#he was already shitty in s2 but it was more clear he was just emotionally unintelligent

[sarasade]

On Claudia, Viren, Aaravos & Claudia's Character Arc

This post is mostly about Claudia's character development or should I say character deterioration.

It's highly likely that Callum will be the one to take down Aaravos- like it all goes back to Harrow's letter in s2 and chains of history and the themes of free will vs destiny and such. Aaravos possessing Callum is all about that. He's literally taking control of Callum's faith. There is clear antagonism there that's in a direct conflict with who Callum is.

But at the same time Claudia is the one who's got the biggest personal beef with Aaravos. He exploited her grief, manipulated her and used her father to accomplish his own goals. If Aaravos didn't exist Claudia wouldn't have spent two years of her life in a complete stagnation waiting for her dad to come back from the dead instead of moving on. It seems like Aaravos has been molding Claudia into his personal minion through dark magic during the time skip as well.

Taking this into account it would be really satisfying to see Claudia snap out of it and take her revenge. Characters having a personal connection to the villain always makes a story's climax more gripping. More personal the better! And everything between Aaravos and Claudia is VERY personal.

That's why Viren worked so well as a foil to Callum and Ezran in s 1-3. Especially Ezran whose rightful place as the king he tried to take. He was basically their shitty, power hungry uncle who turned against them. Side note but if Viren is still alive I hope he makes a return as Ezran's foil.

Claudia helping to take down Aaravos would be emotionally satisfying. All the elements for that are already there. Of course Claudia should come to some kind of realisation about the way she's been used by Aaravos before she can take that turn. I doubt the show's got the time for that but it's an interesting possibility to think about.

I really like how the plot around Aaravos manipulating Claudia is done. Even Claudia's own father didn't do anything to prevent it from happening although all the signs of Aaravos having sinister plans for Claudia were there from the beginning: Aaravos calling Claudia "an asset" and encouraging Viren to lie to her in s3 therefore enabling Viren's worst impulses while also using them to his benefit. It's SO EVIL (and I love it). Viren isn't that much better since he always had some kind of excuse to ignore the red flags. At this point of TDP's run I'm convinced that Runaan's "Faith worse than death" line about Aaravos' mirror is finally paying off. It means that the consequences of Viren's actions have hurt Claudia, the only person Viren loves unconditionally, in an unfathomable way.

I think Claudia's arc is relatively subtle and very well done. It balances between Claudia being a victim of manipulation and neglect while also giving her agency to influence the plot as a whole. My only complaint is that Lost Child short story should have been implemented in the show itself and not just be extra material. I have some other grievances but those are mostly fandom related.

How some fans, especially in YouTube reviews, talk about Claudia's downfall like it was inevitable because she's always been fucked up or talking about how "trauma isn't an excuse for bad behaviour" is strange to me. Like, yeah, it isn't an excuse but it's simply just bad media analysis to instantly jump into condemning Claudia's actions, like she's a real person who uses trauma as an excuse to hurt other real people, instead of seeing it in the terms of a character study. Claudia clearly uses trauma to convince herself that what she's doing is right but never tries to manipulate anyone else by using it as an excuse. Think about her and Terry for example: she usually refuses Terry's help instead of trying to garner sympathy from him. This character trait is one of the many reasons why she felt obligated to keep her family together as well. She's extremely stubborn and not very self-conscious about her trauma brain but she does understand why others would see her actions as objectionable. I think this character type (usually a woman) has been given the playful nickname "trauma bitch" in the internet lexicon. Anyway god forbid if we actually empathise, reflect on and engage with unpleasant or problematic characters instead of instantly condemning them.

TDP is about how people can always CHOOSE a different path. Viren's dark magic hallucination in season 5 stated this very clearly.

In Claudia's case it's more interesting to think about WHY she DOESN'T choose differently. That's where all the meat of her character writing lies.

Claudia's arc is what happens when the desperate actions of someone motivated by trauma around abandonment are taken to their logical conclusion in this fantasy setting. It's a fictional story, it has metaphors and shit. Fantasy genre has used necromancy and extending one's life by magical means as a story element to explore humanity's relationship to death many times. The metaphor for loss and regret basically writes itself. Ursula Le Guin has used this trope in The Earthsea books, Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn has done it etc. Everything can't be a one to one comparison to real life (trauma rarely makes you want to kill your friends with dark magic irl. idk that's just me though) and there needs to be a level of abstraction involved in a fantasy story. Abstraction and metaphor, paradoxically, can reveal a greater truth about the world. (I'm probably accidentally quoting someone here but can't remember who.)

