#it would just change who he is as a person! & cheapens the idea of accepting death in Trigun

[orcelito]

the funny thing is everyone's like "oh yea a fic studying the senses of an inhuman character, that's pretty cool" but Little Do They Know i happened upon this idea by accident. Sentido started as me just messing around with the idea of hearing Life And Death, which REALLY started as a "Vash can hear dead people" kinda au lksdjfld

decided to go with less of a literal Hearing Dead People and went more of Hearing Death being the acute hearing of death-related sounds. i think this idea's pretty good tbh, even with how accidental it was

[lxmelle]

Geto Complex / Suguru Complex

Reposting from my Twt 😅 I need to stop blabbing in different places.

Out of the numerous things Gojo could have developed a complex about (like almost dying, feeling alienated/sheltered, etc.), it was that he “couldn’t stop” Geto from defecting.

This is interesting. He did not blame Geto or anyone / anything else. We know he was a “resigned person” who could accept things rationally / objectively, but Geto’s defection really hit him harder than anything ever did in his entire life.

While he could accept his departure & even the necessity of his death, Gojo carried this relationship in the pocket of his heart like the one & only treasured photograph within a precious locket. Geto’s pain was his own. He guarded it very, very well. In fact I’d even call him a bit of a guard dog where he just didn’t let anyone into that space. At all.

This is also why I respect him as a teacher. Some lines you just don’t cross professionally. His students were his students. The relationship chart thankfully depicts that too. It doesn’t cheapen the quality of their student-mentor relationship: it strengthens it. Gojo would never lay his hands on the youth that he was determined to protect, after all.

He took onboard a lot from Geto. These boundaries and respect were birthed from the things he experienced with Geto. But! Some things were just natural to Gojo.

As much as he said he hated righteousness and the expectations that came along with the burden of ��the strong” - Gojo actually practice it. From a young age, going on missions and doing what was loosely expected of him, within the parameters of the jujutsu tradition. He just… didn’t imbue it with too much emotion - because, again, Geto was the subjective (compassionate and emotional / philosophical) type and Gojo was the objective (rational and pragmatic / straightforward) type.

It seems aligned with his character shown in HI where Gojo took on the “blame” when things went wrong too, shielding Geto when he apologised & made plans to proceed with their mission (this is how they balanced each other out when their relationship was healthy) - staying focused and generally being reliable, dependable, and offering an aura of security to Geto.

The subtle undercurrent that likely facilitated the Geto complex was that, young Gojo had this attitude where he also readily accepted that “things are just mine if I want”. He was powerful. Never experienced insecurity or poverty. He was a genius. He never had close relationships, so he never knew loss. He never particularly wanted anything and people came and went easily. Nobody really mattered.

But nobody could hold a candle to Geto Suguru. Gojo didn’t realise that there were some things that he needed to look after.

So with this attitude he didn’t imagine he needed to treasure Geto after enlightening, so I think he realised that too late. He didn’t realise he was thinking arrogantly. He just had no idea he took anything for granted. He was born to just be strong. Everyone treated him that way.

Except: Geto Suguru.

That’s why he had a Geto complex... he blamed himself (like always) but it was a painful lesson he experienced for the first time -

To want something he cannot have.

To want to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.

To want to be with someone who didn’t want him to come along.

To love someone who did not want to be loved.

To learn something only for it to be too late.

To be strong, yet, not strong enough.

So what else could Gojo Satoru do with his love, but to love and respect Geto from afar, living in a way that would make Geto proud…

Isn’t that profound?

To let someone change you so much because that is all that is left of them- so he treasured him like that...

And perhaps, also important, is that Gojo recognised that what he had received (and was receiving even when being left behind) was love.

So, really… the pure love between them was also undeniably shared.

If Gojo had a Geto complex, I’m certain Geto had a Gojo complex of some kind where he never forgave himself, wore the kesa with his best friend’s name on it & brainwashed himself with “love to the strong” & “weak & foolish deserve to be punished by death” (these were the wall scrolls in jjk 0).

[theangrypokemaniac]

Several reasons, @iloitse.

1. He's hated mainly for replacing Brock, and every following complaint is rooted in that, but it was a different situation to now.

We never knew Pokémon could last this long, how bad it'd get, and that one day, lineup changes would be expected.

This was the first time it happened.

All this talk of 'together forever' and 'you will always be my best friend', that the bonds formed on the road, from hardship and isolation, are eternal, and then they pull this on us!

It comes from nowhere: Oak asks them to visit Ivy, then Brock suddenly decides to stay.

Ten kids who needed him are left to his feckless, wandering old man, but a grown woman and three teenage nerdettes can't even bloody sweep up after themselves.

We lost Brock for no noble reason, just to simp for Ivy whilst working himself to death keeping these idiots alive.

Sod that, Brock! Come and run free with us!

It cheapened him. Someone devoted and supportive was now dumping Ash and Misty, two children, to their unknown fate, so he could perv on an old bird, begging for her 'gratitude'.

Therefore Tracey represents the sad, pathetic and degrading exit Brock got.

It's temporary only in hindsight.

For all we knew, Brock, someone we cared about, was gone for good, and I suspect that'd be the case had we immediately rolled over and accepted Tracey.

Anger at his loss should be seen as a sign of his value, when we couldn't imagine the anime without him.

Complaint got Brock back, which is a lesson to keep in mind.

Whenever they piss you off, don't just shrug and fall into place because 'it's like that now'.

Resist, fight back, withdraw all financial support, and they'll cave first.

If more if us had done that, we wouldn't be in this mess.

2. The Lost Lapras:

In his cack-handed introduction, (that is, if he's meant to be liked) Tracey, a complete stranger, imposes himself upon Ash and Misty, informing them he's their new travelling partner, about ten minutes after they've met.

Since they know Professor Oak, he insists on tagging along too, whether they like it or not.

Misty even says:

"Hey, you can't just invite yourself."

But he does! And her resentment of it, however fleeting it was, grants us permission to feel the same, as she and Ash don't want him either.

He's not only forcing his presence on them, but on us too, one episode after Brock left, fans still in a state of disbelief, insisting it's somehow a mistake.

Him showing up, determined to take his place, killed those hopes.

Now the rest of the episode intends to make up for it, proving he's not such a bad fella after all, but the damage was done.

Anyone who 'broke' the original trio was up against it, but to be so forward, presumptive and overconfident just got on our nerves.

Well too bad. I'm here now, and you'll just have to accept it.

I don't think so, love. That's why much of the original fanbase walked away at this point.

3. He's unfortunately something of a bland personality, with no stand-out moments or mannerisms anyone remembers.

There's a restraint and almost subdued quality to how he's written, as if consciously held back from fully taking part.

I don't remember Tracey generally being arrogant and selfish, but that was our first impression of him, and no other defined traits ever turned up to help him shine.

Therefore, having nothing else to grab, the idea he was secretly 'like that' underneath remained.

4. His 'thing' of drawing Pokémon, whilst harmless, isn't particularly interesting, either as an occupation or viewing experience.

We all drew Pokémon. That's our job. He ought to do mad stuff beyond us.

It works for an episode, perhaps even stretching to a mini-arc like Todd, but not for the whole region.

Ash, Misty and Brock had dreams needing a hands-on approach with Pokémon, which leads to action in fights, adventures, getting out and to hell with the risks.

Whereas Tracey's quest is entirely dependent on keeping back, staying quiet and still.

That's no good!

5. The Joy of Pokémon / In the Pink:

Tracey draws Joy and Jenny, and finds the latter attractive, so probably likes both.

If Brock's successor had been a fun, unique presence, he may have won converts in time.

Yet not only does Tracey bring nothing to the team, he's now leeching off his predecessor for character traits, and even that's a passing hint soon discarded.

What's the use in getting rid of Brock then?

Not that this is so damning now, since Cilan, Clemont and Kiawe all replaced Brock, and all were blatant rip offs.

6. Brock came in as a solid, tough parental substitute, and retained that sense of authority.

Here was a comforting father figure who always came through in a crisis.

If there's trouble, he'll take care of you.

Tracey doesn't have that safe, reliable aura. No one looks to him for protection.

We were all children then. Having the 'adult' taken away, to make room for a boy you can feel isn't up to it, feeling it in that unspoken, primal level children do, is frightening.

Quite a bit of the vitriol against Tracey came from the age-old terror of losing one's parents and being left vulnerable and alone, which most of the main cast have experienced, and now, in a sense, it'd happened to us as well.

It's telling that when returned, Brock remained throughout Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh, usually in the background, but that was enough.

Once retired, every following male was older than Ash, cooked and healed, shared knowledge about Pokémon, and constantly worried about a brother or sister.

Now we have Goh, who's useless, we have to stay at home.

It's too scary out there without Brock.

7. Brock has a sympathic backstory which immediately invites pity and good will.

Fans love that. Now they can ponder over all the things never said and theorize how the past shaped him.

Tracey came with NOTHING.

We don't know his family, hometown, or nationality even.

Just a pad, pencil, Venonat and Marill, and that's all yer ever getting, to this day.

(Although given the looks of this lad I suspect he's from Johto.)

Anyone willing to give him a chance is sabotaged before they even begin, as there's no material to work with, no substance to love in the first place.

How could we like a character who wasn't truly there?

Incidentally, someone on an old fansite attempted to supply him with a past.

They'd decided he was ashamed of his relatives for being 'hicks' who 'watched Nascar', so that's canon to me.

8. The Power of One:

The end of the world is imminent.

Had Tracey played a crucial role in its salvation, that would give him something, a footing to plead his case to viewers.

But he does eff all!

The writers ignored him, the dub cut his lines, so now even the production on both sides of the globe don't like him either!

This effectively condones our resentment, and perhaps it's a clue they'd listened and given up on Tracey by then, which is certainly more humble and responsive than they have been lately.

The most he does do, in pulling Ash and Misty to the shore, is just him in the right location, and unlike the rest of the cast, isn't motivated by any hidden depths.

• Ash ran into danger because he's a hero.

• Misty dived into the sea because she loves him.

• Team Rocket sacrificed their lives because they have good in them.

Not only could Tracey's action here be given to anyone, even a Pokémon, it's not based on any known quality.

You can't say it's love for his friends pushing him on, as that was never displayed previously, at least not so notably it was his stand-out trait.

9. There's just three Pokémon on the team.

Of them, only Marill has any popularity, and wasn't used enough.

Not until Hoenn did any Pokémon besides Pikachu and Togepi wander around freely, but Marill should've too and had interactions with them.

Boys liked Scyther, but it's a praying mantis, so girls didn't, and as they dominate the 'fandom' part of fan bases, their revulsion stuck.

Venonat was an odd choice. To me it looks fluffy and cuddly, but that's not an opinion too many share.

It's an endless circle: Tracey isn't 'present' enough to give his Pokémon the screen time to be lovable, and if they're not around, we can't warm to him as their owner.

This is the integral flaw in Tracey's existence:

When the spotlight's on someone else, he's boring and does nothing important.

But if he's the star, he's depicted as deeply unpleasant, suggesting that's how it'd always be were he given more to do.

I don't understand how the writers got it so wrong. I almost suspect it was deliberate.

10. Tracey Gets Bugged

You all know what's coming.

I remember him for two episodes.

He's a complete arsehole in both.

Team Rocket are minding their own business when Beedrill bursts the balloon and a scarred Scyther attacks them with its knife arms.

I used to be a Jessie maniac. What they did to her caused me supreme upset.

When she swears vengeance, we're expected to sympathise with the swarm, even though:

• Girls hate Scyther (my mother especially).

• It's a load of giant insects, i.e. the stuff of nightmares.

• The scarred Scyther who cut Jessie also beat Tracey's Scyther half to death, simply for being old and tired, so it could become leader.

• All the remaining Scythers (as in, the family of Tracey's Scyther) accepted this and left it to die.

Aside from his debut, this is the episode with the most Tracey coverage. We learn a little and watch him catch a Pokémon.

Every part of it offends me.

• Bug Pokémon are his favourite (freak).

Boys tend to develop an insect fixation to torment girls.

• He belittles Misty's fear of them.

• He jeers at Jessie's hair.

I like Ash and Misty so they're let off, not that they were at the time, but at least they haven't usurped Brock.

Any cheek is banter with old enemies, the same as they mock one another. Tracey never earned that right.

• He directs Scyther during battle, effectively ordering and intending What Happens Next.

• Scyther is rewarded for its behaviour by joining the cast, serving as a constant reminder for this picture:

...

All these years on, when I've not seen the classic era for a while, and the last four generations have destroyed what I felt for Team Rocket, besides soiling my memories of how they used to be, for now I know how it ends, and realize loving it was a waste of my life.

Even after all that, merely looking at this image awakens the distress I experienced as a child.

I HATED this episode, and refused to watch it again for years. When I did, I still closed my eyes at that point.

They might be burnt, blown up and electrocuted regularly, but it's cartoon damage and impossible to take seriously.

But getting slashed with a sharp implement feels much more serious as it's realistic.

There's a cold malice in it, intending to ridicule Jessie and James.

Here's a pair obsessed with their appearance, so we'll humiliate them with near-baldness, knowing it's the worst punishment.

That's the most graphic injury Meowth ever had.

I think he's been shaved, between the eyes, but as it's from a blade, it looks like part of his face was sliced off.

Skinned alive, even.

And we're supposed to consider this a happy ending 'cause Tracey's Scyther earnt the respect of the vicious monster who almost murdered him.

This, remember, is Tracey's starring episode, and what's the result?

Alienating the entire fanbase!

• Brock fans hate him for replacing a better character.

• Ash and Misty fans hate him for spoiling all the shipping potential by being there.

• Team Rocket fans hate him for delivering the most violent attack they ever received.

I know, I know, it'll be gone by the next installment, but in that moment, he disfigured them.

11. From a distance, Tracey appears the worst companion of them all, if one measured the negative coverage each is given.

This is very unfair. Later ones deserve it much more than him. But he was introduced at time when people still spoke their minds and were open in their dislike.

Nowadays everyone remains silent and puts up with stupidity for some reason, meaning the real bastards get away with it.

12. The most we know is Tracey was created to pander to Americans.

You can't come back from that.

I can never convey how much I hated Tracey back in the day, in that irrational, full-blooded and brutal hatred only children possess, but it's all gone now, even if I've dipped into it here as the memories flood back.

Can't hate Tracey now I've known Max.

Can't hate Max now I've known Iris.

And sometimes I go insane and imagine I can't hate Iris now I've known Goh.

Every single time, I think it's the worst it'll ever be, and it always gets worse.

[snlhostharry]

try try again

harry x reader

2.2k words 

summary: harry wants to propose, but life keeps getting in the way 

a/n: first off... I suck at titles... why am I like this.... second off this is my secret santa gift for @jambrosemc ! happy holidays em! hope you like this, you are a super talented writer I just binged all your pieces and I am obsessed. and thank you to @peeterparkr for hosting 

The first time he tries is after the first concert he does for Fine Line. 

Fine Line at the Forum is a success in all the ways that matter, and Harry is so happy coming off the stage that he almost forgets about his plan to propose all together. When you barge into his dressing room after the show is over, smiling and ecstatic for him he suddenly sees the ring box on the counter and rushes to shove it in his pocket before you can see it. 

“That was insane, love,” You say wrapping him into a hug. “I think they really liked it.” 

He gives you a cheeky smile, “You think?” You roll your eyes in response, “What gave it away?” He asks, “The frantic screaming or the bra’s that were thrown onto the stage?” 

“You should’ve kept a couple,” You tease, “They could’ve been my size.” 

He laughs, “If you want one that bad I will buy it for you.” 

“I’m holding you to that,” You say, taking a seat on top of the counter. He runs a hand through his hair, knowing that this would be the perfect moment to just get down on one knee. He can see himself doing it, simply bending down and saying the words he’s wanted to say for what feels like forever. “You okay?” You ask him, seeing the look on his face and supposing that he’s thinking about something that happened during the concert. “You did a great job out there, seriously. Everyone really loved it H, the album is spectacular.” 

He shakes himself back into the moment, “I know, I know.” He says, and it comes off a little sharper than he means it too, he’s just very much in his own head about this whole thing now. What felt like it would be the perfect moment now feels wrong, like doing it now would cheapen the entire thing. He sighs, “Sorry,” He says, planting himself down on the floor dramatically, “Thank you.” 

“We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to,” You tell him, guessing that he’s just tired from a long night. “Let’s get takeout and go home, or go home and get takeout whichever order.” 

He smiles, “You ate before the show.” 

“That was like three hours ago, and it was a snack, I always planned on eating again, and you were too nervous to eat before the show.” 

He hugs his knees to his chest, “Watching you eat an entire kids meal in under five minutes actually helped with the nerves.” 

You shrug, “What can I say? I have my moments.” 

He stands and presses a kiss to your forehead as you swing your legs over the side of the counter. “You have a lot of moments, I love you.” 

“Love you too,” You wait a second before asking, “So home then?” 

He thinks about it for a minute, “Yeah.” 

“When you call in the food order make sure you put it under my name,” You tell him and he collects his things from the room, “People are beginning to get suspicious when I go into the restaurant to pick up an order for Harry.” 

He nods, and gently grabs your hand as the two of you leave. Maybe he’s not going to do it tonight, but he’s more resolved to actually pop the question than ever. He’s just so in love with you that he wants the whole thing to be perfect, and for some reason he has it all in his head that it needs to be a story that the two of you can tell in the future, something meaningful, he just has absolutely no idea what that is. 

The second planned attempt is a lot more off the cuff. 

You insist on throwing him a birthday party at the house, saying something about wanting to one up your sister who threw a very tasteful christmas party that the two of you went to. Not that your sister was invited seeing as the party was in London, but you knew that there would be enough pictures that she would see that you’re just as good as she is. Harry doesn’t understand it at all, but he decides that he doesn't even want to know how a rivalry like that can develop and leaves it alone. 

Objectively, you throw a very nice party. Of course Harry makes it a point to tell you this as often as possible without seeming overly invested in it, because he loves you and he wants you to be proud of your own work just like you want him to be proud of his. It’s hard for him to leave your side at all because he loves to see you talk to his friends and family and seem so happy to do it. You fit right in with everyone and he’s so grateful for that, and it’s as he’s standing there watching you talk to people that it hits him that this could be his moment. 

