#arthurs just a very complicated character to try and do meta on because of how much the writers contradicted themselves

[strandsofgold]

so, i guess i'm kind if in the minority of players who actually really liked guarma. like, don't get me wrong, i really disliked the limited area, but the scenery is beautiful and the missions, god the missions, are so damn good. they do so much for the characters and the themes and the story as a whole and they are honestly the missions i replay most frequently.

one of these days i'm going to write a meta along the lines of "hercule vs. dutch: honest revolution and grifts" but that's for another time. right now i want to talk about javier, his relationship with dutch, and the idea that he "should've stayed a good guy".

i've seen a quite frankly confusing amount of people say that javier "would've sided with arthur" if it wasn't for rdr, and that he "wouldn't have turned bad". and i have a few problems with this.

in every single camp, javier has a multitude of random encounters and conversations that divulge his past; a past filled with want for a better world, revolution, betrayal, heartache, and loss of family. and then he describes how dutch found him and brought him into the gang. how he gave him a new purpose, something to fight for.

the sense of loyalty javier has towards dutch is just as strong, if not stronger, than arthur's.

in chapter 3, javier is beginning to doubt dutch. he believes in him fiercely, but there are holes in his plans that he cannot help but question. when he asks dutch about it, dutch lashes out, telling javier in no uncertain terms that he not only needs javier but that he needs javier strong. and the way javier reacts really underlines how unsure javier is of everything and how much he relies on dutch and the image javier has on him. he hesitates, he stutters, clearly unused to dutch talking to him like that, but ultimately gives in, willing to follow dutch to the ends of the earth, because dutch saved him, gave him a new family, and has yet to lead him astray.

and then guarma happens. javier is shot and captured – he essentially sacrifices himself to ensure the others' safety.

dutch and arthur come to his rescue. they could have easily left him to rot, and it would have probably been easier considering how heavily guarded the place is, but they don't. dutch puts himself directly in the line of fire and takes the extra weight of a wounded javier on his back while holding guards back with the help of arthur.

dutch could have easily died trying to save javier, was willing to put himself in mortal danger for javier, and javier notices. of course he does.

twice now, dutch has saved javier's life and brought him to what will/has become his family. how can he not double down on his loyalty?

on top of this, as dutch unravels further and further in chapter 6, the one thing he constantly rambles on about is loyalty and doubt and how the people doubting him are the reason for their downfall. and javier, who at this point believes even more fervently in dutch than he did before, hears this and sees the way john and arthur have begun questioning dutch, a man who – as javier believes and points out to them – raised them and gave them a family and a purpose to their lives, and comes to the same conclusion as dutch: they're the ones who have betrayed them.

so yeah, the idea that javier would have sided with arthur if rdr didn't exist is just wrong, even if you exclusively look at rdr2.

i also want to dismiss the idea that javier "became bad" in chapter six or that r* butchered his character. they didn't. what javier does in the last chapter lines up with everything i've mentioned above, and it doesn't make him a bad guy. putting aside the dumb idea that any character in rdr2 can be described as bad or good, that all the characters aren't morally gray and complicated, javier, till the very end, fought for what he thought was right, what he belived was right.

javier explicitly says that he is willing to die for what he believes in, for freedom, and unlike dutch, whose ideals i believe have eroded and nearly been cast aside by the time the game starts, this is a constant for javier. i believe that javier fervently believed in the ideals and philosphy dutch used to believe in, as well as the family dutch invited him into.

this doesn't mean that he doesn't eventually become a traditional villain in a sense. honestly, it's like r* put a neat little bow on the entire thing, because javier seems to undergo the same changes between rdr2 and rdr as dutch had before and during rdr2: he becomes everything he was previously against, everything he swore to destroy. javier abandons his ideals, actively fighting against revolution in mexico, and works for a man who, in cutscenes, has women dragged away to be raped – a villain in every sense of the word.

in my opinion, rdr2 did the same thing for javier as it did for dutch – it humanised him, made him redeemable and sympathetic, ultimately making his reappearance in rdr and john's life all the more tragic and horrible.

[nextstopparis]

Hello again, funky little raccoon! I just have a quick question, do you think Arthur is more bad or good? (I know that’s probably a tough question because everyone has bad and good parts in them and it might be difficult to say which is bigger, sorry!) I know he’s done some things that he probably shouldn’t have, but then he also does some other things that are good and I don’t know??

Cause I’m having another little bout of love for him but then I’m like “ahh he’s not that good though! But maybe he can’t help it and it’s Uther’s bad parenting?” But I feel like although some of it was Uther’s bad parenting, he could’ve still changed?? And so now I’m really conflicted.

jsndksn omg hello!!!!

you're right lol this is a really hard question, but only because i could technically write you like. a 7 page essay on my opinion. now, i HATE to sound like one of Those people that try to turn things that really arent philosophical discussions into philosophical discussions but. i really think this heavily depends on what you personally define as a "good" person vs. a "bad" person. regarding arthur specifically, it also very extremely depends on your own interpretation of his character.

like. is someone good solely because of their actions to you, or does intent matter as well? which one is more important? what about if they repent for evil deeds theyve done? what if they want to but aren't given the chance? does that make them good or bad? does that even matter? all those fun questions.

ive personally always loved arthur because i believe he's fundamentally good. this is for a bunch of reasons (im not gonna go through them all) but one of them is because.... i think its obvious that..... whether properly executed or not.... the concept behind arthurs character was obviously a good person...? at least, to me it feels like thats what the writers were going for? someone with many flaws that is fundamentally good, just needs to be pushed to actually achieve his full potential of goodness? like going by the way they talk about him.... it just felt obvious that THATS what they were going for......

now, a lot of people have a problem with arthur because...as we all agree, i think.... they really did his character dirty for the sake of? comedy, prolonging the story, needless shock/tragedy, whatever. take your pick, lmfao. the way they portrayed arthur's fundamental goodness/difference to his father was through a mostly "tell" medium, rather than a "show" one, which rubs people the wrong way. i mean, you have all these people saying he's a great king, that camelots better now that hes king, etc etc, and yet time and again we see him regress his forward thinking every two episodes. we see him make promises that never turn into anything. whatever. and i get it. obviously that sits wrong with people. it sits wrong with ME. but that makes me hate the writing, not the character, because i personally see it as a fault with the writing. its not the characters fault the writers didnt take the "show dont tell" advice. there were a lot of storylines the writers just abandoned, it didn't seem out of the ordinary that arthurs promise to the druids would be yet another one, to me. they also completely abandoned the small detail that he was born of magic?? but also, you know. i understand that some people hate the character for it, and who am i to say anything about that.

so regarding your dilemma on like. how he's done pretty shit things. yeah, i totally get it. and unless he'd actually done something to repent for them, they shouldnt be ignored. but we're talking about a tv show that didnt really seem all that concerned about proper character development/actual redemption/whatever so. unfortunately, we didnt get that. what we did get, however, was arthur being willing to listen to criticism against him. we got arthur surrounding himself by very good people, who loved him and called him out. we got arthur wanting the best for his people. we got arthur ready to risk his life on every occasion just to save even one other person. we saw arthur explicitly express he wanted to bring peace. that he just wanted his people to have peace. we saw arthur want to repent. we saw arthur promise to keep his mind open about magic. we saw arthur be very concerned about justice, and not blindly convicting someone. we saw arthur want to be better.

again, its a lot of the "tell"ing thing and not much of the "show"ing thing, but... again... to me thats just the writing's fault. he sounded genuine, and im biased so i believe that the intent behind all the above was good/genuine. this makes him a good person, to me, with a lot of unresolved ..... er? everything?

i dont know if this answered your question at all, but i can only hope at this point jdnsjkncsk. at the end of the day, he's a fictional character, and its completely valid to just hate him sometimes and love him other times for literally any reason at all:) or you know. hate him all the time or love him all the time.

[vashak]

Different worlds: Eiji (1)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Originally posted on 24 July 2019 in Turkish here.

Previously, I wrote about Ash’s perspective on how he and Eiji live in different worlds. Now it’s Eiji’s turn... The story of Banana Fish gives us a couple of hints about Eiji’s life before he came to New York. But our main source for the ‘different world’ that Eiji’s living in is the side story Fly boy, in the sky which was written before Banana Fish began serialization.

Fly boy, in the sky tells the story of how Ibe-san and Eiji met. Eiji is introduced as a high school student living with his parents and little sister in his hometown Izumo. He’s no different from the Eiji we know, except for the hair. An obedient, good-natured, baby-faced boy. He opens his already huge eyes to see better because he’s near-sighted and refuses to wear glasses for fear that the other kids will make fun of him in school. Yes, he’s a perfectly normal teenager.

Eiji is a member of the school’s athletics club and competes in pole-vaulting. He’s got a rival from another school and although the two boys have been competing against each other since middle school, his rival has grown a lot taller recently which puts Eiji at a considerable disadvantage. Now he keeps coming second in competitions (The second character in Eiji’s name “二” means “two”).

At home, things are not so easy for Eiji either. His father was hospitalized a year ago due to liver disorders, so Eiji has been living with his mother, sister and grandmother ever since. The family is not doing great financially. But above all, the 17-year-old Eiji is away from his father when he needs a male role model around the most. And he can’t bear to see his mother flirting with other men.

But Eiji really loves pole-vaulting even if he doesn’t realize it. When his body is suspended midair for two seconds, his mind becomes free of all thought and an expression of pure bliss appears on his face. So much so that Eiji can’t recognize himself when Ibe-san shows him the photos he took of Eiji when he was ‘flying’.

Eiji: Is this... me?

Ibe-san: Of course, it is!

Eiji: So this is how I look? Wow... I didn't know that...

Ibe-san: Right? You look so good.

Then we find out in Banana Fish that Eiji badly injured his foot and, although the injury eventually healed, he could no longer pole-vault. And later when he lost his sports scholarship, he became more and more withdrawn. Ibe-san tries very hard to lift him out of this depressive episode and finally decides to take Eiji to the US with him, thinking that some change of scenery might be good for him.

So the now 19-year-old Eiji finds himself in New York as Ibe-san’s assistant and meets Ash.

First, Eiji pictures Ash quite differently because of how the police describe him. But when he actually meets him, what Eiji sees is a teenager just like himself. And Eiji chooses to believe what he sees, conquering his nervousness. While Ibe-san stutters trying to speak with the notorious gang leader, Eiji even makes a curt retort at Ash when the latter remarks that he looks like a child. Then he notices Ash’s gun and we get this awesome scene with many layers of meaning.

This scene might be the one that best describes how Eiji sees Ash. I wish we could get into Eiji’s head and hear his thoughts. I bet he noticed how empty Ash’s eyes looked. It is also in this scene that Ash gets to experience for the first time what it feels like when someone weaker than him approaches him without fear. Naturally, Ash isn’t used to being seen as a normal teenager rather than a fearsome street punk.

Then all hell breaks loose with Arthur’s gang storming the underground bar. In the chaos that follows, Eiji’s reactions and behavior give away how he slowly becomes attached to Ash. Just think about it: Eiji is in a foreign country and suddenly he finds himself in the midst of a gang battle. He is kidnapped and held hostage. He thinks he’s going to die for sure, but manages to escape wounded. On his way to find help, he faints from heavy blood loss and when he comes to in the hospital, the first thing he says is “I wish I could go right back.” Later on, when he finds out that Ash’s going to jail he pleads Max to protect him and says “I almost wish I could join him.”

Why is that? It’s because Ash endangering himself to save Eiji—a complete stranger—leaves a deep impression on him and he returns the favor when he gets the chance. I’m talking about Eiji pole-vaulting over that wall in the warehouse using a rusty pipe to get help. And when things get even more complicated, suggesting just how much danger Ash is in, Eiji can’t bring himself to leave him behind like that. It breaks his heart to see Ash determined to crack down the mystery of Banana Fish, knowing that he’ll probably end up dead in the end. So Eiji wants to help Ash however he can, although he knows very well that he can’t do much.

Let’s not forget that Eiji met Ash at a time when he was depressed and thought he failed at life. Ash is around the same age as Eiji but had a much harder life and is still trying to cope with trouble that Eiji can’t even imagine. So, Eiji decides to help him out and that becomes his new purpose in life. At the end of the story, I think Eiji was alluding to this purpose In the letter he wrote to Ash: “I know you are much smarter than me, and bigger, and stronger—but even so—I always wanted to protect you.”

It’s easier to explain why Ash is so captivated by Eiji. But when I asked the same question to myself the other way around, I had to pause and think. A lot. And all that thinking lead me to write this meta.

Read the next part of the meta here.

