#literally it is a consistent trait of his that he only mentions backstory things when they become relevant and NEVER before

[huehanya]

some people I guess?: “uta being randomly inserted into luffy’s backstory breaks immersion!! she messes everything up!! it’s unrealistic that she’d just suddenly get mentioned!!”

me: (gestures to Ace) (gestures to Sabo) (gestures to Dadan) (gestures t

[evelhak]

Aaaaa, this!!! I literally cried, I am so happy to see some actual common sense!! I am so, SO tired of this trend, it's not just Rory either, there's a really unfair pattern going on where the "renaissance" on a piece of media is basically just fans ripping a protagonist to pieces for things that these fans do not hold other characters, particularly beloved antagonists and rivals, accountable for.

This video perfectly illustrates the dynamic: Rory, who tries her best to both achieve her goals and be a decent human being while doing it, who never was a perfect human if you paid attention, gets held to the standard of an angel, so every time she makes a mistake that mistake is treated as disproportionately horrible and irredeemable. Meanwhile, as a good example, Paris, who consistently treats other people horribly, gets downright babied, and how she deserved better is repeated, her own responsibility over her actions downplayed or completely ignored. Only her good qualities are remembered, and highlighted.

There's an excellent quote in the video:

"The audience loves Paris because she is so over the top that she becomes a non-character. But when you take her as a real person and judge her with the same standards as you would Lorelai and Rory, she is pretty terrible."

This. This happens with so many characters whose traits are so much that they are viewed as inherently comedic or unbelievable, so they don't count in people's eyes. Paris having a fit in her college entrance interview, yelling over the interviewers and defending eugenics, gets brushed off as "poor baby, she's clearly mentally ill, she just deserves better, she should have gotten in", while Rory, who got manipulated into an internship by the BIGGEST journalism figure just so he could tell her "she didn't have it" was JUST weak and entitled for getting upset and discouraged over it.

Paris cheating on her boyfriend for months with a college professor gets pushed under the rug because people are too uncomfortable to even acknowledge the whole thing, meanwhile Rory is THE WORST for sleeping with a married guy after she repeatedly asked him if both him and his wife agreed their marriage was over, suggested they could try counselling, and was lied to by said guy that both he and his wife knew things were over between them.

Yeah, Rory made mistakes, and definitely didn't act perfectly after either of the situations I mentioned. She was emotional and people generally make mistakes when they are. But for some reason certain characters get a free pass all the time, while it feels almost like Rory gets punished for even trying to be a good person. Like "See, I caught her making a mistake, that means she's the worst." As if trying to have morals and be decent is inherently arrogant and hypocritical. Like trying and failing is worse than not even trying. It's like, her mom and grandparents and home town expect her to be perfect, so fans did too, and now they're mad at her for being human because they put her on a pedestal. Meanwhile characters who consistently don't care about their impact on others don't get scrutinized, their actually horrible behaviour is just taken as comedy or proof of their victimhood.

Basically, people are desensitized to horrible things from certain characters, they expect it, so they don't react to it, but when Rory who is "supposed to be good" makes a mistake, it's suddenly the core of her character and all she is. Geez.

And don't get me wrong, I love both Paris and Rory. I love every character in the show. But this double standard drives me nuts. So many characters in the show have done very similar things as Rory gets accused of, some of them while feeling no remorse. Some of them have done a lot worse things that get forgiven easily.

And don't even get me started on what a hot guy with a tragic backstory gets excused for. Yeah, some things are understandable when you know the backstory. That doesn't make those things not wrong.

It's like people are obsessed with the idea that someone who appears good on the surface must be bad, and vice versa. Nuance be damned.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

Bnha's Final Twist Villain

I believe that UA and the hero side's real traitor has yet to be revealed, by the process of writing consistency (inconsistency) and references/parallels.

The real traitor that will (hopefully) be emerging soon as we're reaching the conclusion of this "final" conflict between the heroes and villains.

Horikoshi loves star wars

He constantly puts references in his work.

The master and the apprentice narrative:

Deku and All-might - Shigaraki and all for one.

Naming places and techniques in bnha after Star wars locations:

Nabu Island from My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising = the Star Wars planet Naboo

Hosu City from the Hero Killer arc = The frozen planet Hoth.

The Jaku General Hospital = Jakku is Rey's home planet in The Force Awakens.

