#just because it logically makes sense in the narrative the show itself has set up doesn't mean they will actually do it

[inbarfink]

Okay, so… The ending flashback in “I Remember You” is often assumed by fans to be specifically the moment where Simon and Marcy first met. Like, Simon stumbled on this Weird Gray Kid crying in the middle of the apocalypse, cheered her up with a dolly and only after that Simon started taking care of Marcy full-time. 

However, while this seems to be a pretty logical interpretation of the scene - a look at the original storyboard actually reveals that was not the original intention.

You can argue whether or not it was properly conveyed in the finished episode, but the intent was supposed to be that these two already knew each other and were already a tiny lil’ post-apocalypse family (‘he has left her alone for some reason’ implies that they would usually be together at this point).

I mean, since this idea wasn’t really all that clear in the actual episode, a lot of people who did know about the storyboard notes (myself included) still assumed it wasn’t really canon. You know, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. What’s the big difference between Simon giving Marceline Hambo on the first day they met or not? What difference does it make?

And even when this idea was discussed, it was generally within the framework of, like, speculating about a possible connection between Simon and Elise (Marceline's Mom). And/or that Marceline specifically knew Simon before the War. Since neither of these ideas ever really came back in the Show itself, most people just kinda forgot about these Storyboard notes - if they ever knew about them in the first place.

It’s only very recently that it suddenly dawned on me; what was the original intent behind that scene, what is the meaning it was trying to convey, why was it so important to specify that Simon and Marcy already knew each other in that flashback. 

If this is Simon and Marcy’s first meeting then the narrative is, like we mentioned above, that lil Marceline was crying in the rubble because she misses her mom or she just really processed that the world has been destroyed, or because she was tired, or hungry. Then Simon sees the poor little girl weeping and immediately sets on to cheer her up and help her in whatever way he can. That is still a very solid narrative that focuses on Simon’s kindness and strong parental instincts. I can see why so many people are attached to it as their interpretation for that scene. It certainly makes sense for Simon’s character overall and Marceline’s relationship to him.

But the intended meaning is actually uniquely important as a part of “I Remember You”. Because the narrative implied by the fact that they knew each other at that point is that Simon has left Marcy alone ‘for some reason’ (scouting ahead? Forging for food in a dangerous area?) and Marcy probably started crying because of that. Maybe he was taking longer to come back than he promised her to, maybe she just started getting anxious because she’s a little kid all alone (who already has abandonment issues pre-packaged from her mom). 

But whatever the specifics are, with this one extra detail of ‘they know each other’ it seems extremely likely that Marceline was crying because she thought Simon had left her forever. 

But Simon did come back, ran straight to her, comforted her and reassured her that no, he didn’t leave her behind, he’s right here. And then he gives her Hambo as both an apology for leaving her behind and a reassurance.

A reassurance that he’s still here, and he’s not going to leave her.

[departed-pronouns]

Was gonna just like - but oh gosh whoever did the tags, have to share for the tags.

i won’t budge from my opinion that buddie has a shot at going canon up until the very last episode, but that doesn’t mean i haven’t also accepted that i may be wrong because the showrunners could opt to never *officially* put them together romantically, hence getting scenes like buck falling asleep on the diaz couch and leaving it open to interpretation (for now). the amount of people going “this thing can’t possibly mean anything but buddie”…all the optimism in the world won’t make it true if it’s not in tim’s long term plans.

[coraniaid]

I really do think that the least interesting way to approach any longform narrative written over the course of several years by different writers is to act as if it everything that happens in it must somehow be internally consistent. Especially when we're talking about television writers with an (at best) flexible approach to world building and logical consistency; writers with a clear willingness to abandon previously established facts about the setting if it allows for (what they think will be) a more interesting story in the moment. In such a context it is just not sensible to insist that any late season retcons definitively establish some singular Truth about how the show Really Worked in its original seasons.

Specifically (and I'm aware I wasn't being very vague before) the idea that the (often rather bad) writing of Buffy's later seasons establishes definitive Facts about the world of the first few seasons which, if they contradict earlier claims, mean the original world-building lore we were given must actually have been examples of the in-universe characters being wrong or telling deliberate lies is, I'm sorry, almost offensively stupid. We don't "find out more" about the rules of how the world works in later seasons of the show in a way that implies these rules always existed in some fixed and unchanging state. The world of the show has no such rules because it does not, in fact, exist. What happened is that the later writers of the show (who were mostly different people) had different ideas about what would make for an interesting story (and unfortunately these were mostly worse ideas).

There seems to be a bizarrely popular take online that says you can't really understand the first few seasons of Buffy until you've watched the later ones, as if the entirety of Buffy is a single coherent narrative meticulously planned out from the beginning in advance. But you do all get that that is absurd, right? Yes, sometimes the show frequently changes its position on how its worldbuilding is supposed to work, but that's not because the writers are slowly revealing something they had planned out years earlier and knowingly had characters lie to each other about. It's because they are making things up as they go (which, to be clear, is more difficult and significantly more impressive when done well).

The reason Giles claims in Season 1's Witch to have never cast a spell before is that the writers had no inkling of the backstory they were going to give him next season. You obviously can go back and interpret this as a lie Giles is telling Buffy for some reason, but it doesn't meaningfully improve your understanding of the episode to do this. Similarly, the reason that nobody in the show talks about a "Watcher's Council" until Season 3 is that before Season 3 the writers had no conception of such a thing. It's fun to come up with in-universe reasons for why Giles might not mention the Council, even when meetin a second Slayer, but I think we should admit than when we do this we're engaged in something closer to fanfiction than analysis.

We don't "find out" that the character of Anya introduced in The Wish was probably autistic even before becoming a vengeance demon: the writers just changed their mind about how her character worked and why she acted that way (and indeed in The Wish itself she doesn't act that way at all; Anya being "strangely literal" didn't really take hold as a character trait until the show's fourth season). It is not "revealed" that Buffy tried telling her parents about vampires before the show began and they had her locked up: this is just a particularly stupid retcon that doesn't make any sense if you actually remember the first two seasons (woud Buffy joke with her mom about being distracted by thoughts of "saving the world from vampires" in Bad Eggs if the last time she'd mentioned vampires to her mom she'd been institutionalized?). We don't "learn" that Giles and Buffy were always wrong about people not "turning into" vampires (meaning they were specifically wrong about people like Jesse and Ford, and that Buffy herself is some sort of unrepentant mass murderer): the later writers who imply that this is what happens after all just didn't care about continuity (or what this change would mean for the morality of the show's protagonist's entire reason for being).

You have to watch each season of the show as if it were telling you the truth about its world building as the writers understood it at the time, or none of them make any sense. That is, in fact, how you have to watch most television of this form: there was no long term master plan. There is no singular truth about what "really" happened. The rules of the setting are just subtly (or not so subtly) different from season to season. Nobody writing Season 1 of the show had the slightest idea what would happen in Season 7 and anyone who suggests otherwise is full of shit.

[lemotmo]

https://www.tumblr.com/lemotmo/766158462403100672/saying-things-like-8x06-or-never-or-it-has-to

I mean what this anon says is true. There is no set timeline for when things need to happen technically. And the show can do it whenever.

But at the same time

What’s the point in the show doing it in the last 5 minutes of the season when all the people who wanted to see it, are no longer there to see it. Sure some will still stick around but a lot won’t. They will long before that moment have sighed and accepted to themselves they seemingly got played again (and honestly with all the promo, press, interviews, language etc being used can’t even say they’d be wrong to feel that way this time) and at the point when the show finally does it at say the very end of the season, it’ll end up just looking like an attempt to reverse course and get those viewers back.

And I’m sorry but viewers and the characters deserve better than having buddies story essentially reduced down to a cheap numbers grab. We’ve all been saying if they wanna drag buddie out a little longer then fine. But that comes with the condition of giving solid concrete proof it’s heading that way. And that proof involves Eddie. Buddie can not move forward now until Eddie is moved forward with his sexuality.

And if there is one thing this entire hiatus has shown us, or at least should have made clear to everyone by now, that the people in charge of social media, the cast and crew, writers, and the show itself are very much lurking in fandom spaces, and very much aware of the fandoms thoughts, theories, and the over all feel of the situation. So knowing all that, they have to be aware that dragging out Eddie’s story to the end of the season would be something that’s going to back fire because it’s extremely clear and has been extremely clear because no one has made it a secret that this is it. If it doesn’t happen now then most of them have agreed it’s not gonna happen. And most of them have said flat out if it’s not happening then that’s it. They won’t be watching live anymore. They might watch after it airs. Emphasis on might. And they might follow along with some spoilers online. But they would essentially be done with the show. And that’s where the juggling comes in another one of your anons mentioned. Because they see all of that and they need to be able to juggle that with making the story not dragged out past its prime. Because at that point, even if the plan has always been queer Eddie at end of the season, they will never be able to beat the allegations of it was just to get viewers back at that point.

Yep. You're right.

I've seen quite a few people in fandom say they'll stop watching live (or even stop watching the show full stop) if there isn't even a hint anything before the midseason hiatus.

Just to make it clear, I won't stop watching 911 at this point. I'm too invested in these character's lives. I need to know everything about all of them, so I'll definitely keep on watching, no matter what.

But a great deal of my enjoyment would be lost if we -once again- have to see Buck go from relationship to relationship and Eddie staying perpetually single, because women are clearly not his thing. Where's the resolution in that? Where is the satisfaction for the viewer?

This is also a big part of the reason why I'm pretty sure they're pushing forward with queer Eddie and Buddie. They are stuck in a corner and the only way for these two characters to have a satisfying ending is if they eventually get together. And this is something I think we'll see the beginnings of before the midseason finale.

