#even though it’s debatable if it’s canon

[burr-ell]

re: bh never having faced consequences, what are some moments/things they've done you think there should've been consequences for? i'm asking because i've realized these past couple episodes that i also fear they won't face any consequences for this, but i haven't been able to pinpoint why i feel that way yet

I don't think the answer is that they've done things that demand consequences so much as it is that a lot of elements of this campaign just don't coalesce or feel like they matter. Things feel important and relevant and cool in the moment and then don't get any kind of followup, nor do they have a meaningful impact on the characters. So much of this story falls to the wayside with no followup, if it doesn't have the wind taken out of it altogether.

A lot of plot points wind up mattering more to the fandom than they do to the characters—even good arcs, like the events of the party split arc, don't seem to have left much of an impact. There are fans who still bring up Hearthdell as a point against the gods or Vasselheim, but Bell's Hells have barely mentioned it if at all since episode 65. Laudna derides it as a "pissant town" with "pissant squabbles" and is far less interested in the village and its people than she is in her own trauma and feelings about the Titans. Ashton only brings up what happened there because they're still sore about being judged by an angel. There's still a chance that they call out Vasselheim's leadership for the whole mess, but at no point during Ashton's rant to the Exandrian Accord did they ever reference the blatant encroachment and attempt at a land grab. Molaesmyr fares little better; Chetney is the only character who ever brings it up, and when he does it's in the context of rattling Ludinus personally—a point that only he ever presses, even though Imogen and Fearne were also there. The fandom has been debating off and on about how much the nature of Predathos itself can be linked to Molaesmyr's destruction, but nothing has canonically explained it one way or the other, in part because the rest of the Hells just aren't interested.

It's also that lack of interest that leads to major NPC villains that are almost completely irrelevant to the story. It does not ultimately matter that one of Ludinus's generals is Otohan Thull or that the Malleus Key was defended by Ozo Cruth. The audience doesn't really know who they are, and they don't know because the party had no reason to care and didn't try to get one. Matt has indicated that there's a story to Otohan that will likely be revealed in a campaign wrap-up, and the same is probably true for Ozo, but in the actual story, all they are to the audience is a couple of overtuned stat blocks with swords, and the characters they killed might as well have been gutted by a pit fiend for all it mattered. About the only death that has any narrative resonance is FCG's, and it feels less like they sacrificed themself to kill Otohan and more like the story had to lose an interesting and engaging character to get rid of Otohan.

Even returning antagonists don't escape; both Ludinus Da'leth and Delilah Briarwood, important villains from their original campaigns, have been done a great deal of disservice in this one. Ludinus peaked in episode 51; his gambit with Vax and Keyleth was great, but the longer he got to keep monologuing, in a campaign already full of talking in circles about the same issue, the more insufferable he became. Even his death, karmic as it was, is cheapened by the almost-immediate implication that he's got a way to come back, which might make sense mechanically but is utterly exhausting narratively. Delilah, on the other hand, could have been replaced by an original character and nothing of value would have been lost; there's potential in an undead warlock whose patron is their own murderer, but any of the emotional juice of that story is outweighed both by how tiresome the pacing is and how overreliant it is on maudlin imagery and nostalgia for the original Briarwood arc. We don't learn about why Delilah is here or what her specific goals are until episode 77, 40 episodes after the party confronted her directly and gave her an opportunity to explain herself that she did not take. The corruption arc, again, had potential, but fizzled out as soon as a level 20 wizard dropped the soul anchor solution into their laps, with little actual impact on Laudna herself.

The actual player characters have, for the most part, barely substantively changed. Chetney has solved the mechanical problem of not being able to control his werewolf transformations and he does push big red buttons when no one else will, but he isn't really moving anywhere as a character. Laudna continues to do everything in her power to bounce back to the old kooky fun-scary bit from episode 1 every time anything interesting happens to her. FCG did actually have a great arc with an incredibly heartfelt and moving conclusion, but is no longer a meaningful part of the narrative and the party's grief over their death was not given the space to breathe that it warranted. Fearne has matured a bit over the course of the campaign but is still largely just as aimless and go-with-the-flow as she was in the beginning. Imogen, at the very least, started to take something close to an actual stance on the gods and what to do about Predathos, but every time she has to make a choice, she continues to ask someone else what she should do and then hem and haw when she's told it's her decision. Orym has finally let himself lean on someone else, but has otherwise remained static. Ashton had a very promising arc after failing to absorb the shard, but has since regressed into doing the exact thing they called themself out for doing: looking for someone to blame and wanting to feel like they were robbed. Moments like Shardgate and Swordgate, which in any other campaign would have been major watersheds, have become functionally irrelevant for all the impact they've had on the actual characters.

