#from a narrative or framing perspective

[thatswhatsushesaid]

more salty commentary about.... salty fandom commentary, but for a fandom i'm not really involved with

ftr this is about the gay-ass (affectionate) vampire show

squinting at some of super vitriolic anti-armand commentary that tumblr's algorithm keeps throwing at me like 'this? you want this one bestie? no? what about this one instead?' when in fact i want none of these takes, actually. "i don't believe a word that comes out of that lying liar's mouth!!" "of course he could have stopped claudia and madeleine's murders, he's the most powerful vampire in the world!!" (uh, i'll come back to that one later. maybe. if i feel like it) "he was onboard the 'let's murder claudia!' train from the very beginning!!!" etc. if you're even peripherally keeping your finger on the pulse of this fandom's discourse, you've probably seen some of this, too.

and... okay. bearing in mind two things:

it's been about 20+ years since i read the original novels, and

the show's relationship to the original novels, as well as the 1994 movie, is both conversational and subversive,

two seasons into this delicious mess, how are we still collectively failing to recognize that the central conceit of amc's retelling is that, intentional or not, all recollection of louis' past is both catharsis (for louis) and performance (for ???)? that all of louis' recollection of his own actions, as well as the actions of the other vampires in his orbit, is filtered through the lens of his own feelings about those vampires in that moment? like this isn't a subtle storytelling device, this is something the show is repeatedly bashing us over the head with again and again and again: louis' reliability as a narrator of his own experiences can't be trusted even when he isn't so consumed with rage that he tries to drain twenty year old daniel molloy dry for the unforgivable crime of /checks my notes, mouthing off at him like a dumbass, or goes into vulgar detail describing to lestat precisely how he is going to kill him, cut his head off, and then feed his decapitated head to lions at the zoo. which, it bears mentioning, is not the version of events that we were presented with during s1, but it is the version of events that louis himself comes to reluctantly believe is the more accurate recollection of the past.

does that make lestat into The Real Victim™️ who did nothing wrong to louis or claudia, ever? please tell me you're not actually asking me this question. be serious.

the point is that louis is right in the thick of feeling his intensely passionate vampire feelings about armand in real time, in the present day, while looking backwards through time at the 77 years they have spent together, and he is questioning everything. justifiably so, for the record! why wouldn't he question the actions and motivations of the supposed love of his life after discovering that such an important memory from his and daniel molloy's shared past was erased from his mind? but seriously, if you have reached this point in the story and your takeaway from the last episode boils down to "THIS TIME louis' recollection of the past is definitely 100% accurate! the rose-tinted glasses are OFF and we can see the TRUTH about you now armand!!!" then i just. i don't know what to say to you. lmfao.

anyway rather than getting into the weeds with anyone actually in the fandom about which of these diva vampire daddies is right, actually, find me hanging out with claudia and madeleine's ashes giving all of them the proverbial finger. because honestly, fuck all these vampires (affectionate).

[silverwhittlingknife]

"the fault, dear Brutus -" (Julius Caesar)

Quotes from A Critical History of English Literature by David Daiches. Panels from Death in the Family, Under the Red Hood, Lost Days, and Batman and Robin.

[audiblehush]

If you are fine with the fact that the writers had Penelope doing a last minute, zero build-up, half-assed rebrand in order to remain Lady Whistledown (that can’t even logically function with her going public) i.e. her harmful coping mechanism instead of realizing she doesn’t need it anymore…

Sorry, but you don’t actually like Penelope. 🤷‍♀️

[luciuscodedswedeboy]

Izzy wanting to save Ed from Stede's incompetence so badly that he works with the English temporarily vs Ed wanting to save Stede from his own incompetence so badly he decides to work for the English indefinitely

[bucksboobs]

I’m the anon from the post before and I understand what you mean! I guess I just took differently when I watched the show. I don’t think Charlie or Nick was upset about Ben being closeted I think they (especially Charlie) we’re just upset how Ben treated Charlie the entire. Also I’m not saying this to be rude or start anything this is just how I saw it:) I think Charlie was angry (as he should) about how Ben treated him through out the relationship they had and not about him being closeted. Because I do believe if Ben just communicated better and treated him better and didn’t treat Charlie the way he did it could’ve worked out. I’m just saying that I didn’t see them bashing Ben for being closeted only bashing him for treating Charlie the way he did without acknowledging how it felt for him.

Yeah I don't think Charlie or Nick is mad about Ben being closeted but weirdly I think the narrative is and that's what irks me. All his issues and bad behaviors are because he's closeted (you said yourself that it's because he's closeted that he treats Charlie the way he does) but the story doesn't seem interested in exploring that so much as punishing him for it by having both Imogen and Charlie yell at him and then throwing him out of the series before he can improve at all.

