 'holy crap this is it, we're gonna get exposed' cause aint no way Rook WOULDN'T know. Everything about him was unnerving yet so charming?? I really don't know how you do it but the way you just write them is just so accurate👏

As a Vil simp, every scene with him in it had be giggling and kicking my feet✨ I was pleasantly surprised with his advances towards the MC though- like hubba hubba... I ain't complaining though! The tension in those scenes were just *chefs kiss* Every moment with him just oozed authority and power, like I'd be on the edge of my metaphorical seat just waiting for the moment he calls out the MC

Like holy crap you really know how to set your scenes- like legit every time I Rook or Vil were in a scene, it genuinely felt tense. Also props to MC for looking out for #1 (themselves) even at the expense of ruining someone else

Anyway excuse my rambling lmao i'm definitely gonna be re-reading it again ^^

Sounds like another happy reader. And yes, Epel's part was difficult. Mainly because, well, Epel is based off the poisoned apple, so how is he supposed to play that role? In my mind, the poisoned apple is a tool used by the Evil Queen. So, what is similar to a tool? A person to manipulate, which is how I came up with the idea of heir. Combined with the fact that Vil obviously takes a shine to Epel, as he spends time meticulously perfecting his habits and mannerisms in-game. Which fit the scenario I was to use, of a King claiming an heir and drilling instructions and behaviors in their mind to manipulate.

Rook and Vil were easy to place into roles, due to who they're based off of. But it was difficult coming up with scenes for them, since the Huntsman and Evil Queen don't have a lot in the movies. Especially the Huntsman.

For Rook, I actually considered writing a scene were MC followed him as he scoped out the meadow or the moment when Rook was to escort Neige to the meadow, but ultimately I decided against that as it would overcomplicate the plot and give more time to Neige instead of Rook. I needed a way to properly portray Rook's watchfulness and the unease it spawns, which I figured should fit the setting. A carefully worded conversation knit of lies and unsaid threats and fears is much more effective when the reader is picturing hollowed stone halls of a palace instead of a colorful meadow. At least, that was my thought process there, which is why most interactions with Rook are in settings such as those.

And finally, Vil, who I decided to write a few more interesting scenes for purely because I know a good amount of my followers love that pretty man. There were multiple concepts and scrapped ideas I've already forgotten by now, different things that never made it to my keyboard, like a tense dinner scene and back-and-forth bickering. But some of those just didn't fit the feeling I wanted, or was out of character for either the MC or others.

Anyways, now I'm rambling. Sorry. I hope the second read was just as enjoyable as the first!

[a-girl-in-neverland]

Once again, im here to complain about the bridgerton subplots and changes

So spoiler for Season 3 ahead

I hated that they just cast Anthony and Kate aside. Do they really had to go RUNNING to India and couldnt wait for FRANCESCA'S WEDDING???? Hello??? Werent they the head of the family??

The intention with that is great and loving but is the showrunner allergic to having Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley in our screens for more than 3 minutes????

Like at that scene of the night before Polins wedding. Colin mentions that Kanthony has "come back"??? From where??? Did they run off again??

(Also i would really like to know who Edwina married and a bit of her love story)

The way in which the writers simply forgot about benedict's art/painting plot is atonishing. The build up of S1 to S2 was great, with the art school, but then in S3 is like that never happened?? Why didnt they explore more Benedict's lack of purpose or even his disappoinment with Anthony's actions?? Noooo, they just rather have him have sex with people all season long

(Before you come after me, im not critizing Benedicts sexuality, im just pissed that his character had barely nothing to do this season other than have sex, but i did enjoy a lot his scenes with eloise)

The Mondrichs plot was sooooo inconsequential and had nothing to do with any other one in the entire season. What was the point of keeping them?????

Somehow the writers in this show can make up irrelevant plots for lukewarm characters but cant come up with anything for the most beloved ones

And lastly about Michaela Stirling. So many people on twitter are fighting over this that is sickening. But lemme tell you this, all my life i had the pleasure (or better, the experience) to see many books i adore turn into movies/tv shows. Sometimes in adapting change is good, sometimes is necessary. But this change alters the whole story.

To be clear, i am NOT trying to be disrespectul, or homophobic or even mean about it. I dont mind the representation. In fact i think stories centered around LGBTQ+ leads, in this period of time, is a niche that could be much explored. Bridgerton could inspire people who belong in this community to write these stories, which is great.

However, the change of introducing Michaela completely transforms Francescas story. The second-love with the exploration of sexuality trope has great potential. But changing so greatly a story thats well known between the fans is risky to say at least.

Francescas book is not my favorite (by far actually) but it is for a lot of people, and a lot of readers have been enamoured with michael for the last 20 years, at least. So i understand if people get upset, because i would too if my favorite couple/story changed so much out of the blue

And honestly, i think this is one of the ways the show is trying to remain relevant. I AM NOT trying to say that TV should use LGBTQ+ love stories as clickbait. But be serious, the books were written as 8 straight love stories, in todays society people would be complaining if they followed if by the rule.

Anyway, Polin were wonderful. Nicola and Luke you are so so so loved, we couldnt have actors that loved their characters more

(And at this point i might be a Portia Featherington stan, she grew a lot on me)

If you read this far, i hope you have a great week and please dont come for my critics, they are not hate opinions, i just needed to rant <3

[lupunsus]

i want to write fluff. i (you people) need to remember the good sides of this au (non-existent) because yanderes can be nice (questionable)

Anyway, amputated mouse reader with Al-Haitham and Kaveh bc i finished the story quest, and they're literally fucking each other every other day istg

based on genshin hybrid au idea by @cinnamonest

while writing this, it was pure fluff... but my demons whispered in my ear, so there's nsfw in it. im sorry, but my resolve is weak against poly relationship with Kaveh and Al-Haitham.

warning: masturbation, the hybrid is actually the pervert in this one, a bit of angst bc hybrid thinks they aren't good enough to be sandwiched between two hot men despite being loved lots but they want their pp even though they know nothing about having sex with a human

Kaveh is too kind, really.

If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have had such a warm and loving home that cared deeply for you. Having the part of your leg below the knee taken away by bad people with awful traps was sad, but Kaveh and his partner, Al-Haitham, made sure to make you forget about that problem!

Of course, sometimes they argued about things relating to you.

"You claim to be so smart, but what's smart about giving them a pegleg?!" Kaveh glared at Al-Haitham while holding you in his arm. The other held out the object, dropping it in front of the gray-haired man. It was cute to see you hobble around at first. But then you fell over, and tears started to form in your eyes. You were so adorable!! But also, you should never be in pain while under the care of Kaveh and Al-Haitham!! You were fine, just a small bruise, but being the overreacting person he is, Kaveh had to make a big deal out of it.

To others, it would seem like he was making the situation sound worse than it is, but Al-Haitham is just like him. He's just a quiet worrier.

"I suppose I should readjust some things. If I were to buy some parts–"

"Peglegs are unnecessary when we can just carry [Name] around!"

"But then they'd have to crawl around the house if we aren't home."

"We'll put soft rugs down!!"

It's a good thing Dori resides in Sumeru. Her nose can smell potential customers all the way to the desert, but the biggest spenders are always Akademiya students. So when it comes to needing supplies for hybrids, Dori's the one to go to!

But that's a lot of soft rugs. What are you raising? A baby? It's okay. Dori won't ask, just hand over the mora. Thank you~

If anyone were to see Al-Haitham and Kaveh while they lugged a load of rugs to their place, they'd assume Kaveh was getting help with a new project. Nobody knows about the lucky little mouse waiting inside, as the rugs are for them. "Thank you masters! [Name] likes a lot!!" The texture was indeed fluffy and soft. One could wrap themselves up and sleep inside of one. That's how cozy it felt.

It's a shame that the pegleg would sit in storage to collect dust. Maybe one day it'll have its use.

Days when Kaveh is out and Al-Haitham is home are the best days. Why? The two of you do absolutely nothing. You make yourself comfy on top of him and take a nice long nap. Sometimes Al-Haitham will read to you, teaching you some words and whatnot. His voice is nice, however, so most of the time, he looks down to see you drooling all over his chest while deep in slumber. It's the main reason why he stopped wearing shirts during those times. Too much of a hassle to wash them. Kaveh doesn't complain, even doing the same.

Both of their chests make for good pillows, and their skin is always so warm. You definitely start drooling more when you're sleeping on them.

Kaveh is fun to be around, too!

He's made some toys for you to play with, but he doesn't mention how Al-Haitham helped. You didn't ask, so technically, he isn't lying to you. Do you know those cat wheels? Kind of big, enough for a human, maybe if they were to crouch down. Anyway, Kaveh made that for you! A nice little wheel to run to your little heart's content. It's super cute seeing you use it, especially when you get tired.

You just lay there in a puddle of exhaustion, and he takes the opportunity to scratch and nuzzle his face in your tummy. If you're ticklish, you try to push him off, but you're too tired to do so. Kaveh rewards you with treats and stuff to chew on, so it balances itself out. Plus, his belly rubs feel good.

Honestly, living with them makes you forget that you're missing half of your leg.

Almost.

You're a bit clumsy, especially when both of them are busy. During those times, they tend to leave a lot of things laying about. Books, well mainly stacks of books, but there's also occasionally some other stuff. And with how often Kaveh and Al-Haitham redecorate the place, things that are usually in a position you're used to are inevitably moved, and objects put in hard to reach places.

So when you trip or hurt yourself because of it, it's hard not to let a few tears fall. Would it be easier if you had two healthy legs? Of course, it'd be easier to balance yourself with two legs instead of one and a half. These negative thoughts start to spiral until you think about how useless you are to your masters.

All hybrids in shelters know that their purpose is to serve and please their masters. You weren't a stranger to the knowledge, even hearing of how if the hybrid is good, they'll be treated the same and even receive assistance during their... spring season.

But you're damaged goods! Unused, but still damaged! You require more care than the average hybrid, needing special attention and accommodations because of your small size. Neither of the men touched you in that way. Instead, they gave you space and sometimes left the house.