The elephant in the room here, of course, is Imogen and Laudna's relationship, which has been a millstone around the campaign's neck from the beginning. Shippers have accused critics of being motivated by bigotry, but the arguments deconstructing it are ultimately rooted in this very same issue: nothing that happens to them truly seems to matter. This is intertwined with the issues with Delilah, because every time Imogen and Laudna actually run into any sort of conflict or difficulty, it has something to do with that plot thread: Delilah broke the gnarlrock; Delilah was reawakened when Laudna killed Bor'dor and Laudna was extremely upset and traumatized about it; and Delilah was the one Laudna was listening to when she tried to steal and absorb Otohan's sword. All of those conflicts fizzled out as soon as the immediate surface issue was resolved: Imogen dropped the gnarlrock issue entirely; Imogen kissed Laudna and insisted that she couldn't be a bad person for killing Bor'dor, and Laudna completely dropped the subject; and Imogen, as soon as Delilah was sealed in the soul anchor, immediately took Laudna back after less than a day of mild distance and they went off to have makeup sex. It feels less like their love is so strong it can overcome any conflict and more like they retreat to the same way their relationship was before as soon as they possibly can. Even starting a romance doesn't seem to materially change anything.

There's no interest in unpacking anything that could cause a problem, either. Laudna canonically has no issue with Imogen floating the idea of siding with the Vanguard, even though it was a Vanguard general who killed Laudna in the street to get to Imogen; in fact, she refuses to take a hard stance for or against Imogen joining Predathos because she doesn't want to "hold Imogen back from her destiny". Prior to Laudna attempting to take the sword, Imogen told her explicitly "if you need [Delilah], then that's my answer"—and then instead of addressing that, Imogen blames herself for Laudna giving into Delilah by wondering if she should have given into her own toxic influence so at least Laudna wouldn't be alone. At no point have they ever had a difficult conversation about any of their underlying issues, like the actual material harm Laudna has done to herself or others or the fact that both Imogen and Laudna have repeatedly tossed aside their actual needs in favor of maintaining their status quo of unending support and presence in each other's lives. They both just attribute responsibility to someone or something else and continue to swear that they'll always be there for one another—just like every other conversation they've ever had. There's no challenge and no movement, not from them or from anyone else; nothing has ever upset the idea that this story could be anything less than idyllic, no matter the increasing evidence to the contrary.

A common refrain for a very long time, and perhaps one still around in some circles, was a desire for Character A and Character B to "finally talk", and not without reason. In previous campaigns, A and B probably would have talked. This, however, is a campaign centering on profoundly incurious characters with a narrative that is disinterested in those characters becoming genuinely invested in its setting or each other beyond a bare surface level. Of course they won't face any consequences for releasing Predathos when they didn't need to, nor will they face consequences for not communicating their incredibly risky and contentious plan ahead of time. Why would they? It won't matter. Nothing in this story matters, and that's the entire problem.

[mainalias]

I want you and all the other "it's not blood magic" die hards to know that even though I think it's blood magic and I made this poll, I think it's debatable and am disappointed with how one-sided the results are. especially since I can see everyone's tags and am seeing people say "it's blood magic! just like lyrium use and the joining!" (not blood magic) or "the wiki says it's blood magic" (the wiki cites a book that did not say it was blood magic and david gaider saying it was which does not count and I absolutely hate that the DA wiki considers forums and interview comments canon but whatever)

tfw people are agreeing with you but for the wrong reasons

wait, da fandom opinion check. I had taken something for granted but now I'm not so sure.

the chantry and the circle use blood magic right??? the ritual to make phylacteries, where they take blood from an apprentice and do magic and seal it in a vial which can then be used to track them anywhere forever is absolutely blood magic right???

I had assumed it was never discussed in-universe as just standard chantry hypocrisy and not it's not blood magic even though it is magic that requires blood to work and controls people.

god how do I make a poll

[ohfugecannada]

Do you guys think Rocket ever told Groot ii about the og Groot?

I like to imagine he occasionally learned some tidbits about him growing up around the other guardians. I.E. Drax telling him he was a formidable warrior and friend, Quill talking about how he was wise and the only person on the team who had a clue, gamora talking bout how kind he was etc etc. but it was nothing too deep since they didn’t know him long.