And when this show is so renowned for it's love and celebration of queer experiences and identity it will always feel out of place that Ben was left out in the dust seemingly because he and his experiences were too complex.

[dontstandmedown]

Just started watching hannibal and i dont see what this guy is doing wrong. as far as i can tell he's just a gay man who loves to cook fancy meals for his friends

[boypussydilf]

i get why people would take this perspective since at the time everyone thought it was The End Of Adventure Time Forever And This Is Where Everyone’s Stories End. Forever but in retrospect its kind of so funny that after CAWM there were ppl like….. “wtf so now simons just Cured just like that and now he’s just normal :/“ Why would you think that, though. not having curse induced insanity anymore isn’t gonna change the fact that he survived a nuclear apocalypse. his last lines of dialogue in adventure time are him on the ground sobbing over betty

[theodore-sallis]

“Terror Stalks the Everglades!” Astonishing Tales (Vol. 1/1970), #12.

Writers: Roy Thomas and Len Wein; Pencilers: John Buscema, Neal Adams, and John Romita; Inker: Dan Adkins; Letterers: Jon Costa and Sam Rosen

[cannibology]

i think about this a lot. because the thing is, i don’t think either of them are truly to blame for the seals they broke. dean was tortured into submission and had no idea that there could be such massive consequences to giving in; sam was manipulated and deceived and honestly thought what he was doing would stop the apocalypse, not set it in stone. neither of them willingly chose to break a seal, and neither of them had any way of knowing what they were really doing. they were key pawns in a game they didn’t even realize was being played, not active participants in it. and i don’t think you can really blame someone for falling victim to that.

but if you are going to blame sam for his part in it, you also have to blame dean for his. either both of them are responsible for accidentally breaking the most important seals, or neither of them are.

didn't...didn't dean break the first seal? why is everyone on sam's case for being manipulated into killing lilith (which he thought was a good thing bc hey demon dead) but not on dean's case for torturing souls and LIKING it? protect sam winchester oml

[togglesbloggle]

My boyfriend has really vivid, elaborate dreams. He’ll often wake up and talk about some grand narrative- travel, exploration, politics, performances. I’ve always been a little jealous, he can hold really good plots together for them sometimes.

But anyway, this does have a downside; vivid, elaborate dreams make for vivid, elaborate nightmares. I can usually tell when it’s one of those nights, since he grinds his teeth pretty badly.

I was never quite sure what to do when I knew he was having a bad time of it, though the grinding alone was enough to worry me and push me towards intervening. I used to just shake him gently, hope to rouse him just enough to reset the dream or something, but it wasn’t too effective and anyway waking him up all the time isn’t good for rest.

I’m rather proud of the strategy I eventually settled on: gently, so as not to wake him up, I’d lay one arm across his hands, wrapping his fingers around me so that he was holding on. Nightmares being nightmares, I can usually count on a pretty tight grip when this happens.

It may seem a little odd, but consider that holding on to something with both hands is typically a very agentic frame of mind. We hold on to things that give us power, in one way or another, and possessing objects often makes us feel powerful in some respects. That has consequences, even for a dreaming mind.

I knew it was working when he woke up rather mystified from one such dream, and told me that he’d been running through the caverns of some dungeon or cave system, pursued by monsters, but then all of a sudden he was holding a giant anime sword and fought them off instead. So I got to be a sword for him that night, I was delighted.

I don’t usually get to know exactly what happened, since even for a very vivid dreamer like Ritter, nine tenths of these things get forgotten. But I know I’ve been things like door handles, steering wheels, stuff like that. And even when I don’t know what I am to him, he doesn’t grind his teeth nearly as much- the sleep is deeper and more peaceful, so I get plenty of feedback that it’s working.

It’s such a perfect encapsulation of love in microcosm, isn’t it? No matter how much you mean to them, and how much they mean to you, the gap between two conscious lives is fundamentally separating you. But fundamental does not mean insurmountable. There’s this whole world in him, full of dreams and perspectives that I’ll never truly experience. But I will be a part of those worlds all the same, finding little ways here and there to make sure that the dreams of me make him a better, stronger, and happier person.

Or at least, so one hopes. It’s a difficult challenge, and things often go awry. But usually you get at least a little lucky.