It's the only narrative that makes logical sense for them.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[itsclydebitches]

Re: RWBY outfits in v9: Hey wow it's strange that Jaune gets a completely new helmet and hairstyle and altered face AND his armor is significantly retextured to the point of looking completely out of place with the flat-colored outfits the girls have in shots where they're together. I'm sure this has nothing to do with where the narrative focus of the Volume actually was. But it's fine if we don't at least partially take the girls out of their cold weather gear???

This!

Also, people frequently fail to acknowledge how much this snowballs.

RWDE: Why did Jaune get the new texture and hairstyle? Push-back: Duh, because he's the one who's been living in the Ever After for decades. RWDE: Yeah... and why did he get to do that again? Push-back: Because he killed Penny and the story needed him to have a significant arc in response to that. RWDE: Uh huh, and why did he get to do that? Push-back: Because Jaune is the one with the super important healing skill that beautifully contrasts their violent career! RWDE: ... are we not sensing a pattern yet?

Putting aside the fact that Ruby could beautifully fit any of these emotional beats with a bit of tweaking (she falls early, finds the time tree, the emphasis is on the contrast of Penny's first friend having to kill her, silver eyes are somehow significant to that moment, etc.) I think too often fans get caught up in not only the supposed necessity of any one scene —treating the RWBY gang as real people bound by the whims of fate, rather than characters 100% controlled by the writers — but also the ways in which, yes, past work does have an influence on what occurs later. If you make Jaune a team leader equal to Ruby, if you give him a big arc at the very start of the show, if you make him OP in regards to energy, if you give him the most useful skill in the entire group (given that they're fighting humans more than grimm nowadays, silver eyes are all but useless in most fights. ESPECIALLY when Ruby will randomly not use them against Cinder), if you make him the emotional focus of Pyrrha's death, if you give him the revenge quest, if you have him kill Penny... yeah, you're setting up future scenarios where he "has" to remain in the narrative spotlight. That's the problem: not only that RWBY refuses to pull back from Jaune's position in the story, but that it started that trend so early that now they have built-in excuses for why it "has" to continue. We knew going into Volume 9 that Jaune would be a problem because Volume 8 had already introduced the problems of a) having him kill Penny and b) having him fall with the title team. We're going in circles and continually winding up in scenes like, "Well, Jaune has to have an emotional breakdown that detracts from Ruby's because he's the one who has suffered for decades and he's the one who just lost an entire village to deliberate drowning. Not giving him that focus would be bad writing." Yeah, I know it would, hence the frustration that RWBY keeps backing itself into that corner!

The design issues are a like a mini-example of that. You're right, it would be ridiculous to have Jaune living in the Ever After for most of his life and somehow coming out of it looking exactly the same... but if you're going to continue capitalizing on the focus he got all the way back in Volume 1, at least give the girls equal treatment. I don't like that Jaune had a breakdown that undermined Ruby's, but given that I also would have disliked the story ignoring his clearly traumatic experiences lately, I'm glad they at least gave Ruby her breakdown alongside his (even if, as stated elsewhere, there are additional problems with how it was framed). The clothing does the opposite where Jaune gets his logical change AND the story does nothing to try and bring Team RWBY up to speed with him.

Chucking onto that pile: the fact that so many were expecting/hoping for Ruby to come out visually changed from her time in the tree, but she simply reverts back to where she was a few episodes ago with her rose pendant. Jaune, meanwhile, leaves the Ever After as the only one with a visual cue that he's undergone any growth.

[mulletmitsuya]

I hated the tr ending so badly. Not because it was rushed or anything. Wakui could have fleshed out the last timeline so thoroughly and logically and I would still hate it because the ending itself goes against what I felt the story stood for in the first place. He replaced all the characters for fakes, none of the characters we were intoduced to had happy endings because they either are totally different people or re lived their life to avoid healing. The ending basically proved izanas last words right "there's no saving me" yeah I guess not if the only way to help everyone is to make sure their lives never happened the way it did. Horrible I hate it so much. Also one ship I hate is rinzu or ranzu because they don't even interact once and it's so popular for no fucking reason other than "its hot" and tbh they would prolly hate eachother like petty bitches, they would NOT get along at any point. Also Koko and amane ship because if people actually read the manga with their eyes open it would not make sense. Anyways thanks for letting me be a hater in ur askbox, I love your blog btw

This is long, also tw for typical tokrev themes and sa

I think you're the first person who has the same opinion as me lmao😭. I also didn't believe it should have had an ending like that at all because of the themes that had been set up during the entire story. I understand people's perspectives of "It's Wakui's manga and it's his ending he can do what he wants" but media is supposed to be talked about, discussed and even criticized at times. That's like, the whole point of publishing stuff. As an enjoyer and supporter of Wakui's manga, I feel like I have the right to question some inconsistencies and contradictions (not directly attack him tho, that's never okay. like people who send death threats over ships and stuff that's messed up) that showed up in the ending. I also believe lots of people didn't really take it seriously as a manga idk. It had some very serious topics that people seem to forget about. For example: suicide, abuse, abandonment, child neglect, substance abuse, extreme violence, rape, prostitution etc, and I think people just kinda see it as a silly manga that has cool characters they like. And that's okay. It's okay to not take a piece of media seriously and enjoy it for the sake of enjoying it, not everything needs to be critically analyzed, but stop shitting on the people who take it seriously enough to question why the fuck it ended how it ended. Lots of the discourse took place between critical analysers who wanted an author to finish the manga by sticking to the themes and messages he has set up the entire time versus casual enjoyers who just wanted everyone to be happy for the sake of liking the characters. And I completely agree with the Izana thing!!!! You cannot claim to have saved someone by rewriting their entire life!!! Takemitchy was not supposed to be god!! Also, isn't the moral story of time travel that you should never ever do it? Because you win some, you lose a whole lot fucking more. I thought Draken dying was setting up that narrative. That saving Mikey, was gonna fuck up a whole lot. Isn't that why Chifuyu broke down?

Idk about you guys, but dark impulses being a curse disappointed me quite a bit. I thought it was supposed to be a symbol of Mikey being deeply mentaly ill. And that he had to deal with it head on and not run away all the time (this was Takemichi's entire storyline basically and the the main theme of TR). I just feel like it sucked because the message of the ending, whether Wakui intended it or not, was that you can't be fixed without magical time traveling. Although the story had some fictional aspects, it was realistic at least. I thought they'd deal with everything that wasn't time travel realistically.

Any ship with Sanzu and the Haitani's is hilarious to me and although I don't ship any of them seriously, the fanarts fun to look at some time (and you're right I think they look good together cause they're hot😭). You are completely correct about them not liking each other tho. It's actually canon. Idk if you remember during the three deities fight when Ran hit Haruchiyo with his baton? Nothing but pure malice between their eyes😭. The Koko and Akane ship actually triggers me because one thing about me? I'm not comfortable with large age gaps. Akane was 5 years older than Koko💀. And I didn't know people took what she said to him seriously. I thought she was just trying to not hurt his feelings? Koko and Inupi were around 7/8 when the fire happened. Meaning Akane was like 12/13. Uhhh Idk bout y'all but I don't think a 13 yo would be attracted to someone that young. And waiting for them to be of age is...😶. Be fr.

[lesser-mook]

"The logical conclusion to Kratos fighting every pantheon." (I really, really like this concept, only because of how batshit insane Lore acc Jesus is strictly from a power-scaling perspective and despite everyone on the Planet knowing who Jesus is, most have NO idea what he is.)

not a bad concept, though they wouldn't have a reason to fight beyond Jesus' 2nd mission:

Off the top of my head, according to lore, he projects a sword out of his mouth (RV 1:16), can wield starts casually (RV 1:16), while riding a flaming horse or some shit, the sky split open (meaning the fabric of reality is breached) hence commanding legions of Angles hording through (which from text & recent visual interpretation actually look like Lovecraftian demons) to literally conquer Earth. like an interdimensional alien warlord pressing the sleep button on Humanity.

The popular central theme of this guy is he doesn't die or live in a traditional sense, and the only reason he allowed himself to be killed was to be a martyr by choice, to make a point.

Give humanity a couple thousand years to find "his/the way" supposedly, otherwise according to lore, his comeback is "The End" of post-modern humanity itself than it is the literal end of humans, I have to read it again tho.

Then another millennia of apocalyptic fallout. No nukes, no armor, just this guy showing up.

Not only would biblically acc angels be a horrifying aspect to put in a game, but Jesus himself is actually a terrifying entity despite the nice guy nature humans took for granted at the time.

Them just sounding off Trumpets will rumble the earth and cause extinction level events.

Technically he can't be beaten, because everyone knows his mortality. Nobody knows what he can actually do, which is everything. He's the original Gary Stu.

We're not even factoring in the Quantum intelligence that is "God" or even the Holy Spirit which is like a glorified proxy medium. All the Angels, their ranks, their subordinates, etc.

That game would have to be psychological/cosmic horror epic themed, surrealism.

most People only know the Sunday school tales of the human side of prophets and judges, the people God used to manipulate lives to set a narrative. From beginning to end.

Going by the book, Humanity is the original (The SIMS) game.

The BIBLE? In it's raw form, it's a tale of hope, flawed characters, redemption, perseverance, with an over-arching horror story subtext. Constant genocides at God's hands, only for Humanity to pick up the slack without his help.

And In a meta sense, in theory, WE ARE The Cliffhanger.

God itself doesn't reside in Heaven strictly, like Zeus or Odin. He has a throne, he's there, but not there.

That's just where the followers go to honor "it".

Jesus likely wouldn't want to kill Kratos, but if this is post Revelations arc Jesus. This would definitely be the game Kratos dies in cosmic epic glory.

