#both truly are tragic characters

[captastra]

What’s your role in a tragic play?

Thanks for the tag @roofgeese @detectivelokis @madparadoxum and @poisonedtruth 💗! Was tagged to take this uquiz and decided to do it for Lily and Rhea!

misunderstood villain

prepare for an onslaught of both the most dehumanizing and hateful takes, and flood of thirst comments. you are chronically misunderstood. whether or not you're actually evil is debatable. you may be acting out for revenge, to defend someone you love, or even just to protect yourself. you're a pretty jaded person. you don't trust or even really like most people. maybe you did at one point. but that part of you is gone, and you don't go a single day without grieving it. you think a lot about what your life could have been. you're stuck in the past. you're angry and maybe you don't even want to be, but this is the only way you can see to survive. you're open, but less in a trusting way and more like a wound. you don't like to let people see you, but the hurt spills out of you before you can stop it. you're impulsive, even as you try hard to plan and prepare. maybe someday your side of the story will finally be heard. until then, you can convince yourself that being hated is safer anyway.

desperate narrator

this story is a cycle, and you're spinning around it like a hamster in a ball being tormented by a cat. you know how this story ends. after all, you've told it a thousand times. but you try to change it every time. you love the people in this story more than anything. so watching them fall victim to the narrative breaks you in a way you can't begin to describe. but all you can do is tell the story── their story── with tears in your eyes. you're prone to anxiety and feelings of helplessness. you have so much love in your heart, and for once you wish it would change something. it didn't. it doesn't. it won't. but you refuse to stop telling the story. and you refuse to stop loving the people in it. in this way, no one is stronger than you. you just wish being strong hurt less.

No pressure tags: @kourumi @galaxycunt @clonesupport @sstewyhosseini @theelderhazelnut @incognito-insomniac @unholymilf @euryalex @bearcina @the-grand-king-queen @eclecticwildflowers @poetikat @kyber-infinitygems @confidentandgood @aceghosts @bitchesofostwick​ @driftwoodskeleton​ @kabals-nose-scrunch​ @phillipsgraves​ @weasleyprodigy​ and anyone else who wants to share!!

[guided-by-stars]

When Siffrin first asks Loop why they’re helping him, their response seems uninteresting at first. “Because I think you should be helped. I won't always have the answers, but I think having someone on your side to talk to is better than dealing with this alone.” Well, of course. The guide is helping you because they want to, and obviously it’s important to have someone not looping to talk to or else you’d go crazy.

But once you learn more about who Loop is… once you learn that they have this deep revulsion and bitterness and resentment eating away at their heart, that they’re so upset that Siffrin has unintentionally replaced them and stolen away everything they had that they tried to kill him. They knew that killing them wouldn’t bring their friends back, their place in their party back, but they wanted so desperately the satisfaction of taking everything that Siffrin stole from them, away from them too. To make them even. They needed that catharsis so desperately, to break him down, to bring them back to the desperation and hopelessness that Loop felt in that moment. Their role was up. The curtains had fell. They had no reason to be there anymore. They needed Siffrin to feel the same way that they did, for them to be one again. “You’re me, so why can’t you feel this pain too? We should both drown, I should drag you under, take your helping hand and pull you into my coffin, let’s be buried together.”

But at the same time, they weren’t lying, when they said that. They do truly and wholly think Siffrin should be helped. That he deserved to be helped. And they pushed themselves so hard to help them in every single way that they could. They told him that he could confide in his friends, in the very beginning. They say “Don’t make the same mistakes that I did.” when teaching them to zone out. They desperately plea and beg and make a mess of themselves trying to prevent them from killing themselves with the dagger. They tell him to help his friends, advise him on how to escape the loops, creates their own theories to propose to him while he’s gone, even listens when Siffrin explains his plan to talk to the King, despite thinking it was a horrible idea. They remind him of his parties names, when in a moment of panic and hopelessness, he looses it. They talk them through the panic, calm them down, remind them to breathe.

Loop cannot stand looking at the party. It hurts too much, to see these ghosts of the family that they loved, the family that they doomed. They say they cannot possibly see them, cannot let them see them. No matter what. It’s impossible for them. Despite that, when Siffrin goes off the rails in Act 5, breaks, they find them. They look at them. They tell the party what Siffrin is going through, they guide them through the whole House, give them everything they need to succeed. They devote themselves so truly to help, to their own detriment, because they want Siffrin to escape so desperately.