[v-arbellanaris]

one of my favourite parts of dai, which i don't usually speak about, is when you get to halamshiral, and they announce the inquisitor. at least half my inquisitors recruit the mages as free allies of the inquisition, and yet at halamshiral, the inquisitor is credited as vanquisher of the rebel mages, crusher of the vile apostates of the mage underground. sera says 'he's so full of it! that's not how it went.' and it's vivienne who says 'remember to smile. this is all for show, my dear.'

this, amongst many moments, really encapsulates the heart of the story inquisition is trying to tell, and there's a hundred little moments that build towards this story. i have talked before on this blog about the original purpose of the inquisition, in-world, which was both to bring the mages back under chantry control and, if necessary, to recreate a loyal templar order. that is explicitly the context in which the herald is brought into as a character - that is the 'problem' they are to address, the same way the warden's narrative problem is posed as 'there is a blight that needs to be stopped' and hawke's problem is posed, interestingly in a dual-layer kind of way which is both 'i need to keep my family safe and secure' and 'how did we get to this [gestures at the aftermath of da2]?'. the narrative then goes ahead to fill in that story. and even in these stories, throughout, there are so many things building up to the narrative beats in inquisition. everything from the portrayal of the grey wardens as a heroic force in dao and how quickly the origins goes to show the wide depth of perspectives and feelings you can actually have around being conscripted and how the joining ritual - and jory's death - expose the true heart of the order's utilitarian approach, to loghain's status as the hero of river dane and his role in the rebellion and the man he actually is under that mythos, to the entire narrative of da2 being framed around this "champion" who the chantry is painting as a deliberate saboteur and conspirator (with the grey wardens) to bring the chantry and the circles down, to the ameridan reveal in jaws of hakkon, and the evanuris reveal in trespasser. there is so much story and deconstruction throughout the series of the 'chosen one' narratives - each story's protagonist has been a "chosen one" who was never really chosen, survived through chance, and shouldered responsibility for a wide variety of reasons. and their actions become legends and myths that consume any trace of who they really were. and this culminates in an extreme way in dai, because the role of the herald - which is who your pc is before they're the inquisitor - has religious significance, and in-world, andrastianism is the most dominant religion. and the religion is SO culturally pervasive, to the extent there are no governing bodies in the entirety of thedas are secular, and most are andrastian-aligned. even orzammar's belief in paragons and the stone is aligned to a religion, even if it's not andrastianism - atheism and secularism is something entirely unthinkable within a thedosian society. so of course the impact of the herald of andraste is different to the hero of ferelden or the champion of kirkwall.

but i think it's disingenous and outright insulting to insist that this was done well, or with finesse, or that the narrative tools used to convey these themes should somehow be overlooked in light of the mere presence of The Theme in the Narrative. i've spoken before on how often the writing in dai doesn't want you to think - it removes the options to argue, to present you with a statement that is The Objective Truth, as though if enough of your companions repeat the statement, it will become true. and i, myself, and plenty of people in the fandom - particularly people of colour - have been vocal about the implications around the framing of these Objective Truths, when you consider the real life analogues that these Truths are drawn from, by bioware's own admittance. that's not even touching the inherent problems with the narrative push of "imperialism is better than chaos". therefore, i cannot and do not understand responses to criticisms of dai that essentially come back around to "well, you have to understand that the dai pc is not written to be a leftist, they're written to be a centrist" - inquisition, especially, rewards conservatism specifically, as a first point. as a second point, why would having an option to have a pc with leftist or progressive views - not just progressive for thedas, but progressive according to modern values - take away from either the deconstruction of chosen one narratives or the idea of losing your identity that's pervasive throughout dragon age as a whole?

i have spoken to the blank-slate feeling to the inquisitor as a deliberate writing choice, one that people suggest is actually feeding into the themes of dai, but i argue that it's actually a deliberate writing choice so that new players come in without any opinions or experiences of the world at all, and thus become more primed to accept Objective Truths from the companions. thus, criticisms -- certainly mine are -- around the lack of options to argue with your companions stems not from wanting to be right, but from being allowed to have a different opinion. how does having a different opinion to what's publicly acceptable, or desirable, actually not enhance the themes of identity loss in dai?