Not in front of everyone because that would be so much more pressure than he needs, but he thinks that after when everyone has finally left the house that he could catch you in the middle of cleaning or something and gently ask you to marry him. He decides that tonight, that’s the plan and he spends the rest of the night just thinking about that. It really is a great party, full of all his favorite things and people, it’s one of those nights where he feels like he loves you so much that his heart might just burst out of his chest. 

When finally every last guest has left the house, and things are a bit messy, he can’t seem to find you anywhere. He locks the door behind him, and starts walking through the house calling your name. He checks upstairs, in the kitchen, in all the bathrooms, and nothing. Until finally he walks into the living room and finds you sound asleep on the couch, snoring loudly enough that he’s surprised he didn’t hear it while he was looking. He looks at you and just smiles, suddenly completely fine with the fact that another plan has been ruined. He simply picks you up and takes you to bed, well aware he’s going to have to move onto plan C if he ever wants to get this done. 

The next time he tries, you end up surprising him. 

Plan C is a nice candlelight dinner at the house, which Harry tried to cook but ended up burning so eventually he relented and ordered food before putting it all together. Of all the plans he had come up with thus far, this one seemed the most foolproof. Everything was already planned: he knew you were going to come home from work at a certain time, he knew that there wouldn't be any distractions, and he had psyched himself up enough that he wasn’t just going to forget about the whole thing like he did the first time.

When the entire table is set up and the ring is in his pocket, he sits waiting for you to come home. He thinks about getting up to change some of the place settings just a little, but when he does he hears the clicking sound of your key in the door and sits back in his seat. After you walk into the house and set your stuff down in the entryway, Harry hears the sound of your shoes on the floor as you excitedly run into the kitchen. When you make it to where he can see you, he sees that you have a megawatt smile on your face and a large box in your hands. 

“I have a surprise,” You say, keeping a firm hold of the box. 

“I suppose it’s in that box,” He says, leaning over the chair so that he can see. 

You roll your eyes but keep smiling, “Yeah, obviously.” 

“Do you want me to guess?”

“God no,” You say, “That would take way too long. Basically I was at work today, and Mark has been producing this piece about a no kill animal shelter for a new segment about everyday heroes or whatever which is gross because puff pieces but when the woman came in to do the interview she brought in all these cats, no dogs for some reason, but anyway so we were all playing with the cats because our job is stressful and cats, and then she was like ‘you guys seem so good with these cats, they are looking for homes and-” 

He looks at you with a wide eyed expression, “You didn’t.” 

You ceremoniously walk over to the table, open the box and pull a small orange cat into your arms, “You bet your ass I did.” You gently pet the cat, which mews quietly from your arms, “She does not have a name mostly because I couldn’t think of any.” 

“We talked about pets like a week ago, briefly.” 

You give a guilty smile, “Yeah but I felt like I really needed this cat. I live here now, we live here, and I finally feel like I’m settled-” You sit down at the table and sigh, “I think I might be nesting, which is kind of gross but I don't know. I love you, and I love being here and I finally feel stable enough to get a freaking cat so that’s the explanation I have.” 

He can’t stop himself from breaking into a smile, even though he knows his plans have been thwarted again. (He thinks later, after the moment has already passed that he very well could’ve done it right then and there after you’d given a whole speech about the two of you being stable). He shakes his head after looking at you making funny faces at the cat like it’s a child, “Okay hand her over.” 

You hand her over and say, “I will not accept any names that have to go with the fact that she’s a ginger, because that’s just lame.” 

“Well seeing as those were my only ideas-”

You sigh, “We will think of something, just not now because you got dinner and I’m starving.” 

“What’s she going to eat?”

“I got food and a bowl, and a bunch more things being delivered within the next week or two.” 

“Did you go out and buy a box just for the dramatic reveal?”

“Yes, I did and it was totally worth it.” 

The cat’s name ends up being Hillary, after you discover an affinity for pet names that are usually person names. Something about the way you’ll end up talking about Hillary in polite conversation and someone will have to ask you who that is makes you want to choose it overall. Even though Harry is not sure about the sudden change at first, he soon becomes best friends with Hillary, and you often find the two of them cuddled up together on the couch. She likes to listen to him play music just as much as you do as it turns out. 

Harry is still trying to think of a way to propose. So much time has passed since he bought the ring, and the first time that he planned to pop the question that he wonders if he’ll ever find the right time to do it or if you’ll just end up asking him one day because it’s all gone too far. One afternoon when the two of you are relishing a rare shared day off, he watches you cook lunch in the kitchen and decides that now is the time to do it. No more excuses, no more surprises, just him and you and the question on the tip of his tongue for too long. 

When you put all of the food on plates, and set them out on the counter he walks over and just looks at you. It weirds you out at first so you ask, “What? Is there something on my face?” 

He gets down on one knee and you still are very confused about what he’s doing. You open your mouth to ask him, but the realization suddenly hits you and you cover your mouth with your hands. 

“y/n,” He says, “I have been waiting to ask you this for what feels like forever. And everytime that the plan fell through you somehow managed to make me want to marry you even more. I love you so much, I love everything about you, how excited you get about your work, how much you love Hillary and how supportive you are whenever I do anything. I love our life here, and I want to be with you forever. Will you marry me?” 

You don’t say anything for a second, still shocked, “Yes of course.” He stands and kisses you, slipping the ring onto your finger. “I was wondering when you would ask me.” 

“You knew?”

“I saw it that night after the forum,” You say, “I figured you got nervous.” 

“And you just let me flounder here for almost six months?” 

“Yes,” You smile, “I figured you wanted to do it on your own terms.” 

“Next time just call me out love, because I sat on this for too long.” 

[jayeray-twst]

How He Shows You Affection: Cater Diamond

Warnings: None all fluff!

He Takes Pictures of You

“Say strawberry!” Cater ordered with a toothy grin, as he snagged you around the waist and pulled you close, pressing your cheeks together with his arm extended out, holding his phone.

Several months of dating meant you were now quick enough on the draw to smile at the camera for the first snap of the shutter and were even quicker to turn your face to the side, pressing an affectionate kiss to your boyfriend’s cheek before he managed to hit the button again.

“Babe!” he whined a playful lilt to his voice that probably would’ve fooled most, but you saw right through it to the faint blush on his cheeks and the warm look in his eyes.

Cater always got a little flustered when you did little things like that to catch him off guard, which was only fair in your opinion considering how much he did it to you. Your boyfriend had enjoyed flustering you, and gone out of his way to tease, and flirt just to see if he could.

“Let me see?” you asked, making grabby hands at his phone. He immediately passed it over without complaint, pulling you into his arms and resting his chin on your shoulder so he could see the screen too as you looked at the photos he’d taken.

The first was pretty cute, with wide beaming smiles on both your faces, but the second one definitely stole the show. As per usual, even when caught off guard Cater managed to take the picture at the perfect moment, just as your lips brushed his cheek. His eyes were wide with surprise and there was the beginnings of a blush on his cheeks.

“Cute,” you cooed, pleased with the way it had come out, “You going to post that on MagiCam?”

“You know me so well,” he teased, giving you an affectionate squeeze around the middle before accepting his phone back, “We really take the best pictures together babe!”

“If you say so,” you told him lightly.

“I do say so!” he informed you, one hand still holding you to him as his clever fingers tapped away at the screen of his phone one handed, “You’re so photogenic it should be against the rules!”

You huffed in affectionate amusement. Honestly you were pretty sure the only reason you came out looking half so good in all the photos Cater took of the two of you was because he had an eye for it. Cater’s ability with a camera was exemplary, enough to put professionals to shame in your own opinion and frankly you were more than a little flattered that his favorite subject seemed to be you.

His timeline on MagiCam was full to the bursting of pictures of you, doing everything and anything under the sun, almost all of them candid or taken with only a split second’s notice and yet somehow you looked good in all of them. Not only that, but all the pictures were tagged with flattering words about how amazing you looked and how blessed he was to have you and to be your boyfriend.

Looking at it never failed to make you feel warm inside. MagiCam was a huge part of Cater’s life, and when it came to his content you were front and center. It was like his entire timeline was a testament, his own unspoken way of showing his devotion to you more eloquent than any words could ever be. After all if a picture was worth a thousand words than Cater had written entire epochs on how much he adored you.

“Alright all uploaded!” he cheered, pulling you from your fond thoughts and twirling you around in his arms with a bright laugh, “Now that, that’s done we should probably go check up on the A-Deuce combo. They’re supposed to be painting the roses, but knowing the two of them…”

You laughed in agreement and let him drag you off to go check on Heartslabyul’s two most troublesome first years, feeling immensely fond of your boyfriend.

Later when you were scrolling through your own social media you weren’t surprised to find the picture of the two of you from earlier beaming smiles at the camera, tagged with mushy cute things like #loveofmylife, #smilebabe, #aren’twecute?. However the picture of you kissing his cheek was missing.

You fully intended to ask him about it the next day, right up until you caught sight of his phone again. The picture was there both in his background and as his lock screen staring you in the face. You honestly couldn’t do anything in the face of that besides melt and give your sweet boyfriend an affectionate kiss, feeling completely and utterly adored.

He Tells You (And Only You)

Cater was the kind of guy who flirted with everyone, so at times it could be hard to take his words seriously. Compliments like beautiful, wonderful, and precious were a dime a dozen, and not limited to just you either. His whole personality seemed to be exuberant, extroverted and friendly, the kind of guy who had friends everywhere because he had no trouble making friends. He felt almost unreal with how perfect he was.

There were times, especially at the beginning of your relationship that it had made you incredibly insecure. Cater was popular, both through MagiCam and just in general, and you had no idea why he’d want to be with you of all people when it seemed like he could have anyone he wanted. In the face of your worries his words almost felt insincere, shallow and hollow, as if he didn’t really mean them because he said them to everyone he met.

However, the longer you were with him the more you realized something incredibly important. Despite the compliments that fell from his lips at the drop of a hat Cater never, ever used the word love. Sure there was an implication of love, as he said things like “I adore this’ or ‘I’m wild about that’. He said ‘I’m captivated’ or ‘I’m infatuated’ or ‘I’m enthralled’ but never ever ‘I’m in love.’

It was like the words were anathema to him, almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to say it at all. It was then you realized, slowly but surely that a lot of the face he showed to the world was a carefully crafted mask. Just as you’d suspected no one could be quite that perfect, happy and friendly all the time.

Cater got frustrated, anxious and annoyed just as anyone else did, he was just much better at hiding it. There was also a pretty vicious side to him, one that could hurl lethal insults wrapped in so many honeyed words that only those who were looking for it or really paying attention to him noticed.

Funnily enough this actually made you relax. It humanized him, and made him seem more relatable rather than the near perfect being he’d seemed before. Once you realized how much he was hiding you carefully did your best be worthy of his trust, so he could have a safe place to rest. After all keeping up a cheerful mask at all times sounded utterly exhausting to you no matter how good he was at it.

Slowly but surely, he’d begun to let his walls down, coming to you when he had a rough day, sitting in silence with you, cuddling with you, enjoying quiet little moments that you once would’ve thought he’d hate. Instead Cater seemed to relish these stolen moments with you, and as you began to truly see each other for who you were rather than the face you both showed the world you finally got to hear it.

Love. A word he admitted he hadn’t quite believed in and so had never bothered to say. A word he felt was trite and meaningless because of how often it was said over every little thing. A word you’d managed to change his mind about, one that was special and intimate and meant only for the two of you.

“I love you,” you murmured to your boyfriend as the two of you lay cuddled together on his bed, curled up and quietly watching movies together on his laptop. It was something you didn’t say nearly as often these days, as you’d slowly adapted to Cater’s way of thinking that saying it about too many things cheapened the meaning in a lot of ways.

“I love you too,” he assured you, equally quiet, his normal exuberance set aside in placed of utmost sincerity, the words so real and rare on his tongue that you had no choice but to believe them.

He’d only ever said them to you, only ever planned to say them to you, a word that was meant for you and you alone, a little piece of his heart with your name stamped clearly in ownership. It was a privilege you savored and treated with the utmost care, it was the very least you could do to prove your own affections for your boyfriend who cared so very much.

He Makes Things For You

“How do I look?” you asked your boyfriend shyly as you emerged from the dressing room.

Normally trying on clothes with Cater was a lot of fun. Even if you didn’t enjoy shopping all that much Cater made it into an experience. He had an extremely good eye for what would look good on someone and what wouldn’t. and put a lot of interesting things together. He was also perceptive enough to know what would make you uncomfortable and what wouldn’t, and work within your comfort zone.

It made him the idea shopping partner, and lots of fun, especially since he was more than happy to try on anything you asked for him as well. Honestly it was a bit unfair just how good Cater looked in pretty much everything. There were a few times you’d purposefully tried to pick silly things and yet, whether it was sheer force of personality or because he was simply that handsome he always seemed to look good. Still it was fun to try, and the two of you always had a good time together, laughing and teasing joyfully, and you almost never left empty handed.

This however was different. Cater had always had an eye for fashion, and had occasionally dabbled in making his own clothing. However, he’d never really taken it all too seriously before, despite the fact that perfectionist Riddle recognized his talent and had let him design the outfits for when they had to dress up for unbirthday parties.

Despite that, it had never occurred to you that Cater might want to try designing something for you. However he’d apparently wanted to do just that, as he’d shyly approached you with the suggestion when you’d complimented some of his work. That in itself had let you know how very important this was to him. Cater was never shy, so the fact that he’d been so hesitant to ask said a lot.

Which was of course why you’d agreed without a moment’s hesitation. Honestly even if he hadn’t been so shy about it you would’ve said yes. Cater knew your style inside and out and you trusted him more than words could say.

Your trust turned out to be well founded, and the outfit he’d made for you was utter perfection. It was done in colors that flattered your skin, eyes and hair, and had a cut that flattered your figure. You weren’t sure you’d ever felt so simultaneously beautiful and comfortable before. You absolutely loved it, you just hoped Cater loved it too.

“You look beautiful,” Cater told you, quick on the mark as ever with a compliment as he hopped up from the couch he’d been waiting on, “But then again you always do.”

You huffed at that, but didn’t protest as he circled around you, holding still so he could view you from all angles.

“Do you like it?” he asked, once he reached your front again, uncharacteristically shy again.

“Cater are you kidding I love it!” you told him fiercely, not willing to let any sort of insecurity stand.

“Pretty sure you’d have to say that even if it was ugly babe,” Cater told you a little wryly.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings,” you conceded, unwilling to lie, especially when you knew how much Cater valued honesty, but also unwilling to back down, “But in this case I’m definitely not exaggerating! Have you seen me?!”

You twirled in front of him arms spread for emphasis, “I look amazing! I feel amazing which, as you’ve told me, is just as if not more important! If you don’t believe me we can march right over to Pomefiore and get Vil. I’m sure you’d believe him!”

“No need for that,” Cater told you with a huff of amusement, his eyes warm and full of affection as he gently tugged you to him, his warm hands clasping your elbows as he peered into your eyes, “You really do like it babe?”

“I really, really do,” you answered him, with all the sincerity you could muster, “So much so I might just have to wear it every day. I’m not sure my other clothes could ever compare.”

“No need to go that far,” he insisted, though the bright look in his eyes belied the words, “I can always make you more.”

“So long as it doesn’t put you out,” you replied, “I’d love to wear your clothes Cater, anywhere anytime.”

Your boyfriend gave you one of his rare soft smiles, tugging you into his arms and just holding you, clearly grateful for what you’d said. You hugged back, quietly scheming to yourself determined to help Cater realize how talented he was. He deserved it, but in the mean time you would simply savor how much he clearly loved and trusted you, letting you be his first real model. You really couldn’t have asked for a better boyfriend than Cater Diamond and you were now even more determined to make sure he knew just how much you adored him in return.

Like this or my writing in general? Feel free to drop by my ask box to make requests! Just make sure to read the rules first! Want to support me or make a commission? Please see my Ko-fi!

[dragynkeep]

Top 5 worst male characters and Top 5 worst female characters in RWBY, and brief reasons why?

This is the type of ask that’s gonna get me shit but I have known no hubris in my life so let’s go. These won’t be in the case of being intentionally bad, I’m doing more on personal taste and the quality of their writing. 

Worst Male Characters

1. Adam Taurus

Obviously, Adam is at the top of the list for me. His storyline was butchered from a story of racism and vigilantism to a story about domestic abuse, his brand was cheap shock value with very little substance, he stopped being threatening after the Fall of Beacon and instead became a whiny little bitch, and his voice acting is just bad.

He sounds like he’s gonna call me a slur on Xbox Live.

2. Jacques Schnee

Yeah, the abusive rich man who runs slave mines is bad, but that’s not the main reason he’s on this list. I could accept a character like that if the writers made him good, but they didn’t. Jacques wasn’t intimidating at all. He wasn’t smart at all. The man who conned his father in law and wife into giving him complete control of the most powerful company in Remnant is not the same man we get in the actual show.

He’s whiny, cowardly, and a useless villain who’s entire downfall was treated like a poorly made joke, and now only serves as comic relief in the Jailbirds scenes in V8. 

3. Hazel Rainart

Same issues with Jacques and Adam, but less egregious. Hazel was actually a pretty interesting villain in his earlier volumes, and even after his blunder at the Batlle of Haven, he went back to being kinda good in V6 with his protective behaviour towards Emerald. And then V8 came around and I grew to hate how stupid his reasons for joining Salem were, and the fact that he just beat the shit outta Oscar while whining about his dead sister.

Bro, Idgaf about someone I never met while you’re maiming a 15 year old boy because you wanna be mad at the guy in his head. 

4. Qrow Branwen

It’s the same case with Hazel. I actually liked Qrow up until V6, and even then I cared enough to try and see where his alcoholism arc went since it’s a serious issue that affects not only my family, but my people. I started to dislike him after he punched Oscar and kept being horrible to the boy, all without apologising in the end, but v7 and 8 made me really hate him. 

I don’t care for his edgy attitude, and I don’t care that he got his self-help book boyfriend murdered by a crackhead. Add onto CRWBY butchering a serious topic about alcoholism with him, and he’s just sank right down writing sense.

