#but it's also her story and I am at the character's disposal

[tales-from-nocturnaliss]

There is a real difficulty to portraying mental illness in a story.

The difficulty being: how much is too much?

Generally speaking, I'd say that if you get tired of portraying it, then it's becoming too much.

But what do you do if the character is still in the middle of an episode of, say, derealization? I've experienced that in the past and know you don't just snap out of it. So what do you do, then?

I feel like I'm taking a risk with making the first chapter of Fates so much about Shary's mental illness/disorder (which is not 100% defined; it's a contemporary story but with a supernatural element that affects protagonists to some degree, so I decided to portray symptoms, not a specific disease/pathology). Like, most of that chapter is about that - and about how her sister handles her. Both of which are important elements for things to come.

I also feel the risk is worth it, because Fates is a sort of tribute to my life and a comment on some things I experienced.

Like, if a reader gets tired of reading about Shary in chapter 0 because of her being so annoying being mentally ill? Yeah. Yeah. EXACTLY. That is how everyone who suffers from mental illness feels:

being tired of having to live with themselves and their issues.

Welcome to the life of crippling anxiety, bitches. That was my life growing up, for decades. You don't like it? Imagine how I felt - and how everyone who suffers from it feels.

[jyoongim]

A Deal with God

Alastor x Morningstar!Reader

Themes: fem!reader, Morningstar!reader, Angst, mention of character death, secrets, religious themeAlastor being Alastor, fluff, slight smut, deal-making,  soul possession, Lilith a shitty mother/wife/sister, established relationship, difficult family dynamic, there’s a trope in here I just don’t know what to call it?

“Just because you see a smile, dont think you know what’s going on underneath‘ - Alastor

chapter 1 chapter 2

~Prelude~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Let’s make a deal my dear” Alastor said smiling, arms wrapped around your waist. You tilted your head frowning “I cannot give you my soul Alastor”  He laughed, shaking his head “Oh no I don’t want your soul. Just a simple deal thats all.” 

You bite your lip “what kind of deal?”

”Ill continue to help Charlie and her little passion project, in exchange,  Ill give you my soul. Just break my current deal and grant me my full power.” 

You gawked at him shocked “A-Alastor…I..I cant” you began to pull away from him, but he held you fast. His eyes were wild and smile tense 

”But you can! Think about it. Ill do whatever you say, be at your complete disposal. All you have to do my dear is allow me my full power.”

You bit your lip, looking away from him “What makes you think I can do such a thing?”

Alastor hooked his finger under your chin, turning your head to meet his gaze ”Because you’ll do anything to protect your family”

He leaned down to press a soft kiss to your lips.

“Do we have a deal?”

You sighed, knowing he was right ”Ill only allow you to use your full abilities when absolutely necessary Alastor”

His smile almost broke his face

”Then we have a deal?”

”Deal”

The building shook as a eerie green glow emitted around the two of you as he pulled you into a passionate kiss.

note: HI EVERYONE!!!! Im trying my hand at what I am hoping in a short series. This is heavily influenced by episodes 5-8 so please bear with me if it becomes lengthy!

This was originally ’Skyfall’ but but I wanted to revise the plot a bit. Please leave comments and your opinions as the story progress!!!

(This is also posted on my A03!!!)

[goldenrulemotherfucker]

Real talk, I came to the Fallout series a total newb, knowing nothing about the lore/games and came away with a new favorite show, easily in my top five. In particular, something it does exceptionally well is narrative payoff. Nothing in this show happens just to happen; every choice the characters make shapes their future arcs. As a SFF writer myself, I'm not only impressed--I'm inspired.

I feel this way about the entire story, but in terms of Lucy and Cooper specifically, we get so many great payoffs from their interactions. When he doesn't share his water, it seems like he's just being a dick until we learn that his canteen is full of dirty water. (Yes, he was still being a dick, but he knew she naively thought he was drinking clean water.) When he forces her to use the knife in the "ass jerky" scene, he's absolutely being cruel, but he's also extremely fatigued to the point of near collapse, which only becomes clear only after she's out of sight at the Super Duper Mart. When he cuts off her finger, it seems like nothing more than him "getting even," when he actually took a much-needed replacement part for his hand (from someone he assumed wouldn't be alive much longer).

These interactions are all brutal, give us new insights into both characters, and also set up a massive payoff in Lucy's "golden rule, motherfucker" moment. Even after everything he put her through and how he treated her as disposable, she does the opposite and shows him empathy and kindness. To put it plainly: Her choice in this scene wouldn't carry half as much weight if he hadn't repeatedly treated her like shit. Coupled with her ability to self-rescue, the scene cements who Lucy is as a person--both for the viewer and for Cooper. (And what happens next? He watches a film clip where his old self looks right at him and delivers the line about a villain being ugly and strong but having no dignity.)

The moment when Lucy gives him the vials could have been enough of a payoff for their arc by itself. But it sets up an even better one: The next time they cross paths, he treats her differently. Having already seen himself in her, and knowing that they both want answers to the same (or very similar) questions, he invites her to accompany him on his journey this time--no longer as a pawn, but as someone he trusts and respects at least a little. As a direct payoff for her memorable act of kindness toward him, this fucking rules. It's surprising while also feeling completely earned. "Golden rule, motherfucker," isn't just a satisfying moment (or my favorite line), it shapes the characters' future.

On Lucy's side, when she decides to follow him, she has no reasons to trust or respect him (yet); she likely just recognizes that he's currently the only person who will lead her to the truth. But she's only met the Ghoul so far, not Cooper Howard. She doesn't know that his primary motivation has been searching for his family this whole time. She doesn't know that she's seen him before, in those old movies she watched at home. She doesn't know why he shot the billboard.

Now, I'm not making predictions about how their future arc will play out (nor am I asking for them), I'm just along for the ride. But I feel confident that there will be many more great payoffs to come now that they've gone from "hostile forced proximity" to "traveling together by choice." I've rarely been so pumped for a second season. <3

[flightofthejackdaw]

I just want to say how much I adore the women of One Piece, not just on a ‘holy moly these women are beautiful’ but also on ‘holy moly these women are so well written’

I love how many layers the lady’s have, even those who are not part of the main cast

Nami acting as the brains of the crew, but always being up to scrap with the boys and put them in their place, her fear of trusting and being betrayed being a core aspect of her character. WCI and Wano are pretty recent examples of this, with her anger at Sanji, and her belief in Luffy. I love how confident she is in her self, and how she is a little evil sometimes she’ll use everything at her disposal to get what she wants. How she knows that she’s needed on the crew and without her they would’ve all drowned along ago, and she’s beautiful and cute and she knows this. I hate people thinking that she’s less of a character post timeskip just because of her appearance, she’s so much more than that

Vivi’s love of her people and her country, her worrying nature and her desire for adventure despite her position. Her care for the crew despite the small amount of time she knew them. Also how she’s basically the main character of Alabasta, and how she’s the one saving her country

Robin going from someone who was always looking over her shoulder, always running and never having a real place to call home. To someone who knows she has a family who loves her and will protect her no matter what, and she can be her strange morbid self without judgement (other than from Usopp)

Viola and Rebecca, two ladies forced into a living hell under Dolfamingo. One humiliated by her own people and forced to fight for her life when at heart she just wanted peace, and the other whose soul was almost broken by Doffy but chose to fight against him even if she knew she wouldn’t win. Viola going to stab Doffy even if she knew she would fail shows her strength as she stood up against him even if it could’ve meant death because she wanted to do what she could

And there are so many others that are just as amazing:

- Big Mom: a major villain with a twisted idea of family and love. One of the most powerful pirates in the sea, all this strength but she’s still just someone that was abandoned by the world and became obsessed with filling that void

- Pudding: a woman twisted by the abuse she suffered hating herself and lashing out at others in turn. And how that persona comes crashing down when showed only a bit of kindness

- Boa: the strong powerful empress, who is deeply scarred and can’t show any weakness to her people. And just wants to be loved by someone who sees more than her beauty

-Reiju: the older sister that had to go along with her little brothers abuse, and helped when she could. But only when she couldn’t be the target, she’s flawed and distant but she loves her brother

- Bonny: a literal child who braved the seas to save her father and became one of the most wanted pirates of her generation in under two years, scrappy and tomboyish with a soft heart for her dad

These ladies are living breathing characters! And there are some many others that are just the same, they are all so well developed and different from each other in character. And none of them are just there to be, ‘the girl in the group’ or the ‘love interest’ (though Boa likes Luffy and Pudding likes Sanji neither are their main character traits and have story reasons for being in love)

I love them so much

I love women

A certified girl kisser wrote this at like 1 am

[conwise]

Dracula from TAZ vs Dracula might just be my favourite version of the character solely because I LOVE the way he's portrayed as an antagonist (and also Griffin's voice)

*TAZ Dracula Spoilers Below*

Like, of course he's a bad guy, he kills people and terrorizes the populace of Angrave. Heck, look at what he did to Renfield! His evilness has always been immediately apparent just from the fact alone that its Dracula. Dracula as a character usually has, historically speaking, been an evil dude!