[janiedean]

ooh so linked to the Brienne ask re: the kingsguard part. What are your thoughts on Aerys’ kingsguard, especially like Arthur Dayne who Jaime from what I remember has complicated feelings for but pretty much idolises him. And they’re so loved by almost everyone in universe!!! Like idk how to think about them really my feelings for them are also complicated

+ okay good because I honestly don’t see why people love them so much like most of the things we’ve heard about them are like. Objectively bad. And like yeah the idea of them is cool but well that can only go so far. also I’m sorry if these asks are a mess I’m exhausted!! ALSO I think you’re amazing for answering all of us anons with such detail I always love coming on to your blog

(putting both asks in the same place uu)

in order: the fact that they're loved by everyone in-universe and fandom actually likes them (or at least arthur dayne hahahahaha god) is like... some of george's best trolling because guess what the entire point is that they're supposed to look like amazing people/the real deal when instead they're all terrible the end - except again for the poor martell prince whom we don't know enough about and I'll give him a pass bc martell people are usually not stupid af but in order:

as I said george has made a point of stating that knighthood is a rotten institution and the kg especially aerys being like... what should be the highest honor for a knight is equally as rotten as knigthood in general and is made of people who do Not Deserve The Title - I mean again hey it's orders so marital rape is fine, hey we're leaving the 15yo to man an entire castle? WHY NOT, the king is mad? WELL WE SWORE TO SERVE HIM, like not counting martell prince there isn't one single person in the aerys kg except jaime who actually upheld the oaths they swore ie protecting the innocent so make of that what you will

the fact that jaime aka the fifteen year old is literally the only one who gets the job and then goes there like 'hey we're basically covering for marital rape what the fuck' and no one else bats an eyelid should already say everything there is to say about these people's moral standard

the fact that none of them actually stuck up for the fifteen-year old who was obviously not ready for the job nor tried to idk do anything to make it easier on him or whatever also says everything about their moral standard because honestly fuck you

the fact that everyone thinks they're amazing jaime included when they're all pretty much shitty is like... well, same as fandom does, which means that the readers bought what people in-narrative do... except that the moment you scratch the surface it's really damned bad

and I'm saying barristan is on thin ice because from his chapters you can see he's like... not a bad dude but like his reaction to jaime being in there still when he saw aerys is 'ah that fucker who killed the king and was so proud he had to try and get into it at fifteen'? like??? fuck you?? honestly the fact that all of them literally served a dude who put people on fire and was a menace/danger to the realm and then have the gall to think that jaime is the worst or who didn't like try to help him or anything while he was obv struggling with his vows and the fact that he was serving a madman says all about their moral standards, again

and honestly arthur dayne is the literal worst of all of them because like - first of all oh you knight the 15yo who goes along with you slaying bandits and you don't try to dissuade him from joining the kg? what the fucking fuck am I supposed to think - second of all you don't even warn him of what is expecting him when he joins when you've been there for a while? - but third of all which drives me insane and I hate that fandom sleeps on it and goes around happily like ARTHUR/LYANNA THE SHIP OF DREAMS... okay listen like I have literally zero investment in lyanna as a character or in r + l and I don't necessarily think he did everything - I think they had a mutual infatuation and eloped and she sorely regretted it and then it was on r. who shouldn't have like acted on it because he happened to be the 20+ year old with a wife and kids, but there's the whole tower of joy situation - in which sorry but we have arthur fucking off KL with other kg people and leaving all the others in the literal shit bc they'd have to deal with aerys and it'd be less of them than they should be, to go with rhaegar to the tower of joy to help him elope which whatever, and then lyanna was left there after r. had to go back... when her brother and father were burned alive and like if she knew that then I doubt she'd have wanted to stay and if she didn't then they withheld fairly important fucking information, so like he stayed there guarding a pregnant 15-16 yo who most likely did not want to be there and who is pregnant by his best friend whose family oh accidentally murdered half of hers........ and lyanna was there even after rhaegar died so I mean it's not like the moment he happened this dude goes and says 'hey maybe we should actually go back and see if we can solve this mess' no he kept her prisoner there anyway - on top of that... here I'm wildly speculating but: he had to know rhaegar was dead and when ned showed up if we are to believe him and idt he was unreliable on that... ned didn't want to fight him or kill him he just wanted to get his sister and leave and like he was most likely in love with ashara aka arthur's sister so why the fuck would he want to kill him right, and like rhaegar's dead and arthur has nothing to lose by letting ned up especially knowing that lyanna is fucking dying in childbirth like she's dying her brother's there just let him up and solve it later esp when the dude doesn't want to kill you....... but no ned had to kill him because he wouldn't budge and why the fucking fuck wouldn't you budge at that point? your side lost the war, the guy you were friends with that you did all of this for is dead, the girl is about to die at least let her die with her family, why? - only thing I can deduce from it: that rhaegar told him that the baby's survival was the most important thing because third head of the dragon blah blah blah and that if the war was lost to just grab the baby and lyanna if she survived and fuck off to essos until he grew up, except that lyanna didn't survive so the conclusion is that he tried to stop ned from going up there bc he'd have found out about the baby and tried to stop them and at that point who gives a fuck if lyanna died or not but he'd have liked... let her die and kill ned in the process and done that most likely, and sorry but when they knightly vows are, I would like to remind everyone, In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women…. like... what, what exactly has this dude done that would qualify as that? because lyanna would be young and innocent and a woman and he basically is letting her die, that behavior does not qualify as bravery and he'd like... deny the kid a chance of growing up with his family period if he killed ned and he didn't seem to particularly give a fuck las we checked, and that's like not counting the whole 'oh I won't tell the 15yo who idolizes me that he's signing

his life away to trauma nor I will support him for shit when he does' part of it, but the tower of joy stuff is shady whichever way you look at it and honestly the more time passes the more I'm convinced this guy is just a complete pos and the worst of them all except gregor when it comes to like 'people thinking you're a good knight and you're actually a pos instead' and I'm dying on that hill until george proves me wrong

and on that the thing is that... I ranted about it once here but basically jaime idolizes the shit out of him because he never saw that even if his subconscious kinda knows because when he had the weirwood dream his greatest fear was confronting the former kg and everyone was accusing him of stuff he couldn't have physically prevented (more ranting on the weirwood dream here) and he's there like 'ah I wanted to be arthur dayne but I became the smiling knight instead' but like... actually he is more of a true knight than arthur dayne can ever hope to be? because like in the above meta I was talking specifically about how to pia he's like... better than arthur dayne, but like not to be that person but jaime who thinks he's the gregor clegane of his time and not arthur dayne, while arthur dayne was... doing the shady toj thing with lyanna - saved an entire city from aerys blowing it up - risked his neck for brienne even if he didn't even like her as in he got himself kicked in a healing stump when he couldn't even stand up for himself so she wouldn't be raped - risked his neck going back for her at harrenhal and jumped into the bear pit without even knowing how he'd manage it - was actually being a decent person to tommen until c. forced him to leave - the moment he saw what happened with pia he gave her her rapist's head when she's like a commoner no one gaf about and took her into her service - when his squire wanted to bed her he like told him to be kind to her jfc - is per tyrion the only relative who actually loved him/freed him/actually stuck up for him (and tysha is on tywin thank you all very much and jaime feels so great about it he doesn't think about it until he can't anymore) (also he was the one chasing the bandits away in the first place so he was probably there like oH I HELPED A MAIDEN too lmao god fuck tywin) - actually stuck for his cat vow bc he took riverrun without bloodshed - sent brienne after sansa with the magic amazing sword because he wanted to upheld their shared vow to cat going against his own family - the moment brienne shows up like hey wanna blow this joint and leave the army you don't wanna lead to find sansa he didn't even like blink before saying yes and I'm supposed to think that in between him and arthur dayne he isn't the only one who actually stuck to his vows as well as he could/knows anything about them/is actually a trueknight™? because lmao the fact that jaime doesn't fancy himself one because of aerys when everyone fancies arthur dayne one when the latter did absolutely fucking nothing beyond slaying bandits to put his money where his mouth was while jaime didn't even like brand himself like that and still did all of that and half of it was acting on instinct not even like doing the math before and *he* was the one wanting to be knighted at fifteen and took his vows seriously when oh wait knightly vows are basically the epitome of selflessness is like again grrm trolling the hell out of everyone characters included but it's clear from the narrative imvho and I can't wait for the moment he serves the just desserts and a) jaime realizes it b) everyone else in-narrative realizes it c) bran timetravels to the fucking toj and we find out what actually went down there and this saint arthur narrative is burned to the ground because honestly no

there, I think I spat out almost all of my venom XD

[camelotsheart]

For the Merlin ask one: 1, 10, 11, 13, 18, 19, 22, 28

Oh my god 💀You really went for it, didn’t you? 🤣

1. Favourite Character - Arthur because of how nuanced his character is. He refuses to show vulnerability but can’t stop himself from wearing his heart on his sleeves. He’s a royal prat but insecure about how people see him. He claims that as a prince/king he can’t form close relationships yet is very quick to put trust in the people that are close to him. His character, when the writers actually give him the breadth to develop, is *chef’s kiss*

10. Favourite Magical Creature - The Griffin because it started the merlance, arlance and gwencelot meetcute.

11. Which character would you bring back to life? - Arthur because he and Merlin shouldn’t be expected to carry the weight of saving the world for a second time. And Merlin doesn’t deserve to wait for 1500 years for the person he cares most about.

13. Favourite Antagonist - The Calileach. Her character is just so contradictory to me and I’ve been enjoying trying to figure her out for a long time. She seems to show just a bit of care towards Morgana, and goes out of her way to warn Merlin about the rip between the veils, and yet she also refuses to close it without a sacrifice even though a sacrifice isn’t needed in the first place. 

18. Favourite Insult - The parallel of Merlin (1x01) and Gwen (2x02) burning Arthur and ending it with ‘My Lord’. Literal god-tier scenes.

19. Favourite scene of your OTP - I love Merlin & Arthur’s campfire convo in 5x01 (the “more than friends, more than brothers” one) because of... complicated meta reasons 😅. Basically I interpret that scene as Merlin and Arthur acknowledging the similarities in their personalities in that they would do anything for anyone (”you understand that, don’t you?” - also 1x05 “Merlin would do anything for anyone”), while also acknowledging to each other that the other person is not just “anyone” (”I wish I didn’t” - also 1x10: “arthur would do the same for any village, that’s just the way he is” “It’s more than that. He’s here for you”).

22. Was Arthur a good king? - He was an ignorant but fundamentally good king. Sometimes I think we judge Arthur’s value as a ruler solely on the fact that he wasn’t able to give sorcerers the freedom they deserve (which is a big factor in his kingship. The main one, but not the only one), but I think in a world where Arthur followed through with killing Uther in 2x08, he would have done all that he could to make up for what Uther’s reign did to those who had magic. If he had been given the knowledge that had been witheld from him throughout the seasons, I think he would have turned out as the king we wanted him to be. And in other things that are not related to magic, I think he took care of the kingdom quite well.

28. A song that makes you think of the show/a ship - Dynasty by Elephante and MIIA because the song perfectly captures the tragedy of the show.

Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

It all fell down

[army-of-mai-lovers]

~another Zuko redemption arc meta~

I’m reading this book for class called Women and Evil by Nel Noddings and the author’s already brought up some really interesting ideas. Basically, her thesis is that the tradition of white male philosophy has never looked at evil from the perspective of women, and when you look at evil from the perspective of women, lots of things that male philosophers take for granted become suspect. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Arthur, this is all well and good, but this is your ATLA blog, and you promised me a Zuko meta, why are you talking about some random feminist philosopher?” 

This line: 

“When we look at evil from the standpoint of women’s experience, we will question the whole tradition of honor that has grown up around war and violence.” 

Y’all know when I saw that quote I immediately thought of Zuko. Smarter people than me have talked about how Aang and Zuko’s arcs are reflections of one another, as well as how Aang is a feminist hero, and I think we can use Noddings’s work to connect these two ideas. 

First, we have to talk about the arguments that have already been made: 1) that Zuko and Aang’s arcs are reflections of one another, and 2) that Aang is a feminist hero. I think the first one makes itself pretty clear in some artistic decisions, namely that we get both Aang and Zuko’s backstories in “The Storm” (which, if you have ever talked to me about ATLA, you’ll know that’s one of my absolute favorite episodes). We get both of their backstories, sure, but more than that, both of their characters are complicated so much by the information divulged in this episode. We learn that Aang left his people because he was afraid of being the Avatar, and we learn about a major moment of Ozai’s abuse towards Zuko. Notice how we learn these things too: Aang tells Katara about what’s going on with him, whilst Iroh tells the ship’s crew about Zuko. Aang is open about his feelings, and after a bit of prodding from his friend, can talk about what he’s experienced and what he believes to be a major flaw of his. Conversely, Zuko does not volunteer this information about his backstory himself (and Iroh raises some serious questions about consent by telling people without Zuko giving his permission) Consider also how this episode resolves: Aang and Katara have a real conversation about their emotions regarding Aang’s backstory before going to save Sokka and the fisherman, while Zuko...lets his crew not risk their lives to try and capture the Avatar? The emotional payoff is not there for Zuko the way it is for Aang, and it is precisely because he closes himself off from feeling his emotions,. I really think this episode does a great job establishing them as each other’s character foils, and I also think that Aang’s ability to talk about his emotions is a big part of what makes him a feminist hero. Unlike Zuko (and most male heroes) Aang wears his heart on his sleeve. He resolves conflict as much as he can by being, as he puts it to Avatar Yangchen later, “quick or clever”, not angry or violent (by and large.) He is, ultimately, a peaceful, respectful kid with good communication skills, and this extends to the respect he pays to his female bending teachers and friends and all the women in the show who aren’t actively trying to kill him. (and before anyone comes for me, obviously Aang is not a perfectly feminist hero because he exists within a work that has sexist and racist flaws. However, in comparison to Zuko and much of Western canon, he can be viewed as a feminist hero.)

