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zeta-in-de-walls · 4 years ago

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What's the most common misconception you hear about c!tommy?

Hey! Really interesting question, cheers. I’d say that there’s quite a few misconceptions floating around: that he never apologises, that he hasn’t developed, that his exile was his fault, that he’s the main source of conflict on the server, that all he does is steal, and plenty of other stuff.

But the one I probably hear most is how Tommy supposedly values music discs over people.

This one is such a mess of misconceptions. I’ve even heard it said that Doomsday happened because Tommy cared about his discs too much and he was wrong because you shouldn’t value items over human lives. I hate this one because it misunderstands Tommy enough so you can dismiss him because its such a weak position.

Anyway, I understand why its so messy. Tommy throughout season 2 is frequently in a state of uncertainty and is being driven by emotions and isn’t thinking clearly after so much suffering. He says a lot of stuff he doesn’t mean and is very suggestible. Most of his talking about the discs is done when he’s lonely and thinks his friends don’t care for him anymore, that they’re better off without him.

Now, let’s be clear: music discs are something Tommy’s character loves. His happiness every time he listens to one feels very genuine. He’s had so many emotional moments listening to his discs with others and even considers his bench his happy space. He likes them and invites others to listen with him. These items hold no intrinsic value, they’re of no worth to anyone else besides how much they mean to Tommy. The only reason to take them is to try to control him specifically. That’s the original reason Dream took them in the original disc war - to punish Tommy after he caused some trouble.

And the original disc war was fun for Tommy. He found the battle to be exciting and enjoyed trying to outplay Dream with his best friend Tubbo and anyone he could get on his side. It was like a fun game to him. One that, while chaotic, no one really got hurt from at all - the only one who really suffered was Tommy himself, who put stuff on the line for it and had his whole base dug up. (And Tubbo who got dragged in and lost items, but he was initially a very willing partner who found the conflict fun too.)

And then we have Dream, who traded away L’Manburg’s independence for Tommy’s discs, an interesting decision which meant only Tommy really paid the price that day. Everyone remarked on how unusually selfless it was of Tommy. That day was a victory for everyone else, but bittersweet for him. Wilbur consoled him, saying they could get them back and then they’d have even more history and sentimental value attached to them, having been what paid for L’Manburg’s freedom. Tommy was encouraged and so the game continued.

Dream over this time became not just Tommy’s enemy, but his friend. They had fights and conflicts but it was more like a fun game. As they also did stuff like make a church together. Eventually Tommy managed to steal Mellohi back from Dream while Skeppy acquired Cat. At the elections, Tommy gives Mellohi to Wilbur who gives it back again when they’re banished. Months pass and they finally win back L’Manberg and its a wonderful day (until it goes wrong) but Tommy’s not done with his disc war.

This disc war was always a personal thing for Tommy, he’s never wanted others to be dragged in and hurt by it. He kind of takes Tubbo for granted, but Tubbo’s also always been his partner in crime and Tommy enjoys having a war he can fight alongside his best friend - he and Tubbo against Dream. Dream at this point is still seen as a friendly enemy, in spite of choosing Schlatt and helping Wilbur blow up L’Manberg. Anyway, he rejects Presidency, giving it to Wilbur because he trusts him and also wants to focus on his personal battles after so long ignoring it. He doesn’t want others to be dragged in or for his interests to be divided. He’s leaving L’Manburg in safe hands he can trust. That’s season 1 of the SMP, but season 2 is where things get messier.

After the war, Tommy hears that Tubbo had been suspicious that Tommy might’ve been the traitor. In order to show that he trusts him, Tommy gives Tubbo Mellohi. It’s not just a disc now, its a sign of trust, a sign of their bond - at least in Tommy’s eyes.

Then Dream builds obsidian walls around L’Manburg and we first see Tommy showing that bit of selfishness. He states that he’d wanted to step away, that L’Manburg wasn’t his priority anymore. That he’d left it in safe hands so he could focus on the discs. But it doesn’t matter what Tommy intended. Dream is targeting him and is dragging the rest of L’Manburg into it by threatening to seal them in obsidian forever if they don’t comply. Tommy and Tubbo do have a disagreement here, but its not actually so much about the discs.

-Tommy believes that fighting Dream is the superior option, if they ask for help from others in the server - because what he’s doing isn’t right - then they could defeat him, show him that he couldn’t just push them around.

-Tubbo feels like that would get them killed and he doesn’t want to risk their lives. It would be better to appease Dream for now and secretly plot how to take him down later but Tommy’s being too hotheaded.

Tommy brings up the disc to state how he trusts Tubbo and would consider being exiled a betrayal but Tubbo reminds him that they’re just discs and there’s more on the line and Tommy needs to be more cooperative. Anyway, Tommy’s hurt by Tubbo exiling him and think its a sign that he doesn’t care about him anymore. Tubbo meanwhile found it difficult to do but felt like there was no other option but did still care about Tommy. Tubbo would later come to regret doing it while Tommy would later say that it was the right choice when they finally actually talk.

The discs here are kind of a symbol but Tommy doesn’t really value them over others, he’s being a little selfish for sure but that is mostly a result of being treated unfairly by Dream and feeling attacked and ganged up on by his friends, not seeing how they were trying to help him. Dream’s the one to blame here. At worst, Tommy’s being irresponsible in thinking he can just step away from L’Manburg - he didn’t value the discs over it, he just wanted to fight a personal battle without L’Manburg being involved for once. But too many things do matter to him and Dream realised he could attack Tommy through his friends. Its also why Tommy says he didn’t want Tubbo to be President, because he wanted him to be free to help him in his personal war too. There were some issues in their friendship that for sure got exploited and blown out of proportion.

So post-exile. Tommy is rather confused. He’s decided he doesn’t want to die and that Dream wasn’t really his friend, but he still feels abandoned by all his other friends. He still believes they didn’t really care about him after his failed beach party and everything else. And his feelings on Dream are mixed because he knows logically he should hate him but emotionally he still feels like he’s his friend.

Tommy at this point, begins clinging to the discs as some sort of tangible goal while feeling so lonely and abandoned. He has no real sense of agency and really wants Technoblade to give him guidance. Technoblade however wants to destroy L’Manburg and reaffirms his thoughts that Tubbo doesnt really care about him. Tommy is still...kinda(?) clear that he doesn’t want L’Manburg to be destroyed but is willing to compromise on minor terrorism. His remaining belief in L’Manburg is being eroded. You can see in his trips into L’Manburg he is rather unaware of the extent of his actions. He’s suffered and now feels right in lashing out. It seems to be the start of a villain arc even. Right at this point, the discs make more sense than people so they are his goal. And yet even in the midst of his uncertainty, he says the one Tubbo has is safe, he wants to get the one Dream has.

The discs are Tommy’s way of saying he wants to fight Dream. It’s not really about the discs anymore, Dream went way too far with the exile and now Tommy wants to stop him and find it easiest to frame it as going after his music disc.

Then the festival. Tommy finally confronts Tubbo and sees him about to give his disc to Dream. It’s his worst fears confirmed, that Tubbo doesn’t really care about him and that he’s on Dream’s side. They fight and Tommy finally says the line ‘the discs were worth more than you ever were!’

And he regrets it immediately. The statement rang false. They were just discs and Tubbo was his best friend. He immediately tells Tubbo to give up the disc and changes sides then and there. The discs were not more important than people. He was being selfish. And he also remembered how much he cared about L’Manburg and didn’t want it to be blown up no matter what he’d agreed to the day before. He wants to fight for it, choosing his friends once and for all.

In his argument with Techno on Doomsday, he does bring up his discs and words it kind of awkwardly. He tries to explain that ‘nothing had been taken from you, while the discs were stolen from me’ Tommy believes that Techno is destroying something people loved when he could’ve just walked away, he wasn’t fighting for something he loved like Tommy in his wars. That’s what he’s trying to get at, not that music discs are more important than people. Tommy doesn’t actually believe that and prefers wars that don’t hurt others, as the disc wars was once supposed to be before Dream brought in everyone else. Even saying that, Tommy admits he’d messed up so many times in chasing the discs. That he was wrong.

Tommy talks about going after the discs again but at this point it really means taking down Dream. Dream had expressed that he would not stop, he enjoyed their ‘game’ too much. Tommy has nothing left to lose as far as he’s concerned and needs to take down Dream for everything he’d done.

During the disc saga finale, again Tommy always chooses Tubbo first. There’s this one moment where he has Mellohi and could run away forever but he stops and gives it up along with all their items before their taken to the vault and almost forced to watch Tubbo die while he gets thrown in prison forever. But he chooses Tubbo. He always does.

Okay, summary over. I hope that better explains why I dislike the misconception that Tommy chooses his discs over people. He doesn’t really. It’s used to discredit him way too much, I feel. It’s only at his lowest, after being tormented in exile that he even gets close to that position and that’s when he’s on the bring of choosing a dark path and becoming what he hates. At the festival, he rejects that path.

Now that he has his discs, he hasn’t started trouble with them once. They’re safe and he can bring them out to listen to when he’s feeling low, not hurting anyone. They’re just something he loves and its okay to have attachments.

#dream smp #tommyinnit #meta #analysis #replies #aah sorry for the long post #i got carried away #ilike to correct misconceptions #dreamsmp #yeah this is all pretty much tommy's perspective so yeah it is biased #exile arc #but thanks for the ask

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inkweaver22-blr · 3 years ago

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Here’s chapter ten! I do believe this is the first chapter with absolutely no dialogue! I hope you enjoy it regardless!

AO3 Link

Scattered Cicadas - Chapter Ten: Soft Shadows

Redemption is a hard process. Yet the cycles seem to make it easy for one particular demon.

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Redemption was a tricky thing. It required so many different events to happen in a certain order that it rarely occurred.

The first step was to commit some form of wrongdoing.

This was unfortunately the easiest part to do and most people never moved on to the next.

The second step was to realize and acknowledge your actions as wrong or harmful.

Many had justified their own actions over the course of existence and never saw themselves as doing wrong. Worse, many knew their behavior to be cruel and simply did not care or relished the feelings of power it gave them.

The final step was perhaps the most difficult to achieve.

One had to feel genuine remorse for their actions and wish to change.

Very few actually made it this far in the process as it usually required a catalyst of some sort. A personal revelation after going too far or someone laying your actions out clinically so you couldn’t justify them. Even a single act of unconditional kindness and trust could make someone wish to change.

Then came the truly hard part: actively changing your actions.

The path to redemption was not a short one. It took a lifetime of pursuit and dedicated work to not slip into the temptation of reverting back to who you were before.

Closing yourself off and pretending you didn’t care was easy, after all. What was difficult was being honest with yourself and allowing yourself to feel.

It helped if you had people around you to offer support and love. If it was from the same people who you had harmed originally, all the better.

But earning forgiveness wasn’t the goal of redemption. Some would refuse to give it, and you would have to live with that as it was their right to do so. It may hurt, but you had hurt them first and have no right to demand it even if you had changed.

Being redeemed wasn’t for the benefit of one’s victims. The hope was that you could grow into being a better person. It was for your own personal peace of mind. Whether others choose to accept that you’ve changed was not up to you, but you must continue onward regardless if you were to ever live with yourself.

Tang was intimately familiar with this process. The amount of cycles where he had been some sort of villain was not small.

The first three steps came easy to him. Feeling remorse for his wrongdoings and wishing to change were simple for one stuck jumping through time.

He could even spot a suitable catalyst for his potential ‘redemption’ fairly quickly. MK’s kindness and belief of the good in most people had certainly been useful on many occasions.

Having the whole process down to a science himself, Tang was even able to pull others into changing their ways sometimes. The Demon Bull family were commonly caught in his actions whenever he was a part of it.

(Having Red Son as a younger sibling had been interesting.)

What was bemusing to the scholar was that throughout the cycles there was one person who would constantly be redeemed, even without his meddling.

The Six Eared Macaque was an interesting puzzle.

He seemed to fit into the group that knew their actions were harmful, but did not care. Yet time and time again, he would become one of their allies.

Tang hadn’t known much about the demon early on in the cycles, but the knowledge about him came inevitably.

Macaque had been a “beloved friend” of Sun Wukong in the past. At some point, they had a falling out, Macaque seeing it as being left behind by Wukong.

The scholar had actually experienced part of that tension back in that cycle with the time traveling cactus.

So it seemed feelings of betrayal, jealousy, and abandonment were Macaque’s main motivations.

That last one was eerily similar to MK’s insecurities.

Macaque was very much like both Wukong and MK when Tang stopped to think about it. All three had repressed emotional trauma and coped with them in wildly unhealthy ways. Usually by pretending they weren’t there.

Macaque channeled those repressed emotions into schemes of revenge. He used lies and illusions to get what he wanted. He was condescending and sarcastic to his enemies, seemingly cruel and uncaring.

And it was all a facade.

At least, most of the time. There were a few cycles where Macaque was genuinely a despicable person who showed no remorse.

As much as he tried to hide it, Macaque was actually a very emotional being. It was quite easy for him to get attached to one or more of their group and slowly his cruel streak would fade.

Macaque’s catalyst for change was usually a person. It differed from cycle to cycle, but someone would show him some kindness or trust and before Tang knew it they would have another sarcastic immortal monkey as a part of the team.

MK was obviously the most common person to get the demon to change. Macaque was not lying when he called him a good kid. Having four father figures in those cycles seemed to be good for MK.

Wukong, while usually not the initial catalyst, tended to play a big part in Macaque’s redemption. Being old friends, they knew each other extremely well. While that tended to lead to a lot of arguments, it also led to them picking up where they had left off their previous relationship.

It didn’t really bother Tang that said relationships were often romantic in nature. Watching the two monkeys cuddle when they thought no one was looking was just too cute.

Mei was an interesting choice for Macaque to become attached to. He often ended up becoming her mentor, teaching her how to properly wield the Dragon Blade. Both of their sarcastic natures worked surprisingly well together.

The biggest surprise had been Pigsy.

That cycle, Macaque was basically under house arrest as ordered by Heaven. Pigsy, not wanting the manipulative demon to be anywhere near MK, forced him to stay at their apartment. It was some time later when Tang had woken late in the night to some loud noises and had left his room to complain.

Only to find Macaque pressing a kiss to Pigsy’s cheek before fleeing his room, pursued by a flustered and angry pig demon soon after.

It was strange, but Pigsy’s gruff and silent compassion meshed really well with Macaque’s easy going and nonchalant attitude. The scholar found their affection towards each other endearing.

Tang supposed it was only a matter of time before he himself acted as Macaque’s catalyst.

The cycle had started early, about a year before the original events. While working at the library, Tang had been approached by what he immediately recognized as Macaque in his human disguise. He had requested help on learning more about The Journey to the West for a school assignment. Tang, deciding to play along, offered himself up as an expert on the story and they began meeting weekly to go over it.

Macaque truly did not know the full events of the Journey in this cycle and seemed upset at several points, such as learning about the fillet used to inflict pain on Wukong. Over time, the pair began to meet up more often and discuss things other than the famous book.

He really should have expected falling in love.

Macaque was still sarcastic as ever, but never malicious. He made jokes and comparisons that had Tang’s side aching from how hard he laughed. He was quick to pick up Tang’s quirks and preferences, surprising him with his favorite foods or a nice new set of bookmarks.

He was still Macaque, but this softer side of him made Tang’s chest flutter.

As he lay in bed with his partner, (who had still yet to reveal himself to Tang, but he was patient), Tang couldn’t help but feel a new place in his heart open up for the shadow demon. He had already been considering adding Macaque into his family due to the many times he had joined them, and this just solidified that decision.

Oh Tang knew the cycles where he never changed would be painful. Watching as someone he loved went down a path of self destruction wasn’t easy. But he held onto the knowledge that there would always be the cycles where Macaque did become a part of their family.

As long as the possibility existed, there was hope that the same could happen in his own timeline.

If he ever got back that is.

Tang shoved that increasingly reoccurring thought away and closed his eyes, letting the soothing sounds of Macaque’s breathing lull him to sleep.

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A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES!

Macaque is the fandom’s darling bad boy, so of course I had to have a chapter discussing his many, MANY redemption’s over the many fics and AU’s.

In particular, (Teach Me to Be) Tougher Than Leather, Softer Than Silk by *checks notes* HOLY SHIT! I had no idea this was by @ninja-knox-ur-sox-off until just now! *ahem* Anyway it is an AMAZING fic with a practically never used pair and I highly recommend it.

Tang seems to have a type doesn’t he? Demons that seem emotionally distant, but are big softies at heart. It’s probably the purring that gets him. ;P Also does Tang/Macaque have a ship name? If not I'm dubbing it InkyPages.

Don’t worry Tang! I’m sure those intrusive thoughts will go away all on their own.

Important notice! I’m probably going to be putting this fic on the back burner for a bit because I really want to write about the cycle mentioned here. Not as part of Scattered Cicadas, but as its own thing. So keep an eye out for that!

Until next time!

#Ink Writes #Monkie Kid #Scattered Cicadas #Tang #Tang Monkie Kid #Macaque #Six Eared Macaque #ninja-knox-ur-sox-off #(Teach Me to Be) Tougher Than Leather Softer Than Silk #MK #Mei #Pigsy #Sun Wukong #squidinknoodleshipping #Tang/Macaque #what IS their ship name anyway?#InkyPages #InkyPagesShipping #LEGO Monkie Kid

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beautifulterriblequeen · 3 years ago

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The Thief and the Tinker, Part 4: Circles and Cycles

part 3

Part 4

Viren: *smirks and plinks Runaan's coin to Ethari*

Ethari, furious: You throw another Moonshadow at me and I'm gonna lose it.

