#he's the reason the three main characters of the third even survive long enough to go through everything in that book

[onenotsubtle]

emotional about my favorite book on this Midnight On Monday

[giowritess]

fortnight [1]

gif by @dameronscopilot

pairing | Benny Miller x female!reader [Grace Stratford]summary | you somehow end up pretending to be Benny's girlfriend for two whole weeks. is your heart going to survive that? probably not. warnings | mentions of sex, alcohol, mentions of cheating by a third character word count | 1.7k author's note | so. happy new year! i deeply apologize for not showing my face here for the last two years lol things have been complicated and i haven't found the time to write. i've recently fell in love again with the miller brothers from triple frontier and this came up completely random, it's gonna be a small series and i'll post as soon as i write them. future smut. no mentions of y/n; grace's name is only mentioned once. english is my second language and this wasn't proofread so i apologize for any mistakes. hope you enjoy it. xx masterlist | main masterlist

fortnight

"Meaning: 14 days; fort·​night ˈfȯrt-ˌnīt : a period of 14 days : two weeks."

Pretending to be Benny Miller's girlfriend for two whole weeks wasn't how you planned to spend your days off, but here you were.

After working so hard for so long, you finally had your well-reserved month off, plus a few days more. You spent a few days with your family and now were all set to enjoy two weeks of summer bliss at a friend's super fancy summer house, along with lots of other friends and others not so much, as you soon found out.

The moment you got there, you could hear the laughter coming from the house—a mansion, one could say—even from your car. The moment Will showed up at the doorway, Maddie, your best friend and his girlfriend, jumped out of the car to run to him and you rolled your eyes. They saw each other yesterday. But then Benny showed up at the door, shirtless, laughing as Will picked Maddie off the ground, and you sighed. 

Yeah, you had it bad, and he was completely oblivious to it.

While you and Maddie made the trip there, she filled you in on a lot of things. The house belonged to Luke's parents, Luke being an Army buddy of the boys and your long time friend since high school. What a small world, right? Besides him and the three in front of you, you couldn't say you were “friends” with that many other people there. At best, “acquaintance” was the most appropriate word, but you didn't mind, you were there to enjoy the summer, the Fourth of July and Luke's birthday. But the thing is, Maddie also told you some other rather interesting things. Benny was pissed for two reasons: one, he was the only single guy there, and two, his ex-girlfriend was there with her new boyfriend. His ex that, according to Maddie, was the one who broke things up and he still had a thing for. His ex that Maddie hated because she was a typical Regina George—nevermind being almost thirty.

The idea started to form in your head the moment Maddie told you all that, but you still weren't so sure of it.

The thing was, your relationship with Benny was weird. Since Maddie was your soul sister and you were always around when you weren't deployed, he was basically a brother-in-law to you. You two had always been friends, got along just fine; there was, however, one alcohol-filled event two years ago that changed the trajectory of your relationship. 

You still remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. You'd just gotten back from deployment, happy to be home at the beginning of summer, your favorite season. Maddie and Will were in the early stage of their romance, lots of longing glances and unsaid words, so you were starting to be around Will and Benny more frequently. The thing was—you had a thing for Benny since, well, ever. You just couldn't help it, guys who knew how to make you laugh were your downfall, and it was only a bonus that he was handsome as fuck and had eyes that made your parties drop. Suffice to say, Benny Miller was your dream guy, but he never made a move on you as seemed interested in you. It wasn't that you weren't brave enough to go for it—you just couldn't bear the possibility of being rejected by him, so you accepted your fate of liking him from afar. 

That night in particular, your first night back, the four of you were at your favorite bar to celebrate your Captain promotion—after four whole years in the Air Force, you finally had a helicopter to call your own. To say you were happy was to say the least; you were estatic. Your little brother would be proud of you. All drinks that night were on Maddie and the boys; you weren't a heavy drinker, but that night you let loose and really enjoyed yourself. And shit, you could swear Benny had never looked as good as he did that day. It didn't help that you hadn't had sex in a million years and he was basically sex on legs, nor did the fact that the trash bag of your ex, who cheated and dumped you through a phone call while you were overseas, had just walked in with his brand new girlfriend, the one who he cheated with. It served only to make you want Benny even more—he was so much more man than your ex, and you'd bet an arm that he was better at sex, too. You were sure of it, even though the only place he'd been recently (every night) was in your dreams. 

You were both drunk, you more than him. Maddie and Will had abandoned you already. You weren't sure how—maybe because of your sex deprived and lust-filled mind—, but the subject turned to sex, asking each other what sort of crazy things you'd already done. The thing in question was 69, which you'd never done, and Benny surprised you when he denied it, too.

And then, maybe it was the alcohol running through your veins, fogging your brain. Or how close he was and how good his perfume smelled. Or maybe you'd just had enough, so you said, taking a sip of your beer:

“I bet you know how to properly eat a girl out.”

You saw the moment his eyes darkened, one of his eyebrows raising up. He slowly placed his beer on the table. You didn’t breathe, feeling as if you were about to die while waiting for his reply. 

“Wanna find out, Captain Stratford?”

You were bracing yourself for a rejection, for him to say he wasn’t interested in you that way, anything but that. You definitely weren’t expecting that. He didn't ask, but you'd never had sex in a car before. Or had three orgasms on the same occasion that weren't self-induced before. But yeah, he was way better than your ex, and your dreams. 

But then it got awkward between you two afterwards. Sure, it was the best sex of your entire life, and sure, you'd love for it to happen again, but you weren't really sure how to treat Benny. So you tried to act as natural as possible and so did he, almost as if pretending that nothing had happened. Except it had, and every time you looked at him, you remembered it. Everytime you looked at his hands, you remembered how well he worked you up with those long fingers. Everytime you looked at his face, you remembered his beard glistening with your juices after he made you come twice with his lips alone. Whenever you saw him holding something, you remembered how good it felt to have those fingers wrapped around your throat while his cook hit every right spot, again and again. Safe to say, you were having a hard time focusing whenever he was around, and it made you wonder if the remembered it, too, when he looked at you, because sometimes you could swear he looked like he did. And sometimes... sometimes he looked at you the same way he did that very same might when he asked you that question. But then it faded as quickly as it came. So you tried to treat him like you used to, but for the past two years it seemed to have an elephant in the room with you, and you just didn't know what to do about it.

Truly, you'd already accepted that nothing would ever happen between you two again. But the moment Maddie told you all that, the gears in your brain started working. It was risky—what if he didn't like it? And honestly, why? It wasn't as if you really wanted him to get back with his ex... yeah, there was no rational motive you could come up with. At least no motives that weren't selfish. But then, still sitting at the driver’s seat in your car, you glimpsed your ex, wrapped around his current girlfriend—a new one, who looked suspiciously like you—by the pool, and that gave you the courage to go ahead with your plan. So that was how you found yourself in your current predicament. Exactly when Benny was awkwardly talking with his ex, still by the door, you called out his name and went to him, the surprise evident in his face. And then you kissed him.

This was the defining moment. You were scared of his reaction—and then he kissed you back, way more fiercely than you expected, his tongue slipping into your mouth, until the girl in front of you cleared her throat.

“And you are?” She asked, and the tone of her voice made you want to strangle her.

Instead, you took the jealousy and anger cursing through you and transformed into confidence, and you gave her your best smile.

“I'm Grace,” you replied, and you felt Benny's eyes on you. “Benny’s girlfriend.”

You didn't know what surprised you more: the giant scowl in her face, or one of his hands going around your body. 

“I'm sorry, what is it again? Pam, Tam?” You asked before she said a thing.

You knew damn well what her name was.

“Sam,” she replied through gritted teeth.

“Oh, that's right. Lovely to meet you.” You turned to him, dismissing her entirely. “Help with the bags?”

He nodded and gave her an apologetic look, before grabbing your hand (another surprise) and following you to your car. The moment you opened the trunk, he let go of your hand and you already missed the contact.

“What's going on?” He asked, confusion clouding his beautiful features.

You glanced around to make sure you were alone and tugged him closer.

“Look,” you whispered, “both our exes are here, and according to Maddie, you still like her. This way, you make her jealous, maybe win her back, and I rub it in his face that I landed someone way better than him.” His lips tugged up in the slightest shadow of a smirk. “What do you say?”

You didn't realize you were holding your breath until he replied.

“Huh. That's really smart,” he said, surprising you once again.

You expected him to say something more, but then he grabbed the bags and walked back towards the house.

And that was how you found yourself pretending to be Benny Miller's girlfriend for two weeks.

Would your heart survive those two weeks? Probably not.

by @reveriesources

➜ part two

[evachuber]

More theories because I am on a brainrot

I spent some time to think of theories and what everything means during the wait for part 2, and whilst it's quick, I do think I should lay down some I have right now and see if they make sense. Let's begin.

Spoilers for all of Chapter 2 but I think you all knew that the moment you saw my post's title.

I do think that if David IS telling the truth about his secret, then Hu can be the three suicides one. After all, she mentions not being useful after David's big reveal and seems to hold a significant amount of trauma due to that.

It WOULD also help show why the fuck she keeps babying Nico, seeing them as someone who needs guidance on how to survive a killing game with people like Ace in the room, not to mention, she already has a friendship with Nico, so it's a starting point.

Does that mean I like her?

Look I may have such low standards I like Veronika but Jesus Christ Hu is a fucking annoying character, just cuz she has a good reason DOESN'T mean she's likable

ANYWHO, enough Hu hate or else she will give me at least 20 Aneurisms in a matter of a millisecond, we got another killer suspicion

Do I believe it? No. Not because It's not right, but because if it IS right, my discord pfp changes and I am naturally very biased because of it.

People are saying the killer is Levi. Which... definitely has points.

Levi using the crazy sprite here makes him seem like he's fucking insane, but also... hiding something? most of the cast has something to hide, and by this point, Levi is definitely the most sus one who's hiding something

close second/third is David/Arturo but they've revealed big something already so they're not on the list

Dude was MEGA quick to hit the vote button on David, even to the point of it looking too quick. Since David is the most sus person this chapter, it's natural to think he's a suspicious person and the best person to vote, therefore get them out of the way and win the trial. The only reason this fails is because Teruko's thinking and Charles realizing the group fucked up (Just between us, that's the most BS cliffhanger I've seen. Makes sense, but damn it was fucking abrupt.)

I find it oddly out of character for Levi to instantly push Eden as the killer. David? You can make the argument he revealed a new side to him and confessed to the murder instantly, but EDEN makes less sense to me. They are shown to be friendly, as shown in the first episode of the chapter.

ANOTHER THING is that Charles brought up a point I would see the calculative Levi agreeing with; No one was going to accuse Eden of murdering, she was just suspicious as the note had her name on it.

All this makes Levi very suspicious, and that's just from the trial. There is also evidence that points back to him.

I will not cover every evidence. Not because this post is too long as is and you'll need to read it when you have the next few hours free, but because I do not remember how the evidence plays into the case and my IQ usually isn't higher than 5

Man I am such a good DRDT fan :D

ANYWHO- One I will cover is the Merry go round, or as Infinite from Sonic Forces Teruko describes it, "The spinny thing".

Now, tape being wrapped in some sort of way around the merry go round is already looking suspicious, but then you look at Arei's wrists.

There is a mark on her wrists. It also can't be rope because of the shape, rope would leave a few patches of untouched skin, whereas in this case, Arei has a complete rash around her wrist, showing that tape was definitely used to drag her. This is also why her glove was missing, most likely to keep people from either guessing it's tape compared to rope or her glove was resistant to tape. It's one of the two, I have 0 idea.

Now, the main idea is that Levi used the Merry go round to push Arei up on the swing set to make it SEEM like she hanged herself in order to stage a suicide. However not only is that not the case due to Suicides not causing a trial, but also look at the fact that we can confirm that Arei's death had nothing to do with drowning (meaning no relaxation room ravine was involved.)

Arturo confirmed her neck was broken.

At first, this seems irrelevant. After all, hanging usually ends in broken necks, right?

APPARENTLY NOT.

seems sus for someone to die from a neck snap without the use of a noose. and let's remember what Arei's talent is...

Yeah, she's pretty fit

Of course, a Bowler has uses with the arms...

OK that sounded wrong- but I can't explain it better-

ANYWAY, Given her strength, it would be natural she could overpower most of the cast, even if they tried to hurt her. Some people are also not physically fit enough to either fight back/kill Arei or even fight her, and I doubt most people would know how to snap her neck.

Levi looks like he has healed, so I don't see him looking like he CAN'T snap Arei's neck. He also could easily push the carousel as long as his arm doesn't get hit with the pain, but the dude is buff enough I think his remaining hand will be fine.

There is DEFINITELY more I can think off, but remember, I'm some British guy theorizing on how buff dude killed a character who nearly got character development, but DR;DT played it well. If I think of more shit I can make a part two to this post but until then imma go commit tax evasion and angering Karen's with my shitty opinions, have a nice life

[wedontburnbookshere]

☆☆☆1/2

For some reason, I thought this series was just a trilogy? Then, partway through book three, The Shadow Wand, I saw that there was no way that this was all getting wrapped up in one book, even if it was over 600 pages, so I looked it up, and book five comes out next year. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if I'll continue. I'll read the synopsis of book 4, and if it piques my interest enough, maybe I'll pick it up.

Anyway.

I feel like I harp on tense a lot (at least to friends), but I don't think these books should have been written in 1st person, present tense, especially since in book three, there are multiple POVs, switching to 3rd person, present tense for the other characters. There are a few switches in POV in the first two books, but those are more snippets, before we are taken back to Elloren's narration.

Before I read the third book, I thought that something that would have helped would be if it had been written in past tense instead, where Elloren is recalling her time at school from some point in the future. We as the readers know that Elloren is the prophesized Black Witch, long before she's even aware she has magic. A big part of her arc in book one is her beginning to unlearn her prejudice towards the other fantasy races. A big part of this involves her borrowing history books from one of her professors. Elloren complains about history being confusing, as depending on who's writing about what happened, accounts don't quite line up or even directly contradict each other.

It would have been nice, having an element of Elloren being an unreliable narrator, recalling this time in her life during a time where we as readers can assume she can sit down and recount it all/write it down. Just an element where I as the reader couldn't help but wonder what side of history she's writing from and with what motive(s).

When The Shadow Wand switched POVs, I felt that maybe the books should have been in 3rd person from the beginning, with Elloren still getting the most page-time in book one, then splitting it a bit more in The Iron Flower. Part of why I think this is that in book three, one of Elloren's love interests (Lukas) has a change in personality that feels... sudden, I guess.

There are things we see about him in book one that doesn't make this change feel out of nowhere, but when we see Lukas in the first two books, he kills and hangs up the pet of Ariel, one of Elloren's roommates, seemingly without guilt. (Seemingly, since this is from Elloren's POV.) When Elloren feels guilty, Lukas tells her that if she wants to survive, she needs to show herself as powerful. Later, when Elloren is realizing everything she'd been led to believe about her people and history is wrong, she brings up the series' main antagonist to Lukas, who says he thinks Vogel is wrong. However, he says fighting against him would be choosing the losing side.

Keeping power and the security power brings is one of the only motivations we see from Lukas, and at first, this motivation is even what leads him to wanting to be with Elloren. He knows she's powerful before she does, and he wants her power to be allied with his own.

In book three, his motivations have changed to wanting Elloren safe. Since he wasn't in book two much, him going from wolf to puppy feels sudden, though if I decide to read book four, I think there had been enough hints where Forest could add scenes in Lukas's POV to show where his feelings towards Elloren had shifted.

Elloren's relationship with Yvan unfolds more naturally, since we get to see more of Yvan and how he changes around her as Elloren learns more about the world and begins changing for the better. I enjoyed him starting out as an antagonist, even if it was pretty obvious going by YA book conventions that he'd eventually be a love interest.

Yvan is a Kelt, which Gardnerians like Elloren and Lukas look down on and oppress. He is understandably not happy to have to be around Elloren when she receives orders to work in the kitchen to help pay for her scholarship, but the narrative treats his suspicion and anger as being fair considering the world's politics on top of what we learn of his backstory later into book two.

A major theme in the books is relations between the fantasy races, primarily how the Gardnerians consider themselves superior. Vogel, the main antagonist, is running to head the Gardnerian council and wants to crush the other nations under Gardnerian rule. In favor of him are Elloren's aunt and a growing number of Gardnerians.

Forest is about as subtle as a sledgehammer when it comes to this theme of politics and race relations. There is one point where Elloren is reading a newspaper with a classmate, who is disguised fae, a race being actively hunted and killed by the Gardnerians. Elloren mentions she'd never bothered to keep up with politics before, to which her classmate retorts that it's because it hadn't affected her before.

I don't see this as a point against the books, and the school setting was used really well in delivering exposition for the world-building. Elloren might be from this world, but she had been spoon-fed propaganda wrapped up as history since she was a baby, so as Elloren learns more about what's really happened and what's going on now, a lot of the information dumps honestly feel pretty organic.

I'm not sure if the sudden switches in POV in book 3 just threw me off, but it took much longer for me to get through it compared to books one and two, which only took me a few days to read each. With book two especially, I got excited to get back to it whenever I had to put it down, which made me excited for book three, since it's common for the second book in a series to be harder to get through compared to the first and third, especially in a trilogy (which again, I for some reason thought this series was a trilogy). I had also started reading book three at the start of a depressive episode, so my inability to get into it may have more to do with my mood than the actual book.

Like many magic systems, the one in this book gets more holes in it the longer you squint your eyes, but it works well enough that I can mostly just accept it as I kept reading. Runes are a bit of a sonic screwdriver kind of magic, able to do just about whatever is needed. I don't mind that too much, since there have already been some established rules for runes, so it still feels like there are stakes, especially after seeing some of the magic Vogel has acquired.

When it comes to Vogel, I'm on the fence about how I feel about him as a BBEG. He is definitely big, bad, and evil, almost cartoonishly so by the time we see more of his power in book three. However, irl, there have been some cartoonishly evil people, so....

I'm less on the fence with Fallon. I don't like her. She feels like a Regina George-type clone but with god-like powers, mainly with ice magic. Because Ice Queen, I guess. *badum tss*

She honestly doesn't provide much, which I feel is a shame, because considering everyone thinks Fallon is supposed to be the next Black Witch, she could have been the perfect foil to Elloren, and there were points that made it seem like that that was supposed to be her role.

If I decide to continue reading the series, I'll probably add on to my thoughts, like if I'm right and Forest does more to show Lukas's change in heart towards Elloren.

[sludgest]

> IT by Stephen King

TW: Abuse, Sex talk, Gore, Godawful Shipping etc.

To preface this, the book is nothing like the movie. It's absolutely nothing like the movie. They took the characters' names and three isolated events from the book that were like... three pages long each, and then made a movie out of that. If you’re thinking of the movie, don't associate it with my following review, even though I’ll be using movie ss to make the review more visually appealing. I repeat, this is not about the movie.

TW: abuse, sex talk, gore

IT, by Stephen King, was super crazy, I loved it, and my overactive imagination did too. the characters are so good, I'd kiss Richie Tozier on the lips in a mildly homoerotic way, the story is laid out so nicely and the word choice is insane. Sure, it might have given me nightmares about flying leeches biting dime-sized holes into my arms and flying into my mouth, but it was fun to read. Wild ride. I also liked the perspective switch, graphic detailing, and the way that these horrible events were used as a vessel to talk about philosophy. This book basically scratched all of my itches. A need for gore, a need for emotional depth, a need for comedic relief, a need for poetry, a need for murder and horrors beyond my comprehension.

Ok, I'm gonna elaborate a bit further to do the story justice. I drip-fed the book to myself slowly, reading a bit every day, five days a week, and it took me... weeks. Well, currently it's my favorite book (no other books have breached the 10-point mark yet) and there's good reason for it. 

First off, the perspective switches were awesome. Point, end of the story. Incredible. I like how you were able to see everything from everyone's perspective, how there were subjective and objective accounts of things, diary entries, news articles, etc. Had me cumming and nutting I swear to god it's so good.

Second, the family dynamics were well-written. I'm a cause-and-effect type of guy, and I like when characters are fleshed out, and there's a rhyme and reason as to why they're the way they are. King (Stephen King, the author) executes this fantastically by letting you meet the families of most of the losers (that's what they call the main characters if you were unaware.) 

For example, we're introduced to Bill's apathetic, cold family (giving him a motive to kill IT, since he thinks it'll make his family care about him again), we meet Eddie Kaspbraks mother, a fat, and overly emotional lady that sort of abused him (I'm pretty sure that the way she treated him was abusive) and really shaped his character from a young age. Mike Hanlon's family was awesome and supportive, real model family, but he got crap for being african american (story set in 1958, it was really bad for Mike). Richie Tozier also had a good family, Stan Uris as well (he went birdwatching a lot with his dad.) Bev's family, I think, was the worst of all because her dad physically and emotionally abused her, and well as attempting to sexually abuse her. This is later reflected in the man she marries, Tom, who physically, emotionally and sexually abuses her. It was very hard to read, I'm gonna be honest. I didn't know what it feels like to read something with a lump in your throat until I read the parts about Tom and Beverly. Plus, it's like... ultra-triggering for survivers of abuse, so I'd discourage anyone who went through that kind of stuff from reading. If you really wanna read IT though, you should skip over the Beverly POVs because frankly, they're just brutal.