Now compare this to Zuko. Zuko does not chug his respect women juice. He sips at it sometimes when it’s convenient for him, but he very much does not chug. He also has emotional problems, and views emotion as a weakness for most of the story. His entire character, especially in season 1, is predicated on seeking honor within a violent context. I’ve seen a lot of people argue that Zuko “restores the Fire Nation’s honor” through his redemption arc, and while I agree with that, I don’t think we’re really dissecting the concept of honor as it’s presented in the show as fully as we could be. To apply Noddings’ work, the honor in the Fire Nation is dependent on the existence of war and violence. This is most succinctly illustrated in what Ozai says to Zuko as he’s about to burn his eye: “You will fight for your honor.” To Ozai, honor is fighting in an Agni Kai that you shouldn’t have been challenged to because you’re a literal child, and not living up to that definition of honor is deserving of violence. This is personal violence towards Zuko, but I do think that there’s evidence that, at least since the beginning of the war, this has been the way the Fire Nation views honor and violence at a structural level. We can draw a parallel between Zuko not fighting Ozai and Ozai responding by burning his eye, and the Air Nomads not fighting Sozin and Sozin committing genocide against them. And this violent definition of honor very much corresponds to the way he treats women, because expressions of imperialism and toxic masculinity are deeply, intrinsically connected. He’s disrespectful to June and the Kyoshi Warriors. He doesn’t really see Azula, his own sister, as a human being. But in my opinion, the incident that damns him the most in this regard is how he treats Mai in “The Beach.” I know part of the reason he is the way he is in this episode is because he’s really conflicted about his path and all that jazz, but he honestly treats Mai like a jewel that the boys talking to her are trying to steal, not a person. As a self-avowed Zuko stan, it makes me a little sick. I feel terrible for her. While he doesn’t treat every single woman he encounters poorly (Jin comes to mind), generally, as a rule, he’s pretty all about toxic masculinity as a response to abuse. For him, honor largely means enacting violence towards others (capturing the Avatar, the way he treated Iroh for a lot of b1 and 2, yelling at the crew in “The Storm”) as well as not really respecting women. 

But his attitude changes the closer he gets to redemption. For years, I’ve wondered why it was Katara who was down in the crystal cave with Zuko, given that he was more Aang’s foil than hers at that point. Now, I think it has a lot to do with Katara being quite a strong and empowered female character from a nation that the Fire Nation has historically oppressed. We have hope for Zuko turning good and joining Team Avatar in this moment because he has (it seems) overcome some of his toxic masculinity and imperialist thinking (remember, these are connected) and now sees Katara as a human being that he can connect with (one could argue that Jin is an early example of Zuko learning to connect with marginalized women). Later, redeeming himself means supporting Katara unabashedly as she seeks to right the wrongs that his nation has done to her (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Southern Raiders”? powerful. simply powerful.) 

Thus, when we say that Zuko “restored the Fire Nation’s honor”, what we really mean is that he changed their entire definition of honor. Through his interactions with Aang, Katara, and the rest of the gaang, as well as his own self-reflection, Zuko established a definition of honor built outside of the framework of imperialism, colonialism, and toxic masculinity. Rather than being based in violence and war, Zuko’s honor is based in love and understanding. Honestly, I wish we’d gotten a Steven Universe: Future kind of thing with ATLA, because I think seeing Firelord Zuko as he struggled with understanding what a love-based honor looks like when you’re leading a nation that has done absolutely horrible things to the world would have just been the cherry on top to his redemption arc. But we see that he understands at least part of it by the end of the show: respecting women. His relationships with Suki, Toph (y’all saw how gentle he was with her in the finale right? B1 Zuko would never. Early B3 Zuko would never.) and most importantly, Katara show that he’s learned how to communicate his fears, deal with his emotions in a healthy way, and support women.   

[our-happygirl500-fan]

Okay okay okay okay, I know I’m asking a lot of stuff and probs annoying you. I’m currently reading about the character but what about her and Tim?? Like can I get a run down of everything about them. The good and bad?? Everytime I see things on here it’s either making Tim to be so bad (Anti-Tim ig) or Steph to be so bad and I’m sure they’re both at fault, yea?

No I’m happy to help.

Both Tim and Steph have made mistakes but not in an awful way and more in a ‘these are literal children dealing with serious situations while also trying to be in a relationship with one another’. 

The Steph being bad stuff entirely comes from the fact that she’s a female love interest to a boy who’s one half of a popular mlm ship, she’s made mistakes here and there but they’re human instances where she’s trying to do her best, fandoms often tend to erase or demonise female characters in any any fandom if they are involved in a ship. It’s a sexist habit that comes from reducing a female to only her romantic relationship and ignoring all her other connections and reeks of misogyny. There’s also some slut shaming as Steph was a teen pregnancy & a victim of sexual assault multiple times.

The anti Tim stuff is a bit more complicated, partly it’s a response to sexism where so many fans are sick of the misogyny directed at Steph that they go full throttle the other way or it comes from fans genuinely uncomfortable with Tim’s actions as this is comics and comics are usually written by sexist men which means Tim sometimes takes actions or says something that is not so great.

The important thing to remember about Tim and Steph is that they are each others best friends and they have been through so much together to the point where even if they were not dating they would still be one of the most important relationships the other had.

There is some worry that Tim and Steph feeds into each others complexes 

Tim and Steph both experienced neglect growing up in different ways which makes their attitude to love very different.

Tim's parents were never around most of the time which makes him sort of desperate for love, for validation and most of the time he seems to be of the sort that love is something he can earn if he just does the right thing or achieves the right goal which reflects on how he probably thought if he got good grades or made his parents proud they'd notice him more they'd spend time with him more.

Steph's childhood of neglect I guess you could say came from the sickness of her parents Arthur Brown was abusive to both his wife and daughter and Crystal's drug addiction making her barely able to raise Steph half the time. More often than not it was Steph taking care of the house hold and her mother than any adult looking out for Steph.

With the neglect Steph went through she knew that there was nothing /she/ herself could do to change it, she couldn't magically make her mother quit taking drugs or stop her father from committing crimes by winning an award or behaving well, heck most of her childhood was just trying to keep her and her mum alive so in contrast with Tim who is desperate to receive love Steph is desperate to give love. Because if she's giving love to this person that means they care about her too right? 

This comes across in how easy Steph is willing to poor love into people who are even remotely nice to her like the second Barbara or Bruce stop treating her like shit she's immediately like 'I would die for you'. The second her mother is sober enough to notice her Steph is there being like 'mom I love you I would protect you with my life'. Cass is slightly nice to her? She is now Steph's best friend.

Tim is desperate to receive unconditional affection while Steph is desperate to give unconditional affection which would explain why they are drawn to one another but enough about the meta and onto their actual history.

Steph became a vigilante originally to stop her fathers crimes, the entire point of Spoiler was an abuse victim taking agency back from her abuser and due to Tim being Robin and also investigating the same crimes the two would run into each other multiple times, there was an attraction between the two however neither truly pursued anything due to the fact that Tim was dating another girl and Steph was ‘seeing’ a guy (though the relationship was implied to be unhealthy as he was significantly older, Steph only being around 14 at the time, and showed little in Steph’s actual well being).

However despite the two already being in relationships the two developed keen banter together and quickly began to enjoy the others presence what arguably set then on the path towards a relationship however is when Tim very nearly died and Steph managed to save him at the last second, Tim was so relieved that he kissed Steph sparking a romantic interest from Steph and Tim beginning to realise he had feelings for her.

Steph would then continue fighting crime outside of her fathers crimes as Steph realised that as Spoiler she could help other abuse victims such as herself. Steph’s entire life can be described as falling through the cracks in the system no one caring about the abuse and unsafe situations that she grew up with and Steph’s early journey as Spoiler is her realising that even though no one had cared when she was abused and hurt she could be the person who would care for other people so no one would suffer the way she did. Steph aiming to fight crime meant that she and Tim ran into each other even more working multiple cases together until it eventually culminated into Tim admitting that he had feelings for Steph but due to his loyalty to Batman he could never tell her his secret identity however Steph told him that that was enough for her, the two ended their previous relationships and started dating.

This is actually where a lot of criticism over the relationship is from due to the obvious power imbalance Tim knows every detail of Steph’s life while controlling all information Steph has on him and only lets her interact with Robin. Tim has also been shown to be rather possessive of Steph controlling her interactions with other members of the superhero community and expressing alarm in her spending time with other heroes who are not him.

There is also the fact that for a large part every man Stephanie has ever interacted with have been abusive in some way, her home life was incredibly dangerous due to her mother and fathers friends all being criminals or victims and Steph had to deal with at least two instances of child predators growing up so to many readers it becomes increasingly obvious that Tim might very well be the first man Steph ever interacted with who treated her with human decency and that is why she fell in love with him.

After the relationship started Steph found out that she had become pregnant from her previous relationship and the reader discovers that Steph’s previous boyfriend on top of being awful to her was also using her for sex. Steph tells Tim about the pregnancy fully expecting him to break up with her however Tim states that he is going to be there to support Steph. The two grow even closer as Tim becomes someone for Steph to lean on wearing disguises to take Steph to birthing classes and helps Steph through the process of putting the baby up for adoption. Tim is even there when the child is born.

The incident made Tim and Steph even closer and afterwards the two continue dating and remain close, Steph quickly becomes what could be considered Tim’s safe place as he is able to leave any problems as Tim Drake or Robin away and simply enjoy being with her and during times where Tim is unable to visit Steph he is shown to be tense and disgruntled without the positive emotional outlet however after nearly over a year and a half of dating Steph begins to realise that the dynamic of the relationship is uneven as Tim has complete control and knowledge over her own life while she knows nothing about Tim’s life out of the mask. Steph begins to worry about merely being used and starts openly wishing that Tim would let her be more involved with his life outside of Robin.

Tim meanwhile is beginning his rebellious phase against Batman and Bruce takes actions to try and nip it in the bud as Dick’s rebellious phase ended with Dick leaving Batman for the Titans and Jason’s rebellious phase ended with Jason dead. Bruce attempts to control Tim by using Steph revealing Tim’s secret identity to Tim. After that point Bruce would continually manipulate Steph in a gambit to manipulate Tim and Tim expresses frustration at Bruce using Steph to get to him.

Bruce and Steph’s relationship is incredibly complicated in its own right as Steph has a childhood admiration of Batman as he was the only one who seemed to be able to stop her fathers abuse by putting him in prison. This childhood admiration causes Steph to follow and respect Bruce no matter how many times his actions hurt her. Bruce on the other hand has a lot of issues regarding Steph as Steph reminds him a lot of Jason and Bruce puts a lot of his unresolved issues regarding his dead son on her which as you might assume does not end well for Steph at all.

Outside of Bruce’s meddling however Steph and Tim grow increasingly close no longer having to worry about secret identities the two go on regular dates and are there for each other in every aspect of their lives. However Tim’s father finds out about Robin and forces him to quit and Steph who had been dating Tim ‘batman needs a Robin’ Drake for years was firmly of the belief that ‘Gotham needs a Robin’ at which point Steph herself becomes the fourth Robin though it is heavily implied that once again Bruce is manipulating Steph in order to manipulate Tim into coming back.

Then DC enters its dark ages where they kill off characters left and right and Steph is tortured, raped and killed in a Gotham wide gang war primarily for Bruce angst so that Bruce can go ‘oh god it’s Jason all over again I knew she was girl Jason I knew it’ mean while Tim has what can probably be best described as a mental break down over Steph’s death and the subsequent death of his father and multiple friends. This causes Tim to become cold, cynical and increasingly dark and pessimistic (he has depression).

However Steph comes back to Gotham two years later alive again and it is revealed that Leslie Thompkin’s essentially kidnapped Steph to Africa for two years and faked Steph’s death in order to try and save Steph from being a soldier in Batman’s crusade. Steph was Leslie’s ward for two years but realised that she could literally not stop fighting crime as in Africa Steph literally started dressing up as an African legend and started fighting crime there, eventually convincing Leslie that they needed to go back to Gotham the two returned and Tim was over the moon to see Steph alive kissing her on sight, however Tim realises that he essentially had a break down over Steph death for nothing and expresses resentment over Steph letting him believe that she was dead for two years. Steph who had spent the past to years recovering physically and mentally from the trauma of being tortured for days prior to Leslie faking Steph’s death and Steph essentially not having had a choice in Leslie’s plan to fake her death is just like ‘I don’t know what to tell you buddy’ 

Steph is still Tim’s emotional home, immediately relying on her for emotional support once again and the two are shown to still love each other however the two had changed a great deal over the time they were apart. Steph having had an adult finally care about her well being for the first time in her life grew much more positive into someone who believed in the inherent good in people and in hope while Tim had grown harsh and dark and cynical. The two even joke about how Steph has become an optimist while Tim had become a pessimist. Steph is like a beam of light for Tim who had become increasingly dark and Tim finds himself being both wary of it and drawn to it.

Then Bruce gets back to his old tricks of using Steph to manipulate Tim and gives Steph instructions to challenge Tim in order to improve Tim’s skills as a crime fighter. Steph on Bruce’s orders employs and assassin to fight Tim however the assassin goes to far and Steph is injured trying to protect Tim. Tim realising that Bruce is once again manipulating Steph to get to him as well as having an inherent fear of Steph dying again demands that Steph should not be a vigilante any longer never mind that Steph literally can not stop fighting crime which causes a rift between the two.

The superhero community then believe that Batman is dead and Tim leaves Gotham to prove that Bruce is alive while Tim is gone from Gotham Cass makes Steph the new Batgirl and Steph becomes incredibly close to Barbara and Damian and as Batgirl makes several friends within the masked community no longer having her interactions be controlled by Tim or Bruce. Steph starts coming into her own and building up her self confidence, when Tim returns he is once again upset that Steph is still fighting crime his fear of Steph dying still going strong and acts condescending towards Steph’s attempts to help him however Steph proves herself in sheer level of skill and prowess and Tim accepts her as a vigilante and the new Batgirl accepting that Steph will not die again. Tim then attempts to rekindle their romantic relationship however Steph realises that she had been too dependent on Tim’s love and wishes to improve herself as a person before she even thinks of entering a relationship again. The two remain close friends however Tim expresses attraction towards Steph multiple times (Tim is the horniest little fuck during this time in their lives and Steph is literally out their trying to live her life and better herself as a person and get a university degree it’s hilarious)

If Convergence is to believe the two would always eventually get back together in one way or another the two issues being about their romantic interest in each other and getting back together.