But this Dracula is also a bad guy. He's honestly kind of a dick, and that makes him worse than if he was just some inhuman blood-sucking monster. We get to know him as a person through the diary entries and his relationships with other people, we get to learn about the normal people things he does, and you can so clearly see just how kind of terrible he is as a person.

He doesn't care about other people and constantly regards himself as a victim (I can practically hear the :( in his opening monologues). He treats the people around him as disposable; Frankenstein meant so little to him that he just dropped him the moment his plans required it, leaving a subpar replacement to placate him, and Renfield was his number one guy until the moment came when he needed a test subject. Not to mention the letter to Sweater Drac/Vlad where Dracula tells him he'll probably be killed but should put up a good fight anyways just to keep up his own reputation. And then he just sits down with a pen at his little table and goes "Dear Diary, why am I so unhappy and alone :("

And that's just the half of it.

But the thing that gets me the most is the bones in his car. THOSE ARE LADY GODWIN'S BONES. He's never cared about the fact that he killed Godwin, it's just a funny story to him, but the sheer fact that he just casually tossed what was left of her body in the trunk of his car and forgot about it had me fuming. It's insult to injury to Godwin at that point. That body meant as much to him as the old gym clothes that were in there with it. Is that a monstrous and evil thing to do? Not really. Is it a dick move? Absolutely.

And we see more of him being a selfish prick than we do of him killing people and doing evil things. Sure still does those things, but at his core he's a selfish dick who also just happens to be an evil vampire/monster. And I LOVE that. I hate him as a person, not as an inhuman big bad evil guy, the same way I wouldn't be able to stand it if I had to deal with a jerk like that in real life. I hate him in a very specific and real way, like a coworker who's always talking about themselves and gives waaaaaaay too much detail as you just kinda sit there as they talk at you and wonder how on earth they don't realize that they sound like a dick

I just think this version of Dracula is such a good concept for an antagonist and it's done so well

[melinoephilia]

Analyzing Anya & Xander's Duet

Aside from the general sadness of the episode, one of the sad things about "Once More With Feeling" is Anya and Xander's "I'll Never Tell" song. First, let's start with the most obvious. When Xander sings about Anya in this song, almost all his lines about her positives have to do with her body/looks and being in her "tight embrace" (we all know what he was really talking about). In fact, if you go through the lyrics of the song, the only time he compliments her personality is when he calls her a charmer and says she's sweller. But if we look at all the things he sang previously, is it charmer for her personality or because of what she does for him? (satisfy his sexual urges). On the opposite end of this, he has many criticisms of her personality within the song, "She clings. She's needy. She's also really greedy." Furthermore, if you want to take his insecurity lines into account, you can see that while, yes, he's insecure, which is fair, anyone can be insecure, they're also implying that he believes she's only with him for monetary purposes, and views him as disposable DESPITE her clear dedication to him (and willingness to live in his parents' basement). Don't even get me started on the "Am I marrying a demon" line. While I can understand that fear, on account she was a demon for a thousand or so years, it completely ignores all the human growth she had and character arc she went through.

Now let's start on Anya's verses. While yes, she does criticize him a bit, almost all her lines have to do with one of two things. A) the way he treats her. OR. B) insecurities centered solely on her. She doesn't compliment him much in this song, but she doesn't disparage who he is as person much either, and when she does it's either things all couples complain about like, "he snores" and most fair of all "his penis got diseases from a Chumash tribe," or things that critique his behavior in their relationship, "I talk. He breezes." and "Say housework and he freezes." Now I will acknowledge one line she said "His eyes are really beady." Yes this is a diss against his appearance, but this also comes with her interrupting a long verse of him just disparaging her personality and she was like just trying to stop that train by changing the track. It should also be noted that this verse against her personality came directly after she called out his habit of hiding behind buffy when things get rough, so he is clearly lashing out having not liked the feeling of feeling emasculated. Another note is that all but one of her complimentary lines toward him have to do with his personality. "He's swell," and "My knight in shining armor."

From her lines in the song we can see how insecure he makes her, because ultimately we have to remember this is a song about their relationship. "Will I look good when I've gotten old," "when I get so worn and wrinkly. That I look like David Brinkley," "I've read this tale. There's wedding. Then betrayal," and most importantly "Like it's all just temporary."

Lastly, just a quick assessment on their perception of their relationship that comes in near the end of the song. Xander sings, "Am I crazy?" whereas Anya sings, "Am I dreaming?" She views this as a dream, something not possible but somehow is, whereas he views it as something crazy, a word with negative connotations, that what he's doing could be done by someone not in their right mind.

My summation? While this song is upbeat and peppy, it actually was telling us exactly how their love story would end, as well as who would be the one to run. Xander, as much as he's central to the scoobies, was and always will be a sexist coward. He never loved Anya, he only love what she could do for him, and she was also the only one interested in him.

Anya wasn't perfect, but she 100x deserved better.

[ride-thedragon]

Before I start this, I don't want any hate towards this person, I won't include their user name, or the platform I got it from and if you do know leave it be but I want to talk about my issues with what they said. I don't know them.

This is really weird and reductive. I'm not saying you can't be a fan of Rhaena potentially getting Nettles' storyline even if I'm not, but the way this is framed is horrible.

Nettles specifically is George using stereotypes of black girls and women and subverting them.

Nettles is 'dark' and 'ugly' because it's a Valyrian beauty standard that is being upheld. It could very well simply be her black features that are being called ugly. Look at who says it in the books and look and who maintains it. They are all white.

Now I'm not one to say we can't have ugly characters, but I am one to impose something in the written narrative, and in this case, that plays out into George subverting racial stereotypes with Nettles. So, while she could be ugly, I also think there is a large possibility that she isn't. She could just look unambiguously black.

I'm not one to defend a white man against racism allegations, but not all the black and brown women are sexually promiscuous. George does have an orientalism issue, but let's not deny that there are characters like Missandei, Sarella, and Nymeria in the narrative. Summer Islander characters are a bit harder, but there is a real-world reason for them to be sexual, its not just George on his snow bunny arc. Their culture views it as a type of worship.

There are 3 fics under the Nettles / Addam Velayron tag, and I've read one that isn't like that. I'm not saying it's not plausible, I'm just saying out of three fics it's not that big of a deal. As for bigger Nettles fics and ships. it's a stretch to say that half are written in her own pov, but typically, her stories have a romantic arc because that's what most fanfics do. Create romantic arcs. And as someone who's read the majority of her fics (I'm being dead ass), it's not mindless sex. It's a conclusion to her romantic narrative arc about 75% of the time. Call it bias but I can't remember the last time I read a Nettles fic where the writers let her be a whore. We've failed on that mark. We have a snow bunny issue, but outside of that, it's not that serious (free my girls from the shackles of white men)

Moving on to the weird respectability politics. "Smart, tough, elegant, and not becoming the street urchin /ghetto stereotype like Nettles."

The only thing that stereotype doesn't have in common with that phrase is elegant. That's literally the only difference. I'm not American, so I'm not going to impose myself on that view, but I will speak to holding anyone to respectability politics. Black girls especially don't have to act one way to be better than others. There isn't one way to be black. That goes hand in hand with being both respectable and assimilating and 'ghetto'. It's reductive to say that anyone should be and applying the 'better' one to Rhaena and baela and the 'worse' one to Nettles is foolish and ignorant. I will have a bigger post on this soon.

As I've said countless times before, Rhaena taking Nettles' story is racist because they aren't interchangeable. Rhaena isn't black, nor is she poor or disposable within the narrative. Daemon isn't going to be miraculously proud of her. Nettles deserves her narrative. No one can cry the way Nettles does after the Battle of the Gullet. Not even Baela and Addam or Alyn. No one can have their life seen as disposable by Rhaenyra like Nettles can and no one can start the burned men but Nettles.

