#it all feels like narrative manipulation

[haine-kleine]

The fact is, had the League and especially the LOV trio started trauma dumping on each other, by the war arc they would have been undefeatable.

And now that we are at the finishing line of the story, it's starting to stand out as a fairly odd fact that they hadn't. The culmination of all three's stories was the part about unblocking their tragic backstories, and the heroes being the ones to hear those backstories first is kind of. Weird? You could argue that Shigaraki, Dabi and Toga weren't particularly inclined to open up about their past, but wasn't the entire point of LOV being a place where all the members felt accepted, when their previous environments never allowed them to feel this way?

The story takes so much time to explain this fact in great detail but then becomes short-sighted when it comes to LOV's actual relationships with each other and always jumps to the 'they are villains' point. Sure, they are, but they are also human individuals, who have spent around a year being extremely close in conditions that naturally encourage bonding. They didn't commit crime 24/7 and it's not like they stood around AFK the rest of the time when they weren't actively breaking law lol. All of them save for Shigaraki could have left at any moment, but they didn't, even when they became homeless and had to go on the run, even when Shigaraki's life became a non-stop battle with Gigantomachia, no one exhibited any desire to leave the League despite the fact Shigaraki had never forced anyone to stay. They were loyal to him, and to each other. The friendship was there. The trust. They even had time at their disposal.

So why is it the ones who get to hear their stories and sympathize for the first time are the hero kids, literally minutes before their deaths?

[licensedproldier]

brennan will really be like "is anyone gonna write six of the most tragic and fucked up teenagers in the whole world and their narrative foils having violent murderous beef with each other in a devastatingly teenage way and then tell their story through a series of unreliable narrators or" and then not wait for an answer.

[batsplat]

CRAZY THINGS ARE HAPPENING https://www.tumblr.com/kwisatzworld/767503662882914304/sete-came-to-the-vr46-garage-what-year-even-is-it

(photo of sete in the vr46 garage) been thinkinggggg about this.... I'm actually quite ambivalent on the topic of like. sete + valentino reconciliation because I'm also a big believer in some wounds remaining open, like I actually think there's something cute and fun and compelling about valentino being So Fucking Weird about sete and doing his weird erasing him from the narrative gig... and I've been a very sete-sympathetic mood recently where he's really been triggering my sports underdog-love brain and what valentino did to him was SO MEAN and SO FUCKED UP - low key kinda the worst he's done to any rival lbr!! - and obviously valentino will NEVER apologise for that... so a part of me kinda wants sete to pull himself together and be a bit more bitter in his own right y'know. but I suppose the bit of sete that folds is kind of key characterisation too... idk. it's also not going to prompt anyone to take his career + rivalry with valentino more seriously because valentino's already basically done the damage there. and if you're going to be such a cunt you might as well go all the way, like if valentino were any less evil about it I would find the whole thing considerably harder to stomach. as a sports fan my heart is very much attuned to sete's plight!! sete, don't talk to him. don't go to his bloody ranch

anyway that's the normative analysis about what I'd LIKE to happen. as for the positive analysis... weird weird vibes. I recently remembered some uccio/vale/sete lore that didn't make it to the toxic yuri post and it does kinda make me very. curious. about what that three-way dynamic looks like, if you will. real likelihood that sete is the valentino rival who uccio had by far the most of an actual... direct rapport with... like it's not unreasonable to suggest them and valentino hung out socially on several occasions... they also knew each other when valentino went all *gestures* y'know. on sete. idk where I'm going with this!! I just think it's interesting... I don't really feel like this is a photo I could imagine happening with any of valentino's other rivals, which does Tell You Something idk. curious if this all leads somewhere or if uccio went back home to valentino to call sete a bitch

[borgialucrezia]

i was digging through old blogs and then flashbacked that ironic aspect of the fandom when the show was still airing, and tbh it was interesting how people who were biased against juan defended neil jordan from those who rightfully criticized him for disingenuously nerfing his character in his final ep by throwing juan's development (returning from spain as a shaped up and secure of his bastardy especially after becoming a father) completely out the window just to make him sabotage his relationships with his mother and sister beyond hope. he was suddenly portrayed in the worst light possible just to ensure that cesare's actions would appear somehow justified to the audience when he kills him. yet after the s4 script dropped the same people who had defended neil jordan at the time crashed out and became his most obnoxious haters for some of his writing choices for cesare and lucrezia's relationship (such as nerfing the incest and having cesare betray lucrezia which leads her to attempt to kill him). like they clearly selectively accepted questionable writing when it benefited the narrative they wanted to push then objected when similar writing choices affected the narratives they favored. meanwhile i was an unbiased fan who loved cesare and lucrezia's incestuous relationship as well as juan's character, and i didn't like how neil jordan diminished either of them. you just had to be there etc.

[filtheopathic]

.

[luniviravosshipper]

POV: You’re sad and wanting comfort but the character you’d usually find comfort in was deemed unlikabled and totally undeserving of love by the narrative. So instead of feeling comfort thinking of that character now you just feel even worse. Because every time you try to immerse yourself back into the story they came from you have to constantly be reminded by it that they never got to receive any sort of affection and the story wanted the audience to know the reason was because it never felt they deserved any. Even when intentionally making them sympathetic at moments, at the end it’s clear that they were always planning on kicking the dog with them.