Well, third, I like how Stephen King wrote sex in this book (it's a continuous theme.) And before you judge me, I'm praising him for being thorough enough, but vague enough. The story is not an erotica, it's not meant to be hot. Sex is mentioned as a form of bond, as a form of abuse (holy shit there's so much abuse in this book, it's absolutely packed with it), and also mentioned in the "losing your childhood" sort of way which becomes VERY important later in the story. Sex is only insinuated in the story, it's not graphic, you don't get any action out of it and it's only for the plot which I find awesome. Even in the part where adult Bill cheats on his wife with also-adult Beverly (lol), sex is only insinuated, even though it's the only actual erotic scene in the book. 

Lastly, the poetry is crazy, and the way he strings together the literal dozens of characters with their own individual stories and experiences is so well-executed. King unironically sat down, created a masterpiece and dipped. Everything fits into place, all the experiences come together to form this... beautiful picture with no loose threads. I'm getting goosebumps and a boner thinking about this (I'm a writer, how could you tell?), but the only thing I didn't like about the book is how it ends. 

(It ends with all of them moving to different states/places and forgetting each other, like, a full memory wipe, and just going back to their lives before that. They're slightly improved though, because Bev leaves her abusive husband and Ben gets a promotion, along with Bill's depression lightening up.)

Now comes something that really ruffles my feathers. I hate Ben's and Beverly's relationship. I hate, hate, hate it. If the word HATE was printed tiny, 10 times onto every square inch of the 1184 pages of the IT paperback, it wouldn't be able to touch the amount of HATE HATE HATE that I feel for the relationship between the two. Bev could have ended up with anyone else. Richie, maybe Eddie, hell, Bill would have even be fine. But Ben? Ben the weirdo who's fantasized about touching her breasts starting in fourth grade? Ben who never got over her, even as she was married? Ben who couldn't back the heck off? Ben, the lonely, fat pig who I wished had died instead of Eddie in the finale of the book? I guess he's not as bad as Tom, but holy, I was dreading the Bev&Ben arc, and it ended up being confirmed at the end of the book. Screw that, man. 

Still doesn't take away from how good the book was. I'm rating it a solid ten. 

[bokunoheroanalysisforthefuture]

A World Constantly Graded on a Curve

The Sports Festival, Pre-Kamino Heroics, and the Issue of Public Image

The UA Sports Festival. The wildly popular in-universe event that replaced the Olympics. The second major narrative arc of the series. At twenty-three chapters long, stretching from chapter 22 through chapter 44, it makes up more than half of the series up to this point - and quite a few developments crop up in it.

This is not an analysis focused on the battles themselves or the characters in them. This is more focused on the motivations and reasonings for why the Sports Festival is the way it is, why it’s so popular in-universe, what UA intended for it, how UA handled what happened, and what it all tells us about hero society (and Japan as a whole) before the Kamino disaster and All Might’s subsequent retirement. 

(If you would prefer to stick to the chapter analysis, check out the main readthrough! I’ve completed through the sports festival arc at this point, so there’s plenty of content available.)

To start us off, when is the Sports Festival in the school year? 

A lot of people place it in late May, giving the kids some time to develop their skills and show what they’re made of, plus it pushes it closer to the general summer timeframe real-world sports festivals in Japan happen. However, the main trouble with that is that that doesn’t fit with the timescale Horikoshi gives us in the narrative.

Japanese schools roll over to a new year on the second Monday of April. The USJ incident was on the first Wednesday of the school year. And the Sports Festival was two weeks from the Friday of that same week - meaning towards the end of the third week of school, or the fourth week of April.

However, after the sports festival, we get a bit more information from [chapter 46] that leads me to believe that the Sports Festival is actually the Tuesday of the fourth week of school, placing it at the very beginning of May.

Yes, this does mean that class 1a only had roughly three weeks of training for this event. Which on one level makes sense, since it’s the chance for kids who didn’t pass the entrance exam to possibly transfer up, while those who perform poorly get transferred out. 

[chapter 23]

It’s early enough that there hasn’t been too much invested into any given student, but still just enough to give the first year hero courses an edge over their untrained competition. For second and third year hero students, it’s the opportunity to show off how they’ve grown over the past year, to in turn attract the eyes of potential internships, and in doing so make connections that will last them well after they graduate and start making names for themselves in the hero industry.

(This explains how Izuku didn’t really have much time to improve his performance with One For All before the Sports Festival - he’s only been using it for a few weeks!

That also means that All Might reached out to Gran Torino fairly quickly for help regarding One For All, all things considered - especially with how afraid of Gran we know Toshinori to be.)

With that covered, let’s get into the Sports Festival itself, and the reasoning behind hosting and broadcasting it. 

UA has just been attacked. Public confidence in the school is a bit shaken, everyone’s talking about the class who survived villains, and the school needs to prove that nothing’s changed - as well as to show off their suddenly-popular first year students as soon as possible. While the general plans for the Sports Festival had likely been planned and were under construction even before the school year started, I would guess there were some last-minute changes made in order to make the best of their situation.

Aizawa himself notes that the Sports Festival is still happening because it’s necessary to demonstrate that UA’s crisis management protocols are sound. It’s not an event that can be cancelled over a few villains. According to him, UA’s Sports Festival has taken the place of the Olympics in terms of scale and popularity. Which is… interesting. And not necessarily in a good way.

[chapter 22]

To clarify, it’s understandable that the Olympics, which are based solely on demonstrating the peaks of the standard human body, would fall apart when there are suddenly so many powers around that there no longer is a ‘standard’ by which fair and balanced competitions in any sport or event can really be held. Even trying to keep it ‘quirkless’ can’t really save them, since it’s very likely that whole new sports have come around or undergone heavy revision specifically to take advantage of quirks existing.

However, the fact that a school competition, featuring high schoolers, is Japan’s new big event of the year… it feels a bit odd. And I think it has something to do with Japan’s quirk laws, now that I think about it. 

You see, one of Japan’s noted things is that quirk use is illegal outside of heroics (and most likely the medical profession). Very few people get to use their quirks freely in public besides like, minor stuff that no one would bother to report. So the Sports Festival, alongside heroics on the news in general, is probably some of the few times most people get to see quirks used to their full potential - and considering the popularity of superhuman media today amongst the Japanese, it probably isn’t a surprise that the in-universe quirk-based events are just as popular. 

In addition, when I was doing some more research into the Sports Festival, I came across this wiki article about the National Sports Festival of Japan. Most notably, there are two pieces of information in here that I think can tie into why the UA Sports Festival operates the way it does.

One, the NSF has three age brackets for its various events: 

Adults: Born before (and including) 1 April 18 years prior to the start of the tournament.

Youth A: Born between 2 April 18 years prior to, and 1 April 16 years prior to the start of the tournament; second and third year high school students.

Youth B: Born between 2 April 16 years prior to, and 1 April 14 years prior to the start of the tournament; third year junior high school, and first year high school students.

And considering the NSF is apparently the premier sports event of Japan, well. That suddenly explains why a high school competition can be so popular. Especially considering point two: the NSF is broadcast nationally. To quote from the article itself, 

On days in which there are competitive events rather than the opening and closing ceremonies, that prefecture's television studios and equipment are used (the newsroom, an open studio etc.). Also announcers from those stations (normally either a man and a woman, or just one person) take the host role, explaining events as the tournament progresses. The general broadcast format follows a simple flow. The outline summary of that day's main games, as well as introducing key athletes, a broadcast from the main sport venue of that day, a broadcast from the studio giving results of other events and other topics.

[Chapter 43]

Another article I found does talk about normal school-level sports festival events, and a lot of what’s in here lines up with what we see from a lot of the sports festival, abet if it were mixed with an elimination-style tournament. Most notably, the major events mentioned:

Competitive events usually include relays, bean bag tossing, obstacle courses, tugs-of-war, and the famed 「騎馬戦」“kibasen” or Calvary Fight, the Japanese version of Chicken Fight. This last one involves a student hoisting his/her partner on the shoulders, who then tries to rip off the opposing team’s bandana to score a point… a truly heart-pounding game indeed!

While, narratively speaking, the Sports Festival was likely just an excuse for Hori to write a tournament arc, in-universe, I wouldn’t be surprised if UA has taken up the old role that the NSF used to fill, likely again because of Japan’s quirk laws and the general struggle of balancing events where everyone has superpowers that could let them get ahead of the competition somehow.

For something so popular, what exactly is the goal of the Sports Festival? Well, it differs from department to department. 

For heroics students, the goal is to catch the attention of the heroes there as scouts, because said heroes will be looking to hire them as sidekicks after they graduate. 

[chapter 22]

For support course students, it’s an opportunity to show off their inventions and be noticed by support companies.

[chapter 25]

For business course students, it gives them a chance to hone their skills as salespeople and run business simulations. 

[chapter 26]

And for general education students, well… it’s their only chance to transfer to another course. Most prominently, the hero course. 

Overall, that seems fair and balanced, right? Except… no. No it’s not. The sports festival is overwhelmingly about physical challenges and endurance, generally favoring those with the strongest bodies and quirks. And what else tended to favor those kinds of quirks? The entrance exams. The same entrance exams that decided who got into the hero course in the first place. 

You sort of start to see the issue. It’s even confirmed at the beginning of the Cultural Festival arc that the sports festival is where the hero course has its chance to shine.

[chapter 169]

And I mean, it does make sense that the annual school event that focuses on physical strength favors the course that focuses on physical capability. And while I can’t find any resources on how often transfers happen from other courses to the hero course, I am going to guess that, like Shinsou, they tend to take a while and require a lot more evaluation and training in order to catch them up to their peers before moving them into the class when the year rolls over. At the same time, it seems to require making a good enough showing to catch the eye of one of the teachers, and then getting them to start considering the student for training and transfer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not very common. 

So the goal of the overall festival is to showcase the hero students. But what about the individual events? Canon in this case actually explains it better than I could! 

[chapter 27]

In short, the first round is individual based, focusing on the competitive aspect of heroics, to be able to race to get to the scene first and claim victory before your opponents, regardless of what - or who - is in the way. The second round, on the other hand, represents the need for cooperation between heroes for bigger issues, such as the Sludge Villain. And the third round is just plain a chance to show off quirks and skill.

But wait, there’s more! 

Consider, if you will, that the point of this year’s festival in particular is to make a show of strength to the public, to reassure civilians and to warn off villains all at once. Class 1a has the eyes of all of Japan, meaning that UA wants to show them off as much as possible. We actually see this from the beginning of the festival - Present Mic gives them a particularly grandiose introduction compared to the rest of the classes.

[chapter 24]

It’s blatantly obvious to the kids participating: the other courses might as well just be there to make the hero course - and 1a specifically - look good. And of course, the other classes focus their resentment at class 1a instead of at the media and staff and culture that are hyping them up so much. Probably because the kids can’t do anything about the source of the problem. 

So with UA doing their best to show off 1a in this festival, what can that tell us about the events themselves?

Well, you’ll note that the first event is one of endurance. Specifically, a four kilometer race around the perimeter of the stadium, with obstacles along the way to slow them down. Already heavily favoring those with physical training, even before considering the obstacles themselves: the robots, the ropes, and the mines. 

The robots are the most obvious gimme for the 1a kids, and likely were something added in at the last second. While I wouldn’t be surprised that the small robots were planned ahead of time, the large robots were no doubt in part a chance to make shows of power or agility. You’ll notice that it was Shouto and Momo who each took out Zero Pointers, while 1b - and the other courses - lack members who have quirks at the same level of raw power.

Likewise, with 1a already having gone up against actual villains, they were able to avoid hesitating when it came to getting around the smaller robots - Katsuki, Tokoyami, and Sero went over the zero pointers, Kirishima (and Tetsutetsu) went under them, and the rest ended up going around.

[Chapter 25]

The second and third obstacles were definitely pre-planned, and so less obviously advantageous to 1a. Still, all of class 1a ended up getting through to the second round, with the cutting-off point turning out to be just after Aoyama, who came in 42nd place.

Ah, but that comes off as rather curious once one considers how important it is to show off all of 1a. Since the second event cuts the number of students heading into the third round down to sixteen regardless of how many got into the second round, and that the sports festival is in theory meant to give kids in the other courses a chance to grab a spot in the hero course if they make a particularly good showing - or to move hero kids who do especially poorly out… why that cut-off point?

In and of itself, it wouldn’t bother me, but if you go back to chapter 24, you’ll note that Midnight never gave a set number of students who’d be getting through the qualifiers - we only knew how many went on to the second round after the results were in! And naturally, UA couldn’t just let one of the 1a kids they want to show off be left behind because his quirk was not meant for endurance! So instead, the two go-getters from outside of the hero classes get subtly rewarded by moving on to the second round instead.

[chapter 24]

The second round, as noted above, is meant to showcase teamwork and being able to work around other people’s quirks. It also puts the students head to head, directly targeting each other in order to get points - with, I should note, a caveat that attacking other teams is grounds for disqualification. Why is this? 

Well, my main theory is that UA is covering their asses by minimizing the chances of quirk-related injuries before the final round. After all, the first round, while a competition, doesn’t have a set number of students who will go through, likely to lower the desperation of those crossing the line later. It also minimizes the need for students to use their quirks on each other, instead focusing most of their energy on navigating the terrain.

Likewise, the second round allows some quirk use against each other, but specifically discourages direct attacks against one another - while all the students who got through are in theory trained with their quirks, not all of them have perfect control over them yet, meaning that they are more likely to be weeded out in favor of those with exceptional quirk control. And so the final sixteen - the best of the best - will on average all be well-rounded and capable of giving a good show while avoiding making UA look bad.

...and I just had an epiphany about that ten million point headband, whoo boy. I mentioned UA wanting to minimize student injuries and show off the best of their hero students. And the best students to have go through are the ones with the best control over their quirks, who both will put on the best shows and are least likely to actually cause lasting injury to one another.

You know who fucks up that plan? Midoriya ‘bones go cronch’ Izuku, who gets first place in the qualifiers with some quick thinking - and without his quirk. He’s strong, sure, but his bone-breaking habits have a high chance of putting off prospective offers, and more than likely would cause quite some concern among those watching. So what is UA’s best way of filtering him out without seeming like they’re deliberately targeting him?

[chapter 27]

By giving him a literal ‘free pass’ to the third round, with the caveat that he has to defend it for a full fifteen minutes against every other student who wants to get it from him. As well as have at least one other team member in order to even participate. 

But of course, who would want to take on the burden of signing up for the team starting with the ten million point headband, when they can just play it safe, get onto another team, and then take the free pass towards the end? Even Izuku acknowledges this issue, as well as how his questionable quirk showing (beyond what they’ve seen of his previous bone-breaking) has likely killed his chances of winning their trust. 

There’s two likely ways for this situation to play out - either Izuku gets a team, or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t get a team, then he - and his game-breaking headband - are likely disqualified from the match and the tournament, thus ensuring that his chance of harming himself (or others) is minimized. And if he does get a team, it’s highly likely that they’ll be overwhelmed by the other teams in short order and will struggle to make it through to the third round, again eliminating Izuku from causing potential issues in the tournament bracket.

Part of my evidence for why this might be the case? This convo about the entrance exam from a flashback during the Final Exam arc.

[chapter 60]

If the entrance exams were designed to avoid claims and suspicions of people being harmed in them, then what about the sports festival? Especially one that UA is using as a show of confidence-building? Them letting a kid with such a dangerous lack of control through to the finals would undermine that goal severely. 

However, UA underestimated how resourceful Izuku could be, as well as his ability to make use of quirks and support gear alike in order to make a disadvantage - no offense - into an advantage - high mobility and defense. Likely because they’ve only known him for a few weeks. 

(They really should have checked with Toshinori before going through with their plan.)

Edit: After realizing that this sounds perhaps a bit malicious on UA’s part, I felt the need to add in a clarification that that’s not the case! UA is trying to discretely help Izuku by giving him a clean ‘out’ early on, while he’s shown at his best.

Even if he’d gotten a team and done his best but fallen short (as they probably thought would happen), he’d still have had the benefit of his good showing in the first round and a fairly decent showing in the second in order to make him look his best before he’s put into a situation where he’ll be pressured to use his quirk or lose unflatteringly. Remember, he’s still breaking his bones at this point!

And we saw the result of the crowd’s thoughts on him once he showed off his self-destructive quirk - he ended up with no offers whatsoever. UA was probably trying to prevent that with this ploy, only for it to backfire on them.

Like, is it still a little bit underhanded? Mayhaps. But it’s certainly kinder than letting Izuku break himself to the point where one of his hands is permanantly fucked up, like what ended up happening.

Ultimately, there’s no way for UA to predict who will go through to the final round, only guesses and estimates. But what they can do is take advantage of their best estimates in order to lean on the number of ‘showcases’ they have available to them: Shouto and Tenya, the legacy students, as well as Katsuki, Momo, Kaminari, and Tokoyami as their up and coming superstars. And the best way to show them off?

An elimination tournament. Head-on, one-on-one battles, no gimmicks (like the foam sword fight of the year before), no special requirements, just pure combat. Pitting quirk against quirk, strength against strength, to see who the best of their cream of the crop is for the year.

[Chapter 32]

I mean, they even pull out the lot box last seen with All Might for the battle trials in order to randomize the matches, leaving it all to chance instead of subtly trying to set up the ‘best’ matches possible. While maybe the results could be fudged a bit, I feel like UA has less room for bluffing the brackets there than in other parts of the festival. 

I personally believe that the third round was initially going to be a more standard, gimmicky type of final round, as is implied to be the case for previous years. However, between the need to show off 1a and the fact that 1a favors more powerful, straightforward quirks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the previous plans were scrapped and the tournament bracket was set up instead.

While the students who don’t get into the final brackets still do end up participating in what seem to be more standard sports festival activities - ball racing, object hunting - it’s basically just a bit of padding to give the participants of the final round time to plan, eat, rest, and/or relax. They probably aren’t showing off quirks as much in this part, and potential sponsors and scouts are likely taking the opportunity to get up, stretch, walk around, and so on. 

This leads us into another question - what are the sponsors and scouts looking for from the future heroes? Well, that’s twofold - one, they want to see the spectacle of the first year class who survived a villain attack. And two, they want to figure out how valuable those kids would be for their own agencies. 

It’s actually business students that tell us what agencies look for from a marketability standpoint - quirks, appearance, and then other applicable talents such as skill, sensibility, etc etc. It seems like, at least from the standpoint of popularity, the only things that really matter are appearance and power. Which ends up explaining why the top ten heroes are who they are.

[chapter 26]

For most of 1a, these aren’t huge issues - they are all attempting to put their best face forward, to show off to their best ability and to be good sports about it, winning or losing. 

There’s only two problems: Midoriya Izuku, and Bakugou Katsuki. (And Todoroki Shouto, but that’s a different kettle of water fish.)

On Izuku’s end, a lot of it comes down to his priorities for his second match changing after speaking to both Shouto and Endeavor. Winning the tournament is no long his priority - getting through to Shouto is. And on that front, he succeeded! 

However, what everyone else sees is a kid with a self-destructive quirk literally breaking himself to pieces while taunting Endeavor’s son until he uses his flames. While the end of the match is certainly an impressive show, that doesn’t change the fact that Izuku ended up shattering the illusion UA was trying to press of a cast of perfect little heroes-to-be with his stunt.

[chapter 40]

And then there’s Katsuki. 

Katsuki who, like Izuku, doesn't care about his appearance or his marketability, who is his most genuine self with absolutely no shame or doubt. And this is, in-universe and narratively speaking, his downfall in the eyes of the public.

In the first two rounds, he was able to get away with it. Whatever he did could be brushed off as competitiveness, or putting on a good show for the crowds. On paper, he’d seem like a perfect candidate to get through to the final round, to show off the best of what UA has to offer.

In practice? Well. Things probably wouldn’t have gone downhill as fast as they did for him if he’d been up against anyone besides Ochako for the first round. 

Katsuki’s been up against Ochako before, during the battle trial - even if they didn’t directly fight, she and Izuku ended up managing to win the round together, thus shattering his confidence in his own superiority. He knows how much she likes working with Izuku, knows how willing she is to trust Izuku’s information and plans - and Izuku knows a lot about Katsuki. In Katsuki’s mind, it’s a guarantee that she has some kind of tricky plan up her sleeves, one that he has to be hypervigilant for. 

Hence, instead of going all-out offense against her, he holds back and plays defensively, trying to guess what she’s up to before she can go through with it. He knows letting her in close is a bad idea, since one touch gives her the advantage, so he makes sure she can’t get close, no matter how many times she tries.