For the show, it doesn't make sense to take Nettles out entirely. There are way too many gaps to full when you can just add her character.

Lastly and all of this to say, you don't have to defend liking something, making stuff up is weird and acting as though it's a better choice to combine a black character and a non black character is crazy. It can just be a choice you like.

On the other hand, I want all three final girls because I can have them, and there is no reason not to.

[eularin]

I was watching some scenes from Naruto, and then I saw the one where Obito summons the Kyuubi in the cemetery, apparently next to Rin's grave and I was like "WTF you crazy? Right there next to your crush's grave? What the hell man" and then I remembered that Obito always does things with some justification (every villain does), but it is Canon that Obito likes to prove his PoV to others, and also to himself. So I asked myself: why the hell did Obito summon the Kyuubi near Rin's grave? What could he be thinking? And I came to the following conclusion:

He wanted to prove to Rin, and to all those other dead ninjas who probably sacrificed themselves for Konoha that their sacrifice was in vain. Obito's story, and especially Team Minato's story, is about sacrifice, promises, and tragedy.

Obito sacrificed himself for Kakashi (and the Team) bc he thought it was the right thing to do and the most important thing. He was more loyal to the team (his friends) than he was to Konoha (am I the only one who noticed that by going to save Rin, Obito basically abandoned the Kannabi Bridge mission?)

On that mission, Obkk made his promise, Kakashi gained his Sharingan, Obito "died" believing that by joining his power with Kakashi's, it would make them stronger and in a way invincible to protect Rin (his precious people) so of course the cruel world and cruel destiny proved to the two that the sacrifice and their promise were worthless.

When Obito finally realized that his shared power with Kakashi was not enough, and that Rin's loyalty to Konoha far outweighed her loyalty to the Team, Obito had a meltdown (another meltdown). I can reflect on Rin's character later. Let's focus on Obito.

When Obito chose the graveyard to summon the Kyuubi, he was making a strong statement. He literally wanted to tell Rin (and the other ninjas who sacrificed themselves for the good of Konoha) this: "hey Rin, look! You killed yourself to stop a Bijuu from destroying Konoha, but your sacrifice can't stop this Bijuu now. See? No sacrifice is worth it. You only delayed the inevitable. You died for nothing and without meaning" - Obito must have been very angry with Rin and Minato. At least I think he was.

During the 4th war he was literally mocking Minato and his acclaimed speed. Basically he was saying "there's no point in being the fastest man in the world if you don't arrive at the moment that matters most", and I don't think he was referring to the Kannabi Bridge mission. So there's that weird conversation where Obito tells Kakashi that Rin is an impostor?!? I don't remember that dialogue anymore (I watched it with subtitles, so I really don't remember what I read years ago)

the only thing I understood was "Rin killed herself, so she's not the real Rin, she's just an impostor that this world created!" – Obito is so... crazy? logical? delirious that I couldn't keep up (I always rewatch the 4th war arc)

also, i'm thinking about it 🤔 i think obito might have been bitter towards Minato bc out of all team 7, Minato was the only one who got along in the end. get my drift: obito "died"; kakashi and rin were devastated and minato probably suffered too, but the anime only shows kakashi for most of the whole story, suffering much more. (unfortunately, the anime shows almost nothing of Rin and her personality. she's portrayed as... idk, easily disposable background character. we don't see anything about her dreams, her struggle to be a great ninja, we don't see her other friends or family... she's almost an empty character, even though she's important to the story of two big prominent characters.)

So back to the main focus: Obito "died"; Rin and Kakashi suffered, then Rin died and Kakashi was left to wallow in his guilt and pain, then Minato went and put a traumatized child in the ANBU. And we know that Obito was already spying on all of them. He certainly didn't like seeing Minato being a beloved hero, enjoying his laurel leaves after the war, so he fulfills his dream of being Hokage, marries his wonderful Kushina, plays house and has a child. In other words: Minato moves on while Obito doesn't (and Kakashi doesn't either). I bet that made Obito pretty angry. I can imagine his anger at Minato's good life. So he went there and ruined it all. 💁🏻‍♀️💀

Well, that's it. That's my theory (?) about why Obito summoned the Kyuubi at the graveyard that night.

So, what's your take on this?

[youryurigoddess]

The Small Back Room — Hour of Glory (1949)

Good Omens 2 begins with the visit to The Small Back Room not because it was meant to serve as an exposition scene for Maggie and her record shop. It’s a substantial foreshadowing of the main plot and the relationship changes between Aziraphale and Crowley.

As all the other classics referenced throughout the show, this 1949 Powell and Pressburger production is easily available online — whenever you have 100 minutes to spare, I highly encourage you to watch it.

Our story begins with the arrival of Stuart, a British military captain, who makes his way through a labyrinth of offices towards a small building — the research section led by an eccentric, queer-coded, bow tie wearing professor Mair — to ask for help with a secret Nazi weapon.

That’s when the professor calls our hero, Sammy Rice — an engineer and bomb disposal expert in the service of Her Majesty’s government and, not accidentally, the most brooding, wounded man in Powell and Pressburger’s impressive canon of dysfunctional and alienated characters.

Due to a prosthetic foot keeping him from active service and confining to work in the titular back room instead, Rice is dramatically slipping into alcoholism. Haunted by self-loathing and disappointment with the internal politics, he can’t see the point of his research anymore.

Sammy is also conducting a clandestine affair with the secretary of his research unit, Susan. They live in the same building and meet regularly, but can’t openly enjoy their company or even dance due to his injury, which makes him even more bitter and pathologically determined to wear her angelic patience down.

Susan puts up with it until the minister is forced to resign. She knows that if non-scientists take over, their section will become useless, Rice even more difficult, and the war possibly lost. She urges him to take action and when he dramatically refuses to make a difference, she leaves him.

Seemingly at his lowest now, Rice becomes a sudden chance to redeem himself. Captain Stuart calls him about two unexploded booby traps found in Wales, but left to himself, he dies during a heroic attempt to dismantle one of the thermos-like devices before our engineer arrives at the scene.

In a nerve-jangling finale, Stuart’s notes help Rice dismantle the second device. He becomes a hero, gets an officer commission as head of the new scientific unit, and discovers that Susan not only came back in the meantime, but repaired everything he drunkenly destroyed in the apartment after their breakup.

The parallels seem straightforward enough for me to add that in this context the role of Maggie through most of S2 may particularly reflect Crowley’s stagnancy in both work and love life. And if you’re unsure why the demon identifies with the heroic roles and characters, you might want to read this post on the subject.

Now, The Small Back Room was distributed in the US under another title — Hour of Glory. Which happens to be a specific Bible term referring to Christ’s “hour”, the period supposed to consummate all of his work on Earth and reveal God’s ultimate plan of salvation: the Son’s death.

John 12:20-36 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Christ’s hour began in the garden — this time the garden of Gethsemane — as he prayed passionately for the cup to be passed from him, similarly to Aziraphale declining Metatron’s offers on screen, both regarding the hot drink and his reinstatement as part of the Heavenly Host:

Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

All throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s wrath being described as a cup poured out on sin and those guilty of it. By accepting it, Jesus took the toll of all the sins — from Eden up until the last one to be committed right before his Second Coming — on himself, for the sake of his beloved humanity.

The passion of Christ continued as Judas betrayed him with a kiss, his disciples abandoned him, and the high priest accused him of crimes he was not guilty of. Even Pilate, the prefect of Rome, pretended to uphold the law; and remember we already expect a S3 trial based on another Archers movie.

All in all, it’s an hour of great injustice and pain, but also glory of God. We’re led to believe that the Ineffable Plan will similarly triumph over the great one (or whatever Metatron tries to implement at the moment), as it did in S1. And its ending will be a good one, back in a garden.

[call-of-ishmael]

You Are (Not) Disposable

Rei is a very integral character to many of the themes of Evangelion, be it human connections, self determination, grief and loss.

But the one that has caught my eye a lot recently, having watched the Rebuilds to completion for the first time, is identity. Lets take a look at her incarnations and see what each uniquely brings to the story.