After the reboot happens when they meet again Tim immediately expresses romantic interest in Steph while Steph herself is wary of Tim as in this universe both her mother and her father are criminals who have tried to kill her and Steph has effectively been homeless living in public libraries or where ever she can. It is unknown when but Tim offers Steph a place to live at his apartment and a some point the two eventually enter a romantic relationship.

A lot of fans have criticised this as Steph is entirely financially dependent on Tim for food and shelter and once again Tim holds more power than Steph in the relationship. Also in the rebooted universe Tim is Steph’s only support system as her parents tried to kill her, her father murdered any civilians she was close to in order to hurt her and any connections Steph had before the reboot have had vast amounts of their history erased.

Steph has also been shown to be responsible for a lot of Tim’s mental health as she has to stop him from crossing lines or going off the deep end multiple times it is described as Tim having a tendency of walking a dark path when he is alone. 

Steph and Tim are both presented as each others support systems in current comics and when Tim wanted to leave Gotham in order to research the multiverse Steph went with him as the two rely on each other.

I don’t believe there is a good guy or bad guy in their relationship both Tim and Steph want what’s best for each other but sometimes these views don’t line up which causes conflict but at the end of the day they are two people that care about each other a great deal and whether they are in a relationship or not they will always be one of the most important people in each others lives.

The relationship is criticised by the fandom as fans either fetishise mlm relationships and are angry at Steph ‘getting in the way’ an unfortunate trend in all fandoms and on the other side many are tired of female characters being reduced to their romantic relationships.

TimSteph is a cute ship with a deep connection and a lot of history proving that they care about each other a great deal but sexism and misogyny are things that exist especially in fandom spaces and that creates a nightmare.

[morganaiefay]

I feel like writing meta today, so building off my last post about how I'd like each of the four main characters' story to develop, here are what I think would be their mortal flaws and how they both doom and save them

Arthur's mortal flaw is pride. He's been raised as a king's son and a prophesied legendary king himself. he thinks he's better and more worthy than anyone else. he disregards others opinions in favor of his own and he doesn't like to accept when he's wrong. this all could be overcompensating for his insecurities, born out of the inmense pressure placed on him by the prophecy and, more closely, his father's expectations of him. He's afraid he will fail so he acts like he's infallible. Of course this makes him annoying as fuck but it's also what let's him break from his father legacy and ultimately become a better person. if he let himself be ruled by his insecurities, without trying to overcome them, he would follow unquestioningly on his father's footsteps, trying to be the king Uther would have wanted. but his pride pushes him to be better, to actually become the men he likes to think he is. and for that he needs to learn humility, to the point of accepting that maybe he's not the one who should be king (in my personal headcanon)

Merlin's mortal flaw is also pride in a way, arrogance maybe more exactly. he's always been different, special, he's more powerful than anyone and he knows things very few other people know. he's been foretold to be the greatest sorcerer that even was and help bring about the kingdom of Albion. he thinks he always knows best, and acts accordingly, trying to make things the way he thinks is right. this is also overcompensating for his insecurities, much the same way Arthur does. they both have an enormous weight upon their shoulders, but if Arthur is supposed to be a great king Merlin is supposed to make that happen. he's called to action in a way Arthur's not, and he has the secret of his magic on top of it. he's terribly afraid to fail and make the wrong choice so he overcompensates with arrogance, convincing himself of the righteousness of his decisions. this can lead him through a dangerous path of becoming a sort of tyrant in the shadows, imposing his will on others. but that confidence on his own way to do things is also what lets him ultimately free himself from the constrains of "destiny", disregard the prophecy and actually learn to do the right thing, which is maybe not what's been foretold. I don't think Merlin needs to learn humility quite as Arthur does, his thing I think is about letting go, being willing to let things happen outside his control, seeing other ways to approach things and accepting that there might be a better option than his.

Morgana's obvious mortal flaw is wrath. anger is the emotion of self-preservation, the emotion that protects the body. so it makes sense that Morgana has a problem with it. since her father's death she's been on her own, with no one squarely on her side. she's dependant on Uther's good will for everything. protection, status and the very roof over her head. she's self centered because she's been more or less on survival mode for a long time. sure Camelot's her home, but it's not completely stable, or even safe once she realizes she has magic, and her future is in the hands of a man she doesn't really like and who fundamentally hates those like her. but she's also a noblewoman, used to have to care only for herself, to think herself above others, and that contributes to her self-centeredness. so Morgana has a wrath problem born out of her self-centeredness. when she's personally wronged she can't let it go, she's consumed by the anger and she loses perspective on anything else, she becomes cruel and unyielding. this causes a lot of damage to both herself and the people around her, but her anger is also what moves her, what gives her her drive to fight for justice. being able to remain unaffected in the face of injustice is a terrible thing, Morgana's reaction is the right one, but she needs to learn temperance, to manage her anger and use it in helpful ways and ultimately to become less self-centered, to be able to put aside her feelings of anger sometimes and to let go of revenge when it's needed, to achieve something better and greater than herself

and at last once again, Gwen. her thing is more complicated than the rest, not as easy as assigning her a deadly sin. imo this is mostly because the writers wrote her as almost flawless at first, which nice because Gwen is perfect but also not nice because characters need flaws to be interesting. so for this one I'm taking certain liberties and maybe ignoring or stretching canon a bit.

I propose that Gwen's mortal flaw is indecisiveness. she very well balanced on most aspects. she's kind but not meek, she's brave and smart but not arrogant, she just and strong willed but not ruthless or despotic. but maybe she lacks decisiveness to pick a side.

and I mean pick a side regarding the central conflict of the show. reform vs revolution, Merlin vs Morgana, Camelot vs magic. I said in my previous post that I imagine her siding with Morgana at first, after her father's death, and joining the magical resistance. but Morgana is still too consumed by anger and personal revenge and ultimately Gwen can't stay with her (maybe over a fundamental disagreement over what should happen to Merlin). so she comes back to Arthur/Merlin's side, although she would never betray the resistance and divulge its secrets, so she's also not squarely on team Camelot. this indecisiveness puts her in a complicated position all on her own, in a sort of no man's land. people on both sides can distrust her and hold against her the fact that she's unwilling to make a definitive decision ("you always have a choice, sometimes it's easier to believe that you don't" "you always have a choice but you have to make it") (that would be an awesome exchange between Gwen and another character, Morgana maybe). but, of course, her position in the middle of conflict is what in the end let's her serve as a bridge between the two sides and carve a way forward that avoids further death but that doesn't let Camelot's crimes go unpunished.

[prairiedust]

Jack the Friendship-Killer

Jack Kline can be refracted through several folkloristic lenses to get a deeper understanding of his character. The first lens is that of the Jack character of English and American folklore-- sometimes a giant killer through his innocence and good intentions, at other times too cunning for his own good. How do we understand Jack now that he’s burned off an unknown quantity of his soul?

Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk” and Jack from “Jack the Giant Killer” are subtly different heroes. Beanstalk Jack is not particularly clever-- in fact it is his naivete that starts the whole escapade in the first place. He believes that he’s been given magic beans, whereas common sense (personified by his mother) says that Jack was just conned and in fact had impoverished his family beyond recovery. Beanstalk Jack’s adventures don’t stem from him being particularly smart or strong-- while he is able to climb down the beanstalk with various treasures and then chop it down and thus kill the giant, his main skills seem to be his ability to sneak around and run fast, and to be really, really lucky

Jack the Giant-Killer, however, is a deadly clever and impressively strong young man-- the son of a farmer who sets out to kill a local giant and upon finding his first success, makes that his vocation. In the story of the Giant Killer, Jack meets a series of giants, and defeats them through a combination of brains and brawn.

The fourth giant Jack GK meets is a two-headed giant in Wales. Let me make sure I have my Jack Giants in order…yeah that’s giant #4. This giant plans to do him in by poison, but Jack outwits him and foils his plan. In the morning, the giant serves him a hasty pudding. Jack takes a sack and ties it to his waist and fills it with the pudding. Standing up, he shows the giant a trick-- he slices the bag under his shirt and all the hasty pudding falls out, but Jack is obviously unharmed. Not wanting to be outdone, the Welsh giant slices open his own belly, but falls down dead. Jack the Giant-killer has established himself as a professional liar at this point.

In another “episode,” however, he befriends the son of King Arthur, who is a paragon of generosity and gives away his last twopence in order for a dead man to be put to rest. Jack is so impressed by the prince that he becomes his manservant and in order to procure a meal and a place to sleep, he rides ahead to the home of another giant. To this giant he tells a half-truth, that the son of King Arthur is on his way with a force of a thousand men. The giant is so terrified that he has Jack lock him up until King Arthur’s son had passed, and Jack GK and the prince spend a fine night in the giant’s castle. The giant was so grateful that he hadn’t been slain that he offers Jack anything in his possession, (much as the gods of Olympus gave Perseus gifts in Clash of the Titans.) Jack takes a coat of invisibility, a cap of knowledge, a sword that could cut anything, and peculiarly speedy boots. These items help Jack and the prince out in their next set of adventures.

Jack Kline is poised as Jack the Giant Killer in his story, now. He has gifts-- his unusual nephilianic powers-- and has discovered a new one: the power of deceit.

Jack GK’s adventures shift, however, once he has befriended the son of King Arthur. Instead of wandering the countryside looking for giants to slay, with the prince he encounters a lady who has been enchanted to serve the devil himself; it is she whom the prince set out to save in the first place. Jack commits himself to his prince’s quest, and uses his giant-gifts to save her, and she in the end marries Arthur’s son and Jack goes on to have more adventures. During the rescue of the prince’s lady, Jack uses his giant-gifts to best Lucifer but it’s important to realize that he does not resort to any of his old tricks-- while the magical items do give him an advantage, he doesn’t cheat nor lie in his typical manner to help his friend the prince. Once the prince’s quest is over, Jack is made a knight of the Round Table and strikes out on his own again and gets back to his old tricks, and soon finds a lady of his own to rescue and marry.

Our Jack, however, has no superlative companion to serve. He has father figures, true, but it’s a key point in the Giant-Killer story that the prince is a companion, a friend-- as Jack is introduced as the son of a farmer and the prince as the son of a king, it can be argued that they are of the same age. With Maggie gone and the Lebanon Kids alienated, Jack has no companions to look up to to keep him in line. He has no peers. Even God was not a singular entity (barring the time that he had Amara locked up.) This innate isolation may be his salvation, or his undoing.

We were offered a second lens through which to analyze Jack. As Donatello said, he’s the most powerful being in the universe (absent Chuck and Amara I guess?) and his mind is impossible to know. The MOTW that we were given in an episode about Jack trying to make friends was a singular creature, perhaps the only one of his kind at all, who had devoured his family and been turned from an ordinary, human kind of monster into an extraordinary, supernatural one as a punishment, because Henry Parker, who cannibalized his family, had felt no remorse for what he’d done. In fact, he continued to do it even after the winter had passed. Since he felt no remorse, the elders of the tribe who punished him imposed remorse upon him in the form of eternal hunger, a hunger that would literally destroy him if not assuaged.

Interestingly, There seems to be no remorse in Jack-- in fact, he chose to lie about his time alone in Lebanon rather than face any consequences that might be imposed upon him by his elders. He seemed to feel that Stacy’s encounter with his angel blade was her own fault, and the way I read the scene was that after he healed her he expected the group’s complete approval (even adoration?) once more. His mistake did not seem to impact him.

The third and most complicated lens through which we can try to divine Jack’s new nature is one that was invoked many times. Perez seems to have totally made up his Native creature rather than draw further from Native mythology or legends. I can find neither hide nor hair of any such thing as a Kohoka; Perez appears to have created it based on the Wendigo, although Kohoka is a place name mentioned in the Journals of Lewis and Clark, and there is a Kahoka, Missouri, which was named after the Cahokia tribe of the Illinois confederacy, so I suspect he came across something SOMEWHERE? At any rate, the Kahoka can be classified as “probably made up,” but Sheriff Romero obliquely invoked Coyote many times in the episode. So many times that I’ll bet that seven more mentions of coyotes were left on the editing bay floor after this episode was filmed. I’m not going to do a big meta about Coyote, but here are some very important and relevant stories. Despite what you might read, Coyote was not monolithic. Coyote was for some nations a trickster, for others a fool, and for many he was the old man who made the world. In my opinion Coyote stories are among the best you’ll ever read. Many if not most stories about Coyote are religious in nature.

How Coyote Got His Cunning

https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/HowCoyotegothisCunning-Karok.html

Coyote Secures Fire

http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/pla/jat/jat17.htm

Why Coyote Stopped Imitating His Friends

https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WhyCoyoteStoppedImitatingHisFriends-Caddo.htm

L

In some nations’ stories, Coyote was paired with Rabbit, who among other things, kept him humble.