You could smell their scents on each other.

Why were you even here if they had each other to pleasure? You were grateful to even have such a nice home, but what were you to them? A pet? Or worse... an experiment? You've heard stories of fellow rodents being used for tests and experiments. They weren't harmed, but they weren't as loved as other hybrids in homes.

Ah, maybe you were a charity case.

A poor little mouse with half a leg missing. Nobody would want them as caring for them is so expensive, and you'd need to rearrange furniture and make the entire place practically baby proof. Perhaps you were a child to them. But you're definitely past that age! And what will happen to you if they do manage to conceive one? It's unheard-of for a male hybrid to get pregnant, but there are rare cases of it happening. Some can happen with the intervention of researchers, but only psychopaths (Dottore) would experiment with that.

Well, whatever. You're exhausted after overthinking and making yourself insecure and depressed.

The two men you loved with your entire being said they would be out late, but were they just having fun without you? Ah, you already told yourself to stop assuming things and thinking negatively, but it was hard. You wanted to be with them, too! Even during those times... There was only one thing that could help clear away these negative thoughts.

That's right. Stealing.

Borrowing would be a better word. You always put their clothes back! ...With the dirty clothes. Kaveh would be confused, not recalling wearing some of them, but blamed it on the alcohol. Al-Haitham made Kaveh do laundry, so he never spoke about it. He did express his impatience at how Kaveh takes forever to wash clothes, but that was it. They wouldn't think that their precious little mouse was to blame for the misunderstanding and confusion.

You'll never know it, but they think you're incapable of doing anything without them. Of course, you get exercise from your wheel, but they still feed, bathe, and clothe you (you're mainly naked unless they have guests over) with their own hands. The only things you should be doing without them are running on the wheel and chewing on your toys.

Going back to your session of "borrowing," it was usually something you did during the day when they were out, but since they're out late, you figured stealing more clothes of theirs again wouldn't get you caught. If they were doing what you thought they were doing, the two of them would get back home when the sun started rising.

So, you had plenty of time to make a nest in your hidden corner and masturbate while being surrounded by their scent.

It was really well hidden! Plus, you still had some clothes from earlier today, so the nest would just be cozier, and the smell of them would be even stronger. There really was nothing better than burying your face in their clothes while getting yourself off. It only helped to fuel your dirty desires.

Would they take you at the same time? You were confident that you stretched yourself to take both of them (you are definitely not), even using 3 fingers instead of 2! Surely, they'll both fit. But would they take turns instead? Impossible. They bicker so often that you think one of them will get impatient. And then there comes with that thing humans do. Kissing? You've only ever received forehead kisses from Kaveh, but you wanted more than that. Both men thought they were secret in kissing each other, and even if they weren't, they explained it as a way to share energy even if they both were out of breath afterward.

That was what you wanted. You wanted to give all your energy to them. To be drained until there was nothing left to give, even if they were insistent and shared with you their energy just so they could take it back.

"M-Masters...!" It was a relief that you came before your arm became weak. For some reason, you could only bring yourself to cum twice before your wrist felt numb. Maybe you needed to exercise more, you didn't know. You were still sensitive, so you opted to grind against their clothes to reach another high.

On any other day, you'd feel horrible for getting the clothes of your Masters dirty with your essence (or, as you like to call it, your love for them), but you were upset for always being left out! And they'd always tease you too. Going around the house topless. You have to hold back from pouncing on them and rubbing your nipples against theirs. You've done it before when sleeping on Al-Haitham's chest, but that time was an accident. It felt really good, though...

And the material of their clothes rubbing against them now felt incredible, but you really wanted to feel their hands and bodies against them. To have them pinched and squeezed even though no milk would come out. You heard hybrids can lactate if their nipples are squeezed and sucked periodically, so maybe if you play with them every day, you can give them a nice surprise.

Milk is delicious, after all!

Bringing yourself to the edge for the sixth time, you collasped onto the nest, exhausted from grinding against clothes. At most, you could only last three rounds, but this is an improvement! Humans generally go for seven rounds, so you are really close! But you're so tired... do humans really do it so many times? Their stamina sure is amazing.

You had time before your masters came back, so a nap wouldn't hurt. Plus, you were very hidden in this corner! Even if you overslept, they wouldn't be able to find you. You even threw a blanket over pillows on the couch just in case :) You've seen Kaveh do it, so it'll definitely trick them into thinking you're asleep.

It truly is unfortunate that you think you could outsmart two Akademiya graduates.

Al-Haitham is used to Kaveh's tricks, so he immediately knows you're hiding. You haven't figured out how to unlock the door, and there's even another few locks that you can't reach even if you manage to figure it out. Windows are too complicated to unlock for you, too. It's while he's narrowing down possibilities that Kaveh is calling out for you, thinking you were playing hide and seek, but fell asleep while waiting for them.

Kaveh thinks it's adorable and fun to look for the obvious tail sticking out from behind something. It isn't until Al-Haitham notices some of their clothes sticking out from underneath a table in the corner that he knows where you are and what you've been doing. How could he not? You practically begged them and threw a fit just to keep the table in its spot. It wasn't really hidden, but nobody would notice if someone or something were under it.

Calling over his partner, they looked to see you slumbering on top of their clothes, using their shirts as blankets. It would've been a cutely innocent sight if not for the fact you hadn't cleaned yourself up. "They've used more clothes than usual, but their heat is 3 weeks away.." Al-Haitham gently rubbed the inside of your thigh, causing your body to shift. Kaveh moved some of the shirts aside to see your reddened nipples perked up. He wanted to pinch them, but he settled on flicking one, smiling when you mumbled incoherently and squirmed a bit in your sleep. "Maybe they missed us~ We were out longer this time."

"Because someone can't play cards."

"I'd like to see you beat Cyno in less than 7 rounds!"

Realizing his mistake, both men looked towards you as you shifted. "Masters...." Nuzzling your face into their clothes, you let out a content sigh as their comforting smell seemed to be stronger than usual as if they were beside you.

"My skill is not provoking him. You'd have lost in 4 rounds if you had drank alcohol." This time, Kaveh chose to glare at Al-Haitham. The reason he didn't drink tonight was so that he'd be sober enough to remember being welcomed home by someone much cuter and nicer than the Acting Grand Scribe. But seeing you curled up in a nest of their clothes is definitely better.

Al-Haitham only sighed at the sight. "They took the pants I was going to wear tomorrow this time. I'll have to start hiding clothes I need."

"Wait, you knew they were the reason our clothes ended up in the laundry so often?" Al-Haitham only gave Kaveh a look that screamed, "Was it not obvious?" before rearranging the clothes to cover your entire body so you wouldn't get cold. If you weren't peacefully sleeping right in front of them, Kaveh would have yelled some very mean things at Al-Haitham. But that could wait for another day.

After all, they've left their cute little mouse waiting too long.

[physalian]

A Case Against “Redemption = Death”

“Redemption = Death” is, in my opinion, one of the laziest “telling not showing” cop-outs you can write, and it happens over and over and over again. It’s manipulative, it’s cheap, it kneecaps the character’s development, it undermines the meaning of a true redemption, and it promotes a message that some people are so evil, the *only* redemption for them is the ultimate sacrifice.

**Taking an aside here to plainly ignore religious connotations and focus on the success or failure of a satisfying character arc**

I hate this trope. I have never seen a flawless execution of this trope in its basest form: Evil bad guy is evil for 99% of their story, and in the 11th hour has an out-of-character realization that they’ve done wrong and sacrifices themself for the heroes, whom they don’t actually care about, for ~drama~.

Today’s writing advice is pretty straightforward: Please stop doing this. It tends to happen in action movies like the superhero genre, but also in action-heavy sci-fi and fantasy where rich character development is sacrificed for spectacle and cool battles. I love action movies, even the stupid ones, and I firmly believe that they can do better.

1. It’s manipulative

A malignant evildoer who shows zero remorse for their entire story, commits heinous acts of violence and abuse, who murders, steals, beats, cheats, betrays, and uses other characters does not earn any shed tears over their ultimate sacrifice.

Time and time again, the big bad will do a 180 and leave the protagonist distraught over how to react to this, often with lines like “maybe he was a hero all along,” or “you know he really wasn’t that bad”. (a la Snape before we all woke up and realized he's a whiny Nice Guy)

Nope. He was actually that bad, and his final act of terror was convincing you to give a damn about him and regret not being able to save him (and it is always male characters. It’s always men. Find me a story where it’s a woman and I will gladly read it and complain about her, too).

This character has only themselves to blame for their Tragic Backstory. They were never a tragic hero, they didn’t fall from grace. There was never any hope or expectation that they could do better, the hero isn’t even trying to redeem them, it just happens in an attempt to engineer depth where there isn’t any.

2. It’s cheap

A hastily-written “redemption” tips the author’s hand, showing that they didn’t plan for or can’t conceptualize how to fix the mess they’ve made. Now, maybe the villain dies in the last chapter of the book and the story has no room for the aftermath anyway—that’s fine. It’s only a problem when the villain gets an unfounded “he wasn’t so bad” reflection by the survivors to scribble a deeper meaning and message for the story in the final lap.

If you’re planning from the start to have your villain be “not that bad,” provide any evidence other than them deciding maybe they don’t want the world to burn as the clock on the nuke counts down to zero.

This would be like if Gandalf told Pippin Denethor was actually a decent guy as the man flings himself off Gondor's tallest tower after nearly burning his son alive.

3. It kneecaps the character’s potential

Character deaths, whether they’re permanent or not, are generally treated by the other characters as permanent and final in the moment. There’s tears, there’s funerals, there’s grief and regret over what could have been, what might’ve been, what should have been.

And all of that development goes straight to the surviving characters, not the one that died.

Your dead evildoer can’t prove they’re trying to do better once they’re dead. They can’t show their remorse, they can’t show how they planned to fix all their mistakes, they can’t follow through with choosing the path of “good”. They’re dead.

You killed them to avoid the hard work of having to write them as a good guy.