Rei II: Setting the Stage

The Rei we see from the opening of the show up until about half way through is already not the same Rei we see in some flashbacks (having been killed by Ritsukos mom) .

To Gendo and NERV at large, Rei is more an asset than a person, in a similar way to the other pilots, but to a more extreme degree, as she is a pilot that can simply be made again were the current one to die.

We only really see her find some enjoyment in the company of Gendo at first, before she meets the other pilots and has more of a chance to interact with people and experience new things.

The turning point for this character is at Episode 6 having saved Shinji and Shinji having saved her, both realize they aren't alone, she doesn't only have piloting the Eva in this life, she doesn't have to say farewell, there are people waiting for her.

She realizes she has a choice in how she wants to live her life, and this will only repeat for every subsequent Rei we see, she in the end, has the final say on how her life goes.

Her final sacrifice is the conclusion of this arc, shes come to a point where there's things she wishes to protect out of her own will, not because that's the mission she was ordered to do, she has grown close to Shinji and does not want to see him get hurt.

Ultimately this is done too out of the knowledge she can be made again, the toll the knowledge takes on her that she is at the end of the day for the machinations of the Human Instrumentality Project, disposable.

Rei III: I am not your doll

When we get to Rei III is when the show starts to really unravel the themes of identity more, as the new Rei starts bringing up the conflicts of the way the Ayanami series works, and her overall purpose into the grand narrative of the finale of Evangelion.

Rei herself is seen struggling with those questions, tears for memories that aren't hers, the knowledge that Gendo simply can make more of her, the shadows of her past selves haunting her present reality, the expectations of her to be the same Rei Ayanami the others were.

Much of this conflict is also seen in the more internal psychological moments of the final two episodes, who is she? what is she?

She exists as she perceives herself but also as the many ways people perceive her too, their previous experiences and memories with her.

The culmination of all this is perhaps one of the most satisfying moments for her character. Her refusal to be a tool anymore.

She wont allow herself to be used by Gendo, and so, changes the course of the Third Impact and of her own ultimate fate.

Who is she? She is herself, the final say on who she is does not lie in her previous incarnations nor on the value others place on her, but on her own choices and desires.

Rebuild of Rei

The Rebuilds are very interesting in their meta-commentary of peoples expectations for them

All the characters are similar but not quite, related but ultimately unique.

Rei in this series of movies starts off much more determined and driven.

While she still is motivated by wanting to feel closer to the people she loves she goes about it a different way, trying her best to bring Gendo and Shinji. She participates more in group activities and has a friend group, is more outspoken, and in a fascinating way to drive all this home the notorious elevator scene between her and Asuka has her not simply sit there and take a slap to the face, but catch her hand and not let herself be hurt.

This makes the moments that parallel original show scenes have a different impact on the viewer, seeing a more determined Rei ready to blow herself up to protect NERV HQ and make sure Shinji never has to pilot an Eva again at the end of the second Rebuild feels completely different to how it was in the original series.

By the time we see her for the last time, shes still determined, she still wants the best for the people she loves.

Gendo makes the same mistake he does in the original series, he assumes Rei will simply do what he asks of her, but Rei, proving him wrong once again, gives Shinji control of the Eva, respecting his choice to take that burden for himself, and to make the choices for his own future. And in the end, she like all the pilots finds her own place to call home, no longer having to bear loneliness by herself, after one last farewell to Shinji, and to us as the audience.

Ms. Lookalike: Finding your own way

The final incarnation i want to talk about is perhaps the most fascinating.

If the core of her character wasnt obvious enough, the movie decided to yell at the audience some more about the point of all the different versions of Rei.

You are not disposable

This Rei starts in a place much much further away from others even the first Rei we see in the original series does. Having so little interaction she struggles to understand a lot of the world around her, so still that she will only do what she is ordered to.

And this works in excellent contrast to where she ends up.

From someone who would not do something unless asked, to someone who ponders her own name, her own identity.

During 3.33, its stated as much to the viewer, when she asks Mari "What would Rei Ayanami have done" she gets the answer:

You are not her, what do YOU want to do

3.0+1.0 spends a lot of time following this, this Rei found a place she felt truly happy in, she learned from others and about herself. It didn't matter if she had been predetermined to like Shinji, she is happy that way, and if shes happy she can decide to pursue that.

People do not have expectations for her to be the same as the previous Rei, we see Toji and Hikari do not try to force that baggage on her, to the point of when she says shes not Rei Ayanami, they immediately respect it, calling her Ms. Lookalike instead.

Her end is not exactly a happy one, but she is happy, having found herself a place, having found out who she was, having the freedom to be herself, to be able to determine what the course of her life would be.

Who is Rei Ayanami? Rei is no one but herself, shes not a fake, not an imitation, she is simply herself. That choice lies with nobody but her.

[aihoshiino]

Hey there! I love your OnK posts especially about Ai so I wanted to ask you something that's been on my mind this week. Do you think she was "fridged" just for shock value? I've heard people call it that because of how it starts Aqua's revenge quest and I was curious how others saw it. Would love to hear your thoughts!

anon can i just say. not calling you out but the thing about being active in other parts of the fandom outside tumblr means i will get asks like this sometimes and immediately know which post on the subreddit I am being asked to indirectly reply to. again, not calling you out, but i did read this ask with a strong sense of like;

but anyway, to actually answer your question: No, I don't think Ai was fridged and I think that anyone passionately insisting she was has a fundamental misunderstanding of what purpose her death serves in her own arc and that of others and also just… what fridging even is as a concept. I've commented on this before and basically summed up my thoughts as best I could so lemme grab that old comment of mine.

Fridging implies a certain disposability and lack of care for the woman at the center of things. It's sort of drifted and gotten muddled because of misuse in modern discourse like the term 'Mary Sue', but as it was coined, it was specifically, explicitly both observation and critique of how female characters are treated in fiction primarily centered on men: the ways in which they are treated as uniquely disposable, their interiority as less full and complex, their stories as less valuable and their tragedies as inherently unworthy of exploration and interrogation. The term literally originates from the phrase 'women in refrigerators' which itself was coined by Gail Simone in reference to the trend in American superhero comics of gratuitously brutalizing, sexually assaulting or killing specifically female characters for the sole purpose of spurring the protective instincts of their male counterparts. While it's true that Ai's death spurs Aqua's revenge arc, it is also the very explicit capstone to Ai's own character arc that she goes on over the course of the prologue arc and her life in general. It is the textual manifestation of something that exists in subtext: that being an idol and growing up in the entertainment industry has robbed Ai of the opportunity to have a normal life. It makes pitch perfect thematic sense for this idea to climax in an embodiment of the misogyny, purity culture and fan entitlement that has caused her so much pain to make that idea literal in bringing an end to Ai's actual life. On top of that, Ai's actual death scene is entirely about her: it takes place entirely from her POV, centers her feelings and pain and resolves her character arc and the two most important relationships to her. The manga even frames the scene in such a way that Ai's own thoughts and feelings drown out and crowd out the most bloody and shocking moments, spending page time that could be used on goggling at the spectacle of her pain instead on forcing the reader to look at her heart and understand her. Rather than focus on her bodily agony, up until the last moment, Ai's death is about her strengths, her flaws and the absolute purity of her love. From there, interrogating the tragedy of her life and death is the entire driving force of Oshi no Ko's narrative. Ai touches and contextualizes every character's story; her legacy is the light that every one else chases while standing in her shadow. She's the beating, bleeding heart of almost every emotional beat. Almost every arc involves her, directly or indirectly, and the current arc of the manga is built explicitly on the idea of understanding and empathizing with Ai as a person and trying to honor her wishes even though she's gone. So no, I don't agree that she was fridged and I think it's reductive to try and make that call entirely off the first episode. As someone who has spent the better portion of the year having a cognitive energy dedicated to this character that surely makes me in some way mentally unwell, I think her death is so incredibly, miserably satisfying as the capstone of her arc and getting to go through the rest of the story with her heart and legacy as its foundation has enriched pretty much everything else about it.

'fridging' is not 'anytime a woman dies' anymore than 'bury your gays' is 'anytime a gay person dies'. The context surrounding these phrases is important and by extrapolating them to the point that they can mean literally anything, they lose their edge when it comes to serving as tools of critique and commentary on harmful trends in fiction.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Just want to say: a, I admire very much that you've figured out a healthy way to work on your fics that allows you to have fun with it. And also b, am very excited to hear that you are getting there with pez! It has fully given me brain rot ever since I read it last year, there is just such a lack of content for the highly specific trope of using time travel as a device to explore extremely unhealthy levels of self loathing.

