#he's also kind and generous and extremely heroic and very traumatized and just

[itsdrawingmen]

Random Yoosung headcanons:

Has the cutest moles on his face. And body. Just a lot of moles in general.

Sleeps in pyjamas always.

He expresses his feelings exactly the way he feels them, and while they may sound cheesy, that is only because they are really this big and dramatic. He does honest to god react to everything.

More empathetic than is good for him. Always thinks of others' feelings before his own.

He is VERY not squeamish. Like, blood, shit, pus, wounds, bugs, dirt, — you name it, he can handle it. Yes, he's a medical student/medical professional, a veterinarian in the making, which kind of forces him to learn that, but he's just generally not squeamish.

He's also into trying things for himself before forming opinions, even weird things.

At the same time, he's a huge softie, and he can absolutely NOT tolerate any human-inflicted violence. He will not watch horror or (realistic) war movies, he becomes absolutely devastated after treating animals traumatized by humans, and if he sees someone hurting someone else, if he doesn't rush to intervene he beats himself up about it forever.

He's very body positive in that he's completely fine with all the things the human body does (blood, fat, sweat, hair, you name it), but also in that he romanticises everything about his beloved people: he finds their features beautiful because they're theirs.

He always feels like he isn't doing enough. His parents never really told him he was good (they didn't want to spoil him) or supported his emotions (boys don't cry), then came Rika, then RFA, and basically all his life he's been surrounded by people who were better than him. And he just grew up without really feeling like he was good at anything. Because of this, he's dependent on instant gratification and prone to debilitating depressive episodes, and this is partially the same place his self-sacrifice comes from. Raised on heroic media, he feels that the only way for him to ever do something that counts is to sacrifice himself.

He thrives on others' encouragement, and he's always craved it from his parents, but the attention they would give him was mostly nagging and punishments, so he internalized that love is pain, people hurt those they love, and that, most importantly, you need to deserve love.

His learned reaction to danger is fawning. When he is mistreated, his default course of action is to smile and take it. If he does ever get offended, it's on the others' behalf. It takes him a while to unlearn.

Forever remains far from traditional masculinity, and learns to embrace that fact.

Extremely loving and tender in bed. He likes pleasing more than he likes being pleased. In general, lovemaking to him is about emotions and connection, an expression of love, and orgasms are mainly a sweet bonus.

He likes his hair being pet and his scalp being touched. Having his hair washed is an absolutely heavenly experience for him.

Over the years dyeing his hair, he has developed an interest in hairdressing, so he would wash/braid/dye others' hair with pleasure.

[brunhielda]

Here we are again with another analysis/rant/watch through:

Let’s talk OG Pete’s Dragon.

I loved this movie as a kid, and it is so easy to see why. This movie is amazing. Like, not for the time amazing, just in general some great stuff.

Let’s start with the fact that one of the main villains (there are two) are just an abusive family that “adopted” a kid to work him to death. Which is then juxtaposed with the later family (less conventional family, and old man and his adult daughter) who take him in to give him love. They ALSO work a hard job, and he helps, but they all work TOGETHER to build a life.

The Gogans are cartoonish in thier evil, but the things they say and believe and do off screen and anything but. The main character- Pete- is TERRIFIED of them. The portrayal of the main character as an abused kid is very real. He is scared of adults being too close, he takes punishment for things he didn’t do so as not to upset people, and as soon as someone shows him kindness he leaps at getting any kind of affection, being extremely helpful and useful.

Nora is the woman who takes him in- this woman is a study in how to approach scared kids. She always says “if you like” or “if you want” and “we were thinking we might try,” always giving him choices. The one time she puts her foot down is about going to school and explains to him why it is important instead of ordering him about. She is caring and kind, and often reaches out to help him with something or offer affection, but if he shows ANY hesitance, she backs off and acts like it is normal and nothing and moves on to the next thing.

She also takes everything he says seriously. Does she believe the dragon exists? No. But she understands it as an important coping mechanism for a traumatized boy, and behaves as if Elliot, the dragon, is a real being. She defends the dragon in front of other adults, and makes sure the dragon is comfortable out in the cave.

The MOMENT his abusive family shows up she stands between him and them and says “You can’t have him, you don’t love him. Look out, or I’ll take you apart.” Doesn’t matter that legally the boy “belongs” to them, she won’t let him go with them. I love her so damn much.

She is also tied in some of the themes of this movie. Impressive themes for a movie in the 70s. Acceptance for all and letting people live- she sings “There’s room for everyone” a song about being kind to the dragon but honestly about being nice to the new kid. Being a place of safety and hope for those who are struggling- she sings “Candle on the Water.” She is singing it about her fiancé lost at sea, but demonstrated every lyric in her interactions with a lost hurt kid she found wandering the beach. And then of course her methods of interacting with Pete wildly differ from both the Gogans and the local school teacher, highlighting an anti physical discipline theme I was NOT expecting in a 70s film.

Then we have the dragon, Elliot, himself.

Elliot is big, clumsy, and does NOT understand human societies rules- which makes him very relatable for kids watching the film. He often gets himself and Pete into trouble, and yet, he is seen as GOOD, which emphasizes that even kiddos who get in trouble can be good people who do heroic things. Elliot is Kind, Protective, and is always looking to help everyone he meets (even if he doesn’t do it very well 😅). Moreover, his childlike qualities are balanced with a keen understanding of people and thier emotions, making him a great friend to a scared little kid who needs fun and distraction. He is also incredibly unselfish- he spends this entire film trying to find the best life for Pete with good humans, even though it means he will have to say goodbye at the end. Then he has just a touch of dragon magic to help him find just the right thing and be there at just the right time (which is quite the handy plot device).

All of that, honestly, is enough to love this film, but THEN- they added in some of the best comedy actors of the time. 😂

First you have Mickey Rooney as Lampie, who in turns is an over the top cowardly drunk, and an insightful hardworking lighthouse keeper. Honestly, Mickey Rooney is worth watching in anything he is in but he really shines in this flick.

Then we have the comedic duo of Jim Dale as the villainous Dr. Terminus, and Red Buttons as his assistant Hoagy. You would know Dale from the voice on the American audio book of Harry Potter (however you feel about the author, we will not deny his voice work convinced most of us to give reading a shot), and Red Buttons from multiple films with John Wayne (he played the classic comedic best friend).

Dr. Terminus is a mustache twirling, cape wearing con man, and Hoagy his over worked assistant who actually makes it all work. The two of them make up the other villain plot in this film and it is classic vaudville at its finest. I would pay considerable money to have seen those two perform something, anything, live, and this is as good as we can come to it. Their villain song- “Money by the Pound” is all the best of over the top capitalist evils, and lives in my head rent free. I think my sisters and I started to sing this song anytime we found extra change in our pockets. 😂

Of course this means they have at least one scene with Mickey Rooney as Lampie, and for real? Would watch this film just for the scene in which Buttons and Rooney act out drunk adventurers off to look for the Dragon in the scary cave.

What I mean to say is if the sweet and progressive themes weren’t enough to make you watch this film, it also is comedy gold, and you should watch it just for that alone.

From a historical standpoint, the technical aspects of this film are amazing. Elliot the dragon is animated, and much like the chalk world of Mary Poppins, that makes him a wonder. More than interacting with the environment, Pete RIDES him, and Elliot often hauls people about by the scruff of thier neck, employing some impressive wire work. I’m sure that there are tech people out there who can explain better why the techniques here are so freaking impressive, but I know it looks cool, and we can’t replicate it now. The one thing I can appreciate is the way they incorporated the safest position of wire work into how Pete rode on Elliot- at a time when it wasn’t always true, I can tell they were looking out for thier child actor.

My mother told me that this film barely made a blip at the theaters and then mostly faded into obscurity, which is an absolute shame. I honestly think it’s some of Disney’s best work.

[shihalyfie]

Shiramine Nokia, and her role in Cyber Sleuth’s narrative

This one’s on request! Cyber Sleuth is quite the interesting game and a rather landmark entry in the franchise, mainly for being a love letter to the franchise and its long history itself, and for being the franchise’s very first work exclusively aimed at adults, meaning that it can explore different topics that wouldn’t normally be Sunday morning timeslot material, while also being a little more willing to assume that the people playing this are familiar with a lot of older parts of the franchise (not that it’s advisable to have complete lockout, but the game benefits greatly by not needing to assume lockout by default).

One of the ways Cyber Sleuth exhibits its “franchise love letter” status is by starting off the game all the way back at the franchise’s roots, before Digimon Adventure changed the game and everyone’s perception of Digimon and Digimon partnership, when the V-Pet lore was intertwined with Digimon as elements of hard sci-fi. As the game proceeds, the atmosphere slowly starts to resemble the more fantasy-like version of the franchise established by Digimon Adventure and its follower entries -- and that change is represented in none other than Nokia herself.

Before we begin: As anyone who follows my meta work has probably noticed, I generally prefer to have my analyses use tons of references and screenshots so that it’s easy to follow and the evidence is concrete, but Cyber Sleuth is a game, and it’s much harder to get those things without replaying the entire game, so I hope this won’t be too hard to follow despite being mostly text.

Nokia’s background and personality

If we want to apply the producer’s statements on Twitter, Nokia is 17 years old at the time of Cyber Sleuth, and has a backstory of having originally been a shy, bullied child who broke out of her shell thanks to the influence of her cousin (who, of all people, happens to be none other than Date Makiko). The flashback we get with Nokia in chapter 18, however, portrays her as just a fairly cheerful, go-getter child, but (although we only get to see her hair) she’s not quite as “flashy” or in-your-face as the description entails.

A possible hypothesis for rationalizing this all together comes from a what we learn about the process of memory wiping in Cyber Sleuth chapter 14: even if memories are extracted from the person, there’s some kind of residual memory left behind (the producer’s above statement also states that the same thing had even happened to Suedou). In Hacker’s Memory chapter 16, Arata confesses to Ryuji that the first Under Zero incident and Jude's loss to the Knightmon had re-triggered his trauma from having lost Yuugo years prior -- “not the memory, but the feeling.” So in other words, there was some feeling of loss that came after the loss of Yuugo that impacted those involved -- and it’s very possible that this deeply impacted and traumatized Nokia as well.

Assuming we’re still following this line of thought (since, again, this background point wasn’t actually in the game proper), Nokia eventually decided to break out of her shell thanks to Makiko’s influence, and become eccentric and assertive, and thus, the game begins.

While we’re here, I also want to point out that Nokia is also voiced by Han Megumi, possibly the Digimon franchise’s most notorious “promoted fangirl” who freaked out after getting to meet her childhood characters’ voice actors while cast as Airu in the Xros Wars crossover and ended up casted in a handful of major Digimon roles thereafter as a result. Which is not to say that her voice performance wasn’t also absolutely perfect for the bright and aggressive Nokia, but, you know...considering the below analysis, food for thought.

Nokia as a representative of “the conventional franchise”

Cyber Sleuth opens on a world where Digimon are largely seen as hacker programs, and even the hackers themselves only see them as non-sentient programs; there are ones like Chitose who treat them with empathy, but his attitude seems to be kindness towards them in a way not entirely unlike a family would treat a Roomba. Although he doesn’t admit to it at first, Arata himself also comes from this “world” of hackers, and we later learn that Yuuko herself is as well (via her “Yuugo” persona), meaning that, other than the playable protagonist, Nokia is the only “outside-context” person -- a completely ordinary civilian who’s gotten dragged into all of this.

Much like, say, the protagonists of Digimon Adventure.

With this background behind her, once she’s thrown into the world of hackers, she immediately has a “fateful encounter” with Agumon and Gabumon, instantly recognizable as two of the franchise’s most prominent Digimon (and complete with their Adventure voice actors, too). And I do especially bring up Adventure specifically, because while Nokia’s position in the game does end up taking in certain elements that roughly came around that era and possibly slightly predated it (mostly Digimon World and V-Tamer), Agumon and Gabumon weren’t particular mascots of the franchise until Adventure basically blew everything to pieces.

Right off the bat, Nokia does not have a single shred of doubt that Agumon and Gabumon are living beings and should be treated as such (again, much like the protagonists of Digimon Adventure; even Taichi in his “is this a game?” mode never doubted this). And they open up their meeting with this conversation:

Agumon: Umm, who are you? Nokia: It... It can talk?! It's so... so... so adoooooorable! M-M-M-M-My name's Nokia. What're your names? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

And on top of that, Agumon refers to Nokia as having a “familiar” scent. Remember this for later.

Nokia’s second encounter with Agumon and Gabumon in Cyber Sleuth chapter 3 involves her properly partnering herself with Agumon and Gabumon, and learning about the existence of the “Digital World”. Note that, for all intents and purposes, EDEN had been treated like the functional equivalent of the Digital World in this narrative up until this point -- cyberspace with hackers, coming from the network, it’s basically a “digital world” from top to bottom, and yet here Agumon and Gabumon are introducing the concept of a more fantasy-esque incarnation of a digital world. (And, in fact, despite EDEN being right there, many long-time Digimon fans playing this game often complained about how little you get to see the “Digital World” in this game, because of how associated that term is with something more fantasy-like.) So, again: here we have Nokia, who’s forming a partnership with Agumon and Gabumon as equals instead of recruiting them as hacker tools (even the protagonist wasn’t immune to this method), and being indirectly responsible for introducing the more fantasy-like concept of the Digital World that the modern franchise is currently associated with.

Nokia embarks on the conventional shounen anime character arc of starting off cowardly, but eventually learning to have her own inner strength, with her Digimon evolving in accordance to her emotions. And, eventually, in Cyber Sleuth chapter 8, she decides to form her own hacker team, called the “Rebels”. She ostensibly bases it off the old creed of Jude, having heard that they were a team that never caused trouble for others, but we later learn via Arata turning out to have been its former leader, and the even later portrayal in Hacker’s Memory of its spiritual successor Hudie, that this is an extremely rose-colored image of them -- Jude (and Hudie) was not a well-intentioned team by any means, but rather a sort of mercenary group meant to enforce the “freedom” of EDEN, often taking on shady jobs and “punishing” entities they considered to be causing chaos. But in this case, Nokia forms her team under the idea of legitimately fighting for justice and good will -- again, much like a Digimon Adventure protagonist.

In case the metaphor weren’t clear enough, Nokia decides that the members of her group will not be called “hackers”, but “Tamers” -- the same lingo used by the franchise to refer to a human who partners alongside a Digimon to help them get stronger -- and that she wants to promote the idea of humans and Digimon working in tandem (complete with emotional bonding exercises). For this, everyone looks at her weird, and yet her methodology, initially naive as it seems, keeps working, because Nokia’s natural charisma starts bringing people from different places together and making quite the formidable team. Everyone is perplexed by this, but perhaps it’s only natural, because Nokia has just independently invented the modern concept of Digimon partnership in a world where it did not exist. And this is eventually solidified by the Under Zero invasion in Cyber Sleuth chapter 10, in which Omegamon is finally formed (from sheer guts on her part).

Omegamon is yet another symbol of the modern franchise, but it’s important to remember that he hasn’t always been so; even his appearance in V-Tamer was as more of a tactical piece than any kind of game-breaker, but the impact of Our War Game! has led him to constantly make a resurgence in major franchise roles (maybe a little too much these days). However, on top of Nokia basically embodying the modern franchise itself by doing this, Nokia and Arata’s positions are an obvious reference to Our War Game! in particular, being Omegamon and Diablomon Tamers -- but they’re not seen directly fighting each other. In fact, Arata’s partner only ever reaches Diablomon when he’s at the highest point of his morality, so the reference is more ideological; Nokia represents the more idealistic and heroic side of Digimon, whereas Arata represents the more dirty-playing and cynical hard sci-fi side of it (remember that Diablomon himself was rather detached from the fantasy conflict of Adventure, being a mysterious entity that sprouted out of nowhere on the Internet and wreaked havoc). Moreover, Nokia’s usage of Omegamon embodies a theme that’s central to both Our War Game! and Cyber Sleuth itself as a whole -- while most people associate Omegamon with Taichi and Yamato these days, the original method of formation back in Our War Game! came from “bringing people from different places together”. Nokia managed to bring together a formidable army in a place where everyone else in the hacker world was trying to promote a dog-eat-dog philosophy, and the sense of cooperation is arguably making her stronger than anyone else.

(I should also point out that Nokia’s name is, obviously, a reference to the Finnish telephone communications company, and this has a lot of relevance to the game’s theme of connection, along with her phone Digivice...and, also, the method used to bring everyone’s powers together in Our War Game!’s spiritual successor, Diablomon Strikes Back. Feels a bit too on-the-nose here.)

In the second half of the game, when the world starts falling apart due to the Digital World portal opening, Nokia becomes one of most important people holding everything together as Arata goes off the deep end and Yuuko starts fixating on her own personal problems and revenge -- because she’s the one most in tune with treating Digimon as the living beings they are, she’s most active in advocating for them and helping them bond with humans, and and she’s the one making the chaos be a little less chaotic. The second half is basically the more fantasy-esque version of Digimon leaking into the sci-fi, with the sidequests progressively resembling your average Digimon anime monster-of-the-week episode, and holding that all together is Nokia, who becomes a vital figure in maintaining that fellowship by being in tune with the modern franchise’s philosophy.