Rocket, by contrast, despite knowing og Groot a lot longer compared to the rest of the guardians, never mentions him. At all. And anytime the subject comes up he dodged questions or tries to change the subject. Maybe the pain of losing him still hurt, similar to his trauma of losing batch 89. Or maybe he feels he wasn’t truly og Groot’s friend due to how much he pushed him away and called him an idiot, and thinks he cant be the one to tell his story to his son. A bit of both?

Whatever the case, perhaps Groot ii either never learned about og Groot from Rocket, or at the very least, it took Rocket a long time to do so. Only opening up to Groot ii later when he was a teen or adult.

[juniemunie]

If we're not giving up, don't give up wherever you are.

That's a promise.

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[aiura-stan]

(on Gay Hairo being canon)

-True, there’s no evidence that Hairo isn’t gay. You got me there… that’s certainly an Implication in that one chapter, considering Saiki’s reaction.

That said, his ass always being out is not *inherently* gay. I don’t see anything that points to the gag being consistently associated with sexuality in any way. (other than Saiki’s occasional comment.)

(on Saiki’s ‘hypnosis’)

-I feel like we have this same conversation every so often; I apologize in advance if I’m just repeating myself, lmao.

‘Hypnosis’ is his ability to make people look like someone else in canon. I used that word the wrong way, didn’t I. Sorry.

It is separate from ‘mind control,’ which I keep confusing it with, which Kusuo used to make things like his pink hair and limiters normal. He also used it to make it normal for students to have jobs, and to make anime tropes such as quicker healing, the ‘ton’ to the back of the neck effective, and destruction of property quickly fixable (I don’t get that one tbh.)

Yeah, come to think of it, ‘hypnosis’ in the sense of making someone else ignore him, is fanon. You’re right.

That said, Kusuo has a lot of weird perception altering powers. He can use hypnosis to make people look like each other, he can cause an auditory hallucination of music (presumably with his telepathy), he can use mind control to make people believe that things are normal (which in turn somehow changes the world itself.) For whatever reason, people do not notice the year repeating itself again and again as he periodically rewinds time. I can’t find it but I swear somewhere in the manga (is it the anime?) there’s a scene where a guy thinks to himself that Saiki’s limiters are strange, and we are told that he rationalizes it away due to Kusuo’s powers. (presumably his ‘mind control,’ which begs the question, if he actually permanently changed their perception of reality, why should they have to rationalize at all?)

I thought it was somewhere in the early chapters but couldn’t find it when I looked. Argh. But yeah I think that’s why I keep confusing the two. Because at one point, there’s some weird implications due to this one guy reacting to Kusuo’s limiters.

(on Teruhashi’s power to make people ‘fall in love w/ her on sight’)

-Yes, I agree “parasocial relationship” comes closer to what Teruhashi inspires in her followers and the men around her.

(on Saiki being affected by Teruhashi’s beauty)

-Okay, I can see where you’re going with the Teruhashi affecting Saiki point, now. I made some incorrect assumptions about what you meant by that sentence.

I think Teruhashi’s good amounts to being nice. Even though they are often done with ulterior motives, her actions have kind effects at least, if that makes sense.

I mean? It seems to improve their behavior, at least whenever she is around? Like the gag with Rifuta, who asks two boys to walk her to the cafeteria, and they start fighting, but they make up and agree to do it together when Teruhashi chastises them for it. So she’s like their external conscience.

After she leaves… debatable. haha. But I do think she has some sort of power that basically amounts to “make people behave as though they are their best selves due to her beauty” while around her specifically. (Which… I don’t know how I feel about that. But that’s what I think.) And Kusuo isn’t affected by that, because he has his own internal moral compass that he basically refuses to compromise on.

Yeah… after she leaves, I’d say they’re back to stumbling around in the dark, morally speaking. She’s still very much doing good, but even though her sphere of “good” is limited to when she is personally involved. I think that’s part of what makes her ego so bad. Because she truly thinks people can only be their best selves when she is around. Which is why she likes Saiki, because her presence doesn’t effect his actions or morals in the least.

That would definitely be interesting! I wonder how he lost his vision… what was able to injure Saiki’s eyes? At the volcano scene he is pushed to his absolute limit, so maybe it’s some natural disaster like that.

I'm not a fan of soulmates in romantic fiction because it's basically arranged marriage with extra supernatural noncon/dubcon elements.

However, in the Saiki universe, the soulmate connection seems to lack pretty much all of those problematic elements.