I just adore everything you're doing in it. Neither midoriya is anywhere approaching okay for any portion of the fic and I love rereading and mining into all the subtle characterization pointing to that. It's a bit like nhtycth in that some really goofy funny stuff is often hiding some really fucking worrying things, but the fact that characters DO do that stuff—that todoroki uses his teaspoon's worth of extremely stunted social skills to bludgeon his friend's door open and help him, that a rpf shipping war is an actual source of drama despite how goofy the sentiment seems on the surface, that about half of what jon says is deeply worrying and the other half is extremely funny and there's a lot of overlap between the two—really lifts the tension and brightens the universe. It's sort of similar to what you did with gerry, in that endless misery isn't nearly as painful as the ups and downs of a life that, when you step back and zoom out, has something deeply and horribly wrong with it.

(jon sort of reminds me of spider-man in that he uses human to deal with trauma and stress, except I don't think he at any point realizes how fucking funny he is. He's just there, in a home depot, gnashing his teeth because he's got so many bodies to dispose of and this cashier sure is taking her time.)

I really, really, really have had trouble finding fics that take everything midoriya has dealt with to task. It's a hell of a thing to live 14 years as a disabled minority, have it heavily shape your existence, and then one day you wake up and you realize you're...not that, or at least, nobody will ever acknowledge you as that again. You've lost all claim to it. Those experiences that shaped who you are? Dust in the wind. 14 years of pain and life might as well be buried in the ground for all the good they do you. Nobody's going to cut you any slack or quarter, you've gotta simply work harder, be better. And now when you do that you get the results you wanted, so that's fine, then. That's good. There was something wrong with the you before, and there's something right with the you now, and if the transition is a little rough, well that doesn't matter, you're the same as everyone else now, so it's your own job to fill in whatever gaps you need to.

I really can't get over how mentally fucked it must be for midoriya to run into quirkless people, run across quirkless issues, and be silently caught between, incapable of speaking his mind and too scared to do so anyway around those he can trust.

Also I should mention, I'm just very excited for bakugou to get back from the gym. He's been there like a year I hope he's getting a good workout in.

Me realizing that it’s been a year since pez dispenser debris:

I feel like there’s just this very specific type of grief that Izuku has to grapple with in the span of pez dispenser debris that I’m just obsessed with. He’s sort of silently mourning who he could have been, when 1) he has to present like there’s nothing lost to maintain his secret and 2) the entire world is constantly inundating him with the message that there was nothing lost.

Like. I don’t want to get too deep into it because it risks spoiling things and I do have major plans to continue it (I’ve loved this story for so many years before I ever even hit publish), but the emotion that Izuku’s feeling right now is so much more complex than “I hate who I used to be and want him to stop existing” or “I just want to keep my secrets.” And I think the way he interacts with Mirio is the biggest evidence of that.

Izuku’s placed himself at the very center of the Quirklessness debate with his support of Mirio. He fights for Quirkless heroes, very publicly, to the point where he’s not even graduated yet but considered to be one of the most prominent voices on the matter. If you took a poll of Quirkless people as to which hero would be most supportive of them pursing their own career in heroics, Izuku would be right at the top of the list. When it comes to Quirklessness itself, he’s nothing but supportive.

But he didn’t tell Mirio the truth of his own Quirklessness.

Out of everyone, Mirio’s the one everyone expects to know, despite him being a relatively newer relationship compared to someone like Iida or Uraraka or Todoroki. And I tried to imply that he’s sort of the one who knows the most about Izuku out of everyone save All Might.

Like, we’ll get into how much exactly Mirio knows soon, so I won’t divulge what, if anything, Izuku has told him. But we know that Mirio knows, weirdly enough, that Izuku is deeply fucking haunted. He knows that boy has many violent ghosts in his bones. He finds it hilarious and will tell their realtor about it. Izuku told him about the discontent spirits who died in a violent passion and live on inside of him before he told him about his Quirklessness.

And I just feel like one of those things is a little bit easier to discuss than the other.

Izuku has decided to keep his own Quirklessness quiet in a way that surpasses secrecy about One for All. If it was just about OfA, he could tell people he didn’t get his quirk until the entrance exam, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. He’s purposefully obscuring his own past as Quirkless even as he takes a forefront of the Quirkless hero debate with his open support of Mirio.

And the fact that he’s at the forefront of this debate in and of itself requires a difficult dichotomy. He is the world’s most vocal proponent for the first Quirkless hero. He is a known figure in the Quirkless community now.

He isn’t considered one of them anymore. He’s an outsider coming in.

It must be such a strange, odd sort of grief to come to the people you were home amongst for most of your life and be greeted as a stranger. To return home, and to be welcomed in for the first time, and to not even be able to tell people that you’ve lived here all your life and don’t need a tour.

It’s a sort of death of self, I think. And I think Izuku never expected to have to grapple with his own ghost.

[bluginkgo]

Wtf am I doing ranting again, you may ask. I was gonna talk about absolute solver again... but then my brain said "Nah, more nuzi." And who am I to refute that argument?

Spoilers, duh

Yes, how fricking typical. A duo of an emotionally scarred emo girl and a retriever puppy boy that get together. But honestly, after being in the usual angst department shipping for a couple of years now, Nuzi is such a refresher. Not to mention, that despite Liam Vickers focusing his story mostly on lore (LORE THAT I CRAVE AND LOVE), he takes time to include little things like nuzi. Nuzi didn't have to happen, but I'm so glad it is pretty much canon. Makes the dark and unbearably scary moments for the duo... bearable. I could go on a whole tangent about these two, but I mostly want to take note of how N interacts with Uzi. (I might do a post later doing the opposite, analysis of Uzi interacting with N.)

To put it simply, N is soft. Wow, Ginkgo what a revelation! (That was sarcasm) I know thank you. But seriously. When he talks to Uzi, his voice softens. Especially taken notice in ep4 during the Falling... for you? scene. Perhaps I'm just dense, or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention when watching the first time, but when N pulled the "therapy session" I was fully expecting for him to chat to her about the murder spree. How fricking wrong I was. N took me by surprise and asked the question that was ACTUALLY bugging Uzi the entire time. Not the killing spree, not the issue with her solver going haywire, not the backstory of her mother. None of that! It was if she was lonely.

"No, don't look. I'm gross and eating people and stuff."

"Yeah, we'll figure that part out. But you know that's not what I mean."

After rewatching the Murder Drones like 20 something times, it still baffles me how he talks to her. Softer, more open, willing to admit he's also scared- despite being a fricking disassembly drone, a demon in the eyes of regular worker drones. I can see where that trust comes from.

Uzi's fought and killed N before. But instead of fighting again, she puts blame on humans that "supposedly" made him.

"Do you really think that the company won't dispose of you, once all the workers are dead?"

Of course, there's way more evidence on how Uzi's comments, mannerisms, and remarks gave N a reason to trust her. There's also something I took notice of. The difference between N's chat with V and Uzi.

In ep3, N is cornered. Uzi and him had a misunderstanding, and V is very hush hush about their past. He has no other place to turn except to V for answers.

"V, if you're hiding something. We can figure this out together!"

He's open, here. Trying to get answers from out of thin air. Now, don't get me wrong. I love V. V is, by far, my most favorite character in the show. I love her violence, sarcasm, and character growth. But because this was only ep3, she's also trying to do what she believes is for the best. And we see why she was very hush hush about their past. N himself said "Not dealing with this great to be immediately honest." When he first lays his eyes upon the experimentation absolute solver was doing in the mansion. In V's perspective, it's better for N to forget. Ignorance is bliss as they say.

You can even see that she's guilty in the following frame for what she was about to do- cut N off literally and figuratively. Of course, since then, V has come a long way. Going even as far as trusting Uzi with everything.

But here's the difference.

"Just avoid another whole spire. Baby steps, together?"

Maybe it's just the moment, maybe it's just simple animation choice. But they made him here uncertain. The same "we can do this together" line, following his attempt with V, is less bright and more uncertain. A question, instead of a statement. He was at least somewhat ready to be shot down again, but instead Uzi met him halfway and took his hand in this big mess. It's these somewhat little moments that build the trust between the two, and what makes Nuzi so wholesome. There's no secret past about them, no big overdramatized misunderstandings. Just two people- or robots- learning how to get through this big mess of the universe ending.

