#i can appreciate complex villains but as soon as the writer tries to get me to feel sorry for them because they had a traumatic past

[massiveladycat]

me watching people justify villains/antagonists because they're misunderstood (they massacred innocent people)

[mk-wizard]

Netlfix He-Man Season 3: It was good, but not great

Hey, guys.

As the title implies, I have an opinion on the recent season 3 of Netlfix He-Man which I binged watched and I did like it and I’m excited for the upcoming season 4 already, but I have to admit that it fell into the "good not great” trap.

Warning that this opinion will have spoilers if you have not watched season 3 or Netflix He-Man and the Masters of the Universe yet.

Number one, Krass’ redemption dragged on for too long in phase 1 and was rushed in phase 2. To understand what I mean, redemption arcs can split into two phases. Phase 1 is the regret and questioning stage. In Krass’ case, it took her almost the entire season to get through and that’s too long even for an eight episode long season (more on this later). Three episodes would have been enough. Phase 2 of a redemption arc is the actual redeeming where the character repents and atones. This part is supposed to take longer because it takes longer to make amends, rebuilt trust and requires several conversations to clear up all of the misunderstandings. Her phase 2 was settled in one second which came across as anti-climatic.

Number two, speaking of anti-climatic, the big reveal about Teela was different, but it did not blow me away. I appreciate that they tried to make her something else other than the Sorceress’ daughter, but making her the clone of the Elderess is essentially the same thing. And because the reveal was rushed, we didn’t get a chance to digest it and the way Teela handled it was off especially for her character considering that she is the most mature and serious of the gang. I was expecting her to be in more shock and even need time to mourn for the Elderess kind of like how king Randor was still mourning for Keldor/Skeletor.

Anyway, number three, it was not kind to its new or secondary characters. When I saw how Merman was written by Netflix, THAT blew me away. His design was badass, his backstory was deep and original, his character was complex and compelling, and he was a powerhouse on the battlefield, but what did the writers do? They offed him just as soon as he was introduced and I cannot lie, this made me mad. This is also why the one-off is an outdated concept in writing. You cannot just make your audience fall in love with a great character and then take them away. And it wasn’t just Merman who got cheated like this. Stratos, Man-E-Faces, the snakemen and even Orko who was there since season 1 only appeared in one or two episodes or were just reduced to being background characters. This is a very unkind thing to do to your audience, folks. Don’t do it.

This all brings me to the last issue; number four, we only got eight episodes which is the root cause of all the problems listed here. You cannot tell a proper story, utilize the cast to its full potential or develop arcs properly in just eight twenty minute episodes. Good stories take time to write so they are going to need time to be told. When you cut corners, the quality gets compromised and yes, it shows even in kid’s media. And if they had no choice, but to only use eight episodes, then I would have concentrated on only two arcs not three or more and written it well. In other words, stick to Krass’ redemptionand and settle Teela’s connection to Elderess in season 3, while revealing the ugly secret of King Grayskull, and the second reign of terror of Skeletor in season 4. And at the risk of being nitpicky, they should have kept Merman alive as a secondary villain kind of like how Stratos and his gang are secondary good guys.

Now don’t me wrong, I still like this series, I just think that season 3 was a bit buggy and I hope that season 4 will be good. Anyway, these are my thoughts, what are yours?

Thank you for reading and as always, stay safe.

[nightswithkookmin]

GOING ON A HIATUS

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time out to read my posts and has enjoyed it so far. It's really been fun and entertaining exchanging thoughts and having these much deeper ship discussions.

I thought this issue was gonna go away but I woke up this morning to more people messaging me about finding my last video analysis on several other platforms without appropriate credit.

But that's not disturbing. The disturbing part is the people sliding into people's DM'S on other platforms to get them to take down my video because they don't want people sharing my content on other platforms as they believe it would only make my blog popular.

For those worried about this whole credit business, thanks for showing this much concern for me? I really appreciate the love and concern if it's from a genuine place of concern. Thank you...

I think some of you already know this by now or might have figured it out, I am a law student, I am very much well aware what is and what isn't within my rights? Lol

I honestly didn't see this whole credit thingy as a big deal. It's not. Not to me. Lol. I repost people's photos without credit too all the time. Often, it's because I don't know who to credit and most time my lazy ass just forgets to. Lol. I think it's normal? It's inconsequential I mean.

The videos I use are usually often water marked by the appropriate owners so I don't go through the hustle of figuring this whole credit business out. If I should decide to come back here again I will check that habit of mine?

While this whole credit business is not a big deal to me, malicious slander and defamation to my character is and I don't take it lightly.

It has been brought to my attention that some Jikookers from Tumblr have since been sliding into people's DM's on other platforms asking them to take down my video and or remove the credit they give to my post.

They are telling people I am problematic, calling me the Taekook Lives of the Jikook community. That I have been spreading lies about Jikook, that the Jikook Tumblr community hates me or something like that and to further caricaturize me and make me appear more evil in order to get people to turn on me and hate me, they make up the most ridiculous lies about me claiming that I believe a notorious serial killer is innocent.

Now I have since deleted my YT account because I don't want my colleagues to find out I am into shipping too lol- shipping is a guilty pleasure of mine and I know how this fandom works unfortunately. I've been a silent part of it since 2014. I mean it's started already. The Doxing and shit.

The original post under which these replies are from couldn't save sadly as my account has been deleted but you can see from my notifications the general feel of what my interests outside shipping looks like.

I am interested in a myriad of topics, from literature, Aliens, writing, Harry Potter, history, activism, advocacy, philosophy, law, politics, NASA, and mystery and murder among other things.

My quora is mostly filled with notifications from my Book community and True crime community and often I do share my thoughts and answer questions with regards to the psychology of murderers, legal evidence, notorious villains in literature- well I guess now you know the kind of lawyer I want to be if and when I'm able to complete law school.

But what has my interest in these topics got to do with Jikook and shipping please?? How does this prove I hate Jikook and spread lies about them?

This Kookie Min Monsta person slipped into someone's DMS and asked the person who had put up my video analysis to take it down or discredit me because to her I am problematic. She is not the only one.

You want so bad to paint me black- no pun intended just to win an argument? You claim I am the evil malicious person here but I am not the one sliding into people's dms trying to take credit away from people for their hardwork, spreading hate and negative energy, making things up to manipulate people's perception of others and get them to hate and turn on them- and all because of A SHIP? Damn. This is pathetic.

Who died and made you the gatekeeper of the jikook shipping community? Honestly antics like these don't work on me try again.

I made a video commentary on my Booktube YT account- yes I am part of the book YouTube community as well sue me or better still slip into their inboxes and tell them I voted for Trump therefore I hate chipmunks.

The commentary I made on YT months ago was when I was in the highs of finding a new passion and it was on Ann Rule's book, The Stranger Besides Me- a true crime novel on Ted Bundy which I found so poorly written that at the end of the book it left with me wondering whether or not Ted Bundy was guilty at all!

The Author's writing style which deviates from most writing styles of True Crime novels I have read gave me trust issues as I stated in the video. It felt more as if she was writing a made up fictional novel than an actual True Crime novel but because she knew Ted Bundy in person she made it seem as if we just had to believe her account.

Then there was this whole thing about the police not being able to match the DNA samples taken from his rape victims, to his own Semen because his Semen was DNAless- in lay man's terms. I'll spare you the technicalities involved.

As I stated in that video, I do believe Ted Bundy was guilty but I do not have much faith in the Judicial system, or criminal procedures or even the Author of that book- a sentiment most people within the true crime community share as well. We just had differing views on whether the writer's style took away from the narrative and waters down on the extent of Bundy's guilt.

We had a Similar conversation about Chris Watt. If the community I was engaging in didn't have a problem with my commentary why do you? Please don't meddle in things you know nothing about. It's embarrassing.

The conversation about whether or not Ted Bundy is innocent is moot but a philosophical one. It has nothing to do with Ted Bundy's guilt but more so the criminal procedures involved in his case and the different accounts that exists surrounding his case.

He was electrocuted, he confessed to his crimes no damn person with brains would think or assume he is innocent and I never said anything of that nature drew any conclusions to that effect.

Besides, I moved on from Ted Bundy a long time ago. Now I am into the Serial Killer who writes death poems and signs it off with drawings of the size of his dick at his crime scenes- mind your own business please or don't and let's have an intellectual discourse about him? Lmho.

I am also into cat memes if you care to know and have a whole IG dedicated to cat memes. I believe human beings are the most dumbest species in all the galaxies and when the Aliens arrive I am snitching.

When my mind is at rest, I often wonder if Aliens have masculinity complex and if they do whether or not their masculinity is contingent on the size of their dicks or whether they have to engage in a battle to the death with an alien grizzly bear to determine who is the man.

I love BTS memes too- a little too much and often end up debating over the internet with random people over whether BTS memes are funnier than cat memes- I'm weird, true. But how does all of that make me a bad person?

It's crazy how these people can go on these other platforms to ask people to take down the credits to my posts as well as my posts itself but can't ask people who run to these other platforms with misinterpretations of my work to take those down.

Instead they come on here to call me out for people's interpretations of my work?? It doesn't work that way. You are the author of your own opinion and interpretation of other people's work. You don't call out the original author for someone's opinion of their work. If that were so I would be emailing Stephanie Meyer for Anna Todd and her After series. Get some education.