Circles and Cycles

Angst rating: 8/10

Back to Ethari, because we're not done with him yet. Ethari is soft, but he isn't weak. He won't be a willing pawn for Viren. He loves Runaan to the point of invention, and his devotion is more constant than the moon itself. He'll agree to do what Viren says, and he'll be Very Sad. But his spirit is in no way broken. Viren bribing him with the coins containing his family will only have the opposite effect. It'll give Ethari something to fight for.

We could get Focused Chaos Ethari. We could get Angery Trickster Ethari. We could get Rules, What Rules? Ethari. Let him try to steal the coins, try to break them, try to kill Viren, and be stymied at every turn, until he settles and seems cowed. And then all he does is craft his way out of the problem.

What if we are gifted with Iron Man Elf Ethari, who pretends to build a fake Key for Viren, but meanwhile he's really building a coinbuster with whatever he can get his hands on - primal stones, magically imbued gemstones, stolen artifacts, his own arcanum, his own reputation as the Master Craftsman of the Silvergrove. He'll use almost - almost - anything, to stop Viren and free his family.

Ethari may have to choose between those two things, though. And he's a hero, deep down, just like his family, just like his daughter. If he has to choose, he'll choose to stop Viren and save Xadia. He'll pay the same price as his family has if he must.

He'd let Viren think he was motivated purely by wanting his family back, but Ethari is far too steeped in the illusion and sacrifice for that to be all there is to his motives. It's a so-close-and-yet-so-far thing, how he and Viren almost embody the same ideals. Almost. Ethari would take one look at Viren, who just burnt down his whole Forest, he'd see the biggest threat in Xadia, and he'd say anything to get a chance to stop this juggernaut of destruction from getting his hands on whatever that ultimate power really is, locked behind that missing key. If he has to abandon his people and bawl his eyes out to convince Viren he's in, then he will.

And Viren wouldn't make it easy for him. He knows clever when he sees it. He went through all this trouble to persuade Ethari to work with him. He would need to keep Ethari as off-balance as possible to ensure that he keeps working as he should.

Angsty jewelry, anyone?

Viren giving Ethari his husband in pendant form to remind him what he's working for, when Viren and Ethari both know full well that only dark magic can open the hellcoins. Ethari wearing another pendant of his love, except it's not a metaphor this time. It's literally his love, in a coin around his neck.

Viren would love making Ethari stay close to him of his own free will if he ever hoped to free Runaan. Making people bind themselves to you is a big power flex. Remember that TDP stream future-season teaser note about Bait being in a creepy restraint in a future season?

This card is written on in all-caps, so that really could be "Bait" or "bait," or--knowing this show--both. Viren's been using Runaan as bait for Ethari all along. Putting his coin in a dark magic pendant casing for Ethari to wear would be a great parallel for that. Oh god. Oh man.

Maybe he'll stab the coin's scary casing right through that circle on Ethari's chest, right over his heart, make that Iron Man reference really obvious. Ethari also losing his shirt at some point, for angsty Viren-related reasons? It's more likely than you think. I mean... Ethari is literally involved in both forms of forging at this point. Shirt's gotta come off for uhhhh work reasons. And because he's hot. Because of all the forging. Mmhmm. I mean how else are we finally going to discover what his markings look like this is research I swear

I mentioned that I liked god-tier villains, right? Yeah, this is amazing. I haven't wanted to die and ascend over an idea for quite a while, but Ethari vs Viren in a drawn-out battle of wills would kill me in the best way. Especially since, while it looks like they're essentially fighting for who gets Runaan, they're truly fighting a much larger battle with much higher stakes. They're fighting for the future itself. It's an epic struggle between the Narrative of Strength and the Narrative of Love. And we've seen what happens, over and over, when the Narrative of Strength gets to call the shots.

On a meta note: If Ruthari's story arc isn't a love letter from one trauma survivor to another, and on a broader scope to all survivors who see it, I don't know what is. Sometimes life just chews us up and spits us out and we can't stop it and it breaks us. But sometimes we can reach out and grasp the chance to help each other, even after that, even when it hurts a lot, because we know what it means to be loved, and to love, and to want a safer future for each other and for people we'll never meet. The future is worth standing together for, helping each other back up for, fighting side by side for, even if you can't see how it'll end, or even how to begin. We are stronger together, and sometimes we need to fight for our "together" before we can fight for anything else. And that's worth it, every time.

This is glorious, it's beautiful, it's tragic, it's amazing, it makes me want to dance, it makes me want to scream into the void, it makes me want to slap someone with a semi truck. No, someone specific, don't worry, and he super deserves it.

Because Ethari is going to win. He was always going to win. He's soft, and he's clever, and he hasn't forgotten what love means. It's what he's fighting for. Not power, not control. Love. He doesn't want to dictate Runaan's future or anyone else's. He just wants his husband--and everyone else--to have one at all.

So he's going to win.

What thwarting Viren looks like, I couldn't possibly guess. TDP is no stranger to angst, so there will probably be a high cost involved in outwitting the dark mage. Maybe not everyone can be rescued from the coins. Maybe Ethari will lose his life, or his soul, or his vision, or something else really angsty. Viren could even kill him and resurrect him as a smoky craftsman, or a zombie craftsman, or something equally biddable but horrible. The only thing I'm sure of is that Ethari would never willingly make a working Key of Aaravos Ethari as long as there's a chance Viren could possess it. But I do believe that if he gets the right opportunity while he's busy saving the world from Viren's dark intentions, he'll break his husband's hellcoin open somehow and set him free, even if he has to smile at the devil to do it.

Ethari understands the difference between "you can" and "therefore you should." He might sacrifice his own world to save his husband, but he'd never sacrifice someone else's world. That's one of the Moonshadow cultural limits I've noticed: they accept boundaries when it comes to other people's autonomous rights, especially regarding life and death.

These limits could get pushed. Ethari will be under great duress and emotional strain if he goes through this kind of interaction with Viren. And maybe he will choose some dark things. Everyone else has. But I'm placing all my eggs in the basket labeled "Saved By Love." Either I'm right, or I'll get the best angst omelets in the universe. And I do love omelets. A villain invented them, you know. ;)

Another support for Ethari not making the key for Viren: the real Key exists!

Callum has it right now. The plot doesn't need Ethari's key (yet? ever?), but it does need Ethari to learn what he's made of, to stand up for something, or against something, or both at once. And once he learns what he will and won't do and the universe has rewarded his discovery with the return of his beloved husband then Ethari will be ready to take on whatever else the plot has in mind for him.

Depending on the plan, all of these events could happen in S4, as a setup for even bigger things to follow. Viren's wishes can be thwarted here and the show's overall tension will only continue to rise. It would let Ethari flex yes pls his skills so we know who he is, it would show how driven Viren can be for a long-term goal, it would let Claudia saunter further downwards, it would reveal some human/Moonshadow history, and it would resolve the seasons-long tension regarding Runaan's fate, allowing for the cycle of speculation, feels, angst, and Ruthari fanart to begin again. ;) Viren would need to find another way to pursue his long-term goal. And Callum's Key will get a little more clarity on just how important it is to the fate of the world - which will make everything he does, and everyone he talks to, and anyone who knows what he's carrying, intensely important.

Nyx is gonna steal it isn't she, omg chaos birb

To Viren, Ethari was a main course, meant to be devoured and consumed in his lifelong quest for something that will finally satisfy. But to Ethari, Viren was just empty calories to be passed over in favor of ordering his perennial favorite dish, one more time.

Once Ethari escapes Viren's clutches with as much of his family as he can rescue, Viren may turn back to looking for the real Key, especially if someone's seen it recently. Hunting a kid probably seems easier than hunting a full-grown Moonshadow craftsman who just outsmarted him. okay so maybe Nyx stealing it would be a good thing and save Callum's life

Ethari could go on to help repair the Sunforge, or rebuild the Moonhenge, or work on constructing Moonshadow villages in Katolis if he hasn't been ghosted for abandoning everyone after the forest fire. He might build magical devices for any number of reasons, to help all kinds of characters. Hopefully, wherever he goes, he'll have Runaan with him, in some way, for at least a little while. Cycles be like, and I feel like Runaan will not want to remain still for long, for whatever reason. Does he need revenge, atonement, justice, a new body, to find Rayla, to find Ezran? He'll be back in action as soon as he can, I think.

Okay, but, I'm so soft at the thought of a scene where Runaan and Ethari come before King Ezran. The husbands tried to save their people Runaan's way, the old way, and it only continued to endanger them. Following the cycle, as Moonshadows do, was the wrong move. But the son of the last human Runaan killed reached out with mercy and broke a thousand years of suffering and sorrow and hatred. Ezran did what Runaan couldn't: he saved the Moonshadow elves from total destruction. And that, more than anything else in the world, could soften one very broody assassin's heart toward humans again.

What would Runaan do, if his heart truly changed toward humans? What would he say to Ezran? I could see him struggling for a long moment before dropping to one knee to pledge his heart as he once had to do before the Dragon Throne. He doesn't know any other way but to serve. Ezran, reading the whole room and everyone's feelings before he tells Runaan that No, we don't do that here. That he's free, and free means free. No chains, no oaths. Just trust and friendship. He should get to make his own decisions for a change, even though that can be hard and scary sometimes. Runaan being genuinely scared, because that's too much freedom. But he's not alone. He has Ethari, and Ezran, and Rayla, and Callum, and their people, and their allies. And no matter what else happens, the people of Katolis - elven and human - will find a way forward. Together.

part 5

#tdp #tdp theory #tdp speculation #tdp parallels #tdp angst #heavy angst #viren #ethari #runaan #moonshadow elves #hopepunk #ezran #runaan's super getting a tart of jelly tm

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remnantoforario · 4 years ago

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7 Things I Want to See in RWBY Volume 8

So with Volume 8 being stalled because of the pandemic (though they are still working on it in increments) I thought about doing a post about things I would like to see in the next volume. This is similar to the “Questions I Want Answered in Volume 7″ before that volume came out, but this one will be more centered on the actual story and characters rather than the broader stuff I wanted in 7. These have no real order, just seven random things I want to see. Here we go:

1. More Varied Character Interactions

This is one of the bigger sticking points I’ve had with the show in general rather than a problem I had with V7 itself. It’s no secret that one of the biggest complaints about RWBY from even it’s most hardcore stans is the lack of interpersonal interactions between characters outside of their given pairs. Ruby only talks to Weiss, Blake only talks to Yang, Ren only talks to Nora, and vice versa.

Yang and Weiss had moments in Volume 5, but when was the last time Ruby and Blake had a conversation? Volume 1? What about Yang and Qrow? A big part of his arc in Volume 5 was his alcoholism and Yang was nowhere near that. Ruby and Yang are also big offenders. Weiss and Blake had one small moment in the mine and then went right back to being perfect strangers. Weiss and Jaune haven’t “talked” since volume 2 (I don’t count their dialogue after she got stabbed in V5) and I can’t recall anytime Ren and Nora have ever had a conversation with Yang and Blake. These kids are supposed to be friends who have been through thick and thin together, but they seem more like strangers outside of their supposed “pairings”.

The preview with Yang interacting with Oscar, Jaune, and Ren gave me some hope. Hopefully the show continues it.

2. More Information on Summer Rose

Volume 7 dropped the only notable information we’ve had about Summer since Qrow’s talk about the Silver Eyes in Volume 3, that being that Salem was likely responsible for Summer’s death. It’s now time to finally get more information on her. Who was she as a character? What was her semblance? What was her weapon? How did others view her? What is her connection to Ozpin? Why was she so important? How exactly did she die? I think some, if not all, of these questions should be answered in either this volume, or the next. We need a reason to care about her.

One more important thing I would stress is that it needs to be Ruby actively searching for these answers. She shouldn’t have them handed to her, she should ask Yang and Qrow. Hell, if I wanted to get crazy I would just have a bottle episode with the three trapped in a bunker or something while Salem is attacking and all they do is talk about Summer. Anything to highlight just why this woman who has been hanging over the show like a specter since the red trailer is so important.

3. Give Yang Something to Do

Yang has been mostly directionless as a character since Volume 4. Her goal was to find Ruby, and that mostly carried her through V5, but now that they are reunited she’s mostly used to dress up the background or play will they won’t they with Blake (we’ll get to her) for ship bait. Put her on a path of wanting revenge on Salem for killing her mother (Summer), make her more worried about Ruby, or add her to Nora’s “defend Mantle” plotline. Something to make her an active character in the story again.

4. Put Blake Back on track

Told you we’d get to her. Blake is an interesting character when you sit down and think about. In theory she should be the most compelling character with the deepest story arc, but she’s not. She was usurped by Weiss (who we will also get to in a moment) not long after Volume 5 ran its course. Her original course was to face her past, which morphed into taking back the White Fang from Adam, and then finally devolved into getting rid of Adam. Since then she has had little to no direction as well.

Atlas is a hotbed for Faunus discrimination (as far as the show has implied) so I would like to see Blake get back to that. There was a slight moment in V7 with the mine, but that was quickly discarded. It would be interesting if she was able to rally the Faunus in Mantle similar to how she did in Menagerie.

Also, fix her hair. Come on, CRWBY. My girl out here looking like a used swiffer duster.

5. More Focus on the Schnee Family

A lot of people expected Volume 7 to be Weiss’ volume and its not hard to see why. The set up was there. She ran away from Atlas at the end of Volume 4 to find Winter, only to find out that her sister had been called back home. Now she was going back and not only would she reunite with her sister, she would also have to face her Father once more. Ultimately, this didn’t pan out and Weiss was mostly window dressing for what should have been the biggest part of her story.

The other Schnees weren’t much better. Winter got some things to do, but it was more in service to Penny’s character than hers. Jacques remained the same. Whitley STARTED to get a character arc and Willow did little more than drink and a be plot convenience for Weiss. With Jacques now in jail and the company and family in shambles, this is the perfect time to give us something to latch onto with these five individuals.

6. Character Conflict and Consequences

RWBY has had a nasty habit of late of pushing “protagonist-centered morality”. Meaning that no matter the situation, our main characters are always right and whoever opposes them is wrong (despite the litany of examples illustrating the opposite). This has to stop going forward. It only serves to irritate the audience because it makes it seem like the characters can’t make mistakes. Nothing they do has any lasting consequences or stakes.

Team RWBY stalled Atlas’ defense plans against Salem by lying and unwitting sabotage, yet the story treated it as if they were in the right despite them offering no alternatives. Any attempts to speak against them were framed as “villainous”, turning once compelling characters into caricatures (Ironwood did nothing wrong).

When it comes to character conflict, Ruby is always right. No matter what she says or does, her group falls in line no questions asked. That’s not natural. Someone should question her, someone should disagree with her methods and give a different perspective.

Yang blistered Ozpin for lying about Salem and the Relic, but she was ok with Ruby doing the same thing to Ironwood? It made no sense and made her look like a hypocrite.

Blake abandoned her friends, yet was welcomed back with open arms with little to no conflict. Even if the audience knew her reasons, her friends didn’t. For all they know she just up and left because she felt like it. Yang talked all this mess about Blake leaving, but didn’t keep that same energy when she came back.

It’s ok for characters, for friends, to argue and disagree. It’s normal and happens all the time. Let them fight in the beginning of the volume, break up, and come back together in the end. Something. Maybe Ruby has a plan that Blake, Weiss, or sister don’t agree with and their clashing ideas split the group in half for a while. Then you can have the underlying narrative be them coming back together with new ideas to combat Salem when their individual plans don’t work.

7. Give the Villains A Win

This is probably the most important thing I want to see. Salem and her forces are supposed to be the most evil group of people the planet has ever seen. A force of nature filled with killers, monsters, and madmen who want nothing more than to watch the world burn...but they haven’t posed a real threat since the Fall of Beacon.

The show TELLS us Salem is a big deal, but until the end of Volume 7 all we’ve seen her do is sit in her tower and yell about Ozpin. She had yet to directly do anything that made our main characters want to stop her other than “she bad person”. Cinder has had more impact on the plot than her, and she hasn’t been useful since Volume 3.

The villains NEED win this and the next volume. They need it so the writers can reestablish the stakes and make it so we WANT to see these bad guys defeated. Whether that be killing notable character off, taking the relic and Maiden powers, or dropping Atlas out the sky and destroying both it and Mantle completely, SOMETHING needs to happen to assert the villains dominance again in the plot.

These are just what I personally want to happen in the next volume. I’m expecting them all to happen, but I least hope one or two of them do. We’ll see how it goes.

#RWBY #RWBY Volume 7 #RWBY Volume 8 #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long #Team RWBY #Jaune Arc #Nora Valkyrie #Lie Ren #Team JNR #Oscar Pine #James Ironwood #Winter Schnee #penny polendina #Summer Rose #Rooster Teeth #Salem

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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ohh i saw your answer about the sequels of star wars. id love to read you tear through the whole trilogy

Well, I’ve avoided this ask long enough. Part of the reason is this is really a huge topic, far too much for one ask, so I’m going to have to do this at a very high level.

In short, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is what one gets when you slap together the goal of selling merchandise and making tons of money, being as risk averse as humanly possible, adding a handful of warring directors with incredibly different visions, and having virtually no imagination when it comes to the imagining and writing of characters.

And we get this beautiful, awful, franchise that for reasons beyond me people seem to actually like (though interestingly, no one seems to like all of it, they may actually like one or two of the films, but no one says all three are actually in any realm of good).

With that, let’s begin.

The Force Awakens

For me this is easily the most tolerable of the sequel trilogy: it’s not great, it’s not terrible. It’s thoroughly watchable, you can be taken along for the movie’s journey and not raise your eyebrows too much at the action and leave the theater feeling this maybe wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

There’s a good reason for that. That reason is called the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen in cinema in my life.