Through all of this, Nokia ends up taking a role rather similar to a Digimon protagonist, which is highlighted very strongly in Cyber Sleuth chapter 18 when she ends up literally becoming the player character while the main protagonist is out of commission. During that time, Yuuko and Nokia learn the truth of what happened during the EDEN incident eight years prior -- and we also learn that the five children involved had an extremely conventional “first meeting in the Digital World” experience that could have been pulled right out of the first episode of a Digimon anime, with them having a lovely adventure meeting new creatures. And at the center of that “first contact” was none other than Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon themselves:

Agumon: Um... who are you? Nokia: Ahem! I am Nokia! And just who are you? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon’s meeting at the beginning of the game had been an (accidental) reenactment of their first meeting in the Digital World eight years prior -- and, in the flashback, Nokia invites them to go on an “adventure” with them. So in other words, Nokia getting involved in the hacker conflict at the beginning of the game was, unknown to all of them, her attempting to restore that beauty and idealism of the Digimon Adventure-esque philosophy and fun in a world where the Eaters had torn it away and EDEN had turned into a haven of cynicism and hacker battle royale.

In the end, the game’s conflict is only resolved by bringing everyone together; Arata has to be retrieved from the deep end, and Yuuko has to settle her deep-seated personal grievances. Everyone makes a promise to return together, in the sense of making things right and repairing the connections between them that had been cut in that incident. The final battle (momentarily) causes the playable protagonist to literally fall apart, and the one reaching out to them and sending her message to them at the end of the game is none other than Nokia herself -- again, in the absence of the game’s protagonist, Nokia is the one with the closest role, because in the face of the new world going forward, she was the one who contributed most to restoring its idealism.

Ultimately, all of this is especially because Cyber Sleuth works under one of the most terrifying imaginable premises for a fan of a kids’ franchise: “we made an entry for this, but for adults.” Many of us can testify that this kind of premise can go very well, or very badly -- the latter especially in the case of things that decide “taking the opportunity to do things that you can’t do on a Sunday morning kids’ timeslot” means “going out of your way to put edgy violence and sexy things and cynicism just because you can”, or, in other words, looking down condescendingly on its kids’ franchise roots with malice and deciding that something for adults means “more suffering” and not “issues that require more life experience to understand”. The reason the game ended up getting as much acclaim among longtime Digimon fans as it did was that despite being the franchise’s first venture into this territory, it did end up setting itself up as something that took that opportunity to do something new and unique that would have never made it into any of the prior entries (holy hell the doll quest) and yet never gave up on the idealism and themes of connection that make up the franchise at its core, and paid respect to everything that had contributed to all of that while it was at it.

And at the center of that is Shiramine Nokia, who is effectively the spirit of Digimon Adventure, condensed into a single character.

[flying-elliska]

I finished Midnight Mass. Overall, I enjoyed it, even tho much like his last it didn't feel like "real" horror (don't have that much of an issue with this because I am a huge scaredy cat)

On the plus side : really good look at how religious fanaticism/social pressure/the need to believe/fear of death/despair (or a mix of those things) can cause people to warp their perception of reality to convince themselves of what they want to be true ; the true horror of this is both how it enables really bad people to gain influence (like Beverly) and some more complex people with good in them (like the priest) to delude themselves into a horrific spiral of terrible decisions while arguably meaning well/caring a lot. Monster stories reflect cultural anxieties dominant at a certain time, and this is pretty damn obvious in a time where extreme beliefs have caused mass suffering ; this is the true monster of the show. The central concept is a very clever, fresh take on a classic monster, too. The take on faith is very layered and nuanced, it shows both how easily it can be manipulated and distorted, leading to terrifying self delusion, but some of its more positive sides as well. The two Muslim characters, father and son, are two of the most positive, clearly heroic characters in the whole series. On the whole, it's a tragedy, the ending is not a happy one, but it remains very humane, signifying that even in the "end times" acts of courage, kindness and humanity still mean everything. The slow, almost meditative pace, will not be for everyone but it mostly didn't disturb me ; it worked well with the windswept, lonely island, the light saturated skies and grey houses, slowly weathered away as the island dies - to create a liminal vibe, a sort of purgatory, a mix of slow creeping despair, desperation and elegiac peace ; it's very interesting in terms of tone. Also, as somebody raised Catholic-adjacent, I feel it makes really good use of the fucked up nature of a lot of its symbolism. Also, all the performances are great and it has some very attractive people in it.

On the less good side : yeah, so, the slowness and the monologues are absolutely too much in places. It definitely feels like it could have been scarier and more intense but in places it felt like it was working against any tension instead. At times the sentimentality feels kind of overblown and...a bit manipulative ? Like it just pushes it in your face that it wants you to feel EMOTIONS about this in ways that feel a bit forced. Also, Mike Flanagan has very interesting things to say about addiction, trauma, grief, and how to break cycles of despair, but there seems to be this running theme in his stories about ill/mentally ill/traumatized/generally "broken" characters sacrificing themselves or having their deaths romanticized in ways that I find a bit iffy, and makes me a bit uncomfortable - maybe it's the almost sugary tone of the endings after a shit ton of horrifying stuff - this is something I also thought after his other shows, even though I also really enjoyed those (and he has characters like these who also recover and have happy endings so it's not like, glaring). All in all, I liked the characters here, but I didn't get super attached to any of them like I did in Bly Manor (which remains my favorite of his, an unpopular opinion I'm sure) - this show often feels oddly detached from its own characters, they don't seem to be doing much except drifting about and having sad conversations, like they're already ghosts. So the big revelations and moments hit me less hard. Also, there are lesbians but they're a lot less prominent than in Hill House or Bly Manor.

Overall still a nice interesting thing to watch this time of year.

[m4gp13]

I generally try to keep relationshippy type posts more platonic on my blog but ethabaster shippers (or ethaster, as I’ve seen it referred to) y’all gave me content when there was none, this one’s for you babes <3 Also quick sidenote, this ship has extremely limited content in canon (which is to say, NONE) so a lot of this is based on speculation but bear with me because some of them are actually fairly plausible (or at the very least they aren’t explicitly ruled out by canon). Si tight because this may end up being pretty extensive.

The main reason they are shipped is because they are the only two similarly aged demigods in the titan army that we have any information on (including name) and thus have some small chance of meeting however it would be silly to say this is the only reason and - believe it or not - there are some other interesting reasons on why this is shipped. Keep in mind this is the PJO fandom, a fandom that visibly adores the “the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one” trope (have y’all seen how popular Solangelo is ???) and in that respect Ethan and Alabsters personalities are easily compatible. 

I can’t recall a single instance in the books where Ethan is described as smiling; he is usually serious, driven and has very sharp responses to questions or statements he doesn’t like (see: “there is no wrong side”, glaring after being asked about his eye and almost pulling a sword on Percy for questioning his mothers motives and ethics). Alabaster on the other hand, while he is still traumatised from the massacre he recently witnessed, does still make ironic comments, smile and he is described at one point as “happy-go-lucky”. And yes, it is important to note that Ethan was with his enemy and Alabaster was with an ally during pretty much every page we see them in, the fact that Ethan had moments ago been rescued by the people he was snapping at and Alabaster still being somewhat cheery despite the horrors he had only just witnessed suggests it is more of a personality thing rather than a situation thing.  

This beloved trope is of course not the only instance of compatibility between the two. For example, Ethan’s story ended with him giving up the notion of getting revenge on the Olympians like kronos wanted and instead giving his life to pursue and fulfill his original goal of balance. On the contrary, Alabasters story is currently in a state in which vengeance helps keep him going; he sites revenge as the only thing that would make him go anywhere near chb. This sort of balances them out and creates and interesting dynamic and it would be a joy to see them interact after this but considering Ethan’s current predicament I don’t think that’s likely except in fics. (although in this Ethans calmer demeanor would make him the sunshine one and Alabaster with his John Wick revenge plot would be the grumpy one).

They also have a lot in common but not so much that they start looking like mirrors. They are both clearly passionate about their cause, both of them are willing to kill and die for what they believe is right. They both openly express how strongly they feel to the conflict and they didn’t get so far in the army by being apathetic to what everyone around them is fighting for. Alabaster was chosen to lead the demigods into battle and Ethan is definitely a person of note in the army from the things we’ve seen him do (meaning they had a very high chance of meeting during their time in the army). However, Alabaster and Ethan view the army in very different ways. Al clearly sees the army as a heroic force from his “hero’s never die, right?” line while Ethan isn’t so black and white with his world view which we know from his “there is no wrong side” line. This means that they are similar enough to have common interests that they can bond over while still being separate people that can act on their own wishes, desires or simple personalities. (because sometimes it’s nice when characters are characters instead of just existing to serve a ship)

They understand each other. As they were both high ranking members of the titan army with similar goals they will have had similar experiences and therefore know things about each other that most people just can’t; as in, they don’t have the experience necessary to understand them like they understand each other. This is very appealing from an observers perspective because a lot of the time people don’t want grand declarations of love and massive bouquets, they just want someone to know them intimately enough to be truly in love.

They also have a lot of story potential both before and after Ethan’s death. Especially if you consider the fact that Al could have saved Ethan or brought him back as a mistform. People like drama and intentionally or not seek out dramatic things. Ethan and Al’s storys are dramatic enough on their own but when you put them together and then imagine all the things they could have done or could do!!! The spice! The flavour! The DRAMA!!! and the intrigue. They are both very interesting characters that can pique one’s curiosity easily. When people are curious about characters they look more into them, think about them more and in some cases this leads to shipping.

Another reason is simple vibes. Sometimes you just look at some characters and go “yeah bro those guys vibe together” and that’s that. Your ship has been chosen by the Vibes ain’t nothing you can do about it. 

These aren't the only reasons of course but these are the only ones coming to my mind; if you have others please tell me. Now that we’ve got a couple of reasonings of why they’re shipped it’s time to look at their canon interactions. Since there are none you may expect me to skip this part entirely but you underestimate my devotion to both my favourite (platonic and romantic) ship and ✨obsessing over throwaway lines that only exist to give the readers a clearer image of a scene in their head rather than any plot important reasons✨. That’s right fellas it’s over analysis time (as the old saying goes, “if i cannot find homoerotic subtext, I will create it”) !!!

Before we begin, fear not avid lovers of sticking to things explicitly mentioned in the books, my argument is not “On page 228 of my copy of battle of the labyrinth, Ethan is first mentioned by a demigod holding a torch. Alabasters mother is the goddess Hecate and one of Hecate’s symbols is the torch therefore Alabaster is the person who found Ethan and thus the first times both are mentioned is in conjunction with each other which means boyfriends”, although I will admit my mind did have fun spiraling down to that little tidbit.

We know from the son of magic that Alabaster was able to use his magic to protect himself from the Princess Andromeda exploding but we are never given an explanation on how Ethan survived. I have mentioned this theory before and I’m going to say again the idea that Alabaster used the same magic to save Ethan that he used on himself. Alabaster doesn’t mention Ethan when he tells Claymore how he survived but remember he is still traumatized and it is anything but rare for trauma victims to seriously suppress their trauma (for example: almost watching a close companion being blown up right in front you and knowing that you are the only thing standing between them and breaking their toe on the big bad bucket) Of course there are reasons this might not work such as Ethan leaving the main deck to go to the engine room before the ship blows and Alabaster, being a high commanding officer, was likely on the deck when she blew however, Alabaster could have easily given Ethan some kind of magical protection before hand as they were warned of the anti Andromeda plot and will have prepared for any possible outcome. 

Another deadly event that Ethan miraculously survived is the bridge incident. Realistically, do you genuinely believe that an unconscious, minorly wounded kid is going to be able to drag his unconscious body through a massive crowd of tightly packed teenagers, to the other side of a very large bridge and get far enough away from that bridge to be safe from it completely collapsing all by himself ??? We already know Alabaster is powerful enough to survive an explosion of greek fire so a collapsing bridge should be nothing to him, even if he is lugging around his friends limp almost-corpse. Also, if you like the trope of character A lovingly teasing character B then there’s nothing to say Alabaster wasn’t the “nice knowing ya” guy and, If you prefer it when character A ruthlessly defends character B from silly jabs then there’s also nothing to say Alabaster didn’t stomp on the guys foot the second Ethan left. 

Another thing, ya know how Al has a bit of a revenge thing that he might need to tone down ever so slightly? Who better to help with that than a kid whose mum is the goddess of that kind of thing?! And yes, I know Ethan was already dead at that point but also, I don’t care; it can sort itself out. Anyway, I feel like with Nemesis kids it’s less of a “constantly seeking revenge for everything” and more of a “having a deeper understanding of revenge and therefore more able to regulate who does or doesn’t need some vengeance in their life”. It would have been interesting if Ethan survived and sorta coached Al on his feelings and how to deal with them in the least destructive way possible.

Also, as I mentioned before they are both high ranking individuals in the titan army. Al is chosen to lead the demigod forces into battle and Ethan seems to get called on by Kronos for a lot of specific tasks i.e. the sword of Hades, capturing Beckendorf, guarding Prometheus and being with Kronos during what he thought would be his final victory. From this we can assume that they probably worked pretty close together as the only high ranking demigods aside from Luke that we know of. All other important people in the army are titans, monsters or gods. As the only two demigods with such importance they probably gravitated towards each other and bonded over their workloads, goals or other things that people talk about before developing more intimate feelings (I assume but anyone who knows how relationships work please correct me if I’m wrong)

Also, a couple of things I noticed is what drives them is, at surface level, the same thing. They both want the Olympians to back up a bit and allow for the minor deity’s to receive some of the respect that has been with held from them for centuries. However, Al is more deeply motivated by his emotions while Ethan is not so much. Al expresses anger at the gods and disdain, he almost immediately latches on to the closest father figure he can get and gets notably excited when it appears he’s about to win and distraught when he thinks he’s lost. Ethan is motivated less by hatred for the gods but by a less emotionally draining thought of the minor gods deserve respect. He never gets emotionally invested in tasks, even life or death ones, unless attacked with something personal (he was generally apathetic during the parley until Percy started insulting him and his mother).

 This could be due to Al being allowed to openly express emotion while Ethan has been taught to suppress it. What evidence do I have for this? Their mothers. To Nemesis, Ethan is a tool, a means to an end, a “thing” to use so she can get the desired outcome. To her, taking his eye and telling him to join the army was little different from drilling a hole in a board. She took a part of his body as payment so she clearly doesn’t see him as or care that he is his own person with thoughts, feelings and desires of his own. Hecate on the other hand actively acknowledges that her son has his on interests ideas and she wants to see him happy which is a complete U turn from Nemesis. We know that Al ans Hecate have regular enough conversations through dreams but we don’t know if Ethan ever met Nemesis after the eye thing. So we know that Al has contact with a mother that not only supports him but actively uses her powers to improve his life (see Claymore) and Ethan saw his mother once, was presumably traumatized and never saw her again. Big yikes. (Also the reason that Hecate stopped resisting the Olympians was because they threatened her with Al’s life. If Nemesis was the one who chose to resist and Ethan was still alive would she have stopped to keep him alive? I doubt it)

But yeah that’s pretty much all possible character interactions they could have had, the rest is up to our dear old friend, imagination. have fun kids. Also pretty much everything here can be read as platonic sooo.

[hamliet]

Spy Thriller + Murder Mystery + Cooking Show

When asked to describe The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, I can only describe its genre as being exactly as above. it’s as quirky as you’d expect, with genuinely compelling characters, plot twists to shock you, and compassion for every character, no matter how twisted.

I believe TSOMD is based on a danmei novel, and you can see the “bromance” of Tang Fan and Sui Zhou is representative of something more than “just friends.” But, while both Tang Fan and Sui Zhou are excellent characters who each get strong development, the emotional core of the show is hardly either of them. Instead, the third main character, Wang Zhi (based on a real historical figure), steals the show’s heart and soul, undergoing one of the most beautiful, complex arcs I’ve seen in a long time, from scheming utilitarian to kind human. 

I’ll probably write a meta just about Wang Zhi’s arc, but the short version is that he’s based on a real-life eunuch (and eunuchs in imperial China, er, lost more than you’d think) who de facto ran the empire. His interactions with Tang Fan, Sui Zhou, their found family, as well as with the Emperor and the Noble Consort (his unofficial adopted parents) and his righthand man Ding Rong all offer him challenges. 

In general, the show did excellently with the romances, both explicit and subtextual. Tang Fan and Sui Zhou were truly compelling, and seeing them develop together was lovely. Wang Zhi also has a subtextual romance with Ding Rong (it’s barely subtext, and directly parallel to Tang Fan/Sui Zhou multiple times) that is equally compelling. Explicitly, we have Pei Huai and Tang Yu, Lin Chaodong and his fiancee, Princess Gu’an and Wang Xian, the Emperor and Noble Consort, and even some puppy love from Dong’Er and Little Loach. Perhaps the only one the show didn’t sell me on was Duo’Erla and A’lasi.