Anyway the rest is great. When you think of it all for a moment it's pretty fucked up how Claudia has been used by Aaravos. It's not some tiny part of Caludia's story. It IS her story. And Viren set that norm for her. Viren too has abused Claudia's trust. It's a complex subject and probably requires its own post since Viren, Soren and Claudia's situation reflects some pretty realistic dynamics real life troubled families have. That's why the characters compliment each other's stories so well. Viren is a more realistic character after all when Aaravos is more over the top and symbolic and less of a real person. Aaravos is one of those villains who embodies the opposing ideology of the heros. We (still) don't know almost anything personal about him so he matters mostly in relation to other characters.

Thanks for reading this Claudia propaganda! I've had so many of these in the drafts. Anyway TL;DR

[storiesbeyondthestars]

So it's pretty obvious that Keith was lying during the Feud about why he chose Lance... I've rewatched that episode countless times, but something I recently noticed is that just the episode prior, when Keith leaves to help Axca, it's Lance who he tells to "keep the team together." Not Shiro, who's literally there and had been the leader for how many seasons before that. And not Allura, who also notably has lead the team in the past. He tells Lance. And I think this is a HUGE indicator (1/2)

(2/2) about how Keith really views Lance. He might not say it out loud b/c he's such a disaster gay, but he shows it through the responsibilities and unwavering trust he shows Lance, and I think that's so freaking amazing because THIS is exactly what Lance needs -- he needs to be shown that he has a place on the team, that he matters, that he's not just a boy from Cuba... and Keith has been trying to do that. He left the team so Lance could stay in Red, he told Lance to lead when he went (2/3)

(3/3) uh I lost my place because my internet decided to be a little poopyhead but um basically what I was saying was that Keith left so Lance could have a place on the team, trusted Lance to lead, and didn't even use his insecurities against him when he was going space mad even when Lance told him to drift off by himself. He CARES so much about Lance, and chose him because he believes in him and his capabilities. So yeah, anyway, k i c k

When S6 aired, a lot of people flipped out saying that Keith and Lance were back to how they acted around one another in S2. I disagreed with that then, and I disagree with that in S7. On a team level, they jumped right back to where they were in S3. 

Without a doubt, Keith trusts Lance with the team. He has full confidence and faith in his abilities to make decisions that benefit others, to lead. In fact, it probably never once occurred to Keith to ask Shiro or Allura. Before Keith went with the BoM, Lance was like his co-leader. They worked as a great team before Keith started self-sabotaging, as he does. 

I don’t think Keith not saying ‘I trust you’ out loud to Lance, or ‘you’re a good leader’ has anything to do with caring about him. I think it just genuinely didn’t occur to him to be vocal about it. Keith is a man of action, and he’s an awkward shit with words but he’s trying and getting so much better at it. 

We actually see him trying with Hunk when he approached him knowing that Hunk was in a very bad mental space. It was very clear that Keith was out of his element, but approaching Hunk first? That’s so much easier to him than Lance or Allura (and I think he desperately needs to communicate with both). Hunk already proved just a couple episodes before that if Keith fucked up and flipped out, he wasn’t going to hold it against him or anything. It’s easy for him to approach Hunk first. 

Back to Lance though - you’re right that Keith trusting him, listening to him, is exactly what he needed. It’s not told to us via someone saying ‘I’m glad someone’s listening to me’ or so on, because that’s not how it works in television. We’re shown it. Lance isn’t questioning himself. He’s not being yelled at. It leads him to sharing. In fact, the show went out of the way to show us that Keith listens to Lance via the passengers in each lion. He wanted Kosmo with him - Lance put Kosmo with Allura. In fact, Lance probably went a little rampant because someone’s listening to him and trusting him. 

There is absolutely no doubt that Keith cares about Lance. However, he is being a little more abrasive than he was in S3 for whatever reason, and since he started like that right off the bat when he came back in S6, I still think he saw something when he was on the space whale. Why even include that they could see glimpses of the future if it was only going to be used to show Keith that Shiro was going to attack him some day? Keith pushes people away to protect himself from being hurt. It’s a shitty thing to do, but it explains his actions. It just makes us wonder why he’s doing it. What prompted it?

TL;DR: Keith cares about Lance and trusts him so much, and that’s shown to us in the show, but he’s being emotionally distant and we have yet to see why.