Because that Jesus isn't preaching love, he brings war, and his physical form is G.O.N.E.

I would love to see Kratos go up against a straight up hax-ego centric narcissist being that can't bleed, be reached or touched. Having no form.

And it's only form, his kinder nicer, human self, his Son. In canon is no more. Jesus as a physical being that can be hurt, doesn't exist anymore.

(JESUS), unbeknownst to most "Christians", actually existed simultaneously throughout the Bible since Genesis/possibly pre-Gen.

Meaning this guy CHRIST, can pass through time itself. Because he did, does, will do.

I shit you not.

Superman RED Son's (novel) ending plottwist has NOTHING ON this.

There's this narrative that repeats multiple times in just Relevation Chapter 1 "Was, Is, is to come"

Revelation 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Past, Present, Future. It's consistent.

That's what i mean by "-doesn't die or live in a traditional sense", the guy existed before he was born, before he did, before he resec himself. Think about that.

Kratos needed to go on a whole ass side-quest to go through time. Jesus can just do it, technically the fabric of space-time is something he can possess, re-write, or see. Because REALLY think about what it means to exist in the past, present, and future: At the same time.

The past is gone for humans, we always live in the present. But Jesus still exists in back then. As we're in the present, waiting for the future, where he ALSO exists.

See how broken that is?

Even Asura couldn't touch this guy. DOOMSLAYER can't touch this dude, you can't.

How in the actual fuck, do you "fight" that?

Everyone says the meme "Flash can go back and kill you as a baby". Jesus apparently can do the same thing. He is simultaneous.

When the text states God is everywhere, that includes timelines, dimensions, etc. This is a beyond 10th dimensional being.

Manifested himself in flesh.

Defied death after 3 days, the only one to do that, Lazarus needed re-animation, Christ is the ONLY one to do it himself.

Not as a rule, but just to make a fucking point. That shit is both petty and scary.

The (Pan) in Pantheon.

Post-Revelations Jesus IS THE God, of War. And death.

That would be the sheer irony of pulling this off as a game

This is why it claims to be "THE" God. The thing, It, is literally every superpower you can imagine. We're talking serious beyond Haruhi Suzumiya+Dr.Manhattan+Cthulhu on steroids type shit.

no god of the sea, no god of dreams, none of that shit. This one wanted the title of "THE".

Alpha--Omega, period.

Revelation 5:1, There's God's throne, and he's holding like this book no one man or anyone in the pantheon can open except his successor, Christ.

It has Seven seals, the book does, and Christ just opening the seals is summoning horseman, like these summoned executioners RV 6:4

Revelation 6:1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse:

And then another event where the people over the course of all time that died for God, are paid tribute and given royalty treatment after they question him as to what is their reward for their spilled blood?

Revelation 6:9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? 11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. 12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

Instead of tyranny for being questioned, he took care of them, gave them quality clothes, rest and a seat in the Kingdom to wait for the others after them: Theoretically any of us who would join.

Basically sit back, here's some drip and wait for immending immortality for being killed for his sake.

If this was OT, they would've been struck out of existence, but the era of Christ was God himself having a character arc that he himself determined in advance because technically before it happened, it happened already.

And the

RV 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

Just him opening a seal of this book warped physics to change the shades of celestial bodies on a level of an eclipse.

JUST HIM OPENING THE SEAL.

This thing is next level.

The religion aspect is what people turn away from, including me, but from a strictly "kaiju"/Cosmic being standpoint, "Yahweh", "Elohim", "Christ" is a serious monster.

Unless Kratos drops in during the NT or before OT even happens, because again Jesus existed during & thus by proxy before Genesis.

I used to think the whole book was corny but the Shit is mind-numbing apocalyptic, straight insanity.

Kratos cannot afford to be holding back with this one, even if he doesn't, it won't help.

The problem is most god's Kratos has fought has had physical silhouette's one way or another

Or that time he fought Zeus' ghost

or he’s had some kind of weapon to tangibly touch spirits. (GOW3)

This one, pantheon and all, is a whole different beast. These things are omi-dimensional avatars-- Vibrating between dimensions because reality is just a frequency that our atoms reside in.

Which is why we're not going to find Aliens in space or in the Earths Core. They're literally next to you, in another frequency of reality-- A dimension, that's what Parallel Earths in Comics represent. Thats what Heaven is. A frequency.

That's HOW this God does it, through sound, frequency science. Not spaceships.

Revelation 8:2  And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

These trumpets according to lore will change landscapes, cause great events and summon greater angels.

And that's why people resonate with music so much, how it can control moods, frequency of sound is power, it taps into dimensions if the sound is strong enough.

Specifically the method that Christs coming is announced is through Horns, Sound. Punching through our dimension like a battering-ram on a door.

It's no accident that the "Arrowhead project" let in aliens from another dimension into this one in 'The Mist' story because the military went and knocked on their front door.

Sound is a stronger element than Humanity realizes, well the uninitiated anyway.

All in all, I genuinely want to see that game happen. Even if not accurate, (because if it is, Kratos loses hard, it's not even a fight), the interpretation alone would be cool.

Though his death was trash, GOW Thor was awesome.

[elytrafemme]

my thoughts on "we're all doomed" (by THE daniel howell <333)

warning this is a little critical but altogether written with love <3

i never gave my We're All Doomed takes i'm realizing. okay so i love daniel howell and i'm really glad that this show was healing from him, i could definitely see dystopia daily and the pieces he's discussed of his scrapped (via YouTube's fuck ups) comedy special within the show itself. i thought that the set design/music/lights was fucking INCREDIBLE and i adored the opening segment, the ending of act 1 monologue, and the ending of the show overall.

that being said, i think the show was not like... narratively cohesive? it was a lot of segments that didn't really logically follow from one another, and they would range from being genuinely funny to going on for entirely too long (the judge segment being his favorite shocked me because... Uh). the ending of act one didn't really roll over into the start of act two in a way that made sense to me-- it set me up for an entirely different direction of act two that i think i would have maybe preferred? similar with the wardrobe change, it was gorg and i understood what he was going for but it didn't really hit as well as it could because i think it was mistimed.

my main complaint, which will not be well-received for anyone who cares deeply about this due to the fact that WAD was distinctly a comedy special, is the fact that i'm like... a leftist? and i know daniel howell is in his own rich-British-white-man way, but a lot of the "takes" confused me because i couldn't tell if he was genuinely trying to make a strong argument as a left-wing person (in which case i think i'm allowed to have respectful criticism of it) or if it was supposed to lean heavy on the satire (in which case ???). obviously this is no critical commentary/cancellation of him as a person, he's great and has done SO much good in the world, i'm not trying to imply he's the worst or whatever. it was just funny because me and my friend (also a leftist) kept squinting at the camera being like... okay dan this is an... interesting argument. this majorly happened in the last segment, when he just did the costume change and tried to talk about global events and he made a VERY good argument but gave us hell along the way because at several points it almost became the worst take ever (trying to relate global events to things in his personal life was definitely like... a decision. for sure.)

in any case, i did adore it, if only for the segments i listed above that i liked. the fan reacts were cute (we couldnt' get ours to work :( ), i fucking LOVED the orange carpet before the show and the Q&A after. me and my friend had a really good time, and i can't wait for what he works on next. also i might cave and buy merch but that depends on how unwise my other purchases this month are.

overall: i have 48 hr access to it but i don't intend to rewatch any part of it, i am glad i watched it at all though and i am left with fond feelings about daniel howell knowing how much the show meant to him-- i've been in that dark place and having that hope means SO much. ultimately though, i didn't love the political commentaries sprinkled throughout, but the show was good. proud of him.

[mae-i-scribble]

As a fan of manhwa in general for the life of me I will never understand the praise that Revolutionary Princess Eve/The Princess Imprints the Traitor gets because it is straight up one of the most racist plots I have seen in a hot minute save for like, the general nonexistence of melanin in anything manhwa related (technically not all of them but like, cmon yall know what im talking about). To me that’s what makes it more insidious? Like people can call out the blatantly racist bs but the moment its more casually interwoven into the narrative it’s praises all around. What is awful even further is that this manhwa presents itself as the exact opposite, our protagonists are on the side of good, undoing the system of slavery, and with some very minor tweakings, you would actually have a gorgeously done story about how to best inspire large scale societal change, to what lengths should we use violence to further our righteous goals, changing the system from within vs using external pressure of retribution/rebellion, the nuances that come from being in a privileged position but still genuinely doing their best to help the people around them, the struggles that it takes to actually unite a group of people even if you are part of an oppressed class, and more themes actually very much relevant to the story it is theoretically trying to tell. Instead we get a flaming pile of garbage because the author refuses to actually engage with the themes and world set up.

Surprisingly, the glaring issues pop up within the first 3 chapters. First and foremost being the reason why Mikael started this entire revolution. Mikael is the first to break out of the brainwashing as the “king” of the homunculi and leads the revolution to overthrow the monarchy that upheld this institution of slavery. It all makes perfect sense, of course he would want his freedom and autonomy and vengeance against the people who tortured him so, and also wants that for his fellow homunculi- except oh wait no he didnt do that for any of those realistic reasons silly. He wasn’t upset at being a slave or at the unjust and cruel treatment of those deemed lesser for no reason other than their identity as a homunculus. He was in *love* clearly. With the 7th princess who he has only had 1 conversation with. When he heard she was being sold off he just had to stage this revolution to make sure that wouldn’t happen. No other reason :)) (insert eye roll here). Like oh yes the slaves were perfectly fine being slaves I guess. Like this isnt explicity what the story is saying bc it goes out of its way to show you how miserable the homonculi are, but by having Mikael’s sole motivation be to like, get together with Eve eventually it makes him a wet cardboard character with no compelling motivation or backstory. It’s also just degrading the idea of slaves uprising and fighting for their rights, because nooo our love interest can’t have done anything for those reasons, that’s wrong. And that is such a fucked worldview to present. People shouldn’t fight for their right to exist as human beings and not property. Only when motivated by actual pure reasons such as love or non violent change is it the right course of action.

