#just dealing with The Fuckery™️

[a-ndian]

Adding to this:

Only some, SOME, spirits can be removed with the aid of physical objects. If you're dealing with a more severe level of enitity/spirit, then this wont do Jack fuck.

You also have to figure out what kind of entity/spirit etc you're dealing with. Shit being thrown around your house? Either the wind, or some high level fuckery happening but probably not a demon. You feel anxious and like you're going to be ill? Evil spirit trying to harm you? Probably a lost spirit who had anxiety in life and can't handle you running around the house like a headless chicken. Seeing a dark shadowy figure beside your bed? Yelled at it and now you feel awful? Probably the lost spirit of a little child cloaking themselves because spirit realm spooky. They also don't understand English so why yell at them in English to go away? (Yeah, last one personal, sorry hombré).

Spirits are vast, man. They're all different kinds, nature's, etc, and figuring out what kind it is will help you immensely. Know thy enemy and all that jazz.

But that being said; throwing around salt and burning an incense from your local wook shop is like watching Supernatural and thinking you can thrown down "Like That™️". Reality check; you cannot.

Sometimes it's just not nessicary.

Speaking from personal experience of being a complete naïve prat who felt like salt and sage (we don't talk about it) and rose quartz were gonna save my ass. They did not.

Look into banishing rituals if you feel you need them. Not everything is a haunting, not everything is demonic (don't get me started, demons don't fuck with people for no reason, they're not evil), and not everything is a "spiritual experience".

If you've done all of the above, an all clear from a MH professional, then try moving on to some Middle Path/LHP banishing rituals.

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) is a really good one, regardless of personal practice and the like. Just make sure you do it more than once. PRACTICE.

I don't know where the line of thinking came from that you only need to cleanse and banish once and you're done. You're not. You can't walk into what is essentially an energetic horde, speak words of *love* at a festering pile of rotten food, and hope that all the maggots and flies inside of it magically poof. That's not how this works. Spiritual shit and entities and this whole realms of things is Not Safe.

Figure out grounding, figure out energetic protections, figure out banishing rituals both physical and non physical, try to learn for yourselves what works and what doesn't. Tiktok and Instagram and reddit and tumblr won't save you when you're fucked. Best of luck finding someone to do it for you as well, because the micro layers covering this entire dimension ensures levels of safety for guides working with you, not for you yourself.

Swallow that info and take this in mind: you're going to be well and okay, but you need to figure it out. If you don't have the mental cognition or the emotional energy to carry out these tasks, ask for help. Help is out there for you, but don't be complacent. Trust me, after a certain point you gotta do it yourself. Which sounds rich coming from someone who used to be lazy as hell with it.

That being said, I'm rather blunt. I won't soften this for anyone because it's dangerous. Learning how to accept fear, accepting this whole thing is not some new age roleplay, accepting that shit happens, will help you endlessly on your journey from where you are now to where you'll end up next.

Nothing is easy, this all comes with time, you won't ever be alone. The person I'm responding to has some fantastic advice. It's awesome, this person knows their shit and I'm just adding my two cents onto it in hopes people don't make the same mistakes I, and many other people have.

banishing (how to do it)

yeah this is like all UPG but it works good for me, take what you will and leave the rest behind.

if your response to this is "but most people never ever have to deal with unwanted spirit problems so you're probably wrong if you think it's a spirit! do shadow work and touch grass!" please let me invite you to just not interact with this post at all.

Don't cleanse. Like please don't, why do people do this??

"I am confident an unwanted spirit is in my home and I cleansed but nothing happened."

Okay, an unwanted guest is in your home and you did a bit of vacuuming and washing the dishes, so why are they still there??

Why WOULDN'T they be there?! It's nicer now??? It's better for them to stay?!?!?!

"I want to break up with my boyfriend so I did his laundry but he's still texting me :/"

Cleansing =/= banishing and cleansing should be saved for cleaning up after an unwanted spirit after they are banished, which again, is not accomplished by cleansing.

Stop raising wards that trap the spirit inside.

"I cleansed and put up a protection but that only made the problem worse!"

Yes you did a wash up and locked the spirit inside with you, of course it's pissed off. It's trapped.

If you feel the need for immediate protection when dealing with a spirit problem, craft an amulet that serves as a personal protection for you. NOT one that seals off the entrances to your home.

Once the spirit problem is taken care of and you are confident its presence has been removed, feel free to raise up those wards sky high.

Also, if you are heavy-handed with the warding, spirits can sometimes just get trapped inside regardless. Learn how to temporarily "switch off" wards when you need to so things can leave.

Put your fucking foot down and tell the spirit to leave.

This will solve a surprising number of unwanted spirit problems. Not all of them, and come on, please stop telling people they never need to learn actual banishing skills just because telling spirits to leave works most of the time.

But you gotta do it. And I mean you don't have to be an asshole about it. You don't have to jump right into screaming in the spirit's general direction and threatening all such harm on it.

And there's plenty of good reasons to start with this step, especially if you want to be a spirit worker, but that's neither here nor there. Just tell them to leave.

Go to an area where you think the spirit is, or go where its private and speak with the intent that the spirit will hear you.

(You may also sign or write; would generally not recommend doing this operation entirely mentally)

"Hey, Dude. I know you're here, and I want you to know that you must leave. It is no longer an option for you to stay. I request that you leave immediately, and I request that you do not come back to this place. Leave now and we part ways in peace."

Do not go belly up and beg the spirit. It benefits you to behave with authority and dignity.

DO NOT try to "soften the blow" by twisting your words into something that is no longer a demand that the spirit depart. "Hey, if it's okay with you, I'm hoping you'll leave soon, or as soon as you're able... I don't feel comfortable with you here, and I'd prefer if you went." Great, now the spirit knows how you feel. So what?

Banish the spirit (or human, or whatever).

Presumably we're at this step because the prior step ("bro, seriously just leave and never come back") did not work.

Obtain correspondences heavily associated with banishing, use them to enchant a candle, burn the candle.

Can't use a candle? Try a simmer pot.

No fire at all, including incense? Try a floor wash (test carpets to ensure there will not be staining).

Can't burn things or clean the house? Try a sigil you visualize being imprinted on all the walls of your home.

Can't visualize? Consecrate something to represent the spirit, drop it in a jar of water along with banishing correspondences, swirl it around like a whirlpool, chant about the spirit being washed away.

No waterproof containers? Consecrate something to represent the spirit, stand on the edge of your property, throw it off the edge of the property.

You get my drift -- do magic. Do magic. Do magic that banishes. Use magic specifically to banish. Not to cleanse the vibrations or whatever. Specifically magic intended to yeet a spirit.

At this point, do not try to ignore the problem or keep talking it out. Do not just try to meditate or whatever. Do magic. Do magic that banishes.

Here's a banishing spell if you need it:

Basil, cloves, red pepper

Candle (ideally, red)

Paper and ink

Small offering

Draw the planetary seal of mars and the planetary square on a piece of paper, ideally in red. Dress a candle in oil (*burning your house down is an effective way to banish a spirit but perhaps too heavy-handed; dress with care) and include either one or three dried, powdered herbal correspondences to it.

Dedicate the candle to Mars. ("Planet Mars, someone on the internet told me you'd help me if I asked - I'm asking now. I give this candle to you. It belongs to you now.")

Put the candle near the paper.

Evoke Mars. ("Planet Mars, where your symbol exists so you exist. Where your planetary square exists, so do you exist. The space has been made welcoming to you through the presence of these Martian correspondences.") The martian correspondences are the basil/cloves/peppers, btw ("I ask you to bring your attention now to me. I ask you to dwell fully in this space.")

Read the Orphic hymn to Ares if you'd like a little extra elbow grease behind your evocation.

Petition Mars. ("So please get rid of this spirit, it seriously sucks so bad.")

Offer payment. ("In exchange for this help I know you will provide, I give you this candle and also this [small offering].")

Seal the deal. No, you do not need to be able to receive psychic confirmation from a planet or whatever, but do not proceed if you feel any gut-level bad feelings or suddenly get a ton of anxiety. If that happens, be like, "Mars, buddy, never mind - I get a bad feeling about this, so I'm noping out. Thanks for listening while you did. Leave in peace."

But if you feel fine about moving ahead, just be like, "now I give you Mars this offering, and I light your candle, with full and total assuredness that this spirit will be permanently banished from my space, my life, and my home."

[Light the candle, give the offering]

Cleanse

The spirit should be gone before you put up wards

Residual ickyness can make you feel the spirit is still nearby even if its been banished

Cleanse your space and see if the symptoms of the spirit return.

If symptoms return, the spirit has not been banished.

If they don't return,

Put up wards.

Ya got haunted because ya didn't have a fence up to stop random cows from wandering into the garden of your life and trampling all your hard work. Put up the wards.

Oh, but maybe the banishment didn't work, in which case:

Mitigate symptoms.

I mean yeah, maybe try at least a few more types of magical banishing, call in a priest even. But!

Not every spirit can be banished. That's just the long and short of it.

As humans we have the capacity to intertwine our lives, intentionally or otherwise, with forces that cannot be immediately removed from our presence.

Like if the grand spirit of a forest hates all humans and you build a house in the forest, you're not going to be able to banish the forest from the forest, you feel me?

Sometimes, banishing isn't the solution.

As rare as it is, it happens. Make personal protections, use mirror or other illusory wards to hide from its attention, make reparations if possible, avoid attracting attention, and get on with your life.

[just-some-common-bitch]

I just want to add something to the Try Guys conversation we’ve all been collectively having for well over a month now. I’ve seen these points iterated several times but I am your local Loud Greek™️ and will be sharing my opinion.

for those of you who haven’t seen the SNL Try Guys sketch, don’t bother wasting your brain cells on it. it’s truly awful. every part of it was horrible. condensed into a few sentences, they greatly exaggerate the reactions of Eugene, Zach, and Keith, and greatly downplay Ned’s affair. I’ll get more into detail further down the post. look for this emoji: 🖕🏻

now, Ned has a direct connection to the SNL writer’s room. he went to Yale alongside and is admittedly friends with Will Stephen, who wrote/helped write that insanely tone-deaf Try Guys sketch. (proof in this tiktok here). he allegedly has up to three friends in the SNL writer’s room, but I was unable to find any sort of solid proof of the other two. 

there are two possible scenarios behind this incredible play by SNL. 1. Ned contacted Will and threw a tanty about how he’s the victim and he’s being treated so unfairly and Will agreed and pitched/wrote the sketch 2. Ned did not contact Will but Will on his own thinks/thought that Ned is the victim and was being treated unfairly so he pitched/wrote the sketch - in both of these scenarios, Saturday Night Lame decides that, since the Try Guys news has turned the entire internet upside down, the sketch needs to air in order to get some of that sweet Gen Z attention. which is the single funny thing about this, since the only reactions I’ve seen (save a handful of fuckheads) have been every flavour of pissed about this. either way this sketch came to life, it looks really bad for Ned and hurts literally everyone involved way more.