The crowds, however, don’t see it that way. What they see is Katsuki bullying a girl on stage for no obvious reason. To the point where they start calling him out on it and booing him. Aizawa even calls them out for it, pointing out how seriously Katsuki is taking Ochako as an opponent.

[chapter 36]

It’s only once Ochako reveals her plan - and Katsuki neutralizes it - that he shifts gears towards ending the fight once and of all. Not that it means much, since Ochako collapses right after her stunt fails due to overstraining herself, but Katsuki still takes her as a serious enough threat / competition that he calls her by her actual name, not just a nickname. 

He does stand down once it’s obvious she’s not in condition to fight, but it’s obvious that he hasn’t let himself be affected by the crowd’s opinion of him or his match - in his mind, both of them put their best effort in, and he won. That’s all that matters. Even if some of Katsuki’s own classmates seem convinced his actions were villainous.

[chapter 37]

And then comes the match with Shouto. While I want to just paste the entire chapter again to highlight the disaster it comes off as from an outside perspective, I’ll just leave the link to the chapter 43 reread and bring up the highlights here. 

The gist of what Katsuki does and says during this match is as follows:

grabs Shouto by the hair and throws him while demanding to know if Shouto’s looking down on him

gets pissed when Shouto doesn’t use his fire, and starts threatening to kill him and that he refuses to take a win if Shouto isn’t trying his best

gets up after the match is over and goes over to Shouto, possibly to attack or threaten him - though Midnight steps in and knocks him out before anyone can see what might happen. 

So with all that, how are the crowds supposed to view Katsuki? Especially so soon after all their negativity with his match against Ochako? 

UA has to salvage this situation. They have to keep Katsuki from causing any more possible incidents and further wrecking the careful image UA was attempting to craft around class 1a, but they have no idea how far he might go or what mental state he’ll be in when he gets up.

On the other hand, they can’t just leave him out of the awards ceremony, not when UA’s reputation is likely already being questioned again by letting in students like Izuku or Katsuki into the hero course. So what does UA decide to do in order to salvage the situation?

[chapter 44]

(deep breath)

Alright, now I’m ready to talk about this without resorting to frustrated rants. The way Katsuki is constrained, his reactions to everything that happens here and right after, are very over the top. And we’ll see in a few pages that he still has that medal in his mouth even once they get back to class, though we can’t see his hands, so…

The narrative itself seems to play this off as comedy on a surface level, if a bit on the darker comedy side. It might even be a reference to other manga or shows or whatever that do similar things and write them off as silly and of no consequence. I know I’ve seen people say that this isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as chunks of the fandom take it. But I keep staring at this and what’s coming up, and I have a few reasons to believe Horikoshi is doing something else here.

First off, the Kamino arc. We know the most bluntly stated and direct consequence of this moment - the League of Villains see Katsuki as a potential recruit, and so kidnap him and offer him the chance to join them. Because he was seen as a villain and treated as a villain by the heroes. We of course know that’s not true, right?

...yeah, about that. You see, we actually have seen the same level of constraints on someone else as we have Katsuki: the giant villain from chapter 1.

[chapter 1]

Combining this with Katsuki’s earlier conduct in his matches against Ochako and Shouto, how are the people of Japan meant to perceive this? The only thing I can perceive is that UA does not trust Katsuki enough to not have him restrained for the purposes of receiving an award. And the people, who have already had reason to have doubts, are going to walk away from this even more convinced that Katsuki isn’t suited for the path of heroics - something that also comes up during the Kamino arc.

[chapter 86]

I also would like to add the analysis and conversation provided by my friend on the NWA server, Alli. This came about due to be forgetting to add to my commentary on the Ochako-Katsuki match in chapter 36, so I suppose in a way it’s good I was a bit forgetful that day!

Okay, so

Bakugou displays a complete merciless drive to win the sports festival. and even though in his own way that is a very noble thing that is highlighted about him, the unwavering drive to be the best is something a hero needs. They can't settle for mediocrity or they aren't being the best they can.

The issue is, his way of going about it, his reactions and overall demeanor, do not fit into the traditional mold, but more importantly come across as mean spirited at best (this arc we're also introduced to endeavor which we already know is very similar to Katsuki, at least in outward demeanor. Interesting)

Like, if Katsuki had said "I want to do my best and I want to win the sports festival because to me, that exemplifies what a hero means", he would have gotten a good reception. But instead he says "I'm gonna win," and in such a dismissive manner that it immediately turns the whole stadium, spectators and contestants, against him (edited)

Then, Monoma basically says that Katsuki is stupid for wasting his energy on meaningless victory for the sake of his ego (which for someone like him and his quirk, might be a lesson he struggles to remember. Or maybe he's projecting without realizing? Focus your analysis Alli) and Bakugou goes feral, turning the tables around and getting second

But he's not satisfied with second. A normal reaction to that would allow some anger and frustration, but he's not just angry and frustrated, he's furious, and openly expresses that fury without carrying how it makes him look (bratty is honestly the word that comes to mind, if I step back from psycho analyzing him for a few minutes)

Then with the fight against Uraraka, I gave my spiel but the point is almost everyone is already against him at this point, and even with his mindset plainly translated by Aizawa, it doesn't change the fact that the bias towards him is already "this guy is power hungry and arrogant"

With his fight against Shouto, his reaction to winning is obviously an over reaction, but the emotion behind it is justified. He knows it's not a real win and feels slighted, but grabbing your unconscious opponent, goading them to keep fighting or shaking them is just not a good look, especially when earlier you had been very respectful of your opponent who was downed (is it because she was a girl? You'll blow her into smithereens but won't beat her while she's down? Talk about a double standard)

This is getting longer than I was expecting, but the point is - regardless of what Katsuki's intentions and how righteous or noble his motivations are stripped back to their core values, the way he presents himself and interacts with others just isn't how most people think. It's hidden under a prickly exterior that he's too proud to let go of

And sure, be yourself and all that, but being a hero means you do have to worry about your public image. If civilians can't trust you to protect them, you can't do that job

Which is exactly why, from what we can infer by Katsuki (obsessed with prestige and numbers), going to Jeanist (who may have been the only "top" pro to offer him an internship)

Jeanist very plainly stated that Bakugou, despite having the skill and the drive, did not act like a hero, which is something he needs to learn

Jeanist may not have wanted to craft Bakugou into this perfect little hero who smiled and waved, but he wanted to illustrate that the reason why people acted the way they did to him was because of how he acted. Your image will affect how people react to you, so you need to be prepared to tailor that image in a way that is authentic while also being something the public can relate to

It's another important aspect of heroism that isn't talked about much, and I'm really glad there's a clear example of it

----

Okay I'm done, god that got so long

Tldr: your image affects how people perceive you, so you have to be conscious of it. You may not deserve the treatment you get all the time, but you need to self reflect why you're viewed the way you are

While there was a lot more to this conversation that I would love to share, it eats up a fair share of the post, so I’ll summarize it here: 

Everything that happens here all boils back to how Izuku and Katsuki as characters are, at the start of the series, meant to represent the values society states it upholds, versus the values it actually rewards. And Katsuki was condemned by hero society for seeing past the glitzy image into what they actually wanted and exemplifying it, basically shoving it into their faces until they couldn’t ignore it. 

And yet, even after being punished, he was still rewarded with the second-highest number of requests! Which really goes to show the lack of self-awareness within heroics - or at least the incredible double-standard at play here.

[Chapter 45]

That all leads into my final thoughts on the Sports Festival, and what it tells us about hero society as a whole. 

In short, before Kamino, heroics values showiness. It’s about being able to look good to the cameras and the crowds, to have a quirk that captures attention, an appearance that appeals to marketing, and the skill to take down villains faster than the competition can.

UA attempted to push 1a into displaying their ability to fall in with these values, but in doing so, severely miscalculated. Because class 1a - all of them, not just Izuku and Katsuki - are already starting to question, are starting to think about who they want to be.

While it’s too early to really see most of their character arcs kicking off, there’s no doubt that they’re already primed and ready to be a new type of hero, the future that Japan desperately needs after All Might is no longer around to maintain the status quo.

So what does that mean for the Sports Festival as a narrative arc? 

In my opinion, it’s not Horikoshi’s strongest writing. Which is understandable! Horikoshi was still testing the waters of his series and setting, trying to map out character arcs to some distant ending he likely hadn’t even finalized yet. Nighteye probably hasn’t been created yet, nor has the MLA, the Eight Precepts, or any of the later characters who end up providing new growth opportunities for 1a. 

I do, however, believe that this arc is more solid than I - and perhaps many of you - had initially given it credit for. Goodness knows going into it that I was all set to hate it due to the prevalence of fanfics that just transcribe canon with only cosmetic changes. And yet, coming out of it, I ended up finding myself thoughtful instead. 

It kind of makes me eager to see how I’ll feel about the next few arcs.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. I hope this analysis sufficiently covered everything about the Sports Festival, but feel free to share your own thoughts, whether narratively speaking or in-universe. 

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Nightwing #81 Review

i swear i actually thought no one was interested so i didn’t write one but a grand total of two (2) people said they wanted to read it, so here it is. honestly, my opinion’s been going a bit downhill, but the art is really cool and there are some decent parts so. holding out i guess? i really hope taylor has an end goal or at least a cohesive plan, otherwise i don’t see this series going anywhere i’ll particularly enjoy

the cover is very straightforward in its imagery, this villain has nightwing in the palm of his hand, easily manipulated, easily controlled no matter the action dick thinks he’ll take. 

what i find interesting is the colour: both previously and heavily in this issue, the colourist has chosen to make pink this villain’s main colour, with different shades of pink as accents. so why the red in the cover? possibly to just make it more eye-grabbing, though one could argue that pink is even more eye-catching than red. maybe to convey a sense of dread or fear that pink won’t fully get across. either way, it’s definitely a decision i’m curious about.

so melinda zucco is in a high enough political position within bludhaven that she is next in line to become the mayor after the previous mayor died and dick just,,,,didn’t have any idea she existed? dick didn’t know anything about her? forget dick’s own brilliant detective skills, forget his doggedness at anything zucco related, you’re telling me bruce never found her and told dick about her? maybe he wouldn’t have now, but back when dick was a young kid, he definitely would have at least made dick aware of her existence, to let dick know and ask if he wanted to interfere with her life or anything.

i have a thought about zucco’s facial expressions. she is very much stone-cold poker face throughout the entire issue. the only time i see her pull a different expression is near the end when dick corners her against a wall with an arm around her throat. 

this is most certainly intentional, what with the varied and intense expressions we see on other characters, dick most prominently. i’m wondering what exactly is the creative team’s reasoning behind this. in these panels, zucco is meeting with the most dangerous, powerful, near-bloodthirsty man in all of bludhaven and becoming the mayor of the city respectfully. in both of these panels, there is barely a hint of emotion in her face: no fear, no determination, no satisfaction. it’s just odd, considering the circumstances she’s in, regardless of any training recieved.

just spitballing here but. like. from what i’ve read so far, dick doesn’t really seem like bludhaven’s guardian angel. more like when peter parker first put on spandex and blindly stepped out into new york.

dick, how exactly can you underestimate someone from one move. so he caught your escrima. anyone with enhanced reflexes can do that. you still don’t know how he can actually fight, and this is shown in the next set of panels. 

i just don’t like the wording here. dick’s “underestimated” him, but beats him up easy in the next page. in addition, i don’t know much about combat, but i would assume it would take more than one move to determine exactly what an opponent’s skill level is, made even more complex when you add physical enhancements and metahumans and aliens into the mixture.

idk my first thought when i saw that he caught the stick was “ah ok he’s enhanced” because obviously he couldn’t have reacted fast enough if he wasn’t (as there are few people trained enough to catch it on human reflexes alone.) then the wording in the next panel, i’ve underestimated him, made me think “oh no ok so he’s not enhanced, he’s just a really good fighter and can give dick a run for his money in a fight.” then, it turns out my first assumption was proven correct in the next panel. it just comes across as misleading to me.

(also sidenote but his curls are cute.)

have i praised the art enough in this series? no, i have not.

i adore the way this is laid out and illustrated. without even having to read the text, the action sequence is visually engaging and intense, and easily followable from one panel to the next. dick’s physical expertise comes through quite efficiently, and i love the special attention shown to draw our attention to dick’s escrima in the bottom right corner.

also that move in the middle row leftmost panel that’s the mcu black widow move to get up off the ground it was the first thing i noticed and it made me laugh; thought it was worth noting

i’m really loving dick’s escrima sticks in this run. they’re just so multipurpose, it’s hilarious and exhilarating. kinda reminds me of bruce’s belt, the way the button in the middle does eevveeerrryyytthhiinngg. 

got a problem? don’t worry! dick’s installed a feature into his escrima that can fix that! (i like thinking dick helped make them it makes me happy and makes my engineer!dick side satisfied)

yawn. your big heart is your one true weakness yadda yadda the fact that you care will be used against you blah blah we get it. jesus can the villains please find a different weakness to exploit, this is getting old.

i need dick’s capacity to empathize and care and love to stop being a weakness that villains sneer about. bonus points if dick saves everyone anyway, either because of or despite his great big heart and the villain is surprised by the goodness of mankind or some shit like that.

i need it to be a strength, right from the get-go. the fact that he cares so incredibly much should be an asset that dick has and will use. he’s a very complex character with years of background, it can’t possibly be that hard to find another weakness of his. 

ooooh this is cool, gosh i absolutely love this.

because what exactly is the reader doing? we are seeing the fear in dick’s face, just as this villain intended. even better, we’re seeing the reflection of it from the villain’s glossy mask, telling us exactly what we’re seeing and exactly what he likes so much about it.

dick’s standing up straight, shoulders drawn back, looking up at this villain’s face with determination and resolve, but his suit is tattered. one eye looks to be swollen. his hair is falling limply around his eyes, as opposed to the curls from earlier. his escrima aren’t even part of the main focus, instead blending into the side of the mask in the outer corners of the mask’s eyes, which tells you exactly how big of a threat they are to this villain.

poor bitewing’s quite alarmed.

also on second thought why would you bring your puppy out like this, when you know you’re gonna end up fighting someone in the suit. a) how many grey three-legged adorable little puppies live in the bludhaven area dick? and how easy will it be to connect the doggo running around with nightwing with the doggo that dick grayson owns? and 2) is this puppers trained? does she have fighting experience? how exactly can you ensure she will survive this highly stressful situation?

dick take better care of your dog 

you know what? i was with tim on this one. why exactly is dick so optimistic and trusting about the people of bludhaven? bludhaven, which has been described as gotham’s smaller, smellier, more corrupt sister city once or twice. it’s not just the corrupt people in power, the entire system needs to change and people need to have faith and hope in order for them to come together, espcially if they’ve been living in conditions like how bludhaven has been described. from how clueless dick is about his own goddamn city, i can tell he hasn’t been here long.

it was a nice moment of hope, i’ll admit. but it was a tad unrealistic for me.

also it was in a weird place in the comic. this sort of confrontation and big get-together of the people to rejuvenate hope in each other feels like it should come near the end of a run, if not the end of an issue. certainly not in the first third of an issue. the pacing’s a bit off to me.

loyal little puppy patiently waiting for her human to wake up. i love her so much.

no it’s not. it’s bitewing.

living for this t-shirt honestly. do comics of dc characters exist in the dc universe? they must if the mug and the shirt are any indication

(now i’m imagining the first batman movie that came out in the dc universe and bruce just. being so offended at who they chose to play him.)

well, yes. but when a group of people are put through hellish conditions over and over again, they soon become desensitized to the pain and terror of their everyday lives in order to both stay sane and keep their life relatively stable, and part of that becomes ignoring or blocking out anything that isn’t directly important to you or your loved ones. having a bleeding heart will most likely get you killed in a city like bludhaven if you don’t have the same skills that vigilantes have.

and of course, people are more than capable of coming together and rallying under their city’s vigilante after seeing the good they’ve done and how they’ve helped the people, but that sort of trust takes time and effort to build. dick also had the whole ric arc and was gone for a while, which has been referenced several times in this particular issue in fact. that’s not going to make bludhaven’s citizens any more likely to trust him.

maybe i’m being a bit harsh but this comic is comic off as a bit too idealistic for the amount of change nightwing can do in a city given the present and past circumstances as well as nightwing’s own abilities. even dick grayson can’t pull off everything.

ok seriously this needs to stop this needs to stop.

right now, dick reminds me of oliver queen in the few episodes of the cw’s arrow i watched. he does the punchy-kicky-fighty and occasionally has smart insights due to the skills he gained from his past that he certainly definitely totally has but only ever exhibits once, while his team does all of the background research and information gathering and actual work.

this is dick’s city. if he has the same intelligence, worth ethic, and stubbornness in this run that he’s been shown to possess all his life, then he knows this city inside out. he’ll have meticulous notes organized in a ridiculously efficient system, he’ll have scouted out zucco long before this started, he’ll have known when anything big happened in the bludhaven political landscape in an instant.

i’m really not liking exactly how much dick’s relying on babs and tim in this series. sure, he loves them and cares for them and likes working cases with them. but he always pulls his own weight, has always been a mentor figure to tim instead of what’s weirdly becoming the other way around, and takes point on the cases in his own damn city.

what kind of weak-ass oracle is this?? redacted fbi files are child’s play. babs used to hack into the fbi for fun. this one particular picture is so out of character i want to laugh.

reading this series has unfortunately made me confront that, despite the tiny fluid acrobat dick that lives in my head 24/7, canon dick is impossibly 5′10 and muscular at that.

mmm. titties.

tim said hydrate or die-drate bitch

love how dick’s doing all this intense brooding and stuff meanwhile bitewing is curled up in a soft comfy post having the time of her life.

you don’t understand i would legitimately kill myself for her.

also the lighting in this one scene is cool. the blue tones come off so well.

they’re just. so multipurpose!! they can become a bo staff. they can cut glass. they can become a grapple hook/line. they can electrify someone. they’re a funky colour. i’m becoming really attached to these things. absolute solid choice in weaponry.

if you’re gonna write up every rookie mistake dick has made during this series to head trauma, then dick shouldn’t be out and about at all, much less in costume.

see this? this is just straight up wrong. dick most definitely should have spotted her, and would have immediately moved to take her down.

scratch that, dick would have done a full check of the building, because he knows not to break into places uninformed, especially if the owner of the apartment was raised by the maroni family. someone as highly trained, experienced, and competent as dick wouldn’t have done this.

and if you chalk it up to head injury, (which is probably true), than his ~love interest~ and his little brother should have done a much better job making sure he stays in his house.

zucco looks so awkward it’s fucking hilarious

are those shadows that mimic a domino mask, to both reflect and hide the fact that his mask is missing? are those bruises around his eyes, to show how, despite what good he’s doing, being nightwing is hurting dick right now? 

(isn’t his domino mask supposed to have an electrifying feature that keeps people from removing them?)

it’s a little odd how the three known villains of this series are all coloured in warm shades, more specifically pink. meanwhile, in earlier issues, dick’s fondest memories were in pink, memories of him and alfred in particular. why has the colour pink changed from signifying something benevolent to something malicious? idk i hope this gets explained later.

this i did like. either it’s just a display of brute force in anger, or dick slipped the ties and pulled them off once untied. both ways, it’s an unintentional display of power, and i think that’s kinda cool.

again. dick is,,,tall? sort of? weirdddd

i’m so glad most readers are unified in the notion that this was the absolute dumbest fucking thing.

i’m hoping this gets disproved or something soon. and i hope dick doesn’t fall for it, because he definitely knows better than to take something as important as this at face value.

what exactly is taylor trying to accomplish here? why is he trying to go back on what we all knew was a happy, loving childhood and throw strife and disharmony and (what i’m assuming will be) infidelity? this will not end well at all.

---

,,,,,this review got way longer than expected lol. and i realize most of it just became me ranting. i guess i didn’t realize how ticked off i was originally. fingers crossed it gets better.