yes, you cannot decide that your warden does not become a warden - but you live through the experience of becoming a warden, to show why it's necessary. you are allowed to have complicated opinions about being a warden, and act based on those opinions. yes, you cannot choose to not play as hawke, but you can choose exactly what kind of hawke you want to play - someone pro-templar, or pro-mage, or someone who starts out at one end and comes out of it the other end, someone who values family or money or status and prestige, someone who is funny or diplomatic or violent. you have a choice. and when the inquisitor doesn't have any background at all, there is no justification for why the inquisitor needs to be a centrist, or why they would be one. my circle mage pc could have been part of the rebellion. my cadash could have been someone kicked out of orzammar as a child or someone who lived in dust town before they got to the surface. the lack of backstory for the inquisitor, similar to the warden or hawke, actively weakens the story - how do you write a story about someone losing their personal identity to their growing myth/legend, when there's literally nothing that is ever establishing what they've lost? how do you write a story about someone losing their personal identity, or being subsumed by their role, when there's nothing to indicate their personhood? how much more jarring would it have been to have been proudly and loudly and unapologetically pro-mage and pro-rebellion the entire game, only to get to halamshiral and be called vanquisher of the rebel mages? all of your personal politics and values disappearing and smoothed over in such a visibly visceral way? how much more gutting would it have been to have these values, and speak to them, and argue for them articulately, and still never be able to change your companions' minds, instead of constantly being put in a position where your companions get the last word in on absolutely everything, right down to arguments about slavery with dorian? how much more intense would it have been to have had a wide array of options in dealing with main quests and situations, only to have it boiled down to one thing or one of two decisions, with all the complexities stripped from it? how can you say that being forced to be centrist as the pc is central to the story being told, and not something that actively hampers the themes dai is trying to draw on?

i especially don't know how people can insist to overlook how - as in the methods chosen here - bioware's writing team in dai pushes the deconstruction of the 'chosen one' narrative that is present throughout dragon age. inquisition choses to do this by doubling down and retconning and two-sidesing every single complexity under the sun - from suggesting mages oppressed themselves by rebelling/not every mage even wanted to be free of the circle (while offering limited voices otherwise, and making sure to clarify the voices calling for mage freedom are Evil and Bad), to blaming the dalish for being slaughtered by the exalted marches in the dales, right through to the decision to make ameridan a dalish elf and yes even the decisions made around the writing for the evanuris. and we have to be clear about it, that if the overarching themes of dragon age are deliberate, then this was also a deliberate writing choice, to further emphasise the idea that history is written by the victors, that stories warp and change over time, etc etc. the series' successes in storytelling have been around the subjectivity of absolutely everything; there is no objective truth in dragon age, there is something that happened, and then there is 50 different opinions about it. the codex entries are not objective truth, they're biased reportings from people with agendas and pre-existing beliefs and notions. you can live through the battle of ostagar, and there are still 50 different perspectives on it, and all of them valid from that person's standpoint. inquisition takes a hard swerve from this, to insist on Objective Truths, not because it was the best way to make their point - they've been making their point with subtler storytelling for years - but because it's lazy, racist, colonialist writing. and worse, still, is that this writing is then forced as Objective Truths to you, the player character, with no way to argue even when you have the knowledge, or your pc could reasonably be expected to have the knowledge to counter this information, or to even argue about the interpretation of the "Evidence" you find of these Objective Truths.

and i suppose, if it's not your stories and histories being co-opted, it's easy enough to say having those choices don't matter to the overarching theme. i suppose, if it's not your religions or cultures being borrowed and frankenstein'd into this fictional world and the religion and culture you do identify with are primarily portrayed as inherently correct and superior in a way you were never taught to question, it can seem like questioning those beliefs and opinions in your companions and in npcs is a waste of effort. it's not, but i can see how it might feel that way.

inquisition itself, as a game, does not simply deliver a theme - the narrative tools used to deliver that theme throughout the story are frankly abhorrent. on top of that, key decisions in the plot have little to no immediate, serious consequences (for example, siding with the mages or templars only really has narrative consequences for who you face at fall of haven and in the temple of mythal; there are almost no consequences for kicking the wardens out of orlais; etc etc). companion character quests revolving around whether or not to change and strive for better, or to stay with their old regressive patterns have absolutely no narrative consequences because the world re-sets to status quo. 2/3rds of your choice for divine essentially reinstate the old systems, and only one (vivienne) actually makes any systemic changes to those systems, and the game mechanic itself is incredibly slanted towards choosing the divine that brings everything back to "normal". all following mentions of the media neatly dodge the question of whether you have made any lasting change at all. all to push the narrative that change isn't really possible, because society will always go back to the status quo. and if you try to challenge that status quo, you will just make things worse, so it's better to just stay as it is. nothing matters, no change is permanent, and anything you try to do, people will warp for their own agenda anyway, because you are not you anymore, you are a caricature people will use to justify the way things are and insist it is how it must continue to be.

which is a stupid hill to die on, if you're going to defend the ways inquisition tells its story. even trick weekes themselves find it a trite and bleak storytelling mechanism. when even bioware itself is going "our next narrative will Not be that" - will even be the opposite of that, that it's bullshit not to try to change things at all - it's as good as an admission that the ball was dropped on that in the previous installment.

anyway, i just think it's actually incredibly disingenuous and insulting to address criticisms around narrative framing and the limitations of character responses and choices in inquisition as if its overlooking the story's themes, or somehow missing the point that has been staring us in the face since origins. we know the themes they intended to convey. that still doesn't mean inquisition satisfactorily delivered. which i frankly think even bioware themselves recognised and are actively trying to do better in for da4.