I quite enjoyed the compassion the show had for mental illnesses and other disorders. It outright condemned people accusing those who suffer from ailments of demonic possession, and while it is set in the 1500s, Pei Huai, a doctor, offers some truly honest, accurate, and kind descriptions of post-traumatic stress disorder, which Sui Zhou suffers from, and autism, which Wang Xian has--and explicitly states, regarding the latter, that it is not an illness. It’s just a different way of thinking and processing. The show’s depiction of PTSD was extremely honest and realistic (and not gratuitous), as was its depiction of autism, and a panic attack. 

The show also donates quite a bit of its time to exploring the past of its villains, humanizing them. Even the most disgusting ones, whom I loathed, I ended up crying for. It doesn’t excuse them, but it does show how human they still are at their core--and this, in turn, ties into the show’s main theme of humanity (Wang Zhi’s arc is entirely about learning to live as a full human). It offers redemption for many of them; some take it, some do not. 

Female characters abound, and they are all unique and complex. From the child genius Dong’Er to the proper mother Tang Yu, to prostitute Qing Ge to disguised Jin San, to the kind and capricious Princess Gu’an and the fiesty Duo’Erla, the Emperor’s Mother to the Noble Consort, each character is unique and does not only exist to serve the male characters in the story: instead, they have their own to tell. 

However, I’d be remiss not to mention my issues as well. One prominent female character very much gets fridged at the end of her arc for manpain, and it’s incredibly frustrating. In addition, I was highly uncomfortable with what could be seen as racism towards the Oirat people. While there are a variety of Oirat characters and many are heroic, there was a balance the show tried to walk and didn’t entirely succeed. China’s record on treatment of minority people groups (which continues to this day with the Uygurs) makes it hard to give the show the benefit of the doubt in its iffy moments of Oirat portrayal. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Mysterio

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

In one of the greatest twists in all of cinematic history, it turns out that Mysterio, the man who in the comics is one of Spider-Man’s most iconic foes and who was heavily hyped by marketing as TOTALLY a good guy, is in actuality… a villain. Bet you didn’t see that one coming!

I think the real twist is that, despite how obvious the twist is and despite how much they change going into this character, they really managed to make him one of the most enjoyable antagonists in all of the MCU. And trust me, the fact that he is yet another villain that Tony Stark inadvertently helped create is a big hurdle to overcome, not to mention Beck is coming right on the heels of one of the MCU’s greatest villain so far, Thanos. But somehow Quentin Beck manages to not only be great, but a villain who takes the cake as one of the most terrifically amoral douchebags in all of cinematic history.

Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal plays Mysterio, and while it is literally impossible to make this man ugly like his comic counterpart, they not only managed to give a good reason why Quentin Beck should be sexy but they gave it to the perfect actor for the role. Gyllenhaal manages to sell Beck as a charming and likable fellow, a “cool uncle” figure to Peter as he has been described, to the point where the inevitable reveal that he’s just a scumbag who is lying out his ass about everything sting all the more even though it is so obviously coming. And when Beck’s true nature is revealed, Gyllenhaal manages to use that natural charm Beck seems to exude to make him at once completely hilarious with how he treats everything his team does as a primadonna actor would as well as utterly terrifying with his extremely blasé attitude towards killing children, treating it less like a contemptible crime and more like an annoying speedbump in his career he’d really rather not do. Gyllenhaal absolutely nails it, and while this Beck may not be in the film business like in the comics, he still manages to be one Hell of an actor.

Motivation/Goals: As it turns out, Beck was the guy who made B.A.R.F. If you don’t remember what that is, don’t worry; the movie gives a flashback to the scene where Tony debuts it in Civil War. Beck was fired by Stark for being too dangerous and unstable, and giving his hard work a stupid acronym was the last straw for Beck, who proceeded to round up disgruntled Stark employees to utilize illusion technology, drones, costumes, and special effects to essentially do what Syndrome wanted to do in The Incredibles: create fake world-threatening problems that he could solve with ease to make himself out to be a hero, all the while causing untold amounts of death and destruction in an attempt to make things realistic. You know, just like how a totally normal, mentally stable person would do it. This might actually be the one time where Tony made a good call in firing someone and it still somehow comes back to bite the people he cares about in the ass.

Personality: Quentin Beck, when acting as a hero, exudes the sort of charm and charisma one would expect of a hero, though occasional hints at his ego and lack of modesty do pop up; however, all of that is subdued by the general air of cool, friendly affability he exudes. He’s a kind mentor to Peter, giving him good advice, and in general seems to be a genuinely good guy…

...But obviously it’s all an act. Beck is very much an egomaniacal sociopath who has no care for anyone, not even his own henchmen; he threatens them after a screwup, though it is a bit justified seeing as how they were brushing off something that would blow their ruse wide open. Just as Beck revels in being a hero, he too revels in his villainy, as one can see during the scene where he gleefully breaks Peter’s mind with a series of traumatizing hallucinations. While he does give some indication he wished he could just have let Peter go, his behavior indicates that unlike someone like Vulture, all of this is just him never turning off that surface-level charm he puts up. He’s absolutely not sorry he has to kill Peter, he’s gonna have fun doing it, but he has to at least put forth that token “I really wish he didn’t have to do this” as if for the sake of some unknown viewer he wants to convince of his nobility even as he tries to brutally murder high school students.

Final Fate: Beck is apparently shot by one of the drones under his command, and dies shortly after Peter manages to break through his illusions… or is he? Considering this is Mysterio we’re talking about, and considering the mid-credits scene, there is a high chance that Beck faked his own death and used one last illusion to escape from under Spidey’s nose. But for now, we can only assume he’s dead. I’m definitely updating this if he comes back, trust me on that.

Best Scene: The scene in Berlin where Beck subjects Peter to a series of illusions that look like something ripped straight out of a comic book, or even a Scarecrow sequence from Arkham Asylum. It’s filled with utterly nightmarish imagery, tons of fakeouts, lots of references to the Spider-Man mythos, and even a few allusions to Mysterio’s video game appearances. In a film where Mysterio has no end of fine moments, this is easily his finest.

Best Quote: Beck has so many great lines that really ring with truth nowadays about people and their desire to believe even the most blatant of lies just so they can have something to believe in. But his greatest quote is perhaps when he weaponises that, with a little bit of edited footage he sends to a seedy, sensationalist news site called The Daily Bugle…

“I managed to send the Elemental back into the dimensional rift but I don't think I'm gonna make it off this bridge alive. Spider-Man attacked me for some reason. He has an army of weaponized drones, Stark technology. He's saying he's the only one who's gonna be the new Iron Man, no one else. Spider-Man's real... Spider-Man's real name is - Spider-Man's name is Peter Parker!”

And with this doctored footage, broadcast live on the news for all to see, Mysterio cements himself as one of the most absolutely scummy pricks in the entirety of the MCU, second only to Ego in sociopathic kick-the-dog cruelty.

Final Thoughts & Score: I just want you all to know that Mysterio is my absolute favorite comic book villain; I love his costume, his concept, that time he fought Daredevil, his gimmick… Mysterio is a villain who is a lot of fun but who rarely is handled well by comic writers, never getting to truly show off the full extent of his greatness. As you can imagine, this meant my expectations going into Far From Home were pretty high… and they were blown out of the water. Mysterio is just that good.

It helps that the MCU really managed to utilize the sort of paranoia and distorting of the truth a guy like Mysterio can bring to the table to its fullest extent. It’s to the point where, yeah, it’s easy to believe that he survived his supposed death; he’s shown us so many other moments where it has seem The day is saved prior that turned out to be BS, why should this be any different? Then there’s the fact that Gyllenhaal is able to fully sell this super-cliched bargain bin hero fantasy involving dimensional travel and world-ending elemental monsters, complete with wooden acting, cliché one liners, and an oh-so-obviously manufactured heroic sacrifice and make it cool in universe and out, that it all goes above and beyond to not only wash the bad taste of him being another villain Tony created out of your mouth, but also the sheer clunkiness of his expository bar scene where he literally explains everyone's role in the Mysterio ruse for the benefit of the audience and seemingly no one else in what might be one of the most awkwardly done scenes I have ever scene. He is so legitimately good that he somehow manages to walk away as a 10/10 villain despite being in a scene that bad.

I think what really makes him work is how psychological he is. Obviously, he has no real powers beyond a dedicated special effects team backing him up, and yet he still manages to be a serious obstacle to overcome by just how good he is at utilizing the illsuions he can create to mentally torment Spider-Man. He taunts him over Iron Man’s death, he plays on his fears of not being able to save MJ, he pretends to be trusted authority figures to trick him into endagering his loved ones... he just goes all out and really delivers a different kind of villain, one who poses a far more intriguing threat than simply a physical one and forces Peter to grow as a person and come to terms with himself in order to beat him.

When I compared him to Syndrome earlier, it really was more than just in terms of his plan; he’s equal to Syndrome in terms of quality as well, and portrayed by an actor who is able to inject just as much charm and personality into the role. And much like Syndrome, by the end of the movie you will think Quentin Beck is one of the must insufferably smug, sociopathic, and scummy villains you will ever love to hate. He outed a child’s secret identity to the world out of spite, for Christ’s sake! That really is up there with “I put a tumor in your mom’s brain” in terms of deliciously hateable dickishness in the MCU, in my opinion.

He may not be the most complex villain out there, and his backstory is a bit played out  (which is funny, considering the cliche hero story with destroyed worlds and dead families his team constructs ends up being more original in comparison), but what he lacks in depth he makes up for in charm, charisma, brilliant acting, and just delicious evilness. I seriously hope he comes back, because if any villain deserves more of a thrashing from a hero they fought, it’s this guy.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 240: PLIFF

Previously on BnHA: Shigaraki “Thanos” Tomura gleefully reduced an entire city to dust while laughing maniacally. You know, villain things. He almost turned Re-Destro to dust as well, but Re-Destro got around that by chopping off his own legs. Like it was no big. I still haven’t quite managed to process that yet. Anyway, so everyone was real impressed by Tomura at this point, because how could you not be, and to sum things up, Re-Destro basically accepted him as his lord and savior and handed the Meta Liberation Army over to him. So now Shigaraki Tomura, noted crazy person and heir to All for One’s empire, who has just upgraded his quirk so as to be able to destroy basically anything within an unknown range without even having to touch the thing directly, and who has also pledged to destroy the entire world, has an army. And he also has Gigantomachia, who was watching him all hearts-in-eyes while he did his thing. So all in all this has been a very productive arc for the League of Villains. And meanwhile, the League of Everyone Else may want to think about changing their name to “League of People About To Be Incredibly Fucking Screwed.”

Today on BnHA: The League of Villains, in what is clearly the best rebranding move since New Coke, renames itself the “Paranormal Liberation Front”, a.k.a. PLF, a.k.a. PLIFF because that’s what it instantly became in my head and you can’t stop me. Among PLIFF’s Finest is newly initiated member Hawks, whose mystery bag is finally confirmed to have contained exactly what we all thought it was going to contain. I don’t even want to talk about that. I’m still in denial. But also weirdly thrilled. I’m terrible. Anyway, so Hawks is all “:) we’re fucked,” agreeing with the consensus the general fandom has come to over the past week, and palling around with his new best friend Dabi as he frantically tries to come up with some kind of plan. Maybe the heroes can try rebranding themselves as “the Supernatural Emancipation Cavalry.” That wouldn’t really solve anything, but it’d be funny to watch the villains come to realize they’re being mocked. Sorry but y’all brought this on yourselves.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)  

so I received an ask from a very kind anon warning me to be careful of spoilers for this chapter. thank you, anon! rest assured that I have been very cautious, and am pleased to inform everyone that I’m diving in spoiler-free this week. so bring on your Kacchan hero names, your Best Jeanist heads, your new Deku quirks, and whatever other twists you want to toss my way, manga. but especially that first one. this arc has been fantastic, but now that it’s wrapping up, I miss my kids and I would like to check in with them soon. they grow up so fast and time is precious

so apparently the title for this chapter is “Power”, which could mean lots of things, but I imagine it’s not something that bodes well for our heroes. honestly does anything bode well for them at this point. they’re not having much luck on the boding front

oh cool, a time jump! so this is apparently now one week after “the deadly battle.” wow, way to sum everything up in the blandest terms possible while still being accurate. like, yeah, that is what it was, but somehow it doesn’t quite communicate the full magnitude of what actually went down, you know?

anyway so the town basically looks like it got hit by a fucking meteor

new crack theory that a time-traveling Shigaraki Tomura is what actually killed the dinosaurs

wow would you fucking look at this

I guess this is the BnHA version of “an unfortunate training exercise”

also I like how they didn’t think it would be believable that one sleepy boi could cause all of this destruction, so they amped it up to twenty fucking guys instead. sob. why did they even bother giving Tomura an army. he is an army

lol the bullshit continues

“reporting to you live from Deika City, an innocent and wholesome country town in no way affiliated with an extreme right-wing quirk supremacist movement, where citizens recently found themselves victims of an entirely unprovoked attack by no fewer than twenty, and definitely more than six, villains. the brave citizens proceeded to fight them off, and definitely killed them all and didn’t surrender to them and elect their leader as their new god. also the president of Detnerat just happened to be there. just coincidentally. he definitely was not the one who instigated the entire thing. when asked for comment, Mr. Yotsubashi responded, quote, ‘nonsense, I’m no hero. would you call a man a hero just because he fought off an army of villains alone and selflessly sacrificed his own legs to ensure that justice prevailed? would you call that heroic? poppycosh. that’s just the kind of man I am. I wouldn’t call myself brave. ‘humble,’ maybe. ‘handsome’, perhaps. but a hero? no. I’m just an everyday, all-around good type of person, that’s all.’ so there you have it. truly a courageous figure. a gallant example of truly stellar fortitude and virtue. we need more Yotsubashi Rikiyas in these trying times. back to you, Jeff”

anyway, so the media in BnHA. fairly gullible, huh?

so now the report is concluding with a statement that the investigation is still ongoing. uh huh. damn they really got away scot-free with all this, huh

and we’re cutting to a close-up of sushi! oh my god. Compress have your dreams finally come true at last

yesssss oh my god. I’m so happy for him

(ETA: on my second read-through I paid attention to try to see whether or not Compress had finally gotten a new robot arm, but it’s impossible to tell. he’s only using his right hand here, and later on when he goes on stage with the rest of them he’s wearing his usual trenchcoat and gloves. I’m just gonna assume he finally got the upgrade he wanted, though. nice to see you so content, Mister I-Ran-Around-A-Lot.)

excuse me, what, Dabi? he didn’t even do anything?? as opposed to you, who basically just set yourself on fire and glared at Frogurt for half a dozen chapters?? don’t hurt yourself climbing back down from that high horse you punk

lol what

I don’t even have to scroll down to the rest of this page to immediately know this is some bullshit. she’s not dead. out of everyone in the League she’s probably third most important after Tomura and Mr. You-Didn’t-Even-Do-Anything above. her quirk is too plot-critical for her to actually be dead. you’re not gonna kill off the ONLY GIRL IN THE LEAGUE OF VILLAINS, either. Horikoshi who do you even think you’re fooling

ah, yep

Togaaaaaaaaa omg. I’d hug you but you’d stab me. but I’m so happy to see you my precious baby girl

and it actually makes sense for Twice to be mourning the clone, though, and I’m glad they showed it. because he of all people understands that the clone is the person to at least some degree. like, it’s nice that he doesn’t just view them as disposable and he respects them. he’s so nice omfg

anyway so it looks like he’s back to being crazy though

oh well, it was nice while it lasted. at least he doesn’t appear traumatized anymore. and he has a boyfriend now too. where is Giran anyway

now fucking Skeptic is walking in like he’s on the set of a fucking sitcom

[canned audience laughter]

nice touch on the following page with Hanabata starting to refer to Re-Destro as “The Supreme...” before catching himself and amending it to just “Re-Destro”

oh wow

damn, LoV, y’all went from poverty straight to the .01%. talk about an upgrade

oh my god there’s a secret passage

oh my god it leads to a secret basement

trying not to think about the last time we were in a secret villain basement. this isn’t like that. relax. that arc is over now. deep breaths

holy shit

this is like the fucking Mines of Moria. complete with a Balrog. jesus christ

omg look who got himself a BRAND NEW SUIT AND TIE ENSEMBLE oh shiiit

is that a fucking fur-lined coat. Shigaraki Tomura has officially upgraded to KHR Villain status. what a little shit. I adore you, you son of a bitch

and I thought he destroyed all the hands?? come on dude, I know it’s like your signature look, but I was hoping we were going in a different direction from here on out. ah well

wow, Horikoshi

just once. just once I would like this man to leave a plothole unaddressed for more than one page. god I love this manga

anyway so they’re fully lampshading the fact that this one hand somehow miraculously survived, and they’re all “I guess it’s his trademark, huh?” yep, that’s right. his lewk. now be quiet, you two. which of us is doing the recap here

so now RD is up on stage showing off the weirdest fucking wheelchair I’ve ever seen, and singing Tomura’s praises

it’s remarkable how quickly his ego adapted to his brand new role as head of Tomura’s PR. he almost seems to be enjoying this more than when he was the leader

oh shit??