I have since blocked this person and others whose Tumblr I have been able to find thanks to all those that's helped me finding them on here.

My gf also tried reaching out to the persons who shared my post after we realised this was becoming an issue and had asked them to credit her or my blog- but honestly I don't care about that yet she won't give it a rest. Lol. My ride or die this one. Sigh.

However, we realized soon that this is not about 'stealing' credit- can't call someone out for not giving credit when I suck at that myself. Lol.

This is about people's malicious intentions and their attempts to silence me and take away my right to freedom of expression however way that they can. This is wrong and evil.

I honestly don't care for all these ship politics these people are engaged in. I've had enough intelligent conversations to know the distinction between arguments that flows from bruised egos and actual conversations around a subject matter.

This whole I am right, she is wrong politics... y'all get that the point of having an opinion is not to be right, right? We all cant have the same perspective and you can't call someone a liar for holding views that is different from yours. That is a bizarre mentality to have.

As I stated in my post, that content I made was a rebuttal to the Taekook theories running around on the internet alleging JK glared at Tae when he pulled on his shoulder because he was jealous Tae and Jin were having fun behind him. He wasn't. He was worried Tae was gonna expose him and JM holding hands behind Suga.

If you don't think they were holding hands then Taekookers were right and his reaction was because he was Jealous of Taejin I guess...

But thats your truth. That's not my truth. I don't believe Taekook is real. JK isn't jealous of Taejin he is not Twelve- but then again he was sneaking around behind Suga holding his boyfriend's hands so I guess he is twelve? Lol. Jikook!

Do you.

But please stop the evil malicious attacks and seek immediate help. There is such a thing as right and wrong and this is just plain wrong. Your Karma and chakra are in the negative nodes and you need to fix it. It is not funny anymore.

Thank you to everyone who has shown genuine concerns for me in the past few days and thank you so much for trying to stand up for me. There are good people on here and I have met and interacted with a lot of them and thank you so much for such a wonderful experience and insightful discussions.

I don't hate people because of our differences in thoughts, beliefs, opinions. There's always room for dissenting opinions in every sphere. At the very least, we can agree to disagree and shake on it. But You can't make up shit about people just to prove your opinion is right and their opinions and views which differ from yours are 'wrong.

I am not a victim though, and they are not bullies, psst. They are just vile pathetic human beings exposing the greens of their insides. What you do says more about who you are as a person and human being. And this is who they are.

Just be a nice decent human being. That's what this world needs. Fix whatever is broken inside of you and free your mind and spirit. Hate is never the answer.

I'm going to be away for a while because I have studies, work and other interests I want to pursue at the moment- it's just my AADD flaring up so if you see me henceforth raving about Nana at least you'd know why. Lol. She's wrecking my Jimin bias. Lmho.

Spread positivity, do the right thing, stand up for a good cause and keep supporting Jikook. Jikook is real.

Until we meet again.

Signed,

GOLDY

[siren1song]

In Which Jo Loves Content Creators

I’m in a mushy mood. This means it’s time to snipe people with my love for their work and affection for them as people. (People I don’t know that well/talk to regularly won’t be as personal as people as I’ve made good friends with! All to avoid making anyone uncomfortable <3)

I’m going to start with @sleepless-in-starbucks, because of course I’m starting with Lia. I know I’ve made a literal collaboration post with Max about how much I love them and their work, but Also how can I not mention once again how sweet and funny they are? I vowed that one day, I would rick roll them, they don’t believe I can, but I will, one day. Also they’re really good at comforting people??? And let me scream about some of my favorite fics/tropes to them. I also really enjoy talking to them about stuff I’m working. Listen. Lia is great, okay?

Speaking of @max-is-tired did you know they’re an incredibly sweet datemate who’s super considerate and easy to talk to and gosh I love them a whole lot? Not to mention their writing and ideas are phenomenal!!!! Max is so big brained!!!!! I will never stop expressing my love for them ever.

Oh, oh, oh!!!! @thechildoflightning is also really super sweet!! I became a huge fan of their writing through their daemon prinxiety au!! And my love of their work just kept expanding as I read the jksf verse they’ve worked so hard on! Their research is expansive!! And did you know they’re really cute when they info dump? I asked them to tell me about the bird facts the other day because I wanted to hear their info dumping and it was really cool information!!! I learned a lot about a really cool bird!!

(This is going to get long... time for a cut!)

Another segue! You know who else I’ve learned a lot from? @lilfellasblog who is so cool? And kind???? And smart? Sometimes, I’ll ask them questions in a joking way and then I’ll end up learning something and wow! That’s so cool! And they don’t mind simplifying things for me when I ask! And their fic, Healing Broken Wings? An actual masterpiece, though if you check it out I recommend reading tags thoroughly. And if you have questions about a tag, ask them! They’re so willing to elaborate to make sure you’re able to stay safe!!! They care more about your safety than your readership!!!!! And that’s so awesome! I love Lil so much! A great friend and an amazing writer!

A friend I don’t really talk to nearly as much as the others but who I still care about a whole lot is @illogicallyinclined. They say they can’t write, but bullet fics are a Valid Form of Writing, and also their art? Stunning? They’re the reason I started appreciating Logan a whole lot more than I used to, and their hockey au  is really good (and Jam Packed with Logan Angst if you’re into that.) They’re also hilarious to talk to. I have chatted about Virgil and Logan being huge ass meme’s with them on multiple occasions.

Someone I’ve only recently started talking to is @sign-from-god-complex who’s actually really cool? I was talking to him about my love for fandom content creators before I decided to make this post and of course I had to include him? I’m literally going to be bingeing his writing as soon as I finish this Love and Appreciation post because it’s amazing! I can’t believe I haven’t read more of his work before! A travesty, honestly!!! And oh my God his music is good? Literally the whole reason I joined his server and started talking to Lo in the first place was because he was really nice when I asked him how downloading music worked because I’ve only ever done that onto an MP3 (I know, I’m old) and even then I had to have help because I’m not adept with technology. A great singer and writer!

Now for people I’ve never talked to personally but really want to show my appreciation for... Goodness, there’s so many?

I’m gonna start this section with @princeanxious who’s writing, art, and ideas in general are amazing? Have you seen his coma au? Heart wrenching. His Lost Guardian au? Beautiful world building! His punk lo/pastel dee au? Adorable oh my goodness I can’t get enough!! I tried to talk to him once, but I kind of got scared I was bothering him, but he seems really nice!!!!

Did I mention soulmate au’s earlier? I did. You know who writes really cool and great soulmate aus? @not-so-innocent-bi-sander and MAN is their writing great! Have you read their vampire soulmate au? That was so cute??? I loved Logan’s internal conflict with changing Patton and Roman, gosh? And they have such interesting au ideas too? Like I have actually never heard the concept of Lockets before, and it was such a fascinating idea for a soulmate au? I mean, obviously they have other fics that aren’t soulmate aus, like their prinxiety fic Overcoming a Legacy? Stunning, I am pretty sure I stayed up really late reading that one.

Speaking of fics that made me stay up late (so many segue’s) @impatentpending ‘s fic Powerless had me up from 5:30 pm when I started reading it to 2:30 am when Max finally woke up and distracted me long enough to make me shower and go to bed cause I had work in the morning. Do I regret it? No. Powerless is a stunning fic with an amazing concept. I can’t tell you how excited I was to read a fic where Virgil willingly took on a villain role to protect his loved ones. And also I’m going to physically fight Missy, she can catch these hands. I can’t really give much else on the rest of her fics, because I tend to avoid anything that might not end happy (I’m five chapters away from finishing Powerless, and I’m only just now getting skeptical they might not get their happy ending so count me scared) but I have no doubt everything she’s written is just as good, if not better since this fic was finished in 2018? Wow.

Another fic that had me up super late was @lovelylogans gilmore girls au where you lead, i will follow. Don’t be fooled by the eleven chapters, that fic is over 100k words but God is it so worth it to read every single one. You don’t even need to be familiar with the show the au is based on, it’s amazing either way. The characters, the plot, the romance, all absolutely stunning. I will personally fight Patton’s mom. And the rest of her fics! Wow!!! Stunning, amazing, wonderful, beautiful, I’m running out of adjectives. I loved their princess bride bullet fic a whole lot, that was fun.

If you ever see me gushing about mermaid aus, please know that @voidsides au is Probably my favorite take on it. The prinxiety! The sassy virgil!!! The Logan being so done with Roman’s shit. Literally the one comic with Logan interaction I could practically see “Roman I swear to god if you don’t stop flirting with the fish I’m going to push you into the water” in his words. He didn’t say it, but man he was definitely thinking it.

Oh man, I can’t forget to mention the person who got me into g/t-slash-borrower sides @infinimay cause his content? Amazing, really. I found him when someone I follow reblogged one of his halloween fics and I fell in love and proceeded to binge the rest of their writing. Amazing, really. I really love the giant hermit virgil and hiker logan ones a lot. There’s more that I definitely love a whole lot as well, but I can’t currently match content with titles right now and if I go through I’ll get caught up and forget to come back to this post, but just know I love

Another giant/tiny writer I really love who I fell in love because of his amazingly written alien au- @delimeful WIBAR is currently one of my fic obsessions and I might reread it soon because it’s so good? I love the world building and how he’s written the characters so much. The rest of his work is Also Great? The fic where Virgil turns into a dragon when stressed? Amazing I can’t wait for it to continue.