And coming back to the whole, Mikael has been in love with Eve the entire time thing which is fucking stupid to me because I hate love at first sight tropes. Logically, doesn’t it make for a far more compelling story to have them at odds by virtue of their positions and life experiences despite ultimately holding similar viewpoints and then have them find common ground in the new timeline where Eve is more proactive and they actually interact for more than just a longing stare? You can’t even argue he was in love with her for plot reason- he doesn’t need to be in love with her for this story to start. When Eve dies he’s the one who wants to try and bring her back, but who does he actually need to do the procedure? The sage, or Eve’s personal mentor. Literally. Just. Have. The. Sage. Turn. Back. Time. It would make perfect sense considering how close the two are and how unfairly Eve was assassinated when she had been doing her best for the homunculi. You could have Mikael honor her with a funeral, respectful as to what she meant as a royal who publicly was against the homunculi system and then have the Sage bust in the middle of the night and drag Mikael unknowingly into this spell because they’re the one that wants to give their precious student a second chance. It literally solves all your problems in one without reducing Mikael’s entire personality to just “in love.” It’s also a great way to introduce the Sage and make the reader wonder just how special Eve must be for someone to go to such lengths for her.

Furthering the romance talk, this manhwa is a romance, except its an incredibly disturbing one from start to finish. When Eve imprints Mikael his entire thought process is changed. This is quite literally mind control magic forcibly changing his opinion of her to favorable. They explicitly show that!! Multiple times!! He even sees her as beautiful because of the imprint and nothing else! And you cannot argue what are his true thoughts and what aren’t because the imprint works to actively change his thoughts unless he is consciously going against it. So logically we have to conclude that any emotion Mikael feels about her is constructed by the imprint or in the case of any positive ones, being drastically amplified. This is not love. This is not a romance. This is just mind control but we’re supposed to see it as romantic because our protagonist obviously cannot do anything wrong. Also, the imprint makes it so that little spark of personality we see in Mikael when we first meet him in the floating prison goes away completely. Our two protagonists never truly argue about anything after that point. It’s so,,,, stale. All of the conflicts we could have had between them to further the themes and their relationship just don’t exist because the author wants Mikael’s personality to be “simp” and Eve’s to be “perfect princess who never does anything truly wrong.” In a story dealing with such a direct allegory for the slave system and dealing with racist institutions not have those sort of furthering arguments is a massive blow to the story’s integrity. I can’t see it as anything smart despite the promise its idea shows because clearly the author isn’t going to actually follow up on anything. How could they when they can’t even give us the relationship between the two main characters without resorting to using mind control to mellow out one side’s feelings.

Ironically, out of everything in this mess Eve is by far the best written aspect of it. She very easily could be a white savior trope through and through, naively condemning Mikael’s actions on the basis that “violence is wrong UwU.” To some extent, she does fall into this because one of her major goals is to not have that revolution Mikael starts. However, it’s made more complex by Eve’s mindset. Eve doesn’t consider herself exempt from the homunculi’s scorn. She recognizes that her resistance while novel in itself never lead to results, so she effectively did nothing for the people she was trying to help. In the original timeline she fully believes that Mikael hates her for these exact reasons, and his kindness towards her is only a ploy for her to lower her guard. She also doesn’t deny her place as an inheritor of the very monarchy that began and enforces this systemic racism, she will always be connected to their misdeeds. To Eve, Mikael rising up to take down the emperor is a death sentence, because to kill off the imperial family in condemnation of their crimes means that she too will be executed. Eve wants to live just as much as she wants to help the homunculi, so of course she’s going to stay far far away from that path. Another aspect of it is that Eve is genuinely sad for the destruction caused by Mikael’s methods, because a lot of innocent people inevitably got caught up in the crossfire. More than that, Eve in this new timeline actually goes about trying to correct her mistakes in the past timeline. She plays the political game in order to put herself in a position where she can actually help the homunculi rather than just saying they deserve better treatment. And she does so without ever losing that perspective of “im sure i can’t be seen as some sort of good person to the homunculi because of who i am and the part i have unwillingly played in their suffering, but i will do everything in my power to make things better.” Sure, I realize it’s just there so it can be proven wrong eventually and have Eve realize she was adored all along but its really an excellent perspective to have without considering that.

However, even with the positives there are plenty of things that fall short. Without any proper conflict of ideologies, Eve’s mindset of changing the system from within by becoming crown princess and letting reform start there goes uncontested. It is upheld as the “right” choice because it is what leads her to her victories. In turn this utterly condemns any sort of violent response, even in the face of unspeakably cruel and inhuman treatment. Rising up to fight back is never right, see how much happier everyone is now that the nonviolent option was chosen? If the author had just made Mikael into a properly autonomous character with his own opinions it could have made for a very interesting juxtaposition of their worldviews. Eve could come to terms with her own implicit biases, and come to even understand why Mikael did the things he did. By having her just be right all the time it takes so much depth out of the story.

Having read spoilers for the ending of the novel out of curiosity, I was disgusted to find that not only does most of the royal family go unpunished, but both Rosie and the King are redeemed???? Which like okay, I’m not saying you can’t have redemptions, I’m not saying god awful characters cannot be redeemed. But I am saying that the half-hearted bullshit given to us by Revolutionary Princess Eve is downright disgraceful. Even ignoring that the entire royal family besides Eve willingly kept personal slaves also used as sex slaves, often throwing away the homunculi’s lives for enjoyment, the King is quite literally just garbage. He relishes in the power he holds over the homunculi, he resists change time and time again because losing that power and system of free labor would be devastating to him. He only cares about his children when they meet his standards, and then forgets about them when they aren’t doing anything that grabs his interest. Neither Eve nor Mikael have any reason to forgive or accept this man as a part of their lives and yet both of them do????? He never faces any real consequences for his actions or anything, just retires on in peace. The same thing goes for Rosie and what happens between her and her personal knight (slave) who she repeatedly raped and abused and yet somehow. SOMEHOW. the author has the fucking gall to make it a “oh well things are bad here but one day they’ll probably be together” sort of ending for those two???

All of this just goes to show that despite coming in strong with its promises of a racially allegorical story about breaking down a society’s racist systems, this manhwa never had the slightest intention of actually approaching the incredibly dark ideas it puts in the forefront. Nothing is followed through upon, nothing is rightfully challenged, our main characters hardly have arcs to speak of. In the end all we have left of those promises is an incredibly racist narrative that says violence is never the answer to face your abusers and slavers, our privileged protagonist is always in the right with her mindset on this very delicate situation, and any character from the enslaved class gets 1 personality trait and that is to love Eve. How anyone can appreciate this for anything other than the hot garbage it clearly is has a mind I cannot comprehend.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

reblogged this earlier just so it would be easy to find, but now i've got time to add to it.

the three layers described here, in terms that might be a little more clear, are:

the world as an environment

the societal structures in the world

the individual people of the world

or to give another example:

middle earth as a setting, with different environments and people groups that are each suited to their own parts of the world and have their own histories. good and evil as tangible natural forces, and the way they shape the world. etc

the cities and settlements of middle earth, with their politics and social interactions. the shire compared to rivendell compared to gondor. the effects of each society on each other, the effects of history on the current age, and also how each society has organized themselves to be able to handle the threat of evil in their lands

the characters the books actually follow; frodo, aragorn, gandalf, etc. how each of them has been shaped by their home culture and how this informs the way they interact with the people around them and the new environments they come into, as well as how they react and handle conflict. sam being less formal than boromir, gandalf being able to interact with ancient and powerful beings on an equal level, aragorn's ability to lead an army.

if any part of this were to fail, like maybe frodo acting like a powerful and seasoned adventuring hero when that's really not what he should be based on the context he was raised in, or giving every society a powerful army but claiming the world has always been at peace until now, well the story just wouldn't be as good, would it?

we wouldn't believe as well in the powerful armies of the good people if the narrative didn't show us how their history has prepared them for the big conflicts they're about to face.

The reason I'm posting to this blog instead of my main blog is that I think it also applies to things like fantasy biology, in stories where that's relevant. It's entirely possible to just not bother with detailed biology in fantasy creatures!

but if you've set your story up in a way that suggests realism, that presents itself as having a long history of something like, say, dragons as part of human war culture for multiple centuries, then I would expect the humans in that world to actually know things about the dragons on a deeper level. and I would also expect the dragons to have some logic for why they work with the humans and why they even bother with human wars. and dragon biology in this case may very well be an important detail to explore and keep consistent!

or if you've got both elves and humans and they interact with each other and the narrative presents them as being different species, I expect that to affect the way they interact, and I expect them to look different enough from each other that it makes sense for a character to say "ah, this person talking to me must be an elf" because there would be visual anatomical differences.

consistent details are essential for effective worldbuilding, on every level. every part of the worldbuilding must be cohesive with the other parts. even if you're writing a simple children's story, you still need the world to fit together in a way that is clear and simple and makes sense for that story.

I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.

Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.

Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.

Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.

Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).

So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.

For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.

In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.

For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.

[myalchod]

Dearest Charis, I have some things to ask you if you don’t mind!

Who is your #1 character from FTWS, and who do you like the least?

If you could change anything to Fate canon, what would it be?

Have you read or seen anything from the comic? Any thoughts?

Thank you!