And not to mention that the "together" line comes back to bite on us. The teaser for ep7 and 8 have that line as the last thing we hear.

"...figure things out... together."

I'm probably repeating things people have already said... bite me. I love Nuzi and how they've developed throughout the season. I may be after Murder Drones mainly for lore, but damn me, Nuzi is a really great addition to the entire package.

[lemonhemlock]

https://www.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/763163615828361216/adding-to-your-nuanced-discussion-regarding-sara much of the hatred towards sara hess is gross and openly misogynistic. unfortunately, it also muddies the waters for making valid critiques of her writing overall. i’m only familiar with her work on HOTD, and while i think she does basic level serviceable work (ie- mostly the plot makes sense) i find a lot of it extremely lazy. take both HOTD finales for example; we have two scenes of domestic violence (daemyra and helaena/aemond) being used to communicate the pretty elementary idea that these men are bad, wrong, and power hungry for anticipating war in a struggle for succession. now with both characters, you can argue it makes sense; daemon has been orbiting the throne all season, he sees the greens as the threat they are and, understands war is inevitable. he’s frustrated with rhaenyra’s lack of response and lashes out after finding out viserys didn’t trust him enough to communicate aegon’s dream. meanwhile, aemond has just discovered he is at a great disadvantage in this dragon cold war, has already committed severe violence to become regent in the first place, and is also lashing out because he is insecure in his position and fearful of what might happen.

the problem is instead of exploring these (very sensible) feelings for the characters or developing them through actual scenes and dialogue, we have this shorthand where Men = Violent, because they couldn’t possibly explore these emotions for these characters in another way. i can’t remember if it was olivia or phia who spoke about the aemond/alicent/helaena scene as helaena refusing to feed aemond’s violent male ego… girl you are literally at war! idk if this is about his male ego so much as he doesn’t want to fucking die 😭 not to point the finger at the actors, i am just assuming that idea came from somewhere, and it seems most likely to be the writer or director. and daemon isn’t in the wrong for expecting battle- yet instead of having that be a real conflict between him and rhaenyra, we have this moment of abuse that is quickly brushed aside and moved past. it exists only to show us how aggressive daemon is in the simplest, laziest way possible, and then it’s disposed of when it’s no longer needed. you can say the same for “civilians don’t matter”— it’s just lazy writing! they don’t have to, in that the story can function without an in depth look at the smallfolk’s relationship to dragons and the targ dynasty overall, and why bother to do any of that when you can just decide that for this one scene, none of them matter!

this is very long 😮‍💨 i’m sorry for the essay! i find this topic hard to discuss because too often people come in to just call her a cunt because she wrote a medieval man who didn’t articulate feminism perfectly. there are real issues here!! and it’s not all on her, condal obviously approves everything and they are on the same page here. anyway. thanks for reading as always!

Coming back to this ask after some time, sorry for the delay!

I agree very much with your assessment of her doing serviceable, but ultimately lazy writing. Perhaps that under a more competent showrunner, she could have written something decent. But one of her problems is that she is only superficially familiar with the source material - I'm saying this because she gave an evasive answer when asked if she read the books ("a long time ago"). This matters because she clearly doesn't understand the politics of the universe she is writing for (the scheming is nonsensical in HOTD) or the themes (dragging back the "civilians don't matter", but it's very revelatory to how she approaches the scripts). How can you write ASOIAF media, a series that relies heavily on politicking and dismantling tropes, without a grasp on those two things? D&D misunderstanding the themes of the series is famously one of the reasons for its lackluster show ending.

And that's just not going to rectify itself on its own. If she lacks the initiative to analyse the text properly, then someone should direct her as to what exactly to write. I'm sorry, but that's you can't just have it both ways - not do the work and then shrug your shoulders when you end up creating a divergent version that doesn't fit in the plot you're bound to follow.

take both HOTD finales for example; we have two scenes of domestic violence (daemyra and helaena/aemond) being used to communicate the pretty elementary idea that these men are bad, wrong, and power hungry for anticipating war in a struggle for succession. [...] the problem is instead of exploring these (very sensible) feelings for the characters or developing them through actual scenes and dialogue, we have this shorthand where Men = Violent, because they couldn’t possibly explore these emotions for these characters in another way.

Exactly, and the reason it ends up working for Daemon is because he previously got a ton of screen time and we got to know his personality, whereas Aemond gets little next to nothing in Season 2, in addition to his in-built disadvantage of being much younger and, thus, getting introduced later on. Well, surprise surprise, what worked for Daemon will not work for Aemond in that situation, because if you don't invest in Aemond's characterisation, the parallel will fall flat. Aemond and Daemon had very different upbringings and it's very silly to think that what applies to Daemon will automatically apply to Aemond and, therefore, you don't need to bother to dissect Aemond on screen in any meaningful way.

That's just concentrating on the logistics & not even critiquing the very lazy stereotype of men = violent & women = peacemakers.

i can’t remember if it was olivia or phia who spoke about the aemond/alicent/helaena scene as helaena refusing to feed aemond’s violent male ego… girl you are literally at war! idk if this is about his male ego so much as he doesn’t want to fucking die 😭

This. ^^^ I often find that the writers were trying to make some kind of point that, in other circumstances, could have been relevant, but they have a knack for picking the worst situations as illustrative examples. And, after that, they're surprised their simile felt mismatched.

Aemond having a violent male ego and being critiqued for it within the text is absolutely fine, but is it reasonable to do it when he's trying to ensure his family are not getting killed? And have Helaena be that agent of critique, when she herself has just been subjected to horrific loss and trauma at Daemon's hands?

Conveying that the smallfolk live miserable lives that often lead them to forsake their morals and commit horrific acts in desperation (such as becoming assassins for hire) is another valid point to make. But is it really appropriate to beg for clemency from the audience via a widowed dog (the lowest form of sympathy begging, if you ask me) when we are talking about a cruel child-murderer at the end of the day?

In the same vein, high-borns having more resources at their disposal to recover after trauma is very true. But is it appropriate for that comment to come out of the mouth of a mother who only just recently lost her son to horrific violence? Especially after having her grieve so halfheartedly, it's giving less intersectionality and more her not actually giving much of a shit instead. No one in their right minds would go to a rich lady mourning her dead child and start lecturing her on the privilege of grief. Helaena is just not the appropriate vehicle in that moment for that kind of commentary.

Neither are the smallfolk of King's Landing in a position to mourn the dragon Meleys mere days after it butchered so many of their fellow townies. So many times I can sense this disconnect between what a believe, humane response would look like and half-baked attempts at social commentary.

and daemon isn’t in the wrong for expecting battle- yet instead of having that be a real conflict between him and rhaenyra, we have this moment of abuse that is quickly brushed aside and moved past. it exists only to show us how aggressive daemon is in the simplest, laziest way possible, and then it’s disposed of when it’s no longer needed.

Yes, in some ways, Daemon is the writers' opportunity to eat their cake and have it, too. They make a lot of noise about how much of a problematic bad boy he is, but, when it comes down to it, nothing he does has any kind of real consequence. The only consequence he ever faced was Viserys banishing him and that was way back before any kind of time jump (and it got overturned in the end, anyway).* Alys doesn't do anything to him except hold his hand and gently nudge him in the "right" direction. Rhaenyra takes him back with nary a snide comment.

Even back in season 1, he can kill Rhea Royce with no fallout: the Royces don't do anything and Lady Jeyne is still Rhaenyra's lackey with no explanation given. He can spread the rumour of killing Laenor with the intent of sowing fear and decapitate Vaemond in front of the greens. Yet the greens are not worried about him and scrambling to prevent Rhaenyra from seizing the throne. Oh no. Crowning Aegon is just misunderstanding Viserys' dying words. 🤦‍♀️ Daemon can even kill Jaehaerys and still Helaena decides to help him instead of her own brother.

*honestly, that's one of the reasons I think the first 5 episodes of season 1 are the show's strongest. It's like back then you did stuff and it had consequences. Incredible achievement.

you can say the same for “civilians don’t matter”— it’s just lazy writing! they don’t have to, in that the story can function without an in depth look at the smallfolk’s relationship to dragons and the targ dynasty overall, and why bother to do any of that when you can just decide that for this one scene, none of them matter!