Musutafu city = mustafar the unstable volcanic world

Phantom Menace (ファントムメナス, Fantomu Menasu?) is an Ultimate Move performed by Mirio Togata using the Permeation Quirk.

And...

All for one is a very direct Darth Vader reference.

Likes to hold up people via the choke lift, uses weapons made of light, the dark helmet is spot on.

While true All for one does use (dark) lightning as a weapon that trait is not unique when drawing parallels to sith characters or other forces users of the darker side, as many in star wars are able to use that ability such as count dooku, Darth nihilus, Darth revan or starkiller, Nightsister Clan Mother Talzin, Snoke (sequel series) or even Rey.

And then there's: Chancellor Palpatine

The mastermind that succeeded in talking over the galaxy, but why and how exactly did he win?

Palpatine won because he was playing both sides of board, manipulating both parties against each other for his own ends.

The "heroic" Jedi/Republic and the "villainous" Sith/separatists.

Cliff notes rundown of pre/during-clone wars:

The separatists were in many ways, the scapegoats of the clone wars.

While they generally did lean towards the corrupt political category in it's leaders, that doesn't mean that the movement itself was wrong in their grievances towards the Republic.

The Senate and it's governance really were corrupt and uncaring, many peoples and outer planets abandoned and left with far less than more prosperous/useful planets.

Those left to rot by the system would inevitably rise up against it, though due to deception and bad leadership, the separatist movement and it's end was made to help Palpatine rise to power.

The Jedi (and by extension the Republic) didn't fair any better.

Palpatine was able to so effectively pull the wool over the Jedi's eyes because they were so set in their ways, so much that they couldn't imagine any elements or consequences beyond what they believed, they refused to adapt to evolving circumstances and threats (their enemies using different tactics) and address their own flaws (their rigid beliefs being one example), that it all resulted in their downfall.

Which leads me to: Principal Nezu

Nothing about Nezu makes any sense when you really think about it.

For an important detail to start, he won't even specify what he is: "That's right. It's me, Nezu, the one who could be a dog or a mouse or a bear, but more importantly... I'm the principal!"

And supposedly he's an animal that manifested a quirk, something that hasn't been shown anywhere else in bnha.

Then it's later revealed that he has a Dark past as an experiment by humans, this only came up once and was never mentioned again, though it definitely stated to be his backstory.

But that's the thing, if Nezu is an animal that was in a quirk based experiment (the only reason the situation would make sense is if it was quirk based) there's only one person in who could have had a hand in his being the way he is.

Afo's doctor (or doctor Ujiko), is literally the only person in this series who could create a being like Nezu.

There is no one else who even seems to know any quirk based science.

This doctor is the only one.

Nezu is supposedly a genius, his quirk is: High Specs: Nezu's Quirk grants him a high level of intelligence that surpasses that of humans.

A level of: Intelligence - 6/5 - S

This is backed up by his performance in the students vs teachers match, but there's never been any kind of showing of Nezu's genius or strategy skills otherwise.

It's not even confirmed that Nezu came up with much of the current war strategy.

He (if you believe he's truly genuine) failed to sus out the student traitor, being aoyama, and couldn't prevent the attack of the league of villains in the forest training event that lead to the kidnapping of bakugo.

He didn't play any significant part in the first war against the paranormal liberation front.

And he didn't do much else in the future arcs except encouraging class 1A to go get deku.

Nezu doesn't really seem to do much of anything or have any real impact.

So either Nezu isn't nearly as competent or intelligent as he and his allies say that he is.

Or his stated intellectual level is true, but how could that be if he isn't shown to be proving it and when he does participate (finding the traitor, protecting the hero students) it ends badly?

Unless that was the plan.

And his absence or failures benefiting how he wanted these circumstances to play out, with all the conflicts/events going against or for the heroes being what Nezu wanted.

A counter point to this theory would be this scene:

Nezu saying this does imply that he believes ochako can be a hero that could surpass All-might.

(She definitely could if she sticks the landing with toga.)

But if there's anything that's definitely been explicitly shown to be true in bnha, it's that those who are heroes can still be in the wrong.

Endeavor, Hawks, the pros in general and even All-might himself.

All had a hand in creating the current situation (and the destruction that came from that) in their world.

Insane ambition, serving an obviously corrupt government, allowing/endorsing brand deals/popularity contests and ensuring the status quo "Normal " to be an unshakable cornerstone of hero society.