@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors You got me so in love with laoft I think about it often. Scary Virgil?? Changeling Logan???? Witch Roman???? Gifted Patton????? I want to cry I love them so much. And God, May! May Gage is a disaster of a woman but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love her. I just. I love this au so much and it’s gotten me to love fae lore so much like I used to. I want to reread this au now, crap. Wait I need to read Lo’s stuff first. Double crap.

Oh man. speaking of writer’s who keep bringing up fae and reminding me how much I love them, @lefaystrent I hope you know your parental shenanigans on my dash bring me life. I didn’t know carbonated milk existed until last night. Kind of wish I was still ignorant on that particular topic. Either way, your fae virgil fic? Amazing. I got so super excited every time I saw an update, and that epilogue? A beautiful ending, if you ask me.

@stillebesat I start screaming in excitement, reading your Interview fic. When I found it, I became so in love with the fic I had a really hard time reading anything else and I frequently checked your blog looking for an update. I am so in love with it, and honestly there’s lots of questions I have about it but if I ask all of them this post will be even LONGER and it’s so massive already.

@today-only-happens-once You’re writing is amazing. So many of your fics are so stunning?? I fell in love reading The Only Exception. Still need to go through your masterlist thoroughly, but man everything I’ve read from you so far is so well written and takes my entire heart.

This post wouldn’t be complete without @notalwaysthevillian who actually got me to start shipping Logince with her fic Shattering Stereotypes. And then there’s of course her tangled prinxiety au??? Which I actually really gotta finish but what I’ve read of it? Amazing. 

Oh crap. If void has my favorite artistic mermaid au, @teacupfulofstarshine has my favorite written au. LDAD is a stunning fic and I would die for it. And also her recent atla au fic? I was screaming over it. Also also her moxiety dad au series she did for halloween had my entire heart. Every installment of that series had me so incredibly soft I probably could have cried.

And finally, @randomslasher I really love your writing. Your fic, Starved was one of the first I read in the fandom and I adored every single word. I haven’t actually had the chance to really sit down and binge any of your work that I could find, but I plan on fixing that soon. It’s also?? Really nice to see an older fander! As someone in their twenties and constantly seeing how young everyone is, it’s comforting knowing I’m not the only one!

That’s everyone I wasn’t scared of bothering! Everyone who I wanted to shower in my love for their work (and affection for the people I talk to!) This isn’t really in any particular order, beyond me separating the people I talk to from the people I don’t. This post is massive, but I hope everyone enjoys my appreciation for their content!

[sebastianshaw]

What about your muse makes you sad?

Shaw’s not really a guy that I get sad feels for. I do think it’s sad that he suffered losses in his life that came too soon (losing his father to a blood disease, losing Lourdes to a Sentinel) and that he’s basically imprisoned himself in his own emotional issues, but he’s also not the type of character that engenders a lot of Oh Poor Baby sympathy because he’s,,,,well, he’s him. I actually like him best when he’s just written as being the bastard he is, and something I’ve always appreciated about him is that neither the writers nor HE HIMSELF have EVER tried to make readers feel sorry for him AT ALL. I get REALLY ANNOYED when I can tell the writer is demanding me to FEEL SYMPATHY DAMMIT for some scumbag and I also find whiny villains really annoying, especially in a series like X-Men where literally EVERYONE has some kind of terrible tragedy (usually more than one) like it’s not special. So I’ve always appreciated that Shaw basically NEVER brings these things up, they’ve got nothing to do with why he’s a villain, etc., and likewise writers never make a point of them either (though that has more to do with I think they just don’t know/forgot, since like only a few have even shown they know his history at all---it’s sad but pro writers at Marvel have fucked up the history of MAJOR characters before, of course they don’t bother learning Shaw’s) What makes me sad is more on a meta level that he just doesn’t get good writing anymore, as described HERE. Like he’s just SUCH a fun, interesting, complex but still delightfully despicable villain when he’s written well. I’m not demanding he be written as a hero, or a better person, I just want him written with accuracy and dignity and consideration like any other character (which does include being a TERRIBLE ASSHOLE but a very specific TYPE of terrible asshole! You gotta get the brand right!!)

[gavillain]

Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch by Serena Valentino Review

Serena Valentino's villain series is... interesting. I really loved Fairest of All when I first read it, then A Beast Within was disappointing and cluttered, then Poor Unfortunate Soul was awful and weighed down by an over reliance on Valentino's OCs and running plot, then Mistress of Evil was literally the worst Maleficent thing I've ever wasted time on, and then The Odd Sisters was "no payoff” incarnated into a single book. I had skipped over Mother Knows Best (which is actually the fifth novel in the series, set before The Odd Sisters) originally because I'd been burned by Valentino before and didn't like Gothel enough to give it a try. But my friend said it was actually on the better end, and I'd already suffered through the rest so, hey, might as well complete the series.

Before I say what I thought of the book, I need to address my opinions of Tangled and Mother Gothel in general. So I like Tangled. I don't love Tangled. I think it's on the better end of Revival era Disney movies but on the lesser end of Disney movies on the whole. It really took me until the Tangled TV show to come around to liking Rapunzel and Eugene as much as I do, and I definitely feel like the show made me appreciate the movie Tangled more than I did at first. Likewise, my feelings on Mother Gothel are about the same: one of the best villains of the Revival era but one of Disney's weakest overall. My issue with Mother Gothel is that, though she was basically the last real Disney villain, it doesn't feel like the writers were that invested in making her a character in her own right. Unlike Dr. Facilier one movie earlier, her motivations are only told to us by the opening narration and she gets only two very short scenes from her point of view. For the most part, she exists only as she pertains to Rapunzel, just there to fill the role of Rapunzel's abusive mother without having much character of her own. And having my default Rapunzel story in my head being Into the Woods (the stage play, btw, not Disney’s compressed film version) with a really complex and nuanced Witch character, Gothel was never satisfying. As a result, I feel like Gothel was always ripe to be filled in with more information to flesh her out and make her feel less like a stereotype and more like a character. As a result, I ended up loving this book. Well, okay, my bar for Valentino books at this point is super low, and this one cleared the bar so I probably am grading it on a curve. Don't love it as much as Fairest of All, but it's an easy second place in this series. I had a good time reading it, and I got sucked into Gothel's character and struggles. Here's the thing: if I liked Tangled more then I probably WOULDN'T like this book because it takes a sledgehammer to Tangled's film lore and also gives very little room for any of the TV show events or characters to exist. That said, I find the book's original ideas to be engaging and fun, and I think they're cooler than the movie's. A quick plot summary (spoilers ahoy): Gothel and her two sisters Primrose and Hazel are the three daughters of the witch Manea, the queen of the Dead Woods. Gothel and her sisters are set to become real witches by Manea sharing her blood with them. However, Primrose detests how evil their mother is and the wicked things she does, and she tries to rebel. This leads Manea to try to kill Primrose. Unwilling to let her sister die, Gothel burns her mother's magic Rapunzel flowers, causing Manea to crumble into dust by rapid aging. Gothel and her sisters attempt to move on with their lives and pick up the pieces, but Gothel's sisters soon become terribly ill following Manea's spirit coming back for revenge. The three Odd Sisters arrive under the pretense of helping in exchange for Gothel sharing Manea's magic books with them. However, despite all of Gothel's efforts, her sisters succumb to their illnesses and die. Gothel is devastated, and the Odd Sisters give her a spell that puts her to sleep for centuries. Gothel's undead servant Sir Jacob keeps her alive as she sleeps by using the last surviving Rapunzel flower. When Gothel awakes, she becomes obsessed with reviving her sisters. However, when the armies of Corona storm the Dead Woods to find the Rapunzel flowers, Gothel flees with her sisters' tombs and one single Rapunzel flower and goes to live in a cottage far away. She lives there peacefully with her cook Mrs. Tiddlebottom for a time, but eventually word gets out about the remaining flower and the Coronans come for it. Gothel, desperate for the flower to keep her alive and one day possibly revive her sisters, goes and kidnaps the princess whose hair now has the flower's power. Gothel names the child Rapunzel after the flower and leaves her to Tiddlebottom to raise and take care of whilst she studies her witchcraft to revive her sisters. On Rapunzel's eighth birthday, Tiddlebottom walks in on Gothel and the Odd Sisters trying and failing to use Rapunzel's hair to revive Hazel and Primrose and interrupts the ritual. The Odd Sisters wipe Tiddlebottom's memories, and Gothel decides to whisk Rapunzel away to the tower until her hair is long enough to complete the spell. However Gothel, having no interest in being a mother, has the Odd Sisters place Rapunzel in an enchanted sleep where she would dream of living out her days with a loving and doting Mother Gothel. After ten years, Rapunzel's hair is finally long enough and she awakes from her decade long slumber, blissfully unaware that her life had all just been a dream. The events of the movie happen and Gothel dies, her ambitions unfulfilled. Maybe a not so quick plot summary XD It's a fairly long book, and a lot happens, as you can see. The flower is no longer a single mythical sundrop hoarded by Gothel, but, rather, a breed of flower cultivated by the witches of the Dead Woods. Gothel doesn't even TRY to be Rapunzel's mother, and most of Rapunzel's childhood is nothing more than a dream. And there's a lot of extra lore with the witches. So, what I like MOST about this books is everything up until the destruction of the Dead Woods. The Dead Woods is a decaying forest where the neighboring villages are ordered to turn over their dead to. If a village tries to hoard their dead bodies, then Manea sends an army of the undead to slaughter their village. The setting is very macabre and gothic, and its got a great Halloween feel to everything that takes place in this setting. It's creepy and fun, and Gothel's mother Manea makes for a great villain despite her limited appearances. I'm not super fond of Primrose or Hazel, and I feel like they're kind of generic in personalities, but I do like Gothel having someone she cares about THAT much. And Primrose being the one disturbed by Manea's evil leaves Gothel plenty of room to be kind of enthralled by it in a way that makes her stand out nicely. In fact, Gothel is fittingly really good in this book. Her personality is not really the one we saw in Tangled, but the book explains that the movie events are Gothel trying to put on a motherly act after having not done anything for a decade. And, to be honest, I like her personality in the book more than the movie version. She talks more like a person than a stereotype, which is nice. She's not just some vain woman, but someone smart and cunning who is not without compassion but who will tolerate and commit any depravity as a means to an end. I found her to be a fun and engaging villain protagonist. I also appreciate that while Gothel never gets to become a full out witch with powers because Manea never completely the blood ritual, she's constantly surrounded by witchcraft and necromancy and her lack of magic is actually an important plot point and disadvantage that she works to overcome. Again, something I always felt missing from Movie-Gothel was magic and witchcraft so I appreciated this book giving it back without contradicting the movie. While Poor Unfortunate Soul and Mistress of Evil both had the problem of their focus villains being only supporting characters while Valentino's OCs were the main characters, Gothel in this book is fully and completely the point of view character outside of a hand full of chapters. Valentino's OCs don't get in the way as much in this book. The Odd Sisters kind of do get annoying and in the way at a few points (a lot of the recounting of the movie events are literally "The Odd Sisters watch Tangled with wacky commentary"), but they're not as bad here as they are in some of the other books. We don't find out in this book, but in The Odd Sisters, they're revealed as Gothel's half sisters, so there's a bit more relevance to them here than in, say, Maleficent or Ursula's stories. So, yeah, overall a pretty good read, imo. Maybe not the best thing in the world, but I'm glad I went back and grabbed this one. Gave me a new appreciation for Gothel. Also, you gotta love these covers under the dust jacket with the alternate faces.

