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thegeminisage · 6 months ago

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star trek update time. i'm WAY behind. friday we watched voy's "tattoo," saturday i finally womaned up and agreed to watch ds9's "the visitor" and then we also bravely soldiered on to "hippocratic oath," and last night we did ds9's "indiscretion" and "rejoined."

tattoo (voy):

it's a real shame about (waves vaguely at racefaking "expert" on voy's writing staff) because, due to my own lack of education, i never know which stuff is based in fact and which is just wholesale bullshit. i remember one time i googled something about chakotay's culture because it seemed so obviously fake, and it turned out to be Kind Of True But Not Like That. it sucks because not ONLY was it a huge missed opportunity for Representation And Education (tm) but chakotay is a really interesting guy and i'd like to know more about him and see him get to do more stuff without him getting buried in the like. mysticism and racism of it all. it's no good for him and it's no good to sit through either

bc like. at this episode's core. if you could somehow remove the racist panflute and the whole thing where we portray people from THE SPACE TRAVELING FUTUREEE as primitive savages, you could have had a good story. chakotay struggles with not feeling at home where he lives/in his own culture, goes to space about it, then has an emotional crisis when his dad dies while the two of them are on bad terms. i know that's a good story and i know star trek can make that a good story because do you know who else has that story? SPOCK.

LIKE. IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY. WHAT WERE YOU DOING!

anyway, chakotay naked. i know he was naked for the wrong reasons but that man had his whole ass out. bold moves heretofore only taken by sir patrick stewart himself. GOOD FOR HIM!

oh yeah the b plot of this episode sucked. we have to give the doctor a cold because of his lack of compassion? since When has he ever complained about sick or whiny people? been gruff with them, sure, tough-love kind of guy definitely, but no one would program a doctor who hated serving patients?? i did like that kes gave him an extra hour to be evil though. i love her so much

the visitor (ds9):

i don't want to talk about it.

or, no, i actually already talked about it, and i don't have anything to add, except that 1. christopher nolan can still suck it 2. every episode of ds9's 4th season so far has made me feel like i need to give it a "must see" on the spreadsheet. i almost can't believe i'm watching star trek. i have to start grading the damn things on a curve

hippocratic oath:

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. stuck with the jem'hadar and julian is like "i can fix them" and o'brien is like "i have been racist my whole life and i'm not about to stop now and also you cannot fix them so i am going to condemn them to a horrible death in order to save your life" because he did at the beginning of the episode say out loud with his mouth that he wished his wife was more like julian bashir and then promptly refused to examine that thought even a little bit

like this had EVERYTHING. gay people. ethical dilemmas. twink with a spine of steel. worf forgetting he's no longer in tng. my best friend odo disguising as an inanimate object. and i'm supposed to just give it a WATCH?

like, i was right there with julian. fix them fix them fix them it's so easy they CAN be weaned off of it this could change everything i was so livid with o'brien for condemning those guys to a painful and undignified ending and for repeatedly ruining julian's attempts to help with all his attempts to escape and then he was like. yeah. i did all that to save YOUR LIFE because i saw that YOU were in danger.

and it obviously doesn't excuse anything and you get the feeling julian COULD have helped them with enough time and the right tools and and and...but he didn't have all that, and obrien KNEW he didn't have all that, and he wasn't willing to risk his friend's life on a gamble when it came to helping enemy soldiers

like, it's his fucking cardassian ptsd. note how he didn't speak when they were captured but bashir did because the gun was on his friend. note how he had to explain why the commander couldn't escape with them. IT MKAES SO MUCH SENSE FOR HIS CHARACTER. who hasn't done horrible things for the people they love? if his wife doesn't get back soon he's going to be asking for julian's hand in marriage by season 5

indiscretion (ds9):

KIRA PULLING THE THORN OUT OF DUKAT'S ASS. sorry i'm good i'm normal

something about dukat...at first he was very boring and flat, and then he was funny but still pretty 2-dimensional, and then he was funny AND gay with sisko but still 2-dimensional, and now he's got all kinds of depth. i completely wrote him off as generic cardassian villain at first but i am genuinely thrilled to see him every time he shows up

like, the bajoran lover and the daughter is such an amazing plot twist, but also, sorry to say this, he and kira have q and picard energy. as in, q wants picard to fuck him so so so bad, and picard has zero interest in doing this, and somehow that interest gets even lower the more q wants it, and the lower his interest gets, the more rabid q is for him, and it's probably the only thing i really enjoyed about either character, a few of sir patrick stewart's better speeches aside. dukat is exactly like that with kira. he is GAGGING for her strap and she finds him vile and rephrensible and the closest they got to fucking was when she pulled the spine out of his ass cheek and laughed at him and he probably is going to put that in the spank bank for the rest of his life. and she will still never fuck him

really fun when she told him to shut up and he shut up <3

i just love episodes that deal with the fallout of the war...it's always such incredible character work. i was worried that with the dominion threat these kinds of episodes would go away and i'm glad that's not the case

also, hi, sisko fumbling things with his gf for the b-plot. dax and julian giving him romantic advice and then mocking him when he leaves. jake being the only one who can talk sense into him. incredible. 10/10

ALSO, not only did capt yates make him work at that apology she did NOT kiss his ass goodbye. and he deserved it.

even quark was funny in this episode, despite the misogyny. he was nice to jake in "the visitor" so i think i've forgiven him because i've made at least two quodo jokes since then. my first love will always be kiraodo (kodo?) though

rejoined (ds9):

LESBIANS IN STAR TREK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as previously stated about 600 times on this blog i DID NOT KNOW there would be a gay kiss happening. i thought btvs held the honors for the first gay kiss and that this was going to be like an allegory or a metaphor like in tng. and i did like the tng ep for what it was! but holy shit this blows that out of the water.

i think it's so important that this would have been absolutely NO different whatsoever if either half of the couple had been a man. for the time period especially it's very much like. Queers Are Just Like Us which i think is an important step 1 to reel in potential bigots who are still on the fence. i cannot believe my mother is going to watch this episode someday

also, hi, the allies in this episode...? julian sitting through that WHOLE dinner without the first word of complaint. sisko telling dax it's a bad idea but he'll back her tf up. kira bewildered that any of it is any problem at all. sisko's moment was especially nice bc at first you think he's being a dick which is out of character for him and then you realize 1. he's scared for her 2. he loves her 3. he would probably fight the homophobic (recursionphobic...?) trills with his bare hands if he had a good excuse

it's also nice that zero people in this episode were weird about the idea of two women together. it was SO NORMAL. god i can't believe andor let those two women touch hands for a single shot and called it progressive between that and spn my standards are through the FLOOR!!

TONIGHT: ds9's "starship down" and "little green men," and then we're finally back to voyager.

#personal #star trek blogging #ds9 lb #voy lb

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fryandleelasbigfling · 2 years ago

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Fry and Yancy Jr. could be good too

oooo yes, luck of the fryrish is actually one of my fave episodes (and one of my first) so i think about yancy jr a lot even tho i don't talk about him much!

my take on yancy jr is that he was envious of fry's unabashed self-expression, but didn't have the way to express his feelings because of their dad's toxic masculinity and the family's tendency towards repression. yancy jr is the older son and his father's namesake, so i think he has a stronger sense of "duty" than his younger brother, especially with yancy sr's strong american values.

we see in "cold warriors" that yancy sr actively encourages his boys to fight each other, presumably because he thinks it'll toughen them up. they don't have much room to be honest with each other because, on top of being young boys in a time of political contention, they grew up in an environment where neither parent was great at expressing themselves and love was inconsistent.

so i think YJ is jealous of fry's boundless creativity -- yes, there's the clover too obviously, but their rivalry and YJ's plagiarism and jealous dates back to fry's birth. while it started as childish "i should get everything i want," i think YJ struggled to find a sense of identity as he became a teen, and it was much easier to take a page out of fry's playbook even though he knew fry's ideas were often stupid and impractical.

fry had low self esteem and possibly issues with getting respect , but he was still confident in his imagination and originality. so i think it stung whenever YJ aped his style because that's all he had. fry wants to be important so bad and it sucks feeling like you can't have anything to yourself. so he interpreted YJ's plagiarism as spite, because it's a recurring theme that he cannot believe his family loved him at all because of the low self-esteem they fed him out of their highly flawed "tough love" approach.

i really love that YJ seems to have grown into a well adjusted adult and is now able to clearly recognize that he loves his brother, even if it sadly took a loss to acknowledge it (though we can infer in the BBS timeline they also became much closer for some time -- we see them playing together and phil ii knows his uncle's whereabouts, implying a consistent family relationship. and of course phil ii still has his name because YJ has liked the name philip since he was a toddler, so no it's not a plot hole like some people think). in fact, i think naming his son after fry isn't just honoring the (allegedly) dead, but symbolically breaking the need to follow the fry family legacy by breaking the yancy name tradition. you can tell from what phil ii became that his father encouraged him in a way fry was never encouraged, and i think that's in part because YJ retrospectively respects his brother so much more and probably regrets their strained relationship.

so i don't think it's any coincidence that phil ii shared the same dream as fry -- i think YJ had some good stories to tell that planted some ambitious seeds in his son's mind early on. :)

#answers #futurama #philip j fry #yancy fry jr #yancy jr #fry #phil ii #fry fam #analysis #the luck of the fryrish #also i hc that phil ii is autistic diagnosed and it kind of made YJ reevaluate some things abt his family

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blaqueswanzaghouliishiilikeda · 2 years ago

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This may be my personal reading but I think Claudia very deliberately riled up Lestat in that chess scene so she could expose everything to Louis and get him to leave with her. I never saw Claudia for one second believing anything Lestat promised, but she likely went along with letting Lestat back in cause she knew that Louis needed to be shown without a doubt that Lestat was full of shit before he would actually agree to leave. Cause in that first chess scene its not like Lestat is saying anything provocative or aggressive towards anyone, for all we know, he's playing his part really well yet she pokes at him with very sensitive jabs (Nicki) to get him to expose himself, which he does and that helps to push Louis closer to leaving. She knows at this point Lestat isn't thinking about her much more than as a means to keep Louis so she turns that against him as now she becomes the means to get Louis away from Lestat.

I always wondered why in those 6 years did she not leave NOLA? We see that Louis is physically perfectly fine by year 3. She must've known with the non-stop gifts from Lestat it was only a matter of time before Louis was worn down.

im gonna push back on this hard. i want you to know that i’m not like mad or angry or shutting you down. im just VERY passionate about children especially black children.

before i get into it we do not see a louis who is perfectly fine ever. there is not a single episode when louis is in anyway stable. this is a assertion that does not take into account the beast of PTSD. that shit showed up with flashbacks in Dubai. He was not okay. and Claudia knew that.

also before i get to whats really driving me to push back. we are disagreeing in Lestat playing his part well. Louis is in love and bonded (the real actual definition of trauma bonded, not like how its been wildly misinterpreted) to lestat. He is not going along with this because Lestat is playing his part well. He is manipulating Louis. He is trying to manipulate Claudia. Lestat is the one who broke their relationship it does not matter that he’s not being provocative or aggressive in this scene. the last ten or so minutes ep 5 is enough of a reason for her to NEVER trust him again. What does it say that ANYONE should expect her to over look that alone and play nice because in this moment he’s not doing anything that is a take i cannot and will not agree with.

but ep 5 is not a stand alone. he been provocative and aggressive from the beginning.

but im gonna have to push back on something that has been bothering me. Claudia is not without emotion. and she is not without feeling. in fact locked up at fourteen she is MADE UP of emotion and feeling. she is NOT just a plotting monster. i thought i challenged this take enough in my rewatch but imma have to get into it more. maybe she doesnt feel the ramifications of her actions. maybe she isnt burdened by guilt bc of her age. maybe shes more ruthless bc of her age. why should i not attribute emotion to that. this is where i think ppl like to refuse the full breath of children’s humanity. kids seek nurture and care. they’ll do anything for it. they don’t have an full understanding of everything. but they are not these unfeeling cold monsters that just go about being destructive and not caring. a friend of mine told me onetime he took i think it was a jelly fish or something from the sea and put it in the bathwater bc he wanted to keep it. he didnt understand that would kill it. when it died he was so fucking anguished he cried for the rest of the day especially when his parents told him it happened bc he put it in the bath. that it belongs in the sea.

he didnt do that bc children are cruel monsters. he did that because he didnt understand the variety of life and the particular needs of that animal. but he is full of emotion. it was love that made him pick up that animal. it was love that made him want to keep it. it was love that crushed him when he found out what he had done.

now. i see to much that y’all wanna only allow the monster piece in claudia and it drives me up the wall. and her childhood is often used agaisnt her. shes more of a monster bc she didnt get to live a full life she let go of her humanity bc she didnt have all the years of humanity loustat did. except she had 14 years of humanity. in 14 years she lived a life. and i refuse to take that away from her. she is angry!! she is angry and sad and lonely and frustrated and isolated and alienated and reaching for connection and she is time and again denied her personhood. That is the humanity in her. she also fed the fuck up!!! and how she chooses to go about getting her ass out of there does not take away her humanity.

she is also curious. she also is loving and wants love in return. she is also nurturing and wants to be nurtured back. she is also gentle and wants gentleness back. ALL of this drives her ruthlessness for fighting back. her ruthlessness for killing. her ruthlessness for surviving. and her ruthless for doing what needs to be done to get out.

she also dragged louis out to algiers bc she loves him. bc it hurts her to see him. why do you think they included that little walk where they were talking about Emily Dickinson? they were happy. they weren’t perfectly fine. but they were happy. they were relaxed. they were at peace. they were each others. they werent constantly under the threat of abuse and mistreatment and fear. Louis traded that for his relationship with Lestat. I can understand why he did that and also stand with her on her anger about that. that fucking HHURTS! it hurts children when the abuser comes back home. it hurts them. she was hurt. so no i dont agree that she just did that to plot against them. hating and loving are often times not mutually exclusive. sometimes you hate because you love. and eventually with enough signs it wont get better hate can eclipse love. but thats where it was born. at least thats what i see was elevated in their relationship with the amcverse.

#mw asks #claudia is a full person #a whole person #she’s not only just doing things to further the plot to me #shes a ruthless vampire bc times were ruthless and the trauma that turned her was ruthless and the hell she endured wasruthless and the #one conducting her hell was ruthless #iwtv #this was in my drafts i thought i posted it.