Mysterious Hex Anon, is that you? 👀 Either way, questions! I like questions! And if I don't answer them promptly I'll get completely distracted by Things, so welcome to the Braindump Hour. Are you ready for some rambling?

Who is your #1 character from FTWS, and who do you like the least?

Okay, but I clearly can’t say that I like Random Specialist #37 the least, so I have to narrow this down somehow. And I’m still going to tantrum like a small sulky child because I hate decisions like this -- never have I ever been good at picking a singular favourite. But if I absolutely have to pick just one favourite, I think Farah just edges out Saul for the top spot. She’s why I watched the show in the first place. There are so many things about her that land her squarely in my kryptonite zone: emotionally constipated older woman haunted by her own past and unresolved issues and enough guilt to power a small town, doomed by the narrative, aware enough of this fact to hold herself just that bit apart while also not aware enough to realise how this makes that doom a self-fulfilling prophecy? Yeah, I was pretty much set up to wail over her grave from the word ‘go’. Least favourite … oof. That’s a tough one too, because the deeper I get into this show the more fond I find myself of most of the characters? Of the core cast, it’s probably either Dane or Sam, and it’s mostly that I just don’t particularly find myself engaging with either of them. Most of the others I’ve seen enough of to be intrigued by some aspect, but … meh. (Characters you’re supposed to dislike don’t really count for this, I think, so the likes of Callum and Arthur -- in addition to being peripheral -- wouldn’t figure in. And I’m ignoring Bloom’s parents too, because removing a child’s bedroom door is a bridge too far and just no.)

If you could change anything to Fate canon, what would it be?

Okay, but do I have a limit? Because “anything” isn’t “one thing” and oh my god nonny, there are so many things I would change, even if a lot of them are probably more meta (give me more detail, show, I want a thousand pages of backstory and worldbuilding, or reconcile these things that don’t seem to fit together, or give me more focus on the characters I like most). That said, if there’s one thing that I am the saltiest about in the broadest terms possible, it’s how Farah’s death was handled -- both in terms of reaction (or lack thereof) and in terms of the “lol yeah I actually did die, sorry, no coming back from that”, because I am so sick and tired of my blorbos always dying. It’s very unfair.

Have you read or seen anything from the comic? Any thoughts?

There were some panels and information shared in the Winxsource server, but I’ve not read the comic itself, nor do I have any particular inclination to doing so based on that limited knowledge … which probably tells you the general direction of my thoughts on the subject. I’m not impressed based on what I saw; the biggest issue I have with it is that it doesn’t have logical continuity with the show. I can see ways that it could work, even if I dislike the decisions (I do not grok the idea of Farah as Bloom’s biological mother broadly speaking, and have trouble with maternal Farah in the absence of substantial narrative changes). My focus has always been primarily the adults, too, so from what I gather there’s little in the comic that would be interesting to me, especially with that.

Did you read through all of that? If so, I hope it made some form of sense! And you certainly deserve a cookie for that time and effort, so: 🍪 Come back anytime, dearest nonny!

[porphyriosao3]

Something I get a fair number of compliments on in my fanfics is backstory and world-building, and I thought I could offer some tips for the new fic writers on ways to set up the story in a proper environment.  The key to it is always to have a reason for everything.  Anywhere an author deviates from the expected, that author should have a reason in mind for why it is that way.  That reason may never get used!  And that's okay... but it needs to be there in their mind.  I see a lot of people so eager to get to "the good bits" that they throw a situation together that doesn't make sense in terms of the characters' own nature, the inherent structure of the 'verse, etc., and it's important to remember that this can drag the reader out of their engagement very easily.

Let me give a concrete example: I've been reading quite a bit of a ship set in the Detroit: Become Human 'verse.  In that game world, androids were liberated (over the course of the game, with 99% of the fics are set after the "good" ending) and are now legally equal to humans.  Most of the stories that are told are romance are thus set in a world where one set of people have theoretical new rights but the lingering effects of imbalance persist.  Obviously, this gives great opportunities for narrative tension.  If a fic tells me that one of these newly-freed androids (who were forbidden from owning money or property) has a mansion less than a year later, the question of 'how did that happen?' becomes a major impediment to the story itself - unless it's a factor in the story.  In that case, the other characters in the fic need to ask the questions the reader has, so the reader continues to read because they want to know too.  

I've also seen stories where a person whose character is well-developed in game acts completely contrary to their defined nature for reasons which are never explained - why?  A hard-boiled and suspicious detective would never eat random food delivered by a service with no source; a reclusive genius with no social skills would not show up with a picnic basket to a public place, asking acquaintances to join them for a social event.  This cognitive dissonance is intensified when the fic centers on the particular person(s) who are acting out of character - if it is crucial to the story that the genius have no social skills, having him be even borderline competent at a complex social interaction confuses the reader... and confused readers tend to yeet the fic and leave.

This is NOT to say that exceptions can't happen!  Exceptions can be the core of the story, in fact - every 'personal growth' story has a core of this, where the protagonist realizes that they need to change, and gradually improves.  That can be lightning in a bottle!  Still - it has to have an explanation, and one which is presented to the reader at least in passing.  Without a good reason, it just comes across as random and the author being lazy and chivvying the reader along with a nonsense plot.  The average reader is also pretty forgiving, so even a somewhat handwave-y explanation can be acceptable as long as it's plausible.  Using the example above, the detective ate random food because it was smuggled into an expected delivery and s/he was tired; it turns out the genius was sent there by a third party with greater social skills and doesn't know how to act.  This sort of thing maintains the integrity of the setting, and that integrity is critical for getting your readers to suspend their disbelief and engage with the story.

My favorite personal trick for this is to imagine this story being told to me as an impartial observer.  Does it all hang together?  Is it plausible?  Anywhere I have a reaction where I think 'wait, what?' I know that I need to do a little more work on that bit.  The whole story should flow logically once the basic assumptions are laid out; if it doesn't, it needs a little more polish.  

Hope this helps someone  :)

[restlesshush]

One of the things I find particularly entertaining about destiel as a phenomenon is how it’s a study in accidentally creating homoeroticism via a lack of shared screen time. It’s not just that “for what it’s worth, I would give anything not to have you do this” and “well, I guess I’m not the man either of our dads wanted me to be” are already incredibly intimate things for two characters to say in their eighth episode together, but they’ve also really not interacted very much during that time and none of that unambiguously on the same side. It’s the whole “Cas is Dean’s [redacted]” of it all: season 4 destiel doesn’t work as a story about Friendship or whatever because that’s just not something the writers have taken time to show. Instead, it’s simply gay.

It doesn’t stop there either; even as late as Cas’s “I could go with you” in the season 11 finale there’s a sense of “wow, that’s very intense for two guys who’ve really not spent a lot of time together lately”. But I think, ironically, the point of no turning back here was season 6, specifically how tmwwbk works in the context of the rest of it. In a season 6 where Cas had more frequently come along for motw cases, or at least where the vibe had been more friendly and amicable when they had interacted, it would be much more plausible to read Dean’s heartbroken betrayal as being about Cas as a friend. But instead, most of their interaction has just been Dean being irrationally angry at Cas for (checks notes) trying to stop the apocalypse from restarting, while this endeavour also keeps Cas off screen a good amount of the time. Because she disliked the gay angel and so gave him as little screen time as possible before trying to write him out, Sera Gamble inadvertently set up the perfect conditions for Ben Edlund to use that Eurydice turn to say “fyi, Dean’s in love with him too”.

This thread continues throughout the show, with Cas and Dean’s having intense interactions while Cas is in only roughly half of episodes, itself making these interactions come across as even more potent. The narrative forces keeping Cas and Dean apart actively directly contribute to the logical conclusion being that they’re in love with each other; the narrative just can’t win <3

[susiephone]

okay spoilers for the Uglies series ahead, i highly recommend you read them.

i think what makes Uglies stick out to me among all dystopian lit i've read is that.... you see why people thought some of this was a good idea at first. even the really unconscionable shit that's on its face horrific started from someplace human and that, at least, is understandable.

like, i think most dystopias fall into two categories: totalitarian government doing what it can to cling to power, and a utopia gone horribly wrong.

in the first, life sucks and most people probably know it, but it's all happening so a very select few can live the high life (or, in really crapsack examples, just continue to exist- think 1984, where even the most privileged members of society live a terrible, terrible existence. but everything they do is so the system and party that gives them that privilege can continue, even if the party line itself is only misery.) the hunger games falls here; life in panem is objectively terrible for most people and everyone knows it, but the system continues to keep the capitol in power.

the second, however, has the harder task of selling a world that both seems great (at least at first) and isn't, and convincing the audience that the characters have a good reason for not realizing things suck at first. the giver accomplishes this by making it clear at the outset to the audience that something isn't right, but showing how literal decades (if not centuries) of living this way and suppressing the knowledge of any other option has everyone convinced this is grand. plus, y'know, active attempts to suppress people's emotions and free thinking.

uglies does this masterfully, because, in many ways, Tally's world is better; clothes are recyclable, medicine is free, climate change is under control, there's no poverty or hunger, there hasn't been a war in 200 years. and the central conceit of the series--an operation that turns you inhumanly beautiful at age 16--doesn't sound so bad, either. and the logic behind it, that no one will be discriminated against based on their looks if everyone is beautiful, so let's make everyone beautiful, makes sense from a certain perspective.

but then the novel skewers the idea by shining a light on beauty standards and who decides them. one of the most shocking moments of the first book, at least for me, is when Tally and her BFF Shay are playing around with a computer program that will let them take a picture of themselves, then go through different filters and alterations to see what they might look like after they get the pretty operation. Tally takes a picture of Shay, and one of the first things she does when she starts editing the photo is lighten her skin a few shades so it's closer to "standard."