[susiephone]

wtf is dracula daily?

i’ve seen a couple people ask this question on my posts about it, so i thought i’d go ahead and clear it up here!

ok so, the classic horror novel “dracula” is an epistolary novel - that means it’s told via letters, diary entries, ship logs, and news articles. (technically the term “epistolary novel” refers to works told solely through letters or emails, but many have expanded it to mean any work that is told via in-universe documents, hence why diaries and logs often get included as well. “frankenstein” is another classic example; the whole framing device is robert walton is recounting the story he heard from victor to his sister via letter. a modern example would be “several people are typing,” which is told via slack messages, or “the perks of being a wallflower,” which is told via letters from charlie to his anonymous pen pal, which is functionally more like you’re reading his diary.)

because of the nature of the narrative, we actually know the exact day nearly everything in dracula happens - the letters, news articles, diary entries, etc. are all dated.

“dracula daily” is a substack project where the novel is broken up into parts, with people who are subscribed to the project getting emails every day something in dracula happens - for example, the novel opens with jonathan harker’s journal entry on may 3, so on may 3, subscribers are emailed that entry. the action of dracula takes place from may 3 - november 6, plus an epilogue set some years later. the project started in 2021 (i think), but fucking BLEW UP in 2022, and they’re doing it again this year! lots of us are very excited - especially people like me who fell behind last time.

why not just read the book?

valid! due to some parts of dracula being told out of chronological order, dracula daily does reorder some things. for example, the first section of dracula is told entirely from jonathan harker’s pov, then the second section switches the pov to mina murray. their sections have some overlap in the timeline, so dracula daily jumps back and forth between their perspectives.

if you want to read the book as bram stoker intended, dracula daily may not be for you. but for a lot of people (myself included!), it breaks up a very long text into easily digestible chunks (....mostly. there is one entry that is 10k words), and the fact that it’s a big project means there are a lot of people reading along with you.

i think there’s also something valuable about experience the slow revelation of wtf is going on along with the characters. the book which you might otherwise get through in a few days is stretched out into months of suspense and agony as you wait for the other shoe to drop, and it’s great.

plus, the whiplash between “jonathan harker’s neverending horror” vs “lucy is basically on the bachelorette” that you get in dracula daily is very very funny.

how do i sign up?

right here! and if you sign up and fall behind in the emails, no worries - the dracula daily website posts past entries so you can catch up.

what if i prefer audiobooks?

have i got great news for you!

like i mentioned before, i couldn’t keep up with the emails last year. part of it is that it is much easier for me to focus on an audiobook or keep up with a podcast than it is for me to sit down and read, especially with longer entries.

this year, there is going to be a podcast titled “re: dracula” that was inspired by dracula daily. every episode will be a dracula daily entry, with a full voice cast! (seriously, if you listen to british podcasts, you will recognize some of these names. the magnus archives and wooden overcoats girlies are WINNING.) you can find that here.

there is also a podcast called “cryptic canticles” that has an already-completed audiodrama of dracula that i’m told is also extremely good, and was also broken up by date. you can find that here.

why do i keep hearing about paprika/the boyfriend squad/lizard fashion/cowboys?

you’ll see.

oh god am i gonna hear about this nerd shit for the rest of the year

yes. sorry.

[yourdandelionofthedeathknell]

The Theraprism: Good or bad?