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swiftfootedachilles · 3 months ago

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wait actually i never thought of the comparison between mickey and debbie both being separated from their kids during crucial development times because of incarceration good lord i just know if the s4 writers were still on the show they wouldve at least touched on that a bit. even just one scene showing debbie and frannys reunion and mickey asking her what it was like to be without franny. i can literally see the scene in my head now. i need to invent time travel and go back to write season 11 i can singlehandedly make the greatest season of television to ever exist

when i first watched s11 i kinda got mickeys attitude bc i know during covid i regressed a lit mentally so i acted like i was an annoying teenager again 😭 but i was also stuck with my parents during quarantine and thats why i acted so childish. but nonetheless i really tried to make mickeys character make sense, for my own sake not to bail out the writers idgaf about them

but i still cannot get over that scene of ian being told hes the man in the relationship and saying "gender's a social construct but thank you" THATS THE IAN WE SAW DATE TREVOR! THATS THE IAN WE WATCHED LEARN ABOUT THE INTRICACIES OF GENDER AND SEX!! SO WHY THE FUCK DOES HE STILL THINK TOPPING = DOMINATING = MAN. SIR YOU ARE TOO OLD TO BE ACTING LIKE THIS BECAUSE YOU FEEL YOUR MASCULINITY IS BEING QUESTIONED

the writers couldve spent literally 2 minutes writing a scene where they SIT DOWN AND TALK and instead of being a misogynist ian couldve said "hey i know you wanna do this thing and you thought id be into it bc ive done it before but i actually dont enjoy bottoming. and youre not less of a man for bottoming. you should do what you enjoy, not what you think you should enjoy" literally why on gods green earth did ian spend that entire episode believing in gender essentialism but in the same breath admitting gender is a social construct NOTHING YOURE SAYING MAKES SENSE BABYGIRL!!! SHUT UP!!!!

like you said their fighting couldve been over their clashing beliefs in gender ideology. like it wouldve taken 0 effort on the writers behalf to kept the bickering but just changed ians stance from "IM the man" to "we're both the man thats the whole point of our relationship mickey we're gay"

i am actually a s11 defender because i still was entertained and it had some pretty good moments plus you will have to pry married gallavich from my cold dead hands. but to be a s11 lover i also have to be a s11 hater. and man theres just....so many missed opportunities so many loose ends that couldve been tied up with even just one scene. just one scene wouldve been enough to placate most fans. just to prove to us they didnt forget about all the previous characters and plots. but instead i had to watch ian and mickey fight over not having friends (everyone that attended their wedding were just there for fun apparently. also fuck mandy i guess. fuck that weird gay jesus girl who scared terry away from their wedding i guess) and have an orgy over it for some reason

although i do still think its better the writers we did have for s11 didnt bring up yev or other serious topics because i truly think fic writers have done infinitely better jobs at tackling such subjects in fill-in fics

The whole Yev situation is complicated, but I do find it a little strange how he was not mentioned in season 10 and 11 when Mickey and Ian talked about having kids. Did the writers forget about him?

ive mentioned this before. mickey was raped, he never wanted a child, yev was (presumably) happy and healthy with svetlana after her final marriage. they probably had a conversation off-screen where ian tried to talk about it or tell mickey where yev was and mickey responded "if he's with him mom and being taken care of, i don't wanna talk about this" and ian dropped it. yeah the writers probably kinda forget about his existence, but i feel there's a very simple in-character answer for why gallavich never touches the subject

#iirc all the shitty gay plots (#(byron 11x3 and 11x7) were all written by the same gay man #and i hate him they never shouldve put his ass in the writers room #like they couldve mentioned yev/svet once in all of seasons 10&11 and people would've been cheering and hollering #they couldve mentioned mandy texting ian once and the audience wouldve been on their knees crying #but we couldnt even get the bare minimum 😭#gallavich #shameless #shameless meta #gallavich meta #i cant keep typing this much i NEED a podcast

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9worldstales · 3 years ago

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MCU Loki: Why I fear they failed to deliver what they promised

At this point I’m kind of confused by who the “Loki” series is trying to reach or which is the goal/message they’re trying to pass along.

They had tried to intrigue assorted audience but, if you ask me, the series has often failed to deliver what it seemed to promise.

Of course I might be wrong. Or maybe I'm not seeing another type of audience the series aimed and managed to reach.

When the series started I wanted to keep a positive mentality and hope whatever seemed not to work would be fixed along the way or have a reason for existing that I just wasn't seeing because I hadn't seen the full story yet.

However, after 5 episodes I'm starting to lose hope the series will make a genuine effort to reach the fans at whom it seemed to aim.

PART 1 – “LOKI” IS NOT FOR THE OLD FANS WHO PRODUCED META SHOWING HOW HIS TRAUMA DAMAGED HIM

"I think it's the struggle with identity, who you are, who you want to be. I'm really drawn to characters who are fighting for control. Certainly you see that with Loki over the first 10 years of movies, he's out of control at pivotal parts of his life, he was adopted and everything and that manifest itself through anger and spite towards his family." [Loki's Struggle With His Identity Confirmed To Be A Focus Of His Disney+ Series]

What was it about Loki as a character that attracted you? He’s just fun, for one. He has a very playful sense of humor about him. I like how he never quite lets you know what he’s thinking. Beyond that, what I connect to about him is the same thing the legions of fans do, which is his humanity and his vulnerability. This is a guy who—yes, on the one hand, he was the prince of Asgard, seems like a nice life—but his father, in fact, killed his actual birth father, adopted him, lied to him about his heritage and parentage his entire life, he was forced to live in the shadow of his oafish older brother who was born to be king. He’s experienced a lot of trauma, and I think that what he’s looking for is just a little bit of control over his life. Which he feels like maybe he’s never quite had. That’s something I think we can all relate with. [From Loki to Doctor Strange and Star Wars, Michael Waldron Is the New Franchise Whisperer]

Let’s be honest, the audience for the “Loki” series is not really meant to be Marvel movies old time fans who enjoyed “Thor” and “The Avengers”, made countless Meta analyzing Loki’s behaviour and who wanted answers about what happened to Loki prior to “The Avengers” or wanted to see Loki’s family terrible dynamics be discussed, or at least to see explored the wrong dynamics of Loki’s interracial adoption (he’s taken away from his planet, the truth is hidden from him, his look is changed to disguise him as an Asgardian, nothing is done against the racial hate for the Jotuns at which Loki is exposed, even witnessing it from his brother) or talk how much in control of himself Loki was during “The Avengers” (okay, the web said the sceptre manipulated Loki, but what about acknowledging that in his own series? It doesn’t have to come from Loki who had no idea he was manipulated but someone could mention ‘think yourself lucky here the stones don’t work, they’ve the nasty tendency to manipulate people’).

The series has avoided digging into all that as much as they could.

Even when Loki talks with Sylvie, the most we get is a small big about how Frigga was awesome in his eyes and taught him magic, but this isn’t meant to explain any of the issues Loki had with his family, it just make Sylvie feel bad because she can’t remember her adoptive mother, as for the D.B. Cooper born out of a bet with Thor, yeah, fun but completely random. What’s meant to be the message about family dynamics here, that it was the bets between Thor and Loki that caused Loki to decide to conquer Earth? Or what about the Sif loop? Is it there to push on Loki the blame of his poor relation with Sif?

No, clearly not.

In regard to Loki the Frigga flashback is there to remark he had a loving and supportive family while the other two are there to have Loki admit he is ‘a mischievous scamp’, ‘a horrible person’ and ‘a narcissist’.

To put it in Classic Loki’s words: ‘Damn it! Animals, animals! We lie and we cheat, we cut the throat of every person who trusts us, and for what? Power. Glorious power. Glorious purpose! We cannot change. We're broken, every version of us. Forever. And whenever one of us dares try to fix themselves, they're sent here to die.’

In short it’s all Loki’s fault if he does bad, nothing happened to him that could have messed him up, he’s just a horrible person… however…

PART 2 – “LOKI” IS NOT FOR THE OLD AND NEW FANS WHO BELIEVED LOKI TO BE A DANGEROUS, EVIL, PSYCHOPATH VILLAIN EITHER

"Loki is an a**, and that makes my life as a writer, easy." ... "Due to the trauma in Loki’s life, I would even [accept a story] in which he is committed to being all bad." [Michael Waldron on Loki: He’s an a**. That makes things easy]

Considering the series is trying to pin SOLELY on Loki his wrongdoing, completely skipping the toxic way in which he was raised you might think they want to paint him as an evil, psychopath who was just born bad.

But no, that’s not the intention, we see it from the start.

Loki is given a quick briefing on how his beloved family loved him despite him hurting them, a briefing that contains false information which would work if we accept the briefing as manipulative but, at this point I’m not so sure that was the author’s intent. The Doylist purpose of the briefing is clearly to show the audience how Loki cares for his family, how he still has feelings, feels pain at the idea Frigga and Odin died and wish to make up with his brother.

It’s not just they loved him and did nothing wrong toward him, it’s also he who loved them and didn’t mean to harm them. That’s why we’re fed that damn discourse about Loki sending the Dark Elves to kill Frigga, because the series wants to remark that no, Loki didn’t want to kill his family, he loved them.

Tom Hiddleston used to say what Loki is came from a place of pain but the series didn’t explore that place of pain… it just gave him more pain and not just in episode 1. Episode 2 has him discovering Asgard is destroyed, episode 3 has him remembering Frigga, episode 4 shows him believing Sylvie die and watching Mobius being pruned. He doesn’t cry in Ep 5, episode 5 wants us to truly feel bad for Sylvie, not for him, but there’s a lot of bitterness from Classic Loki who commits a heroic suicide so you might say we get a sad Loki anyway.

And this also works as a shock to make him change his mind about his ‘glorious purposes’. Sorta, with Thor reminding us he’s not so bad and Loki explaining his behaviour as “I don't enjoy hurting people. I... I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to, because I've had to. Because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear.”

Plot-wise, this is completely useless.

The show will prove Sylvie is not Loki and has completely different motivations and Mobius, being an expert in Variants, should know.

What’s more why would Mobius care if Loki enjoys hurting people or not?

His goal is to capture Sylvie with Loki’s help. The most he should care about is how to keep Loki loyal to him, not if Loki has fun hurting people or not which, in fact, is a knowledge that won’t be used in his investigation.

No, this is here for the viewers, to tell them Loki isn’t a sadistic, evil villain, he’s someone weak who tries to scare others so as not to look weak. As Mobius will put in ‘a scared little boy, shivering in the cold’ who has an ‘insecure need for validation’.

What’s more?

The show will try his hardest to establish he’s not even competent.

Let’s talk of him as a fighter.

In the movies Loki is a competent fighter and side material establish he’s pretty strong, definitely much more than a human.

In “The Avengers” we see Captain America needs Iron Man’s help to beat him and, anyway, Loki’s plan was to be captured. Loki manages to walk away on his feet when Coulson hits him with that superspecial weapon and it’ll take him to be Hulk smashed after a fight with Thor and a meeting with an explosive arrow of Hawkeye before he can’t fight any longer.

This doesn’t happen in the “Loki” series.

Loki gets beaten up by various people in 4 episodes, preferably women (B-15, the people possessed by Sylvie, the guards on the train, Sif). You might say in episode 5 he’s not but actually Classic Loki is the one who gets swallowed by Alioth and our Loki instead survives because he has Sylvie supporting him as, on his own he couldn’t even distract Alioth.

Let’s talk of him as a wizard.

He can use magic, impressive magic but… it serves him mostly nothing. In the TVA his magic doesn’t work. Outside of it is mostly useless. It doesn’t help win fights. The Tempad he caused to disappear gets broken. To beat Alioth they needs enchantment, not his own magic. What’s more, when they’ve to go on the train his disguise wouldn’t have worked without Sylvie’s enchantment and, if this wasn’t enough, he got drunk, removed the disguise and wasn’t even able to make tickets appear.

Classic Loki too, with his impressive illusions is ultimately a distraction. Alioth tears easily through his illusions which aren’t even solid.

Let’s talk of him as a planner.

All Loki will accomplish is to escape from the Time theatre for a brief period in episode 1 and figure out Sylvie hides in apocalypses in episode 2. The rest of his plans fails or are not plan or are mocked over and not even put into practice.

Let’s talk about him as a manipulator with a silver tongue.

He can’t even persuade Mobius when he’s telling him the truth, Mobius dismisses it as a lie due to ‘cockroach's survival mechanism’.

And psychologically?

He’s just someone who crave attention because he’s a narcissist scared of being alone. Not a psychopath.

Loki is not meant to be a dangerous, evil, psychopath villain in this series, he’s a not serious man, a clown, a scared little boy in need of attention, a narcissist who needs to be loved.

Welcome to cartoon villain Loki, this Loki isn’t the Variant of “The Avengers” Loki, he’s the Variant of “Avengers Assemble”Loki… only he’s even less competent than him.

PART 3 – “LOKI” IS NOT EVEN HERE FOR GENERAL MARVEL MOVIE FANS

"That's a lot of Infinity Stones. That's true but they are useless there in the TVA, so I don't know. Is that gun loaded or not? We'll see..." [Loki Writer Comments On Whether TVA’s Infinity Stones Will Return In MCU]

“We had to create an insane institutional knowledge of how time travel would work within the TVA so the audience never has to think about it again. It was a lot of drawings of squiggly timelines.” Marvel already made its case for how time travel works in Avengers: Endgame, but that, Waldron points out, “is the way the Avengers understand it.” With a TV show it’s a little different. “I was always very acutely aware of the fact that there’s a week between each of our episodes and these fans are going to do exactly what I would do, which is pick this apart. We wanted to create a time-travel logic that was so airtight it could sustain over six hours. There’s some time-travel sci-fi concepts here that I’m eager for my Rick and Morty colleagues to see.” [How the Man Behind LokiIs Shaping Marvel’s Phase 4 and Beyond]

BC: The TVA is there to clean everybody up? MW: Yeah, Avengers: Endgame… that's how The Avengers understand time travel. 'Loki,' episode one, is how the TVA explains time travel to Loki and we're certainly building on what's come before us. [Loki: Michael Waldron On Gender Fluidity, Mephisto, Time Travel & More]

It’s true “Loki” is focusing on a new corner of the MCU but it interconnects very poorly with the movies before it.

Although Loki escaped with the Tesseract... it just dismisses completely the Infinity Stones.

Despite talking a lot about timelines and creating branching realities it waved away the whole plot of "Avengers: Endgame" as apparently supposed to happen even though it should have created branching realities.

We see Renslayer wave away how the Avengers went in the past causing the Tesseract to end up in Loki’s hands... and all the other things the Avengers did that affected the past goes unmentioned.

Bruce meeting the Ancient, Thor meeting his mother and taking away Thor’s hammer, Rocket being seen as he steals the reality stone from Jane, Tony stealing a suitcase and damaging the place in which the Tesseract was kept then meeting Howard Stark, 4 flacons of Pyn particles missing, an alarm given to the military bases, how Steve managed to bring back the sceptre if that timeline was pruned, how a timeline handled being without Thanos and Co as they went in the future or how they clearly didn’t bring the orb back the second they took it as Nebula remained unconscious there and nobody came and when she woke up Thanos could get her. It didn’t even explain why Steve remaining with Peggy didn’t change anything.

It's not that the audience has all explained... it's that they were told to dismiss it as 'meant to happen' and that was it.

What's more, the TVA apparently didn't list a finger to stop 2014 Thanos from going in the future and causing Tony Stark's death.

As if this wasn't enough, “Loki” just skips any possible connection with the movies, even hands Loki false information about them (he lead the Dark Elves to his mother when Loki had no idea the Kurse was a Dark Elf and they would have found her anyway as they were searching for the Aether which Malekith could sense, he’s born solely to cause pain and suffering and death, overlooks how he saved Jane twice or helped the Asgardian escape Hela) and never discusses them again.