Siffrin says it himself. He could not have escaped without Loop. He would have resorted to something similar if he didn’t have them. He would have been doomed, without them. Without the loops in general? If he never made that wish? If his party split up? I truly think he might have killed himself then, too. The only way that Siffrin survives is by standing on the corpse of himself. Loop was always doomed to be the only reason why Siffrin was blessed. And even yet, Loop still truly believes that he deserves to be helped, genuinely wants to help him to be free.

[trappedinafantasy37]

POV: Your girlfriend has finally returned from her assignment. But, she has grown a will of her own and she despises you. And it pains you to see that she is so much happier without you. If only you were smarter and never handed her over to Ketheric. Maybe she would still love you because she was the only one in this world who ever did, even if it wasn't real.

[itsafternoonpast5]

thinking about their friendship so hard

[joyfuladorable]

I meant more of a… in relation to how she’d feel about saving her father from the Canon. How would she balance her father’s willingness to sacrifice for the greater good versus her desire to hypothetically save his life? And how would she connect that to Miles?

Ohh! Thanks for the additional context!

She’d probably be pretty damn conflicted!! She’s a hero! She wants to save people!! But, she’s also a kid and now has peers who are older and more experienced than her telling her about Canon and how “things are supposed to go” to preserve the Multiverse. Miguel has “proof” that deviating would lead to disaster!

And she’d try to find comfort in the idea of fate, I think. Presumably, after ITSV, she experiences some BIG Tragedies and likely gets support and empathy from the other Spideys who’d be like “sorry, kid, it just Has to be this way.” I don’t think that mentality would stick, at first? Maybe she’d run an algorithm or calculations or make theories because (like Pavitr like Miles like Hobie) she’d believe that there’s a way to do Both, save people despite Canon and preserve the Multiverse.

But maybe the math keeps just not Working and she just gets tired and more Tired. And what does it really matter? It’s not like she can go back in time and save her dad anyways…. He made his choice (heroic yet tragic) and she’s had to mourn and live with it ever since. It’s not like she could’ve stopped all the Other Things that have happened since, either…

And then comes Miles. A friend, a teen she’d dismissed at first cuz he wasn’t up to snuff and there were other more competent Spideys to collaborate with… then their attempt to keep him safe failed and he proved them all Wrong. Peni watches as he learns about Canon Events and realizes his dad is going to Die.

But he doesn’t accept it. He’s going to prove them wrong, save his dad, stop Spot. He has the chance, and he’s going to Take It.

Maybe that wakes Peni up from this fugue state of resignation. She’s a Hero. She Wants to Save People. She didn’t get that chance with her dad, but she can sure as hell help Miles save his.

[ghost-proofbaby]

ghost. i literally just got back from my classes today and hopped on to check my dash and saw the eddie being jealous abt astarion fic and oh my god… when i tell you that might be my favorite thing you’ve ever written. genuinely. it was so soft and sweet and i LITERALLY GIGGLED OUT LOUD WHILE READING IT!!!! i’m going to cherish that so close to my heart im literally obsessed with it

😭😭😭

i literally adore you so much thank you oh my gosh

i just needed it. between that and my wip about eddie reacting to you getting the mind blown achievement…. they just make me giggle. like yup. i’m taking him, shoving him into my modern pocket, and he’s gonna play bg3 with me because i said so <3

(btw eddie talks big game for someone who definitely fell for astarion’s charms his first playthrough. he vowed up and down he’d romance shadowheart or karlach but then- oh shit, oh no, that pretty vampire wants to spend the night with him? he can’t possibly say no. and oh shit oh no, he’s suddenly meeting him in the forest? baby boy definitely had to reevaluate his priorities and save scummed to be back on the shadowheart romance path)

[onelungmcclung]

the terror did not turn me into an edward ashley fan but mota did. go with g-d, ed ash.

[amandabe11man]

the part of me that appreciates layered characters in media is completely fine with amanda being a tragic figure, but the other part of me is like “let amanda be completely evil, let her enjoy causing misery to others”

[trophygony]

equivalent of biting your fist to restrain yourself from talking about Newest Blorbo

[rooolt]

truly scouring the trailer for the next season of a show for my dear reoccurring character bestie who has never had a relevant plot line not including his childhood best friend and didn’t even get one of those last season. Is it too criminal to hope my king will do something?