4. It undermines the meaning of a true redemption

Self-sacrifice is a noble end, but self-sacrifice because a character can’t imagine actually committing to the long and bumpy road of fixing all their mistakes is cowardice. The people they hurt are still suffering, the wrongs they committed still need answering for, the damage they’ve done still needs rectifying and dying leaves all that work to those who survive them.

They’ve done nothing to prove they’re worthy of redemption except to stop digging their hole deeper and at that point they’re not “redeemed” they’re only marginally defined as a “tragic hero” by the skin of their teeth, depending on what catastrophe they prevent with their death.

5. It argues that some people aren’t worth redeeming

Ironically, “redemption = death” proves the exact opposite of the case you’re trying to make. They die because they’re convinced they must, because not a single other character could either talk them out of it, or cared enough to show them death wasn’t the only option.

“Redemption” is only for those who everyone thinks aren’t worth redeeming. But he’s irredeemable! Is he? Or do you just want to see him punished and have zero faith that he can’t at least try to right his wrongs?

This would be like if Zuko showed up at the Western Air Temple and instead of becoming Aang's fire bending teacher, he died fighting Combustion Man or Azula in a blaze of glory, all because Katara would not budge from her "he's evil and always will be" stance.

Or, if Zuko died in the last agni-kai, taking Azula down with him, as if the story said "yeahhhhh, we just gotta go clean slate here and expunge the whole Fire Family, but hey, Zuko did stop Azula in his blaze of glory".

—

But what happens when “redemption = death” is actually satisfying? Aka, not a redeemed villain, just a tragic hero. So let’s look at a famous example: Darth Vader.

This is a character that checks two boxes: He has one pillar of light determined to save him, and he’s shown before his moment of sacrifice to have some remorse. It doesn’t come out of nowhere.

He’s not redeemed, though, because his one act of murder-suicide may end the war (ignoring the sequel trilogy) but doesn’t undo all the damage and lives lost and planets destroyed. He’s just a tragic hero.

Sometimes, however, this character knows the only way all the evil ends is with their death. They know they’re doomed because by their continued existence, evil persists, and they literally cannot live on to fix things because things will never be fixable so long as they’re still breathing. Or, they’re terminally ill and incurable through their own machinations with the Big Bad and will die no matter what they do, might as well go out swinging.

Greed, from Fullmetal Alchemist fits here. He spent more time as a reluctant good guy occasionally doing bad and selfish things because his essence is chained to a good guy, but he cannot survive the story, because by his very nature, he’s a piece of the main villain.

But even then, Greed’s redemption comes *before* he dies, we all already love his character, this is just the tragic icing on the cake. His realization that, in his final act, he becomes the most selfless character in the show—the antithesis of his entire being.

Your mid-redemption character redeems themselves as much as they can while they still breathe. They help the other heroes, they teach the team everything they know, they show their plans for a better future and have even built tools to help the survivors thrive. They’ve dreamed about being a part of this future that’s barred from them. They’ve fully understood and accepted the consequences of their actions. They understand that their final punishment is never living to see the paradise they nearly destroyed.

Even if they can’t change the world with their actions, they’ve done all the emotional and personal labor they can manage with those that they’ve hurt. They’ve made friends, allies, even romantic endeavors.

And when they die and the heroes mourn, they mourn the hero that this redeemed villain became, not who they imagined this villain could be if they tried, if they'd made different choices. At that point, redemption didn’t even equal death for them, redemption was the short road to recovery before the consequences of their actions finally caught up with them.

[astralwukong]

sometimes i think with how people still say blcksn wasn't cut off the right way and what not, maybe the best thing to write it off at the beginning of V6 would have been for sun to attempt a kiss and getting gently rejected with a clear explaination as to why between the two of them. crude as heck, sure, even a little out of character for sun at that point of the story, but maybe it would have put the little romantic arc to a definitive rest and wouldn't leave people wondering. What do you think?

--------

Edit: sorry, i probably should have given more info about what i was going for here lol

First premise: idc about blcksun shippers complaints (they are shippers, they were gonna complain anyways, naturally). i am talking about the fact that no average viewer ever got to know for sure what kind of feelings were involved between blake and sun and whether there was still a chance between them after that goodbye (that's because unlike bees no one ever said i love/like you to each other nor they have ever discussed what they are). i didn't like the send off from that perspective, personally, because as with many other things in rwby, things aren't stated properly and that's a general complaint i have.

Secondly of course, as i've said, thats out of character of sun and clashed with the little "development" he got in those 3 seasons. My question is mostly a what-if scenario focusing on viewer perception of a potential almost-blcksn-kiss + rejection in that particular part of the show, but it could have played out in any other scene at the begining of V6 or end of V5.

The real question i was going for, i guess, is this:

would an almost kiss + rejection (whatever way you wish for it to happen) have helped the average viewer understand what went down between blake and sun since V1 and properly motivate why the ship isn't going to happen in the future?

[ominousvibez]

following up on this post i made the other day

Ninjago Dragons Rising Season 2a spoilers below

Arin is going through the ringer in season two. Which, I’m not complaining about—I love angst and seeing characters go through pain, because that’s how they grow to become stronger. You can’t make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, and whatnot.

But Arin is a passenger on the struggle bus and it gets a bit painful to watch, at some points.

It’s clear that, by the end of season one, he feels like he’s fallen behind Sora and Wyldfyre’s training; after all, he’s still the only one without an elemental power, and he’s only been able to successfully do his object Spinjitzu a few times, and all of those times were when someone he cared about was in danger. So when Season 2A starts up, and Arin struggles multiple times with just defeating the Bad Guys by himself, it’s obvious that the writers of Ninjago Dragons Rising are setting up something for him.

I’d talked about it in my previous analysis, but I do enjoy how Arin and Sora are pretty interesting as character foils. People have talked about how the dragon imagery with Sora conflicts with the growing Oni imagery given to Arin and how dragons and oni don’t mix; to be honest, I’ve never seen the last seasons of Ninjago, so I’m only picking up that lore from other posts, but I think that it’s interesting how Arin and Sora are developing together in opposite directions.

Sora is, obviously; getting stronger. She’s reached her True Potential, after all. While she doesn’t learn Spinjitzu in Season 2A, it’s obvious that she’s going to have it down by the second half of the season, maybe whipping it out in the finale just like her TP in the S1 finale. She’s also become a bit stronger, and a bit more optimistic. She’s developed Elemental Mech for the other Ninja, and her control over her tech powers have only grown since we’ve last seen these characters.

Arin, on the other hand, is almost getting weaker? Or, perhaps, he’s stagnating in his growth. He hasn’t been able to perform object Spinjitzu since the S1 finale, and is constantly getting beat up by the other bad guys. He gets beat by Cinder. He gets beat by Lord Ras. He’s only able to somewhat defeat what’s-her-name because Riyu is on his side and she’s kinda weaksauce anyway. (I know her name is Jordana; this is meant to be a joke.) He can’t protect Bonzole from being taken by Lord Ras and used.

He is going through the gutter this season, my poor blorbo.

I think Sora “helping” Arin in the final fight by using her elemental power to mimic his object Spinjitzu was nice of her; but it’s going to lead to a fight, I’m sure. The writers seem to be setting Arin up for what looks like some sort of corruption arc.

You know the story. A character is left behind by their “friends”, and is adopted into the bad guy troupe. They commit a few crimes, maybe go a bit too deep into the rabbit hole, but they come to their senses and defect back to the good side, now a bit spicier with a bit more trauma. It’s a fine and fun story to write. It puts characters into uncomfortable positions. The good guys have to reckon with the fact they left one of their own behind, and their own defected to the bad side. The bad guys have to deal with turning this goody-two-shoes into an Actual Villain, which has varying levels of success.

But I don’t think they should do this with Arin.

Would Arin make a terrifying bad guy? He’s a ninja super-fan; he knows all of their weaknesses. He would be absolutely terrifying as a bad guy.

But, I’ll be honest: I don’t think he has it in him.

Now, the writers could do something big to him, and he could defect and join the bad guys, but I don’t think that could be as fun as the other possible arc Arin could go through, that I think would be ten times more interesting;

I think Arin should quit being a ninja.

Not forever. But temporarily.

One of the biggest things in the show is the phrase “ninja never quit”—the ninja are trained to be determined to see things through to the end. To keep fighting for the good of Ninjago, and the newly merged realms. They have hundreds of thousands of people relying on them, they can’t quit in the face of evil.

They say it multiple times. It’s their motto, their theme; they don’t quit, no matter how hard it gets. When Kai gets locked in the cursed hell in-between space (forgot the name of it), he’s not going to quit until he gets back home. When the ninja train to learn the Rising Dragon technique, they don’t quit training, trying to figure it out, even as they run out of time.

But Arin? Well, Arin’s been trying to follow the motto, but it looks like the world has decided to beat the crap out of him constantly no matter what. He keeps getting beat up. He keeps losing to the bad guys the other ninja could beat with little issue.

I think Lord Ras says it the best;

“I stopped you as easily now as the first time we met. I was weak like you, once...”

Arin’s not progressing as a ninja; in fact, he might be degressing, a bit. He gets knocked down a fang when training with the dragons because his Spinjitzu is too raw and uncontrolled. He can’t figure out his object Spinjitzu. He’s going through the motions of being a ninja, but getting beat up at every turn, and everyone has these great Elemental powers, and Arin’s just… Well, he’s just Arin.

Honestly, going through all of that, I’d be thinking about quitting, too. It would just be easier to hang up the towel and call it a day. It’d be a lot less painful. He wouldn’t have to worry about the fate of the world, he could just return to The Crossroads, or maybe he could quit and focus on trying to find his parents.

But I think he should quit. Full-stop. For a few episodes.

It’d be great to explore what would happen to Arin for a few episodes, maybe even though he quits, he can’t stop trying to help people and save them from danger. How even though he doesn’t have an elemental power, he can still do great things. Learn how to be great himself.