Even with Classic Loki, who’s a Variant of “Avengers: Infinity War” Loki, they don’t talk about what happened after Loki’s supposed dead, apparently hinting it was better if he died, nor explain how Loki knew Thor survived.

PART 4 – “LOKI” IS NOT REALLY OFFERING A GOOD REPRESENTATION FOR FEMALES EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY AIMS AT FEMALE AUDIENCE

Let’s make a quick experiment.

Everyone, let’s name all the characters we remember which appeared in more than 1 episode of “Loki” for more than one minute.

We’ve, of course, Loki, Mobius, B-15, Renslayer, Sylvie, C-20 and Miss Minute.

5 females versus 2 males.

What’s more, females are not sexualized, they remains completely dressed, they’re clearly not there to attract male gazes, they’re represented as strong, dangerous, in control, something archived often by showing them beating males either physically or intellectually or in rank.

It seems promising. At first.

Is there someone who’s sexualized?

The “Loki” series takes care to offer us Tom Hiddleston naked.

So since there’s an abundance of females in the cast and Tom Hiddleston is shown naked is it aiming at a female audience?

Very, very likely but… but how’s then handled all this?

When Loki is seen undressed he’s not in a situation of power, like Thor who’s twice shows half naked in his movies but because he’s changing/washing and perfectly comfortable in showing his body and once in a situation which could be a male forbidden fantasy, to have many women massage your naked body, no, he’s shown as he’s powerless while being stripped by a machine. Clearly not a male power fantasy, more like a male nightmare.

And, in a totally not surprising way, pictures of this scene were spread by many female fans because it was aimed at them… though a part of them, was also honestly appalled at seeing this scene in contest, finding the forced stripping humiliating and degrading.

Sure, a naked Tom Hiddleston makes a nice eye-candy but this wasn’t how Loki’s many fans wanted to see Loki naked.

But let’s talk of female representation here, since the show seems to be interested in female audience… only who even though this was the representation women wanted doesn’t understand much of women representation in the first place.

Why?

For start because women here are all the same type of woman.

Strong fighters who’re in control and confident, with no real characterization beyond this to speak of despite the large amount of screen time.

Renslayer is an ex-hunter who can fight one on one against Sylvie and who clearly has the position of power she has because she was good as a hunter and shows her abilities in fighting after that Sylvie had beaten 2 guards at the same time. B-15 is introduced by beating Loki and is the commander of a squad. C-20 is another commander and, albeit possessed, can dispose of a part of her squad members.

Do I need to spend words on how Sylvie is depicted as this awesome fighter who has learnt to fight by herself, can keep at bay more than 1 Minuteman, can use a sword, has learnt enchantment on her own and is feared by all the TVA? Do I?

And it’s awesome to have women who are strong fighters in positions of command/power/control… but why women has to be represented as just that?

Even when they add a female as an one episode cameo, it's Sif, beating the hell out of Loki. And what about the Lady in Lamentis 1 who was too old to be strong but managed to blast away both Loki and Sylvie seeing through their deceptions?

Even the harmless Miss Minute can avoid being hit by Loki and gets she has to pretend to do researches to stall Sylvie and save Renslayer.

Women kick asses here… but that’s all they’re good for.

And so we get to Sylvie, who is the superior Loki Variant… because she’s female.

Kid Loki: You're different. Why? Loki: No, I'm not, you see? I'm the same, really. I'm the same as all of you. Have any of you met a woman Variant of us? Classic Loki: Sounds terrifying. Loki: Oh, she is. But that's kind of what's great about her. She's different. She's not trying to take over the TVA, she's trying to take it down. And she needs me. Now, you said Alioth is what keeps us here. You said it's a living thing. You said it's a shark. Well, if it lives, it dies. So I'm gonna kill the shark. I'm gonna kill Alioth, and I could use all the help I can get.

That’s what Loki preaches to his fellow Lokis who think a woman Loki would be terrific.

I mean, they’ve an alligator Loki, a POC Loki, but the one who has to be different is the female Loki. Because being female is a character trait.

Mobius: Okay. I feel like I'm always looking up to you. I like it. It's appropriate. [Ep 1]

Basically females in the “Loki” series are all representation of the Action girl trope and aren’t even different representation of said trope. I mean, “The Avengers” have 5 actions boy who’re clearly as different as they could be. Girls can be represented as different too, if they really aim at young audience they can take good old “Sailor Moon” as an example. 5 action girls who are strong and determinate AND DIFFERENT, more than just someone who kicks the adversary away.

And it’s not like they don’t know how to characterize people in a different way.

Mobius is an analyst who shows sympathetic traits toward the Variants and a certain level or intelligence. U-92 and D-90 are hunters who are shown to held Variants in little regard (U-92 wanted to attack the boy they found in the church, D-90 mistreated the scared people in the shelter). Casey is an harmless and naïve guy who had never seen a fish. The guy who made Loki sign the papers about what he said seemed emotionless but he clearly loved cats as not only he had one but on his cup there was also the image of a cat. Martin is clearly a bossy daddy’s son, who think too high of himself to the point he can’t respect rules. The boy in the church, despite thinking Sylvie was a demon, accepted and ate food she gave him and remained in the place despite the crime. He’s clearly more brave than he looked like but he’s also naïve as he easily trusted ‘the demon’ and Mobius.

What’s C-20 character trait when she gets described by Sylvie?

Sylvie: Yeah. She was just a regular person on Earth. Loki: A regular person? Sylvie: Loved margaritas.

She’s a regular person who loves margaritas. Liking a drink is not a character trait!

There’s a more diverse female representation in “Thor” than in “Loki”.

In “Thor” we’ve Frigga, queen of Asgard, loving mother and wife who’s powerless to erase Thor’s banishment. We’ve Sif, a dangerous and loyal warrior. We’ve Jane, the amazing scientist with a lot of enthusiasm. We’ve Darcy, who’s funny and who seems focused mostly on herself but who, when the city is attacked, worried to save all the animals at the pet store.

But maybe the one who gets the worst treatment is the supposed heroine, Sylvie, because the poor girl is turned into a Mary Sue.

In case someone isn’t familiar with the term:

“The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye colour, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal. She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favourite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc. Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series.” [tvtropes.org]

So let’s see how she fits this checklist:

1) She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye colour: Sylvie painted her hair blonde even though the Lokis are supposed to be black haired

2) has a similarly cool and exotic name: She is the only Loki Variant who has changed her name from Loki to Sylvie.

3) She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting: Awesome at fighting she can enchant people, an ability the Lokis don’t posses, that she magically learnt on her own and that is necessary in the story. Also she figured out how a Tempad worked BEFOREseeing it in action.

4) She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing: No flaws, all her plans involve fighting and brute force is no substitute for diplomacy and guile, which could be a flaw… if it wasn’t for the fact that the series will prove Sylvie can plan just fine without using fighting and brute strength and also be successful at it.

5) She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story: She was taken by the TVA when she was younger than Kid Loki but managed to escape them and had to live alone and on the run till then.

6) The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting: Loki, who has never loved anyone, falls for her, Mobius saves her and apologizes to her, B-15, who used to look down at Variants, basically asks her what should they do and is shown admiring her, the Lokis don’t criticize her plan, Classic Loki dies to save her, everyone views her as the superior Loki Variant.

7) if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal: Renslayer, the hunter who has arrested her, is currently playing the part of the antagonist who’s fascist and believes in a murderous, lying cult.

8) She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favourite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc.: She’s the Variant and love interest of the titular character.

9) Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series: Loki, the title character, has conveniently been turned into someone who’s a weak fighter and incapable of planning which Sylvie has to save by enchanting guards or giving him her sword or pruning herself or teaching him how to enchant and coming up with all the plans.

Now all she needs in order to be a perfect Mary Sue is to know how to sing well as Mary Sue usually do this as well, though I’m sure she can do it because Loki could so she surely can.

Sylvie is amazing, Loki himself said so:

Loki: No. We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don't die. We survive. I mean, you did. You were just a child when the TVA took you, but you nearly took down the organization that claims to govern the order of time. You did it on your own. You ran rings around them. You're amazing!

There’s nothing inherently wrong in having a new female character who’s competent, for whom the hero falls and who changes him… if all this is built around a solid plot.

Think at “Iron Man”.

Tony Stark is, to quote Tony Stark himself a “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? But the movie shows us why he’s that.

It spends time setting up his pedigree, how he inherited the money and intelligence from his father, how he was supported as he grew and studied becoming always a greater genius. Tony shows himself to be charming before seducing his first woman onscreen so that when he does it makes sense. His philanthropic activities are, at first, just mentioned but seems rooted in how his father was a hero who helped fighting Nazi and then they became his mission. He felt guilty he was a merchant of death and tried to make up for it.

Sylvie too could have a solid plot behind herself.

Instead than magically knowing what a TemPad does and how it works and managing to escape with it, she could have escaped with, let’s say, a hunter that discovered the truth and decided to rebel to the TVA or just had pity of her. Maybe another Mobius Variant who used to work at the TVA prior to Mobius and that, instead than an analyst was a hunter. She might have learnt fighting from him and then he too died and she was left alone.

Enchantment might have been an ability she might have learnt coming in contact with a mind stone. It could have been an occasion also to talk how mind stones can influence people negatively. Or it could have been taught to her by Frigga who, with a female daughter, decided to teach her a different type of magic than Loki.

Her past could have been explored more instead than being tragic for the sake of tragic. We might have seen her fall in love and either be betrayed or have to say goodbye to her loved one because that reality got pruned. We might have seen her being interested in males and females alike as she’s supposed to be interested in both.

She could have had discussions with Loki that weren’t just about Frigga or about how the TVA kidnapped her from Asgard, she escaped and from that point on she was always on the run, or about how love didn’t feel real, but more about how they were, how they felt, what hurt them and what made them happy, what they liked and what they disliked, their ideals and their fears, things that can built up a relation.

Loki basically fall for her because she’s on a mission for revenge instead than power and seems confident. That’s his reasoning.

She falls for Loki… because apparently he’s the person who spend time with her who praised her. That’s not a solid love story, that’s desperation.

SYlvie could have flaws, she could have learnt diplomacy or persuasion from Loki or could have something she lacks and Loki has so that they would complete each other.

And since the purpose was to have Sylvie and Loki fall for each other… they could have let Loki have characteristics that can motivate the exceptional heroine to fall in love for him PRIOR to him falling in love for her. He might be shown good at something, instead than just a clown.

Even if we say the real purpose of this series was to turn Sylvie into the protagonist, the heroine, a good Loki character was still needed to explain why this awesome girl would fall for him.

So okay, there will surely still be women who can see themselves in Sylvie and imagine they got Loki… and it’s not bad really… but I think we deserved more.

Long story short, yes, “Loki” has many females in its cast and this is meant to draw the female audience… but the representation is poor as almost all of the females have no character traits and Sylvie is just a Mary Sue with no realistic characterization.

A good female representation is diverse and solid. Women don't need to be born irrealistically perfect out of nothing to be good, they can inherith and grow and learn to be as such like any human being.

Last but not least…

PART 5 – DOES “LOKI” REALLY OFFERS REPRESENTATION TO THE LGBT COMMUNITY?

BC: There is a lot of talk on social media about Loki being gender fluid. Wouldn't that actually be a natural fit for the character? MW: Yeah, I guess as, with all questions pertaining to that stuff, I think those answers, truly, are best experienced in the watching of the show, as opposed to me trying to answer them. Because it's just watching it and the way that's addressed and everything will just be more fulfilling. BC: Why do you think it's important that Loki is gender fluid? MW: I think that Loki is a character that a lot of fans see representation in. People that haven't felt represented before, and they see themselves in Loki and everything. So we want to do justice to the character, to who the character is in the comics and in Norse mythology as well. And you also … you know you want folks to feel represented, and everything. That's why it's important. It always has been. It comes from everybody on the creative team. [Loki: Michael Waldron On Gender Fluidity, Mephisto, Time Travel & More]

The series hugely spread the info that this Loki would be fluid and Bisexual. The news were welcomed with delight and it’s awesome how the series didn’t hesitate to put it on paper.

Loki being fluid was written for everyone to see, and Loki having male and female interests was spelled out for everyone to hear.

IT’S A GREAT THING!

However…

It’s all we got.

It had no relevance into the plot whatsoever, it’s just a random info we’re given.

Him being fluid was on a paper along with his other data like eye colour and birth planet.

Him being interested in males and females seems to be put there just to imply he tried a large amount of people before deciding love didn’t feel real.

Assuming the other Lokis too were fluid, they actually found terrific the idea of a woman Loki in a not positive way. They weren’t interested or asking for clarifications about what Loki meant.

Loki’s bisexuality doesn’t even get a side story, them sending Fandral to beat Loki instead than Sif because Loki cheated on him or something. I’m not upset Loki ended up with a female, this is one of the possibilities of a Bisexual person. I’m upset that this was used merely to attract the audience but then wasn’t explored. They could have said Asgard was open minded with it, or disapproved it so Loki had to keep it hidden, or it could have been Sylvie who discussed some experience in that regard.

We were told over and over it was a show about identity. We expected it to be explored instead we were just told ‘ah, by the way, Loki is bisexual, let’s move on.’ And that was all.

Having representation from an important Marvel character is always important, especially considering the shortage of representation. But honestly I expected more.

PART 7 – TO SUM IT UP

Many of the people who worked in “Loki” are fantastic actors. They worked hard for this series, I can see they tried their best.

The premises for the “Loki” series are interesting.

We get a Loki who hadn’t experienced most of what happened in the movies yet, we make him confront with someone who knows his life, the one he lived and the one he was meant to live and we also make him confront with Variations of himself.

Loki has the Tesseract and the TVA has plenty of infinity stones, we could explore them.

The TVA itself have a fascist organization that dictates people’s lives and murders whoever tries to do differently, that goes so far as to brainwash the people working in it, which mistreats and belittle the Variants and establish a manipulative cult around the Time-Keeper with elements of police brutality which could be very actual.

Time travelling was the plot of "Avengers: Endgame" they could have tied the movie to the series, esplore the why some time travels were allowed and some weren't or their effects.

There were references to plenty of awesome comics they could take inspiration from.

But unless it redeems itself with the last episode… well, so far it’s failing to deliver what it promised due to a really poor plot which doesn’t give the characters a chance to be themselves or to be characterized as they’ve no real story nor real differences to speak of.

They’re given more time than a movie as they’re a series… but that’s no good excuse for wasting said time.

I’m still hoping the last episode will be spectacular, that it’ll manage to erase the messes of the other 5… but, as of now I’m disappointed.

I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and hope they’ll surprise me.

#mcu loki #loki #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #9 worlds study

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raymondebidochonlifechoices · 3 years ago

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All fans are equal but some are more equal than others. NOT.

There’s been quite a few people in the fandom lately getting very stressed, feeling they’re obligated to constantly be on the defensive re: their fandom choices.

