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queen-beefcake-sqx · 3 years ago

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I’m going to regret this I’m sure but....

tl;dr - TGCF shouldn’t be read as a character-driven novel, but as a situational story akin to a fairytale or parable.

Before you read this: I have an awful memory and may have totally misremembered something. This is also almost all stream of consciousness, however much I tried to format it. Please take this take with a grain of salt and be aware I am totally speaking from my own perspective on this story.

Okay I wasn’t going to drop my two cents but I’m dropping my two cents on TGCF’s narrative because I think better when I verbalize my thoughts and I don’t see a lot of people talking about TGCF from this angle so here we go: (spoilers for the entirety of TGCF btw)

A bit of background on me - I’m a Literary Arts major who did a Choose Your Own Adventure thesis, and I like making narrative-heavy games in my free time. Narrative flow and narrative structure is something I think about a lot.

I’ve been seeing a lot of criticism of TGCF as a story, which I get if you’re reading it expecting a typical novel narrative flow. There’s a lot of gaps in information in TGCF, and the characters are definitely flatter than other novels because of it. Many of the conflicts we encounter in TGCF are in media res - problems that began before Xie Lian’s third ascension - and MXTX gives us very little to work with as far as characterization until we get the first flashback scenes in Book 2. Even then, we have a lot of telling instead of showing that happens in regards to side characters and their backstories during these conflicts.

TGCF is a disappointing novel if you’re expecting something character-driven. That is not something it is successful at. The reason I think TGCF fanfiction is so appealing is because there’s a lot of blank space to flesh out and play in. That said, I think it’s unfair to say it’s a bad story purely because the characters are flat. Because TGCF isn’t a story about characters. It is a story about situations. It’s a fairytale, a parable, a warning about idol worship and devotion. And from that angle it’s VERY successful in my opinion.

Fairytales set up situations that must be overcome, with the main character having the perfect traits (or perfect companions) to leap that hurdle (or not). Cinderella has a fairy godmother who grants her the ability to meet the prince, as long as Cinderella continues to be pure and virtuous and punctual. Anansi the Spider is greedy, hoarding his wisdom in a clay pot, until his witty son proves Anansi isn’t the only one with good ideas. The boy who cried wolf is childish and playful, leaving himself vulnerable when his cries are no longer a joke.

These characters are all very flat, but their situations serve a purpose still. They’re lessons. Cinderella teaches a lesson on how the virtuous can come from even the lowest backgrounds. Anansi the Spider teaches us that there’s a little wisdom in everyone. The boy who cried wolf teaches us that constantly lying is a really, really bad idea. Their stories are successful in setting up a situation that we can apply to our everyday lives that helps us guide our morality.

So what’s TGCF teaching us, then? Well, a couple of things, but there’s a few big ones I’d like to focus on —

First, Xie Lian’s entire story is a cautionary tale about idol worship and human suffering. We are witnessing the third ascension of a once beloved god who is now considered a god of misfortune - how did this happen? He was considered so virtuous and unable to do any wrong to the point that when he is unable to accomplish something or refuses to act in a way that compromises his morals, his people turn on him. People only see the god, forgetting he was once mortal.

Books Two and Four encapsulate Xie Lian’s biggest lesson - that no one person can hope to end all suffering, even a god, and that putting a person on a pedestal places unachievable expectations upon them.

The rest of the books deal with two different but tangential lessons — devotion means seeing the best in people, regardless of their flaws; devotion also means inevitable destruction when you are not valued to the same degree.

Consider arguably the most famous quote from this whole book — “To me, the one basking in infinite glory is you. The one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is you, and not the state of you.” What matters most is not the person you are in fringe cases of duress or adulation, but the person you are most consistently in the moments in between.

Book Three is a textbook gauntlet of moments like this. Each situation we are presented with are meant to be foils to Xie Lian and Hua Cheng’s relationship: Shi Qingxuan, Quan Yizhen, and Bai Jing each trust someone dear to them (Shi Wudu/”Ming Yi”, Yin Yu, and Ling Wen respectively) who betray them in some way, and yet they remain incredibly devoted to their person. These stories show the way devotion can destroy a person, and yet those destroyed continue to believe the best in the one they idolized, for better or for worse. (We could spend all day discussing my emotions about all of these relationships because oh my god each one is really its own cautionary tale.)

(Also, we’re ignoring Feng Xin and Jian Lan for now - I don’t remember their narrative well enough to loop it into this analysis at the moment, and I just got home from work. I’ll revise this later).

Hell, while I’m here - that moment in Book 4 where Xie Lian is speaking with ghost fire Hua Cheng? The “I’ll never let them know I’m still here” conversation? That’s also a great moment emphasizing that Hua Cheng is aware of these lessons more than anyone else — Hua Cheng is aware of what devotion does to a person, how destructive it can be, and refuses to let Xie Lian carry the burden of knowing what Hua Cheng has done for him.

It’s obvious that Yin Yu carries grief for what he did to Quan Yizhen, and even Ling Wen gets her little moment of subtly implying remorse for her actions (“Let it go, your highness” fucking kills me every time). We never see He Xuan following the Black Water arc, but it’s easy to infer he’s the one who delivers the wind master fan back to Shi Qingxuan as his own way of showing remorse for what happened. (On top of a lot of good meta that has already been written about how much crueler He Xuan could have been to Shi Qinguxan). Hua Cheng refuses to do that to Xie Lian, who has already shouldered innumerable grief for his former failures — grief that Hua Cheng has had a front row seat for.

What sets Hualian apart is that Xie Lian never saw Hua Cheng as a stepping stone to his goals, regardless of form. The ways that Hua Cheng is destroyed are of his own volition, willing sacrifices on Xie Lian’s behalf. Which in my opinion all makes sense when you consider that Hua Cheng is an orphan who never had ANYONE else care about him, as far as we can see. His fall from the wall can easily be read as a suicide attempt — he is already ready to throw his life away before meeting Xie Lian, and suddenly here is this person who offers him kindness and a purpose. And Hua Cheng takes that purpose to its logical conclusion, giving his life over and over and over again. It is only at the end when Xie Lian returns his love and devotion that his sacrifices can finally stop.

(also, re: Hua Cheng being a total cunt - to me, it’s the most obvious thing in the world for him to be cruel to the people he is cruel to, and one day I’ll reread the novels fully with that take in mind and explain to everyone exactly why. Additionally, I don’t think any of the lessons being put forth by the novel are “Only good people deserve good things” and I think that’s wildly antithetical to the above point of “Don’t put people on pedestals”. Like this novel is about human failings, despite being focused on “gods”, and part of that is that even people with flaws deserve kindness.)

Look, this is already too long and rambling, and I don’t have the energy to pull out the book right now and get sources for the kind of in-depth character analysis I’d like to do (especially for Hua Cheng, who I know complicates a lot of the morality in the novel, I know). And to be clear — I’m not faulting anyone for disliking TGCF at all. I fully expect there’s a lot of people who won’t agree with this meta at all.

But please, consider — How many of you were the golden child growing up whose parents were disappointed when you started slipping later in life? How many of you have said something that has irreparably ruined a relationship, despite otherwise being a good friend/partner? How many of you have tried to fix a problem only to make it worse?

I was not pulled into TGCF because of the characters. I was pulled in by the scenario the story set up, and as I read I stayed invested because the situations the characters continued to find themselves in mirrored problems I’d witnessed in real life. I’ve never seen the fall of a god, but I’ve witnessed beloved friends ostracized from friend groups for failing to take the “right” side. I’ve seen the disappointment on people’s faces when I acted less than virtuously, when I was petty or lazy. I’ve seen small problems spiral among the rumor mill and had my name caught up in them when I’ve tried to set the record straight. TGCF gives me several easily imprintable characters for living through a world where those moments turned out better, eventually — where maybe I or my friends could have had a happy ending.

And to me? That makes an amazing story.

#shut up sadie #sadie writes analysis #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #I am shaking because I haven't eaten in several hours but I had to hammer this out to be free of my hyperfixation #heaven official's blessing

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seddm · 3 years ago

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Would you please do a little something about Amphibia. I’ve always loved the way you put things in perspective :)

HUGE SPOILERS FOR AMPHIBIA'S FINALE BELOW ALSO MESSY POST I DIDN'T REALLY PROOFREAD KINDA WROTE IT AS A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I'm still in the middle of FEELING and THINKING and THINKING ABOUT HOW I FEEL, so my ideas might change in the following days; also, while I certainly have a lot of opinions, I didn't dedicate to this show the amount of time I dedicated to SVTFOE, so I don't feel as comfortable analyzing its themes and ideas inside out.

Anyway: the finale hurt. A lot. It's your classic "change happens" finale, which is something completely in line with the themes the show always had. Could they have gone for something different, keeping the dimensions connected, maybe in a partial way but still connected? Probably. By the end of the series, all notions of escapism surrounding the characters and their time in Amphibia had been solved and replaced by more mature and positive feelings, so I don't think keeping the possibility of Anne and Sprig being in contact would have undermined anything. It's just, evidently, not what Matt Braly wanted. What's wrong with this, beyond a more subjective and personal preference for perfectly happy endings goddamnit I wanted to smile fuck? The possibility, the risk of giving the idea that Amphibia, as a place, doesn't deserve its "agency", and that its role was over the moment Anne, Sasha and Marcy went back home. That it was little more than a dream, a fantasy that stops existing the moment the coming of age journey of the characters is over, and they can leave behind their fantasies.

-which clearly doesn't apply to this show. Amphibia is the main setting of the series, it's a second world to the characters, Sprig and Anne are the main characters and their separation was THE climax of the episode. Still, a possible interpretation given the decision to throw the "leaving behind some things" in the larger hat of "CHANGE AS A POSITIVE" of the show.

Earth and Amphibia being separated, probably forever (sure there's Terri with her portals, fans can dream and speculate, but the girls are OLD now compared to the target age for Disney products, their story as far as Amphibia goes is probably over even in the super unlikely possibility of any kind of spinoff or continuation or comic), hurts a lot. I'm livid. But there was also closure in it, a wonderful goodbye that can never be tainted. It'll forever hurt and I'll forever wish they went in the opposite direction, but that won't haunt me. I accept it.

What about the girls? Somehow, that's the part that hurt me the most, and many other viewers like me. And, in my opinion, that's harder to analyze. And to rationalize.

We get this scene giving us some exposition about what happened during the timeskip, and most of the problems stem from this. Did Marcy not physically visit the girls for almost a decade, or it's a "can't believe it's been ten years since our adventure in Amphibia ended!" kind of deal?

Does this line mean Marcy knew so little about the girls' lives for all this time, or it's just a way to allow Sasha to give the viewer some exposition?

If it's the former, then why does she know what Anne is doing? A rekindled and recent interest through social media? Or they did talk during all these years, maybe occasionally, the way a lot of real life friends do even when they're not as long distance as they are? I have no answers, I pray for some kind of Word of God Clarification™ from Matt Braly, but I wouldn't count on it since showrunners rarely like explaining stuff like that. But I can, maybe, analyze some of the issues that are currently hurting me, and possible "solutions".

The show takes place over less than a year, the timeskip lasts ten years. To us viewers, 99.9% of the life of the characters happened during that one year, but to the characters, if you were to imagine them as living people with their own agency, the years of the timeskip - highschool and college and beginning of adult life - clearly represented the majority of their lives. And this is the first layer of the issue, something that can affect every work of fiction, the irreconcilable difference between the viewers' perception of the events, and how the character in the work might reasonably act.

Second layer, the show gave us some incredibly tender moments between the three girls, especially in the last episodes, when they had fixed or come to terms with most of their personal issues, forgiving themselves and each other. This probably made their friendship look stronger than it was.

I use friendship with a very specific meaning in this context, because that's feels like what the show / writing was going for. By the end of their adventure their bond is incredibly strong, more than it has ever been, but as far as friendship goes, the ""problems"" they had before might still exist. Marcy certainly learned to pay more attention to how other are feelings, but that won't magically make Anne and Sasha interested into playing Dungeons & Dragons, and so on.

In a way, this scene told us what we saw in the timeskip.

This applies to Sprig, obviously, but also to the three girls.

Life lead them in different places, maybe different interests -they already had different interests to being with, but they still care about each other more than anything else, even if they might not have (it's an odd sentence I know but it's the best way I can put it) participated in a long time in any of the common rituals of friendship. This much is clear, this scene speaks volume (and that's why I uploaded it as a video, the voice acting and body language is important).

And Matt Braly tweets this

and says in multiple interviews things like

It really allowed me to think about how we grew apart, we grew back together, we grew apart again, and we found each other again. There’s this beauty in life of these relationships that ebb and flow. That’s what I wanted to bottle up. It’s tricky, though!

And at this point I, poor little viewer who was hoping for the three girls to be best friends forever always together often bought in bulk do not separate for the rest of their lives, am forced to let the two wolves inside me fight.

The one who's fucking sad and who can't believe these girls might have fallen out enough to barely talk for multiple years after everything they went through, after all the work and self improvement and shared experiences that forever changed them and who thinks this is all bullshit and that a five seconds long scene that could have easily been dialogue-less soured a whole show and three wonderful characters for me; And the one who tries to understand the intentions of the show. That friendships come in all form and shapes, that we have the perfection of Spranne, ending at an all times high with external circumstances separating them, and the imperfection of the Calamity Trio, three girls who would (did?) die for each other and drop anything and everything to help, but who still took different paths for a part of their lives. And that's normal, happens to a lot of people, friends can not see each other for years and still act like not even a day passed the next time they meet. But it's also jarring, because in the simple world of a cartoon one would have expected more. But that's also not permanent, the show ends with a promise of change to come, Anne's narration talks of things returning in your life, the very last image of the series is one of pure happiness. It's easy to imagine any number of scenarios leading to their relationship bringing once again on the table "the standard rituals of friendship", because the love and affection never left them for a single moment.