We have to do a little extrapolating from what we see in canon since this aspect of Aiura's powers is not covered in detail, but:

Soulmates do not seem to be guaranteed to ever meet, considering the fact that Aiura specifically looked up her soulmate and that one guy who was linked to someone in a remote African village that would almost certainly never cross paths with him.

Being with your soulmate is completely optional, otherwise Aiura wouldn't bother providing relationship scoring and just tell each person to go find their soulmate. This allows for a lot of narrative opportunities to explore why someone would consciously choose to not be with their soulmate, and also opens up the door for polyamory.

Soulmates do not instantly fall in love, and are not forced to stay in love by any supernatural powers. Aiura didn't think anything of Saiki until he flawlessly saved Yumehara's life like 10x in a row, and Saiki certainly didn't fall for Aiura right away either. They fought over their values strongly enough that it would've been a breakup if they'd ever been together.

Soulmate status just seems to indicate particularly good chemistry, and like the rest of Aiura's powers, is purely informational and not determinative. Presumably soulmates have the highest possible compatibility scores, and it's kinda cool that it seems guaranteed there's at least 1 person out there who will jive with you, but also plenty of other people you can connect with to various degrees.

With Saiki and Aiura specifically, it's shown that Saiki can change the future Aiura sees as soon as he hears about it. It may even be possible for him to change the soulmate determination, and he certainly could've used Time Leap to fool Aiura into thinking someone else was her soulmate if he was really opposed to the concept. She had scryed it recently, so the butterfly effect shouldn't be a challenge.

But they do work so smoothly together with their powers complementing each other, and Saiki is kind of a lonely romantic tsundere at heart, so it makes sense that he would let the soulmate thing play out and yet test the connection by pushing Aiura away as much as possible.

Actually, considering that Saiki can't control people's actions directly (and that he sucks at trying to control people indirectly), the strongest noncon/dubcon force in the Saikiverse shockingly appears to be Teruhashi's beauty.

The only male character that doesn't seem at all affected by Teruhashi's powers is Hairo, most likely because of his heavily implied homosexuality. Women attracted to other women are also impacted by her power, as seen with Aiura.

While Saiki says that married people aren't affected by Teruhashi, Kuniharu does actually show several signs of being affected by Teruhashi, and so does Kumagoro.

All affected people instantly fall in love with her on sight, no exceptions.

Critical thinking ability appears to drop precipitously when it comes to her, with her fans accepting that she had a secret child with Saiki despite being in school with her every day and that she can just choose not to poop for a week. More effective mind control than anything Saiki can do tbh.

The instant Saiki loses some of his powers, he starts being affected by Teruhashi's beauty.

The narrative supports Saiki's theory that Teruhashi is literally favored by God and can affect reality just by hoping for something. The implication that God is (physically??) attracted to Teruhashi and does whatever she wants is.... yikes on several levels. If she asks for someone to love her, do they get a choice in the matter??

Anyways, there are way more elements of noncon/dubcon with Teruhashi ships than there are with actual canon soulmate mechanics in the Saikiverse and that's just such a wild choice by the author lol.

Truly subverting tropes!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Do you think they should have made Colt a good father to Felix? Or are you fine with him being a bad father?

I don't think that Colt should have been anything. He died off screen before we even met Felix and Felix is a minor character. Why is he getting more backstory development than Kagami when Tomoe is alive and actively involved in the plot? Wouldn't it have been far more interesting if the play was her story?

But if we must include the mustachioed cowboy man, then I would make him a good father or, at the very least, a mediocre one. I'd do this for reasons that have nothing to do with me wanting Felix to have a happy childhood. I'm fine with him having a tragic past! The problem is that this is a story and, in terms of story telling, there is no reason to give him a tragic past. It adds nothing to the story. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it detracts from the story, but we'll get to that in a minute. First let's go over why it's a pointless addition.

In his titular episode, Felix is a brat who tries to destroy Adrien's life. Those actions actually made more sense when we thought that Felix loved Colt and was acting out over Adrien not coming to Colt's funeral. Now that we know the full story, we're left asking, "Okay, so, why did Felix do any of that?" And don't say that it was to help him get the ring because it didn't help him get the ring. He got it from hugging his uncle and there were far simpler ways to get a hug.