Apparently, whoever has a different opinion about a character or a ship must be said character’s/ship’s stan i.e. overzealous and/or obsessive, i.e. not an objective viewer. Even worse, they must be a dreadful person, who condones a number of moral offences that said character/ship perpetrated (or is thought to have perpetrated). Because, of course, the only acceptable reason for appreciating/enjoying a fictional character or dynamic is their morality. And, by that reasoning, fans who support the correct character/ship must be better fans and better people.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the notion of the objective fan. An “objective” fan is called a “viewer”. You and I, Riverdale friends, we are not just viewers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have created blogs and dedicated hours of our lives to a fictional couple from an extremely mediocre show. We are still undoubtedly capable of critical thought and objective analysis but we are also aware of our own emotional investment in the show. (Or, at least, one hopes). As a fandom, we engage in activities that exist independently of the show. Fandom is a space of free expression. No one gets to play the higher moral card here. Needing to loudly tell everybody how wrong they are? That’s not the sign of an objective viewer. That’s the sign of a viewer who is also extremely invested, just for different reasons than I am.

Are we seriously holding the morality card over people’s heads for a show that used a poc woman’s pregnancy (Toni) as the means to retroactively establish trauma for a white male (Kevin), all the while touting it in every media possible as a woke response to the BLM movement?!

Are we seriously holding the canon card over people’s heads for a show that treats its 5th(!) season as a tabula rasa?! If the Lodges new backstory in 5x12 shows anything, it’s that s5 is not a time-jump. It’s a reboot.

There are so many people “enlightening” others on their inability to understand canon …

Seriously? That’s the hill you’re willing to die on? Canon Riverdale? You think that people don’t understand what they’re watching? That they’re interpreting canon incorrectly?

No, but seriously: canon for a TV show consists of what the characters say, what the characters do and how the actors portray them. Does this really apply to Riverdale?

Let’s take Donna for example.

Canon explicitly tells us Donna did what she did to avenge her grandmother. At the same time none of her canon actions were against the people who were actually responsible. So, riddle me this, fandom friends: why did Donna do what she did, as per canon?

Let’s try this another way:

Donna is a psycho bitch. Both in terms of Riverdale’s canon (the writers’ intention) and real-life criteria. To create a tag that reads “Bonna for ever uwu!” is deranged.

On the other hand, her character is (like a lot of Riverdale’s characters) an inconsistent caricature. Canon uses ridiculous dialogue and a lot of the Bonna scenes are cartoonishly enemies-to-lovers tropey. To create a tag that reads “Bonna for ever uwu!” is hilarious.

This doesn’t mean that Bonna is a canon couple. It does mean, however, that a Bonna crackship is based on Riverdale’s campy and over-the-top canonic writing.

A viewer who thinks Bonna is disgusting is not more “objective” or more “correct” or more “true to canon” than a viewer who thinks Bonna is funny. Nor are they a better person for it, and this cannot be stressed enough.

Similarly, who is canon Cheryl?

1. Cheryl is an absolute bitch: if a privileged student was calling an actual homeless boy a hobo in your real-life school, you would neither think her a queen nor use “hobo” affectionately in your tags, comments etc.

2. Cheryl is a deeply traumatized person: her father killed her brother, her mother killed half the town and forced her in conversion therapy, she attempted suicide and more.

(Note #1: this more does not mean more than the other Riverdale characters).

(Note #2: nor is it an excuse for her rudeness, affectionately called “mood for chaos” by the writers).

3. Cheryl is also a caricature of the archetypal mean girl who’s there for laughs and meta comments. She’s not to be taken seriously.

4. Cheryl is lgbtq+ representation …

5. … who canonically shits on other lgbtq+ characters.

6. Cheryl is one half of Choni, who are canonically presented as an uber couple.

7. Choni is also, as per canon, a couple with an acute power imbalance (cough!gaslighting!cough) that visually very clearly panders to the male gaze.

But most importantly:

8. Cheryl canonically is not the sum of her parts. The different facets of her character do not intermingle in any meaningful way.

Was Betty kissing Archie specifically a sore spot for Jughead?

Canonically no [2x14]. But, also, canonically yes [5x03, 5x10].

Are there seriously fans that are astonished that Betty is making some highly questionable choices while investigating?! Did they just discover Dark™Betty/Killer Genes Betty? That is canon Betty! Was it ok before because she was then smooching Jughead instead of giving him the cold shoulder? Honestly, the only newly outrageous part of s5Dark™Betty is the fact that she still believes in ��killer genes” despite having spent 4 years at Yale …

As for liking/disliking Betty and morality …

Look, I’m going to be very honest: I am NOT particularly enjoying s5 Betty. And it’s not because of b*rchie.

S5 Betty has 99 problems but the sexcapades ain’t one.

For me, it’s the fact that she’s turned into s1 Alice 2.0. But surely that’s not news either? Ever since the first info about the time jump, everyone and their mother have been speculating about the teens becoming their parents …

Just because Jughead is better written (and written to be more likable), it doesn’t make him more worthy of redemption. Just because the writers are keeping Betty’s redemption “secret” (insert eye roll) for their big reveal in the season’s penultimate episode, it doesn’t mean she won’t have one.

Simply put, the writers have made Jughead more likable. He’s still the underdog. He’s the only character in Riverdale actively trying to deal with his trauma, since the very first post-time jump episode (working at Pop’s explicitly to fend off the debt collectors). He has scenes with a new and extremely likable character (Tabitha). He has the only new plot line (the Mothman). Said plotline is narratively already tied to both his unknown past and the town’s destruction by Hiram. His behaviour is explicitly explained, even as his recent trauma remains unknown. He’s transparent.

In comparison, s5 Betty is traumatized but not the underdog. Her trauma (TBK killer) is both known to us and a repetition of previous storylines, which makes it narratively less exciting. She is completely disconnected from any other storylines. She comes out as being judgmental and self-interested: telling Tabitha Jughead’s not her business while previously accepting his help? Berating Polly for lying while not keeping in touch and lying about her own life (TBK)? Please note: I’m not saying there isn’t a reason behind her behaviour, just that it comes out in a negative way.

You don’t like Betty’s current behaviour? You don’t consider trauma a good enough excuse? Cool.

You feel sorry for what she’s going through? You consider trauma to be a valid explanation for her behaviour? Also cool.

Personally, I don’t give a flying fig, either for Betty’s trauma or Jughead’s. Because, even though Trauma™ is s5’s actual mystery plot, narratively speaking, trauma never affected the plot of the past 4 seasons, nor s5 trauma will affect future plots, once revealed. And you know what? That is also cool.

None of the above is better.

And just because I’m not enjoying Betty right now, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want her to overcome her current situation or that I won’t cheer for Bughead like a River Vixen on fizzle rocks, once they reunite.

This thing though, where people are made to feel as if they owed anyone in the fandom an explanation about why they like the things they like, because, somehow, their preferences are a reflection on their character or their cognitive abilities to read a TV show? This is a joke.

There is no “wrong” way to consume any show, let alone Riverdale, with its fractured format, its short-term memory and its see-sawing characters.

Look, everybody’s here for their own reasons. For most people this is a place of escape. No one’s escaping better than the other, because of how they enjoy their teen TV show ...

#Riverdale writers negativity #fandom negativity #fandom entitlement

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coffee-in-that-nebula · 3 years ago

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!Spoilers! Snowpiercer: S03E09: A Beacon for us All [my usual review]

So, the latest episode of “Snowpiercer” was the most interesting of this season so far and this only happened for one obvious reason: Melanie is back. But it’s not only that, it’s also Connelly’s energy and acting skills that kinda saved the day, so ty for that.

Well, the episode was better, but we cannot say it was perfect or even as good as the most episodes of the two previous seasons. The plot issues are still here and the characters... are still kinda off, you know.

First of all, Melanie’s rescue and return felt rushed to me and also I believe it happened kinda... quickly? I mean, season 3 is kinda slow and it’s been dragging a lot, like an entire episode was literally wasted on Layton’s dream - and I still can’t get over that btw. And yet, besides all that, Melanie was rescued quickly and with no drama by Josie. We also got a *very* quick flash-back, where we saw how Melanie survived for all these months. Everything was going fast at the time and the writers acted like they wanted to cover a possible plot-hole in the possible safest way. And that was the question we would all have: how did Melanie survive?

Still, I really wanted to know more about all the months that Melanie spent away from Snowpiercer. I wanted to know more about her thoughts, feelings and fears. I also didn’t want to see that “3 days later”. I wanted to know more about her condition whey they found her and I would enjoy to know about Alex and Ben’s first thoughts and feelings. I know that these are kinda a matter of taste (and I apologize if they seem unimportant, lol) but there was much dedicated time to Wilford’s hospitalization. I just would enjoy if Melanie’s rescue and healing process had more time.

I guess I know why that happened. It seems that Melanie came back only for one reason: to move the plot forward. Although, before I talk about that, I’d like to talk about some other things first.

- I enjoyed Layton and Ben’s interaction much more than I thought I would. I’m not seeing a brotp, but it was nice they had a moment after all the time they’ve spent together maintaining Snowpiercer’s engine and moving the train forward.

- I’m glad that Josie and Ben are not really a thing. I didn’t like it when it happened and yeah let’s say that the fact that it happened out of desperation and loneliness kinda makes sense. I’m still not entirely convinced that those characters would act like that (especially Josie) but oh well.

- Layton’s love confession was out of place. Entirely. Except he dies in the next episode, which won’t really happen, since season 3 proves that Snowpiercer = Layton. Layton confessed his love to Josie for typical reasons in this season: pretty much someone told him to, so he did it. It’s exactly the same thing as when WIlford informed Alex that Melanie is alive. It’s the same as when Wilford told Melanie about the plot-hole of New Eden. It’s just like when Layton told Asha to say to everyone that she saw New Eden and so she did! But oh damn, the writing of “Snowpiercer” used to be more complicated than that. To be fair, though, I enjoyed Josie giving Layton the cold shoulder.

- Bess x Audrey is a big MEH. I mean Bess has a kinda bad taste in women (Jinju wasn’t an angel either) but AUDREY? I don’t really get it. I know that Bess needs to heal, but I believe that she also knows what type of person Audrey is. I don’t believe she would fall for her, not at all, but like, *that* easily. That feels rushed too. There was some kind of build - up but I didn’t expect to see Bess enamored with Audrey like that. As for Audrey... I plainly don’t trust her. She’s a chameleon tho and she wants badly to survive. She got really disappointed by Wilford’s weakness too and I believe she’s been searching for some new kind of authority in her life or something.

And now about the whole Melanie situation:

Melanie starts going around on Snowpiercer only to find out that she’s missed a lot. Everyone has pretty much continued with their lives, Alex is too busy having some kind of social life, Ben stares at her like a puppy (at least that didn’t change), Layton is too busy being the leader of the train and everyone looks forward to going to New Eden. Nobody really cares that much about what Melanie went through and nobody really asks her much about that [which is also weird]. The one person who *really* talks to her is Wilford. He even looks at her.

What’s the conclusion of all this? Wilford played everyone like a puppet, he convinced the crew to save Melanie only to apparently use her for his plan. There are two things that really don’t make any sense here:

The first one is that Melanie didn’t really question him. Also from the promo of the next episode it seems like Melanie and Wilford will cooperate which also doesn’t convince me.

The second one is that Ben and Alex are so convinced about the existence of the New Eden. Where did their critical thing go? Oh, well...

At least, Melanie took over Snowpiercer in like 10 minutes, which is the most convincing thing of this episode.

So, for the season’s standards, it was a good episode. But season 3 is not a good season. The plot is questionable and there is very inconsistent character writing, which is the biggest problem with this season and of course it affects Melanie’s return too.

#snowpiercer #snowpiercer spoilers #i am late with this review but i kinda wrote it #melanie cavill #tow melanie cavill is back #I didn't really say about LJ threatening hubs with a knife but it was getting late and I gotta wake up early tomorrow

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creativenicocorner · 3 years ago

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Piggybacking off of @undeadchestnut ‘s wonderful thoughts in this post (and decided to make my own post because although my thoughts are in the ballpark it might deviate from the posts original intention - and that’s not fair to op )

I am eternally glad I’m not alone in these thoughts! Because I absolutely believe Jim has never resolved his trauma both on screen and off.

And what we see in ROTT is the unfortunate consequences of that, be it as an anxiety induced nightmare or not.

It is a cautionary tale all the same.

The show has always had a sort of brushing away from trauma and skipping away from a moment to mourn (most likely to get to the next pretty thing or fart joke). It’s a little less in season 1 but still.

And yes, that choice could easily be an executive decision in trying to keep the target audience entertained and laughing - which is fair, but also not so fair. It would have been amazing - especially under the brand name of GDT monster lover extraordinaire - for a kids show to take the time to teach its audience that mourning and looking out for yourself is Important and Needed otherwise there’s a risk of self destructive tendencies developing and heightened stress affecting behavior and judgment [ point to slightly out of character Jim ]

Children should learn how to mourn, and know yes it is sad, and those feelings are okay and should learn how to navigate through them in a healthy way. Its just as important as occasionally scaring kids in shows - they are far smarter and cleverer than we give them credit for and sometimes showing sadness and scary things is beneficial! Just look at Inside Out! Or just any interview with Neil Gaiman on the importance of this!!

Gaiman confesses that the “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale really frightens him, but he does believe that children must be exposed to dark stories. Gaiman thinks that “if you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up. I think it is really important to show dark things to kids—and in the showing, to also show that dark things can be beaten, that you have power.” quote from here [x]

And while TOA had attempted this they never committed to it! And the attempts and commitments has, in my opinion, depleted since after season one.

Season one ends with Aargh turning to stone, and Jim watching Toby mourn, and in turn making a choice to go into the Darklands alone instead of taking the time to mourn WITH Toby. Season two after showing how Jim in the darklands alone was Not a Great Idea At All and wonderfully shown the teamwork between Jim and Nomura and was saved from Gunmar with the help of Jims friends. That sharing the burden leads to better results than carrying it alone. Season three we have Merlin going ‘no friends! only you!’ and thus begins the return of Jim’s hero Atlas ‘its gotta be me’ complex. Granted!! It’s not always there!! But the instigator sure is.

But I’m getting ahead of myself ldkjg What I’m underlining is Attempts have been made, these topics have been brought up, but there has been a lack of confidence in committing to it. Most likely due to executive and producer influence - which brings me to...

And while we can go as in depth as we want, we cannot ignore the cold hand of that ever present shadow of Capitalism and Showbiz Executives. The company has products to sell and watching kids cry is not going to sell little plush toys. Showbiz gotta showbiz, and when producers think fart jokes sell more toys than tears well..[vague hand gesture] you get some questionable disappointing choices.

But I digress.

ROTT could have had this wonderful potential in showing that Jim has finally learned and accepted that he doesn’t have to do this alone. Putting this immense stress on an individual and not showing how to share the burden leads to questionable choices!! Cue the previously mentioned self destructive tendencies and warped behavior.

The theme discussed as far back as season 2 is ignored, and instead we go digging even more into the whole Atlas spiel when the Atlas thing (I think) was more of a cautionary nickname given by Strickler. It was originally the Titan Atlas’s punishment to hold the heavens. What was a mythological condemnation is treated as Jim willingly putting the weight of every burden on his own shoulders and that’s not okay!! Not great for adults and especially not great for teens!! And while mythologically speaking Atlas does eventually get relieved from his duties with the Pillars of Hercules, Jim does not! He turns away time and again from a support system that could help ease the weight on his shoulders. (yes I know the Pillars has multiple stories, but I’m choosing the power of friendship one on this).

