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0-racle-0-f-hylia · 3 years ago

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Who did the Hero of Time end up with?

In every Zelda game I could always find some reason, convenient or otherwise, for Zelink to be present- every game except one.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, 1998. Unlike games previous to it, it had several female love interests for Link. Saria, Ruto, Nabooru, Malon, and of course Zelda herself.

I never really considered the first three mentioned to be a good match for Link though.

Saria is a perpetual 10 year old

Ruto forced a 10 year old Link into an engagement with her (he didn’t even know what that was) and had him carry her around in her shoulders like he was her servant. (Not to mention if they did have any kids they’d be Zora, not Hylian)

Nabooru is at LEAST 7 years older than Link. I mean, she was an adult when they met and he was a little kid. (Also it is hinted at in game that she is Malon’s MOTHER)(think about that)

And then there was Malon. Initially, I didn’t think much of Malon to begin with. I mean, to me she was just the npc that gave you a horse, but whatever. I didn’t like her as a love interest for Link because I didn’t think she was good enough for him. I really HATE shallow-female-love-interest-characters that do nothing to support plot/Link and are only there to look pretty.

And a never gave Malon a second thought because it seemed to me that during the game, Link had a stronger connection to Zelda than he did Malon.

Zelda gave him the Ocarina of Time, an essential tool for his quest

Guided him after his seven year sleep as Sheik and taught him the teleportation songs

Helped him in the final battle against Ganon

Had a heartfelt goodbye as she sent him back to relive his childhood

To me, there are two legitimate reasons why people ship Malink. One being that, in the manga, Malon had a crush on Link and dreamed he was the “Prince” she was waiting for. Two, in Twilight Princess, Link, a descendant of the Hero of Time, lives in a ranch. So people naturally assume that since Malon herself is also a rancher, the Hero of aTime married Malon and hence all his descendants are ranchers.

Now, since the Manga isn’t canon, the first reason is void, but the second? It does seem pretty solid doesn’t it?

And for the longest time, I couldn’t find any reason to deny that, even if it made me want to pull my hair out because I couldn’t find anything to prove it was wrong.

Every Zelda theorist I knew, claimed that Malink was canon and I COULDN’T DISPUTE IT.

But after looking through both OOT, TP, and every trusted Zelda resource that I know-

I’ve come to the conclusion- that it is far more likely the Hero of time married Zelda not Malon.

I do find it believable that Malon or Talon founded Ordon village as it is the closest thing TP has to LonLon ranch, sharing many similarities in culture. And it is logical to think that Malon’s descendants would live in Ordon village.

So, in conclusion, the Hero of Twilight, descendant of the Hero of Time, is related to Malon because he lives in the ranch-centered village of Ordon!

Yes, it’s the perfect theory! No flaws in it whatsoever.

. . . except for one thing- TP Link- is not an Ordonian.

It’s a tiny detail most people seem to miss. In Twilight Princess, alongside all the other races of Hyrule, there are two kinds of humanoids:

Hyruleans: the non-magic people of Hyrule with round ears.

Hylians: with long ears, gifted with the ability to “hear the gods” and possess magical ability, as said in the Hyrule Historia.

Link is from the latter category, as he has long, pointed ears. And while it is possible one of his parents or grandparents was Ordonian, there is no way to prove this as he looks the same as any other Hylian. Meaning, it is likely that Link had no relation to the Ordonians by blood.

There are no other Hylians in Ordon besides Link, which leads me to conclude that Link’s parents were from castle town, the only other place in TP where Hylians reside.

In the beginning of the game, Rusl does say that Link has never been to Hyrule. But that merely implies that Link has ever been outside the village in his memory or since Rusl has known him.

Meaning his parents may have lived there when he was a baby. Or he was found/given to the Ordonians after his parents death or disappearance. Similar to how the Hero of Time was raised as Kokiri because his Hylian mother brought him to Kokiri forest and died soon after.

Epona is another factor that needs to be accounted for. It could be argued that as TP Link has a horse named Epona, this ties him to Malon, as the original Epona came from LonLon ranch. But it is a null point as the Hero of Time owned Epona even if he didn’t marry Malon and therefore his descendants, wether or not they are related to Malon, could have a horse that is related to, or named after Epona.

Now I’ve stated a couple reasons why I think Link didn’t marry Malon, but I haven’t given any reasons why the Hero of Time would marry Zelda. But I’m getting to that :)

One of the reasons why I believe the Hero of Time married Zelda is due to his appearance on TP, specifically, the Hero’s Shade.

Besides his ghostly, skeletal figure, the most intriguing thing about him is his armor. Comparing his elaborate armor to the much simpler armor of the guards or soldiers (not knights, as some people think) in Ocarina of Time, makes me believe he is much higher ranked , probably an esteemed Knight or something similar.

Which makes sense, considering he was the one who warned the king of Ganondorf’s treachery and possesses amazing swordsmanship skills. It is also hinted at in Hyrule Historia, that Link’s father was a knight as well, making Knighthood, Link’s inheritance.

Another detail I find interesting is, though faded, you can tell that the Hero’s Shade’s armor was once gold with red detailing. The armor’s color scheme, red and gold, is typically used by kings of Hyrule.

As seen in Wind Waker and the Minish cap. King Gustaf, King Daltus, and King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule all wear red and gold.

Another peculiar detail about the Hero’s Shade’s armor is the shape of the breastplate resembling that of an owl’s head. Owls are associated with wisdom. In OOT, Zelda holds the triforce of WISDOM.

In TP, you can buy an item called magic armor in castletown. It’s design is reminiscent of Zelda’s appearance in the game. Including the design of the crown pauldrons and tassel. This makes me assume it once belonged to a prince of Hyrule. This is further backed up by its red and gold color scheme, colors associated with the king of Hyrule.

The most obvious connection between Hylian royalty and the Hero of time is concerning the magic armor. Specifically, the long, red cap included in the outfit. Compared to the rest of the armor Link gets in the game, the magic armor just doesn’t seem to fit.

The hero’s clothes have a green cap because it’s what the previous hero wore, Kokiri styled.

The Zora armor has a blue cap because it is made to resemble the Zora’s long head fin.

But the magic armor? Something made for royalty? In all the other games, no other Hylian royalty is depicted with a long cap, so where could this style have come from?

Well, if the Hero of Time married into the royal family, perhaps his unique style would have carried over into the traditional Hylian royalty get-up, as he become a prince. Creating an outfit that includes the royal colors, crown, tassel and the Hero of Time’s long cap.

On a side note, may I remind everyone that in Majorca’s Mask, when the Skull Kid was attempting to bring down the moon the first time, Link flashed back to his last moment with Zelda?

Sure he could have just been remembering the song of time and yes, the fact that he has Epona means he did go back to LonLon ranch to see Malon.

But one, he probably just went to LonLon to get his horse to travel with

And two, he didn’t flash back to his last moment with Malon, did he?

And three, the fact that he rembered how Zelda reminisced about their time together and he didn’t just recall the song of time just go’s to show how strongly he felt about their relationship.

#zelda #twilight princess #ocarina of time #zelda theory #zelink

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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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Do you think Ruby will kill Grimm!Summer and if so, how do you think that will clash with her objection to killing Penny?

I think it's all going to hinge on a) how the story portrays Ruby reacting to Jaune in Volume 9 and b) what sort of shape grimm!Summer is in.

First, they may not have Ruby kill Summer at all. And I don't just mean that the plot will twist to ensure someone else has to (somehow, without silver eyes) do the deed because she's unavailable, thereby freeing her of that hard choice — precisely like how Ruby was conveniently in the void by the time Penny needed to die. Rather, Summer might still be able to be saved. Many (myself included) have theorized that if Ruby's eyes destroy grimm and grimm only, she might be able to destroy the portion of a grimm that possess a person (for lack of a better word), leaving the rest of them intact. That's mostly come up in Salem discussions — could Ruby remove the influence of the grimm pool, leaving human!Salem behind? — but now that same question applies to Summer too. When she used her eyes on the Hound we saw the grimm part of him get stripped away, revealing the faunus underneath, before the goo of the grimm started Venom-creeping back over the rest of him. If Ruby could give off a more powerful blast, perhaps she could erase the grimm portion entirely, all in one go, sort of akin to how they won the geist fight in Volume 4. Hit it harder, all at once, until after a single blow only the core of the beast remains. In each case the grimm would leave the thing it possessed.

So that's Option B: is Summer in a state where it's possible for her to recover in some way? How deep do these grimm experiments go, are silver eyes capable of destroying the grimm without killing the person? How much of the original Summer would be left without the grimm parts? etc. etc. Lots of questions we don't have any answers to. Option A, however, comes up if we're given a scenario where Summer is beyond hope. She's a grimm now, no way to fix it, killing her is seen as a mercy. And that, I think, is the crucial difference. Ruby unequivocally said no to killing Penny... but Penny also wasn't presented as having to die. It's one of the rare moments in the volume where I 100% agree with what Ruby is saying. Penny has been hacked, her order is to open the vault, and then she's set to self-destruct. So how does killing her benefit anyone in anyway? They obviously want to save Penny, so all killing her at the manor would do is hurry the self-destruct along, the thing they want to stop. They want to keep the Maiden powers safe, but killing her might risk sending them off into the world, lost, or even wind up with Cinder if her attempts to steal them formed any connection. Obviously we know now that the powers didn't go to Cinder, that Penny was able to think of Winter and send them to her, but my point is that just killing her then is a HUGE risk. Finally, there's no real danger in opening the vault. I mean yeah, they don't want Ironwood to get the staff... but like, he just wants to leave. If Ironwood were planning to use the staff to, idk, decimate all of Atlas I can understand the group considering killing Penny to be worth avoiding the potential death of an entire kingdom, but there's no threat to anyone if Ironwood does somehow snag the relic. The only threat here is that opening the vault will allow Salem to get the relic instead, but the group decides to open the vault anyway. Penny is basically going, "If you don't kill me now then I'll open the vault, which will lead to Ironwood escaping Salem with a large portion of the kingdom and standing down from his bomb threat, and then I'll die!" So you want them to kill you to avoid... other people not dying? And you want to die so you don't... die?

It's absolute nonsense.

This is basically a long-winded way of saying that killing Penny in that moment wouldn't benefit the good guys in any way, shape, or form. The fact that Penny suggests it at all is monumentally stupid. It's a Deep, Dramatic Moment that makes absolutely no sense. "You have to kill me!" she cries... even though killing her does nothing good, likely does a whole lot of bad, and absolutely does a Big Bad by hurrying along one of the major things everyone is trying to prevent: Penny's death.

Of course Ruby said no. That's the smartest Ruby is in the whole volume.

But when Jaune is faced with the question? Well, it's meant to be a very different context. I've gone on the record multiple times as saying that the show did a HORRIBLE job of justifying the need to kill Penny, but I also recognize that we're supposed to believe that was the best option on the table. Unlike at the manor, Penny's death does achieves something here: giving her the ability keep the powers safe. It's also presented as inevitable: Penny will (supposedly) die regardless, so better that she die when she chooses, preventing Cinder from getting more power, then dying in a few minutes with more risks attached. The manor death had nothing going for it. The finale death — no matter how badly executed — is meant to be justified to some extent, whether we personally agree it or not. We're still meant to realize, "Yeah, Penny is dying, no way to avoid it, so killing her will at least help keep the power out of Cinder's hands and will give her some agency over the time she has left." It's still stupid, but it's a "You wrote this scene really badly" stupid rather than a "This entire concept is nonsensical" stupid.

So Ruby has never actually been in Jaune's position. For all her insistence that she won't let anyone die, Ruby has never actually been in a scenario where killing someone would do the most good for the world, or would put someone out of their misery, or would give them some agency over their own existence — all the things that Penny's death is (again) supposed to represent. We don't know what she'd choose if death was inevitable and she was faced with providing a "kinder" death, or what she'd choose if a death was, from a practical perspective, presented as the best way forward. That's because right now the story is horribly written and Ruby isn't forced to choose anything, but if they actually brought her back to her Volume 1-5 self, I can easily see her killing her mother as an act of kindness. Summer was turned into a monster by Salem. The very thing she's spent her whole life trying to eradicate. There is no possible, other way to help her. She is a danger to Ruby and all of her friends. Perhaps, if a part of her is still lucid, she expresses that she doesn't want to continue living like this, being the thing she despises, being Salem's tool, being a danger to her daughter. So Ruby kills her as an act of mercy and love. It's presented as a release from a nightmare existence.

But that potential, future characterization depends on whether Ruby understands the choice Jaune made. Again (again, again, again) I think the story did a terrible job writing that scene and that it didn't succeed in justifying the kill, but for the purposes of what I think the story was trying to do, Ruby may well parrot all that back in Volume 9: "Yes, Jaune. Penny was dying and there was no way to save her even though your semblance is healing. There was nothing else you could have done even though you might have gotten her through the portal and saved here there. Killing her then kept the powers safe messy lore aside. You did the right thing, horrible as it was." And that acts as setup for Ruby doing the same thing for Summer later on. Either that, or she's initially furious at Jaune and comes to realize — after some messy and contradictory character arc — that he did the right thing all along and she was just too grief-stricken to realize it. Which I will hate if we get that given how badly it'll all end up lol.

So those are the two theories I'm leaning towards. Either the story, in the fashion of Volume 8, will ensure that Ruby never has to make the hard choice of whether to kill her mom or not (oh god I'm imagining a scene where Yang offers to do it instead as some act of sisterly devotion/a sacrifice so the "pure" sister remains pure no no no no), or Summer's situation is (no doubt just as badly) presented like Penny's second request for death, as a necessary act that Summer wants, will assist the heroes in some way, and is definitely the Best and Only Thing To Do.

Of course, Option C is that this is... just never resolved. It definitely speaks to my lack of faith in RWBY atm, but given how many important things we've dropped I would not be surprised if Summer is never actively introduced into the series again. RWBY may well treat this as the answer to a mystery that never existed until said "answer" arrived, the writers viewing this merely as the explanation of what happened to Summer and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, viewers are 100% right to expect more in the future. This change raises even more questions than were already attached to Summer's disappearance and the existence of the Hound absolutely implies that, in a well written story, grimm!Summer will appear somewhere down the line. But, to be blunt, RWBY is not a well written story. So if some number of years from now we look back and go, "Wow, the answer to how they'll handle this is that they... didn't. This was never brought up in a meaningful way again" I really wouldn't be surprised.