And why did Felix even want the ring? That has yet to be explained because, in Strikeback, he was planning to go out of the country as "Adrien" without ever offering to exchange the ring. He simply stole the fake peacock and got out of dodge. He had no possible way to know that Ladybug would come to him for help, allowing him to offer up the miraculous and use the ring to sweeten the pot. I also don't believe for one second that he needed to sweeten the pot. He could have offered up the miraculous and nothing else and Gabriel would have gone for it. So once again, what was the plan with the ring, Felix? What was the plan?

While we're on the topic of Felix getting the peacock, Colt being abusive adds nothing to that plot either. Whoever has the peacock can snap any sentimonster out of existence. Felix could have the best damn childhood on the planet and it would still make perfect sense for him to want the peacock!

The only reason to make Colt abusive is if you want to explore that and use it to develop Felix's character, but I have absolutely no faith that they're going to do that. Colt is the Jagged Stone nonsense all over again. They're introducing a very serious issue that would dramatically affect the psyche of most people and then acting like it's no big deal. I think I saw someone say that Colt was only introduced to shut up the people calling Gabriel and Emilie abusive by showing us "real" child abuse as if abuse was an Olympic sport and you need to qualify for the team. I'd buy that theory, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Even if I'm wrong and they are going to explore Felix's trauma, I still think it's a bad move. There's a thing called compassion fatigue. It's commonly experienced by health care workers who deal with traumatic cases day in and day out, resulting in thing like the inability to feel compassion for your patients because your compassion meter has been rung dry. You can experience a lesser form of this just from watching the news. Story after story of people in need to the point that you're desensitization to these events evoking horror or sorrow.

When you're telling a story, you need to keep this phenomena in mind and be very careful when introducing multiple sources of trauma. The more trauma you introduce and the quicker you introduce it, the less impactful that trauma will be for your readers. If you're a good writer, then it will also be less impactful for your characters. Allow me to explain with a quick example.

I had a brief Marvel phase and, while I never wrote anything for that fandom, I made up a few stories in my head. A lot of them revolved around my favorite character, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). Tony becomes Iron Man after being kidnapped by terrorists and I love confessions of traumatic backstories, so I was working out how to do one for him and the Avengers to help bond the team. Then I realized that his teammates are all orphans and that the majority of them were raised in poverty. Most of them have also gone through scientific experimentation of some sort and not all of it was voluntary. In other words, in the world of the Avengers, Tony's trauma isn't really special. His team might sympathize with him, but they wouldn't be deeply impacted by his story the way I wanted them to be because most of them have gone through equal or worse trauma.

Circling back to Miraculous: they keep heaping trauma on these kids and it's a terrible move. When Adrien was the only character with a messed up home life, things were interesting.

Now? Well, this is the current list of characters with a messed up home life: Kagami, Zoe, Chloe, Adrien, Felix, Luka, Juleka, and probably Lila. Add in Rose's serious illness, Mylene's mother abandoning her, and Marinette's traumatic past dealing with a straight up hate campaign on top of all the trauma introduced over the course of canon and I just don't care anymore. I am drained dry. They have introduced way too many serious elements without exploring any of them in depth and that is a massive writing faux pas.

Generally speaking, when telling stories, you should default your characters to whatever a happy home life is in their universe unless you're going to do something with the non-happy home life. Non-happy home lives complicate stories and you don't want to introduce a complication if you're never going to explore it. This is why I think that Colt should have been at least a decent parent. It's also why you'll see me say that Emilie should be at least a semi decent parent even though canon has made that option impossible unless you ignore a lot of the unpleasant implications found in Adrien's backstory.

While I love evil villain couples, Emilie is in a coma, so she can't be Gabriel's co-conspirator and I personally have no interest in her waking up to start a new villain arc. When she wakes up (or finally dies), the Agreste's story is over and so she basically has to be nonthreatening for that ending to work. It also circles back to the issue of keeping the trauma tight and focused so that the trauma you do include really pops!

Reminder that the above is a discussion of story telling, not a commentary on what makes real people interesting or the commonality of home life issues. There's also nuance I didn't get into because this was already really long. Writing trauma well is a really fascinating and complex topic.

[coralcatsea]

If people won't stop referring to England as "America's d@d" every chance they get, I guess I'm going to have to start calling him "America's boyfriend" all the time to counteract it.

England can't just be "England" anymore. He always has to be referenced through some kind of relationship. 😩

[r0bita]

Everybody saying Cahara is the only character who didn't get their S ending because he would have been the only character left to have taken the girl to the depths are probably overlooking an equally, or even more, depressing implication.