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @bikoncon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds​ @comics-observer

[dykeseinfeld]

u asked someone to remind you to post about your pjo dual protagonist thalia/bianca au and i am SO intrigued by this idea please say more

anon asked: hey queen hope your homework went good yesterday 🌸…now what were you saying about thalia and bianca 😳 ?

ok y’all i’m here...the moment almost none of y’all have been waiting for....bianca/thalia protagonists with alternating pov’s au

warning it’s kind of super long and may or may not read like a 2nd grader’s semi-coherent game of pretend so under the cut it goes!

so the main things you need to know about this au are 1. thalia survives and 2. annabeth’s + luke’s ages are a lil diff bc canon is my sandbox 3. i can’t decide if percy exists in this au or not (maybe y’all can help me decide?)

so the first book:

would start a few months after grover brought thalia (12), luke (13), and annabeth (10, not 7)  to camp half blood. they were chased by monsters sent by hades on the way, and thalia almost didn’t survive, but ultimately she got lucky and managed to send a bolt of lightning through her spear for the first time and they made it into camp

it’s been some time so annabeth is happy as a clam in the athena cabin doing her 10-year-old-with-severe-mommy-issues thing and luke is actually pretty popular with the hermes cabin bc he actually Met Their Dad Holy Shit and also he’s getting pretty good with a sword

at the same time, thalia is alone in the zeus cabin. everyone has been freaking out bc they all saw the huge bolt of lightning that incinerated a couple hellhounds as they made their grand entrance and What The Fuck Child Of The Big Three???

she’s also further isolated because chiron will take her for private training sessions sometimes, since she is clearly really powerful already and also Hades Himself was trying to kill her (chiron told her the reason was the big three’s pledge not to have kids, and maybe about the great prophecy? if he tells her that then she’s sworn to secrecy)

once grover leaves on another protector assignment, thalia mostly hangs out with luke, and annabeth. luke + annabeth both will try to eat meals with her at the zeus table but annabeth doesn’t want to get in trouble and luke is genuinely making friends in the hermes cabin so thalia will feel bad sometimes and send him back

kronos, seeing this bitter isolated child of the big three’s dreams: it’s free real estate

MEANWHILE

hades is Pissed that thalia survived and zeus got to break their oath And get the glory of a prophecy child

so he sends someone to take bianca (12) and nico (10) out of the lotus hotel and casino a little early.

grover is still their protector, but since the Stirring hasn’t begun in earnest yet and hades is lowkey determined to keep them safe, they make it back to camp half blood with no escort/incident

bianca + nico are put into the hermes cabin, and luke kinda takes them under his wing bc while he’s not bitter he still needs therapy bc this 14 year old has never met a pre-teen he couldn’t try to parent

luke introduces nico and annabeth since they’re the same age and they become really good friends!! she Loves mythomagic and he thinks her dagger is super cool and they’re both just really excited about camp <3

bianca is more reserved and resistant to the whole thing, and she wanders around alone exploring and runs into thalia in the zeus cabin

at this first meeting they get into a bit of a fight bc bianca is still in shock/denial about the gods being real, but thalia at this point has zero patience for this

anyway after that and maybe another scuffle during capture the flag or something they hit it off and become best friends in the way girls can, especially bonding over how they’ve both had to take on raising annabeth and nico basically on their own at the age of 12

~QUEST TIME~

thalia is given a quest for [unspecific reason] and chooses bianca and luke, they go off leaving annabeth and nico frustrated at home

quest hijinks etc, bianca is trying to figure out her parentage + her weird mysterious powers? and thalia is arguing with luke because he’s settling into camp/hero life really well actually but she’s getting progressively angrier with the gods for trying to kill her and also keeps getting dreams from kronos and doesn’t get why he doesn’t seem to remember all of the shit that the gods have put him through

bianca + thalia have las-vegas-style-heart-to-hearts where thalia shares her tragic backstory about her mother and her brother and how hades tried to kill her and even about the great prophecy and how she’s trying on this quest bc of that and her dad but at the same time these dreams are making her suspicious that he might’ve been responsible for her mom’s death.

bianca then shares her own stuff, about how terrified she was being on her own with nico having to protect him but also not remembering most of her childhood and not remembering her parents or how she ended up in the care of this lawyer and just the absolute mindfuckery that her memories/past are

luke is asleep in those scenes i guess lol 🧍‍♂️

anyway eventually they finish their quest in this massive climactic battle where bianca discovers her powers in a huge-showy-”i’m the ghost prince”-way and is formally claimed by hades which thalia sees as this Massive Betrayal obviously and bianca is horrified too because she knows what hades did to thalia but at the same time she’s just so happy to finally understand at least part of her past

thalia just reaches a breaking point though because everyone around her just doesn’t understand her anger and just when she thought she had found another sympathetic person who understood what she was going through she joins hades??? no. no fucking way. kronos reveals that he’s the one who has been sending her dreams, prob by sending some messenger who he possesses or smthing and when he offers thalia the chance to join him? she does (dun dun dun)

main beats of the rest of the series:

thalia and bianca on opposite sides of the war training to be the prophecy child, they come together a Lot and have like melodramatic fight scenes where they talk out their anger and try to get the other to join them bc they don’t want to kill each other

luke is extremely conflicted/betrayed and there’s a titan’s curse moment prob towards the end of the third book where they’re fighting and thalia is trying to get her to go with him but here he actually does go to join her (gasp!!) and is evil for at least one book but his heart’s not in it and he goes back to the good side eventually

by the point of luke’s betrayal, annabeth and nico are growing and developing and old enough to go on quests w bianca and by the last book they’re a main trio of sorts and their hypothetical character development is already making me emotional

there’s just a lot of general sexiness with foils and inner conflicts and bianca doesn’t even want to be the prophecy child but she needs to for the fate of the world and bianca is so angry at thalia bc thalia is a daughter of zeus and could control her powers and is perfect and just meant to be the prophecy kid, not some daughter of hades who they didn’t even have a cabin for before

hm maybe by either the last or second-to-last book thalia + bianca are close to reconciling or at least their interests are aligned for the moment and they read the text of the prophecy together and things go Wild bc they both think “single choice shall end his days” either is about luke or nico and it turns up the gas to their fighting both of them care about both of them and yeah

and then i can’t decide if there’s romantic arcs at all but if there were it would go like this:

just a dash of thaluke where at first it was luke having a one-sided crush but thalia misses him a Lot after she goes to kronos and wonders if it’s that she misses him or if it’s something More until to get him to defect there’s like a melodramatic moment in the fight where thalia kisses him and they go off to be Evil Together but it ends bc luke doesn’t believe in the cause and only joined her in hopes of getting thalia back to his side

once luke leaves/is kicked out thalia realizes that she didn’t love luke she just wanted a family and also in the second half of the series she realizes she’s a lesbian as a parallel to her redemption arc

bianca meanwhile is unconcerned w romance until she has her botl-hoe-moment where within one book she 1. runs into the hunters on a quest and has a thing with zoe nightshade who tries to get her to join plus tells her about that time she met thalia, 2. she goes to calypso’s island and falls in love w her in the moonlight or w/e and has her what-if moment, and 3. when they meet up that book thalia somehow knew abt zoe + calypso and seems almost angrier abt them  than the war?? weird bc bianca knows that thalia is Totally Straight right??

my main point is that bianca/thalia is our friends-to-enemies-to-lovers endgame thank you i will take my pulitzer now

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Day of the Animals

While perhaps not my favorite episode this season, Day of the Animals is easily the best written story of season three. Even so, it still has problems due to the third season’s poor approach to characterization. 

Summary: Rapunzel, Varian, Angry and Red are returning stolen loot that the two girls had stolen years ago. They are accompanied by Max, Pascal, Ruddiger and Hamuel who all cannot stop quarreling with each other (or in Hamuel's case, just being useless). While messing with a sea shell pendant, it magically transports the humans into it, leaving the animals to fight over it. A minor thug named Dwayne, steals the pendant forcing the animals to work together to retrieve it. 

So Why is a Polynesian Inspired Kingdom Within Riding Distance of a Northern European Country? 

If you’ll remember my review of Beginnings, Neserdina’s princesses were wearing Polynesian garb and dancing the Hula when prepping for the competition. Now I’ve already went into length as to why that’s not good representation, but in addition to that it’s also just plain dumb. You can’t just transport one ethic group and dump them into another part of the world because it’s convenient for you. You don’t earn any brownie points for doing that. Especially when your fantasy world is still based off of our own historical earth. 

To make things even more confusing, we actually saw Neserdina way back in season one in Way of the Willow. It’s where Willow bought the gremlin knock-off. 

That is an island. How the heck do you get to a volcanic island riding in a horse and cart? And don't tell me they’re riding to a port, because Corona is a port city already. They could have gotten there by boat. It’s also can’t be too far away from Corona’s borders if Angry and Red were able to get there on foot during their year long travels. 

The only explanation is that the entirety of the Tangled crew doesn’t understand geography, and this won’t be the last example in the show to back up that statement. 

So Why Is Rapunzel Here?

We get explanations for why everyone is on this road trip, except for the main character herself. Red and Angry are trying to return some stolen loot. Varian is wanting to pick up rare alchemy supplies at the market and was invited along because Raps hopes it’ll be a chance for Ruddiger and Max to get know one another better. 

But why on earth does Rapunzel feel the need to come on this trip herself? Doesn’t she have a kingdom to run? While I’m sure Eugene is more than capable of handling things, this doesn’t reflect well upon the writers supposed plan of making Rapunzel appear more responsible. 

Literally any other adult could have come along on this trip. This wasn’t something Rapunzel needed to waste time on. Lance especially would have been more appropriate here as he’s the one who’s suppose to eventually adopt Angry and Red.  And the sad thing is, all they had to do was give Rapunzel a line about needing to attend some sort of diplomatic business in Neserdina. That’s it. 

In a show that’s supposed to be all about Rapunzel; Rapunzel sure doesn’t have a whole lot of reasons to exist in the majority of the episodes. 

Lack of Worldbuilding Strikes Again

At this point I’m kind of numb to the whole “magical thing just exists for no adequately explained reason” and so I’m not as upset as some people are about the shell necklace. But it’s still not good writing. 

Why does this thing exist? How did come to be cursed? How did it get mixed in with their stuff? What activated the magic and why did it only effect the human’s even though the animals were closer to it? 

Just something show. Anything. You bothered to give use rules for how this thing works and even stuck to them this time, but you can’t just make the last leg of the trip and give us some exposition? 

Yeah, okay. 

So Where Exactly Are We in Relation to Corona?

We can see Pittsford and Ivangarr on the road sign and we have to be in riding distance to Neserdina from Corona, but like are we in Corona still? Are we in Koto, which is Corona’s nearest neighbor to the east according to season three. Are we in some no-man’s-land where none of the kingdoms have control, or are we already in Neserdina itself? 

The series gives us no sense of direction nor any firm placement for Corona within it’s world. I only know it is a Northern European country because Corona itself is a peninsula with a north sea, uses French, English, and German fashion/customs, and Rapunzel is a Germanic fairy tale. But like those clues are thrown into a blender and contradicted several times over, on top of never being told where it’s closest kingdoms actually lie. 

All of this matters when traveling and exploring the wider world are big themes of your show. You need more solid and consistent world building than this. It also impacts how much authority and control your main character has within the episode itself if she range of political power is limited to one area. So like we need to know where the heroes stand here. 

(FYI I personally headcannon Corona as former Prussia which was once part of Germany and it’s alliance of smaller kingdoms. It’s also a peninsula next to the Curonian Spit) 

This Is Not Progress

Okay so the idea here, is that the show is implying that Rapunzel is trying to improve Corona’s justice system over Frederic’s previously inhumane crack down on crime. However, this is terribly executed. 

For starters the show has never called Frederic nor Rapunzel out for their previous misbehavior. You can not change any system for the better without acknowledging the flaws within said system first. Therefore this comes right out of nowhere and doesn’t stick around long enough to stay within the viewers minds for later. 

Secondly, Rapunzel is incredibly fickle about who she does and doesn’t set free. The Saporians were still in the dungeons last time we saw them, Caine was shipped off to the prison island and left to die there as far as we know, and the Stabbingtons are shown shackled together in the wedding short even though they supposedly changed their ways and befriended Eugene again. 

Meanwhile Dwayne and Stalyan are free to go their marry way and continue their life of crime, Varian is only released from his overly harsh punishment because he kissed Rapunzel’s ass not because it was wrong to imprison him in the first place, and later Cassandra gets away scot free because she’s Rapunzel’s bestie even though she committed the worst crimes out of everyone in the show and for very little reason. 

That’s not justice. That’s not compassion. That’s not progressive reform. It’s just nepotism, and it’s every bit as corrupt as Frederic’s classism and totalitarianism. 

Just because Rapunzel is “nice” it doesn’t mean that she is kind. Real reform has to treat everyone with equality and have a set of base standards that are beyond one person’s personal judgment. She is still a dictator and an abuser even if she lets the occasional person go free on a whim. 

Finally, Rapunzel’s methods are just downright ineffective. Dwyane may not be a threat to our heroes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a threat to other people. He’s not actually sorry about trying to rob people at knife point and he fully plans on continuing being a thief after feeding Rapunzel the lines she wants to hear. 

Furthermore, we don’t know if this course of action is born out of malice or desperate need. He half heartily comments about finding ‘an honest job” but can he even do that? Is it even a realistic option for him? The series has been weaving this class inequality theme through out it’s past three seasons and directly connecting that to Corona’s crime rate. 

Eugene had a hard time finding a job during season one directly due to his past record, remember? A life of crime he was forced to lead in order to survive, and he’s the Prince Consort! What chance does Dwayne have? Did Rapunzel even try to help him find work or did she just wag her finger at him and told him “Now, now, stealing’s not nice.” 

The show wants to act like Rapunzel is this progressive reformer but then they turn her into a Republican instead. That’s not me being sarcastic either, this approach to criminal justice is the foundation of conservative belief and has been for centuries. The right are not interested in why people commit crime. They don’t care about addressing the fundamental problems in society that lead people to break the law. Let alone bother to analyze why those laws exist in the first place. Instead they resort to doublethink and survivor bias to either write off those that fall through the cracks or make excuses for why their policies repeatedly fail, often ignoring the fact that things aren’t actually working for whole swathes of people who aren’t themselves.  

Tangled the Series is far too simplistic and childish in it’s approach to deeper subjects like this to enforce the messages it supposedly wants to enforce. Rapunzel herself relies on magical thinking, double standards, and personal bias to see her through every and any problem and the show just rewards her for it rather than challenging her to grow and in doing so winds up supporting people like her in their authoritarian ideas, whether that was the writers’ intentions or not. 

In short, Rapunzel shows no interest in putting in the real work it would take to implement genuine restorative justice. She doesn't honestly care about Dwyane or his victims. She’s just posturing here for the sake of her self image.  

You’re Not In Any Position to Talk Rapunzel 

Speaking of Rapunzel being a hypocrite.... The entirety of season three’s main conflict is her having a petty bitch fight with her supposed best friend and needlessly dragging everyone else into it.

In fact that’s the whole show. Rapunzel repeatedly failing to get along with other people because she’s deep down a shitty person despite the veneer of ‘friendliness’ she slaps on to hide it. Having her just say she knows better does nothing to convince me that she’s actually learned anything. You have to show that she’s learned it first, and that requires acknowledging her own wrong doings.  

Varian’s face here just tells it all. Rapunzel is full of shit and no one in the show knows it better than him. Why are they even friends again? Why should we trust her with the three kids she neglected more than once? Why should any of these people take what she says seriously? 

Well This is Contradictory

Also, since we brought up double standards, here’s Varian undermining that whole “jail is bad” thing Rapunzel is trying to push with Dwayne and later with Cass. Not only is the show under cutting it’s themes for a joke, but it just reinforces the abuse Varian received. He’s now bought into Frederic’s stupid beliefs and winds up reinforcing to the audience that that his ‘reform’ was due to his past imprisonment.   

As an adult watching this series, Varian’s supposed redemption continues to increasingly look like a victim complying with their past abuser out of fear of further harm rather than anyone genuinely learning to be better.

Can We Please Stop Infantilizing the 16 Year Old

As if to deflect from Varian’s past mistreatment and continuing parentification, the show then goes on to showcase the opposite extreme whenever possible. I know it’s hard to tell just from these few screen shots alone, but over the course of season three Varian is spoken down too and treated condescendingly by the rest of the cast, and by Rapunzel in particular, even as he enters his later teens/early adulthood.  

Some of this is just to due to Rapunzel being her usual holier than thou self, but there’s also times, like here, where Varian is lumped together with the actual children of the show, even though he’s 6 to 8 years their senior. 

In fact out of everyone Rapunzel interacts with, Varian’s actually the closest to her in both age and development. Queen for a Day forced the two of them into a power imbalance due to a mixture of classism and society’s ongoing unhealthy (and often artificial) divide between younger and older teens, but as we get further and further away from that point in time and as Varian nears the same age Rapunzel started out as, that imbalance becomes less and less relevant. 

Look at how this scene is framed, He’s standing between Angry and Red and is placed lower than them to make it look like he’s one of them. He’s not. 

Varian may still look 12 with his big old eyes and short stature, but seeing as how we’re past Hearts Day, he’s actually close to being 17, if he isn’t already. The timeline gets even wonkier after The King and Queen of Hearts, but trust me, we’re close to being two years past Queen for a Day, if not more so. 

Varian, for all counts, should be Rapunzel’s equal by now in terms of story. Not only is he closest in age to her, but he’s also the only other person going through a coming of age arc. And of the two, Varian’s the one who has actually learned and grown as a person. He has more real world experience than Rapunzel ever will and knows how to implement that experience. (He’s also the more mature, but that’s more of a failure to write Rapunzel competently than a reflection of his capabilities.) 

No matter how you slice it, Varian shouldn’t be taking orders or advice from Rapunzel; no one should be, really; and he most certainly shouldn’t put up with her condescension. Rapunzel is not his nor anybody else’s mother. She’s not even a big sister like figure, and at no point should be treated as the leader of anything or anyone. 

Rapunzel is a Poor Man’s Rose Quartz 

I typically try not to draw too many comparisons between Tangled and other shows outside of the occasional parallel, as a show should be able to stand on it’s own for good or for bad, but it’s hard not to discuss the series without also discussing Steven Universe in some way. 

Steven Universe is this generation’s Batman the Animated Series or Scooby Doo. It’s the game changer that everybody else is trying to copy in some manner. Chris desperately wants Tangled the Series to be the next Steven Universe, right down to how the show is structured, paced, and what themes are presented. But unfortunately Chris has no idea why Steven Universe works the way it does. 

For starters SU adjusted it’s pacing as it went along, smoothing out its rougher edges while Tangled doubled down on its filler. SU had a planned arc from the get go and stuck to it, so that by the time the twists came they made sense. SU kept it’s focus on Steven purposefully so that the story unfolded from his view point while making to sure to acknowledge the importance of other characters around him and their conflicts. It didn’t make him infallible nor shove aside everyone else’s arcs.  

But most importantly, Steven Universe was written by a bisexual nonbinary person who set out to make a show for people in the queer community like themselves. Meanwhile, as a middle aged white man, Chis hasn’t a damn clue about his primary audience and has shown no interest in connecting with them. 

This isn’t to say that Steven Universe is a perfect show. No show is beyond criticism. Nor is this to say that straight white cis men can’t write; many of them do and can portray characters unlike themselves competently enough. But if you’re completely disinterested in other points of view than you can’t be a good writer of fictional stories, that’s just a fact. Because in order to understand proper characterization you need to acknowledge that not every character ever will be like you and that even you’re main heroes will hold beliefs and experiences different from yourself. Otherwise there is no genuine conflict to build off of. Either no one will disagree with each other or the conflict will come across as flat and forced, complete with lopsided bias. 

Therefore, in the end, Rapunzel winds up being less of a Steven and more of a Rose Quartz/Pink Dimond. Both are spoiled princesses/co-rulers of a kingdom that mistreats it’s people and anyone outside of it, who rebelled against their guardians, supposedly out of a sense of justice, but really for themselves and their own freedom, only to make things even worse for everyone. On top of that they both accidently harmed their friends, freindzone their best friend while also bossing them around, are condescending to their love interests, is controlling of people who trust them, and throws temper tantrums when they don’t get what they want, oh and neglected someone for an inhumane amount of time. 

Even then, Rapunzel winds up being the worst of the two. 

The whole point behind Rose was that she is someone whom the main characters place upon a pedestal and as the series went along slowly had the scales fall from their eyes and learned to view her for who she really was flaws and all. By the end, in Future, she is even metaphorically removed from her pedestal when Steven removes her picture from the wall.  

Rose also grows as a character, unlike Rapunzel. Her story is deliberately being told to us backwards. The awful person she was in the past was no longer who she was by the time of her death. True she was still flawed, and the consequences of her actions continued on even after her demise, but she actually tried to be a better person. She got called out for her behavior, she wasn’t excused for actions even when the show explained why she did what she did, and she stopped doing harmful actions whenever she realized that they hurt someone. 

Greg was allowed to stand up to her and show how she was wrong, and she respected him for it and later fell in love with him because of it. She tried to better control her temper when she wound up hurting her friend. Her failed revolution and her mistreatment of Spinel was actually born from a misguided desire to help, rather than outright selfishness. 

Rose Quratz/Pink Dimond is a brilliant fucking character. You may not like her, but you can’t deny that she is one of the most complex figures in children’s media to ever be created. She is real, nuanced, and multifaceted. He role within the story is complicated, messy, and intricate. She is the most well rounded female character I’ve ever seen and she is what I had hoped Rapunzel would be when I first watched season one, only even more so as the actual focus. 

I want women in cartoons to be people! 

But Rapunzel fails at every turn to follow through with this promise. She is not a deep complex character. She’s not a flawed and complicated heroine. She’s a blank canvas in which the creator can shove his creepy ass views upon. She is never taken off her pedestal, she’s never allowed to be wrong, and she is forced to spout the the creator’s personal bias against other characters. 

Rapunzel isn’t a person. She had the chance to be one, but then was reduced to .. to this. As a woman, the treatment of Rapunzel and Cassandra in this show is just flat out insulting. 