#rwby #mymetas

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newtedison · 4 years ago

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my thoughts on the crank palace

i touched about this a bit on twitter (@newtedison_) but i figured i would Try and touch on my points more here (spoilers obv) again, its sort of lengthy

1. im gonna start with talking about the ending because i need to get it out of the way. either i havent read the books in a while and i forgot some canon (which could very well be true, i literally forgot that Bliss was a thing) or this ending makes no sense and is (somehow) setting up for a tdc sequel? so first off, newt was shot in the Head with a Bullet and somehow didnt immediately die? i know that that can happen in real life but it just seems so unlikely that not only would he not die, but he would survive long enough for someone from WCKD to transport him back to their labs and try to revive him. and who the fuck was he talking to? did thomas get newt’s journal at some point and i just dont remember? like i said, either im forgetting stuff or this ending doesnt make sense and is setting up a sequel which...i’ll get to later

2. why was this written? like, what was the point? i understand that this wasnt going to be all sunshine and rainbows but i feel like i was reading torture porn. like, literally all that happens is newt gets tortured (which is described in detail) by WCKD soldiers, has bouts of insane-fueled rage where he KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE, and then he dies. ??? what did this contribute to the canon? what was this trying to accomplish? truthfully, i never really wanted a newt-POV...well, anything except for maybe those little nuggets he wrote some time ago. but even if i HAD wanted a newt-POV novella, this is not what i would have wanted. he KNOWS that newt is almost universally the most loved character in this franchise. you can tell because he constantly uses him as a way to get fans in his good graces again. so why on earth would he take that character that so many people love and write a novella where its torture porn and a descent into madness before death? i am not interested in that At All. i’ve read fics (and even written a drabble) where newt is a Crank, and those were more respectful and easier to read than tcp. the parts where newt is having bouts of the Flare were literally exhausting to read; it was described in such vivid and torturous detail that it made me sick reading it. and it didnt help that newt is a character i care a lot about. i didn’t need to know what becoming a Crank felt like. the way it was described in the other books (and even the movies) told me everything i needed to know. the way thomas and everyone found newt at the crank palace in tdc and hes described as obviously not well, but not knowing what exactly happened to him...thats good enough on its own. the mystery of what exactly newt had to endure is part of what gives his journey more emotional depth. not everything needs to be written out and explained. not every gap needs to be filled in.

3. me saying “the characterization felt off” is going to make some people roll their eyes because ‘duh, sami, the characterization will be off because he’s going insane’ to which i say...exactly. we weren’t really reading a newt-POV novella, were we? even if he isn’t past the Gone in the beginning, hes clearly not the same person we knew him as. the whole novella felt like an uncanny valley situation; i knew i was supposed to be reading about newt, but it felt like i was reading about someone else who looked like him. and that is part of what made this such a disconnect and made me lose interest at parts. not only that, but the world building and lore is inconsistent. newt makes a comment about how it used to rain in the glade, and apparently (as ive been told) that is simply not true. keisha having somehow working cell phone that magically connects her to her family also doesnt make sense. how would they have each others’ numbers? what are the odds that they BOTH found working cell phones in an apocalypse? i get that its a novella but you cant just throw something that crazy in there as a plot convenience. actually work on your plot and world building in a cohesive way, please. and another thing that doesnt make sense...

4. ...is newt finding out that sonya is his sister. if there was anything i would have wanted from a newt-pov novella, it would have been this. him finding out that not only is sonya his sister, but he already knows her post-WCKD. something that would have made this novella actually captivating, contributing something worthwhile to the canon that i would actually want to read, is if newt found out while in the crank palace that sonya was his sister; the Flare would remove that part of the Slice in his brain, and he would realize it was her. then, knowing that he couldnt go past the Gone before seeing her, he would try to find a way to get back to her. he could learn this after thomas and everyone originally see him, so it could match up with the canon. and then, by the time 250 comes along, hes lost all hope of that actually happening, and lashes out to thomas in a fit of rage. the journey of him trying to find his ACTUAL sister would have meant more to me than the story of keisha and dante. trust me, i love a found family trope as much as the next girl. but this series is FULL of the found family trope. it pretty much is the backbone of the franchise. so to see a blood family dynamic would have been a refreshing change of pace that i actually would have been interested in reading. also, the way that newt DOES find out about sonya is...underwhelming. he just randomly says “you remind me of my sister, sonya” to keisha in the WCKD truck. first of all, sonya is not the name you would actually know her by. you would know her by her birth name (which is lizzy? elizabeth?). second, why does he act like he didnt already meet her in the series? when the WCKD doctor tells him sonya is his sister and is alive, hes so surprised. wouldn’t he have known that already? why is there not more emphasis on the fact he already met her? that would have been a really interesting dynamic to explore, and im sad they didnt

5. the pacing and dialogue of tcp is so dragged out. i remember specifically there was a section where newt goes to talk to keisha after she starts abandoning dante, and i swear to god there was a page and a half of text before anything ACTUALLY happened or anyone ACTUALLY said anything. dashner described a launcher at one point as “the energy dependent electric firing projectile device.” that’s SIX words to describe a stun gun. a fucking stun gun! we know what it is! why did you have to use six words??? it just felt like everything was dragged and stretched to the longest it could possibly be and it added to the exhaustion i felt while reading it

6. okay i cant end it without talking about newtmas. its very obvious by now that newtmas is a VERY large part of this fanbase. its clearly the most popular ship and what keeps a lot of people interested in this series. even the marketing team for the MOVIES used newtmas as a advertising tactic (i.e.; using thomas and newt standing face to face as a thumbnail for the trailer, emphasizing newtmas based questions in interviews, even making a fucking facebook memories video for them. yes that last one is real). not only does dashner use newt as a way to lure fans in; he also uses newtmas. the parts that were sprinkled into this were so obvious that it didnt feel authentic. i cant speak for the original trilogy; i dont know the culture around ships back then, and i dont know how much it influenced his writing at the time. but the scenes in those books felt more genuine than tcp. by genuine i mean; he wrote scenes without a relationship in mind, but the chemistry had noticeable subtext that, while unintentional, was largely agreed upon by the larger audience. the parts of newtmas he added into tcp felt artificial and forced, likely as a way for people to take snippets of and use as a free marketing tool for him. one example you might have already seen; “he had already gotten used to his post-thomas, post-WCKD life.” the fact that dashner SPECIFICALLY used the phrase “post-thomas” rather than “post-his friends” or something similar shows that he is using newtmas as a hook on purpose. not only that, but to make newt’s last thoughts as he died “tommy. tommy will understand...” is...wow. first of all, i never wanted to know what newt’s dying thoughts were, but thanks, i guess? and second, when we all initially thought newt died underneath thomas with a gun to his head, i was pretty much inferred that newts last thoughts would probably be about thomas; they would sort of have to be, given the circumstances. so adding that in gives me the same feeling that “i’m coming for you, newt” at the end of the fever code gave me. not as offensive, but written very much on purpose. and the ending is implying that there will somehow be a sequel where thomas gets newt’s journal from...someone. at this point, i can only think that this sequel will retroactively make newtmas canon somehow. now that newt has been confirmed as gay, it could happen. which brings me to my last point...

7. hearing dashner confirm newt is gay was already mind-boggling before. now that i’ve read the crank palace...im angry. im very angry. i think its safe to say that newt is the character that suffers the most in this series. you can argue with me but hes definitely high on the list, if not #1. so; you take this character. you give him a horribly sad arc in the original trilogy, then decide to expand upon it and tell us, your largely QUEER fanbase, exactly how painful and torturous his last days were, in detail. and then you tell us he’s gay. something that is never mentioned in the canon, only in an offhanded reply to a tweet of someone calling you out. on a base level, i can understand why people would be happy. representation (i guess), seeing themselves in the character, having their headcanons be confirmed. great. but what i see is you telling your largely queer fanbase “hey, you see the only confirmed gay character? im going to literally write torture porn about him before killing him off and offer it to you like im providing a service to your community.” how fucked up is that? “hey, kids, if youre gay, you WILL be violently tortured and become violent and a danger to the ones you love. then you will die and your love will never be reciprocated.” what a message! and if he DOES end up retroactively making newtmas “canon” in some weird sequel...i will start foaming at the mouth. THIS is an example of how not all queer representation is good or genuine.

i’ve definitely forgotten some points but this is long enough already. let me know if you agree or if theres anything else you want to add! im interested in what you guys think

(8. I JUST REMEMBERED!!! if WCKD needed to study newt so bad bc sonya is his sister and is immune while he isnt, why did they let him run around the crank palace in the first place??? you cant test his vitals or anything you’re literally just watching him. what is the point????)

#my fingers hurt from typing lol #the crank palace #the maze runner #newt #newtmas #anyway...

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k7l4d4 · 3 years ago

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Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 7 Part 2

Hello all, I’ve returned for another piece of Midnight Striga! Everybody Clap Your Hands!!

Scowling to himself, Hunter ducked away from the human. He… wasn’t supposed to be in Bonesburough, not really, but it was one of the few days off he got, so he decided to make the most of it with some research. Events had shifted. What before everyone would’ve laughed off as some kind of joke, or the words of a deluded fool, were proven true when a group of human rogues decided to raze the Covention, using magic!! Hunter wouldn’t deny, he burned to know how they did it, how did they overcome the biological limitation? If ever questioned, he could and would easily decry it as Wild Magic, something to be locked away for the heresy against the Titan it was… but in private, he craved that power for himself. Not for glory, or conquest, no! He wasn’t an idiot.

He wanted to be normal.

“Stupid human, thinking I would buy a cheap excuse like that.” He muttered. It burned, it truly did, that she somehow thought he would fall for a ploy, even if she had no clue who he truly was. ‘The Emperor’s most trusted agent, The Golden Guard himself!’ He puffed out his chest, smirking in pride at what he’d accomplished. And it WAS an accomplishment. Anyone who knew the truth of his situation would no-doubt cry about how he had it all handed to him by his uncle, and if they did he would have no problem laughing at the fools, behind their backs of course, no need to start a fight when he could finish one.

For as long as he’d been in his Uncle’s care, he’d worked and slaved to obtain his position. He’d studied, trained, honing his body and his mind to be the best. If someone crossed him, he found ways of getting even, and without even having to get his own hands dirty half the time. Seriously, he understood the need to maintain the Coven’s image of being the best of the best, but most of them were just stupid!! ‘Even Clawthorne.’ He scornfully smirked to himself. He was ecstatic at seeing the cocky witch being taken down a peg, especially by her own hand. The fact that it showed the Isles what she really was, a worm and a cheat who slinked her way to the top, made it all the sweeter, and not to mention that her actions unleashed the most dangerous Wild Witch in generations into the populace. He knew that’s not how it actually worked, but it was a convenient lie that people would reach of their own free will, and would make an excellent tool for getting her out of the way when she finally outlived her usefulness.

But that’s besides the point. He shook his head lightly, clearing his thoughts as he leaned against a bookshelf. The human was here, in the library, and that was an opportunity he wouldn’t let pass. He wouldn’t stalk her or anything, but he’d be watching, waiting, and listening to see just what exactly she intended for the Isles. The mad laughter of those maniacs who had been brought in echoed in his ears, his eyes hardening into stone at the memory. If she turned out to be a threat, he would destroy her. Even if he never gained the secret to the humans’ ability to wield magic, he would gladly sacrifice it to protect the Isles. He swore it.

“This place is both amazing, and kind of ridiculous.” Luz commented, having put aside any thoughts of that rude guy from before, determined to make this a good day. She ducked under a book flying overhead, glaring at it as it shrieked at her. “I wonder if anyone would be willing to help me navigate this place.” She murmured, rubbing her head at another near miss.

“I believe we can help with that!” A voice that seemed to mix charming and cheese together in a corny mess sounded out behind her. Turning around, Luz raised an eyebrow at what she saw. Two Witches, a male and a female, and by her guess twins, if the incredibly strong resemblance and similarity in age was anything to base her decision off of. The two were standing back to back, the boy shooting a cocky grin that he probably thought made him look “so cool!” beneath his deep green hair and golden eyes, his apparent sister tilting her head in a different direction, gazing off in thought, a mysterious look in her eyes.

Luz turned on her heel, already done with these two. “Yeah, if you’re trying to flirt with me, I prefer homemade food and some shopping,” She said, not watching as the two collapsed in shock. “Also, you guys kind of come across as desperate.” She added, turning her head back to shoot them an eyebrow.

“W-we weren’t flirting with you!” The girl shouted, face flushed, even as her brother sat in a heap, poking at the ground with his finger. She marched over, her flush fading as her look shifted from it’s brief moment of outrage to some measure of control. “We just overheard you saying you’d appreciate someone showing you around, and we happen to know someone. We’d be cool introducing you.” She explained, looking Luz up and down as she did so. She shrugged. “But yeah, we probably would flirt with you normally, but we don’t have time for that today. Ed!” She called, her brother raising his head in response. “Let’s go find Mittens!” Her brother nodded in agreement, still seeming a little dazed from Luz’s snark from before.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” Luz rebutted, raising her hand in a halting motion. “Did I say that I agreed? Because I don’t think I did.” She said, crossing her arms.

The girl huffed, hands on her hips. “Do you have a reason to actually refuse?” She challenged.

Luz paused, thinking for a moment, before shrugging. “Fair. Okay, let’s go.” She stopped, causing the girl to groan.

“What now?” She asked.

“I just remembered I never got your name.” Luz sheepishly admitted.

The girl blinked, before chuckling, some of the tension in her face bleeding away. “Yeah, I did too.” She stuck out her hand in a shaking gesture, leaning forward at an angle that honestly looked a little silly. “Emira Blight, at your service.” She smirked.

“And I’m Edric!” Edric called out, popping up behind his sister.

Luz laughed. “Heh! Good to know! Since we’re formally introducing ourselves, not that I don’t believe for a second that you don’t know who I am,” She said, shooting the two a challenging smirk. They had the good sense to accept it with a shrug and a nod without putting on airs. “The name’s Luz. Luz Noceda.” She declared, shaking the slightly older girl’s hand. Her grin turned mischievous. “So, I’m assuming that Mittens is Amity?” She asked gleefully, leaning forward, even as the two siblings did the same.