“The Force Awakens” is just “A New Hope” wearing a mustache. Only, it’s one of those cheap mustaches you get from a party store that, if you stare at it too long, just looks like the most false and awful thing you’ve ever seen. The mustache actively makes it worse. “The Force Awakens” is “A New Hope”, but worse.

Seriously, every major character, every major plot point, every major scene I can go directly back to “A New Hope”.

Our story begins when the Resistance, at great cost to our valiant heroes including torture at the hands of the Emperor’s second in command, sends a file out into the wilderness to be received by his people. This file contains plans for the Death Star.

The film then focuses on Luke, er Rey, getting involved in the Resistance, boarding the Death Star, and successfully destroying at the same time even at the lost of a beloved mentor that she just met (trading in Obi-Wan for Han Solo).

Our evil empire is run by an evil emperor who is so evil he sits in a chair, is served by very Moth Tarkin-esque human storm troopers, and has a second in command who revels in the Darth Vader get up (for no other reason that it makes him feel cool but we’ll get into this).

It’s “A New Hope”. Rey is Luke, Han Solo is Obi-Wan, Poe is a kind of Han Solo, Kylo Ren is Vader, Snoke is Palpatine, Hux is Tarkin, BB-8 is R2-D2, etc.

“But that’s not terrible,” you say, “I liked A New Hope?”

First, it is terrible, it gives a very bad sign of where the sequel trilogy is headed and is just lazy writing. It means that those who produced this franchise were so terrified of taking risks, of possibly ending up mocked as the prequels were, that they will deliver exactly what the original trilogy was. And what’s that? Uh, evil empires, scrappy desert kids, AND MORE DEATH STARS!

That brings us to point number two, the world of Star Wars after the events of the original trilogy shouldn’t support such things. And, if it does, my god what a bleak existence this place has turned into.

The First Order being able to rise easily from the Empire’s remains means that Luke accomplished nothing. Anakin sacrificed himself and had his moment of redemption for nothing. There was no happy ending to the Original Trilogy, our heroes failed miserably, and there is no indication that our new band of heroes can possibly succeed in their place. (More on this as the movies progress).

We now are in a galaxy where this new Republic is so pathetic that Leia doesn’t even give it the time of day and builds her own private army to battle the Empire. The First Order is able to not only rebuild a massive army by raiding villages on many different worlds and stealing children and do so successfully for at least ten years but is able to build a Death Star bigger than any we’ve ever seen before.

And the movie tries to convince us these are completely new problems, that Luke Skywalker is a hero (remember this is TFA, not TLJ yet), and that somehow these things just sprung up out of nowhere. BUT YEAH, RESISTANCE, WOO!

As for Rey, she’s like... a worse version of Luke. Her only motivation through the entire series is her trauma at being abandoned by her parents. That’s it, there’s nothing else to her, nothing else she ever wants or feels conflicted by. She struggles with the dark side because... the dark side? Genetics? Unclear? She’s absurdly, ridiculously, powerful in a way that’s acknowledged but never that acknowledged (we’ll get into this) and the movies just fail to sell me on her in any way.

Honestly, an easy fix for me would have just been making Rey a much younger character. I could believe a fourteen-year-old having stayed in the desert, scrounging for scraps, believing her parents are coming back every day now. As a twenty-something year old... It starts getting hard to believe she never left. (Also, this gets the benefit of getting rid of Reylo, which is always a plus for me).

As for Kylo Ren, I legitimately walked out of TFA thinking he was supposed to be comic relief. He’s what happens when someone desperately wants a likable, redeemable, villain and we get... Well, as a reminder his opening scene is one of genocide: he pillages and destroys a town with no regret and brutally tortures a man for information. We’re told he’s like this “because evil evil Snoke” and that may well be but throughout the film (and the series) it becomes clear that Kylo Ren’s main motivation is he deseprately wants to be cool. He wants to be a badass like Vader, he dresses in Vader cosplay (either ignoring or not knowing that Vader only dressed like that because his body was completely destroyed), he has these huge temper tantrums and nobody respects him because he’s a toddler in a Vader suit.

He murders his own father, his parents who (at least in the films themselves) show every willingness to take him back and forgive him what he’s done, so that he can fully embrace his own “evilness”. In other words, he commits patricide to feel cool about himself, then it doesn’t work.

And the movie series really banks on me feeling conflicted about Kylo Ren or at least wanting him to be redeemed. Granted, the wider internet seems to love him, I just can’t.

Oh, before I forget, the other thing I love about Kylo Ren is that the movies insist he’s a) strong in the Force b) is equal to Rey. Rey consistently beats the shit out of him with 0 training. Kylo Ren has been training in the Force for years. Guys, they are not a Dyad, Rey is far far far stronger than he is and for whatever reason the films never want to admit it. Because I guess we like things coming in pairs now.

But yes, “The Force Awakens”, at a distance not great nor terrible, but a rip off of a movie we’ve already seen that left me going “Welp, the next one’s probably The Empire Strikes Back then I guess we’re getting Ewoks”. I was sort of right on that and sort of wrong.

The Last Jedi

So, JJ Abrams clearly had a vision of where he wanted this sequel trilogy to go. He set up these big questions such as what’s up with Finn, who are Rey’s parents and why was she left on this nowhere planet, will Kylo Ren be redeemed and how, who is Snoke, etc.

Now, I’m not saying these aren’t stupid questions. To be frank, they kind of are. Finn being Force Sensitive was the most inconsequential thing I’ve ever heard of, Rey’s parents should not have been used to drive the plot the way it was, as spoken above I’m clearly team gut Kylo Ren, and that Snoke was actually just Palpatine being the world’s largest cockroach is a beautiful but hilarious answer.

That said, what Johnson did was he decided, “You know what, I’m going to take every trope of Star Wars and completely flip it on its head and absolutely doom the sequel to this movie.”

And by god, he did.

We get a weirdly pointless movie in which Poe, SINGLEHANDEDLY, completely obliterates the Resistance. He first obliterates their bombers by failing to follow command, then goes and bitches about how he’s not put in command when he clearly shows no ability to understand how a military works, actively subverts orders which in turn obliterates the entire Resistance fleet until the only survivors can fit on the Millenium Falcon. They have no ships, no weapons, barely any people, and are ultimately doomed doomed doomed.

We have Finn’s weird subplot with a suddenly introduced character Rose in which the pair aid in Poe’s blowing up the resistance (they send sensitive information using the communication equipment of a guy they do not know, who fully admits to being shady and out for his own skin, and are flabergasted when he betrays them).

Rose herself is this weirdly sweet person who seems forced into the plot to a) provide a love triangle for Finn and Rey b) provide this forced sunny outlook that I didn’t really need in the film.

We get Rey never really being trained, going into the Cave of Wonders for a few seconds, falling in love with Kylo Ren over weird Force Skype calls (where I did not need to see him shirtless, thank you film) and being horrifically betrayed when Kylo Ren turns out not to be a great guy. Never saw that coming, Rey.

As for Kylo Ren, well... God, we get Emperor Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, the Emperor. I’m not even that upset about the anticlimactic murder of Snoke (that was kind of funny, especially in the context of Palpatine going, “Bitch, please, you’re in my chair” immediately in the next film) but just Kylo Ren being emperor. And also that the Resistance only escapes at all because he’s so dumb he made their dumb plans seem smart (i.e. concentrates all his firepower on an illusion for ten minutes while Hux goes, “Emperor, sir, we could actually destroy the Resistance right now.”

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t complain about Luke. A lot of people are upset he became a grumpy, miserable, old hermit who sits around waiting for death. Frankly though, in this universe, that’s exactly where he is. He left “Return of the Jedi” thinking he’d saved the world, he’s resurrected the Jedi Order, and all is well. Only a decade later, his students are all murdered by his nephew, the Empire’s back, and he accomplished nothing. He’s an utter failure as a Jedi (though Luke never realizes he knew jack shit about the Jedi Order and was in way over his head but I guess that’s beyond him). Why shouldn’t he go sit on a rock and wait to die?

Now, did he have to drink that blue dinosaur milk? Well, I guess it was funny, gross but funny so... Sure, I guess he did. But I do like that he gave Rey 0 training, they had one meditation session and then he whined about how Obi-Wan was such a stupid asshole. And then Rey ran off to be with her boyfriend, who then told her that her parents were gutter trash (which again, was funny, but I don’t think that was supposed to be funny).

Of the characters introduced in the movie, the only one I really liked was the hacker, and it was for the actor/the beautiful way in which he gracefully exited stage left with zero shame going, “You all knew I was going to betray you!” You beautiful man, you.

Rise of the Skywalker

First, when something is called “Rise of the Skywalker” you know you’re in for a rough time.

But anyways, TLJ was filled with a controversy Disney didn’t want (half their audience hated it, half loved it, but at least they sold those penguin dolls) so they desperately get Abrams back. Only, what he clearly wanted from his series has been shot to hell, and now he’s left with Emperor Kylo Ren, a completely obliterated Resistance, a dead Luke, a love interest he never planned to introduce for Finn, Rey’s parental crisis being solved with trash people, Snoke just suddenly dead, Hux planning revenge, and then some.

And so, Abrams goes the brave and hilarious route of shouting “PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED”

We open to a fully functioning Resistance (their bomber fleet is back, their fleet period is back, they have all their fully trained personnel). We have Rey getting the Jedi training she needed this time from Leia, who is now a Jedi, because yay feminism rammed down my throat to make the audience feel better. Rose says “It’s cool guys, I don’t want to join the adventure this film, I’m going to stay here and work on robots” so that she can gracefully exit the entire plot. Kylo Ren is demoted from Emperor in two seconds when we discover that a) Snoke was apparently Palpatine b) for unexplained reasons Palpatine’s alive (and I am now convinced that man will never die). Kylo Ren tells Rey at the first opportunity that he lied about her trash parents AND REALLY SHE’S A PALPATINE! THIS WHOLE TIME, REY! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I’M SUPER SERIAL THIS TIME, REY.

Basically, in the course of an overly long movie, Abrams desperately shoves in everything he was trying to get out of the series, while sobbing, and sobbing even harder when things like Finn being Force Sensitive or Lando having a secret daughter get caught. I actually agree with the Producers on this, by the way, the Finn trying to tell Rey something scenes were weird and indicative of a love triangle but him being Force Sensitive instead... It says a lot that the movies did not change when it was removed, at all. And Lando was just this strange cameo who was in the film to make us feel nostalgic.

And this isn’t even getting to the ridiculous 24 hour time limit (which made me think there should have been some video game style clock in the corner letting us know when Dawn of the Third Day is coming), Palpatine’s other secret army on a secret Sith planet that can be easily taken down by taking out one navigation tower, Rey’s hilarious struggle with the dark side in which she has a vision of herself in a cape hissing, Kylo Ren’s hilarious redemption in which the movie in the form of Leia and Han Solo says, “Alright, Ben, it’s time to stop being evil” and he says “okay”, the fight with Palpatine in which I’m supposed to believe he dies for reals because... I have no idea why I’m supposed to believe he’s dead. The Reylo, god the Reylo, and Kylo Ren’s tragic, hilarious, death.

And then, of course, the ending where Rey decides she’s a Skywalker now.

I actually did laugh all the way through “Rise of the Skywalker”, you can’t not, I mean it’s a hilariously awful movie. The only thing that might have made it more hilarious was if we actually did get those Ewoks.

TL;DR

They’re all bad movies, if you want more specifics than this, you’re just going to have to ask me questions.

#ask #anon #anti star wars sequels #anti rey #anti kylo ren #anti reylo #ah what beautiful awful movies #i look foward to the characters being shocked and appalled when yet another evil empire arises in five years #i look forward to them being even more shocked when palpatine's still not dead #that man will never die

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hankwritten · 4 years ago

Text

TFComics Rewrite

I am currently plotting an outline for a TFComics, and I want to get my thoughts about fixes to canon and possibly get feedback. Since this is a rewrite there’s really no *spoilers* or anything, so I’m willing to answer all questions about what I plan to do. Also some characters I’m not so sure about how I want to retool them, so if your have ideas for your fav let me know!

Disclaimer:

This rewrite is intended to critique the content/choices made in the construction and telling of the Team Fortress 2 comic series. It is not a personal attack on the artists/writers/directors or any of the creatives that made contributions to this series, nor is it meant to substitute or replace the official release. This work is transformative in nature, and relies on an understanding of the source material to be understood. TF2 and its characters belong to Valve.

TFCR is working on the assumption that the audience has read the original comic, and as such will skip over scenes and plot points that are unchanged from the original. I don’t think it needs to be said, but this fanfiction will not make sense if you are not familiar with the source.

I also recognize that there are strengths within the comic’s writing and weaknesses within my own. Namely, that Valve writers are gods in the realm of comedy, and I’d rather not try to match them in the regard. As such, I will state up front that these will not be as funny as the TFComics. That is not to say there won’t be jokes (either ones transplanted from the source or some of my own) or that the tone of this will be terribly grimdark, only that my focus will be on improving story structure and character development as those are what appeal to me.

The Broad Strokes

The goal of TFCR is to give a more engaging story for all the mercenaries we know and love, as--let’s face it--the TF2 mercs are side characters in their own damn story. These are some of the planned improvements.

There will be reason for each of the mercs to actually be there. As it stands, the motivations for almost every character besides Pauling and Saxton Hale are vague and unsatisfying. We’d usually say something along the lines of “money” for hired killers, but clearly Scout doesn’t even know if they’re getting paid, and some of the other characters are even worse. The hunt for the Australium is, therefore, boring. MacGuffins usually are, but at the very least the characters should care about the item even if the audience doesn’t. This work aims to give each of the nine mercs a motive and a reason to be in the story instead of just replaceable joke dispensers.

Explain what “Team Fortress” means, and how it relates to RED and BLU. Long and short: the nine mercenaries we see on the team are not from either RED or BLU but rotate between the two, and were the individuals selected to fight the robots. That means all things do happen to all characters. As Valve pretty much goes with “whatever is funniest at the time”, it’s very hard to make a cohesive theory about “where the hell is BLU team?”, but I’ll do my damndest. We’ll also examine Team Fortress’s relationship with the other capital T Teams, and why they’re considered the “rejects” of the bunch.

Comics 1 & 2 will be removed from the timeline as they serve no purpose, only taking what needs to be known about the plot’s setup and jumping straight to A Cold Day in Hell.

We will introduce the Classic Mercs right away so they can generate threat and play against the TF mercs when they do actually meet head to head.

We will not be killing off Gray Mann. (Not preemptively anyway.) In fact, there will be more focus on him and Olivia as villains facing off against the Admin, providing her foil as the TF2 and TFC mercs provide foils for each other.

I considered waiting until the final comic was out to begin working on this, but that may never happen. Jay Pinkerton said he may reveal what plot they had in store eventually, but considering it took Half Life over a decade to get the “I was once a Valve writer but my NDA has expired and now I can go buck wild” treatment, I’m not holding my breath. The main reason I wanted to do this is that the Administrator’s motivations are not interestingly foreshadowed, to the point where there aren’t even any good fan theories out there. That said, WritingDispenser and Riddle of the Sphinx helped come up with a pretty fun one, which was actually the inspiration for me to get off my butt and start plotting this.

There will be no queerbaiting. This refers both to HeavyMedic (which has been simultaneously used as wink wink nudge nudge joke many times and as encouragement for fans to play their stupid hat game) as well as lesbian Pauling (since femme lesbians are the preferred method for front facing LGBT representation across almost all media, but video games especially). If you need to understand why lesbian Pauling is an issue, Sarah Z coined the term “queercatching” in order to describe word of god confirmations on characters sexualities that are not followed up on in the text. I recommend the full video on it.

Due to the importance of immortality in the theming of the comics, respawn will not be a thing. Deaths we think should have happened previously will be explained as close calls, or that Medic can heal a short time after death. Medic and Scout’s deaths will be cut in the story itself, as after Sniper died and came back, them doing the same thing kinda lost their punch.

Scout

There will be no ScoutPauling hints. It doesn’t make sense to give screentime to this relationship because Valve obviously doesn’t think it’s going to go anywhere so why make Scout turn down advances from other hot women? I mean I get Expiration Date was a Thing but it feels like Scout’s whole motivation shouldn’t be reduced down to chasing a girl who doesn’t like him back.

He’s here because he lost his life’s savings in bad investments and needs the money. That’s it. Which is still somehow more than his canon motive which is question mark question mark question mark

He, Soldier, Spy, Demo, and Pyro all start the adventure with Miss Pauling.

Engages with Heavy on a genuine level when they go to collect him, Heavy doesn’t blow him off when he tries to level about dead dads.

There will be no DadSpy reveal. The way Spy treats Scout has never been “deadbeat dad feels bad about abandoning his kid” but more “this is someone I would kill without a second thought if I felt like it” which makes his reveal in comic 5 feel very disingenuous. I don’t think Valve even had this plotline in mind until comic 3, as #2 still has Spy seeming only to care about Scout’s Ma and not Scout himself. It also makes “seduce me!” retroactively weird.

Uhhh hooks up with Zhanna. This one isn’t critical I just think it’s funny.

Soldier

Soldier is going to be the Ur example of the Admin not treating her people well, as we’re going to lean into the whole “Soldier was only mildly messed up until the whole lead poisoning” thing.

He’s here because he’s blindingly loyal to the cause. He’s actually going to very little from canon because of this actually.