i was like "WHOA!" because up until then, race had never been brought up, save for a moment where Tally remembers learning about war in history class, and how humans used to discriminate and kill people based on skin color--and how Tally still has trouble getting her mind around that one, how anyone could be so cruel and illogical and destructive. and then she turns around and does this, completely oblivious to how this is another form of that same discrimination, and how she upholds it. Shay herself, while she objects to the operation and having her photo altered, never brings up the skin lightening as a reason why.

that's when you realize: this setting's standards of beauty and totally eurocentric, and part of the plan to eliminate "ugliness" is to eliminate all racial and ethnic diversity, and the government considers this to be key to eliminating war and conflict. it's utterly horrific, and even more so is how all the characters never seem to notice, but the narrative very clearly draws your attention to it. and this wouldn't work NEARLY as well if Tally weren't a sympathetic character; she's not a monster upholding an evil system, she's a nice kid who's been brainwashed by that system, and upholds it simply by acting as she's been taught to. because that's how so many horrible systems continue to be enforced; much of the work is done by the people who don't even realize what they're doing.

and this ties into the series' greater theme of what people will do for "perfection". this society has defined perfection as a world where there's no fighting and unrest. and rather than work through conflict and celebrate (or at least accept) people's differences, they've decided it's easier to stamp both out entirely. Tally has never heard anyone older than a teenager argue, much less debate public policy, because lesions in the brain keep people too docile to ever seriously disagree. Tally is stunned the first time she sees a city where every shade of skin is present, because her city doesn't allow too much diversion from the "baseline." Tally believes she is completely hideous despite being a normal teenage girl, because society has brainwashed her into believing she is. because if too many teens decided they liked the way they were, they would start to fight back. so the system finds little (and not-so-little) ways to make being an "ugly" even more unpleasant than being a teenager already is, so most teens won't think twice before jumping at the chance to become a "pretty." and as for the teens who do think twice, or just want to look a little different from all the other "pretties"? can't have that - no deviation from the norm allowed.

and all of this comes back to the fact that, in the backstory, the world was nearly destroyed by humanity's greed and inability to think in the long-term, and the survivors would do anything to stop it from happening again. "anything" including taking away people's free will, independence, and uniqueness. and when the rebels find a cure for the brain lesions, there's a genuine moral quandary in whether or not forcing people to take it is okay- especially since the people who need it are the people who can't understand why they need it. most people who receive the cure by force are grateful once they can think clearly, but the doctor who created it fully acknowledges that the cure is dangerous and risky, especially at first, and, as a doctor, she cannot bring herself to perform medical procedures without informed consent, unless it's literal life or death. "informed consent" is a huge theme in the series, as is the question of free will vs. the greater good. it's easy to say one should always triumph over the other, but the series shows us the dangers of the pendulum swinging too hard in either direction.

in general, Tally is a really, really fascinating protagonist, because she is a dystopia protagonist who has zippo idea she's in a dystopia for a large chunk of the series. we're seeing this messed up world through the eyes of someone who thinks it's great, and it's really interesting, especially since she's an extremely dynamic protagonist. not only does she experience this dystopia from many different layers of its caste system, she slides all around the scale of anti-hero, villain protagonist, hero, and true neutral. she's easily one of the messiest YA protagonists i've ever read, and for that, she seems so much more human.

i suspect all this messiness and gray area is part of why the series didn't blow up as much as later dystopias did- i think even if it came out during the dystopia boom, it would've gotten lost in the shuffle and still been an underrated gem. plus, while there is romance, the core relationship of Uglies is Tally and Shay, two best friends who find themselves pitted against each other again, and again, and again, often through no fault of their own, who love each other but seemed destined to be enemies.

anyway. read Uglies. it deserves to be as popular as The Hunger Games, imo.

Uglies was so freaking ahead of its time it's actually insane.

[borkthemork]

The Wu Whereabouts Theory

Now that people are getting hyped for the month countdown toward Amphibia Season Three’s release, I am going to be talking about a theory my friend and I talked about over the past few months, and it’s time to buckle up because we’re going to be tackling this theory from a production, character design, and semantics perspective.

And why these specific factors? Because the theory revolves around these three characters.

And why I believe all of them are related in some way.

Now, you might ask yourself: Bork, how in the hell are these characters related? The old woman character doesn’t seem to have any semblance of features relating to Marcy. What about the dad, are you going to explain the dad? Are you pulling my leg?

And to that, we’re going to have to start small. I’ll first explain why the character on the right seems to be an important character to the story, how all these characters can be connected through deliberate design/semblance, and then I am going to hit it out of the park with the probability from a logical perspective with what the intro and past Marcy interactions seem to give us on why everyone is where they’re currently at.

Especially where Marcy’s father is currently located.

This theory is very, and I mean, very long, so hang on to your seats as we dive into my thoughts about where Season Three might lead us.

And credit goes to @CynDavilaChase on Twitter because she made me realize the probability of this theory in the first place.

And with that, let us begin!

Section One - Who’s This Woman?

With animated introductions, I think one of the big things I noticed with Amphibia Season Three’s intro is that it’s heavily serialized. Compared to Amphibia’s introduction with Seasons One and Two, there are a lot of animated scenes found in the sequence where the story is already being told in a narrative.

You get shots of Anne being introduced to her house, you get new important characters introduced in a lot, there appears to be insight into future events such as Anne getting a moped while being chased by government agents or the massive monkey robot chasing her through the alleyways.

A lot of the intro is prioritized over its serialized format, and that means the characters seen and animated in the foreground have to be important characters or else the studio is basically wasting time focusing on a background character that will never be seen again.

Of course, you get some sliding shots like with the construction workers or the beach scene with the beach-goers but that’s only for a second and they’re not truly the forefront.

But during the shots between 0:29 and 0:49, the sequences we see include a lot of what appears to be important scenes with important characters that will play some role in the story itself.

There are no parts in the sequence where background characters are put in the foreground. Each bit of the animation needs to count, it needs to tell a story of what’s to come and what the audience can anticipate to see.

Now that begs the question:

Why is a supposed random background character in the foreground?

We got some reason as to why the engineer lady looks important since she was in a shot full of important or supporting characters, but why her??

Sure, one could argue this shot could just be indicative of Andrias’s invasion, but there are numerous other ways to show that there’s an invasion without putting too much animation effort on one background character, especially from a composition perspective.

Pardon the messiness, I had to do this quick, but look at how all three ladies are lined up.

The far left grandma, when following from her head to the the front lady’s creates a line that not only creates a sense of direction for our eyes to follow but follows the more significant and foreground character of all three. Look at how the dragonflies occupy most of the top of the frame while the two older women stay in the marketplace’s form, and how this leaves the younger woman to be abruptly placed in the open — creating a visual that this character in particular is more important than the rest in the shot.

Check the way the characters move their eyes when the scene happens too: the background characters quickly look to the right, then the woman out in the open then directs her eyesight to the skyline, where all the dragonflies are flitting by.

Now, I’m not a storyboard artist or composer, I could be wrong on how the crew created this scene all together, but regardless it is still so odd to put emphasis on a background character in the front and then just leave it at that.

She has to be important in some way, and this is where I want to talk about character design.

Section Two - All Related or Am I Just Racist?

When it comes to character design we need to talk about how the character designers make sure to give Anne some form of semblance to her parents, and in this case, she looks a lot like her mother.

They got the bushy hair, the same skin tone, eyebrows, etc. And with her dad you could even see that Anne got her fluffy bangs from him specifically. Only one shared genetic trait, however.

This is deliberate, we know that for sure, and that is why I need to make this very clear as we transition to the similarities found in Marcy and the theorized characters, and why I believe they’re related in design. Mainly because the concept of race and appearance could be quite a debacle and I wanted to make sure that all of you know I am not assuming things out of naivety, and if I am, feel free to get my ass.

Other than that, let’s look at them again.

And here I shall compile the appearance stuff that each character seems to have.

With these three characters they seem to connect to one another with one genetic trait, but if one looks closely, there comes the question of the older lady (who I will just call Marcy’s mom at this point) and why she’s vastly different to Marcy when it comes to skin tone, hair color, and hell — if we look between Marcy and the engineer — why these two characters have vastly different hairstyles compared to the woman.

Even though I could give speculation and some doubt to the engineer and Marcy’s mom being related, and on first glance I couldn’t do the same with Marcy and her mom either, but then I did some digging and realized something. I can connect Marcy and her potential mom in one way — hair design.

Marcy and her mom both share the same poofy hair, it’s just that one is more short and the other is allowed to grow out in a nice little nest.

Don’t believe me?

They got the same floofy bangs with that specific hair line.

And when Marcy was little, Marcy appeared to need a hair tie because her hair was growing out, and it looked like this.

If we consider that what Marcy’s hair tie is holding up might be her bangs — bangs that might cover her eyesight from how floofy it is — then if you removed the hair tie then she and the woman would have a very similar looking design hair-wise.

Even with these hair similarities, however, there is still inquiry as to why Marcy is vastly different compared to her mother when it comes to skin and hair color, and here is where I go into some speculation to piece all of it together:

Marcy actually carries the appearance of her dad more than her mom.

Her dad has olive skin and black, straight hair, while her mother harbors tan skin and floofy, brown hair.

It’s this one piece of speculation that basically slides everything into place, but regardless it’s still speculation and one that I cannot confirm or even argue much about due to the nature of genetics and the limited info we have. But with this piece set in place, we could start to create the argument that maybe, just maybe, these characters are related.

But if they are, why do we only see Marcy’s mom and her supposed sister and not her dad?

Why do we get no indication of Marcy having a sister until Season Three?

How do we put all of this together?