🖕🏻 alrighty! time to deep dive into the absolute fuckery of this sketch. trigger warning (tw) for infidelity, homophobia, and trauma. - they turn Ned’s full-blown affair - let’s not forget, he called it a relationship and the guys confirmed it had been occurring for a while - into a single kiss. they verbatim call it a ‘consensual kiss’. this is not only a blatant lie on SNL’s part, but it completely eradicates the inherently problematic nature of Ned sleeping with a subordinate for several months. even if we take Ariel and Will (Alex’s ex-fiancé) out of it, sleeping with an employee is quite literally illegal. - the other guys dropped Ned because he did something very illegal with his power as a boss. they also admit that he was dropped because of his betrayal to their brand and image and trust as friends, but they had no choice but to remove him from the company because of his misconduct. he was not let go because he cheated on his wife. he was let go because he caused a giant HR and legal mess in their company and 2nd Try LLC would have been in big trouble had they kept him on. SNL jokes that Ned only kissed his subordinate and didn’t tell his friends and how heinous and awful and sdfajklgrjfsdb and that’s why he was fired which is. A COMPLETE FUCKING LIE. - SNL make a joke out of the fact that the guys call it trauma. the audience laughs every time the Zach character says the word trauma. how completely devoid of human decency do you have to be to find humour in the life-altering fuckshit these men went through? yes, it’s not the kind of trauma that victims of abuse or SA or natural disasters go through, but they had their trust violated and had to cut off a dear friend of theirs. the entire world has been talking about this since it dropped. that kind of attention is fun for nobody. let’s not forget, Zach, Keith, and Eugene are in charge of an entire company in the middle of all of this. they had to remove one of their best friends, a co-creator, from their staff, and figure out a way to buy him out in order to keep their company (their LIFE’S WORK) afloat through all of this. the stress of that alone is enough to cause trauma. dealing with HR and lawyers and keeping the internet’s information pool in check atop all that must have been torture. THAT is trauma, point blank period. - SNL has a history of sexual misconduct allegations that have not been handled. I’d link articles, but there are literally too many to sort through. just google ‘SNL sexual misconduct’ and you’ll find some. the fact that SNL’s history matches up better with their sketch of Ned’s out of control penis than Ned’s actual out of control penis is very telling and very gross. - they make an INSANE caricature of Eugene Lee Yang. for those of you who don’t know, Eugene Lee Yang is a Korean-American actor and filmmaker and one of the 4 original Try Guys and owners/co-creators of 2nd Try LLC. he is also openly gay. in the sketch, Eugene is played by Bowen Yang, who is also an openly gay Asian actor. however, Bowen’s take is... not great. he really plays up the true, genuine anger and pain and exhaustion on Eugene’s face in the original video and turns this Eugene character into the hostile, angry, aggressive POC character. not only that, but they give ‘Eugene’ a very stereotypical gay accent. it’s very harmful and very problematic, considering neither of the white guys are made fun of in nearly the same way at all. - the sketch makes NO mention of Ariel (Ned’s wife) or Will (Alex’s ex-fiance). they also keep referring to Alex as a Food Baby, and not Ned’s employee. if you are unfamiliar with the Try Guys and viewed this sketch, you would be inclined to believe that SNL was not exaggerating that much and you’d assume both Ned and Alex are/were single during their affair and that Alex was not Ned’s subordinate. this is extremely disrespectful to the victim most hurt by all of this, Ariel and Will. AND! Ned has two fucking children with Ariel. for the sake of rubbing salt in the wound for a failed funny haha, Ned’s entire family has been erased. I cannot even express to you how angry that makes me. poor Ariel and Will have done absolutely nothing wrong and are being punished over and over and over again.

Ned Fulmer is a piece of garbage human and whoever greenlit that SNL sketch is too. justice for Ariel, Will, and everyone at 2nd Try LLC.

I hope I got everything I needed to say with this. I’ll reblog this and add more if new information comes out or I come up with more opinion blurbs.

[caydebug]

update to this guy because i thought about him more since the last time i drew him and now he’s very different:

this guy (calling him bad_end.gg for now) is a version of sonic from sonic 2 (game gear) whose tails went missing, so of course he went to go find him. because this is a .exe thing, several things went terribly wrong. long story short, he couldn’t save tails and got killed (?) but also not really, it physically and mentally fucked him up real bad to the point where he’s barely recognizable as the same guy, and also for some reason he radiates an aura that causes anyone who can see him and anyone he can see to experience extremely powerful feelings of paranoia and dread (something something that was the last thing he felt before he got Got™️ so now he’s cursed or something)

besides that he wouldn’t hurt a fly (he’s more of a gentle giant and also is very shy because of his effect on people and physical appearance, the blood on his hands is just from his own shit) and he’s sort of in denial about the fact that he couldn’t save his tails so he’s kinda wandering aimlessly searching desperately for him even though deep down he knows he failed. big sad

oh, he also doesn’t have a mouth anymore. he can still communicate telepathically by making eye contact with people, but doing so only makes the dread/paranoia even more intense, so he tries not to. poor boy is very lonely though. he needs a friend

he’s really just a bunch of somewhat corrupted data, so he can still blip around from device to device, but he usually sticks to game consoles since, well… he’s looking for tails. he can still communicate through text boxes too, it makes the psychic link fuckery easier to deal with, but it still freaks people out

[narcosfandomdiscord]

FIRSTOFFFFFF UMM???????? INSPIRED PAIRING???? After the fuckery she had to deal with all throughout S1, Mika so deserves some of the lightness and breeziness of the TL universe and more than deserves a sweetbbangel bestest good friend like Dani Rojas. Inspired pairing, truly.

Not only do i adore this pairing bc it's absolutely in-line with the spirit of the prompt, but there is not nearly enough Mika-fic out there, so i am delighted at any opportunity to read anything with Mika. She's one of my favs, i feel like the creators of the show really learned from some of the writing missteps in OG Narcos Connie you deserved better!!! and it makes Mika really shine imho.

Now, for the tasteeeee little snippets. Cue my surprise when I thought this was gonna be full Ted Lasso cheer™️™️ not that TL doesn't have depth but it's decidedly more lighthearted than Narcos/Nmx for obvious reasons ksksks and you hit me with this -> But there’s no victory. Not when they’re falling so far behind. When the drug lords of the world are only rising up the ladders, and they’re… Revelling. Socialising. Over nothing, right btwn the EYESSSSS. But then you had be snort-laughing at this -> Mika knows it’s no good to eavesdrop, to watch from the side, but then she remembers that Kiki does this every day. Around drug lords. And this? It’s a community football team, who is she kidding?! bc i've never considered this but it is SO TRUE, Kiki is kinda lowkey a stalker for a pay skjskskfjsk all tailing ppl in his car or pretending to be a migrant worker to get bussed out to the middle of nowhere and pick weed, y'know, no big.

Also sorry but Mika just deciding they're going on vacation in the middle of his investigation is like so Mika, like it totally reminds me of that one scene where she's like "hurry we're gonna be late for Rita's barbecue" and Kiki's like "what barbecue" and then he like refuses to go and she just gives him this👇 look of like

and next thing you know he's sitting at the swimming pool with Jaime grilling ksdjfsk like Kiki's stubborn but when Mika's had it, she's fucking haaaaaad it.

And though I've come to expect it now, I can't take it for granted, I have no choice to marvel at the accuracy of your Ted Lasso characterization -> And slowly let them click into place. And whoever they click with? Well, it’s not his choice. Like, we have a saying here in the narcos fanfic writers discord community, that this man is, simply put, in👏🏽your👏🏽bones👏🏽. But you not only nail that, you also nail Kiki -> A new place, new temporary accommodation, but his mind simply itches with bigger and better things: The drugs, the routes, the kingpins at the head of the game, and -> “Well, ‘friends’ is one way to describe it.” Kiki chips in with a small frown, “It’s a long story,” what with the constant cynicism and preoccupation with all things work he puts Walt to shame sometimes tbh fsksks

BUT THEN THE END, Ted basically giving Kiki permission to acknowledge how exhausted he is, such an unexpected turn for the fic that i wasn't expecting but makes so much sense, like i really did just love the mix of Nmx angst with the hopefulness of TL. It's exactly one of the reasons why i loved this prompt, like you really just managed to marry all these aspects so unexpectedly yet seamlessly!

Americans In London

I'm back on the Narcovember grind! (Mayyybeee...) Fic number 12 @narcosfandomdiscord

As the current hyperfixation is Ted Lasso, buckle up! They're gonna be everywhere >:D

Prompt #23, Book Of Just Chaos™: Fanwork with a cracked crossover/ship with characters from two very different genres 

The main crossover in question is: Dani Rojas (Ted Lasso) & Mika Camarena! (+ other Narcos: Mexico and Ted Lasso characters) 

Word Count: 1.9K

Relationships: Kiki Camarena/Mika Camarena, Mika Camarena & Dani Rojas

Warnings: None in terms of content, but just ignore the vastly different time periods of the shows... Let's just pretend that they co-exist, ok? Ok.

~ Read the fic under the cut ~

Mika walks through the streets of Guadalajara, mostly when she knows that Kiki’s out, and won’t be back for a while. 

She gets it, maybe not as entirely as she thinks, but she gets it. This job is important to him, and her husband’s always wanted to do good. For the family, for the world, or at least a portion of that world: Mexico. 

But sometimes, no, actually, most of the time, she believes it’s too much. She tells him, late at night, how dangerous things feel. How he just needs to have some time off, to recalibrate… To focus on the good things in life. 

He zones out at the barbecues hosted, sitting back with his drink and watching his companions revel about trivial things, their wives joining in on occasion. 

But there’s no victory. Not when they’re falling so far behind. When the drug lords of the world are only rising up the ladders, and they’re… Revelling. Socialising. Over nothing.  