“You know Luz, I think we are gonna get along just fine.” Emira declared, an equally mischievous smile on her face, mirrored by her brother. With that, the trio rapidly began plotting how to best fluster the composed youngest Blight. Hey, Luz more or less liked her, but she thought a little harmless goofiness would get her to destress some. Not too much though, she liked her head on her shoulders. The trio walked off, heedless of their watcher in the isles.

Boscha breathed out a sigh of relief. “They’re gone.” She muttered. Not only was she here, but so were Amity’s older siblings!? Yeah, she wasn’t gonna stay and get caught in whatever craziness those two decided to get into. With a spine-cracking stretch, Boscha pulled away from the Isles, pulling a book to her chest. She breathed in deep, sighing out, before freezing at the sight of flame licking out of her mouth. Clamping her jaw shut, she rapidly shifted her eyes back and forth, already feeling paranoid at anyone having seen that. She clambered off towards the checkout, the book white-knuckled in her grip.

The book’s title read “Mysteries of the Mind, and Other Dark Truths.” Maybe now Boscha will be able to get some answers.

Luz rounded the corner, arm slung over Emira’s shoulder, chatting away with the other girl. “-And that’s why I never date a girl with fire magic without asking if they are medicated or not first!” She boldly declared, completely unbothered by her own past misadventures. Admittedly, she and Azzie probably would’ve still been together, if she wasn’t head over heels for a childhood friend who ran away with the circus.

Edric sprayed out his drinking, choking on his laughter. “And she let you live!?” He asked incredulously, choking and wheezing all the while.

Luz sheepishly shrugged. “Yeah, maybe trying to tell her that I wanted to break up while she was waiting for her medicine to be refilled, and while she was practicing her spells to boot, wasn’t my smartest move.” She was SOOO lucky she dodged that initial attack, her butt still felt like it was singed at the memory!!

Emira gave her an amused smirk. “Oh, I wonder why?” She playfully ribbed the other girl. Her look of amusement softened. “You know, I was honestly all geared up to tear you apart at first.” She casually admitted, even as Edric stared at her in shock and Luz raised an eyebrow at her admission. “Yeah, after I got a rundown about what you accidentally dragged Mittens into, and trust me, I know you wouldn’t be able to stop her, I was totally prepared to dismember you and bury your corpse so you could never get involved with her again.”

“Eh, not the worst thing anyone’s admitted to wanting to do to me.” Luz said, shrugging the casual death threat off. Edric just wordlessly worked his jaw, somehow at a loss for words.

“But… as much as I want to blame you, I get that it wasn’t your fault, what went down. So I’ll be keeping an eye on you, but I’m not gonna try anything. Especially not now that I know how fun you are!” She finished, giving Luz a chipper wink, getting a friendly smirk in response. As the next area caught her eye, she perked up. “Oh! I think we’re here!”

“Finally!” Edric cheered, having gotten bored of the place a few stacks ago, with only Luz’s stories to keep him going. Who knew you could cause so much chaos with Cheese, a banjo, and a juggler!? He must find a way to top that…!

Peering around the corner, Luz’s eyes widened. “Is that what I think it is?” She asked, her voice tight with awe and fervent hope.

“Yeah.” Emira squeaked, equally overcome.

Edric just raised his eyebrows. “I don’t get the big deal, but you guys do you, I guess.” He said, shrugging.

Before them sat Amity Blight, her normally stern look having fallen away, a look of innocence and kindness gracing her features, as she read from the book in her lap to the children surrounding her, Skara standing to the side with a happy smile of her own.

“‘What do you think you’re doing?’” Amity read along, keeping pace with her place in the book, her eager audience leaning in closer, with Skara sidling up too, a sheepish grin on her face at how captivated she was with the simple reading. “‘We’re your friends and we wanna help!’ said the Tin Boy with a yelp. Otabin smiled and paced the floor. ‘I’ve never had real friends before.’”

Luz suddenly found herself very much identifying with a children’s book character from a story she never read, just from that one line. She turned to the twins with starry eyes. “Amity reads to kids?” She stated more than asked, getting an enthusiastic nod from Emira and a playful smirk from Edric.

She watched in slight awe as Amity continued. “‘Then we’ll be your first.’ The Chicken Witch Clucked. Otabin couldn’t believe his luck.” She turned her gaze to the kids, eyes glowing in delight at this simple kindness she was performing. “So, Bookmaker Otabin, surrounded by friends, bound a book of friendship and that’s the end.” She finished cheerfully, the children cheering and applauding, while Skara threw an arm over her friend’s shoulder, which Amity playfully shoved off.

“Yay!”

“Thank you so much.”

“Goodbye.”

One particular kid walked up to Amity and hugged her legs, before speaking in a strikingly deep voice. “Thank you for the story Miss Amity.”

Amity gave the little demon boy a kind smile, reaching down to return the hug. “Ah, thank you Braxas. Have a good day, and give your dad my wishes while he heals up. See you next week.”

The little demon, Braxas apparently, cheerfully ran off, waving in reply behind him. “Okay!”

Skara gave a soft laugh, clapping her hands. “That was so sweet, Ams!” She cheered. She shot Amity a mock critical look. “And just why haven’t you shown this to me before?” She asked faux-haughtily, even as Amity snorted.

“I think what I do to destress is my own business.” Amity replied dryly, getting a sheepish laugh from Skara in response. Her smirk softened into a smile. “But still, I’m okay with you having shown up. The kids really liked you.” She gave Skara an appraising look. “I honestly didn’t expect you to be cool with something like this.” She softly admitted.

Skara gave Amity a stern look. “Amity, I get that I can be judgy, but I’m not gonna bust your chops for being nice to kids.” She said sharply, before shifting into a teasing smirk. “Still, you know that now you have to do something I like to do without other people, right?”

Amity spluttered. “I don’t remember agreeing to that!” She said hotly, her face flush.

Skara spun on her heel, pulling Amity along with her. “Ah, don’t be such a buzz-kill! It’s nothing illegal, and I promise, you’ll enjoy it.” She said, giving Amity a wink, prompting the other Witch to roll her eyes.

At that point, Luz decided that it was about the right moment to reveal herself. “Well, well, well! It looks like Hexside’s number one lemon drop has a secret sweet center.” She commented, stepping into view.

Behind her, Edric and Emira shared matching looks of glee, mouthing the words ‘lemon drop’ to each other in delight. Oh yeah, they liked Luz, for sure!

#the owl house #fairy tail #owl house au #fairy tail au #owl house crossover #fairy tail crossover #luz noceda #amity blight #emira blight #edric blight #braxas the owl house #skara the owl house #magic

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thatmysticaltuxedocat-rp · 3 years ago

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Beneath the cut is basically an untitled drabble. More often than not, my writing is a freewriting exercise. I rarely use actual plots.

This one is me venting and kinda... a downer. Angsty. If you're looking around tumblr for fluff or sweetness it is NOT here.

Also this is a stand alone. It doesn't fit with the usual headcanons I write with, e.g: there is no monochromatic siblings, tuggoffelees or magic.

The one thing Mistoffelees was scared of above all things, was the others knowing him. The real him.

When he was found just over a year ago by a confused Alonzo out of the junkyard by himself for the first time, he never imagined he would end up with a home, with friends, with family. At first this had been heaven. Although the little kitten couldn’t yet talk- something Munkustrap later decided was a selective mutism as they all became aware of Mistos painfully shy nature- the others were kind and friendly, making him feel... welcomed. Misto couldn’t bear to tell anyone later on that his silence was due to not being around any other cats properly until Alonzo had found him. He suspected some, like Jellylorum or Jennyanydots had an inkling. If they did, they didn’t say anything. That was probably for the best, Misto had quickly decided. It would bring forth all kinds of unwanted questions as to why such a small thing was alone in the streets of London. It had at least given him time to listen to the others before having to officially introduce himself. Even when they didn’t think he was listening, or thought he was much too young to understand what was really being said, Misto was listening and carefully storing the most important bits of information.

This became imperative to Misto being allowed to stay, or so he figured. Here and there, the tiny tuxedo had heard talk of a recently banned magical cat. Now any other would probably assume this was ridiculous. A magical cat indeed, magic was the stuff of stories and fairy tales. There was no cat that could disappear in a puff of smoke only to turn up miles away or bewitch others with other worldly hypnotism. Misto, however did not scoff or dismiss it. He knew those things were real. Because he himself could do strange things no others could. It had started not too long before he was found and anyone who he came across who learned of this gift immediately chased him away, scared by these strange and potentially dangerous abilities. In the warm den with the gossiping queens, Misto made a silent vow then, to never allow anyone to know what he could do.

Now almost a fully grown tom, about to reach maturity and belonging to a community, Misto knew this little piece of information had pretty much saved him. From then on he did all he could to hide who he really was. He kept his coat the dullest possible black he could, adding much more white along his arm and legs, as he had observed the other cats were hardly one solid colour. Most importantly. he figured the name Mistoffelees felt... too grand. Like he would stand out, be expected to have an impressive talent. So he fashioned himself a new identity, with a duller, much more forgettable name: Quaxo. Quaxo, did indeed have a talent, but a much more ordinary and widely accepted talent of dancing. Though the others rarely saw it. Quaxo didn’t dance with others. He barely stayed around long enough for them to play with him when they were kittens, or really get to know him as they grew. Nobody had any idea where Quaxo would go, but he would always turn up again unharmed. And this disappearing didn’t affect anyone else so they generally let him be.

He couldn’t deny, it was a lonely existence. But it was necessary. He would always need time to be himself, to let the illusions of a dull background character in the day to day stories of the junkyard continue. The less he was perceived, the less chance there was of Mistoffelees being discovered.

Quaxo couldn’t stand the thought of letting anyone down. He would twist himself into all kinds of mental shapes and directions in an attempt to keep as many happy as possible, even at the cost of his own sanity or health.

The worst part though, was he just wasn’t good enough, whatever he did. He readily agreed to anything asked of him, he wouldn’t argue when he was dragged into some event or task, wanting to do it to the best of his ability. But more times than not, his best just wasn’t good enough. He felt like he always made things worse more than anything. That he did things wrong, that he just upset others. Perhaps it was his shy nature, causing him unable to communicate properly, or ask for help when he needed it. But others had their own problems... right? Why should they be burdened with his? He had taught himself gradually how to pull it all inside, lock it up tight and make sure nobody ever saw his true thoughts or feelings. Not if it would cause others to feel sad or down or even angry. Whenever he accidentally let a tiny bit of his true feelings out he felt incredibly guilty for days after. Had he ruined their day? Had he ruined the relationship he had with whoever bore witness to the display? They probably hated him now! He had mastered a further mask in addition to Quaxo hiding Mistoffelees, to hide how he just wanted to cry sometimes, how he wanted to scream at himself, couldn’t he do anything right?? Or even useful?? He had developed a very carefully constructed smile. He had spent a while studying others smiling. How it wasn’t as simple as turning the upper corners of your mouth up. How he had to use his eyes too, or stand taller, not fold in on himself. If he was truly happy to be there he would look eager and involved. Sometimes, he felt maybe the sure he would say in agreement sounded stretched and forced. However if the others didn’t seem to notice like he did. Maybe they didn’t care. That suited him just fine. It was perfectly fine, everybody only knew this fake Quaxo,who seemed to have come into existence for others requirements. Quaxo, who simply and conveniently disappeared when he wasn’t needed. Like a tool that could tidy itself away in the cupboard and save anyone the hassle of bothering with it beyond it’s initial use. A tool that maintained itself too, nobody needed to bother with the upkeep. It would simply appear when needed, shiny and new and go away again when they were done with it.

Done with him.

This was the life Quaxo had carved for himself. It was fine.

He was fine.

He was perfectly fine.

#ooc #venting #free write #mr mistoffelees #mister mistoffelees #Mistoffelees #Quaxo #cats fanfic #what even is my life #why even is my life #Why can I never do anything right?

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fatehbaz · 5 years ago

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Do you have any good posts about gardening?

Hey. Sorry, in advance, since this post is a bit long. Looks like this will be a “regional ecology and geography of food plants, gardening, and folk knowledge” and “the role of gardens in ecological imperialism” masterpost resource.

I know very little about the actual practice of gardening. I’m horrible source of info on gardening. I also know little about chemistry, soil science, and the more “technical” aspects of plant life. I’m more into historical ecology, the history of human/cultural relationships with plants, and the geography and distribution of plants, animals, and ecoregions. But I know there are some good people on this site with great knowledge about gardening, foodsheds, and native plants. I am very impressed and humbled by these people, and I would recommend people like caecilian-caesura (soil, gardening, growing things); cedar-glade (restoration, prairie, oak savanna, the Ohio River Valley/Great Lakes); spatheandspadix (great knowledge of plant life, regional and technical ecology, Great Lakes, Appalachia); radicalgardener (food, gardening, Alaska); pacificnorthwestdoodles (gardening and food in the Pacific Northwest). And there are several more people on this site who I could recommend for info on Texas and Florida. (You know who you are, I think (?). Hope you know I respect you). Send another anon or message if you want their names. (And I’m sorry if any of you are uncomfortable with me publicizing or mentioning you here. Please let me know and I’ll remove your name, no problem at all.)

I know this is almost completely unrelated to what you asked, and this isn’t what you were looking for, but I hope it might be interesting for some people? For sheer fun and convenience, I figured I’d compile a list of posts about (1) regional ecology involving gardening, food, and traditional environmental knowledge of plants/food. And (2) the use of gardens, botany, and plants generally in imperialism.

(One of my interests is in regional geography/ecology, especially involving temperate rainforest; prairies and oak savannas; the Pacific Northwest; so-called Canada; the Rockies; the northern Great Plains; and the Great Lakes. And another of my interests is the historical ecology of empires and colonization, and the role of plants and soil in imperialism. So, I’ve separated the list into those 2 categories. The reason I chose to include ecological imperialism here is because Euro-American gardens and farms have played such a central role in extinction, dispossession, initial waves of European colonization, and continued degradation now, as with non-native earthworms.)

Regional ecology and geography involving gardening, food, folk knowledge, and traditional ecological knowledge of plants and plant harvest for food:

- Masterpost about Palouse prairie native grassland: Native and endemic plants. Indigenous history of ecoregion and traditional plant use. The giant native earthworm. Some maps. (Very unique and endangered prairie ecoregion in the inland Pacific Northwest, one of the only sizable grasslands west of the Rockies. Ecologists estimate that only 0.1% of native prairie remains in the Palouse, the rest lost to agriculture over the past 120 years.)