Section Three - Distance and Finance

I rewatched True Colors numerous times when it came to understanding and interpreting what I could with the limited Marcy-centric flashback we had. I even went through episodes such as Maddie and Marcy, New Wartwood, and a lot of other episodes just to fit everything into place. And I think I have a good indication as to why this family is the way that it is.

First off, we’re going to be talking about Marcy’s dad and his new job out of state.

California is a very expensive state. And as someone who lives in California, the housing crisis and the ability to even stay in a house/dorm without sweating over the idea of being bankrupt is a very real thing.

So it is a curious thing that one of the reasons that the Wus had to leave came out to moving out-of-state due to a new job offer, one that infers a lot more money and probably a more stable living environment.

You could even hear the dad saying “Marcy, you have to understand!” when Marcy runs out, meaning that there’s probably a good reason as to why the parents believe that the move is essential, and I am banking on the idea of money for a number of reasons.

One, living in Los Angeles is expensive as hell.

Two, the coping mechanisms Marcy has makes sense if finance is the main comeuppance.

Three, the background art.

And four, why this girl has straight A’s and a PSAT book.

We already covered number one, but let’s take a look at what I mean about coping mechanisms.

Marcy Wu’s many flaws come from what looks to be the fear of being alone, and the fear of being seen as unvaluable and worthless; that if Marcy doesn’t prove herself lovable and essential to the people around her then she gets anxious and will do anything in her powers to make the people around her like her or stay with her.

She will omit information, move along objectives through passive and indirect persuasion, allow people to assert their will over her because they said so and, most importantly, does all of this because she fears the consequences when she gets outed or rocks the boat. Because rocking the boat means people will get mad at her, and she appears to try to avoid that situation of vulnerability like the plague until it all culminated into True Colors.

She is terrified of getting hurt. She is terrified, specifically, of consequences — punishment through stress, frustration, the people she loves looking at her differently because of the mistakes she’s made, etc.

Why do I say this? It’s because if we look into Marcy Wu with her pre-Amphibia self, a lot of these fears could be placed into that middle school scenario very well. Marcy Wu plays videogames and loves fiction because it is a form of escapism or happiness away from stress; she has this intense curiosity to basically anything of interest and uses that to thrive with getting straight A’s and an overall very solid record, but there’s still a probability that high expectations or making the people around her love her comes through said status of being the smart one (after all, she prides on her intellect, and sees it as essential to basically surviving the day to day).

Look at Marcy’s flashback in True Colors. She’s a middle schooler but is studying for the PSAT, which is mainly held in High School, and I’m no expert but I don’t think you read that stuff for fun or at least study it that early.

And I find it interesting that that’s the first shot we get of Marcy before we dive into her parents’ argument — education, studying, the expectation of high scores.

And then when you remember that Marcy is the least athletic of the girls, the thrift shop’s street she retreats to away from her parents is not that faraway from her neighborhood.

And this street, is messy as all hell. And with the revised background art for this area, nothing about the place changes but instead gets emphasized through more shots of how rundown it all looks!

The fact there’s a bail bonds building behind Mar-mar also doesn’t reassure me in the slightest.

So here’s where we are: Studying, getting good grades, a serious financial situation, lives near a rundown section of the city, high expectations, and the evaluation of one’s worth through intellect and academia.

What we are witnessing is a nuanced family situation. If we go by the assumption that the three girls’ lives are not only vastly different in personality but upbringing, then on an income scale, Anne would be middle income, Sasha would be high income, and Marcy is low income.

Her family’s struggling to be stable in a city that they can’t afford to live in, there’s a very high emphasis on good grades and education in the household, and the situation is so bad that her dad would take the proposal of a higher-paying job out of state than finding a similar job out in the city.

However, in this household’s struggle to have a better life, the parents had to focus on their children getting better living than them, and this means Marcy had to live in an environment where the biggest source of reward and praise is through intellect, academics, the approval of the parents.

And I could probably assume that this focus on finance also lead to very rough patches where Marcy was unable to be encouraged over stuff she loves like C&C or videogames, since the level of attention is low compared to the amount of happiness and pride her parents get when she gets an A+.

Especially when we consider that in the dialogue we hear from Mr. and Mrs. Wu, her dad is more assertive while her mom appears to care but doesn’t seem to go against her husband’s tone, so a lot of the probable issues might’ve come from Marcy wanting her dad’s approval and her mother never standing up for her when he became frustrated.

That would make a lot of context with Andrias even worse in retrospect, because that means the moment a male adult figure decided to care about her and give attention to what she loved, then Marcy fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

And could you blame her?

Now, let’s finally get a glimpse on one other character I’ve been neglecting in this essay.

This gal! Because if Marcy and her are somehow related, then we need to question why she was never mentioned or why she wasn’t involved in the conversation between Marcy and her parents.

I’ve done a massive theory post about this already, but the biggest probability comes in the design itself, since if Marcy’s sister went through trade school to be a mechanic/engineer then there’s a high probability she’s in her mid-Twenties. And if we consider that Marcy is 13, then Marcy would’ve been born when her sister was 12 or 13, and ultimately leave the household when she turned 18.

This means Marcy would’ve gone on with less contact from her sister for 6 years, and that’s a lot for a developing child.

It’s not improbable for Marcy to have lost contact with her big sister, or at least had lesser time to meet up with her due to work, college, or her own adult life now that she’s out of the house.

After all, in Maddie and Marcy, I find it very interesting that out of the advice Marcy could’ve given to Maddie about siblings, Marcy tells her that even though Maddie is the older sibling and is allowed to have her own life she suggests that maybe she should make some time for her sisters occasionally. Almost as if this was a ditto moment for her, that she understands but also had a good example of a sister who made time whenever she had the chance.

On more speculation terms, it would be cute to think that the reason Marcy has so much fire and spirit toward her fiction and love for games is because of her sister. After all, Marcy harbors the same interest toward engineering and robotics, it wouldn’t be a stretch in the imagination that perhaps her sister encouraged her to keep on going with what she felt passionate for regardless of their parents’ lack of response, to basically be unapologetic of what she loves, and this mantra kept her going for a lot of her life even when her sis went for trade school.

But let’s go on a side note here. I find it quite interesting that the character design of Marcy’s sis is also very telling, because not only does it tell a supposed story about who she was in the aftermath of graduation, but we could find a way to also put the theme of income and finance into her story as well.

Let’s be real these two are partners in all the way — from mechanics to engineers to straight up girlfriends, these two basically have their own business going on and I find it interesting that none of them just go with robotics or mechanics as a full-time thing, it’s mainly two jobs rolled up into one.

Why is that? There is some speculation that maybe they’re specialists and work in a very science-related area, but it seems highly likely that their main jobs are being car mechanics by day and robotic expert nerds by night. After all, the city can be hecked with money so I wouldn’t be surprised if they did two jobs at once to keep the lights on. I could also see them doing freelancing to repair or experiment with engineering projects since they take more money than actually makes in most cases.

Overall, money plays a big part with the family, and culminates to what I like to call a Massive Shitfest TM when they get alerted over the girls’ disappearances.

Section Four - Massive Shitfest Boogaloo and Where They Are Now~

In the aftermath of their teleport to Amphibia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wus had a big argument over Marcy and what should be done in the aftermath. Really, the family still needs to take that job because of finance, people are blaming each other over who pushed her to the brink, and then you have Marcy’s sister — who was probably out of the loop but probably knows how it was in the household — getting added into the mess of what just happened and adding her grief into the mix.

It is a blunder, terrifying and could break apart a family if I’m being honest. but what comes through is this:

People have now become stubborn in the Wu household, and no one is going to back down.

And what I mean is that Mrs. Wu, devastated by what happened ever since the argument in True Colors, will stay in Los Angeles out of grief and a supposed hope that Marcy would return. While Mr. Wu, determined to keep the finance going and keeping everyone stable and safe, abides by Mrs. Wu and decides to go out of state regardless, bringing back a flow of money to keep the Wu household stable through the aftermath.

It would make sense as to why Marcy’s mom is present in the intro but not any suspecting candidates for the dad.

Or how we see that there’s two older ladies with her in the intro. They might actually be close relatives who moved into the household out of the obligation to comfort Mrs. Wu but to also keep her company throughout this dark time in her life.

After all, when one loses a child, a lot of prior relations start to unravel as the status quo changes, and we are definitely going to see Anne confront the Wus and Waybrights when it comes to upbringing and home life.

But really, it is all up in the air. With Season Three around the corner, I am excited to see what the story has in store for us when it comes to the deep-diving into Marcy’s home life. She might’ve had a nuanced family life. She might’ve had abusive parents, perhaps no sister at all but a lot of relatives who grieved for her.

But with this theory out to the public, thank you all for reading along with this massive beast of a post, and I hope we get to see Marcy out of the aloe vera sauce very soon!

[ruby-whistler]

Why c!Dream should (and probably will be) redeemed

Hi! I’m bad with intros. You’ve read the title, so, let’s start with the definitions.

In this essay, we are considering the popularized definition of “redemption” instead of the classical one, which is, as per the Oxford Dictionary, “the act of saving or state of being saved from the power of evil; the act of redeeming.” That’s not however the way the word is used in fandom and media.

/dsmp /rp

The definition of redemption I’ll be working with in this essay is not forgiveness by the people who c!Dream has hurt, nor is it removing himself entirely from his past actions, but moreso the decision to change for the better and abandon destructive mindsets for himself and others.

A “redemption” in a narrative sense would be circumstances and a character arc that would allow that kind of healing and betterment.

I’d like to start this off by the fact that being “irredeemable”, in this sense, also doesn’t exist; redemption is a thing of conditions and choice, not of being allowed by someone else. You can’t gatekeep healing from people who seek it, just to be clear, and that even goes for people who have done terrible things.