She needs to get him out of here. Even if it means they might not come back… For a week, or two, or three– Hell, a holiday! DEA agents work so hard, of course they’re gonna need one! 

The afternoon sun bears down on Mika as she finds spaces of green, families in parks, many enjoying picnics or popsicles. 

But one particular green space catches her eye, barred off by a green wiry fence. There’s a door to this area, how else would all the boys get inside? But she’ll watch from her distance. 

She listens, keenly, to the mix of English and Spanish in the air. Young boys, lined up in jerseys and sport shirts. Black and white balls at their feet… 

A practice enclosure. A field. A training ground. 

Maybe they’ll go to a football game, Kiki and Mika, and do something else for a day… But a single day off? It’s nothing. It’s about as good as one of those barbecues, and off they all go, into regular life again. 

However, she won’t give up hope so easily. 

One young man gets pulled aside by the coach, and the coach speaks harshly to him in a flurry of Spanish. The young boy should probably be crumbling at the severity, but instead, he’s steeling himself, waiting patiently, properly– 

There’s her ticket. There’s his ticket. 

“ You’re no longer good enough for El Tigre. Only because you’re better. Tomorrow, off to Richmond. You play the big game, Dani. ”  

The boy’s eyes, Dani’s, widen in an instant. He first salutes his coach, before jumping up and down, shaking his hand. “ Gracias, Coach! ¡Muchas gracias! ” 

And it’s like the world has fallen into his hands. Like Guadalajara is now too much for him, perhaps too small for him… And this Dani fellow might not even fit into London very well, and he might come running back to the safety, the familiarity of El Tigre.  

Mika knows it’s no good to eavesdrop, to watch from the side, but then she remembers that Kiki does this every day. Around drug lords. And this? It’s a community football team, who is she kidding?! 

“Hey, you!” She calls out to the young boy, “Dani, isn’t it?!” 

“ Sí! ” He responds, his dark brown hair jumping up and down with him, “That’s me, Dani Rojas. Do you support the team?” He gestures back to his teammates, hell, they’re his friends. And he’ll miss them. 

Mika waves a so-so hand and sighs, “Look, I’m sorry if this seems weird, or rude, or something, but… My husband and I needed a getaway from Guadalajara. He’s not very keen on a holiday, but I am, so… Why don’t we join you in Richmond?” 

Dani’s foot taps against the ground, likely mulling it all over… Which is fair enough. A random woman, approaching him, basically trying to follow him to where he goes– It’s almost stalker-y, if Mika was the last thing from a stalker, and Kiki actually… Kinda stalked for his occupation. 

The smile on his face is like a ray of sun itself, bursting with life on her face. “Coach told me the flight’s for 9 o’clock tomorrow! Ooh, it’s going to be a long day, my friend!” 

She nods and brushes back a strand of her hair. This is our ticket.  

“You seem like a lot of fun, Dani.” She shrugs, “Call me Mika.” 

***

Kiki Camarena arrives home late that night. 

Not that Mika Camarena has any objections this time around. 

All the lights are on, bags are strewn on the floor, clothes everywhere– It’s like Mika’s pretending to be him when he packs for a long stakeout. 

And it’s confusing, because he hasn’t been assigned to any long stakeouts, and hasn’t had the guts to try again after last time… He’s been complacent (somewhat) working with the information that they have, sticking with the group, no crazy travel destinations! 

So why does this feel like he’s going to a crazy travel destination? And, if it’s related to anything with the DEA, why does his wife know first?  

“Hey, honey?” Kiki begins, knocking gently on their bedroom door, “Do you mind telling me what this is?” 

Mika laughs and looks up from her pile of clothes, her expression surprisingly bright. “Yeah, Kiki. We’re goin’ on a holiday tomorrow.” 

“A holiday?!” He immediately exclaims, furrowing his brows, “Mika, we’re here in Guadalajara, we don’t have time for a–” 

“Holiday.” She finishes, “Yes, we do. I’ve talked to Jaime, he’s given you time off. You’ll be back on the job the minute we get back, ok?” 

“Fine.” He resigns, gesturing to all the clothes, “So, where are we going? And when’s our flight?” 

“9 o’clock tomorrow morning, and we’re off to Richmond. It’ll be fun!” 

London, of all places? Why? What’s going on? What surprises are there?! 

“Help me out here, and do yourself a favour, sweetheart. Prepare for jet lag.” 

***

“When’s the new player, what’s-his-name–” 

“Dani.” Both Nate and Beard say in unison. 

“Yeah, him…” Ted sighs, rubbing his hands over his eyes, “When’s he comin’ in?” 

“Should be sooner or later. He’s from Mexico, remember?” Beard reminds, “But we should cut him some slack.” 

“Yeah, that’s right.” The manager stretches, looking out onto the pitch. It all reminds him of Sam, his homesickness, and his struggle for a few days. It’s not going to be fair to him to force him to play his best. 

After all, they need to figure out who Dani Rojas is, as a player and a man. It’s Ted's approach, after all: Find out one’s skills, one’s weaknesses, one’s personality… And slowly let them click into place. And whoever they click with? Well, it’s not his choice. 

As long as they fit in somewhere, the team can work with that. 

Little do they know what sort of storm is coming. 

***

Dani, Kiki and Mika step off the plane, and they each consult each other for directions, until they find taxis. 

And now, they’re on their way to Richmond AFC. 

It turns out that Dani Rojas, not unlike his new coach, Ted Lasso, talked for the majority of the flight. He didn’t seem entertained by any of the movies, games, and so on in front of him… Instead, he was enthralled by the idea of going to Richmond, of pouring himself and his life out onto Kiki and Mika. 

Mika did most of the talking in return, especially with her husband and his job. It’s because of that that he holds suspicions about everybody. 

Even this young footballer, fresh off a team in their area, and the sort of guy who’s filled the most loving personality. 

He repeats his mantra several times over to his newfound friends: “Football is life, right?! Oh, you’ll see… Football is life. ”  

Kiki tries to smile in the taxi, watching the world pass them by. A new place, new temporary accommodation, but his mind simply itches with bigger and better things: The drugs, the routes, the kingpins at the head of the game. 

He can’t switch off. At least, not for long. 

It helps to watch the young man, at times, seeing how he’s humming things to himself in Spanish… Mika clearly knew what to do, to make a strong connection with this guy, and something that would interest him enough to think about anything but the drugs. 

Maybe a part of that plan was working. 

They step out at Richmond AFC and Dani races through the front door of the club, surrounded by grey, blue and red. New colours, new themes, new surroundings… And he’s anything but fazed. 

And out the back door? That’s his ticket. The sun shining down on the gloriously green pitch, marked up in white. 

“Come on, amigos! ” He calls out to Kiki and Mika, “Let’s play!” 

The pair follow after Dani, sharing a small chuckle at that. The last thing they’ll be doing is playing, instead, just observing. Being completely honest with themselves, they would have rather headed to their accommodation first– But things are sorted out there, apparently. 

Besides, they’re here to support their new friend. 

And, in doing so, they end up beside the manager himself, Ted Lasso. 

He turns to face the newcomers with a bright smile, “Oh, hey!” He waves, “I’m only assuming you came with Dani?” 

“Yeah!” Mika smiles back, encouraged by the man’s initial reaction, “I’m Mika and this is Kiki. We’re friends of Dani’s.” 

“Well, ‘friends’ is one way to describe it.” Kiki chips in with a small frown, “It’s a long story.” 

“Perfect.” Ted says. Right off the bat, a long story connecting these two and Dani? Of course, he’s ready. “You can tell me everything, more than happy to hear it. I’m Ted, by the way, Ted Lasso.” 

From there, the woman dives into the details, with Kiki adding his own sentiments every now and then, a few sparing details about his job, because this man… Mika seems to trust him. 

And sometimes, that’s all he can believe: His own wife’s emotion and intuition. 

“Now we’re here. All because of Dani.” The DEA agent finishes, turning back to face the pitch, “Hold on… How is he not jetlagged as hell?! And he’s–” 

Really good. Is what he was going to say, and the three of them watch the young player circle around the other Richmond players, scoring a smooth and impressive goal in quick time. 

“Ooh, boy… He’s like a goshdarn puppy, that one!” Ted laughs, unable to help it. “Look, you two, you enjoy your time here. Rest is one of the best things you can get, Kiki, alright?” He pauses for a moment, but not enough to let anyone interject, “Hey, and if you need anythin’, just give me a holler, you got it? I’ve been here for a few months now, I’m not perfect, but– You’re two fellow Americans in London, so, we’re all in the same boat.” 

Kiki considers his words and sighs quietly. Rest is one of the best things you can get…  

He realises, only just then, how much his body’s been aching, how much his eyes struggle to stay awake, how the constant frustration and anger is only added to this amalgamation of things. 

God, he needs some rest. 

The minute that the pair walk away from the football scene, the man finds himself leaning his head against Mika’s shoulder, and she presses a kiss to his head. 

“Exhausted, aren’t you?”  

“Yeah…” Kiki replies slowly. 

“Well,” Mika simply laughs, “I’m glad that Ted Lasso got to you. ‘Cause it’s about damn time.” 

[stuckasmain]

Ghost (1990) review-

I swear these photo shoots are so fucking weird? Just makes them look like a throuple with a eclectic fashion sense lmao.

First thoughts-

I don’t know why I went in expecting it not to be good? (Despite the leads being like top tier stars??) I was also under the impression that the pottery scene™️ would happen while he’s a ghost? Ghost fuckery(literally-) and I was freaking because they can’t touch anything it’s the basic rule. Luckily it was before but anyway.

The movie was actually pretty damn great?! And it reminded my why I love ghosts so much - they’re such a good tool for tragic storytelling but also just interesting in general. I like to think their real just for fun. (Just to like to think there’s something after death you know- even if it is just limbo in old clothes-) and I’ll give them credit for doing some good ghost lore and world building. However my criticism is: not enough ghosts! There’s a few that show up and he only talks to 3 - which is dull for a “they’re everywhere” sort of thing. Rip to subway ghost I’m sorry Bud.

It’s a good love story and a take of  grief as well that we want so bad to believe in something that we’ll try and make it true. I love that. However how she believes and doesn’t believe after finding out she’s a scam artist- despite the fact the information she gave was memories you wouldn’t find in the trash or mail??? I get it was probably for the plot but cmon!