5. Ghira Belladonna

I never liked Ghira. I think the others are higher than him on this list just on the virtue that I liked them, or the idea of them, and the writing just pulled them down so much.

But I never had that problem with Ghira, so the disappointment doesn’t sting as bad. He’s just an unnecessary character that cheapens Blake since she’s now a princess, a useless father who somehow couldn’t get his own 12 year old daughter back even thought she didn’t even bother to change her own name, and then featured live on a tournament channel that the whole world saw. He was a useless leader, his ideology was stupid and almost got him and others killed, and he was so ungrateful towards Adam for saving his stupid furry ass that I completely sided with Sienna calling him the fuck out.

At least he’s not on my screen anymore, but I know that won’t last forever and I gotta look at his dumb face again.

Worst Female Characters

1. Cinder Fall

God, she is the worst villain and character in this show. She’s so flat, her stans are annoying as fuck, her voice leaves a lot to be desired, and the fact that there’s hardly anything to her for seven years makes it even worse now that we finally got a backstory for her, and it’s one we ALL GUESSED.

Who would’ve thought she’d be a Cinderella who killed her abusive family, I am shooketh. 

2. Blake Belladonna

Blake was my favourite girl in RWBY and I’m mad at CRWBY for what they’ve done to her.

It says a lot that a girl still affected by the abuse and trauma of fighting in a terrorist organisation has more personality and backbone than one who’s supposedly broken free of her traumatic past and moved forward. Blake now is spineless, flat, boring ass cardboard cutout of what she once was, who would rather let her human friends defend her from racists than call them out herself like she did to Weiss in Volume 1. 

She’s spoiled, priviledged, annoying, and Arryn has such a flat voice on top of being a gross ass person that I get annoyed every time she speaks. She’s no longer an oppressed minority fighting for the rights of her people, she’s a princess who would rather go to a club with people she didn’t even like than a rally against the man who caused so much suffering to her people. Even her talk with Nora about not letting yourself be taken over by who you’re with romantically is hypocritical, since that’s exactly what’s happened to her since she’s been paired up with Yang.

She couldn’t even have the spotlight of fighting her own VILLAIN, Yang was the one who broke Adam’s Aura and had the big triumphant moment of throwing his sword in the river while she was too busy fucking rock climbing. 

3. Yang Xiao Long

Yang was my second favourite girl in RWBY and I’m mad at CRWBY for what they’ve done to her.

Yang wasn’t super developed in the earlier volumes. Honestly, I didn’t think much until her talk with Blake about Raven in Burning The Candle, and her dismemberment leading her towards depression and PTSD. Come Volume 4, I was alright with the portrayal of her recovery. I don’t think they gave enough time between her trying on the arm and then being good enough to leave, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t bad. 

What was bad was everything after. Yang became a hypocritical, moody bitch who would drag everyone for their bad decisions while ignoring her own. Her PTSD, something VERY personal to me, was ruined and up and vanished by V7 since she’s now killed the man who gave her the disorder so obviously it’s cured! She is always on Ozpin’s case for the birds shit, and then keeping secrets, but then goes and does the exact same thing while giving little resistance to others doing it because they’re family.

Even her argument with Ruby in V8 was tame as fuck. She blamed Ruby for things not going well while ignoring that it was her own dumbass decisions that contributed to it. Ruby didn’t tell Yang to go and spill the beans to Robyn, her stupid cat girlfriend did that, and Yang went along with it while being unrepentant later on when Ironwood was RIGHTFULLY pissed about it.

Add onto v8 then having her worry about how BLAKE thought about her, rather than RUBY, and I just hate her. This ain’t Yang, I want Yang back. 

4. Nora Valkyrie

Nora is just a flat character. Her voice is annoyingly high pitched and screechy, her jokes aren’t funny, and all the things I loved that she got in v4 was later dropped entirely. She had such good moments in V4 that actually made me appreciate her more, and then she just became another hypocrite in v7 who wanted to yell at Ironwood while refusing to look at her own flaws.

On top of her kissing Ren when he was clearly not in the mood to talk, and it made me hate her. It’s not a cute ship moment, it’s a creepy disrespect of someone’s personal space. If it was the other way around, no one would think it was cute.

5. Robyn Hill

Similar to Ghira’s reasons, I never liked Robyn, so she’s low down on the list compared to the others since at one point I loved the others (Minus Cinder but she’s just so bad that she’s #1).

Robyn isn’t a good freedom fighter. She runs in without thinking about things and then proceeds to deny any responsibility of her actions. She won’t accept that maybe her agreeing with the same serial killer that nearly killed her and Fiona, on top of succeeding in murdering some of her supporters and Forest, and starting a fight with Clover in an enclosed space wasn’t a good idea. 

Add onto the fact that she’s really just incompetent. She steals supplies from Ironwood to fix the wall and help Mantle, but after time we see that nothing has been done. 

Christina Vee is wasted on her honestly.

[whateverafterhigh]

Worldbuilding Succession Systems: Goodfallow

Most of what we see or hear when it comes to the succession systems in the universe that Ever After High is set in relates to fairytales and the inheritance of specific character roles. Many of the fairytale royalty are born into their royal bloodlines or otherwise marry in. But there are some kingdoms where things aren’t as easy as that. One such kingdom is the Good King’s Kingdom – which I named Goodfallow in another post.

The Good King is a fairytale character, but his role in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is small. In fact, depending on the adaption of the story you read he might have already died by the time the story has officially begun. He’s not quite dead yet in the series, seeing as he’s still raising Raven Queen, but it is never acknowledged that Raven is in line for the throne. Not even as a “Hey, maybe Raven has her dad’s destiny…” kind of way, which you would expect given Raven is constantly fighting for any destiny other than her mother’s. Going that route might seem like too easy a fix to acknowledge in the series, especially early on, no matter how powerful a red herring that would be for the readers. It could have even been used to make Grimm start to worry on whether or not he actually guessed right when it comes to writing the fake book. Grimm doubting himself would have been great, even more so if it’s a big thing to have forgotten that the Good King needs an heir too.

The potential for drama aside, there must have been something else that made everyone think they were right so conclusively (and I’m not speaking of the gendered characters, there are too many female characters who have their father’s destinies for that to be the reason).

Then I had an idea.

The Goodfallow Crown

I wanted to create a succession system for Goodfallow that would be able to stand up to the Storybook of Legends on something akin to even ground. Obviously, I didn’t want it to have such a grand scale. But I knew I wanted something magical, and I knew I wanted it to be possible that the Storybook of Legends (the original) could guess wrong. (I mean what even is the point of having an antagonist as powerful and insufferable as Headmaster Grimm if he wasn’t able to grasp at some straws to save face and avoid even the harshest of punishments?). Still I wanted Grimm to be arrogant enough that he wouldn’t have worried about Raven’s position as the Evil Queen until she was throwing the book in his face on Legacy Day.

This meant I needed something with so many possibilities that something like the Storybook of Legends would have a hard time even coming up with the most likely outcome for the Next Good King. Something that could be affected up until the moment that the Good King has been crowned. And something that had the magical power to break the magical contract to the Storybook of Legends that signing it would create without extensive repercussions – something that would cause a page to fall out on its own if need be.

Also it needed to be something that played into what a Good King should be, it is what is choosing the reigning monarch after all.

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Evil Queen is defined by her attitude and treatment of the kingdom’s people, so it only makes sense that the Good King be defined in the same way. So I played with the idea of the Good King being an elected position that passed down the bloodline out of convenience and all the things that real life kings and queens have to do to make sure that the people don’t start up a revolution. Something like the Sword in the Stone from King Arthur’s legends could do that, the same could be said for Thor’s Hammer (though I wasn’t actually thinking of Mjolnir when spider-mapping ideas).

I couldn’t see it being an actual sword, as cool as it would be for the Good King to actually have the kingdom’s blessing of sorts to raise his sword at those who wronged him. And after reading the fairytale Prince Darling, where there is a ring that pricks the young Prince on the finger every time he does something wrong in hopes that it will make him into a good person, I thought of using a crown.

The Goodfallow Crown, named such because it is the physical manifestation of the collective will of all the citizens of Goodfallow ticks a lot of the boxes for what I wanted.

It’s magic, powerful enough to break the bindings created by the Storybook of Legends because I’m the author and I say so. A lot of citizens in Goodfallow mean a lot of different possibilities for whether or not they think a candidate is the best for the Good King. It can still be meddled with before the inheritance ceremony, popularity and propaganda are going to be important – the same goes for whether or not a candidate knows what they’re doing. In turn this could be what makes Grimm so arrogant in his assertions that Raven will have her mother’s destiny.

The students at Ever After High are shown to be scared of Raven to the point they scream and run away from her. At the start of the books she assumes that this is just a side effect from her destiny as her mother had mentioned that something of the sort would happen when she reached a certain age. But it could be argued that this has more to do with how bullying of Raven (or any supposedly-evil-aligned character) was encouraged by Grimm or other members of the faculty, high tensions from how close Legacy Day is for her etc. Because Raven does get more popular as the books go on, and because the characters act a similar way in the beginning of the show’s canon it could be argued that she get’s popular enough to win Thronecoming.

But it’s not just Raven’s lack of popularity. Grimm makes all the final class decisions when it comes to what subject’s students can take, so he can ensure that Raven never takes classes that would prepare her for being the Good King (Kingdom Management, Throne Economics, etc…) and then there’s the low possibility that the people of Goodfallow would accept someone who willingly signs up to potentially marry the king of a neighbouring country, abuse their power, and even get arrested or die before having kids as their Ruler. This is one case where the Storybook of Legends doesn’t need to be real for the damage to be done. And Grimm has no reason to not be arrogant about his guesses until Legacy Day where Raven declares she wants to write her own destiny on the in-verse equivalent of international television he’s not going to worry too much.

The tangent into Grimm’s motives and assumptions show that having Goodfallow’s succession system be like this will only add another layer to some of the things going on in the series, and this can even be applied to other characters too. Raven would have grown up in a kingdom where your actions mean more then what you say, so even agreeing to sign the Storybook of Legends and live her own life after would have not been in the cards for her (not to mention it would cheapen Apple’s own story if she asked that of Raven), and Queen White would have also grown up in Goodfallow given the Good King is her father as well, and that could add a really interesting layer to her own character and her obsession with popularity. Especially in the context of the Class of Classics comic which shows that Snow was once a studious student like Apple was but has now seemingly forgone that in favour of focusing on popularity (which is the same in the books as well as Dragon Games). It certainly speaks of there being more to her character then what we’ve gotten.

Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how the Good Fallow Crown works.

It seems a bit much to have someone attempt to wear the crown for the first time on their coronation, and I’m also understanding of the fact that it’s technically headwear and therefore can’t get heavier if the kingdom seems to disagree with an idea or something else – also Goodfallow isn’t a hivemind? So there would need to be some kind of inheritance test. Perhaps for officially declaring a Crown Prince or Princess.

Historically, Crown Princes or Princesses seem to given the title when they are ready for it. With the announcement happening sometime between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, unless their parents were dead, and they were ruling through a Regent. Raven is fifteen when Legacy Day takes place so sixteen seems like a more reasonable time for the ceremony to happen. Though obviously some of the kingdoms would name their children the Crown Prince or Princess earlier (I’m thinking Briar and Hopper might have been given their titles when their Magic Touch developed, given its significance to their stories).

So the sixteen year old heir would try the crown on. It would be impractical for the circle of people who can hold or lift the crown to be small a la Thor’s Hammer, especially when it’s the literal Will of the People. So, magical girl transformation?

Very basic, plain clothes are to be worn with no jewellery – because you might lose it otherwise. If the people agree with the Prince or Princess being a good candidate for the throne then they’ll get decked out in finery when the magic is a match. If not then there’s no change. (Not that that prevents rumours from spreading to the contrary).

“Rumour has it the Evil Queen tried to wear the crown once and it set her on fire.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that’s why her hair is like that now.”

Of course, the changes don’t stop at the Inheritance Ceremony. Just because the Goodfallow Crown doesn’t get infinitely heavier when the Good King does something the people don’t agree with that doesn’t mean that nothing happens. Raven’s dad is described as being bald in the books, and I like to think that the reason for that is the people of Goodfallow not agreeing with him marrying the Evil Queen, while still understanding why he did it. But there would likely be other affects as well. Such as increased stress, anxiety, paranoia, etc. Maybe a lack of motivation in his day to day life? I don’t know, but the Goodfallow Crown does take the phrase “Heavy is the head that wears the crown” to a whole new meaning.

I love the whole thought of this, as evidenced by the fact it takes up almost three whole pages in a Word Document. Definitely one of my favourite pieces of worldbuilding I’ve done for any fandom ever.

[letterboxd]

Ghibli Goes Digital.

We celebrate the explosion in Studio Ghibli activity on Letterboxd with Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham from the Ghibliotheque podcast.

LISTEN NOW: David Jenkins (Little White Lies), Tasha Robinson (Polygon) and Adam Kempenaar (Filmspotting) nominate their most magical Studio Ghibli moments in this new episode of The Letterboxd Show.

For all the ways that the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the film industry, one coincidence that’s worked out extremely well for Studio Ghibli fans old and new is the roll-out of 21 of the famed studio’s films on streaming services.

It started in February for Netflix subscribers outside Japan and North America. Then in late May, HBO Max launched in the US with the Ghibli films as part of its offering. Finally, Canada got its turn with twenty titles available on Netflix right now, and The Wind Rises coming on August 1. For film lovers sheltering in place, the timing is as soothing as a nap on a Totoro’s belly; as wondrous as a Takahata sunset.

株式会社スタジオジブリ (Studio Ghibli) was founded in 1985 by directors Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, and producer Toshio Suzuki, upon the success of Miyazaki-san’s 1984 feature, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Huge acclaim, an Academy Award, and growing fandom followed, but the studio has long shied away from making its catalog available for digital consumption, preferring the films to occupy a larger canvas.

And then, all of a sudden, Suzuki-san announced the digital streaming plan—starting with the whole catalog being made available to own (via download) last December. “We’ve listened to our fans,” Suzuki-san said at the time. “In this day and age, there are various great ways a film can reach audiences.” This turn of events has been a very big deal—both for long-time fans and Ghibli newbies—and we’ve run the numbers to prove it:

The above chart shows the daily number of entries logged on Letterboxd for each of the Ghibli films, and clearly depicts the February, March, April and late May spikes as groups of titles were released to the two aforementioned streaming platforms (and mini spikes coinciding with weekend watches).

The Ghibli films included in the streaming deals stretch over four decades of the studio’s output, and include big-hitters like the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and the whole-family favorite My Neighbor Totoro. All of those films appear in the Official Letterboxd Top 250; Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service also made it onto a list of Letterboxd members’ top twenty favorite comfort films in a recent survey.

To get a sense of what this all means, we went to Letterboxd members Jake Cunningham and Michael Leader, hosts of Ghibliotheque, a podcast dedicated to the studio’s filmography, about the Netflix deal (“none of us could quite believe it when it happened”) and the clues Ghibli films offer us for how to have adventures inside our own homes.

Earlier in the pandemic, when we were all figuring out how to stay home, you hosted a joyous My Neighbor Totoro watch-along. What is it about the fuzzy, mythical creatures that feels so helpful right now? Michael Leader: In some ways, the world’s mum is in hospital right now. We’re all working from home. There’s the bit halfway through the film where the dad is trying to get on with his work in the study, and [his daughter] Mei is coming up and putting little flowers on his desk. That’s what everyone is doing right now, is trying to get on with their work whilst their kids are milling about, full of imagination and adventures.

With Totoro, I go back to a guest we had on the show, Helen McCarthy, who wrote the book about Miyazaki. And she described Totoro as something like “kindness and acceptance made furry”, and that’s really what it is. The idea of this creature being there for you, coming out of the surroundings that you live in, allowing you to not only come into a new space that you’re maybe scared of going into, but also dealing with tricky situations that you’re in.

You’re both deeply embedded in the London film scene, but the dynamic of your Ghibliotheque podcast is that Michael is the long-time Ghibliophile, while Jake is the novice. How did that come about? Jake Cunningham: Michael and I actually work together, and it came up that I hadn’t seen any of the films and then it happened to come up that Michael was one of the UK experts of these films and was having a go at me for never having watched any. This was the perfect opportunity to work on something with each other, and my ignorance has finally paid off, because all I need to do is watch the film and then I get this amazing history lesson.

Jake Cunningham with his ‘Only Yesterday’ poster, and with Michael Leader at the Ghibli Museum.

ML: It was really fun for me, because by that point—this is nearly two years ago now—I’d been writing about Ghibli on and off for almost a decade. There aren’t really many outlets to write about anime, Ghibli and animation in particular, in the monthly film magazines. Jake is the novice we can take through the library and invite people to join us on that journey. We have listeners who are so engaged, sending us comments every week. They had no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

That’s something that was personally for me quite important about the show. We want to show that this is one of the few studios that has ten five-star films. They had this amazing streak from the late 80s through the 2000s, just innovating on every film at the highest level, with multiple voices working in their own different worlds. We’ve really managed to show this whole world and invite people into it.

What did you make of the Netlix flex, and the subsequent explosion in Letterboxd activity around Ghibli films? JC: The graph is amazing! I was expecting a boost but not so big. They must be very happy with how well the deal has done for them. I think it’s a good place for Ghibli for sure. I want so many other people to be in the position that I was in two years ago. It is a whole world of pleasure to delve into for audiences.

I did think it was so funny that they spent fifteen years going “We’re never going to be streaming, this is never going to happen, stop asking us”, and then out of nowhere the announcement that they’re going to be online in two weeks! I think none of us could quite believe it when it happened, but what it’s meant is people are going back to the start of the podcast and listening along, because they can finally watch the films that they hadn’t seen before.

And it’s so exciting that people might watch Totoro, or Spirited Away, or Howl’s Moving Castle, these bigger tentpole releases, and that’s going to change their algorithm and they’re going to get presented with Isao Takahata’s My Neighbors the Yamadas or Tomomi Mochizuki’s Ocean Waves. The under-appreciated Ghiblis are suddenly going to get dragged out again.