Since I understand there is a lot of concern for c!Dream’s past actions, here is a post from people who are much more fit than me to speak on the matter, about the way in which they see a possible c!Dream redemption arc.

Another disclaimer, I am not going to be considering c!Dream only from the perspective of c!Tommy in this essay. c!Dream appears in other people’s perspectives and he himself has his own, unseen perspective. As a character, he is an individual person in his own right rather than just the antagonist of c!Tommy’s story, and so I do not have much concern for their narratives intertwining too much should this writing choice occur.

I’d also like to note that redemption is, in this sense, always a positive thing for everyone involved - someone who’s been prone to doing bad things in the past deciding not to do them anymore and try to change, or just simply heal enough to consider it, isn’t going to have a long-term negative effect in any of the characters, but rather the other way around. Healing is an unlimited resource, and the victims do not have to heal first for the person who hurt them to consider being better.

Here’s a well-written thread on Twitter that elaborates a bit to finish off this point, and let’s move on to actually talking about redemption in the context of the Dream SMP, and c!Dream specifically.

Why a c!Dream redemption arc is not only a good writing choice, but in this case the only good writing choice;

c!Dream, as we all know, has been subject to mental and physical abuse to the point of straight up torture by both c!Sam and c!Quackity (to different extents). He has been in indescribable amounts of suffering for the past 74 days at the time this essay will be published. That is six and something times the duration of the entire exile arc in canon.

Whatever the interpretation of his words in prison is, what is undeniable is first of all the fact his mental stability is absolutely crushed at this point, second that no human being could possibly ever deserve to undergo this, and third, his stay in the prison is showing off his humanity and making him out to be sympathetic.

Now, consider this; how would it feel if c!Tommy died at the end of the exile arc? Empty, there would be no catharsis to such an end, especially because of all of the hurt he’d gone through. Objectively, a bad writing choice.

Let’s compare, narratively of course, this situation to the prison arc. Even though I would never say one of them is “better” or “worse” than the other, since both are terrible and undeserved, c!Dream’s current state checks off all of the boxes that would make his death unsatisfying in the storyline; even if people want him gone, there would still be the dissatisfaction at the current build-up and why they even did it in the first place (it really wasn’t necessary to anyone else’s story to make him out as a victim, and yet they did) if they were planning to kill him off anyways. And since the prison arc is naturally meant to induce sympathy, even from an angst perspective it would simply not make sense within the themes and writing of the plot.

So, c!Dream can’t die, and he also can’t stay in the prison forever - the build-up must lead to something, which is logically a breakout. Great… what now?

Well, the Dream SMP prides itself in accurate representation of trauma and mental instability, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream who have pulled it off incredibly during the exile arc.

Now, undoubtedly, after the prison, c!Dream is going to be just terribly traumatized- considering the writers’ past creative decisions, would it make sense for him to play the role of a dangerous, heartless villain in other people’s stories, while completely ignoring the logical fallout of what he’s been through?

In my mind, no. The most possible result is that cc!Dream is going to rightfully portray someone who’s been hurt so much he is broken, scared and tortured into submissions over months of agony and slowly stripping away of his agency, his dignity, his humanity. And that is… not going to be pretty, nor is he going to be in any way the same as before.

After everything, I’d be surprised if he can properly look at shears without shaking. That’s not villain behaviour, that’s the behaviour of someone who needs help.

Which leads me to another point, which is relatability. Believe me or not, there are people out there who heavily relate to c!Dream because they have been through things that allow them to see themselves in the character - abandonment, mental illness, etc. - or who have had destructive mindsets they have struggled to let go of in the past.

To them, as well as to the viewer, redeeming c!Dream could actually be a very good example, showcasing that anyone who has done bad things or has been hurt in the past can learn that it is possible to be better, to move on, to not be stuck in a loop but to actively seek help and then use that support to find the path to healing.

Making c!Dream a better person, who in a way, wins over his past, over his trauma, over the hurt he’s caused, and manages to actually get better… is inspiring, in a sense. It shows that you can abandon unhealthy mindsets, you can find a support group of people who care about you, you can make your life better simply by deciding to be better and then sticking to that, no matter how difficult the process.

This is why I believe that redeeming c!Dream would not be bad writing, but quite the opposite, and that the prison arc is an obvious set-up. Alright, but how does that work with the character? How could someone so widely hated mentally improve in such a seemingly violent and terrible environment? Would it even make sense within the context of c!Dream’s character so far? Well,

Why c!Dream has the capacity for healing and the Dream SMP the ability to provide it;

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that through c!Dream’s entire spiral he wasn’t ever directly given a chance to change. He was regarded as someone to defeat in order to accomplish a happy ending, or as someone who needed to be removed in order to achieve power on the SMP. Ever since the 16th, which is when the corruption of the character is the most obvious, there have been no attempts to reach out or to help him. I do not blame the characters for this - I am simply pointing out that since it has never happened before, we do not know how he would respond, and that, after everything he’s been through, any bit of kindness or compassion towards him will be a new concept he will have to learn to deal with somehow.

This point is especially driven home by the fact that both c!Quackity and c!Sam would often tell him he is a monster who deserves nothing but to suffer, and that what he’s going through is never going to amount to all the hurt he’s caused - basically removing any possibility for ever getting better (because by this logic, he doesn’t deserve support, and he doesn’t deserve to get better) from his line of sight.

He also hasn’t had a support system since shortly after the 16th, when his friends left him over c!George’s dethronement and made no effort to mend their relationship afterwards. c!Dream isn’t used to having allies and people on his side, but to being hated; again, wouldn’t that mean positive reinforcement could very well be all he needs to make the choice?

His bad mindsets - attachments are weakness, ends always justify the means, people will consider you a bad person no matter what you do - have been continuously proven right by his environment, even in prison. Any kind of subversion, plus an explanation as to why they are wrong, could be of great help to c!Dream.

Just another disclaimer; I do not believe c!Dream would change thanks to the treatment in prison, but rather despite it. His mental stability is non-existent at that point, and in order to get better he needs genuine emotional support from the people around him as well as to heal before he can redeem himself.

Alright, but… c!Dream has hurt a lot of people. Who would be fit to help him?

Let’s start off with the worst option and why it’s impossible the writers would even attempt this; c!Tommy.

c!Tommy has no responsibility to help or ever forgive c!Dream - not to say he could. The two, as it is, would drag each other down instead of helping in any capacity, and only make matters worse. The two of them shouldn’t even interact in the best case scenario - the best thing for both of them would be if they got enough healing and support individually that they could live around each other and not get their trauma or toxic habits triggered when interacting for whatever purpose of the plot.

So, if not c!Tommy (and c!Tubbo neither by extension), who could redeem c!Dream?

Well, he can’t do it on his own for sure. Being in nature with animals is nice, but further isolation from other people would merely help with the prison trauma, not with the state of his tendencies when interacting with others. He, once again, needs positive reinforcement from other people for him to heal properly.

There are two main options for this in my mind, and then there’s a few individuals he could also find comfort in, including people from both groups or those unaligned.

1) Kinoko Kingdom

From the people of this new country, c!Dream has never negatively interacted with c!Karl before, he has never hurt c!George and he hasn’t directly harmed c!Sapnap. Although the relationship with his old friend group could be difficult to rekindle, none of them have grudges against him that are too personal, and they have been canonically close friends since the beginning of the SMP, so it would be very much possible to rebuild burnt bridges. They’d be familiar, and with the addition of c!Karl they could be a good source of comfort for c!Dream after he either breaks out or is released from prison - just gotta convince c!Sapnap not to kill him first.

2) The Syndicate

From the Syndicate, c!Dream has never directly interacted with c!Nikki, and from what I know of her character she never seemed to be very affected by his actions - even doing his work for him when he was planning to burn down the L’Mantree. c!Techno is an ally who doesn’t have anything against him, and as for c!Ranboo, here is why I believe c!Dream being in the Syndicate could be positively influential on his character arc as well;

c!Ranboo and c!Philza have had a conversation about change, during which c!Ranboo made it clear he thinks everyone can change except for c!Dream; who, in his mind, is “too deep down the rabbit hole”. c!Philza replied that he thinks anyone can change if given enough time.

… you see what I’m getting at?

c!Dream has been implied to be an ally to c!Ranboo’s enderwalk state (or the state when he has access to his full memory), and hence would most likely not behave negatively towards him at all. While it might make it more difficult for c!Ranboo to deal with his own issues, it might also give him more motivation to get to the bottom of it as well, especially since he now has access to the person who, presumably, started this all. While this is going on, c!Dream would show himself in a much different light than c!Ranboo sees himin, which could lead to confusion, realization of the flaws in his own logic, and hence, positive character development.

Here’s a great post about why c!Techno as a character could be a great asset in c!Dream’s healing process & redemption, and why there is not much need to worry about him not knowing or finding out about c!Dream’s actions.

Of Kinoko Kingdom and the Syndicate, as far as I know, neither c!Tommy nor c!Tubbo have ever been directly involved with these groups, nor are they planning to.

Another important point to make is that, while c!Tommy needs to be kept away from c!Dream in order to heal properly, the same goes for c!Quackity and c!Sam in c!Dream’s case. While c!Quackity has high chances to interact with either Kinoko Kingdom or the Syndicate in the future, there’s an even higher chance, in that situation, that c!Dream would be offered protection, which is also important; there is no healing from trauma without the knowledge of safety, to some degree.

So, this was an essay as to why I think c!Dream’s recovery and redemption (one needs to come before the other, naturally) is not only extremely possible but also could be pulled off well and have a positive impact on both the characters, and the audience.