So speed round:

A scam medium becoming the real deal is clever and hysterical and I love it. Oda Mae is everything.

I actually like that she can’t see him either just hear him? That’s actually wild I haven’t seen that done or I haven’t watched enough ghost related movies.

I hated Molly’s haircut the whole film I’m sorry. You can do short hair but just something about it?

Sam wheat deserves the world low key

I like how he goes full blown poltergeist half way though but I also liked when he was first a ghost. He can’t really talk or touch but he sits there around all day. Watching you know, giving his commentary

Honestly we did not deserve the sarcasm and one liners and the comedy of the movie in general

It did genuinely make me emotional, not a lot of movies do that and I’m surprised this one did

Genuinely love this movie and that’s not much crush on Patrick Swayze talking or my love for Whoopi either lmao.

[theteapotofdoom]

ALSO. I can totally see kurogiri like walking into a room right as compress snaps someone's neck, looks at his husband with a sigh, then walks Right Out and to the complete opposite of the map. while shigadabi are bastards that bully each other when they're imposters, blackmagic dads are Sophisticated and will walk right out instead of dealing with that shit. (and will discretely fuck with each other, of course. tomura gets his bastardness from his dad)

AAAAH THIS IS SO PURE IM ACTUALLY CRYING :’)

I love the different love languages ... blackmagic are ride or die because that’s what Marriage™️ is all about and they will keep the fuckery and bastardness lowkey because they are distinguished. Meanwhile, Tomura and Dabi have into morphed chaotic feral gremlins who just keep yelling, sabotaging and bullying each other with no respect because they are very competitive and they are in love with each other’s bastardness.

WE LOVE TO SEE IT!!!

[gch1995]

I had to quit watching after S5 because the writing for everyone’s characterization was so unbelievably OOC, infuriating, and mutually toxic, especially for Emma, Rumple, and Belle, who were my faves. They’d even turned Henry into a whiny and selfish little shit with no empathy in the 5B finale of “Only You” with that stupid “destroy magic” PLOT twist. Of course, I couldn’t really blame the characters for behaving in wildly OOC fucked up ways, and/or doing, and/or saying wildly OOC fucked up shit to each other that no one would ever realistically forgive. I could understand if it actually made believable sense why they were all being characterized as such as toxic messes, but on the show at this point, it was blatantly clear that Emma, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Snowing, and Henry were all victims of A&E and these writers external forces of nonsensical PLOT-driven magical fuckery Drama™️ on this show that had devolved into a soap opera, and not really due to anything that had to do with them being inherently unlikable or unsympathetic characters.

Plus, after that unbelievable, wildly OOC, and melodramatically mutually toxic extreme low the writers took CS to in 5A with that character destroying Dark Swan/Dark Hook nonsensical PLOT twist, I knew there was no way that A&E and these writers weren’t going to purposefully fuck up Rumple and Belle in a way that was so wildly OOC, illogical, melodramatically mutually toxic, and cringeworthy that I couldn’t defend or excuse either of them anymore as written in canon sooner or later to prop up Hook/CS again after 5A, and I couldn’t deal with that shit anymore, especially not after S4-S5 being more than bad enough to Rumbelle for Hook/CS’s benefit enough already.

Yeah, I think OUAT was the first show I watched on television that taught me the difference between hating a fictional character and hating the writers/creators behind them.

I used to be one of those people who thought, “Oh, people who ignore canon writing for their favorite problematic fictional characters when they do fucked up things, are just being babies! They signed up for a problematic fave, so they should know better!”

The problem with OUAT wasn’t the characters as originally written, and/or when written in-character and developed organically. I loved Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma as originally characterized and developed from S1-S3 in canon on the show, and I love them in canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios! But A&E and the writers were ultimately lazy, and chose to misuse them as tools in their PLOTs to emotionally manipulate the audience to blindly feel whatever they wanted them to feel, rather than telling an organic story with realistic characters who dealt with realistic relationship problems, development, and/or consistent characterization in favor of cheesy magical soap opera Drama™️ I had to quit watching after S5 to save my sanity.

The big issues, in my opinion, were that:

A) It was only ever a melodramatic big deal “OMG, SO EVOL” when Rumple so much as considered committing crimes and/or abusing magic in ways that violated autonomy or consent that could recklessly hurt/potentially endanger other people for, generally speaking, good reasons. But Emma, Belle, Regina, Snow, David, Zelena, Hook, and Henry could abuse magic for their own ends in ways that could/actually did potentially hurt and/or endanger other people recklessly all the time now too, and no one batted an eye. Rumple wanting to do the same with magic to protect family in narrative shouldn’t have been excused either, but character assassinating him by having him fuck around with bizarre and contrived magical macguffins out of nowhere and framing him as awildly OOC cartoonish mad villain for it, didn’t make the other characters look any better for getting away doing the same whenever it suited them on the show. Just because the writers had Rumple look bad under a magnifying glass of deliberately character assassinating bad writing by having him abusing magic to counterbalance everyone else’s magic abuse on the show, it didn’t automatically make the other characters look morally superior to Rumple or make them better characters. It just made them look hypocritical, self-righteous, petty, narrow-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. I feel like Adam, Eddy, and these writers felt like they could make everyone else on their fucked up and toxic show look better by deliberately tarnishing Rumple as their scapegoat to vilify in an increasingly obvious attempt to emotionally manipulate their audience to side with all of their other also incredibly fucked up and problematic characters by singling out one character as the “worst” on a show where everyone else was/ended up becoming just as much of, if not worse of a toxic mess of bad writing in one way or another anyway. Not surprisingly, they failed.

B). A well-written problematic character is not necessarily redeemable, but your audience still sees and understands the realistic reasons of how and/or why they got there gradually and consistently unfold on screen and/or within their backstories behind the scenes that build up to increasingly problematic behaviors on screen by not taking care of their mental health/sanity, even if they don’t end up liking them in the end.

A badly-written problematic character may suffer from unresolved issues of abuse, mental illness, addiction, trauma, grief, and loss to flesh them out more sympathetically in a narrative, but those realistic issues don’t end up being the issues the writers behind them choose to focus on to drive their increasingly problematic and out-of-character behaviors from point A to point C. On OUAT, they chose to focus on contrived, biased, externalized, hypocritical, and blatantly emotionally manipulative cartoonish “hero vs villain” character destroying Drama™️ by breaking, and bending their own rules of magic with bizarre macguffins and flashy magical PLOT twist fuckery character destroying garbage to force the audience to feel the way they wanted them to feel about the characters. Consistent, realistic normally intelligent, loving, open, kindhearted, devoted, loyal, cautious, and sane characterizations in these characters and their relationships were thrown away out of the blue if and/or whenever the writers stupid PLOTs demanded they suddenly start acting like wildly OOC caricatures who were acting bizarrely cartoonishly evil, exceedingly distrustful, exceedingly deceptive, exceedingly gullible, exceedingly conniving, melodramatically toxic, melodramatically cruel, reckless, and/or unbelievably stupid because the writers wanted for them to be ridiculously oblivious to solutions to conflicts and/or problems with each other thst should have and would have been obvious for them to resolve by taking a fucking chill pill, asking questions and doing research, sitting down to talk to each other and make compromises with each other like two mature adults for no realistically believable reason because they wanted for them to self-destruct to the worst possible rock bottom in their magical Drama™️ soap opera character destroying PLOT fuckery “twists.” (CS in 5A and Rumbelle in 4A-6A).

I could understand if it were a gradual, realistic, slow-burn, and organic build up of insanity in an unhealthy response to a character being constantly abused, rejected, misunderstood, ostracized, emotionally manipulated by false hope, and/or fucked over for trying to be good, anyway. However, on OUAT, especially in later seasons after 3A, you would have Rumple, Regina, Belle, Emma, Snow, David, Henry, and even Hook himself going from being seemingly normal, loving, rational, sane, and/or trying to be good in one moment to very uncharacteristically melodramatically abusive, cruel, criminal, dark, deceptive, distrustful, petty, impatient, insensitive, reckless, triggering, stupid, and/or batshit insane in the next out of nowhere within a timeline that took place over a day or less from the end of 3B-S7 because their asinine PLOT twists or contrived macguffins demanded they do a complete 180 for senseless character destroying Drama™️ for “fun” in the next few episodes of an arc.

Then, they just “went back to normal” after the writers were all done outright destroying their characters credibility and integrity for wildly OOC needless Drama™️ in their magical PLOT fuckery twists by making them do, threaten to do, and/or say horrifically and unbelievably OOC, melodramatically and needlessly cruel, destructive, hurtful, mutually toxic, traumatizing, reckless, violent, and/or stupid shit in regards to each other for a few episodes of an arc that no one would ever realistically forgive, even if they meant well. At least not without a logical explanation for why it happened, and/or or a lot of time to process it to let go of the hurt they caused each other first, which we never got to see on screen in the aftermath as a resolution on screen.

It’s the most infuriatingly lazy type of writing that I have ever seen on a television show and such a total waste of potentially interesting and relatable characters for cheap shock value and Drama™️ in the PLOT.

C) When you kill off a character, especially a redemptive anti-villain/tragic hero type character, kill them off once and then be done with them for good. I’ve seen it work in fan fiction, but on television where you’re expected to stick to rules, it never does.

D) “Foil” does not mean you outright destroy another character to fool the audience into thinking that the other one you want them to root for is any better without them actually doing or saying anything to prove it. That’s just lazy and blatantly emotionally manipulative bad writing.

E). Stop with the “Evil is sexy” in female villains and Rumple, a feminine-coded anti-villain. It honestly was so cringeworthy and unsexy on OUAT.

F). Female “empowerment” and “feminism” does not mean being a control freak with a man, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, interrupting them, belittling them, walking away, and/or being needlessly cruel, and/or a petty bitch every time they so much as slightly disagrees with you. It does not mean giving men ultimatums for you to be together, or leading them on with borderline emotionally manipulative false hope to get what you want from them, only to drop them right afterwards/if they don’t do exactly what you demand 100% of the time. It does not mean being emotionally, verbally, physically, and/or sexually abusive of men. It does not mean needlessly kicking men when they are already down by using their emotional vulnerability against them to mock them about how “weak” they are for expressing their very real fears to you in a desire for your emotional support and understanding. Being a “strong” woman does not mean treating men in relationships like “projects for you to ‘fix’” just as being a “strong” woman does not mean giving up your own personal convictions and independence to be with them. My god, they really fucked up Emma, Regina, Belle, and Zelena with this Empowerment™️ trope…

G). Male characters should progress and regress with more than just the solely emotionally manipulative force of a female love interest. Female characters should be able to progress and regress with more than just a male love interest’s emotionally manipulative force. I’ll always love Rumbelle, Snowing in the early seasons and in fanon scenarios, and even CS wouldn’t have been that bad, but the writers either destroyed both halves of them with Drama™️ in the PLOT, and/or sidelined them and made them unhealthily codependent. I think killing off Nealfire killed that core theme of family, especially in Rumple and Emma.