So What Is the Difference Between Angry and Red Now?

I’m all for character growth, but at this point Angry and Red are just interchangeable. Anything that made them uniquely them has been lost, and they’re now just fulfilling the generic rambunctious little kid trope. Red becoming more assertive shouldn’t mean she stops being an introvert altogether; that’s not how that works. While Angry shouldn’t lose her temper completely just because she’s wiling to open up more. 

So Why Dwayne?

I like Dwayne as a character and in truth I don’t mind his existence here, and unlike that werewolf hunter last time he at least was established in a pervious season. But this is still time that could have went to a more important antagonist. 

Also notice that Dwyane gets a villain song, but not Lady Caine or Zhan Tiri. Just saying. 

Rapunzel Has Not Earned the Role of the Wise Sage and Mentor 

Rapunzel has never learned to listen to others. Ever.

On it’s own this might have been a good speech, but when taken in context of the wider story it just makes Rapunzel look like an ass. 

A year traveling does not make Rapunzel suddenly all knowing. She is not wiser nor more experienced than anyone else in this scene. She’s also a crappy leader and big fat hypocrite.  

Even when she’s technically right, as seen here, she’s still in the wrong because she never follows through and acts upon her own advice; making this whole story pointless in the grand scheme of things. 

And that’s the core problem with season three. Rapunzel is shoved into a role she is not designed for and the whole premise of the series runs right off the rails. You’re main heroine in a coming of age story can not inhabit the mentor role. She can not simultaneously learn and grow and be always right while instructing everyone else. 

All through out season three Rapunzel is either rendered completely useless in her own damn series, or she utterly fails to fulfill any sort of narrative promise laid out for her while she infuriatingly hijacks the story from more interesting and dynamic characters. 

Behold The Only Reason Why Varian was Included in the Episode 

Speaking of hijacking things, Rapunzel of course has to get the idea to save everybody, even though what she thinks of isn’t anything special. It’s not derived from her character as an individual nor from all that experience she supposedly has. It’s literally an idea anyone could have come up  with and the show just hands it to her in order to justify her exitance. 

Meanwhile the character who actually is useful to the plot is sidelined and reduced to just a plot device. And not just here, Varian is rendered practically pointless in all but two episodes in season three, even in episodes that he actually should have more impact in, like the season opener and series finale. 

Good writing treats characters as equally contributing to the plot in ways that complements who these characters are.  

Ok I’ll Admit That This Line Is Funny

Look, I know this whole review series is about pointing out the negative, and I stand by my opinion that Tangled the Series is one of the worst written shows I’ve ever seen, but I want to make one thing clear.... I do not hate the show. If I hated the show I would not waste my time reviewing it. 

Yes the over all writing is shit, but there are a lot of good things to be found in the series beyond just the crap story arc. The humor is usually solid, the animation is gorgeous, the music is a delight, and the majority of the characters are likable even though they don’t develop in the ways that they should. There’s a lot of talent that went into this show and there’s a lot of potential to be had in it’s set up and lore. 

Being critical or negative about the aspects of something doesn’t mean you dislike it, or that you’re not a real fan, or that you’re just a ‘hater’, and I actually find TTS to be fascinating because it’s such a mess. I write reviews because they’re fun and because I genuinely think there is something to be learned from Tangled’s mistakes. 

So Why Do We Cut Back to Rapunzel Here and Not Varian? 

This is such an odd framing choice. Varian is the one who is talking and reacting to what’s happening. It’s his pet that’s in trouble and therefore he carries the emotional weight of the scene, and yet it’s Rapunzel’s shocked face we focus on? Why? What’s the point of that? She has no business being the center focus here. The action does not involve her. 

If you wanted to include her for a later set up then why not have both her and Varian present in this shot? Usually I can at least count on the story boarders to frame things better than this, but they really missed the mark here. Unless Chris is just that stupid and petty that he over ruled them and forced Varian out of the scene, but that seems like a pointless fight to pick, even for him. 

See This is How you Fulfill a Narrative Promise 

The conflict between Ruddiger and Max was set up in season one with What the Hair, then it was reiterated a few episodes ago during The Lost Treasure of Herz Der Sonne, and then it was reintroduced in this episode along with a stated lesson about working together that they needed to learn. By they end of the episode, guess what, they’ve learned to work together. That is how you properly set up and resolve a conflict. 

It’s clear from this that the writers of Tangled the Series know the basic tenants of writing and how to fulfill narrative promises. So the fact that they don’t follow through with this in the majority of the show’s episodes and ongoing story arcs just baffles me. 

Is it negligence? Is it hubris? Is it incompetent management and editorial mandates? Is it just one asshole ruining everything or is this a failure in the writers room as a whole? 

I just don’t understand what the fuck went wrong here. There’s no reason for why the show got as bad as it did. How does the most acclaimed animation company in the world put out such amateurish tripe? 

Just... wow. 

Now you know why I’m mesmerized by this show. It is a mystery to be solved, like trying to figure out how the crew on the Titanic fucked up so badly or why Hindenburg blew up. You just can’t look away. 

Conclusion 

Like I said at the start, structurally speaking this is the strongest episode of the season. I personally enjoy Lost Treasure a little more, just because Rapunzel annoys me less in that, but it’s not a bad story. However when you’re best episode in your final season is filler, then you know you’re in trouble. 

If you like my reviews and want to support my writing endeavors you can drop a tip in my kofi https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #187

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making Yagyu Tajima-no-Kami Munenori, living proof that you can prevent spoilers by spoiling other things. Anyways, he’s an Inquisitive Rogue to defeat his foes with facts and logic, as well as a Samurai Fighter to defeat his foes with a goddamn sword because he’s in the saber class.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: Domo Arigatou, Kaa-san Roboto

Race and Background

Yagyu beef is still a Human, but he’s a Variant Human for the extra skills. This gives him +1 Wisdom and Dexterity, as well as proficiency with Investigation to put that big brain to work. That’s not enough skills though, so grab the Skill Expert feat for another +1 to Dexterity, as well as proficiency with Animal Handling for your riding skill and doubled proficiency with Perception. I know we didn’t get regular proficiency yet, but it’s happening at level one so it’s fine.

Yagyu might have been as rich as a noble, but that doesn’t mean he was one. We’ve been using Mercenary Veterans for swordsmen for a while now, and I see no reason to stop now. This background gives him proficiency with Athletics and Persuasion.

Ability Scores

First up make your Wisdom as high as possible. Yagyu’s a clever boy, and wisdom-based skills are the more applicable part of that equation for you. Secondly, your Dexterity has to be good- Yagyu is a master swordsman, and he’s not exactly swinging a greatsword around. His Intelligence is also pretty solid, but it’s just lower since it’s not quite as directly helpful for the build. Yagyu’s Constitution isn’t half bad, he’s got to be tough to survive feudal Japan. That means his Charisma is pretty low- he’s scary, but not much else. That means we’re dumping Strength. He’s an old man, and we don’t really need it for the build.

Class Levels

Rogue 1: Starting off as a rogue nets us a couple extra skills, more than we’d get from multiclassing in later. Rogues start off with proficiency in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as four rogue skills, like Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and that Perception we mentioned back in the Skill Expert feat. Told you not to worry about that.

They also get Expertise in two skills for double their proficiency bonus. Double down on Insight for more logic and Intimidation to put that logic to good use scaring the crap out of people. You also get a Sneak Attack once per turn, dealing 1d6 extra damage as long as you are using a finesse or ranged weapon and either A) have an ally next to your target or B) have advantage on that attack. It’s complicated, but we’ll make it real simple soon enough.

Oh yeah, you also get Thieves’ Cant. It’s a language.

Fighter 1: Okay, the underhanded stuff is done for a while. Bouncing over to fighter gives you the Dueling, adding 2 to damage rolls with a one-handed weapon, like a short-sword, which you can now wield since you’re proficient with martial weapons. You also get a Second Wind each short rest that will heal you as a bonus action. Taking a break when you need one is smart. You’re smart, so you take breaks when you need one. That’s the transitive property.

Fighter 2: Second level fighters can use all that break-taking to push themselves once per short rest, making an Action Surge to take two actions in a single turn. Fighting your hardest can also be the smart thing to do sometimes.

Fighter 3: Third level fighters get their martial archetype, and as a Samurai you learn to unleash your Fighting Spirit, spending your bonus action to gain some temporary HP as well as advantage on all your attacks for the turn. You can do this three times per long rest.

You also get History proficiency. It’s almost cheating given that you’re a historical figure, but hey, we had to get another proficiency here.

Fighter 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Dexterity.  Your sword uses dex, your armor uses dex, it’s just a really good ability to improve upon.

Rogue 2: Going back to rogue lets you stuff even more into a single turn thanks to your Cunning Action, letting you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. I’m not saying you’re faster than a monk now, but you could definitely keep up with one for a bit.

Rogue 3: Third level rogues get 2d6 in their sneak attack, and they get their roguish archetype. as an Inquisitive, you gain an Ear for Deceit, so your insight checks to determine lies always get die rolls of at least an 8. You also have an Eye for Detail now, letting you spot hidden creatures with perception or find clues with investigation as a bonus action. You’re really getting a lot out of those things, huh?

Continuing the bonus action train, you can use Insightful Fighting as a bonus action, forcing a contested insight check against a creature’s deception. If you win, you can use sneak attacks against that creature for up to a minute without needing advantage or a nearby ally. Your fighting spirit has limits, but you can use this one as many times as you need- just keep in mind you can only target one creature at a time.

Rogue 4: We’ve got more feats we want, so use this ASI to become a Defensive Duelist. Use your reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your AC for one melee attack, potentially avoiding the attack entirely. You need to be holding a finesse weapon, but somehow I don’t think that’ll be an issue for you.

Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters finally get their Extra Attack, letting you attack twice per action. You can still only use your sneak attack once per turn, but now missing once isn’t the end of the world!

Fighter 6: You get another ASI now, so lets grab Keen Mind to show off how clever you really are. Your Intelligence bumps up by 1, and you’re really good at keeping track of yourself in time and space thanks to knowing which way north is and the number of hours left until sunrise or sunset. Most importantly, you have a photographic memory of the last month.

Fighter 7: Seventh level samurai are Elegant Courtiers, giving you proficiency with Wisdom saves to prevent your emotions from getting the better of you. You can also add your wisdom modifier to persuasion checks now. I’d prefer that to be intimidation, but if you can’t talk your DM into that it’s not the end of the world.

Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues get an Uncanny Dodge, using your reaction to halve damage from one attack. Defensive Duelist would reduce the damage more, but even enemies score natural 20s sometimes. Also, your sneak attack grows to 3d6. It’s been a while, just wanted to make sure you remember that.

Rogue 6: At sixth level you get another round of Expertise; double down on Investigation to be a clever boy and History to prevent your party from repeating it.

Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues can deal more damage with 4d6 sneak attack, and they can avoid consequences of using that damage thanks to Evasion. If you fail a dex save you only take half damage. If you succeed, you take 0.

Rogue 8: Use this ASI to max out your Dexterity, giving you the most accurate and deadly swordplay available to mere mortals. It also makes your AC good as a side effect.

Rogue 9: Ninth level inquisitives gain a Steady Eye, giving you advantage on perception and investigation checks as long as you move at half speed that turn. It’s not quite Reliable Talent, but it’s still pretty useful. This also means your sneak attack grows to its final size, 5d6.

Fighter 8: Use your final ASI to bump up your Wisdom for better Insightful Fighting, Wisdom saves, and perception checks.

Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable, letting you re-roll a failed save once per long rest. Even when you fail a wisdom save you succeed it, that’s how solid your mind is.

Fighter 10: Tenth level samurai get a Tireless Spirit, so if you start a fight without any Fighting Spirit, you get one back for free. Also, your fighting spirit gets a bit better, giving you 10 temporary HP when you pop one.

Fighter 11: Your capstone level is simple, but effective. Another Extra Attack lets you attack thrice per turn, up to six times with action surge.

Pros:

With a maxed out attack stat and plenty of attacks per turn, you can dish out pretty consistent damage, especially if you use your fighting spirit to fish for critical hits. 6d6 per turn without spending any resources is nothing to sniff at.

As befitting any rogue, you’re also very skilled out of combat, lending insight and knowledge to the party.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating- mixing a fighter’s health pool with a rogue’s damage reduction techniques makes for a very solid combo, especially when you throw Defensive Duelist in as well for an even higher AC and Fighting Spirit for extra health to chew through.

Cons:

You have great AC and some extra health in reserve, but that doesn’t change the fact that your HP is rather low for a front-line fighter. Your damage reduction makes up for it, but it’s something it has to make up for, you get me?

You’re too focused on your sword. It makes you really good with your sword, but not very flexible in combat. If you’re playing to character, you’ll have trouble with flying creatures and those that resist or ignore nonmagical attacks. (Assuming your DM doesn’t give you a magic weapon. Hopefully your DM’s nice enough to notice you’d be hosed without one, but for a guide like this it’s best to assume the DM gives you nothing.)

You need your bonus action to activate your fighting spirit, cunning action, eye for detail, and insightful fighting. Similarly, your reaction is split between opportunity attacks (which are super useful for rogues with their sneak attack), uncanny dodges, and defensive duelist uses. Basically, your main action is too simple, but everything else is really complicated for some reason, and you’ll have to sort all these options out for yourself.

Hey, nobody said being smart was easy.

[otp-armada]

If Jason wanted to convince me that Lxa was the love of Clarke's life, he wouldn't have killed her off, effectively cutting their love story permanently, with 4.5 seasons left of the show. Their arc, starting with their introduction in 2x07 and concluding with L's death in 3x07, is 17 episodes long, accounting for 17% of the entire narrative. If I generously add 3x16 to the count, an episode in which L is already dead in the corporeal world Clarke is trying to return to, it's a whopping, grand total of 18%. An 18% congruous with Clarke's intense connection to Bellamy and vice versa, which even A.lycia confirmed as romantic. Feelings romantic enough to spur the formation of a love triangle. An 18% ignoring Clarke's ultimate choice to go back to her people when L wanted her to stay.

CL is a chapter in the story begun and wrapped up in the first half of the narrative. And that's omitting further illumination on the finer details making CL so problematic for Clarke. Do you expect me to believe it was coincidental for CL to occur at a time when Clarke was spiraling down a dark path, commencing with Finn's death? Who played a hand in forcing Clarke's own hand, with Finn, and TonDC, and Mount Weather? Whose example inspired her to ensnare herself in armor and warpaint to be strong enough to save her people? Whose behavior did she emulate in the pushing away of support from her people? Who gave her a place to continue hiding from Bellamy, her mom, and her friends? A place to be someone other than Clarke Griffin? In lieu of facing her fears like the heroine she is? The purpose of CL wasn't to provide Clarke with a magnificent, fairy tale romance gone tragically wrong. I believe Jason's intent with the relationship aimed to further damage Clarke's psyche after L's death, to solidify the belief that her love is not only deadly to its recipients but renders her too weak to do what must be done for survival.

After 3x16, CL is an often superfluous namedrop or two per season for Clarke to briefly react to before carrying on with the plot. Season 5 aside, most of these references are needless enough to be able to interpret them as attempts at reparations for the L/CL fandom's benefit -and their views- without altering the course of the story. Crazy me for thinking it's not enough to constitute an ongoing love story. Crazy me for not thinking this was on par with interactions between living characters. Crazy me for thinking it doesn't befit a love story for the protagonist.

This sliver of the story is what Jason and the CLs would have us unquestionably believe is the pervasive love story of The 100's seven seasons?

Despite his lie and the constant gaslighting from the pineapple CLs, some of us know how to decipher what a temporary love interest is. Lxa? I think you know where I'm heading with this.

I'll acknowledge my admittedly negative appraisal of CL as someone who recognizes its value to the LGBT+ community and treats it as valid while not caring for L/CL on a narrative level. I felt, when swayed by L's influence, Clarke became the antithesis of what I found admirable about her. I resented Clarke's acquiescence of her power to the commander. I wanted nothing more than to remove the wedge L had driven between Clarke and Bellamy.

Let me try to give L/CL the benefit of the doubt for a minute. I don't hold L as responsible for Clarke's choices, but I recognize the prominent role she played in their upbringing. The push and pull was an intriguing aspect of their dynamic, as was the chance to meet a manifestation of who Clarke might have been if she was all head, no heart. Her fall from grace was arguably necessary for her to be a fully-rounded character, not a Mary Sue. It wouldn't be realistic for the protagonist of a tragic story about a brutal world to be a pure cinnamon roll. When forgiveness is an innate theme with Clarke, it would be my bias at work if I was content with her applying it to everyone but Lxa. Clarke saw enough commonalities between her and L to identify with the latter. When she extended forgiveness to L, I believe it was her way of taking the first step on the path to making peace with herself by proxy. None of this means I wanted them paired up. At best, I made my peace with seeing the relationship through to its eventual end. In time for L's death, ironically. My passivity about them notwithstanding, my conclusions are, however, supported by canon.

If I may submit a Doylist reason for romantic CL? Jason knew he had a massive subfandom itching to see them coupled, thereby boosting ratings and generating media buzz. A Watsonian reason? Without relevance, I think L would have been another Anya to Clarke. Grapple shortly with the unfair taking of a life right as they choose to steer towards unity, melancholy giving way to the inconvenience of the loss of a potential, powerful political ally. Romance ensured her arc with L would have the designated impact on Clarke's character moving forward in the next act.

For a show not about relationships, Jason has routinely used romantic love as a shorthand for character and dynamic development. It's happened with so many hastily strung together pairings. And when it does, everyone and their mother bends over backward to defend the relationship. It's romantic because it just is. Didn't you see the kissing? Romantic.

No, The 100 at its core is not about relationships, romantic and otherwise. But stack the number of fans invested exclusively by the action against those of us appreciating a strong plot but are emotionally attached to the characters and dynamics. Who do we think wins? Jason can cry all he wants over an audience refusing to be dazzled solely by his flashy sci-fi.

Funnily enough, "not about relationships'' is only ever applied to Bellarke. Bellarke, a relationship so consistently significant, it's the central dynamic of the show. The backbone on which the story is predicated. Only with Bellarke does it become super imperative to represent male-female platonic relationships. As if Bellarke is the end all, be all of platonic friendship representation on this show. In every single television show in the history of television shows.

Where was this advocacy when B/echo was foisted upon on us after one scene between them where he didn't outright hate Echo? When one interaction before that, he nearly choked the life out of her. If male-female friendship on TV is so sparse, why didn't B/ravens celebrate the familial relationship between Bellamy and Raven? Isn't the fact that they interpret Clarke as abusive to Bellamy all the more reason to praise his oh-so-healthy friendship with Raven as friendship? They might be the one group of shippers at the least liberty to use this argument against Bellarke, lest they want to hear the cacophony of our fandom's laughter at the sheer hypocrisy of the joke. Instead, they've held on with an iron grip to the one sex scene from practically three lifetimes ago when the characters were distracting themselves from their feelings on OTHER people? They've recalled this as "proof" of romance while silent on (or misconstruing) the 99% of narrative wherein they were platonic and the 100% of the time they were canonically non-romantic.

Bellarke is only non-romantic if you believe love stories are told in the space of time it takes for Characters A & B to make out and screw each other onscreen, a timespan amounting to less than the intermission of a quick bathroom break. If it sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. And yet, some can't wrap their heads around the idea that maybe, just maybe, a well-written love story in its entirety is denoted by more than two insubstantial markers and unreliable qualifiers. B/raven had sex, and the deed didn't fashion them into a romance. Jasper and Maya kissed but didn't have sex. Were they half a romantic relationship? Bellarke is paralleled to romantic couples all the time, but it counts for nothing in the eyes of their rival-ship fandom adversaries. Take ship wars out of it by considering Mackson. Like B/echo, the show informed us that Mackson became a couple post-Praimfaya, offscreen, via a kiss. Does anyone fancy them an epic love story with their whisper of a buildup? Since a kiss is all it takes, as dictated by fandom parameters, we should.

If Characters A & B are ensconced in a romantic storyline, then by definition, their relationship is neither non-romantic nor fanon. "Platonic" rings hollow as a descriptor for feelings canonically not so.

If the rest of the fandom doesn't want to take our word for granted, Bob confirmed Bellarke as romantic. Is he as delusional as we are? Bob is not a shipper, but he knows what he was told to perform and how. Why do the pineapples twist themselves in knots to discredit his word? If they are so assured by Jason's word-of-god affirmation, then what credibility does it bear to have Bellarke validated by someone other than the one in charge? They're so quick to aggressively repudiate any statement less than "CL is everything. Nothing else exists. CL is the only fictional love story in The 100, nay, the WORLD. CL is the single greatest man-made invention since the advent of the wheel."

We've all seen a show with a romantic relationship between the leads at the core of the story. We all know the definition of slowburn. We can pinpoint the tropes used to convey romantic feelings. We know conflict is how stories are told. We know when interferences are meant to separate them. We know when obstacles are overcome, they're stronger for it. We know that's why the hurdles exist. We know those impediments often take the shape of interim, third-party love interests. We know what love triangles are. We know pining and longing.