ML: I’m really excited about it. It’s an interesting thing: it shines a light on what I think is more of a fandom problem, where something becomes rarified or scarce or special to a certain subculture, and that becomes part of its appeal. Sort of ‘Oh, Miyazaki doesn’t believe in streaming, he will never sell out’, and going on about how Netflix somehow cheapens it—but really they are completely accessible films that should be available in a mass market.

Also, and this is something we wanted to tease out in the podcast, they are business savvy. They’re not crazy geniuses who live in wooden shacks in the middle of nowhere. They’re a real company that needs to keep the lights on. There are so many ways to speculate on what this deal means. I think on the one hand they were happy because in the Japanese market they sell enough merchandise, they have a real home entertainment churn going, that they never really needed to do an international release.

There’s a really good book just out by Steve Alpert, who was their first international division lead. He was hired in the 90s to sort out their penetration into western Europe and America. Before the 90s, there were a couple of home entertainment releases and small theatrical runs, but they suddenly saw the business benefits in going global. In some ways I’m very happy for it because it’s a business deal that makes these films more available. They’ll always be special because they’re great films.

JC: The films streaming is extremely exciting, but something that’s gone under the radar a bit is that all of the music is now on Spotify. There are some of Ghibli’s shorts that you can only watch in the museum in Japan, but the scores for those films are now on Spotify, and everything is there. After having the melodies of some of these stuck in my head for months and months, you can finally actually go and deal with the earworm once and for all.

Is it possible for you to sum up for us the thematic essence of Ghibli films, and make a case for why Letterboxd members should introduce their children to the catalog? For me, in the context of the pandemic, it’s the corn on the window-sill in My Neighbor Totoro: the idea of presence despite distance; connection through gesture; the significance of nature. JC: It’s a lot to do with leaving things in an ambiguous space. Having kids watch things where there’s not a binary answer to everything. The studio moved away from the earlier films where a villain is a villain. In Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, it’s less clear what a ‘bad person’ is and what a ‘good person’ is. I think it’s important that kids are gonna see that. Even with something like Kiki’s Delivery Service, on the surface it’s one of their simpler films. Kiki goes on an amazing journey and she meets amazing people, and at the end, she learns about who she is and what she can do. I think in a Western kids’ film that would be the end note. But there’s that note at the end of the film where she says that she still feels sad, and she still feels homesick, but that’s okay and that’s part of being alive.

ML: I think Miyazaki’s real magic touch across his films is that he’s able to really look at the world through children’s eyes. I’m not the first person to say that. It tends to be one of the first things that people say about him. The magical things about My Neighbor Totoro are when they’re just walking through the house, cleaning the house, cooking together. And for Kiki, when she gets her own [apartment], sweeps up and cooks herself pancakes. It is just as much about the magic of the everyday, about the world that you can see around you, within the four walls of the home.

JC: Now that you say that, I’m thinking about Ponyo, a key scene where the storm is hitting, and Sosuke and Ponyo and Sosuke’s mum just hunker down in their house and they have a generator going and they make instant ramen noodles, and the mum slips in little bits of ham. They also have some honey tea. Even though he’s a fantasy filmmaker, and he makes grand statements about geopolitical situations, these are the sequences now which will play most poignantly to people.

ML: Ghibli offers escapism, right now.

We got a glimpse of the next Ghibli film, Gorō Miyazaki’s fully-CG Aya and the Witch (see picture below), via the online version of the recent Annecy International Animated Film Festival. What are your thoughts? JC: Regarding the new images, I’m not as petrified as some fans have been. On the podcast I’ve mounted my defence for Gorō’s Tales From Earthsea, which is very much the black sheep of the family, and I don’t think I’d be doing him justice after that if I didn’t stand in his corner on this one as well. Until we see the style in motion, I think it’s unfair to judge, but it certainly is… different.

Jake, are you now a true Ghibliophile, or are you still just following along with what Michael’s got you into? JC: I would say I am now. I could definitely bore people in conversations with production stories! A lot of people will, I’m sure, have seen a lot of the films, but doing the podcast is the only thing that would have made me watch all of them.

Michael, how proud are you of this achievement? ML: Turning Jake into a new Ghibiliofile is really something. When we went to Japan in November last year—we managed to find change down the back of the sofa, and take the team out and visit the museum, visit Studio Ponoc, who are the spin-off studio founded by veterans from Ghibli—the thing that made me most proud was seeing how excited the rest of the team were. I think just out of shot of Jake’s webcam is a poster of Only Yesterday that he bought in Japan. It’s the only thing he wanted to find, was an original 1991 poster of that. There’s a picture of Jake just absolutely beaming with this poster.

Related content

Our Letterboxd Show Ghibli Magic Moments episode, with Tasha Robinson, David Jenkins and Adam Kempenaar.

Little White Lies editor David Jenkins’ Letterboxd review of My Neighbor Totoro.

The Official Letterboxd Top 250

Letterboxd members’ favorite comfort films.

[jakattax]

I was a lucky kid growing up, my family were largely bohemian and didn’t really pressure me at all to fall into a particular crowd or scene. For the most part I was left to decide my own hobbies and interests, which I feel as a working class northerner is an oddity. I was largely uninterested with anything considered the norm, I found the perception of normality to be terribly boring. I lived in my own mind, fuelled by my still present wild and colourful imagination, and nothing fuelled my imagination more than the idea of magic. Films like the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Excalibur’ were Bible to me, any media with witches, wizards and sorcerers utterly enamoured thing. I believe this fundamental obsession revolves around the concept of power, that these mystical men and women could achieve the impossible and bend reality by possessing a power that no hero-knight or any other could possess. The wizard or witch was a solitary creature, usually ostracised or eccentric, both qualities I possessed as a child. And so it was a common pastime for me to find the best stick that would act as my staff and to jump around the woods pretending to be Gandalf. I knew that magic could only ever exist in my own imagination and I stuck to this falsehood for many years. After a trip to the goth haven of Whitby with my grandparents, I realised that magic was very much real and was not limited to book, screen or my own closed mind. I bought a hazel wand (inscribed with ‘Blessed Be’ in futhark) from a Wicca supply shop and my first book of magic. This book of shadows was my prized object, with only the media portrayal of magic at my disposal I knew that every enchanter possessed their own book of spells, while mine wasn’t bound in human skin and written in odd runes, it was magic, real magic. Another very vivid memory was that a bought a handsome besom from the same shop, a gorgeous birch broomstick wrapped in colour silk, and so on our trip to the north York moors I placed the broom between my legs and jumped up and down over the heather. Alas I did not fly. Only in my mind.

Wicca was truly my gateway into my magical studies, even though I was very young I had absolute conviction that magic was very much real and tangible, I even recall having a particular fondness for a rain spell which seemed to work without fail. Naturally my new obsession with real magic just pushed me further from the grain of normality, thank God. Yet the older I got I started to become disenchanted. Like all teenagers I went through a period of abandoning childhood fantasies to focus on my image or popularity. Who I socialised with and how I looked over-rided any past passions. It is something I feel remarkably ashamed over, yet adolescence is a period in life in which one wears many masks for the sake of an easy time, even though I was bullied none the less for my bookish and overall weak disposition. But no-one could know I use to dress up in a pointy hat and make it rain. I killed that part of my childhood. This abandonment of magic continued until I was 16.

I was now in college and was the worst sycophant to a particular friend who I followed blindly. He was the coolest kid in college, a Casanova, I was discovering my own sexuality and realised too that I was deeply in love with him. Again I was sacrificing my core personality, but not for long. I was a theatre kid, and bloody good at it too, our first year assessment was based on the performance of a classical monologue. Know I don’t know exactly how I decided on it, or how I even knew of it, but I settled on Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’ to perform. I was a committed and serious young actor, finally in s subject that I cared for and excelled in so I conducted research into how i wanted to stage the piece. In my mind I wanted the stage littered in books and scraps of paper all bearing occult symbols, yet I didn’t know any. I didn’t want to cheapen the performance by having blank scraps of paper, they needed to be Faustus’ magical and alchemical work, so I used the library computer to find some.

And the gates opened.

Like a child again I was reading about magic, real magic again but this time I found a new mindset. In my research looking up Occult symbols to litter my set with, I came across a name, a name steeped in controversy to this day, the wickedest man in the world; Aleister Crowley. Reading up on Crowley and MacGregor Mathers brought me to a new and dangerous form of magic, the magic of the ceremonial magician. While indeed Wiccans and witches take their art and practise very seriously, there was something about the strict Methodology and science like nature of ceremonial magic that appealed to me more. Changing the weather was great and all but demon conjuration? Intricate magic circles and glyphs? Spirit evocation? Yes please, this was the magic that I wanted. And so I purchased my first Grimoire of ceremonial magic, the Ars Goetia.

This was a book I carried with pride, it was a conversation starter, I was the kid who studied demons. My image had changed after my then best friend moved to university, gone was the preppy and popular false Jack, now was the time for a brooding, dark clothed Jack who read Shelley, Byron and books of demon summoning in his spare time. To be frank it’s not a phase I’ve quite broken yet either.

As enamoured as I was by the Ars Goetia, I was no fool, I knew that in terms of practicality it was something I could not attempt, yet. The magic was complex, the tools seemed impossible to acquire and so I sat on my grand schemes of being a conjured per excellence, yet the flames in my mind were raging.

Three years later I moved to Nottingham for my university education, wonderful city. for the first time in my life I was with strangers who had no preconceived notions about me. I could wear a new mask. Yet I chose the hard path, I was at university so one should act as a university don should, I bought tweed suits from charity shops, wore a bow tie and started to smoke a pipe. I found rebellion by not being normal, fuck normality, the new Jack would never bow down to popularity again. I call my university years some of the darkest of my life, not only because of the daily cocktails of alcohol, drugs and severe bouts of depression but because these were the years in which I honed my craft as a goete.

I had the good fortune of renting flats with basements and because my flatmates were dull football types brainwashed by heteronormative coding, they were naturally scared of it and didn’t go down there. And as horribly cliched and Hollywood as it is, I began conjuring demons in the basement. Even though I had been studying the Goetia for a few years now, I still lacked pretty much everything needed, other than my own conviction. I used chalk for my circle and triangle of art, candles for mood lighting and some sticks of incense and began conversing to the shadows. The crazy thing is, the shadows spoke back. I knew that I had the crossed a threshold in which there was no return, while I had achieved magic with fairly simple effects, now I had truly pierced the veil and was openly seeing, speaking and listening to demons. The glass of reality had cracked, I was in a new world in which magic was the only truth. I had demon spirits perform many many tasks for me, some failed, some excelled. I tried to hone in my skills, realise mistakes and amend them. Then I started branching out, with my knowledge increasing I came into contact with more books, more new information and magic to discover; the Verum, the Cyprian texts, Agrippa, Abra-Melin etc. Etc.

Yet this was closeted. While I was unashamedly eccentric, I had too much against me as a gay man and an oddity. I suffered extreme bullying again and thanks to my depression made a suicide attempt, if anyone knew I was in the basement ordering demons to attack those who wronged me, it would be fatal to me. Or so I thought. The layman perceives magic as nonsense, Harry Potter glitter Magic that simply isn’t real and if you believe in it you either have too many cats or are just delusional. They do not understand that magic and only magic is the highest form of science there is, the microscope or telescope can see hidden things that the eye cannot yet so can a scrying ball. For all the wonders that science can perform and demonstrate, it cannot lift the eyelids on the falsehoods of reality, only through magic can we truly see between the lines and realise that the mundane world is shrouded in mysteries that only magic can answer. And so due to this fear of being stigmatised, I kept my magic a secret.

For the best part of a decade I studied and practised Ceremonial magic in private. Whenever my parents or housemates we’re out I’d grab my tools and begin my work. My library was growing, my collection of magical tools too, I was growing and flowering into a proficient 21st century Magus. Then two years ago I decided fuck it. I was tired of keeping a fundamental part of my spiritual beliefs and occult practises silent and so I outed myself as a ceremonial magician. Not to much fanfare however, everyone seemed largely indifferent, probably just another one of jack’s eccentricities. But no, magic is no hobby, no idle pastime or frivolity to me, magic is in my Veins and every breath, it is my true calling in life to study, explore and understand my place in this world through the Occult sciences. I am a magician who can charm you or tear you to pieces just as easily, I live in a demimonde of illusion, I achieve the impossible.

When you sit before the scrying glass and see a spirit looking into your eyes, you must reject all notions of a normal reality and accept wholeheartedly that magic is real.

[dalekofchaos]

My problems with Rey

I want to like Rey and I adore Daisy Ridley but her character was poorly written. There is very little development at all. It feels like everyone involved wanted Rey to be this strong female character without any build up or achieving an arc or struggles as a character, so style over substance. Instead of writing a great arc for Rey in TFA, JJ decided oh so brilliantly the best way to write Rey was to make her a mystery(mYsTeRy bOx) and her lack of development is even worse in TLJ. The other issue is Daisy doesn’t think Rey should have any flaws and that’s the problem. So here are my issues with Rey

Note. I’m not going to make the claim that she’s a ‘Mary Sue’ What I will claim though, is she is extremely overpowered, in ways that Luke and Anakin were not. They had special abilities sure, which was explained by them being ‘strong with the force. But they also had fatal flaws, they had obstacles to overcome -and what kept you interested in what was going to happen to them. Rey, besides being overpowered and hyper-competent, is pretty much well liked by everyone she meets (Luke and Anakin were not). She also seems to have no trials, tribulations, obstacles, or character weaknesses that force her to grow (Luke and Anakin both did).

Here are my issues with how they chose to write Rey’s character throughout the Sequel Trilogy

Rey selflessly chooses not to give away BB-8. Rey grew up on Jakku, dog eat dog world. She had no reason to be selfless on that planet. I do love Rey, but it really makes no sense that a person who was raised on a ruthless and violent planet of thieves and scavengers, abandoned and lived the life of a scavenger who barely makes enough to survive. It doesn’t work that she would be selfless and was willing to pass up all that food for a droid she just met. So I think it would help if Rey starts off as a mix of Han Solo and Jyn Erso. Someone who only cares about her own survival and is consumed by her own trauma but learns to overcome her trauma, start caring for other people and something bigger than herself. This would be shown by having Rey sell BB-8 and later after meeting Finn, she learns of the importance of the droid and she feels guilt and fights to get BB-8 back and learn to fight for something bigger than herself. That I think would’ve improved her arc in TFA

Rey perfectly flies The Falcon despite not flying a ship. In the movie she says she’s never flown before and doesn’t know how she did it. In The novel she says she flew ships at night and simulation. That’s all well and good, but if you choose to explain things in the novel, but not in the movie. Then you deliberately chose not to explain how a scavenger who never leaves the planet knows how to fly the Millennium Falcon.

She pulls off maneuvers and mechanical tricks that not even Han Solo could think of and a scene later he is dumbfounded and astonished by Rey

Being mentally probed by Kylo Ren is not a convincing nor acceptable excuse for her to somehow “get the idea to try using the same technique”. It doesn't work that way. it has never worked that way. Kylo Ren had to train all his life with Luke and adulthood with Snoke. All of a sudden, just because Rey turned the probe back on Kylo, she gained mastery over the force? Like Han Solo said "That's not how the force works" You can’t mind trick someone without knowledge of how to do it. You do not just magically figure it out on conjecture and a hunch…. and I don’t care if she failed the first time she attempted it. That doesn’t make up for it. Further, Rey should not know how to use a lightsaber, let alone be able to use it against someone who seems to actually have training with such a weapon.  It makes little sense for a lightsaber to be usable in any meaningful way by someone without formal training in its use. The thing is supposed to have a powerful gyroscopic force that makes it unwieldy when it is activated, requiring use of the Force to control it. Furthermore, all the weight is in the hilt, which also makes it unwieldy by that fact alone. An untrained user has a greater chance of hurting themselves than another person. they sure as hell can’t deflect blaster shots with it without use of the Force.

Effortlessly beats Kylo. Rey has no prior training. Never held a lightsaber. Rey fighting off thieves with her quarterstaff is not the same thing, it is understandable that Kylo was struggling because of his injuries, but Rey didn’t struggle against Kylo. Even Luke struggled with Vader and Anakin struggled with Dooku. What should have happened is as it looks like Kylo is about to win, Chewie from the Falcon fires his bowcaster to keep Ren at bay and both Rey and Finn make it to the Falcon. This way we can keep Kylo Ren strong and show Rey struggling to overcome Kylo. It will also show This is how powerful he is when injured, so imagine him at his peak. Instead we get a pointless fight instead of Rey and Finn just escaping Starkiller base while Ren collapses due to injuries and Rey beating Kylo served no purpose(the end goal to destroy Starkiller Base was already accomplished) and helped derail their villain of the trilogy.

The lack of a Hero's Journey. Imagine the traditional Hero's journey but take away any growth or struggle. Just teleport to the end. That's Rey

Rey hugs Leia. Leia hugging Rey out of nowhere instead of Chewie just doesn’t work. Why is she hugging and grieving with someone she just met when Chewie is right there?

Everything TFA was building her up was instantly ignored. How Maz got the Skywalker lightsaber? Never mentioned again. How Rey was drawn to the Skywalker lightsaber and what the force vision was meant to mean? Never addressed. Rey says that she’s classified information, “none of your business” Then her parents are revealed as junk traitors who sold her for drinking money and died in Jakku. If her parents were just junkers, how did they afford that space ship if they spent the money on booze? All that build up for nothing. The force can come from anyone, we all feel it but you build Rey up only to do nothing with her.

Rey has no character arc in TLJ. Rey doesn’t learn anything and I don’t feel like she has a character arc or journey. She starts her journey in TFA and I was excited to learn where her character would go. And TLJ does nothing with Rey. I do love Rey, but I don’t feel like it truly tests Rey and forces her to grow as a character. Rey is intriguing and we care for her, but her journey feels non existent. Luke and Anakin had struggles and journeys. I just don’t feel it from Rey. While learning the truth is a struggle for Rey, she already knows. She knew her parents, it really is not that big of a reveal. I am really disappointed with how TLJ handles Rey. Rey doesn’t have any struggles. Rey is all powerful and she is the same character she is from TFA.