And finally the over reliance on heroes (making apathetic civilians) had a giant hand in creating "History's Worst Villain".

Just because someone believes in heroes, that doesn't mean that they are actually making things better or that they have good intentions, not in bnha.

And again, it's really hard to believe that someone with a genius level intelligence wouldn't realize all of these hypocrisies and flaws in hero society.

While in this theory, Nezu's real overall goal for why he's doing this would be debatable, the inconsistency with his character and the parallels to star wars' greatest villain is too spot on to be a coincidence.

(source: star wars the clone wars 2003 TV series)

Also something else interesting to note, if deku and shigaraki's battle at mount Fuji is meant to parallel the mustafar lava battle in star wars: revenge of the sith-

-what else happened in that movie?

[caliburn-the-sword]

more cress thoughts and reactions (if i wasn't lazy i would start numbering these)

WHAT is with this lunar guard and WHY would he randomly choose to help these guys. since he's a Named Character (but i already forgot) i'm demanding a pov chapter immediately. probably won't get one until we trust him tho rip

NO WAY SCARLET CAN'T DIE OMG - oh thank goodness she's been taken hostage. that's better because it means she has a chance

what is it with cinder and her tendency to pick up strays?? first thorne now the blondie

cinder got that medical rizz (got blondie to take his shirt to staunch blood)

wait how does blondie know that cinder is the lost princess?? did i miss something??? maybe it was something cress mentioned

"Thorne thought maybe it was best for her to practice (cutting bonds) on herself anyway" DAMN BRO COLD

i wonder if the programming making the sat invisible still applies now that it's crashed. if not we're about to have a big problem on our hands

"somehow she’d never worked the sensation of prickly facial hair into her fantasies. She would amend that after this." MISS GIRL WHAT???? that said i find the diction of 'amend that' there's just something so detached about it lmao

OMG THORNE LOST HIS VISION YES THIS IS MAKING ME NUTS

no i agree cress WHY would you give a newly blind man a knife

her hair is getting cut off <3 "It felt as though twenty pounds had been cut from her head" probably because it HAS girly. haircuts are literally magical. feel sad?? get a haircut

"It's not your fault" damn thorne i really appreciate how conscious he is of cinder's and now cress' self blaming problem even though he doesn't act like he's all compassionate. softie

grossed out by thorne kissing a 16 year old even if it was just her hand (someone play sixteen by ayesha erotica)

omg i thought the kids were talking about PRIZE MONEY for a BOUNTY and that we were about to see someone properly threatening appear, not just gummy worms fkshfsdkh. LOVE erland for indulging the children. he seems like a fun uncle type figure to have. i wonder how much those kids make him grieve for his daughter. OMG CINDER MENTION IT I NEED ERLAND'S REACTION

omg cress' descriptions of earth make me feel like i've been taking it for granted <3 i love her to death and i wish her all the happiness in the world

i LOVE thorne's no nonsense attitude, especially when it conflicts with cress' fantasies. yeah!! shake her!! wilderness survival king

tf??? i've never heard of a green sunset????? i'm assuming that this is a rural thing or i'm just gonna pin it down to random radioactive scifi reasons

thorne you know what OTHER than constellations would rule out australia?? THE SAND WOULD BE FUCKING RED. i would know because i did a 6 week cross country road trip across the desert from east to west and back again. i get that he's blind but surely cress would have noticed and thought to mention it (catch me looking for the southern cross constellation whenever i go to the northern hemisphere since it's the only one i can consistently recognise)

whenever cinder gets glamoured she always snaps out of it immediately. even kai, the few times it's happened to him. it's honestly VERY disturbing to read it from scarlet's perspective where she's completely unable to (also now i'm finding kai sus. does he have the implant against his knowledge?? he got out of it with pain but wolf literally got SHOT and stayed glamoured)

LANDED IN AFRICA OMG THEY'RE GONNA REUNITE WITH CINDER. I BET ERLAND HAS ALREADY HEARD NEWS ABOUT THE DROPPED SAT

cress' backstory is intriguing, ESPECIALLY because idk how she's alive. does experimenting really make her THAT worth keeping before her hacking skills came to light?? why does sybil want to keep shells alive in the first place?? she seems very down with eugenics

holding onto neurodivergent coded cress and defending her with my life. of course some traits overlap with her trauma and being isolated for so long

only just remembered this but i guess now my theory of cress not being fully lunar doesn't hold up now that i know her parents. but with what she's saying about her backstory, makes sense why she doesn't identify with lunars that much

maybe it was thorne that i decided was bi??? just by seeing this line about blackmailing a hot pilot if he were in her position??? now that i think about it he had a similar line about kai or something. anyway with thorne saying he would have blackmailed someone i reckon he's just putting on a facade so no one sees him as a softie. but it's still funny to just make characters queer. it's a coping mechanism