A NEW NAME?? oh my god. edge of my seat. can’t wait. take it away boys

LOOOOOOOL what

sob this makes it sound like they do ghost investigations. is there a League of Villains Buzzfeed Unsolved AU. this is what happens when you put the otaku in charge of the name

just. why paranormal. they thought it sounded cool?? and am I really supposed to type out PLF and not pronounce it like “pliff” in my head moving forward?? yeah, that’s not happening. you guys are now PLIFF. congratulations

thank god they’ve still got Tomura to lend legitimacy to this whole ridiculous operation. god, there’s something I never thought I’d say. Tomura why are you now the part of the League -- excuse me, PLIFF -- that I actually take the most seriously. god

y’all heard the man. whatever we want. this is happening. just remember kid, you gave me permission

holy shit you guys is that motherfucking Carvel!?!? I was staring at the panel all “WHO IS THIS” and wondering if they’d somehow brought Kizuki back to life, oh my god. I’m fucking dying send help. he looks like Galaxy Express 999. my brain is short-circuiting

anyway so everyone is all HOORAY WE LOVE THIS and they’re all cheering

HOMBGLKDF

DSLFKSHDLGK HEY BOY, HOW ARE YOU LIKING BEING A MEMBER OF THIS NEW HERE VILLAIN CULT. WHERE’S THE FUCKING BAG, HAWKS

SDFKSJDLFKSDLKFH A FLASHBACK AHHHHHH

I CAN’T TURN THE PAGE OH GOD NO SOMEBODY ELSE DO IT

OH MOTHERFUCKING SHIT

my jaw just. fucking. -- -----------

okay Hawks. fucking explain. how did you do it. is it a fake?? surely it’s not the real deal?? oh god, the memes have now become terribly real. I have no choice but to embrace this with even more stupid jokes and memes as a coping mechanism or I’m gonna lose it

but for real, they didn’t seriously do my boy Jeanist like that. Paramount Optimal Jeanist did not survive a point-blank attack from motherfucking All For One just to get shanked by Hawks so that he could get good with PLIFF, only to be, and I quote, “too late...!”

(ETA: and on readthrough #2, Dabi does indeed bring up the fact that this might not actually be Jeanist’s corpse. “setting aside the issue of whether he is who you say he is...” so even he acknowledges that shenanigans could be afoot.

but he seems convinced it’s a real body at the very least. though did it never occur to you that he could have just picked it up from the morgue, dude? that’s gonna be my go-to theory for now at any rate.)

is now a good time for me to bring up something I’ve been wondering about for a while, which is how Bakugou is going to take this? yes, Bakugou. “okay makeste, I know he’s your favorite and I know you miss him, but what kind of mental cartwheels are you doing in order to make this situation with Hawks and PLIFF somehow relate to Bakugou Katsuki, whom we last saw twenty fucking chapters ago, and who has absolutely nothing to do with this?”

well I’m glad you asked, and you see, it’s because (a) the internship, and (b) because we already know Katsuki blames himself for at least one hero’s downfall as a result of what happened in Kamino, and I could easily see him having a similar response to Best Jeanist’s injury and subsequent disappearance. like, we already know this shit is all over the news. and Bakugou knows Jeanist personally. and so now what with him being missing, I can’t help but wonder if he’ll blame himself again for being the reason Jeanist was there at Kamino, and lost a lung, and so forth

and I realize this tangent is coming sort of out of left field, but seeing as this arc is finally wrapping up, and we can expect to cut back to the U.A. kids again soon, I just figured I’d bring it up now, because we’ll see if I’m right or not shortly

anyway. so let’s get back on topic. best dead Jeanist. oh god

but it seems like it did, at least, finally convince Dabi of Hawks’s sincere villainous intentions. so we have that one minor win, I guess. congratulations Hawks, now you know about the secret villain basement and their new rebranding. was it worth it you bastard

oh shit. actually, maybe it was. because now he understands just how incredibly screwed they are sob

so he doesn’t know for sure about the Noumu yet. so Tomura still has that little ace up his sleeve. fucking great

but him knowing about the Detnerat thing is big, though. so now the heroes know not to trust any of their equipment, or any of their lackeys like fucking Slidin’ Go. that’s something, at least

and you gotta love the whole “equal to, if not greater than” bit, sob. never in my life have I ever seen something so egregiously understated. “Shigaraki might be more powerful than the heroes at this point” yeah, you think!? god

holy shit Re-Destro calm the fuck down

Tomura’s telling him to get lost, and he’s immediately making himself scarce lol. good riddance

and Tomura is now kneeling dramatically and pounding his fist on the floor. okay

hey

I take offense, sir. “League of Villains” had a timeless air about it. and more importantly, you couldn’t abbreviate it to the sound that someone makes when they plop down tiredly onto a couch

oh shit!!!!

THIS LAST PAGE HAD BETTER BE A TERRIFYING PANEL OF THE HIGH END NOUMUS, OMG. I’M HOLDING MY BREATH

GODDAMMIT IT’S JUST ANOTHER SEXY CLOSEUP OF TOMURA’S FACE

I mean, can you actually call it that at this point? can you actually “grant” something to someone if they already have more of it than they know what to do with?

but I mean, we know what he really means though, so fair enough

oh ffs now he’s saying “but first there’s something I’d like you to do for me” oh my god enough with these side quests!

he wants him to transport something, apparently. ARE YOU HATCHING SOME NEW SCHEME oh gosh

oh my god and meanwhile Hotwings is becoming canon right before our eyes holy shit

of course!! he’s fucking thrilled!! everything is just!! so great!! right now!! :)!!!!!

oh my god Hawks

“Endeavor, and everyone” I see what you did there kid

(ETA: and as far as I recall, Endeavor doesn’t even know about his undercover mission yet. I wonder how he’s going to react when he finds out. your adopted son is now best friends with your presumed-dead son! and in mortal danger omg.)

wow. wow. and that’s the end of the chapter. fucking shit

so! lots to process! Hawks really did it! the absolute madman!! and Dabi fucking loves him now, which is great, if you like things that inevitably end in tragedy. then that’s great for you. but otherwise I guess it’s not so great

so I wonder if our next arc will be the Undercover Hawks Antics arc, or if we’ll be getting back to Deku and the gang. I’m guessing the latter because it’s been a while, but it’s definitely exciting to see this particular plotline finally advancing and becoming more intricate

so basically I have no idea what to expect next week. which is amazing. I’m so fucking excited. now if Horikoshi could just leave us all a little pity disclaimer clarifying that no Jeanists were actually harmed in the making of this chapter and that it was all CGI or some shit, that would be great :/

[comicteaparty]

June 6th-June 12th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 6th, 2020 to June 12th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you personally decide to kill-off a character, and how do you handle it?

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I never kill a char for shock or to motivate other characters (hate, hate, HATE those tropes); but if that character's decisions result in their death, so be it. But I always double check if decisions with huge results like death make sense for that character, to avoid the "ideot ball" problem.

Mind you, I only have three character's whose death would break the story, all others are fair game.

Miranda

I have yet to kill a character. But I do have a death planned...and right now the reasoning is to show how far a character has come from being a self-preservationist ass. If I maintain that route it won’t be done lightly and the person who does it will feel the weight of their decision.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Any deaths in my current work happened before the story started, and... that changed nothing. They’re still characters in the story I don’t know if I could actually KILL-kill a character without knowing that their death is an important stepping-stone to the plot’s conclusion. But even then, the character can feel more like a device than a person. Maybe for a future work, I can do it... but... for this one... I’m actually banking on things worse than death

copperine (Lady Changeling)

I have a main character death planned. It's not quite the same as most deaths but explaining further would be spoilers.

That is... not a helpful contribution, but oh well.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

It's such a battle of 'do or do not' at times with these things! You want that death to make an impact for the story, however it may lend to the narrative, and that makes planning just when and where so difficult!. When we first started writing GJS, we had SO MANY planned deaths! That was the first draft, which when we read it later as we approached those parts, made us realise that these character kill offs didnt really affect the story in a way readers would care for. (in fact, it was a chapter before that we decided to save an important one!) We later calmed down our edgy-ness, and had any such sort of death fit more cohesive with the tone of the story-- and I think that is a big part!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I've had kind of a similar character death journey with my story. There were a lot more for more shallow reasons when I was starting out. I think that probably is also a symptom of writting most of those deaths as an edgy teenager :p But over time I've cut a lot of them or rewritten them, in the case of backstory deaths, so that they're more nuanced. Even the like three I have planned to happen as plot points may end up being changed by the time I get to actually scripting it. Honestly, if I was writing a new story I'm not sure how I would approach having death involved or if I would. Death is a really defining experience. For the backstory deaths in RDD they're included because they define some aspect of the characters they effect. Sometimes it's movtivation (though not the I Must Avenge! kind) and sometimes it's just how they view the world. I think that's the way I would continue to use death as a device, though there are all kinds of other experiences that can create the same outcome. Death isn't always the most interesting device to use for creating depth or raising the stakes.

carcarchu

In PP the eliminations are kind of the equivalent of dying. Most of them don't have a lot of emotional weight but i'm really dreading having to eliminate the more important supporting characters later. i feel like the author of Princess when she wrote in her author's notes that she couldn't stop crying when she had to kill off her main character and had to draw through the tears, that's me but like 100 chapters from now

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I wholeheartedly agree, Mariah. I think as we grow, we find out ways to problem solve without being so absolute about our decisions in a sense

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

I have killed off characters in my story; heck, their deaths are part of of the whole problem! I chose to kill them off because they’re not just one off characters; their deaths have a major impact on my protagonist’s character development. If they have to die, then they shouldn’t be dismissed at all. Rather, it has long lasting effects of trauma and that’s something the protagonist has to move on from.

carcarchu

Oh and also in my second story which i have not drawn yet the main character dies in the first chapter but she comes back to life after winning a bet with a demon and that whole thing is an extremely important plot point that ties the entire series together

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Like @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine), most of my character deaths happened before the story even begun. Most of them were incredibly important to one character or more. Although... Since the story of Whispers of the Past is told largely through flashback, it feels like these deaths just happened. And when I wrote the prequel stories to my comic, I battled myself over a certain death that I didn't want to happen. I realized very quickly that I don't make the rules.

eliushi [a winged tale]

My kill test is: if the character dies, what sorts of impact would it have on other characters? The narrative? Readers? Could it be misinterpreted as a message I wouldn’t want to send as an author? And what happens if the character survives? I do have planned character deaths as I don’t want my characters to have plot armour. I approach this by designing the deaths/narrative and events leading up to it important and impactful. Hopefully I’ll stick the landing.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(omg Kill Test Eli)

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

That’s a really good test to use, Eli. It’s good to understand what a character’s impact is on the whole story if they die. Deaths are pretty traumatic, so it would also work to see how other characters react to it.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

The "what happens if the character survives" is the big one I always consider it's the one that has saved a lot of characters because the answer has been more interesting for me to write than the death was XD(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That's fascinating to think about... Holy hell, if one particular character didn't die, it would be an entirely different story!

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Sometimes the survival of a character has even more impact than the death. Unless they come back as a ghost, which in this case, they can still actively influence the story as opposed to being inactive

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

generally when i'm writing character arcs, i start from the end and work backwards. so if at some point in an arc i get to something like "this character needs to experience death for their growth" i'll put a character earlier in their story to get killed off. or if the character arc ended with the character's death, i'll make sure to build up to it throughout. i guess my style of writing is kinda different to some others'? in the sense that i don't go "ok here are my OCs, let's see what happens to them" - rather, i go "here's what happened to my OCs, let's see how they got there". though, that does kinda result in me tipping my hand a bit, lol. like if a character gets killed by one of the protagonists, i'll generally make the killed character a big jerk. if the character is killed by an antagonist to spur on the protagonists, i'll generally make the killed character really likeable.

eliushi [a winged tale]

I also consider when you want to kill a character during an arc. An incomplete arc is more heartbreaking than one that is complete before the end

That’s totally fair snuffysam. It’s all about the perspective

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohh that is an interesting way to write Snuffy-- that would definitely produce interesting results and a cool way to tackle character development

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

It is a good way of thinking and also introduces a lot of possibilities. Because what if the character killed by the protagonists had legitimate grief/beef? Or that the story hints at their backstory a bit more and show them to be more human? It can set up some good questions about the moral grey area.

I like to believe that each character thinks they are their own protagonist of the story....whether it be heroic, anti heroic, villainous or in between.

eliushi [a winged tale]

Sometimes the survival of a character has even more impact than the death. Unless they come back as a ghost, which in this case, they can still actively influence the story as opposed to being inactive

It’s also interesting to think about death as a concept. If your story deals with an after death story vs death as an absolute vs reincarnation one

Death itself can mean different things to individual characters

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Death of a friend, death of a loved one....death of a personality.

Or even growing up can be seen as one, since it’s death of your childhood.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Because what if the character killed by the protagonists had legitimate grief/beef? Or that the story hints at their backstory a bit more and show them to be more human? It can set up some good questions about the moral grey area.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I have a character who is currently stricken with guilt over a guy he killed. And, like, the killed guy in question was a huge jerk as mentioned, but, like... he had a family. So it's a lot of figuring out what one could do to make up for that sort of thing.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Exactly. Even if they were portrayed as jerks (or actually are jerks, like in the case of your story)...they're still people and have their own stories to tell, too.

Imagine the stories you lose out when you completely demonize or put someone on a pedestal.....not seeing them as human at all.

eliushi [a winged tale]

I definitely prefer round rather than flat characters and even if it’s one who’s only seen once in the story, I like to add some contrasting characteristics to hint at their “person” even though their roles are small. It’s the little things that will be most impactful especially when they die

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

especially when they die oh my god Eli your bloodthirst is showing

eliushi [a winged tale]

I there’s a place for characters who are designed to pass for the sake of the story’s theme/character impact/setting danger

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

hmmm there is. And the trope is called Stuffed in the Fridge, when that character is specifically slated to die for the sake of story progression, like you said.(edited)

eliushi [a winged tale]

Stuffed into the Fridge: A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish.

I think there’s a fine line between the intentions for sure

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Absolutely. Depending on how you write it, you can pull if off very, very well.

Oh! I think I meant to say the lost lenore

Usually people who have died and who end up driving the characters' motivations, my bad

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

yeah there are times that killing off a character for another character's progression can be done well like the first 15 minutes of Up are considered some of the best scenes in pixar history and that's totally lost lenore

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

It all depends if the character actually was a character with their own hopes or dreams or just a thing to be smashed to make someone sad.

Did the character who died have agency? Did they have their own hopes and dreams?

Thing is, I personally only care for character‘s death if I also cared about their lifes.

It‘s hard to explain, but so many lifes only seem to matter in stories because they matter for someone more valuable; and there‘s a definite pattern which character gets to be valuable on their own and which one is only cared about because it impacts someone deemed more worthy.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Gurren Lagann is still my benchmark for a meaningful, impactful, heart-wrenching character death - one that propels the story forward (eventually) but also brings it to a screeching halt long enough to really delve into the emotions behind it. It's a death that doesn't feel necessary at first, but you look back and see the doors it opened to deeper conflicts.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Ohhh, character death!! I'm gonna second a lot of opinions here about death having to be relevant and affecting other characters; and I sure wanna bring the point home that even in war, violence has meaning and life and death have meaning too. Deaths of characters happen mostly for plot reasons: they happen so I can show things (about them or about the others around them). I like to think in terms of what characters represent and the way a character dies says a lot about what you personally think about the things they represent. So I have characters that from moment one I could say "Oh no this guy's gotta die and he's gonna have to die a LOT". Also gonna go there and say that yeah sure I am guilty of the killing for motivating other characters, but also to put the plot in motion. Others, I hope, also tell us something about the characters involved in their deaths...(edited)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(YESS CLAIRE!!! I always say the Kamina Death when we talk about that possibility in stories XD it was such a good impact)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I know people bring it up SO MUCH (along with one in Madoka... which was equally shocking!) but there's a reason they do!

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

hhh yesssss Madoka too!

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

those deaths are brought up for very good reasons, they are huge marking points in both narratives

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Madoka and the deaths in it always felt shallow to me. I facepalmed and went „of course“ on the first one. I knew it would happen from the moment the happy music started.

eliushi [a winged tale]

Deaths are just another plot device. Just have to make them count... or not... depending on what you want to do as the author! Imagine all the control... But to make a death impactful, that’s a harder question. For your wips, I’m curious what are your go to tips? Great points about agency, multifaceted, relationships with other characters.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

.........Write them as a character first before their relationships with others. Or if you do write their relationships first...brainstorm why they interact with others the way they do. Did something in their life influence it?