[brw]

Small compilation of Charles looking kind of cunty in X-Men: Children of the Atom

[spacedlexi]

i forgot how weird people get sometimes when you add minnie to clemvi situations :/

[cdroloisms]

I seee tysm for explaining, you and sum. I'm surprised protege au wasn't end game because I saw often saw that take lmao and with the extent of exile I thought that was the plan, and vague phrasing of "help with dreams goals" I've seen someone mention before that c!dream had empathy for him during the playing around with tridents, and seemed taken a back by c!tommys suicide arc. And I'm still lost as to who had the discs around exile arc, just c!tubbo right? how would c!tommy give the discs to c!dream if he didn't have them I can't remember the lore lol

well, they were still tommy's discs, so c!Dream wasn't entirely unreasonable in assuming that c!Tommy could get the disc from Tubbo if need be and then give it to whoever it's not like c!Tubbo was holding the thing hostage. Either way, keeping c!Clingy away from each other was c!Dream's best shot, as seen through how he finally manages to get the disc by pressuring c!Tubbo which only worked because of the conflict that existed between c!Clingy largely from c!Dream forcing them apart and then playing both sides to make the other half seem unreliable and untrustworthy. The disc that c!Tubbo had was Mellohi, and the other one was with Skeppy and was Cat--we never get an explicit explanation for how c!Dream manages to obtain it iirc.

it's important to remember that as far as c!discduo goes, they did have a preexisting relationship--c!Dream and c!Tommy weren't born enemies from the start (tm). a degree of friendliness and trust lingers long into exile both because of cc bleedover (cause like, frankly, half of exile is just dicking around bc neither cc was that interested in an hour of whump roleplay a day 😭) and because these characters are far from strangers from each other. even considering the overt manipulation involved in exile, including c!dream's poor attempts at trying to seem friendly, i don't think it's strictly incorrect to say that 1) c!dream had some level of empathy towards c!tommy and 2) c!dream was caught off guard by how deeply affected c!tommy ended up being bc of exile, including his suicide attempt. obviously that doesn't absolve him for ... any of it lmfao but c!dream is a character with a canonically skewed as shit perception of pain and abuse and how it affects people--when this stuff applies to himself, it's hardly a stretch to consider that the same fallacies apply to others.

[shyfurby]

I have not posted any of my analysis to reddit yet and I think I might just post it and ghost it. I've already spent too much time looking at other people's threads on there to feel any way good about interacting with folks.

I already went in an added the "I know you're going to bring this up let me save you the time" section which is exclusively touching on the frequent topics of:

"well what about the fingerprint nostrum and finger mimics? He is clearly just a crackpot"

And

"it's definitely some weird elaborate sacrifice to Metyr thing"

[pochapal]

Strike Two

[velvetjune]

Spoilers for Alan Wake/Control games and DLCs: one of the things I really like in Alan Wake 2 is the confirmation that, no, Alan can’t create something out of nothing. There were implications in-story that supported that, but it was good to have that be a big part in the sequel. The AWE control dlc easily made it seem like Alan himself had a role in the events of the game and the formation of the FBC, and, personally, seeing it through that lens cheapened a lot of the game and Jesse’s story. Instead, having his writing influence the Hiss and try to manipulate (even out of desperation) Jesse/the FBC to end Hartman and get help, fit right into plot and conflicts of Alan Wake 2, with Alan being sympathetic, but also an asshole for trying to change and control people’s lives in his writing.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 4 :)

[starbuck]

watching this show in the way i am (with my friend who has an encyclopedic knowledge of it but REFUSES to give me spoilers) is soooooooo fun bc the way i’m assessing what might happen going forward is so funny… like. did he successfully kill himself? probably. will he be brought back in some other form AGAIN? maybe. could his bitch ass actor cope with not being as involved? probably not. <— reassess point “will he be brought back in some other form AGAIN?” to likely. is my friend blatantly lying to me by saying that he’s permanently dead? very possibly.

[bucksboobs]

I’m the anon from the post before and I understand what you mean! I guess I just took differently when I watched the show. I don’t think Charlie or Nick was upset about Ben being closeted I think they (especially Charlie) we’re just upset how Ben treated Charlie the entire. Also I’m not saying this to be rude or start anything this is just how I saw it:) I think Charlie was angry (as he should) about how Ben treated him through out the relationship they had and not about him being closeted. Because I do believe if Ben just communicated better and treated him better and didn’t treat Charlie the way he did it could’ve worked out. I’m just saying that I didn’t see them bashing Ben for being closeted only bashing him for treating Charlie the way he did without acknowledging how it felt for him.

Yeah I don't think Charlie or Nick is mad about Ben being closeted but weirdly I think the narrative is and that's what irks me. All his issues and bad behaviors are because he's closeted (you said yourself that it's because he's closeted that he treats Charlie the way he does) but the story doesn't seem interested in exploring that so much as punishing him for it by having both Imogen and Charlie yell at him and then throwing him out of the series before he can improve at all.

And when this show is so renowned for it's love and celebration of queer experiences and identity it will always feel out of place that Ben was left out in the dust seemingly because he and his experiences were too complex.

[kits-ships]

i didnt realize it at first but the fact that leon and lunette both faced abuse from an authority/parental figure(s) kills me