Any of the playable characters would have achieved their S endings, but the girl still becomes the God of Fear and Hunger - no matter what. The girl's fate was set the moment she was born and everyone else was simply an unwilling participant in the grand scheme, even Le'garde.

[worthington-iii]

Obligatory "I'm biased as shit so take anything I say with a grain of salt" before I yap but. Warren. Yes.

I think one of my favorite pieces for him is Angel: Revelations. It holds a strange space narratively speaking, since the other four original X-Men all got a cohesive oneshot backstory in the same comic line, but Warren got a five issue backstory with a more intense maturity rating, published at a later date. If you haven't read it yet, I think it's some of my favorite character work for him and can stand alone even without X-Men or Marvel context.

One of the biggest takeaways from that series, though, is that Warren always felt drawn to do something more, but lived in such an isolated social bubble that he didn't know what to do with it. Even when he's able to save lives, though, he doesn't feel entitled to be proud of it because he recognizes he can continue to be the golden boy, or he can be the hero. Being a mutant won't allow him to do both.

Interestingly, Warren is the only one of the O5 to pursue solo hero work before joining the X-Men. Again, he has that sense of justice and a calling to help while still feeling a degree of shame and embarrassment for his mutation.

I think I pull a lot of my character interpretation from what's not necessarily written on the page, but from reading between the lines. Warren takes time to get comfortable with his mutation in daily life while picking up that big hero persona to show off. When he's the Angel, he flaunts his wings and is loud and proud. When he's just Warren, he covers up even in front of other mutants for pretty much the entirety of the silver age X-Men comics. His parents never find out he's a mutant, and he blames, in part, his own inaction for their deaths later on. I really wish this was expanded on more in canon.

It's also clear he did continue to struggle with personal turmoil about his mutation being so physically noticeable, and how hiding it came with pain and consequences. A bit of a jab from him to hank in Amazing Adventures during Beast's issues over there:

Another missed opportunity to me is Warren coming out publicly as a mutant. It's a throwaway line in Champions (1975). But to me, this reads as a consistent arc for him growing confident in himself and finally acknowledging the power that could come with his status combined with his mutant identity. He's able to use that status to rocket new teams to brief popularity and financial security, like the Champions or his iteration of the Defenders.

Basically in all of the random appearances following his departure from being a full time X-Man, we watch Warren's confidence grow and his self awareness change. I'd propose that this is a big influence of having Candy in his life - some form of stability and care for him that he couldn't find within the X-Men. Part of his reason for leaving (at least seemingly as he agreed with Jean) was wanting to seek out meaning away from the X-Men, potentially with love and a family in the future. I'd say this is probably the peak of his mental health. We see him getting a little obnoxious and overly flirtatious at times here, but he does seem pretty self aware of those traits and just doesn't view it as a problem.

Then, we hit X-Factor. The beginning of X-Factor sees Warren feeling a big win with Jean's return. He thinks he's at the top of his game and unbeatable. That's why the narrative takes a plunge with Archangel and the betrayal of Cameron Hodge. When you're at your peak, the only place to go is down. I think this is a very interesting turn for him, watching him struggle to recover from that brainwashing and mind control from Apocalypse. He begins to fall back into those old habits of seeing himself as a freak and as monstrous. He spends a lot of time there wallowing in self pity and fighting against the urges Apocalypse instilled in him, debating whether they're really from Apocalypse or something that had been deep inside him all along.

I really think healing begins again for him when he meets Betsy. She's a telepath who can help him untangle those things in his mind and allow him to move past the guilt and fear of the Archangel persona. Especially as Betsy faces her own similar struggles, the two bond and share fears over their changing powers and bodies. Crimson Dawn, while its reallyyyyy not my favorite, does some interesting early character work for both of them.

Continuing, he begins to feel more in control of Archangel again and slides back to the X-Men team in the 2000s era from time to time. While he isn't there, he's shown doing nonprofit and charity work with his fortune alongside just running his company. He actually is a big part of the efforts with mutant outreach on a global scale, working diplomatically when he isn't fighting evil. And not just work for mutants, either. He does end up running a charity cause for disabled children. To me, a lot of this reads like him trying to repent for the damages he'd done as Archangel. It's clear he carries a lot of guilt from that which never really went away, especially as Archangel style powers emerge from time to time in battle.