Rey has a connection and starts to trust Kylo Ren…when only ONE DAY passes since Kylo has tortured her, killed Han Solo, and injured Finn. Rey then seeks comfort in the same man who has done nothing but hurt her instead of Luke. There’s a difference between being “forgiving” and there’s being blindly gullible. She went from wanting to kill him to believing he’s “our last hope”….for reasons. If there were a time skip, I could understand this change of heart, but one day passes and suddenly there is a change of heart?

Rey’s stupidity in TLJ. Rey’s plan. Rey has some vision of Kylo Ren deciding to help her out and locks herself in a box to fly straight to him, with no escape plan or regard for her own safety. As bad as JJ chose to develop Rey, I will admit that Rey is adaptable. Rey makes plans and strategizes. She has been raised as a scavenger, working hard for every day of survival and fighting for every item in her possession. While Luke and Anakin throw caution to the wind in order to succeed, Rey keeps a level head and fights her way through things. TLJ acts like that version of Rey doesn’t exist. 

Rey and Kylo Ren displays “raw power” in the force and doesn’t use that raw power to end the Throne Room fight against The Praetorian Guards sooner than it should have ended, instead resulting in the absolute worst fight in Star Wars history. There is no tension in the scene and it is pointless. Kylo Ren and Rey are fighting a faceless a group of guards that we know absolutely nothing about and have literally no purpose in the entire story except for this one fight. We know neither of the characters are going to die because these are just faceless red shirts and there is still like 30 to 40 minutes left of the movie. There are times where you can tell that some of the guards are just waiting their turn to fight and in one shot the editor literally digitally removed a knife from one of the guard’s hands because it would make no sense why he didn’t just stab Rey. There are multiple times where Rey, Kylo and the guards are just doing motions and actions because they look cool but serve no purpose but to look cool. Kylo stabbing the ground? Pointless. Rey twirling her rave stick around while someone falls behind her, pointless. Another annoying thing is that both of the characters are acting like they don’t have monumentally strong force powers. Hell, both of them get into a force tug of war right after the fight. Kylo can freeze people in place and stop blaster fire in mid air. Not even  once do we see them displaying their powers is what cheapens the fight. Kylo Ren is powerful enough to freeze a blaster and a person in place and Rey herself unlocked Kylo’s powers, so the two of them could have easily ended the fight sooner than it was dragged out. Kylo is powerful in the force but he SERIOUSLY could not stop a Praetorian Guard choke holding him and Rey struggled with a guard? Rey and Kylo were stronger in TFA and are just made weaker in the duel with the Praetorian Guards. Kylo could have frozen half of the guards and Rey could have mind tricked the other half into killing the frozen guards and Kylo and Rey could have finished them. They are masters of light and darkness, but they are made weaker.

Rey openly trusts a murderer and a proven liar because “they touched hands” and is surprised that said lying murderer wants to kill her friends and the very cause she believed in and only used her to kill Snoke. Rey then openly believes that said lying murderer about her parents being nobodies who died on Jakku when Rey is seen visibly watching her parents fly away. Rey KNOWS who her parents are, she does not need to hear it from Kylo Ren. Here’s the thing. Rey never wanted her parents to be anyone special. Rey never thought or wanted her parents to be important in TFA, she was literally going to pass up adventure and being important to stay on Jakku because she wanted a family. She didn't want to be important, the audience wanted her to be. Rian Johnson couldn't tell the fucking difference.. Rey knew who her parents were, she did not need to hear it from Kylo Ren. She did not want or need her parents to be anyone special, she just wanted them home. Rey sure is willing to believe someone who has done nothing but lie and hurt her over and over again.

My big issue with how TLJ handles Rey, is she does not learn anything. She was awakened by Kylo’s mind melding and has his powers transferred to her, she doesn’t even earn her powers on her own, it’s all from Kylo. She has the powers of the man who's been trying to kill her and her friends, she doesn't learn anything on her own nor is it her own awakening. Your big feminist icon has to learn everything from a man that’s been harming her from day one. How empowering....please kill me. She doesn’t learn anything from Luke and she feels like the same character in The Force Awakens. We see Luke showing Rey to feel the force and the Jedi’s hubris. The third lesson was deleted, but we did not really get to see Luke train her as a Jedi. Rey doesn’t learn anything. In the end we see Rey has the sacred Jedi texts, but Yoda pointed out that those texts were holding back the Jedi and doesn’t teaches her what she doesn’t already know. SO in the end, Rey doesn’t learn anything and that’s the problem.

The lifting rocks scene. Rey lifting the big rocks like they’re pebbles without even a hint of struggling physically drives me insane in the worst way because even if she’s powerful, so was Yoda and Yoda had a problem lifting the debris to save Anakin and Obi-Wan. We see trained Jedi struggle to use the force in The Clone Wars and that was the Jedi AT THEIR PEAK. We see Ahsoka, Kanan and Ezra struggling to use the force successfully in Rebels. Luke Skywalker struggled to stack those couple of small rocks on Dagobah and couldn’t lift his X-wing out of the water either, which I think would be pretty comparable to the weight of all those boulders. I love Rey and I want her to be strong but holy shit was that just completely unbelievable to me, she wasn’t even breaking a sweat and the fact that her smiling and running to Finn didn't break her concentration and crushing anyone coming out of that cave is completely laughable. Just look at similar characters in similar situations who show struggle and what Rey should’ve looked like during the boulder scene.

Rey in TROS looks like nothing ever changed. The same type of outfit from The Force Awakens, the same Lightsaber and the same hairstyle. Like nothing ever happened or changed. Like nothing ever changed. God forbid Rey looks like a mix of a Jedi Knight and Resistance Leader, godforbid Rey builds her own lightsaber, especially a Saberstaff. It’s almost as if JJ and Lucasfilm are afraid to develop Rey as a character and let her look different at all….*sighs*

And the big problem is we are expected that Rey will learn everything off screen….that’s the problem. You cannot just have a character who can do all these amazing feats, show her not being trained as a Jedi and make her even more powerful in the final movie with no build up whatsoever. Luke had like 3 years after ESB to learn more to become a Jedi Knight. This is why there should have been time skips. Three years of training with Luke on Ach-To and they return to The Resistance. 5 years pass in between TLJ and TROS and Rey has become a Jedi master. Instead we are expected to believe Rey has learned everything in the Jedi Texts in just a year.

When we first see Rey in the movie, she is levitating with the rocks while meditating. Just...what the hell? In all 6 movies and in the clone wars. We witness Jedi meditating, but not once do we see them meditating with rocks all around them. This was basically JJ Abrams “Hey fuck you, you think Rey’s overpowered? Well too fucking bad” The first moment I saw this scene, I knew the movie was going to be complete and utter bullshit

Rey’s lack of empathy for BB-8′s injuries after dropping a tree on the droid

Rey thinks she needs to earn Anakin’s Lightsaber....despite being an overpowered demigod

Despite wielding the force, Rey uses a blaster on the Stormtroopers

Rey suddenly learns force healing after only a year? Force Healing takes a long time of learning, but Rey just knows it because the plot demands it

Instead of talking and realizing they are both being used by Palpatine, Rey constantly goes apeshit and fights Kylo Ren every chance she gets

Rey accidentally kills Chewbacca(oh but not really because JJ doesn’t wanna make Rey a morally grey character)

One fight with Zorri Bliss and they’re good.....okay, sure, fine.

Rey, Finn and Poe treat C-3PO nothing but contempt and annoyance and suddenly he “takes one last look at his friends”

Rey is now Palpatine’s granddaughter. No build up or hints, she’s suddenly NOW Palpatine’s granddaughter, you know Rey nobody worked better despite my problems with it. But no, JJ the man who literally only has a job because of his family won’t let anyone come from nothing and build themselves into being a hero, she has to be related to the literal Satan of this universe.

Rey faces her inner darkness and Dark!Rey her face looks like Pregnant Bella Swan and has shark teeth....I wish I weren’t making this bullshit up.

Despite Ben being emotionally distraught by Leia’s death, Rey uses this opportunity to kill him. But only being too late does she realize she did the wrong thing and heals him.

Rey tells Finn. “People keep telling me they know me. No one does” That’s the problem. It’s three movies, we still don’t know Rey. We don’t know her because the movies haven't taken the time to actually get us to know anything substantial about her. By movie three of both the OT and the PT, we already knew the major conflicts/obstacles and dilemmas that drove both Anakin and Luke to take the respective paths they were currently walking. By the third movie in the sequel trilogy I still don’t know what Rey’s motivations are, why she has stake in anything or why Rey is a nice person when she grew up on a planet like Jakku. We still know nothing about Rey and that’s a problem

Rey constantly treats her friends as afterthoughts and extra baggage 

Rey attempts to go to Ach-To to exile herself and suddenly Luke appears. This movie attempts to paint the picture that Luke and Rey had this great relationship. She even calls him “Master Skywalker” Rey and Luke did  not have a good relationship. They barely even fucking train for like 3 days. She slices a rock in half, looks at some books, then argues with Luke and runs away. Even in a deleted scene, their third lesson. Rey shows nothing but disgust in Luke. But now they are a loving master and padawan? SINCE FUCKING WHEN???????

Luke lifts Luke’s old X-Wing because nostalgia and Mark’s fuck you to Rian. And Rey flies it because JJ desperately wants Rey to be the female Luke Skywalker

Rey is able to destroy the Emperor. Palpatine has the ability to destroy ENTIRE SPACE FLEETS WITH FORCE LIGHTNING and somehow Rey is able to send it back to him and destroy him. “I am all the Jedi” bullfuckingshit

“I’m Rey...Rey Skywalker” Rey didn’t need to be a Palpatine or take the Skywalker name. This isn’t me hating on Rey. Rey can be a great character by standing on her own. Rey being related to NO ONE was powerful and shows us that even someone who came from Jakku can be a powerful Jedi. She doesn’t earn anything on her own. She downloaded all of Kylo’s abilities. She took the Falcon, she made Chewbacca her personal uber, she took BB-8 from Poe and buried Anakin and Leia’s lightsaber on the literal symbolic oppression of the Skywalker family instead of something peaceful like Naboo or Ach-To. She has her own Lightsaber, but never uses it. Rey being a Palpatine and taking the Skywalker name undoes the beautiful story the revelation TLJ had does. She didn’t need to be a Palpatine and she didn’t need to take the Skywalker name or even their relics. Rey Nobody works. Here’s why. Rey’s story is her own, it is not her parents, it is not about where she came from, it’s about where she is going, and who she decides to become. Maz Kanata said “The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is in front of you.” Rey in the TFA trailers said “I’m no one” Rey never thought or wanted her parents to be important in TFA, she was literally going to pass up adventure and being important to stay on Jakku because what she wanted was her family to finally come home. She didn't want to be important or wanted her parents to be important. The audience wanted that. Any more lingering discussion of the possibility of Rey’s parents being ‘somebody’ only is distracting you from the actually beautiful story that is being told. Rey is a story of a girl who raised herself, who held onto hope for people who didn’t deserve it, she is a story of how light can be born from darkness, and Rey is story of someone who was scared of her own truth—but then finally faced it. Rey being a Nobody is the story I was skeptical of at first, but grew to love, the story that gives me more hope than any Rey Skywalker or Rey Solo story ever would. Rey calling herself "Rey Skywalker" was so forced and unnecessary because all the whiny pissants did not like that a girl was skilled and powerful in her own right and because Rey did not have a good relationship with Luke in the first place. JJ was so set in just making Rey a Luke clone that it just undoes character development. If Rey had to take a name, Solo or Organa would make the most sense since she actually had a relationship with Han, Leia and Ben. Say what you want about how RIan Johnson handled Rey in TLJ. At least he treated Rey like her own person, with her own journey, and her own desires and fears, rather than consigning her to be a vessel for OT nostalgia. And at least he allowed her to actually have a new outfit and new hair style. At least he let her change. Like him or not, Rian Johnson treated Rey with more respect and identity than JJ Abrams ever did. It means more than making her related to anyone because Rey was every lonely girl who wanted to be a part of something but didn't feel like they belonged. Every woman who learned to make her way in the world alone. Every person who clung to hope when they had nothing left. She is so many things to so many people. Rey Nobody can be fierce, angry and powerful without it connecting to a man or evil bloodline. She can love, be curious and emotional without being weak. She is a scavenger, a Jedi, and one half of a powerful Dyad. She is Rey of Jakku and that's all we needed. Rey calling herself a Skywalker denied her every last inch of who she was. Her character arc was ruined to please men that thought her power needed to be connected to a man for it to make sense. All we needed her arc to be was Rey accepting that she needs to be her own hero and loving herself for who she is, rather than who she wanted her hypothetical parents to be. And honestly Rey in TROS was a huge disappointment. Her entire character arc was regressed, she's back to wearing the buns and dressed all in white and sticks to the glorification of the Jedi. It's like everything she learned in the last movie never happened. And honestly her character in TROS  is what men think a "strong female character" is She fights, but they don’t have to deal with her processing internal pain. She loves, but they don’t have to deal with her fully exploring her desires. She’s a “badass,” & for them that is enough. When I say "A Palpatine is left and steals the legacy of the Skywalkers" I am not suggesting she doesn't deserve the title. I am saying that essentially, Palpatine won. Anakin, Padme, Luke, Han, Leia and Ben are all dead. Leia died for nothing. Leia deserved to see her son come home, and to see the end of the monster who ruined her family. She didn’t deserve to feel her child die. The entire line of the family is now extinct. The wiki even says "the extinction of the family name" what kind of depressing garbage is this? JJ Abrams ended the entire Skywalker saga on Palpatine successfully using love to manipulate, corrupt, hurt or kill every single Skywalker across three generations, ultimately resulting in the total eradication of the Skywalker, Solo and Amidala bloodlines, whilst Palpatine's heir lives on and claims the Skywalker name and legacy. Rey calling herself "Rey Skywalker" was patronizing and insulting and demeans what Rey's journey meant in the first two movies to everyone who loved her. Rey coming from Jakku and nothing but rising up as a heroic Jedi means more than "you have his power...you are a Palpatine" or "Rey Rey Skywalker" ever will. Women Of The Galaxy author Amy Ratcliffe says it best. “Even beyond the trappings of the Star Wars saga — the First Order, the Resistance, the Force — Rey’s story is inspiring, familiar, and timeless. Just because you come from nothing doesn’t mean you’re not part of the story. You’re not no one, because anybody can save the galaxy. Anybody.“

Compare Rey and Luke’s journeys in ANH and TFA. Rey wanders around and stuff is handed to her. Luke takes initiative and works for what he has. Let's compare ANH with TFA

Luke screws up on watching R2, then chooses to chase him down. He makes another mistake by spying on the Tusken Raiders instead of getting the hell out of dodge. This leads to him being knocked out, and rescued by Ben Kenobi.

Luke initiates the meeting with Ben Kenobi, and it happens because of his early bad decisions.

His aunt & uncle are killed, but thanks to his screw-up with R2 & the raiders, he and the droids are spared.

He chooses to follow Kenobi to Alderaan instead of staying on Tattooine.

He chooses to accept Kenobi's instruction in the ways of the Force, even though most people think it's a myth and a joke. Even though he's bad at it and doesn't seem to get any results at first.

He makes the decision that they're going to rescue Leia, potentially dooming their escape from the Death Star. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Kenobi's death.

Then he chooses to help fight the Death Star, even though he's not a member of the rebellion. He was offered a job with Han, and he could have ensured his safety by leaving with them. Instead he chose certain death.

Finally, he chooses to trust a literal voice in his head instead of the targeting computer.

Let's contrast that with Rey.

BB-8 runs into her. She tries to send him away, but relents and lets him follow her home.

She chooses not to sell him for food.

Finn wanders into camp on his own initiative.

The camp is attacked because BB-8 is there. The camp would have been attacked no matter what Rey did. The other scavenger was, I'm pretty sure, from the same camp. And if she'd sold him, BB-8 would also have still been in the camp.

She is forced to take the Millennium Falcon when the ship she wanted to use was blown up.

She chooses to go with Finn and bring BB-8 to the Rebellion Resistance.

She stumbles upon Luke's lightsaber, and runs away from it.

She accidentally runs into Kylo Ren while hiding in the forest.

He chooses to kidnap her because he senses something special about her.

After her first exposure to the Force, she learns how to use some of it, successfully, and escapes from Ren. And to her credit, escaping and trying the Force out is a choice she made, rather than something that passively happened to her.

Then she, um, is standing there when Han is killed.

She chooses to fight Kylo Ren, and beats him in her first lightsaber battle after closing her eyes and thinking about the Force.

She sort of chooses to go summon Luke back to civilization - I say sort of because it's not clear why she was picked to go over, say, Leia.

Luke makes mistakes, and he is an active participant in his story. Rey is just kind of there, most of the time. She doesn't make mistakes, but she doesn't really do much else.

Here is a thought, what are Rey’s motivations?

Rey wants to find her parents.

Rey wants to do the right thing.

Wants to bring back Luke Skywalker

Rey wants to find her place 

She wants to suck Ben’s tiddies. Wants Ben to return to the light, home and to call off the fleet

Has no real motivation to be on either side of the conflict, but chooses The Resistance anyway

Says she wants to kill Palpatine in cold blood, was close to giving in

What are Anakin's motivations?

Wants to leave a life of slavery and come back and free his mother

Wants to become a Jedi and become a hero

Wants to protect Padme

Wants to save Obi-Wan

Wants to stop Dooku and end the war before it can begin

Wants to be a good master to Ahsoka

Wants to clear Ahsoka’s name

Wants to stop the war

Wants to save Padme and his children's lives at the cost of the Jedi and doing whatever it takes and becomes Darth Vader

What are Luke’s motivations?

Luke is a farm boy who dreams of leaving his mundane life.

Luke discovers that his father -unlike what his uncle told him, was a heroic Jedi Knight

Luke, is reluctant and refuses the ‘call to adventure’, but after the Empire murders his Aunt and Uncle, he decides to Join Obi-Wan on the quest.

Save the Princess

Luke is angered by Obi-Wan’s death at the hands of Darth Vader, and seeks retribution.

Destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion

To be trained by Yoda

Save Han and Leia

Luke discovers his father, the heroic Jedi, is none other than Darth Vader. After years of training, he sets out to redeem his father and turn him back to the light.

Rey has no personal stake in this war or motivations and she’s supposed to be the main protagonist.

Rey has never left Jakku before TFA and she tells Han that ”she never knew so much green existed” when they go to Maz’s castle.

In other words Rey must have had very limited knowledge of the world outside of Jakku and all she has heard from it are stories.

Rey who barely knows anything about the rest of the galaxy, to the point that she didn’t even know that forests existed what exactly is her personal stake in the current galactic conflict?

In TFA we saw The New Republic’s capital systems blown up by Starkiller Base and we never saw a reaction from Rey. We do see Finn and Han’s reactions. Also worth noting about Rey is that if she was unconscious throughout her involuntary travel to the Starkiller Base she was never actually aware of the Starkiller Base until just before Han, Finn and Chewie started planting the explosions in order to sabotage it.

Luke while he had no personal attachments to Aldeeran did actually get to see the horrible aftermaths of it’s destruction.

But Rey was barely affected by the destruction of the Capital systems. Most characters were not as affected as they should have been in my opinion but we didn’t even get to see her have an emotional reaction to it.

This was probably the greatest genocide in Star Wars history and our main hero is unaffected by it? Finn has a reaction to it and he’s supposedly NOT the main protagonist?

Rey really has no reason to care about the state of the galaxy. She only seems to care if people she knows are in danger.

The fact that she is supposed to be our main hero of this trilogy when she has next to no personal stakes in the well-being of the rest of the galaxy feels wrong to me.

Finn actually has stakes in this conflict since the FO took his family and childhood away from him and Poe has stakes because he actually lives in the New Republic and doesn’t want it to be under FO’s rule. Yet neither Finn nor Poe are considered the main protagonist? But oh wait, I forgot we can’t have a black or Latino man be the leading protagonist in Star Wars

The big issue I have with Rey as a character is she is a boring, lazily written character with a complete lack of development, barely any motivations and not a believable protagonist.

Rey is not allowed to have flaws or personal struggles or has a real hero’s journey. Which is disappointing because I truly loved having Star Wars be centered around a female lead and feel like it’s a missed opportunity. It’s not Daisy’s fault, I feel like the blame lies with Disney. I’m not sure if Disney got cold feet with a female protagonist and felt they would get backlash if they made her character naturally flawed but it’s storytelling 101 to have your protagonist faced with problems that aren’t easy to overcome and correlate to said flaws. Instead we got a hero who faces no real consequences, has no real goals, and can defeat everything in her path with abysmal training. Which ultimately makes for an extremely uninteresting hero. No hard training, no real consequences, no real flaws, no struggles or not even an arc and everything is handed to her. It just makes Episode IX predictable and boring. There is just not a reason to care to see what will happen with Rey. Finn and Poe are what’s keeping this trilogy alive, Finn had the most development in TFA, but someone decided "We can't have Finn be the protagonist of this trilogy", so they sabotaged his character the moment Finn uttered the word "sanitation" and reduced him to the black comic relief in the next movie. Poe is the one person with the most development and shows heroism in TLJ and someone decided "we can't have Poe be the hero of the trilogy" and proceeded to demonize and belittle Poe throughout the entire movie. The point is Finn and Poe had the most potential and their potential was squandered to prop up Rey as the protagonist of the trilogy when no one has a reason to root for Rey. Disney just failed Rey as a character.

[piracytheorist]

How do you think they assassinated Emma’s character in s6? I thought Emma was very true to character in s6. She fought for the people she loved and to protect innocents. She fought for Killian, Belle, and even was willing to sacrifice her own life rather than kill Gideon, because she knew the Black Fairy had his heart and was controlling him. I thought Emma was very heroic in s6.

Oh well, I guess you’re one of those who think that just because she was a good person, she was also well written. I mean okay, if you love her and felt inclined to see all the good in her, great, but since you asked me, and I don’t think I’ve made a complete post with all my problems with Emma’s writing in s6, here goes.

Note that it’s not my intention to hate on Emma here. But because up until the end of s5, I loved what Emma had grown into, I was so, so disappointed by the writing choices. So remember, I’m criticizing the writing choices, not the character. (though I’m sure I’ll get nervous nellies coming at me and calling me a hater either way)

1. Her whole (and I mean, whole) development from s5 was completely ignored. Seriously, even from the first episodes from s6, it felt as if the writers had completely forgotten everything they wrote in s5. 

Season 5 Emma started scared, insecure, with the Darkness pushing her buttons and making her not trust in her family. By the end of 5A, she learned to trust them to help her - hence, she let them follow her in the Underworld. She did feel guilty, at times, but her growth was shown by her accepting that help.

S6? The first thing she does is hide from her family the fact that she has high chances of dying soon. She’s brought to re-learn the lesson of trusting her family, all over again, and play again the “you’re right I should’ve trusted you yadda yadda”.

Now, yes, in real life, people don’t drop such bad habits that easily. But OUAT wasn’t real life. And when you fucking trust your family to protect themselves and your underage child from whatever the Underworld may bring, I don’t know, hiding a potential death threat from them later sounds kinda illogical.

Point is, Emma had already gone through the process of learning to trust her family. S6 was just a complete re-do of s5. Hence, the writing “killed” the progess she did in s5.

2. The Captain Swan stuff. Oh boy, where do I fucking begin?

- She outright ignored Killian’s very obvious turmoil in 6x13 because she was oh so excited to get engaged. That was selfish, not a nice development.

- In s4, when she suspected Killian had a past with Ursula he wasn’t being truthful about, she confronted him in a very mature way, telling him what upset her and what she expected of him as her boyfriend without rocking their relationship at all.She trusted him to deal with the issue and let her in when/if he needed her. And that was awesome. But the moment Killian is having an issue in s6? She shouts at him, demands that he trust her, and breaks off (even if it was shown as a temporary break-off) their engagement. Which she had pretty much forced, btw. Certainly not a good development, especially since we saw her handle the relationship stuff very positively and carefully in s4, long before they had even exchanged “I love you”s, let alone get engaged.

- Talking about the trust stuff… she shouted at Killian about how he should have trusted her, when not ten episodes ago she’d done the exact same thing to him. Instead of looking inward and realizing that he only did what he did out of fear, like she had done before, the writers had her blame him. No support, no understanding, barely even a chance for him to explain himself. The scene where they fight about the dreamcatcher looks like it’s straight out of a cheesy soap opera and I simply cannot describe how much I hate it. And you know what’s even more ridiculous? When in 6x06 he comes clear to her about not throwing away the shears, she’s immediately understanding. Yes, she looks shaken by him having lied to her, but she does look inward and says “I would have done the exact same thing” - which, though it was beautiful, was another proof the writers had forgotten about s5, where she did that exact same thing by turning him into the Dark One, ignoring his wishes not to. So truly, the line should have been “I have done the exact same thing”. But anyway. Yet, when the same thing happens with the dreamcatcher, she shouts at him. What’s the logic there?

- Her first reaction in whateverthefuckepisodeitwasIdon’tcare, when Killian doesn’t come back after she broke off the engagement, is to assume he’d straight up abandoned her. Sure, abandonment issues yadda yadda. We’re talking about the guy who gave up his home for her happiness, endagered his life and even lost it twice for her, opened up to her in a way he hadn’t opened up to anyone in centuries, yet her first reaction is to think the most dedicated guy in the world gave up on her. That’s, again, a negative development from the woman who went to the fucking Underworld because she knew Killian would want to be back with her. Like, what else should Killian have done to prove to her that he won’t give up on her like that? I mean, even when he was shaken and wanted to leave with Nemo, it was with the aim to come back once he’d found himself. Instead Emma was written to immediately think he’d dumped her forever - so no understanding of her almost fiancee’s character and devotion to her. And it wasn’t even that she felt guilty over forcing the engagement on him and then abruptly breaking it off. She literally packed up his stuff and was about to go put them away. If she had felt guilty she would’ve kept them, but no, guess he’s gone forever now bye.

This was not the development Emma Swan deserved. Sure, she did heroic stuff. But the writing owed to her (and other characters too) to stay true to her. 

3. General stuff

- Getting rid of the shears was stupid and illogical from the get-go. There were two (or more? I don’t remember) openly evil magic users out there. She had a magical object that could change her life and have an impact on virtually everyone. Her solution? Throw it away and hope the expert magic users won’t find it. Though mentioning that feels like cheating because it was a collectively stupid idea. Hide them outside the town border, perhaps? Were all their brain cells burnt while in the Underworld?

- The wedding. Look, I’m not gonna go into detail here. Whether you liked it or not, her dress was 100% not Emma. It was nothing that represented her. The whole wedding was not about her and Killian, it was about the whole town - and if you like Adam’s quotes as much as my other anon did, even he said that the wedding was about the town (or was it Eddie who said that?), and what the fuck, marriage should be about the ones involved. Marriages for the communities usually signify some lack of consent (I’m thinking of matchmaking where the couple doesn’t even know each other before getting married, because they live in a regressive community or something). The super conservative dressthat we never found out why she would even like wearing doesn’t help, either.

- Saying that she was happy she grew up unloved because that made her strong. If you don’t realize how problematic that is just by itself, I don’t think any arguments I may present will convince you.

All those things cheapened her character. Combined, they outright destroyed her. I didn’t watch six seasons of the show, to see the woman who blew on a lonely cupcake on her birthday find people she loves and go through all kinds of turmoil for them and to be with them, only to a) continue to not trust her family, b) be a bad girlfriend c) doubt the devotion of the guy who literally died for her, d) be stupid, e) get married “for the community” in a super conservative dress and worst of all, f) pretty much become an abuse apologist.

Yes, Emma Swan still did good things and “savior stuff”. But that was pretty much the only good thing left in her character by the end. Everything else, considering her positive development, flew out the window. And all for the sake of drama. 

And that’s how Emma’s character was assassinated.

[dogcopter]

[novantinuum tumblr com post 611767607081713664/][novantinuum tumblr com post 611764379084636160/]

first link has: “she was on the road to redemption in my mind. I believe redemption is a journey with no endpoint. There’s no day where you wake up and are 100% redeemed. It’s something you work at every day, trying your hardest to be the best possible version of yourself you can be at every moment you exist. She cannot continue that journey now, because of her choice to make Steven- and in many ways, that’s pretty tragic.”

second link is that fanart w has a tag: “ i don't believe rose as a character is incapable of redemption theoretically but as she is DEAD- yeah she's unable to be redeemed. unable to continue that redemption i mean”

Ok this will be MUCH MUCH longer than you likely want but let’s take a minute to talk about this. Because this aspect of Rose meta is a huge part of the conclusion of Steven Universe, and the other half of Steven’s story I’m most excited for.

Responding to this question of Rose being unable to change is implicit to the Rose is Lion theory and it’s really at the heart of the story. I genuinely don’t read a better or more consistent explanation for the pieces right now, so I operate under the assumption Rose is Lion and we are headed for the legendary impossible Rose redemption arc - the conversation changes if she’s really gone, so we’ll get there if that’s the case, but I also think that tragedy was honored quite beautifully in Steven Universe. I think the note Future will end on is instead, it’s never too late to change (Rose), it’s ok to not be sure what’s next (Steven), but you will be ok if you have love in your life and work towards the future. Unfridging the absent mom character is a big cartoon trope flip too.

I agree with the OP regarding SU’s idea of redemption. An SU “redemption arc” means the character reaching some kind of catalyst to choosing a change. They change some behavior that has caused them and/or others pain. They want to more fully express themselves and to be connected to those around them, and through some process or journey have understood no one is all-bad or all-good, but each action is a choice and each of us has impact on others. 

This is what my url and the “Rosedemption” 2020 tag refers to as I anticipate it - not “redemption” in the sense that she’s bad and becomes good or that her mistakes are overwritten or we get a perfect everything’s OK happy ending. SU does hope and does cartoon anime fanservice and the power of love, but it doesn’t do that. Agree or disagree with whichever individual story choices and character decisions you feel a way about, but I think we can all acknowledge that SU doesn’t try to simplify interpersonal relationships to black-and-white.

So rosedemption is redemption only in the sense that she is understood and chooses to take a step forward. Like how “Peridemption” describes the process of Peridot trying to learn, coming to love the Earth and embrace her personality. At the end of Steven’s story, Rose, like the others in the cast who have a place in his life, will join them in having the potential to be herself, have her innate capacity to be good recognized like everyone else, and have the chance to break a pattern of behavior she has become trapped in as well. She won’t be absolved of all her mistakes.

When pursuing the theory it was like a daisy chain of if-then. The explanation for Lion’s behavior and knowledge that makes the most sense is Lion being Rose. Fact. The next question is then: -> Is that possible given the mechanics of the universe? Yes - Steven demonstrates every power necessary, including going into other people’s bodies. Next question. -> If Rose is in fact astral projecting into Lion’s body, it’s possible she’s also responsible for the dream weirdness, is it also possible she’s in other bodies (melons)? Yes - all still in Steven’s moveset. (The thing that turned me on to the idea was that scene in Escapism, so I worked backwards a bit - but it makes sense, because we only get certain information later that illuminates pieces from earlier) -> But if Rose isn’t dead, where is the story going? 

IMO this is why people don’t entertain the idea so much, things have changed a lot, and it upends things we thought were settled. In theory terms I expect her to come forward because it’s the logical conclusion to her arc - she gets to choose to stop running and hiding, which was borne of her past, and if she’s back she can lift responsibility for her legacy from Steven’s shoulders.

It doesn’t erase what happened, though; Steven and Rose may be able to say they love each other, but maybe he’s not ready for a relationship after this void in the shape of her characterized his upbringing. Having her today doesn’t change the childhood he spent without her, and often, very lonely. Knowing she was looking over him in the way she thought would hurt him the least, doesn’t make finding out she was by his side caring for him as Lion & co. any less painful a truth to learn after childhood has already ended. Those feelings are going to come out on Steven’s end, but all they have to reach by the end of the series is a hopeful starting point that maybe someday they’ll both be in a better place. And maybe some things will never heal, you know - that’s OK - and not all of this will necessarily be explicit onscreen, we will have fanwork and meta to cover many of those infinite possibilities.

The whole first series was devoted to the CGs dealing with her death and growing after the loss of her. Does Rose coming back cheapen that? I don’t think so - what happened happened. Those things the first series went through were real. In fact, giving up her physical form and then being Lion are additional decisions made with best of intentions but enormous fallout for others, the crux of Rose’s struggle to be better when continuously she hurt people too. SU is always committed to showing how people are people and in part respond to their circumstances and the systems of society and family they were born into. As far as condemning or glorifying her actions, I don’t think SU asks either of us because of this very framing, but of course any viewer has the right to. Will I ever forgive her for what she did to Bismuth? I don’t have to - Bismuth doesn’t have to - Steven doesn’t have to. All we’ll be asked is to understand her, which is all we’ve been asked all along. Each character has this aspect to them. 

That’s not to say any story is perfect, it’s told by people as imperfect as the characters they create. And different perspectives are not only valid but expected. Some folks will always hate Rose, or Lapis, or Pearl, or the Diamonds, some will love all of the above. Sometimes your favorite character is your favorite because something they felt spoke to something you’ve felt, sometimes you hate a character because of their actions or just because you wouldn’t get along with them socially. The people who respond to things that they think SU fell short on, will make more art and cartoons that continue that conversation. Can you weigh the good influences she had on Steven’s life against the bad and come out with a mathematical judgment of binary goodness/badness, or is it more like real life where they have to accept what’s happened and move forward from there? Do you reject that and write the fic of the story you prefer? 

So to me the Rose redemption arc raises all the hard questions Steven Universe has been porting over. Who are you to others and yourself? How do you know? Where do you go after you aren’t playing a role to someone else? When do you take responsibility for your actions? What’s the point at which you’re too late? Is there? How do you face the family who harmed you, when you’re so frightened you’d rather stop existing to escape them? How do you face the people you’ve harmed, even after they understand you? When you didn’t intend to? When you did? How do you move forward when a paradigm shift upends the narrative of your life, as Steven has been forced to do wrt Rose repeatedly? Does everyone get a chance to change? And why do you do what you do? Why fear? How to face it? Can you love yourself and love others? Does love win?

That’s something I find so exciting about this possibility. It changes the entire conversation, because both those who adore Rose and those who despise her have their reasoning, but the conversation is so oriented around her inability to change like everyone else. The conversation I’m most looking forward to goes past that stopgap. When it’s not the case that she can’t change, how do we see her now? After living through the consequences of her choices and coming to understand her better alongside Steven and the family, the thought is very personal, as it will be for Steven. That’s what enchants me about the signs pointing to Rose’s return. It’s complicated and messy, but ultimately hopeful! 

If the signs were not pointing to that but something else, I’m excited for that meta too, but we’ll talk as the month unfolds and destroys us.

[trashboatprince]

@gruvu sent me some prompts on discord for Sammy and Henry content and it’s like, oh snap, these are some good prompts!

Here’s one of them, my personal favorite out of the bunch.

And yes, this is Sammy/Henry content, even if it’s just a small bit of fluff.

On with the fic!

--

Staff meetings were always dreaded at Joey Drew Studios.

Ideas were thrown about, such as projects, changes to the show, things like that, but more often than not the majority were rejected.

And a lot of the ideas that were accepted tended to be ones Joey would have a hand in. After all, he was the boss and the face of the studio, so it made sense. But that didn’t mean that Henry was happy with it, he had every right to be mad, he was co-founded and his ideas were often shot down or changed on him.

He sighed through his nose as he listened to Joey argue with one of the employees as they sat in the pub room, the usual place for meetings. The two had been complaining for about five minutes now and Henry was so close to throwing something at either of them.

He looked over at Sammy and Norman, who sat at the table with him. Norman looked ready to fall asleep, Sammy was quietly sitting next to him, checking over some of the sheet music he had with him, making minor changes here and there. Made Henry wish he had brought something to draw with. It would keep him distracted from having to hear Joey speak about cutting costs with the animation department’s already slim budget.