It’d also be great to see how the other characters react to Arin’s decision to quit. Stories are built upon the interaction and conflict between characters, which drive character growth and plot. Sora would try to drag him back, obviously; either Arin or one of the older ninja would make it clear that it would be wrong to drag him back to a world he doesn’t want a part in. They’d all be shocked, of course. Maybe hurt, betrayed—ninja never quit, right?

But what if a ninja did quit?

Arin is the most interesting character in the Dragons Rising series. He’s a relatable individual for many old Ninjago fans, and represents that audience, a bit. He’s living the dream of becoming a ninja that many of us could never be. But he also keeps getting beat up by the bad guys, he can’t control his Spinjitzu, or do his special thing, and he doesn’t have an elemental power (yet; I see what you’re doing with the Source Dragon of Motion, writers). He’s the odd one out, the black sheep of the ninja.

If the story keeps beating him down, well, maybe he just needs to quit, in order to find himself again, and build himself back up, either on his own, or with the help of his friends.  

Ninja never quit, of course. He’ll find his way back to Team Ninja eventually. But maybe… Maybe ninja need break?

(No, that doesn’t work as well.

Eh, whatever.)

Ninja never quit permanently.

He’s one of the main characters. He’ll get dragged back into the plot whether he likes it or not.

[panharmonium]

Hi! I love your Naruto thoughts and meta posts with all my heart and I want to ask your thoughts on something that has been on my mind literally since I was 13: what do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura? I went from being a hardcore shipper when I was a teenager, to being against any romantic relationship in Naruto after finishing the anime when I was in my early twenties. Nowadays I'm very into platonic love and depictions of friendship and I think the anime's obsession with forcing the "romantic interest" curse upon the main female character robbed us of... so much. There are a few wonderful moments in the anime where Sasuke and Sakura acknowledge each other, but because she's always "the girl with the crush", her actions are so often interpret as irrational or selfish by the fandom.

Hi @riemmetric!  It's great to talk to you again! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this; RL has been making demands of me lately and it took me way longer to finish writing this up than I wanted it to (then again, I knew from the minute I read your original ask that my reply was going to get long, so I suppose I should have predicted a delay XD)

It's funny, my sister once asked me to choose between Sasuke or Sakura for an “unpopular opinion” meme, and I ended up doing Sasuke solely because I think the negative fandom opinions about Sakura are so unhinged and divorced from the actual text that I wouldn’t even know where to start.  People are entitled to dislike whatever characters they want, obviously, but there are some fandom takes that are, for me, so obviously rooted in bad faith viewings/readings that there’s no urge in me to discuss them.  That said, since you asked, I’m happy to go into my own thoughts on this a bit, with the disclaimer for other potential readers that I only write about fandom things for my own personal enjoyment, not as a contribution to The Discourse. If you don’t like Sakura, great!  I have no interest in changing your mind. Please consider this a sincere invitation to scroll on by and go enjoy whatever parts of the fandom appeal to you.

In general terms: I love Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship as much as I love all of the relationships in Team 7.  If we’re talking about them specifically as a romantic couple, then I probably fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, because I do like them together in a post-canon (to be clear: non-Boruto) setting, after time has passed and they’ve continued to develop individually and reconnect with each other, but I also wouldn’t exactly call myself an intense “shipper,” in the sense that I have no interest in pulling things out from the text and incorrectly citing them as evidence that Sasuke has hidden romantic feelings for her during the canon period. He cares about her in the canon period, just like he cares about Naruto and Kakashi.  That’s not up for interpretation; it’s the text.  But Sasuke during the canon time period does not demonstrate specifically romantic interest in anyone.  

[A note before people who might ship Sasuke with Someone Else emerge to rail against this statement - please just scroll past and continue enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you. It is cool to ship whatever fanon thing you want; I think that’s great!  But earnestly citing any loving or emotional thing Sasuke does re: various characters in this story (yes, Sakura included) as indicative of specifically romantic love isn’t supported by the text. I know there are always going to be enormous subsets of any fandom who insist that it is, and I'm certainly not going to barge into anyone else's space to complain about that (because other people having fun together is harmless and none of my business), but I'm not obligated to indulge it on my own blog, either.]

Anyway, that said - the reason why I love Sakura and Sasuke’s relationship (from here on out I’ll use “relationship” in a general, non-romantic sense) is precisely because Sakura isn’t just “the girl with the crush.” Sakura has an arc when it comes to Sasuke, and its trajectory moves in the exact opposite direction of “irrational” or “selfish.”  She specifically goes from “the girl with the crush” to “the girl who steels herself and tries to put her personal feelings for Sasuke aside for the greater good” to “the girl who knows she can’t put her feelings aside, but who also knows full well that Sasuke doesn’t reciprocate them, and who still wants to save him regardless, because he matters to her as a person and a friend.”

[I'm putting the rest of this under a cut to save everyone's dash, and also to emphasize once again that this is a personal post on my personal blog which I wrote in response to a question from a personal acquaintance, the full content of which no one is obligated to read. I am not sending this post to random strangers and forcing them to look at it. I'm not even putting it in the character tags. I'm typing it up on my own blog and putting it under a cut. If you already know that you don't like Sakura, but you still click the link/read the post and then feel an urge to comment and complain, I am going to copy-paste this disclaimer and remind you that I specifically recommended that you scroll past and go have fun with fandom in your own way. Thanks in advance for responsibly curating your own fandom experience!]

So, from the top:

1. the girl with the crush

Sakura is, obviously, completely obsessed with Sasuke at the beginning of Part 1.  She’s also deeply clueless about him and his history (bizarre though it is, the story seems to indicate that she initially doesn’t know what happened with his family, the same way young!Obito is initially clueless about Kakashi’s father).  But what I like about Sakura and Sasuke’s Part 1 relationship is how this changes over time.

The critical scene that kicks this off happens right at the beginning of the manga, when she and Sasuke are talking by that bench - she complains about Naruto and blames his behavior on him being all alone/having no family to scold him; and even says she’s jealous that he doesn’t have parents to nag him all the time.  This obviously triggers an outburst from Sasuke, who tells her she has no idea what loneliness means and that she “makes him sick”/she’s “annoying” (importantly, the exact same thing Sakura said to Naruto in anger earlier that day), which in turn prompts Sakura to reassess herself and wonder whether she’s been making Naruto feel this terrible all the time, too:

From that point on, it’s a process of her putting little pieces together.  She still has a MAJOR crush, and she still acts like a twelve year-old, but as we approach the end of Part I, Sakura actually has a more accurate grasp on Sasuke’s current state of mind than Naruto does.  Naruto is initially excited to fight Sasuke on top of the hospital, because he feels like Sasuke’s finally acknowledging him, whereas Sakura is the one who immediately recognizes that something is wrong about this situation.  She is also the one who, after this fight, is concerned that Sasuke is really unwell and might do something drastic like run off in pursuit of the power Orochimaru promised him, but when she communicates this to Naruto, he assures her that this would NEVER happen:

(Sakura isn't convinced, though, because she goes to monitor the exit out of the village anyway.)

I’m not criticizing Naruto for his response here.  I ADORE hearing him say that Sasuke is too strong to need Orochimaru, with such perfect confidence - I love seeing how much respect and admiration he has for Sasuke underneath all their fighting, because that’s the whole reason he’s always baiting Sasuke and yelling at him and claiming “you're not so great!” He looks up to Sasuke; he wants to be like Sasuke; he thinks Sasuke is awesome! (It’s that Obito @ Kakashi behavior, you know?) But the fact remains that he is clueless about what’s actually going on with Sasuke in Part 1, and he remains clueless(ly optimistic) for a long time.  

(Eg, when he catches up to Sasuke during the retrieval arc and Sasuke climbs out of that cursed seal coffin, Naruto waves at him and calls "Come on, let's go!" as if Sasuke has been successfully rescued and is now going to come running home.  Even in Part II, when Naruto hears that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, he beams and immediately says, “So he must be on his way back to the Leaf Village!”  And everyone else in the room is like, “....,” because they know better.  Naruto doesn’t yet fully understand [or doesn't want to accept] the extent to which Sasuke has willingly chosen this path, and it’s not until after Jiraiya’s death/the Pain attack/the Five Kage Summit that Naruto really starts to understand Sasuke more clearly, which is something he himself admits.)

Sakura, in Part 1, has access to more information about Sasuke - she’s there for his first dissociative monologue during the bells test, she’s there for the curse mark’s placement, she’s there for his first violent transformation in the Forest of Death - she is, in fact, the unwitting catalyst for it (“Sakura…who did this to you?”), and her compassion is the reason Sasuke is later able to overcome the curse mark’s influence - so she has a more accurate/complete picture of “how he’s doing,” for lack of a better phrase, whereas Naruto, who doesn’t know about the curse mark in the first place, is still in the dark.  This means that Sakura is able to accurately discern that Sasuke is struggling more than Naruto realizes, and specifically to predict that he’s going to run away.  

(This dynamic is then interestingly flipped in the back half of Part II, since at any point after the Five Kage Summit, Sakura doesn’t have access to extremely relevant [if currently questionable and unproven] details that would in any other circumstance inform her behavior).

Of course, just because she has more info in Part 1 doesn’t mean she has some kind of miraculous insight into Sasuke’s every thought and feeling.  There are parts of her attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village that are as clueless as any of Naruto’s assumptions, and they showcase the kind of magical thinking common to childhood - like when she says that if he stayed with her, she could give him happiness, she’d do anything for him, even help him get his revenge - this idea that she herself can do something to make him feel better, that she can love him powerfully enough to defeat his pain - obviously none of that is rooted in realism.

Is this part of her approach irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered?  Of course it is!  But it’s no more irrational and immature and inadvertently self-centered than Naruto’s stated plan to drag Sasuke back to the village even if he has to “break every bone in [his] body!” 