Which wolf is going to win? I have no idea. Likely the latter, in time, but it's painful. As anyone who followed me during SVTFOE times knows all too well, understanding the themes and intentions of the writers does very little to change the perception of execution, and the way something subjectively resonated with one's preferences and experiences. Also, an open ending is still open, no matter how positive the outlook might be, and that's fertile ground for the demon that is lack of closure and doubt.

I asked a friend who doesn't watch the show for a somewhat unbiased opinion, and they said

Yeah, I can definitely see how it seems uncontroversially positive from a detached point of view

I guess I'll latch onto that adverb as strongly as I can, at least while I eagerly wait for Matt to benevolently bestow on us, through tweets and interviews and AMAs, any minuscule crumble of Word of God that might bring some manner of comfort to our troubled souls. I don't know, something like "whoops my bad didn't realize Marcy and Sasha's lines would have came across as that bad haha it's not like they became strangers soon after coming back from Amphibia it was gradual they still have a group chat Marcy shares memes every day it's just been a while the avalanche of events from highschool to college to starting to work took them by surprise but now things can change, something new can always begin, they still have decades to be together who knows maybe they'll be roommates for the next five years haha".

A man can dream delude himself...

#amphibia #amphibia spoilers #seddm answers #seddm ramblings

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stellocchia · 4 years ago

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Okay, time for another overly long analysis of our favourite green blob with a god complex and traumatized teen!

I will be discussing both the “Trapped in prison with Dream” stream and the “Am I dead?” stream as I think they should be analyzed together, so espect spoilers for those. It also goes without saying that, from here on out, unless stated otherwise, I’ll be talking about the characters and the roleplay only!

So here we go! More under the cut and be advised that this will be a long one!

First of all it’s essential to keep in mind that Dream’s view of his relationship with Tommy is extremely different from Tommy’s. I will be going more into details as the analysis proceeds, but it’s very clear by now that Dream is under the delusion that Tommy’s attachment to him is as strong as his for Tommy.

We have multiple examples of this, but the strongest one (until the revival stream at least) was back in the season 2 finale when he kept believing that Tommy wouldn’t kill him as he wouldn’t kill Tommy. We also have instances like him saying “exile wasn’t that bad, you had me” and his insistence on them having “so much fun together” that all point to the conclusion of Dream believing their game is played on both side.

Tommy, on the other hand, made it abundantly clear that he despises Dream entirely. He recognizes that Dream actively makes him a worse person when they’re together and he recognizes that he abused and manipulated him along with many others. Tommy doesn’t reciprocate Dream’s obsession in the slightest and actually seems extremely taken aback any time the green man proposes the idea of them being a theme.

On that last point it’s interesting to notice that the actual idea of them working together (Tommy and Dream vs the world style) is actually something new that Dream introduced with his stay in prison. Proposing they could “escape tigether” when they first ended up stuck there and even more in the two latest streams... Dream’s interpretation of their relationship seems to have shifted from “fated nemesis who have fun together” to “friends”. No, this is not a positive shift, and I’m not framing it as one. Dream’s idea of friendship is as twisted as can be and Tommy has zero say in the matter.

Now that the introduction is done, let’s get to the actual analysis!

Trapped in prison with Dream

So the stream starts with Tommy trying his best to annoy the Hell out of Dream. Then PussBoy is introduced...

One thing to point out is that Tommy seems to fear silence and lonliness over everything (as we’ll see proof of later on), so it’s honestly no surprise that he would not be able to bear the silence for too long.

“The cat is the best thing that’s happened to us” Dream is already sort of shifting from the “me” talk to the “us” talk, which is rather interesting. That also mirrors his “You being stuck here is the best thing that’s happened to me since I got to prison” statement.

Then there is the interaction with Sam where he decided to leave Tommy in there longer in order to solve the issue. We also get a very rare instance of Tommy showing a lot of his vulnerability, talking about exile (though it’s clear he doesn’t know Sam knows as much as he does about exile), which promptly gets ignored in favour of Sam continuing to work on the security issue.

A few seconds after Sam left Dream already burns the new clock. The reason he’s doing it is obviously to keep Tommy in a more vulnerable state of mind by continiously insuring he has no way to tell how much time has passed. All the while acting like it’s no big deal of course. Like his actions aren’t deliberate.

“What if we get out together?” “No, no! Because then you’ll break out with me, I don’t want you to break out with me” Dream already gave a similar proposition when they had just got stuck together and, again, the reason why this is so important, is because it seems to indicate a shift in Dream’s mind between the “me vs you” mentality to the “me and you vs the rest”.

There is then the whole debacle with PussBoy where he’s killed. There isn’t really much reaction from Dream for it (really, Tommy shows more panic about it then Dream does any emotion. Please people, re-watch that scene and stop using the damn cat as a motivator there). “Look Tommy, I’m gonna get out” is literally his only reaction. That and saying that Tommy is and always has been his motivator: “You motivated me, well, you motivate me all the time”. It really couldn’t be clearer here.

“I’ll get out and, when I do, I’ll get my revenge” (...) “On who” “On everyone who’s wronged me” “Oh on fucking everyone won’t you! You’ll go and you’ll kill fucking... you wouldn’t kill anyone would you? You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t kill someone (long pause)... of course you fucking would...” Now, why did I highlight this whole thing? Well, because there’s a lot to unpack here.

1) Dream is still fully of the idea that he was in the right, hence his desire to get revenge on “those who wronged him”. His mentality has not shifted at all so we can conclude, once and for all, that his “meek” act during most of the visit was indeed just that: an act.

2) Callback to Tommy saying he feels like his brain is “wired to be Dream’s friend”, despite having already been killed 2 times by Dream, Tubbo more recently almost dying to him and knowing what he is capable of in general, it still takes him quite a bit to remember that yes, Dream would kill someone, he would hurt people. Tommy still has a hard time admitting to what happened to him and the impact Dream has had on him and he’s not entirely out of Dream’s manipulation (once again, good representation, because you don’t heal from something like that in a month), he is however now better at recognizing it and correcting his own faulty thinking.

“I have a plan” I did not notice this on first watch, but was Dream’s plan to send Tommy to the afterlife from the start? Or, at least, to send someone there so he could study it? It could very well have been. He’s shown in the next stream that he wanted talk to Schlatt immediately asking Tommy about him once he was back. We can’t however ignore that he mentione that “someone who owes him a favour” may be a part of his escape plan, so that feels rather important for the future once he’ll have brought Willbur back to life.

So then there is more of fight that start. Dream is getting annoyed at Tommy’s “whining” and tries to make him see things from his perspective (aka “it’s not so bad because we have each other” again with the trying to establish their “friendship”).

“You don’t have ME, you never have ME, we don’t have each other, alright? I am me and you are this fucking looser who goes around manipulating people and lying to get what he wants” What this is is 2 things:

1) Tommy recognizing what Dream is trying to do, the subtext of what he’s saying and refuting his claims (hurray for the bit of healing he’s had!)

2) Tommy actually recognizing the possessive side of the claims Dream keeps making. I don’t see this talked about that much, but, to Dream, Tommy is most definitely his propriety, just like Tommy’s disks were Dream’s in his mind (remember that speach? He literally referred to them as “my disks”). I mean, he clearly acts like that’s the case, enphasizing time and time again how he has absolute power over Tommy (I’ll go a bit more into it towards the end of the analysis of the other stream, for now though, keep this in mind)

“Even when I’m in here I’m more powerful then you are when you are outside” back on the theme of Dream’s God Complex I see. He seems to like showing off as often as he can “how powerful he is and how powerless Tommy is” (in Dream’s words from the season 2 finale), though that’s most probably to keep enforcing the dynamic that he already established in exile, the whole thing with Tommy being entirely dependent on Dream. He seems to like that aspect of their dynamic as he has expressed multiple times his appreciation for that specific period of time.

“If I wanted to, right now, I could just kill you. And the only reason I’m NOT is because of my friends, for Tubbo, because WE need that fucking revive book, alright? That’s the only reason I’m not killing you” well, I mean, we’ve known this for quite a while. The only reason Dream got to keep his last life was because of Tommy’s attachment to his friends. I’ve seen a few people saying that it was specifically to revive Wilbur and, while that may have been an idea at first, by now he had already shown multiple times that that was not the case (even before spending time with him in the afterlife). When he went to “Wilbur’s revival” (the failed one) he showed that he was already incredibly uncertain about wanting Wilbur back (describing him as “not so poggers” in very Tommyinnit fashion). No, the actual reason why he wants the book is most likely because Tubbo is on his last life and we know he can’t live without his best friend.

“Tommy, I’m never, I am NEVER EVER going to use the revive book to help you or any of your stupid little friends, okay?” So now the question is: was this a lie or a twisted version of the truth?

I’m gonna say the latter and here is why: Dream DID, in fact, revive Tommy. We know this now, it’s canon. But he really didn’t do it FOR Tommy. One thing I want to make clear is this: while Dream may, in fact, consider himself and Tommy “friends” he doesn’t CARE for Tommy himself, not in a way that’s commonly considered as “caring” at the very least. He finds him fun, entertaining and he seems to be rather dependent on him, but NONE of this things equate to caring about HIM. So, now that that’s cleard up, the resons why he revived him in the first place should be rather obvious:

1) He wanted to see if he could and learn more about his power in general

2) As I said before, there is a degree of dependency Dream has on Tommy. It’s very obvious in the fact that, despite having let go of every other attachment, he doesn’t seem able of letting go of Tommy, not permanently anyway. He seems to actually need to have a degree of control over Tommy at all times

“I will never use the revive book. I will NEVER use it on you, I will never use it on any of your friends, I will never use it to save ANY of you” now THIS one is a straight up lie. What Dream was trying to do here was provoking Tommy enough to see if he’d actually kill Dream or not (which was a useful information for him for later). To see if Tommy could bring himself to do it (he can’t)

“I’ll get out eventually because, either you’ll let me out or... people will be dead” way to be ominous green man! We could assume by this point that his plan to escape may have been along the lines of “getting Techno to repay him by killing one of Tommy’s friends therefore forcing him to let Dream out to bring them back”, or something of the sort.

“This isn’t worse then exile (...) because in exile I thought you had all the power (...) here’s the thing Dream, here’s the thing I know: I don’t think the revive- I- how could I be so fucking...? The revive book Dream, it’s not real is it?” Here is where things start to actually go downhill fast. There is nothing Dream hates more then Tommy questioning his power, there is nothing that makes him angry faster (I’m sure the whole “I don’t give a fuck about Spirit” speach comes to everyone’s mind when I say this, as it should). Dream, as much as he presents himself to be a logical mastermind, is actually very emotional in the way that he is very easily overtaken by anger. He does irrational stuff every time he gets mad, that’s no secret. If he wasn’t already planning to kill Tommy to test his power, this push is what convinced him to do it. Also this is the exact reason why he likes Tommy (weirdly enough, their relationship is so very complicated) in the first place, because he’s the only one who’s constantly questioning him and challenging him.

As we know the fight escalated and Dream ended up killing Tommy telling him to ask “Schlatt” about the book. Though before that there are quite a few exchanges were Tommy expresses that he thinks Dream is powerless now and was lying about the book all along because that’s generally what he does and Dream keeps insisting that he’s not lying and that Tommy’s life is still in his hands, that he still has all the power (turns out he wasn’t so wrong...).

Also, last line to analyze from this: “I might as well be a God Tommy! You can’t kill me and I can kill you” pretty sure this is the first time Dream outwardly announces his God Complex and it’s interesting that his idea of power revolves entirely around having power over Tommy specifically. Because, even having power over Tommy’s life he’s still in prison, he stil has no real power of any kind. Everyone on the outside still hates him (aside from the anarchist duo), they still aren’t letting him out. Who comes to see him and what he can keep in his cell is still entirely dependent on Sam and not on him. But the fact that he has power over Tommy is enough to make him a God in Dream’s eyes.

Am I dead?

Fisrst things first, the afterlife part:

It seems that we may be seeing pieces of conversation had at different times. Let me explain myself:

Tommy opens up asking if he’s dead, then he has an interaction with Wilbur that sounds like it could be their first interaction after his Tommy’s death as Wilbur asks how he’s doing.

We know however that he’s been ther for at least 2 months, probably more considering he seems to have interacted with Schlatt, but Schlatt has been comatose for 3 months. We could then assume that what we see is a sort of very short montage of Tommy’s time in the afterlife.

The next scene we have Tommy asking “How long is left?” (we don’t know what he’s referring to, though it could be to his revival) and Wilbur responds saying that, to the end of the Universe it would be still 8 eons. Then Wilbur asks him to play competitive solitary and they randomly chat for a bit.

New change of topic (probably next scene again) we have Wilbur telling Tommy he’s happy Tommy is there (dead) with him as the tw of them were never good for the server and caused all the problems (which we know to be incorrect, but it was Wilbur’s mentality at the time of his death and it makes sense that he would have kept it). Tommy also has a very clear panic attack which Wilbur generally ignores. Wilbur also says that, if he’s brought back to life, he knows for a fact that the server will be in shambles because, in his words: “I know what I’m like, that’s the issue”.