“I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be best if you just reused old scenes?” Joey scoffed. “I mean, who is going to even notice.” “You’d be surprised.” Henry grumbled.

Joey glanced at the animator. “Excuse me, what was that?”

Henry looked up at him, narrowing his eyes. “Joey, we can’t just reuse scenes, that’s sloppy work.”

“I’m sure it’s not! Some of the other studios do it!”

“Yeah, but we’re not other studios. I like my cartoons being new each time we put one out.” Henry replied, his voice starting to express his annoyance with the director. He missed Sammy looking at him and setting down his pencil, slipping his hand off the table.

Joey rolled his eyes. “I doubt anyone but you would notice if we reused a walk cycle or dance sequence.”

“I repeat, you’d be surprised, Drew.” Henry snipped, though his anger slipped when he felt something brush his hand on his lap. Glancing to his right, he saw Sammy looking straight ahead, but his hand was clearly against the animator’s own. He felt Sammy’s pinky wrap around his own, giving it a small squeeze, the musician giving him a small look out of the corner of his eye.

Henry let out a sigh, relaxing. He’d have to thank Sammy later, he was very close to throwing his shoe at Joey’s head. “Look, I know we’re a bit tight on money, especially after that projector caught on fire, but we can still do new scenes without cheapening out. At least we can save money by using animation cells from scenes we cut.”

Joey gave this a moment’s thought and nodded. “Sounds good. Animators, just do what Henry said, that’ll help us all out. Anyway, onto the next subject matter.”

As Joey rambled on about something, Henry leaned back in his seat, his pinky still wrapped around Sammy’s. He looked at the man, who seemed to have returned to tweaking his music sheets, but there was a content smile on the conductor’s face. A small smile of his own came to Henry’s face as he ignored the rest of the meeting. 

Meetings for the studio were a pain, but there were some small enjoyments. 

[seddm]

One week later

I think that this time, despite the magnitude of what happened in the show, managed to have a mostly non-kneejerk reaction to it, but a week (and a looot of thinking) later, I think I got a better understanding about how and why I feel about this episode, S4 so far, and the show’s future as a whole. Going to make this a bullet-point style list because making a single conversation about all of this would be either too long, or end up feeling disconnected at times anyway. Bad things first, then the good ones to close on a positive note, for a change.

THE BAD

- The thing I always loved the most about this show has been its ability to use individual events and interactions between the characters in almost any given segments, even ones more fillery in nature, as a way to slowly advance the growth of the characters from a pre-established Big Event™ to the next one. This always gave the show an aura of strong continuity despite its storyboard driven and episodic nature, and allowed me to claim that even events clearly facilitated by some sort of plot based compulsion (such as the Truth Cube in Sleepover, or the photo booth in Booth Buddies) were still largely natural, just more flashy ways to push the characters in directions they were already taking.

The first episodes of S4, up to Curse of the Blood Moon, didn’t really do this. They felt heavily more compartmentalized than the usual: S3 ended in an explosive way that seemingly set up all the characters for immediate changes or payoff, but then this current season kinda ignored that. Not completely, because both Moon Remembers and Ransomgram has Marco tell Star things like “rip the bandaid off” and “own up to your mistakes”, which could be clearly applied to the “Tell Tom about the kiss” situation (never mind that she didn’t do that, it was still relevant and her going the wrong way about it was part of the point), but between an increased focus on plot and plot exclusively, and a two parter season premiere that chose to focus exclusively on finding Moon (reasonable decision, really, but it ended up making 40 minutes of show feel a bit empty on the emotions side, in my very subjective opinion), Curse of the Blood Moon seemed to happen a bit out of the blue, especially considering that Star and Marco’s feelings were apparently so strong and so intrusive to justify even Tom being able to see them in the former case, and Eclipsa’s comfort and counseling having been needed multiple times offscreen in the latter. Things that we didn’t see at all in the first 7 episodes, with the exception of Star never reacting to Tom telling her that he knew the kiss with Marco didn’t really mean anything. It’s not a necessarily tragic scenario, especially if the show purposefully wanted to wait for Curse to kick start a new chapter in the shipping of the show, but this bridging between seasons taking one third of the last one felt a bit excessive and largely devoid of sufficient build up to me.

- Kelly / Kellco. Anyone who’s familiar with my blog should know that I always struggle to never insult ships, characters or elements from the show that other people might like. And even now I don’t want to cheapen the value of personal preferences at all, nor tell anyone “No, you can’t ship this!”. But at the same time I have to say that, in the context of the show, these new Kellco developments look (ready to eat back my words in the future, as usual) extremely pointless, and handled badly. Kelly feelings something for Marco, kinda unilaterally liking him, that’s something the fandom has been speculating ever since Lava Lake Beach. They shared an emotional moment over heart break, and then clearly developed a friendship from there, and hanged out more. Kelly’s lines in The Ponyhead Show then confirmed without doubt that she felt something from Marco, but that he seemed to be largely unaware and oblivious about it. Just like you’d expect Marco to be, especially a Marco who spent the previous season focusing on how strong and intrusive his feelings for Star were.

At this point essentially everyone, me included, expected for Kelly’s World to be used as a way to bring up Marco’s unrequited (as far as he knew) feelings once again, to introduce Curse of the Blood Moon. I expected Marco to either go something like “Sorry Kelly but I’m not ready to give up on my feelings for Star” or, at worst, a frustrated Marco who’d have thought and reflected about Kelly’s feelings for him. Instead, out of the extreme blue, we got a Marco who was uncharacteristically all too aware of the situation, going “I don't want these feelings for Star they're getting in the way of other feelings" while being all blushy and then being more than receptive to Kelly’s emotionally confused flirting. Now, if this was reality, there would be absolutely nothing weird in a kid like Marco being dual in his feelings, really liking Star while also being tired about all the pain those feelings have been bringing him for the better part of a year and being receptive to another girl being ready to jump his bones. But this is not reality, and these events absolutely lacked any form of proper build up, they were (wow, I can finally use the word Starco haters have been throwing around for years!) forced. Not entirely, but for a great deal. Jarco had Sleepover and Naysaya providing a strong buildup to the ship revolving around Marco overcoming some personal hurdles; even Tomstar didn’t immediately go for the ship after the well-timed dance in Club Snubbed, but first had Demoncism, giving some sort of basis to the exes getting back together, and Tom and Star had a pre-established relationship and we both knew that Tom still wanted Star, and that Star still had hung up feelings for Tom, if just physical attractions ones (from her behavior in Blood Moon Ball and Mr. Candle Cares, very spread out over the show, I admit). Meanwhile Kellco went from “ok they shared an important moment one season ago and Janna teased Kelly in a holiday special episode but after that their interactions have been nothing but background ones” to “Marco and Kelly lose track of time reading about fighting on a bench, then as the warm hues of the sunset wash over them they fight hand in hand, as one body and one spirit, and the fireworks and music happen and there’s more blushing in a single scene that there has been in the whole show and in all the kisses in it so far”. That’s... very, very, very heavy handed. Very “manipulative”. Especially since Kelly and Marco aren’t even properly together yet I guess, since Marco might have gotten over his feelings for Star (hahaha yeah as if), but as far as we know Kelly still isn’t completely over Tad. So where is this relationship going to go from now? Why does it exist? In what ways it doesn’t shit on what Jarco already taught Marco? How is it going to “end” once Marco inevitably realizes he still feels thing for Star without making Kelly look like a throwaway rag? Obviously I don’t have the arrogance to assume I know how things are going to play out from here on, so who knows, maybe Kellco is going to be part of an important arc, but from where I’m standing, from what I know now, it’s hard not to see it as a hamfisted attempt at going “Haaaa these confused teens, it’s only fair that they get their share of experiences!”. Which is ok, sure, fine, but FICTION ≠ REALITY and things need some kind of build up and reason to happen. If it’s just supposed to be padding to keep the situation in a status quo for a while, “Marco is with Kelly and Tom is with Star and everything is right in the world and they don’t have to think about their feelings anymore” then... bleah.

- This is tangentially connected to both the previous points, and it’s not really THAT bad, just me being a bit nitpicky about a still legitimate direction the show decided to take: by having this constant comparison between THE OTHER SHIPS and STARCO, now stronger than ever after Curse, the former being very casual but also ultimately unrewarding, “we hold hands we blush a little and we are ready to kiss and be a couple”, while the latter being “dozens of life changing events are needed to progress the ship even by little; NOTHING BUT PAIN can ever come out of Starco for the people involved until it’s officially recognized as being completely and utterly full, pure, complete, mature and life lasting love”, can kinda give a wrong message about relationships and teen love, or an annoying one at least. “Hey kids, don't try to actually have fun or be happy with romance, because that's not how True Love™ works. If you actually find it kind of easy to be happy with your significant other, that isn't love!" [quote by @ngame989]. Obviously I’m using a hyperbole for the sake of clarity, and it’s clear that Star and Marco’s relationship is based on finding it easy to have fun together, always. But if we talk strictly about romance and the way the show approaches to it, it’s kinda undeniable that Starco has been nothing but a source of sadness so far, and the only genuine moment of happiness, this one, lasted about three seconds and overlapped with a realization of True Love.

By now I have fully accepted that the show is not going for an early Starco relationship to then show it growing and changing as the two make the first steps together, but that they’re waiting for a “ok we’re both completely sure this is what we want”, and it’s a completely fair direction for the show to take, but it also contributes to this “fetishization” of true love. Still, execution matters way more than the larger brush strokes in this case, so we’ll see.

- The timing. I’m going to talk about why this incoming arc can actually be a very good thing in a moment, but at the same time introducing the idea that the Blood Moon might have forced feelings now, 30% through the last season, when absolutely nothing before that ever referenced of foreshadowed it, and with essentially no references to the Ball throughout the show (last direct one was in Naysaya and it was Tom throwing shade at Marco...), feels kinda jarring to me.

- This is a bit more of a personal note, but not entirely: Star and Marco enter a dance in their memories with the specific goal of “destroying their feelings”. One minute into spending time together having fun without any kind of distraction for the first time in forever, they literally fall in love. Not crush, love. The whole setup of the Severing Stone’s function literally confirms that. What kind of tension can Kellco and Tomstar deliver now that we know that Star and Marco can and will fall in love with each other if given a moment to truly think about nothing but each other and themselves? The endgame was kinda clear before as well, but now it has officially ruined any chance at making other ships feel worthwhile - beyond their value for the growth of the characters involved, obviously. I mean their intrinsic value as a ship / source of romantic drama.

THE GOOD

- Even if I’m not a fan of the timing, I can see a lot of potential in an arc revolving around the question “Are these feelings genuine? Is Marco/Star the person I truly love and want to be with?”. Now, obviously we know that the feeling were genuine and that the Curse didn’t force anything, so it’s not really the answer to the question that matters. What’s important is how they’re going to get to that: by having Star and Marco more or less directly tackle this question in a context where there is apparently no sadness and pain brought from unwanted feelings, some positivity can FINALLY be associated with Starco as a romantic relationship. Obviously we don’t know how things are going to play out now, but if both dorks are now convinced that they are only friends (something that didn’t happen at the same time since early S2) they can enjoy their relationship to its absolute fullest, and see along the way, together this time, that they both want more. I don’t know if one or both of them lied about not having feelings anymore, or if it’s placebo effect, or if the Severing Stone has some lingering after effects. What I know is that these two now feel like they can be completely comfortable around each other once again, while still having all the feelings of friendship that were the base for the romance once already,

and that the last time they had a moment to truly be together with each other and enjoy their feelings to their fullest, they fell in love, like love for real, certified by the Severing Stone taking that moment away as a price.

So yes, we all know the answer to this question already (articulated a bit better by the show’s composer in this post),

- Curse of the Blood Moon as an episode itself is far from being without merits: it opens with a wonderful display of one of the many sides that make Star and Marco’s relationship so adorable, with the duo having a secret cereal date at night without waking up Meteora; shows how in sync and how well they understand each other (yes, this was a set up for the scene but you can’t tell me it’s the curse’s fault, that’s bullshit); it literally had Marco tell us that he likes every single thing about Star and her personality (again, not the curse’s fault. That’s bullshit.), and the dance itself was utterly perfect and pristine and had Starco fun, Starco flirting, and Starco love all happening the moment they could focus on each other and forget about the rest.  Also, while I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of Tom having achieved “good boy status” simply by getting slightly better with each episode instead of taking some affirmative action on the nature of his relationship with Star, I don’t mind seeing him helping his friends, at all. Sure, this can contributed to making him feel more “pathetic”, with scenes like the spat on the elevator apparently underlying a lack of compatibility between him and Star compared to her and Marco, as many other scenes before, and that’s the part I don’t particularly enjoy, but the overall journey he went through, that’s good. It should have featured more defining moments of change in my opinion, rather than a simple “little by little always better and gets points for trying”, but it’s still vastly preferable to a world where we can’t get some Tomco bromance moments, and this kind of relaxed situation, as infuriating as it can be at times, could potentially contribute to what I said in the first point, give Star and Marco the chance to understand what they feel for the other in a completely or almost completely positive way.

- This is connected to the first point and not necessarily an objectively good one on its own, more like something that further contributes to feeling like there’s potential for things to develop nicely from her on: the brunt of the romance in Starco fell on Marco for most of S3, at this point Star was less of an active player than him when it came to liking each other. But Star is the Main Main Character, we can’t have that happen. With this new turn of events, with things being “reset” into New Game +, the spotlight moves once again on Star and this time we can finally have the Main Main Character answer the question “do we love each other?”. Obviously Marco is surely going to have a role as well, he’s still a protagonist, but it’s Star’s story before anything else, and this “Free Will and Choices” arc can easily tie Eclipsa / ruling Mewni to Love, and strongly relate to the blonde (ex) princess.

- On the same note of “elements that makes one hopeful about the show’s potential but still don’t really confirm anything about what’s going to happen”, we have this quote from one of Adam’s interviews:

Adam describes Star as someone who is “all over the place” in terms of life as compared to Marco who unlike Star has yet to outwardly reveal his feelings. “But, she’s one of those people who so much stuff is going on for that she doesn’t necessarily, in my opinion, she doesn’t really have time for a romantic relationship. She’s too busy. She’s got a lot of things going on her plate,” he explains. “But, she’s one of those people who, in my opinion–I’m not saying this happens, I’m just saying this is why I like them–I feel like she’s going to be one of those people who is gonna stop one day and have a second to breathe and then dust is gonna settle and she’s gonna look and see through all the settling dust and fog that someone has been there with her the entire time and she’s gonna see Marco,”

and while there’s absolutely no way to confirm this, especially since everything Adam says is always nebulous PR talk that has to be taken with eighty grains of salt, looking at list of episode post-mid season finale suggests that this “dust settling down” might happen sooner than later, the second half(ish) of the season having way more episodes with titles suggesting either Earth things, or a generic downtime for the teens to focus a bit more on their own lives, and a little less of Eclipsa. Obviously there’s still necessarily going to be plot happening, but I can also see how they could be going (strong emphasis on the could) for a journey that allows Starco to finally happen in the series finale in an explosive way, with both Star and Marco being utterly sure that this is what they truly want, and that they love each other, not just like or crush.

Cornonation Doop-Doop / Britta’s Tacos Beach Day / Gone Baby Gone Sad Teen Hotline /  Jannanigans Mama Star /  Ready, Aim, Fire The Right Way /  Here to Help Pizza Party /  The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse Cleaved 

To conclude and sum up, my greatest issues so far are with the way S4 handled romance and relationships in its first 7 episodes, rather than with the new arc Curse of the Blood Moon apparently set out, or with the idea that the show is almost certainly going for series finale Starco (still kinda hoping for just a little something before that though, with the finale being the true celebration of what they have). It’s not the show I’d have liked the most, but it’s still one that has all the potential, so far, to honor the kind of build up Starco had, and the amazing characters Star and Marco are. But this first third personally disappointed me in a number of ways, and it kinda hinders my ability to fully trust this potential to actually become the reality of a good execution. But “hinders” doesn’t mean I completely lost any hope, and there are certainly dozens of ways to properly pull this off. We’ll see.

[myassbrokethefall]

OK, my GoT thoughts under the cut. Summary: Motivations technically understandable/justifiable; execution bad/dramatically unsatisfying/anticlimactic/baffling.

Essentially: I can buy what happened to Dany and I can accept the ending for Jaime, but the way the show got to both of those points makes no sense to me, and undercut the effectiveness and the meaning severely for both.

Dany: Was I expecting this character to just fly into King's Landing with her giant terrifying dragon(s), roar at Cersei, peacefully take the kingdom, and have a parade thrown for her as she happily fulfills her destiny? No.

Am I mad that we got a "mad queen" arc? I am not. One might almost say it was inevitable and has been foreshadowed with every word of the show and the books since the beginning.

But I was expecting SOMETHING redemptive, not just "Dany goes crazy and kills everyone for no reason." I also was looking forward to clash of the two queens, both crazy for power and increasingly unstable in their attempts to hold onto it, and for it to become clear that Cersei was irretrievably gone to the dark side, and Dany was not. I was expecting Dany's reckoning with her "mad" side to involve her somehow overcoming it, or trying to overcome it, even if in some small symbolic way that ultimately ended in tragedy for her. Not just her...becoming evil, full stop.

This entire season has felt super rushed, and I also am annoyed that we have had TWO hour-and-a-half episodes almost entirely dedicated to battles. When there is so much shit to get done!!! Character arcs are getting short shrift but we gotta have all the gore and destruction, not just in one episode, but in two episodes, directed by the same dude who is their “battles” guy I guess. Having this battle almost cheapens the other battle. I was like, remember when we all united against the ice zombies and humans finally prevailed, and it showed all these other conflicts to be ultimately petty and meaningless in comparison to the fight against death and existential (and literal, lol) darkness? That de-escalated quickly.