And...never stop asking questions about your characters. Fire away them yourself or have a friend ask you constantly. Thinking fast sometimes helps you get an eureka! moment about your characters and reach a deep part you might not have realized it at first.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

I started the story knowing I was gonna have to kill a character in the next one or two chapters and I wanted it to matter; if I had started the story killing him right away, it would look too much like a cheap, shock-value death, and its impact on the other characters could possibly look like an overreaction. So I had to make sure that character would have a lot of interactions with others that would show at least the points of his personality that I cared for the most.(edited)

It felt like running against the clock and everytime he was on the spotlight I was just "oh no I gotta make this count, I gotta make him matter" and I hope I could make it look like he mattered to the people around him(edited)

eliushi [a winged tale]

I really like that shizamura! Making the scene and character portrayal count as we slowly move towards their demise

I’m also curious when people realize a death flag for a character. I try not to hint at the death until it happens but I’m sure there are some things that clue the readers in

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

I tried using red flags by making other characters sound like they'd be the ones to die to draw attention from my target, tho I don't know to which extent that work

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't think anyone actually disagrees with me, but just bringing up a counter-point: character death does not have to be surprising to be impactful!

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

agreed!

DanitheCarutor

Depends on the story, I have a couple where characters die. One is a fantasy/sci-fi/war story where death just happens, it has a mix of the overall horror of war and the desensitization to it all, but there is also a scene where it has personal significance in a good and bad way. (Super vague, I know.) I also have a cosmic horror/fantasy comic where characters die, but they don't officially go until their souls are gone, so "death" doesn't have much importance but the devourment of souls and fading away of old souls has a sobering importance, with the former having an almost taboo feeling. I will admit to really enjoying low-blow gallows humor, as a mean joke I was actually considering making a fake ending in my current comic where an important character dies, making the other have to reflect on everything alone, and it would have dropped the story into full blown Tragedy territory. Doing this solely to see how my readers would react, but that would be too mean, and I don't have the energy or time for something like that. Although in all seriousness, as desensitized as I am to death and gore, I personally try to handle death as respectfully as possible. It's a big deal, and I don't like the use of it as a cheap story device.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Death... Hm. I have very few stories in which I actually kill off Characters. For me, personally, the Characters kind of live in my head, and if I know I am going to kill them they are sort of "branded" in a sense in a way that taints them for me even while I'm working with them when they're alive. It's hard to explain, but I look at those Characters differently and it's always in the context of making the death as powerful as I can, rather than the kinds of things I enjoy working on more. So, I very rarely decide to kill Characters. I can find more uses for them when they're alive! The only time I will do it is if it's a short story, and the death is an intrinsic part of the tale, or in longer stories if it is something to establish stakes (if I want the stakes to be death, sometimes I don't!) Other than that, I really try to write around deaths, cause sometimes Character deaths feel like "and now we don't have to deal with writing them anymore!" Rather than being something very potent. I've not yet had a character die outside of story outlines and plans. So I'm not sure I can say how I approach it, yet.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Every character that dies in my stories hurts. Some more than others for sure, but they all hurt me I don't know if it makes sense but I try to save them. It's just that their personalities and choices tie my hands. If I can save them in a way that would be plausible for the story setting, I do. I like happy endings. Usually, the deaths in my stories leave gaping holes. In the style of 'things would have gone much better if so-and-so hadn't died.' And if I kill, I kill permanently. No fake outs.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I rarely think about character deaths very often, myself. I know, weird, right, considering I have a murder mystery in my own comic? However, the victim, Count Bailey, was a death I was ready for and planned very carefully around. In the brief time we saw him alive, he was likeable and fair, to get readers wanting justice for his murder. He was also passionate in his beliefs, and this last bit allowed me to hit the ground running with possible motivations for the killer(s?). As time goes on, I also plan to reveal more about him as well. So, even though he's dead, he's still very much an active character. Retroactive? But, yeah, I suppose that's a bit of a different take from others, considering the genre. In general, I'm not a fan of killing off characters, unless it drives the story, and I would be hard-pressed to do it especially to a character my readers have bonded with. That feels cruel to me, and I wouldn't want to do that to other people.

I want to make clear that I'm definitely not judging others for doing that! It's just not the kind of writing I could do myself.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah that's exactly my thinking too. Like sometimes a character (or multiple) needs to die to move the story forward, but I can't imagine writing something Game of Thrones-like where every week you tune in to see who's gonna die. Like, I just can't imagine writing character arcs in that sort of environment, unless I was writing some experimental story about characters dealing with their own mortality in different ways. Like a more philosophical Final Destination. Not to knock anyone who does, but I just can't write like that.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

This might be splitting hairs or something, but I feel like while I am not at all against "character deaths," I don't like to "kill off characters." Probably an approach/mindset difference (and different approaches are all valid!) rather than a difference in the results.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

It's kinda the same for me. Because I don't really "kill off characters," they just... die, and I'm basically just a witness.

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I killed my protagonist in the first chapter

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Well, I mean, with a title like Hans Vogel is Dead...

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

but also there's a difference between killing a character and necessarily removing them from the narrative altogether: I used to be SUPER into killing ALL THE CHARACTERS!11! when I was younger and have since moved away from it (a lot in part because of how turned off I was from GoT) and have been trying other ways of getting rid of characters

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Honestly, why can't more characters leave because they left on a journey or something?

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

yeah!

or like, opened a bookstore or something

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah!

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

or if they're bad there's a lot worse things (dramatic music)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

ooof

I mean

I don't know if I'd like to see anything too gruesome, even for villains

(Doesn't help that my villain is my favorite)

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

oh no, I'm a baby lmao I can't do gore and that kinda stuff :''"D

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I mean, or mental torture

nah thanks

I'd rather just let 'em die at that rate

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I'm a big fan of The Good Place theory of letting them punish themselves

there's a lot of options out there for sure

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

^^^

eliushi [a winged tale]

I’d like to think a character killed on screen give some sort of impact and meaning to other characters and the readers, that can’t be achieved in other ways (leaving for a journey, survived but different, losing memory etc).

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

that's definitely true! it depends on what you want the reader to get out of the character being taken out of the narrative

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I haven't committed to killing off any characters yet and I'm not sure how I'm going to go about it when I do. Only one character has really died so far (Joe) and that was just the premise for the whole thing so it wasn't a difficult decision. I don't know whether I'm going to kill other characters at this point

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

If I need to get rid of a character, my favourite way is to give them exactly what they want. Since I write adventure stories, that usually leads to their retirement - or with them having to deal with the consequences of the fullfillment, which means they are interesting to write and read about again.

AntiBunny

It really varies depending on what the story calls for, and the character arc. In the case of Nailbat http://nailbat.AntiBunny.net/ the main character's death was already a foregone conclusion from the very beginning. It was the premise of the entire story. Everything built up to that moment.

A character just died in http://AntiBunny.net/ as well. In this case it was more to make a statement. There wasn't a place for this villain's story to go other than prison or death, and I chose to kill him off because he lived inflicting violence on others, and his last moment is one of shock that he'd meet his end at that very same violence. It's a human moment for an otherwise monstrous character as he reaches out, perhaps asking for help, but it's too late.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

My comics don't kill a lot of characters mid-story, but now that I'm thinking about it...there's a whole pattern of "characters whose arcs include managing the fallout of pre-canon deaths."

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Leif & Thorn stars a team of knights that was twice as big before a flubbed dragonslaying mission, so I had to come up with a pack of character designs that I only ever draw when the main cast are reminiscing. https://leifandthorn.com/comic/watching-over-me-629/

eliushi [a winged tale]

Pre-canon deaths I’m also interested in yours or anyone’s approaches to deaths that happen before the story started. What made you decide that? How do you keep the readers interested and care for those who’ve already passed on?

DaeofthePast

i imagine there'd be some flashbacks? :0

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Well, in this case, the readers don't really need to care for the passed-on knights...the important part is you can tell the survivors cared about them. And the survivors are the main cast. So if they're sad about something, you care based on your attachment to them, not based on having a personal attachment to the ex-knights.

🌈ERROR404 🌈

I think that it really depends on the genre for sure. The generic death of the father in a tragic accident can turn into an action protagonist's reason to start their adventure, and never appear again and still work for the genre/ Meanwhile, for something that's noir or mystery styled, the death of the father before the story starts affect very specifically the characters more than the audience. It's important to understand the genre when working with death post mortem

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Occasionally there's a flashback that brings someone out in more detail, but it's for the sake of "let's explore a specific way that character's death is affecting one of the survivors."

boogeymadam

catching up to this for the first time and there's a lot of great advice in here "KILL TEST" ASDFG but like its so wise so i can't make too much fun of it :')

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

The reason I decided to have so many of them was that Thorn is "the only survivor of meeting the dragon face-to-face", and I want readers to appreciate how big a deal that was! A looming pile of non-survivors makes the point pretty well.

boogeymadam

something already mentioned way up there earlier: killing characters to motivate others has been treated kinda taboo lately (and i imagine a lot of pre-canon deaths fall into that category,??) but its a perfectly valid thing to do as long as the characters would be multidimensional regardless of the death. i think. it can definitely depend on the voice the story is trying to have~ Or a readers Knowing The Stakes type death like Erin just mentioned those are fun!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Honestly, I don't think pre-canon deaths work the same way there. The worst part is when a new character gets introduced and you start to get invested in them, to care about their feelings and think about where their storyline is going, and then it turns out they were just a plot device whose only purpose was to get killed off.

If the character's already gone by the time the story starts, there's none of that bait-and-switch feeling.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I think one of the big issues with "killing characters to motivate others" was sexism; like, far too often it's female characters being killed to motivate the male lead. It's extra questionable when the female character is supposedly equally (or even more so) good at surviving/ fighting as the dude.

But like any trope, it's not inherently bad; there's just been Weird trends with people using them thoughtlessly.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Oh, definitely. If part of the reason you're excited about the new character is "finally, another woman in this dude-heavy series"! (or "finally, a same-sex couple!" or "finally, a black person at all!"...) then it hits doubly hard.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeeeeeah...

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Because it's not just "the writer(s) got me invested in this female character and suddenly they offed her", it's also "the writer(s) gave the impression that they were going to include and develop more characters from this underrepresented group, and suddenly it turns out, nope, they didn't care about that at all."

And honestly, that's super easy to offset, if you just put in more variety of characters from the beginning.

DaeofthePast

^^^ I get flashbacks to basically every zombie apocalypse story I've watched.

eliushi [a winged tale]

The bait and switch feeling can be tricky to navigate for sure. I find that act 2 deaths can sometimes feel that way. Act 1 deaths tend to motivate the protagonists/be the inciting incident and act 3 deaths kind of form the finale.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Nyx+Nyssa deals with the pre-story death of Nyssa's mother, but her actions and decisions she made before she dies reverbrate through the whole story. She's more a post-mortem character than offed-and-gone. Dead ten years and STILL causing trouble.

... Another reason I don't like death-to-motivate-main-character thing is that it can so, so easily feel cheap and generic, too. "Yay. Another dead romantic interest/younger sibling" way - as if the writer couldn't think of something more interesting or more fitting to the story/setting.

It's like... So many stories use it as the character-motivation equivalent of the "As you know, Bob..." style exposition.

Can it be used well? Yup! Everything can! But it so, so, so often isn't.

AntiBunny

In the case of Pre-canon deaths I do have the mother of the 4 Rabbintlov sisters. In this case while one male character has been chasing revenge all these years, it's more been about how these 4 sisters interact and grow up, without her. The youngest never knowing her mother, the middle two being most traumatized and it becoming a source of strife, while the oldest is wracked with the responsibility of having to be both sister and mother to her younger siblings.

I think deaths that happen before the story tend to be less about the character who died, and how the characters in the story deal with loss, and have to go on without them.

copperine (Lady Changeling)

(I am lurking here because any comments about character death in my own comic are spoilers and I don't have any to mention in the ones I read yet)

DaeofthePast

I haven’t killed anyone off (yet) but I do plan to. This specific character was created for a purpose and once that purpose is done, then I’ll probably kill them off. Unless I think of something else they can do, otherwise there’s no point in keeping them.

Idk how much I want to say without spoiling, uh, I tend to think of character by what role/job I’m having them do in the story. Like, “I need a character can teach the protagonist this life lesson” and then if there’s no existing character that can fill that role, then I create a new character.

So this character that’s going to die has a very important role in the beginning to get the ball rolling. I could possibly keep them, but I’ll be introducing some other characters later on and I might have too many characters to juggle and keep track of by that point So that’s my decision making process for killing them off.

DanitheCarutor

Pre-canon deaths I’m also interested in yours or anyone’s approaches to deaths that happen before the story started. What made you decide that? How do you keep the readers interested and care for those who’ve already passed on?

FFFF I didn't even think about this! I actually have a pre-canon death, from a reader perspective it's supposed to be seen as a third party learning about the death of someone's relative, you see how it affects the characters and memories of them tend to be more romanticized. In all honesty I don't really care if readers are interested in or care about him? I just want them to know he existed at one point, and he that he played a large roll in the MCs lives, holding much greater importance to Julian than Apollo. A lot of brainstorming went into his removal from the main plot, if he stayed my comic wouldn't even be a thing. I considered at one point just having him disappear, but that would honestly be too cruel for the characters, (like when a loved one disappears, leaving the family wondering what happened or if they're still alive. Not having that closure can be devastating for many people.), and the main story is already bleak enough. Lol Presentation wise, I use flashbacks and character discussion, although not a whole lot. Just enough to get an idea of what he meant to them, and what his role was. I want to leave it vague for the audience to speculate. The most recurring approach is the use of photos, or a single photo specifically, since it's the only tangible proof of his existence.

Moral_Gutpunch

I cheated at first. The one who died is a ghost, but talking about him turns into talking about others who died, be they legendary, a death that has political effect or personal effect

Feather J. Fern

I always plan deaths of characters, anyone can die. The favourite, the villian, the best friend, the main character, someone's coffee, anything is free game for my writing.

[gryphons-of-aentha]

The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 2)

Because this is what you were getting yourselves into when you followed me.

Right, so, Talon and Iadra join up with Kyran to overthrow Kyran’s asshole father, who happens to rule the country. They end up working well together and form a sizeable group of aquei and one or two additional gryphons who Iadra managed to convince. If not for the fact that it was all being headed by a seventeen year old with absolutely no martial experience at all (not to mention a much greater talent for dividing people than uniting them, which was great for starting the rebellion but not finishing it), it might have worked. Unfortunately, it was being headed by a seventeen year old, and he doesn’t believe in stealth or subtlety because he’s melodramatic enough to want an audience when he confronts and in theory usurps his father. While they do manage to make a heavy dent in the king’s guard/soldiers and cause a lot of problems for him, they’re overpowered without much effort in the end. Talon and Iadra manage to escape the aftermath mostly unscathed, though not all the gryphons do, and Kyran is arrested and very promptly exiled on the spot. The king’s hope was likely that the humiliation of such a complete and public defeat would prevent him from ever showing himself in Andolia again, but as it turns out humiliating Kyran has roughly the effect of throwing water on a grease fire, and he was already plotting revenge before he’d even finished storming out of the room. 

Meanwhile, Talon and Iadra are trying to figure out where to go from here because this whole fiasco has made the Andolian impression of gryphons even worse (largely because the king is actively pushing the narrative in that direction to throw the blame off himself, since Kyran managed to make himself into a massive PR disaster). Even Talon is finding himself less welcome in a lot of places than he used to be, and distances himself from the places he is welcome to avoid bringing unwanted attention to them, so he mostly hangs out in the no-man’s-land with other gryphons unless his town has some kind of monster-of-the-week situation he needs to deal with. Iadra does have to rescue his ass more than once when he overestimates the goodwill of a few villages, because he’s entirely too optimistic when it comes to judgement of character, but while she's more wary about which aquei she’ll interact with, she enthusiastically jumps on the reputation-grinding sidequest train (gryphons are very fond of three things: proving how badass they are with dangerous heroics, being complimented about it, and receiving shiny things, so this is really the gig they were made for) and even becomes cautiously friendly with Talon’s hometown.

Barring the occasional snag, they do this pretty successfully for a couple years until who should show up again but Kyran, with an even bigger chip on his shoulder and an even more horribly ill-conceived plan to get back at the king.

Among the many powerful eldritch forces and arcane loci that can be encountered in the wilderness around Andolia is what I vaguely dubbed the Powers of Darkness and then never got around to actually naming properly. Anyway, the Powers of Darkness are a sort of multi-consciousness/hivemind/sentient form of malicious energy that feeds on suffering and conflict, generating from and partially comprising what I equally vaguely refer to as the Eleventh Dimension. Just don’t ask too many questions about this one. Obviously, Kyran looked at this extremely powerful malevolent force that has no agenda other than causing more misery that it can feed on and a resume of imprisoning souls via impulsively-made contracts as long as time itself and thought “yeah I can probably use that and deal with the consequences later” because he has learned nothing in the last two years and is still holding a massive grudge about his previous defeat. He proceeds to summon and make a bargain with this thing, certain that if he inflicts enough collateral damage along the way it will satisfy whatever price the Powers of Darkness would otherwise take from him.