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

[douxreviews]

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - ‘Code Yellow’ Review

Keller: "Heard a body came in. We know the cause of death?" Yo-Yo: "No, but if they called us, it means it's not old age."

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to experiment with format and delivers another atypical episode. Like the previous one, "Code Yellow" places the characters on a brand new set where they are allowed to have some fun, is more or less structured as a standalone episode and heavily relies on humor. It's not as successful as "Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson," though, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't entertained for the most of it. Was it flawed? Yes, but it was also fun.

Let's start with the flaws. The events happening in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ were the heavier part of the episode, but to have those events unfold the way they did the writers relied on plot holes and characters behaving inconsistently. First of all, why wasn't John Doe's body isolated as soon as it got to the HQ? Dr. Benson states during the autopsy that the body is flooded with an inert neurotoxin, but what if it wasn't inert? Benson, Mack, Yo-Yo and Keller would've been exposed and doomed already. Then, regarding the bird found inside the corpse, Benson presumes that the knife stabbed on it gave birth to it. Wouldn't it be much more logical to presume that the knife killed the bird instead of concluding that the knife was some sort of bio-weapon? I'm not a scientist and my first thought was that the knife was keeping the bird dead, contained or whatever.

As soon as Benson takes the knife out of the bird and it awakens, Yo-Yo, a speedster, doesn't stab it back in two milliseconds. The bird flies around inside the lab, sometimes low enough so that Yo-Yo can catch it, only she doesn't. Later when the bird starts going inside Keller through his mouth, Yo-Yo has more than enough time to take the bird off of him, and again she doesn't. One could argue that in that moment she was paralyzed with fear, but that's not Yo-Yo at all. Here we have one of the plot holes I dislike the most: a superpowered person not using their superpower because the plot demands so. That could have been easily avoided by keeping Yo-Yo out of those scenes altogether. So simple: have her arrive on the lab's floor when Keller is already doomed.

I might be evil, but I thought this was a gorgeous shot.

As of now, I'm not sure what the writers have prepared for Mack and Yo-Yo, or what was the point of introducing Keller into the mix and taking him out so fast. We barely saw Yo-Yo and Keller as a couple, so it's unclear just how much this is supposed to damage her, but at the very least I liked that, after being so inert for most of the episode, she was the one who killed zombie Keller. It's consistent with the fact that she has the guts to do what must be done, even at great personal cost. So I can appreciate the conclusion, even if the path to get there was rocky. Where the writing failed, the actors more than delivered and I found myself caring about Keller for a few seconds.

Over at Deke's company, the writers stretch their comedy muscles, and not just in the script but in front of the camera as well. Maurissa Tancharoen debuts as Sequoia and, boy, did she make a good job. She might consider acting on a sitcom because she's got the chops. Sequoia was a hit.

I understand, however, why some fans thought the comedy in this episode was totally out of place. Or that the first four episodes haven't felt like "real S.H.I.E.L.D." It made me think of how Alias's fans (myself included) reacted to the fourth season of that show, which ditched its trademark complicated arcs for standalone stories. Even when the standalone episodes were good (and some of them were really good), it felt as if the "real story" hadn't begun. The "real story" has begun on S.H.I.E.L.D., though, it's just being delivered with a different style. That's not a bad thing, and I believe that the entertainment value of the past two episodes will be more appreciated later, but the show will get some criticism if it tries something new and it misses the mark. Having Deke break the fourth wall for no good reason is an example of missing the mark, but I'm forgiving of any episode that gives us stuff like this:

That whole bit with Sequoia thinking that Sarge and his team were mo-cap actors cracked me up, and I respect a show that doesn't take itself too seriously and allows its villains to be part of the comedy too. Hey, I grew up watching Buffy. To be honest, the humor in "Code Yellow" is a mixed bag, but all in all, it entertains more than fails. When fake, seductive Daisy first appears, it's a fail. When she reappears as part of Deke's ploy to defeat Jaco, it's clever and funny, especially after Mack's horrified reaction and Deke's proposal to keep his mouth shut. Rocky buildup, good punchline.

And in the midst of all that comedy and drama, the arc story moved forward nicely, even if the writers wanted to keep us from concluding the obvious. We now know that Sarge and his team are after specific people that don't belong to this reality, which is why Deke accidentally became a target, and they might not be so evil after all. Sarge kept May alive and seemed somehow attracted to her, intrigued at least, which makes me wonder if Sarge is indeed a version of Coulson from another dimension, a brainwashed one that couldn't help but feel a connection with May. Now that May has been kidnapped (again!), we will have a chance to find out.

Intel and Assets

- May going into battle without guns is another writing flaw. We've seen May with guns before and the situation clearly demanded the use of one.

- What's with Dr. Benson? He told Yo-Yo to run, but barely moved. Does he have suicidal tendencies?

- Since Deke is now super rich, can't he fund S.H.I.E.L.D.?

- I liked Trevor Khan, both the character and the name. That's a sexy name, isn't it? Or at least the actor made it sound sexy.

- I loved the bit with the programmer so lost inside his own world that shit was going down in the company and he didn't even notice.

- This is the first episode of the series without Elizabeth Henstridge, which means that only Chloe Bennet and Clark Gregg have appeared in all episodes of the series. However, with Henstridge gone for the hour, Bennet playing a fake version of Daisy, and Coulson dead, none of the main characters have appeared in all episodes.

- Alien parasite bird is very The X-Files. Metallic stalactites coming out of a person's body, very The Expanse.

Quotes

Jaco: "If you consider the infinite complexity of nature, maybe 'strange' is the norm."

Dr. Benson: "Well, this is the strangest autopsy I've performed since... the last one."

Mack: "If this guy wants to take out Deke Shaw, he's gonna have to wait in line." Hee.

Deke: "This is Mack. He's..." Sequoia: "He's large and muscular." Deke: "...an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."

A fun episode, hurt by some plot holes. Let's go with two and a half out of four knifes.

---

Lamounier

[thesydneyfeminists]

Incredibles 2 and the Queer Coding of Villains (Spoilers)

By: Brittany L.

10 July 2018

After 14 long years, Incredibles 2 finally graced theaters worldwide earlier last month. With a diehard fan base of millennials, plus a younger crowd of current school children, the film was always going to be a box office hit. After only 30 days in theaters, Incredibles 2 broke the record for highest grossing animated film, doubling Finding Dory’s $9.2 million USD. It also holds an impressive 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. From a feminist perspective, Incredibles 2 gets a lot of things right. You can tell the film is pushing boundaries from all the internet backlash it’s receiving from men’s rights activists and Not All Men advocates. One such Twitter rebuke reads, “Tried to relive my childhood by seeing Incredibles 2 yesterday. The movie would have been fine if there wasn’t an agenda. Very modern feminist movie. Leave politics out of cartoons and children’s movies”. With such opinions circulating rampantly across social media, viewers can expect at least a bit of a feminist leaning. And Incredibles 2 certainly delivers. It passes the Bechdel Test, while presenting a nuanced take on finding and maintaining a work/family balance. Both Elastigirl and Edna are back and better than ever. Plus, the sequel to the 2004 hit introduces plenty of new female roles, including a technological genius, a Dr. Strange-esque superhero and an older, left leaning politician. The film is fun, enjoyable and well done. Still, this feminist can’t help but want more from Pixar and other animation giants.   

