#her story is kind of tragic

[theramblingsofadork]

Roots edition ask game:

2, 4, 6, 7, 19, 20, 21 for Professor Yew because we know so little about him, I wanna know more!! (You don't have to answer all of these ofc, do what you're comfortable with <3)

Yew is a woman, actually! (Have I really never shared anything about her before?? Oh goodness, my bad!)

For starters, she’s human! (Yes, there are both Mobians and Humans in my story.)

This isn’t her civilian look, but it is an outfit she gets later on.

2. What was your OC's first job? Do they still work that job (or in that field), or do they do something else now?

Yew’s first job was working for her grandpa as part of a cleanup crew that picked up trash and other debris left behind by battles with Dr. Eggman. She was always interested in plants and the environment, so she did various jobs relating to that until she eventually become a professor. She left that job after a few years for... reasons, and tried to join an environmental board to make some real change. It did not go as planned, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

4. What was your OC's childhood dream? Is that still their dream? If it has changed, why did it change and what's their new dream?

Yew wanted to be a doctor growing up, but never knew what kind. As she got older, she narrowed that down to ‘plant doctor’ and conservationist.

6. Did your OC have a teacher or a mentor growing up? What was your OC's relationship with them like?

Yew’s grandpa inspired a lot of what she did, as he taught her about plants and how to make various concoctions and tonics. They were close, and although he’s gone now, Yew misses him often, determined to uphold his legacy.

19. What traditions or stories does your OC carry forward from their childhood to the rest of their life?

Yew keeps a greenhouse of plants, and remembers well her grandpa’s stories of Ancient Powers, Gaia, the Echidnas, and Chaos. These things formed a lot of Yew’s way of looking at the world, and sit as part of her foundation.

20. What were the most idyllic years of your OC's childhood? Does your OC miss those days?

When Yew was 5-9. The world was simpler, she wasn’t as aware of the corruption and strife in the world, and her grandpa was merely ‘the cool guy who read her bedtime stories and let her help with his plants”. She does miss those days sometimes.

21. If your OC could speak to their childhood self, what would they say?

“They’re going to say you’re crazy. That nothing more can be done. Prove them wrong. Make Grandpa proud and change the world.”

[jorenilee]

my daughters.........

[strryhaze]

bobby & david kennedy

“There was some level on which David tapped his father’s sensitivity. You would find him walking with David or with his arm around David. David just seemed to need it.”

— chuck mcdermott.

“If his father’s death hit David harder than the others, it was because there had been a special bond between them—both were the runts of the litter, sandwiched into the middle of a large family. He was the only one in the family who hadn’t been enthusiastic about the run for the presidency. For weeks after his father’s announcement, David had been plagued by recurring nightmares about Bobby’s death. Distraught over episodes that seemed premonitory, and missing the special attention his father had given him, David had gotten in trouble for throwing rocks at cars passing by Hickory Hill. The day of the California primary, he had joined his father in Los Angeles. The two of them had been swimming and he had felt himself being carried out by the undertow when his father grabbed him, scraping his own head on the ocean floor as he reached for David’s slippery arm. With a teenager’s melodrama, David had decided that he owed his father a life and would look for an opportunity to pay him back in the years ahead. That night as he sat in front of the television set in his room in the Ambassador Hotel and watched [his father] bleeding on the floor downstairs, one of the thoughts he had was that the debt would be forever undischarged.”

“As the worst year of their young lives came to a close, they decided to surprise their mother at Christmas with a book comprised of letters about their father. David’s said: ‘Daddy was very funny in church because he would embarrass all of us by singing very loud. Daddy did not have a very good voice. There will be no more football with Daddy, no more swimming with him, no more riding and no more camping with him. But he was the best father there ever was and I would rather have him for a father for the length of time I did than any other father for a million years.”

— the kennedy’s, peter collier & david horowitz.

“David looked at himself in those pictures like they were a strange sort of mirror. He looked at them half a dozen times at least, mesmerized by them, and he kept asking me questions. There was a tremendous desire to know his father, to really know him.”

— john seigenthaler.

“David and Bobby were so close. They were inseparable. David was small, a runt like Bobby had been.” Ethel then explained to Noelle (her secretary) that David had always been a very sensitive youngster, very introverted, "not like the other boys. He and I would go and pick flowers while his brothers were killing each other with their crazy games", Ethel recalled with a smile.

— ethel kennedy.