[infizero]

this image haunted my brain when i was trying to fall asleep last night so i had to make it

[kcrabb88]

It's truly wild to me how many people out there don't understand that the Star Wars prequels are a tragedy or how tragedies work.

Posts like "these are the Jedi failed movies" truly just make me shake my head. They're actually the "fascism wears a smile until it strikes you down and then it's too late" movies. They're the "the senate became corrupt and clapped in the face of genocide" movies. They're the "make people scared enough of war until they accept authoritarianism" movies. They're the "fear and possessiveness will tear you up on the inside" movies. The Jedi were the heroes of lore, people loved and looked up to them, looked to them for safety, and then too much got put on their shoulders on purpose by Palpatine, and also by a senate that didn't want to act (not you Padme and Bail and Mon, you're perfect). They were drafted and used and scapegoated, which is, you know, a tenet of the vast majority of authoritarian governments (Hitler and Stalin, for instance, might be on different ends of the political spectrum, but they sure both did scapegoat specific groups and commit mass murder, just differently).

When some people say "these movies are about the fall of the Jedi" what they mean is "the Jedi failed" but that's not what "the fall of the Jedi means." It means they were wiped the fuck OUT. Like, Jesus, in Rogue One Tarkin is talking about burning out the final MEMORY of the Jedi by blowing up the holy city in Jedha. Palpatine had to get rid of the Jedi because to get rid of the Jedi was to get rid of the final people standing in his way after he had already worn them out. His intention was not only to kill them, but to alter the galaxy's entire perception of them. To rip away hope. People are always looking for the Jedi to be Bad or nitpick their mistakes (because while other people are allowed to make mistakes, the Jedi never are). Palpatine made himself look like a benevolent grandpa who would keep everyone safe. And that, more than anything, is what gave him SO much power. He stole the narrative.

It's just like. Of course WE know what was going to happen! We know from watching the OT that the PT can only end in tragedy. But the characters don't know that! They don't have all the info! That's how a tragic story structure works. We see it coming and they can't.

Anyway. The Jedi are laser-sword wielding monks with psychic powers who just wanted to do what they could to help. The world would be better if more folks remembered that.

[roguskii]

what a beautiful sequence omg.

these two are literally in the most intimate position that two separate individuals could be with wade dying and then regenerating inside of logan, leading them to share a single stream of consciousness. wade was already the only one who could understand logan fully, but this was made even more apparent through them quite literally sharing one brain here. obviously i think that scares logan, but i think part of him is relieved to feel so seen and understood for once.

life feels so lonely for them both individually, and even though logan sometimes kinda really hates wade’s guts, they share such a unique, complex and undeniable love (like dawg it’s literally a soul bond).

logan is genuinely such a tragic character, but so is wade, and they truly are bound together because no one else could understand what it’s like to live the way they do. they’re polar opposites, one is adamant he hates the other, and they mix like oil and water. and imo that’s what makes moments like this between them so impactful

(…also they just want each other BAD)

read deadpool and wolverine WWIII !

[prideprejudce]

I think alot more people would enjoy the show if they learned to see Rhaenyra and Alicent as Unreliable Narrators, and characters who are supposed to have glaring flaws and weaknesses.

Mandatory preface- There are Issues™️ with season 2 that are its own other ask- but the complaints ive seen about character assassination on both women kind of tells me ppl just wanted to see the two just GirlBossing around, not being tragic characters trapped in their own circumstances.

For Alicent specifically- she just isn't written to be Cersei 2.0, and while it was really interesting to see motherhood from cersei's point of view, its already been done!! I actually prefer seeing Alicent's mercurial clinging to and abandoning motherhood- its interesting!! She was made a mother at what- 15? An age where you truly arent mentally developed enough to raise 3 kids, AND be a child bride, AND be a queen, (AND be a lesbian).

Alicent is interesting to me because she's stunted at 15 years old, she's an adult woman who talks to and sometimes bullies her kids as if they are her peers, and is obsessed with her childhood crush(es). She hasn't built any new relationships* past the ones she was entangled with as a teenager, she's obsessed with both acting out to make SOMEONE see that shes suffering, (she's honestly pretty blatant for someone who prides themselves on being the Temperate Voice of Reason) but also to erase herself and reset to before she had to marry the king, before aemma died.