Like it or not people Wilbur is most definitely implying that he knows he wasn’t a good person and that he won’t be different when he comes back. Simple as that. It’s also a further confirmation of his self-deprecating nature that brought him to self-destruct in the first place.

There is another pause that we could consider a cut scene and Wilbur is then talking about making a solitaire arena in a couple of months to an exasperated Tommy

Now for the revival itself:

First thing we notice once Tommy is back to life is that he’s most definitely experiencing a sensory overload. He’d gotten used to living in a colorless dimension with almost no sounds (aside from Wilbur’s and Mexican Dream’s voices I’m guessing) and no sense of touch aside from the constant pain that being back on the living plain may be quite ovewhelming for him.

“So what was it like?” Dream doesn’t loose a beat once Tommy is back before starting to ask him questions. He literally sounds like an eager kid who just got a new toy (and I gotta commend cc!Dream for the voice acting here!). The book worked and now he needs to find out exactly to what extent he can use it (the idea of immortality being on his mind as we’ll see later).

“Void, it was dark, it was all dark” “There was Schlatt, there was Mexican Dream” “There’s so many more drugs then just alcohol” “Mexican Dream, he was there, which was confusing, he was loud. And then there was Wilbur...” “(Continuation from below) and then I came out and I was in a long long hole, a tunnel of black and void, not even black just colorless” “When I was there it all felt so real, but so torn apart. It felt like I was in pieces, like I was stomped on” This is our best description of the Afterlife so far. A static void with no colors or viable sensations, with only 3 known residents now that Tommy is not there any longer. A weird reality with a seemingly entirely different set of rules to our own.

“Death felt like my body was taken apart and then put together and then taken apart and put together here. It felt stretched man” “It felt like I was shredded to dust” “No it didn’t feel goo- it felt like I was put through a shredder, but there was no blood, there was no flesh it was just essence, like a powder and I was put through (continues in previous section)” This is Tommy’s complete description of his experience with death and what it felt like. Having to stay for months with this constant sensation it’s really no surprise he would be so hypersensitive to touch.

“Honestly I was kind of scared it wouldn’t work” So, here we got another indication of the fact that, while Dream killed Tommy in rage, having him stay dead was never his intention (despite him claiming he would never use the book on Tommy a couple of days prior). He never intended to severe his last attachment (I’m honestly not sure he even CAN seeing as how dependent he actually seem on Tommy), he literally only killed him because he was mad Tommy would question him and wanted to prove a point, but to prove his point in the first place he needed Tommy back. It’s also probably why he revived him so fast, his weird need to have control over Tommy, which he couldn’t have while Tommy was dead.

Why did he care so much about Tommy not believing him on the book, you may ask? Was it to save his own skin? It’s possible and I think that’s part of it, others being convinced that the only reason they kept Dream alive was a lie could cause his death. The other reason is that he seems, as I said before, to want to shift his and Tommy’s dynamic to an “us vs the world” type of deal, which would require Tommy in particular to believe everything he says.

We can now add being hit at all by Dream to Tommy’s ever growing list of trauma triggers as he seems to have a very vivid recollection of his death by Dream’s hands... also we need to point out their body language in this: Dream is constantly trying to get close to Tommy as much as he’s constantly insisting on getting more information, while Tommy alternates between getting close to Dream and pushing him away (could be he’s both seeking some kind of comfort, but is also very overwhelmed).

“Tell me, one more time: what was it like when you died?” “Did it feel good?” Dream’s insistence and exitment about Tommy’s very obvious extreme distress is honestly concerning, but expected. By now we can safely assume that he doesn’t really have any empathy, I know, bold claim, but is there any evidence to refute it? Any evidence at all? Because, so far, he has shown a distinct lack of empathy in any and all situations...

Another interesting thing was Tommy’s reaction to Dream’s probing questions: while he seemed to get increasingly distressed by them, he kept answering Dream every time with little hesitation only at times adding on things like calling Dream a monster for the way he was treating him. I honestly think this may have been because he was in desperate need of comfort, and having someone to confide into is part of that. And Dream was the only “someone” he had there.

We then get the whole exchange about how time in the Afterlife is different then in the normal plain of existence. I’ve seen people equate 1 day to 1 month, however that’s incorrect. That was Dream’s wrong assumption but, from whet Tommy said, we can guess that it was much more then that. Frist of all, the first month and 18-20 days Schlatt was still awake and he was the one making them keep count. That said, we know Schlatt has been asleep for around 3 months (we don’t know exactly how much as they lost count). Which means that Tommy’s stay in the Afterlife was much more around 5 months then 2, meaning 1 day in the Real World should equate to roughly 2.5 months in the Afterlife give or take. That is, of course, assuming time there moves in a regular way and there is an actual correspondence between Real World time and Afterlife time, which is not a given.

Tommy keeps asking for the people he find reassurance in (at least we can assume so) which, in this case, are: Tubbo, Jack, Phil, Fundy an Sapnap. It’s a pretty weirdly matched group of people but, apparently, they are the ones Tommy seeks out when he’s distressed. It would be interesting to see an analysis of his relationship with each of them, but this one is not about that I’m afraid.

“Wait shut- shut up! Shut up! Sorry, I’m sorry” Tommy seems to have re-acquired some of his exile mannerism such as being overly apologetic and skittish, together with the lashing out more. None of this are good signs... he had just started healing as well...

“I... I’m a God! I can bring people back to life, I wasn’t even sure that I could, but I can!” Bringing Tommy back to life worsened Dream’s God Complex even further, because now he doesn’t only have power over Tommy, but everyone else as well. And, I mean... at this point he IS basically a God, he’s not even wrong on that.

“Dream, Dream, listen to me. The things I saw, the things he talked about, the things he said he will and the things he WILL do... do not- promise me, never EVER bring back Wilbur! Please, please, please” In case anyone was wondering this is the exact thing Tommy said on Wilbur. He didn’t say he’s worse then Dream here, but he IS bad news, at least if we trust Tommy on it. Wilbur wasn’t only self-destructive when alive, he was destructive in general. He was dangerous to others as much as he was to himself and he DID hurt people. And this side of him seems to only have been accentuated by death.

“Do NOT bring back Wilbur. Ever! Promise me you’ll never do that, alright? Dream, Dream, you are nothing, you’re nothing, you’re fine Dream! We can be friends if you don’t bring him back! You’re not even- all the tragedies you’ve done-” and here’s the part that I’m guessing people are interpreting as Tommy saying Wilbur is worst then Dream which is... a fair interpretation actually (considering that Tommy is not a reliable narrator). Now please don’t get me wrong, Alivebur as he was, wasn’t worse then Dream, but he had years in the afterlife to become even more radicalized in his beliefs. There is also the fact that Tommy doesn’t seem to put the harm done against him on the same level as that done against others: Dream has hurt Tommy worse then Wilbur ever did, but Wilbur’s potential harm against others might be greater in Tommy’s mind then Dream’s. That’s the reason why he’s offering something he knows Dream wants, which is his friendship, in order to keep Wilbur from coming back: because he truly doesn’t care about his own wellbeing as long as others are safe. Of course Dream’s response to this is: "It’s not up to you. It’s up to me because I- I have that control” which is very in character for the green blob with a God Complex

“What if, now that we know, we could send you back and you could figure out-” We can see that Dream has an utter fascination with this whole concept and, now that he knows revival works, he has no qualms with sending Tommy back (no matter how obviously traumatic it was for him) to get further information because, guess what? Death is not in any way an escape anymore. He can simply pull Tommy back as he pleases.

There is then the exchange about burning the book, but, as Dream has it memorized, they would need to kill Dream to get rid of the knowledge, but Tommy can’t bring himself to do it because he’s even more terrified of being stuck alone in the cell then he is of Dream bringing Wilbur back.

“I wanna know about death. We can study it! We can study it together! We can become immortal together!” Again, if there were any doubts on Dream’s constant need of having Tommy under his control, this should dissolve them. There is truly not much more he can do to show how obsessed he is then offering Tommy to be immortals together, especially because we know that the ideal for him would be to have Tommy be completely dependent on him again. To have his favourite puppet under his control for eternity apparently... “I want absolutely fucking nothing to do with you” of course, as we said many times, Tommy doesn’t view their relationship in the same way. Tommy actually hates Dream and truly doesn’t want anything to do with him.

“You owe me your life” “Owe you my life? You beat m-!” Who’d know that Dream had some similar arguments to his apologists huh? But this does show how warped his view of reality is. I mean, he’s fully aware that he beat Tommy to death, but he still think Tommy should be grateful to him for bringing him back.

“Now you can tell everyone that the book exists, that I'm not a liar!” Dream really went hard with the whole God Complex thing, even going as far as choosing his profet huh? Man’s just on a high horse and will never get down...

“Everyone... is my puppet” Welp, this is the culmination of his God Complex. The realisation that he has absolute power of life and death over everyone else. That he can play with them as he pleases. Also, may I add that, for basically this whole stream, he has used the “soft voice” he tends to do with Tommy whenever he’s trying to get him to comply? Like, I’m mentioining it now because it was particularly obvious in this last exchange, but it’s been there on and off the WHOLE time.

“You killed me to prove your own point. You could have just showed me! You could have just- this is so evil. This is- this is- this isn’t like before. This isn’t you’ve blown up and- you’ve put me through torture, through pain, to prove a point, that’s fucked! You can’t do that to me... to anyone!” It took almost half an hour but Tommy has finally come to the full realisation of what happened to him, of why it happened and he’s honestly very understandably distraught about it (though it is to be said that it's arguably quite good that he understands that it wasn't okay for him either to be put through that as he tends to downplay his own suffering greatly). He has been through something unimaginable for us because Dream was upset that he didn’t believe him about the book. That’s all there was to it, that’s all the reason for his suffering. Like, he’s not wrong at all when he describes Dream as a monster, that’s literally the only accurate description of him. No normal person would put someone else through this for such a petty reason.

“You’re soft Dream, you’re soft” Another valid point by Tommy. While Dream IS undoubtedly extremely powerful and extremely clever, he’s also petty, stubborn and childish. He throws violent temper tanrtums every time someone (especially Tommy) disagrees with him and mostly gets away with his bs because he has the power to back them up. That said he hardly ever lost, the only true loss he had was being locked in prison, and he managed to turn even that in his favour! But that’s the think: loosing makes you stronger, it often teaches you a lot and pushes you to get better. He (along with a couple of others) basically never had that. Tommy’s been through literal Hell and he survived that, he knows he can survive that. Dream? He may break at the first real hardship as far as we know!

“I’ll let you free, I’ll let you free alright? We’ll call for Sam, we’ll get him in here, he’ll let you out, but... I’m gonna bring back Wilbur and Wilbur- Wilbur is gonna help me escape” 2 things to unpack here (aside from the fact that he’s using the “soft voice” to say something extremely disturbing again):

1) Dream is, once again asserting his power over Tommy in two ways: by frasing it in a way that implies that it’s up to Dream wether Tommy leaves or not and by confirming again that Wilbur’s resurrection is entirely up to him and that Tommy’s opinion on the matter is utterly worthless

2) He fully intends to use Wilbur as a puppet as well because, as he says a bit later, if he brings him back then Wilbur will be indebted to him

And that’s how it’s concluded!

My closing thoughts on this are that, generally, Dream’s level of dependence on Tommy seems to worsen as fast as his God Complex. man went from telling him that their story “would never be over” to offering him immortality in the span of little over a month. Tommy is Not Doing Good, AT ALL, but I’m hoping he’ll ask for help this time from other people because he literally cannot deal with this on his own. Wilbur will not be good news, but what he’ll do is still entirely uncertain, it is to be pointed out however that, at the beginning, his frasing at a certain point sounded scarily similar to Dream’s idea of “us vs the world” when he said that him and Tommy specifically are the single cause of conflict. I hope I’m wrong there because the LAST thing Tommy needs is another obsessive God-like individual in his life!

@mysweatymakerstudentworld

#long post #I'm not jocking this gotta be the longest I've ever written!#tw abuse #tw death #prison arc #analysis #character analysis #dream smp #dreamwastaken #tommyinnit #c!dream negativity #don't know if that needs tagging #god this was exausting to write #I'm spent #utterly deceased #hope it helps those who were still confused though #/rp #my post

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lovesupernova25 · 4 years ago

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ALL RP! TALKING ABOUT THE CHARACTERS, NOT THE CCs!!

I am not ok after Tommy’s latest stream so naturally the first thing to do is make a list of all the worst (or best, depending on your perspective) parts :]

(also spoilers obv for the latest stream and tw for trauma/panicking)

-this is just exile 🙂but worse 🙂 so much worse😊in so many ways 🙂

-confirmed that Tommy still can’t sleep/has nightmares cause of dream (add that to the confirmed nightmares abt wilbur...)

-confirmed blackstone makes Tommy freak out because it brings back a LOT of traumatic memories

-Tommy gets panicky in plains biomes

-STANDING UP! TO HIS ABUSER! GETTING (well...trying to get...) CLOSURE! RECOGNIZING THAT HIS TRAUMA EXISTS!

-really glad they didn’t just decide that trauma n stuff would go away cause dream was gone :]

-‘dream, you ruined my past but I will not let you ruin my future’

-AAAAAAAA! I’m so proud of him!