Coyote Misses Real Rabbit

http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=Apache/uvaGenText/tei/Chi13.xml&chunk.id=CN13&toc.id=CN13&brand=default

And then this one because it’s just really, really good (and I’m fascinated with Mount Shasta):

Why Mount Shasta Erupted

https://www.indigenouspeople.net/mountsha.htm

Just to give a little taste of the Appalachian Jack that I grew up with, a Jack who is even more wiley than his British forbear (it’s hard to find Jack Tales because they’re rarely written down, but many have made their way into books) here is Jack and the Varmints:

https://www.ncpedia.org/culture/stories/jack-tales

Tl;dr: Jack needs a peer.

See you all again on Thursday!

[sansanficrec]

Q&A  with ladytp

Grab a glass of wine and get to know @ladytp!

How long have you been writing fanfiction?

I actually went back to the folder of my first posted fanfic, and it was almost 6.5 years ago, September 2012… That was my first ever creative work I wrote as well, as I started quite late – being already adult, established professional and all that. So never too late to start, one doesn’t have to have grown up writing!

Did you write before that?

No I didn't - unless scientific publications are counted as 'creative' writing (well, to be honest, sometimes there was an element of creativity when trying to make one's data make sense, LOL!)

How long ago did you join Tumblr?

To be precise (as I like to be!) I joined March 1st 2013 – so almost six years ago… But it took me four months to make my first post (an awesome music video about ASOIAF and GoT), being initially a ‘lurker’ to observe and learn. I migrated there from Livejournal when things started to quiet down there – like a moth I was drawn to bright lights, moving images, and more of my fandom content!

What is the meaning behind your username?

My username is from the Livejournal times as well, as when I joined it, I didn’t grasp the significance of one’s url or username and just picked the first one that came to mind when filling in the details: “lady” and my initials. D’oh! Luckily I have been able to successfully have the same name in other platforms as well, which is great – it is easier than have many different names. I am also glad that it is not fandom specific, as my interests are many and varied…

What was your first fandom? First pairing?

Definitively ASOIAF – that was my introduction to the whole cultural phenomenon of ‘fandom’, devouring fics and joining communities (yeah, I am so far behind of everyone else – I used to have a life, LOL!). Sansan was my first ship, but I also had a brief period when I was very interested in Daenerys and Jorah (this was before I saw the show). Even though the show had a big negative impact on Sansan experience for me (not due to Rory, I hasten to add – but the storylines), it has still stayed my OTP in a sense that I feel most comfortable about writing them and their dynamic still fascinates me above anything else.

How/when did you first notice (or start to ship) Sansan?

My story is very typical; first reading their interactions after the Hand’s Tourney, then the scene of the Battle of the Blackwater – and I was hooked. Googling and finding fics, Livejournal communities and all the metas…no getting back from there! I mean; it is so blatantly obvious that I wonder who can read the books and NOT get the vibes??

Is there a SanSan fic you’re particularly proud of?  Chapter? Paragraph?  Plot?

Hmmm…’Which one of your children you love the best?’, in other words – always a difficult question! I guess I am still the proudest of “The Triangle”  It was one of my early fics, it was a long-fic, and it was about the subject I had been fascinated with for years and years; the complicated Arthurian relationship between 3 people who loved each other for different reasons (Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot in the original, Sandor, Sansa and Jaime in the fic). Chapter-wise I am very happy with the last chapter of the “Kiss of the Blade”, as hard as it may be for some due to the character death implied. It has melancholy but also beauty, I thought when I wrote it. Plot-wise I am excited and happy about my current WIP “This Time, We’ll Do Better”, as although it has some common trope elements, I think they have somewhat cool applications and it is nice to write something more plot-orientated for a change!

Any comments you’ve received that stick out, even now?

I have to admit that again, “The Triangle” inspired some absolutely wonderful comments, probably because of its unusual premise. Towards the end, and especially with people who had read it in one go long after it had been completed, there were some wonderful convos going back and forth. I especially enjoyed the ones where people either told that they had had some reservations starting it, but then ended up really enjoying the fic, or the ones where they might have had some queries and doubts and questions, leading to a mutually fruitful and eye-opening discussions on both sides. Those conversations really blew my mind!

Do you use a beta?

I have had the privilege of working with two wonderful betas, of which I am eternally grateful. The first one was wildskysheri / wildsky, whom I “met” via Livejournal, and who betaed for me for “The Triangle”, “A Chance Encounter” and “A Premediated Reunion”.  She taught me – a non-native English speaker/writer – so much about writing and what to pay attention to and what to look out for. I owe her so much! After our ways parted amicably as she moved on to other things, I was without beta for a long time, not really actively looking for one, but when my path crossed with the lovely @hardlyfatal, I have once again had the pleasure of getting my words scrutinised by someone knowledgeable, making them better on “This Time, We’ll Do Better”. I honestly can’t speak highly enough for a beta who can make any writer and fic so much better!

Are there tropes/styles/genres you struggle with?  Any that are almost too easy?

I do struggle a bit writing babies and children, and hence haven’t written much about them… I don’t generally care for modern AUs either and would struggle to write a full story in a modern times – although who knows, maybe in a right setting, replicating the high stakes situation of the canon, it could work. Haven’t tried so can’t say for sure! Very fluffy genre is also something I don’t feel particularly comfortable with, nor anything where the characters are very young. And porn without plot is neither a genre I relish. The most comfortable genres for me are the slow-burns, where mature people interact with each other in a mature way (whatever that means…). First realisations of feelings, hesitancy, and all that. I also do like plot-driven stories that have a start, middle and ending. I am all open for fake marriage, bed-sharing, ‘there was only one room at the inn’ kind of genres – any kind of ‘forced’ situations where the characters are obliged to spend time together!

When you start a fic, do you know where it will end?  Or do you figure it out along the way?

There have been fics along both scenarios – some were started at the spur of the moment, with only vague ideas of where and how far they would go (”The Prophecy” comes to mind, which I started as a random holiday scribbling – and repeatedly apologised and updated my chapter number as it grew and grew and grew…). And there were the ones where even at the end I couldn’t decide what the ending should be, so I wrote two (for example “Past Was Such A Long Time Ago“). But for most I would have some idea about the ending at the start, and for some I would gain it somewhere early along the way. So yeah, it varies!

Do you have any rituals/conditions for ‘getting in the mood’ to write?

I mostly write over the weekends when I have more time, after getting up and having breakfast, reading my emails and checking on Tumblr and doing all the routine stuff one does – and then I open my doc and start writing… With my internet radio blasting on the background on some jazz or lounge or classic channel. I find it hard to write during the weeks after getting back from work and being distracted by mundane home things and TV and such.

Have you ever had writer’s block?  Any tips for overcoming it?

I did have a period well over a year ago when I felt I had ‘lost my mojo’. It was largely to do with the way the Game of Thrones show had progressed and changed the characters so much that I couldn’t recognise them anymore, and my initial inspiration of writing about them consequently suffered. Especially as the show canon started to take over the original book canon so strongly in many platforms, including fics. The way I got over it was to distance myself from the show and partly, unfortunately, also from the fandom (so largely focused on show). I had a nice break, didn’t read many fics, focused on books and generally took a step back. Then I challenged myself to write a new type of story, a plot-focused ‘action & adventure’ story instead of romance focused only. That inspired me to write again, and I have been riding on that inspirational wave ever since with my latest long-fic WIP!

Aspirations of publishing one day?

No, not really. It is a tough world out there, especially as writing has become more reachable to many people who previously might not have even considered it (yay, fanfic and other forms of creative writing and platforms encouraging it!), and publishing world is awash with submissions and self-published stories alike. Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that wanting to become published would take much more effort and determination and will than what I have for now, as for me this is a lovely hobby, nothing more.

What are your other hobbies?

My absolutely biggest hobbies are food and wine. I have loved cooking, eating and learning about food and wine for most of my life and it’s really important for me. Cooking meals ‘from the scratch’ from their base ingredient is what I love, as well as learning to master new techniques, new cuisines and difficult recipes. When I travel, food is one of the main drivers for that too, and holidays are largely built around restaurants, regions, cuisines and wineries. Holidaying in wine regions and wine tasting is the favourite kind of holiday! Yet I also love everyday cooking – the beauty of this as a hobby is that I get to do it every day and can challenge myself, be inspired by it and practice it all the time!

As for other hobbies…not really… I follow the transformative artform that is WWE, especially Dean Ambrose, and love visiting historical sites and reading about history, but that can hardly be called an active hobby… I also make some photo and video edits for fun, but lately my writing has taken much of the time I used to dedicate to that. Yet I feel that what I have is enough – I have no desires for an active life with lots of different hobbies and activities.

Any tips for writers looking to post their first (or second, or twentieth) fic?

I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh, but it would be really cool if even those who write only for ‘shits and giggles’ would do some basic formatting and language checks… Things like how to indicate dialogue, spacing between paragraphs and when to apply them, and of course, basic grammar. There are nowadays so many websites advising about those things, as well as free tools (for example Grammarly), that they are accessible to every person with access to sites posting their stuff – and a simple Google search is your best friend. I recommend this because ignoring those things may easily drown even the most amazing story in these times of fic over-abundance.

Other than that, write the stories you would like to read yourself, and the scenarios you would like to see in the canon. Study the writing style of the writers whose stories you admire and see if you could pick up a trick or two from them (but not plagiarizing, naturally). And if you can, get a beta – it is not absolutely necessary, but would give you a second opinion and advice from a trusted person. Oh, and give yourself a break between writing and final editing – ideally have a buffer of chapters in a draft phase before starting to post, so whenever you write something new, you can afford to let it rest for a while before getting back to it with fresh eyes. And have fun!

Anything you’d like to say to writers in general?

Don’t get hung up on statistics or comparisons. Think why you are writing – is it because everyone does it and you feel you should too, or because you truly enjoy it, or because of the stories themselves, or because you have an internal urge to do it, or it is part of your social networking activities… all are valid reasons, but once you define what they are for you, the easier it is to focus on it and the satisfaction it gives to you.

Anything you’d like to say to readers in general?

If you like a fic, don’t be shy about commenting, as it truly means so much to the writers… Even simplest comment is gratefully received. If you feel like wanting to pass on constructive criticism, first ensure the writer welcomes it, then formulate it in the politest possible way with positivism thrown in as well (and of course, make sure it is actually constructive). Marvel the choices and abundance of fic availability and acknowledge what a joy it is to live in this time and age when all that is possible. Enjoy!

Anything you’d like to say to the SanSan fandom in general?

Do not give up hope – Game of Thrones is over soon and we can get back to canon content, hopefully soon with The Winds of Winter. Whatever the further story of Sandor and Sansa is there, we know how important it has been already and nothing can take that away!

Read LadyTP’s SanSan here!

Read LadyTP’s full library here!

[princess-in-a-tower]

Sansa’s “Beauty and the Beast” Arc, Part 1

GRRM has drawn inspiration for ASoIaF from various other works of fiction as well as historical events. The Lord of the Rings and the War of the Roses are two prominent examples. Not far behind those two big ones though is another story, which happens to be one of the author’s favorites: Beauty and the Beast.

Sidenote 1: For those of you who have not watched the following two versions of Beauty and the Beast, I suggest you at least read their summaries before continuing reading this meta.

 La Belle et la Bête (1946)

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Beauty and the Beast is a fairytale that has heavily influenced Sansa’s arc. Many have commented on the Beauty and the Beast theme in Sansa’s arc before me, and yet no one to my knowledge actually took a step back to look at the bigger picture GRRM has painted. The picture which makes it clear that the outline of Sansa’s story, stripped to its bare bones, is following faithfully the one of Beauty in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.

Sidenote 2: Even though GRRM holds Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast in high esteem, I believe he is also critical of it to a degree and subverts the plot points he would like to “fix” (for whatever reason), while at the same time taking care to remain as faithful as possible to the original story. This of course is just my own observation while composing this meta, but GRRM’s own words support it, since he admitted:

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple.

George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview, April 23, 2014

Sidenote 3: This meta series is in no way a shipping manifesto, but rather a critical in-depth analysis of the ASOIAF text in relation to Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation. As a result it ended up being extremely critical of ships like Sansa x Sandor and Sansa x Tyrion , because they, in no way, parallel the dynamic between Beauty and the Beast, but rather juxtapose it, as will be demonstrated in the following parts of this meta series. If you like those ships and still decide to read on, please remember that you have been warned.

In the very beginning of her story in AGOT it would have been impossible to guess Sansa would become asoiaf’s most prominent “Beauty” figure, mainly due to the fact that GRRM went to great pains to present her like an “evil step-sister” to Arya’s “heroine”.

When we are introduced to Sansa in Arya’s first POV chapter, and even later in her own first POV chapter, on a surface level she comes off as bratty, spoilt, superficial and snobbish. In other words, she is presented to us in a way that makes her look similar to Beauty’s step-sisters:

Beauty lives in the country with her father, a 17th-century merchant who has lost all his money; her brother, Ludovic, whose only interests are drinking and gambling; and her two sisters, Felicie and Adelaide, who are motivated entirely by spite, selfishness and vanity.

La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) script

Not only that, but it can be argued that Sansa was Ned’s least favorite daughter with Arya as his favorite (proof of that can be found in the following series of metas: Ned, Sansa and Joffrey Part I, Part II, Part III) and it’s not a secret that Sansa looked forward to leaving her father and his protection for that of her husband’s. All of that links Sansa to Felicie and Adelaide and Arya to Beauty, as you can see in the following quotes:

BEAUTY: That wasn't the first time [Avenant has] asked me to marry him since we lost all our money.

THE MERCHANT (to Beauty): So you want to leave me.

BEAUTY: No, father, I'll never leave you.