Hating on Sakura for her Part 1 attempt to convince Sasuke to stay in the village while simultaneously lauding Naruto for his feels like a bad faith misread of what is, to me, pretty clear narrative intention.  The story doesn’t at any point intend for us to see her begging him to stay as a selfish or conniving attempt to get something she wants.  She’s begging him to stay for the same underlying reason that Naruto is: she cares about him.  She thinks he’s making a mistake that will only cause him more pain in the end (she’s right) and she wants to make it so he feels less pain right now (she can’t.  But she doesn’t understand that/isn’t able to admit that, and she’s willing to try ANYTHING that might help).  

It’s critical that this farewell scene is set in front of that same bench from their first important confrontation - she references that day and how angry he got at her, and this time she tells him that she understands his reaction.  She’s learned things and she recognizes how insensitive she was being back then (“I know what happened to your clan, Sasuke”), even though she still can’t fully grasp all the complexities of the situation. She tells him that him blowing up at her back then helped her understand what loneliness actually meant (as opposed to her previous shallow understanding of it), and she challenges him about his choice right now: "So that's it, you're choosing the lonely path?" And when she tells him that she'll be very lonely if he leaves, we're immediately shown a panel of Sasuke thinking of both his friends, with the very clear implication that if he goes through with this, he will be lonely without them, too - that he's still struggling with the idea of leaving them, no matter how hard he tries to pretend:

Sakura at this point knows that Sasuke isn’t interested in her the way she is in him, but she still wants to give him happiness, however fantastical and immature her ideas sound to us (and, I’m sure, to him).  “I’ll do anything, even help you get your revenge/we'll have fun every day, and...and you'll be happy! I'll make sure of it!” - of course, it’s completely childish.  It’s irrational.  It’s ridiculous to think that any of this would ever be effective, but no more ridiculous than Naruto’s belief that he can simply break every bone in Sasuke’s body and keep him in the Leaf by force.

Both Naruto and Sakura are children who have a deeply oversimplified understanding of Sasuke’s situation.  They both still think they can fix him themselves.  They both think they can save him themselves.  They both think they can convince (or force) him to do what they want, what they think is in his best interests.  Both of them don’t yet understand that he has to want to come back, if it’s ever going to mean anything.  Their attempts to keep him in the village are immature and unrealistic, yes.  What they aren’t, however, is selfish, because neither Sakura nor Naruto are doing any of this with the intention of advancing their own interests.  They’re only thinking about Sasuke - how to keep Sasuke safe, how to make Sasuke happy - even when neither of them are taking an approach that will actually work.

Naruto and Sakura are children.  They’re afraid of losing somebody they care about.  Their attempts to prevent that from happening are desperate and messy and ultimately ineffective, but they are also genuinely felt and rooted in a true desire to rescue Sasuke from his pain, which - and this is the single most important thing that should impact our viewing of Part 1 - is something that Sasuke RECOGNIZES.  He doesn’t spend that agonizingly long moment bowed over Naruto’s defeated body so we can pretend he doesn’t understand that Naruto was just trying to help him.  He doesn’t take the time to murmur, “Sakura…thank you,” before laying her out carefully on a bench, just so we can discount it and pretend that he doesn’t recognize and appreciate her genuine intention to make things better for him, however clumsy that attempt might have been.

2. the greater good

If Stage 1 Sakura is "the girl with the crush," then Stage 2 Sakura is a progression to “the girl who decides to put her feelings for Sasuke aside in order to protect innocent people, including (but certainly not limited to) Naruto.”  She’s driven to this decision by interactions with Shikamaru, who all too recently had to grow up fast himself (“We're not kids anymore...we can't allow a war to break out between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Cloud because of Sasuke") and Sai, who risks his new friendship with Sakura and Team 7 in order to speak some hard truths and deliver one of my favorite lines in the whole story: “I don’t know what promise Naruto made to you, but it’s really no different than what was done to me.  It’s like a curse mark.”

(INCREDIBLE.  How can anybody be complaining about a season where Sai gets to say something that goes THIS HARD and Sakura LISTENS and takes DRAMATIC ACTION that actually propels the story forward in a meaningful way - )

[Okay, yeah, brief personal opinion interlude - it is just bonkers wild to me that there are people who complain about Sakura in the Five Kage Summit arc. That entire season is the greatest character arc she ever has.  Literally she has never been more interesting and dynamic than in Season 10; it’s the first time she ever gets to be as deep and fascinating as the boys; what is everybody so worked up about?  Oh, “she lied to Naruto that one time” - Sasuke joined infant-kidnapping baby-murdering human experimentation machine Orochimaru when he was twelve years old in order to (dare I say it????) selfishly pursue his personal goals and yet, somehow, we are still able to root for him.  He abandoned his friends/allies to imprisonment and death (Suigetsu and Jūgo) or outright stabbed them in the chest himself (Karin) in order to (SELFISHLY) get what he wanted, and yet, somehow, we are still able to love him, understand him, and be on his side.  Naruto is canonically not upset with Sakura about her lie after receiving context for the situation and I think we can probably take our cues from him without feeling the need to bring her up on war crimes; please calm down]

[Sorry, I just really love most of Season 10 and think it’s one of the best examples of how good this story can be when every single character gets to do something that matters (as opposed to things being all Naruto, all the time) so I get a little bit worked up over people complaining about some of the best writing Sakura ever gets.  I don’t understand what certain elements of fandom want from her. People complain about her being “useless” and not doing anything that contributes to the story, but then they complain just as much when she does finally get to act decisively and have just as complex/dynamic an inner world as the boys.  She’s “weak” for being unreasonably in love with Sasuke, but when she tries to be “strong” and put her love for him aside and eliminate him in order to protect Naruto and the rest of the world, she’s evil, because she should have been more understanding of his situation (despite the fact that she doesn’t KNOW anything about his situation).  But then when she can’t go through with killing him after all because she cares about him too much despite the things he’s done, she’s not "compassionate" or "kind" or "a good friend," she’s “weak” again. Nothing Sakura does in S10 is more wrongheaded or rash than any of the batshit, buckwild things Naruto and Sasuke have done in the past (and will continue to do in the future), but when Naruto and Sasuke have big feelings or take bold action, it makes them interesting characters, whereas Sakura can’t breathe in anyone’s direction without being minutely scrutinized for moral impurities.]  

Anyway. Back to a more measured response.  

Every single piece of development Sakura has with regard to Sasuke in this season satisfies me so much.  Her initial shock and disbelief at hearing that Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki?  Good, appropriate.  The fact that she starts to acknowledge the reality of what Sasuke’s done sooner than Naruto does?  Also extremely appropriate, very in-character for both of them.  Her taking Sai’s words to heart and deciding that the promise she asked Naruto to make when they were children is causing him to suffer and she has to relieve him of that burden?  Juicy!  AND thematically significant (promises!!!!  the burden that a promise places on a person, especially when it can't be kept - we've seen that before in this story and we'll see it again).  Her anguished pivot from wanting to protect Sasuke to realizing that she has a responsibility to protect the countless innocents who will die because of the war he’s trying to start?  HELLO THIS IS INCREDIBLE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.  Her knocking out the classmates who agreed to help her so they don’t have to share in her burden (and so the only person Naruto will hate when it’s over is her)?  BRUH.  Her being so committed and focused on her goal of saving innocents and protecting Naruto (not just from being harmed by Sasuke/the Akatsuki, but by the possibility that Naruto will someday have to hurt Sasuke himself) that she tries to take everything on by herself and walks into a confrontation that she absolutely cannot win??  INCREDIBLE.  (Literally the first time I watched this, I said, “Finally!!!  It’s Sakura’s turn to go off the rails!”  I laughed with my sister about how Kakashi isn’t even mad, because Naruto and Sasuke have been pulling stunts like this for years and Sakura was way overdue for her own meltdown.)  And then, after Kakashi intervenes in the fight - Sakura barreling back into the battle when she realizes he’s going to take on the burden of killing Sasuke himself in order to spare her and Naruto the horror - “I can’t let Kakashi-sensei bear this burden!”  I love her for that.  

And then, of course, in the end - her not being able to do hurt Sasuke after all.  Despite committing herself to the act, despite forcing herself to put her feelings for him aside, despite resolving to stop him from starting a war and killing innocent people, she can’t harm him.  She cares about him too much.  This, too, is thematically significant - think about Itachi’s “you don’t have enough hatred” - she doesn’t have enough hatred to kill someone she cares about, even if it seems like he deserves it, even if would be the right thing to do to protect others.  She can’t do it, and Sasuke almost kills her for her compassion.  

I love the dynamic this sets up between her and Sasuke, for a few reasons:

1) Personally, I think Sasuke respects Sakura much more for trying to kill him than he would have if she’d just tried to talk him out of his behavior or beg him to come home (a la their original confrontation in Part 1).  This is the first significant interaction he’s had with Sakura in years, and the fact that she does something SO contrary to his memory of her is an important demonstration of the fact that she’s not the same girl she used to be.  Sasuke spends a lot of time after his defection declaring to his old team “I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore,” but this is one of the moments where he’s forced to acknowledge that his teammates have changed, too.  Time didn’t just stop for them when he left.  While he was turning into someone new, so were they.  They grew up without him, and his old memories of them can’t encompass the whole picture of who they are now.  

(This is a little tangential, but in general, I love the spectrum of reactions that Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi have in this sequence, and the way that all of them are ultimately messages Sasuke needs to hear.  Sasuke - who we know textually regrets what he did here, who apologizes to Sakura for it later - for “everything,” in fact - needs Naruto’s aggressively optimistic open-arms policy, yes, needs that potential, that unconditional possibility of return.  He also needs Sakura’s refusal to let him hurt her friends and start a war that will kill thousands of people, needs her surprisingly ruthless attempt to take him down; needs just as much her failure to do so, because it shows him that she still loves him too much to kill him even as she condemns him.  And he needs Kakashi’s grim line in the sand, needs someone who very possibly won't hesitate like Sakura (despite the horrifying personal cost), someone who will try to reach him but also won't let him escape and become the next generation’s Orochimaru, who won't let him cause untold suffering to untold numbers of people just because a teacher loved him too much to stop him when he had the chance. 