- “I always wanna make sure I like who I am. And when I’m around dream... I don’t think i like myself. I dont like who I am around him.”

- there were so many freaking powerful lines in this stream, I’m prolly gonna miss a lot but all around incredible acting

- the way tommy was so clearly nervous and panicky throughout the whole prison thing but he was forcing himself to do it, and then when he realized he was trapped just having a breakdown, like full on panic oh my gosh acting skills

-talkibg to Sam 🥺 about how he’d been a good friend 🥺 opening up to him and being serious to let Sam know he appreciated everything

-he turned off the music 😳 fight or flight response to that

- checking to see sams name tag do that he knew he was safe and then the terror when sams name disappeared

- even as he was terrified he was still standing up to dream and not listening to him

-GOOD FOR TOMMY IM PROUD

-(how long will that last-)

- WHO DID THE TNT

RANBOO? PLS NO BUT PROBABLY

- the way dreams demeanor so completely changed after the tnt because now he didn’t need to convince Tommy to stay or keep up his act. he was in control again.

- dream doesn’t want to escape, he wants Tommy.

Maybe escape is next on the list, but now that he has his toy back, trapped with nothing to do but talk to him... dream is gonna be lot happier. He has that bit of power that drives him

-let’s be honest, we didnt really think dream was just gonna waste away forever, did we? Dream always has a backup plan- and even when he doesnt (he used his safety net in the disc finale- bringing people back) he knows which strings to pull so that he’s in power again.

-uhhhhhh yeah none of us have forgotten about that techno favor right? That’s GOTTA come into play soon

- peopke keep talking about the legend of Pandora’s box 😀 and how evils and hope was trapped in there 😄 and the evil escaped 🙂 but hope was trapped forever 🤡

- ok I know it’s controversial but Tommy calling for Phil when he was begging to be let out,,, it could have been in or out of character but wouldn’t it,, wouldn’t it be angsty if it WAS c!tommy calling for someone he associates with safety while in a panicked state,,,

- THE LAVA

PLEASE

-no actually I am very worried please Sam hurry and green boy you stay FAR AWAY

-but! Tommy kept saying things like ‘close the book’ and ‘this is the last chapter’ etc, in contrast to Dream saying ‘our story isn’t finished/our story is never over’

tommys tryna move on, realizing he doesn’t need dream, while dream lives only to be the villain to Tommy’s hero.

THE CHARACTERS ARE SO GREAT YALL

- even after short amounts of time with dream Tommy feels confused and conflicted about dream (similar to just after exile) and says he feels conditioned to be dreams friend (which.. he was, so... 😀)

considering this’ll be up to a week alone with dream...

- add that to the fact that we already know that dream using his ‘nice voice’ and pretending to be Tommy’s friend is triggering for him..

This is going to be very interesting

(continue in notes!)

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Midnight Mass: It’s Time to Talk About That Monstrous Twist

https://ift.tt/39I2zkp

This article contains huge spoilers for Midnight Mass. So help me God if you read this without watching the series first…

The version of Midnight Mass that Netflix advertised still would have made for a compelling horror series.

An isolated, insular island community? Great. A young, charismatic preacher suddenly coming to town to shake things up? Perfect. That preacher proving capable of performing minor miracles? Love it, no notes!

Of course, as viewers who have watched at least four episodes of the seven-episode series now know, Midnight Mass has one extra supernatural twist in mind that elevates an already interesting story to true mind-blowing status. Critics were understandably asked to keep this aspect of the show a secret before it premiered. So please indulge me as I finally slay these embargo demons and get it off my chest.

Vampires. Vampires! V-A-M-P-I-R-E-S. VAMPIRES! VAMPIRES VAMPIRES VAMPIRES! Literally like Dracula. And Nosferatu. Anne Rice’s Lestat. Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. Vampires. VAMPIRES, BRO, VAMPIRES.

For creator Mike Flanagan, a filmmaker influenced by all manner of classic horror, bringing the fanged bloodsuckers to life was a long time coming.

“My favorite vampire movie is (Werner) Herzog’s Nosferatu,” Flanagan told Den of Geek and other outlets prior to the premiere of Midnight Mass. “That film is the vampire story as high art. I also adore From Dusk Till Dawn. I read Dracula young enough for it to really burrow in for me. And I read ‘Salem’s Lot early enough to color an enormous amount of work that I’ll do for the rest of my life.”

Midnight Mass’s depiction of the mythological undead beast and how it can neatly fit into Christian dogma is one of the most satisfying horror twists in years. Now that the truth is out, let’s discuss Midnight Mass and how it conflates vampires and biblical angels.

Mistaking a Vampire for an Angel

The interesting thing about Midnight Mass is that it clearly takes place in a universe where the average person has no knowledge of what a vampire is. Even Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish), arguably the most well-read person on Crockett Island, has to do some research into “porphyria cutanea tarda” (a.k.a. the real life “vampire disease”). This is similar to The Walking Dead’s approach to zombies, in which the “z” word and George A. Romero’s name are never spoken. This strategy in Midnight Mass allows for a truly fascinating case of mistaken identity.

While viewers immediately know that the creature Monsignor John Pruitt (Hamish Linklater) encounters is a vampire, he believes it to be an angel. Given how studied Pruitt is in the Bible and Cathloic theology, it’s entirely understandable why he would think a tall, muscular, bald-headed beast with fangs and leathery wings is an angel. As it turns out, the angels of the Old Testament can be truly terrifying.

Not all angels are soft-featured human-like creatures with fluffy white bird wings. Some, like Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are designed to intimidate God’s enemies. In the New Testament’s Book of Luke, an angel visits Zechariah and immediately asks him to “be not afraid” because the angel can see the poor guy absolutely shaking in his boots upon his arrival. Angels being terrifying is even something of an Internet meme, with users contrasting the phrase “be not afraid” with images of truly monstrous beasts.

Not only does Pruitt’s vampire have the vague appearance of an angel, it also apparently holds the secrets to eternal life as promised in the Bible. By merely drinking some of the “angel’s” blood, a good Christian can live forever just like God says. Does that blood-drinking sacrament sound familiar? It did to Mike Flanagan.

“In Bible school I used to say ‘if the wine turns into Jesus’s blood literally and we’re drinking it so that we can live forever … that seems like a short leap to vampiric myth.’”

Of course, drinking the angel’s fluids in the case of Midnight Mass also leads to some unwanted side effects like a thirst for blood and extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Thankfully, good ol’ Bev Keane always has a Bible quote ready to go for that. When read through the proper perspective, the Holy Bible may as well be the original vampire story.

The Rules of Vampirism

“The thing that I love about the vampire as a cinematic tool is how malleable it is,” Flanagan says. “We all agree that there is no canon. There are no rules. In fact, part of the joy is seeing what rules people cherry pick as they approach a vampire story.”

All depictions of vampires are indeed quite different. Vampires can range from the classic Stoker-ian monster to Twilight’s nigh-invulnerable sparkle bois. Midnight Mass’s version of the vampire leans towards the classic, albeit with some tweaks. In terms of appearance, The Angel (as we will be calling Midnight Mass’s O.G. vampire for simplicity’s sake) has a more bestial look like Nosferatu rather than an aristocratic one like Count Dracula or Anne Rice’s creations.

“We winked at (Nosferatu the Vampyr actor) Klaus Kinski a few times when we designed our guy,” Flanagan says.

Though the Angel resembles Nosferatu in appearance, its vulnerabilities owe more to Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Religious iconography does not appear to hurt the Angel nor its thralls. Traditional human weapons like bullets or blades also do no harm (at least not mortally). These vampires are, however, tremendously susceptible to both fire and sunlight. Exposure to the latter for even a few seconds is enough to kill the Angel and his many acolytes.

Why Midnight Mass is Mike Flanagan’s Most Personal Work

By Alec Bojalad

Midnight Mass Cast: Previous Credits From Hill House to Bly Manor, Legion & Sherlock

By Louisa Mellor

Like in Rice’s works as well, the path to creating a new vampire is quite simple. Step 1: Drink its blood. Step 2: Die. In Dracula and ‘Salem’s Lot, the method of vampire creation is merely being bit by one, zombie-style. Rice and Flanagan’s approach is quite a bit more intentional and interesting. It also opens the door for perhaps Midnight Mass’s most ingenious storytelling quirk: communion. John Pruitt is able to get nearly the entirety of Crockett Island to become a vampire by spiking the communion wine with his buddy’s blood. Then, all that remains is for them to poison themselves to death, Jonestown-style.

The mass “resurrection” scene in which the congregation awakes as their new vampire selves also provides some insight to just how hard it is to contain the vampire’s overwhelming hunger. Riley Flynn was able to resist it when he turned because John Pruitt babysat him like a psychedelic mushroom guide. The plan for the rest of the congregation was to have their babysitters as well but that didn’t quite work out. Still, Riley’s dad Ed makes it clear to his wife Annie, that even if it’s hard to resist the call for blood, it’s not impossible.

“When I saw them at the church, I thought it was something they really couldn’t help. Like something impossible not to do. But it isn’t, Annie,” he says.

Maybe if more vampires were like Ed Flynn, a whole island full of vampires wouldn’t be too bad of a thing in the first place.

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How to Defeat a Vampire

While every vampire story presents its own unique take on the creature, the answer on how to defeat a vampire is usually the same: by doing it together.

“We poor humans only have so much that we can give,” Flanagan says. “We’re ill-equipped as individuals to make any kind of meaningful stand. The only way evil in the world can be brought down is through collective effort. That’s something Stoker understands inherently. It’s clearly something King understands.”

Alongside the aforementioned Bram Stoker and Stephen King, Flanagan presents a small team of humans at story’s end who will do what it takes to defeat evil, even if it means dying in the process. Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), Dr. Sarah Gunning, Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli), Annie Flynn (Kristin Lehman), Warren Flynn (Igby Rigney), and Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Cymone) are the six residents of Crockett Island brave enough to try to take down the Angel. All but two (Warren and Leeza) die. They do succeed in eliminating the immediate threat on Crockett Island but it’s possible the Angel made it away to suck blood another day, damaged wings and all.

What’s interesting about Midnight Mass’s “final crew” is that six appears to be the magic number when it comes to taking down a vampire. Stoker’s Dracula has six heroes: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker nèe Murray, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Abraham Van Helsing (of which, only poor American cowboy Quincey Morris dies). King’s ‘Salem’s Lot also has six: Ben Mears, Matt Burke, Susan Norton, Mark Petrie, Jimmy Cody, and Father Callahan (of which, decidedly more than one of them die). This strange bit of arithmancy is something we asked Flanagan about.

“The number was certainly not intentional,” he says. “Once it was clear that Riley was not going to be carrying the torch to the end it really was about asking ‘who are the characters who seem in the very beginning to be at a disadvantage and how do we empower them in the end?’ This was gonna be played out by Sarah Gunning, Sheriff Hassan, and everyone else who would get to just give a little piece.”

Considering that Erin and company were outnumbered about 117 to six, it was a pretty good showing for Crockett Island’s last humans standing.

All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Midnight Mass: It’s Time to Talk About That Monstrous Twist appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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wuhhluhhhwuhhh · 3 years ago

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hello, i'm happy to report that i took a nap and woke up to find a streaming site that had the euphoria season finally on it. i am no longer seizing and foaming at the mouth :)

just kidding i have so much shit to say <3

spoilers under the cut!!

iAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

HELLO?? HELLO DID ANYONE SEE THAT???? FUCKING-

OKAY OKAY OKAY ORGANIZATION UM

FUCK

FIRST OFF, FAYE, SWEETIE, I KNEW YOU WOULD COME THROUGH!! THANK YOU FOR THE BIMBO REPRESENTATION LAKSDHFGHKL I LOVE YOU AND AM GIVING YOU A KISS ON THE FOREHEAD MWAH <33

NOW IN MORE SOMBER NEWS

Ashtray :(

the way,,, they way fez is out here shouting about how he's just a kid and how they shouldn't shoot made me fucking sob

I was never the type of fan to scream and cry over fez and ash akdfhghk i like them, they're chill and likeable, but there are so many more interesting characters to focus on?? characters with more depth????

at the end of the day i think people liked them because they aren't as problematic as the others and because they're not that complex like say cassie rue and jules but laksdhgfhk oof just because i thought people were hyping them up too much didn't mean that i wanted them to die 😭😭😭😭

maybe it's for the better tho lmao what's this show without a little drama-

uM OKAY NOW ONTO HOW THIS EPISODE DID JULES SO DIRTY

ELLIOT IS OUT HERE WITH AN ENTIRE SONG (WHICH I WILL GET TO) AND SHE GETS A FEW HOOTS IN THE AUDIENCE AND A TWENTY SECOND SCENE WHERE SHE SAYS TWO LINES AND GETS LEFT ALONE IN AN AUDITORIUM

Like no okay Rue was right for walking away, she really does need to focus on herself but fuck man,,,, I hate elliot <33 His little song is stupid and the rhyme scheme could have been made by an eight grader alskdhgfhkl please 💀