Might be the reason Team Fortress has a reputation of being the lower tiers of the Teams, but that doesn’t mean he’s damn good at his job. Fatal flaw is that he’s unstable, and even though the courthouse plotline won’t be in this fic, it should be noted that he actually does cause problems for the other protagonists due to his short temper. He’s a risky asset, but still essential.

There will be a minor explanation for the WAR! Comic, but I think that’s better saved for Demo’s analysis.

Pyro

Pyro is the character you could cut entirely from the comics and have the least change. Now, they’re going to be Pauling’s right hand. Let me explain.

Engineer and Pyro are implied to live together, and Pyro doesn’t have anything better to do than go with Engie after Team Fortress is disbanded. Rather than having a reveal, we will see some of what is going on with the Admin and friends early on, and see what leads up to her sending Miss P the note that kicks off the whole plot. However, while Engie needs to stay and look after her, Pyro’s skills aren’t useful here, and they are sent as a direct messenger to help Pauling.

They’re loyal, and unlike Soldier rarely mess up orders. They’re also partially mute, making them ideal for handling sensitive info. Pauling trusts them to handle the burning of “Elizabeth’s” paper trail.

Will be using they/them in the narrative voice, but other characters will refer to them as he/him. I considered going with it/its because that’s bubbled up in popularity again, but ultimately I decided against it.

We’ll get glimpses to their train of thought, but like the comics they will remain virtually silent.

Demo

Demo’s role in the cast is going to be very similar to Spy’s. The events of WAR! involved him nearly dying and Soldier taking the win, and he’s very bitter that after all those events *apparently* mercs can just be switched around teams willy nilly and don’t have to kill each other anymore. (As the audience, we know this is because the Admin found out the “make them so angry they won’t ask questions” wasn’t a long-term viable solution, and instead brought TFI forward as a neutral third party that was pretending to mediate the gravel wars.) But Demo’s suspicious, and is only along because he really has been miserable since he lost his job.

This conflict will eventually come to a head, more on that in the Sniper section.

Is fairly forgiving with his teammates. Doesn’t like Sniper but I’m willing to drop a little angst during that submarine scene. Is glad to see Medic actually. Here to be some glue to hold this merry band together.

The Eyelander will not be forgotten after 2 comics because I love this character concept and I think it was underutilized.

Drunk jokes will be kept to a minimum. What I liked about WAR! and Bombinomicon was that it took Demo and showed that they knew how to make him funny without making him one note, which they sort of did in the early TFComics but stopped in the later ones in favor of him….being asleep for the whole plot. I promise 100% awake Demo in my rewrite.

Demo likes Pauling on a personal level, but has trouble reconciling her with his feelings on TFI.

Doesn’t get knocked out by moonshine because. Seriously? Poisoning the Demoman with alcohol? In what world does that work.

Heavy

Not too much to change. Scout doesn’t accompany him when he goes to look for the secret Australium cache, and he engages with Mags and Saxton (which will be when the audience finds out what they’ve been up to) and actually cares about what’s going on with them. He thinks Darling is up to something. Which he is, he’s attempting to unseat both Gray and Helen due to long family history.

Will at least mention Medic. Their reunion falls a little flat since it mostly relies on Meet the Medic for context, as they don’t really interact in the comic. There can be a bit of a flashback to what it was like as all these mercs broke up.

I know uhhh Valve seems to think found family is really dumb, and that these murderers could ever like each other is silly or something, but the mercs do? Like each other? For the most part anyways.

Bronislava and Yana come alone for adventures, not just Zhanna. Again, no real reason, but sometimes I get to have tacky fanfic stuff in my own fanfic because I Wanna.

Engineer

Engie ruminates on his family history of allowing all this bullshit to happen and just kind of shrugging. Basically Moss’s analysis of the Conagher themes.

Has put a lot of time, sweat, and tears into BLU and now TFI, isn’t willing to let it fall now, even if Admin is basically living on borrowed time. He’s doing this because of the ‘ole sunk cost fallacy.

Also we get to see more of Pauling and Admin’s relationship through his eyes.

Medic

Congrats on being the one merc with an actual arc, Medic! As a reward, you will not be changed much.

I’m actually going to use Medic’s section to say that the Classic mercs will be referred to by their first names in order to differentiate them, and we’ll get little previews of what they’re like from Medic’s perspective before we actually see them fight Team fortress. The battle at the submarine will be more of a fight in this sense, working it out so it seems like surrender is the only option after Sniper is killed.

Final fight with Cheavy will be...not blocked so awkwardly. I mean this is now a textual medium so my work is already halfway done, but still the pacing is so weird. Shudder.

Sniper

These are the big guns. Most changes, even more than Demo. He’s been actually hunting for New Zealand/the Australium cache on his own, and doesn’t want Pauling interfering, saying for a he knows she could have been the ones to kill his adoptive parents.

(She hasn’t, but the Admin did actually order them killed in an attempt to stop Sniper because she thought she could prevent the exact thing that is going on right now which is that Sniper is considering trying to get at it.)

Sniper doesn’t know this, but Pauling, Demo, and Spy eventually convince him to share his findings and help them get to New Zealand.

Spy

Similar to Demo but is less conflicted about it. He knows just because he likes someone doesn’t mean he won’t have to kill them later.

Spy knows about who killed Sniper’s parents, and tells Demo, sort of as a test to see where his loyalties lie. He also knows that Pyro is Pauling’s confidant for certain things.

Demo questions him about what he’s doing here, whose side he’s really on. But you know. Spy is Spy and he was never really on anyone’s side but his own. When it comes down to it, it might be exactly as Scout thinks: that he’s ditched them all and run off when he had the opportunity. But, big damn hero, comes back in the end.

He’s here mainly to “keep an eye on things.” Also maybe because his gf asked him to keep an eye on her son :)

#tf comics rewrite #tf2 meta

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firebunnylover · 4 years ago

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LoSH S2 discussion

I love Legion of Superheroes. And i love season 2, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about how it could have been improved. In terms of quality, it varies more than season 1. Some parts are top tier while others… eh.

Season 2 is darker than season 1. And there’s the inherent stigmatism that darker means better. But it’s not true.

A horror schlock film is not inherently better than an animated film.

I don’t blame the staff on all its shortcomings. Kids WB was on its deathbed, so they probably had less time to work and iron out ideas. And executive meddling.

The second season had a lot of good elements, but there are things that weighed it down. I am here to discuss how to improve said things.

Heads up: ended up editing part of this post after rewatching the episodes.

This first bit is more of a personal preference, but instead of the 41st century, maybe move the original source of conflict to a farther region of space, one that the UP doesn’t interact with, and has been growing in terms of turmoil until they finally resort to bringing the Legion over. In other words, it has just been put aside by everyone else to the last minute.

Parallel to Brainy’s relationship to Brainiac. He doesn’t want to deal with it. He never brings it up. But maybe if he did, he wouldn’t have gotten corrupted.

This place still has plenty of old documentation of the original age of superman, so Kell is disillusioned with the ideal glory days. Keep Kell Edgy.

Kell’s home and K3NT still gets destroyed - reflects Krypton’s own destruction.

SPEAKING OF KELL:

Make his story more apparent that it’s one realizing that kindness is not an inherent weakness. And neither is being soft. He was raised for fighting and killing Imperiex, and was taught to think that they were weaknesses. Have him realize his identity can be beyond the Clone of Superman made to kill Imperiex. Or rather, have him react more to realizing that he’s moving beyond his given identity.

To clarify; they do address his development in the show a few times, but I want more continuous development instead of the rapid nods we get. Have him try to interact in a more humane way with others. Especially with other members of the Legion. Where they have to take a double take in seeing him acting not that edgy. Maybe offer more flashback of him fighting Imperiex in comparison, and how he treated allies then.

Also put K3NT’s story under the microscope. I doubt Imperiex just came out of nowhere with his attacks. Plus the fact they went far enough to send a hitman after a fucking child? That screams yikes and maybe we need to double check the story.

And an overall issue to be addressed is what rights do robots have and what conditions need to be met? Because let’s face it, we make robots to do complex work for us. But Colu is a culture where the main people ARE robots. Like in Transformers. What line do we draw between non-sentient robots vs the sentient ones in the 31st century? And what about cyborgs/people who give up their original bodies for robotic ones?

Plus Imperiex himself came to be because of the perfected combination of organic tissue and robotics. This topic of robots and individuality/personhood could have been a fun topic to explore.

Don’t sideline the girls. Leave TG alone.

Don’t put SG in a coma for nearly the whole season - seriously it’s the reason why the guys make one bad decision after the other. Although with that said, it’s because she’s not around we got the majority of s2 plots. She’s the goddamn mom of the squad. Just make her busier and unable to keep an eye on her idiot boys for the plots based on bad decisions to happen.

Or have her deal with after-effects of what Esper did to her. Maybe after a whole season of being the emotional support character, have her be the one in need of emotional support or not being able to help directly, especially when the group needs emotional support. Emotional support paradox.

Maybe don’t make Cosmic Boy appear as much as a dick in the episodes where he does show up. He’s trying to hold this goddamn team together, and there’s a goddamn tyrant trying to conquer the galaxy. HE’S FUCKING TIRED AND STRESSED. AND IM SURE THERE ARE A BUNCH OF JERKS WHO WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT TO DISSOLVE THE LEGION. Better yet, throw in some more backstory with him and his little brother Pol!

And in regards to Imperiex… The dude has a lot of potential. I like his voice actor, Phil Morris. The guy voiced Dr. Sweets from Atlantis.

But his writing needs help.

In the original DC comics, he’s the embodiment of Entropy. Anyone who’s seen Madoka is probably familiar with what that is. But if you're not, here’s a definition: “ the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work...” He’s the embodiment of that energy that cannot be used for anything. And Entropy grows over time.

Another definition of what Entropy is “lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.”

In the comics, he’s more of a cosmic being as a result of him being an embodiment of unusable energy. He’s been in existence since, well, the beginning. He had destroyed the universe and recreated it multiple times. Okay, so that lines up with how the show portrays him. And technically, he does get the universe to reset itself in the 41st century when he alters the 31st century enough.

But I personally feel that making him a cosmic being is kinda… meh?

I personally prefer more personal villains most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, an Eldritch being done right makes a great character, but I can’t see Imperiex as one. At least not LoSH’s version.

Plus I like it when the protagonist sees the villain has a point and has changed as a result for the better.

You know, over a year ago, I used to think that it was impossible to make a tyrannical villain who’s presented as real evil seem complex.

And then… I was introduced to TFP Megatron.

Now for you LoSH fans who haven’t watched Transformers Prime, Megatron was once Megatronus. A low caste member who worked in the mines and Gladiator games. He wanted to fix the growing corruption of Cybertron. To make things better.

But his worse personality traits took over, and he lost that good motivation. Now he’s just fighting to win and defeat Optimus Prime.

But despite the change of goals and ideals, he doesn’t want to simply abandon his relationship with Optimus. He and Optimus, or as he used to be called, Orion, were fighting for the betterment of society. And they meant something to each other. Megatron doesn’t want to just get it over with. He wants fanfare for his victory over Optimus. And he doesn’t want anyone else to rob him off that. But he isn’t opposed to getting Optimus/Orion back on his side. It’s because of this you can still argue that there is a remaining shred of good in him.

They were the best young lovers anD NO I AM NOT CRYING OVER THEM!

Also, the fact we know he was part of a minority group in the form of the lower cast that was enslaved can make us sympathize with Megatronus of the past, as well as understand how he came to be.

It doesn’t mean we forgive him for his actions - and he has done a lot of shitty things. And I mean a lot.

But his history is more understandable. TFP Megatron’s a fall from grace.

OK I’m done dissecting TFP Meg’s writing.

We know Imperiex was a slave, and was originally organic, who’s from a society where his purpose is literally just to fight, and was gradually stripped of his original body. He was originally stripped of any agency before then though.

But he says this was a good thing. Calling his original body a weakness. And refers to his old self as a pathetic slave.

He gave up whatever softness he had.

Also, this is where K3NT’s story needs to be reexamined. Imperiex was made during what K3NT described as “A Time of Extended Prosperity”. That time had freaking slaves. And K3NT says that when Imperiex did rise up, they were unprepared. So… they were prosperous, but lacked defense to prevent anything like that happening? Or perhaps those who were in charge were that unpopular that it was easy for Imperiex to start the war.

What made him decide conquering the galaxy was the next thing to do after he had every bit of his original self stripped away? Why go as far as destroy it?

What I’m trying to say is that they could borrow a few pages from the Megatron book. Maybe he was once trying to better the society he was part of, but he decides to play the violent card at some point. And somewhere along that strategy, he starts to lose sight of the initial goal. With that, being the victor and in control becomes the main one.

Or perhaps he has grown cynical of the galaxy as it is and decides it just needs to go all together, and then start from scratch.

Like the second definition of Entropy, he gradually declines in predictability and descends into disorder.

Maybe to juxtaposition the fact that Brainiac became the main threat at the end, make him the opposite or foil to him. Rationality or logic do not serve as first-or-second influences to decisions under pressure. Emotions and his own perceived ideas do.

Speaking of Brainiac, maybe offer more of the OG Brainiac. Give us more of that smooth-voiced Corey Burton.

Or TFA Megatron.

Seductive Bastard.

I’m sorry I have fallen for the shady-business-mafia-boss-but-morally-grey robot.

Also, the members of the legion that only get one episode focus? Give them more screen time. You can’t just introduce superman’s new adopted son Karate Kid and just not bring him for another speaking role again!

Actually, that brings me to another point.

As @spandexinspace pointed out, his episode is not the best, and is arguably the worst written of the whole series. Things that are issues do get brushed off to the side.

So a proposal on potential rewrite:

First, have the legion look over its current rules and what exceptions/changes they need to make.

Explore the subject of kids having to participate in these fights.

To clarify, kid shows are meant to be escapism for kids.

Shocking, I know.

So it makes sense that some characters would be the same age as the viewers.

But while this is good representation, as you get older, you find yourself going “WHY WOULD THE ADULTS LET THEM ENDANGER THEMSELVES?!”

Kids having to fight at that age does have consequences. Batman Beyond certainly addressed it. So did Steven Universe Future.

Steven ended up being responsible for so much, that when he no longer needed to take care of things, he was unsure of who he was. And then there’s the fact he ended up with PTSD because of him having to fight so much. Then you have the fact that Greg and Rose never intended to raise him like their caretakers did... but as good as their intentions were, they still caused damage. Rose for… all the gem stuff. And look, Greg is a great dad, but not enforcing anything for Steven when he’s growing up still has it’s cost.

With Batman, he’s obviously going to do his damn best to keep kids safe, including the Robins. But sometimes, it’s not enough. He wasn’t able to keep Tim safe in the event with the Joker in Batman Beyond. Where he was held captive and tortured.

But the Batkids are never expected to resolve this stuff by themselves. Because Batman knows how much you can get screwed up as a kid. He fucking cares.

And to be fair, in most continuities I’m aware of, the other sidekicks came out pretty okay overall.

Except Jason Todd.

So my proposal?

Have Val originally with Grimbor, as a sort of Protege. But have the legion capture him, only to go “uhhh this is a child with no powers”. And Superman, being the good, wholesome paragon we all love, takes him under his wing.

In all honesty, I want Superman pulling a batdad for Karate Kid in his intro episode the whole time. That was the best part of the episode for me.

Plus after the events of “Cry Wolf”, the Legion should examine the no-killing rule. Because they do need to kill Imperiex to save the universe. But that goes against the code. But they can argue it’s a necessity. But Mar Londo is also a monster. He’s the everyday monster some of us have grown up with.

When do you need to make exceptions to kill someone?

And my final main suggestion:

Add more Mekt.

What the heck were you guys expecting? You all KNOW me by now. I LOVE MY GARBAGE BOY.

Joking aside, here’s what I would do.

Have the Chained Lightning episode pushed back, but have Mekt with Imperiex earlier. Most of us would yell “Why the heck would you join the guy whose main goal is to destroy the galaxy?!” But this is one of the easiest things to address.

Explore more of his past. Use the comic sources with him being outcast for being a solo on Winath. With that in mind, him deciding to side with Imperiex can make sense.

Why try protecting something that has done nothing but hurt you?

There’s actually a pretty good reason why he would side with Imperiex, as seen in Champions and Lightning Storm. Remember, Mekt was willing to cheat to get ahead of the sports competition he was introduced in. And also was thrilled when fighting Garth and was beating him on his own. He likes being in power.

Imperiex offers him that.

As for why Imperiex would bother with Mekt? That’s a little harder to answer. He knows that Mekt has a soft spot for his brother, and in turn sister, which proves to be the reason why the Tachyon Cannon fails. You’d think Imperiex would remove a huge fatality.

But he doesn’t.

Maybe he could hold another type of value for Mekt. Perhaps... nostalgia?

I’m still sold on the idea that they were sleeping together.

Also, give us a conclusive answer on where Mekt stands with the LSV. In the comics, he was the leader, but that role was given to Tyr in the cartoon more or less.

OK I think this has been polished enough for me to post now. What you guys think? Feel free to add on!

#legion of superheroes #legion of super heroes #losh #OH GOD I STARTED THIS IN SEPTEMBER #IT'S FINALLY DONE

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themattress · 4 years ago

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OUAT AND ME: SEASON 3

Story - Season 3 was the first season to (intentionally) divide itself between two story arcs, with the first half being the Neverland Saga and the second half being the Wicked Saga. While the Neverland Saga focused on the journey of the show's main characters through Neverland as they conquer their own inner demons in order to save Henry from the clutches of Peter Pan, the Wicked Saga focused on a new Dark Curse being cast on Storybrooke and the main characters' fight against Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West, who is working toward a secret objective that will allow her to exact revenge on Regina, the Evil Queen.