He doesn’t tell Talon or Iadra this, he just states that he’s found a source of power that can potentially raze the capital to the ground, to which both are like “okay, no, committing war crimes over your unresolved daddy issues would be bad, actually.” Iadra has been pretty thoroughly done with him since he almost got them killed last time and is wary of burning the bridges they’ve been carefully rebuilding, but Talon, giant stoic golden retriever that he secretly is, still thinks that Kyran has potential if he could just be steered off the wildly destructive path he keeps going down and probably would be, if not a good king, at least a better king than Shale given a few years to mellow out. Two years ago this was probably true, but now he’s strongly underestimating how much Kyran should not be put in charge of anything. This leads to the first major conflict Talon and Iadra have ever had, which eventually ends in Iadra just throwing her hands up and going back to Talon’s town to brood about it and continue what they’ve been doing, assuming Talon will come to his senses after the plan inevitably goes to shit, having known him long enough to be confident that he’ll survive the consequences just fine. 

Those would have been safe assumptions if not for the fact that Kyran was much more dangerous and stupid than either of them were prepared for, and even Kyran wasn’t prepared for the fact that the Powers of Darkness also possess the more subtle tendency to slowly get into peoples’ heads and drive them to extremes they’d never reach on their own (not that this absolves him of wanting to destroy a city but he was very much under their influence by that point). Now granted, his desire to work with Talon was sincere; they’d become very close during the first rebellion attempt because Kyran’s lack of a competent father figure matched up well with Talon’s deeply ingrained Mandalorian Instinct™ and there was a good reason why Talon was so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here. The problem is that Kyran didn’t think to read the fine print while making deals with actively evil eldritch forces and was confronted with the consequences of his actions much earlier in his plan than expected. Suddenly realizing that he’s much less impervious to said consequences than he flippantly assumed, and pretty thoroughly cornered, he does the last thing available to him that doesn’t involve actually dealing with his own shit and paying the price himself, and turns on Talon to sacrifice him instead. Normally a moderately competent but inexperienced teenager against an adult gryphon whose day job is fighting things would be a laughably unfair fight, but the Powers of Darkness have a vested interest in Talon losing, and to the surprise of both of them he falls very quickly to Kyran, who hacks off one of his wings (unfortunately for Talon, the Powers of Darkness don’t feed on death or amicable defeat) and leaves him to bleed out, then flees into the hills, very much traumatized (albeit not as traumatized as Talon) but confident that he’s off the hook and determined to now proceed with his plan.

Luckily for Talon, this all went down not far from a fairly isolated aquei homestead, and he’s found by the couple who lives there, who heard all the crashing and screaming and are both 200% ready to throw down until they arrive on the scene and find nothing but an unconscious gryphon hybrid in a puddle of blood with one of his wings laying several yards away. Given the current state of interspecies relations, they probably would have killed him had they not recognized him as that guy from that one weird town, but fortunately all the sidequests have paid off. They haul him back to the farm and he eventually makes an impressive physical recovery, though due to the circumstances of losing the wing he’s kind of stuck between forms and can no longer shift to fully humanoid or fully gryphonic, which is an unusual state to get stuck in but still very livable in his case (he mostly just looks a lot more like a winged aquei than an regular half-gryphon). Still, losing an entire limb and all ability to fly is a lot, and he’s down for the count both physically and psychologically for a good chunk of time.

Iadra, when she doesn’t hear from him or Kyran for a while, starts to wonder if maybe something went wrong. Eventually word reaches her that Talon is dead (which even Kyran believes to be true, since the only two people who know otherwise are keeping their mouths shut) and she immediately decides to hunt down Kyran herself and absolutely murder the shit out of him. He’s not easy to track down, as he’s currently laying low and gathering power for what he’s determined will be the final assault on the capital and his father, and she has to increasingly rely on her human form the deeper into Andolia she goes, but Iadra is extremely determined and Kyran is pretty bad at being subtle, and she eventually tracks him straight into the capital. The ensuing fight between an accidental evil warlock who’s also the king’s bastard son and a horse-sized flying apex predator with fairly recognizable plumage almost immediately causes a scene and also a lot of property damage, and the king’s guard arrives quickly to apprehend both of them (or they will, just as soon as everyone stops flailing claws and dangerous forces around). Kyran, who this time lacks both the biased support of the Powers of Darkness and the element of surprise, fares much worse against Iadra than he did against Talon. So, in a last-ditch move of desperation, he calls on much more power than he’s already paid for to try and portal himself out of there.

Which is how he, and by extension Iadra, find out that Aentha has an inherent interdimensional connection to the planet Earth, and specific humans who live on it. And unfortunately, this is getting too fucking long again so I guess there’s going to be a part three.

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Loki Episode 4: MCU Easter Eggs and References

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This article contains Loki spoilers.

“Marvel, you’ve done it again!”

OK, but seriously…this is the best episode of Loki yet, and one of the best examples of the MCU’s Disney+ TV strategy full stop. Plenty of drama and action, to be sure, but also packed with surprises, some of which are very much things that Marvel Comics and MCU fans will be excited about, and others a little more subtle.

Here’s all the good stuff we’ve found in Loki episode 4 so far. If you spot anything we missed, let us know in the comments!

Valkyrie

Young Sylvie (young Lady Loki? What’s the correct nomenclature here?) is playing with her toys, and is reenacting (or imagining) a legendary battle involving one of the Valkyrie.

The Origin of Sylvie

This episode makes it pretty clear that Sylvie is 100% a Loki, and had at least part of a childhood on Asgard.

There are some subtle touches with how we see her booked into the TVA. The pile of papers indicating “everything you’ve ever said” is much smaller than the one presented to Loki in episode one. The camera lingers on the scorched floor to indicate the real danger (and the one a child would feel) of that checkpoint disintegrating you, etc.

Considering the extremely traumatic and messed up way the TVA just stormed in and took Sylvie away, it pretty much explains her habit of never wanting to sit with her back to doors.

Not Natasha!

Hey, remember when the trailers for this show were hitting and everyone (including us) thought there was a shot of Loki talking to Black Widow’s soul on Vormir? Whoops! Turns out that was just Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis-1 after all!

Blade is Coming to the MCU

Mobius talks up all the different types of beings that they’ve dealt with, including “Kree, Titans, and vampires.” This is the first confirmation of vampires existing in the MCU, right? Blade reboot, here we come!

The Eternals Connection

When Mobius mentions “Titans” he isn’t talking about the team of DC heroes. Instead, the Marvel Titans are Eternals who primarily inhabit (wait for it) Titan, the homeworld of Thanos.

Kree

Any self-respecting MCU and Captain Marvel fan knows who the Kree are at this point, of course. But remember that we also saw a member of their rival species, a Skrull, being booked into the TVA in the first episode. The TVA’s jurisdiction is truly boundless.

Lady Sif

Loki is tortured by the (justifiably) abusive words and punches of Lady Sif, as played by Jaimie Alexander. Previously, Sif was quietly forgotten due to her notable lack of appearance in Thor: Ragnarok and the lack of any reference to her since then. In real life, it was because Alexander was busy with her TV show Blindspot. 

As for the in-story reason, according to Kevin Feige, the official explanation is that after her appearances on Agents of SHIELD, Sif was banished from Asgard by Loki (disguised as Odin) in fear that she could expose his ruse to the rest of the realm. She was one of Thanos’ victims during the big snap, but was brought back five years later.

Interestingly, this encounter with Sif seems to be referencing a story from Norse mythology, although in a slightly skewed fashion. Here, Sif is annoyed with Loki for cutting her hair without her permission. But in Norse mythology (and at least one Marvel Comics story), Loki was the reason that Sif’s hair was black and not blonde, having magically changed it while she slept as a joke.

The Time-Keepers are Fake!

In the first Avengers movie, Nick Fury compared Loki to the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz, giving us the famous, “I understood that reference!” Captain America meme. This episode keeps the Loki/Wizard of Oz connection going with the way the Timekeepers are merely a fake identity meant to scare and grandstand. I guess we’ll have to wait to see who’s really behind the curtain, though.

Considering the way they’re laid out and dressed, the Timekeepers are most definitely supposed to be reminiscent of the Three Most Important People in the World, the futuristic utopian rulers who set things in motion in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to keep the correct timeline intact.

#47

Sylvie is held in Time Theater 47. The number 47 has a strangely deep connection to science fiction. The number occurs frequently in Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is because writer Joe Menosky attended Pomona College, where 47 is something of a meme, due to two students in the ‘60s researching whether the number appears more frequently than others. The nameless protagonist of the Hitman videogame series is also named Agent 47.

The Variant Lokis and the Post-Credits Scene

Loki wakes up and we get an homage to that famed shot in Avengers when Loki finds himself on the ground, surrounded by hostile heroes. Except this time they are Lokis. And…is that a crumbling Avengers tower we see in the background.

Of all the variant Lokis, the most significant of these is…

Kid Loki

Kid Loki made his first appearance in Thor #617 in 2010. Feeling he had hit a dead end as the God of Mischief and was too distrusted for his schemes to matter, Loki set up his own death in the event Siege, where he was killed by the Void. He was reborn as his child self, from back when he was beloved and still relatively innocent. While mischievous, Kid Loki tried to break the chains of what his previous self had become and used his powers to help Asgard and his brother. By the time he proved himself heroic, the soul of the previous Loki was able to overtake his body and ride on his reputation.

The conclusion of that story suggested that the status quo wouldn’t allow for a heroic Loki for too long, but instead of going full-on evil again, the new form of Loki instead fell into bouts of guilt over his actions. This led to Kid Loki joining the Young Avengers and eventually aging himself up to a young adult.

So hey, Disney+ shows are three-for-three on introducing Young Avengers characters!

Alligator Loki

The alligator Loki doesn’t exactly come from the comics, but it does seem to be a nod to the incident where Loki transformed Thor into a frog during the Walt Simonson run of the Thor comics. While the adventure was short lived, Frog Thor was such a beloved concept that it’s been revisited various times, including making it a separate character (real name Simon Walterson, because of course).

Classic Loki

Richard E. Grant makes an absolutely perfect comics-accurate Loki. Not only is the costume a perfect version of the way the character was portrayed in the pages of Marvel Comics for decades, where Loki was far more evil than MCU fans might be used to and…also kind of looked like Richard E. Grant now that we think about it.

Also, folks who have been rightly noting the Doctor Who parallels on this show will also note Grant has played the Doctor in a couple of forms in his time, as well.

“Boastful Loki”

We don’t know who that cool looking armored Loki wielding what looks like Mjolnir is exactly, but he’s credited as “Boastful Loki.” He sounds fun.

Miscellaneous Time Variants

Even though they’ve been around since the first episode, the “So… you’re a variant,” posters on the desk in the end credits certainly hits differently, doesn’t it?

The Moonlighting energy that we were getting last week with Sylvie and Loki seems to have been transferred this week to Loki and Mobius. Not that we’re complaining.

When Loki wakes up during the post-credits scene, he wonders whether he has arrived in hell. But of course, the closed captioning reveals that Loki is speaking of Hel, the Norse underworld overseen by the goddess Hel.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s Loki Episode 4: MCU Easter Eggs and References appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[hellsbellschime]

A Brief Exploration Of How Generational Trauma Destroys The World

Although The Umbrella Academy is only two seasons deep, one thing about the family that serves as the focal point of this story seems abundantly clear. They are absolutely, abysmally awful at their jobs.

After the bizarre births of some seemingly extraordinary children, Sir Reginald Hargreeves set out to purchase as many of these oddities as possible with one singular purpose behind it in mind, using these exceptional kids to save the world. Although Reginald only managed to acquire seven of these baby flukes, each of the Hargreeves children were gifted with some extremely unusual superpowers that seem to set all of them up for a successful life as superheroes.

Reginald raised them with the most rigorous superhuman training that he could devise, and he explicitly intended for his children to save the world. However, after nearly two decades of training and experience, along with a few major bumps in the road, the vast majority of the Umbrella Academy decided to leave the life of the hero behind.

But despite the fact that the children were raised to save the world, it seems like they can't help but to end it. The family has been estranged for years, but now, over the course of two seasons, they've managed to end the world twice, and in both instances it was just mere days after reuniting as a family. So, why the hell do all of the Hargreeves kids suck at life so hard?

Although the Hargreeves clan is supposed to be a squad of superheroes, the reality of the situation is that they are truly just a group of neglected and traumatized children who are not equipped to deal with adulthood, and their lack of ability to cope seems to have catastrophic consequences for the rest of the world. However, each one of the children is dysfunctional in their own way.

LUTHER

Oh, Number 1. Luther is the assigned leader of the Umbrella Academy, but it's painfully, awkwardly obvious that Allison might be the only one to even possibly defer to Luther in an emergency situation.

It is very interesting though, that Reginald has made Luther his number 1. Clearly Luther doesn't have the necessary leadership skills to keep his siblings on task, but he also arguably has one of the least useful superpowers of the entire group. So then, why is it that he's number 1?

Well, the obvious answer seems to be that, while he is not the most powerful, he may be the most useful to Reginald, because he is the only one of Reginald's children who actually tows the company line. He's the only person who has truly committed his life to Reginald's failed experiment, so even if he's the least powerful, he provides the most utility to Reginald.

In Reginald's eyes it's easy to see why Luther may have been the most important, however through the eyes of a normal human being, it's easy to see why Luther's experience growing up in the Umbrella Academy and his experience as Number 1 was so psychologically damaging to him. Luther seems to go to great lengths to seek approval and love specifically from people who always deny him, and this self sabotaging behavior seems to be reflected in many of the largest and smallest aspects of Luther's life.

Luther shouldered a disproportionate amount of blame for ending the world in season 1. Yes, his actions did have the direst consequences that any actions can have, but it's not at all difficult to understand his train of thought.

Firstly, he's the only member of the Hargreeves family who has never been able to escape his abuser. Luther's entire self identity is designed around what Reginald has taught him, and his overly simplistic idea of what a hero is and how he needs to lead his family is one of the many ways in which Luther demonstrates that he truly has not experienced life outside of his abusive childhood.

Secondly, it should come as no surprise at all that Luther's first instinct on how to handle Vanya is to do exactly what Reginald would have done. Despite the fact that no one actually remembers Vanya being locked up, Luther's reaction to the threat that Vanya poses is astonishingly predictable given that he is built by Reginald's design, through and through.

But finally, while Luther's actions are obviously the incorrect ones, clearly his assumptions about the threat that Vanya posed were absolutely correct. There were very few reasonable courses of action when the family realized that Vanya not only had powers, but had become dangerously unstable surprisingly quickly. Luther did take the wrong course of action, but there was really nothing wrong with his thought process behind it, and ironically it was likely only Reginald's extended isolation of Vanya in her childhood that led to Luther's imprisonment of her in adulthood causing such apocalyptic consequences.

Although Luther is a product of his environment, it's clear that he takes his duties as a real life superhero seriously. And interestingly, even though he was the last child to extricate himself from Reginald (and he didn't extricate himself willingly), he has actually shown himself to be one of the most easily self-reflective and self-critical characters in season 2 of The Umbrella Academy.

Luther made an enormous mistake because he recognized that Vanya was a powder keg ready to explode, but the choices that he made actually caused that bomb to go off. When he sees Vanya again, it's understandable that his first instinct is to eliminate the threat at any cost. But after just a few moments of consideration, he takes responsibility for his own actions, he recognizes that he needs to change, and he acknowledges that Vanya deserves the opportunity to change as well. Ironically, one of his first choices as an individual that isn't directed and controlled by Reginald is exactly the kind of decision that a good leader would make, which really goes to show how much Reginald's influence has stifled Luther's growth as a person.

DIEGO

If you're not first, you're last. Despite the fact that Diego is outwardly the most resistant to the training and indoctrination that his abusive father foisted upon him, it seems like Diego's position as Number 2 is how he has defined himself for his entire life.

The effect that Reginald's abuse had seems to be the most obvious with Diego out of anyone in the family, because it controls every aspect of his being. Everything that Diego thinks, says, or does is in reaction to his realization and understanding that he was raised by an abusive monster, as well as his deep and unyielding desire to experience true parental love in a way that was always denied to him.

It's intriguing but understandable that, despite hating his father more than anyone, Diego wound up becoming his Number 2. Because although Diego seems to mold himself in a reactionary way against everything that his father taught him, he's still the most ardently heroic member of the family, even more so than Luther.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Diego appears to be the most aggressive and brash member of the family, it seems like whenver he makes an attempt to express any of his sincere or deep emotions, he has a lot of trouble doing so directly. Both in the literal sense, due to his stutter, but also in an emotional and psychological sense too.

Like many of the Hargreeves kids, Diego's form of dysfuction almost seems to be an extension of his own superpower. He can literally adjust the trajectory of flying objects when they're already in flight, and his life's obsession seems to be redirecting his heroic story arc in the direction that he wants to see it go instead of along the path that his father set out for him. However, it's still incredibly telling and meaningful that Diego still defines himself by the heroic archetype that his father forced on to him when he was a child.