Also is Rue not a lesbian?? Why was I expecting elliot to try and make out with her during that scene alskdfhhk i didn't want it to happen but god did i think it was gonna go there-

this entire season has people acting like that special episode with rue didn't happen btw and that pisses me off so much?? she's literally like cassie in the sense that she's so heavily reliant on male validation. the only difference is she was seeking male validation so she could conquer femininity and have people see her as a woman (smth most euphoria viewers probably can't relate to) and cassie was doing it to fill the hole her dad left in her life (smth they can probably relate to lmao shit dads are everywhere)

am i saying a lot of the hate jules gets is because of transphobia yes exactly u got it and i'm correct, she would not be getting this much shit if she was cis because then her issues with male validation would be like cassie's and thus more relatable but apparently no one is ready for that take ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

from an objective perspective tho oof elliot's song took up way too much time still and he had the audacity to say he was still working on it???? babe that was like three minutes and okay this tweet encapsulates it all actually-

i didn't look away from the screen for a second until he started singing lmao

dominic i know you're like part filipino askdhfghk this isn't personal at all lmao but god,,,, your character is shit <33 very unnecessary <3333

BUT OKAY NO JULES IS AN ENTIRE POST OF HER OWN IT'S WHAT SHE DESERVES AFTER SAM ASSASSINATED HER CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AKSDHFGHKL

CASSIE

CASSIE AND MADDY

FUCK

for real tho this is me after a math test that shit is beating my ass every day of the week-

but god,,,,, oof. i really wish we saw more of maddy beating her up they could have cut the elliot song to do that oKAY I'M SORRY I'M DONE

I STILL,,, IDK BEFORE THIS EPISODE I COULD FEEL FOR CASSIE A LITTLE, HELLO FELLOW DADDY ISSUES BITCHES, BUT AAAAAA YEAH NO LAKSDHFGHKL THE WAY SHE HOPPED UP ON THAT STAGE READY TO WHOOP HER SISTER'S ASS HAS ME OFFICIALLY HATING HER MORE THAN FEELING FOR HER 😭😭😭

i think,, i think i'm done for now lmao see y'all in 2024 um.

i'm gonna go watch killing eve now <33

#ronnie rambles #euphoria #euphoria spoilers #screaming crying and throwing up please just give me self improvement from both rue and jules then give me rules

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shikai-the-storyteller · 5 years ago

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Mae Catt’s Cyberverse Q&A

Here’s a neater version of some key Q&A responses from Mae Catt’s Cyberverse stream.

Please note: not everything is verbatim, and also note that Mae Catt said “Don’t take things I say as the end-all be-all.” She’s a big supporter of fanfic writers!

This Q&A session contains spoilers for Season 3 of Cyberverse. For a (somewhat) more comprehensive transcript, please refer to this post.

Q: Megop rights?

“Oh absolutely, duh.”

Q: What does Optimus do when he’s not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK?

I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies?

Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. *pauses* Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream?

Because they’re deceptive! Megatron knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed. Optimus would use the official media channels (like the news), not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone?

Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on with streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing things while Bee and Hot Rod were in the middle of streaming something.

Q: Is Megatron dead?

In discussions we wanted to kill him. We wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.

Q: Did the Titan mind Decepticons living in them?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry?

I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time.

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime?

[GAY LAUGHTER]

The question is: do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.

(Mae Catt talked a lot about representation and later mentioned how there's more pressure to write the girl characters well, especially because of the need for better representation. They wanted more girls in the show, and they planned to have Jazz be a girl).

Q: Elita prime when?

All the time, in my heart!

Q: Did you plan to have ___ character in the show?

Almost every character was discussed at least once.

She really regrets that they didn’t get to have Beast Machine Obsidian or Rumble and Frenzy in the show, and says she would’ve loved a MTMTE-style Ultra Magnus / Minimus and Transmutate. She didn’t know what Obsidian’s personality would be, it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing.

(Note: We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl getting into Cyberverse)

Q: What was your favorite episode?

“I Am the AllSpark” because of the Megatron and Starscream dialogue (which she wrote). Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave.

I enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was my first episode, and it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. It was hard doing Optimus’ voice, I’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

Q: Did you ever plan to have Hot Rod become Rodimus?

Rodimus was never considered for the show because Optimus dying has been covered to death, but we were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader. Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader.

(On that note, when someone asked if she thought Bee would ever become Prime, Mae Catt said:)

I don’t think Bee would be a Prime. Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

Q: Did Megatron always plan to return to Cybertron?

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

Q: Which death hurt you the most?

Starscream. (Slipstream’s hurt too).

We didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value, but in certain instances it made sense. Like, the audience will fall in love with Slipstream because she’s becoming good, so she has to die. (She apologized for that sounding harsh). We killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant. I almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge’s head untouched, but I’m ultimately glad that idea got shot down.

(She circles back to this comment later, so I’m making note of that here since it wasn’t a direct response to a question)

When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream, I wanted Starscream to have amnesia and have a redeption arc. I wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where the only person he talked to was that (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say). Eventually Bee would befriend him and he’d wind up with the Autobots.

I wanted to write Starscream kind of like an abuse victim who expects the worst of the Autobots, but I wanted him to warm up slowly to them. I wanted to have a Starscream and Optimus episode where Starscream messes up on something and Optimus is like “you did your best and that’s what counts”, a response which is totally new to Starscream. But obviously we didn’t have time for that.

Regarding redemption arcs (a continuation from the previous question, and a huge highlight from the stream):

Re: the potential for Starscream’s redemption arc “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have had a laundry list of excuses for it, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but the character needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt [by their actions]. [The character] needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to do a 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

NOTE: Mae Catt also made a few more comments re: the idea of a Starscream redemption arc on her Tumblr page.

Q: Did Megatron really kill Starscream?

The Starscream beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the storyboards. According to Maecatt, Megatron didn’t kill Starscream when he slammed him down (which is a bit confusing since the show definitely made it seem like Starscream died).

Q: Did Drift die? Why was he a double-agent?

According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want. We needed a double-agent, someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod. (She says they went with Drift because of his history in the comics).

(Later on in the stream)

Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he’s rethinking his decision and he’ll come back later. Drift would’ve been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he’d come back with Repugnis or something.

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy?

He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. (In response to someone’s comment about his personality) Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's?

Oh totally.

(She later mentions that Percy has permanently taken over Maccadam’s. Also: Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac, but Percy takes good care of her).

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot?

A firetruck alt mode, and an Autobot insignia as a face. Nat (her fiance) and I talked about it a lot. Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an ax. It just makes sense!

(She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that).

On that note, Mae Catt said they used Tarn for the show because: “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”.

Q: What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives?

Probably historical archives and working on stuff about all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics.

Q: Did you always plan to make Optimus socially awkward?

We “found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus was depicted as a father figure in S1 (implying it’s because S1 is from Bee’s perspective), S2 / S3 we were able to explore more and found the limits [writing him] and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech for the Party Down episode. “[Optimus] can’t not be in war-mode.”

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron ever friends, or did they just work together on the speech stuff?

Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him?

Mae Catt: *puts hand over hear heart and looks off into the distance dramatically* Yes.

Q: What’s the best selfie Arcee’s ever taken?

I like the one with the giraffe. Or maybe a selfie with some humans. I like the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends.

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man?

They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something).

Q: Who’s the Florida Man of the Transformers?

Rack ‘n Ruin. But he’s too nice. Hmmm.

Q: What was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? Like humor/characterization/arcs

I wanted to make sure I didn’t write dialogue that was condescending to kids, wanted to be true about the character. Dialogue needs to be true to the characters, and gay. (Laughs)

Q: Do Transformers know what memes are?

They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. We wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but we never had time to really get into that.

Q: What music does Soundwave like?

We had a cut joke from S2 E5 [where Megatron and Optimus are popping through portals all around the world trying to find the All Spark] . Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he crashes the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most?

His favorite song is Despacito. He thinks its so sad.

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus voice the first time?

She apparently listened to his vines a lot when he was in his teens so meeting up again like that was a cool coincidence.

Q: What other dimensions or places did you want to be in the show?

I would’ve liked to have the other Transformers series show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but we don’t have those assets or budget.

“This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it.

Q: What about ____ ship?

Mae Catt says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums. For example, someone asked about Arcee/Grimlock, and while she said she sees them more as friends, she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship. (Mae Catt also said she doesn’t ship Bee with anyone because she sees him as a little brother).

As she said several times in the stream, “Don’t take things I say as the end-all be-all”!

That being said, she did say she likes Dead End / Perceptor and Windblade / Slipstream.

Q: Why are there no humans in the show?

From the show’s conception, there were no plans to include any humans. They didn’t want humans distracting from the Transformers.

Q: Why did the Scientist collect Soundwaves?

He collects Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL! Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Why does anyone collect what they collect? “That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children he carries around in him and he plays music. Gotta have that!”

(Later on, she circles back to this question)

All the Other Universe Soundwaves the Scientist collected also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.

(And of course, here are the boyfriend questions from the stream:)

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend?

Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

(Mae Catt says she really loves the Deadceptor ship. She knew people would ship it, but she didn’t ship it herself until she saw the fanart for it).

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?

No, no...he’s not a good person, really.

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend?

Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend?

Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Other information tidbits:

- If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire.

- Mae Catt said “A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” in space, explaining why so much of the non-Cybertronian life we saw in the show were robots.

- Knock Out was considered for the show, but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the writer’s room. (Ex: “Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”).

- “The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the ‘toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.”

- They decided Optimus would be in the Other Universe’s Matrix and have a plinth because they wanted to show he was dead. “Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade.”

- Dead End’s eyes are white.

- The team wanted Jazz to be a lady (!!!!!!!)

- These characters have their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes that we don’t always necessarily see.

- Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character. “We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”.

- Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar.

- Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy.

- She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark. Mentions how Starscream acknowledge Cheetor as the “Guardian of the Allspark”.

- Mae Catt describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times.

- Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe.

- She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff. (They had a cut joke about someone telling Bee he should paint himself red and Bee saying, “But then everyone will think I’m Cliffjumper!”).

- Cyberverse got 26 episodes for season 3 because they had the 4-part episode movies.

- Megatron cares about his troops, but not in a way that we would notice that care.

- AcidStorm is genderfluid.

- Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. When asked why all the Seekers look the same then, Mae Catt says “Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like”.

- She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally Wild West-style.

- One of the things she’s proudest of was turning Lugnut into a gal (and having so much body diversity and gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters). They wanted to include many more girls in Cyberverse (Nickel and Lightbright among them). She also mentioned that Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height.

- She describes Cosmos as “R2D2, but a Transformer!”

- Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence.

- Blurr really was the fastest.

- Mae Catt says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today. She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from the age of 12-20 years old. It helped her learn a lot about writing.

- She uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin when referring to both of them, but says that individually they both use “he”.

- She’s really sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line.

- Mae Catt won’t say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not. (She laughed when someone commented "I don’t believe that man has ever been to medical school”). She also says she wants “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” on a T-shirt.

- When asked why Rack ‘n Ruin were captains of the Ark in one universe, she says they’re probably the Prime in that one weird universe (lmao).

- She loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families.

- In a world where they had an unlimited budget, it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms. Example: she’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”.

- She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

- She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down.

- Shockwave altered his spark to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark.

- She said it’s hard talking about writing a show because you’re designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female”) which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she’d never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it’s part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show. “It starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”.

- They didn’t want to have Unicron in the show since he’s the default “big bad”, but if he was in the show, Mae Catt says “If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”.

- Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron.

- She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face.

- “I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby, which explains why Starscream’s the way he is”.

- Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Thanks for your time Mae Catt! We’re lucky to have you. Thank you for all your hard work on this amazing show.

#Megaop #Megop #Deadceptor #Cyberverse #mae catt #Primordial Robot hell #Transformers #I'm watching Cyberverse #i talk #Cyberverse spoiler /#Legitimately half these questions were ones I asked thank you Mae Catt for being so sweet #We're so lucky to have you #I loved that moment in the stream where everyone spammed the Lesbian / Bi flag #that was so cute!#(I was DecepticonGroupie)

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cloverachiever · 3 years ago

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Fic Masterpost

♡- Fluff ♢- Angst ♧- Mulitchaptered ☆- Au ✎- Series

Fics are sorted newest to oldest, there's more on my ao3 i simply do not interact with the fandoms they are part of anymore and as such will not be linking them

DSMP

Glow Worms ♡; Moving slowly through the springtime air Holding moments in the depth of care

exeunt ♢☆; exeunt (n.); used as a stage direction in a printed play to indicate that a group of characters leave the stage.

Tubbo takes Michael and makes himself a home far from everything he's ever known.