But basically, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, Emma, Neal, and Hook should have all been more developed as individual characters who could grow and regress as more than just love interests.

H). Stop this trope of using female love interests to vilify their male love interests by turning them into OOC emotionally abusive/whiplash PLOT devices to trigger them with on-and-off-again bs or problematic behaviors to drive them insane. They did this with CS in 5A, Rumbelle in 6A, and Phole on Charmed in season five. It’s not fun to watch. It’s actually really misogynistic writing that does not make either halves of your couples feel blameless or likable in anti-heroine/redemptive anti-villain couples. It ruins and limits both of them in a way that feels mutually toxic and gross. Acknowledge that both halves of your anti-heroine/anti-villain couple are imperfect and flawed, or break them up amicably for good. But stop trying so hard to make the audience see the problematic female love interest as the “blameless” victim for consciously pushing the male anti-villain’s every button, and getting away with problematic behavior towards him! Stop doing this trope of having the male anti-villain as a “pure EVOL abuser” driven to insanity by the woman with this trope, and then wonder why fans aren’t rooting for either of them when they are being written this way by you.

J) When you “have” to kill off, sideline, and/or outright destroy other characters/ships to get rid of competition for your favorite character or ship, it doesn’t make you a good writer. It just makes you look like a petty hack with a Gary Stu/Mary Sue or a creator’s pet that’s polarizing the show.

K) You are are a very bad storyteller if you think that “fun” means deliberately destroying/derailing your normally sympathetic and/or intelligent characters characterizations into something inexplicably, melodramatically, unbelievably, and uncharacteristically mutually toxic, stupid, and unsympathetic for contrived, needless, and senseless self-destructing Drama™️ in your PLOTs.

L). If your goal as a creative writer is to mindfuck your audience with “SHOCKING” twists that you pull from your ass with no lead up whenever things seem to be headed in a direction that actually feels interesting, promising, and starts to makes organic sense, then we will lose emotional investment in the stories for these characters you’re not interested in telling, and catch on to a pattern the more often you do it because we’re a lot smarter than you think we are.

M). Accept that character growth and/or regression can’t just happen right away because your PLOT demands it. Take time.

N) Guest characters should be fleshed out, and well-developed. Don’t use them as discardable plot devices

O). Stop going back to the status quo! (Rumple’s the Dark One, Emma’s the Savior, Hook/Neal is her boyfriend, Rumbelle are separated for reasons x, y, and z, Rumple does something stupidly self-sabotaging with magic to try to fix a problem in the wrong ways and only makes it worse, Rumple does something selfless for the “first time,” Belle’s a failure hero, Hook wants to get revenge on someone who wronged him, particularly Rumple, Regina has a hole in her heart she wants to fill by artificially absolving her guilt, Zelena fucks over Rumple, Emma has to learn to open up her heart to love, Snowing keep dark secrets from Emma, etc. This show became such a predictable soap opera by S5 that I had to finally quit to preserve my sanity…)

P). Stop romanticizing rape culture!

Q). Dealing with visible negative symptoms mental illness and trauma is not just something that just “bad guys” deal with. “Good guys” can deal with it too, and it’s not something that makes then “weak” or “evil.”

R). No one is entitled to forgive someone who abuses them.

S). Committing murder in immediate self-defense is common sense, not evil.

T). Do not keep trying to force the audience to sympathize with and forgive a villain who feels no remorse for their crimes, and who does nothing to earn it (Regina in S2, Hook, Zelena). The best they did for writing redemption on this show for a villain that I actually cared about was with Rumple, but they even fucked up their best written character.

U). Commit to a single moral standard that applies to everyone on your show, not just one person on your show.

V). Stick to your own rules of magic consistently, and make sure they apply to everyone. Don’t bend and/or break them.

W). Romantic relationships can still be interesting and entertaining to watch without becoming toxic or unhealthy.

X). There’s a way to write hurt/comfort and relationship break up angst that makes realistic sense with a realistic and satsisfying conclusion. Then there’s OUAT romantic couples who get angst for angst sake that feels forced by becoming on-and-off again, juggling the idiot ball, getting written as wildly OOC, and/or getting character assassinated for “SHOCKING” magical PLOT fuckery bullshit contrivances and twists that make no sense to force them to unbelievably toxic and/or stupid extremes that make no sense.

@0ceanofdarkness

@sarashouldbestudying

@takingbackouat

@sieben9

@bellefrenchroleplays

@worryinglyinnocent

anneelliotscat replied to your post “I’ve said it before and even though I swear it’s been explained to me…”

Well, I put it down to two things: first, fiction requires Plot, which means conflict, and angst makes great conflict for these two. Second, they are both so pretty when they suffer. And the reason we yell at the OUAT writers about the angst is that their angst is Badly Written. Too often it depends on OOC behavior, Reverse Character Development, or the Idiot Ball.

I guess. But doesn’t all angst require one of those three things anyway? 

I mean, the natural state of these two is to be together, so if we want to force them apart, then we have to make them do something stupid in order to do that. 

[gch1995]

I do think that the shoehorning in of Hook/CS and the Neverland/Peter Pan arc were a big symptom of the downfall of a lot of good things on this show, such as Nealfire’s death, and all of the painful character assassinations on OUAT to prop up Captain Fuckboy’s “redemption” arc from S4-S6, especially for Emma, Rumple, Belle, and Rumbelle.

If they had decided to not have Rumple already sacrifice his life selflessly to save his family in 3x11, they hadn’thadn’t gotten the Peter Pan/Neverland rights, they had kept Nealfire alive after finding him in Hook’s place, they hadn’t gotten obsessed with Hook and made the whole show his, they hadn’t done the stupid twist of the whole “The boy will be your undoing” prophecy to momentarily revert Rumple/have him struggle, and they had stuck to a more slow-burn character driven storyline with magic being used as more of a weapon of defense and a hobby for the characters to do it on the side, rather than ua Deus ex Machina crutch for random magical PLOT twist fuckery palooza to do the next big “SHOCKING” thing to drive the whole story, they had stuck to their own rules of magic and its limitations, they had continued discarding the whole black versus white “heroes” and “villains” set up from S1, and they had these characters develop realistic and healthy relationships with their family, friends, and loved ones, while dealing with realistic struggles of redemption in the town, then it could have been better. Instead, they kept constantly bouncing around from one big “SHINY” to the the next. If they’d slowed down with the magical “twists,” then they could have gotten Emma, Regina, Rumple, Snow, David, and Henry to the exact same character developments/endgames that they all had at the end of 3A over the course of seven seasons without ruining them or their stories with their loved ones.

As it was, they kept retreading their stories over and over again with their loved ones in increasingly OOC ways, and butchered them mostly to fit in Hook/CS to their narrative, thus, ruining them all from S4-S7 in one way or another.

I think the magic and the double standards aspects in shows is an issue about a lot of fantasy ones. The writers get so distracted by the magic and “hero versus villain” PLOTTY action/adventure elements that they forget that fans are emotionally invested in it for developing the main characters as real people, not simplistic, hypocritical, black and white archaic, and/or cartoonish one-note “hero” and “villain” tropes, not contrived Drama™️, and/or all the “SHOCKING” shit that they can come up with to use magic for on their shows with no constraints, limitations, restraints to their own initially established rules.

These writers use the magic and their magic macguffins unlimitedly to tell their stories long term, not their characters, so they usually end up burning out of juice for ideas of what else to do with their characters, even their most complex, likeable, and well-written ones, after the first three to four ish seasons of their series, and then continue the writing for the rest of the series all on PLOT by doing whatever the hell they want with magic “SHOCKING” twists because they’re too lazy to come up with anything else for their characters anymore. That’s why the characters often all start becoming more cartoonish, hypocritical, shitty, unlikable, repetitive, stagnant, regressive, unrecognizable, and just obviously very badly written caricatures in a cheap magical soap opera where they are being pulled around inorganically by the writers contrived and nonsensical external forces for Drama™️

The same thing happened to Charmed (1998) after the first three to four-ish seasons...

Even if it’s a show about magic and fairytales, people still want the main cast to have consistently realistic, relatable, dynamic, well-developed, and relatable characterizations and storylines that feel organic and well-earned. Even if we end up hating a character at the end, it will feel well-earned if the character is a well-written unlikable and/or unsympathetic fictional character who becomes that way because it makes organic and realistic sense, not because the writers suddenly start to derail a character who’s characterization originally started out as consistently and organically sympathetic and redemptive in spite of their flaws, so that they can have them fit some stupid “SHOCKING” and bizarre cartoonish magical PLOT twist, prophecy or macguffin out of nowhere that makes no sense, and/or to prop up another character that they want their audience to love an originally unsympathetic character they decide they want their audience to love without putting in any actual work and time to develop them into an organically sympathetic character in their own right, and emotionally manipulating an audience who is usually too smart to fall for that shit sooner or later.

You wonder why so many of us didn’t end up hating Rumple from S4-S6, and felt more disappointed with A&E and the writers every time he regressed to a new “SHOCKING” melodramatic low with Belle? It’s because it felt wildly OOC, contrived, forced, and unearned wasted potential for a character played by an actor who did so much better in the consistently morally gray, relatable, and sympathetic redemptive zone in the first three ish seasons, rather than the “worst” villain ever PLOT twister scapegoat to be deliberately torn to shreds along with Bae and Belle by malicious writers who wanted to inorganically prop up another less deserving character/ship that they wanted to force the audience to love without putting in any work to develop organically into a sympathetic character and/or give realistic conflict to.

Hook was originally supposed to be a temporary character. When do you think he was supposed to leave? For me it should've been at the end of 2x11 when he gets run over. Hook gets his revenge on Rumple by hurting Belle then gets mown down by a car & dies as Kharmic payback. Or after he attacks Rumple in New York in 2x15 he gets arrested & locked up for attempted murder; that way we still get the beautiful Rumbelle phone call scene.