(And then even Kakashi chooses not to deliver a killing blow when he has the opportunity -)

(I know that in fandom people are more likely to be all, “oh, Naruto Good, everybody else Bad,” but I don’t think the narrative frames Sakura or Kakashi as “worse” than Naruto in any way.  The story goes out of its way to make it clear how desperately they don’t want to hurt Sasuke and how much they care about him.  And [this is just my interpretation, so obviously I won’t claim it as fact], I personally think that Sasuke - Sasuke, who, looking back, can see how lost he was then and how tortured he would have been if he’d gone through with many of his plans - would be grateful to Sakura and Kakashi for making an attempt to stop him when he couldn’t stop himself.)

2) On the other side of this, the fact that Sakura wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow means a lot. Sasuke was incapacitated under that bridge; he was completely at her mercy - but she stopped with the kunai an inch from his back.  She couldn’t kill him, even though she knew that he was completely willing to kill her (because he'd attempted to Chidori-assassinate her from behind just a few minutes ago).  That’s huge!  Sasuke is too out of his head right now to process this or understand it, but later, it's going to matter.  She stayed her hand.  She spared his life.  She loved him too much to hurt him, even when he’d given her every reason to take him down.  She hesitated, and he almost killed her for it, but her inability to strike him ultimately gave him yet another chance to come home, another chance to get better, another chance to have a life outside of his pain.  Despite everything, some part of her still hadn’t really given up on him, and that knowledge will matter later, when he’s finally able to acknowledge it.  

The point of all this is to say that I really have no complaints about Sakura and Sasuke’s dynamic in their S10 confrontation.  This season is the point where Sakura fully grows past her “girl with a crush” stage and into her “shinobi must make very harsh decisions” adulthood, but it never means that she doesn’t care about the person she’s trying to take down.  Her ultimate inability to deliver the killing blow remains a dangling lifeline for her relationship with Sasuke, an open door that Sasuke is able to walk through at the end of the story (literally, in fact, when Sakura opens that portal for him and saves him from Kaguya’s desert prison, and figuratively, too, when Sasuke apologizes to her).

3. she only wants to save you

The last stage in their relationship is what Sakura settles into during the war arc.  She started off Part 1 being just a girl with a crush, then tried to harden her heart and put her feelings for Sasuke aside in service of the greater good, but she was unable to actually follow through and kill him, and because of that, what she’s come to accept by the war arc is actually two things: that 1) Sasuke truly is willing to let her die if it furthers his goals, and 2) she wants to save him anyway.  

She has no intention of pursuing Sasuke romantically.  She knows full well that Sasuke isn’t interested in her.  She even knows that Sasuke isn’t really on their side (there’s a great scene where Sai questions Sakura about Sasuke’s return, and she reassures him that everything is fine, and Sai sadly thinks to himself “even I can tell your smile is fake”).  She’s well-aware that Sasuke didn’t try to help her when Madara stabbed her.  She’s well-aware that he left her to die in the lava pit.  She’s also well-aware that none of this is enough to make her stop loving him.  He doesn’t have to care about her - she still cares about him.  She still wants to help him.  She still wants to save him.

This is not hidden, hard-to-parse character development.  It’s explicitly articulated on the page:

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

I’m not sure if people look at this last confrontation and unquestioningly take Sasuke at his word (as if we haven’t just read 71 volumes/watched 700 episodes showing us how how painfully distorted his thinking is), or if they stop reading/watching before the end of the scene, or if they don’t understand that Sasuke saying something doesn’t make that statement an accurate representation of reality.  The entire point of this scene is to show us how deeply mistaken Sasuke is about Sakura (and, by extension, the rest of Team 7).  He’s locked into a false pattern of thinking.  His single-minded focus on revenge and destruction has blinded him to the unconditional love his friends feel for him; he’s become so accustomed to using others and being used that he can’t understand or accept that someone would care about him without needing a reason, without needing him to love them back, without needing to receive something from him in exchange.

Sakura’s not trying or wanting to make you hers!  She only wants to save you.

Sasuke matters to Sakura as more than a love interest.  He always has.  She does love him romantically, yes, but she doesn’t only love him romantically, and her desire to help him is not and has never been contingent on him returning her feelings, romantically or otherwise.  Sasuke isn’t able to acknowledge that in this scene, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to just sit back and agree with his warped perspective.  Kakashi is the one who’s explicitly positioned as the voice of the narrative here.  We, as the audience, are supposed to recognize that Kakashi is the one telling us the truth.

[tangential thing 1: You don’t have to love Sakura's last plea to Sasuke here. It’s not my favorite, either - the best part, other than Kakashi’s speech at the end, is the moment after Kakashi collapses when Sakura’s expression changes from pained uncertainty to pure rage, when she grits her teeth together - when I first saw that, I almost leapt out of my seat like “Oh my god.  She’s finally going to let him have it.  It’s finally happening - ”  I wanted that so badly, and I still think it would have been a more effective writing choice for Sakura’s last words to lean more into her anger at the suffering Sasuke is causing all of them (himself included!) and less into yet another of Kishimoto’s “let me have Sakura articulate what a shame it is that she can’t do as much as Naruto despite the fact that I literally just went through a major reveal sequence in the war to show that she’s caught up to the boys; I can’t make up my mind about whether I want her to progress or not” - it’s extremely frustrating (and it's something he does at the very end of the S10 Team 7 reunion, too, which is the ONLY moment of S10 that falls flat for me).  But at the same time, even if there are ways this sequence could be more satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that her plea to him is not remotely motivated by a desire to be with him romantically and not anything to condemn her for.]

[tangential thing 2: I do like how she remembers that moment when Sasuke says “Thank you.”  That panel precedes her saying “If there’s even a tiny corner of your heart that thinks about me…” (which I’m sure is one of the things that people like to criticize about this scene, aka “oh she’s sooooo self-centered” etc), but that particular line of dialogue is preceded by that particular flashback panel for a reason: Sakura knows that Sasuke DOES think about her.  He thinks about all of them.  Sakura remembers that “thank you,” and it reminds her that despite everything Sasuke has done and said since, despite all evidence to the contrary, she knows in her bones that his expression of gratitude back then was genuine.  He cared about her once.  He cared about all of them.  She’s trying to reach the part of him that still does, if it exists.]

[tangential thing 3: The fact that Kakashi says “she suffers from loving you,” and it triggers Sasuke to remember his own family - thinking about how much he suffered (and still suffers) from loving them - “Perhaps…those are the ties to a failed past” - the idea that it’s not worth it to have bonds if it means you suffer this much…that it’s too difficult, it’s too painful, and if Sakura and the rest of Team 7 were smarter they would just give it up (all Sasuke knows how to do now is sever potential bonds before they can hurt him; so why aren’t Sakura and the rest of his teammates doing that, why can’t they let it go, why are they making this so hard - ) << yeah, he clearly doesn't care about her/them at all.]

4. the shadow of my family

This has all been a really long way to answer the original question, but the short response to “What do you think about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura?” is “I really care about it,” just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, just like I really care about the relationship between Sasuke and Kakashi. And I don’t think the story ever asks me to choose between them.

I’m not sure whether it’s the impact of Boruto-era “canon” that gets in the way of other people approaching things this way (I don’t consider sequel material when I evaluate the original story), or if it’s Kishimoto’s frequent disinterest in/disrespect towards female characters, which yes, does sometimes make it harder, or if it's a shipping thing (bane of my existence), or some combination of factors, but for me, taking one member of Team 7 out of the equation hobbles the rest of the story.  I can’t read/watch Naruto while hating one of the protagonists and loving the other three.  It doesn’t work like that for me.  The story wasn’t written that way, and there’s nothing in the text that would cause me to receive it that way.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with disliking one of the main foursome (or any character, for that matter) - obviously we're all going to have different preferences, and everyone is free to enjoy or reject whatever parts of a story they want, or to like or dislike whatever characters they want. I know that some people have more fun disregarding canon and doing their own thing, which is fine.  My own personal zone of enjoyment comes from receiving the story as closely to how I think it was intended to be read as I can, and personally, when I look at this particular story, what I see is that all the members of Team 7 clearly demonstrate their love for Sasuke in ways that he himself later recognizes and acknowledges. All of them are driven by their desire to save him and their unwillingness to hurt him. All of them make repeated choices to chase after him when he runs away, to trust him when he hasn't exactly earned it, to give him another chance when he doesn't appear to deserve it. ALL of them, not just Naruto, do these things multiple times throughout the story, and Sasuke owes his life (and thus his eventual recovery) to ALL of them, many times over. Kakashi disobeys Hokage-elect Danzō and breaks the law to negotiate for Sasuke's life with a foreign head of state. Sakura and Kakashi both have opportunities to kill Sasuke in the Land of Iron, and they choose to spare him instead. Kakashi stops Sasuke from killing his only friends at two different points in the story, which would have been a mistake Sasuke couldn't have recovered from. Sasuke would have died in Kaguya's desert dimension if Sakura hadn't saved him (Sakura, who knew that Sasuke wasn't even truly on her side yet, who knew he'd abandoned her for dead multiple times already that day). Kaguya's bone bullet would have killed Sasuke too, if Kakashi, with his intention to die in Sasuke's place, hadn't leapt in front of it (Kakashi, who also knew that Sasuke wasn't fully on their side yet, who also knew that Sasuke had abandoned him for dead earlier that day). Sasuke and Naruto would have BOTH died in the Final Valley if Sakura and a severely injured Kakashi hadn't chased after them to heal their injuries.

Remove any one member of Team 7, and Sasuke never makes it home. Without the combined efforts of all three of his teammates, he doesn't survive.  That’s the way it should be, thematically, for a story whose first and most foundational premise was the importance of teamwork, and since Sakura was just as essential to that framework as everyone else, I’m just as invested in her relationship with Sasuke as I am in his relationship with everyone else.  You can’t remove one leg from a four-legged stool without damaging the integrity of the entire structure, and for me, discounting any single member of Team 7 irreparably damages the integrity of the entire story. 