[…]

THE MERCHANT: They're real little devils, aren’t they? Let them sulk; I'll soon console them. Tomorrow morning I'll go to the port to see to my business. Then one can marry a duke and the other a prince!

La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) script

Another interesting scene is when Sansa wishes to join the queen in the royal wheelhouse, and Arya chooses to get her hands dirty instead:

"You better put on something pretty," Sansa told her. "Septa Mordane said so. We're traveling in the queen's wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today."

"I'm not," Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria's matted grey fur. "Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford."

A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

This echoes how Adelaide and Felicie wanted to attend the concert at the duchess’ court in the beginning of the film, while Beauty stays back and does chores around the house.

FELICIE(shouting): Beauty, you can wash the floor. We'll be late for the duchess.

La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) script

The parallel here is anything but perfect, considering Sansa genuinely wanted Arya to join her in the royal wheelhouse and repeatedly tried to convince her to do so, unlike Beauty’s sisters, who wanted her to be their servant. That is because, as I said above, GRRM made both Sansa and Arya a mix of Beauty and her two “evil” sisters.

What actually makes the above parallel interesting and layered is exactly this mixing. Once you consider that it was Beauty and Sansa who chose to stay back and do what was right/expected of them (which are two vastly different things for each girl because Beauty is a commoner and Sansa is a noble maiden), while Arya and Beauty’s sisters decided to run off and do something more or less selfish for their own pleasure (which again are two anti-diametrical things for the same reason as above).

To wrap up this parallel between Sansa and Beauty’s sister, we see that she never got to ride with the queen:

“Sansa, the good councilors and I must speak together until the king returns with your father. I fear we shall have to postpone your day with Myrcella. Please give your sweet sister my apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so kind as to entertain our guest today.”  

A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

Just like Felicie and Adelaide never got to attend the concert

FELICIE: We were told that the duchess was not receiving, though the court rang with laughter and music.

La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) script

Another thing that makes the connection between Sansa and Beauty more pronounced is the introduction of an “Avenant” figure, who is of course Joffrey: the blonde, dashing suitor with a not so hidden affinity for violence and an all around terrible character, with whom Sansa got to spend a whole lot of alone time in her first chapter. Unlike Beauty though, Sansa (and her father) accepts his marriage proposal and delights in spending time with him.

As we can see, by the end of Sansa’s first chapter, GRRM has established both similarities and differences between Sansa and Beauty. In my opinion GRRM decided to keep the core of Beauty’s character intact in Sansa (dutiful, kind, gentle, protective and romantic) and make her work towards the rest. That was accomplished by giving her some “undesirable” traits shared by Beauty’s sisters, which she would shed in later books through her negative experiences that would in turn result in positive character development.

From here on things only get more complicated, because, as I mentioned in the beginning, GRRM liberally subverts the things he disagrees with in Cocteau’s story. Not only that, but he uses a plethora of characters as stand-ins for Sansa’s “Beast” to move the story forward, all of them his foils in different ways each.

They all have one thing in common though, which establishes them as the Beast’s foils: They don’t care about Sansa’s consent. And the fact that men like Sandor Clegane and Tyrion Lannister could have taken more from Sansa but didn’t in the end, doesn't undo the abuse or lack of agency that Sansa suffers in those situations they put her into.

The most powerful force in Beauty and the Beast isn't magic, or even love, but consent. Most retellings of Villeneuve's version are careful to keep it. The Beast is clear that Beauty must know what she's getting into. (In Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's 1910 version, it's still more explicit: The Beast warns Beauty's father to "be honest with your daughter. Describe me to her just as I am. Let her be free to choose whether she will come or no...") Later, the Beast asks Beauty herself if she comes willingly. And that first dinner is marked by the Beast's deference to her wishes. Beauty's earliest surprise is how much power she wields. Even in his nightly request that Beauty marry him, he defers. Andrew Lang emphasized the power dynamics in 1889's Blue Fairy Book:

"Oh! What shall I say?" cried Beauty, for she was afraid to make the Beast angry by refusing.

"Say 'yes' or 'no' without fear," he replied.

"Oh! No, Beast," said Beauty hastily

"Since you will not, good-night, Beauty," he said.

And she answered, "Good-night, Beast," very glad to find that her refusal had not provoked him.

Lang was one of many who used marriage proposals for the nightly request (Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 retelling was the first), but Villeneuve was under no illusions about the story's undertones. In her original, Beast asks Beauty to sleep with him. Beauty's power is the ability to withhold sexual consent.

Beauty doesn't admit love for the Beast until after he releases her (which permits her to rejoin him on her own terms). But this regard for her will is what first softens Beauty's heart. The story's not just reminding young women to look beyond appearance but reminding young men how to conduct themselves. Fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes outlines the story's social mandate in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: "The mark of beauty for a female is to be found in her submission, obedience, humility, industry, and patience; the mark of manliness is to be found in a man's self-control, politeness, reason, and perseverance."

Disney takes that out, and the story becomes significantly darker. Besides their rocky introduction, he punishes her for refusing to eat with him ("If she doesn't eat with me," he bellows, "then she doesn't eat at all!") and physically threatens her. His temper must be tamed before he can love or be loved—that, not his appearance, is the barrier. It's a decided departure from the courtly Beast, and Beauty's now required to forgive his outbursts before friendship can begin—an additional emotional burden. In this, Disney's more akin to 1978 Czech horror Panna a netvor (in which the Beast barely curbs his appetites and Beauty's drawn to him only through loneliness) than it is to the dreamlike tension of Jean Cocteau.

[...]

But Disney's retelling doesn't acknowledge its darkness. Covering threats with musical numbers doesn't count as exploration of subtext. This wasn't the first Beauty and the Beast adaptation to feature a Beast with rough edges, either; a story centered on power dynamics in relationships will shift to include contemporary concerns. But Disney's retelling asks Beauty to forgive abusive behavior, both ignoring the sovereignty of her consent and erasing the Beast's own obligations. And it's such an influential retelling, it's affected how the archetype has applied. By now, the label of a Beauty and the Beast story applies as much to a relationship in which the woman's love "tames" the man as it does to one about looking beyond appearances. (The CW's recent Beauty and the Beast updated the 1987 series(*) but replaced the scholarly, leonine hero with a handsome man with uncontrollable bursts of violent anger; these abusive undertones are the new beastliness. These days, Beauty is trapped in the Beast's S&M penthouse, and his understanding of consent is decidedly murky.)

How Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' Became the Darkest Tale of All

(*) The 1987 series with the scholarly leonine hero mentioned above is the CBS TV adaptation, which was written amongst others by GRRM himself.

The above article was written in order to criticize the dark retelling of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”, but I believe that everything that has been said there about Disney’s version could also be said for Sansa’s “Beauty and the Beast” arc in ASOIAF up until ASOS. And everything that’s been written about the audience’s faulty perception of the archetype can be applied to the readers of ASOIAF as well.

Beauty’s consent is of paramount importance in the original Beauty and the Beast fairytale written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villenueve, which is something both Cocteau’s film and the CBS TV adaptation stayed true to. And yet, the men who took on the Beast’s role in Sansa’s storyline showed minimal to no respect towards her wishes and an equal amount of concern for her lack of consent. On the contrary, they all used and abused her, each of them in their own way, behaving more like villains than romantic interests. And that is because those men serving as the Beast’s foils are meant to be viewed as villains and not romantic interests, which can be supported by the words of the author himself:

Amazon.com: Do you have a favorite character?

Martin: I've got to admit I kind of like Tyrion Lannister. He's the villain of course, but hey, there's nothing like a good villain.

George RR Martin, Amazon.com, 1999

Martin: I am sometimes surprised by the reactions of women in particular to some of the villains. [unintelligible] Over the years who have written me that their favorite characters are Jaime Lannister, or Sandor Clegane the Hound, or Theon Greyjoy, you know. All of these are deeply troubled individuals with some very dark sides who have done some very dark things.

George RR Martin, interview with Geek and Sundry, June 2012

Commenter 1: Oh please don't cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn't bear if it'd feel creepy all of a sudden. Well, that's me making demands. LOL

Martin: Old guy? No, but... the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa, and was never written as attractive... you know, those hideous burns and all that... he's a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.

[...]

Commenter 2: LOL, you're such a man. To many of us women, dangerous *is* attractive.

Martin: But no one has any love for poor old Sam Tarly, kind and smart and decent and devoted…

Comments on GRRM’s Not A Blog, August 2009

But why would GRRM decide to change his Beast from the kind and decent Beast archetype into the obviously much more problematic and villainous new one when he started writing AGOT in 1991, just one year after the CBS TV adaptation ended? Considering that 1991 was the year Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” came out and that one of GRRM’s favorite movies is Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast”, I believe it’s not that far-fetched to assume this change can be attributed to the author’s discontent with Disney’s adaptation.

In my opinion, the subversion of the “Beauty and the Beast” trope in Sansa’s arc is the author’s in-text critique of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”. By having the Beast figures in Sansa’s arc be dark, abusive and villainous, GRRM wished to showcase how the new “Beauty and the Beast” trope, where Beauty is required to forgive the Beast’s abusive behavior and “tame” him with her gentleness, should not be romanticized, because, in real life, Beauty not only won’t be able to tame the Beast, but she also shouldn’t be required to.

So in away, I believe he is deconstructing this very dark and problematic version of the trope in order to reinvent the original one. And for the deconstruction part he needs foils, but for the reconstruction he needs the actual Beast. And there are foils of the Beast aplenty in ASOIAF, but only one Beast.

The first foil of the Beast will be discussed in the second part of this meta series.

Special thanks to @kellyvela and @lostlittlesatellites for their help in the writing of this meta with their invaluable input and constant support.

EDIT: The rest of the series can be found in the following links part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

[zeitism]

First off: Do not reblog this. I was nice enough to leave a few personals in my followers list, don’t make me regret it. This meta is mainly for me to kind of get things straight in my own head.

Like with every single post where I try putting my thoughts into words, this is gonna be rambly and go every which way. Read if you want or don’t.

Mephisto is... such a stupidly complicated character. And he, I think, more than any character within this series, is so ridiculously open to interpretation by each and every single individual who sees him. Frankly, I don’t think any of us who aren’t Kazue Kato will every really come to capital T Totally understand him or his motives for his actions. 

Not long after chapter 109 dropped, someone in the big fandom Discord server started talking about how they were worried/believed Mephisto is actually some big bad antagonist hiding in plain sight. And yea, I can see where one might get that idea. Mephisto isn’t exactly subtle. He drives home the point that he’s a demon. He shouldn’t be expected to act human?

Let me just... Try to break things down. Both so I myself can get a grasp on things and so that others here might as well.

Mephisto isn’t tied down by our human bullshit. Moral and emotions and fear of consequences for actions taken. He seems very much like a “The ends always justify the means” type. He takes action. Actions humans are too weak to take for themselves. 

In chapter 66 Mephisto says that he was testing everyone. 

Yes, everyone is a piece in “his game”. He had a hand in each and everyone one of their lives which lead them all to where they are. As I said before in other posts (that I believe I’ve deleted because personals reblogged them or something) Mephisto can’t actively control people. He can’t reach into their heads and make them do exactly what he wants. They have to do things of their own accord.

Do people just not understand that there is no such thing as "right and wrong", "good and bad"? They're strictly human consumpts and mean nothing at all outside of humanity. Which Mephisto, and others, clearly state time and time again that he is. It's like- You can't DO that. You can't simultaneously shun Mephisto from your kind and your world yet still expect him to act according to your moral and ethical principles! 

Like when Rin tells Mephisto that he can't treat people like that in chapter 66- I really just. "You can't, what with your “consciences" and all that-" He's the only one that's willing and able to do the shit that needs to be done in order to get the best possible outcome for humanity.  

Humans always want to try and find the easy way out. The safe way out. Mephisto doesn't. He sees what needs to happen and does his best to guide people down that path, all the while planning ahead who knows how many steps in order to always be able to counteract the fact that humans are so fucking self-destructive. Just as likely to be working against their best interests as for them if they perceive things one way or another. And he may not have emotions like humans do, but he sure as hell knows how they work. 

Like, he was around humans even before breaking off from Lucifer and founding the Order. If there were ever a master of human physiology, it would be Mephisto. He’s lived and worked closely with humans for over two hundred years now, and again was around them even longer before that. He knows what makes them tick, knows how to look for and study and use all their little triggers and ticks and thought processes and use them to get what he needs out of them. Everything is fine-tuned to each person. 

Like the way, he overworks Yukio to the point he betrays his only living family and his friends. Things were piled and piled and piled on top of him until he finally broke under the weight of it all. Without that happening, Rin would have never fully awakened (well he would but it wouldn't be at the right time), and wouldn't be in the past learning everything Yukio was just plain too desperate to know. He’s consumed by it. By the need for knowledge and now, power. Because for whatever ridiculous reason he sees himself as weak and useless when, frankly, he’s not. 

And on that note of Rin being in the past- When he saw his newborn self start murdering people straight out of the friggin’ womb- I firmly believe that this is going to be important to Rin’s character development. We saw that, way back in Kyoto, Rin somewhat starting to acknowledge his demon-ness. No, he didn’t ask to be born. Didn’t ask to be born the way he was. But he is here and he’s going to make the best of it. Mephisto is, I believe, pushing this acceptance of himself along. Showing Rin that, yea, he started out as this way, but look what he is now. That little fire-clad baby chewing a mans face off is now the teenage boy who would, and has, put his life on the line to save his friends. 