Autostraddle published a great review of Incredibles 2 a few days ago. I encourage you all to give it a read. For context, the author Heather Hogan highlights the many examples of queer subtext in the film. One of the new superheroes, nicknamed Voyd, is Elastigirl’s biggest fangirl. She is adorable, powerful and honestly deserves her own movie. During a speech to Elastigirl, Voyd describes the freedom of finally being able to “come out” as a superhero. The emotions she exhibits will resonate with many queer individuals. Not to mention the many resemblances between Voyd and LGBTQIA+ icon Kristen Stewart. The most intense queer subtext, though, is the relationship between Helen, aka Elastigirl, and Evelyn, the creative inventor behind the mega company DevTech. After leaving the theater, I thought maybe I was imagining things. But I soon discovered I was not alone in thinking the two women vibed romantically. The chemistry between them was so potent, the internet has already decided on a couple name: Hevelyn. The women spend several scenes bashing the patriarchy together and relating over their shared experiences as women. If you’re not convinced yet, Hogan paints a beautifully queer picture of the two women in her review. Just imagine: Helen respectfully and amicably divorces her (kind of crappy) husband and shares joint custody of the kids with her new female lover. There are tensions, but they all come together to fight evil as a team. Pixar was so close to creating the best superpowered lesbian couple and family to ever exist.

In her review, Hogan is enthusiastic and optimistic about Hevelyn’s portrayal on the big screen. Other reviewers appreciate Evelyn’s role as the villain. One woman writes, “Traditionally, baddies tend to be men and I fell for that assumption. But I liked how the movie portrays complex women who can be strong, sensitive, feminine, independent, funny, creative and, yes, evil”. These points are valid, and I mostly agree with them. However, although Evelyn is a complex and ultimately empathetic character, she falls somewhat messily into the queer coded villain category. The term queer coding refers to writing characters with traits typically associated with queer people without actually stating their sexual identity. The practice is surprisingly popular with animated film companies, especially Disney, and has garnered a good deal of critical attention over the years. Many queer people find strength and even freedom in identifying with villains and monsters (http://www.roguesportal.com/me-myself-and-the-monsters-queer-coding-queer-morals-and-queer-possibility/ and https://www.acmi.net.au/ideas/read/imperfect-reflections-defence-bad-queer-representation/). In Incredibles 2, Evelyn is no exception. Despite her corrupt moral compass, Evelyn’s character is relatable and understandable. Indeed, her commentary on society’s unhealthy reliance on superheroes to pick up their dirty work rings a bit true to our own society’s fascination with superheroes. Evelyn’s wish to wipe out superheroes is not the best solution, but her character certainly sheds light on the problem. The queer community is not perfect and being queer does not negate one’s ability to be racist, sexist or otherwise unethical. So, it makes sense there would and should be queer villains in media.

At the same time, the consistent queer coding of villains in animated film and TV plants the dangerous seed in people’s minds that queerness equals evil. Everyday Feminism published a relevant video on the subject a couple years back. In it, Riley J. Dennis, a noted intersectional feminist, activist and queer, trans woman states queer coding “can easily influence the young people who see these TV and movies. Queer youth can begin to see themselves as Other – as something that’s not normal and something that’s to be defeated. Non-queer youth, likewise, find it easier to demonize queer people because that’s already the association they have with queerness”. Consciously or not, Incredibles 2 builds on the long history of queer coding in animated films. Evelyn’s character is treated with a bit more finesse than some of the most well-known queer coded villains. I’m glad Pixar didn’t decide to kill her off like their last Incredibles villain. Frankly, though, Evelyn deserved a better ending, and I’m disappointed in the turn the film takes in the latter half. As one writer suggests, “we should be diversifying the protagonists and characters in relation to sexuality and gender transgression so as to normalise and encourage acceptance, equality and diversity from a young age”. In Incredibles 2, Pixar begins to create the kind of feminist animated film we should be striving towards. However, there is still work to be done. Hopefully fans won’t have to wait another 14 years to see how the Incredibles universe continues to grow and change.

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/28/incredibles-2-feminism-animation

https://www.cnet.com/news/from-elastigirl-to-edna-how-incredibles-2-women-kick-butt/

http://punkee.com.au/the-incredibles-2/51104

https://hellogiggles.com/news/incredibles-2-feminist/

https://www.bustle.com/p/incredibles-2-has-a-feminist-message-that-couldnt-be-more-timely-9317729

https://variety.com/2018/scene/news/incredibles-2-female-empowerment-gender-equality-1202833671/

https://www.cbr.com/incredibles-2-elastigirl-feminist-message-violet/

http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/incredibles-2-at-the-intersection-of-family-and-feminism

https://www.autostraddle.com/for-a-movie-thats-not-gay-incredibles-2-sure-is-gay-425276/

https://www.acmi.net.au/ideas/read/imperfect-reflections-defence-bad-queer-representation/

http://www.roguesportal.com/me-myself-and-the-monsters-queer-coding-queer-morals-and-queer-possibility/

http://lgbtfiction.com/index.php?title=Queer_coding

https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/queer-coding-movie-villains/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/08/praise-complicated-queer-villains-film

http://www.thegryphon.co.uk/2018/02/23/weve-still-got-jafar-to-go-the-queer-coding-of-disneys-villains/

http://www.marginsmagazine.com/2015/12/18/fabulously-fiendish-disney-villains-and-queer-coding/

https://twitter.com/rileyjaydennis?lang=en

[diabolikpersonals]

Like, what do you think of them generally?

alright alright alright alright alright thank u for the opportunity to talk about diaboys!!! I appreciate it ! under a read more bc I ranted forever

LAITO:

My first exposure to dialovers was the anime so my first impression towards Laito was like “oh, he’s the flirty one - oh shit he’s banging her in a church, you cant do that, thats nuts lol” but as I got more into the games, Laito became SO IMPORTANT TO ME??? especially like his relationships, w/ ALL the characters like his brothers and yui and the other families and everything! I especially love learning more about his relationship with Ayato and Kanato because it’s so dang complex. His feelings towards his triplet bros is really complicated because he loves them and you know he loves them but his trauma w/ his mom sort of fucks it all up so he’s got like this genuinely nice and kind and loving personality fighting against this trauma and warped view of the concepts of love and family that Cordelia gave him, and what you get is, “I love my family and I hope they die” and throughout the games u learn more about the reasons why he has those world views and it’s SO GOOD Laito is such a well thought-out character!?! As a writer Laito delights me but as a fan, his whole deal makes me so dang sad djhfghjdkdfd

That’s why I was so fucking satisfied w/ Laito in the Laito vs Shin cd because you got a bunch of the darker stuff surrounding him (his tendency to push people off of buildings, that FUCKING VOICE DROP he does when he’s genuinely mad) and Laito was like...he was SCARY. And he was scaring YUI and he was scaring HIMSELF, too, which made me so sad!! Laito was like crying and punching walls and being like “why am I acting like this??” and it fuckin broke my heart dude. He’s a genuinely good person, he’s so wonderful, but he’s recovering from some really really nasty stuff. So that cd really gave me a sense of like, “Man, Laito hates this just as much as I do.” It makes me want to...idk...it makes me want to give him more opportunities to be good. He really is good!!!

KANATO:

As for my first impression, I think Kanato turned me off right away because I could instantly recognize all the tropes they were gonna use when they were designing him. You can look at him and tell that he’s gonna be the ~yandere~ character (I hate using that word but u know what tropes I’m talking about). As soon as they showed him eating a bunch of sweets I was like “yep.” When they showed us his room full of wax dolls, I was like “uh huh, that seems about right.” And then he yelled a lot and tried to stab Yui for making him french toast or whatever and I was like “ok.........I’ll go start ayato’s route” u know??? just super not my type, and the Kanato vs Azusa cd was torture because Azusa’s so soft-spoken but Kanato’s always yelling at the top of his lungs. I had to keep messing with the volume and it bugged me.

I think I would like Kanato a lot more if he...had a...friend. I think rejet kinda realized that he needed one and they had that in mind when they were introducing Azusa, but that ended up being a pretty bad failure I think. Kanato doesn’t really get along with anyone and he’s pretty open about admitting that he doesn’t like anyone particularly well. I’m glad to see him starting to love Yui genuinely but...idk I feel like every other diaboy has another diaboy(s) that he gets along with really well and it’s always nice to see them acting friendly and even encouraging each other sometimes! Kanato doesn’t really have that kind of relationship with anyone. When Ayato tried to reach out and apologize in LE, Kanato was like “lol kill yourself” and I was actually so fuckin mad at him, I was like “boy if you don’t fix that attitude of yours-”..........I guess I just wish that he had more character development by this point. That scene really hurt.

RUKI:

Basically the WORST first impression ever...my first Ruki scene that I ever saw was when he broke the cat’s neck and I was so pissed. I was like “immediately fuck this guy” and he became my least favorite character right away. And on top of that he was really elitist and one of those jerk intellectuals “ohhh solve this puzzle or STAY OUT THERE IN THE COLD you big dumb idiot. im smart and you’re not” and I was like FUCK this guy, how does yuma put up with him with HIS backstory?