Ya know, i've never been sure how to feel on the Theraprism, as shown in the Book of Bill. This is in large part because we get very little info on it, from any perspective other then BIll's own at least (and he is...Not a reliable narrator). Personally, I see three possible interpretations and I don't know which one is correct. To be clear, I think all of these are fairly valid: 1. Their methods seem insipid, but are actually quite effective. They seem to have been effective in the past (one of Bill's fellow patients is slated for release in the near-future apparently), and the Axolotl (who, while not exactly rich characterization himself, has, generally, been portrayed as wise and benevolent) referred to it as "what [Bill] needs the most", which would be weird if it doesn't have SOME merit. I, myself, honestly prefer this one, because I think it works better with the narrative of the Book of Bill (a book which, generally, does not encourage the reader to sympathize with Bill's plight. Pity, maybe, but the framing is very clearly that he kinda deserves this) and the schadenfreude the reader is encouraged to feel if Bill's hellish afterlife is, largely if not entirely, a self-inflicted one: That it wouldn't be particularly bad if not for his own combo of being unable to accept that he lost, that he shouldn't be allowed to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to anyone he wants, inability to form meaningful bonds with others, and, most of all, his total inability to admit to being wrong. He COULD leave at any time, if he would just actually repent, but...He's Bill, so...He won't. It just works best for me if his hell is largely self-inflicted. 2. They are harmful, possibly deliberately. This does have a fair bit of support textually. Mandatory therapy is already a pretty major ethical grey area at best (a major tenant of modern psychotherapy is that you can't make someone change unless they take the first step), they definitely engage in toxic positivity, and, of course, the "Solitary Wellness Void" is...Solitary confinement, which is a practice most modern medical institutions oppose and consider to be psychological torture. So, fair bit of support for this. 3. This is what I think was probably Alex's intent: They're a bunch of oblivious obnoxiously happy morons (as Bill himself would probably describe them) whose attempts to treat eons-old eldritch horror bad guys with puppet shows and arts and crafts is meant to be amusingly-inept rather then actively malicious, and whose effectiveness (such as it is) is down to having literally eternity to try. Kinda like what Mabel might do to rehabilitate someone. To use an analogy, think Charlie Morningstar from Hazbin, at least in the first couple episodes, where the fact that she's treating adult criminals like misbehaving children is the joke and is meant to indicate incompetence rather than malice. I get that isn't that much different from the proceeding (except in terms of "how seriously are we supposed to take this"), but still. I think all three of these have support, and, to be clear, I go with the first one not because I think it's the most supported (might be the least), but because it jives most with how I think about BIll's narrative IE as a character we're meant to, at best, pity, but not really sympathize with. I think the intent is "Bill is suffering a karmic self-inflicted punishment after all the pain and suffering he's caused", not "Bill is being medically abused and we should feel bad for him". The Book of Bill does invite readers to sympathize with Bill occasionally, but mostly past Bill, not current Bill. All viewpoints are valid, this is just trying to organized some thoughts on the subject. I sincerely hope I haven't said anything harmful here. Uh, cards on the table, I am neurodivergent, but i've never had therapy, forcefully or otherwise (although I did have an irrational fear of the possibility of institutionalization for a bit), so i'm sorta going off vibes here, sorry to say. If I said anything insensitive here, I apologize.

[kasienda]

Why I love Marinette Dupain Cheng

So, I just watched the London Special and I have feelings!!

I want to preface this by saying that I very much didn't resonate with the second half of season five for a lot of different reasons, but that the special really worked for me, gave me what I needed to get to a place to be excited about the potential of season six.

Marinette is a 14 year old superhero who is fundamentally a good person. She tries to do right by others, and when she realizes that she's done harm she genuinely tries to fix it. Now, her character is often portrayed as someone with ADHD. She is subject to tunnel vision, hyperfixating, anxiety spirals, and not always being great at taking other perspectives into account. She's never been good at anticipating how her actions and choices might hurt someone else.

And I LOVE that about her!!!

You know who else is not great about taking other people's perspectives? Fourteen year olds!! Developmentally, they're LEARNING THIS AT THIS AGE!! They're also LEARNING to make decisions and accept responsibility. And they are NOT good at it!! Take it from someone who works with fifteen years olds DAILY!! Even the most "good" well behaved teenager does and says thoughtless harmful things that hurt others sometimes in excruciating ways. And you ask them, "What were you thinking?" after it's blown up in their face and the answer is ALWAYS, "I don't know" OR "I wasn't thinking."

Developmentally, middle school is about fitting in. It is not easy for kids at this age to stand up for what is right, to make decisions that are healthy, to communicate in healthy ways. Marinette's whole character is about learning to do that! And to showcase that you have to show her making mistakes, sometimes even big ones, and learning to take responsibility for those choices.

Marinette salt hurts me so much because the salt seems to paint her at this malicious manipulative girl who wants to control Adrien and the world on whole. That she's malicious in the choices that she's made.

Meanwhile, the narrative is not framing her as in the right when she makes these choices. Kagami told her she disagreed in almost the first scene. Nathalie told her it was time to tell the truth. Throughout the whole special, it's obvious how much the choice she made is weighing on her, how much she's wondering if this was right. She seems to know on some level that it isn't.