- Masterpost of worm invasion in the Great Lakes region, Canada, and the Midwest: Lots of info about non-native earthworms in hardwoods forests; the transition zone between Great Plains and eastern deciduous forests; Ojibwe/Anishinaabe land; and the boreal-temperate transition zone of the Great Lakes. Info on how worms threaten mycorrhizal fungal networks; understory plants; soil integrity; sugar maples; and traditional maple harvest.

- “Sometimes ... plants that are aesthetically pleasing ... are worse.” Karuk prescribed burning. Traditional food harvest. Agroforestry in Klamath Mountains. Geography of oak woodlands in the PNW. And how California’s settler institutions messed up soil and forest health with bad management by prioritizing pretty conifers instead of cultivating oak woodlands.

- “Coyote’s biota”: Comcaac (Seri) and O’Odaham food, plant knowledge, and the ascribing of special names to native plants and Euro-American plants to distinguish between types of food.

- Gardens, plant-human relationships, and the sophisticated seasonal planting schedules of Makushi people (northern Amazonia).

- Horticulture, deliberate promotion of fungus-plant symbiosis, gardening of Matsigenka people (Madre de Dios watershed, Amazonia).

- Easy-to-access compilation of audio recordings and oral histories of bioregional foodsheds, from 13 Native food autonomy advocates. (New England maple syrup. New Mexico. Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Abalone/acorns in California. Salmon in PNW, etc.)

- Swamp rattlesnakes, bogs, endangered flooded prairie of Ontario, Great Lakes, Midwest. Geography of massassauga distribution and disappearance of flooded remnant prairie. (Love that pygmy rattlesnakes live on the boreal fringe on Manitoulin Island, the shores of Georgian Bay, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.)

- Endangered endemic frogs and oak woodlands/prairies of the Pacific Northwest: Maps and info on the Oregon spotted frog and disappearance of dryland oak woodland/savanna/prairie in the coastal PNW. (Most of the dryland prairie of the PNW, and the frog habitat specifically, has been lost to agriculture and/or urban development.)

- Respecting plants, wetlands, native foods, and Indigenous history of Chicago area

- Recognizing the centuries/millennia of Native role in cultivating grasslands and resilient foodsheds of coastal California (specifically, Quiroste and Amah Mutsun environmental management techniques in the Bay Area). Also includes info on how California institutions are incorporating Native leadership/management in formal policy.

- Potentially the worst and most annoying post I’ve ever made. A post about snakes, remnant prairies, and forests in the northern Great Plains. Pothole prairies, riparian cottonwood corridors, aspen parkland, and a special snake species in the northern Great Plains. Short and incomplete version: [X]. Longer and more annoying version with answers, more maps, discussion of prairie, Black Hills, Colorado aspen, forest types in the Midwest: [X].

- Indigenous agroforestry in Amazonia, underappreciated designing and planning of forest structure.

- “Forage wars” between Native food harvesters and California legal institutions: Abalone, native foodsheds, and food harvesting in Pomo, Yurok, Coast Yuki, and other Klamath Mountains and coastal Northern California communities.

- Settler agriculture in Canadian prairies and the normalization of standards of agriculture and meteorology in late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Some discussion of effects of unsustainable agriculture on local soil/plant death.)

- New worms in Alaska: Recent news of the discovery (2018 - 2020) of Alaska’s first known native earthworm, near Fairbanks, around the same time that ecologists announce escalation in non-native earthworm invasion of Alaskan and boreal forest environments for the first time. (The non-native earthworms threatening Alaskan/boreal environments were apparently introduced in gardens and at fishing sites.)

- Worm invasion in Alaska: Presentation on where non-native earthworms have expanded their range in Alaska, and how they alter the soil. (From 2019.)

- Worm Disk Horse, responses to worm questions. (Some references to gardening and native/regional foodsheds.)

- Oak savanna, endemic reptiles, sudden oak death outbreak in Oregon and Northern California. Contains a bunch of maps.

- Biodiversity, key species, native plants in native prairie and shortgrass prairies of northern Great Plains

- Endangered and endemic butterflies of oak woodlands/prairies of the Pacific Northwest.

- Uncanny legless lizard creature, landscapes recovering from non-native plant agriculture, and remnant prairie of the Midwest and Great Lakes.

- Palouse prairie and recent news of the survival of the giant Palouse earthworm: Potentially temperate North America’s largest native earthworm, which relies on native prairie.

--------------------------------------------

Role of gardens, botany, plants, and Euro-American gardening in ecological imperialism:

- The grand tale of breadfruit domestication, the mutiny on the Bounty, and plantation owners plotting with Kew Gardens to domesticate crops to undermine slave gardens in the Caribbean. (Also includes comments on the under-reported central role of media/PR manipulation and slavery in the “mutiny on the Bounty” story.)

- Wild rice (the imperial plot to domesticate wild rice), “cottage colonialism” in Canada, imaginative control, the power of names and naming plants. (Covers 1880s to Present.)

- How the gardens, horticulture, and food markets of slaves and the poor/dispossessed in the Caribbean allowed autonomous food networks to exist and undermine plantation owners and imperial interests. (Late 1700s, early 1800s.)

- Anna Boswell’s discussion of endemic longfin eels of Aotearoa as example of the problem with making “land-water” distinctions in Euro-American agriculture and land management

- Grasses, seed merchants, and “the Empire’s dairy farm” in Aotearoa. (European agriculture in late 19th and early 20th centuries.)

- The role of grasslands, deforestation, and English grasses in ecological imperialism in Aotearoa, early 20th century.

- European botanic gardens in 18th-/19th-century Mexico and Central America as a tool of imperialism and knowledge systematization. (“Botany began as atechnoscope – a way to visualize at-a-distance – but, at the end of the eighteenth century, it was already a teletechnique – a way to act at-a-distance.”)

- Pineapple, breadfruit, and plantations “doing the work of Empire” in Hawaii.

- Carl Linnaeus, botanists’ racism against India and Latin America, and the use of botanic gardens to acquire knowledge as an exercise of “soft empire.”

- Kew Gardens plotting to take Native strains of wild rice and domesticate them for cheap and profitable consumption in other imperial British colonies.

- Calcutta Botanic Gardens abduction and use of Chinese slaves; Kew Gardens (successfully) plotting to steal cinchona from people of Bolivia to service their staff in India; botanic gardens’ role in large-scale dispossession to create plantations in Assam and Ooty (1790s - 1870s).

- Dandelions, other non-native plants, and settler gardens changing soil of the Canadian Arctic. (Late 1800s and early 1900s.)

- Mapuche cultural legacy, Valdivian temperate rainforest, and European plots to dismantle the rainforest to create “Swiss or German pastoral farm landscape” in Chile.

---

Sorry. In retrospect, it looks like worms and amphibians are a little over-represented here.

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novarose24 · 4 years ago

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Writings from Offline {Ep.2}

Raavanan

Director: Mani Rathnam

(Warning: spoiler alert)

Raavanan was an effort by the director to show the perspective from Raavanan in a modern sense. The title pretty evidently conveys that by the end, we would understand Raavanan’s perspective of the happenings in the Ramayana.

The movie, without any elaborate revealing, shows the widely perceived antagonist in the very first scene. One of the prime setting of the movie, water and river is also revealed in this scene. From here, we meet “Sita” who is then abducted by “Raavanan”. We also meet the eagle for the first time, in this sequence. Being a symbol for Vishnu, it is of significant importance and visits again in later parts.

The title scene follows which has red, fire and shades of brown dominating the background. The song says “Veera” which literally means a brave warrior, giving an aura of justice and righteousness to the character.

The scene that follows is the one where our “Ram” is intimated about his wife’s kidnapping. The coolers hide his eyes, but it was pretty evident that he was more upset and angrier than worried. His face showed an expression of determination to kill his enemy.

The characters in the story embody the traits of the characters in the Ramayana, but are conveniently modified to suit the needs of the story. “Raavanan” is manifested as “Veera”, a dacoit who is a savior to the people but a villain in the eyes of law - in some sense, a robin-hood. The people who inform the police of their encounter with Veera have ten different accounts to give of him, almost like he had ten different faces. The repetition of the reference to ten faces is a common occurrence in the progression of the film. Ten different voices too torment him. There is no transition of character in the film except that he falls in love with the woman that he had kidnapped. His ideals and values remain the same. The change occurs in the perception of the audience.

The audience observe this change through the eyes of “Sita”, here “Raagini”. Since the emphasis is only on Raavanan in this story, Sita only functions as a tool for us to observe this change; she doesn’t express her story despite being given almost an equal amount of screen time. In the scenes following her abduction and in the scenes at the end, she does express her opinions and her desires; otherwise she follows the conventional-ideal-wife trope. She has an undying love for her “Ram”, portrayed as “Dev”, who’s name literally means god. The naming might be an intentional action to draw attention to the juxtaposition of his name and his actions. He is a police officer, we are initially of the feeling that he is a good cop who is honest and righteous, but eventually we see that his determination to catch Veera turns into a bit of an obsession. He lies to his wife and hurts her in order to get to Veera. Rescuing his wife is not his main motive; much like Veera he uses Raagini as a bait to reach his target. There is no difference between the two men in this spectrum. Dev plays an important role but has approximately the same screen time as “Singaraasu” who could possibly be a representation of “Kumbakarnan”. Veera’s other brother is the most decent and “civilized” among them, like “” and is called “Sakkara”. These two are always on their brother’s side and help him with his work. Their representations don’t exactly fit their counterpart in the epic.

“Hanuman’s” representation as “Gyana Prakasham” suffers the same fate. He is a forest guard with good knowledge about navigation in the forest, but is crippled by his addiction to alcohol. It is confusing that Hanuman’s modern version is a drunkard.

“Lakshman” is also represented in a contradictory context; but he still hurts Veera’s sister,” Venilla” the same way Lakshman hurts Soorpanaka. Hearing the story of his sister, Veera’s acts of revenge are diluted of their viciousness. We understand that there is a valid reason on his side too. The alternating shots between the flashback and Raagini’s shocked concerned face creates this feeling.

The scene following this tells us how this account from the criminal’s past has influenced Raagini. Raagini walks to the middle of the river where there is a broken statue of Vishnu. She prays for her anger to keep burning because she fears she pities Veera and is falling for him. She stands near the head of the statue but Raavanan stands at the feet of the statue. This simple placement of the characters captures the gap between the two in the social order.

In a successive scene, the exact opposite is conveyed when Dev flips the back-to-back photos of Raagini and Veera. It could stand for how he considers his journey to rescue his wife is equivalent to triumphing over his enemy or his doubt on his wife of being in close proximity with his enemy. His shouting for Veera and the talk about lies-detector support this. The interesting thing about the accusations that he frames on Raagini is that it is set in the tunnels giving us the feeling that we are in the dark regarding the true motives. The colour of their dresses in this scene is pivotal. Both Dev and Raagini where white initially. When Raagini meets Veera, Veera is still clad in black like he usually was in the film. When Dev emerges out of hiding, he is clad in white shirt and brown leather jacket for the first time instead of his usual pale colored clothes.

The majority of the screen is green and when Veera and his folk come in, it is covered in earthly colors of brown and black. All the songs with his folk involve rain, water, mud and great lyrics! The “Kodu potta” song is important in terms of their message to the world. They want their land and the freedom to govern it themselves. Another observation is that Raagini who shelters from the rain at first is seen getting wet in the during the end; not a significant act but it could possibly mean that she is learning to enjoy their ways too. Another example for the developing soft corner in her heat is her clothing. Could be said to be a requirement of the plot, but the fact that she dressed in a red saree that turns brown in the rain is significant in my view.

The music and the songs all act as a measure of civilization. The songs of the tribe are more upbeat with mainly percussion and some kind of horns. The dialect used for the lyrics just like their speech is different. The song of the “civilized” world, “Kalvare”, is more classical and has a more refined version of the language. Also, it is the only vision we have of the two and their life before.

The narration of the story shifts from the actual chronology of events. The story begins with no pretext, with the kidnap of Raagini, then we have a short idea of Raagini and Dev’s happy life, the story continues showing the different sides of Veera and Dev and the dilemma that Raagini faces, there is flashback giving us Veera’s backstory and then the events flow to the climax.

The jumps from scenes and the sequencing were typically good but the editing didn’t quite meet expectations. A lot of unwanted scenes were left unedited.

The other is the references in the film to Ramayana. The story by itself pretty evidently points to the Ramayana. The constant references in dialogues seemed unnecessary personally; if the details were played more subtly, it would have been more interesting to search for the tethering between the two tales. For example, repetitive scenes that emphasis the distance that Veera maintains with Raagini was overplayed that it got a bit boring.

The only time he touches her is prevent her from harm when Dev shoots during the climax. In the consecutive scenes, Raagini and Veera reach out their hands to touch each other but that doesn’t happen. As the audience are waiting with a yearning for the two of them to meet, they are left uncompensated and conflicted with the death of Veera.

#Movie #Moviereview #Tamilmovie #Kollywood #Raavanan #ManiRathnam #Assignment #College #Writing #offline

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sicklyscribe · 5 years ago

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hey so if you wanna hit me with that sweet sweet elijah’s characterization meta anytime please feel free. or direct me to any previous posts because my dumb ass is using this time to re-obsess over vampire melodrama.....

It appears that most of my non-tag and non-petty-casual commentary is still in drafts... so instead of finishing the ‘What the hell is wrong with season 4: an itemized list’ meta and finishing answering the ‘What would you change if you could rewrite any of the show?’ ask from a while ago, I’ll just pick out the Elijah bits and add on to them for garnish. (Those posts might exist at some point. But honestly not soon enough for me to worry about people getting annoyed with copy/paste so PREVIEW TIME: ELIJAH FLAVOR)

This is way sloppier and un-cited than I usually meta, by the way, but what the hell, The Fandom is Dead and I Only Have Friends to Entertain Now, so if anyone gets angry and tries to step into my asks then it’ll just be nostalgic rather than annoying. Here’s the starter, which is from the F*CK YOU SEASON 4 meta and quite a few of these points will be repeated later because you asked for it technically so.

The cracks in the narrative began to show as early as season two, and believe me when I say I’m not saying this because I love him - it began with Elijah. I can make a lot of arguments to this effect, but the only one that I am certain is not propelled by my very strong bias concerns the presentation of the Red Door.