Young Atlas does not choose liberation or Pillars of help in ROTT, he passes the burden of the heavens to Toby instead. Jim does not resolve his trauma but pushes it away, and hurts (unintentionally or not) those around him in the process.

The Krohnisfere - which is a very wonky way of spelling CRONUS or CRONOS or KRONOS (The Titan of TIME btw) - could have been used as a plot device in learning to take the time to process, resolve trauma, and care about yourself.

Which sounds potentially boring mixed in with a bunch of magic and robot mecha fights (well not to me lkjg) but it could have been done in an interesting and creative way!! Jim could learn to take the time tor process and accept help and we could still get the giant mecha pacific rim reference fights (and subsequently sold toys that looked like robots). What I’m Trying to say is, they could have done so much more with all of this and still get this message across.

Anyways ROTT is a cautionary tale on what happens when you don’t take the time to take care of yourself, and subsequently hurt others and (intentionally or not) pass trauma onto others.

So take the time to take care of yourself kids!! Because THAT is how “Krohnisfere will make right.”

Or as Strickler famously quoted Billy Joel’s song James in Season 1, Episode 1 said, “Do what's good for you, or you're not good for anybody.”

This is one hefty 2 cents on my part and a very wordy way of saying HARD AGREE, but what can I say?

ANYWHO I’m HCing Jim wakes up from this nightmare back at his house at the end of Wizards, and asks Barbara and Strickler about potential therapists he can see, and has a heart to heart, and Jim/Young Atlas finally finally learns to accept the Pillars of Hercules/his friends + support group.

Because no one should be condemned to hold up the heavens alone. You’re not alone.

Best Wishes, Nico

#ROTT spoilers #Tales of Arcadia #2 cents #long post #Nico blabs into the void #ToA Rise of the Titans #Trollhunters #Rise of the Titans #spoilers #Jim Lake Jr #James Lake Jr #no one should be condemned to hold up the heavens alone. you're not alone. please take care of yourselves

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vaicomcas · 2 years ago

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Thank you so much for you comliments.you have really been a great inspiration for me to start my own story

so you said that you agreed with someone else's post that you woulden't mind cas suffering if the story was about him, and I agree in fact I wouldn't mind if cas's suffering was actually doing anything for the plot, some times he suffered and it did not make any sense like in s12 we had two episodes 10 and 12 if I am not wrong and they did not discuss it any further. so where they even for?

the one with Lily gave a really good look at cas's past but a lot of people use it villanise cas and it angers me so much

SPN writers used all of their side characters as plot devices, I still haven't understood why crowely had to go.

Yeah, first of all I have never understood the desire for "happy ending" (but I know others such as my own husband who cannot fathom the appreciation or even tolerance of sad endings). That personal preference aside, any compelling character goes through hardship and suffering, just like in life everybody experiences pain and humiliation. The problem with the show is what extreme trauma they put Castiel through was not used to charactrize and develop his character and often not even acknowledged. For those of us who see Castiel as the main character, we experience him being pushed aside and used as a tool in his own story.

I actually really like the Lily Sunder episode, even though there is a lot in it that bothers me (the disrespect Dean showed both to Cas and to his angel buddies, the way they as always set Cas up to have to chose between his angel identity and the Winchesters, by making the angels evil of course, and did I mention Dean's assholery?), it is actually one of the few episodes that was all about Castiel, about who he is. I am glad I never saw those posts that villainize him for this episode (how? never mind don't tell me), I would be angered too.

I am not too sure about the point of "stuck in the middle with you" either. I think part of it is to up the ante on the Mary's "betrayal" arc, so they need some serious consequence that viewers would care about . The whole s12 is very depressing-- all about Castiel being down on himself but also his complete dedication to the Winchesters at the same time (this one, and later killing of Billie). Did they intend to show Castiel's dedication to Winchesters as part of him losing his agency? Because that would actually be refreshing, and would be consistent with the choosing Kelly/Jack part ("I've been so lost. I am not lost anymore"). But then as soon as he stopped being lost they killed him, and then it's back to him being sidekick again. They are kind of all over the place arent they? They neither developed the de*tiel thing (which was very palpable in s12) nor developed Castiel as his own character.

One of the worst example for me was when we learned that he got mind wiped over and over for at least thousands of years. It is so horrific but all they used that for was to set up first the "simulated killing of Dean" and then the crypt scene so they get that fake conflict arc with Dean. (It does seem like the show was promoting de*tiel here) Then, it was no longer mentioned ever again, and they immediately turn Naomi, the one who violated and tortured him over thousands of years, the one who murdered a restaurant full of innocent people in cold blood a few episodes ago, into a "good guy" who cares about people and wanted to reconcile with Castiel , and made him seem foolish for not trusting her on the spot, by making Dean wisely believing Naomi in contrast. It makes zero sense all around. Even later when they brought Naomi back she still gets to be some noble figure and Castiel doesn't even get to be mad at her for more than five seconds.

Later they make him go into Dean's mind and marvel "there is so much trauma". While Castiel's trauma, far exceeding any human could possibly imagine, was only used to build up Dean Winchester.

#ask #dean critical #justice for castiel #I am so verbose

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doppel-drop-distance · 3 years ago

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Doppel Spotlight: Giovanna

Surprise~!

I know, I know, about time, right? The hypothetical Soul Gem has broken, and the Doppel Spotlights are back from the dead! Er…temporarily, anyway. I can’t say for certain how many more of these I’m up to doing just yet. It’s a bit too early for me to make any big estimates or guarantees. But! This Doppel analysis has sat here unfinished for quite some time now! And you all have shown such lovely support that I couldn’t help but be excited looking at all this old material again. So as a gift to you all, let’s finally analyze the Doppel of our main protagonist, Iroha Tamaki!

This analysis will contain spoilers for all of Magia Record’s first arc! This does include anime-specific content, as I will be discussing certain scenes from Episodes 5 and 7! You have been warned!

Let’s dive in, shall we?

GIOVANNA

Doppel of Silence

Feature: Cuckoo

“The master of this emotion is aware of how pitiful her Doppel is and refuses to look at it. This Doppel wordlessly wraps around and strangles anything it doesn't want to hear as it continues its search for something to fill the hole in its heart. While it should be calling for someone, it is cowardly and afraid of acknowledging the reality it has concealed, and so it remains, silently covering its ears.”

It's been a while, so how about we start things off with a little refresher?

Both Giovanna and Campanella’s names are direct references to Night on the Galactic Railroad, a Japanese novel written by Kenji Miyazawa. In the story, a shy boy named Giovanni travels on a star-bound train with his close friend, Campanella. To keep things brief, I’ll leave most of the general plot details out. However, if you’d like a lengthier summary, I suggest reading the summary I provided in the previous Doppel Spotlight, which is linked here.

I should also mention I actually located an English-translated copy of Night on the Galactic Railroad! As a result, I can quote the story directly, although I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the translations or my own interpretations. Please keep that in mind as you read!

The opening scene of the novel establishes early on that Giovanni is a reserved, self-conscious boy. In class, he is certain he knows the answer to the teacher’s question. However, when called on, he doubts himself and stays silent, bringing upon the jeers of his classmates. Campanella, who also raised his hand for the question, willingly chooses not to answer, despite also knowing, in order to show some sympathy for the flustered Giovanni.

This opening scene is likely what is referenced in Giovanna’s nature as the Doppel of silence. Giovanni stays silent out of self-doubt, and as a result believes himself to be pathetic. Iroha also silences herself in her own way, being very passive, self-conscious, and reserved at the beginning of her story. And, true to that comparison, her Doppel’s reflections of insecurity make her feel pitiful, to the point where she refuses to look at it.

Giovanni’s character can also be representative of Iroha’s inner loneliness. With his mother sickly and his father out of the house, Giovanni is too occupied with taking jobs and caring for his family to have time to talk. More often, he is bullied by his peers. The only exception is with Campanella, who doesn’t bully him, and even sympathizes with him. As Giovanni and Campanella travel on the Galactic Railroad, Giovanni’s loneliness is at its clearest. Campanella begins talking to Kaoru, another passenger on the train, and Giovanni becomes morose with jealousy. See this quote here:

“Is there really nobody who will stick with me to the edges of the universe and beyond? Campanella just sits there jabbering away with that little girl, and it hurts me more than anybody knows.”

Iroha is also incredibly lonely, deep down. She lives on her own, with parents away on business trips. The anime implies she doesn’t have a lot of friends either, with her classmates talking behind her back instead. Worst of all, her sister, who she values more than anyone else, is completely absent, Iroha being the only one that remembers that she exists. Such relationships sound awfully lonely, don’t they? It’s only through her bond with Yachiyo and the rest of Mikazuki Villa that Iroha grows into her own, letting her optimism, warmth, and confidence shine through.

Giovanna’s connections to Giovanni tie her quite close to Campanella, Yachiyo’s Doppel. And, well, Yachiyo is certainly not the kind and sympathetic Campanella at first meet. Her first encounter with Iroha is cold, brutally honest, and fully intent on keeping Iroha out at any cost. We learn later on that this attitude is a wall Yachiyo puts up to protect people – that she believes the people that get close to her die, and that she still struggles with the guilt of her past. Yet, it is Iroha who shows sympathy to Yachiyo, breaking down that wall between them. For example, let’s take a look at Chapter Six. After a trip to the Memory Museum Uwasa, Yachiyo has been reminded of the death in her life and is reflexively closing herself off again to keep Iroha safe. Iroha once shriveled up in response to Yachiyo’s intimidating rejection, but now, as her friend, she isn’t having it. She says this:

“You saying there’s nothing you can do to help Tsuruno and the others… It makes me feel sad…Lonely…We fought together all this time…But more than that, I’m angry. I’m angry with you, Yachiyo...”

“I’m your friend, Yachiyo. And as your friend, I’m going to take out that Uwasa, all on my own! I’m going to be the one to protect you. I’ll smash this made-up idea you have of me sacrificing myself for you!”

Just as Giovanni interprets his journey with Campanella as a sign to stay diligent in life, Iroha’s friendship with Yachiyo allows her to steady her own resolve and fight adamantly. Their namesake connection is a sign of their bond, and their newfound devotion to fight together and protect each other.

To wrap up this Galactic Railroad talk, have you noticed that in many of the anime’s early episodes, Iroha is riding on a train? In fact, it is on a train that Iroha is whisked away to Zenobia’s Barrier in Kamihama, where she meets Yachiyo for the first time. Perhaps a stretch, but a fun little detail regardless.

Anyway, there’s far more to Giovanna than story connections! Giovanna’s silent nature reflects a lot of Iroha’s character struggles: mainly, her feelings of denial, and her inclination towards self-sacrifice.

“This Doppel wordlessly wraps around and strangles anything it doesn't want to hear as it continues its search for something to fill the hole in its heart. While it should be calling for someone, it is cowardly and afraid of acknowledging the reality it has concealed, and so it remains, silently covering its ears.”

When you think of someone “strangling anything it doesn’t want to hear”, concealing their own reality and being afraid of acknowledging it...well, that sounds a lot like someone who doesn’t want to accept the truth.

Iroha shows quite a bit of denial in her search for Ui. The odds are stacked against her for a lot of Arc 1. She finds little to no clues wherever she searches, and the Ui she encounters from the Uwasa of the Commoner’s Horse is only a fake. Iroha is certain that Touka and Nemu, Ui’s closest friends, will remember Ui. But, they do not, and only ridicule Iroha for her seemingly impossible set of memories. Throughout Chapter Ten she is belittled for sticking to her goals. She’s ensured on all fronts that Touka and Nemu aren’t believing her, and that there’s nothing she can do to change their minds. But, no matter how many times Iroha is told by the world that she’s believing in a lie, she never lets her belief go.

“I’m still going. No matter what you say. I’m bringing Ui back with me…She’s the whole reason I came back to Kamihama.”

This stubborn determination, when twisted by the corrupt perception of a Witch, is far more like paranoid desire: an aching, fearful need to find whatever is missing in her heart and get rid of whatever threatens it.

Following this, let’s talk about Giovanna’s feature: a cuckoo. Cuckoos are solitary birds, shy and secretive, and best known for their calls. Yet, Giovanna’s beak is tied up with cloth. She cannot call for anyone. Her journey to find Ui is painted as one of futility: Giovanna searches and searches for the one she’s longed for, but in the end, is too afraid to call out to her.

Here’s a fun detail, by the way:

In Episode 5, when Iroha summons her Doppel for the first time, Giovanna actually does not have bandages around her beak (which is why she’s able to let out that high-pitched shriek):

In future appearances, however, Giovanna does have the bandages around her beak.

Come to think of it, Giovanna looks rather... different in her first appearance, doesn’t she? Not only is her beak not bandaged, but her colors are a lot redder and more decayed, her cloak is worn and full of holes, and the crown around her head is gone. This may just be a stylistic choice for Iroha’s first Doppel, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s a sign for something else. Maybe that Giovanna is angry with the Commoner’s Horse Uwasa for projecting an illusion of Ui? Giovanna does fight a lot more aggressively here than in any other appearance, after all - she wraps the Uwasa up and drills into it with her beak. Meanwhile, in her second appearance, she only attacks an Uwasa with her bandages.

Giovanna’s unwillingness to call for others actually brings up an interesting facet of Iroha’s character: her sacrificial devotion. The reason that Iroha unleashes her Doppel in Episode 5 is because she neglects her own needs in favor of others. She believes that she must be strong on her own to find Ui, a thought reflected by her own Doppel’s words in Episode 7:

“Stronger…If you don’t become strong, you won’t be able to find anything! Cover your ears! Shut those eyes! Silence determines fate!”

When Iroha fails to find Ui within the Uwasa of the Commoner’s Horse, she is filled with despair. Ui was right before her eyes, proving the beliefs that even she may have begun to doubt. Yet, in that same instant she recognizes the Ui she sees is nothing but an illusion the Uwasa projected for her. So close, and yet so far. When Iroha begins to succumb to her despair, she even mentions that it might’ve been from the shock of not seeing Ui.

With all of these feelings, all of this disappointment and despair, who does Iroha use her only Grief Seed on? Yachiyo, of course. At this point in the story, Iroha wants to be friends with Yachiyo, but they are not seen as equals. She is not comfortable enough to open up to Yachiyo about her feelings, and neither is Yachiyo with her own. Yet, Iroha still sacrifices herself to keep Yachiyo from falling to despair. And by staying silent about her own woes, Iroha falls to her despair for the first time, summoning her Doppel.

Let’s keep this topic in mind and focus on something I haven’t addressed before: the Magia Archive artbook! There are some production notes in here that provide insights on the meaning and symbolism behind a Doppel. Unfortunately, I don’t know Japanese, but I did find a translation of Giovanna’s section, courtesy of @greenyvertekins. Here is a small piece from it that I would like to highlight:

“The motif is a bird flute and a saint with a rabbit-like appearance.”

The theme of a “saint” struck me as a little odd, at first. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to get that idea from her design. But, it did lead me to a unique little find, which is probably a stretch, but maybe kind of cool anyway?

(credit to Silvermoon424 on Reddit for the scan!)