Similarly, Diego seems to be equally conflicted in his feelings towards his siblings. He at times embraces them, at times resists them, and he always seems to want to redefine the relationships that they all have on his terms instead of his father's terms. And the fact that he is so ardent that they all be a part of Team Zero when he spent his entire life playing the role of Number Two just goes to show that while he seems to rebel against everything that Reginald forced upon him, he still defines himself, his family, and the world in the terms that the Hargreeves patriarch laid out for him.

ALLISON

On the surface it would seem like Allison is the Hargreeves sibling who has gotten the closest to achieving a relatively normal life and who is the most capable of relating to others on a more healthy and normal psychological level, but it's still clear that her power defines how she relates to people and relates to the world, whether or not she's actually using it at the time.

Clearly her relationship with Luther is her most important familial bond, and while she doesn't seem to share Luther's more romantic interest in her, she does seem to be very keen to lean in to the person that Luther sees her as. And it's an understandable impulse, since it would appear that she doesn't use her powers on Luther or anyone in her family besides Vanya, so he's one of the few people who's interpretation of her she can actually rely on to be truthful.

But even when Allison can't or won't use her superpowers, her attempts at relating to other people or to society at large seem to be mostly driven by a need to control, redirect, or otherwise influence their way of thinking, even if they're extremely resistant to it. Of course, this isn't an entirely uncommon behavior, and it is an attitude that can be enormously beneficial in some situations while enormously detrimental in others.

However, the damage that Reginald has done to Allison is readily apparent because, regardless of the fact that she has been able to form deeper and more complex interpersonal relationships than any of her siblings, she still has no understanding of how to relate to people outside of her power.

And why would she? Allison's constant attempts at creating a normal life that seem to inevitably fail are not just failures because she is a superhuman trying to live in a human world. It's because she never had a fully dimensional and fleshed out human experience as a child. She wasn't seen as a person, but as a power, so she only knows how to develop or maintain relationships in which she exercises some sort of psychological control over the people she is engaging with, regardless of whether or not she's actually using her power in order to do it.

KLAUS

Klaus is undeniably one of the most compelling characters in the entire series, and it's easy to see why his childhood trauma has resulted in such extreme behavior and personality traits in his adulthood.

Reginald is a parent who did an exceptionally poor job of socializing his own children in a way that would help them function in the real world, but that lack of appropriate parenting seems like it would have the most extreme impact on Klaus, because Klaus' power is inherently social.

Seeing ghosts would be terrifying for any child and pretty much any adult on earth, but for a child who has no idea how to interact or relate to others, it could be an utterly crippling ability to have.

It's clear that the ghosts that Klaus typically sees are spirits who have some sort of unfinished business left in the world. And not only would any child be astonishingly incompetent when it came to dealing with those kinds of emotionally and psychologically complex situations, but the fact that Klaus' father mostly psychologically neglected and occasionally outright terrorized him meant that he had a very mentally draining and damaging power and was given no tools or coping skills with which to deal with them.

More than any other member of the Hargreeves family, it is Klaus that does everything that he can in order to escape his power, which is ironic considering that it was the only characteristic that his father seemed to think was relevant about him.

But, Klaus' desire to dull his senses by any means necessary was a rational response from a poorly emotionally developed person that was stuck in an astoundingly bizarre and psychologically taxing situation. In a sense, none of the siblings were failed by Reginald quite as much as Klaus was.

And that is a truly tragic result of Klaus' exceptional abilities. It's very telling that Klaus seems to occupy some metaphysical space between life and death that allows him to commune with the dead, but he's also terrified of losing the ones that he loves to death.

If most people knew with any degree of certainty that the afterlife was real, let alone if they could actually commune with the dead, it would be a huge relief. But Klaus lied to Ben about going into the light because he was afraid to lose him, and he spent most of the second season doing whatever he could to save Dave from certain death. But why? Well, because his father made his own abilities, and the dead, into his source of constant terror.

FIVE

Interestingly, despite the fact that he spent the least amount of time with Reginald out of all of his siblings, it seems that Five's utilitarian attitude towards heroism mirrors his father's the most closely out of anyone. It's easy to see why that would be the case, but the fact that Five's reaction to the most extreme trauma that any of the Hargreeves kids have endured is to act more like Reginald than any of the other members of his family is a strong indication of how abuse and generational trauma can affect an individual as well as an entire family.

However, there is one stark difference between Five and Reginald. While Five has a very easy time grasping the greater good in any morally difficult situation, he still goes out of his way to prioritize the health, safety, or survival of his family whenever he can.

With all of the Hargreeves children, there is an element of conflict that arises from the fact that they were raised being told that they had to save humanity, but they were also raised in a way that completely disconnected them from humanity. And with no character is that conflict more apparent than with Five.

Five is ready and willing to sacrifice nearly anyone that he feels he must on the altar of the greater good, but his emotional connection to his family is extremely strong, and even in the most dire of circumstances it seems like he always keeps them as his priority.

It's an interesting dichotomy for the character, because the distance between him and the rest of his siblings is larger and longer, both literally and psychologically, than anyone else in the Hargreeves family, but he seems to be almost entirely oriented around his family at the expense of himself. And it's a sharp contrast with his father, his father seems to have reacted to world-ending trauma by ensuring he would have no familial bond with his children, but Five has reacted to it by holding on to his familial bonds as if they're the only thing in the world that matters.

Although the trauma that Five experienced in the post-apocalyptic world as well as during his tenure as a time-traveling assassin is probably far worse than the trauma that he experienced as a child being raised by Reginald Hargreeves, becoming the survivor of an apocalyptic holocaust led him to most clearly mirror and contrast the parent who spent his entire life raising him with the intent of preventing another apocalyptic holocaust.

BEN

Most of the Hargreeves siblings seem to have some sort of connection between their power and their personality, either because of nature or nuture, so it's fascinating that Ben seems to be diametrically opposed to his. His ability to summon and partially transform into some horrific Eldtritch creature seems to completely contrast to his innocent, sweet, and generally kind disposition. But why is that?

Ironically Ben seems to be the most well adjusted member of the Hargreeves family, and it's hard not to speculate that his maturity might actually be driven by the fact that he died young.

He was subjected to the abusive and neglectful parenting of Reginald just like the rest of his siblings, but through death he actually wound up escaping his abuser. So, while his literal growth came to an abrupt end, it seems like his personal growth may have actually begun.

On the one hand, it seems like Ben's behavior is an obvious signifier of the fact that his life stopped at a relatively young age, however, a lot of Ben's behavior and overall outlook on life seems to be exceptionally childlike, even for someone who died as a teenager. And that in combination with the fact that he seems to be so well adjusted in relation to his other family members begs the question of whether or not death finally allowed Ben to have the childhood that he deserved but never had.

Either way, it certainly says a lot that the two most well adjusted members of the Hargreeves family either spent most of their lives in an apocalyptic hellscape or literally dead.

VANYA

Poor Number 7. Being relegated to the least important member of your family is never an easy position to occupy for anyone, but it seems like Vanya is the purest and most clear manifestation of all of Reginald Hargreeves' failings as a parent and teacher.

There are a lot of curious complexities to Vanya, and it's obvious that having no real human parental influence is almost certainly why she became the most dangerous member of the Umbrella Academy despite not even using her powers for most of her life.

Reginald's fatal mistake with Vanya was his belief that constantly reminding her of how un-special she was would lead to her never becoming dangerous enough to do real damage to the world. But his assumption of what would be the best way to handle her seems to be based on an incorrect conclusion that Reginald drew based on Vanya's behavior towards her nannies.

It's quite an odd dynamic, because while Vanya seems to have extremely negative reactions towards the nannies that try to parent her, Vanya's behavior in general has demonstrated her to be an extremely emotional, empathetic, and kind individual who doesn't want to hurt anyone or anything. So why did she keep on lashing out at the women who were being hired to care for her?

Well, because she is someone who had never experienced a human parent-child dynamic, and therefore she lashed out emotionally when that dynamic was suddenly thrust upon her.

Vanya may have become dangerous after years of being horribly abused, but what's sad about the trajectory of her life is that she clearly had an abundance of emotion, much of it positive emotion, that she was desperate to express but couldn't.

Given that she has very quickly fallen in love twice over the course of two seasons, it's painfully obvious that she feels like she has a lot of love to give and no one to give it too, but it's also tragically clear that she doesn't know how to differentiate between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one.

Vanya dedicated her life to expressing herself through music, which is clearly deeply connected to the latent superpower that had been repressed for her entire life, but as a result of that enforced repression she even felt like a complete failure at that.

So, while everyone at the Umbrella Academy contributed to Vanya's meltdown in some way, the honest truth seems to be that nothing could have been done to prevent it. After a literal lifetime of total repression, abuse, and neglect, there was no other way for Vanya's abuse, or the abuse of all of the Hargreeves children, to end.

REGINALD

Of course, as the patriarch of the Hargreeves family, Reginald Hargreeves is truly the architect of his children's dysfunction. They all react to his neglect and abuse in their own way, but ironically the entire reason that the Umbrella Academy seems to repeatedly fail in it's sole mission is because of Reginald's single-minded focus on it. The Hargreeves children are doomed to destroy the world because all Reginald ever cared about was saving it.

Reginald is literally an alien, but the literal and metaphorical implications of a group of children who are raised in a world that separates them from their humanity is a rich textual and subtextual aspect of The Umbrella Academy.

Reginald himself is not a suitable parent to his children, but all of the outside influences that he allows on his children are literally not human either. Grace and Pogo provide some basic functional emotional satisfaction to the Hargreeves children, but they're still not people. They don't help the children to understand humanity or human existence any better, and they still serve to separate the Umbrella Academy from the very world that they're meant to protect.

On the whole, Reginald's abject failure as a parent, teacher, and creator is a fantastic allegory for the nature of generational trauma. Reginald is a failure as a parent for many reasons, but ultimately Reginald is a being who was extremely traumatized by the destruction of his own world, and as a parent, he passed that trauma down to his own children.

In that sense, the failure of The Umbrella Academy to live up to it's potential solely rests on the failings of Reginald himself.

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

i think robininthelaberynth is the person i saw suggest that the untamed is how wwx would like to remember the events of mdzs and that works for me too like i think as good at not dwelling and moving on as mdzs wwx is the second flautist would HURT and it's the sort of thing he might wish was true in a secret corner of his heart and then there's jiang cheng's face which i love but it would be kind of hilarious if in universe he only looks like that to wwx because he knows him so well and everyone else is but jin ling is just looking at minor variations on madame yu's sneer but yeah i really don't think the wwx of the untamed is lacking in complexity or moral ambiguity! he tortures (a lot of) people to death he makes a superweapon he can't control properly and is pretty cavalier about that he does a shit job balancing his obligations to his sect (i'm not talking jc and yanli i'm talking all the OTHER sect members he's also ditching and sticking with the murder bill while pretending that's nbd and they should just be chill) he's a real dick to a lot of people including people who love him! he's also kind and generous and extremely heroic and very traumatized and just a fundamentally loving person who wants the world to be better than it is he's trying so hard in an impossible situation and he's just a baby! and i have absolutely seen book only people declare that wwx has never done anything wrong in his life and not in the fun way i respect and cherish stop saying he only murders because of his poor self esteem and love of justice let him murder for low self esteem and justice but also rage and vengeance and a half articulated conviction that he might as well play judge jury and executioner because he's better qualified than JGS (via op)

You know what I just thought of? The Untamed might be how the story will be told in MDZS once a long time has gone by. Think about it: WWX didn't invent demonic cultivation but instead got the idea from more evil people, JGS and JGY were the root of all his image problems, there's evil magic metal that corrupts people rather than regular human nature - it's the perfect mostly sanitized propaganda piece with good guys and bad guys more neatly divided, which is what tends to happen to history.

I like this, but I admit that I personally fall into the camp of people that think there’s plenty of moral complexity in The Untamed. It definitely takes out or glosses over some of the darker stuff from the book, but both by virtue of its medium (visual storytelling with pretty broad acting) and because of a bunch of pretty deliberate adaptation choices The Untamed is also much more of an ensemble than MDZS, and I think giving other characters more time to establish their perspectives and motivations adds back in some of that complexity.  It goes out of its way to establish that the baseline of the cultivation world is violent and unjust and all our heroes are complicit in that (that archery scene! the general attitude towards blood feuds! Mingjue in his capacity as Mr. Righteous saying that it is basically impossible for the Jiangs to owe Wen Qing and Wen Ning anything in light of what their family did to his, and in fact kind of lowkey suggesting that acting otherwise is an unfilial dereliction of duty!).

Also, everyone is 300% less repressed and the question of how Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian is not supposed to be much of a mystery. This doesn’t actually make the drama more complex, but it does give it yet more room to highlight the perspectives and motives of characters who are not Wei Wuxian, which I do think makes it harder to miss the complexity. We get stuff like The Untamed putting in the work to make sure the audience understands how we get from Jiang Cheng telling Zixun to shut up or put up in front of a war room full of the most important people in the cultivation world to Jiang Cheng saying “look I agree he shouldn’t have killed members of your clans but his heart was in the right place,” to Jiang Cheng at Nightless City, not taking the “fuck Wei Wuxian in perpetuity” vow but also very much not protesting when everyone else does. Is it spoonfeeding? Maybe, but it’s also delicious. Subtlety is dead to me I only want Wang Zhuocheng’s cryface.

That being said, these may just be things I’m particularly interested in and thus paying attention to? I’ve definitely seen meta from people who came away from both the show and the book under the impression that most conflicts were caused by people being too dumb or evil to handle Wei Wuxian’s awesomeness and equating “inconvenient to wangxian” with “bad,” and I’m going to be mean and say I think the problem is less with either work and more with their reading and viewing comprehension. I am very sympathetic to the pains of having your favourite elements of a book minimized or absent in an adaptation. Wei Wuxian is definitely a lighter shade of grey, considerably less repressed, and much less of an asshole in The Untamed, and Jiggy does get a hell of a villain edit (I think he’s plenty villainous in the book! but if I was a Jiggy apologist coming to The Untamed I’d be miffed). I get being annoyed about those changes! Just, you know, Wei Wuxian does still very much torture a lot of people to death for vengeance in a story that is in large part about the role vengeance plays in maintaining the cycle of violence.

[daylighteclipsed]

I’m starting to really get into Star Wars and god do I love how Luke’s clothes shift from white to black as he slips closer to the Dark Side throughout the movies. I love that overt morality symbolism. It’s so interesting, especially because Luke’s moments of slippage aren’t always obvious.

ANH opens with farm boy Luke Skywalker dressed in pure white, having had a relatively stable upbringing. He’s an orphan and that kind of sucks, but he hasn’t been through any traumatic experiences or gone through any big losses yet. Sure he’s impatient and reckless and a little temperamental (like his dad), but he’s a good kid. Not long after we meet him, he’s told his father was murdered by Darth Vader. His aunt and uncle are killed by Imperial forces. Later he witnesses his friend Obi-Wan die at Vader’s hand.

The beginning of the trilogy establishes Luke’s scared and angry and has more than enough incentive to want revenge. It’s involuntary, but because Luke is Force sensitive this is the start of the Dark Side’s corruption. Temptation comes from the inside. You don’t necessarily have to act on those feelings–though if you do I think that speeds the process up–but once the feelings are there, festering, you’re already in danger of having them take over.

That’s why the Jedi are so against attachments and prefer to train people when they’re very young, before they can form major attachments. If they’re not attached to anything, they have nothing to fear losing. But by that logic, anyone trained when they’re older is likely to succumb to the Dark Side. Both Anakin and Luke are pretty much doomed from the start then, which Yoda does point out. Remembering Anakin, Yoda’s reluctant to train Luke at all in fact.

But he does, or at least starts to, which brings us to ESB. Luke’s impatient and kinda short with Yoda before Yoda even reveals who he is, which already doesn’t bode well. Luke fails two of his major Jedi lessons: he’s told to face his fear in the cave without a weapon, but brings his lightsaber anyway, effectively beheading Vader without hesitation; he’s told not to abandon his teachings in fear of his friends, but does so anyway. Anger and fear perfectly laid out, and he falls prey to both of them.

So its only fitting Luke’s dressed in murky grey when he tries to save his friends and face Vader in Bespin. He fails, miserably. The Dark Side’s corruption is growing. His father senses it, takes advantage of it to slice Luke’s hand off, and then drops the truth bomb of being his father, which turns Luke’s world upside down.

As a kid, I guess I never really considered the emotional impact this would have on Luke beyond obvious confusion and horror, fear and anger. But discovering his father’s alive and a Sith Lord and that his supposed “friend” Obi-Wan lied to him about it, that would throw all of Luke’s beliefs into question: Why would Obi-Wan, a Jedi, a ‘good’ guy, lie to him? Are the Jedi really ‘good’? Is he right to trust them? How could his once heroic Jedi father become this twisted monster? Everyone’s wary Luke has too much of his father in him. Are they right to be wary? Is there Darkness in him too? Is he really destined to be like his father?