THAT IS SO RELATABLE!!!

Have you ever lied to a friend or to your parents? And then, realized huh, I probably shouldn't have done that, but now you're in too deep and don't know how to take it back? Have you ever NOT told someone about a hard truth about themselves or about you because you didn't want to hurt their feelings, and then have to watch as they get hurt or rejected again and again because they just don't realize what the problem is??? Or confronted with someone around you who has lost a lot and just not sure at all what to do in the face of all that? And then to be given the choice to maybe ease the hurt of that loss with a lie? You think you WOULDN'T at least CONSIDER doing that for someone you love??

Do I think it will bite her in the butt? YES!! AND I AM HERE TO SEE IT!

Nathalie tells Marinette they should tell the truth. And Marinette's like, "but you'll go to jail." And Nathalie nods, accepting this. "But then Adrien will be alone." And Nathalie responds with "he'll have you."

DO YOU KNOW HOW TERRIFYING THAT WOULD BE TO HER??

If she does tell the truth, Adrien DOES lose Nathalie. That would hurt him too. Adrien DOES have to deal with the backlash of being Hawkmoth's son both inside his own head and with the world at large. And maybe in the long term, that would be the better choice. But how many of us choose what's better in the long term??? (THE ANSWER HERE IS ALMOST ZERO! I DON'T CARE HOW OLD YOU ARE!)

Bunnyx tells her there will consequences good and bad to every decision she makes. And what matters is how she faces the consequences. How she tries to take responsibility for them in the future.

Marinette is not trying to hurt Adrien here. She's not trying to manipulate or control him. It also doesn't mean she thinks what Gabriel did was right or that she condones his actions. It certainly doesn't mean she's okay with abuse. Everyone saying that she is has the benefit of the global perspective of knowing everything in the show! Marinette does NOT have that perspective.

Does that mean she isn't causing harm? No! She IS probably causing harm here. As so many of us do unintentionally, or sometimes even knowing that we're doing it because doing something else feels impossible to face in that moment.

And when the truth comes out, and I do think Gabriel's identity will come out (I'm less confident about the senti reveal, but that's more because they're literally not allowed to say the words), Adrien is going to have a LOT to work through. But the thing about Adrien, that all of his defenders seem to misunderstand, is that HE IS FORGIVING! If she explains it all to him, he will be angry and maybe hurt, but he is also going to be the first to understand. He's been the one right there next to her with a front row seat to all the pressures she had to face often completely on her own. I think she will be way more angry and hard on herself than he will be on her. That's kinda who his character is. He's NOT VENGEFUL.

This whole show from the beginning has been about characters making mistakes, sometimes learning from them, and being forgiven for them!! And it's the FORGIVENESS AND UNDERSTANDING given to each other after the fact that has brought the characters together time and time again. Watch origins and look at the class dynamic. Then watch guilt trip. The class has come together in a way they absolutely were not in the beginning! Because they have gotten to know each other and forgave each other. Watch Alya apologize to Marinette for telling Nino about still being the fox, and watch Marinette smile and say she knows what it feels like to need to share your secret with your best friend! Watch Ladybug ask Chat Noir if he understands the weight of a secret, and have him dryly agree that he is familiar with the feeling.

They are all flawed characters who make mistakes, who do things that hurt each other even when they're are trying SO HARD to do the opposite, and that's why I love them!!

I like characters making mistakes! I like there to be conflict in my stories.

And what I love about miraculous is that so far, the resolution to conflicts has always been one of listening to each other, and coming to a place of understanding and forgiveness.

[the-littlest-goblin]

Something that's stuck with me from the Arch Heart's appearance, which highlights a major underpinning of my frustration with C3, is the "Big Doors don't work" comment.

In what way exactly is the Big Door not working?

The purpose of the Divine Gate was to mitigate the gods exerting undo influence on mortal affairs, and according to everything we've seen in all 3 campaigns up to this point, this was a demonstrable success: the Calamity ended, and despite multiple potentially world-ending catastrophes cropping up since then, it has been up to mortals to deal with these threats. They've often done so with divine aid, but I fail to see how that's overreaching on the gods' part when accepting said aid is still dependent on mortal choice.*

Part of the Arch Heart's reasoning for wanting to "let go" is, as I understand it, because mortals continue to rebel against and resent the gods even from behind the Divine Gate. Which, yes they do, but like... the customer is not always right. Not every complaint needs to be catered to, especially the ones based on faulty postulates.