But I hella warmed up to him during MB, like especially during Reiji’s route where Ruki was like “...uh...okay” the whole time jhdghdj that shit was hilarious. Ruki started feeling really real. And I think that like...hm...like if Laito is a genuinely good person surrounded by bad influence, Ruki is the opposite - he’s a bad personality surrounded by good influence. Ruki’s a jerk and he’s been a jerk his whole life but he has these wonderful brothers who love him so much and this lovely angel Yui and he’s just got all these good people who look up to him and he has to be good. This little asshole kid who treated all his servants like shit is now cooking dinner for his three adoptive brothers every day and they love him so much and they love him so much. It’s so fucking satisfying. I love seeing him supporting his brothers even though it conflicts with his personality and his main drive, like letting Kou run away with Yui even though Kou couldn’t become Adam. Ruki’s most important thing in MB was making one of the Mukamis become Adam but he gave that up to let Kou be happy. That shit is so important. Ruki was such a fuckin turnaround for me, I hated him at first but now I love the hell out of him and what he represents for the Mukamis.

KOU:

Kou is great!! I think he’s affected lots of characters in really positive ways, and he’s been affected in positive ways by different characters and it’s really nice to see. For sure he’s still got that trauma from his past but I really appreciate that Kou is in an environment that doesn’t have a lot of reminders of the bad stuff from his childhood. Like, how Kou was sought after for being such a beautiful child, and how he was trapped in a dark place for such a long time. There’s none of that shit when he lives with the Mukamis. Rejet could’ve easily put in tons of haunting reminders about Kou’s whole “too beautiful for his own good” thing but whenever he gets complimented, it’s usually for something different. Azusa will talk about how talented and amazing he is, and Kino’ll be like “idol clothes are pretty nuts huh? lol” and Ruki will be like “you’re working properly after all” and I fuckin love that shit...They could’ve made it so dang hard for Kou, but no, he’s in a much happier place now. He’s nice and comfortable being with these people. That makes me feel relieved lol

I already talked about how he helped Ruki but I think the most important relationship with a diaboy that he has is SUBARUUUUU cuz like, when you look at Subaru’s route you’re like “oh he definitely needs a friend, I’m glad he has a gf but he was so dang lonely and self-deprecating that he DEFINITELY just needs a genuine good friend” and then Kou showed up and he was like “guess what subaru? we’re gonna be friends, I’ve decided” and subaru was like “???” and MB happened and by the end of it Subaru was like “I took everything you said really seriously and I do want to be friends with you..............im not gonna say it out loud tho. let’s just shake hands ok” and I was like AW HECK YEAH!!!!! And then you keep seeing nice little reminders that they’re friends in other games, like in either LP or VC (Im sorry I literally cannot tell these two games apart) they were picking out hair accessories together for Yui, and in the Subaru vs Kou cd, Kou asks Subaru at the end if he had fun, and in LE Kou gave Subaru that pep talk and made Subaru laugh, and Subaru was like “Kou if I’m gonna die then I want you to kill me” and Kou was like “But I don’t want you to die!” and Subaru was like “you dont??? you actually care? about ME???” ITS SO FUCKING GOOD DUDE Subaru needed Kou so badly. Thank god for Kou honestly

KINO:

It was weird like...I was so mad at him during certain routes but I could never actually dislike him. It’s because he’s so dang funny tbh. He literally killed some of my favorite characters but then he would say a funny line and I’d be like “haha, I’m glad kino is here!” like it’s almost scary how charismatic he is towards both the other characters and to me, the player. He asked nicely if he could kill Shu and Shu was like “ok, sure.” Kino is hands down my fav villain because of this. Especially because you can really tell that deep down he wants to be a real member of the Sakamaki family and like he genuinely wants to be friends with people like Yuma and Kou, and he’s got the whole villain-turned-awkward-family-member trope which I LOVE. Like especially in that drama cd where he was like “I never get to go to school so I want to do home ec with you guys! Let’s make donuts!” and Kou was like “ok!!!” and kou tries to be super positive and encouraging the whole time even though Kino was actually secretly plotting to blow the place up. Kino looks like an idiot but he’s a genius tbh

and and and and and and I want him to kiss yuri. I think yuri is super in love w/ kino too, despite the fact that he’s. annoying. thats all I got dhgfdjskj...I love the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope so fuckin much

CARLA:

hey carla fuck you

I was really mad at him for his actions in DF mostly ^^; And tbh it’s really hypocritical because it was a group effort between both of the Tsukinamis, but I ended up loving Shin and hating Carla. Kino also did similar bad stuff to Carla, but I ended up loving him while hating Carla. So, why?

Well here’s fuckin why. Shin and Kino are cute & funny. They have their nice little payoff moments - maybe Shin hurt one of my favorite characters, but then you get to see how bubbly and energetic he gets around his big brother. He was walking one of his wolves around christmas time while wearing a red jacket and a random kid approached him thinking he was santa claus. That’s adorable! For a long time, Carla didn’t have anything like that. And he was a jerk to absolutely everyone, including Shin, who was so dang devoted to him!! Like remember in the DF cds where he was like “hey shin, the plan is we suck her blood until she’s purified from the vampires” and shins like “ok nii-san got it” and he started sucking her blood, exactly like he was ordered to, and then carla came in and STABBED HIM and was like “hey dont touch my property” like SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK CARLA U TOLD HIM TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! IT WAS THE PLAN

And he fucked Ayato up real bad in DF so I was so mad...;; I only recently started forgiving him once diatwitter and LE started up. Diatwitter let us see his cute old grandpa side where he fuckin wanders around amusement parks by himself like some kind of cryptid and kou keeps being like “wait was that carla? what the heck??” and LE gave us some pretty nice stuff like carla being like “ur definitely my brother, shin” so...carla is ok I guess...but then again LE also gave us some bad carla moments like “if ur not actually a founder then u lied to me and im gonna kill u” so basically uh?? carla’s just a jerk I think. I’m warming up to him at a snail’s pace but he’s still a jerk. sucks about the endzeit tho, I hope he’s like permanently ok now

[ofgoldenblood]

I had to take the time to come fangirl in your inbox because I am truly in love with your writing. I read your latest update for the 'more than a ghost au' and you managed to make me commit to the story despite my not shipping Lightstar. It's a true testament to how talented you are. My jaw dropped at the quality of this verse. I think your insight into the inner workings of Jonathan's twisted mind is extraordinary and

your portrayal is nothing short of brilliant. You make him human and it’s all that I could ask for when he is the most misunderstood character in this fandom. I especially look forward to every update of your abo verse and your hooker au since Jalec is my otp. These stories make me genuinely happy and there are no words that could possibly express how grateful my Jalec heart is for having such a wonderful writer pen my favorite pairing. From a fan

First of all, thank you so much for this lovely message. Your words really cheered me up & I loved hearing that you enjoy my portrayal(s). There’s a lot of controversy about Sebastian and it’s always nice to meet someone else who appreciates him, despite his obvious shortcomings & villainy!!Tbh, I will never understand why people watch shows like SH & then non-stop point out ‘bad’ things and complain about the bad guys. If you want drama-free & entirely harmless then maybe you should watch something like Dora the Explorer instead of hating on people who enjoy a good drama-driven story. Drama requires villains or at least people fucking up, otherwise there would be no conflict and conflict (& its resolve) is usually what makes a story thrilling or interesting. I’m sure most of us want drama-free lives, but who wants to WATCH that, really? BUT I AM SORRY FOR RANTING… so I will continue to rant under the cut.

I agree with you that Sebastian is misunderstood, even if most people in this fandom immediately start fuming when someone says that. Because they think misunderstood = poor mistreated little cupcake. That is not what he is. He is a killer, he is cruel & merciless and he knows no remorse for the things he does and the lives he takes. I am not excusing those actions.He is, however, deeply disturbed and a victim of tremendous abuse. He was drugged literally before he was born, with something that altered his very being & gave him no chance to grow up a ‘normal’ boy. His mother abandoned him because the only other choice she saw was to kill him. As far as he knos, she never even considered trying to save him. His father never loved him, called him a monster that nobody could ever love & literally whipped him (& probably other things, lbr). He isolated him from any healthy human contact & effectively stole his entire childhood. This is severe emotional and physical abuse and I wish people would stop disregarding that and instead only focus on the fact that Sebastian kissed his sister.

Valentine turned him into not a soldier but an (almost literally) soulless weapon. He made him the possibly loneliest person alive. I once saw a post in the Seb tag where someone said something along the lines of ‘I can tolerate Valentine but Sebastian is just pure evil and needs to die‘ & it pissed me off so much, because it blatantly disregards the fact that it was Valentine who made Sebastian the way he is. We’ll never know for sure, I guess, if Jon/athan Christopher hadn’t turned out to be a sociopath too (you don’t need demon blood for that), like Maia’s brother Daniel for example, but he certainly wouldn’t have been the monster that we see in the books. I really like drawing the connection to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in Seb’s case. The monster - as the Doctor himself calls it - is presented as a vile nightmare that haunts Frankenstein and destroys his life - but really all his negative & frightening features are a result of Frankenstein’s treatment, neglect & horror. He created the monster AFTER bringing a dead person back to life. We don’t know how much of Seb’s cruelty comes from his demon blood& how much is Valentine’s influence, but I like to remind people that warlocks are half demon too, and nobody would go around saying Mag/nus is at least 50% evil.