The Neverland Saga, in the present day sequences, is the best the show has been since the Enchanted Forest quest early into Season 2. In its best moments, it's even on par with the Dark Curse Saga of Season 1. Seeing all of the characters work together toward a shared goal after all the clashing agendas from the previous season is so refreshing and exactly what the show needed, and everyone undergoes some kind of character development and gets their moment to shine. Greg and Tamara are killed off within the first few minutes of the premiere episode after finding out that "the Home Office" was the Lost Boys all along, and Peter Pan is quite possibly the greatest Big Bad in the show's entire run, and certainly among its most popular for just how wonderfully menacing, manipulative and despicable he is.

Unfortunately, I can't extend the same praise to its flashback sequences. The ones that involve Rumpelstiltskin and Hook in the 4th, 5th and 8th episodes are great and connect to the current narrative, but I take issue with all of the others in some way, big or small. The flashbacks in the 2nd, 9th and 10th episodes have fuck-all to do with what's currently happening in Neverland, and while the ones in the 3rd and 6th episodes do, there are too many issues in them to consider them good. For the 2nd, 6th and 10th, the problem is that the show is starting to contrive new "Snow White and friends vs. the Evil Queen" stories where they don't belong and aren't needed, and it especially has a negative impact on the Evil Queen since this is the point where she shifted from slightly campy to overtly campy, her menace quota reduced to virtually nil. For the 3rd, giving Regina and Tinker Bell a past connection is fine and works for the story, but the way they do it is stupid and with dire consequences later down the line, plus the show doesn't get much into her connections with actual Peter Pan characters like Hook, Wendy, and, well, Peter Pan. And as for the 9th, I actually have quite a lot to say on that so I'll save it for when I'm discussing Episode Quality.

My thoughts on the Wicked Saga have not changed all these years later: it's a textbook example of They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot. With the set-up it starts with: a new Dark Curse, a new Big Bad, and new dynamics between many of the characters, they had the chance to take the show in a bold new direction following the ending of the Neverland Saga wrapping up the plot that's been going on since "Pilot". But instead, Adam and Eddy fall back into their bad Season 2 habits, and the result is that the show settles into this kind of bland status quo that it won't ever be able to shake off. The arc isn't actually a bad one, as it's solidly structured just like the Dark Curse and Neverland Sagas and there's a lot of great moments and developments made. It just falls short of the greatness that it could have had.

Characters - Everyone's more likable now! At least until they aren't.

* Emma takes center stage in the Neverland Saga. After finally learning to believe based solely on faith instead of always waiting for evidence to do so, she takes charge as the leader of the group affectionally dubbed "the Nevengers" by fans. In learning how to be a leader, she is able to learn more about herself and become an even more confident and decisive hero. Tragically, her character arc isn't fully resolved before it gets cut off by the events of the midseason finale, leaving her in a state of anxiety and uncertainty in the Wicked Saga before finally making her way back to the resolution of her character arc in the season finale. And on paper, this sounds fine, but in execution Emma's character through the majority of the Wicked Saga is a one-note bore who mainly exists to prop up the development of other characters. She isn't as sidelined as badly as she was in the latter half of Season 2, but still not ideally handled, especially when much of the story arc is specifically building toward only her being able to defeat Zelena only for Regina to do it instead. However, the resolution her character receives in the finale is handled exceptionally well, so I guess it all balances out in the end.

* Snow is actually back on top form in the Neverland Saga and it's wonderful to see, but it doesn't last into the Wicked Saga where she's back to the insipid, Regina-coddling weakling that Season 2 turned her into, whose biggest contribution to the plot is simply having a baby. Charming is a lot more interesting, as in the Neverland Saga we get to see his David Nolan weaknesses return but this time as a result of his Charming strengths, which is a fascinating dynamic to see at work and leads to some great interactions between him and Hook, a relationship that got started in Season 2 and will only continue to grow (and occasionally regress) as the show continues. And in the Wicked Saga, he has an entire episode dedicated to his feelings of failure as a father and how he fears that he might fail his second child too.

* Henry....still sucks, damn it! For a story arc with the mission statement of Save Henry, the Neverland Saga makes it difficult to care about saving him when he's portrayed as so stupid and gullible and easily led by his captor, Peter Pan, to the point where he literally sacrifices his heart (the Heart of the Truest Believer) to him against the pleas of his father and mothers. And while he has the potential to become more interesting in the Wicked Saga due to having lost his memories, the show totally ruins it by giving him his memories back by the end, because Heaven forbid that Regina pay a lasting consequence for her decades of villainy.

* Oh, and speaking of Regina, like Snow she's also really good in the Neverland Saga only for the Wicked Saga to ruin her again. In the Neverland Saga, she establishes herself as the Token Evil Teammate of the Nevengers, who knows she's a sociopathic villain and owns it as she utilizes her skill set for the greater good. Her line after ripping out a Lost Boy's heart at Emma's behest sums up why she works so well in this arc: "She didn't. I did. That's what I'm here for. One happy family." This should have been Regina's seasonal character arc and her status within the show going forward: a part of the family who may be evil and grouchy and not get along with everyone and even antagonize other members of the family, but who can still be counted on when push comes to shove and whom the other members of the family stand on equal grounds with and can push back against. It's the ideal recipe for a slow-burn redemption where by the end of the show she's truly become a semi-decent person. Just the act of destroying and fully reversing the Dark Curse in the midseason finale alone, at the cost of Henry losing all his memories of her while she gives him and Emma good memories of having always been together was a powerful start to such a redemption. It was all right there.

But of course, Adam and Eddy could never let their precious Regina go so long without having all of the things both she and they believe she is entitled to. So in the present-day story of the Wicked Saga (she's still fairly decent in the flashbacks), Regina gets a handsome soulmate in Robin Hood, and validation over her more powerful half-sister, and engagement in family dinners, and reconciliation with Snow without her expressing any remorse or apology toward her (Snow puts the blame on herself instead - "I was such a brat!"), and Henry with all of his memories back, and to out of nowhere and without her heart in her body become a powerful practitioner of light magic to the point where she's basically the Savior now! Yes, she seems to lose Robin at the end when Maid Marian is brought back, but that just ends up making her victim complex and blame deflection even stronger ("You're just like your mother!" she says to Emma, "Never thinking about consequences!" Because how dare she bring back one of Regina's past victims and allow her to be reunited with her family!)

In short, the Wicked Saga put a sudden fast-forward on Regina's redemption, giving her all sorts of goodies that would make sense as individual karmic rewards on a slow-burn redemption but make no sense when they happen in quick succession. And then at the end, they took one of those things away just to make her seem like more of a martyr, something they've been doing ever since the end of "Queen of Hearts" back in Season 2 and at this point I was sick of it. Little did I know it was about to be taken to a whole new level...

* Rumple wasn't bad in the Neverland Saga, per se, in fact he's amazing in the last four episodes. But early in, he backtracks on the goodwill he built up in the Season 2 finale by arrogantly abandoning the rest of the Nevengers to go rescue Henry all by himself, and all this accomplishes is getting him lost in the jungle, crying over old childhood dolls, being plagued by a hallucination of Belle, taunted by Peter Pan, and having an underwhelming reunion with the son he thought had died only to quickly come to blows with said son as he begins showing signs of temptation from his selfish self-preservation instincts at the expense of Henry's well-being once again. It just gets tiring after a while and you're glad when Regina verbally bitch-slaps him back into some semblance of his old self, which leads to the aforementioned amazing moments where he reconciles with the other Nevengers, confronts his father, and ultimately masterminds the heroes’ action plan in the midseason finale which culminates in his final redemption as he sacrifices his life to take down Pan once and for all.

But therein lies the problem: Rumple's entire series-long character arc just came to its natural conclusion. He chose love over power and courage over fear, standing up to the father who ruined his whole psyche and giving his life for his loved ones. However, since it's the middle of the season and Robert Carlyle is still contracted for more, they had to resurrect him. This decision cheapening his sacrifice is bad enough, but the writers also have no real idea what to do with him for the rest of the arc other than act crazy in a cage and then serve as Zelena's meat-slave, which is even less fun to watch than him moping around in the jungle was! While him deceiving Belle and killing Zelena at the end promises better things for him in the future, it's still a slog to have to sit through what preceded it, and you never quite shake off the feeling that the show might have been better off if it only had the balls to leave him dead.

* Hook was already one of the best additions to the cast in Season 2, but Season 3 is where he truly shines. He is in his element in the Neverland Saga, bonding with Emma and Charming while he rediscovers the more heroic and honorable side of himself. The insight into his past especially helps with this, as we better understand where he came from and how he got to where he was when we first met him. And in the Wicked Saga, he is the impetus behind Emma regaining her memories and returning to Storybrooke to be the Savior once more, as we learn that he had attempted to return to his old pirate ways back in the Enchanted Forest but ultimately couldn't do it, as his experiences with Emma and his love for her had changed him for the better. And so when he learned her family was in trouble and needed her help, he sacrificed the Jolly Roger and his pirate captain status in order to get back to her. After learning this on top of all the time they spend together, particularly in that very season finale, Emma finally lets down her walls and enters a romantic relationship with him...and I can't blame her in the slightest, because out of all her love interests, it's clear that she and Hook have the most in common and have the best chemistry. It’s True Love.

* This also might just be the best season for Belle as a character. Her focus episode in the middle of the Neverland Saga is actually about her and her desire to be a hero and contribute to the cause rather than just about her romance with Rumple, and she gets to be a badass who saves the day and makes a great new friend in Ariel. She's also good in the Wicked Saga, where she bonds with Neal, takes Hook and Regina to task for their past misdeeds against her until they apologize and make it up to her, and continues to be a valuable asset as the town librarian and scholar. Pity we can't feel happy for her on her wedding day, though, as even in his goddamn proposal to her Rumple manages to be the worst lover ever.

* Neal is promoted to a regular character this season, which naturally means he's its designated screwed-over regular who won't make it to the next season! It's a shame since despite how miscast Michael Raymond-James continues to be, Neal is better written in this season than he was in the previous one. Through both the Neverland and Wicked Sagas, he shows a passionate desire to be a better father to Henry than Rumple was to him, to not repeat the same mistakes that Rumple made. And so when he is separated from Emma and Henry, he becomes obsessed with getting back to them no matter what the cost, veering dangerously into Rumple territory as he starts dabbling in dark magic. But when the ritual to resurrect his father so that he can find a way back to Earth costs him his life, he ends up accepting his fate rather than cling to life like a coward and risk becoming just like Rumple. While I don't particularly miss him nor do I find his heroic death enough to warrant Snow and Charming naming their new son after him, I'm glad in the end he was able to break the cycle.

* Peter Pan, as I said before, is a top contender for the show's greatest Big Bad. Much of it has to do with Robbie Kay, who absolutely nails the cocky and charismatic yet malicious and frightening qualities that you expect to see from an evil version of Peter Pan. He is so utterly, thoroughly, skin-crawlingly evil that you are invested in the heroes' quest less out of concern for Henry and more because you want to see this demon child be defeated. And of course, there's his backstory and true identity - he's actually Malcolm, Rumple's father, who cruelly abandoned him in order to bond with the Eldritch Abomination personifying Neverland's dark side and obtain eternal youth. But eternal youth doesn't mean eternal life, and Pan will die unless he obtains the Heart of the Truest Believer belonging to his great-grandson, Henry.

While this backstory is divisive among fans, I'm in the camp that loves it. Not only does it add a greater layer of depth to Rumple and his story and make Pan both more pitiful and more reprehensible, but OUAT is at its best when it uses fairy tales to explore real issues, and this is a quite literal exploration of "Peter Pan Syndrome", where adult men selfishly remain in arrested development even when they become fathers. It also really boosts Pan's Ultimate Villain cred, as none of what transpired in the show would have happened if he hadn't abandoned his son and scarred him for life. He is Patient Zero for all the characters' suffering.

* Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West, naturally feels like a step down when compared to Peter Pan, but this isn't for a lack of effort on the part of the actress, as Rebecca Mader is delightful as she chews the scenery in a blaze of bug-eyed, bared-teeth, shrieking, cackling, psychotic glory. The issues with Zelena are in the writing. First off, making her Regina's half-sister is questionable given that we just had a villain with a secret familial connection with one of our mainstay baddies, which was following from an evil woman with a familial connection to Regina specifically! And them being sisters doesn't have much bearing on the conflict beyond explaining why the Wicked Witch has green skin (it magically turned green out of jealousy for Regina), and she only has green skin in the flashbacks anyway. It also doesn't track with how they first present Zelena in her backstory: she's a girl who wants love and a place to belong, but the moment she discovers she has a sister in another realm her reaction isn't to seek her out and bond with her but "why does she have all of that power and privilege, I oughta have all of that, it's not faaaaaaaaair!" She also lusts after Rumple who, having previously insisted that no-one could ever love him, casually admits that "he has that effect on women" and stops training Zelena because he accepts as fact that she loves him more than anything else and so she can't cast the Dark Curse for him. It makes no sense.

On top of that, her big secret plan ends up being anticlimactic - she wants to create a time travel spell so that she can go back in time and make herself the one who casts the Dark Curse for Rumple - and she is defeated ridiculously easy by Regina's out-of-her-ass light magic powers and then unceremoniously shivved by Rumple in her jail cell. All while Adam and Eddy drop boulder-sized hints that she isn't really dead and we haven't seen the last of her. Then why "kill her" to begin with? Why not just keep her imprisoned? Like I said, Zelena is a good idea for a character and with a great actress, but the writing really let her down.

* Beyond the usual side characters around Storybrooke who are fine as usual, we get several new ones that all make an impact. There's Felix, Pan's creepy and fanatical right-hand boy; Tinker Bell the cynical exiled fairy turned reluctant ally of the Nevengers; the adult versions of John and Michael Darling who run the anti-magic group Greg and Tamara belonged to on Pan's behest since he's holding Wendy hostage; Liam Jones, the deceased older brother of Killian Jones; Ariel of The Little Mermaid fame played to adorable perfection by Joanna Garcia-Swisher, Blackbeard the pirate who serves as Hook's arch-rival in their mutual field of interest; and Glinda the Good Witch who protected Oz until Zelena ousted her from power.

And then there are the new ones that make much less of an impact such as a charisma-free Prince Eric; Walsh the Wizard of Oz (and Emma's short-lived boyfriend, and a flying monkey - yes, he's really all three of those); a bland version of Rapunzel; a dumbfounding semi-villainous adaptation of Lumiere the talking candle, and Dorothy Gale who is so devoid of anything special or interesting that she's a slap in the face to her literary and cinematic counterpart. I'm not sure what went wrong with these characters, but it went very wrong.

However, one side character needs to be addressed above all others: Robin Hood. He's back and involved in the present day story, now played by Sean Maguire instead of Tom Ellis, and the revelation via Tinker Bell's pixie dust that he's Regina's "soul mate" is the start of his character being butchered beyond repair. The sad thing is that it could have worked: the argumentative, mutual dislike yet still caring about each other type of relationship they have in the flashbacks was perfect and should have continued, progressing naturally into Belligerent Sexual Tension and finally romance as Regina becomes a better person. Instead, when they lose their memories and meet again in Storybrooke, it's now love at first sight and instant romance, with Robin being disgustingly courteous and compliant toward Regina (claiming she's "bold and audacious, but not evil"). Robin Hood is supposed to stand against corrupt, oppressive tyrants, not fall in love with them, and Regina is nowhere near out of her corrupt, oppressive tyrant mindset yet. But she's Regina, Adam and Eddy's favorite character, and so if Emma's getting a sexy British love interest than so must she, regardless of how it clashes with his code of honor! Ugh, such a waste of a great hero, and of a good actor.

Atmosphere - Remember when I said that Season 2 got dark in the bad way? Well, the Neverland Saga is dark in the good way, where the darkness isn't coming from a constant steam of personal misery, heinous actions, and the heroes failing against the villains, but from things that are suggested and things that lurk in the shadows, from trials the heroes must face in order to come out stronger that come off almost like an intense form of therapy, and from a particularly evil villain who will do anything to get what he wants. The fight against said villain also restores the tit-for-tat style of combat that Season 1 did so well at, with both the heroes and the villain getting the best of each other on multiple occasions so that it feels like a legitimate struggle rather than a never-ending one-sided blowout like it was with Cora.

Unfortunately, the show also takes this dark atmosphere to way too literal an extreme. The choice to keep Neverland in the present day always at night seems cool early on, but the novelty wears off quickly when you feel like you've been looking at the same backdrop for scenes and even episodes on end. I think allowing some scenes to be at day or afternoon would have done wonders at keeping up a sense of variety - many gifsets online brighten up the pictures and they looks so much better as a result. This was a big wasted opportunity.

The tone of the Wicked Saga is generally lighter and campier, with the only particularly dark things coming from Rumple and Neal's storylines, and that was definitely the right call since anything heavier after the Neverland Saga would start to feel oppressive. And again, the fight against Zelena is an even-handed one, with both heroes and villain getting to score points.

One of the biggest surprises upon revisiting this season is just how well Storybrooke was handled as a setting. It doesn't show up too often in the Neverland Saga but is well utilized when it is, and in the Wicked Saga we get a lot of new locations like Zelena's farmhouse beyond the woods and explorations of ones that were previously underexplored such as the docks and shipyard area. More importantly, magic shenanigans are kept to a minimum and for the most part there are actually sensible rules applied to them! Pan enacting the Dark Curse, the heroes counteracting him, Zelena's usage of magic, Emma learning to channel her inner magic, the séance to summon Cora's spirit, the time travel spell...they are things that don't just happen, there's stuff that has to be done and established beforehand.