OMG NOW THAT THE SATELLITE HAS CRASHED THE LUNARS ARE EXPOSED. I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THAT. but the spyware should ALSO be down unless specific feeds went directly to the palace

this read has been such a treat for me!! i mentioned this on a reblog of one of my first cress post, but for those of you who haven't seen it when i was like. 5. my library had this picture book of the biblically accurate grimms brothers rapunzel. BEAUTIFUL illustrations. i was a silly goofy little kid obsessed with morbidity and i LOVED the gory illustrations of the prince's eyes getting stabbed out by thorns and him wandering around the forest all bloody and blind. i tried to find it online but couldn't!! the closest thing to it was rapunzel by sarah gibb which isn't gloriously violent anyway. i want to see if i can hunt it down irl and let you guys know which one it is but i used to frequent three different local libraries + the school library of my primary school was basically my own playground so i can't remember where i used to read it ;-; but yeah all this is to say i'm obsessed with cress as a retelling of rapunzel by far as someone who has a long history and grew up with it <3

@eddisfargo @francforever @winterrhayle @winterpinetrees

[garthofshayeris]

I've seen you've talk about how rebirth Garth is not real Garth and I believe you obviously mean personally I am still annoyed over Roy's clone from n52 that everyone keeps acting like is Roy is still a thing, but how is he different?

I’m so glad you asked! It sounds obvious, but typically people like a character for their personality or their story arcs or their character development. Like, why else would you like a character, right? So when there are huge changes to the things that make you like the character, uh…there’s not much left.

So, obviously with reboots some things are going to be changed. Maybe someone’s appearance is altered. some of their backstory is switched up, some personality traits get dropped or added. What sucks about Rebirth Garth is they changed everything about his character, none of it for the better. And for a character who, until now, has had a major part to play in Aquaman and other dc comics for about half a century, it’s honestly pretty insulting. So many creators poured their hearts into shaping him into a character before the reboot. There was so much love put into his stories, that the comparison to rebirth is so, so noticeable. Like…if Dick Grayson was rebooted with a completely different backstory and personality and was only vaguely related to the Batfamily, I think fans would be rightfully upset. I feel the same about Garth.

His personality, or whatever attempt they made at one, is bland and boring. He’s a brute who likes fighting and….that’s it. Compared to preboot Garth who is consistently sweet and sensitive and emotional and good. He’s just a good guy who thinks of fighting as a last resort, because he would rather use his words than his fists. It was such a lovely, refreshing take on a male character (and one who is in big name comics like Aquaman and Titans and JLA) that to lose one of his key elements is terrible sad and disappointing.

Garth’s story is, ultimately, completely tied to Arthur’s. They bring out the best and worst in each other. Garth is Arthur’s foil, from the start he is there to complement Arthur as a hero and they’re part of each other’s arcs. And his backstory heavily influences how Garth acts and what he does. His story is one of grief and loss and identity and overcoming stigma, prejudice, and taking control of your destiny. His story is about healing. Or it was.

Because Rebirth Garth doesn’t have any of that. He is, essentially, a completely different character who happens to be named Garth. Sure, he mentioned offhandedly that when he was in Magic College he had a girlfriend who Died Tragically and then they never mentioned that again. It’s a cheap imitation of his Tula storyline, told in like 2 panels, because Tula is also a completely different character now. They’ve spoken in canon once. Two characters who have been so closely joined together for 50 years barely know each other now. This is the same for every other character who still exists in Aquaman canon (they’ve written out a ton). He’s never even spoken to his other love interest in preboot, Dolphin, at all.