Exit Music (For A Film) ♢; tw: major character death, corpses, suicidal ideation (check tags for more)

Sing us a song A song to keep us warm There's such a chill, such a chill

Tubbo mourns. Spoilers for lore streams 11.28.2021

Me and My Husband ♡♢;

Me and my husband We're doing better

Little Beast ♢; tw: implied child death, unrequieted love

I know history. There are many names in history but none of them are ours.

george aches, and sleeps a lot.

eye for an eye ♢♧; tw: implied child death

(quackity nd tubbo angst)

Mars ♢♡�� ; We were amateurs at war/Strangers to suffering

BEING REWRITTEN

Rot ♢♧ ; rot's my favorite word so i wrote smthn inspired by it

(ranboo & tubbo)

At long last, love has arrived ♡ ; And I thank God I'm alive/You're just too good to be true/Can't take my eyes off of you

beeduo enderwalk fluff :)

'Cause we could stay home and watch the sunset ♡♢ ; But I can't help from asking, "Are you bored yet?"/And if you're feeling lonely you should tell me/Before this ends up as another memory

tubbo and tommy talk

Before you cross the street ♡ ; Take my hand/Life is what happens to you/While you're busy making other plans

tubbo tells michael about l'manberg

You and me need never be lonely again ♡ ; Spin with me endlessly or at least until the end/Please never fall in love again

ranboo monologues about tubbo ig idk man

I still wanna be your favorite boy ♡ ; I wanna be the one/I might just be the one

bro idk they're just being soft platonic husbands, i wrote this as a gift NFHDSKJL love u cherry ur pog

'Cause I don't think that wasting (A second of this time) ♡♢ ; Would benefit the outcome/Of the life I had in mind/I'll refer to you as my special love/The one that set me free

Michael gets sick, Ranboo and Tubbo realize family life is harder than it seems

I can't be the only one who hears you ♡♢ ; Tears falling down at the party/Saddest little baby in the room/Fears, tell me fears, don't get me started

tubbo from ranboo's perspective

Life's too short to worry about things that we got wrong ♡ ; So hug all your friends and let them know/You're not letting go

sam helps tommy make a gift for tubbo :D

I will wait for this to end ♡♢ ; The back and forth; the battery/For you at last to comprehend/The kind of love of which I speak.

spoilers for the finale 1.20.21

we didn't start the fire ✎ ; Canon divergent au with semi-canon sbi family dynamic (Techno's relationship with it is. Complicated.) No L'manburg exploding, and Niki is here bc I love Niki :) It also starts at the first festival, nothing after that is connected to canon in any way.

tell me, atlas. what is heavier? ♢♡ ; the world or its people's hearts?

And if I could, I'd get you the moon c ; And give it to you/And if death was coming for you/I'd give my life for you

takes place a week after the first fic in the series, but can be read as a standalone piece!

BBC MERLIN

Wasn't it love as soon as we knew each other properly? ♡ ; Livin' 'bout half right 'til a certain person got to me/Nothin' is secret, everythin's sacred, how it ought to be/Under the moonlight on a clear night

merlin and lancelot being gay gay homosexual gay

Lungs ♡♢ ; He tried to push through, to make his aching lungs take in more air and keep going, he couldn’t.

At the edges of my fingers ♡♧ ; Never quite closing ‘round it/Oh, that peace like a river/Always going, but never getting

Merlin and Arthur but there's only one bed(roll)

A narrative waste of patches and light ♡♢ ; We grew up in the suburbs then we cut all our ties/Now just take a look at this through Gwyllian eyes/You're wrong my friend, the road, it bends a bit to the right

Slice of life merthur, i guess?

SHAKESPEARE

May their carbon given ♡♧ ; Be an echoing hymn/That goes on and on and on again/So long as I live

mercutio/tybalt

Am I still speaking? ♢♧ ; Yeah I’m long in the wind/I’ll go on and on and on again/If my chest don’t cave in

mercutio/tybalt

ORIGINAL WORK

We've got younger faces ♡♢ ; Than our hearts are letting on

Oc ficlet :]

Hanahaki ♢♡♧ ; ‘Anemone: Forsaken, forgotten love, affection.’

If it doesn't, it was never meant to be. ♢♡; Random oc angst

Ends of the Earth ♡;

To the ends of the Earth would you follow me?

If you won't I'll say my goodbyes to thee.

#DSMP #BBC Merlin #Shakespeare #Original Work #Masterlist

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sscactus5719 · 4 years ago

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Okay wow, alright time for my silly thoughts on the new Tommy lore stream because wow that was a lot.

Spoilers for Tommy's lore stream on 3/12/2021. Know that at this point I have only really seen his perspective and heard about others so I'll only be talking on his character and his reactions.

This is going to be long so prepare yourself, and know I am talking solely about characters the entire time, not the cc's.

(I am also very open for discussion because I am so curious to hear others opinions :) )

----

My thoughts on Tommy & Dream

TW//Manipulation & Abuse

To start off, Tommy is free now. He got out of prison and is now physically free of Dream.

But he really isn't.

Dream still looms over everything he does, every action he takes paved in fear and trauma that he knows is there. I like to believe the theory that Dream is attached to Tommy, and in doing what he did and traumatizing him to this extent he has made himself irreplaceable in Tommy's mind. Even if that is in the way Tommy wants him dead(whether for the good of the server or just a personal vendetta).

Also this is shown in the trident scene once again.

The first time was in exile, Tommy whispering how he is "all Alone"

The second after Dream is put away, screaming "I'm Free!"

The third after he leaves Prison, trying to fly again and feel free, but only receiving pain as he lands hard.

This kid wont ever be free of Dreams influence until the man is dead, and probably not even that will stop him. Because the effects of trauma dont end after the abuser is dead.

I could go on for hours about their relationship now, but I'm going to stop before I get too rambly.

---

My thoughts on Tommy and Tubbo/Ranboo

Dear lord the children have just received more trauma.

To start this one, I don't feel as if Tommy's character feeling replaced is out of bounds or a bad storyline. Tommy has always been a bit possessive of Tubbo, his loyalty and devotion to him only escalated due to the end of the disc war.

He no longer had to choose between the peices of a past life he missed so dearly and his best friend standing in front of him.

But now he feels replaced, and that is totally valid response, especially for someone who has felt like people move on or forget him so quickly. Even though it felt like months to Tommy, it had only been about 3/4 days he was thought dead if we are going with irl time.

Also, while I wish the flower was more cared for, that is the result of being trapped with an abuser for a long period of time, dying and being brought back to life shattered. He probably didn't even realize the sentimental value, or incorrectly guessed the value in a moment of panic.

Because you put flowers on a grave, a casket, and everyone was exclaiming Tommy's death.

(Ranboo also has everything Tommy could have wanted at this point[Tubbo's friendship, respect and acknowledgment beyond anger, a decent relationship with Techno.] To Tommy's knowledge, Ranboo is happy.

Miscommunication is the big thing here, and truely talking it out will probably solve a lot of issues with how Tommy feels, so HOPEFULLY Tommy(well basically everybody) gets some therapy and can take those steps.

----

My thoughts on c!Tommy and c!Jack Manifold's.

TO PREFACE, I DON'T KNOW MUCH ON JACK (dont know jack about jack haha), I HAVEN'T WATCHED MANY OF HIS STREAMS.

But I don't see either side of the party in the right or wrong here. We're in that gray area most of the SMP sits in of, both characters acting out or not because of emotions unregulated.

Jack was angry Tommy was alive, saying he grieved even after all Tommy had done to him. He tried to visit in exile and Tommy forgot about him. He even brings up the nukes to kill him. He said Tommy should have stayed dead, and shouted about how the hotel should have been his. That Tommy is selfish and did nothing to deserve this.

Tommy shoots back with anger and frustration and desperation for Jack to see he has changed and bigger things are happening that he doesn't see. That he has changed in drastic ways because he DIED, but he interrupts and Jack takes it badly.

He says Tommy is making it all about him, "thinking he is all that" because he died. As if the server hadn't crafted him into the perfect soldier and perfect hero long ago and as if it isn't forcing him to play the role like a good little puppet.

Tommy is forced into the main characters role, but with all the consequences of a real leader. No plot armor can protect him, and Jack is a perfect example of that.

Anyways, this entire interaction was filled with terrible miscommunication and anger that hasn't been processed properly. Two parties that are hurting but not being heard out.

Therapy is definitely a must.

----

My thoughts on Tommy's character now.

PLEASE GET SOME THERAPY

Honestly this child just needs to catch a break. He keeps setting higher goals for himself to reach to distract him from what he has faced, but he can't do it anymore.

Tommy cannot be a child anymore, he is being forced into the adult role, the hero role, so aggressively that he was forced to continue his life to continue it.

Tommy has experienced Trauma after Trauma, and been made to keep walking.

It's never his time to die if you remember.

Tommy has suffered, and while he isn't a perfect character, while he is flawed, he hasn't deserved the lot his has been thrown. The cards he has been given.

Maybe that's why they play solitaire in the afterlife. You don't get to pick your cards there, only where you play them.

But he honestly just needs someone to help him, he needs a support system he can rely upon. He needs someone there to help him keep going.

At this point, it'll probably be Puffy.

---

My little thoughts for the continuing of Tommy

Just let him leave. Let him leave the main portion of the Dream SMP, alone or with Puffy(preferred). Let him just leave everything, forcibly taking himself from the story. Let him breath and not have to worry about the server's well being, or Dream or Wilbur.

Let him be the kid who has been traumatized but is getting help.

Therapy arc please??

Also I really hope Tommy and Techno become friends again. Or at least they dont hate each other(more Techno hating Tommy, because I dont think the sentiment is returned). I think I've included this in every post I've made, but their relationship makes me sad and I miss it :(

ANYWAYS

TLDR; Everyone needs therapy, even the therapist, and Dream is a terrible person.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading my thoughts! I have had a lot bottled up and this was a nice outlet. The Dream SMP is really fun to talk about, so I hope it keeps going like this. Please have a wonderful day!

#dream smp #tommyinnit #dreamwastaken #tubbo #ranboo #c!tommy #c!wilbur #c!dream #c!tubbo #c!jack manifold #c!ranboo #technoblade #c!techno #still dont know how to tag #tell me if i missed any tags #tw manipulation #tw abuse #tw trauma

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starcrossed-pharaoh · 4 years ago

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Red Crackle Breakdown

Itstalkcartoons recently had a live stream interview with Carmen Sandiego’s showrunner Duane Capizzi, I’ve seen some thoughts on tumblr so after watching the interview I thought I’d drop down some direct quotes and talk about what happened. You can find the interview on Istalkcartoon’s IG page, it’s about an hour and a half long full of other tidbits about the characters and the show so definitely check it out if you’re interested. The post below will have spoilers from season 1 - season 4 so if you haven’t seen it yet, do not read below.

- Duane confirms that Gray is the most complex character and has the most complex arc of anyone in the show.

- Gray’s story was meant to be wrapped up in the season 1 pilot. Duane created his story for that episode only. After the pilot, the Writer’s Room was developed and he was blown away by the interest that people had in Gray as a character. It was from there they decided to go with the ‘amnesia’ arc to expand and enrich his character.

- Duane confirms that in the pilot episode, at that point in time, Gray “was willing to kill her [Carmen] for V.I.L.E on the train”. He says a little earlier to this quote that “we know Gray has good qualities, from his days back at the school protecting Black Sheep, but he’s still a criminal, still a sociopath” and he admits that this is a controversial opinion of the character. “He [Gray] says one of the most awful things to her, that anybody in the series has ever said, something like ‘You proved yourself to V.I.L.E, that’s all you ever wanted, wasn’t it?’ and it’s so demeaning.” By Carmen leaving him gift-wrapped in her coat on the train, Gray “got what he deserved” and Carmen “moved on”.

So what we do know is that despite Gray and Black Sheep being very close on the island, when Black Sheep defected, no matter how hard Gray could have found this he was still grimly determined to kill Carmen for V.I.L.E. This is heart breaking, not only for their friendship, but because of the successful brainwashing and nurturing of sociopathic tendencies that V.I.L.E did to these barely legal adults. Carmen clearly proved herself unique to this, she had the longest exposure to villains and brainwashing on the island, but her innate empathy for others won over her drive for success.

I suppose, we don’t know exactly what the lives of the other V.I.L.E members were like. We know from season 4 that Gray’s drive was to be successful, he was a junior technician at the Sydney Opera House and wanted more out of his life. But V.I.L.E is, essentially, a cult. V.I.L.E engages in mind altering practises, cull dissenters, dictate their students’ beliefs, education, social communities. They clearly target and prey on teenagers with specific skill sets, who likely have specific backgrounds that make them more vulnerable in society, or more likely to respond to a vigilante or criminal way of living. They clearly make sure that their students know V.I.L.E is their entire life, their entire community, and if you want that: you need to follow the rules.

It’s not too surprising to me that Gray is like this in the pilot. He’s a complex character leaning into sociopathic tendencies, he was written to be that way.

- Gray’s arc changes with his amnesia. Duane confirms Bellum created nice guy Graham Calloway onto Gray, it was a personality “grafted onto him” that opposes his personality in the pilot. Carmen protects Graham Calloway, she recognises that he isn’t the ‘V.I.L.E Gray’ and that he is innocent and has the potential for a do-over. This shows Carmen’s true selflessness, despite her ex-best friend trying to essentially kill her/take her down, she sees he doesn’t remember any of that and believes in his goodness. So much so that she protects it. It’s the opposite of where Gray was in the beginning.

- Tragically, when Gray gets his memories back, he does revert back to V.I.L.E. Duane does not confirm exactly why this is but he does say that Gray was never good enough for Carmen up until the finale. We can theorize and infer a lot from what he’s told us of Gray’s character, despite the good qualities he does have, he struggles with doing the right thing. How much of Gray is because of V.I.L.E’s cult-like brainwashing and how much of it is due to Gray’s own chaotic morality and ambition is up to interpretation. I’m of the belief it’s a strong mix of both. In saying that, I’d like to think Gray’s aware that if he defects with Carmen, he knows he’s as good as dead. Graham Calloway might have believed Professor Maelstrom would let him walk free, but Gray is not so naive. He made his choice a long time ago and taking Carmen’s hand is not just about caring about her, it’s choosing a side and who he wants to be.