I think most of her 'bad out of character' decisions are just these two impulses winning out, her trying to force a reset, go back to a time where none of this had happened yet, when things were simpler and she had love and every day wasn't the worst day of her life™️.

She sleeps with cole, the man she thought was pretty at 15 (her last uncomplicated attraction just before it all went wrong and aemma died) -she doesnt seem to like it that much, but she does seem compelled to seek him out, esp when upset- shes obsessed with, and desperate to reconnect with Rhaenyra, her childhood best friend (and first love) and get back to where they were as kids, AND she still treats and asks her father for absolution as if he's still the only authority that matters to her just like she did at 15. Alot of her 'victim complex/bewildered they took it so far' behaviour in the plotting of rhaenyra's usurption reads to me like a teenager in over her head, she talked big game and now its real and shes panicking!! She's tragic BECAUSE she's still a teenager- so stunted shes unable to meaningfully grow up and learn to make healthier choices for herself, or move on and stop trying to grasp at the 'if i could just go back' urge.

As a mother, I think this creates an interesting dynamic as well, and I do like that in the casting even, she seems closer in age to her kids than rhaenyra does to hers. I think the contrast ppl are drawing with Alicent Protecting Her Kids in season1 compared to her giving them up in season two isn't bad writing to me, just massive differences in context. Sure she protected Aemond in driftmark, but we cant ignore that she probably felt humiliated by her husband choosing rhaenyra's side over hers in front of everyone, did it seem like a grown woman fighting for her son?? or a teenager furious with her ex winning one over her again? or both!! both sides twisted together is still interesting! When she protected Aegon from Rhaenys, is stepping in front of her son the king to protect him from the enemies dragon fire not the most romantic daydream of a deserving death a child bride could come up with?? Was it the impulse to protect the son she couldnt decide if she loved or hated, or was it to have the most heroic death possible to escape the reality that she sees coming. And if Rhaenyra hears about how Brave she was in the face of a dragons maw, and cries about it forever and feels sooo bad and regrets it til the day she dies, thats an added bonus. I think Alicent loves her kids, but is teenager selfish about HOW she loves and protects her kids, and is unable to be a mature, consistant, protective mother to them when she also sees them as having ruined her life. I think in season 2 when she 'gives them up' shes relieved, and once again following the compulsion of 'if i reset to when Rhaenyra was heir, i had no sons, and i wasn't married or queen, everything will be better'. I think theres complexity to it, i think she does love her sons and feels insane about it, but I think Alicent has been trying to Go Back in more and more Intense ways ever since she got married, and we might be giving her sanity more credit than it deserves when it comes to the need to wipe the board clean and go back to being 15.

hey anon are you trying to get married to me or what

[hearts-are-connected]

Dang it, I love this ship and I love the enemies to lovers trope. I get that a lot of people see them as a surrogate father and daughter relationship, but it feels like a been there/done that kinda thing.

As much as I love that trope, I'm also a little tired of it. There's only so much Last of Us style found family I take after seeing it for so many years.

The thing I love about VaultGhoul or Ghoulcy is the idea of Lucy breaking down of Cooper's walls while he helps build hers up.

Is he incredibly cruel to her and those around him in the first season? Yes, extremely

Does he need to chill out and find some of his humanity that's been buried under 200+ years of wasteland survival and bitterness? Yes

Who can bring that needed direction to his life while learning the ways of the new world she finds herself in? Lucy MacLean

I know that the canon ship of the show at this moment is Lucy and Maximus, and as much as I love him, I find the pairing obvious and kind of boring from a story telling perspective. I loved it on my first viewing, but upon re-watching the series, I wasn't as behind it as before. I see their relationship, kiss and all, as a kind of first fling for the both of them.

While it doesn't diminish the care they show one another, there's not a lot behind them as a couple. Now I know that some people might turn around to say how she and Cooper spent less time together than her and Max, but I guess the thing I look forward to is seeing what their relationship brings with the second season.

I feel like Max and Lucy will have a great friendship and I'm interested to see where the Brotherhood fits into their dynamic as well.

With Cooper though, I find his story so tragic, as it's supposed to be. He's your standard hardened survivor who only looks out for himself that's now stuck with the happy-go-lucky main character, however, she's not that character anymore by the end. She's still going to be the Lucy we love, but she's changed by the end. While not losing her compassion and some optimism, I think Cooper is going to bring out a harsher side to her as we saw when she bit off his finger.