You know, I would actually like to take this opportunity to point out that I get this conundrum as a showrunner. You don't really want to make a story about smallfolk suffering, because it would be a massive downer and it would not sell as much or be as popular. Not many people are interested in Les Miserables but with dragons and that's understandable! But there is a way to simultaneously not delve into the intricacies of oppression in your escapist nobility fantasy, but not be downright insulting about it.

They don't need a ton of screen time to set up the basic theme of "it's always the innocents who suffer when you high lords play your game of thrones". They just don't and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. They can very well illustrate the point of smallfolk suffering without resorting to insane suspension of disbelief like King's Landing starving after two weeks of blockade. And, if they can't, then they shouldn't be in the writers' room for productions that have the audacity to submit episodes to prestigious award shows.

[bonkquartz]

a hat in time au; what if the conductor fought dj grooves instead?

just a sketch for an animation meme i wanna make. gave grooves more stars on his jacket and also a little, idk what it's called but it's like, a stitch? on the open part of his jacket at the bottom (i don't know how to explain it but i thought it looked cool). his trousers have diamonds on the side.

conductor looks a bit more casual here, he is wearing a blazer tucked into his belt, loose tie, holding his hat in his hand. he's also wearing trousers that have two pockets like the ones in cargo pants. his trousers are tucked into his boots which have some belts on them. maybe he has the dead bird studio logo on the back of his blazer and on the chest pocket?

i hope these designs look cool, i think they look cool !!

extra sketch + my opinions on the intended boss in botb under the cut [long scroll]

extra:

little beady eyes poking out

ofc it's plausible that both characters could be the actual intended boss, and there's evidence for both, but i wanna explain my idea on things !!

at first i was conflicted because at the start it shows that the conductor has 3 time pieces while dj grooves has 2. this led me to think that the conductor has to be the winner because he has two to give for his levels and then one final one to give for his award ceremony, while dj grooves only has two to give for his levels. but i realised recently that the conductor actually gives away one of his time pieces before you even get to any of their levels, which would mean that both of them have 2 time pieces each for their levels, and my original theory is false !!! so now i am completely convinced that it is MR. GROOVES HIMSELF who is the intended villain (i know that there probably isn't an actual 'intended' boss, this is just headcanoning really and i'm completely fine with others thinking differently to my headcanon).

first off, it's a plot twist i personally love. he's such a kind and chill guy, how could he turn on us like this ?! i LOVE it. i think that all of those continuous losses really can take a toll on him, especially because he DID win once. it must've felt amazing, but it means the failure afterwords would be all that more upsetting. i believe all of this really affected him. i mean, how couldn't it? it seems obvious that it'd negatively impact anyone's mind. i feel like it festered inside of him, as a large mass of hatred and despair; he couldn't take it, what good is it being a filmmaker if you aren't even good at it? when he finally started considering the idea of quitting, the perfect solution fell into his lap - a girl approached him, speaking of mysterious hourglasses with time-shifting abilities, about how they're the optimal fix for problems such as theirs, speaking about the fame he could have - the power he could wield.

and then he had it. the annual bird movie award was right in his flippers. it was his, all his. but he didn't do it alone. he had produced a new star. was it because of her that he won? a familiar feeling of jealousy encapsulated him. she had to go.

but he failed, he failed to dispose of her, and there were so many witnesses to his failure.

his moon penguins, they were like a family to him, and they saw him like this. even the conductor was there, helping the girl. why? why did it turn out this way? all he wanted was to feel proud of himself, he wanted to feel like he deserved the admiration he got from his fellow moon penguins, he wanted to make them proud.

WHY did this turn into a fanfic??? but anyways, i wanted to give an insight into how i believe he felt during the whole thing, and i guess a fanfic was the best way to do that????????? but um, actual reasons that convince me:

- the hitbox is always dj grooves' - it's more interesting to me story-wise, personally - in hat kid's diary, she seems shocked by the betrayal and like someone else pointed out, i feel like she would have seen the conductor betraying her coming, so that wouldn't be shocking, but dj grooves being the boss would be shocking to her. after all, he's been so nice to her from the start!! - dj grooves is one of my favourite characters.... - he isn't majorly featured in any subsequent chapters - could show that he feels too guilty !! - in the concept game he was always going to be the villain - he gets his own storybook (i think it's in the dlcs?), the conductor doesn't. the main bosses all have their own storybooks i think.

probably more but i have to sleep away !!!

[thegreymoon]

The Story of Minglan

Bitch, you just tried to strangle your daughter. What maternal instinct?

And the only reason you took your son when you abandoned her was because you thought you could get more money for him.

***

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD 🤬🤬

THIS REPULSIVE PETTY PIECE OF SHIT WASTE OF AIR!!

Seriously, I despise him more than Manniang!

My guy, quit while you're ahead! You lost the girl because you were spineless. Get over it and stop embarrassing yourself! 🤬🤬

***

LMAO, what else is he supposed to do?

Let's say it's been four or five years since Manniang ran off. This child was two at most at the time. He would be six or seven now. What are you talking about? That is still a whole baby!

I love (and by love, I mean hate) how disposable children are in this society unless they are sons anchoring their mother's position in their respective households.

***

Oh, shut the fuck up, you bitter, pathetic loser.

***

Drag him, Tingye!

I am so sick and tired of his bullshit.

***

NOOOO, BUT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, HE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!

OF COURSE, MINGLAN WAS SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL RETIREMENT FOR HIM TO GET HIS SHIT TOGETHER AND SUFFER ALL KINDS OF INDIGNITIES IN THE MEANTIME!

HOW DARE SHE NOT BUILD A SHRINE TO HIS ESTEEMED PERSON AND PUT HER ENTIRE LIFE ON HOLD SO THAT HE CAN FEEL IMPORTANT?

With all that said, this actor is beyond fantastic, I can see why people are obsessed with him. I hope to watch him in a more sympathetic role next time.

***

LMAO, look at the pot calling the kettle black 🤣🤣

I cannot with this loser of a man.

***

If he had not been born rich, he would have been the founding father of the incel movement, blaming every man with even a semblance of a spine on his inability to fuck.

***

Oh, sure, it was for the government 🙄🙄

Your jealousy is palpable. You can't even convince yourself.

***

LMAO, what the fuck.

This is a dead child you're talking about! Your child! And you are mad you cannot get money and status because of him?

***

She's right, though, she did make the biggest fool out of him.

***

Good for you for slapping her, Minglan!

I've been waiting for someone to do it for ages now.

In fact, so many people in this drama deserve slapping. It's about time you got started on that.

***

Aww, he found his dead baby 😢

***

Wait, that's all?

THAT'S ALL??

WE DO NOT EVEN GET A BEHEADING 😭😭

Not only does her sorry ass not get punished in any way, he will continue to provide for her for the rest of her life. Sure, she will not be living in a manor in luxury as his wife, but she will have a roof over he head and food to eat, plus he will have to employ people in the middle of nowhere to make sure she doesn't go causing trouble again.

She should be in prison instead. Or in some hard labour colony, which I'm sure there are plenty of in Song Dynasty China. OR BEHEADED!!

And what about his maternal Bai relatives? Do they at least get arrested/exiled/beheaded? They have been REPEATEDLY trying to kill him for YEARS!

I am very disappointed with this resolution.

***

Well, I am glad this is over.

Honestly, as far as I am concerned, this whole Manniang subplot has been a huge blight on this otherwise excellent show and a black stain on Gu Tingye as a character. Big thanks to @ruizhi for filling me in on the details from the novel so that I can understand the writing decisions here better. Obviously, I realise that I am in the minority for disliking these decisions (and Gu Tingye as a character) because from what I have seen, he is a firm favourite among the people who watched this drama and everyone is on board with this sanitised version of his character arc.

I have to be honest, if they had kept his harem from the novel, I probably would not have touched this with a ten-foot pole, because I freely admit that I watch c-dramas for the pretty people and idealised romance. I also know that this would have made Gu Tingye more realistic and thus harder to project on, which is ironic because my complaints here are the lack of realism and easy ways out since they decided to include his other women in the drama too. Harem stories depress and infuriate me and I do not watch them unless there are very compelling reasons for me to pick them up, so out of a couple of hundred dramas on my to-watch list, this one would probably not have made it to the top if it had been closer to the source material.