[imaginedmelody]

“Dirk Gently” Season 1 and Todd Brotzman’s back-story

(Meta transplanted from its original home on twitter- yeah, I can write meta on twitter now! The only true advantage to 280-character tweets!)

I’m midway through catching up with Dirk Gently season 2, having marathon-watched Season 1 in the space of a week, and I promised myself that I would hold off on writing meta until I was up to date. But earlier today, I found myself thinking about Todd Brotzman and the backstory he reveals to us, and then I was off and running.

I was struck when I was watching season 1 by the scene where Dirk tells Todd to stop calling himself an asshole, even though he’s just confessed to terrible things—lying about having a (conveniently invisible) disease to get money & avoid responsibilities. Todd is maintaining that his decision to do this means that he’s a horrible excuse for a human being. The thing is, though, I don’t think Todd’s lies are a sign that he’s an inherently bad person. It’s clear to me that Todd was faking an invisible illness to cover up the fact that he’s suffering from a different invisible illness: depression.

Depression has the power to derail someone’s life, and often people don’t even realize that there’s a mental illness causing the issue until it’s so entrenched they’re powerless to stop it. Instead, they think they’re just shitty people. Bad at life, while everyone else manages to get by. That’s what I think happened to Todd. I think he developed depression in college, and when he could no longer cope with the pressures of his schooling, turned to his band as his only relief from the stress he was experiencing. He might not have made the connection that there was something emotionally wrong that caused him to fail; to him, it would have just looked like failure.

So why lie? Why construct this entire fake illness instead of just admit he was struggling? Well, the nasty thing about depression is that it renders you simultaneously helpless and desperately protective of yourself. You cling to whatever makes you feel better, even if it means making decisions that are bad for you—or that disadvantage others. Those of us who struggle with depression understand. We’ve lied to get out of commitments; we’ve made excuses for our inability to function so people don’t realize how inhibited we are. Todd takes it a little further than most, perhaps, but it’s a painfully familiar situation. For Todd, the band is the only thing he can summon up the energy for. So he makes up a convenient, elaborate ruse to get out of what he cannot cope with—and to provide him with the means to survive while avoiding the pressures of his everyday life. 

This is shitty, yes, absolutely, but sometimes with depression it feels like the only thing you can do. The lie is acceptable because it protects him. It makes him feel less helpless, his depression more contained, even as he feels terrible for perpetuating it. Knowing that he’s deceiving people who care about him, neglecting his responsibilities, and draining his family’s finances must weigh on him- but it allows him to keep his eventual emotional collapse at bay for a little while longer. So he keeps it up, assuming he’ll make it right later and no one will be any the wiser. At least, until Amanda gets sick and throws a wrench in his plan.

It's tempting to see Dirk as the turning point in Todd’s recovery, in light of all this. But I’d argue differently. I think the Todd we see in episode 1 is already in the process of recovery. He’s just in the earliest (and hardest) stage. Depression recovery is comprised of two parts: there’s feeling better, and there’s doing better. These stages can happen in either order, but in my experience the “doing” usually comes before the “feeling.” Amanda’s illness is what snaps Todd out of his depression, or at least out of the maladaptive behaviors that characterize it. He realizes his need to help her is greater than his need to protect himself. And because of his deceptions and how they’ve driven his family to the brink of financial ruin, she has nowhere else to turn.

Episode-1 Todd is already functioning, albeit unhappily. He is going to work, earning paychecks, staying in touch with Amanda. This is the first part of recovery: showing up to your life, no matter how much it still hurts. Dirk doesn’t come into the picture and meet fraudulent, manipulative Todd. He appears to Todd when he’s already trying to be a better person. Todd’s life is bad, but arguably it’s about as bad as he could reasonably expect it to be, given the circumstances he’s set in motion. It sucks, but he can get through it if he sticks it out. He’s not at the end of his rope. Well, not YET. 

Dirk does two equal and opposite things. The first is that, in many ways, he ruins Todd’s life. He takes the precarious bridge from mental illness to stability that Todd has been building and he just DEMOLISHES it. But what Todd has lost in depression—what many people with depression lose—is that trust that things will work out. Dirk’s unrelenting faith in the universe is Todd’s salvation. He sees that he can play a part in the grand scheme of things.

That sense of purpose is exactly what Todd needs. And sure, Todd’s a little fanatical now at the beginning of S2 (I’m mid-episode 3 as I write this). And he has an actual illness to deal with now. But his redemption story began before the series even started. And Dirk is the key to its success.