TL;DR: I love all of the Team 7 relationships, including Sakura and Sasuke's, because despite what some segments of fandom seem to believe, the text of the story never gives me any reason not to.

[snowblack-charcoalwhite]

Hi, dropping in on your inbox again because Tumblr started complaining about the lenght of my comment. (Foreign language takes many words!)

Once again, ignoring the glaring favoritism (which imho hurts both tb&tg, only in different ways), it's the wasted potential of what we could have had that's so frustrating with hotd.

What makes the whole naming thing so infuriating is that when done well, the way characters use each others's names adds so much nuance to story telling and is easily one of my favorite things in stories and when writing. You can tell so much about the relationship and feelings between two people from how they address each other. Similarly, when done poorly (like so many things in s2) it becomes yet another one of those small details that keep adding up and making this season such a painful mess to watch, because it either makes the characters look bad due to incompetence (for example: Alicent isn't suppose to look like she doesn't care about the death of her grandson but ends up looking uncaring due to poor writing choices) or, if purposeful (Alicent is made to look bad to the audience via writing choices that heavily make it seem like she doesn't care about the death of her grandson), due to pure malice.

Small side-tandrum, but it would have been so interesting to hear some variations on how, say, Aegon calls Jaehaerys when it's just him and Hel and the kids (and the servants in Hel's room, but to royalty they are pretty much just part of the furniture) because I will forever headcanon that Aegon has some dumb (affectionate) nicknames to all of his family members, and how Aegon addresses him during the council meetings. We got a glimpse of that from the way Aegon kept inforcing the fact that Jaehaerys is his heir and just that small detail added so much to his character because it shows the open wound of Vizzy's neglect. Aegon is hellbent on making sure his own son feels wanted and loved - the things he never got to feel. This is the level of character depth something seemingly so small as a name or the way a character calls another can add and it's these glimpses of something really good that makes this show so infuriating. If it was just plainly bad I wouldn't be clawing my eyes off out of frustration when watching it. But there are these small moments of greatness that show what the story had the potential for. They're just muddied by all the not-great-stuff. :/

Getting back to the story not allowing Jaehaerys & Jaehaera to have names and therefore being distanced from the audience on purpose. My kindest, most generous interpretation* on what the writers maybe were trying to do with Helaena & Alicent is that both of these women are trying to dissociate from the trauma of Jaehaerys's death(would work so much better with Alicent had they gone the book route but no, of course we could not have that 🙄). But that only really works when you've given the audience enough many times beforehand where they do use the child's name. Only then will the audience feel the impact of them suddenly being unable to utter the name, only referring to Jaehaerys as 'boy'. Because the memory of what happened to him and the knowledge that he is no more, is too painful. This is a real thing that people do, it's a coping mechanism, but the story failed to communicate this properly. It didn't give Jaehaerys's death the time and the weight that it should have had and that in addition to there being barely any time with helaegon family together before B&C, robs his death the impact, both political and emotional, that it should have had. The way it's done now just adds to the feeling that no-one apart from Aegon & Hel cares about their son ;_; and definitely does make it feel, like you said, that the writers just wanted us to forget the brutal child murder that no-one in universe seems to remember in a few weeks anyways (honestly, time has no concept in this season).

And as for Jaehaera, I just want to cry, she's such an important part of the Dance, especially towards the end, and they're giving her nothing, not even a name! There are so many ways they could have added to her character, even without having the very young child actor on screen. Maybe show her having some similar collection to Helaena's when Aegon comes to look for Jaehaerys. Make Jaehaera collect, I don't know, pretty rocks or feathers or something equally cool and creepy to her mom, maybe instead of bugs it's skulls or something. It doesn't matter what it is, but with that small visual cue they then could have build on that. Have Aegon slip her something new for her collection when he comes in and later have him pass something to a servant when coming in and saying it's for Jaehaera. They could have shown both tg characters caring for her and what her name is with such easy ways. This is elementary levels of story telling, ideas I would have pounced around with any author who'd come to me with their 1st or 2nd draft. Not in a you must do this but in a consider adding something like this to communicate these vital things about the character. Such simple, easy fixes, but instead now we're heading to s3 with most general audience probably not knowing who Jaehaera is. ;_;

*(still looking at this through my prof. editor brain because this was such a glaringly 1st draftiest 1st draft I've ever seen, only they went and filmed that)

Hi, hope you are having a good day! You are always welcome in my askbox whether with a question or with a wonderful bouquet of your thoughts😊

Well, you have basically said it all! Whether it is the matter of ineptitude or malicious intent (or both), season 2 has ruined many characters and just as many potentially wonderful relationship bonds. And the consequences of poor writing choices (making the story about Rhaenyra and Alicent, blatantly favouring Black characters while neglecting the Greens and so on) are only exacerbated by the script feeling (truly) like it's a draft and not something to be acted out and filmed for an expensive hit TV series (WGA strike or not, we have what we have).

And I agree with you SO hard: one of the worst things about all this is knowing that many ingredients for the recipe of greatness were there - and that all the hard work, love and dedication put into HotD by the cast and crew have somehow been tarnished and diminished by the incompetence and lack of professionalism from the showrunners.

We really need to do something about it: something like getting Condal, Hess and their gang the hell out of the writing room and putting some of the people from the fandom there (including you! I love your thoughts on the details you would have added to the script so much!).

[top-wing]

Could you ramble to us about topwing?

Actually, me in 2021-2022 maybe would've done a better job at this 😔👍 But I'll gladly do so anyway!

I haven't actually watched a full episode for a while now, so I probably have forgotten a lot. I'm not sure what to talk first, the characters? the plot? the concepts that make no sense if you think about too deeply, but otherwise compels me? Idk where to start !!

Characters. What really brought me into the show was how fun the characters interacted. The cadets all just have a really fun dynamic among each other, and I liked how the instructors acted mature enough as adults while still having that 'downplayed to focus on the kid characters' thing going on. For characters in a 'mid' average preschooler show, I think their characters are pretty fleshed out in their own right. Their personalities just bounce off each other well. I wrote something about the cadets' friendships some time ago on Wattpad, tho maybe I should try moving some those contents on this blog as well.

Lore (?). For the show's plot or I guess lore (?), there's a lot that could be fixed and changed (which some people in the Top Wing community agree and have taken matters into their own hands hehe), tho the show presents you with just enough interesting things, while keeping a lot of things unanswered and vague, so that it can keep being expanded on and explored. And I think that mostly what got me to stay interested in Top Wing even after years of ending abruptly with only 2 seasons. I'm slowly trying to get back to doing stuff based on canon, however I'm really just having fun creating something within the Top WIng universe as well lol.

Expanding the story and possibilities. And even if you don't add new things, there is actually a lot to work with the canon if you're eager to explore possibilities and willing to dig deeper into the shallow water that is the show lol. You've got the academy itself, which presents more interesting background to it in season 2. There's other academies, other cadets, Speedy and Bea's history of being cadets themselves, Inspector Eagle Eye and the whole concept of inspectors, Swift's grandpa who used to be an instructor & famous pilot in Big Swirl, etc. The antagonists characters and their whole deal, whom are quite full of their own charm but never really used to their full potential. Then there's Big Swirl Island, filled with mysteries of its own lore, mainly got to do with pirates and probably dodos. Example: the pirate ship wrecks, lost treasures, the whole thing about Kersplash Canyon and Dodos (tho honestly, this one is kinda "ehh" to me. if to complain about how this show handles some things, we'll be here all day), and the rest of the parts of Big Swirl Island that were not shown on-screen. There's so many headcanons and theories or AUs to play around with.

Well, that's all I have in my brain for now. There are more stuff I've written on Wattpad if you want to check them out, though it's understandable if you don't want to go there just for that LMAO. Most times I assume people here are also on Wattpad and have seen my stuff, but if there's enough interest to move content from there, I might consider it in the future!

Anyway, thanks for sending this in, anon!!!! Had fun writing this :] There's a lot of stuff going on for me to do more organized stuff with Top Wing, but I hope to continue just having fun with the series and the community for years to come 🩷❤️🧡💚

[muthaz-rapapa]

Hirogaru Sky Impressions (3/5)

Alright~

So we're more than halfway there. Excited for leaks season yet?

Show is still going good despite the last 10 episodes being mostly filler. I don't have anything to really complain about since as far as fillers go, the quality of HiroPre's is definitely better than those of previous seasons.

But me being me, of course there is going to be some form of criticism so let's gogogo~ and get that over with.

Again, the fillers are quite enjoyable but ever since the recovery of Captain Shalala, doesn't it feel like we've gone too long without any plot-related episodes?

Thankfully, it seems they're getting back to that with ep 31 next week. But even so, the lack of clues or hints about the Undergu Empire and the reason for its antagonism dragged the show's momentum slightly. So it felt longer to get through these 10 weeks.

"Filler doldrums" as I'd like to call it because tuning into Precure weekly became more of chore than something to look forward to.

But it wasn't that bad so let's hope the next 10 episodes will be more balanced.

Moving on.

I spoke too soon on not having to worry about the handling of Mashiro's character arc anymore. Why am I surprised, though? Whenever I let my guard down, my expectations are always betrayed. Oiy.

But honestly, they got me all hoping and excited since they actually gave her potential content to work with. Like her taking an interest in creating picture books. Or even her cooking skills or passion for makeup. Or her long distance relationship with her parents. That's quite a bunch of material to expand on for her.

Instead, she's been regulated to the passenger seat again to let Sora drive.

On one hand, I understand and can accept that Sora would receive more focus since the she is the main character of the overall story. Her coming from another world and therefore being a fish out of water bird out of Skyland when it comes to most things Earth-related...along with being someone who's never had friends before due to spending most of her time training are all prime real estate for development.

However, you can't deny that there is a blatant amount of lead favoritism.

It's not as bad as previous seasons since the writing for HiroPre is a lot better. But when the rest of the cast individually gets one episode of spotlight for every five or so the lead gets, it can be tiresome or even suffocating to sit through.