For me they should have killed him off in season 2, but then they got the Peter Pan rights so I guess it kind of made sense that they at least kept him around for 3A, and then of course he “fell in love” with Emma out of fucking NOWHERE and we were all stuck with the CeSspool from that moment on.  Even Eddy, Hook fangirl of the highest order, said he was a “weekend in Vegas” for Emma.  He was never supposed to be the long-term guy and it showed.

Still fucking bitter that he ruined my favourite show, can you tell?

[gch1995]

As far as I was concerned, the real Rumple and Belle had more or less died with the rest of the real OUAT back in season three ish, and lived on in Rumbelle canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios. These pod!people wearing their faces on this awful crack!fic on screen from the end of 3B-S7, occasionally reminded me of the great characters and ship they once were and should have still been on screen all the time, if Adam and Eddy hadn’t deliberately fucked them up for illogically OOC toxic plot fuckery Drama™️, and repetitive arcs when they ran out of ideas after 3A, and got a boner for Hook/CS. I still shipped them in principle because I loved what they once were and should have still been, but I wasn’t really emotionally invested in either of the characters they’d been reduced to in the shitshow that canon had become at this point, or any of the other remaining main characters for that matter. I stopped watching after season five, and kept watching the spoilers from the sidelines waiting for this trash show to just fucking die already!

Yeah, Emilie De Ravin and Robert Carlyle had such amazing organic chemistry when their characters weren’t being deliberately derailed to prop up everyone else, and redo/undo Rumple’s redemption arc. However, even the happy and cute moments between Rumbelle in canon at this point still reminded me that the writing was inexcusably and inorganically contrived and godawful. At this point, nothing A&E and the writers did, could or would make up for the irrevocable damage they’d done to Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, Emma, Hook, Henry, Snowing, or really any of these characters, unless they took the time to slow down, logically explain why it had happened, stop deliberately retconning previous character developments, and slowly and consistently build them back up to an organic slow-burn mutual resolution with no magical plot fuckery, Drama™️, or quick fixes. Sadly, this show was all about PLOT now, so I knew that wasn’t going to happen on screen, and I was finally emotionally numb to canon.

@sieben9

@sarashouldbestudying

I think OUAT was the first show I watched on television that taught me the difference between hating a fictional character and hating the writers/creators behind them.

I used to be one of those people who thought, “Oh, people who ignore canon writing for their favorite problematic fictional characters when they do or say fucked up things, are just being babies! They signed up for a problematic fave, so they should know better!” After dealing with the clusterfuck of OUAT for seven seasons, though, I completely have come to understand the concept of rejecting contrived, character destroying, and nonsensical bad writing in canon.

The main problems with OUAT were that:

A) It was only ever a big melodramatic deal of “OMG, SO EVOL” when Rumple so much as considered committing crimes and/or abusing magic in ways that violated autonomy or consent for, generally speaking, good reasons. But Emma, Belle, Regina, Snow, David, Zelena, Hook, and Henry could abuse magic in ways that could/did hurt other people all the time by violating consent, or committing crimes whenever it suited them, and the narrative often acted like we shouldn’t have cared, or felt seriously pissed off about it when they easily got away with it. Rumple shouldn’t have been excused for wanting to do the same with magic for family either, but character assassinating him with contrived magical macguffins, then framing him as an OOC cartoon mad villain who was “too EVOL” to understand, even while everyone else got away with doing the same things with magic for similar, if not far worse reasons now, didn’t make me feel like Belle, Emma, Regina, Hook, Zelena, or Snowing were any better than him in the situations. It just made them look like self-righteous hypocrites.

B). There’s a difference between a well-written problematic character and a badly written problematic character.

A well-written problematic fictional character is not necessarily redeemable, but even if they aren’t, you’re audience still sympathizes with them, even if they don’t like them because they see and understand how and why they got from point A to point C consistently and realistically, and they suffer realistic repercussions.

A badly-written problematic character may suffer from abuse, mental illness, trauma, grief, and loss, but those things are more of plot devices for Drama™️ or shock value, rather than for actual story. On OUAT, rather than acknowledging that those issues existed in their characters, they used them for shock value, pretended they didn’t exist in “good characters,” and/or demonized those issues in “bad guys” as one time characterizations by inorganically forcing them from Point A to Point C with bizarre SHOCKING twists, inexplicable magical macguffins with multiple functions, magical prophecies, and through bending and breaking previously established rules of magic and characterizations inconsistently. Then, once the characters did the right thing, and the writers were done with the stupid character destroying twist for Drama™️, they went “back to normal” with little to no repercussions, and it was like it never happened. That’s not how people work in real life, though. I know this show was about fairytales, but I was initially given the impression that these characters would react like realistic human beings, and use some common sense.

Then, you had the fact that rather than actually dealing with realistic issues between characters in relationships, such as Rumple and Belle on screen from S4-S5 in S6 that were actually obvious, relatable, and understandable, the writers actually went there by fucking up the unborn baby like they did with Leo and Piper’s babies Chris and Wyatt from Charmed because “fun.” But it wasn’t fun! That’s the worst storyline you can do on any show! No one likes stories about magical pregnancies, evil fetuses, evil future babies, or babies with magical powers!

C) When you kill off a character, especially a redemptive anti-villain/tragic hero type character, kill them off once and then be done with them for good. Don’t bring them back from the dead and try to have it both ways. Don’t break rules to bring them back from the dead. I’ve seen it work in fan fiction because fan fiction writers, but in TV shows resurrecting characters never works because show-runners and writers don’t know what else to do with them, so they fuck them up instead.

D) “Foil” does not mean that you destroy one character to fool the audience into thinking that the other one is better. Foils are parallel opposites to create a similar opposites narrative contrast, not an excuse to completely destroy one character to prop up another. A good example of well-written “foils” are Mr. Rochester and St John Rivers from Jane Eyre who represented fire and ice. Jane was more attracted to the fire and the passion with Rochester, while St. John was far too cool and formal for her liking in regards to her feelings for her. St. John saw her as a business partner in his proposal for their marriage, while Rochester saw her as his true love. However, St. John’’s integrity, credibility, nobility, or goodness of character was not completely destroyed to prop up Rochester. Even Jane admitted that he loved another woman, and that he was a better man than Rochester.

At this point in OUAT, Rumple/Rumbelle mostly still existed to be destroyed to prop up Hook/CS, and Hook/CS could only exist with Rumple/Rumbelle being destroyed to prop them up. It’s like they’d created a symbiotic parallel between Rumple and Hook at this point, and that’s not good writing.

E). Stop with the “Evil is sexy” in female villains and Rumple, a feminine-coded anti-villains, no he and the EQ didn’t have sex in 6A, no I don’t think he was in to it, thank god, and he and Belle were more or less divorced at the time, so I think the cheating accusation is unfair. But it was still gross because of all the incest, manipulation, consent issues with the split!queen bs, and initial sexual assault of Rumple on the EQ’s part.

F). Female “empowerment” and “feminism” does not mean being a control freak, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, interrupting them, belittling them, walking away, and/or being a petty bitch every time a man so much as slightly disagrees with you. It does not mean giving men ultimatums, or leading them on with borderline emotionally manipulative false hope to get what you want from them, only to drop them afterwards/if they don’t do exactly what you demand 100% of the time. It does not mean being emotionally, verbally, physically, and/or sexually abusive of men. It does not mean needlessly kicking men when they are already down by knowingly using their emotional vulnerability against them to deliberately lord over them about how “weak” they are for expressing their very real fears to you in a desire for your emotional support and understanding. Being abusive, bitter, needlessly cruel, controlling, emotionally manipulative, hypocritical, self-righteous, restrictive, violent, or controlling towards men, treating them like “projects to fix” are not signs of feminism, strength or empowerment in female characters. I think it’s actually a really misogynistic and insulting portrayal of women, actually.

I get that Rumple, Hook, and hell, even David and Robin were far from the ideal and perfect, or innocent husbands/boyfriends, but at the very least if or when they were problematic on the show, it was generally framed as wrong, even if I think Rumple and Hook were vilified in ways that felt exaggeratedly cartoonish, flanderdized, and/or ooc in 4A, 5A, and 6A. I get that most of these women had every right to be angry at their men, distrustful, leave them forever, or defend themselves against them at one point or another. But being and doing those things to men who have hurt/threatened to hurt you as a woman, or who have fucked up, whether intentionally or unintentionally in the past, present, or future does not require you being needlessly cruel, emotionally manipulative, consciously pushing all their buttons when they try to have a normal conversation with you, being mean to them even when they do or say nothing wrong, leading them on with false hope, refusing/withholding emotional support, even when they do reach out for your honest understanding, or refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, being hypocritical, treating them like “projects to fix,” giving them ultimatums, blaming them for your own problems, trash talking them behind their backs without actually knowing the truth about them first hand, stealing their autonomy/consent, being hypocritical/self-righteous, and/or walking away every time they disagree with you, or do something you don’t like without trying to understand them first. The writers made it look like they were apologizing for the one-sided rape and abuse of Graham, Robin, and Rumple on Regina and Zelena’s parts. While Emma and Belle certainly did not deserve to be lied to and/or abused by Hook and Rumple in 4A, 5A, 6A, and while I am in no way blaming them for breaking up with them, or for reacting in understandable human self-defense in the rare moments they lashed out aggressively, I will blame them for all the times they were playing the roles of the triggering aggressors in their relationships with Rumple and Hook. Rumple shouldn’t have lied to Belle in S4, and he and Hook were definitely unjustifiably off the rails in some wildly OOC moments in 5A and 6A in which they played the role of the aggressors to Belle and Emma in their relationships, and I could see where the girls were coming from at the end of 5x08 to the end of 5x11 for Hook with Emma and at the end of 6x04, the end of 6x08, and 6x09 for Belle. However, they were also aggressors in their relationships with them by victimizing them through being needlessly disrespectful, inconsiderate, controlling,cruel, self-righteous, selfish, and hypocritical by stealing Rumple and Hook’s autonomy/consent, banishing them, insulting them, treating them as so beneath them, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, and shutting them down and walking away every time they did try to reach out to them when they didn’t like what they had to say.