Initially, I was ecstatic at the opportunity to explore Elijah’s past, his perspective, his darkest moments. I was a bit wary in that it seemed as though the narrative wanted to Explain Everything about Elijah through this device, but he was finally getting some attention so I tried to hold back judgement.The result was pretty promising. One of the most gorgeous moments on the show occurs when Klaus enters Elijah’s mind and tells him how much he needs him. It showcases the main pillar of the show - the structural trifecta of Hope, Klaus, and Elijah. And afterwards, as usual, Elijah pushes the experience away.Until it’s convenient.

Elijah begins to be erratically vicious. At first, I felt as though it wasn’t handled poorly, I could explain away my worries easily, and that was all I needed. But it happens over, and over, and over again, with the same excuse - protecting the family, protecting Hope. Elijah’s triggers, once so crucial, begin to break down, but we don’t see why or how that process occurs. He begins to be the character that is level-headed when it is convenient, and a violent one-track-mind when it’s convenient. Eventually, in order to maintain balanced tension with a softening Klaus, Elijah became violent without nuance in every situation. His continued development is no longer possible, since his character no longer displays depth.

Which is annoying, as a fan. But as a person who loves to analyze narrative, it’s a huge red flag. Elijah is necessary for this story. His love for Klaus, and Klaus’ relationship with him, is one of the things that holds the narrative together as it goes forward. The two of them need each other in order to experience growth, but cannot grow from each other any longer - and that friction is what provides energy and substance that can help drive a multi-year melodrama. This is why I mentioned above that Elijah’s violence was likely intended to balance with Klaus’ changing heart - but there is no balance in the level of development the two brothers experience. It has been shoddy in many places, but attention has been given to Klaus’ journey towards peace and kindness, while Elijah has been given a single metaphor, a single psychosis, and is expected to carry half of the narrative weight. The story has no choice but to make a plot device out of him - he simply does not have the required depth to be anything else, which is made obvious by the attempt to do so in the ritual to bring Inadu to the material plane, which I will discuss later.

When his development is ignored, when he is used as a tool to get from point A to point B time and time again - that’s when the pillar starts to crumble.

Zooming back in on s1, this was actually my only major structural gripe with season 1, so it comprises the entirety of the ‘what would you change’ for that season:

The poison that rotted the whole dang show started very small — casting Elijah too strongly as a white hat, to offset the darkness of the rest of the main family. This was the right move, of course, but it was pushed a twinge too far and it was the tiny weight that set everything wobbling. As an offshoot of that, this was also done with Hayley to a degree. I would have had them bond very similarly to the way they do in the show, but I would have had them connect at least once over the skeletons in their closets. (Only once or twice, again, since their ship relied in this season on the fallacy of each other being saviors). In fact, this was one I felt so strongly about that I actually did rewrite their scene in 1x07 ‘Bloodletting’.

Then season two when it gets more pronounced:

The rift in the show widened with the swing-and-miss that was The Red Door arc. Elijah became a Problem when it was convenient for the plot and A Fixer/Sounding Board when it was not. They used probably the most INTERESTING and INTEGRAL part of his characterization -- which had been a mystery for YEARS counting The Vampire Diaries appearances -- and Elijah discovering that either from trauma or his mother’s magic, he has repressed the moments which forged him. This lack of knowledge, this lack of control, should have been something much more cataclysmic and its effects should be clear when comparing ‘Elijah Before’ to ‘Elijah After’. Instead, it kind of served to take off Elijah’s ‘White Hat’ that he’d been illy-fitted with in S1, and allow him to accessorize with it or whatever version of Elijah fits the episode at hand.

This tension, and this chaos should have been much stronger and much more messy than simply putting the Suit back on and being Pretty Much Okay (barring one plot-insignificant diner massacre) only a few episodes later. It would make the therapy scene later with Camille even more gorgeous than it already is and it would then place Elijah’s moment of catharsis, and the beginning of his attempts to move on, with Klaus’ monumental forgiveness in 2x11. I think this is what was intended, but it was not at all achieved, because Elijah is such a tricky character to write, and it is so very easy to use him for whatever the scene requires. Because of this, Elijah’s struggles got dropped just long enough for Klaus’ forgiveness to hit powerfully in viewers for Klaus, but not for Elijah. The writing began to lean on Elijah as a Drama Everyman more and more throughout the show, and it’s just tragic to me that The Red Door wasn’t utilized to its potential. (And that we didn’t have a Klaus/Tatia conversation, but hey, I have an unfinished fixit for that whole saga on Ao3, you’re welcome and I’m sorry).

In season three, we got a few good glimpses of the kind of complexity that Elijah should live in -- the way he kills Arianne, for example, I’ve linked what I called a ‘headcanon’ but in retrospect it was pretty explicitly canon -- and we see the youth and terror and involuntary power in him in the flashback where he discovers that Klaus killed their mother. But the relationship between Tristan and Elijah? The man that he made, and that made him? That was far too pedestrian to have produced either of them. If Elijah learned ‘nobility’ from Tristan, learned what ‘superiority’ looked like, and this was the time that he began to change... we should have had words between them, or a scene highlighting just them, at least once in the flashbacks.

If this season was supposed to be about the creation of the Trinity, the First Children (because Finn didn’t tell no one that Sage is actually the oldest ‘cuz he’s an ashamed little bitch) why did we see only TWO of the THREE transformations? Klaus turned Lucien accidentally, trying to heal him. Rebekah’s sympathy and love were used as Aurora’s tool to turn herself. When and how did Elijah turn Tristan? It is explained that Elijah turned him in order to create a third vampire for his plot to trick Mikael into chasing them instead -- it is explained that Tristan, Aurora, and Lucien were compelled to believe that they were in fact Elijah, Rebekah, and Klaus in order to make their decoy impeccable. But when this compulsion was shattered -- when Lucien learned that he had been used and made monstrous as a tool for a monster who wasn’t even noble -- did he confront Elijah? Did they ever speak, or was their next meeting the day Elijah learned that Tristan had taken over Elijah’s coven? I would argue that Elijah needed equal weight in the France flashbacks even though he didn’t have a flashy romance (though if early press release rumors were true, he and Tristan could have had one and that would have been perfect)

Season four is really where you can pick an episode and Elijah will put on the stage makeup and play any part. It’s also -- BIG COINCIDENCE -- where the plot deteriorates completely. Here’s just one example from my Excuse You What the Hell? Season Four meta:

On to the next moment that showed major neglect (I know this has been Elijah-heavy so far, but again, this is where the problem started so I want to carry this thread through for a while before addressing other issues) - the ritual to bring Inadu to the mortal realm. The purpose of this ritual was to scare viewers with the risk of Hope’s safety and hype the Hollow’s “bad”ness, but also to make the first move in the ‘Letting Go’ thread between Hayley and Elijah. Elijah was supposed to be forced to choose between children's lives and letting the Hollow loose upon the world, and decide to kill the children. That was the dramatic point of placing this ritual in the narrative, but it isn’t mechanically sound.

It is stated outright that the ritual has to end with the death of the children linked to the spell. The children were linked via their totems found in 4x03 - placing Hope definitively in this group.

But we only ever see four of the five in one place. Maybe it was worth it to the Hollow to reach as far out as Hope was to bind her via her hairbrush, maybe it was worth it to the Hollow to drain her from afar, I’d buy that easily. But they made no attempt to kidnap her and place her with the other four children during the ritual. The ritual that required the deaths of five children. Unless it required Hope to be there only on standby, which is absolutely ridiculous. They had the kids on an alter, even if it was just for show. But why not all of them? If the real goal of the ritual was to lure Klaus and/or Marcel, wouldn’t kidnapping Klaus’ child be a more surefire way to accomplish that rather than just hoping the Mikaelsons would come to the right mystical diagnosis in time?

The reason why Hope wasn’t there was because the ritual was never thought through. The reason she wasn’t there is because it didn’t make sense for Elijah to want to kill Hope to stop the Hollow, which is what this ritual actually demanded if it actually worked the way Vincent claimed. In actuality, all that was desired was for Elijah to display a willingness to kill innocents in front of Hayley, and in doing so it demanded that Hope’s life both be at stake and not at stake at all. This failure to coherently execute a single-episode arc is plainly poor storytelling. It displays not only disrespect to the narrative structure, but a blatant flippancy towards one of their main characters and arguably the most complex one on the series. The sloppily contrived tension here between Hayley and Elijah does eventually contribute to the supposed theme, yes, but at what cost?

Elijah was neglected because he was hard to write, and even harder to write well as a ‘light’ foil to Klaus. Marcel should have fully owned that role, and not been similarly jerked around as a plot-serving every-man once the mystery of season 1 and the reasons behind Marcel’s ‘senseless’ cruelty were revealed.

Elijah was always the cornerstone of the family’s narrative, because he was complex enough to carry it. Camille provided an additional column of support to Klaus’ individual journey as a person/father, but she was bulldozed for Allmighty Plot as well. By the end of season three, both she and Elijah had effectively been thrown in the garbage one way or another, and the show tried to go on without them. It couldn’t.

I will say that Elijah’s conversation with Hope in that ludicrous backdoor pilot did make me feel things. I did also see the clip where Elijah and Klaus have a heart-to-heart in some sort of european flashback, which was touching, but felt incongruous for their relationship/dev at the time. Hope asking Elijah how old he was when he made his promises to Klaus, though? Elijah offering carte blanche to Hope for how to punish her friend’s bullies? TWO OF THE THREE SCENES INVOLVING ICE CREAM?

SOME of season 5 is valid but ONLY because it stole scripts from my headcanons.

#anamysis #preview of some metas in progress #hey guys does anyone here want to talk about ELIJAH?#*pepe silvia voice*#Anonymous #asks

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studiitopografice · 4 years ago

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The Study of Topographic Maps and Surveying

I love researching new things. My daughter is just a sixth grader and they only began a brand new section of study on maps. I've already been very interested lately in Civil Engineers. They play a sizable role, or even the largest role, for making and keeping our society running because it does. They create buildings, roads, bridges and everything that keep us functioning smoothly as a society. What intrigued me was that Civil Engineers use a kind of map I'd never been aware of before, a topographic map.

Topographic surveying is done to generate these maps and determine the relative location of tourist attractions on Earth. Surveyors work with a technique that measures the horizontal distances to show the difference in elevation and direction such that it could be represented on a topographic map.

Landform elevation is very important to be represented on a map for any type of geographical planning. Civil Engineers use these when creating structures, highways, bridges, overpasses and so most of the issues that society uses to supply convenience to the modern lifestyles. Topographical maps are also important in mining and studii topo other endeavors that involve the Earth's surface. People that are serious hikers or orienteers use these highly detailed maps alongside compasses to identify their location when in areas which can be less common to everyday explorers.

Topographic surveying can be used to ascertain where larger streams, big bodies of water, forests, significant structures and tourist attractions should be place on topographic maps. Arial photographers and remote sensing techniques help topographic surveyors give accurate detail when the maps are now being created. Much like modern maps, signs, symbols and color help designate different details on these maps and are explained within the margins of the topographic maps.

There are numerous principles that have to be considered when taking part in topographic surveying. Surveyors must determine a scale to use within prior to starting any land measuring. This helps determine any plot able errors. It can be important that most accurate ways of surveying are employed first. Each survey that is taken should be oriented taking into consideration true north.

Initially surveying should start with establishing a vertical and horizontal rule which may be accomplished by measuring the three d's of surveying; distance, direction and difference in the rise between fixed points. Lastly, a survey plan should be in locations that contain checks on accurateness. Examples include surveying between two fixed points or even pacing measured distances.

It is simply so interesting if you ask me most of the tools that I don't even take into consideration on a daily basis studii geotehnice that help to help make the world around me run because it does. It's so neat to check out things from the new perspective as the youngsters are studying topics that I've long put into a folder in the trunk of my memory bank marked unimportant. It's fun to position these random items of knowledge back in a host to recognition within my head.

#studii topo

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mischiefiswritten · 6 years ago

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What Otome Has Taught Me About Writing Romance (and Some Other Things)

Alright, time for me to come clean about my love for visual novels and otome games. (Otome, if you're not familiar with it, is a genre of games with female protagonists that tells a love story, allowing the player to choose a suitor and make choices along the way that influence the ending. It's fantastic fun.) Aside from being an excellent little diversion, it's actually proved to be a useful tool when it comes to writing elements of romance into any WIP.

On with the Show

Otome games tend to be relatively short, so they need to pack a lot in to every chapter or episode. The best of them manage to cram in a full range of emotion and a cohesive plot to forge a memorable experience in relatively few words. I'm not suggesting that novels or other fictional formats need to be stripped down to their barest word counts, but there's something extremely valuable about being able to convey important elements of a story with economy. For one thing, your readers are probably busy people, just like you. They don't have unlimited time to read all the things they want to read, and if you spend too much time saying nothing at all (like in exposition), they might drop your story in favor of something else.

Now, there's no perfect formula for when to launch into the action of a story - each one is different and calls for something different! Personally I love to have some time for introduction at the start of a novel, not just so that I know who the characters are, but also so that I have a chance to crawl inside the world and live there before having serious plot to keep up with. That said, I have a 100 page rule - I only require myself to give a book 100 pages to convince me to stay. If I hit page 100 and I'm still saying, "what is this book going to be about? when is something going to happen?" there's a very good chance I'm outta there.

In contrast, if you jump into the deep end of the action immediately, readers may lack a sense of why they're supposed to care. These characters are distressed? That's a bummer, but if the reader never sees who they are and what their lives are like without the drama, they may have less passion for seeing that drama resolved. Like everything else in writing, this is a balancing act. It's all about finding your sweet spot so the progression from opening your book's cover to finding yourself swept into the narrative can seem as natural as possible and get the best emotional and intellectual investment from your readers.

Cheap Drama Feels Cheap

Your readers are intelligent people. Don't try to fool them into thinking there's real drama and suspense somewhere there's not because they'll be able to tell right away. It's annoying to most readers, especially when excellent characters - like yours! - are wasted on it. The otome routes that get dropped somewhere in the middle and receive the absolute worst reviews are the ones that feature the 'easily-resolved misunderstanding' trope. It's. The. Worst.

Terrible misunderstandings happen all the time in real life and in fiction, and the ensuing conflict (or disaster) can be extremely rewarding for the audience. "NO!!" it will make them scream as they clutch the book thinking about how it doesn't have to be this way. If only the characters knew, if only they realized! It's not the unnecessary nature of the issue that makes it cheap - it's how easily it's resolved. If there's an easy answer conveniently within your characters' grasp and no reason for them to not realize it or not take it, it will bug your readers.