It's not all done well, of course - we get the worst excuse why no-one can leave the town line yet (flying monkeys will get you if you try!) and Regina's light magic is pulled out of her ass following a breaking of the Dark Curse from her that makes no sense (Henry wasn't under any curse, so a True Love's Kiss on him shouldn't break squat!), but it's a step up from Season 2, enough to fool you into thinking that Adam and Eddy have learned their lesson.

Episode Quality - There's no bad episode in the Neverland Saga, although there are a few that stand out as weaker than the rest. "Nasty Habits", for instance, is kind of drag whenever Peter Pan isn't onscreen, since the Nevengers are stuck moping around at Baelfire's former tree house while Baelfire himself ("It's NEAL!") continues to be unable to sell the drama between him and his father in the way it deserves to be sold. And "The New Neverland", beyond having an awful title that gives everything away too soon, has a ridiculously fast-paced and repetitive plot in order to set up the midseason finale...a problem that could have been easily rectified had it not also hosted the most pointless flashback in the entire season.

And now I need to talk about the flashback in the episode before that one: "Save Henry", the climax of the Nevengers' time in Neverland. It's about how Regina first adopted Henry, and I actually really like it. It shows how she almost might have reformed after obtaining her new son but then discovered he was the child of the Savior, and unable to choose between him and her power over the cursed town, she copped out by drinking a memory loss potion. Not only is this tragic but it actually explains a lot about why Regina was so unstable and abusive in Season 1, since a flashback in that season had Snow drinking just such a potion to forget Charming and we got to see exactly what it did to her psyche as a result. However...this flashback didn't belong in this particular episode. Sure, Regina's love for Henry was a part of the present day story, but so was Emma's. And Neal's. And Pan's desire to fully assimilate his heart so that he could live forever. I really think that a flashback to Neverland in its prime, shared between Pan, Hook, Baelfire and Tinker Bell, would have been far more appropriate. After all, we hear a lot about those relationships, but I really want to see more of them.

I have few complaints about the present day narratives of "Heart of the Truest Believer", "Lost Girl", "Quite a Common Fairy", "Good Form", "Ariel", "Dark Hollow", "Think Lovely Thoughts" and "Save Henry", though, nor about the flashback of "Nasty Habits" that brilliantly composites Peter Pan with the Pied Piper of Hamelin, luring children away with a pan flute.

And then there's the midseason finale, "Going Home". Holy shit. This is the finale that gives "A Land Without Magic" a run for its money. It's not just the finale to the Neverland Saga, but the finale to the entire story that was begun in "Pilot", with every character making what appears to be their last stand. The stakes and the emotions run very high in this one, peaking with the double punch of Rumple's beautiful sacrifice to save his loved ones from Pan and the scene at the town line where Emma and Henry have to say goodbye to all of their friends and family from Storybrooke, with the town and the characters disappearing in a cloud of purple smoke as Emma and Henry drive across the town line, all their memories of the show's events forgotten but replaced with new memories implanted by Regina, memories of Emma never giving Henry up for adoption and them living happily together for years. It all started when Henry came to Emma's apartment to bring her to Storybrooke, and now it ends with them both leaving Storybrooke and heading toward their happy ending. It's perfect.

The Wicked Saga had its work cut out for it in topping what came before it, and "New York City Serenade" following up the last minute, literal Sequel Hook of "Going Home" does end up feeling anti-climactic in how quickly Stoybrooke, its residents, and all of Emma's memories are restored (also, Emma's new boyfriend being a flying monkey was so dumb), but it's still a solid and enjoyable enough episode to watch, with its direct follow-up, "Witch Hunt", being even better. "The Tower" has great atmosphere and character development, and while "Quiet Minds" definitely could have been better, it could have been worse too. "The Jolly Roger", meanwhile, is the perfect midpoint episode, mostly a breather and a deeper exploration of Hook's character and how much he's changed in spite of him doing his damndest in the flashback to resist that change, as well as the welcome return of our fave fish-girl, Ariel.

It's really just the four heavily Zelena-focused episodes "It's Not Easy Being Green", "Bleeding Through", "A Curious Thing" and "Kansas" that I have trouble with; I feel like the writers really dropped the ball on Regina and Zelena's conflict and individual character development in these episodes, which is ironic given that Evil vs. Wicked was the biggest thing promoted about this half-season arc and it ended up being its weakest element.

The two-part season finale, "Snow Drifts" and "There's No Place Like Home", is both a weird and wacky homage to Back to the Future and a return to the series' magical roots. Emma and Hook's adventure to the time of the "Snow Falls" flashback is so much fun and is the perfect antidote to the last few lousy episodes. It also could have very well made an ideal series finale if five changes had been made to both it and the whole Wicked Saga's story: Neal would have to still be alive (that way we don't get the baby being named after him, which is stupid), Rumple would have to still be dead (so no lying to Belle via wedding proposal and killing Zelena), Zelena would have to still be alive and in jail (totally doable with Rumple not alive), Marian would have to not be included in the plot at all (past or present), and of course the stinger with Elsa showing up would have to be removed. Do that and it's a happy ending. But they didn't do that, so following a quick diversion, I'm stuck having to watch Season 4.

Overall - Just as there is no doubt in my mind that Season 1 is the show’s strongest season, there is no doubt in my mind that Season 3 is the runner-up. This is an all-around solid, largely well-crafted, entertaining season of television, especially the first half of it. During this season, I was proud to call myself a OUAT fan. It’s such a shame that the Wicked Saga didn’t end up innovating more and instead settled the show down into a status quo, because if it hadn’t done that then this season’s template would have been the one to follow for the rest of the show, with truly new and exciting story arcs in each half of a season that shake up the show and its characters for the better rather than always returning them to the same tired status quo that only lessens their appeal every time it happens. Oh, what might have been...

#Once Upon a Time #ABC #OUAT and Me #Opinion #Analysis

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rwdestuffs · 3 years ago

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There’s a lot of ironwood stans and a lot of ironwood haters out there. Now, to be fair, one’s opinion on the guy is likely dependent on that person’s view of the real-world military, as well as their own opinion of the writing in general.

Due to the… let’s be nice and use the phrase “lackluster writing”, ironwood is a very polarizing character. One can see his view on wanting to save people, but once a single chess price shows up, he loses it, and plans to abandon all of Remnant.

Keep in mind that the main characters have no reason to trust him. Not only has atlasian forces been around Mantle for a long time, causing distress and by extension, attracting Grimm, but ironwood seems to have no interest in using any atlas resources to build the communications tower. He only expends atlas military resources to protect it. Everything else comes from Mantle, including the time and energy of their best protector.

It took a submission post [here] to kinda spell it out:

The writing is so bad that we aren’t entirely sure if we should be sympathetic to ironprick or not. Given that I am calling him ironprick, you can probably tell where I lie on that whole thing.

Our own views of the US military has kinda skewed our view of ironwood and the atlasian military, so, let’s try to take a much more objective look at what they do, and how it either makes ironwood a tragic character, or a downright villainous one.

The discussion as to how the show has more or less demonized characters with prosthetics, has been done better in this post [here].

Our first introduction to Atlas in general is honestly… not that great. in this post [here], we see that right off the bat, Atlas is… well, sus. Their resident robot girl is “combat ready” and while this seems like an innocent line in this world, it makes one wonder “Why would she need to state that?”

In addition, with the SDC being a major point for resident racist turned un-racist off=screen, Weiss, the view of Atlas is already not that great. And as a quick tangent, but can we at least have mention of an apology? Like, just a random line of dialogue that tells us, yes, Weiss did in fact apologize? If these writers can’t resolve that conflict on-screen, the least they could do is give us the details of what happened off-screen.

With that rant done, it’s pretty clear that Atlas is either full of a bunch of trigger-happy gun-toting military personnel, or that they seem to be gearing up for a war with the rest of the world.

In Volume 2, we also get the reveal that Penny isn’t allowed to have social interaction, and that her status as an android is kept secret for unknown reasons. Had this show gone in the route of “Penny would absorb the Fall Maiden powers, but we run into the philosophical question of ‘She is also a living being, should she not also have a say in how her future is determined?’“, then that would have made sense.

In this Volume, and in Volume 3, we see that not only is the Ozluminati willing to sacrifice a young girl and rob her of her dreams, but that Atlas isn’t willing to expend any resources for her sake either.

With Volume 4, we kinda get a sort of insight into Ironwood and Jacques’ relationship. Jacques more or less tries to play the “I’m your friend” card with Ironwood. Given Jacques’ easily recognizable racism, it’s telling that Ironwood kept him as good company until he decided on an embargo, which, really only hurt the rest of the world. Ironwood wasn’t protecting anyone, he was trying to hold onto resources.

This is further exemplified in Volume 7, where, as mentioned earlier, he is taking Mantle’s resources to fuel his own pet project… And we later find out that that pet project was a total lie, as it turns out, it was just bait to lure out one of Shadow Queen’s minions.

We then see this all culminate in Volume 8, where Ironwood starts working with Watts to get payback on Penny for betraying him. His dialogue mirrors a lot of rhetoric that an abuser would use to try to coerce their victim to their side. And his casual discard of Penny is honestly something to take note of. Ironwood doesn’t value differing opinions. He never wanted anyone who would question him. He wanted loyalty. If he had his way, he would have installed Order 66 in all Atlasian troops to make them turn on any hunter that wasn’t loyal to him.

All of Volume 8 happened because he saw that his supposedly perfect defenses weren’t so perfect after all. And instead of resolving to try to do better once they expelled the intruder, he instead turns on the main heroes for not trusting him.

Now here comes the next question:

Should have team RWBY trusted ironwood from the start?

Now, we as the audience know that all of that stuff about Ironwood makes him look suspicious. But what do the characters know? Well, Weiss knows that they’re a bunch of militaristic assholes who refused to help her or her family escape from her abusive father even though one of their top specialists was her sister.

Ruby and Yang likely have a poor view on Atlas and Ironwood in general thanks to their conversations with Qrow.

And Blake knows that they’re basically the racism capital of the world.

As for team JNOR, their experiences likely come from how team rwby acts. With them being so close, and adding the fact that all of them got arrested for fighting grimm when they first arrived, their views are also negative.

On top of which, Ironwood is the headmaster of Atlas Academy. The last headmaster they trusted (Leo) stabbed them in the back, and the one before that (Oz) lied to them about their mission, so they have every right to be suspicious of Ironwood. They don’t exactly have a good track record with these headmasters.

So clearly, with what both the audience knows, and with what the characters know, their lack of trust in Ironwood was not misplaced.

With all that said and done, let’s dive into the final question of this post:

Is Ironwood a sympathetic villain?

As a blunt answer, yes. As an equally blunt answer, no.

Ironwood is a human character who is in charge of a military force. He hasn’t had to deal with racism like Ilia, Blake, or Velvet, but he also has been through a lot of battles if his large amount of prosthetics is to be seen.

Ironwood clearly has not had the world be kind to him, but by contrast, he hasn’t been kind to the world. As for which came first, is up to interpretation, but the point of the matter still stands: Ironwood was acting like a dictator.

Now, is his horribly described semblance Mettle to blame for this? Well, let’s think for a moment as to how it would have affected the story if we had known about it beforehand. Either in an interview, or because (in this hypothetical scenario) the writers were smart and had maybe Qrow try to talk him down by saying something like “James, calm down. You’re letting your semblance talk for you” really doesn’t matter. Let’s ask ourselves: How would knowing his semblance beforehand had affected our view of this?

Simply put, it would make us sympathetic to him, until we see his aura break and that he’s still going on his main goal of ditching all of Remnant and being selfish. It would have informed us that it wasn’t just Mettle driving Ironwood, Ironwood had that sort of thing in him the entire time, but he reached a breaking point. It’s been said that “people go from 0 to 60 over one little thing” but really, that’s not true. People don’t just go “from 0 to 60.″ People just don’t pay attention to how long a person has been at 59. And quite frankly, Ironwood was doing an admittedly good job at hiding how long he was at 59. He was constantly calm, cool, and collected in a lot of stressful situations, like when he had to confront the rest of the council.

But we also know that he was locking up dissenters. Labeling them as “traitors” and more or less, acting like he knew best. Plus, we know that he was doing a lot of questionable things in the past that makes a lot of his actions rather dubious at best.

But, once we view this with the view of the US Military, which Atlas is based on, intentionally or not, we kinda see something. Not some “grand protectors of the border and ideology of the country” but a bunch of power-hungry generals willing to throw bodies just to get their way, only for them to be unprepared when they are the ones who get invaded. And for them to basically be the fuel that gives their supposed enemies their power to cause so much destruction. Atlas was already at a breaking point. All Salem and her forces did was just add that one little extra bit of weight that caused it to all come crashing down.

In this case, literally.

#rwde #ironwood crit

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violethowler · 4 years ago

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Break the Wheel

It’s a common point of discussion in the Kingdom Hearts fandom how often the main heroes are screwed over by the actions and attitudes of their various mentors. Ansem the Wise, Eraqus, the Master of Masters... Nearly every mentor figure in the series has contributed in some way to the pain the young people they interact with have endured over the course of the series.

The Master of Masters deliberately manipulated his pupils into turning against each other and starting a war to further his own agenda. The Foretellers spread that suspicion and mistrust of each other outward to the members of their respective Unions. From what we’re seeing so far, the Dandelions are removed from the Master’s direct influence and are handling the Potential Traitor discussion so much better than the Foretellers did in Back Cover, but something still clearly went wrong that left at least four of them thousands of years in the future with only vague memories of their past at best.

Birth by Sleep showed how Eraqus’ paranoia and distrust of darkness directly lead to the suffering of his pupils. His attitude toward Terra’s darkness in the beginning drove the latter to seek validation from Xehanort, who used Terra for his own agenda causing Aqua to trap herself in the Realm of Darkness to save her friend. Eraqus’ insistence that she spy on Terra and bring Ven back to the Land of Departure drove a wedge between the trio at Radiant Garden. And his willingness to kill Ventus to stop Xehanort leads to his duel with Terra and subsequent death.

Ienzo’s role in the experiments performed by the Organization’s founders prior to the fall of Radiant Garden is unclear, but his conversation with Ansem in Kingdom Hearts III suggests that the older apprentices kept him in the dark about many things and might have potentially used Ansem’s fondness for him to manipulate their mentor. This resulted in Ansem’s banishment and - if DDD is any indication - turning Ienzo into a Nobody against his will when he was only 8 years old.

Ansem himself went on to openly seek the destruction of Roxas, Xion, and Namine for the sake of his revenge against everyone who wronged him, using his prejudice against Nobodies to justify the things he did in pursuit of his goals. And despite guiding Riku to accept his own darkness in Chain of Memories, Ansem still fundamentally buys into the view of Darkness as something inherently negative, best illustrated at the end of Riku’s side of that game where DiZ attempted to make Riku choose between the “road to light” and “road to darkness”, implicitly trying to force Riku into a rigid either/or path that Riku rejects in favor of choosing “the middle road”.

This pattern has repeated often enough that when fans on Twitter shared screenshots of Dark Road from the game’s prematurely leaked website showing Master Odin, several fans - myself included - began eagerly anticipating the ways in which this pattern of old men failing the young would rear its head in Xehanort’s time as an apprentice.

The fact that this pattern appears so consistently across the entire Kingdom Hearts timeline is not an accident. The entire starting point of the Heroine’s Journey is built around the idea that the protagonist’s environment - parents, mentors, peers, sometimes even their entire society - has failed them in some way[1]. By forcing them to adhere to a rigid binary of what traits are considered desirable versus undesirable, it forces people who do not fit those standards to cut themselves off from vital parts of who they are in order to be recognized and validated.

So when the younger generation grows up with these standards and is called to fix the mistakes of their elders, they are expected to do so on their mentors’ terms[2]. In doing so, they will ultimately continue the cycle that led to those problems in the first place. But the central protagonist of the Heroine’s Journey is different. The qualities which set them apart are the same ones that allow them to think outside of this rigid binary and ultimately break that cycle. In the course of their growth, the main character learns to create a new, better world not by vanquishing a villain who represents the failures of the old one, but by healing the wounds those failures created.

Kairi said it best in Kingdom Hearts III that Sora’s journey is about helping people, many of whom he’s never met before. This is significant because the protagonist breaking out of the cycle has commonly taken the form of learning to solve problems with compassion and understanding instead of violence and punishment[1]. The main character cannot improve the world around them by simply killing the villain and calling it a day. In order to achieve meaningful change they need to help the people who have been hurt by this rigid cycle. And as the contrast between Sora’s attitudes towards the dying Organization members in Kingdom Hearts II and III demonstrates, that includes the same villains he’s fighting against. Yes, even Xehanort.

Because when you look back and think about it, every non-Disney antagonist in the Kingdom Hearts series is shown to be motivated by the pain and/or trauma inflicted on them by the worldview of their peers and mentors, which they then took out on the people around them.

Marluxia as Lauriam was powerless to stop Strelitzia’s murder, and then he lost all memory of his past when he arrived in the present from the Age of Fairy Tales. That knowledge casts his behavior in Chain of Memories as someone trying to control the people around him as a proxy to feel like he has control over his own life[3].

Ienzo’s words when Ansem returns in Kingdom Hearts III[4] and the fact that he was a child [5] when Radiant Garden fell[6] paint his words toward Riku in Chain of Memories about the latter destroying his home as Zexion projecting the repressed guilt over the destruction of his home onto Riku.

Saix’s cruelty toward Roxas and Xion in 358/2 Days is revealed in Kingdom Hearts III to have been driven by jealousy towards Axel and the feeling that he was being abandoned and replaced[7].