When Demon!Rin started breaking through whatever little pocket dimension Mephisto stuffed Rin’s demon heart into, did he just let it happen? No. He let him throw his little fit for a couple seconds then popped him back in his time-out corner. Then stuffed Rin in a corner of his own to chill out and get a grip on himself again. 

While still on this note, it’s safe to say Rin isn’t actually spending all those years watching Shiro and Yuri grow up. He’s been bouncing back and forth between points in time- Possibly even beyond Mephisto’s control, as we saw him be surprised at one point that the started out in one year, went forward five (Don’t quote me on that), and then went back again.

And he’s still not seen the reason he and Yukio were allowed to live. What made Shiro go from “I’m going to save Yuri by killing her monster children” to “That boy is MY son”, so I think time is possibly frozen at the point where Rin started losing control of his emotions and gets locked away to chill for a while and get them back under control. Which is the whole reason Mephisto sent him back in time in the first place? He even said to himself. 

That “The reality that your brother must accept isn’t the past. The past what you must accept”. Rin needs to fully accept himself for who and what he is if he actually wants to be of any use. Wasn’t that the whole overarching point in the Kyoto sage? He couldn’t draw his sword and use his flames until he stopped fearing them? 

There’s also the other character arcs- Where we saw that Mephisto got to Renzou before the Illuminati did, and knew full well that he would be a spy not only for the Order, for but for the Illuminati as well once they did get to him. And there’s Izumo- It’s probably safe to assume that the blonde woman who got Tsukumo (her little sister) out of the Inori lab was one of the Order’s other spies Mephisto talks about. Mephisto put her in a safe place without telling Izumo because it would likely impede her own growth. He knew about her past, knew where she was taken, knew what was going to happen to her, and yet sent the gang out to rescue her all on their own. And with Yukio leading, too. Putting him in charge of their safety. 

I got off point again, I’m sure, but when talking about Mephisto- I feel it’s important to provide context. Or maybe I’m just rambling like an idiot and wasting everyone's time. 

Mephisto isn't "good", because that doesn't exist But he's sure as hell far from "bad", because doesn't exist either. He’s an asshole. An annoying, creepy, cryptic little bastard, who by his own admission “knows everything”, yet never tells anyone anything until he sees fit or just not at all. Letting them find things out for themselves. 

When Rin got all up in Mephisto’s face in chapter 66, Mephisto was nearly fed up with him. It’s not HIS fault Rin can’t see the bigger picture in things. It’s not HIS fault humans have their ridiculous senses of right and wrong. And Mephisto lets his irritation show by quoting one of the last things Shiro said to Rin on the day he died.

A dick fucking move, right? Stabbing a knife straight through one of Rin’s weakest sore spots? Rin kind of deserved it, really. Getting all up in Mephisto’s face like he did, flames and all, going on about how evil Mephisto COULD be, and why he should listen to him in the first place, never listening to him when Mephisto tells him that he is not their enemy. 

And when kid Shiro also got all hands-y with Mephisto- Telling him how one day he’d tear out Mephisto’s throat with his teeth. Which- Fair, right? Shiro grew up in an awful place and suffered through things that no one should. Yet Mephisto still told him the truth of it. How Shiro was creatated by Mephisto for a purpose and one way or another, and he can make all the threats and promises he wants, but he’s still going to fulfill that purpose. Which he does in the end. Oh, he killed and killed and killed demons, became Paladin- But in the end, he was a sacrifice to a demon. A sacrifice to Satan to save the life of a child he once vowed to kill and instead raised as his own. He was also a sacrifice to make Rin draw his sword and start this whole adventure. 

It’s so easy to look at Mephisto through the eyes of an ignorant, simple-minded human. To take him and his actions at face value. But when you try to look past that, I think, the picture becomes more clear. 

Again, no, Mephisto isn’t “good”. He’s no Arthur, he’s no Rin, he’s Mephisto. He’s a “person” using his means and his skills to ensure the continuation of the human race. Yea, those methods are cruel. He has done and will continue to do horrific and inhumane things to people. But they have their purposes. Without what happened to Shiro, how he came to be and what he went through, he would not have been the man he was. You know that “You must simply live on” quote he said to Shura? It came from knowing life will constantly chew you up and spit you out, but it’s important to roll with the punches and make the best out of the scars they leave behind.  

Without awakening and watching the only father he’s ever known die right before his eyes, without Yukio shooting and basically (down right) killing him, Rin would not be in the past right now, learning the why of it all. Yukio, too, would not be own his path of self-discovery/acceptance. The jury is still out on what exactly he’s going to find while in the Dominus Liminis. 

[whitewolfofwinterfell]

Can you do Merlin (I know again but I like reading your metas) and Harry Potter for the ask meme? 😊

5 things I’d change about Merlin:

1. Morgana’s entire arc. I briefly discussed this in the previous ask you sent where I talked about characters I couldn’t sympathise with, but I feel like Morgana’s entire arc across the series was handled terribly. The idea of Morgana transitioning from a protagonist to an antagonist was interesting and I’m perfectly happy with that, but it needed to be written so much better than it was. I think more attention needed to be given to Morgana’s internal processes and motivations. How did she change so drastically from such a compassionate and caring person to such a hardened and ruthless villain? I can’t pinpoint what specific event caused that rapid change and I think that’s the problem with Morgana. The development needed to unfold a lot slower and there should’ve been a clearly traceable line of events and growing of thoughts and feelings that led her to where she ended up. I know that she did have certain pivotal events that changed her - meeting Mordred, discovering she had magic and living with Uther’s hatred for magic, Merlin poisoning her, finding out Uther was her father and had been lying her all those years, meeting Morgause - but I still feel like none of that fully justified the sudden change in her character. I think the writing of her character in the later seasons needed to be more sympathetic and instead of reducing her to a villain, there still needed to be some level of insight into Morgana as a person. Ultimately, Morgana’s actions were driven by her desire to make magic legal, put an end to Uther’s persecution of those with magic and take her rightful place on the throne. All of that is completely understandable and even reasonable, but it gets lost in the mess of trying to make her the worst villain in the world and Merlin and Arthur’s archenemy. 

2. Arthur finds out about Merlin’s magic before the finale. We all knew from day one that Arthur had to find out about Merlin having magic at some point, but to make us wait until the very last episode was cruel and a pretty poor decision. There was so much development involved in Arthur discovering Merlin’s secret. It was the one massive barrier that was constantly between them and by making Arthur find out in the finale, they had to cram an entire season’s worth of disbelief, confusion, angst and acceptance into one episode. Arthur learning about Merlin’s magic represented the turning point for him. Already throughout the series we saw that he didn’t hold the same harsh beliefs that Uther did about magic and that he was a lot more open minded and forgiving than his father. To find out that Merlin had magic would’ve completely turned his world upside down and make him question the beliefs, morals and principles he’d carried his entire life. The prophecy of Merlin and Arthur creating a golden age never truly happened because it couldn’t happen as long as Arthur was in the dark about Merlin’s magic. It’s only through finding that out and coming to accept Merlin’s magic as being part of who he was that the two of them could’ve truly become a partnership and worked towards building a better and brighter kingdom. It’s only through understanding Merlin’s struggles and experiences with magic that Arthur could’ve come to make the decision to make the practice of magic legal in Camelot and stop the persecution of those that practised it. The central conflict throughout Merlin is essentially one between those with magic and those without it, and Merlin and Arthur are the embodiment of that. Arthur is the king, he’s the one with the power to govern the kingdom and make the laws that Camelot lives by, he doesn’t have magic and has an ingrained prejudice against those that do that’s passed down to him from Uther. Then there’s Merlin, the most powerful warlock of all time that has so much magic yet is completely powerless when it comes to making the decisions that impact the kingdom. Like the show said, they were two sides of the same coin and only together could they bring the peace and balance between magical and non-magical people. But as I said above, in order to do that Arthur needed to know everything and have his eyes opened to the fact that magic was not the enemy, and that if it hadn’t been for Merlin’s magic he would’ve been dead in the pilot and the entire kingdom would’ve fallen to ruin. 

3. ARTHUR LIVES, Gwaine lives, Lancelot lives, everybody lives! I appreciate that Arthur’s death was temporary and there’s some level of comfort to take from that, but it still felt like everything that happened was for nothing. All of the blood, sweat, tears shed and sacrifices, pain and devotion Merlin endured to protect Arthur and fulfil their destinies felt utterly pointless. I don’t even care if it’s too idealistic and too much of a fairytale ending, the finale should’ve been Arthur and Merlin side by side in the castle looking out over Camelot, the sun setting in the sky and Kilgarrah narrating that they fulfilled their prophecies and it truly was the beginning of a golden age of Albion. Killing Arthur was unnecessary and a very unsatisfying and devastating conclusion to the story. The only ending that would’ve made sense to me is Merlin and Arthur together at the end, having overcome all the obstacles and evil they’d faced and created a united Camelot where magic was able to thrive in a new way, with the future ahead of them and endless possibilities for all the good they’re going to do together. As for Gwaine and Lancelot, I think they both should’ve survived until the end. Gwaine’s death was even more unnecessary than Arthur’s, there was just no impact or reason for it. I’ve always loved Lancelot and think he was killed way too prematurely, and should’ve been a part of the round table. I also disliked the way he was resurrected by Morgana to be used against Arthur and would completely scrap that plot.

4. Merlin and Morgana’s relationship. By this, I don’t mean I think Merlin and Morgana should’ve had a romantic relationship, but I think there was sooo much potential where Merlin and Morgana were concerned. Just as Merlin and Arthur’s destinies were entwined, so were Merlin and Morgana’s, and I think there were so many layers to their relationship that could’ve been explored. Morgana’s number one fear was Emrys and in keeping her in the dark about Merlin being Emrys, it simplified the storyline a lot and made something that could’ve been incredibly interesting pretty boring. I think Morgana should’ve definitely learned about Merlin’s magic before Arthur and that Merlin should’ve been there to try and help her adjust and teach her about how to control her magic. I also think that Morgana’s transition to the dark side could’ve involved Merlin a lot more with Morgana trying to turn Merlin against Arthur by preaching that Arthur would never accept him for who he really was and that only with her on the throne would they ever truly be free and magic not be a crime. This could’ve also provided some interesting development for Merlin with him being genuinely torn between his loyalties to Arthur and Morgana, and his desire to protect Arthur and maintain his duties to Camelot and his want to be free and for magic to have free reign too. By maintaining that friendship between Merlin and Morgana for longer, it also would’ve created much more conflict when Morgana found out that Merlin was Emrys. This would also tie into the first point I discussed about Morgana’s arc, because it would’ve kept Morgana more human by building on that relationship with Merlin and having her connect with the protagonist on a deeper level. It also would’ve complicated her role as a villain, because she would still have loyalties and affection for Merlin. Whether or not that relationship could’ve gone to the romantic level, I really don’t know. I’m not a Mergana shipper, but I’m not opposed to it either. I think it would’ve worked incredibly well whether it remained a friendship or if it turned into a romance. 

5. Gwen and Arthur have a baby. This is quite a simple one in comparison to the others, but I always felt like Gwen should’ve been pregnant at some point on the show. I don’t think it necessarily would’ve made sense for the baby to be born in the middle of the series because it would’ve detracted from the main story, but there definitely should’ve been an announcement that Gwen was pregnant in the last season. The reason for this is that it would’ve been a huge celebration of the continuation of Arthur’s family line and provides a nice image of a future with mini Arthur’s and Gwen’s, but also it would’ve been another huge milestone that Arthur and Gwen had overcome after facing so many obstacles and being told that their love could never be. 

5 things I’d change about Harry Potter:

1. REMUS, SIRIUS AND DOBBY LIVE. I understand that death is part of life and in a series like Harry Potter where there’s an actual war there’s inevitably going to be casualties but not Sirius and Remus. Sirius was killed way too prematurely and still had so much to offer. He’s one of the best written and complex characters in the series and would’ve added so much to the story if he’d have lived. It’s exactly the same with Remus. He was such an interesting character that was an unnecessary sacrifice and I will never accept that Teddy had to grow up an orphan just like Harry. It’s too tragic. As for Dobby, why would anyone ever want to kill Dobby? It’s too sad and although I do think his death is effective in evoking the kind of emotion JKR wanted us to feel, I just love Dobby too much and can’t help but wish he’d lived. Also, poor Hedwig too. Let her live. Poor baby.

2. The entire epilogue. I’m pretty sure every HP fan will agree with me on this one. The epilogue in Deathly Hallows was just so awful. After everything that happened to write such a wishy washy happy ending like that was ridiculous. It wasn’t necessary for us to know that and it would’ve been so much more effective if what came afterwards was left to the readers’ imagination and interpretation. We were already given a happy ending with the defeat of Voldemort and there really wasn’t any need for JKR to take it that step further. 

3. Snape’s entire arc. As a writer myself, I can just feel that not much thought was put into Snape’s character. JKR wanted to create a villain that wasn’t really a villain but failed spectacularly. The idea that Snape was always on Harry’s side and protecting him behind the scenes completely undermines his behaviour and actions across the 7 books. And his reasoning being that he was in love with Lily just has no weight to it. Is he really so pathetic that he spent the rest of his life obsessing over a woman who never wanted him and married another man, and waded into her son’s life because he somehow felt that brought him closer to her? There’s just something incredibly disturbing about it and it’s a weak character arc. 