Just because Gray doesn’t join Carmen doesn’t mean his arc is entirely reverted though. In the pilot, he was willing to kill her. After knowing her through the eyes of Graham Calloway, and having the empathy and naivety and kindness of Graham Calloway literally injected into him, Gray truly feels regret and empathy. V.I.L.E unintentionally gave Gray a huge gift they likely never foresaw: a different perspective. He regrets ever hurting Carmen and never wants to do so again. That’s a huge step from where he was at the beginning, but is it enough to leave what he’s familiar and used to?

There’s a lot to unpack there that I won’t go into because this is long enough. I think it’d be interesting to go more in depth about the psychology of cults and how future Gray and future Carmen would assimilate the personalities they were forced into. Do those personalities go away when the memories come back? Can the trauma of it cause black outs and more memory loss? What does it do to your mental health? Do you assimilate it into who you are? But I digress

- The most important part of Gray’s arc is in the finale. As Duane says, it’s Gray’s “coming of age, when he becomes a real person” and he does so by showing what Carmen stood for: true selflessness. There’s a bitter irony to Gray’s ambitions of success, his desire to work with Carmen as a team, pulling off successful and incredible heists ... all his dreams are coming true. But she takes more risks, he’s shocked by her ruthless and individualistic impulses, he knows it isn’t truly her, and whatever he could excuse before, he knows it’s wrong. He chose to be a criminal, Carmen didn’t. The final thing that gets through to him is what Gray knows she can never take back: killing Shadowsan. He defects and betrays, not for himself, not for success, not for anything except for her. He’ll risk getting killed, imprisoned, he’ll even betray this Carmen, out of a true selflessness for her to be herself again. He proves he has become a person good enough for Carmen Sandiego.

- I also absolutely love that at some point he changed his Crackle Rod to stun mode as a ‘maximum setting’. He didn’t plan for Carmen to be able to use it against him because he thought she couldn’t use it, so for awhile now he’s been ‘stunning’ people instead of killing them. Even though he returned to V.I.L.E, he came back as a changed person.

- His decision in the hospital room was also quite tragic, he didn’t want to complicate her life any further and Duane confirms he felt shame over his actions. That it was the right narrative at the time. I agree with this, though I’m a RedCrackle shipper at heart, the writer in me recognises the parallels of Carmen selflessly staying away from Gray to not ‘complicate’ his new beginning, and now Gray showing the same selflessness is a mirror to me that they’re on equal footing. (But also, please meet up again and talk to each other, because they’re the only ones who have gone through traumatic memory altering and personality grafting and there’s bound to be mental issues with that and they could help each other!)

And now, some talk by Duane on some RedCrackle hints:

- Carmen [on V.I.L.E island] was at an age where she probably didn’t know how to interpret her feelings for him, referencing when she called him a big brother to her. She tells Player she cares about him but doesn’t specifically reference that this is romantic or not

- 100% Graham was flirting with her in Australia

- They absolutely will meet up again in the future.

Anyway, I’ve seen some things circulating about the interview on Tumblr and I just wanted to provide some context and quotes from the interview. It was surprising to me that we were to read Gray as someone ruthless enough to kill Carmen in the pilot, because I didn’t interpret that exactly from my viewing, but I suppose that’s the great thing about art: it’s your interpretation. It also makes sense to me that Gray was written for the pilot and it was the Writer’s Room afterwards that took his character in new ways, just proof of organic storytelling. I also love that in the interview, he doesn’t specify any of the pairings as canon but if we saw things happen between characters or implied by a character, it was intentional, and I love that.

Definitely check out the interview for yourselves on Itstalkcartoon’s IG, they had a lot more to talk about, particularly with the goodbye to Zack and Ivy and Carulia.

Special thank you to Duane Capizzi, I doubt he’’ll ever read this, but thank you for your part in bringing this amazing show and its characters to a new narrative. It’s such a shame it only lasted for four seasons, hopefully in the future we get new stories to tell with these characters. As a complete side note, I am a New Zealander and it was so great to see NZ represented in media, even better that it was a Carmen and Gray episode :D To everyone else, thanks for reading this if you have gotten this far :)

#redcrackle #carmen x gray #carmen sandeigo netflix #duane capizzi #carulia #spoilers

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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 6 of 26

Title: The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) (2012)

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, First-Person, Third-Person, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist, Asexual Protagonist.

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 2/07/2021

Date Finished: 2/13/2021

Peace is sacred in the walled city-state of Gujaareh, and must be maintained at any cost. The Gatherers are a priesthood tasked with maintaining this goal. In the name of Hananja, Goddess of the moon, they walk the city at night and harvest Dreamblood-- the magic of dreams-- from Gujaareh's denizens. They bring the peace of death to those who need it... and to those judged criminal or corrupt.

But something else haunts Gujaareh's streets. A Reaper, a rogue Gatherer driven to endless madness and hunger from Dreamblood, is preying on the innocent, casting their souls into an eternal nightmare. Ehiru, one of the elder Gatherers, finds himself caught in the middle of a political conspiracy between his priesthood, the holy Prince, and the monstrous Reaper. An insidious corruption runs deeper than Ehiru knows-- and it may be too late to stop.

The Gatherer’s eyes glittered in her memory, so dark, so cold--but compassionate, too. That had been the truly terrifying thing. A killer with no malice in his heart: it was unnatural. With nothing in his heart, really, except the absolute conviction that murder could be right and true and holy.

Full review, major spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic depictions of violence, gore, death, warfare, and murder-- including death of children and mass murder. Discussions of p*dophilia/grooming (nothing graphic). Brief reference to r*pe. One character is a minor infatuated with a much older character-- not reciprocated. Rigid gender and social roles, including slavery. Magic-induced addiction and withdrawal. Loss of sanity/altered mental states/mind control/gaslighting.

Last year I read N. K. Jemisin's short story collection How Long 'Til Black Future Month? One of my favorite stories was The Narcomancer, which explored a vibrant, ancient Egypt-inspired world with themes of faith, dreams, violence, and duty. I wanted to read more from the universe, and finally got to do so with The Killing Moon, the first book in the Dreamblood duology.

Jemisin's creativity in worldbuilding is, in my opinion, unmatched in the fantasy genre. I thought Gujaareh was super interesting and fleshed out. While the ancient Egypt inspiration is obvious, it's also clearly an original fantasy culture in its own right. Everything from religious practices to social castes to gender roles to the fucking architecture felt methodical and thought out. The base premise of assassin priests compassionately harvesting magic from people is a fascinating idea and totally gripping. The pacing is a little slow, but I didn't mind so much because learning about the world was so fun.

While there's a hefty amount of worldbuilding exposition in the story, Jemisin doles out information gradually. Bits and pieces of Gujaareen law, etc are introduced at the beginning of each chapter, and usually have a thematic connection to the events of the story. Information is sparing at times, meaning that one doesn't have a full picture of how everything ties together until pretty far into the story. Even something as crucial as the dream-based magic system isn't fully realized until near the end. I like the mystery of this approach, and I can appreciate how difficult it must be to keep the reader invested vs frustrating them with a lack of info. Jemisin consistently does a great job with this in everything I've read by her.

I did want a little bit more from the narcomancy aspect of the story, since dream worlds are such a huge part of Gujaareen religion and culture. In The Killing Moon we see just a few dreamscapes, and then only briefly. There's so much potential with narcomancy as a magic system, yet most of what we see is an outside, "real-world" perspective, which isn't terribly unique compared to other kinds of magic. Dreamblood being a narcotic (heh) with some Extra Fantasy Stuff is interesting, but I wanted more. Perhaps The Shadowed Sun expands on this.

Characterization is the other Big Thing with this book, as it's very much a character-driven story. Overall I'm torn. There's some things I really liked, and others that felt underdeveloped. I'll go over my favorite things first.

Ehiru is probably the strongest of the main cast, and I really enjoyed his character arc. Here's a guy who is completely devoted to his faith, regardless of what others may think of it. Yet he's not a self-righteous dick. He sees Gathering as a loving and holy thing, so when he errs in the line of duty, it totally consumes him. And things just get worse and worse for him as the story progresses. Say what you will about the Gatherers and the belief system of Gujaareh; Ehiru comes off as intensely caring, devoted, and compassionate, and I genuinely felt bad for him throughout the novel. I'm not religious but these kinds of faith narratives are super interesting to me.

Looking at characterization as a whole, I appreciate The Killing Moon's gray morality. No one in the story is wholly good or evil. The Gatherers are an obvious example, considering they murder people in the dead of night in the name of their Goddess-- but do so to help those in need. Despite being a megalomaniacal mass-murderer, the Prince has believable reasons for his horrific actions, and they’re not wholly selfish. Even the Reaper is a clear victim of Dreamblood's addictive and mind-altering nature; it sometimes regresses into the person it used to be, which is sad and disturbing. There's a lot of moral complexity in the characters and the laws and belief systems they follow. This kind of nuanced writing is much more interesting to read than a black and white approach.

Beyond this, though, I struggled to connect with the other leads. Nijiri's utter devotion to Ehiru is basically his whole character, and while the tragedy of that is interesting for its own reasons, I kept wanting more from him. Sunandi is a good "outsider perspective" character but I had a hard time understanding her at times. For example, the two most important people in her life, Kinja and Lin, die in quick succession. Yet besides a brief outburst when Lin dies, this barely seems to affect her. I get people mourn in all kinds of ways but it seems odd. Her sexual tension with Ehiru is also weird and underdeveloped. Perhaps this is meant to be a callback to The Narcomancer, but it doesn't accomplish much in this narrative.

Another issue I had was emotional connection to minor-yet-important characters. Kinja dies offscreen before the story, yet is supposed to be a big part of Sunandi's past (and thus emotional arc). But he's never even in a flashback, so I never felt WHY he mattered to her. Una-une is the big one, though. It's pretty easy to figure out he's the Reaper by process of elimination, but he's barely in the story outside of a few early mentions. There's this part near the end that's clearly meant to be an emotional moment; Ehiru realizes his (apparently beloved) mentor Una-une is the horrific monster, and thus a foil to the situation between himself and Nijiri. But we never saw the relationship between Ehiru and Una-une, and nothing really established this prior... so there's no emotional payoff. It felt at times like this book was part of a much longer story that for whatever reason we never got to see. In some ways that can be useful to make the world and history seem vast, but here it made me feel emotionally distant from several characters. Perhaps flashbacks with these important characters would have helped bridge the gap.

Credit where it's due, though; it's clear a lot of the dark, often brutal tone and stylistic flair in The Killing Moon was adapted into Jemisin's fantastic Broken Earth trilogy. Probably the most notable are the cryptic interlude chapters told from the perspective of a mysterious character whose identity is unknown until the end. We learn bits and pieces of the beliefs and lore of the world through excerpts of common laws and wisdom. I also liked the occasional stream-of-consciousness writing during tense or surreal moments. The Broken Earth is an improvement overall, but I can appreciate The Killing Moon for establishing some of these techniques early.

I enjoyed this book overall and am planning to read The Shadowed Sun. While I have some criticisms about The Killing Moon, I think it just suffers in comparison to other works I've read by Jemisin. It was still an entertaining and intense read, with a captivating and original world. It's not a story for the faint of heart, though, so please mind the content warnings.

#taylor reads #8/10 #2021 reading challenge

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wot-tidbits · 4 years ago

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Live Signing Session—Dragonmount Patreon Stream

SOURCE

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES!

QUESTION:

It has been 13 years since you were selected by Harriet to finish the Wheel of Time. After 13 years have passed, like, has the shock worn off yet?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Yes and no. There are times when I look back and I just I’m like that was really a surreal event in my life. Nothing quite can ever compare to getting a phone call being asked to finish the Wheel of Time. I look back and I’m like how did that even happen?

For those who don’t know, I didn’t apply for it. Harriet just called me and it’s really, really strange. At the same time the fact that I am a best-selling author has kind of settled in because I have to deal with it every day and I’m very used to it at this point. And so the public’s attention being on me, I have gotten used to that. The fact that I got that random phone call still is really weird when you look back at. I don’t know if you have things in your life like that, where you’re like: “Man, that really happened!” That is really strange, like winning the lottery, right? I always describe it as winning the lottery that you didn’t know you’d entered. It’s more like actually getting an inheritance you didn’t know you were getting, but someone you loved of course had to die for you to get the inheritance. So it’s still wrapped up in weird emotions for me.

QUESTION:

The way that Harriet became aware of you was because her friend Elise Matheson was printing out blog posts and other news clippings that were online where there was a news report or tribute to Robert Jordan and yours was on that list and Harriet read that and ran with it from there. So it almost seems to me that you’ve written some amazing things, but maybe that blog post might have been the most important of your career in some ways.

BRANDON SANDERSON:

The single most significant three paragraphs in my entire career are probably that little blog post. […] The weird thing is that I was late. I spent about a week thinking about, “What do I write?” and everybody had tributes come out like the day after and I didn’t jump on that. You see me posting things later when I do blog post reactions. I often am like, “I want to think about this.” And so if I hadn’t waited who knows if that would have come up in the search results. First, because it was brand new when Elise was looking for things. Who knows, if I’d waited one more day it wouldn’t have popped up? If I’d written it the week before, maybe it wouldn’t have either. That’s just one of those things, right?

QUESTION:

What would you say to 2007 Brandon?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I have read this book where you go back in time, and it never turns out well. I would not go back in time and say anything to myself because I would end up as my own grandfather somehow. And then I would need, like, Christopher Lloyd to show up and help me fix all the problems in my life.