Jason wasn't revolutionary in his structure of Bellarke. He wasn't sly. Jason modeled them no differently than most other shows do with their main romances. Subtler and slower, sure. Sometimes not subtle at all. There's no subtlety in having Clarke viscerally react to multiple shots of Bellamy with his girlfriend. No subtlety in him prioritizing her life over the others in Sanctum's clutches. In her prioritizing his life above all the other lives she was sure would perish if he opened the bunker door. There is no subtlety in Bellamy poisoning his sister to stave off Clarke's impending execution. In her relinquishing 50 Arkadian lives for him after it killed her to choose only 100 to preserve. In her sending the daughter Clarke was hellbent to protect, into the trenches to save him. In him marching across enemy lines to rescue her. In her surrender to her kidnapper to march to potential death, to prevent Bellamy's immediate one. No subtlety in Josie's callouts. No subtlety in Lxa's successful use of his name to convince Clarke to let a bomb drop on an unsuspecting village. Bet every dollar you have that the list goes on and on.

There are a lot of layers to what this show was. It was a tragedy, with hope for light at the end of the tunnel. It was, first and foremost, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival drama. Within this overarch is the story of how the union of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake saves humanity, ushering in an age of peace. In this regard, their relationship transcended romance. But with the two of them growing exponentially more intimate each season, pulled apart by obstacles only to draw closer once again, theirs was a love story. A romantic opus, the crescendo timed in such a way that the resolution of this storyline -the moment they get together- would align with the resolution of the main plot. Tying Bellarke to the completion of this tale made them more meaningful than any other relationship on this show, not less.

Whereas the trend with every other pair was to chronicle whether they survived this hostile world intact or succumbed to it, Bellarke was a slowburn. A unique appellation for the couples on this show, but not disqualifying them from romantic acknowledgment.

Framing Bellarke in this manner was 100% Jason's choice. If he wanted the audience to treat them as platonic, he should have made it clear within the narrative itself, not through vague, word-of-god dispatches. A mishandled 180-degree swerve at the clutch as a consequence of extra-textual factors doesn't negate the 84% of the story prior. It's just bad writing to not follow through. And Jason's poor, nearsighted decisions ruined a hell of a lot more than a Bellarke endgame.

The problem is, when Bellarke is legitimized, the pineapples are yanked out of their fantasies where they get to pretend the quoted exaggerations above are real. Here I'm embellishing, but some of them have deeply ingrained their identities in CL to the degree where hyperbole is rechristened to incontestable facts. An endorsement for Bellarke is an obtrusive reminder of the not all-encompassing reception of their ship. A lack of positive sentiment is an attack on their OTP, elevated to an attack on their identity. Before long, it ascends to an alleged offense to their right to exist. The perpetrators of this evil against humanity are the enemy, and they must attack in kind, in defense of themselves.

Truthfully, I think it's sad, the connotation of human happiness wholly dependent on the outcome of a fictional liaison already terminated years ago. I'm not unaware of the marginalization of minorities, of the LGBT+ community, in media. I haven't buried my head in the sand to pretend there aren't horrible crimes committed against them. I don't pretend prejudice isn't rampant. When defense and education devolve into hatred and libel for asinine reasons, though, the line has been crossed. You don't get a free pass to hurt someone with your words over a damn ship war. No matter how hard you try to dress it up as righteous social justice, I assure you, you're woefully transparent.

[giorno-plays-piano]

At all costs

Pairing: dark!Steve Rogers x Reader (Survival Games AU)

Warnings: obsession, depiction of violence, death of minor characters, swearing, slight allusion to non-con.

Words: 2959.

Summary: What was the reason to keep fighting when there was no end to all of this? Yet every time somebody chased you with a gun you were ready to rip their throat out if you needed to. Your sense of self-preservation and vital capacity were way stronger than you had ever anticipated.

P.S. This was written for Shameless hoes for Chris challenge! Dear @navybrat817 and @stargazingfangirl18, hope you will enjoy <3

Dialogue prompt #12: "Don't you dare take another step."

____________

You had never moved that far to the North, but the ones following you cut all other ways out, forcing you to enter territories you had never been before. Although Wanda had warned you about it, there was not much you could do - you almost ran out of both bullets and food. It seemed the game masters had finally paid attention to you and wanted you to move, and it was a damn bad sign.

Carefully hiding an empty can in a heap of garbage just like Wanda taught you, you glanced around again, checking your surroundings with Beretta in your hand. Apparently, there was nothing much in this area apart from ruined buildings just like everywhere else in this abandoned city. You were in desperate need of bullets since you had precisely two left in the magazine of your gun. You wasted most of your resources to fight off three men following you, but then suddenly game masters more coming after you.

You didn't know how much time you had already spent there, fighting every goddamn day just to stay alive. If not Wanda, you would die shortly after you were brought to the abandoned city.

She called it a sick game for sick people. All of the ones in this place were brought here against their will, you included. The last thing you remembered was walking home after going to the grocery store in the evening, and then you woke up on a dirty mattress in the back alley with a gun in your hand and a small bag with food and water supplies. No medication, no hygiene supplies, nothing else. Well, there was a possibility to find or buy a few things like painkillers and bandages, for example, but it was so rear you only really saw a little pack of Tylenol once.

When Wanda found you, you had already eaten all your food and finished your water, hiding behind a huge garbage bin in the alley, trembling so bad you couldn't hold the gun properly. Funny enough, you didn't even know how to pull the trigger as if you had never seen it on TV thousands of times. You were so pathetic that you didn't really deserved to die from a bullet in your forehead. A stone from the ground was enough to smash your head to pieces - this is what Wanda told you, dragging you to her hideout. She didn't try killing you, though.

She used to be a child soldier, she said. Sokovian civil war, a conflict you barely heard of. Although Wanda looked fairly young, maybe even your age, she had the eyes of an old woman. Unlike you, she had been kidnapped with a purpose of making the game more interesting - Wanda knew everything about surviving in the middle of chaos. You, on the other hand, were snatched up and used as cannon fodder for this little artificial war.

It was a game, Wanda said. There were cameras everywhere in the city, and all players were tracked with the chip-things buried in them. The only purpose of the game was to stay alive as long as you could. Maybe there was a chance to be released if you killed enough people, but she didn't believe it. Wanda was sure there was no way out.

All those apocalyptic and Hunger Games type of movies could never live up to the real thing. You were always moving from one place to the other, never staying somewhere for too long. Hiding wasn't easy, but it couldn't be compared to the mad chase when other players discovered where you were. Even Wanda who handled rifles and guns as if she were born with them in her hands wasn't able to predict who would come out alive. So, your main goal was to remain hidden as long as you could. The game masters didn't like it, but with so many players, many of whom were either soldiers or dangerous criminals, no one really paid attention to the two of you.

You often asked Wanda why she was taking care of you. Indifferent, unfriendly, unsympathetic, she seemed the perfect soldier to you while you were too normal to be able to live long in a place like this. Wanda stayed silent despite all your attempts to learn her motives. The only thing she was willing to talk about was how to stay alive.

"Steal. Kill. Open your legs of you have to. Do whatever it takes to survive." That's what she once told you after she shot a dying man asking for help and took all his posessions.

There was no justice, no moral, no honor, no sense of right or wrong, nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for except seeing another day. All of you were just animals fighting for your life every fucking second.

There was no meaning behind it, you thought. What was the reason to keep fighting when there was no end to all of this? Yet every time somebody chased you with a gun you were ready to rip their throat out if you needed to. Your sense of self-preservation and vital capacity were way stronger than you had ever anticipated.

When you thought about her words, you found it odd that Wanda who cared only about survival took you, a dead weight, to take care of. Wasn't it literally the opposite to what she taught you? Why diminish her own chances to stay alive just to save you? Maybe she wanted to team up with someone, but there were much better players for that, not some girl who had troubles even pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, your grim savior had never opened up to you about the true reasons behind her actions, and, eventually, you just stopped asking.

Wanda kept teaching and guarding you until the day she died, shielding you with her own body when someone tried shooting you. She broke the most important rule she set herself, and you couldn't understand why. There was so little human left in her, and yet she sacrificed herself to give you a chance to pull through.

Suddenly, you froze, feeling you were being watched. You couldn't see anyone around or hear anything suspicious, but you had that uneasy feeling of something crawling under your skin. Your instincts were telling you somebody was very close, and you didn't fucking like it. With two bullets, your chances to stay alive were minimal.

There was a shift in atmosphere, and you ran to the next room of the abandoned building, hearing the sound of gun firing. Shit.

"If somebody is chasing you, don't think." Wanda said, watching your eyes opening widely at her. "All this TV bullshit makes you feel like you'd be able to make a right decision in a second while they shooting at you, but that's not true. It will slow you down. Keep your eyes open and trust your instincts instead. If you're lucky enough, you will survive."

She said to reserve time for thinking when you would break away from pursuit, and her advice had never even once failed to save your life. Maybe you were damn lucky just like Wanda said.

But where could you run from here? The room where you were now had just one door. There were a few windows, too, but jumping from the third floor to the cemented road would probably cost you a broken leg or even a spine.

Shit, shit, shit.

You could hear the sound of someone's footsteps and hurriedly hid behind an overturned table to your left, keeping your finger on the trigger of your Beretta. The one who was going to enter the room in a few seconds would first see a huge wardrobe lying on the floor to their right, big enough to hide behind it, too. If you were lucky, the player would first pay attention to it, giving you a second or two to shoot. When the man set his foot inside the room, you quickly stuck your head out for a second and aimed your gun at him. When you fired the first bullet, you knew you missed his head right after you pulled the trigger. Fuck. The second bullet was gone the next second, but it hit the target perfectly, and then you saw the wall covered in blood as if it were a picture made by action painter. Well, now you could probably call yourself that.

Turning away, you exhaled loudly when the body hit the floor with a loud thud. You were still alive.

Carefully lifting yourself up, you glanced at the corpse of a player, the feeling of being watched finally gone. He was alone here. However, the sound of guns firing could be heard by others, and you needed to relocate immediately. The next moment you were looking through the man's belongings, finding two cans of chicken - you preferred to have something more nourishing, but any food would do now - a water flask, and two combat knives. No ammunition. He waisted all his bullets trying to kill you.

Biting your lower lip, you hurried to the first floor, doing your best to avoid windows. Knives weren't bad, but most of the time you preferred not to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Any decent soldier would easily outpower you, and you couldn't risk it. Damn, you waisted all your bullets to kill the bastard with no ammunition left. How lucky was that? Cursing under your breath, you carefully observed the street, seeing no one, and moved as fast as you could, a gun still in your hands to make players believe you could still shoot.

You wanted to return to the South so bad. You knew that part of the city to perfection while here everything was new. More than that, here the players teamed up in a big groups, guarding their territories like animals, while in the Southern part everyone always moved around and worked in a pair of two or three people maximum. It was a shame you couldn't return because of game masters chasing you like a mad dog.

All of a sudden that feeling of being watched returned, and you hid in a little alley where huge metal dumpsters were - or what was left of them. Somebody had spotted you, but you couldn't stay in an alley for long. It was a dead end.

"I know you ran out of bullets." Somebody's deep voice cut the eerie silence, and you shivered, gripping your Beretta. "Please come out. I'm not going to hurt you."

The stranger was either guessing or bluffing. He couldn't really know you had no ammunition whatsoever, so you stayed where you are, trying to locate him.

His loud sigh sounded closer to you than you had expected.

"Y/N, I'm telling the truth. You have just wasted your last two bullets, haven't you?"

The next second you were clenching the combat knife Wanda had long passed to you. There was a tall beefy man coming to you with a rifle in his hands, apparently, Kalashnikov or M16, you couldn't see well from a distance. However, you did see he was oddly handsome with his well-built body, his arms solid, covered in dirt and what seemed like ash. But what truly made you grasp was that he had no beard. The man had a clean shave, his dirty blonde hair cut. Except for game masters, you had never seen a man looking so civil.

But he didn't look like a game master at all. Who the fuck was he?

"Don't you dare take another step." You growled like an animal at him, gripping your knife. It was a pathetic weapon against a rifle, but it was the only thing you had.

He stopped for a few seconds, his expression heavy and dark, but then the man kept coming, and you took a step back in return.

"I just said I'm not going to hurt you. Stop looking at me like I'm a butcher and you're a little lamb." He sneered and narrowed his dark blue eyes at you while you clenched your teeth. Whoever he was, it wasn't going to end well for you.

"How do you know my name?" You barked back at him, thinking what he's going to do next.

"From the game masters, of course. How many times do I have to tell you I won't hurt you?"

"What the fuck do game masters want from me, then?"

His handsome face darkened, and you realized he could fire his rifle any second. Moreover, even if he had no bullets, with those arms of his he could probably break you in half, and no knife would save you.

"Don't swear, Little Red. This your one and only warning."

As you made a step back, staring into him and understanding nothing at all - how the fuck did he call you just know? - you had stumbled upon something and fell on your back, crying out in despair. Shit, you were out of luck, weren't you? You would probably die today.

Before you could react, you saw the stranger's large body hovering over you, the muzzle of his rifle pressed into your stomach as his angry eyes pierced through you. He was clearly done with you and your stubbornness. "I came to offer you join my group." He said, furrowing his brows at you, laying on the ground. "The Howling Commandos. Ever heard of us?"

"And who the f... who would I be there? Someone's whore?" With your face burning with deep hatred and humiliation, you were ready to spit in his face. "You think I don't know how little women are left here and what you do to them?"

Obviously, you hit the nail on the head as the man grabbed you by the collar while still having the muzzle aiming at your stomach. He was clearly mad.

"Do you also know what's gonna happen if you keep up with that attitude?" The stranger snarled, his eyes furious. "I know you've got fire, and I like it. I want to keep you. But if you're not going to submit to me right here, right now, I will shoot you. Don't make me do it."

Both of you fell silent, your chest heaving up and down as the man waited, not moving an inch. You needed to have a minute to gather yourself.

What other choice did you have? He'd shoot you dead before you even blinked.

Steal. Kill. Open your legs of you have to.

"Alright." You said through your teeth, feeling the smell of gunpowder and gasoline coming from him as he kept you close, still gripping your collar with his huge hand. "I'll come with you."

"Good."

The man raised you on your feet in the very next second, pushing your combat knife on the ground away with his leg and gesturing you to move forward. However, he did put the rifle down as he took you by the elbow, leading you somewhere to the huge parking lot and watching you intently. However, he didn't radiate anger as before, seemingly content with your submission, so you kept your mouth shut despite all those questions in your head. Why did game masters give the man information about you? You had never heard of them interacting with any players aside from chasing them from one location to the other. Besides, why did this bastard call you Little Red? What the fuck was that?

"What's your name?" You asked, turning your head to him as you kept walking.

"Captain Steve Rogers."

"So, you're an ex-soldier, huh? A war vet, maybe?" You coughed a little, your mouth feeling dry like the Sahara Desert.

"Something like that, Little Red."

"Why are you calling me that?"

"Little Red? This is how the ones watching the show call you." Steve chuckled. "Wanda Maximoff was the Scarlet Witch, and since you're her protege, they called you Little Red. Kind of sweet."

You wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but decided it was safer to stay silent. Sick bastards. They treated Wanda as if she were a character in some silly video game. Her death probably made them happy.

Blinking the tears away, you bit down on your tongue and felt metallic taste filling your mouth. This was not the time to mourn your dear friend, this was what Wanda would say to you. You had to gather yourself and think what to do after. You were in Howling Commandos now, and only God knew how many men were there. Would you have to sleep with them all? Fucking hell. It was better to die than go through this.

"Why the hell everyone's paying so much attention to me?" You grunted as Steve hummed, crossing the parking lot and turning you to pass under the bridge. "Do they want me dead so desperately?"

"No. They want you to team up with someone who will take care of you just like Wanda did, and I fit the role perfectly. I've been wanting to have you for a long time."

"Are you fucking insane?" You hissed angrily at him, becoming rooted to the ground right where you stood. "Take care? Is that how you take care of women? Throwing them to your men to be fucked to death?"

"Language." His iron grip on your arm made you squirm as Steve pulled you closer to him.

You stared at him with disgust, your dirty face distorted, and then you saw familiar fire in his deep blue eyes as Captain loomed over you, grabbing you by the chin.

"Don't tell me you have forgotten what I just said, Little Red. I will keep you for myself."

__________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki   ​@helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin ​@void-hoechlin @abyssaint @heeeyitskay @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @brattycherubwrites @sllooney @lovelydarkdaydream @angrythingstarlight

[janiedean]

Book!Theon is Azor!Ahai, not Jon. It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience. Theon’s chapters are full of hints, he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”. His story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that. The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA? And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her. D&D already took everything else from Theon, they took this too. And even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing. He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks. And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

anon with no ill will and I swear I don't want to sound pedantic or anything but I, uh, never came to the conclusion you say I came from - that said let's go in order even if I think I already went through all the reasons why it makes literally no sense if it's anyone but jon, but let's start with one thing:

It makes no sense narratively for Jon to be AA, and it’s the most stereotypical thing ever, and he’s already stereotypical, he’s the red flag for the audience.

it's stereotypical.... to us maybe, but it is not to westeros. like, you're looking at it through audience-lens because it has been years and the show confirmed r+l=j and we all figured that shit out, but to westeros, the idea that the prince that was promised is a bastard guy serving on the wall aka a state-sponsored prison where people go to not die and is filled to non-desirables to society is... the least likely option in existence? no really, but again:

first thing that should quiet all doubts, when melisandre asks r'hollor to see azor ahai bc she wants to see stannis, r'hollor shows her jon snow and instead of going like 'uh wait why am I seeing another dude' she's like 'I want to see stannis but r'hollor shows me jon snow there must be some disturbance on the line', like she doesn't even consider for a second that it might be jon;

no one else has brought WITHIN THE NARRATIVE jon up as a likely candidate - they said stannis, they said dany, they said whoever but no one ever said hey jon snow might be AA, because again no one even suspects that it might be jon;

other matter that you're overlooking here: if theon is azor ahai.... it means that the rebellion basically was for nothing? because like the entire shtick with rhaegar targaryen's bad life choices™ is that he was apparently a swell dude, then he read a book where somehow it was exactly explained how the apocalypse was gonna happen, he deduced that he was the guy who had to father AA/the prince that was promised and in order - first he doesn't care about fighting but suddenly after that he starts getting learned; - he immediately worries over having THREE children from which we can deduce from the narrative that as far as he knows in order to fight when the wights come he has to have three kids for three dragons and one of them is azor ahai; - the moment his wife can't have more than two even if he's sure that he already had the right one (aegon) he still runs off with lyanna to make sure he has the third because it's that important that HE rhaegar targaryen fathers the three heads of the dragon... to the point of starting a civil war and most likely giving arthur orders to make sure that the kid lives at all costs even if he thinks lyanna's kid is NOT AA; - let's remember that the entire schtick is also that 'he is the ptwp and his is the song of ice and fire' which means that this kid of rhaegar's is the person these books are titled after.

now, let's look again at tyrion's infamous quote which I always bring up in these cases but let's refresh our memory here Prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head now: given this, we can absolutely assume that no single prophecy in this book goes the way the person at the end of it interprets it... which means that rhaegar was wrong on a lot of accounts, but guess what, the thing is that one out of three of his kids is dead (if we count aegon as trueborn, if he's not then two on three but I think he's trueborn) and the one who hatched the eggs/has the dragon is DANY so he already was wrong on head of the dragon #1, and he can absolutely be wrong on aegon being tptwp which would mean mistake #2 and we should know about the prophecy, but one of his children being AA and his being the song of ice and fire looks a bit too much of a stretch to be incorrect and have AA being someone else's son also would be.... but if AA is jon ie the one he had for last that he was sure was not AA and who doesn't even have the targ name (nor the stark one) and no one suspects having that kinda ancestry then yes it fits exactly all the parameters and it still allows for rhaegar to have partially misinterpreted the entire thing even in large chunks but not enough to make it look like he was completely making shit up, which... I mean the long night is coming I don't doubt he had very good reasons to want to stop it; also, anon not to beat the dead horse, but: - jon's death fits all the prophecy parameters already there's the bleeding star, the smoking wound and the salt of the tears which btw is not obvious nor something you'd immediately do 2+2 about... which fits perfectly with the above - jon died and came back to life in the godforsaken show like he's literally the only idiot who resurrected in it and we're supposed to handwave it the way dnd did? - jon has a valyrian steel sword that he can handle while theon atm really doesn't - we could argue that ygritte could be a possible nissa-nissa contender though I mean maybe it could also be that he and val get hot and bothered and it turns out it's her or someone else and that hasn't happened yet but surely there's more evidence for that with jon than with theon - theon has like... povs in two books for a total amount of less than fifteen chapters, jon has at least ten chapters per book or so on, which just mathematically makes jon a main fiver character while theon is not and like I understand deconstruction and all but you don't make your ace in the hole mystical prince hero character someone who has had fifteen chapters total at most unless I remember wrong the amount he had in acok in comparison to someone who was a main throughout the entire thing - like guys I say it as someone whose third-fave char is theon, theon is not a main fiver™ character and that's okay that's not the point, and with that I don't mean he's not important, I mean that he's not one of the five main ones that have most of the plot stuff on their shoulders and he's not THE main character, because if theon is AA then these books are named a song of theon greyjoy and considering that the main five are jon tyrion arya dany and bran I think it's highly not probable that at the end of it theon is the one character to rule them all

and that was for how jon fit the criteria, but theon doesn't fit them because again he doesn't have a number of chapters/povs that justifies such a plot twist, balon is certainly not rhaegar and I don't see how rhaegar reads a prophecy wrt balon and thinks it's about him, the heads of the dragon should be three and theon had three siblings two of which are dead and asha has no tie to the dragon storyline, this means that theon should be able to ride/command a dragon and we know that in theory just targs can and there's already three of them around - dany jon and aegon - and if anyone who's not a targ has a narrative reason to ride a dragon is tyrion not theon... and tyrion is a main fiver too, also there's the nissa-nissa/burning sword angle and as it is theon could absolutely use a bow again but a longsword with his hands maimed like that and no muscle mass would be a bit implausible, in order for the reborn prophecy to actually make sense it means his last adwd chapter should have smoke, salt and the bleeding star which it doesn't but jon's has so there's that

now, re what you said wrt theon:

Theon’s chapters are full of hints

not really? he doesn't have a tie to the magical storyline beyond his connection to bran. they have hints for a lot of things but that he's AA? idt so

he has the perfect salt/smoke/stars/dragons thing at the end of ACOK, when he “dies”

okay but then I could use the same argument for saying that AA could be davos when he survives blackwater because he says he woke up in wreckage of smoke in salty water, and then stannis has equally valid arguments bc he has the shiny sword and he's in dragonstone etc and we all know it's not stannis, also an AA death at the ending of acok when the topic has barely been introduced in dany's vision is entirely too early for me to drop that bomb

his story is about destroying death, his entire narrative, with things that come from mythology and ancient literature, points to that.

his story is about overcoming trauma and abuse and not dying in the process (which is why I think the show was trash) and okay but everyone in these books has something that comes from a mythology or ancient literature, like jaime brienne and c. all have arthuriana roots same as bran, doesn't make any of them a viable AA candidate

The show is trash, but don’t you think that it’s a little weird that Theon is there at the end and then Arya comes out of nowhere and becomes AA?And what ending does she get? Exploring the unknown SEA with SHIPS? Being free and on her own? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for her because it’s not for her.

considering that maisie williams was shocked that arya was AA and she also thought it made no sense and that dnd never thought theon had his own storyline while I can agree on the fact that it fits more for him as an ending than for arya, I don't think that means it makes him AA, same as I think that they gave sansa his storyline and possibly his confrontation with ramsay and I'm not 100% convinced on the last part anyway but that just means they didn't realize theon doesn't exist for the starks' storyline, also like.. in the show everyone but c. was in WF and theon was already dead when arya did her thing and honestly idt the battle of the long night will ever go like that anyway so idt even partially show truthing is bringing us anywhere

and even if he’s not AA, he’s still clearly connected to magic and all of that, he didn’t go though so much for nothing, he didn’t take his name back for the first time in his life, his name that literally means “godly”, for nothing

I never said it was for nothing which I'll elaborate in a second and ofc he's connected to the magic storyline... because he's connected with bran's storyline and his last round of atonement has to happen through bran in the sense that since he was the one basically forcing bran out of wf now he most likely has to facilitate bringing him back or smth (surely not dying for him), but like whatever magical stuff he has going on it has to do with bran dot, not with AA which I still think he doesn't have a stricter text connection to than davos has for that matter and idt davos is AA as I think I made clear

He has something big to do, and it’s about himself, not Robb and the Starks.

never said he didn't, and I also said that I wasn't going to speculate in detail about what theon has to do because I don't think there are enough text elements to say it now but there will be when wow comes out for sure, but like again I don't want to make predictions when I don't have the elements and wrt theon's themes/possible canon ending etc I always said that he most likely isn't going to inherit the islands but that he'll do something huge before the books are done which is gonna be tied to the northern storyline and possibly to bran because he has to go specular to acok - acok is his downfall, adwd is 'I'll find myself again', wow+ados have to be what would theon do if he decides his own thing while being his own person, or recycling my old THEON HAS HEGELIAN THEMES IN HIS STORYLINE acok = thesis, adwd = antithesis, wow+ados = synthesis so obviously he has something huge in the plans.... I just don't think it means he's AA

And he’s also so clearly connected to the politics of the north and of the iron islands, a villain was literally created for him, so I don’t understand how can you say he’s not really important and all he’s got left to do is retire in a house and be sad

aaand here we get to the point which is that... I never said that? I honestly never said that? I said he has to overcome his trauma and live and thrive and be happy after that. if he retires in a house at the end of ados after he does whatever he has to do in the main plot it's going to be because it's what he wants to do and most likely he and jeyne are going to be adorbs while doing it together or smth or if he goes back to the islands and advises asha then he's going to be happy doing that too, but like... the entire point of theon's sl is that he overcomes that horrendous abuse while not being a perfect good victim™ throughout and still be happy after and gain his redemption? that's what I always said. I never said that now he can just retire and be sad. trauma recovery is becoming happy after getting over your trauma. not being sad. and like.... sometimes not getting amazing mythological things but just being happy by yourself is actually a goal? again, grrm is a lapsed catholic. if I know that breed and I do, he doesn't think redemption and happiness are in shortage at the supermarket. and in order for theon to have narrative importance/weight/relevance he doesn't have to do magical mythological IMPORTANT™ things (even if I think he does have something cooked up as I said above), but like the entire point of his sl is the trauma recovery. he's there for that. that's literally his point in the plot and the fact that grrm created a villain for him means that he thinks it's an important thing to explore.

also I personally think that theon's arc is the best written thing in those books so like I don't want to undermine its importance, I just don't think that in order to be important™ then theon has to be dragged kicking and screaming into main fiver territory because there isn't the need.

. Of course he has a lot of trauma and that’s important, but I don’t like how people reduce him to that and act like just because those things happened, he can’t do anything else

I don't like that either esp. when coming from dnd who didn't even let him have it fully, but: and when did I ever do it? I never said that theon is only his trauma. my standing opinion wrt theon is that he's grrm's best written/constructed character (along with jaime) and his most innovative one (jaime following but theon wins it) because theon deconstructs the backstabber trope which I already went on about but:

again usually ppl who backstab the good protagonist™ get caught and punished and you never hear their pov

theon has all the povs

he's the main char in that storyline not robb

he has entirely understandable reasons that ppl decided aren't sympathetic just bc they don't want to admit that in his position they'd have done the same thing

the audience hates him for having contributed to robb's downfall but then he gets a comeuppance that's completely not what anyone would deserve for that and he gets the spotlight/the sympathy again

he gets narrative redemption saving jeyne so you can see he's not an asshole at all

has to get through horrific abuse for his entire life not just with ramsay, he's not a good victim™ but he's still written in a way that makes you want to root for him and at the end he actually comes through so you want him to keep on succeeding

which is smth that with the backstabber trope never happens

now the thing is that theon's there bc a) identity issues b) trauma recovery storylines that then get tied to bran's main one but like idg why just having the recovery storyline would make him lesser - saying he's not a main fiver doesn't mean he's not important, it means he's not a MAIN™ character... which in asoiaf doesn't matter bc even ppl without povs are important to the narration and are there to drive a point (see sandor and stannis), and I don't see why saying that the most important part of his sl/the one grrm wants to stick with the readers is the survivor part of it rather than whichever heavy magic related plot thing he has to play in the future means undermining his importance. and while I think he has that role, idt it's the most important one he has bc being a survivor is what sells his storyline/the entire arc of his character.

then if come wow I'm wrong I'll be like okay I fucked up, but: honestly, imvho there is no way that azor ahai is not jon snow, the fact that collectively as a fandom we think it's obvious doesn't mean people in westeros do, each single point of evidence is at jon and if occam's razor is a thing then it's jon and that's okay because as deconstructed chosen one as he is, jon is still the protagonist of these books and regarding the prophecy above, it makes a lot more sense that this series is titled a song of jon snow and not a song of theon greyjoy and I say this as someone who vastly prefers theon as a character. also, if smth is well-written, readers should see it coming, so the fact that jon is AA isn't predictable if it's true, it's grrm.... knowing how to write a book and plant his hints because if everyone guessed right then if he makes it suddenly someone else bc jon is too predictable then it's dnd making it arya bc SURPRISE WE NEEDED YOU TO GO LIKE WTF HAS JUST HAPPENED INSTEAD OF FOLLOWING THE NARRATION TO ITS NATURAL CONCLUSION, not 'it's too predictable' or the audience red herring the way jaime being the valonqar is an audience red herring. jon being AA should be absolutely obvious for the reader who paid attention and a total surprise for the other characters in the narration, the audience red herring is more dany than anyone else imvho and I'm dying on that hill for now, thanks for coming to my ted talk but like I don't see how it's anyone but jon personally X°D

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

Filmverse!Knuckles is gonna be Tikal’s Little Brother and if he’s not I’m suing Sega

[ID: Two images; one of clipart of Knuckles the Echidna beside a poster for Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), and another from Sonic X of Knuckles and Tikal together while Tikal is injured. End ID.] 

Thankfully, this might be shorter than my last couple theory posts but unfortunately I am possibly more passionate about it because this could conceivably happen and if it doesn’t I don’t know what I’m gonna do. 

So in this theory, I will endeavor to prove these points:

Knuckles will very soon be present in the filmverse. 

In the Filmverse, Pachacamac (and by extention, Tikal) are no longer four-thousand years gone, but exist at the same time as Sonic.

Knuckles is going to be in this clan not just as any member, but as Tikal’s brother. 

We’re going off the rails and I’m going to tie this all in to the Chaos Emerald Filmverse theory. 

Who’s ready to go? Everything under the cut. 

1. Knuckles is Coming #2k22

[ID: Another edited photo, placing clipart of Knuckles beside a promotional photo for Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). End ID.] 

This will probably be a short section but... there’s no way Knuckles won’t be in the filmverse very soon. Likely, in the second fucking movie. 

Let’s start with the basics: Knuckles was originally going to be in the first movie, but was cut in order to better establish the Sonic vs Robotnik rivalry. Director Jeff Fowler made the following statement: 

“For this first film, we really were just looking at the 1991 game and just see where it all started and keep it simple…Just really try to nail Sonic and Robotnik and just set up their rivalry because you don’t…I mean, I love…There’s a lot of great characters in Sonic universe, but it’s the most important thing is just to get Sonic set up and just tell a little bit of an origin story with him, and just do it in a way that really makes everyone fall in love with him as a character and just be rooting for more.

And then, if all that goes well, then we can kind of open it up and bring in some of these other characters that fans know and love. And yeah, I mean, no one’s more excited than me to have that opportunity.”

[x]

As well as this, co-writer for the film, Josh Miller, has stated he really wants to bring in Knux. 

“I will only hint that we wanna bring in some of the other characters from the games. But, really, it’s all about Knuckles’ love.” [x]

Second, voice actors have, reportedly, already been considered for Knuckles’s voice, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. [x, x]

And third, Mushroom Hill. 

[ID: Two photos; one of the Mushroom Planet from Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). The second is a screenshot from Sonic & Knuckles, where Knuckles is running through Mushroom Hill. Both photos feature gigantic mushrooms resembling trees and an orange tint. End iD.]

The “Mushroom Planet” is a direct reference to the first level of Sonic & Knuckles. The first level of.... the game with Knuckles’s name in it. 

So, you wanna hear something funny? What’s the first thing Knuckles does in the game timeline? 

[ID: Screenshot from Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic is standing on the left side of the screen, beneath a mural of something holding an emerald towards something that looks like SuperSonic. On the right side of the screen is Knuckles, ready to fight Sonic. End ID.]

Well... Robotnik shows up, convinces him that Sonic and Tails are gonna try to steal his emerald, and sends him off to fight them. 

And where’s Robotnik at the end of the 2020 film?

[ID: Robotnik on the Mushroom Planet in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). End ID.]

While the Mushroom Planet may not be where Angel Island is in filmverse, the direct reference would definitely generate fan attention. And it implies that Robotnik, wherever he is or is going, is headed towards Knuckles. And with the game inciting incident of Robotnik having Knuckles fight Sonic for him... well, wouldn’t that be a wild introduction? Especially for casual fans who don’t have Sonic Lore memorized and may not know that Knuckles was originally an antagonist/rival to Sonic. 

Oh, and there’s one more piece of evidence that Knuckles is gonna show up... the fact that his tribe already has. 

And among them, by the way, are Pachacamac and Tikal. 

2. Pachacamac and Tikal are no longer 4000 years old

So. Let’s talk about the opening scene of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). As many of you have probably noticed, Sonic and Longclaw are attacked not just by any masked intruders, but by... the Knuckles Clan of Echidnas. 

And we’re sure they’re not any other clan, because they have the trademark Knuckled Gloves. 

[ID: Multiple gifs of the echidnas attempt to attack Longclaw and Baby Sonic. They are dressed in vaguely tribal wear, and have gloves featuring pointed knuckles, signifying them as the Knuckles Clan. End ID.] 

Now, that’s not evidence of Pachacamac/Tikal itself; we know the Knuckles Clan lasted at least long enough to spawn our Knuckles. What is evidence, however, is in the specific Echidna who shot Longclaw. 

[ID: Gif of the Echidna who shot Longclaw, isolated in the frame. End ID.] 

Look familiar?

[ID: The echdina who shot Longclaw in the 2020 film next to a render of Pachacamac. The mystery echidna’s helmet has the same forehead markings as Pachacamac, along with a design that looks like his mustache. End ID.]

And fun fact: this isn’t me reaching for once. This was confirmed by Tyson Hesse, film character designer and savior of Sonic, on his twitter. 

[ID: Tweet from Tyson Hesse, showing the pictures of the Echidna and Pachacamac. He says, “Late to the #sonicwatchparty but this is an easter egg I haven’t seen many people catch.” End iD.]

Pachacamac is canonically in Sonic 2020. As director Jeff Fowler has said he believes Sonic as ~13 during the events of the film, we could say he’s about three years old in that intro. And we know this because it is specified specifically that the main timeline takes place ten years after the prologue. 

[ID: Screenshot from Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the first shot following the logo. It is a landscape shot of a street in the middle of a green field, and the caption reads, Green Hills Montana: Ten Years Later. End ID.]

Meaning... Pachacamac was alive ten years before the film takes place. Quite the departure from the four-thousand year time jump in the gameverse. Seeing as Pachacamac is alive so close to this timeline, we can reasonably assume that Tikal is, too- she’s his teenaged daughter, canonically ~14 when she is turned into a spirit, which would put her as solidly alive during this timeline. 

...wanna know who else would be alive in this timeline? 

Knuckles, who is only a year older than Sonic. 

And, um, obviously a member of the Knuckles Clan. 

3. Where is Knuckles in this Filmverse Canon?

Okay “Knuckles” is going to stop sounding like a word so can we just call the Knuckles Clan the KC rn? okay? Okay. 

Knuckles is canonically a year older than Sonic- listed as 16 while Sonic is 15. So if Sonic’s alive, Knuckles is alive. Basic logic there. 

In the gameverse, Knuckles’s backstory is as thus, paraphrased from Sonic Wiki:

Knuckles was born and raised alone on Angel Island as the last surviving member of the Knuckles Clan, a long-lost race of echidnas devoted to protecting the Master Emerald from being abused. However, Knuckles’s own past was a mystery to him; he knew nothing how he came to be and believed himself to be the last of his kind entirely. The one thing he did know was that he had always been living on his island, protecting the Master Emerald. Knuckles knew from an innate knowledge that his duty was his fate, and he was content with that.

While we can’t expect his backstory to stay exactly the same, seeing as Sonic now has a dead owl mom and knows how to Fortnite dance, but Knuckles’s backstory does fuel a lot of his character and decisions in the games. Here are what I believe to be the two main points of this backstory:

Knuckles is, or at least believes himself to be, the last member of his race 

Knuckles considers it his sacred duty to guard the Master Emerald 

[ID: Screencap from Sonic X of Knuckles the Echidna holding the Master Emerald above his head. End ID.]

Now... if Sonic was three during that backstory, the KC was around at least when Knuckles was about four. Most children don’t develop long-term memories til then, but if 3yo Sonic could remember his backstory in Green Hills near-perfectly, then clearly mobians are a bit different. We can reasonably assume that Knuckles would then remember at least part of his tribe or family, so that’s a definite change. 

Thing is, what would be the reason for this change? Even ignoring Pachacamac, it was definitely intentional for the clan attacking Longclaw and Sonic to be the KC, which does change quite a bit of Knuckles’s backstory. Which isn’t a problem, you see- it’s a drastic change, but character changes aren’t bad if there’s a reason behind them. 

So what would be the reason for Knuckles having memories of his tribe? 

Well... how easy would it be, then, to get that Sonic Adventure flashback via Knuckles instead of a glowing ball of Tikal/Navi? 

[ID: Screencap from Sonic Adventure, showing Knuckles the Echidna staring down Chaos and the glowing ball of light that symbolizes Tikal. They are standing in front of the emerald shards. End ID.]

Would be an easy way to get any chaos emerald/Master Emerald exposition out of the way, as well as establish some basic and early Sonic Lore- Chaos, echidnas, chao. And if Knuckles, um, remembers his entire race being massacred by an elder god?? That would definitely affect him in a way that he’d consider protecting the Master Emerald, the controller of the power Chaos used to do such a thing, a duty for himself. 

And... what would be the best way to get that backstory out? 

4. Knuckles is Tikal’s Baby Brother

Here’s the thing- the KC citizens don’t seem to know much about what’s going on outside of Pachacamac’s orders. From talking to them in Sonic Adventure flashbacks, we can see they’re quite a bit... confused, I think is the best way to put it. 

[ID: Dialogue screenshots from Sonic Adventure that I had to nab from a Game Grumps video because nobody else had these online. The echidnas say, “The daughter? I saw her in front of the shrine.”, “Well... I.... I just can’t sit still!” and “I think, therefore I am.” End ID.]

So if Knuckles was just an ordinary tribe member, it’d be unlikely for him to know enough to provide the necessary flashback details. And if Knuckles’s past was changed in order to provide an easier connection to the SA lore, he’d need to be very near to the action. Of course, he could just be a curious child, but even then, he’d likely be left out of several conversations surrounding Tikal. 

Most of Tikal’s flashbacks are spent alone- she only has a few arguing with her father, but most of her scenes are spent with the Chao and Chaos themself in the Chao Garden. Considering Tikal seems to be the only echidna frequenting the Chao Garden- the chao are afraid of her when she first approaches, Pachacamac arriving is basically seen as a declaration of war- there’d be no reason for an echidna to be there unless she brought them herself. 

Who would she bring with her? Perhaps... her little brother. 

[ID: Screencap from Sonic X of Tikal, surrounded by flying Chao while at the Master Emerald Shrine. End ID.]

First off, let’s get over the age thing-- I know you’re gonna say “Knuckles is 16 when Tikal is 14,” HOWEVER, TIkal did not age while inside the Master Emerald. She could go in at any point in Knuckles’s life, which means she could be anywhere from ten years older than him to a twin sister to two years younger. 

There’s no real concrete evidence of how old Knuckles would be in filmverse when the SA events happen, seeing as we have only seen Pachacamac existing and have no idea where this is in his timeline. However, from a writing standpoint, if you want to keep a bit of Knuckles’s backstory of living alone for a good chunk of his life, I’d say the massacre happening when he was ~8 seems likely. Old enough to have clear memories of the SA events but young enough to have his life completely sidetracked and feel like he raised himself. 

It’d be very easy for the flashbacks to feature Tikal taking a baby Knuckles to the Chao Garden, just telling him “don’t tell Dad, he won’t understand,” to talk to him about the grandmother he doesn’t remember who used to teach peace, to explain Chaos and the Master Emerald to him. 

And it’d be very easy angst for Knuckles being dragged along with the rest of the clan to take the emerald(s), watch his father basically doom his sister and his tribe murder innocent chao, and then see everyone he’s ever known murdered by Chaos, with his older sister stopping the rampage only by sealing herself and the destructive god in that emerald, leaving Knuckles completely alone. That’s all severe angst that pretty much no writer would pass up. 

Especially because it means Knuckles guarding the Master Emerald has now turned into Knuckles guarding his sister. 

[ID: Sonic X screenshot of Knuckles and Tikal looking up, surrounded by fire. End ID.]

So that’s the general theory. But let’s talk about something more fun: how it all ties into the Chaos Emerald Filmverse Theory. 