I get that this is not how the Arch Heart is thinking about it; my issue is not with the roleplay of individual characters, but with the narrative whole and the sheer amount of time it has spent, both in the text and extra-textual framing, sincerely entertaining the base axioms of an argument that is so poorly constructed Ludinus wouldn't make it past round one of a middle school debate club. None of the anti-god arguments have given any tangible evidence for the claim that the gods are an oppressive force or that Exandria would be better off without them that is not either:

A. Aeor, which was pre-Divine Gate and in fact the catalyst for the gods to pull back on interfering with mortal affairs, and therefore not all that pertinent to the current status quo;

or B. an event or action that, while it may be done in the name of the gods (e.g. Hearthdell) or directly encouraged by a god (e.g. Opal and the Crown) is nonetheless still contingent on mortals making choices, and therefore not a convincing argument that the gods are infringing on free will,** nor that removing them would prevent these types of situations.

An ongoing motif of C3 has been showing perspectives which challenge the prevailing narrative about the gods as established within Exandria's lore to this point. As a story enjoyer, I normally would eat up this sort of reversal—I love a metatextual play with in-universe narratives. But to do so convincingly requires more substance than a handful of characters going 'Trust me bro.' I'm going to need to see some peer-reviewed studies on Exandrian metaphysics before I take Ludinus "17 ulterior motives stacked in a wizard robe" Da'leth's word over what I've seen with my own brain over thousands of hours worth of game play.

If the message of the narrative is telling me to question the diegetic information it presents, then I am going to do just that. So far every argument that the gods do more harm than good for Exandria has been rampant citationless behavior. I find it baffling and borderline infuriating that we're approaching the denouement of this campaign and I still have yet to see evidence that the core conflict of the story, the central debate which has plagued every in-game and fandom discussion for a year now, is based on an actual problem. Like, at all.

*If you think Vax did not exercise his own agency and free will in every step of becoming Champion of the Matron, you are simply wrong.

**For real, we know there are magical means of straight-up mind control in Exandria. Like, you don't have to approve of it, but the gods engaging in standard issue verbal manipulation does not constitute a violation of free will, and it certainly doesn't make the argument that they are so immeasurably more powerful than mortals that they should not be allowed to exist.

[dynamic-swap-au-archive]

just for fun, here's all of the gay parts of 2d's private journal, aka the official lyric booklet for the gorillaz album "The Now Now" (written in character from 2d's perspective)

1: humility's pages, featuring a page with a messy heart and scribbled and underlined words that read "see the state I'm in." as well as the opposite page underlining "I don't want this isolation" and adding the additional line "I see the state of you now."

2: the page between hollywood and kansas, that has "my soul" written in one corner and a picture of murdoc with his face scribbled out in the other

3: the pages for kansas: one repeating the text "Am I incapable of healing the memory of my fall from grace in your heart," and the other scratching out "I don't want to cry" to replace it with "I'm not gonna cry"

4: the page between idaho and lake zurich, featuring the word "selfish" in one corner and a picture of murdoc's face scribbled out and (seemingly) surrounded by hearts in the other

5: the page for magic city having text that reads "About us? About you!"

6: the pages for fireflies: one modifying the lyrics to read "Sometimes I follow a firefly; He takes me into the night baby," and the other page having a note that reads "you = are/were = everpresent"

7: pages in the break between lyrics that feature a torn free murdoc sticker, and a note in the corner that reads "where have you gone"

8: pages in the break between lyrics with notes that read "you gotta have fate" and "I'm sorry too"

9: the page for souk eye with a doodle of two people in a car on the road and (what appears to be) a robot shark (both reminiscent of the stylo music video, referencing murdoc and 2d being in the front seat of the car, and the car later turning into a robot shark at the end), and notes emphasizing the lines "I will always think of you" and "I'm a renagade"

Additional Notes about the album and surrounding media !

1: the souk eye live visual. these were the visuals created for the song, intended to be projected during concerts. the live visuals for souk eye heavily feature footage of murdoc (from phase 3, 4, and 5). both calling back to phase 3 (like the book had done) And seemingly stitching together a narrative of murdoc breaking out of prison (interspersing footage of murdoc driving from a phase 4 commercial with police chase footage)

here's a fan recreation of the visuals:

2: both interviews and the free murdoc chat confirmed that the album was written (by 2d) About murdoc, and most probably because of his incarceration

3: pages from 2d's private journal being scattered on a desk in murdoc's winnebego. particularly "I am an island" and what appears to be the modified lyrics for firefly (featuring "he"). likewise, murdoc has appeared to have framed 2d's booty shorts from the humility mv and hung them up on his wall.

Bonus: my playlist of visuals for the now now