But if I take it non-jokingly, I don’t know. I’ve never been asked this one before. It’s usually your young writer self, what would you say? I honestly have no idea. Maybe I would say it’s gonna be alright. You’re gonna do a good job. Don’t stress this as much as you are. But maybe it’s stressing it that made me do a good job? And I haven’t stressed over a book as much as those books ever. Except maybe my very first release with Elantris. But I am not high stress person, so even that level of stress is nothing compared to what I know a lot of other people stress about.

The nice thing is that by 2007 I was confident in my writing. There were things I needed to learn. There were going to be some hard things I needed to learn and I learned them over the next five years. And it was a tough growing period of writing.

I might say take another stab at Mat once you think you got him. Listen to Jason (Denzel) when he says Mat’s off. Because you (Jason) were the first to point that out to me. I might say Padan Fain. A lot of people are going to think there needs to be a little more. Can you write like 2000 more words on the Padan Fain narrative arc for a Memory of Light? Remember to do that. Brandon, they’re gonna split into three books anyway. Stop stressing about trying to get them all into one book. They are not gonna let that happen. Tor’s not gonna throw that money away. They are going to insist on three books. So plan it that way from the beginning and maybe the timeline issues and Towers of Midnight would have been solved. I’m mostly looking at warning myself to prepare things for the future.

QUESTION:

You and I have talked about that in the past. Rand had a very climactic moment at the end of The Gathering Storm. And then you had some moments but it largely became Perrin and Mat’s book in Towers of Midnight. And then we got back to Rand again…

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I actually like that breakdown. I don’t think I’d change that. I think that Rand in Towers of Midnight being a little bit like Rand in the Dragon Reborn where you’re getting some distance from Rand, because he’s gone through a major change and you’re seeing him externally for a little while.

Actually, I think that’s a selling point of the Dragon Reborn and I like having echoed that in my three, where you know that distance [is there] and then you get back in his head and you’re like: “No, this is the Rand I still love”. This is the same person, he’s just developed. He’s changed a little bit. And that distance, that time with distance, it just gives you a different perspective on the character.

Like I said you are in Rand’s head in the Dragon Reborn, but he feels like a different character, and then we get our Rand back in book 4. I really like how Jim pulled that off. I wasn’t doing that intentionally, but in hindsight looking back, it feels like the right way to do that.

I would try to fix the timeline issues though. I did a lot of work in the Gathering Storm when it was one book to overlap Perrin’s climax and Rand’s climax at the kind of center point of the story which became the two endings of Towers of Midnight and the Gathering Storm. And because those originally had been overlapping back and forth timelines and were split into two books—which again I kind of like how it went—it was clunky since it wasn’t designed that way from the get-go.

QUESTION:

About the deleted chapters you did for the charity novels and are there anymore that might appear?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

No, the only other scene I think I’ve mentioned before; I have like that brief like two-page scene where ladies weave the bridal wreath for Rand. I’ve talked about that before. That’s the only significant chunk they got cut that’s left and it’s only like two pages. The ones were like full things, so someday we’ll find a place for that. I don’t think we have yet, but someday we’ll find a place for that, but it’s only two pages. It is real short.

Did I tell you why that got cut? I should mention it. So it was actually really cool. I wanted to get Rand engaged, have the bridal wreath and have all three of them like weave it together and kind of use some Aiel tradition there and whatnot. And it was a really great scene. I enjoyed it. Everybody liked it.

Then we put the book together. Because often I will write—when I have a large number of viewpoints, I will write a chunk of viewpoints from a character’s viewpoint, and then at the end is when I really start putting things together and then I have to smooth between these things and make sure that the pacing is right. Because you don’t want all sorts of dry scenes together. You don’t want too many action scenes together, unless it’s at the end where you do want a lot of action scenes, and you want to kind of be bouncing back and forth. There’s just a rhythm and feel to it that usually I have a pretty good instinct [for] while I’m writing knowing how they’re going to fold together.

But once in a while you get something that just sticks out like a sore thumb and this was one. Because it was opposite the Talmanes’ scenes going in Caemlyn and like dramatic scenes of people getting stabbed by myrddraal and nearly dying and all this stuff. And it was more powerful stuff. It was really nice tense stuff and then you jump back and the girls were like “Tee-hee, I am like this branch that I’m weaving into the bridal wreath. It has thorns!” And it just did not work!

I’m making it sounds sillier than it was. It wasn’t that silly, but it did not fit thematically. Harriet was like “Oh, this does not match at all.” I’m like “Yeah, you are totally right.” So we cut that one up, which made me feel sad because I did want to get them engaged. I know a lot of people have been waiting for that, but it had to go just for the strength of the opening narrative. That one’s around. It’s fun. You can imagine [it] exactly as what it is. All three go out and gather different things to put into the thing and you don’t seem them gathering, they just come together and say “Here, I brought this. It’s a good match for us because of this” and they kind of weave it all together. Maybe someday we’ll get that but there’s not a whole lot left.

Getting the Perrin through the Ways out—like, I had wanted to find a place for that for a while because I really liked that sequence. I’ve mentioned before that when I look back at it, I’m like, “it needs a lot of revision,” so I actually had to spend a lot more time revising that sequence for the charity anthology than I did the other one, which I just kind of chopped up and it was good to go. Because that had lasted all the way until the last edit, but the Perrin scenes got cut out earlier after we did a bunch of just timeline rejiggering and things like that. Harriet had not been pleased with my depiction of the Ways, and looking back—I think I mentioned this in the Forward—she was right. And that took a lot of revision to make feel right, which I wasn’t planning on spending, like I spent two weeks revising that little sequence for the charity anthology, but I wanted it to be good.

It was fun because when I sent it to Maria to look through to make sure I hadn’t broken anything too big continuity-wise even though it’s not canon, she wrote back. She’s like “This was so nice, being able to actually read Wheel of Time and edit it again.” It was like a bright spot. And that’s kind of how I had felt on it. So it was nice to work on but it was way more work than I expected. The bridal scene will not get similar treatment if we find a place for it in a future Unfettered or something like that.

QUESTION:

Aside from that do you have other scenes still remaining, deleted scenes that could potentially see the light of day?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I don’t think there is anything else at all. I don’t think there are even any scraps or fragments. Everything that Jim wrote I put in the book in some way. There is maybe some Q&A stuff that didn’t get in the book. In one of his Q&A’s with Maria in the notes he was talking about … No, no, this wasn’t from the Q&A. It was just notes from books back that they found dug in there that they were having Rand use the Choedan Kal. Jim had in the notes Rand using the male one at the end of the series but that one was destroyed. It was the access key that was destroyed. I’m like so do we find another access key or was this just old information contradicted other things? Because this was like he was writing book eight or something, he was thinking about doing that and they found a little note file for it. They’re like maybe we use these things, maybe we find another access key or whatnot.

There is stuff like that in the notes that would be fun to release. The fans could like imagine the what if because it’s entirely possible that rather than going with the Callandor solution, Jim would have gone with the Choedan Kal that he would have decided: “No, no, the right thing to do is to find another access key” or something like that or whatnot. And then you have a different twist on the ending using that. There are things like that that could be fun to see from the notes. I don’t know how much has been dug up, how much of it Harriet put in the library.

QUESTION:

Mat and Tuon are my favorite characters. Is there anything little or unknown about them that you can share with us?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Everything I had from Jim that was in the notes I was given—now, remember, I had people look through the notes and give me the stuff that they thought was relevant, Maria and Alan did. So there’s entirely possibly like a lot of the things that are notes that I didn’t see were drafts of appendices that Robert Jordan added things to, and then taken out from like book 7 and 6 and 8 and stuff like that. And there might be things in there.

Everything I had either was in the books—or because that last scene was written by him, the one with Mat and Tuon in the epilogue—he had done a draft on that scene so I was pointing everything toward that scene to just get it in. So that I could drop it in as close as how he’d done it as possible. The only thing that I know is that Mat does go to Seanchan and that eventually he’s found in a gutter without his hat having gambled it all away. And he’s muttering “I lost it all” or “I gambled a lot away” or something like that. That’s in the notes for the outriggers.

The notes for the outriggers are three sentences and one of them is about Mat having lost it all. We can guess he goes to Seanchan. We can guess that he ruins, messes things up and then spends several books fixing them again which is how Mat basically rolls. That would be my guess.

We can guess that Perrin has to go. We think Perrin thinks he has to go to kill Mat. We don’t know but one of those sentences is Perrin is going travelling on a boat thinking about how he’s got to go kill a friend. So there’s got to be some tensions between the continents and things like that, and I would assume that hijinks ensued, but your imagination has got to go on this one. That is literally all I know about Mat and Tuon going forward.

Fun fact is that this was somewhere in the notes but they hadn’t shown it to me, I came up with a new name for Tuon and then Maria’s like: “Oh, Jim came up with one of these” and it was two letters off. We’d both come up with the like exact same new longer name for her. And that was cool, that I had been enough on the same wavelength. And we of course used his. But that’s kind of fun because I think we were both looking at the list of Old Tongue words and found something that worked together and came together and it sounds like fortune and that’s the same direction I’d gone.

Maybe he’d written something that had told me that I should go that direction but either way, that’s a fun thing. There is a little email from Maria saying: “Hey, we should use Jim’s name for this!” And then it was almost exactly the same. I felt very cool on that day. I can’t remember what mine is because Fortuona ended up in the book but mine also started with f, o, r and then I think I had an extra syllable in there and I had Tuon in there as well but maybe my ending letters to it were different or something, I can’t remember.

QUESTION:

I know you’ve spoken a lot about that you’ve read some of these early scripts and…

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Yeah, I’ve read the first six. Still haven’t seen seven or eight.

QUESTION:

I know you’ve had a chance to talk to Rafe (Judkins). I am really curious what your take is going to be and how you’re going to be involved or how, if I can use the word “possessive” of it, that you’ll be when they hopefully get to the end of this saga. When they’re in their season seven or eight and it’s covering your books and to see how much they keep and change. And how much they’ll have to change because their previous changes will lead to, you know, have ripple effects.

BRANDON SANDERSON:

This is uncharted territory for me. And I have no idea. It could be like Game of Thrones where despite the changes they stay pretty much according to what are the big events, so what I wrote ends up there. But it could go completely different.

As I’ve said to people, I envision this as a new turning of the Wheel. It’s the same souls but in a different actual turning of the Wheel. It’s not the one that Jim and I worked on. It’s a different version of it. And so some of the same events are happening, others are different and being rearranged and so. I don’t know. Like my experience has been fantastic working with Rafe (Judkins) so far. But the sum total of my involvement is: I talked to Rafe and tell him what I felt about various scripts and things. I went on set one time and I was mostly there so they could interview me for b-roll to use in their “making of” and to actually let me meet the actors and things like that.

I am not a significant player in the series. I don’t know, maybe they will want me to be more of [one] when it gets to my books. My instincts say that I will become less and less needed. And I am not even sure how much I was needed right now because Rafe knows, has a vision, and is doing a good job with it.

I’ve been in his shoes before but it’s almost like the handoff, at least the way it’s supposed to work, between past presidents where they like leave a letter and are there for a phone call if you have a question for them, but mostly you find your own way. And that’s kind of how it is with me.

QUESTION:

Did you ask them about having a cameo?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I didn’t ask them about having a cameo, no. Maybe eventually in my own things I want to have a cameo but in the back of my mind I was like if I do a cameo I should do it when they get to the material I wrote. That’s more appropriate and so I haven’t asked for one yet. I hope the series takes off and then they get to mine and then we stick in a Brandon cameo.

For those who haven’t heard one of the things I want to do for my books when they get made is I want to die in various different—like I show up, I’m like the Kenny from South Park of the Cosmere or whatever. In every season there’s a version of me that dies in some horrible way, you know, just like a redshirt [from Star Trek] or something like that. I think that would be a lot of fun. You need people falling off the wall, getting eaten by koloss. I’m one of those people. Stuff like that. It just feels like revenge the characters could have on me and it could be this fun little thing. Stan Lee covered the cute cameo. I could cover the gruesome death cameo role.

QUESTION:

Having been through a full three books and years of working on it, what sort of high level general advice would you offer to the people, the writers in the writing room working on the series?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I actually talked to Rafe about some of this stuff. Number one was of course, Mat’s harder to write than he looks. I actually did say ask Jason (Denzel). Mat is harder to write than he looks.

I talked about the kind of soul of the Wheel of Time. What makes the Wheel of Time work. I remember talking to him about the interview that I heard with Jim where someone asked him summarize the Wheel of Time and he hummed and he didn’t want to do it but he eventually said what it’s like to be the normal person and be told you need to save the world. They put that burden upon you that you’ve got to save the world and you’ll probably die doing it and it’s not a burden you wanted. What do you do with that? If there’s a core theme of the Wheel of Time it is either that, or the core theme of old things become new and new things become old, used in interesting and different ways both with the characters and the world building and things like that.

I talked about some of that stuff. But really what worked for me and what anyone has to do who’s in this situation is read through the books, feel the books and then try to have that in mind when you’re working on it. Anytime I started to get lost, I just went back to the books and read what Jim had written and it pulled me back in. When I was working on—and I reread the Eye of the World when I was working on the deleted scene we talked about—it threatened to do that to me again. I was pulled in I’m like “Ooh, this and that!” and the books are just so descriptive, with lush use of language in a way that never feels like it bogs down. You just have to go to the books. He won’t do it the way I did it and that’s all right as long as he’s going to the books and he’s like feeling the soul of those books.

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Huge thank you to @highladyluck for being my editor.

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