So it's not that I didn't want Dany to go mad or I think that was impossible. But it felt very pointless the way it was executed, and felt like it happened because it's the end of the series, not because anything particularly organic made it happen in this moment. (Yes, she lost two dragons and Missandei and Jorah, and Jon froze her out. Her changing her whole personality into a crazed murderer of civilians -- in the face of a victory, no less -- still made no sense to me.) Like I could see her going crazy on the city if they threw rocks at her or something after she was like "I just killed Cersei, you simple dumbasses! I LIBERATED YOU! LOVE ME!!!! I'M THE GOOD RULER!! OK FUCK YOU THEN!!" But to be flying around, basically accomplish her goal of taking the city, and then suddenly be like "Rarrr, Dany go crazy! Because Targaryen blood! Kill all humans!" It's not like Cersei even likes the humans; we spent a long time establishing that she doesn't give a fuck about the people. There was no reason, to my mind, that Dany snapping would involve her burning the whole city that she's fought to get for so long. It felt like it was for shock value, both at the loss of life and at us going "omg Dany was the villain all along!" But it did not, to me, feel earned. Just baffling and disappointing.

If anything I thought CERSEI would do some huge evil gesture to pointlessly fuck the city just to go out in a blaze of glory, and Dany would fight AGAINST her own nascent rageahol Targaryen feelings and experience character growth and transcend her fate in order to try to prevent that from happening. Or NOT ultimately be able to do that, but at least make a gesture towards such a thing. It was just weird the way it happened. And I don't see how Dany can come back from this, as a character, and that is disappointing because we've invested so much in her. It's really deflating. It's just like, oh, I guess Dany is bad now. She was a crazy Targaryen after all! Everybody thought she might go mad, and now she did. D'oh. But it's a weird and oddly anticlimactic ending for such a character. (I realize it hasn't ended yet, but I don't think redemption is in the cards for her after this episode.)

(Also, what was Varys, etc.'s basis for suddenly deciding that she bout to go crazy and we can't trust her? Her being impatient to get to King's Landing and get going on the sacking last week? Arguably she should have let the armies rest, and I took Sansa's side in that argument, but you could make a case for Dany’s side as well, which was essentially "sure, we're tired, but if we wait longer they'll also regroup and it will be even more difficult, let's just get this the fuck done already." That to me doesn't say "I'm dangerously unstable and everyone knows it!" so much as "Our military strategies differ!")

OK. So what I was expecting was Dany versus Cersei, both power-mad, both not wanting to back down, but one of them at her essence having a heart that truly does care about justice (the beat of these warring impulses within her has been struck MANY times with Dany's character) and managing to see through the power-lust fog to remember that. Whether too late or not, for that to happen in some capacity. And this also ties into Jaime's arc.

I wasn't upset when Jaime heard about shit going down in King's Landing last week and decided that his happy chill Winterfell life with Brienne wasn't going to be that easy and he had to go back to fix the mess he helped make and sever his connection with his twin once and for all. (I mean, I kinda was, but I was like, yeah, I can see that this has to happen.) And he was fucking pissed about it and he was all, this is my shit too, I'm an asshole who has done bad stuff that I have never really atoned for, as this jaghole in the rolly chair keeps reminding me, I can't be with you until I get back in the mud with her and end it once and for all. That is where I ASSUMED they were going. And I think they sort of were, but it didn't end up that way at all.

So what I thought was going to happen was Jaime would get to the city, insinuate himself in somehow, get to Cersei, and talk her down. Or make an attempt. That this was how Jaime would finally cement his redemption, as the only person who could reach Cersei. I thought all the "I'm bad, I've done bad things, I'm as bad as she was" was him essentially being pissed that this was his task. When Tyrion was going on about you can escape and get in a dinghy and start a new life together with your incest baby, I thought, oh dear sentimental (perhaps not in an entirely in-character way) Tyrion, Jaime is going to go and KILL her ass and not a moment too soon. He knows that the blood on her hands is on his hands as well. He doesn't want to start a B&B with her in Europe; he needs to cut the cord, to use an apt metaphor. He doesn't want to, and he's dreading it, but he's the only one who can make it happen because he's the closest to her and she trusts him and he's the only hope of saving the city. He may hold her and TELL her that they can escape, and might even say "oh yeah babe there's totally a dinghy waiting for us if we can just get through the tunnels," and then he's going to stab her in the gut and avert that battle that I dumbly thought they would not stage an entire second one of after they just had one two episodes ago. Jaime the kingslayer, who slayed the queen as well, his own sister, but he had to do it and now he's finally fully redeemed. Even Dany who didn’t trust him will see that he was ultimately the only one who could do what had to be done.

If Jaime died in THAT process I wouldn't be surprised. Like if Cersei fought him and he had to somehow sacrifice them both (a la the Cleganes) in order to get her to die, he would do it, and that would be tragic but meaningful. Or if he dispatched Cersei and THEN got buried by the collapsing castle or whatever, he had accomplished his mission but it was too late for him. Hell, maybe they even make it to the fabled dinghy of redemption and he's talked himself into the idea that he can control her, and then he has second thoughts and drowns her or something because he knows he will never be free if she's alive, and neither will the world because she will always lust for power. OR EVEN if, at the last minute, he gets sucked back into her orbit and he's like "bitch we ARE gonna escape!!! WE CAN START ANEW, IT'S ALL LIKE WE DREAMED" and then she kills him or something but at the last second some shit that he puts in motion causes her to die and the city is saved that way.

But what I was NOT expecting is Jaime to be told "go get her, put her in a boat, start a new life together!" and just like, DO that, or try to. To just apparently shrug off the whole Brienne thing and get to Cersei and be like "hi baby! I missed you" and "let's hug" and then they just die in the castle FOR NO PURPOSE. It didn't redeem Jaime, it didn't tragically NOT redeem Jaime, Jaime just sort of went back there just in time to die with nothing resolved. What is the point of watching this character grow over the seasons and then be like "well I guess he realized he had to go back and die with Cersei because THEY ARE TWINS" (pretty much what the showrunners said). Yes, They Are Twins, which is why it's tragic to have one kill the other, or for him to outgrow her, or for him to give up a promise of happiness to go back and put a stop to her evil deeds because he's the only one who can. What I'm saying is, it's not the tragedy per se that I object to! But to just be like, well, he came back to her because remember they were incest twins and they love each other! They died, the end, is just...such a weird anticlimactic way to do it. “He couldn’t escape her orbit after all; that’s the tragedy!” I guess, but to me that was not supported at all in the rest of Jaime’s arc. It felt like we were pointedly amassing evidence that he WOULD be able to escape her orbit in the final inevitable confrontation. And then that just didn’t come up at all. 

And I love Brienne and I loved them together but like, I don't care THAT much, this isn't a shipper thing. I'm not surprised that Jaime ended up dying. It just makes no sense for the character for it to happen the way it did. I kept thinking we were going one way and then something would happen where I'd be like "huh??" As with my old friend Christopher Carter, I can't tell if they just didn't convey what they were supposed to be conveying (maybe Jaime WAS supposed to be intending to kill her, or to do SOMETHING other than just go back to hang out? and it didn't come through?) or if they just legit wrote it like that. Like the Brienne storyline was just a way to pass the time before the timer went off and they had to cut all that short and dump it in a drawer and get Jaime back to King's Landing so he could die with Cersei because once they thought of that ending scene 5 years ago or something.

I mean: Jaime was the Kingslayer. We were reminded of that A LOT, and also of the fact that the king he killed was Dany's father, and that Dany's father was "mad" and evil, and Jaime killed him ultimately to protect the city, and then got shit for this for the rest of his life.

And we are also shown that Dany is becoming a Mad Queen, who may be about to follow in her father's footsteps after all.

And Jaime goes to all this trouble to get back to the city, where almost these same events are playing out all over again. And...

...Jaime just goes to hang out with Cersei? And then dies? How is there not a whole situation where there is SOME parallel to the Kingslayer thing that we keep being reminded of and that is repeating itself? Such as:

Jaime slays a Mad Queen, but it's Cersei, not Dany.

Jaime has a chance to slay a Mad Queen, Dany (we've literally already had a conversation about this a few eps ago, that she was worried this would happen), but instead he is able to reach her and show her that she is different from her father and it DOESN'T have to play out this way.

Jaime has a chance to slay a Mad Queen (either could work) and prevent the destruction of the city, again, but this time he makes the other choice and doesn’t do it, and it results in tragedy.

Jaime, transformatively humanized and experiencing non-incestuous love for the first time and no longer at the top of his fighting game, no longer has the killer instinct to pull the metaphorical trigger on slaying whichever queen, and Tyrion pops in to do the job for him.

Like any of these things would have made more dramatic sense than what happened, which was, NOTHING. Jaime doesn't even get near Dany and once he gets to Cersei he's just like "hi! time to die I guess" and then they die.

(Maybe something along these lines will happen in the finale? Again, I'm not sure how at this point.) (I suppose it's not IMPOSSIBLE that Jaime could be pulled out of the rubble, but if he is Cersei might be too, and I am REALLY done with Cersei and do not want to dedicate the finale to trying to kill her YET AGAIN.)

Anyway. I was being flip about male showrunners yesterday but honestly, it feels like they are like, let's just wrap this all up fast so we can have 1.5 hours of battle scene. THE PEOPLE NEED A(NOTHER) BATTLE EPISODE.

It WAS cool seeing Drogon FINALLY destroy the Iron Fleet, but literally, why didn't Dany do that last episode. I couldn't enjoy it because that continues to be so baffling to me.

This is longer than I intended; oh well.

[thelawyerthatwaspromised]

Hi! I'm a jonerys shipper but I find your theories very interesting. I wonder though, how will you feel about the show/Asoiaf if Political!Jon is debunked with season 8? Do you think it will change your opinion on Jon? And will you still ship Jonsa if he truly bent the knee because he is in love with Dany? I suppose I'm wondering how a post S8 Jonsa faction will look.

Hello! I really appreciate the question because it’s not a bad one: what if political!Jon isn’t a thing? First, I guess I’ll explain what I think has to be true for political!Jon to not be true.

Jon has to have total faith in Dany’s ruling ability; not just her capacity as a conqueror. Jon has to have thought it was acceptable to give away the Stark ancestral home without consulting anyone about it. Jon has to have actually been unable to lie to Cersei at the Dragonpit. Jon has to actually believe that the stuff he warned Dany about earlier in the season (about northerners not wanting to follow a southern ruler) is either not true anymore - or - at least not as important as the urgency to give away his crown before he could even talk to them about it.

All of these have terrible, terrible implications on Jon’s character.

Because it will mean a number of things…

1) It would mean that Jon really didn’t learn anything from Robb and Ned and their respective downfalls. That’s tragic in itself. When it comes to Robb, sure he made mistakes that cost him his life - but he was also way too young and thrust into a position he should never have been forced to undertake. The same is somewhat true for Jon, except he’s now been in leadership and he knows his family’s mistakes. 

I don’t want “aww shucks” stupid heroes. I don’t enjoy that type of storytelling. I don’t think it’s something I can suspend my disbelief while I’m watching if I actively think “he is a complete and total idiot” and he’s supposed to be un-ironically a hero of the story. Beyond that, I think that’s the opposite of the point of Jon’s arc, most especially in the books but also on the show. 

Robb and Ned are there to be cautionary tales for good people who are struggling with the intricacies of dangerous political games. Jon being as dopey as not learning anything from their decisions cheapens Robb’s story, it cheapens Ned’s story, and it makes Jon simply a lucky idiot if he somehow survives.

Jon is also taking a gigantic risk throwing all his eggs in Dany’s basket even if he thinks she’s the most wonderful person. He has no idea what she’s like as a ruler. He didn’t know anything about her other than she’s come to Westeros and has three dragons. He doesn’t know anything about her tenure in Essos - or that it concluded with her very responsibly have Daario Naharis overlooking the biggest political transition in thousands of years over there. No big deal.

In the best case scenario, Jon would have been detained on the island, been “asked” to bend the knee to Dany on multiple occasions, and agreed to go on a mission that he otherwise wouldn’t have gone on (since he asked Dany multiple times to come North without regard to Cersei’s intentions) and almost died on that mission only to have seen Dany take another big risk by flying her dragons up North to try to save him.

That’s not even close to enough information for Jon to know whether Dany is in any way a good ruler. Flying dragons and ruling are two different things. He took a huge gamble whether it’s political!Jon or not; but at least with political!Jon it was because he felt he HAD to do it to ensure her commitment. The alternative is Jon handing that over without any clue as to whether she can do the mundane things like administer land dispute decisions or responsibly manage the treasuries of Westeros. 

2)  It would mean that Jon governs and makes decisions based solely on his own emotional impulses which would really suck. It’s practically inexcusable for Jon to behave this way. It’s irresponsible as a ruler for him to just hand Dany power like he did at face value without talking to anyone from the North about it first. You could have made an argument to me that Jon could legitimately think Dany should rule the North and it might be a plausible explanation without making Jon a terrible rule IF Jon had actually waited until he returned North to tell the lords in person that he planned to give away the crown for her.

By not doing so, it tells me that either Jon is inconsiderate and impulsive enough to give away something as sacred as an entire country (on the macro) and his childhood home (on the micro level) - OR - there’s something else in play for why he felt it absolutely necessary to “bend the knee” with the timing as it occurred. If there’s some 3rd explanation that I haven’t thought of - I’d actually be willing to read it first before I decided whether it’s an idea willing to entertain.

I don’t talk politics thaaaat much on here, but the analogy really would be that, after being elected, Donald Trump literally believed he had the authority and moral high ground to hand his presidency over to Putin. Not only would everyone hate him, but he literally does not have the authority to act like that and would be removed from his position before it happened.

[to be clear Jon =/= Trump and Dany =/= Putin. It’s an analogy on political leaders behaving in another context. If you want, you can imagine the PM of Canada and the the King of Wakanda as substitutes behaving the same way.]

By going solo in that process - Jon almost guaranteed at the very least a gigantic amount of political turmoil in the North…but it’s something I think he’s aware of and has anticipated. If he hasn’t - he has no business ruling anything ever. 

There is no reasonable explanation for the timing of Jon bending the knee (before consulting with anyone in the North let alone his very own travel companion Davos) other than political!Jon and realizing the exact moment was right because Dany had just promised to help fight the Night King and Jon wanted to cement her commitment as much as he could.

3) It would mean that Jon genuinely valued everyone knowing openly that he planned to fight Cersei in the war after the Night King over actually getting the truce to allow them to fight the NK. If Jon did what he did at the Dragonpit - then he proved himself a liar when he said just before that “there is only one war that matters” because he immediately (again, in the absence of political!Jon) affirmed his position in the war for the Iron Throne at the expense of the war to save the Realm. 

Beyond the silliness of the idea that Jon Snow is incapable of lying to Cersei - it really is highlighted perfectly in Jon’s scene with Theon:

“You risked everything just to tell an enemy the truth.”

I mean…is telling the truth generally good? Yes.

Is telling the truth still good if….

SCENARIO: Bad Guy has their finger on the button to launch a nuclear weapon on a Sunday and they say, “oh wait, these nuclear codes were only good until Sunday and now it’s after midnight so it’s Monday!” 

Bad Guy is momentarily confused. “Or is it still Sunday? Say! You, Honest Fellow! If it’s really after 12:00 AM, I’ll have to leave here and try to grab more launch codes, is it really after midnight? I don’t have my watch.”

Honest Fellow: “I’d like to tell you it’s 12:04….but alas, I cannot. It is 11:58-…”

*KABOOM*

Well…you’d rightfully be displeased with Honest Fellow. But, then again, I think Jon Snow would hate this honest fellow as well. How stupid is that if it’s the same story we heard at face value? 

“I just can’t lie!” 

That’s irredeemably stupid. It KNOWINGLY put everyone at risk and actually is LUCKY that Cersei planned all along to accept a truce so she could have time to replenish her forces with the Golden Company. 

I’d recommend that the Honest Fellow version of Jon Snow climb up that 700 foot Wall he’s supposedly been working so hard to protect and fling himself off. They could call it Lord Commander’s Landing.

4) It would completely upend the part of Jon’s story where he has yearned to truly be a part of House Stark, his residual guilt about not being there to help Robb when the fighting began, and his close relationship with Sansa after their reunion. 

I could say plenty of shippy things about how the absence of political!Jon would completely ruin the relationship with Sansa that Jon’s built since they reunited but I don’t even have to go there. Simply as a close companion and trusted adviser and family member, Jon would have spat right in her face.

People seem to misinterpret Jon feeling like an outsider with the rest of the Starks with Jon never feeling welcome and never wanting to be a member of House Stark. The exact opposite is true. Jon’s detachment was due specifically to his wanting very much to be Jon Stark but feeling like it was an impossibility because of his birth. Jon loved the Starks. He wanted to be known as Ned’s son. He craved acceptance from Catelyn but never received it. It’s caused him to feel unworthy of that. 

When they found the direwolf pups, Jon wanted each Stark to have a wolf first. It was essentially a gift of the gods that Jon “heard” Ghost (who is famously silent) after his noble self-denial in favor of the trueborn Starks. 

Immediately after winning the BotB, Jon makes sure Sansa takes up residence in the Lord’s chambers. He didn’t do that because he doesn’t care. He cares very deeply. He wanted Sansa to know that she is House Stark’s true representative. He doesn’t feel like he deserves that, hence the sadness in his voice as he says “I’m not a Stark.” He reiterates that Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell. Being the Lord or Lady (as opposed to “acting” Lord or Lady) means that Sansa has hereditary rights over Winterfell - something they both fought like hell to re-take.

Now I’m supposed to believe that the guy who didn’t even want a simple puppy before the other Starks, who fought like hell to re-take Winterfell, who tried to desert the Night’s Watch once and arguably did a second time to fight for the Starks, who very intentionally placed Sansa as the head of House Stark rather than himself, who then passed to her specifically ruling authority over the North while he was away - THAT GUY - is now supposed to think it’s fine and necessary and RIGHT to give ruling authority and his crown over to a woman before she ever even stepped foot in the North.  (The Gift, which is the territory along the Wall is owned by the Night’s Watch independent of the North. Even if you count the top of Eastwatch as Dany stepping foot up there, she’s still not in the political North)

All of this, too, without ever talking to a single person about the decision beforehand. 

That’s a Jon Snow I cannot root for or reconcile with the rest of his story. In my mind, it’s character assassination.

It would make me wonder what the point was of Jon Snow even coming back from the dead.

Thank you for the ask. Hope this answers your question sufficiently. You’re welcome to ask more anytime.