One of the most infamous examples is when the female protagonist glimpses her suitor for a total of 20 seconds innocently talking to/hugging/putting a hand on the shoulder of/etc. an unidentified girl, and immediately sprints away, tears streaming from her eyes, despairing that the man she adores does not really love her after all and has been unfaithful. O woe, that this strange woman was chosen over her! Curse the vixen who stole her suitor's heart! The female protagonist then uproots everything good that was happening, abandons it all and runs far away. She ignores his and everyone else's attempts at communication until, in a crescendo of needless drama, the suitor travels a great distance to corner her and say,"yo, that was my sister."

Are you rolling your eyes? You should be rolling your eyes. Think of all the things anyone with any sense could have done in this situation. Stayed for another minute to hear the conversation. Walked up and asked to be introduced. Left after a minute or two, but asked about it later. Answered the phone when he called.

The bottom line is this: don't let your story's conflicts have easy answers. Especially not multiple easy answers. Take away the simple resolutions! Make every option cost your characters something!

Emotion Must Be Earned

I mentioned above that if you dive into the drama of your story too quickly, you risk losing the readers' investment in your characters and plot. That's because emotion must be earned. This goes for both your readers and your characters.

You can't just tell your readers they should care about what's happening to your characters and actually expect them to. Even if you have the cutest, most squee-worthy romantic scenes in store, they'll feel hollow without the proper buildup. This happens all the time in otome (and other forms of fiction) where it seems like the writer was in a hurry to just get to the butterfly-inducing romance already! You read through a scene, and oh my gosh that dialogue nearly made you swoon, but... when that initial "OMG" fades, you're left feeling like something was missing. That thing was the feeling of resolved tension, or a triumph over struggles - something to make you say, "Finally!"

You have to make them work for it. It's not about being super clever, or surprising your reader with the build of emotions or the happily ever after. No one starts an otome game under the impression the main characters may not fall in love, after all. But there has to be something that keeps them apart for a while, some will-they-won't-they limbo, or that "ohohoho they're catching feeeelings!" process that makes the characters coming together feel like a win.

The bottom line is this: When romances are quickly and easily achieved, they feel cheaper.

You Can't Rush Love

The characters need some understandable reasons for feeling as they do about one another, as well. Even if it's some intangible 'it' factor that can't quite be explained, readers want to really feel like these people belong together. Otome routes with multiple seasons can fall into this trap pretty easily. When the writers want to get from the first season story of meeting and falling in love directly to season two getting married and talking about babies, it can feel like something very important was skipped. Like where their relationship naturally progressed and grew from that new, fresh whirlwind romance to serious life plans. (This works the worst when there's no time jump at all, or very little time is supposed to have passed.) The wedding and baby dialogue may be as swoony as Pride & Prejudice, but readers still don't want to have the nagging question "How did these people get to this point in their relationship?" in the back of their minds.

Sometimes this happens without time jumps or milestones, and the couple seems to leap from flirtation and new possibilities to 'I-would-die-for-you-and-without-you' levels of love. Like above, maybe it leads to great scenes, and maybe this part of the story is actually very well written, but if you're left asking "what did I miss?", there's a problem there. Along with earning your readers' emotional investment, you have to earn their belief. As a writer, it's your job to convince readers that this is a relationship worth rooting for - something that can last, or at least burn brightly before its bittersweet ending. If it's real love, your readers have to be able to grasp why: why these people are a couple, why they're meant to be, etc.

Keep 'Em Coming Back

If you've played much otome at all (particularly free-to-play mobile otome), you're familiar with the typical ticketed reading system. In most of these games, you only get to read about half a chapter a day unless you pay for additional tickets, divided up into about five shorter segments. Along the way there are often checkpoints you have to pass by raising scores by completing tasks and mini-games and the like - and sometimes it takes a while (several days or even a week or two) to obtain the resources you need to continue reading!

And what's this got to do with writing? One word: pacing.

In otome, the story has to be good enough and each cut-off tantalizing enough that you 1) cash in all your free tickets each day, 2) want to come back each day to keep reading, and 3) are motivated to take the time to pass checkpoints. This means the game writers have to master their cliffhanger game as well as overall pacing. Not all the cliffhangers are of the type that probably jumped to mind upon first reading this. It doesn't always have to be a sudden and imminent danger, a shocking revelation, or other plot twist. Often it's dangling a sweet, romantic moment in front of players or otherwise developing a character through backstory or some meaningful event. The romance genre is largely about discovering the character of a person, all their dimensions and convolutions, and that journey of discovery can be an extremely useful tool for maintaining interest chapter to chapter and throughout the story.

Usually, if an otome route is going to drag, it's going to be in the middle. Perhaps this is because the writers had few compelling ideas for that portion of the plot, which is another topic for another day, but regardless of the genesis of the problem, it can kill a story. Life is busy, time for games and reading is limited, and content to play and read is plentiful. If a story becomes dull for a long stretch in the middle with no end to the doldrums in sight, it can easily be abandoned and forgotten about. At the same time, things can't be explosions and adrenaline-fueled car chases all the time. The less glamorous, less obviously exciting bits of a story are often where its soul takes shape and future payoffs are set in motion, so the trick is not to eliminate the quiet moments but to intersperse moments that make readers need something new. New questions they need answered, new angles they need explored, new emotions they need to experience again.

Your writing is not likely to be diced up to the extent an otome game is, but it's equally important to keep the middle from sagging and to provide that "just one more chapter!" feeling for your readers. Be careful not to make too many assumptions about the attention spans of readers - they need to be kept wanting more!

Don't Drag Out the Dark

Most people like a solid infusion of angst into their media. There's nothing wrong with a dark night of the soul your characters and readers can experience together, but you have to make sure there's some promise of dawn. If things get too abysmal for too long, people may be tempted to put the story down. I myself have been on hiatus with an otome game I absolutely love for more than too years because the route I was playing was simply too depressing! Life has a lot of challenges in store for all of us, and seeing fictional characters triumph over their own hardships can make even the darkest times more bearable. It's important to remember, however, that readers invest heavily in your characters - their burdens become the readers' burdens. Even when life isn't putting you through your paces, you can have a long day, and at the end of a long day, you may not have the energy to plunge headlong into the enduring agony of a novel. If readers feel like the terrible things happening to your characters are never going to end, they may simply lose the will to keep reading, despite loving what you've set up.

Like anything else, it's about balance. As readers, we tend to like being strung along by glimpses of better times ahead, or at least something to make the struggles worthwhile. Happiness makes pain more meaningful. Peace makes strife more striking. There has to be substance to the sadness. A reason for it, and an end to it - even if the ending is tragic. Be creative about what constitutes a good reason (a lesson learned, a sacrifice made, etc.) and also take into account what you advertise vs. what you deliver. (i.e. readers will be much more amenable to a sorrowful tale if they knew that's what they were getting into than if they were sold a happy-go-lucky romcom.)

At the end of the day, what's most important is how the story makes you feel.

I never pay for otome games. I opt for free-to-play offerings instead, and this has in no way impacted the quality of games I've had access to. Most of my favorites are not those with all the bells and whistles like animation and voice acting, those with the highest art budgets, or those from the most popular companies. They're the ones that people poured their hearts into and created earnestly and lovingly, starting where they were and using what they had.

And that is the bottom line of every piece of writing advice I could ever give. A lot of flaws can be overlooked in favor of the emotions a story evokes. Who cares if it was not told as artfully as another so long as it made you feel something real? Storytelling skills are marvelous, but when all is said and done, it's not the telling that matters most. The story itself is what counts.

I hope you believe in the story you have inside of you. I do! Thanks for making it to the end of this super long post (sorry but only kind of) and please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic with me.

#super long post #writeblr #writing #writing advice #strategies & tips #mischiefiswritten #this has been in my drafts for so long

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samstiels-deactivated20201212 · 6 years ago

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The Entire Article Under The Cut

Game of Thrones, in its eighth and final season, is as big as television gets these days. More than 17 million people watched the season’s opening. Judging by the fan and critic reaction though, it seems that a substantial portion of those millions are loathing the season. Indeed, most of the reviews and fan discussions seem to be pondering where the acclaimed series went wrong, with many theories on exactly why it went downhill.

The show did indeed take a turn for the worse, but the reasons for that downturn go way deeper than the usual suspects that have been identified (new and inferior writers, shortened season, too many plot holes). It’s not that these are incorrect, but they’re just superficial shifts. In fact, the souring of Game of Thrones exposes a fundamental shortcoming of our storytelling culture in general: we don’t really know how to tell sociological stories.

At its best, GOT was a beast as rare as a friendly dragon in King’s Landing: it was sociological and institutional storytelling in a medium dominated by the psychological and the individual. This structural storytelling era of the show lasted through the seasons when it was based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, who seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them.

After the show ran ahead of the novels, however, it was taken over by powerful Hollywood showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Some fans and critics have been assuming that the duo changed the narrative to fit Hollywood tropes or to speed things up, but that’s unlikely. In fact, they probably stuck to the narrative points that were given to them, if only in outline form, by the original author. What they did is something different, but in many ways more fundamental: Benioff and Weiss steer the narrative lane away from the sociological and shifted to the psychological. That’s the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories.

This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter.

I encounter this shortcoming a lot in my own area of writing—technology and society. Our inability to understand and tell sociological stories is one of the key reasons we’re struggling with how to respond to the historic technological transition we’re currently experiencing with digital technology and machine intelligence—but more on all that later. Let’s first go over what happened to Game of Thrones.

WHAT STORYTELLING IT WAS AND WHAT IT BECAME IN GOT

It’s easy to miss this fundamental narrative lane change and blame the series’ downturn on plain old bad writing by Benioff and Weiss—partly because they are genuinely bad at it. They didn’t just switch the explanatory dynamics of the story, they did a terrible job in the new lane as well.

One could, for example, easily focus on the abundance of plot holes. The dragons, for example seem to switch between comic-book indestructible to vulnerable from one episode to another. And it was hard to keep a straight face when Jaime Lannister ended up on a tiny cove along a vast, vast shoreline at the exact moment the villain Euron Greyjoy swam to that very point from his sinking ship to confront him. How convenient!

Similarly, character arcs meticulously drawn over many seasons seem to have been abandoned on a whim, turning the players into caricatures instead of personalities. Brienne of Tarth seems to exist for no reason, for example; Tyrion Lannister is all of a sudden turned into a murderous snitch while also losing all his intellectual gifts (he hasn’t made a single correct decision the entire season). And who knows what on earth is up with Bran Stark, except that he seems to be kept on as some sort of extra Stark?

But all that is surface stuff. Even if the new season had managed to minimize plot holes and avoid clunky coincidences and a clumsy Arya ex machina as a storytelling device, they couldn’t persist in the narrative lane of the past seasons. For Benioff and Weiss, trying to continue what Game of Thrones had set out to do, tell a compelling sociological story, would be like trying to eat melting ice cream with a fork. Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job.

To understand the narrative lane shift, let’s go back to a key question: Why did so many love Game of Thrones in the first place? What makes it stand out from so many other shows during an era critics call the Second Golden Age of Television because there are so many high-quality productions out there?

The initial fan interest and ensuing loyalty wasn’t just about the brilliant acting and superb cinematography, sound, editing and directing. None of those are that unique to GOT, and all of them remain excellent through this otherwise terrible last season.

One clue is clearly the show’s willingness to kill off major characters, early and often, without losing the thread of the story. TV shows that travel in the psychological lane rarely do that because they depend on viewers identifying with the characters and becoming invested in them to carry the story, rather than looking at the bigger picture of the society, institutions and norms that we interact with and which shape us. They can’t just kill major characters because those are the key tools with which they’re building the story and using as hooks to hold viewers.

In contrast, Game of Thrones killed Ned Stark abruptly at the end of the first season, after building the whole season and, by implication, the entire series around him. The second season developed a replacement Stark heir, which appeared like a more traditional continuation of the narrative. The third season, however, had him and his pregnant wife murdered in a particularly bloody way. And so it went. The story moved on; many characters did not.

The appeal of a show that routinely kills major characters signals a different kind of storytelling, where a single charismatic and/or powerful individual, along with his or her internal dynamics, doesn’t carry the whole narrative and explanatory burden. Given the dearth of such narratives in fiction and in TV, this approach clearly resonated with a large fan base that latched on to the show.

In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.

People then fit their internal narrative to align with their incentives, justifying and rationalizing their behavior along the way. (Thus the famous Upton Sinclair quip: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)

The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to “would you kill baby Hitler?,” sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be “no,” because it would very likely not matter much. It is not a true dilemma.

We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error.

When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others.

That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.

The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.

But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.

Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.

Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.

WHY GOT PAUSED KILLING MAJOR CHARACTERS

Tellingly, season eight shocked many viewers by … not initially killing off the main characters. It was the first big indicator of their shift—that they were putting the weight of the story on the individual and abandoning the sociological. In that vein, they had fan-favorite characters pull off stunts we could root and cheer for, like Arya Stark killing the Night King in a somewhat improbable fashion.

For seven seasons, the show had focused on the sociology of what an external, otherized threat—such as the Night King, the Army of the Undead and the Winter to Come—would do to competing rivalries within the opposing camp. Having killed one of the main sociological tensions that had animated the whole series with one well-placed knife-stab, Benioff and Weiss then turned to ruining the other sociological tension: the story of the corruption of power.

This corruption of power was crucially illustrated in Cersei Lannister’s rise and evolution from victim (if a selfish one) to evil actor, and this was clearly meant also to be the story of her main challenger, Daenerys Targaryen. Dany had started out wanting to be the breaker of chains, with moral choices weighing heavily on her, and season by season, we have witnessed her, however reluctantly, being shaped by the tools that were available to her and that she embraced: war, dragons, fire.

Done right, it would have been a fascinating and dynamic story: rivals transforming into each other as they seek absolute power with murderous tools, one starting from a selfish perspective (her desire to have her children rule) and the other from an altruistic one (her desire to free slaves and captive people, of which she was once one).

The corruption of power is one of the most important psychosocial dynamics behind many important turning points in history, and in how the ills of society arise. In response, we have created elections, checks and balances, and laws and mechanisms that constrain the executive.