“I think about death a lot. Time hasn’t erased the death of my father from my mind. My family thinks I’m no good and that I’ll never beat my problem. They’ve written me off. I’m trying to get it together, but it’s so difficult. I’m having a terrible time at it. And the thing I want most in the world is the approval of my family, but they want nothing to do with me. All I want is to be with my father.”

— david kennedy, april 1984.

“Like his family, his friends had all wondered at one time or another if he would kill himself; but when it finally came his death was nonetheless shocking. ‘I keep asking myself why. Why David? Why now? All I can come up with is that maybe his father was looking down from heaven and saw all the hell these people were putting him through and said, ‘Come on, You’ve suffered enough. It’s time you were up here with me.’”

— nancy narleski.

Years after David Kennedy’s death, his cousin, Patrick Kennedy recalled a haunting and heartbreaking recollection he had with his father, Teddy, sitting beside his cousin’s casket: “My father remembered Bobby telling him that, as a father, he needed to spend more time with David. He also recounted a story Uncle Bobby had told him just before his own death. On the day before the California primary, the Robert Kennedys had gone swimming in Malibu, to relax together. David had been knocked over by a wave and got caught in the undertow, and his father had come to his rescue. When Uncle Bobby told my father this story, he talked about ‘the undertow’ in broader terms, how there was an undertow in life and David, who was only then thirteen, already seemed vulnerable to it. And then, just hours later, Uncle Bobby was murdered as David watched the TV coverage in their hotel room upstairs. It was unbelievably poignant to hear my father tell this story. David was in the casket next to us. And I wasn’t that much older than David when his father worried whether he could survive the undertow.”

[livinginadumpster]

I just rewatched ep 4 (which was very healing for my soul, it had been too long) and I noticed for the first time that when they're at Tragic Mick's, Niko notices the bear charm and asks about it, and Tragic Mick very firmly tells her it's not for sale.

(In addition, when the boys first go to Tragic Mick's, the camera lingers on the bear charm then, too)

It's fun to see that plot point laid out so clearly from the start, and to know that the trinket that intrigues Niko on this first visit is what ultimately saves her. But it also makes you think, like, Tragic Mick was saving that until just the right person came along, someone who really needed and deserved it, and just by listening to his story, Niko became that person.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[froschli96]

you know, i always find it really funny when dudebros complain about syndicate and odyssey being too "jokey" or not "taking its characters seriously" or whatever…

like, did y'all collectively sleep through "it's-a me, mario!", "i meant besides vaginas", ezio inventing the latte, bartolomeo's... just... *gestures vaguely* entire character, etc?

like, it's fine to have preferences of course, i myself prefer a more serious and grounded tone, but these are usually the same people who tout the ezio trilogy as "peak assassin's creed", call ac1 a glorified tech demo and hate on connor for being "too serious and boring", like? make it make sense!

[sun-marie]

not a hardened!lucanis romance mod....... say it ain't so.....

[finelythreadedsky]

come ON ajax telling tecmessa μηδ᾽ ἐπισκήνους γόους δάκρυε??????? don't cry in front of the tent. don't cry on stage.

[kacievvbbbb]

I finally got around to watching Arcane’s final part and like all parts it’s so beautiful. It really is. But Arcane kinda has the same problem with MHA for me as in the ending is actually pretty satisfying but how we get there could have been so much better.

Don’t get me wrong MHA’s problems were seasons in the making. Arcane actually suffers from the opposite problem there just wasn’t enough time. Like I don’t know why they felt Arcane should be a 2 season show I can only hope it wasn’t a studio pulling the strings (I want to say Netflix would never but yes they would no other company so against the idea of success like them)

But yeah not that Arcane couldn’t have been a 2 season show the 1st season wraps up its main conflicts pretty nicely honestly if not for the cliffhanger and some other lingering plot lines it could have been a good stand alone. But there was just soooooo much happening in season 2. With season one at the core of the story no matter what craziness happened at its core it was about the tragedy of 2 sisters and that was its grounding piece. Season 2 just had nothing like that. It could have been Jayce and Viktor with how that’s kind of the main conflict? This season and given the resolution but Jayce is barely in the thing 😭. They have one moment together and then don’t really interact again until the final part. I just needed more honestly form every relationship.