It’s a bit harder to see in the official art, but that crown circling Giovanna’s head – to me, it sort of looks like a crown of thorns. A crown of thorns is a very striking sign of self-sacrifice.

And sure, this is the stretchiest stretch that ever stretched, but those drop-like patterns on Giovanna’s body are red, and kind of look like drops of blood, right? Beads of blood that have also been associated with the crown of thorns, r-right? Right…?

Phew…I’ve been going on for a while, haven’t I? Is this…is this longer than the first one? I don’t even know anymore…Let’s silently wrap this up with one more, fun little stretch on my part.

Both cuckoos and bunnies, which are elements of Giovanna’s design, are symbolically representative of spring. Spring is cherry blossom season in Japan, and the Eternal Sakura Uwasa lives near a cherry blossom tree only said to bloom when Touka, Nemu, Ui and Iroha are united again. At the end of the event Cherry Blossom Dreams, the Eternal Sakura even remarks that “spring can finally begin” because they are all together. So, if you squint really hard, maaaaybe the springtime connections here are representative of Iroha, Touka, Nemu, and Ui’s union under the cherry blossom tree. But probably not. I’m just having some fun.

And, that’s it! That’s all I’ve got for Giovanna! Wow! That sure was something!

I hope you all enjoyed my silly little analysis! I know some of these connections are a bit loose, but I like drawing whatever parallels I can with what understanding I have, haha. It was great to write one of these again and share it with you all!

If you have any of your own thoughts, additions, or corrections, do send them along! I would love to hear other interpretations!

#magia record #doppel spotlight #iroha tamaki #giovanna

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emwritesstuff · 4 years ago

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as the world caves in | ch. 6 | bucky barnes x reader

synopsis: You are a ghost story. A former Air Force pilot who had her plane shot down by Germany in 1945, but here you were in 2023, alive and frozen in your 25-year-old body.

You haven’t seen Bucky since the 1940’s, before his fall, before you went on a suicide mission only to come back alive. You aren’t sure reliving those memories – and being a living memory of everything the man has lost – is the best for him.

But you and Bucky won’t be apart for long.

This will loosely follow the plot of TFATWS - so spoilers ahead, specially regarding episode four. Thread carefully!

masterlist | AO3

notes: The following chapter is finally here! It took me a while to revise it because I wanted the action scenes to not suck super badly, so yeah.

(warnings: mentions of death, gunshots, blood, injuries) (word count: 3K)

six: shield

You sat next to Sam as he typed in a computer and Helmut Zemo nursed his headache. Once he gained consciousness, he’d showered you in gratitude and niceties, and you were already close to knocking him out yourself.

T-minus what, four hours? The Dora Milaje would be there soon enough.

It’s he the one to break the comfortable silence, only filled by the soft clicking of Sam’s keyboard before.

“Were you ever offered it?”

“What?”

“The serum.”

“No.” Sam said, raising an eyebrow at you with an amused expression. You shrugged.

“If you had been, hypothetically, that is, would you have taken it?”

Sam’s mouth turned down, and he slowly turned to Zemo.

“No.”

“No hesitation, that’s impressive.”

You got up from the table, making a round so you could watch Zemo’s face as he spoke. He’d seen you usher Karli Morgenthau out of the factory basement, and you wondered what he had made of your actions.

“Sam, you can’t hold out hope for Karli.” His eyes met yours as he said that, and you looked away, circling a pillar and walking to be on the other side of the couch, by his feet. “No matter what you saw in her, she’s gone.”

You sighed. “You talk in absolutes. People aren’t like that, Zemo.”

He studied you again.

“And we cannot allow that she and her acolytes become yet another faction of gods amongst people. Super Soldiers cannot be allowed to exist.”

Zemo spoke with such conviction that you were sure you’d be also be harboring a bullet if he knew who, and what, you were.

“Isn’t that how gods talk? And if that’s how you feel, what about Bucky?” Sam’s eyes flitted to you, and you offered him a tight smile. “Blood isn’t always the solution.”

When Steve had talked to you about handing over the shield for the first time you were doubtful. He was grieving the loss of his own time – your time, too – and second-guessing his own claim to it.

You never stopped believing in Steve when he did. You and Bucky were war. Steve was… the end of it. And not just because of the serum. He was that since you all were small and scrawny, him a little scrawnier and a little smaller, as he stopped you and Bucky from butting heads.

For Steve, you, and Bucky as well, that shield meant everything. It meant the salvation of the world from true evil, that in the 1940’s was personified in the form of a little man with a moustache. Whoever carried it carried the responsibility of being the harbinger of that freedom. Of relief, justice, and most of all... hope.

So when Steve talked to you about handing over the shield a second time, this time to capable hands instead of a glass dome, you understood – it was time to pass the mantle to someone who was, indeed, a new beacon of hope.

Safe to say, the fact that John Walker now carried the shield you put so much importance into felt wrong.

“Something’s not right about Walker.” Bucky strolled in, seemingly in a sour mood. You chuckled, and watched as he discarded his things on the counter.

“You don’t say.”

“Well, I know a crazy when I see one. Because I am crazy.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Sam quipped, and you patted his shoulder affectionately when you walked past him to get Bucky to make you a drink too.

You swiped his jacket off the counter and hanged it neatly on the back of one of the barstools. Bucky licked his lips and shook his head as you mouthed ragamuffin at him.

“Pour me one.”

“Can you hold your liquor now, sugar?”

You narrowed your eyes at him and grabbed the glass he had fixed for himself.

“Now you pour yourself one.” You took a sip, smiling into the glass.

Bucky glared at Sam. “Shouldn’t have given him the shield.”

You shot Bucky a disapproving look. He raised his eyes briefly at you while pouring his drink, and shrugged.

“Buck—”

“I didn’t give him the shield.”

“Well Steve definitely didn’t.”

“James Barnes!” Goddamn Bucky and his hard-headed self.

Bucky looked at you like he used to look at his mother, wide eyed, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It only lasted for a second, his bewilderment falling into a scowl right after. Behind you, Sam chuckled.

You shook your head at Bucky, but you had no time to fall into an argument. The one and only John Walker and Lemar Hoskins were bursting in, demanding to take Zemo. Ordering, really.

“Hey, slow your roll.” Sam said firmly. “Man, let’s be clear. Shield or no shield, the only thing you’re runnin’ in here is your mouth.”

You bottomed up your whiskey, knowing whatever was to come couldn’t be good.

“Now, I had Karli and you overstepped. He’s actually proven himself useful today. And we’re gonna need all hands on deck for whatever’s coming next.”

Walker challenged Sam next. He looked eager and ready for a fight, and as much as you’d loved to keep your real abilities hidden, you figured your time out of the spotlight was running out. Bucky looked at you from the corner of his eye, relaxed stance contrasting with the tightness of his jaw. Zemo paced behind Sam, still clutching his own drink.

The moment Walker put down the shield an iron spear cut the air and lodged itself into the pilaster, separating him and Sam.

No, not iron. Vibranium.

The Dora Milaje.

“Even if he is a means to your end… Time’s up.” Ayo announced in Xhosa. You grimaced.

You sighed heavily when John decides to one-up them, too. Ayo swings the spear at his arm when he touches his shoulder and a fight breaks out. You reached for the liquor again.

There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world.

The fight was only Walker and Hoskins getting absolutely overpowered by the warriors while you, Bucky, Sam and Zemo stayed out of it.

“We should do something.”

You swirled your drink, taking a small sip. “I am. I’m observing.”

“Looking strong, John!” Bucky shouted, making you have to hide a snort. Sam exhaled heavily.

“Such a diplomat, you. Bucky…”

“I’m a lot of things, Samuel.” You shrugged, but finished your drink anyways and hiked up your sleeves.

You, Bucky and Sam all ran to take one of the Doras each. As one kicked Hoskins to the couch you stepped in front of him, blocking the hit of her spear with your forearm.

You met her eyes and tilted your head apologetically. When she raised her weapon again you twisted your body and landed a back kick to her middle.

She staggered back a couple of steps but was back at you in an instant.

Hit. Block. Kick. Another hit to your shoulder.

Even if the fight was fairly balanced, Super Soldier against Dora Milaje, you knew you had a slim chance of actually winning. You hadn’t been in a fight in years, much less with someone this capable and trained.

After blocking another of your strikes with her spear, she hit the side of your left knee. It’s your bad one.

East Berlin, 1987. You had been undercover for nearly two weeks now, tracking a lead about the existence of a HYDRA lab that was conducting experiments with new Super Soldiers.

The wind that cut through the rooftop of the building you stood on testing the very limits of the overcoat you wore on top of your tactical suit. So damn cold. You tried not to dwell on how frigid your toes were inside of your boots, instead concentrating on watching the sun slip behind the skyline.

You were waiting on a man that would give you the next lead. Intel said he would be there before you, but he wasn’t when you got there. 10 minutes had gone past the accorded meeting time, and you were starting to think that no one was coming.

A bullet ricocheted on the concrete pillar you were stood behind, and you realized why S.H.I.E.L.D.’s contact was running late. You grabbed your own pistol, still hidden by the concrete, and peeked in the direction the shot had come from.

A man and a woman, in full leather. You saw the red star etched on their left arms as they marched towards you. HYDRA.

You had two exit options, one that was across the rooftop or jumping down into River Spree. Either way, you’d have to deal with the two HYDRA agents that approached you.

You ran to another pillar, shooting at them. You hit the woman on the leg, and she buckled down. Her counterpart didn’t even spare her a look, continuing his way to you. You kept shooting, missing a few and landing the rest on the both of them, the guy barely flinching.

You didn’t understand why he wasn’t using his own gun. Maybe he didn’t feel the need for one.

There was no time for thinking. The man was onto you; swatting your gun away, blocking your punch, hitting your chest. You crashed into concrete.

The woman joined in, landing a hard blow to the side of your skull. Your eyes widened. They were just as strong as you.

Super Soldiers.

You crawled away from them, hand swatting at your leg for your knife. It landed in the woman’s throat with a squelch. One down.

The man was much stronger it seemed, you barely able to keep the fight balanced even with another of your knives. You cut and ripped, but it was like your blade was a feather on his skin.

He backed you up until the edge of the building. You could see the river below.

You groaned when he headbutted you, and you go stumbling down. The blood was hot against your face and metallic on your lips.

He stomped on your knee. Again. And again. You choked on your own agony.

His voice was all you heard before he kicked you off the ledge. You plunged into the freezing air.

Hail HYDRA.

Familiar pain laced through you, making your hairs stand on end. You cried out, nearly tumbling straight to the ground.

The clank of metal hitting the ground and a spear shot at the direction of the shield ended the fight. Bucky’s vibranium arm laid limp and detached on the ground, his expression even more perplexed than when you had scolded him earlier.

You straightened yourself up as the pain subsided. Ayo opened the doors to an empty bathroom.

Zemo. He has slipped right through your fingers while you were busy defending John Walker’s ass from the Dora Milaje.

You helped Sam to his feet as they were leaving, Ayo giving you one last stern look before leading the way out. It felt like a reminder of a debt.

“Did you know they could do that?” Sam said, looking at a limbless Bucky. The arm seemed to snap back into the right place, thank goodness for that. A failsafe, then.

“No.” Bucky rotated his arm, an indecipherable expression on his face, even for your standards.

The room was filled with tension as the three of you gathered yourselves again and John Walker sat defeated on the ground, with only Lemar to check up on him. You walked past them to get inside the bathroom, frowning at the drainage hole Zemo had made his escape through.

“I can’t believe he pulled an El Chapo,” Sam murmured.

“I can.” Bucky clenched his jaw. “Come on.”

Bucky led you through the backstreet and to the back of the building, though you weren’t sure exactly what you were looking for. A lead, maybe, but neither of you knew if Zemo had made his way all the way to the underground or escaped to the streets once he was out.

“You okay? You got hit pretty bad back there.” Sam said, looking at you. You all had taken a decent beating, but the hit to your leg had taken you by surprise. Bucky frowned.

“I’m good.” Bucky frowned deeper, and you shook your head at him, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “I got a bad knee, it’s all. Replacement cap and everything.”

Sam laughed.

“You’re 106 and have a prosthetic kneecap? Wow, you’re starting to sound your age.”

“You know what, Wilson? I think you should respect your elders.”

Sam raised his hands, still laughing. “Okay, okay. But only ‘cause I saw you kicking ass back there. Girl, where the hell have you been?”

Bucky grumbled something, and threw an arm around your shoulders.

“Retired.”

You patted his cheek lovingly, and laughed a little when you caught him fighting a smile. Sam got ahead of you, sending you a look of mischief and wiggling his eyebrows.

You urged Bucky forward, earning a huff from him as you got to Sam’s side.

Compartmentalizing was necessary. Zemo was on the loose, Walker was verging on unhinged, and there was still Karli to deal with. Whatever was going on with you and Bucky – and the insistent feeling that tugged on your heartstrings whenever you looked at him – would have to wait.

You listened to Sam’s conversation on the phone, his tone growing more concerned at every pause. Sarah. Overnight bag. Take the boys.

“What happened?” Bucky asked and you slipped from under his arm.

“Karli called Sarah. She threatened my nephews.”

Shit.

“Sam, I got a safehouse in New Orleans.” You said once he hung up. He nodded at you, and you took his phone to get his sister’s contact.

Karli was entering dangerous territory. Before, you considered her a fighter on a rightful cause, but as if predicted by Zemo, she was escalating. You feared that it was a fight you couldn’t let her win, or run free.

“Karli wants to meet. She left a contact number.” Sam’s phone chimed. “She said come alone.”

“I’m comin’ with you.” Bucky looked at you. “We are.”

“Let’s gear up, boys.”

---

You were grateful you had kept your old tactical suit inside your closet for a rainy day.

The suit was carbon black, except for the blue-grey Kevlar plating on your chest, back and upper legs. It had a faint resemblance to an armor, and the amount of impact it could absorb made you protected and difficult to take down. You completed your gear with your trusty boots and hidden knives.

Sam had changed into his wings and Bucky into his peculiar one-armed leathers.

“Damn, you look cool.”

A laugh escaped your lips. “So do you, Sam.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “We should go.”

The sky was cloudy and the air dry, and still you could feel a storm coming. You walked into the empty building, you and Bucky tailing Sam.

“Karli!”

The redhead revealed herself, standing on the second floor. Sam went to talk to her, leaving you to watch them from a distance.

Karli looked at you and Bucky there, her eyes lingering on you for a few seconds more. You realized how menacing you must have looked, the three of you in full gear, and you wondered if Bucky felt as strange about your rigid stance as you did about his.

The two of you really had changed.

“I was gonna ask you to join me. Or do the world a favor and let me go.”

If only things were that easy.

Sam looked at the screen on his wrist and turned to you in alarm.

“It’s Walker.”

A trap. Bucky was the first to leap to the ground, colliding with Karli in the process. You and Sam landed at the same time, and you hoisted Bucky up while Sam clashed with the girl.

He sent Karli to the ground with a flying kick.

“I’ll send you the location, go!”

You and Bucky leapt into the street and broke into a fast sprint as Sam took off.

“You’re fast!”

You looked to your side at Bucky, smirking. He was just a little behind you.