...on another note, my theory about Captain Shalala possibly being a double agent for the Undergu Empire turned out to be wrong after all. But I think having the enemy take Shalala hostage was the more suitable direction to go for breaking Sora down in order to let her renew and restrengthen her resolve as a hero. The loss of respect for your idol can be a really difficult thing to bear and that might be too harsh a topic for Precure's target audience. It achieved similar effects to the Broken Pedestal trope anyway so no complaints there.

Anyways, we may have broken the Pink trend this year but I'm not optimistic it will stay that way as long as there's always one primary lead in each group. Frankly, I think we're going straight back to special Pink treatment for another 4 years before 25th anniversary but that's a thing to worry about later.

As for Tsubasa and Ageha, I was more satisfied with their focus eps. Mostly.

Tsubasa's always teaches you something new. I really liked the one about branching out your dream, which is something we all need to hear should we ever reach our goal or get stuck on what to do next. And Ageha's most recent one with her older sisters and her parents' divorce when she was younger provided more depth into how she became the person she is today.

But I wasn't pleased when the Peach airline promotion ep that should've been about Mashiro spending time with her parents went to Tsubasa instead. I mean, Tsubasa showing off his airplane knowledge is always amazing but...ngh, they really don't care for Mashiro, do they?

Another thing. I became a little concerned about the portrayal of Ageha. She is shown to be consistently confident and composed in most things she does...but most 18-year olds aren't like that. So I worried for a bit if that might've sent an unintentional message that "you should be as competent as Ageha when you reach adult age" which is like ehhhh......not true.

Though it's only a flaw you notice if you're incredibly scrutinizing like I am. And given Ageha's personality, there's nothing wrong with presenting her as such cuz she wouldn't be Ageha without those traits. But definitely think of her more as a role model instead of one to emulate, that's all.

Right so, next week...is not the debut of Cure Majesty.

YET.

But very soon. Maybe even the week after? September titles haven't been released yet (as of checking right now) but with only...wow, 18 more episodes to go, they better make the best of it.

I don't think Ellee-chan suddenly getting older will become too much of an issue with pacing...as long as they don't put her in school if she still largely retains the mind of a toddler.

Or maybe she'll only grow older when transforming into Precure and return to being a baby during off-hours? That'd be interesting...it wouldn't be as fun as seeing her more grown up, yea, but it'd be unexpected, at least.

Whatever. Just give me more lore and I'll be good.

Finally (haha), let's talk about the future of Precure for a bit.

This season is obviously not going to be the last of 'em. If it was, they wouldn't try to scare you with it in an All Stars movie preview of all things. They'd likely do it the boring way by just announcing it in the news. :P

Anyways, we can definitely expect the franchise to continue for another 5 years. 25th anniversary is something Toei absolutely has to aim for because it will be a double milestone.

Quarter of a century run for the Precure franchise.

And (if my projected calculations are correct), if we keep to teams of 4-5 every year up until till 2028, we will hit over 100 Precure total.

Pretty exciting, yes?

With mixed-gender teams no longer being just a dream (look, Cure Wing even made the news! WAAAAHHH!!! xD) and upcoming projects like the Otona Precure series and the all-male Precure stage play in the works, it's definitely a confirmation that this franchise has no intention of ending any time soon.

If you want more consumers of your product, you need to accommodate for a variety of people and all sorts of new and different ideas, aspects and tastes.

Formula they probably won't budge on too much (not for the main tv series anyway) but there always will be other rooms to explore, y'know?

Ok~ So Precure won't be ending but summer is~

Hope everyone enjoyed it in spite of the heat and best of luck in school or whatever your future endeavors are!

See you in another 10 eps! (^ _ ^)/"

[96percentdone]

Lately I've started thinking that Furue Jin is so absent from Nirvana Initiative on purpose. Hear me out. Here's a list of things we learn about Jin complete with how we learn it:

He is a CEO of a japan only not-spotify, a businessman and author. Boss and several other characters tell this to us. Riichi mentions that although they're both rich businessmen and he's heard of him, they have not met.

He runs a twitter account! Everyone has a different opinion about this twitter account, from Kagami thinking he's "a brilliant genius who isn't afraid of cutting through bullshit," to Amame thinking he "a pretentious jerk who constantly complains online to draw attention to himself". We never see his twitter account or any of the tweets. He circulates that picture of "himself" online, but we don't see the evidence of that either. It's just told to us.

He spent his whole childhood and teenage years in the hospital, and even went to school there because he was ill. We learn this from Shouma who also remarks how lonely he must have been.

The nurse says that "Jin-chan" was extremely meek and timid, and couldn't even use the restroom alone. She also says he was very meticulous and tidy.

Horadori Chikara called Jin "the almighty" because of a birthmark on his face that resembles a % sign, which is an important cult symbol. To him, Jin is a vehicle for perfection/god. We learn this from Shigure.

At one point, Shigure Tokiko loved him because he was her son and did not want to give him up. She then stopped caring about him or anyone after a suicide attempt when the guilt from kidnapping a child got too real.

Uru accuses Jin of constantly mocking him in the same paragraph he mentions Jin has apologized one million times before in his murder diary. Uru also patently does not understand at all why "Mom" "loves" Jin. Mizuki concludes Jin was not a bad guy at the end of the game and that he meant that apology. We do not see this event in a flashback or have a record of Jin's thoughts before he went down there.

There's a trend here. None of this is first hand. Now, you might think "well he's dead first thing so we can't get too much from him himself" but that's weaksauce look. Renju was dead first thing and we had several flashbacks with him IN it, and this game makes great use of reading journals and diaries. There's no reason they can't have shown us something he wrote, his tweets, his social media, his writing, his thoughts in the hospital—anything! This is deliberate.

It's all other people's recollection and opinions; he's a mirror to project on. With a game about duality, they've made a lot of use of the mirror motif, so here's a guy who exists only in reflections had by other people. In universe, he has half of Uru's body, but in the narrative he has NOTHING of his own. Whatever you make of him is entirely determined by the filters of other characters and then yourself.

I think this is a bold choice, and certainly interesting, but I still can't say I think it's a good one. He's the very first victim and too wrapped up in Uru's trauma to be so missing from the text. The duality motif would be better explored by having him appear to be one way and then revealed another way without all the layers and layers and layers of guesswork and interpretation because of subjective opinions WITHIN THE TEXT by having him also be a mirror guy. It's getting in its own way, and it makes his death have like no emotional impact, which is weird. He's the FIRST VICTIM. I SHOULD CARE MORE THAT HE DIED. It's not really great if at the end of the mystery most players are asking "hey so who even really. Was the dead guy anyway." And there's more interesting story potential in allowing him to BE then in obfuscating him.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Ngl my best friend and I are doing a kind of rewrite of totk for fun and like. We had a more nuanced story in around thirty minutes, and I kind of want to work on it more. Here's the thing though, it's so easy to write this as a good story because it has so much potential, and it's like you said!! Taken at face value it's so boring!! I'm genuinely so frustrated with this!!

I know, right? Something I've noticed is that like literally anytime I mention the story being kinda shit, it takes like maybe a minute for people to look at the existing setup and think of something more interesting. Like, I briefly complained about the boring writing in a youtube comment, and I've seen three different people reply to that with more compelling takes on the story using very minor fixes. There's just so many bad decisions in the writing, I have no idea how the fuck Nintendo thought this was acceptable.

I mean goddamn, even putting aside all of the Everything with the imperialism in the memories, the memories existing at all is a horrible decision! They seriously made a role playing game where 95% of the story occurs in the past, where the only involvement the player has is our character being namedropped a few times. It worked in BOTW, because Link was there the whole fucking time, and also the memories WEREN'T the story - that was everything leading up to the actual plot kicking off! If a player just totally ignored the memories, the only real consequence was that you didn't really get to know Zelda! If you ignore the memories in TOTK, you are missing the entire fucking plot.

It's such an easy fix too, I mean ffs if the ancient past is where everything interesting is going to happen, just send Link and Zelda back in time together. Link can actually interact with the story and characters, he can develop his own beef with Ganondorf instead of them literally having nothing to do with each other beyond other people saying they should fight, and it'd fix the gaping plot hole of literally all the Sheikah tech being gone - none of it's been built yet. The story could take Link through working with the Sages, finding a way to heal the decayed Master Sword - fuck, he could even wield the ancient Master Sword in its place while he's in the past! They fight Ganon, seal him away, then for the grand finale Link and Zelda return to the modern day Hyrule shortly after they left, and discover it's basically an apocalypse kicking off, because why would Ganon bother to just wait for his enemies to get ready to stop him, he can just go apeshit the second he's free of the seal. This works in story, but also excuses the finale having some railroading - the chaos of the apocalypse stops Link from going off track, ensuring the devs don't need to put in the entire BOTW map just for that one finale sequence. Link retrieves the formerly decayed Master Sword from wherever he left it to heal for the last ten thousand years, and then him and Zelda go fuck up Ganon together, for real this time. Bam, problem solved. Link's in the actual plot, Zelda gets to actually exist for more of the story than just the ending cutscene, there's a reason for the map being completely different, and the Sheikah tech isn't just retconned into non-existence. Fuck, they could explain the runes being gone as just Zelda dropping the Sheikah Slate in the chaos before being yeeted into the past, or the slate being hit by Gloom and destroyed as well. Also, the expanded list of monsters and old monsters having different designs to include the new horns makes sense; they're ten thousand years in the past, of course things are different. Yeah it'd suck that we wouldn't really get to see the characters from BOTW, but... come on. They barely did anything with them anyways.

Alternatively, they could just do the story in the past with Zelda as the player character, if they're that hellbent on ensuring Link isn't allowed to do anything. It'd be a really cool twist! They wouldn't even need to change the gameplay that much, it's been years since the Calamity and Zelda's been travelling around with Link the whole time, it makes perfect sense that she would have learned how to fight over the years, and Link teaching her would give her a very similar fighting style.

It would have been so easy to give the game a more interesting story, it's just embarrassing that they fucked it up so badly.