Even as it is, all this is precisely why I put off watching Minglan for the longest time. I knew it had polygamy at its core and this made me disinclined to start it, even though it was warmly recommended by many people in whose good taste I trust. I eventually only started watching because a c-drama friend of mine told me that there is no harem here and that Minglan and Tingye were monogamous and ride-or-die for each other, so Manniang showing up early on was an extremely nasty surprise.

With that said, now that I am here already and very invested in this story, I've long since come to terms with the fact that romance is not the main focus of this show and adjusted my expectations. I am really enjoying it for what it is, which is a family drama focused on women's struggle and suffering in this hell system that they must learn to navigate or die destitute, which is why I am especially irked by this cheap trickery they are employing to make Gu Tingye's and Minglan's relationship more "clean" than it actually is. You cannot have it both ways. Either these characters are realistic people of their time or they are not. Either you are sticking to the book version of them in the adaptation or you are not. But these cake-eating writers (as in wanting their cake and eating it too) definitely tried to get away with both and ended up with huge inconsistencies in their story that irritated me enough to sit down and write this entire screed.

Like I said in my comments on my previous Minglan post, this is the exact thing that made TTEOTM unwatchable for me and landed it on the list of the worst dramas I ever subjected myself to, despite my unceasing obsession with Luo Yunxi. Obviously, I am feeling this on a lesser level with Gu Tingye, because overall, the writing of Minglan committed fewer crimes than TTEOM and remains solid on all other fronts, so I am still invested in the story overall, him as a character and him and Minglan as a couple, but the writers here are just as much cake eaters as the writers on TTEOTM. They looked at this bad boy who worked for a story in another medium precisely because he was morally compromised in some way, wanted that for themselves, but then could not or would not follow through, either because they feared they would alienate a big portion of their audience, or because the Chinese censorship board wouldn't let them get away with it. Then they did this ridiculous thing where they tried going, "Yeah, he's bad, but he's not really! He was set up! It was a misunderstanding!" And ended up blowing a giant hole in their whole story.

If they didn't want to explore Gu Tingye as a man of his time making the same selfish decisions as other men of that time, then they should not have had him acting like one. They should have had a logical and consistent reason why he didn't keep mistresses and concubines (such as, idk, seeing his mother suffer or something) and not introduce Manniang in the first place. What was the point of her in the plotline if we were not going to see him and Minglan make the hard decisions, either to treat his illegitimate offspring as lower-class citizens so that her biological kids could be afforded all the privileges of their rank (which would obviously not sit right with the modern audience), or go with the modern moral code that the show wants them to have and deny Minglan's bio kids by treating all the children equally (which could have been done legally if Minglan was to adopt them, but of course, she was never going to do that)? If you never intended to go there, then why bring in Manniang and her kids in the first place?

In my opinion, if they wanted Gu Tingye untarnished in this way and his love with Minglan unburdened with the baggage of other women and stepkids, they should never have kept Manniang in the adaptation. Once they brought her in, there was no stuffing that genie back into the bottle. The shadow of book!Tingye has been around since the adult actors took over and it is not even the non-monogamy that is an issue for me now, but the character inconsistency and the extremely cheap sleight of hand that they pulled in an attempt to smooth it over.

Here is the thing. Every time I start on a story, be it a book, movie, drama, or whatever, there is a certain premise that it promises to fulfil, which comes with the expectations and limitations of the genre. I adjust my standards accordingly, so if I sit down to watch a fluffy romcom with a young, naive intern falling in love with the son of CEO, then I will judge it on how funny it is and whether the main couple is hot enough and has enough chemistry to keep me invested till the end. I am not going to be particularly worried about the power imbalance and the IRL implications of such a setup, my main concern will be if the main couple look like they are having good enough sex and if I can shoehorn my own escapist fantasy into that dynamic. However, if I start a show that deals with misogyny, patriarchy and sexual harassment of women in the workplace, then you cannot dump the privileged son of the CEO into a relationship with the main heroine and expect me to root for it, unless he is right there beside her, taking his father to court for abuse of power and dismantling the system from within. This is, IMO, what this drama failed to do with Gu Tingye. You cannot promise me a Xiao Qi and deliver a Sheng Hong with the serial numbers filed off.

Based on what I've heard and read about the original novel, book!Tingye is not that much better than Sheng Hong. He had multiple women and illegitimate children that he was playing favourites with based on their birth and rank. He sabotaged his older son and indirectly caused his death so that Minglan's children would not have competition. His daughter by Manniang was just as traumatised as Minglan. He had concubines, who were also technically wives with no way out of a hell marriage, whom he then discarded when it was convenient for him. The only reason this marriage was a victory for Minglan is that she was now the favoured wife with the highest rank, thus her circumstances in life dramatically improved. I understand why they didn't want to portray this to a wider audience, and that doing so would have seriously dented Feng Shaofeng's reputation as a heartthrob in the c-ent industry, but then they shouldn't have opened that can of worms to begin with.

I feel like they should have cut the Manniang storyline completely if they weren't going to do it properly, or, idk, had her go off the deep end much earlier and kill her kids off before he got with Minglan. That could have been used as a catalyst for his change, having him go, "That's it! No more mistresses and concubines for me!" Then we could have seen the rest of it play out as it did (minus Manniang) with a REASON, with his family pressuring him to take in a wife and concubines, him saying no, then falling in love with Minglan and moving on from there naturally and giving us a clean, idealised romance that is not typical for their time.

However, once they brought in Manniang but did not bring in all the nasty stuff implied with him having a kept woman and illegitimate children, they shot themselves in the foot because now Gu Tingye's character was in conflict with the story's internal logic. We have seen how this world functions, we have seen how concubines and the children of concubines are treated. Naturally, once they introduced Manniang and her kids (but especially her son), we were expecting to see exactly what happened in the novel, because this is the premise of the story and the laws by which the world it is set in is governed. The fact that this didn't happen did not make me sigh in relief and think of Gu Tingye as a good guy, it made me question why the story never went there. The cowardly shortcuts out of this predicament and the cheap trickery the writers used to avoid it made me feel like the story was "lying" to me, which is maybe a ridiculous word to use because this whole thing is fiction and therefore a lie. But I could no longer suspend my disbelief, immerse myself in the narrative and root for these characters. Suddenly, they felt fake.

Also, I feel downright insulted by these writing choices.

"Yeah, Gu Tingye had another woman but that's OK because she was actually evil so she doesn't count and he was right to abandon her and have his true romance with Minglan! 😀"

"Yeah, he had a son that he would have had to have been grossly unfair to or not have Minglan's kids get the full extent of their privilege of rank, but that's OK, because the kid just conveniently died! 😀"

"Yeah, his daughter should be traumatised in a hundred different ways from having such a biological mother and dealing with the inferiority complex from growing up right next to Minglan's legitimate children and knowing that in the eyes of society and her own father, she is lesser than them, but don't worry, that's OK, because we are making her suuuuuuuper well adjusted! 😀"

"Yeah, if Chang'er had lived, the audience would have been forced to confront the fact that Gu Tingye was very much a man of his time and that Minglan was also no benevolent saint and that they would have treated children that are not biologically hers as second-class citizens, just like Sheng Hong and Wang Ruofu did in the Sheng household! But that's OK, we'll just kill his illegitimate firstborn son so that you don't have to think about that! 😀"

As a character, Gu Tingye feels so disingenuous because of these shortcuts the writers took to scapegoat Manniang and absolve him of the consequences of being just like the other men in this drama. Would he have been an idealised c-drama hero that girls could pin their fantasies on if they had kept his novel characterisation? Absolutely not. They made him more attractive and palatable to a wider, modern, likely younger-leaning audience at the cost of the story's internal logic, plot coherency and character consistency, and that, for me, is a much bigger writing crime than him having a harem and treating his illegitimate children as lesser-than.

Again, this is an adaptation and nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to include Manniang. If they had wanted Gu Tingye untarnished and idealised, they should have handled her differently. They cannot have it both ways.

With that said, I realise that I am in the minority here because most viewers were obviously very happy to let this slide (just like they were with TTEOTM). Again, most viewers will not agree with me on Gu Tingye because he is obviously a favourite ML for many, but for me personally, the overall drama loses lots of points on him, especially because of Manniang.

In any case, there are still more than twenty episodes left here for me, so onwards and forward to better plot points and character arcs! 😅