Destructive historical figures often believe that they must stay in power because it is they, and only they, who can lead the people—and that any alternative would be calamitous. Leaders tend to get isolated, become surrounded by sycophants and succumb easily to the human tendency to self-rationalize. There are several examples in history of a leader who starts in opposition with the best of intentions, like Dany, and ends up acting brutally and turning into a tyrant if they take power.

Told sociologically, Dany’s descent into a cruel mass-murderer would have been a strong and riveting story. Yet in the hands of two writers who do not understand how to advance the narrative in that lane, it became ridiculous. She attacks King’s Landing with Drogon, her dragon, and wins, with the bells of the city ringing in surrender. Then, suddenly, she goes on a rampage because, somehow, her tyrannical genes turn on.

Varys, the advisor who will die for trying to stop Dany, says to Tyrion that “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” That is straight-up and simplistic genetic determinism, rather than what we had been witnessing for the past seven seasons. Again, sociological stories don’t discount the personal, psychological and even the genetic, but the key point is that they are more than “coin tosses”—they are complex interactions with emergent consequences: the way the world actually works.

In interviews after that episode, Benioff and Weiss confess that they turned it into a spontaneous moment. Weiss says, “ I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment, on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”

Benioff and Weiss were almost certainly given the “Mad Queen” ending to Game of Thrones by the original writer, George R. R. Martin. For them, however, this was the eating-ice-cream-with-a-fork problem I mentioned above. They could keep the story, but not the storytelling method. They could only make it into a momentary turn that is part spontaneous psychology and part deterministic genetics.

WHY SOCIOLOGICAL STORYTELLING MATTERS

Whether done well or badly, the psychological/internal genre leaves us unable to understand and react to social change. Arguably, the dominance of the psychological and hero/antihero narrative is also the reason we are having such a difficult time dealing with the current historic technology transition. So this essay is more than about one TV show with dragons.

In my own area of research and writing, the impact of digital technology and machine intelligence on society, I encounter this obstacle all the time. There are a significant number of stories, books, narratives and journalistic accounts that focus on the personalities of key players such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos. Of course, their personalities matter, but only in the context of business models, technological advances, the political environment, (lack of) meaningful regulation, the existing economic and political forces that fuel wealth inequality and lack of accountability for powerful actors, geopolitical dynamics, societal characteristics and more.

It’s reasonable, for example, for a corporation to ponder who would be the best CEO or COO, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect that we could take any one of those actors and replace them with another person and get dramatically different results without changing the structures, incentives and forces that shape how they and their companies act in this world.

The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!

In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo, Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.

#got #wank for ts #sort of #SOMEONE PUT IT INTO WORDS

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love-takes-work · 7 years ago

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Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond Discussion

Lots of spoilers for “Can’t Go Back” and “A Single Pale Rose”!

I was never a strong "Rose Quartz = Pink Diamond" theorist. If you'd asked me before the reveal to declare a position, I would have said I did not believe Rose Quartz was secretly Pink Diamond, but I also would have said I did not believe it was impossible or improbable.

Ultimately, I thought we really did not have enough information about Pink Diamond to compare her with Rose Quartz, and most of the information we did have about her either came from Steven in altered states of consciousness or came from secondary sources that contradicted established content (mostly referring to Garnet's simplistic telling of the Rose Quartz story--which irritated me because I thought it did not make sense for Rose to have been made on Earth).

Mostly, though, I leaned toward thinking they were not the same person because of stuff the Crewniverse said outside the show.

My lengthy discussion of this topic is below. I outline past theories, review a few pieces of information that came from the Crew, identify common fan criticism that I don’t think is valid, identify common fan criticism that I DO think is valid, and share some lists about what the reveal has changed as well as what I still hope to see explained. Also, it has pictures.

Okay, see, I don't really do much theorizing because I prefer to base my understandings of plot on my understandings of character, and mystery for mystery's sake is not my bag. The closest thing I had to a theory about Pink Diamond's alleged shattering was that Rose may have used the mental transference Steven has demonstrated with Lars and the Watermelons to bring Pink Diamond into a compromising position where she could strike her. (If in fact she had that ability and it isn't just Steven's; that's also a possibility.) Now that we know this ability was not involved, I'd still really like to see that ability be important in some vital aspect of Rose's dealings, because it's accessed by dreaming and most Gems wouldn't think to try sleeping, so using an organic Earth practice to bring down mighty Gems seems like the kind of thing that would fit with the narrative of the show.

I thought the answer to the shattering mystery would turn out to be something like that because I pay attention to what the Crew says about their work, and Susan Egan once said in an interview that she was appalled by what Rose did--that she was still trying to swallow it. So I knew it was something morally indefensible on most levels and extremely questionable.

That brings me to this. I mostly take my cues for what I think will happen from how people act. Meaning both characters in the show and creators outside the show. Now, Ian Jones-Quartey has expressed that "Can't Go Back" and "A Single Pale Rose" are the culmination of one of their earliest plans, so according to him, they had always planned this.

But if I had had to create a list of evidence AGAINST Rose Quartz having been the same person as Pink Diamond, high on that list would be an old Twitter quote also from Ian, wherein he explicitly misled a fan who was questioning Rose's status.

I mean, he didn't straight up say Rose IS a Quartz, but the way he said it, he implied it was very silly to believe otherwise. This isn't just talking around it. He threw the fan off the trail, so from this, I see that intentional misdirection is always a possibility when they talk about the show.

Also, Matt Burnett once laughed dismissively at the concept of a Diamond being poofed, but we just saw it.

Now, though, I have to reconcile some of these other elements that don't quite fit right. Mostly, I'm just thinking of Rose's words in "Rose's Scabbard."

"Pearl." "Yes?" "I'm going to stay and fight for this planet. You don't have to do this with me." "But I want to!" "I know you do. Please, please understand. If we lose, we'll be killed. And if we win, we can never go home." "But why would I ever want to go home, if you're here?" "My Pearl."

This scene is portrayed by Pearl in an honest setting that looks like a replay of actual events--I don't believe it is edited for content by Pearl, because it came forth in such an authentic reveal of her pain. Looking at it now, knowing we're supposed to accept Pink Diamond is stating that she's going to stay and fight for the planet, you have to do a little bit of dancing around to get that to make sense. It sounded like it was the first time Rose was proposing rebelling, and Pearl was choosing her over Homeworld. But if Pink Diamond was already transforming into a Rose Quartz and pledging herself to the cause of fighting for the planet, you know her other attempts to save Earth had failed by now. I guess we'll need to know more about the actual process of Pink developing a rebel army in the first place before we know how much sense it ultimately makes.

The scene on the cliff LOOKS like it was Rose telling Pearl about the moment she decided to defect and save Earth, but it could have been after Pink Diamond's ruse to create a rebellion wasn't enough to get Blue and Yellow off her back about completing the colony on Earth. But if this was always meant to eventually make sense as Pink Diamond saying this to her Pearl, that means Pink and Pearl initially thought they'd be going back to Homeworld eventually, and that they wanted to spare the Earth without necessarily putting down roots there. I can basically rewrite the meaning of that scene with current knowledge and essentially get it to make sense, but emotionally it's hard to read right now--plus I don't really have a feel for when this conversation happened and why Pink Diamond would assume she'd be killed if they failed. It sure does explain why Pearl was kneeling to Rose like she was royalty, though.

I did start to think they were definitely moving toward presenting Rose as secretly Pink Diamond as soon as they showed us what Pink Diamond's Gem looked like. I knew a gemstone on its side like that could look like the face of Rose's Gem, and it did bug me for a couple reasons:

1. The shape didn't match what we'd been shown before in representations of Pink Diamond, though the shape of the Diamonds' Gems was always depicted really simplistically in their murals. I can excuse that due to the simplicity.

2. It brought to mind the shirt Surasshu was wearing in the soundtrack's promo videos, suggesting its design was not just a really weird choice for depiction of Steven's/Rose's Gem. It was a spoiler in plain sight.

When I saw that, I thought . . . if Rose is going to turn out to be Pink Diamond, this was a really trollish choice of clothing for a piece of media that will be seen by many fans. After all, we'd already seen Rose Quartz Gems in the Zoo, and we knew they were supposed to have identical hemispheres like Amethyst. "They wouldn't do that . . . would they??" I thought. They wouldn't straight-up show us the Gem they went out of their way to hide right there on a shirt, would they? Yeah. They did. Yikes.

So most of the reason I would have said Rose Quartz was unlikely to be Pink Diamond was based on interpretations of the Crew's behavior outside the show. The evidence within the show is at least usually not explicitly contradictory. (More on this later.) To review: Ian strongly implied that Rose WAS a Quartz because of her name. Matt laughed at the concept of a Diamond poofing. And especially, Surasshu wore a shirt that's so spoilery it seems in retrospect that it shouldn't have been released. We shouldn't have been allowed to see any official depictions of the back of that Gem.

Because, after all, Steven can't get poofed due to having an organic body. So that was a convenient way of us never getting to see the back of his Gem. The only other time we see the shape of Gems at all is when the characters are fusing or shapeshifting. Usually when Steven and Connie become Stevonnie or Steven and Amethyst become Smoky Quartz, there's some kind of reason why you don't see the actual fusing process very well, but you know what? Rainbow Quartz's fusion demonstration is unobstructed, and it seems like if Rose's Gem was actually pointed at the back, we should have been able to see it. We can't.

Gems do become really indistinct and circle-glowy in other Fusions, and I guess we don’t really have a way to know what it would have looked like if we could see the whole shape of the Gem, but why would it just glow on the very surface? The way the shape looks, it looks like it’s the same on both sides. I'll say more on this later, but this makes me wonder whether this is a) an accident; b) intentional misdirection; or c) a suggestion some of the writing did NOT take the actual identity of Rose Quartz into account in places where it probably should’ve.

And I want to say that intentional misdirection isn't really the same thing as a straight-up mystery. For instance, I dislike most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies because they mislead instead of tricking you by building on expected assumptions; they explicitly tell you something that's not true, through the narrative, not through the perspective of another character, and then when they pull the rug out from under you, they pat themselves on the back for hoodwinking you. But you can't put actual previous-century dates on a tombstone in an intro and then claim you just let us THINK it was set in the past. That's deliberate misdirection. That's not just tricking the audience; it's telling them the wrong information so you won't be able to find the right information. So in the case of Steven Universe, if you actually show us Rose's Gem during a fusion and indicate that it doesn’t have a pointed back, we will assume it doesn’t have a pointed back. We will not have the tools to assume it's actually a totally different shape but being obscured without explanation through an unprecedented process. It would have been much better to just sneakily not show us her Gem during fusion instead of showing us an image that would make us conclude it's round and symmetrical on the other side.

But before I pick this apart too much, I will say this: I don't mind if every detail of this plot point or any other revelation in this show wasn't planned since the start. Stories evolve and authors learn new things about their characters. It's part of writing, and it's not BAD writing when your initial plan shifts based on how you and your story change over time. Television writers don't have the privilege of composing their entire story in full before beginning production of the first episode, and we've certainly seen things in the first season that don't make sense given current lore (why does the Heaven Beetle have a tiny temple; what the heck was that smoke monster in "Together Breakfast," why is there a "moon goddess" reference in "Cheeseburger Backpack," why are Gemstones presented as so unbreakable with a SWORD if they can literally be broken by falling onto a rock or getting stepped on, etc.). I'm not defending or explaining away inconsistencies if I say I can accept that they happen in television writing. I don't know which category this reveal is in, and I realize there are also more pieces of information we don't have about Pink Diamond's decisions, but if it's not perfect or there are aspects that ultimately don't make sense, I just accept that the story and its tellers aren't perfect, and I still like the heart of what they're doing.

Things that do NOT read as inconsistencies to me:

The size of Pink's Gem vs. the size of Rose's Gem: Gemstones absolutely do change size in canon. It "shouldn't" make sense, because it's supposed to be the one part of their body that stays the same, but look at the size of Sardonyx's hand Gems vs. Garnet's; look at the size of that Pearl on her head. Amethyst's Gem appears different sizes when she shapeshifts, too. It got super small when she became a bird.

The color of Pink's Gem vs. the color of Rose's: We've seen Pink "for real" exactly never. Never. The flashbacks seem accurate enough, but if you look at how different Gemstones look in different light, it varies a lot. We have also been looking at a part of Pink's Gem that Rose doesn't show, at a different angle. It's okay with me if they deliberately put her in lighting situations where the color of the Gem would look really different. It's not different enough that I have a problem. I've seen Amethyst's Gem look yellow, you know? It doesn't bug me that the shades of pink don't quite match.

Pink Diamond shapeshifting to pose as Rose Quartz for extended periods before she staged her shattering: There seems to be a common misconception that Gems can't hold shapeshifting for a long time. That's literally never shown to be true in the show. The only statement about shapeshifting that refers to a time limit is when it involves "stretching yourself out." We've seen Amethyst say she can't hold her arms like that all day; we've seen Steven start to glitch when he made himself bigger; we've seen Amethyst's endurance give out while playing Jasper. Shapeshifting is detrimental when it forces your body to be bigger. It has not been shown to cause any problems at all if the Gem is getting smaller or rearranging their existing size. (That's also why I think Rose shouldn't have had trouble shapeshifting a womb for nine months.)

Pink Diamond reforming permanently in a Rose Quartz shape: There is no reason she shouldn't be able to do that. We have not been told it can't happen. Permanent forms are usually pretty similar to previous "natural" forms, but we have no evidence that drastically different permanent forms can't be chosen. The statement about Amethyst's weird lopsided form in "Reformed" being "not sustainable" (as stated by Garnet) could easily have been, again, about forcing her form to be larger than it naturally is, which requires resources she doesn't have and can't sustain long-term. I see no reason a Gem can't rearrange herself the way Pink did, especially since the main problem Gems seem to have with impersonating each other is color scheme (and Rose essentially shares a color palette with Pink).

The orientation of Pink's Gemstone being different from Rose's: I don't quite understand why some folks think Gems can't change the orientation of their Gem. We haven't seen anyone need a reason to do so before, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for them. Yes, the area of the body where a Gem's Gemstone resides doesn't change with different forms (though clearly during shapeshifting they can actually move it; Amethyst does so when she makes the weird amorphous shape she does to pose for Vidalia, and Garnet hid her Gems on her hands during "Secret Team"). But since the Crew has suggested the LOCATION of a Gem's Gemstone on their body says something about their personality, I believe where it is on their body is the important part. The positioning of the Gem at the fixed location on the body seems like it could be rotated if they wanted to, and since Pink is said to have MADE Rose Quartz Gems, perhaps she even did so with the plan already that she could impersonate one if she needed to.