A key thing about Seb for me is that he doesn’t understand himself. He is literally misunderstood in that way. He’s never had a chance to figure out who he is or what he wants without someone’s influence in his ear (Valentine or Lilith). He grew up with a distorted understanding of right/good & wrong/evil, so how is he supposed to agree with the ‘good guys’ when they say that it is not okay to kill someone who poses a threat to you & your plan (which is, essentially your entire life’s purpose??)? Or that desiring your sister in a way that this society finds wrong is despicable? (We literally can’t even agree here on tumblr how ‘bad’ inc/est is!!) He never experienced love, never received, felt or understood it, so he tries to bind people to him to fight his loneliness any other way possible. He is a drowning man who can’t ever escape the water but desperately struggles to stay afloat, because there is literally no alternative.

When his hate & jealousy for Jace (who is not even Valentine’s real son but somehow ends up getting everything that’s supposed to be Seb’s - his father, the illusion of a childhood, time to develop, Clary, even Jocelyn for a while, a parabatai, LOVE) threatens to destroy him, he turns them into the opposite and starts obsessing. He binds Jace to himself, tries to consume him, perhaps to somehow make Jace’s life his own. He will never get love anyway (he doesn’t UNDERSTAND IT, it’s like wanting something you don’t even know) so he’s content to have Clary & Jace with him, even if he has to keep them by force.

Now, none of this means I excuse what he does or did. I just like to think about what makes him tick & try to understand him. I love complex villains. My favorite villain is probably Hann/ibal Lec/ter (more in NBCs Hann/ibal than in the books/movies), who absolutely deserves to sit in prison for all eternity, but still is one of the most fascinating characters ever created, imo. His world view, his morals, his motivations to kill and his excuses for it need to be looked at outside any moral judgement if we want to understand human nature better, I think. You can love a character for their complexity and still judge their actions - and I think that is what most people in this fandom don’t accept. Liking Sebastian does not mean I cheer for his murders and ra/pe attempt.

AS FOR THE MORE THAN A GHOST AU, it’s one of my absolute favorites, atm, because it actually goes against my firm belief that death was the best option for Seb at the end of COHF. He’s not prepared to survive & nobody else is either. He is forced to face the consequences of his actions but suddenly lacks the conviction that they were necessary, good or even acceptable. For the first time he recognizes himself as the villain. Not as a monster- which is something wrong & unlovable - but as someONE who did horrible things & has to take responsibility for them. He is willing to do that, even if he feels like a different person & it’s actually Alec in that verse who kind of allows him to adopt that thought of Sebastian being a different person from Jonathan. That gives Jonathan hope, but at the same time it is his ultimate kryptonite. Whenever he is disappointed in his own inability to be ‘Not-Sebastian’, he regresses to telling himself he can never be anyone other than Seb. Jonathan is an idea without an anchor in reality & on his bad days Jon is convinced Alec is just telling himself & Jon a lie everyday to not feel guilty about loving his brother’s murderer.

I also headcanon that Jon doesn’t immediately become a nice person in the beginning of the verse. He ‘learned’ how to be ‘good’ so he could be able to impersonate Sebas/tian Verl/ac, but he never really internalized it. He is still impatient, more easily angered, looks to violent solutions faster than to peaceful ones. He is used to calculating damage against gain & will choose the most effective way, not matter the cost. Since he has feelings now that he didn’t have with the demon blood (presumably) and also a conscience he wouldn’t wage a war for the hell of it or to get what he wants, or sacrifice innocent people.. but he has yet to LEARN who the innocent people are. If there was a young werewolf struggling on their first full moon, threatening to hurt people, Jon would choose to kill them, whereas Clary & Co would try to help them. He still has to unlearn the rac/ism against Downworlders Valentine nurtured in him. He still has to learn how to take and deal with rejection in a way that doesn’t completely destroy him. There are just so many aspects to this scenario & that’s why I love it so much!!

I AM SO SORRY about how long this turned out, and you didn’t even ask for ANY OF THIS *hides, ashamed*

Thank you again for your message & your kind words. I currently also really love the hooker AU and the a/b/o AU, so I’ll hopefully get to continuing those soon c:I have a drabble planned for the hooker AU in which I’ll write about the first time Jace took money for se/x, if you’re interested in that.Unrelated, Andy & I also talked about a short drabble based on ‘The Other Side’ by Ruelle, so if you enjoy having your heart broken, you have that to look forward to.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.:*

[qqueenofhades]

Black Sails s4/finale thoughts

Okay, so I caught up on episodes 4x05-4x10 with @thelittleschemer​ over the past few days, and as such finished the season/series. Now I have many thoughts and need to write them down, welp.

I held off on finishing the show because I didn’t want it to interfere with what I had planned for TDH, and I can definitely say that it did not change anything about what I had worked out for the ending of said fic (which I really need to get around to doing soon). I was pleased to see that there were/will be a few points of concord, but yeah, TDH will definitely remain its own entity/story.

Tagging @prairiepirate​ and @ransomideas, who have expressed interest in my thoughts on said subject, heh. Under the cut for length and possible unpopular opinions.

Okay, first and foremost: Overall, I really liked it. The writing generally remains some of the best on TV, the acting is phenomenal, and as usual with Starz’ historical dramas these days, the production value is jaw-dropping. The sets, costumes, ships, etc are all just so real, and it definitely set up well for Treasure Island. It finished off its narrative arcs cleanly (or mostly so) and it continues to provide some excellent meaty commentary on the nature of stories, who tells them, who remembers them (hums “Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story” because lbr, theme song of this whole show) and the roles we play in creating and managing and remembering our own. This show was (and remains) incredibly intelligent and complex and subversive, you have to pay attention to all of it or you’re going to miss important plot developments (and probably still be confused on a few points) and it’s otherwise not at all what you’d expect from the premise (and first few episodes). As I said, just overall really impressive on many levels. The final few episodes also had a very POTC feeling to them, with mysterious islands that nobody can find, ghost stories, swashbuckling sea battles, hidden treasure, and so forth, and that was a lot of fun.

That said: Time to deconstruct it!

My main issue with the second half of s4 was that they seemed to throw all constraints of time/space/travel out the window, especially when it involves the characters sailing long distances at sea over incredibly cramped time-frames. Possibly writing TDH has made me too well-informed in said matters, heh, but they’d have us believe that Jack sailed from Nassau to Philadelphia, back to Nassau, out to Skeleton Island, and then back to Philadelphia in what.... a week? It’s been hard to gauge a reliable timeline for the show, since they’re moving historical events around freely and playing fast and loose with the facts to tell a good story, but we have the Maroons arriving and Madi’s mother saying that pirates from as far away as Massachusetts (which made me briefly hopeful for a Sam cameo, I AM NOT GONNA LIE) have heard of the fall of Nassau and have come to fight. In what... again, a day or so? I realize it’s important to keep the plot moving, and that nobody is actually going to watch two weeks of Jack and Anne stuck on a ship on the way to Philadelphia (although lbr, it’s probably still amusing), but for a show that has prided itself on its gritty realism, it kept taking me out of the story because I was all, NO WAY THEY’RE THERE ALREADY. WAIT. WHAT. THEY’RE BACK AGAIN? OKAY THEN.

(Aka, every historical/historical fantasy show has to contend with the fact that they need to get characters/news to places faster than historically accurate transport can actually take them, so things get compressed and skimmed over and squashed together, etc. It wasn’t enough to ruin anything for me, but I did keep noticing it, so yeah.)

My other issue was the involvement of the Spanish. Once again, I understand the narrative choice behind the decision: they needed a wild card/way to shake things up/break the standoff between the English forces and the pirates, and re-change the balance of power on Nassau. However (and I feel like they were aware of it and tried to finesse it to some degree in the narrative) are we really supposed to buy that the Spanish hate pirates just that bit more than they hate Rogers, agree to sail to Nassau, sack the place good, and then.... pack up and leave, never to be seen again or to have any further involvement with trying to reclaim the Urca gold (which would at least be a full-circle thing)? Within the span of an episode? I feel like the writers needed the shakeup, and to obviously provide an impetus for Rogers’ poor decisions to blow up in his face, but they knew they didn’t have time to adequately deal with the outcome, so we had the Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition and then poof, gone. This connects to the other sense I had, which was that they knew they had to wrap things up for the final season and find a way to stop a full-out war from happening, so the Spanish had to disappear after their use as a one-off shit-stirring device, the Maroons and the pirates and the English had to hastily make treaties to avoid said war, and despite a few really excellent action scenes, it still felt, idk, a bit... anti-climactic? As if they wanted a relatively happy ending for these characters (which is understandable) but didn’t have time to play everything out, so it just got compressed and a bit watered down.

Speaking of characters...

I love that the show has such intensive character studies/conversations/setpieces. However, I also feel as if the pacing ended up being a bit off as a result. We kept having long, multi-minute scenes of just two characters talking to each other (and again, exchanging important information in most cases, so you can’t really tune out), followed by a brief action scene, usually followed by yet another long dialogue scene. It’s always enjoyable to see the acting chops on display (I mean, these are not easy scenes to work through and require a lot of line memorization and facial nuance and other skill), but at several points I was wondering when everyone was going to stop talking and get back to the issues at hand -- as noted, if they’d cut some of the talking and focused on solving their plot problems, it could have flowed somewhat more smoothly. It felt as if they went too often to the well of “flashback followed by voiceover explaining plot twist” and had to TELL us information rather than SHOW us. Which again, it’s a good problem to have when your narrative is rich and complex and intelligent and has a lot of moving pieces, but again, everything could just be a bit, well, tighter. At least, that was the overall impression I was left with.