While Warren continues this public work alongside work with the main X-Men team, he provides his home in Colorado as a safehouse for the X-Force team. It feels like he's initially hesitant and doesn't even want to know what they're doing because he continues to fear the implications of Archangel coming forth. But he's dragged into it as Wolfsbane is essentially brainwashed to attack him, making the issue personal. I think this marks another tonal shift for Warren as he begins to get more in-tune with Archangel instead of repressing it. Logan and Betsy are both wary of this, training the X-Force team to kill Warren if they need to, which he clearly is uncomfortable with. (Uncanny X-Force is also one of my top Warren arcs, and my number one Warren/Betsy narrative.)

In short, Apocalypse is eventually able to regain control of Warren's mind and Betsy does need to kill him. I wouldn't necessarily consider any of this to be a direct reflection of Warren himself and his own personality, though. I see it more as another thing knocking him down a peg when he's been doing too well. Same goes for his memory-wiped era after this - that man really isn't Warren in any palpable sense aside from appearances. What is interesting, though, is the younger time-displaced Warren's reaction to this.

The younger Warren here is the same insecure teenager that I talked about earlier. He doesn't feel comfortable truly being himself around the other X-Men, and seeing all the awful things that happened to his older self was a breaking point. His mask slips here, and we see the person who's been underneath a lot of those silver age stories. He's deeply uncomfortable with himself and immediately recoils when he can't maintain his preferred status quo. He goes so far as to accept a cosmic curse in the hopes of permanently changing himself, so that he may never become the older version that he sees in front of him.

It's never explicitly explained how the older Warren regains his memories, but from a few tidbits in random stories like one of Iceman's solo runs, it's implied that older Warren was able to get along with younger Warren much better once he was. Yknow. There to speak for himself. Around this same era, a revived Charles Xavier gives Warren a mental barrier that allows him to more freely switch between Angel and Archangel, which he's immediately grateful for.

Not much else happens character-wise until X-Corp for him, which sees him paralleled with another character that faces very visceral and sometimes violent transformations - Penance.

While Warren continues to try and use his business skills to help mutantkind by spearheading Krakoa's economic front, he clashes with his business partner. Monet/Penance is very comfortable with her transformations in a way Warren never was. It's clear here that "acceptance" for Warren is something very different than acceptance for Monet. Monet's powers stem from something internal, allowing her to understand it as a core part of her being. Warren, though, sees Archangel as an external insertion into his life. While he is comfortable using those powers now and has accepted what happened to him, it's stirred a lot of anger within Warren's mind. A lot of those questions like "WHY did this happen" etc. The potential safety of Krakoa is finally allowing him to move beyond the denial stage of grieving his past self.

While he doesn't get a lot of on-page time in the Krakoa era aside from X-Corp, we do get to see him again in Heir of Apocalypse, finally able to stand up to Apocalypse. While before he'd been afraid of him and worried about the mind control returning, he straight up refuses to help Apocalypse now and fights him outright. This is a big shift in Warren's character and in his personal confidence, and I think it's safe to assume that his experiences with Penance and the rest of the Krakoa era changed him as a person, finally allowing him to truly accept his trauma and vow to make a difference in his behavior. It's a short read, but really badass!

Then we tag back up with him in the current X-Factor run, where he's completely lost Archangel's powers. With Apocalypse finding a new heir, Warren is freed from his nightmare, but has been battling it so long that he doesn't know what's left for him anymore. He doesn't know where to find meaning outside of reconciling with Archangel and beating Apocalypse. That's where we've left him now, trying to find meaning in a post-Krakoa post-Archangel life.

tl;dr Warren's biggest theming is a journey of self acceptance and figuring out what comes next once you think you've got it all figured out. While his story is full of missed opportunities and inconsistent characterization, I think reading between the lines of the good, bad, and ugly writing can reveal a really interesting character that's worth picking apart!

SOMEBODY GIVE ME YOUR CHARACTER BREAK DOWNS

I NEED TO LEARNNNN

SOMEONE GIVE ME THEIR ANALYSIS ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WARREN PLEASE

I WANNA LEARN HOW DEEP CHARACTERS GO

If you’ve been desperate to tell someone about a character you’ve dug into

TELL ME

as long as it’s a Marvel Character I’ll listen

And I’ll even take select DC characters but don’t push it.