The only relationship I felt was kind of properly developed was Isha and Jinx (even tho they kind of dropped the ball a bit after she died) but like you actually kind of see that relationship grow. I wish we got more of heiminger and ekko’s new proffesor student relationship (u wish we got more of ekko period honestly) ekko has a way of barely being in the season and then pulling up at the most important moment for a huge blow out in the final part. I just think it would have made Heimidinger’s (I am butchering this name forgive me) sacrifice for ekko more meaniful (not that I don’t think he wouldn’t have literlaly done that for anyone but it would have been nice to see that relationship develop in particular them getting lost in time together and all)

And the getting lost in the multiverse/time thing was really good I really liked it. It needed to be more than 1 episode. I wish we could have really sat with it. The horrors Jayce was experiencing and this new reality that ekko is faced with (like don’t get me wrong for one episode they did a lot and it’s so beautiful it would have just hit harder if it was longer)

Don’t even get me started on Mel and the black rose I still do not understand what that was all about. That definetly needed a whole season dedicated to just that and not (I hate to use the word shoved) but shoved in as a C plot to Viktor’s cult.

For a season they (hopefully) knew going in that this would be their last they were trying to accomplish so much in just 9 episodes like yes they are about an hour each but they are still just 9 episodes. Honestly we don’t even spend enough time with maddy to care about her betrayal. I felt more about Ambessa’s right hand’s death because at least he’s kind of been a steady presence through out the season. I don’t know what was going on with Loris. I though he would have more to do they kept giving him little moments where it felt like he knew more than he was letting on but I guess not? He really was just some guy?…..well okay.

I love the Vander reunion I love it so much the fight was epic the resolution was epic god the fucking memory sequence with the water color kill me now. But again I wish we had more time we just got him back and now we are losing him again drag that shit out really make it hurt twist the knife deeper give us a couple episodes let us truly believe that everything might be okay and then throw that shit in our face that would have hit so much harder. (Well that’s just me though)

There’s was so much happening this season. It all felt like build up it felt like build up till literlaly the last 30 minutes of the show. It just felt like there was no proper middle the show just kept building and building and then tried to cram ever resolution in the last 2 hours. (I know they didn’t fully reveal the what the Black Rose drama was because of this Noxian show they are planning but I don’t know I just didn’t like how they left things 😭 Mel was barely in the season and then she’s back and there’s so much left unsaid and 😭😭😭)

I might be in the minority but I just really didn’t know what to make of Jinx’s arc. Like I can see the parallels and the beauty of it but at the same time it just didn’t click for me. I know she’s probably not dead like I’m not even going to pretend she is. But yeah. Same with Vi honestly. Vi felt so passive this season shes just kind of being led around.

I just think the pain problem this season was that there was no central story. There was no grounding piece that the story all revolves around. And I hate to be an advocate of taking stories centered around women and focusing on the men there but Giving how it ended (and honestly I’m not mad at it) and just the whole hectech being at the center of it all this season, it should have been Jayce and Viktor their relationship should have taken center stage they should have been this seasons Powder/Jinx and Vi the parallels are literally already there. One being consumed by everything they thought they wanted but not like this and the other still after everything trying desperately to reach them (mostly through a lot of violence) they even have the falling out like Vi and Powder did at the end of the first part. But their relationship just wasn’t explored enough for me to really say it was the center of the season. It would also flow well with the general established conflict Vander and Silco mirroring Jinx and Vi mirroring Jayce and Viktor (I personally don’t ship them nor do I think of them as overtly sibling coded I can just see the parallels it is not my fault the other characters are either siblings or heavily sibling coded 😭 but don’t come for me)

Honestly the most developed relationship this season was Cait and Jinx and that mirror they hold up to each other as blue haired girlies manipulated by desperation grief and power. And I enjoyed that. Caitlyn in general got a lot of good screen time this season that I love taht for her.

I don’t want to harp on about the negative because there was so much that I loved about arcane it is such a beautiful story and I know the story isn’t technically finished atleast I don’t think so and maybe mine and everybody’s expectations where impossible to live up to. But I do still genuinely think it is one of the best pieces of television out there and all in all it was a truly amazing season of television that we were so lucky to experience.

Also the music was just straight banger after banger. Like Whoever curated that playlist? You need a raise like asap.

[deus-ex-mona]

kinda thinking about t h e m again…

[fore-seer]

tired of other awakening fans shitting on the valm arc constantly you people are the reason there are no fun filler episodes in tv shows anymore

[willowcrowned]

the irony of naomi novik’s books having very little fic on ao3 does not escape me. it does however annoy me a great deal

[go-go-devil]

Honestly very cool of Matthew Gafford to not only acknowledge Vixy Reinard in A Fox in Space but actually make her a significant part of the greater plot set-up instead of just being "Fox's dead mom who was a mom who died tragically"

[anastacialy]

rewatching season one really has me angry for marina. she deserves so much better

[drownedrow]

every time I listen to remember my name I think of Orin

[harpylady]

i loved totk so much.....