I was successfully kept on pins and needles over Madi’s fate (I had a few choice words when it looked like she was dead) and I hope she and Silver do end up together (I think it’s implied she does come back to him at the end) because I really like that relationship for both of them. It added a bit of selflessness and sympathy to Silver’s otherwise completely self-interested character, as did the scene where Flint presses him to explain his past and he doesn’t; we can tell he simply wants to forget everything that existed before Long John Silver (and I love how both that persona and “Captain Flint” were treated and twisted as distinct narrative entities for both characters) and that his life has probably been incredibly tragic too. He’s just dealt with it differently than Flint (which again, fits with them well as each other’s foils/yin and yang.) Their conversations/one-on-one faceoffs were some powerhouse acting from both Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold, and I appreciated the way things came full circle between them/to the logical end, but with a twist and with callbacks to their relationship in the pilot (as well as Silver finding the cook belowdecks). Madi is also generally a queen of everything and I love that she, a dark-skinned African woman, was made a central love interest and given emotional and narrative power/sympathy in her own right, and that the subject of slavery and her telling off Rogers to his face remained front and center. The show has always been so good with that (and LGBT representation, to the point where it’s a shorter list to think of who ISN’T LGBT than who is) and I really appreciated that.

On the subject of Rogers: Luke Roberts did an incredibly good job. Like damn. You can see the anger and insanity and grief rising and rising in him, but he’s almost scarier because it never breaks the dam entirely, because he’s always (almost always) self-controlled and dangerously calm and driven to do whatever he has to, and yet has no qualms with absolutely anything that is going to take. I was yelling at him for being the worst (and as noting, side-eyeing the decision to involve the Spanish both on a story and a meta level), and rooting for him to get his just desserts, but also genuinely being scared of him and respecting that he was good at what he was doing. You’re aware that he CAN hurt/kill/otherwise cause serious problems for our faves, and you’ve seen him do it, sometimes in gruesome detail. So yes, he served as an effective villain. You never could relax with him on screen, or be quite sure which way he was going next.

As for him and Eleanor, I’m still not entirely sure what to take away from that. I never bought that she genuinely loved him, as Eleanor is way too selfish to do anything, even a relationship, without personal benefit, and she got together with him in the first place as an alternative to incarceration/hanging. Even Flint questions whether her relationship with Rogers is somehow different from all the men she’s bragging about overcoming. Eleanor’s motives/nuances remained opaque until the end -- I believe that she wanted to rule Nassau again, and that she wanted to survive (hence the sad irony in her fate: that everything she did and everyone she sold out trying to save her neck led to her dying anyway) and that she saw in Rogers a way to do it. Likewise, I think he loved the idea of controlling Nassau through her more than her, and that it was easy for both of them to attach their feelings about ruling/controlling this place to the person of the other, to the point where even they might have been fooled/willing to believe it was true (if somewhat twisted) love. Hence as well why neither of them ended up in charge of it, she died, and he was ruined by his wife’s family, but not the wife he expected.

Jack and Anne were, as usual, fab, though as noted, their Super Speed Ship Travel had me side-eyeing hard. I noticed that their story, at least for now, ended far more happily than it does in history. Glad that Max got the chance to come out on top (I never ended up fully connecting to her as a character, but she’s definitely a BAMF).

Billy.... damn. Talk about a 180. Going from the man willing to do anything to keep your crewmates safe from Flint, to shooting them down in the water aboard a boat full of redcoats? Not cool, bro. Not. Cool. (Though I did enjoy the final face-off between him and Flint on the yards.) When that’s contrasted with Flint giving orders to make sure everyone is evacuated from Nassau and nobody is left behind, it strikes you how much they’ve changed places and how Billy has become objectively no better -- indeed, possibly worse -- than Flint, and doesn’t even have Flint’s self-awareness to know it. He has gone down a road by himself, by choice, and which fits fairly well with his upcoming role in Treasure Island/estrangement from the others (real talk, how does he get off?) but which made him pretty hard to root for by the end. I also think it’s no accident that he got paired with Rogers. Both characters are convinced they are acting for a greater good on their respective sides, but both are willing to do anything to achieve it, stubborn and independent to a fault, and unwilling to take any responsibility for their mistakes.

And okay, so... Flint.

He is my favorite and as such, I’ve had to save him for last, since I probably have the most thoughts/investment on the end of his story. In a nutshell: I have mixed feelings. I was convinced that he was going to die for most of the season, so I am obviously happy that he got some measure of solace/happiness/reunion at the end. However, I am also not sure that it wouldn’t have worked better for him to die, or at least leave his fate more open-ended. Hint that Silver wasn’t telling the whole story and that Flint was still alive, but for it to remain ambiguous where he went or what he did or why.

This obviously is a strange place to be for my favorite, but after a season of fairly hard-hitting emotional moments/notes and some pretty bloody action, I almost feel like they chickened out of killing Flint at the end and wanted to give him some happiness instead -- aka, an unexpectedly sunny “Everyone Lives!”-type finale for what has been a pretty dark show. Which again -- I have no problem with, because heaven knows the man deserves some happiness, but I still found myself vaguely unsatisfied with how it was pulled off. See above for my feelings on how well they dealt with the legends/personas of “Long John Silver” and “Captain Flint” in their own right, and I did appreciate that the end of season 2 (Flint wants to leave it behind and settle down with Miranda, but she’s killed) was paralleled with the end of season 4 (Flint does get a chance to leave it behind/is reunited with Thomas). However, on a narrative level, this... doesn’t quite work for me, because Thomas was never built up on-screen to be a character capable of carrying this emotional weight. We saw him only in a few season 2 flashbacks. We saw a bit of his and Flint’s relationship and how that backfired, but all we ever really knew about Thomas mattering to Flint was that we were told he did. We cared about Thomas because we cared about Flint and Miranda, but there was never really enough for him to become any more than a motivating/backstory figure in Flint’s own story.

Hence, I feel as if Thomas worked better as such (a backstory figure) rather than as Flint’s presumably somewhat-happy ending. Yes, I am a diehard Flint/Miranda shipper, but I was more invested in Flint and Miranda’s relationship because of all the time the narrative spent on making me care about it. We saw them together for two seasons. We saw their arguments, their disagreements, their tender moments (”I was hoping to have you all to myself for a few days”/”I recognize you, do you recognize me?” will never not kill me). We saw Miranda fighting to be with Flint and reminding him that she has been loyal and devoted to him for ten years, and him finally accepting that and letting her come with him to Charlestown and the two of them planning to make their home together and leave piracy behind... only for, yeah, welp, noooo. We saw Miranda’s relationships with other characters and we saw her own struggle in how exile had changed her and the sacrifices she had made for allowing Flint and Thomas to be together and the blame she took for the scandal. We had Flint wanting to die and be with her and his flashbacks/dreams of her for half of season 3, and him even saying that this was worse than losing Thomas (”But you... I am ruined over you.”) In other words, I was invested in them because the show spent so much time making sure that I was. I cried out loud when Flint compared Silver’s apparent loss of Madi (the woman he was willing to give up the war for/wanted to be his wife) to his own loss of Miranda. Flint and Miranda were both real characters in their own right, and Thomas just by nature of his role in the story was someone that they had lost and whose memory they still honored. To pluck him out and make him alive again seems a bit, well, pat.

Don’t get me wrong, my super bi ass is definitely incredibly appreciative that Flint, a bi character who has had two great loves in his life (Thomas and Miranda) ended up with his same-gender partner, and that they got to be reunited on screen. But I also feel as if the most poignant and fitting end for his story would either for him to explicitly die, and for his reunion with both Thomas and Miranda to take place in the afterlife (I so wanted that scene of the three of them together again/Thomas and Miranda being there to finally bring Flint back to them) or for his fate to not be spelled out, as it is in Treasure Island. I.e., for it to be pretty clear that Silver didn’t kill him and let him go, but for us not to know where he went or why, and that is why the legend remains and lives on. That way they can have the symmetry of him letting the persona of Flint “go back to the sea,” and to also keep the tragedy and romance and true loss of his story. He HAS changed forever in being Flint. He can’t give that up, he can’t wake from his nightmare. He’s lost everything and everyone (including his ship, poor Walrus). The ending with Thomas was nice enough, but again, I don’t care that much about Thomas in his own right, because the narrative never spent time on making me do that. I am happy FOR Flint because I love him and I know it’s what he would have wanted, but I don’t feel the gut-wrenching relief/sadness/cry-for-days-but-love it that I would have with Flint dying and finally getting to be with both Thomas AND Miranda again, and for us to see them once more as a threesome and a whole. Again, I feel like they ducked out of bringing Flint’s story to a sadder and arguably more fitting end, and while I can’t argue with my fave getting to live, yeah.

Anyway! Damn. That was a long-ass meta. As I said, overall I did like it very much, I certainly had feelings, and the rest of the show was generally so well-written that I can forgive them some pacing and plot hiccups here and there in this season. As I said, this is absolutely one of the smartest and most subversive and diverse shows on TV, and I am sorry to see it end. I would watch the shit out of Treasure Island if they do it (as I think they were kicking around). I just wish they could have hit some even more powerful notes in a few places. But thanks for the great adventure.