I want to see her building up her walls and learning when to let them down. How to truly survive while still bringing her own energy to the wasteland and people around her. I want to see Cooper regaining some lost humanity while learning to truly care for another person again. To see the two of them as eventual equals in one another's eyes as they continue on their journey as reluctant allies.

I also want to say that I'm personally kind of tired of the 'age gap' argument. We have stories of teenagers falling in love with hundred year old vampires. So can we just drop the age gap thing?

As long as they're both consenting adults who understand what they're getting themselves into, who cares about an age gap.

Does it truly matter in the scheme of things when we're talking about a world with cryo-stasis and super mutants?

I personally don't think so.

I don't know if anyone will even bother reading this entire thing, and I know I went on a little long, but I wanted to write down my thoughts on the whole shipping situation with the Fallout TV show fandom at this moment.

I'm a VaultGhoul shipper and I can't wait to see where the second season takes our main trio of characters.

[renshengs]

beyond evil (2021) occupies a very interesting space in the larger expanse of crime shows. like, it is a Cop Show. it is undeniably a Cop Show even if the two main characters, who are both cops for very different reasons, are handled with significantly greater awareness and intention than usual.

it is also, impressively, a show that pierces the real ugly rot of 1) police corruption and its overlap with capitalism 2) atrocious real-life lawmaking 3) the poor handling of femicide in stories. i cannot express how abruptly shocked i was to discover that i did not hate the way this show was carrying itself, despite its crime drama genre, narrative about two homoerotic cops, and its murder mystery premise featuring a plot about a serial killer with solely female victims. here is a story that understands its purpose and is so clear-eyed about it that i did in fact tentatively suspend all my wariness about Cop Shows to watch it—and what i got was a scathing response to every serial killer and true crime documentary out there. a narrative that said: enough. enough. look at the way grief rots people from the inside out. look at the way loss ruins lives. do not forget the sufferings of the innocent.

far too many crime dramas possess an incredibly dehumanizing analytical tone to them that goes, “what if these poor women died in brutal gruesome tragic ways? anyway, look at these men and their heroic journey for justice!” it’s why i can’t fucking stand to watch them for the sake of my blood pressure. while beyond evil is not exempt from using such gruesomeness as a part of its horror aspect, the women in this show, particularly the women who were murdered, occupy such a heavy weight over the narrative that it is impossible to reduce them to what they’re usually reduced to: numbers in files, or cold cases. and because the purpose of beyond evil is to examine the ways grief and loss bring about destruction to people’s lives and communities, these women cannot be seen as numbers. they need to be vivid and real; the audience needs to feel their loss as deeply and gnawingly as the townspeople do. as we would in real life.

personally i’m still surprised at myself for liking a Cop Show this much—because the law enforcement sympathy is unavoidable in a cop show—but then i’m also shocked at how immediately this show establishes its awareness of police power. i don’t mean it gives a passing nod, like a brief disclaimer. i mean that you watch until the end and you’re like: oh! the entire fucking show is about police power and its consequences! this entire goddamn show is about cops’ potential for harm and how it destroys lives! the main character only ever became a cop out of desperation because he realized it would protect him from suffering further at the hands of the police. because he realized it was the only way for him to get access to both the information and the legal power needed to take his own steps to solve his sister’s murder. it’s not radical—it’s a cop show. but it is novel. a cop whose relationship with his own occupation is bitterly resigned at best and traumatic at worst.

this is far from an original thought, but truly i think what makes beyond evil worth watching is that it is so incredibly careful with itself. its meta awareness of its own genre heightens it to a tier above other crime dramas—it knows and rejects voyeuristic perspectives into the lives of people who’ve suffered real loss and tragedy, and so it makes the loss inescapable. every direction you look, someone’s life has been irrevocably altered by the murders you learn about in the story. it gives you no space to push away the murder—no, you need to sit directly in its field of impact. all the fucking time. you are not watching the town suffer, you’re suffering with the town. the story sucks you in and makes you live alongside the rest of them; it's why the first watch hurts so raw. because the story refuses to let you take a true-crime approach. because it refuses to prioritize the narratives of perpetrators over human lives. you are there, and you are hurting.

man. really, if you're going to watch anything, watch this.