All of these characters’ villainous actions can be traced back to the influence of the mentor figures of their generation. Marluxia’s survivor’s guilt over Strelitzia’s death is the result of her killer attempting to defy the manipulations of the Master of Masters. Saix was gaslit about his own humanity by Xemnas and Xigbar for over a decade with Xemnas’ manipulation and whatever effect Norting had on him on top of that. Ienzo’s conversation with Ansem in Kingdom Hearts III indicates that he didn’t fully understand what Ansem’s adult apprentices were doing around him when they were conducting their experiments, and the flashback at the start of Dream Drop Distance suggests he had not become a Nobody of his own volition.

Xehanort too, is someone who was hurt by this destructive cycle. The things he indicates he saw during his world tour - people refusing to acknowledge the darkness in their own hearts and allowing it to grow [8] - showed him the consequences of repressing one’s darkness and negative emotions as he and Eraqus were taught. He wanted to change this, but he was still so entrenched in that system that the best he could think of ultimately amounted to the same rigid viewpoint but flipped so that darkness was on top.

The merciless death many fans felt Xehanort deserved would only reinforce the “darkness evil, light good” worldview that Riku’s redemption arc was built on overturning. In order to truly heal the wounds created by the rigid belief system that made the villain who they are, the protagonist needs to be able to extend their compassion and sympathy even to their greatest enemies, or else it fundamentally breaks the narrative. The idea that there should be limits or conditions on such compassion is exactly the kind of mentality that led Eraqus to try and kill Terra and Ventus in Birth by Sleep. It doesn’t mean the main characters will ever forgive the villain(s) for what they’ve done, but that they are choosing to let go. To focus their energy on self-care and rebuilding, instead of more violence and more destruction[2].

Regardless of how individual fans feel about it, Xehanort being treated with dignity in his final moments needed to happen in order to show Sora’s growth. If Kingdom Hearts III had given Xehanort a violent demise like some of us wanted, it would have been a betrayal of the Heroine’s Journey’s major themes. Treating opponents with sympathy and compassion is a critical element of the framework, and is necessary in order to allow the protagonist to break free of the destructive mentality that created the story’s overarching conflict in the first place.

Sources:

[1] “The Heroine with a Thousand Faces”; June 13, 2019;

https://www.teampurplelion.com/heroine-with-a-thousand-faces/

[2] “On Love and Lions Part 1: An Analysis of Love in VLD”; February 14, 2020. https://www.teampurplelion.com/on-love-and-lions-1/

[3] Analysis of Marluxia by @mlhelena; https://mlhelena.tumblr.com/post/185211447430/thought-that-ive-been-nursing-for-a-while

[4] Kingdom Hearts III. Square Enix, 2019.

[5] Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Square Enix, 2010.

[6] Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. Square Enix, 2012.

[7] Concerning Atypical Heart Regrowth in Nobodies: Saïx Case Study by dicax; June 23, 2019.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329115

[8] Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind. Square Enix, 2020.

#kingdom hearts and the heroine's journey #kingdom hearts meta #kh analysis

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amyltia · 4 years ago

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Dark side, hope and redemption : Anakin and Ben

After watching the behind the scene of TROS, it was said that one way to differenciate Kylo from Ben was hopeful/hopeless. I didn’t realize that, but it does add a new light on the saga for me (maybe what I’m about to say has been obvious for a long time - like 42 years - but it never struck me clearly).

The dark side is emotion uncontroled, pain, selfishness. The light side is control, moderation, giving. Works pretty well with the 3 main couples of the saga (a meta I’m working on). I still think that’s true, but there is a another perspective possible : hope is light side and dark side is hopelessness. Let’s analyse what it means and focus on what it says of Anakin and Ben’s redemption arcs.

1. “Surrender to it” : The dark side is the side of hopelessness

A. When all is lost, “surrender to it” : the dark side’s motto

Characters fall to the dark side when they have lost hope of being good.True villains don’t even have that wish, but Anakin and Ben “surrender to it” when they don’t believe they can be good again or that something good could happen for them. Let’s not forget that Vader and Kylo, while being those persona, are in constant pain and their life is misery, they surrender to the dark side because they have lost the hope that things could change, they are hopeless.

Darth Vader lost the life he had built, his love, his statut, his friends, etc all impossible to retrieve. But in recent comics we learn that he did try and had hope to bring Padmé back, but is that the same hope we’re talking about ? Then all sith have hope, Palpatine more than anyone, but we call that ambition and it is. What is the difference between hope and ambition ? In SW at least, I think hope is something good you can do (saving someone but for the saved one good, not the idea of Vader when he tries to bring Padme back - in ep 3, Anakin wanted Padmé to rule with him on the path of the dark side, nothing says it has changed). Hope is that you can be good or that something good that you wish for could happen. The real question is what is good then ? It’s a vast question indeed but let’s say good is “what doesn’t hurt anyone”.

Kylo Ren feels abandonned by his family, feels like it’s too late and he already is a monster. It even shows in The Rise of Kylo Ren comics, that he turns when all hope is gone aka [SPOILER when the temple is destroyed, when he believes Luke is dead, his three camarades too and especially Tai the only one telling him he could come back. Tai dead, Ben “surrenders” to the dark side and kills Voe, becoming the leader of the knights of Ren], from there there is no coming back (...until Rey!). He has became hopeless and had to surrender to the dark side and he “can’t come back to [Leia] now” as he says to Rey in TROS. He has lost his family and has no hope of finding them again, and that is what differenciates Kylo Ren from Rey : she has lost her family too but she maintains the hope of a family reunion. Tho being a delusion it is ambiguous but it still kept her alive.

When something bad happen, sinking in despair is what leads characters to the dark side.

N. B. There are then two types of characters : the jedi who turn to the dark side (Anakin, Ben) and those who become ermits and exile themselves (Yoda, Obi wan, Luke). It’s not the same reaction, it seems like experienced jedi who have failed as protectors and teachers of others don’t turn dark side but exile themselves. But young characters whose own life is ruined (at a very personnal level) turn to the dark side. Yoda, Obi wan and Luke decision to exile is not so spontaneous, and Obi wan and Yoda even had time to look for a solution : they have been desperate when Anakin turned to the dark side and after order 66, but they made up a plan (to separate the twins, protect them, etc).

For Anakin and Ben, they can’t look forward and give in to despair. But sometimes they try to move on from what happened, to rebuild their life with the hope that things could get better. This is what Ben begins to do in TLJ, leading to the hesitation of the legacy saber in the throne room.

B. The case of Ben in TLJ : finding “a new hope” and reaching the neutral area

In TLJ Ben is torn apart, his attraction for the light side rises and he finds hope again : he turns to the future, he wants to repair his life, his has this HOPE that he can, with Rey, move on and “let the past die”. I always wondered why when he says this it doesn’t sound like a dark side thing, and it’s disturbingly neutral (neither good nor bad) while being the “main villain”’s big project [it’s like Palpatine main goal being not full wicked and having us think “oh maybe, yeah it could be a good idea to destroy planets and rule the galaxy with fear under a sith’s command”]. The good/evil rate of the character main goal IS the character’s position on the good/evil spectrum, that’s why Palps is full dark side and Ben in TLJ gets closer to Rey’s position on this spectrum, closer than ever while he is Kylo Ren : that’s why the legacy saber hesitates between the two. He has at this moment a hope for his future.

In TLJ, Kylo and Rey both move on this spectrum and meet in a neutral/grey area (on the spectrum below, Palps works as a control sample)

Dark side : Palps (ruling), Kylo in TFA (surrending to the dark side)

Neutral (aka grey) : Kylo in TLJ (ruling with Rey for a new order, moving on : hope of a future), Rey in TLJ (she lost hope on her family but wants to be good)

Light side : Rey in TFA (being good and hope of finding her family)

But hope is found and hope is lost for Ben in TLJ : right after the throne room scene, because of Rey’s refusal he goes full dark side back (aka trying to kill Luke and the Resistance) because he has lost what made him reach the grey area in the first place : the hope that Rey could help him move on.

In their last force bond in TLJ, after Crait, he has one last moment of hope...only to be rejected again, destroying the last bit of hope and of light side in him.

My guess is that that is why we see him so determined in TROS, he sunk back into despair but like in TLJ he still wish to move on from it with Rey, only he wants Rey for selfish reasons (just like Vader tried to bring Padmé back to help himself).

2. The light side is hope

Luke was "the new hope" of the galaxy. At the end of TLJ, his projection and implication has brought once again hope in the galaxy (as the broom boy shows us)

Ben has hope again. (SPOIL COMICS in those we may assume while he was Ben Solo that tho he felt it difficult to belong to the Jedi Academy, he had hope he still could fit in, it’s the loss of that hope for the reasons shown it those comics that makes him turn). TURNS because he believes he’s gone too far, can’t fit in and won’t be accepted. Believes it’s too late. TURNS again because he understands it’s not too late and he can still save Rey and do good, hope in himself that he is not the monster he thinks he is.

Anakin : he wants to be good and has the hope he can (and he does great until the end of episode 3). He has hope to stop being a slave and win the race in TPM, to become a Jedi and win Padme’s love in AOTC, to save her in ROTS....until one point. TURNS because he lost hope to save his mother and then to save Padme. TURNS again because he has hope to save Luke and to be good again, once again hope in himself to not be the monster he thinks he is.

Rey has the hope her parents will return. When she lost this hope in TLJ she could have went full dark side but she succeeds in the trial and stays in the light. But in TROS when the trial, like in a fairy tale, presents itself for the second time, she almost fails : learning that she comes from darkness makes her slowly lose hope in herself, therefore falling to the dark side. She doesn’t completely but she does get close.

There goes the second spectrum :

Dark side : Palps (ruling), Kylo in TFA and TROS (surrending to the dark side), Darth Vader (lost hope in life and himself, believe power will compensate his despair)

Darkish : Rey in TROS (on the process of loosing hope in herself)

Neutral (aka grey) : Kylo in TLJ (ruling with Rey for a new order, moving on : hope of a future), Rey in TLJ (she lost hope on her family)

Light side : Rey in TFA (being good and finding her family), Luke, Anakin, Ben (hope they can do good)

N.B. This meta is not about Luke so I won’t complete his journey on the spectrum (in TLJ I mean)

N.B 2 A meta about power and dark saide/light side could be a good addition to this one.

3. Hope for redemption : Luke and his father in OT VS Rey and Ben (TLJ VS TROS)

In ROTJ, it was Luke who had hope he father could be redeemed, in TLJ it’s Rey who has hope for Ben. So far it’s the same

But in TROS it changes : Rey succombing slowly to the dark side has (according to the theory I just explained) lost hope on Ben. Still can debate on why she healed him right after stabbing him (hope ? love ? regret ? no wish to kill ?). And Kylo Ren who didnt have hope, after the stabbing and healing and scene with Han gets hope again. Her compassion makes him gain hope in himself and he understands that “as long as he’s with her he is on the right path” (quote from the Making of of TROS).

So while TLJ repeats the dynamic of hope and redemption of the OT, TROS breaks it (but I think it’s a good thing). Rey has lost hope in Kylo Ren and in herself, or at least is in the process of losing it.

1- As she is surrending to the dark side, she looses hope on what she believed (herself and Ben) : the correlation is there. So far the theory works.

2- So the hope of Ben’s redemption still comes from Rey (the compassionate act of healing him, but it is not her first motive like it was for Luke or in TLJ, it is only a side effect), Leia and the memory of Han, but from himself too. Vader saves his son and it redeems him, but Ben is redeemed before he does anything, his turn is mental, it is a decision : he decides to go save Rey, and from that decision, due to his resurgence of hope in himself, he turns good again. It’s a small difference but it’s important because it’s the difference between Ben and Anakin redemptions : Anakin acts spontaneously and this good act redeems him, Ben has to FIRST forgive himself to be redeemed, his redemption is much easier, it only takes him to forgive himself and have hope in himself again, just with that he is Ben Solo again.

Conclusion

Anakin and Ben have very similar arcs but the differences are important. First, in the third movie of each trilogy : while Luke actively saves Vader, Rey doesn’t and it’s up to Kylo himself to complete this function on himself. Secondly, it takes a spontaneous action to Vader to be redeemed, while Kylo just has to gain hope in himself. Ben litteraly was his own biggest enemy. It’s not saving Rey that makes him turn, he already had, while Vader understands afterwards that he has turned. Ben’s redemtpion is a mental and psychological process, a decision, a choise consciensously made, while Anakin understands afterwards that he had turned, after his spontaneous act. Two different redemptions for two different journeys. But both show the HUGE importance “hope” has and always has had in the Star Wars universe - it’s not for nothing that the very first movie is titled “A New Hope”. The PT, OT and ST have this core thematic continuity about hope being the way to the light side, and despair and hopelessness leading to the dark side.

There are three types of characters according to this hope distinction. Wether it is to fight this despair, to find hope again thanks to someone or from within, Ben and Anakin have the most complex relation to hope and display the spectrum of intention the most extreme. On the other hand, Luke is the representation of hope in the OT and he regains that status again at the end of TLJ. Third type is Rey, she seems to be like Luke but absolutely isn’t (which is great). She is much more greyish and is always fighting to maintain her hope (in her family, in herself, in Ben), because she is aware of her weakness and choses denial to maintain this hope. That’s why it’s very intersting in TROS to see her loosing this hope from time to time, but not enough to be surrending to the dark side. Because she understood the primary lesson of Star Wars : that the best way to remain in the light side or to get to it is to have and to find hope, I think that’s my favourite lesson from Star Wars.

Others main meta

(1) Force jump/flying (TROS meets The Rise of Kylo Ren or Kylo Ren finally meets his peer in Rey) :

(2) TROS’s Ben as a mirror to Anakin’s arc or what is a Skywalker ?

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infizero-draws · 5 years ago

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ok so i was going to wait until i finished the cover but WHATEVER!!! this is something i’ve been (slowly) working on since last summer. my own idea for a sonic game: Sonic & the Candy Cuties!!

i’ve got usual gameplay pretty much down along with some ideas for boss fights, but the actual plot is a bit spotty currently (which is ironic since usually i care much more about the story than the gameplay). anyways more info on the candy cuties and everything under the cut!!

WARNING: THIS GOT REALLY LONG vvvvv

THE CANDY CUTIES

Sugar and Spice make up the Candy Cuties, a duo working to destroy Sonic and conquer the world in the name of Eggman!

Sugar: Silly and lighthearted, Sugar is more carefree than her partner. She can be rather ditzy and cutesy, but don't let that fool you into a false sense of security! Sugar is extremely powerful and a worthy enemy.

Spice: Aggressive and hot-headed, Spice is more hostile than her partner. With her burning passion and determination, she's a force to be reckoned with, especially when working with Sugar.

Sugar and Spice were employed by Eggman to destroy Sonic after he heard about their reputation as small-time villains.

GAMEPLAY

In SatCC, you play as Sonic. By completing certain levels, you can unlock the following characters: Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, and Rouge.

Sonic and Shadow are Speed Types.

Knuckles and Amy are Power Types.

Tails and Rouge are Flight Types.

You can only play as certain characters in certain levels - after completing the game, you can play all levels as the other character of the same type. (EX: Playing a Sonic level as Shadow.)

CHARACTERS

Speed Type Levels: SA2-Sonic/Shadow-style levels where the goal is to get to the end as fast as you can. Taking inspo from Colors, it switches from 3D to 2D.

Power Type Levels: Beat-em-up-style levels where the goal is to fight off waves of enemies and progress to the end. 2D.

Flight Type Levels: Air levels where the goal is to dodge obstacles and fight enemies to progress to the end. 2D side-scroller.

Sonic: High speed, medium damage. Special attack: Sonic Wind (propels him forward at high speed)

Shadow: High speed, medium damage. Special attack: Chaos Blast (destroys all nearby enemies)

Tails: Medium speed, medium damage. Special attack: Tornado Beam (clears screen of enemies)

Rouge: Medium speed, medium damage. Special attack: Night Flurry (makes her invincible to enemies and can go through obstacles for a short period of time)

Knuckles: Low speed, high damage. Special attack: Earthquake (stuns screen of enemies)

Amy: Low speed, high damage. Special attack: Rosy Rush (High damage attack that kills most enemies instantly within an average range around her)

DUO STAGES

Occasionally there will be stages that involve two characters. These are called Duo Stages. Duo Stages can have any pairing of two characters, whether they be the same type or a different type.

In Duo Stages, you can either play as one character and have the other one be the computer, but there is also the option for a second player to join in as the second character.

COMBINATIONS:

2 Speed Types: A race to see who can get to the end first, like SA2 2P Sonic/Shadow levels. If playing with a second player, it becomes split screen.

2 Power Types: A co-op battle. Characters work together to destroy enemies and advance to the end.

Power & Flight: A co-op battle. Characters work together to destroy enemies and advance to the end. Power type destroys enemies on the ground while Flight type destroys enemies in the sky. 2D.

2 Flight Types: A co-op mission. Characters work together to advance to the end.

Speed & Power: A co-op mission. Speed type runs through the level, while Power type destroys enemies and obstacles to aid them. 3D.

Speed & Flight: A co-op mission. Speed type runs through a 2D level and dodges obstacles while enemies shoot at them from the sky, which the Flight Type can destroy.

ZONES

There are 8 zones total. In order, they are:

Minty Field Zone

Dessert Desert Zone

Boba Sea Zone

Gingerbread Mountain Zone

Peppermint Tundra Zone

Cocoa Jungle Zone

Candy Castle Zone

Egg Base Zone

(pictured above: concept art for duo boss fight layout, “saucer” object, and alt. candy cutie form)

STORY

Again, surprisingly the least-fleshed out part of this so far. (and I call myself a writer lol) The main plot begins with Sonic chillin before the CC appear. They have a bit of back-and-forth with Sonic (he loves teasing them villains) before activating a mysterious machine (or something). Suddenly the landscape transforms into a bright candy land, and before Sonic can ask what they’ve done they run off cackling.