If Luke was already subconsciously afraid of becoming like Vader as the cave vision in Dagobah suggests, discovering Vader’s his father amplifies that fear tenfold. Luke’s good, he knows he’s good; he risks falling to his death over surrendering to Vader. But the doubt is still there, and its the doubt that makes the Dark Side stronger.

ESB ends with Luke in this shaken state. He’s doubting himself and his beliefs and he’s afraid and really angry. It’s a snowball effect: The more upset he is, the more the Dark Side grows, and the more the Dark Side grows, the more upset he is. In the time between ESB and ROTJ, I imagine he’s sort of like Anakin, in which he has this immense rapidly growing power and all these emotions he can’t help but feel, with no one to help him deal with it. Anakin couldn’t ask for help, and Luke has no one to ask for help. There’s no one teaching him, no one guiding him. There’s no one preventing him from turning to the Dark Side, except for himself, his own belief in the Light.

That’s one thing I didn’t consider until now: the extent of which Vader revealing he’s Luke’s father damages Luke. The ground is ripped out from under his feet, and all that’s left below is Darkness. He doesn’t trust Obi-Wan. Yoda eventually dies. His friends aren’t Jedi. The only family he has left who can maybe understand him is evil, and it doesn’t help that part of him really longs to be his father’s son, despite everything. Luke’s in absolute emotional turmoil. He’s all alone with the Darkness growing inside.

And next time we see him in ROTJ he’s clad in black, with an ominous hood hiding his face. He Force Chokes guards, threatens Jabba, and slays Jabba’s guards above the sarlacc to rescue his friends; very un-Jedi like actions with very un-Jedi like motivations.

After surrendering to Vader in an attempt to bring Vader back to the Light, Luke’s brought to the throne room, where Palpatine instantly recognizes Luke’s growing hatred and rage and power. Palpatine tries to provoke him, taunting him mercilessly–Luke’s fate is inevitable, his friends are headed for a deadly trap which he’s powerless to stop, he wants to kill Palpatine, wants to strike him down so bad–and Luke snaps. He summons his lightsaber and swings at the Emperor and would’ve honestly killed him right there had Vader not intercepted Luke’s lightsaber with his own.

That’s another thing I didn’t realize: Luke’s big moment is generally considered to be when he has the choice to strike his father down or not, but he gives into the Darkness before that when he tries to kill Palpatine. He doesn’t succeed, but it isn’t himself, isn’t his own moral conscious, that stops him. It’s someone else blocking the way.

Fighting Vader is different at first. Luke doesn’t want to fight his father, and that kind of brings his rage back down to a controllable level. Luke’s still angry, but he feels the Light in his father and refuses to let go of that. He’s trying to be diplomatic, trying to be compassionate. Until Vader threatens to turn Leia, to put her through the emotional hell Luke’s trapped in. Then Luke flies off the handle. “NEVER!” He uses the Dark Side to attack Vader, beats him to the ground, chops Vader’s hand off (an eye for an eye, I suppose), and in the end has his lightsaber hovering at Vader’s throat not unlike how Vader pinned him down on Bespin.

Breathing heavily, shaking with rage, Luke is blind to the Light, blind to his father’s good, as the Dark Side swells within him, screaming for him to kill. Kill his father. Kill him. The Darkness knows you want to, Luke, and the Darkness feels good; unstoppable, intoxicating power…And, once more, Luke might’ve done it, had he not been interrupted.

He’s hesitating a little before that of course, but he doesn’t actually snap out of his rage-induced breakdown until Palpatine laughs. Only then does Luke glance at his mechanical hand and realize his fear of becoming like Vader is coming true. The rest is history: Luke tosses his lightsaber aside and declares himself a Jedi like Anakin. Part of his black robe falls open to reveal the white beneath; no matter how Dark he seemed Luke always had Light within him, the same Light he brings back in Anakin. By yielding, Luke saves himself and his father.

As much as Luke declares himself a Jedi though, he’s really….not. He’s not a Jedi or a Sith, he’s not one extreme or the other. He’s kind and selfless, but he’s also passionate and troubled. Luke loves and feels so much. Being an unorthodox kind of Force User, he exists in the middle, something entirely new, a big thing I failed to realize and what I think some other people still don’t realize: Luke’s in the grey zone. Not to say he isn’t kind and compassionate and forgiving and all, but that isn’t all he is. He isn’t all Light. He can’t be. 

The Dark Side’s a corrupting force and it nearly took him. Yes, Luke pulls away at the last second, but the Dark Side, and the damage it did to him, doesn’t go away just because Luke denounces it. Once its there, its there. Luke may’ve proven the Dark Side doesn’t have to dominate your destiny unless you let it, but the threat that it can will always be there. Luke will always have to struggle with that duality. He will always have to work to keep the Dark from extinguishing the Light inside him.

Which is, in all honesty, a solid representation of the struggle between Light and Dark that exists within us all. Luke having the Light and the Dark is what makes him human. Luke choosing to act primarily on the Light is what makes him a good human.

[yourdailykitsch]

A rough translation of the Cinema Teaser article featuring Dylan and Taylor. Some parts are paraphrased, sorry I’m not as up on my French as I should be...

Dylan O’Brien, the rebooted version of Taylor Kitsch? The rich idea comes from American Assassin and it caused Cinema Teaser to germinate the desire for a cross-talk. The two actors have some points in common with ten years between them and we interviewed them face to face.

There are similarities in your two paths: you started on TV (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS for Taylor and TEEN WOLF for Dylan), then on to big productions in the cinema. Dylan you even made an incursion into Taylor’s field, working with Peter Berg (DEEPWATER). Is there a typical route for young actors to be wary of or to embrace in Hollywood?

Taylor: I think the most important thing is to never do what you don’t want to do. You can’t always fight the way people see you in Hollywood, but you can get closer to projects that attract you and you can fight for what you believe. In the end, I refuse any project that I don’t want to devote weeks of time to, that’s all. 

Dylan: I do not have a very definite plan in my mind...It’s a little weird. I did not grow up wanting to become an actor or anything like that. I grew up worshiping movies and I have parents who worked and still work in the industry and I imagine that in a sense they have conveyed to me the love they have for cinema. When I was little, it was what I preferred: watching movies, watching actors, and adoring all kinds of artistic talents too - performers, singers, dancers. And that’s how my interest is. Growing up, I always performed. I always made small films, short films with my friends and my sister and everything started like that. Hollywood is the drive force of cinema today, the experience now has another scale and it is different. When you come into that environment you must master a part of the trade that is not exactly your profession.

Ten years separate you. If you Taylor, you observe the beginnings of Dylan and if you Dylan, watched how Taylor started, do you have the impression that the industry or the way it deals with young actors has changed?

Taylor: It should be kept in mind that when I start on television with FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, the series was not a phenomenon. We never had the following that TEEN WOLF had. My popularity was limited to a fervent public that has a background in American football or that kind of sports fiction. I don’t know if the industry has changed for young actors. When I see Dylan, I have the impression that the younger generation is attacking the business with plenty of intelligence, it’s on! They know what they want and they know how to use the system to their advantage. 

In your opinion, what is your biggest commonality - professionally and personally? 

Taylor: I would say that Dylan and I are always ready to take on a challenge. We are not afraid to look far into ourselves for a character. For example, it was always a wish to play a bad guy, and I very much like the fact that we both went a little against the usual, in the sense that we show that there is a torment, or even an inner hell. We show that there are repercussions for our actions, especially mental ones. And that’s why American Assassin is a bit different in the genre. 

Dylan: I agree with everything Taylor says! (Laughs) The reality is that on the set we did not have too much time to chat or compare our careers because the time we shared is as short as the time we share on screen. But I am sure that now that we are promoting the film we will have more time to discuss.

Taylor, you are Canadian and you don’t stop playing the American Heroes. In Lone Survivor or in American Assassin, there is a rather harsh picture of the American culture of violence. Do you feel like an enlightened observer?

It depends on the script I get. Also, I think more of the character’s hope than his nationality. Whether it as a (Mike) Murphy in LONE SURVIVOR or Ghost in AMERICAN ASSASSIN, what is important is what he has in his head, more than his flag. The thing is, with Murphy, who is a heroic figure and quite iconic - and it’s legitimate - you play someone who represents something strong and you have to be faithful to him. I live in Texas and I have a buddy who has a ranch. For AMERICAN ASSASSIN, I lived there alone for ten days with the script and some weapons and that’s how I put myself in the head scape of Ghost and created him.

That you have both worked with Peter Berg is not insignificant. Peter casts actors who crystallize something from American. Dylan, what relationship do you have with the image of the American hero?

Taylor: Peter was a TV star (between 1995 and 1999, in CHICAGO HOPE, he played Dr. Billy Kronk) before becoming the great director he became. He is a dream director for an actor, especially the young actors, because he knew better than anyone what it takes.

Dylan: Peter, I learned so much by speaking with him, working with him, watching him. The idea of not being the typical action hero in American Assassin is what attracted me first to the film. If you watch movies about assassins or secret agents, you rarely see how they got there, what events or accidents they went through. A year and a half ago I went through something quite traumatizing in my life (Dylan was injured on the set of THE DEATH CURE). Rebounding after that was very difficult, to be honest. So I can easily connect with that part of my character.

Dylan, TEEN WOLF will stop soon. Is there any particular anxiety? Taylor you remember what you felt when FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS stopped? Do the films made while you’re engaged on a series set the tone of the films that you want to do next?

Dylan: I have no problem with leaving TEEN WOLF behind me because I never wanted to stay ‘cornered’ with the same character for too long. I never looked for stability with a job on TV over seven years or more.

Taylor: The end of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS was bitter sweet. On one side, it was time that it stopped and we all wanted to try other things. But at the same time, we were an extremely close team. We never had big audiences, contrary to what everyone seems to think today. With the rebroadcasts, Netflix and all that, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is still very much alive and surely has a wider audience today than at the time it aired. But I do not take it badly, a series does not set the tone of your career. The producers will always try to hire you for roles that you have already played if you succeeded at a the box office... And in my case, we know that it never happened like that! (Laughs)

Through your respective series, you have (or have had) a teen fanbase. Does cinema help you get another audience? Is this one of the criteria for choosing a project?

Dylan: I have never reflected in these terms. For me, AMERICAN ASSASSIN was interesting because it was different from what I was known for, okay. But as a comedian, you always want to do new things, to meet different challenges. You do not want to always play the same character. As for my fans or the people who follow my career closely, I respect them enormously but, sorry, I will never let anyone lock me in a box.

Taylor: My teenage fanbase is far behind me. I want to go back in time! (Laughs) No, I’m joking, everything’s fine.

Taylor, after shooting supermovies (WOLVERINE, BATTLESHIP, JOHN CARTER), you finally turned to movies that, even if they have a certain pre-awareness, remained original movies. Is it difficult to find original material while evolving in cinema?

Taylor: I think in terms of character. I do not know if I necessarily like the guy I play in AMERICAN ASSASSIN, but I like the fact that he is anchored in some reality. There is a lot of pyrotechnics but I like that there is no green screen, if one has to compare with WOLVERINE, BATTLESHIP or JOHN CARTER. Green screens are always difficult because you have to use all your imagination to try to fill the void around you. AMERICAN ASSASSIN evolves into a reality, a realism, a viscerality, the rhythm is incredible. I think it is the kind of cinema I prefer.

Taylor, after FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, you took time to re-engage in a TV series. Dylan, would you like to devote yourself to the cinema before eventually returning to a series or mini-series?

Taylor: I did not plan to return TV until I had an interesting and limited proposal for the small screen. I did TRUE DETECTIVE and then I just finished a six-hour mini-series which is called WACO, with Michael Shannon, Paul Sparks and Shea Whigham. In this case, returning to television is not an insignificant option, of course.

Dylan: It may have been different ten years ago when Taylor was on TV, but today, there is no longer a real difference between TV and cinema. You find excellent scenarios everywhere as long as you give yourself the means to look for them and show a little patience. 

Taylor: I will not sign a lengthy contract of something like seven years. On the other hand, I could sign for a mini-series of six or ten episodes, if the character interests me. There is something beautiful to serve and dig into a character over six hours, rather than over 30 minutes.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Tick - Quill’s Quickies

Hello and welcome to this subtle rebranding, Remember my Reaction blogs? My short, spoiler free mini reviews I write after I’ve watched a movie in a cinema. Well I’ve never been particularly fond of ‘Reaction blogs,’ so I thought I’d change it. Hence the rebranding. Quill’s Quickies. It’s basically the same as my Reaction blogs except the title is now a hysterical innuendo.

…

Well I thought it was funny! Honestly, I don’t know why I bother with you lot sometimes!

Before this show came out, I honestly had never even heard of the Tick. I didn’t realise there was a whole comic book series or a cartoon or that there was a live action show starring Patrick Warburton. So when this showed up in my Amazon Prime recommendations, I was somewhat bemused. At first glance it looked like a really stupid superhero parody. The kind you’d expect from those idiots that made Epic Movie and Meet The Spartans and all those other shitty parodies. But eventually curiosity got the better of me and I watched it, and I tell you what. I’m so glad I did because The Tick has got to be one of the funniest and smartest comedies I’ve ever seen.

The Tick is set in a world similar to ours except superheroes are commonplace. A traumatised, working class nobody called Arthur believes that evil supervillain the Terror (who everyone believes to be dead) is still alive, and is trying to prove his existence. His actions draws the attention of the mysterious superhero known as the Tick. A man who’s nigh invulnerable and a complete doofus. The Tick is determined to find the Terror and make Arthur his sidekick, but Arthur is reluctant because he’s afraid of getting hurt or killed. The series follows Arthur’s attempts to try and help the Tick whilst trying to maintain a normal life.

The shows plays out as a very surreal satire, but it focuses less on jokes and one liners, and more on telling a compelling and engaging narrative with a more comedic twist. The world of The Tick is clearly meant to reflect the way current superhero movies have gone. Dark, gritty, tragic and ultra serious. But there’s not a hint of pretentiousness about it. There’s a very tongue in cheek, self awareness to it, which is amplified by the Tick himself.

Peter Serafinowicz plays the Tick, and he’s simply magnificent. His performance is very reminiscent of Adam West’s Batman as well as Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. The Tick is clearly supposed to represent old school heroics, and most of the comedy comes from these two clashes in styles. The villains talk and act as though they’re in an Alan Moore comic whereas the Tick behaves like the kind of superhero you’d find in Saturday morning cartoon in the 60s. The villains often resort to foul language and strong violence, but the Tick never sinks to that level. He’s just this symbol of pure goodness and boundless optimism in the face of adversity. While he is a total moron and says some very weird things, you never get the sense that he’s being mocked or ridiculed. In fact quite the opposite. The Tick feels like a tribute to the ‘old fashioned’ superheroes of yesteryear. He’s immensely likeable, clearly has a heart of pure gold and you can’t help but smile whenever he appears on screen.

The co protagonist of the show is of course Arthur, played by Griffin Newman. Arthur has the staple traumatic past, but unlike say Batman or Daredevil, Arthur reacts the same way I think most of us would react to trauma. He’s tentative, apprehensive, paranoid and lacking in confidence. He knows the Terror is alive and wants to prove it, but is too scared to take action himself. It’s only through his interactions with the Tick when he starts to come out of his shell and accept his destiny as a superhero.

The growing friendship between the Tick and Arthur is easily the highlight of the show. It���s extremely funny and surprisingly touching at points (particularly in the last episode). Arthur is initially annoyed by the Tick’s constant intrusions into his life, but you can tell he clearly likes and begrudgingly admires the guy. And the Tick clearly likes Arthur selflessly and unconditionally. He wants Arthur to be his sidekick because Arthur makes up for his own limited intelligence, and also because he recognises the potential within Arthur and wants to see him reach that full potential. While the show is called The Tick, the story is really about Arthur and his development. He’s the emotional bedrock of the entire show who grows and evolves the most.

The Tick is a superhero story first and a satire second. By getting us to feel a strong emotional attachment to the main characters, the weird and surreal situations they find themselves actually become even funnier. There are a number of other recurring characters in the show with their own arcs and gags. There’s the Terror obviously, played by Jackie Earle Haley, who’s kind of a cross between General Zod and the Joker. You’ve got his henchwoman Ms Lint, played by Yara Martinez, who bares some resemblance to Harley Quinn. Valorie Curry plays Arthur’s overprotective sister Dot. Brendan Hines plays the arrogant, image conscious Superian, who’s clearly a parody of Superman. Michael Cerveris plays Ramses IV, who’s an obvious pisstake on gimmicky crime lords like the Penguin. And finally there’s Scott Speiser who plays Overkill. A character that’s clearly supposed to parody the more violent, R rated superheroes to have come out in recent memory, such as Daredevil and the Punisher.

The first half of season one, consisting of six half an hour episodes, was released on 25th August on Amazon Prime with the second half due to be released in early 2018. If you haven’t already, I urge you to watch The Tick. It’s a shiny orb of joy that everyone should experience.