5. It all ties into our Chaos Emerald theory shh 

If you haven’t read Cori’s manifesto on the Chaos Emerald Filmverse Theory, allow me to summarize: 

Sonic is definitely a living Chaos Emerald, meaning that there are six other living Chaos Emeralds running around that we’re gonna need to track down. At least one of them’s Tails. 

First thing’s first... Robotnik going after Knuckles then makes perfect sense. If Robotnik somehow figured out exactly what Sonic was, he’d want a way to dilute his power. And the Master Emerald literally nullifies the power of the chaos emeralds. So whoever has the Master Emerald can severely nerf Sonic. Imagine Sonic getting within the boundaries of the ME and then immediately losing speed and falling flat on his face. Big oof. 

Second, it’s possible that Knuckles will also know what Sonic is. Because, well... what was Pachacamac after in Sonic Adventure?

[ID: Pachacamac attempting to talk down Tikal, who is t-posing in front of the Chao Garden in attempt to keep them out. Behind him is an echidna army, ready to attack. Pachacamac is saying, “We need those seven emeralds to give us total power!” End ID.]

The Chaos Emeralds. In order to use their power as weapons. 

And what was he after in Sonic 2020? 

Sonic. 

Interesting, huh.

Conclusion

Knuckles is gonna be the last member of the Knuckles Clan, guarding his older sister’s spirit inside an insanely powerful emerald, and will definitely be manipulated by Robotnik into using his Master Emerald to fuck up Sonic. 

And it’ll be really awesome. 

[ID: Sonic X screencap of Knuckles giving a thumbs up. End ID.]

[plotbnuy]

KarpReviews - The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Back when The Hunger Games became a huge phenomenon, I have to admit that it didn’t quite grab me like it did for many. The original film came out on March 23rd, 2012, followed by Catching Fire late next year. These films started a trend of dystopian novel movie adaptations, with Divergent coming out on March 21st 2014, and Maze Runner coming out on September 19th that same year. By the time Mockingjay: Part One released on November 21′s, right after Maze Runner, I’d become a little burnt out on these tales of children fighting for survival against an oppressive system meant to keep society under control. Despite reading the first two books in the series, I didn’t return for Mockingjay. 

That is, until a few months ago.  I decided to give the books another try, and to my delight I grew to really love and appreciate them. Katniss is a wonderful protagonist, surrounded by a surprisingly colorful and interesting cast of characters (even though it still features the classic love triangle trope.) While the first two books were rereads, going in blind into Mockingjay was a treat, and I felt the series had a wonderfully satisfying ending. 

Imagine my delight, however, when I realized that there was a prequel to the series! The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes features a much different entry in the story, taking place long before the events of the main series to highlight the tenth Hunger Games. In order to spice up what is comparatively an archaic and unpolished annual event, The Capitol has enlisted a large selection of students from an elite secondary school - simply referred to as “The Academy” - to mentor the children forced to fight in the arena! Who else should be chosen to be a mentor but a young Coriolanus Snow, hoping to become recognized and attain a university scholarship on his path to becoming President of Panem.

Yes, this entry puts us in the perspective of the infamous Coriolanus Snow, allowing us to see a little bit into what led to the events of the original Hunger Games novel. Not only does it flesh out Snow himself, but also how the titular event became the lavish, intricate, and audacious spectacle depicted during Katniss’s run in the arena. This allows this entry to differentiate itself immensely from the others, allowing it to feel fresh and new while it gives us a better look into the universe we’ve become a part of after three other novels and four films. With that being said, I want to dive deeper into what makes this particular entry so engaging. 

While other entries in the series have a bit of a fluid structure, our story this time is split into very neat thirds: The events leading up to the games, the games themselves, and the aftermath. This time, we get to see the perspective of the games from the capitol’s eyes, as opposed to the districts. However, while the event is massively celebrated, with banquets, parties, tours, and intricate broadcasts during the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, the 10th is much different. It’s much bleaker and more depressing, as tributes are treated like livestock, with no access to good food or proper shelter. Many citizens, District or Capitol, would rather ignore the barbaric event, only bothering to attend The Reaping before returning to daily life. There’s no reward for victory, beyond the singular tribute avoiding death, only to return to the poverty-stricken districts. Tributes die before even entering the arena, leading the games themselves to be swift and merciless. 

Ultimately, this raw and bleak depiction of the games, combined with Capitol citizens not yet disillusioned by the grandeur of future games, still recovering from the war, is a perfect choice for this Capitol-centric prequel. It keeps the citizens of The Capitol that we spend most of our time with from being completely unsympathetic, and it allows for a much more engaging story. Even before the games themselves, many things happen that impact the story, allowing for a lot of tension as things lead up to the main event. 

Speaking of the Hunger Games, this is the first time we get to enjoy them from outside of the arena itself. As the story follows our mentors, we get to watch from their perspective as spectators as the games commence in the arena. This event also happens to be the first where sponsors are allowed to affect the games, sending gifts for the tributes to possibly keep them alive. Since the mentors themselves have agency over the games, they never feel boring as you hope for the survival of our main character’s tribute. The aftermath of the games left me absolutely shocked, leading into a finale that felt unlike anything the series has had to offer before.

Even though Coriolanus Snow is designated as our main character, this story is truly given life by the people who surround him. Closest to him is Sejanus Plinth, a childhood friend who joins Snow in the tribute mentorship program as his classmate. At first, Sejanus is telegraphed as an old rival and a clear foil to Snow, and you suspect he’ll be something of an antagonist given the disdain Coriolanus seems to have for him. However, I was pleasantly surprised as the story paints a much more intricate picture of our main character’s best friend. Their relationship is one of the many highlights of this story, as even when Snow tries to distance himself, or otherwise shows dislike for Sejanus, their paths become forcibly intertwined, and it becomes unclear whether they will become bitter rivals or loyal comrades.

The real star of the show for me is Coriolanus’s tribute, a District 12 girl named Lucy Grey Baird. A member of the Covey, she’s a performer and singer who prides herself in her skill for entertainment. With both Panem and the reader as her audience, her personality and charm is utterly captivating, with an even sharper wit than Katniss. Despite the circumstances, she becomes fond of Coriolanus early on, a fact attributed to Snow being one of the few mentors that goes out of his way to forge a bond with his tribute. She leaves an impression from her very first scene, and every moment with her going forward is captivating and wonderful. Truly, if I had to give a single reason to read this book, it would be for Lucy Grey specifically. Even though her situation seems completely impossible, you can’t help but hope for her victory in the games. 

Of course, there’s always room for a good antagonist, even in a story starring Coriolanus Snow. Casca Highbottom, dean of The Academy, is one of the main obstacles making Snow’s future so uneasy. The story says little about him at first, only that he isn’t Coriolanus’s biggest fan, and that he created the Hunger Games themselves. He’s hard to read as a threat, given his addiction to painkillers and somewhat contradictory dialogue. Truthfully, he’s not much of a villain. 

Enter Doctor Volumnia Gaul.  Serving as the head Gamemaker, as well as an instructor at the Capitol University, she spends a large amount of time with both Coriolanus and the other mentors. Specializing in the “muttations” that her labs create for the Capitol, she serves as something of a mentor herself for Snow, challenging his morals and shaping his ideals. She starts off as seeming like an ally, only for her to show just how dangerous she is. She has a blatant disregard for life itself, only just barely being grounded enough to not be entirely absurd. Her presence gives the story a lot of much-needed tension, and I found her to be absolutely riveting. 

What impresses me the most about Songbirds and Snakes is how it expertly avoids delivering what could have easily come off as a tragic backstory intended to garner sympathy for Panem’s ruthless dictator. Instead, it cleverly highlights Coriolanus’s personality, nature, aspirations, and faults, adding to his character without ever trying to suggest that he’s misunderstood or redeemable. His downfall, while accelerated by his environment, can be attributed entirely to the choices he makes himself. Even when surrounded by good people who genuinely love and care for him, miles away from the capitol, he makes the choice to become who he is: a vile, treacherous, untrusting snake. Yet, despite knowing his fate, there was a part of me that hoped he would make the right choice anyway, making the end of his arc even more effective. 

Suzanne Collins is a truly talented writer. Not only is the original trilogy a fantastic read, but she managed to craft a prequel that both builds the lore of the series and has a major impact on the story as a whole. The connecting tissue between this prequel and the rest of the series is solid, not only fleshing out the world explicitly, but leaving breadcrumbs for attentive fans to enjoy. Upon reading the final chapters, there was a particular scene I couldn’t get out of my head. It wasn’t one within the book itself, but one that harkened forward to Mockingjay. I can picture Coriolanus Snow, eyes focused on the television as the rebels broadcast another one of Katniss’s propaganda videos. He can tell she’s in District 12, walking amongst the rubble of the decimated mining town. He thinks to turn away from the image of the collapsed Justice building and broken town square... until he hears Katniss begin to sing. His blood runs ice cold, every hair on his body stands on end, and in a hoarse, mangled voice, he begins to wail. Every one of his past sins comes rushing back as Katniss Everdeen unwittingly deals the most devastating blow she could ever give to Coriolanus Snow. It’s a scene that remains completely theoretical, and yet it’s perhaps one of the most powerful images in the entire Hunger Games saga. If you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series, then I urge you to read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

[snarktheater]

Hey, d'you have any French book recs? I'm trying to work on my French, and rn I have downloaded one of my favourite book series' French translations, but I figured maybe books already written in French might work better? Also have you read the Ranger's Apprentice series? 1/2

RA's def flawed - the books' narration does like to point bright arrows at the protagonists' intelligence, and the last few books def have the tone of 'old white man trying to write feminism', although at least he's trying? - and it's aimed more to the younger side of YA, but it is still a very fun series, and I can ignore the flaws fairly easily, at least partly due to nostalgia? This rather long lol but I'm wordy.

I'll start with the second question: no, although every time the series is brought up I have to check the French title and go "oh, right, I've seen these books in stores". But I've never purchased or read them. It sounds like something I probably would have enjoyed as a teen but I just missed the mark, and these days I'm trying to drown myself in queer books, so that probably isn't happening.

As for your first question, geez, I haven’t read a French book in years, so this is gonna skew middle grade/YA, though that may not be so bad if the point is to learn the language. I will also say that as a result, these may read a little outdated.

I'll put it under a cut, even if Tumblr has become really bad with correctly displaying read mores. Sorry, mobile crowd.

It's also likely that old readers of the blog will have seen me talk about most of these. I don't feel like going through old posts.

One last thing: while I was curating this list I took the time to make a Goodreads shelf to keep track of those.

The Ewilan books by Pierre Bottero

(It's a testament to how long ago I read these books that these are not the covers of the edition I own, and I can't even find those on Google. I'm settling for a more recent cover anyway since it'll make it easier to find them, presumably)

There are at least three trilogies (that I know of) set in the same world.

The first trilogy is essentially an isekai (so, French girl lands in parallel fantasy world by accident) with elements of chosen one trope, though I find the execution makes it worth the while anyway.

The second trilogy is a direct sequel, so same protagonist but new threat, and the world gets expanded.

The third one is centered around a supporting characters from the previous books, and the first couple of books in it are more her backstory than a continuation, though the third one concludes both that trilogy and advances the story of the other books as well.

Notably these books have a really fun magic system where the characters "draw" things into existence. It's just stuck with me for some reason.

A bunch of stuff by Erik L'Homme

I have read a lot of this man's books, starting with Le Livre des Etoiles.

They also skew towards the young end of YA, arguably middle grade, I never bothered to figure out where to draw the line. They're coincidentally also using the premise of a parallel world to our own (and yes, connected to France again, the French are just as susceptible of writing about their homeland), but interestingly are set from the point of view of characters native to the parallel world.

It also has a very unique magic system, this one based on a mix of a runic alphabet and sort-of poetry. I'll also say specifically for these books that the characters stuck with me way more than others on this list, which is worth mentioning.

This trilogy is my favorite by Erik L'Homme, but I'll also mention Les Maîtres des brisants, which is a fantasy space opera with a pirate steampunk(?) vibe. I think it's steampunk. I could be mistaken. But it's in that vein. It's also middle grade, in my opinion not as good, but it could just be that it came out when I was older.

Another one is Phaenomen, which was a deliberate attempt at skewing older (though still YA). This one is set in our (then-)modern world and centers a group of teens who happen to have supernatural powers. I guess the best way to describe it is a superhero thriller? If you take "superhero" in the sense of "people with individualized powers", since they don't really do a lot of heroing.

...I really need to brush up on genre terminology, don't I.

The Ji series by Pierre Grimbert

This one is actually adult fantasy, though it definitely falls under "probably outdated". It is very straight, for starters, and I'd have to give it another read to give a more critical reading of how it handles race (it attempts to do it, and is well meaning, but I'm not sure it survives the test of time & scrutiny, basically).

If I haven't lost you already, the premise is this: a few generations ago, a weird man named Nol gathered emissaries from each nation of the world and took them to a trip to the titular Ji island. Nobody knows what went down here, but now in the present day, someone is trying to kill off all descendants from those emissaries, who are as a result forced to team up and figure out what's going on.

I'm not going to spoil past that, though I will say it has (surprise) a really unique magic system! I guess you can start to piece together what my younger self was interested in. Which, admittedly, I still am.

Once again, this one also has a strong cast of characters, helped by rich world building and the premise forcing the characters to come from many different cultures (though, again, I can't vouch for the handling of race because it's been too long).

The first series is complete by itself, though it has two sequel series as well, each focusing on the next generation in these families. Because yes, of course they all pair up and have kids. Like I said: very straight.

A whole lot of books by Jean-Louis Fetjaine

OFetjaine is a historian, and I guess he's really interested in Arthurian mythos especially, because he loves it so much he's written two separate high fantasy retellings of them! I'm not criticizing, mind you, we all need a hobby.

The former, the Elves trilogy (pictures above) is very traditional high fantasy. Elves, dwarves, orcs, a world which is definitely fictionalized with a pan-Celtic vibe to it. The holy grail and excalibur are around, but they're relics possessed by the elves and dwarves with very different powers than usual. Et cetera.

Fetjaine also really loves his elves (as the titles might imply), and while they're not exactly Tolkien elves, there's a similar vibe to them. If you like Tolkien and his elf boner, you'll probably like this too. And conversely, if that turns you off, these books probably also won't work for you.

This series also has a prequel trilogy, centered around the backstory of one of the main characters. I...honestly don't remember too much about it, but I liked it, so, there you go, I guess.

I said Fetjaine did it twice. The other series is the Merlin duology, which, as the title implies, is a retelling of Merlin's story. Note that Merlin is also in the other trilogy, but it's a different Merlin; like I said, completely different continuities and stories.

This one is historical fantasy, so it's set in actual Great Britain, and Fetjaine attempts to connect Arthur to a "real" historical figure...but, you know, Merlin is also half-elf and elves totally exist in Brocéliande, so, you know. History.

Okay, that's probably enough fantasy, let me give some classics too.

L'Arbre des possibles et autres histoires - Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber is a pretty seminal author of French sci-fi and I should probably be embarrassed that the only book of his that I read was for school, but, it is a really good one, so I'll include it anyway.

It's a novella collection, and when I say "sci-fi" I want to make it clear that it's very old school science fiction. It's more Frankenstein or Black Mirror than Star Trek, what we in French call the anticipation genre of science fiction: you take one piece of technology or cultural norm and project it into the future.

It has a pretty wide range of topics and tones, so it's bound to have some better than others. My personal faves were Du pain et des jeux, where football (non-American) has evolved into basically a wargame, and Tel maître, tel lion, where any animal is considered acceptable as a pet, no matter how absurd it is to keep as a pet. They're both on a comedic end, but there's more heartfelt stuff too.

L'Ecume des Jours - Boris Vian

(no cover because I can't find the one I have, and the ones I find are ugly)

This book is surrealist. Like, literally a part of the surrealist movement. It features things such as a lilypad growing inside a woman's lungs (and, as you well know, lilypads double in size every day, wink wink), the protagonist's apartment becoming larger and smaller to go with his mood and current financial situation, and more that I can't even recall at the moment because remembering this book is like trying to remember having an aneurysm.

It is also really, really fun and touching. Oh, and it has a pretty solid movie adaptation, starring Audrey Tautou, who I think an international audience would probably recognize from Amelie or the Da Vinci Code movie.

I don't really know what else to say. It's a really cool read!

Le Roi se meurt - Eugène Ionesco

Ionesco is somewhat famous worldwide so I wasn't even sure to include him here. He's a playwright who wrote in the "Theater of the Absurd" movement, and this play is part of that.

The premise of this play is that the King (of an unnamed land) is dying, and the land is dying with him. I don't really know what else to say. It's theater of the absurd. It kind of has to be experienced (the published version works fine, btw, no need to track down an actual performance, in my humble opinion).

The Plague - Albert Camus

You've probably heard of this one, and if you haven't, let me tell you about a guy called Carlos Maza

I'm honestly more including this book out of a sense of duty. The other three are books I genuinely liked and happen to be classics. This book was an awful read. But, um. It's kind of relevant now in a way it wasn't (or didn't feel, anyway) back in 2008 or 2009, when I read it. And I don't just mean because of our own plague, since Camus's plague is pretty famously an allegory for fascism, which my teenage self sneered at, and my adult self really regrets every feeling that way.

Okay, finally, some more lighthearted stuff, we gotta talk about the Belgian and French art of bande dessinée. How is it different from comic books or manga? Functionally, it isn't. It really comes down more to what gets published in the Belgian-French industry compared to the American comics industry, which is dominated by superheroes, or the Japanese manga industry, which, while I'm less familiar with it, I know has some big genre trends as well that are completely separate.

The Lanfeust series - Arleston and Tarquin

This is a YA mega-series, and I can't recommend all of it because I've lost track of the franchise's growth. Also note that I say "YA", but in this case it means something very different from an American understanding of YA. These books are pretty full of sex.

No, when I say YA I mean it has that level of maturity, for better or worse. The original series (Lanfeust de Troy) is high fantasy in a world where everyone has an individual magical ability but two characters find out they're gifted with an absolute power to make anything happen, and while it gets dark at times, it's still very lighthearted throughout, and the humor is...well, I think it's best described as teen boy humor. And it has a tendency to objectify its female characters, as you'll quickly parse out from the one cover I used here or if you browse more covers.

But still, it holds a special place in my heart, I guess. And on my shelves.

The sequel series, Lanfeust des Etoiles, turns it into a space opera, and goes a little overboard with the pop culture reference at times, though overall still maintains that balance of serious/at times dark story and lighthearted comedy.

After that the franchise is utter chaos to me, and I've lost track. I know there was another sequel series, which I dropped partway through, and a spinoff that retold part of the original series from the PoV of the main love interest (in the period of time she spent away from the main group). There was a comedy spin-off about the troll species unique to this world, a prequel series, probably more I don't even know exist.

Les Démons d'Alexia

Something I can probably be a little less ashamed of including here.

Some backstory here. The Editions Dupuis are a giant of the Belgian bande dessinée industry, and for many, many years I was subscribed to their weekly magazine. That magazine was (mostly) made up of excerpts from the various books that the éditions were publishing at the time; those that were made of comic strips would usually get a couple pages of individual scripts, while the ongoing narratives got cut into episodes that were a few pages long (out of a typical 48 page count for a single BD album). Among those were this series.

For the first few volumes, I wasn't super into this series, probably because I was a little too young and smack dab in the middle of my "trying to be one of the boys" phase. But around book 3 I got really invested, to the point where I own the second half of the series because I had canceled by subscription by then but still wanted to know more.

Alexia is an exorcist with unusual talents, but little control, who's introduced to a group that specializes in researching paranormal phenomena, solving cases that involve the paranormal, that kinda stuff.

As a result of the premise, the series has a pretty slow start since it has to build up mystery around the source of Alexia's powers, but once it gets going and we get to what is essentially the series' main conflict, it gets really interesting.

Plus, witches. I'm a simple gay who likes strong protagonists and witches.

Murena

There was a point where my mtyhology nerdery led me to look for more stuff about the historical cultures that created them, and so I'd be super into stuff set in ancient Rome (I'd say "or Greece or Egypt" but let's face it, it was almost always Rome).

Murena is a series set just before the start of Emperor Nero's rule. You know, the one who was emperor when Rome burned, and according to urban legend either caused the fire or played the fiddle while it did (note: "fiddle" is a very English saying, it's usually the lyre in other languages). He probably didn't, it probably was propaganda, but he was a) a Roman Emperor, none of whom were particularly stellar guys and b) mean to Christians, who eventually got to rewrite history. So he's got a bad rep.

The series goes for a very historical take on events, albeit fictionalized (the protagonist and main PoV, the titular Lucius Murena, is himself fictional) and attempts to humanize the people involved in those events. Each book also includes some of the sources used to justify how events and characters are depicted, which is a nice touch.

It's also divided in subseries called "cycles" (books 1-4, 5-8 and the ongoing one starts at 9). I stopped after 9, though I think it's mostly a case of not going to bookstores often anymore. Plus it took four years between 9 and 10, and again between 10 and 11. But the first eight books made for a pretty solid story that honestly felt somewhat concluded as is, so it's a good place to start.