Sonic (and eventually the other characters - Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow & Rouge - I haven’t worked them into the story yet lololol) work to stop their sickly sweet plot~!

[insert the rest of the story here]

yeah............... ok so i dont have the middle stuff but here’s what happens at the END:

in what seems like the final boss fight, sonic fights both of the candy cuties together. after seemingly beating them however, they transform to another form (seen in the art above) and you have to beat another phase where they’re way harder. it’s their last ditch effort, and they nearly overpower sonic, but then the rest of the playable characters show up! with their help, sonic manages to beat them.

eggman shows up and the candy cuties, defeated and weak, call for help. but their pleas fall on deaf ears, as eggman cackles and reveals that he was going to betray them from the beginning. the defeated CC watch in horror as eggman abandons them and steals their candy machine thingy to power up his own big robot thing or whatever. eggman is about to strike them when suddenly they’re swept up by... sonic!

sonic yanks them out of harm’s way with his super speed, much to the surprise of both the CC and eggman. the candy cuties ask him why, confused, but sonic simply extends a hand to them. spice doesnt want to trust him, but sugar convinces her. sonic pulls them back up and asks if they can still fight. they nod, and in the REAL final boss fight, the candy cuties fight side by side with sonic and his friends, and manage to take down eggman.

the game ends with sonic and the gang celebrating, and the candy cuties being forgiven. after restoring the land back to normal, sugar and spice head off as sonic n friends wave them goodbye.

(this isn’t shown in the game, but they then retire to a little cottage together, being slightly evil and getting visits from sonic, whom they eventually become good friends with. oh also important note: im trying to stay somewhat realistic to what would actually be in a sega-approved sonic game, but the candy cuties are highly implied/coded (and are!!!) to be in a relationship.)

CONCLUSION

Uh yeah so that’s kinda what I have so far!! I’ve been thinking about this concept for a WHILE, and I can’t wait to flesh the story out more and figure out more of the game mechanics and boss fights. very glad to finally share it with you all ^_^

bonus: some old cursed art of the candy cuties. they were originally going to be mobians, but i really didnt like these designs and went for a more deadly six approach, where they’re not mobian but still look like sonic characters. i did one in the official style (by tracing some official art) and one as a quick doodle in my style (AT THE TIME) anyways i hate these:

cursed.

anyways peace out! <3

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atalana · 6 years ago

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If Five was somehow given a way to assure his family's safety, do you think he'd have the potential to be a true villain? Like not necessarily evil but if he refuses to care about himself or others, would his lack of wanting anything reduce him to an antagonist? Or could he become a hero proper, or something else entirely? I'm curious about your thoughts on this!!

Hooo boy this is an interesting ask, thank you so much!

To first off answer your question, yes, absolutely, Five has the potential to be a villain. Under those specific circumstances, debatable, and there’s a few different factors that could go into it, so lets go into them properly

First off, how is he ensuring his family’s safety, and also does that affect the apocalypse? Because let’s take that one first, if his family survived into the apocalypse with him, Five would not be the Five we know. Honestly, as much as the apocalypse would suck, I think all of them would be better adjusted? It’s one thing to survive on your own, it’s a different thing altogether to survive as a team. They’d learn to work together, they’d get better at not following Hargreeves’ rules and life plan and all of that, it would be miserable sometimes, but they’d have each other, and a lot better mental everything.

If it means the apocalypse never happens, then Five travels into the future to meet his ~30 year old siblings. It would be weird, and he’d probably like to get back, but when he discovers he can’t it won’t be life shattering, because he’s still got his siblings, he’s just their younger brother now. Either way, Five has no reason to get involved with the Commission

But let’s say for the sake of argument that the apocalypse still happens, Five is still the Five in the show, it’s just that his siblings aren’t at risk and so we take that away as a factor.

Well, you’re right, he’s got a lot less of a drive to succeed now. But also, I think he still does want to stop the apocalypse? Because that’s what ruined his life, and Five’s not without morals, even if he frequently puts them aside, given the choice he’d still choose to save everyone, he definitely cares about people as a whole. Like, the closer it gets to the apocalypse in the show the more he starts using “everyone” instead of his family, he criticises the Handler for letting everyone die, he sides with Luther because “there are billions of lives at stake, we’re past trying to save just one”. Five, with no other factors changed, still wants to save the world.

So let’s talk about what would get him to leave everything behind.

Would he do it if his life was at risk? Interesting question. Because I don’t think Five necessarily cares about the world more than he cares about himself, it’s more, he stopped thinking about his own life as a factor ages ago. He’s been driven by this task for so long, he doesn’t know what he is without it. And as we’ve talked about, after everything he went through in the apocalypse, and with the Commission, he really sees himself a lot more as a tool to complete a task than a person with a life. He has absolutely no qualms about throwing himself at a problem to try and get it fixed. I think in a straight up “it’s you or the world” he’d probably choose to save the world? But that’s on pretty shaky ground.

For example, the Handler’s offer. He comes back to work for the Commission, if his family is safe and he gets to stop being thirteen again. In the show, both Five and the Handler went into that agreement knowing it was just a matter of who double crossed the other first. But if that was legit? Well, he still disapproves of the entire planet dying, but he’s killed a lot of people by himself, he’s very good at compartmentalising his feelings away in that respect. And he doesn’t like looking thirteen, he hates that people see him as a child, hates that the only clothes that fit him are the Umbrella Academy uniforms. It’s just that his own body dysmorphia ranks so low on his list of priorities compared to the literal apocalypse. Like, you can see it, he wants to take that offer so badly, it’s why the Handler keeps dangling it in front of his face with things like getting him new adult fitted outfits. The main problem is the Commission part. If that offer came from someone he trusted more than the Handler, I think he’d take it. He may not like what he was doing to the world in the process, but getting to look like himself and go live with his family far away from all of this, that’s a pretty tempting choice.

Is there a timeline where Five continues to work for the Commission? I think only if it was the only way to save his family, as in, they’d be actively in danger and continue to be if and only if he refused to work for the Commission. He may be good at Commission work, but he hates the place, hates what they stand for, sees them only as a means to an end. He’s only worked for them to use them, if he was going to continue working for them past the point they’re no longer useful to him, they would have to have something pretty strong to use against him, and after everything, I think his family’s lives are the only thing strong enough.

Now, villain, antagonist, those are interesting words to use here. Because here’s the thing - to many many people, Five is already a villain. Like, just on screen, people Five has knowingly and deliberately killed to further his own goals:

All of the mercenaries the Commission sent after him, who didn’t know what they were there for, just that they had to kill whoever the tracker led them to

At least one person in Dallas, 1963

37 people from the Hindenburg case, as a way to get the Handler off his back

At least one person fleeing the Commission

At least three Commission agents in the theatre

That’s nearly 50 people right there. And if you count all the accidental deaths Five caused with his actions but didn’t give a shit about, or all the people he assassinated when working for the Commission, the number is easily in the hundreds

To the families of all those people, Five is a villain, it just depends on what narrative you’re looking at. Really, despite being the most driven out of all of them to save the world, Five doesn’t have the moral high ground over anyone in this show. Maybe the Handler, but it’s pretty subjective.

Now antagonist, that’s even more interesting. Because in order to be an antagonist, you have to be working against the goals of the protagonists. Well, who are the protagonists in this hypothetical narrative? If you want to keep any aspects of this story the same, it only makes sense for them to be the other Academy kids, right?

So here’s a narrative for you. The Commission gets the upper hand on Five. They find another way to cause the apocalypse that doesn’t rely on Vanya (it’s possible, there’s one point in the comics where Hazel and Cha Cha literally manage to blow up the earth with a bunch of nuclear weapons Hargreeves had been stockpiling, long story, but they could blow up the moon for the same result as in the show). The Commission just wants this whole situation to be over, so they give him a choice - Five can go live somewhere else with his family and ignore the fact that the apocalypse will happen, or the entire Hargreeves family can die right now. But Five has to convince them to go.

Now, what do you do, when your little brother who you haven’t seen in seventeen years, shows up with a bunch of mercenaries and says the apocalypse is about to happen, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, you just have to go with him and you can all live far away from it if you go right now. Well, you might say yes, if you think he’s being threatened into this, especially if he says your own life depends on it. But if you’ve been raised a superhero, well, you’re a lot more likely to fight back.

And if you see how well he can fight, how willing he is to kill completely indiscriminately, well, you’d probably have a hard time trusting anything he says.

Luther isn’t going to go, because Luther’s duty is to save the world. He’s going to try everything he can to do that, regardless of what Five says.

Diego isn’t going to go, because he cares about these people, he cares about making a difference in the world and doing good. He can’t do that if everyone’s dead.

There’s nothing on earth that could make Allison leave her daughter, and even if she could take Claire with her, I don’t think Allison “trying to be a better person and fix her life” Hargreeves would be too happy about raising her daughter knowing she let Claire’s father die, letting Claire know she’s a coward who took the easy way out

Klaus might go. But Ben would be very very against it.

Vanya will hear Five out, but won’t be able to believe it, and even if she does, she’s got a life here too, and she’s not gonna be super psyched to leave everything just to go with her siblings who’ve always excluded her, and some of whom currently actively hate her.

And let’s be real, Five isn’t going to try and convince them if Five can try and force them. In canon, the only person he talks to is Vanya, and when she doesn’t immediately try to help him, he abandons that plan entirely. He only goes back to his family when he’s out of leads with no idea what to do.

Some of them are going to assume Five is being threatened and try to help him, which Five doesn’t want, because that puts them in more danger. Some of them are going to assume Five’s completely lost it, and is now a danger to them, and are going to try and stop him, which Five doesn’t want, because that’s just letting them all die in the apocalypse.

It would be a disaster, and would go a lot better if these kids could communicate with each other, but they’re so bad at that. I don’t know how the whole thing would play out, if Five would be swayed by their attempts to stand strong against the apocalypse, or if he knows there’s no hope and is just trying to save them against their will, but either way, it would be very fun to watch

#tua #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #number five #tua meta #the handler #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #words #orbmanson7

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starwarsstreettalk · 6 years ago

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Kylo Ren is Building a Mystery

Kylo Ren is still a mysterious character after two movies. Is he evil? Is he just misunderstood? Was he brainwashed by Snoke? Will he be able to “snap out of it” in time to reconcile with his mother and not destroy the Resistance? Will he every reconcile with Lando or Chewie, or his mother?

You come out at night That's when the energy comes And the dark side's light And the vampires roam ... (song by Sarah McLaughlan)

Kylo Ren, you’re building a mystery!

The Background Story we need in Episode IX

Ben Solo as a child

I happen to think that we could use at least one flashback of an innocent boy being “seduced” to the dark side by Snoke during Ben’s childhood to remind us of what Leia said to Han in the Force Awakens as the driving force for Ben to become lost and join the Dark Side. We need to sew the seed that was planted in the first movie of the series.

Young Ben Solo screams “Come Back!”

I also think we could there be a flashback of Ben of calling out “Come back!” the same way young Rey did on Jakku when he is being dropped off with Luke by his mother and father at the Jedi temple. The common childhood trauma and sense of abandonment became the common bond between Kylo Ren and Rey. When Kylo Ren looked into Rey’s mind, he saw a kindred spirit, someone he could actual relate to and actually felt sorry for. I suspect that they will both realize eventually that their parents didn’t abandon them, at least not out of a lack of love, but to protect them.

Lor San Tekka Easter Egg?

Will Richard E Grant play a younger Lor San Tekka in flashback? Kylo Ren tells Lor San Tekka - “You’ve become so old!” Wouldn’t it be great if we went back to a scene in the past where they interacted and this somehow had something to do with the overall storyline?

What Really REALLY happened the night of the destruction of the temple

Sometimes, I get this feeling like nobody is giving Kylo Ren a chance to explain himself, like things are never really what they seem. Like when Luke and Kylo had different memories of what happened in Ben’s hut the night of their falling out. Could it be that the slaughter of innocent Jedi trainees isn’t the only thing Luke got wrong? Luke was trapped in the hut. Does he really know what happened play by play? Was it a slaughter or was Ben in the fight for his life?

Will we see another flashback to the night of the destruction at the temple? Maybe when Ben comes out of the hutt, some of the other students try to avenge Luke and kill Ben and he has to defend himself? Or maybe the other students (potentially the Knights of Ren) killed them and Ben only burned down the temple? Does it matter?

Episode IX Predictions

1) How Kylo Ren will “finish what his grandfather started”, as he alluded to in his chambers in the Force Awakens.

possible options:

a. Destroy the last of the Jedi (This was Darth Vader’s orders. Why would this be a goal of his if he didn’t even know there were other Jedi at the beginning of the Force Awakens)

b. Bring balance to the force (This was a prophecy about Anakin, not his goal)

c. Defeat the Rebellion and bring order to the galaxy (maybe this is why Kylo thinks his grandfather was after... this may be where he is going in the beginning of the story. But what did he really know about his grandfather? Does Kylo Ren see Dark Vader as his grandfather or Anakin Skywalker? Does he understand the difference?)

d. Save the ones that he loves (Sentimentally, this seems like it could end up being the way he ACTUALLY finishes what his grandfather started. Anakin couldn’t save his mother, he couldn’t save his father, and ultimately he couldn’t save himself. An appearance by Anakin Skywalker’s ghost or vision, if only to knock some sense into his grandson, could provide Kylo Ren the true meaning of what his destiny was meant to be. d. is my vote.

2) The Kessel Run less than 12 parsecs

I have this great image in my mind of Kylo Ren/Ben being on the Milennium Falcon again. They deleted a scene from the Force Awakens where he was on the Falcon. Could the last movie be a better moment for Kylo Ren to make peace with his relationship with father by flying the Falcon? Instead of destroying the Falcon, will he use the Falcon to save the day? I, personally, would love to see Ben actually hold the dice again for real. We know from one of the novels that Ben played with as a child. There are happy memories in his past. I also had this idea that he would beat or almost his father’s record of making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. The Kessel Run escape was the most famous and epic accomplishment for the Falcon and Han Solo in his flying career. Something like this would have driven his father crazy but also made him proud.

3) We see an encounter or reconciliation between Ben and Lando

Lando has been Han’s very good friend. Ben thinks of Lando as an “Uncle” in one of the Solo novels. Wouldn’t it be neat to see these two come face to face after so much water under the bridge with Han’s Death? Maybe Lando pulls Kylo by the ear and gives him a bit of a talking to, asking him “Why, Ben??? Why did you DO IT?” I can just hear Billy Dee Williams giving him quite the talking to.

4) We can see an encounter or reconciliation between Kylo/Ben and Chewie

I’m sure Chewie is still pissed off with Kylo/Ben. But let’s think. Chewbacca was Han’s buddy. He was like an uncle or godfather to Ben, and he is a protector of the Solo family. He would have been there all throughout Ben’s childhood, bouncing the little baby on his knee when he was a toddler, before he started show signs of coming under Snoke’s spell and being sent to be trained by Luke in the ways of the Force. Maybe there will be a scene where Kylo/Ben is almost going to die and Chewie sacrifices himself for Ben in the end. This is his best friend’s SON!! Chewie will not try to kill Ben/Kylo again unless he is about to hurt Leia or Rey. Family is family. The Star Wars story is about family.

Speaking of Rey, Chewie really likes her and he will protect her too, even to the death if necessary. If Kylo and Rey end up on the same side, will Chewie accept Ben back into the family? I can almost imagine Ben breaking down in sorrow to Chewbacca and somehow they embrace at the very end. I can see Ben, Rey and Chewie also together in some scene in this movie.

5) Kylo Ren tries to save his mother

Anakin did not save his mother in time. He consequently slaughtered the Tusken Raiders, women and children included, starting him down the path to the dark side. What if Kylo Ren is also faced with the same challenge of deciding whether or not he will or can save his mother from some First Order attack? What if Hux is about to execute some rogue mission and Leia is the target? Kylo Ren gets to her location just as an explosion goes off and he rescues her in time! And in this act, he begins his path in the opposite direction, towards the light?

Alternatively, not being able to save his mother could be the catalyst needed to turn Kylo Ren into someone who would turn on the First Order after seeing excessive show of force and death. I can see Kylo Ren holding his mother in his arms as she dies and touches his cheek and says “I love you” and he says “I know.” Her death could cause Kylo to rethink his future and also end up in the comforting arms of Rey.

Kylo Ren as Big Bad Dark Villain - a red herring?

Before the Force Awakens even came out, we knew he would be the villain. The merchandising, the costume, the menacing voice and killing someone in the first few minutes of the movie - before we find out he is THE ONLY SON of Han and Leia. Is this a trick by the story writers to get us to fall for false stereotypes? Are we all this gullible to fall for the oldest trick in the book? Didn’t Professor Snape end up being a good guy in the Harry Potter series?

More Screen Time for Kylo

I also think we’ll get more Kylo Ren in this movie (= more minutes of screentime) and also the story will be equal focus on him and Rey, maybe even more on Kylo. We have not seen HIS point of view yet. We have only see Kylo Ren through Rey and Luke’s eyes.

Summary

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on this character but without really knowing anything about the main plot of the movie, the fate of Kylo Ren is still nebulous. But I do think there will be a redemption in the end. My only question is whether or not he survives. But if we don’t want to see an exact copy of Return of the Jedi - he will hopefully survive, save the day, get the girl, and come back into the Light side of the Force.

#kylo ren #star wars #star wars episode ix

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