“I’m lighter!”

“No fair!”

“You have a metal arm!”

Bucky led you to the location Sam had sent him. Riga had plenty of empty buildings, it seemed. You were running up the stairs when a Flag Smasher jumped on you, then another on Bucky.

The guy and you dragged yourselves all the way to the top, exchanging punches. You saw his eyes widen under the mask when you landed a boot on his chest and he went flying backwards.

Taking the free time you had bought yourself, you searched for Bucky below you. As soon as you found him the Flag Smasher tackled you, hoisting your body up. You hit his shoulder blade with your elbow and he bumped into the railing, quickly turning and hanging you over the edge.

“Y/N!”

Bucky was upside down. No, that was you.

He reached for you as the other Flag Smasher had him locked in a rear choke.

“I’ve got this!”

Tightening your legs around the man, you let yourself fall, taking him with you. You crash at the bottom of the building.

“You said you had this!”

Bucky jumped to your level.

“I do!”

You stared at his scowl for a brief second before roundhouse kicking your foe and finally putting him down.

Bucky returned to you after dealing with his own Flag Smasher. He looked furious.

“You’re so fucking reckless!”

Oh, Jesus H. Christ. You couldn’t believe Bucky, wanting to argue.

“I am fine! It wasn’t that high.” You huffed. “We have no time for this, James. Let’s go.”

You ran to the top of the building, Bucky trailing behind you. He caught a flying knife right before it lodged itself on your face. He glowered at you as if to say you don’t got this.

Not sparing him a response, you busy yourself with fighting another of the Flag Smashers, this time a woman. It was like all you needed was a little warming up, because you’re clearly in advantage as you blocked her punches and grabbed her torso, slamming her into the ground next.

You looked up. John Walker was staring at you.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on whatever he saw, one of the men coming from behind and immobilizing him.

Karli screamed as she ran towards Walker. She was in it for the kill. Hoskins tackled her before she could do it. All you could make out was the blur of an altercation.

Lemar Hoskins slammed into a pillar with a crack.

Your stomach churned.

Everything stilled as Walker ran to his partner, desperately trying to get him to wake up. He slumped sideways, his head lolled down.

He was dead.

Karli and her group took advantage of the tumult and ran, her shooting one last look at the rest of you as they took off. You couldn’t let her get away this time, though, so you immediately go into pursuit.

You shot one look behind you, seeing Bucky and Sam follow you as you whizzed through the streets of Riga. You’re the first to get to the square, making your way to the middle of the crowd hastily.

Walker stoop upright, holding the shield over the body of one of the unmasked Flag Smashers.

It was broad daylight; there were dozens of people around you.

The city was silent.

He was dead.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky x y/n

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jq37 · 3 years ago

Text

The Report Card – Fantasy High: The Seven Ep 6

Bitches Be Shopping

What is up y’all. A little late but let’s jump in with episode six of The Seven where our girls have just received a LOT of information, Sam most of all who got put into a little vision coma that she’s just now waking up from.

She explains the vision to her friends (as she interprets it, the other Eidolons didn’t die, just became part of the natural forces of the world) and then the bear that Penny made on a whim last episode (who is Russian, named Koda, and somehow a trained circus bear) gets into a fight with Katja with their friends buffing the two to make things more interesting because these are still idiot teens, life or death situation or no. Yelle decides to be the adult and tells them to knock it off and get back on mission.

That means Katja needs to call her dad since he’s knows the guy who’s the best lead to getting to TK ( Talcidimir Tallbreeze who I’ll call Tal). She actually manages to get her dad this time who is inside a giant snake on his hell mission. Katja asks what he knows about TK and he says she’s a sorcerer but also has a spell book so maybe she’s multiclassed. Sam and Ant desperately want to know if they boned and Katja absolutely is not interested in that knowledge. Yelle decides to just ask which makes her dad a little annoyed since he’s kind of in the middle of something (literally) and that annoys Ant, Ost, and Sam who--respectively, accuse him of gaslighting Kat, cast Command on him, and cast Bane on him to aid the Command spell.

Mr. Cleaver fails the save and Ost commands him to tell Katja the truth. He admits that he did hook up with TK and he regrets it (note: it wasn’t like he cheated. It was just a casual hookup that wasn’t fulfilling it seems). Ost demands he apologize for not being there for Kat and Sam berates him for being at the top of the world and not lifting up his daughter too. For his part, Kat’s dad seems genuinely apologetic and promises to do better.

“You don’t need to be the best father, you just need to be there,” Katja says, making her dad break down crying.

Yelle, who has no daddy issues, is a bit less aggro and says that everyone makes mistakes and he can start making it up right now by helping with the Tal situation. She also gives them the tip that a cold spell will probably get them out of the snake lickety split. She is on the money with the snake tip and Mr. Cleaver gets them all invites to a masquerade ball Tal is hosting. It’s being held on the Rumbosa which is this city-sized leisure ship. Mr. Cleaver says he’ll be back as soon as he can and, in the meantime, she should take care of her friends, “even the first 2 that were terrifying to me.”

The girls give Katja the axe they took as a birthday present (it was apparently her birthday the day before which Rekha just decided and Ost/Izzy refuses to accept without a fight because she *knows* Kat’s bday) which is identified as the Axe of Sundering (it can shatter objects, people, and sometimes concepts like halving movement). The two unnamed potions Yelle found are also ID’d as a Potion of Fly and a Potion of Gaseous Form. She distributes the Heath Potions to people without heals. Ant’s new arrows bypass some resistances and let her treat whatever she hits with the first one like it’s her favored enemy.

According to their invites, the ship they need is docking in the city of Gravalvia soon (a very old city in the Baronies) so they need to figure out a plan. They have some downtime, during which:

Zelda tries to hype up the team.

Zelda tries to see if Ost is OK wrt dad stuff and Ost has a Full Breakdown after badly pretending she’s fine.

While Zelda, Ost, and Penny are being Emotional and Sam is trying to literally cool them down with her powers, Ant and Yelle keep watch and experience emotional stability as the Adults Of The Party

Anyway, after a night of rest, they head to the golden city of Gravalvia which is this very cool, very pretty city with mosaics and fountains and I assume columns. They get there and there’s a dramatic fight happening in the square which is halted when one of the fighters realizes that the country he’s fighting for doesn’t exist anymore. And now, it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for. Shopping Montage! Let’s go girl by girl.

Katja and Ost

Kat asks for help from Ost with getting fancy for this gala since she’s never really done anything dressy before (and she had no mom to help--Kaaaat) and Ost is happy to oblige, dressing them both like “Jersey trash”. Kat, of course, still wears her Khakis underneath.

Antiope

Ant decides to get a vibe for what people here wear and picks something that will blend in but be forgettable so she can be stealthy. Classy blue dress and mask.

Penny

Penny...OK, I absolutely cannot describe what happens here in any way that will do justice to the scene. I am going to tell you what matters to the plot. You have to watch this yourself if you want to see the entire table have a collective breakdown.

While looking for a costume, Penny runs into a halfling who is a member of the Society of Shadows--Laertes. He wants to know why she hasn’t responded to their invitation yet. She says she’s really eager to join, she just wasn’t sure how to respond (and also, she’s kind of in the middle of something). He says she can join by just messaging back and then her loved ones just have to sign waivers to have their memories wiped of her and she’s good to go. Say what now? asks Penny. She didn’t realize this was like a full Men in Black situation.

He says it’s ultimately her decision and leaves.

Of course, I left out the parts where he ate a handful of Candy Heart’s remains, became violently ill, almost projectile vomited into Penny’s mouth, and she tried to kiss him despite him being a full adult. It’s A Lot, ok?

Also, we don’t find out until later but Penny picks a sexy duck costume for reasons that make more sense if you watch the scene but not *much* more sense. She also burns one of the healing potions on this dude as he is bar

Danielle

Danielle tries to get some info on the guests at the party and gets the names Lawrence LaDuc, Princess Autumn, and Duston who is the playboy cousin of Tal. She also hears some dude saying some colonize and plunder the earth BS and casts Heat Metal on him, fully mercing the dude. Ice cold.

She tries to play it off like it’s the Curse of the Forest and when that doesn’t work and people start coming for her, she wildshapes into a dragon wyrmling and starts roasting people, killing 1 and dropping 2 to zero.

Unfortunately, one of her party members is a known dragon hater and uses her new arrows to snipe her right out of the sky. Ant is horrified once she realizes what she’s done but Yelle says it’s all good. It’s NOT all good, says Ant, I STABBED YOU. You’re allowed to be mad! Yelle says she’s just really good at compartmentalizing but what Ant’s getting here is that Yelle doesn’t really believe that her feelings matter which echo the fears of her moms.

Sam

Sam uses a combination of Mantle of Inspiration, glamour magic, performance, and good old flirting to get herself some killer clothes and also start a spontaneous musical number Giselle style.

Brennan says she looks resplendent and, honestly, when does she not?

They reconvene, Zelda in a classic hoop skirt. Yelle realizes she never got a costume and just whips out a Met Gala level, autumn themed, Queen Mab-esque costume with Druidcraft which she could have done this whole time so I guess that’s why she was cool spending her shopping time getting gossip and playing Poison Ivy.

They get to the ship and the way this works, everyone has to make an entrance and the really rich people (including Tal) are on a dais up top watching everyone come in. They all have to give fake names for the night since it’s a masquerade and they have to do Performance or Persuasion checks to see how impressive they look going in.

Before they go in, they plan a little. Penny wants to look for TK. Sam wants to find Dunston. Ost wants to talk to the bouncers. Yelle wants to see if there are plants she can manipulate (there are btw) and for any exits.

A quick rundown of how these all go:

Katja aka Mere (which means both mom and horse): 16

Ant aka Midnight Huntress: 18

Penny aka Penny Duckstone: 13

Zelda aka Madame Goodparty: 2 (Poor Zelda)

Sam aka Songbird: 22 (but she takes a hit to entrance save Zelda from totally flaming out)

Ost aka Stanley Gucci: 13

And Danielle, who never hogs the spotlight and is embarrassed to admit that maybe she does want to be the center of attention for once in her life with a Natural 20, gets a 29, absolutely bringing down the house as Empress Anima. As she walks forward she feels a voice say to her, “You got this. I love the name. You wear it well.”

Tal seems very impressed by her and a lady in a rabbit mask (Coeliabranca who I’ll call Coel if she comes up more) comes down to bring her up to the top with the high rollers. As she leaves, Sam casts Fly on her, just in case and holds the Concentration.

Ost and Kat go talk to the bouncers and Kat decides to pretend to be her mom to get access to the area Yelle is. She rolls low and is told, “Hey, aren’t you already up there?” Kat is like, fuck and Ost saves her by using her charm earrings to get an entourage of guards who will let them through and do what she says. Once up there, Kat doesn’t see her mom which I can imagine she has mixed feelings about.

Sam finds Dunston who is talking about Fantasy Bitcoin and seems like a real “Step on me mommy” type you know? Like, I feel like he’s into findom. Anyway, Sam charms him and his hangers on and learns about a procedure called a Phlebectomy that involves something going into their nose and then they feel better. Sam is rightfully horrified because, as I said, she is Most Likely To Survive A Horror Movie and can sense BS when she sees is. It’s apparently all the rage with the rich people here which is, como de dice, concerning seeing as they’re surrounded by them but we’ll get to that. Sam takes advantage of Dunston’s proclivities and gets him alone, knocks him out, steals him clothes, and pretends to be him (a *very* good scene by Sephie).

Penny sees a gnome gnome boy (Lysander Higgins) shining shoes and finds out from him that there is a copper earth genasi woman here. In a very Cinderella move, she asks what shoes she was wearing. Then, she makes out with him which like, sure. At least it’s not a grown adult man this time. Before she gets her kisses in, she does tell the group what she learned.

Up with the rich people, Yelle is introduced to Tal’s friend who is into Eidolons because of the name she chose. Between the shoes and her knowledge, they confirm that it’s TK! Yelle asks what she knows about Eidolons and she says that 7 is a very powerful number.

We cut to Ant who is patrolling the room as the sun sets and she suddenly hears a little beeping. It’s coming from a small crystal that was in Preston’s shirt (which she still has on her because???). Guests start dripping goo from their noses and transforming into monsters. Ant realizes that some kind of spell is happening triggered by midnight and this beeping. Hope these costumes are battle ready cause it’s fight time baybee!

Superlatives

Danielle: Most Likely to Be on The News for Murdering Fantasy Jeff Bezos

I cannot imagine what was running through Yelle’s head when she decided that, having just rolled into a foreign country, her next move was to start using lethal force on anti-environmentalist colonizing capitalists. Like, she’s not *wrong* per se but she is wild--in all senses of the word.

Random Thoughts

Kat keeps saying yesterday was her birthday which Ost/Izzy (and the rest of the group to a less vocal degree) are simply not having because maybe her dad would forget her birthday but her girls absolutely would not.

“You’re great because you stayed,” is the other killshot Kat line to her dad.

At a certain point Sam says, “This is so unhealthy,” to I think Yelle and like, if SAM is telling you your coping mechanisms are unhealthy, get thee to therapy.

OK, so someone, presumably Anima’s spirit, talks to Yelle as she makes her grand entrance which seems like info they should get to Talura ASAP, right? Cause that’s evidence they’re not dead-dead, just changed in form. But also Anima, girl. Don’t talk to Yelle. Talk to your rampaging sister!

"That's my secret, I stay in initiative."

Just a process note, notes are taken for the next ep and I am working on getting that recap up ASAP. As a battle ep, it will be in the abbreviated style that I did for last battle ep.

In this episode, Penny rolls a Nat 1 (which she rerolls) and one of Brennan’s NPCs rolls a Nat 1. Ant rolls 2 Nat 20s, Yelle rolls 1, and Brennan says that one of his NPCs gets a 20 which sweeps him entirely into Sam’s dance number.

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #the seven #the seven spoilers

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nikkiwriteswords · 3 years ago

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Hi! I would love to hear your thoughts/predictions/hopes for s3, now that we got the episode titles :D

Hey Nora!! Let me go grab my tua theory hat real quick. Spoiler alert, it looks exactly like the umbrella hat on the 3 right here:

Full disclosure, I've only got like a pinky toe in the tua fandom right now, but I'm still going to see what BS I can spin from these titles.

1. MEET THE FAMILY. The description on imdb is "The siblings get to know some more of the 43 children in an alternate timeline." So, I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Netflix likes to start things off with a bang, so s3 of TUA will probably be no different: we'll probably get a vague flashforward/flash-sideways to a "what if" scenario that will make sense by the last few episodes, and the rest of the episode will be sowing seeds for the s3 plot. The big question is, what family are we meeting? I think this episode will revolve around themes of family (no-brainer) and redefining the relationships between our Umbrella siblings in light of the season 2 finale, as well as their new Sparrow 'replacements'. To that end, initial Sparrow sibling parallels will be presented and subsequently complicated in this first episode. I also predict we'll see varying reactions to this alternate Reginald, as the Umbrella siblings are thrust into an outsider perspective that follows on from season 2.