I get that mutually toxic relationships are very rare, and I know how people often use that as an excuse to minimize the damage abusers cause in real life to apologize for them. However, at this point, Rumbelle and CS were mutually toxic relationships on the show, and both partners in both relationships deserved better than each other, or at least better writing that wrote them healthily in character. I can’t excuse Rumple or Hook for lying in 4A or for overreacting scarily in 5A and 6A to Belle or Emma. However, I can’t really excuse Belle or Emma for hurting Rumple and Hook either because it wasn’t framed in a way that merely looked like they were reacting to them in self-defense. Reacting in self-defense to a toxic person/“abuser” in your life, does not mean that you consciously become an abuser of them by overreacting to them with needlessly cruel, deceptive, emotionally, verbally, mentally abusive, or manipulative toxic tactics right back. Besides, in Rumbelle’s case, even when Rumple wasn’t being toxic towards Belle in their relationship, doing or saying anything that required her to lash out in response, and/or trying to reach out to her, she was overreacting by walking away from him, belittling him, and/or giving him ultimatums from season two of their relationship.

Personally, I actually didn’t really think that Rumple was an abuser of Belle in their present day relationship, aside from a few wildly OOC badly written moments of fucked up, overparanoid, controlling, threatening, restrictive, and borderline manipulative erratic behaviors, attitudes, and dialogue choices in 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09. The worst he had done to Belle in their present day relationship before 6A was lie to her, though, and that’s not abuse. I could understand breaking up with him for that, and feeling hurt, distrustful, betrayed, and angry over that. However, he wasn’t being mean to her, threatening her, or overreacting to her badly by doing that in 4A, so it didn’t require her abusing the dagger, banishing him, being needlessly cruel to him, leading him on with false hope, or emotionally manipulating him. In 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09, I got where Belle was coming from when she lashed out at Rumple in response to his wildly OOC cold restrictive behavior and threats when she lashed out in response. I’m not trying to say that she deserved it, or blaming her for reacting in self-defense. But it’s also hard to believe that she was a “blameless” victim in this whole scenario of 6A with Rumple, and that she wasn’t consciously and deliberately hurting his feelings by being needlessly and triggeringly cruel, disrespectful, hateful, petty and spiteful at the beginning of 6x04, 6x07, and 6x08, even when Rumple was trying to appeal to her brokenly, gently, and honestly, and he wasn’t immediately doing anything that required her to attempt to kidnap their child, or to treat him like filth beneath her shoes. It’s probably an unpopular opinion, but as far as canon!Rumbelle goes, while neither party was blameless for their issues, I kind of thought that Belle was more often the abusive one in their relationship in the present day storyline with her controlling ultimatums of Rumple, emotional blackmail of Rumple, her walking away when he so much as hesitated to tell her the truth because he was nervous about opening up in 2x04 when she didn’t like his “cowardice” without asking any questions why he wanted magic or trying to understand him first, and her presumptions about what she thought was best for him, rather than asking what Rumple wanted for himself, going all the way back to S2 in small doses. It went off the rails and got flanderdized beyond belief from S4-S6, though.

I liked that Belle said that line to Rumple about “What have we done to each other?” However, I feel like it would have made a lot more sense for this sort of development to happen back in 5A or 5B, rather than the on-and-off bs with Rumple, her going to Zelena to get the sleeping curse, and both of them driving each other insane for Drama™️ over a dream zygote in 6A. But that would have required good writing that was actually logical, in-character, and satisfying. I wasn’t getting the impression that this show was willing to give us that anymore.

G). Male characters should progress and regress with more than just the solely emotionally manipulative force of a female love interest. Female characters should be able to progress and regress with more than just a male love interest’s emotionally manipulative force. I’ll always love Rumbelle, Snowing in the early seasons and in fanon scenarios, and even CS wouldn’t have been that bad, but the writers either destroyed both halves of them with contrived ship war Drama™️, and/or sidelined them and made them unhealthily codependent. I think killing off Nealfire killed that core theme of family, especially in Rumple and Emma.

But basically, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, Emma, and Hook should have all been more developed as individual characters who could grow and progress as more than just love interests.

H). Stop this trope of using female love interests to vilify their male love interests by turning them into OOC emotionally abusive plot devices to trigger them with on-and-off-again bs to drive them insane. They did this with CS in 5A, Rumbelle in 6A, and Phole on Charmed in season five. It’s not fun to watch. It’s actually really misogynistic writing that does not make either halves of your couples feel blameless, likable, or sympathetic in anti-heroine/redemptive anti-villain couples. It ruins and limits both of them actually.

I). Write for characters first, then for plot.

J) When you “have” to kill off, and/or destroy other characters to get rid of competition for your favorite character or ship, it doesn’t make you a good writer. It just makes you look like a biased and petty hack with a Gary Stu/Mary Sue or a creator’s pet.

K) “BOLD STORYTELLING” does not mean making your characters OOC and/or destroying them for cheap shock value and gasps, only to pretend it never happened afterwards without explanation. That’s just bad writing.

L). If your goal as a writer is to mindfuck your audience with inexplicable melodramatic twists that you pull from your ass inorganically in characterization with no lead up whenever things seem to be headed in a direction that actually feels interesting and starts to makes sense, then we will lose emotional investment in the story for these characters you’re not interested in telling, and catch on to a pattern the more often you do it because we’re a lot smarter than you think we are.

M). Take time to develop characters from point A to point B. Unless you’re writing a pulp fiction novel or a thriller, accept that character growth and/or regression takes time, and can’t just happen right away because this or that PLOT device or twist demands it.

O). Guest characters should be fleshed out, and well-developed. Don’t use them as discardable plot devices.

P). If you’re really a bold storyteller, then stop going back to the status quo every time, and do something interesting! Do something new, and stick to it! Let the characters evolve! (Rumple was the Dark One. Emma was the Savior, Hook/Neal was her boyfriend. Rumbelle are separated for reasons x, y, and z. Rumple does something stupid with magic to try to fix a problem in all the wrong ways, and only makes things worse. Belle’s a failure hero. Hook wants to get revenge on someone who wronged him, particularly Rumple. Regina has a hole in her heart she wants to fill by artificially absolving her guilt. Zelena fucks over Rumple. Emma has to learn to open up her heart to love. Female villain rapes male storyline. Snowing keep dark secrets from Emma. Etc., etc., etc. This show became such a soap opera.

“ill-boding patterns” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

This episode hurt me! In a good way, mind, but still. Ouch.

And you get exactly one guess whose fault that is.

could you not with your face?

If this storyline goes on like this, I’ll have to bring that defibrillator back out. More under the cut. (Sorry, it got long again, but you know what Rumple-centrics are like around here…)

Continua a leggere

[gch1995]

I had to quit watching after S5 because the writing for everyone’s characterization was so unbelievably OOC, infuriating, and mutually toxic, especially for Emma, Rumple, and Belle, who were my faves. They’d even turned Henry into a whiny and selfish little shit with no empathy in the 5B finale of “Only You” with that stupid “destroy magic” PLOT twist. Of course, I couldn’t really blame the characters for behaving in wildly OOC fucked up ways, and/or doing, and/or saying wildly OOC fucked up shit to each other that no one would ever realistically forgive. I could understand if it actually made believable sense why they were all being characterized as such as toxic messes, but on the show at this point, it was blatantly clear that Emma, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Snowing, and Henry were all victims of A&E and these writers external forces of nonsensical PLOT-driven magical fuckery Drama™️ on this show that had devolved into a soap opera, and not really due to anything that had to do with them being inherently unlikable or unsympathetic characters.

Plus, after that unbelievable, wildly OOC, and melodramatically mutually toxic extreme low the writers took CS to in 5A with that character destroying Dark Swan/Dark Hook nonsensical PLOT twist, I knew there was no way that A&E and these writers weren’t going to purposefully fuck up Rumple and Belle in a way that was so wildly OOC, illogical, melodramatically mutually toxic, and cringeworthy that I couldn’t defend or excuse either of them anymore as written in canon sooner or later to prop up Hook/CS again after 5A, and I couldn’t deal with that shit anymore, especially not after S4-S5 being more than bad enough to Rumbelle for Hook/CS’s benefit enough already.

Yeah, I think OUAT was the first show I watched on television that taught me the difference between hating a fictional character and hating the writers/creators behind them.

I used to be one of those people who thought, “Oh, people who ignore canon writing for their favorite problematic fictional characters when they do fucked up things, are just being babies! They signed up for a problematic fave, so they should know better!”

The problem with OUAT wasn’t the characters as originally written, and/or when written in-character and developed organically. I loved Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma as originally characterized and developed from S1-S3 in canon on the show, and I love them in canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios! But A&E and the writers were ultimately lazy, and chose to misuse them as tools in their PLOTs to emotionally manipulate the audience to blindly feel whatever they wanted them to feel, rather than telling an organic story with realistic characters who dealt with realistic relationship problems, development, and/or consistent characterization in favor of cheesy magical soap opera Drama™️ I had to quit watching after S5 to save my sanity.

The big issues, in my opinion, were that:

A) It was only ever a melodramatic big deal “OMG, SO EVOL” when Rumple so much as considered committing crimes and/or abusing magic in ways that violated autonomy or consent that could recklessly hurt/potentially endanger other people for, generally speaking, good reasons. But Emma, Belle, Regina, Snow, David, Zelena, Hook, and Henry could abuse magic for their own ends in ways that could/actually did potentially hurt and/or endanger other people recklessly all the time now too, and no one batted an eye. Rumple wanting to do the same with magic to protect family in narrative shouldn’t have been excused either, but character assassinating him by having him fuck around with bizarre and contrived magical macguffins out of nowhere and framing him as awildly OOC cartoonish mad villain for it, didn’t make the other characters look any better for getting away doing the same whenever it suited them on the show. Just because the writers had Rumple look bad under a magnifying glass of deliberately character assassinating bad writing by having him abusing magic to counterbalance everyone else’s magic abuse on the show, it didn’t automatically make the other characters look morally superior to Rumple or make them better characters. It just made them look hypocritical, self-righteous, petty, narrow-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. I feel like Adam, Eddy, and these writers felt like they could make everyone else on their fucked up and toxic show look better by deliberately tarnishing Rumple as their scapegoat to vilify in an increasingly obvious attempt to emotionally manipulate their audience to side with all of their other also incredibly fucked up and problematic characters by singling out one character as the “worst” on a show where everyone else was/ended up becoming just as much of, if not worse of a toxic mess of bad writing in one way or another anyway. Not surprisingly, they failed.