Let’s get back to Magic College though. Garth’s powers (or the few he retained from his original power set, though honestly he just like glows now? They’ve never really explained what he can do) are there because he went to underwater Hogwarts and I guess you can just do that and become magic. In comparison, preboot Garth has magic because he’s an abandoned prince from a long line of powerful sorcerer-kings. But power corrupts and his father is murdered and his mother flees, and although she abandons Garth as birth he is so haunted by their deaths that they plague his nightmares. His powers are earned through an incredibly moving journey that includes (among other things) closure from grief and the literal act of taking ones destiny into their own hands. Garth earns his powers because he is pure of heart, because he is brave, and because he loves so, so much and because others loved him. And when he uses those powers in other comics, you remember the meaning behind them. So Rebirth Garth being magic “just because” is so reductive, so boring, so uninspired. I’d rather him be an average atlantean.

But Garth has absolutely no history with the Aquafamily. Giving us an emotional story with him now would be meaningless because he has no part in the comics or the Aquafam. Sure, they mentioned once that Arthur “raised” Garth but…there’s no evidence of that. They don’t speak to each other in Rebirth. There’s actually no way Arthur could have done that in the canon timeline, but it doesn’t matter because they make no attempt to show he’s even part of the family. Garth has been to exactly zero life events for Arthur. He’s never met Arthur’s daughter. He’s never shown just hanging with the others, and they hang out with assholes who tried to kill them before. He is never there. But we are told, once, that he and Arthur like each other. This character means nothing. You can write him out of the few issues he appears in and nothing changes. He’s completely worthless as a character.

So his personality is gone, his backstory is gone, his character themes and growth are gone…surely he still looks the same?

Wrong. He’a ugly. I’m sorry, he is. Everyone is always posting pictures of him saying he’s so pretty (and comparing him to his look on TT:YO as if those aren’t completely different continuities?) but he looks like every other black haired character in DC right now. He looks like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson and Time Drake and every other fucking guy it’s boring and it’s stupid. He has ugly straight hair (a far cry from Garth’s usual big, curly locks) in a boring ponytail because apparently YJ and TT are the only source the artists ever used to draw him. And his eyes. He has blue eyes. BLUE. When his character has had purple eyes for his entire existence, when his purple eyes have been a major plot point for his entire existence, when his purple eyes were his one defining trait for his entire existence. Insulting.

And he has eye tattoos. Sure, you say, because we all know Garth got his eye scars while training with Atlan (also now a completely different character) when claiming his birthright (written out of canon) to gain his powers (written out of canon) so yeah, maybe they’re just tattoos now. Except some dumbass at DC couldn’t be bothered to put them on the right side of his face. Yet another defining character trait completely fucked up because nobody at DC cared about making this character. He exists to tick off a box, to say “hey, look, we brought back a character you guys wanted. Buy our comics.”

So, when I say Rebirth Garth isn’t the “real” Garth, this is what I mean. The characters are different in every way that makes characters matter. He’s a character who shares a name and nothing else. And I hate him.

[cayenne-twilight]

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

[magnhild]

Before the Dawn didn’t ‘retcon’ Sun- an explanation from an actual writing major

Since the release of Before the Dawn, the sequel to RWBY’s After the Fall, I’ve seen a lot of different takes on it, but there’s a consistent one that it completely and utterly absurd- the idea that Sun Wukong’s persnality was ‘retconned’ for the book. The idea is, quite frankly ridiculous.

Before I get into why this take is so stupid, let me first explain what a retcon actually is, seeing as this fandom has so little understanding of the word. Retroactive continuity, often shortened as ‘retcon’ is a literary device that ignores or outright contradicts something already established in a work’s canon. For example, one actual retcon in RWBY would be the DC comics, while being canon, showing Ruby talking in full scentences shortly after Summer’s death, when Yang previously stated in the show that Ruby could barely talk when it happened.

A retcon is not something being explained differently or adittional information being given towards soemthing, even if these other details hadn’t been come up with to begin with. Salem’s backstory, for example, is not a retcon of the show’s opening narration, because not only is the opening narration very simplied so that it’s easier for the auidence to understand, but it’s also done by Salem herself, who would natutally not be telling the full story.

Now, the case with Sun is not the first time I’ve heard the claim that a character was retconned in the novels. While I don’t know if it’s at all a popular idea, one Redditor ranted at me in fury about how bad After the Fall must have been if it characterized Velvet as at all sassy because we’d never seen her that way in the books, ignoring my attempts to explain that, realistically, shy people are not going to be as shy around people they know well.

The couple of times I’ve shared these screenshots on Twitter were met with the same scorn I felt upon recieveing such responses (espeiclaly since the last comment was posted around two weeks after the rest of the conversation). So, when people failed to see that the situation with Sun was the same, it surprised me.