4. The general portrayal of villains - particularly Voldemort and the Malfoy’s. JKR has tried to defend herself numerous times about the way she wrote the houses, with the general opinion being all Gryffindors are pure hearted heroes and all Slytherins are evil whilst Ravenclaws are somewhere in the background reading and Hufflepuffs just go with the flow. JKR falls into the trap of using stereotypes and makes her villains one dimensional. Voldemort is the obvious example here. What made him become so utterly evil? I mean, there really is nothing redeemable about him yet from flashbacks we learn that he was a pretty normal, even charming child. What could possibly cause that drastic turn to the dark side? The idea of wanting to create horcruxes does not in itself mean he was evil, in fact, it’s pretty in-keeping with the ambition associated with Slytherins - he wanted to be as powerful and strong as he possibly could be. Yet the moment he learned what had to be done to make it happen why didn’t he decide against it? Why did human life mean less to him than being immortal? Draco is another example. Draco is arguably one of the most intriguing characters in the series, but his struggles are not gone into in enough depth. Obviously, there’s restrictions with how far JKR was able to go with it since the books are from Harry’s POV, but just how I discussed Morgana and Merlin’s relationship, Harry and Draco’s relationship had a very similar dynamic and could’ve been built upon so much more to make the story even more interesting. Even though Draco was supposed to be Harry’s archenemy, there’s a bond there between the two boys, a sense of familiarity and obligation that means when Harry first understood the extent to which Draco was involved with Voldemort it could’ve create so much more conflict than we got. JKR did go there, but she just didn’t take it far enough. Similarly, the rest of the Malfoy’s are portrayed as being evil but why? You’ll notice that I’m one of those people that just can’t accept someone being evil and the only explanation being because they are. Very few people are actually born evil, only psychopaths, but surely all of these villainous characters can’t be psychopaths? So what is their drive? What went so wrong in their past that they behave this way? In my opinion it is so hard to write a realistic and strong antagonist and JKR is one of the many writers that fails to do any villain justice. 

5. The time-turner. Although the time-turner was great in that it allowed Harry and Hermione to save Sirius and Buckbeak, the introduction of time travel completely detracts from the entire story. I saw this meme years ago: 

and distinctly remember laughing out loud because it’s so true. JKR can preach whatever philosophical crap she wants about how messing with time could have disastrous consequences and that’s why they couldn’t use the time turner for any other purpose, but with the power to time travel why wouldn’t the characters simply go back and change the key events in their lives that they want to erase? Why wouldn’t Harry go back to the night his parents were killed to save them and kill Voldemort for good in the process? Any rational human would and say to hell with the consequences. From Harry’s perspective there was nothing to lose in doing that, in fact, it would solve all of his life’s problems. It’s just ridicilous that McGonagall would give such a powerful and potentially earth destroying object (if it fell into the wrong hands) to a young teenage girl just so she can take on extra classes. There is no logic in it and there is no satisfying or adequate reason as to why Dumbledore thinks it’s perfectly okay to go back in time to save Buckbeak and Sirius but that it would be abhorrent to use it for any other reason. 

Wow, so that’s it. Sorry this got so long, I really wanted to put a lot of thought into it. It’s so hard to narrow it down to just 5 things and to cast my mind back to the entire series to recall what I didn’t like. For Harry Potter I was going to say I’d change all of the romances, but then the point about the epilogue kinda does that for me. Anyway, thanks for asking again, Tasneem, you know how much I love writing these kind of metas! :)

[aion-rsa]

INTERVIEW: Marc Guggenheim Will Keep X-Men Gold ‘Light and Fun’

For the past several years, Marvel Comics’ X-Men have had their hands full combating large-scale threats to mutantkind’s very existence. When you’re battling those kinds of existential crises, it can be hard to focus on making the world a better place for the humans that fear and hate you. So the X-Men have frequently had to distance themselves from or temporarily set aside the dream of their founder Charles Xavier; proving that man and mutants can co-exist by using their powers to protect and defend the world.

That all changes this April with the launch of the “ResurrXion” line of books, including the new twice-monthly ongoing series “X-Men Gold,” by writer Marc Guggenheim — the executive producer of The CW’s “Arrow” and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” and a comic book writer who made his Marvel debut back in 2006 with the “Civil War” arc of “Wolverine” — and artist Ardian Syaf, formerly of DC Comics titles including “Superman.” “X-Men Gold” finds Kitty Pryde returning to the team she grew up with, now as the group’s leader, as she works to mutantkind into an all-new age of high-profile superheroics.

CBR spoke with Guggenheim about the book’s direction and keeping things “relatively light and fun” (at least at first, Kitty’s leadership position, the initial threats his X-Men will face and how they’ll interact more with the larger Marvel Universe than they have in quite some time. Plus, CBR has the first look at the covers to May’s “X-Men Gold” #3 and #4, both by Syaf.

EXCLUSIVE: “X-Men Gold” #3 cover by Ardian Syaf.

CBR: Marc, looking at the line up for “X-Men Gold,” Kitty Pryde is on a team with her former best friend in Rachel Grey, an older version of a father figure from her youth in Old Man Logan, an ex-boyfriend in Colossus, and two close friends she pretty much grew up with in Nightcrawler and Storm. So at first glance it seems in terms of team dynamic this would be a nice homecoming for her, but is that necessarily the case?

Marc Guggenheim: It is. It’s certainly complicated particularly with respect to Peter, and some of my favorite moments from the first issue relate to their history together, but overall it’s a very empowering homecoming. Kitty is the “kid who made good.” She’s the apprentice who’s returning to become the master.

This relates to my goal of keeping the book — for the time being at least — relatively light and fun. The complexities that arise from the composition of the team aren’t dark and hand wringing-y. They’re meant to be really fun. If I can get you at least chuckling once an issue, that would be wonderful.

So, if you’ll pardon a bad joke, they’re the X-Men and not the Angst-Men?

Exactly. I think the X-Men have always had a certain amount of angst, but the thing that I’m trying to calibrate with “Gold” is not making the angst the driving force of the stories. I kind of feel like for the longest time — and I’m really using “E For Extinction” as the sort of jumping off point — that the X-Men have had a lot of angst, which was appropriate because ever since “E For Extinction,” the X-Men have been sort of fighting for their very existence, always facing some version of extinction.

I think one of the great things about ResurrXion — and one of the reasons it’s so aptly titled — is that the X-Men coming out of “IvX” have a new lease on life. The existential threats that they were facing have been tabled for the time being and that’s allowing the X-Men to look to the future in a way that they haven’t been able to in a very long time. We hit this point pretty hard in X-Men Prime.

Kitty Pryde is returning to the X-Men in a leadership role. What made you want to cast her in this position?

It started with a great love of Kitty. My first X-Men issue that I read was #139, which was the “Welcome to the X-Men, Kitty Pryde – Hope You Survive the Experience” issue. From the moment I was offered the gig, I knew I wanted to return Kitty to the team if the character was available. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was an opportunity to do more than scratch a nostalgic itch. I realized I had the chance to tell a very classic story: the story of the apprentice who becomes the master. To me, her becoming the leader of the team was the ultimate realization of that arc.

When I pitched it, I wasn’t so sure how people at Marvel would respond, and to my delight, that was the thing about my take that excited and energized everyone the most. It certainly energized me because it’s been a lot of fun to write Kitty as someone calling the shots. She’s really proving on the job that she’s learned a lot over her many years of being a member of the X-Men.

EXCLUSIVE: “X-Men Gold” #4 cover by Ardian Syaf

Is she going to feel some of the weight and darkness that some of the other prominent X-Men leaders have wrestled with like Cyclops and Storm?

Eventually I would love to get to that point. I’m intentionally avoiding that right now because, like I said, I tonally want to start the book off on a lighter and more hopeful note.

But you’re right: It is true that Storm and Cyclops have have met with very challenging moral ends. It’s something we’ll definitely be dealing a bit with when it comes to Storm, but it’s more on Storm’s side of the equation than on Kitty’s. It would be really nice to cast that particular shadow on Kitty eventually, but before I cast shadows, I want to get some sunlight in there.

Another interesting dynamic that occurred to while looking at your line up is you have two characters that hail from nightmarish possible futures in Old Man Logan and Rachel Grey. What’s it like bouncing those two characters off of each other?

I’ve got an idea for a really cool scene between Logan and Rachel, but the right moment to have that scene hasn’t happened yet. The scene I have in mind does speak directly to the fact they both come from futures that just happen to both be lousy. What is it about the future that in any iteration, it always looks crappy? I want to get a little meta (but not too meta) about it, but I haven’t had a chance to fit that in just yet.

Superheroics will be an essential part of “X-Men Gold,” but what about the training of the next generation of mutants? Will that be a part of your book as well?

Yeah, it happens in the background because the book is very much focused on the active X-Men. What I think is very critical about the X-Men’s new status quo is that the mansion is full with students, so the X-Men still have to be teachers as well as heroes. They have to continue to training the next generation of mutants.

So, yes, the younger X-Men will very much be a part of the book. In fact, the students have moments in each of the issues I’ve written so far. At the same time, it’s a little bit of a balancing act, because I want to maintain the focus on our core X-Men.

“X-Men Gold” #1 cover by Ardian Syaf

I think balancing between your core cast and all the fan-favorite supporting characters that are part of their world is sort of the main struggle for any X-Men writer. Because even the mutant characters that might be considered C-list by some are other readers’ favorites. So how has it been balancing all of those things?

I always try very hard to keep some space for non-action moments. I think when you’re able to spend time just with the characters it gives you opportunities to interact more with the students and more with the fan favorite characters.

At the same time, different stories are going to lend themselves to different kinds of characters. So while we’ll always have our core group, Kitty is smart: If she needs a particular power or skill set from other mutants she has no compunctions against bringing them into the field. For example, Rockslide and Armor will help the team in issue #3.

What’s your sense of the X-Men’s rogues’ gallery? Is “X-Men Gold” a book where we’ll see classic foes? New villains? Or both?

I would say both. The first arc features a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. One might think, “Jeez, another Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?” But hopefully I’ve come up with a twist that makes this Brotherhood different from all the other ones that came before it. That team will feature some familiar faces and some new characters.

There are a lot of different things I’m trying to balance in the book. One of them is having new characters and adding new toys to the toy box, while at the same time bringing back characters that people know and love. The Brotherhood is a good example of doing a mixture of those two things.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects about the Brotherhood is the word evil is in their name. A lot of villains see themselves as the heroes of their own story. So to have “evil” as part of their group moniker suggests you’re dealing with a group that wants to take ownership of that word and embrace it. Is that true with this group?

Yeah they really should be called, the Brotherhood of Self-Aware Mutants. No, the truth is in this particular instance the “evil” is very intentionally included. There’s a secret to the team that connects directly to the reason for the word “evil” being in the group’s name.

Ardian Syaf’s art has a feel and flavor that reminds me of some of the past heroic eras of the X-Men. So it seems like he’d be a good fit for what you want to do here. What’s it like working with him?

I’ve got to give all the credit in the world to [Marvel editor] Dan Ketchum. I said to him that putting Ardian on this book was the best bit of casting; of matching an artist to a book.

I think Ardian’s style tells you everything you need to know about what the book’s mission statement is. His art is new and fresh, but it also harkens back to John Byrne and Jim Lee. There’s even a bit of Arthur Adams in there. So his style is very modern, but it also speaks to an aesthetic that draws on the influence of the ’80s and the ’90s.

Ardian Syaf’s cover for March’s “X-Men” one-shot, written by Marc Guggenheim, illustrated by Ken Lashley and setting the stage for much of the “Resurrxion” status quo.

Any further hints and teases you can leave us with about the tone, scope, and scale of your initial stories?

Because we’re double-shipping I’m keeping the arcs pretty short. They’ll be about three to four issues long. I’m really excited about that actually, because it’s made the issues themselves very dense. We’re not really doing any sort of decompression here. We’re telling very tightly compacted and constructed stories, and I’m trying very hard to make sure that each issue has a handful of moments that make that issue really, really special. There’s no sort of filler issues. I want to make sure that with each issue everyone is getting a lot of bang for their buck; that in those 20 pages there’s a lot of great stuff going on.

That structure is also a lot of fun. We’re going to tell a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants story in the first arc and there’s going to be a brand new kind of threat in the second arc. You’re not going to have to wait six months to get a different story. You’ll be getting stories on a much more regular and consistent basis, which I think harkens back to the feel of reading these books back in the ’80s.

In recent years it tends to be very easy to have the X-Men exist in almost their own corner of the Marvel Universe. Will we see some of the larger outside MU trappings in “X-Men Gold?” Will groups like say, S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers, pop up from time to time?

Yes. The whole raison d’etre of the book and the team is that throughout the X-Men’s history they’ve sort of segregated themselves. They were either up in Westchester, or they were on Utopia, or they were in Genosha, or Limbo. They were never in the middle of the action; they always segregated themselves from humankind. What’s so great about Kitty’s plan is that she wants to put the X-Men front and center. They’re going to have relationships and interactions with humans. That’s the only way they’re going to combat the prejudice against mutants. The only way you fight ignorance is with knowledge and interaction.

So, yes, the X-Men are going to be smack-dab in the middle of New York, and as we all know there’s a lot of superheroes and stuff going on in New York. We will be seeing S.H.I.E.L.D. As people who read my last comic know [Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” comic book], I have a great affection for S.H.I.E.L.D. We’ll also be seeing other superheroes as time goes on.

We’ll be crossing paths with some big things happening in the Marvel Universe, as well. That’s really important to what we’re trying to do with “X-Men Gold.” The big mission statement of the book and the team is that the X-Men are interacting with the rest of the Marvel Universe in a way that they really haven’t in a long time.

“X-Men Gold” #1 is scheduled for release on April 5, with “X-Men Gold” #2 following two weeks later.

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