[vazaha-tya]

the fact that fans consider snape a poor and abused orphan and a hypercompetent prodigy at the same time is... interesting.

i suppose it's canon-accurate, the man does contain multitudes. when it's time to highlight how much the marauders suck, severus snape is defenseless against his horrible classist bullies. when it's time to show off how smart he was, he knows a wide array of curses and potions and invented some himself. the gap in canon comes when someone asks if he just fantasises about using those in his textbook margins, or if he actually used them. if he did, then against who, and why was is it never addressed by the narrative?

maybe because then the author would have had to work harder at writing a proper redemption arc instead of killing him conveniently and revealing he turned to the right side because he was childhood friends (and/or in love) with lily evans.

don't get me wrong, i want to like snape. i want to like the talented yet emotionally stunted potions professor who made the wrong choices and despises harry but still wants to do right by him and the wizarding world. i want to like the spy who hates kids but is forced to endure them because the dude who made sure he didn't go to jail is his former headmaster and he wants to keep him close at hand. i want to like the abused kid who was radicalised because he was offered power and a way to be vindicated after spending his life subjected to a horrible family dynamic where his father's hatred of magic features heavily.

but he's a bad spy, his motivations for switching sides are not compelling and the marauders-snape conflict, which could have been a smart way to represent a microcosm view of the wider issue i.e the clash of ideology and the brewing civil war existing at the time, instead becomes about a girl. eyeroll.

(but that's part of a wider conversation about how all the death eaters who turned against voldemort turn out to have done so only for selfish reasons and not because they saw his ideology as wrong. sigh. i'll headcanon it away as much as i can, but that's the textual information the books give us. thanks, i hate it.)

i even think it was a good idea to make the death eater an underdog who joined because he yearned for acceptance and respectability and also despised his muggle father while the front kids on the light side are two posh purebloods who have "no" stakes in this. it adds some complexity to the conversation, introduces nuances, and... is plainly something jkr couldn't handle. because she doesn't really do nuance.

and some fans can't either, i suppose, since i just saw a post saying that when remus and sirius talked about snape knowing more curses than half the seventh year while they just entered hogwarts, they actually meant curse words. eyeroll. why do you want him to be blameless? let him be a cunt. he's more interesting that way.

[kitpine]

So do you wanna kissy kiss Ramona Flowers orrrrrrrrr

I-

I don't have to answer that! You literally cannot make me.

[shame-kink]

people who characterize marcille as ‘oh that lesbian elf motivated so much by how she wants to bang her s/o’ literally don’t get it. a marcille who KNOWS shes a lesbian would be on a whole ‘nother level of “annoying about it.” insert joke about gay being a characters only trait level annoying. she still writes off her gay shit as gender envy, protectiveness, or solidarity. once she realizes , its all over. shes going to be getting into harmful intra/ter-community discourse on twitter before collapsing into a years-long disillusionment wreckage as all her online buddies either go entirely transmisogynistic or end up overcorrecting and becoming a different kinda queerscourse radical. she even takes the word ‘lesbian’ out of all her urls :-(. not because she isn’t one or its bad but bc its a painful reminder of a sense of pride that now exists only in memory. and eventually she changes it to FALINSC-💥

[baelavelaryon]

sorry I am a rhaenys and visenya having wild sex while aegon pouts in his war room truther. I have no interest in any conquerors show that doesn't reflect this fact.

[applepies-and-starlight]

Have some writing bits I made that only I know the context of woo!

[realitys-ex]

One kinda fun/odd bit about Discworld is the place of Jews/Judaism in it (no, this probably won't go where you expect).

So there are the 2 obvious places and one arguably subtle/debatable place:

Feet of Clay/Golems very clearly drawing from Judaism (though in subsequent books that was toned *way* down)

Omnianism is a very clear stand in for/amalgamation of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (the amount of each is left as an exercise to the reader).

and Lastly / debatably many people find a similarity between the description of the Dwarf religion and Judaism (I am not stating I agree, just I would have been remiss if I didn't bring it up)

Now the one thing that kinda gets forgotten is that: Judaism as a whole independent religion is somewhat confirmed in Discworld leaving arguments about the above somewhat moot! (you can't have a stand in for a religion if you already have the religion itself).

In both Feet of Clay and Fifth Elephant it mentions Vampires working at Kosher Butchers (for those unaware blood is not kosher so it needs to be drained extra well from meat, a perfect job for a vampire).

Now what does that actually imply? Absolutely nothing.

PTerry often had off the cuff jokes, as well as mucked about with continuity (remember how Trolls originally would continue to grow until they died, and could get up to the size of a small mountain, which only came up in one of the early books and was ignored in the rest?) and (I am sure) just liked that joke and did not intend to imply any theological ramifications or serious world building from it.

But dammit, it is (to me) incredibly funny to step into a (semi) serious discussion about Judaism in Discworld and completely derail it with a throw away line.