2. WORLD'S BIGGEST BALL OF TWINE. This is going to be a multi-layered metaphor. I can feel it. It will no doubt refer to the plot that's about to unfold (is it an outside threat to both parties - the Umbrellas and Sparrows - from, say, the Commission, or is it more to do with the two rival Academies?), but I wonder if it also refers to the Wizard of Oz type scenario the Umbrella siblings find themselves in: they aren’t in Kansas anymore. (But you know what is in Kansas? The world's current biggest ball of twine.) Also kind of want to see Klaus knitting again in this ep - perhaps as a way to subtly re-address his ongoing addiction issues, especially now Ben is gone.

3. POCKET FULL OF LIGHTNING. This probably has to do with powers. Sparrow powers, Umbrella powers. There'll be a lot of new flexes in this season, so who this refers to is anyone's guess.

4. KUGELBLITZ. Here's where it starts to get interesting, because this title carries forward the subject of lightning from the last one. According to a very quick internet search, kugelblitz literally means "ball lightning" in German, and refers to both a) a glorified WW2 tank designed to take out aircraft (a certified Big Boi), and b) a theoretical black hole made from light/radiation rather than matter. So this is absolutely going to be a new, unseen power - probably from the Sparrows. Hopefully from Christopher because a cube executing a move named after a sphere just makes me chuckle. Ah, fun with shapes... But in addition, this power is probably going to pack a huge, debilitating punch to whatever narrative is underway at this point in the plot. I'll bet money that whoever wields this power is the tank character in their party or they are after this at least.

5. KINDEST CUT. This throws me back to the barber shop meta, I'm not gunna lie. Someone's going to get hurt, either physically or emotionally, and it's going to be the lesser of two evils. If it's a follow through on the barber metaphor, then Reggie will be the one to orchestrate it. Or, in a surprise twist, will he be the one gTetting hurt or being silenced? (Remember that cutthroat allegory that chases the siblings through the first season, particularly Allison and Klaus. It was about becoming voiceless.) 6.MARIGOLD. Big shout out to this post for spreading the word on the marigold symbolism. I'm pretty sure this will be Reginald backstory, which ties in with the creation of the Umbrella Academy. Also, because I'm a sucker for flower symbolism and reading into things, consider that marigolds:

a) fall into two families, the calendula which means "little clock" and the tagetes, which is named after the Etruscan prophet Tages. The Etruscans believed heavily in predestination - some events are set in stone, and cannot be changed. (Consider the way the apocalypse seems to always come for one set of siblings...) b) are named as such colloquially because they were offered in place of money to the Virgin Mary. (More divine imagery, and reference to a pure mother figure...) They are Mary’s gold. So maybe it’s a reference to Reginald’s wife, which would fit with the flashback scene we see in 1x10. c) are a flower of duality. They have strong connections with the sun and resurrection, yet the marigold is thought to be a flower of grief because it blooms in autumn. Again, think about that flashback in the first season. At the end of the world and a wife dying, there was the promise of rebirth. d) It's also a very common flower. Remember, there's actually 43 siblings out there. We've only met 14.

Also Netflix loves to do this thing around the halfway point (usually episode 5/6) in a season they're producing. They'll switch up the narrative with a twist or turn that provides a new perspective. 7.AUF WEIDERSEHEN. Once again, a German connection. And, obviously, a goodbye. Considering the last season focused on Kennedy, are we going to get some earlier Cold War time-travel shenanigans? Or maybe WW2? I think Blackman has said something about the Berlin Wall, which is interesting. A country divided... Umbrellas and Sparrows allegory? But as an aside, I'm also kinda lowkey hoping it's a nod to Auf Weidersehen, Pet. If you don't know the show, here's the wiki summary for the first season:

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a British comedy-drama television programme about seven British construction workers who leave the United Kingdom to search for employment overseas. They find work on a German building site in Düsseldorf but despite promises of hostel accommodation, are forced to live in a small hut that reminds them of a World War II POW camp. The rest of the series is driven by the interactions and growing friendships between the various characters.

In episode seven, three of the “Magnificent Seven” visit an intercontinental hotel. Just saying. If s3 was to go this route, my money would be on Luther, Diego and Five getting up to shenanigans in this one. I miss 125 shenanigans.😢

8.WEDDING AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Honestly, I’m holding out hope that one of our fave siblings gets married. I feel like that’s a trap though... Actually I feel like it might actually be a trap. As in, this is when the rising action really kicks it up a notch. But also remember the title of 1x01: We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals. Maybe the siblings get split up, possibly in episode 3/4, and they’re trying to reunite through episodes 5-7. Also thinking about hotels and apocalypses... There’s something very fatalistic about these titles so far. I have a feeling that the B-plot or the subtext is going to reveal a lot more about Reginald’s history and the destruction of his world.

9. SIX BELLS. This makes me think of church bells, which is some nice continuity with the wedding of the last title. But church bells are rung for all sorts of reasons - as a call to worship, or in celebration or mourning, or to tell the time. (Thinking back to those marigolds suddenly.) But why six? Now I’m thinking of bell ringing (change ringing), and the way different bells have different cord lengths to control the time of their chimes. It’s a highly mathematical process. Will this episode be Five’s time to shine? Will he coordinate his siblings through a large attack? 10. OBLIVION. Does anything even need to be said about this one? Hotel Oblivion baby ✌✌ Any further theorising would require more knowledge of the coming plot tbh.

Edit: I wrote most of this at 2am, so I’ve just tidied it up a little. Thank you for the ask, Nora! This was fun to think about.

#nikkiwrites #tua meta #tua s3 meta #aka i shake a magic 8-ball and see what comes up #tua season 3 #nikkianswers #softforklave #tua s3 spoilers #the umbrella academy #spoilers

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cybernaght · 3 years ago

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The Rebel/叛逆者: A Review of Sorts

After being only semi-invested in the Rebel, I ended up getting so into it in the final weeks of its release, I’ve shelled out on IQIYI premium just to get the final couple of episodes a few days earlier.

That’s right kids, it’s a Review of Sorts. Unfortunately, I could not find a translation of the novella the drama is based on, so will be looking at it as a separate entity.

Most of this post is spoiler-free, however I have dedicated a few paragraphs at the end of it to discussing the final episode, as there are a few specific things about it I wanted to mention. There is a clear spoiler warning before that part.

If you don’t want to risk it, TL;DR version of this review goes something like this: Rebel is very decent, and positively one of the best things that I have seen to come out of China since I’ve jumped into that particular rabbit hole. It’s pretty well written, it’s very beautifully dressed and shot, and the cast is killing it. I thought it dropped the ball a little in post production, and I did not always love the pacing. Other than that, it’s incredibly decent, and well worth watching, unless communist propaganda really irks you, in which case stay very well away.

I have been having many conversations with @supernovasimplicity all the way through watching this drama, so there are likely to be some thoughts here that are influenced by those.

The story centers around Lin Nansheng, a struggling servicemen in the Guomingdang party. He has a great analytical mind, and absolutely no emotional capacity for his job. He has trouble handling violence, he is impulsive, he cannot speak to his superiors without bursting into tears, and has nothing even remotely resembling a poker face. And that is what makes this drama as enjoyable as it is.

I don’t think Lin Nansheng’s journey would have been nearly as exciting had he started it from a place of competence. He botches up everything he touches because his big brain switches off the moment his emotions kick in. And so, when you see him grow in confidence, learn to control himself, learn to fake his smiles and compliments, you can’t help but feel a strange sense of pride. It also makes Lin Nansheng very likeable as a character for reasons other than Zhu Yilong’s ability to look like a bush baby.

It did take me a while to feel fully engaged with his performance - not because there is anything lacking in it, but just because it’s hard to be truly surprised by his choices after the exposure I have given myself to his work. That said, at about a half-way point I got charmed by him anyway, and there were quite a few scenes that were truly mesmerising. There were scenes where he broke out of the familiar mould of big unguarded eyes and fluttering wet eyelashes, and tried something that was not pretty: every time to a great success. I am hoping to see more of that in his future work.

I really wanted to like the female lead, Zhu Yizhen, but unfortunately both the way she was written and the way she was performed by Tong Yao left me somewhat cold. It did not help of course that the screenplay ended up sidelining her at every turn, leaving her with very little personal agency. She was set up so interestingly, but in the end her sole purpose became being someone for Lin Nansheng to pine over. It is particularly curious from a perspective of meta storytelling: seeing how this is all centered around superiority of communism, which as a whole was, arguably, ahead of its time in the matters of binary gender equality.

The ensemble cast of the drama is stunning. Wang Yang came very close to stealing the show at several points as Chen Moqun, somehow managing to make his rather unlikeable character interesting. I can say the same thing about Zhu Zhu who absolutely shined as Lin Xinjie, showing an incredible range and imagination in her performance.

The overarching story of the show is engaging, with some incredibly suspenseful elements; every narrative arc including a nice progression through it. As spy thrillers go, it was fairly well plotted. You could if you go looking for a few things that did not pay off in a satisfying way (notably, the Chekhov’s cyanide capsule), but you overall the story really was well told for the most of it.

I did, however, feel like the pacing started to fall apart in the last quarter of the drama. Last episode in particular really did feel rushed, not just due to its pace, but also in a way it failed to pay off the final mission in any visible way. There will be more on that in the spoiler section of this post.

Important to note that The Rebel is a show made in Communist China in the year 2021. It does not ideologically side-step from the path that was laid out for it by that fact. Which is to say, it is, undeniably, filled with propaganda. Communists are the good guys, and if you think a good guy (or gal) is not a communist, they probably secretly are. With one exception of a friendly character who is not a communist, and whose fate we actually never find out. Curious, that.

The Rebel is not a kind of a show where censorship-appeasing scenes are shoehorned in. It’s a kind of a show in which the main theme is Sacrifice For the Party.

Aside from the being the moral vector of the show, Mao’s gentle teachings explicitly help get Ling Nansheng out of prolonged depression following his injury, and almost annoyingly, this sat incredibly well with the character, as he was written. Lin Nansheng is conceived as this naive idealist who wants to be on the front line, who needs validation and support of others. His - and I can’t believe I’m saying this - his being disillusioned in his beliefs and choosing to join a party which includes people whom he likes and trusts makes sense. Him finding this one thing that gives him hope and letting it propel him into gaining confidence and competence makes sense.

In many ways, the Rebel is a story of Lin Nansheng’s failure to become an antagonist within the world of the drama.

I have honestly spent this past couple of weeks pondering whether being well written makes political propaganda better or worse, whether the subtlety of it makes it more or less palatable, whether it’s enough, as a viewer, to be aware of it to shrug it off. Ultimately, this is not something I could or should make moral judgements on, but I do believe that it’s possible to acknowledge the fact that propaganda exists in the drama, and still appreciate it for a good piece of television that it is.

That said, I am very well aware that me being kind of okay with it stems entirely from my own removal from the culture this is made in, and I am, perhaps, lucky to even have a choice as to whether I want to engage with a product which is, undoubtably, here to dress political ideology in fancy clothes.

I have, on the other hand, also seen many things in Russian media of the “Annexation of Crimea is Good Actually” variety and those make me feel very unwell, so feeling somewhat at ease with blatant political propaganda in Chinese media makes me the biggest hypocrite.

But, I digress.

Before we go into some specific plot-related things, I would like to mention that the Rebel has this weird dichotomy in which the production is sublime, and the post-production… not so much. The show very well shot. Every element of it sits perfectly together, not a single prop out of place, not a single extra underdressed, not a page of script not put to good use. It’s lit to perfection. It’s scored beautifully. So much of this show is just stunning.

And then… there is post-production.

This is not even about bad CGI (and the CGI is, indeed, bad), it’s just that most of post-production as a whole feels rushed.

Starting with surprisingly imperfect editing, which at times just fails to make the scene flow together. The final line of dialogue would be spoken within a scene, and it would fade to black instantly without a single breath to indicate a full stop. A montage sequence would be created, but every shot within it condensed to a second, making it feel incredibly fast-paced when the effect should be the opposite. There would be a cut away from a speaking character and to the same speaking character from a slightly different angle, making it dynamic without any reason to do so. There are a couple of truly startling jump-cuts.

I did not speed this gif up. This is part of a romantic montage, edited like it’s a goddamn action sequence.

And of course dear old friend slowing down footage shot at 24FPS. Please don’t do this. You think no one notices - but we do.

There are other tell-tale signs of production rushing to the finish line: occasional, but very noticeable ADR glitches, very sloppy job done at sound mixing, which contribute to parts of the show feeling ever so slightly off.

It’s not unforgivable, but it does make me wish the same amount of care and efforts that went into shooting this drama would also go into it after it was all in the can.

Oh, and just because if you know me you know I have a professional fixation on fights, and I am happy to say most action scenes are toe-curlingly delightful. Hot damn those fights are good. I am absolutely in love with the shot below, for example. Placing an actor behind a piece of set so he can exchange places with the stunt double during a one shot is such an old trick, but the execution, timing and camerawork are just... flawless. This is what perfection looks like.

Now we got all that out of the way...

SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE BELOW

Here’s the thing. I wanted to love the ending and I found that I could not.

The final mission was presented as important, and honestly the scene in which Zhu Yizhen is sending the vital message out as Lin Nansheng holds his ground in hand to hand fight is incredibly dynamic. Party, this is due to the fight itself being incredibly well choreographed, yes, but it’s also where it sits within the narrative, how high the stakes are for everything surrounding it.

But then, the tension all but bleeds out. The Important Message is sent, the fight is won, and we are treated to ten minutes of a very slow car chase, problem of which is not even its speed as much as its placing within the story. As in, by this point both of those operatives have lost their cover, and completed their Very Important Mission. It would be very sad if they died, but their survival does not technically contribute to their cause. Moreover, Zhu Yizhen getting mortally injured in order to protect Lin Nansheng as part of her mission read a little empty when the mission is technically over.

While I personally found Lin Nansheng slow recuperation and his low key ending enjoyable, I think I would have preferred to have seen a more tangible pay-off to all the sacrifices made in the name of “bright communist future”, just a little more justification for every moment of death and despair we witnessed. I would have certainly at the very least preferred to see Wang Shi’an’s death on screen. Considering how many likeable characters martyred themselves on screen, denying us the death of the one antagonist just seemed cruel.

I really did love the ambiguity of the final few scenes however, if we consider the children choir at the end a fantasy. The idea that Lin Nansheng will live out his life in this hope that Zhu Yizhen is still alive, imagining her just outside of his field of vision, his only joy being in this fantasy of her… now, that is incredibly strong. I equally like the idea of rest being promised to him at the end of his journey, and said rest being painful, and slow and unwelcome.

But it felt like as they chose not to to lean into the “sweet” part of the bitter-sweet tone of the ending and we’re unable not commit to the “bitter” part either, so it lands with a splat which is somewhat lacklustre.

---

This concludes my thoughts on the Rebel.

I am more or less out of Zhu Yilong’s filmography to watch, which is probably a good thing at this point. I have just emerged out of several back to back work projects - literally today - and will hopefully once more have time for things I grew to enjoy doing during the lockdown.

Those things, if you have not guessed, include watching Chinese television and writing things about Chinese television.

#the rebel #叛逆者 #Zhu Yilong #review of sorts #now with gifs #chinese drama

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