Rainbow Quartz being a called a Quartz: Rainbow Quartz was part Diamond and part Pearl and therefore isn't a Quartz at all. That doesn't actually matter in Steven Universe. Garnet the gemstone is a silicate despite that both her components are corundum type. Opals are not part quartz. Many of the Fusions we've seen bear no resemblance (on a molecular level) to the Gemstones they come from. And once while answering a fan question, Rebecca Sugar claimed that Fusions have to "decide" their names. Rainbow Quartz can call herself whatever the heck she wants.

Smoky Quartz 1.0 not being able to tell she was part Diamond: The Steven/Amethyst Fusion known as Smoky Quartz demonstrated familiarity with an Amethyst memory that indicated Amethyst has fused with Rose Quartz before. And yet Amethyst couldn't tell from that interaction that Rose wasn't a Quartz. Some think that makes no sense, but I have no problem with it. The Sardonyx arc made it clear fused Gems don't have unrestricted access to their components' memories that transfers back to the components when unfused, and Pearl has now shown us an incredible capacity for compartmentalizing. Amethyst has no context for what fusing with another Quartz should feel like and has no reason to be suspicious.

Things that DO read as inconsistencies still:

Pink Diamond's size: Unless Diamonds grow, Pink punched a glass wall at a level that Stevonnie was able to easily reach. She's then shown to be much larger than Pearl. But since we've also seen hugely different variations in the sizes of other characters (Yellow Pearl in "Message Received" vs. Yellow Pearl in "That Will Be All"; the size of Smoky Quartz in Steven's kitchen, etc.), that doesn't seem like a problem particular to this issue. It's just there in the show in general.

Pink Diamond having a ridge around her Gem some times but not others: It definitely doesn't look like there's a rim there when she's walking around. But then it does look like she has one when Pearl is holding her.

The shape of Pink Diamond's Gem while shapeshifting: We really only see the front of it glow for some reason. This is related to my complaint above about why Rose's Gem shape did not look pointed at the back when we saw it glow during her Rainbow Quartz fusion, which just means the problem occurs consistently. I do not know why only the front of Pink's Gem would glow when it's being activated.

Rose's language talking to Pearl in "Rose's Scabbard": but perhaps it will be explained and put into context later.

Things I very much like seeing explained or given context by this reveal:

Pearl being bound to not reveal the truth is a somewhat sneaky, slick way to get around having her mention Rose's identity--and it helps explain why Pearl had such a violent reaction to not knowing Rose had a Lion--if you'd shared THAT much with someone over the years, it makes sense that you'd be baffled that she had secrets she didn't share.

Why Pearl said vague things like "When I served . . . Homeworld," and why she saw the Zoo herself.

Why Rose had so many powers; we don't really know the extent of Diamond abilities, and Rose seemed awfully overpowered for a plain old Quartz soldier (healing abilities, plant armies, floating, bubbling, shielding, super strength, reflecting energy with the shield, resurrection, PLUS if she also had the dreaming and possession abilities Steven has). It makes sense that Diamonds would be able to do more.

Rose Quartz was notably absent in the shadow presentation of Garnet's "Pink Diamond was a villain" speech in "Gemcation." Garnet's representations as presumably visualized by Steven can't be taken as canon obviously, but it's interesting.

Rose's consistent trait of finding humans amusing and novel blends well with how Pink is portrayed. Rose loves humans but she truly does not understand them, and doesn't appear to feel love for them the same way she seems to feel love for the idea of them. She's inspired by them and manages to make her enthusiasm sound authentic, but even with some of the presentations of Greg, she seemed to think of him more like a pet than a person. An inexperienced Diamond being given her first colony, then realizing the creatures she's going to kill with her invasion are so cool and funny, is something I could see working well narratively, for a character whose cruelty is mostly born of obliviousness.

Why Rose's shield could protect a small group of Gems from a Diamond attack.

Why Rose said it was a good thing that Greg didn't know her very well.

Why Pearl had a pink diamond on her spacesuit, of course.

Why Peridot assessed Pearl as being "fancy."

All those times Pearl covered her mouth when the context for talking about Pink Diamond popped up, which I assume goes back as far as her displaying that gesture in “Rose’s Scabbard.”

What we got undid the contradictory aspects of Garnet's story. I was really irritated that according to Garnet, Rose had been made on Earth and never saw Homeworld. It didn't fit--Rose had referred to Homeworld as home before and implied she'd been there; had expressed that Earth's creatures were so fascinating to her compared to what she was used to and that everything on Earth seemed fast to her; it didn't make sense for Pearl to claim Amethyst was the only good thing to come out of the Kindergarten if Rose was also made there (so that would imply Pearl wasn't told something Garnet was told); it didn't make sense for Rose to not comfort Amethyst with messages about being from the same place if that would have calmed her insecurity. Rose being made on Earth clashes with sentiments she's expressed. Even though the current story revelation also contradicts a couple things (or seems to), it makes far more sense than Garnet's story.

Why Stevonnie felt they recognized the Moon Base during "Jungle Moon," why Steven gets Diamond dreams in connection with places Pink Diamond has been, and why he says he felt such a strong connection.

It provides the answer to "And where was her Pearl?"

Pearls clearly are not necessarily made with their Gems in the same place as the Gems they serve.

Stuff I now really want to see addressed:

Steven's feelings about it.

What other layers exist in Rose’s backstory.

Whether Pink actually had a Crystal Gem rebellion going before she claimed to Blue and Yellow that she did.

How and where Diamonds are made.

What the Diamonds' "family" dynamic is.

Whether there is actually a hierarchy of who's officially in charge in the Diamond Authority (since Pink seems like she at least feels she has to answer and justify herself to Blue and Yellow, so you'd think the fourth unseen Diamond might have that relationship with them).

Why Pink Diamond was hanging out at the Moon Base on the Jungle Moon in that dream, and why Yellow Diamond seemed surprised she was "still there."

Whether Rose had the dreaming and possession abilities.

Whether Rose has ever fused with Garnet or whether she thought that might be risky.

How Rose found Amethyst and what version of the story she gave to her.

Similarly, what version of the story Bismuth had--she, like Garnet, seems to have believed Rose was made on Earth.

Whether Pink Diamond ever hung out with Rose Quartzes and what their voices actually sounded like.

Whether Pink Diamond felt any affection for the other Diamonds despite her perception that they did not care about her, and whether she objected to Bismuth's desire to take the war to Homeworld.

What Pink Diamond's relationship with Pearl was like at the beginning and how they became more than just Gem monarch and servant (though that troubling dynamic has remained throughout their relationship and has always complicated what their love is).

Whether the Diamond Authority has so much military force because they have enemies beyond random organics on worlds they're invading.

Whether Pink Diamond's Zoo was intended to preserve humans from the destruction of their planet, or to give other Gems the opportunity to see humans were worth saving, or for some other reason. (Garnet's assessment that the humans were "trophies of her conquest" seems inaccurate now.)

Whether Pink Diamond's ability to heal was unique among Diamonds. Eyeball saw healing powers as evidence of Rose Quartz's involvement, and Rose's armies being able to come back from being shattered was a tremendous advantage, so I'm thinking that was an uncommon power.

What did Rose do when she experimented on healing corrupted Gems? What did the failure look like?

The story of the Temple--since Amethyst came after the war but seems to be represented in the Temple's Fusion design, was the Temple built after she joined the team? Did this Fusion ever happen with our Amethyst? Or did they have another character with a chest Gem who used to be part of the Crystal Gems?

Whether Bismuth and Garnet are gonna form a "Rose Quartz was a Lying Liar who got all my friends murdered" club.

#steven universe #steven universe spoilers #su spoilers #a single pale rose #can't go back #rose quartz #pink diamond #pearl #su theories #su analysis #my su analysis #gif #myblog

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theamazingsallyhogan · 6 years ago

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The show did indeed take a turn for the worse, but the reasons for that downturn goes way deeper than the usual suspects that have been identified (new and inferior writers, shortened season, too many plot holes). It’s not that these are incorrect, but they’re just superficial shifts. In fact, the souring of Game of Thrones exposes a fundamental shortcoming of our storytelling culture in general: we don’t really know how to tell sociological stories.

WHAT STORYTELLING IT WAS AND WHAT IT BECAME IN GOT

WHY GOT PAUSED KILLING MAJOR CHARACTERS

WHY SOCIOLOGICAL STORYTELLING MATTERS

In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo,Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

#game of thrones #game of thrones spoilers #got spoilers #got #spoilers #scientific american #long post

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madara-fate · 7 years ago

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What did you think about episode 14 of Darling in the FranXX? The Ichigo hate was real after that one.

Yes it was, and while I understand that she wasn’t exactly a saint during the episode, the level of hate that I’ve seen is wholly unwarranted.

Okay, I understand that she prevented 02 from meeting Hiro which is something that really needed to happen, especially after episode 13, but things also need to be viewed from her perspective because when this is done, her actions become a lot more understandable. From Ichigo’s perspective, this was the same 02 who had been manipulating Hiro with zero remorse and tried to turn him into a monster, and only stopped because she discovered that he was her original darling. This was the same 02 who she heard had always used her previous partners as mere tools who she basically killed and disposed of, and now she had first hand evidence of this and even let 02 and the others know of this:

This was the same 02 who went on to physically attack the entire squad over a misunderstanding that she really shouldn’t have been fooled by because it was clear as day that Hiro had escaped from the room of his own accord.

The thing is, nothing that Ichigo said above was untrue, and while 02′s sentiments may have changed by this point, Ichigo still had every right to be protective of Hiro. Add to that 02′s continued needless dismissiveness, and you can see that 02 really wasn’t doing herself any favours. So of course Ichigo’s not going to want the guy she loves to get hurt any further. Perhaps the ridiculous amount of Ichigo hate also partly stems from the fact that she confessed to Hiro and kissed him in front of Goro? Despite the fact that she didn’t know the latter was there, nor does she owe him her romantic affection just because that’s how he feels about her.

02′s continued dismissiveness was just another example of the annoyingly convenient writing this show has sometimes exhibited because honestly, despite the fact that what Ichigo said was indeed true, any explanation from 02 clarifying that these were no longer her sentiments, and that she truly just wanted to have a heart to heart with Hiro would have done wonders towards getting the group to be more willing to let them see each other, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Don’t get me wrong, Ichigo conducted herself in a very brusque manner and she allowed her desire to protect Hiro to stop her from thinking clearly. 02 and Hiro really did need to have a talk and clear some things up and Ichigo’s stubbornness, at least initially, prevented that from happening. However, she was not in the wrong for wanting to protect Hiro from 02 given what they know of her thus far. Ichigo definitely acted selfishly, especially in the way that she pretty much forced herself on Hiro at the end with the kiss because the confession would have been enough. Also, she didn’t seem to consider that 02 is essentially the only one Hiro can pilot with. Thus, she’d be bringing him back to the way he was before. However, I do think that can be forgiven seeing as how her main incentive was Hiro’s protection. I’m sure the majority of people would have done the same thing if it meant that the person they loved didn’t end up dying. She was fully willing to accept 02 into the group and essentially ignore her feelings for Hiro in favour of his happiness with 02, because she obviously saw that he was happy. This continued up until the beginning of episode 12 which wasn’t long ago, but recent revelations understandably changed her mind.

Yet having said all this, 02 didn’t handle herself any better, she was also being selfish for constantly just acting on her own desires and not worrying at all about anyone else or how her actions things could potentially hurt Hiro himself. Both Ichigo and 02 were at fault for the things that transpired during the episode, and to be honest, an equal portion of the blame also needs to be placed on Hiro, but so many people just seem to be constantly ignoring 02′s actions as if she hasn’t done anything wrong, but the reality is that what she’s done and the way she’s conducted herself so far has been just as bad. I can understand why both of them did what they did; they both care a lot about Hiro, but their high levels of emotions caused them to make errors of judgement. We can all obviously prefer one over the other but calling the one trash and worshipping the other exhibits a lot of bias. The amount of childish comments I’ve seen wishing death upon Ichigo for this was beyond disappointing, when all she really wanted to do, was to protect the person she loves from someone who she knew to have been manipulating him and who even made attempts on his life.

But as I stated earlier the writing in this episode was just far too convenient, and I’m also getting a little tired of the show choosing to focus on the relationships rather than the plot. After the potential that episode 13 gave, the show could have gone in so many interesting directions, so it’s rather irritating that they chose to elongate the drama in such a manner. I’ll reiterate that I don’t feel the blame should be placed solely on Ichigo for what happened. For the information she had, she made some pretty rational decisions. I mean, 02 was literally strangling Hiro just 2 episodes ago; the marks on his neck were evidence enough of that, and now she’s saying she wants to talk to him. That’s a big 180, and even though the viewers understand the reasons for the change of heart, this wasn’t explained to Ichigo and the rest of them.For me, the fault lies primarily on the way 02′s been written so far. She seems to remember most if not all of what went on in the past, yet she never gives the squad any of this information even though it would go a long way in clearing up the misunderstanding. Instead she just keeps it super vague, and even after Ichigo’s scathing words regarding how she had been manipulating Hiro, exploiting him and would discard him afterwards, she didn’t even try to defend herself when she easily could have explained that this was no longer the case. She essentially just said “Yeah, I’ve been manipulating and using him, and I’ll probably end up killing him too, but so what? That’s none of your business”:

So following this, why would Ichigo relent? Why wouldn’t they put 02 on guard for a few days after that? That was bad writing used solely to further the drama, when logic would dictate that 02 should simply give a short explanation. And then when the prime misunderstanding happens, she just conveniently either completely ignores or doesn’t see the escape rope that’s very clearly dangling in the middle of the room. So she goes ape shit, and of course that just happens to be when Hiro arrives and justifiably calls her a monster, more convenience.There’s so many places they could have salvaged this episode. 02 could have very easily given a brief explanation to the squad to fill them in on the true nature of the situation (still withholding a lot, but giving just enough information to get them to let her through). Hiro could have broken it to Ichigo why he wanted to talk to 02 but that also conveniently didn’t happen. They could have had Hiro remain in the damn room like he was supposed to, or at the very least not had 02 literally be completely blind at the climax. This episode could have been a lot better if someone just had the slightest bit of communication skills. *Sigh*

#Darling in the FranXX #Zero Two #Ichigo #Hiro #Darling in the Frankxx

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