People claim that BTD characterized Sun completely differently as he is in the show. This is...weird, but I can slightly understand why people would jump to the conclusion that the personality he has in the book is somehow different to his personality in the show.

The first thing of note is that Sun still very much exhibits the personality traits that he’s known for; the positive ones. The very prologue of the book shows that, even in a fight, he’s still cheerful, easygoing and goofy, and we see several moments of this throughout the entire book. The second thing is that 99% of his scenes in the show are with Blake, who he has (or had) a literal crush on. Of course he would act differently around her and her friends than he would around his team, or people he didn’t care as much about. Right away, this shows that his personality was not contradicted and was, thus not retconned. But, of course, I have more to say than that.

The first big complaint regarding something that was indeed added in the book- or, at least, that we didn’t see in the show (given how Sun is not at all a character of focus) is that he’s shown to be angry and on-edge at certain points. And yes, this is not soemthing we saw of him in the show, but it’s also not out-of-character, and very easily understandable. Sun returned to his team expecting everything to be fine and dandy after a quick apology for leaving them, so when they don’t instantly forgive him and are still angry with him, he doesn’t understand, and thus becomes angry with them in return. He had an idea in his mind of how things would go, and when this didn’t go to plan and he continued to be confronted on his flaws, he can’t help but be a little salty about being treated this way by the people he’s known the longest among the main cast. For him, it’s a personal issue. The only reason we never saw him this angry in the show is because nothing ever personally affected him. He had no reason to be truly angry at anything because they were Blake’s problems, not his, and while he would natually want to help her out, he didn’t have any personal feelings towards the matter. But his team are supposed to be his friends, and here they are, not forgiving him after he apologized and everything. In his mind, he was being critizied even though he thought he’d fixed the problem with a simple apology.

The second big complaints are those of how Sun’s not-great relationship with his team throughout most of the book are contradictory to the last time we saw him in the show. People thought that his acknlowedgement of his shortcomings as a leader meant that he was going to be an instantly better one after the fact. These people fail to realize two major problems with this- the first being that there’s no rushing personal improvment. It’s very weird to me that people thought that Sun could instantly become a better leader when he was such a bad one in the first place. The second problem is that Sun, despite his name, is not the brightest bulb, and I say this in the nicest way possible. It’s made clear by both the show and the book that, while he acknowledged that he shouldn’t have ditched his team for several months without explanation, he still failed to realize the seriousness of his actions, or how the team dynamic was affected when he came back and took over again from Scarlet’s temporary leadership. As mentioned in the above paragraph, Sun thought that he could fix everything with a simple apology, and that it would absolve him of all wrongdoing. But more importantly, but the end of the book, he has realzied the weight of his negligence and that he needs to work harder to gain back respect from his team. And yet, critics ignore this and seem to this he acts badly throughout the whole book with no change in behaviour, when this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The third complaint, and the most absurd to me, is that Sun’s dismissiveness of serious situations and regular insensitivity in the book are out of character. Excuse me, but...did we watch the same show??

Perhaps it’s easy to forget because we haven’t seen him in show for a while, but these are two of his core personality traits, especially earlier on in the show. It seems that the fanon depiction of Sun as a sweet and loveable himbo who can do no wrong has caused a lot of people to forget his very prominent flaws, but Sun has always been this way, from as early as Volume 1. He treats serious situations as a joke or bit of fun, and he is constantly making insensitive comments, even to Blake, who he likes. Just to show a few, with replies from Blake for context regarding the second two:

From Black and White:

From Of Runaways and Stowaways:

From Menagerie:

Even in situations where he isn’t outright insensitive, he still frequently exhibits a struggle to read the room. He fails to understand why Team RWBY don’t want him and Neptune coming with them, he fails to fully understand why so many faunus take issue with humans despite being a faunus himself, and he fails to understand why stalking Blake across a continent was a very, very bad and creepy thing to do, even if he had good intentions. In fact, he never even apologises for any of this, at least, not that we saw, so it’s enitely plausible that it’s not soemthing he’s learned from.

So the fact that he continued to demonstrate this insensivity in BTD is very much in-character. That has always been a part of his personality, even though it’s often played off as a joke.