B). A well-written problematic character is not necessarily redeemable, but your audience still sees and understands the realistic reasons of how and/or why they got there gradually and consistently unfold on screen and/or within their backstories behind the scenes that build up to increasingly problematic behaviors on screen by not taking care of their mental health/sanity, even if they don’t end up liking them in the end.

A badly-written problematic character may suffer from unresolved issues of abuse, mental illness, addiction, trauma, grief, and loss to flesh them out more sympathetically in a narrative, but those realistic issues don’t end up being the issues the writers behind them choose to focus on to drive their increasingly problematic and out-of-character behaviors from point A to point C. On OUAT, they chose to focus on contrived, biased, externalized, hypocritical, and blatantly emotionally manipulative cartoonish “hero vs villain” character destroying Drama™️ by breaking, and bending their own rules of magic with bizarre macguffins and flashy magical PLOT twist fuckery character destroying garbage to force the audience to feel the way they wanted them to feel about the characters. Consistent, realistic normally intelligent, loving, open, kindhearted, devoted, loyal, cautious, and sane characterizations in these characters and their relationships were thrown away out of the blue if and/or whenever the writers stupid PLOTs demanded they suddenly start acting like wildly OOC caricatures who were acting bizarrely cartoonishly evil, exceedingly distrustful, exceedingly deceptive, exceedingly gullible, exceedingly conniving, melodramatically toxic, melodramatically cruel, reckless, and/or unbelievably stupid because the writers wanted for them to be ridiculously oblivious to solutions to conflicts and/or problems with each other thst should have and would have been obvious for them to resolve by taking a fucking chill pill, asking questions and doing research, sitting down to talk to each other and make compromises with each other like two mature adults for no realistically believable reason because they wanted for them to self-destruct to the worst possible rock bottom in their magical Drama™️ soap opera character destroying PLOT fuckery “twists.” (CS in 5A and Rumbelle in 4A-6A).

I could understand if it were a gradual, realistic, slow-burn, and organic build up of insanity in a character’s unhealthy response to being constantly abused, rejected, misunderstood, ostracized, emotionally manipulated by false hope, and/or fucked over for trying to be good, anyway. It wouldn’t excuse them for their actions or necessarily make them forgivable, but I would believe that I would do what they would in their shoes in similar circumstances as theirs if I saw the build up happen organically without bizarre twists, contrived magical macguffins, prophecies, and rules of magic being bent and broken to melodramatically and inorganically derail them from being seemingly normal to totally losing their shit and essentially having a completely different characterization/personality in the blink of an eye for whatever PLOT demands. I would see realistic reasons and build ups for why they became the way they did by not taking care of their mental health or getting healthy emotional support, and choosing to give into darkness/insanity instead without any strings of PLOT forcing them there inorganically.

However, on OUAT, especially in later seasons after 3A, you would have Rumple, Regina, Belle, Emma, Snow, David, Hook, and even Henry going from being seemingly normal, loving, rational, sane, and/or trying to be good in one moment to very unbelievable, and uncharacteristically, melodramatically cruel, criminal, dark, deceptive, distrustful, petty, impatient, insensitive, reckless, triggering, stupid, and/or batshit insane in the next out of nowhere within a timeline that took place over a day or less from the end of 3B-S7 because their asinine PLOT twists, magic prophecies, and/or one-season magic macguffins demanded they do a complete 180 for senseless character destroying Drama™️ from one episode or scene to the next.

Then, they just “went back to normal” after the writers were all done outright destroying their characters involved for wildly OOC needless Drama™️ in their magical PLOT fuckery twists by making them do, threaten to do, and/or say horrifically and unbelievably OOC melodramatically and needlessly cruel, destructive, hurtful, mutually toxic, traumatizing, reckless, stupid and/or problematic ugly shit in regards to each other for a few episodes of an arc that no one would ever realistically forgive, even if they meant well. At least not without a logical explanation for why it happened, and/or or a lot of time to process to let go of the hurt they caused each other first, which we never got to see on screen in the aftermath as a resolution on screen.

It’s the most infuriatingly lazy type of writing that I have ever seen on a television show and such a total waste of potentially interesting and relatable characters for cheap shock value and Drama™️ in the PLOT.

C) When you kill off a character, especially a redemptive anti-villain/tragic hero type character, kill them off once and then be done with them for good.

D) “Foil” does not mean you outright destroy another character to fool the audience into thinking that the other one you want them to root for is any better without them actually doing or saying anything to prove it. That’s just lazy and blatantly emotionally manipulative bad writing.

E). Stop with the “Evil is sexy” in female villains and Rumple, a feminine-coded anti-villain. It honestly was so cringeworthy and unsexy on OUAT.

F). Female “empowerment” and “feminism” does not mean being a control freak with a man, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, interrupting them, belittling them, walking away, and/or being needlessly cruel, and/or a petty bitch every time they so much as slightly disagrees with you. It does not mean giving men ultimatums for you to be together, or leading them on with borderline emotionally manipulative false hope to get what you want from them, only to drop them right afterwards/if they don’t do exactly what you demand 100% of the time. It does not mean being emotionally, verbally, physically, and/or sexually abusive of men. It does not mean needlessly kicking men when they are already down by using their emotional vulnerability against them to mock them about how “weak” they are for expressing their very real fears to you in a desire for your emotional support and understanding. Being a “strong” woman does not mean treating men in relationships like “projects for you to ‘fix’” just as being a “strong” woman does not mean giving up your own personal convictions and independence to be with them. My god, they really fucked up Emma, Regina, Belle, and Zelena with this Empowerment™️ trope...

G). Male characters should progress and regress with more than just the solely emotionally manipulative force of a female love interest. Female characters should be able to progress and regress with more than just a male love interest’s emotionally manipulative force. I’ll always love Rumbelle, Snowing in the early seasons and in fanon scenarios, and even CS wouldn’t have been that bad, but the writers either destroyed both halves of them with Drama™️ in the PLOT, and/or sidelined them and made them unhealthily codependent. I think killing off Nealfire killed that core theme of family, especially in Rumple and Emma.

But basically, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, Emma, Neal, and Hook should have all been more developed as individual characters who could grow and regress as more than just love interests.

H). Stop this trope of using female love interests to vilify their male love interests by turning them into OOC emotionally abusive/whiplash plot devices to trigger them with on-and-off-again bs or problematic behaviors to drive them insane. They did this with CS in 5A, Rumbelle in 6A, and Phole on Charmed in season five. It’s not fun to watch. It’s actually really misogynistic writing that does not make either halves of your couples feel blameless or likable in anti-heroine/redemptive anti-villain couples. It ruins and limits both of them in a way that feels mutually toxic and gross. Acknowledge that both halves of your anti-heroine/anti-villain couple are imperfect and flawed, or break them up amicably for good. But stop trying so *hard* to make the audience see the problematic female love interest as the “blameless” victim for consciously pushing the male anti-villain’s every button, and stop having the male anti-villain as a “pure EVOL abuser” driven to insanity with this trope. It’s so annoying and disappointing! If you’re going to make it so that *both* halves of this kind of relationship are toxic to each other in an anti-hero/reforming anti villain romance, then stick to being fair, and call them both out to resolve their issues, rather than trying to make the audience take sides! Don’t chicken out halfway through, and go to “evil abuser” versus “blameless victim” mid-way through and/or at the end because you’re too afraid to admit that the “good guy” in the relationship is imperfect and hurtful in regards to the “bad guy” in the relationship! If you can’t be realistic and fair enough to discard your “hero” and “villain” labels, then just break them up amicably after their first fall out. I’m so tired of this on-and-off-again hypocritical character destroying Drama™️ bs, though.

J) When you “have” to kill off, sideline, and/or outright destroy other characters/ships to get rid of competition for your favorite character or ship, it doesn’t make you a good writer. It just makes you look like a petty hack with a Gary Stu/Mary Sue or a creator’s pet that’s polarizing the show.

K) You are are a very bad storyteller if you think that “fun” means deliberately destroying/derailing your normally sympathetic and/or intelligent characters characterizations into something inexplicably, melodramatically, unbelievably, and uncharacteristically mutually toxic, stupid, and unsympathetic for contrived, needless, and senseless self-destructing Drama™️ in your PLOTs.

L). If your goal as a creative writer is to mindfuck your audience with “SHOCKING” twists that you pull from your ass with no lead up whenever things seem to be headed in a direction that actually feels interesting, promising, and starts to makes organic sense, then we will lose emotional investment in the stories for these characters you’re not interested in telling, and catch on to a pattern the more often you do it because we’re a lot smarter than you think we are.

M). Accept that character growth and/or regression can’t just happen right away because the PLOTs you come up demand it. Take time to get them from point to the next in development and/or regression.

N) Guest characters should be fleshed out, and well-developed. Don’t use them as discardable plot devices

O). Stop going back to the status quo! (Rumple’s the Dark One, Emma’s the Savior, Hook/Neal is her boyfriend, Rumbelle are separated for reasons x, y, and z, Rumple does something stupidly self-sabotaging with magic to try to fix a problem in the wrong ways and only makes it worse, Rumple does something selfless for the “first time,” Belle’s a failure hero, Hook wants to get revenge on someone who wronged him, particularly Rumple, Regina has a hole in her heart she wants to fill by artificially absolving her guilt, Zelena fucks over Rumple, Emma has to learn to open up her heart to love, Snowing keep dark secrets from Emma, etc. This show became such a predictable soap opera by S5 that I had to finally quit to preserve my sanity...)

@0ceanofdarkness

@sieben9

@ishtarelisheba

@idkmybffjillyy

@takingbackouat

@tariella

@leni-ba

@heatherfield

@mrgoldsshopofhorrors

@thenightling

@salty-rumbelle

@sarashouldbestudying

@done-with-ouat

@anna-williams-wins

@anneelliotscat

Hi! Are you also a fan of Emma Swan?

Hello! Yes, I’m generally a fan of Emma—but with a caveat. I’m not a fan of how she was written in the later part of OUAT, but I love who she was at her core and what she could have been. Sometimes it feels like I’m more of a fan of the pairs that Emma is in—her relationship with Neal, or Regina, or Snow and David, etc—and fanon!Emma… but yeah, I’m a fan. She was a lost little girl who kicked ass fought for what was right and found more family than she could possibly know what to do with. :D