With all that said, it really bothers me that people list what is, in objective truth, a deeper insight into Sun as a character, as a flaw of the book. This is not a flaw. I’ve been studying writing through university for over four years, and believe me, showing that people act different depending on the situation or people they are around, as well as expanding upon any flaws they might have, is good writing. Something is not a ‘retcon’ because it contradicts your headcanon, or what you wanted to happen. That would be like if Nora were (not that I think she ever would be) confirmed cis and I called it a retcon because I headcanon her as trans. That would be stupid. 

After the Fall and Before the Dawn are honestly amazing books. They do have their issues, but character writing is far from one of them, and I would, in fact, consider it one of their biggest strengths. The way they flesh out both pre-existing and new characters, the way they can get us to love them within just 20-something chapters, is wonderful. They dive so deeply into even more minor characters, and make them all unique. So the idea that characters like Sun and Velvet were written badly because they were expanded upon and further characterized than they were in the show is an absolutely ridiculous concept, and one that I’ve hopefully changed people’s minds on with this.

Sun was not retconned. You guys just need to remember that the picture you paint of a character in your head is not always going to be the way a character is in canon. We’re not Adam defenders, people (at least, I hope not). 

Anyway. Read the RWBY books. I don’t care if you have already. Do it again.

[cyberfairyblog]

Why Jillian Sucks

Hi, welcome to Odyssey Mystery Hour! I'm your host @gritsandbrits and today I'll be talking about a hot topic in the AIO fandom! Wanna know the tea? Keep on reading!

In the weeks I started getting back into the radio series, the newer episodes have started to irk me, mostly because of one of the more annoying additions: Jillian. Marshall. 😬😬😬

Even though I ship Jason with my self insert OC this not going to be about her. There's a lot of reasons why I do NOT like the idea of Jillian x Jason becoming a canon thing on the show. I hope to describe these feelings as best I can.

Who is Jillian you might ask?

Well to put it simply, Jillian is what happens when a Soccer Mom and a TikTok boyfriend mate and spawn an unholy baby and name them Rachel Berry. Out of the aspects of Nu!Odyssey I dislike, Jillian is the one thing I truly despise. Thankfully I've met fans who share the exact sentiment! 😁😒

Double-N Annoying, Double-O Nincompoop

Making her debut in 2018, Jillian is described as lively and upbeat, if a little high strung and immature; the perfect recipe for Kid Appeal! Before she moved to Odyssey she lived in different cities and worked nineteen jobs before becoming roommates with Connie and her sister Jules.

Now this is actually a fairly interesting set up: a new character struggling to find purpose only to discover it in a quaint small town. But as it turns out her going through that many jobs seems to be more than just struggling to find purpose.

When I first saw her design my thought immediately went to the smarmy classmates I went to school with.

We're introduced with this iconic line: "Hi!! I'm Jillian Marshall, double-L Jillian, double-L Marshall! It's so nice to meet you!"

With that one sentence I knew I was about to die.

The following episode has Jillian bumbling through every job interview much to Connie's duress after which she conveniently ending up working at Triple J Antiques...the same place Jason works!

A little backstory on Jason: he is the adult son of John Whittaker, one of the show's main character, and a bit of an Ensemble Darkhorse. He was introduced as a secret agent meant to bring action and intrigue into the show. He was set up as a charismatic and reckless sort of guy clashing with the calmer Jack Allen. After the Green Ring Conspiracy Saga, Jason officially retired from James Bonding and settled down to work at the Allen's antique shop.

Given his immense popularity there's understandable concern for how he is written and who he gets paired up with. So what does that have to do with Jillian.

Well, the idea of Jillian working at the same exact place as Odyssey's resident bachelor and calling him cute raises a few eyebrows.

"B-but Grits all she did was call him cute! You're reaching too far into this!"

Am I? Look I know this wouldn't be much of a big deal too but that is a subtle tactic the writers threw in to get the cogs turning for Jillison. Jason is clearly uninterested and even implied to dislike her. Jillian bemoans this but Connie reassures her that that's not the case. But hey at least she called him cute so OF COURSE she's going to end up being his love interest!

To me removing a character's core trait to justify a romance means you do NOT know how to actually write a compelling romance. It's trite, it's forced and painful to listen to.

It's also obvious she's a replacement for Bernard, given they have similar personalities and her brief stint on TV (which she also failed at lol). But whereas Bernard was actually endearing, Jillian seems more of a cliche womanchild with zero self awareness and tact. No actual depth, just a personality that is incredibly dumbed down and even insulting. Seriously they made her the dumb blond stereotype in an era where we should've moved on from that! 🤦

Did I mention she goes to church?

Yep she's gonna be one of those Christians.

Literally Loveless, Literally!

Oddly enough the narrative frames this as a rivals to lovers thing, where Jason is both the charismatic friendly guy and the super uninterested Straight Man. The constant twisting the turning makes him go OOC. See we know he's fit better as the former because that goes in line with his canon personality. But when they make him the latter he just comes off as unnecessarily mean. This is turns frames Jillian as someone we should pity: "Oh the attractive male doesn't like me because I went into his office without permission!!"

Wouldn't it make more sense for Jillian to be the one uninterested in a romance since her focus in to find a job/better purpose and romance might distract her? That would make a fun subplot...IF SHE WASN'T OBNOXIOUS!

A pattern I noticed and several fans pointed out: Jason's previous love interests were consistent in that they were strong minded women who challenged him in different ways. Their personalities bounced off creating a fun dynamic that was entertaining to see. Even though they didn't end up with him, you can still see and hear and feel their chemistry which is my goal for Jason x OC. Tasha doesn't make Jason OOC & they had a bittersweet arc, so their interactions were organic. Monica only made him OOC because she was a villain actively manipulating him. So again that worked in terms of story and led to Monica's redemption if my memory serves.

However, Jillian's dynamic is not that fun to listen to. You can feel her annoying Jason through the airwaves. She's strong but only in the sense of feeling something hard underneath your back laying on the bed and realizing that's just your earbud. She's vibrant yes but what else? She doesn't have any unique traits to contrast Jason, and any attempt at a contrast would mean making him act out of character. Adding her bumbling clumsiness and annoying voice, Jason would get tired of her very quickly. He's the type to go for people to have intelligent conversations with, not make him lose braincells. She could very well bring out the worse in him, it'll be an unhealthy relationship.

Here's a tidbit worth mentioning: the VA for Jillian actually auditioned with Jason's VA Townsend Coleman. Now that is big ass red flag right there! No hate towards the actress, just throwing that out there. There's also a facebook page dedicated to Jillison. Typical FB stupidity ramped up to eleven, or AIO fans who see something in Jillian; or at least THINk they see something worthwhile in her.

It doesn't help the writers keep insisting that these two go well together. The audience knows they do not work well as a pair but the narrative keeps insisting they are anyways. I recall an episode that had them pretend to be married while undercover and it was bad. Like REALLY humiliating to see Jason put in that position. He also told her to shut up much to my joy because she could NOT stop being irritating for five minutes. Alas the show still tries to justify Jillian being the Perfect Woman for Jason when she's anything but. And not even endearingly imperfect.

Follow Up

These tags I wrote on one of the AIO posts describes how I feel about Villain Marshall and the Jillison coupling as a whole. It just wouldn't work because Jason needs someone that can actually CHALLENGE him, have their own personality that can bounce off his (without being forced), and most importantly DOESN'T AGGRAVATE THE FANDOM!!

I have not met a single person anywhere that say they like Jillian. It's a different story apparently on the Club App - they like her for reasons I'm too cowardly to find out. But no, she sucks as a character. She makes a annoying friend, and is not a good addition to the show, much less a good love interest.

The only good thing she brought us are the nicknames we gave her 😌

That's all for now thank you for tuning into the Odyssey Mystery Hour. Next week I'll be talking a bit more about my OC Vanessa and her role in the world of Odyssey! Goodbye and make sure to lock your doors to prevent Jillian from coming in!!

[waifstarion]

I don’t think there is any harm in the baby Jack posts as he is in canon a baby, we only ever see him from age 0-3, it’s his 4th birthday next month. Never in canon has it stated Jack is autistic or coded as such, those quirks we see are canon as an angel not fitting in on earth, Castiel does it all the time. I believe it’s only really Gabriel who doesn’t have this issue as he’s been on earth for a very long time. I have quite a few traits in common with Jack from another condition that is not autism but overlaps, along with others (my condition sadly is very hard to diagnose for this reason, so a lot of people are often misdiagnosed as something else) I don’t post how angry that makes me as people are appropriating my condition and babying my traits (even if I do need help sometimes dressing myself right) If people are happy making Jack a baby then they should be allowed to post that. Jack only aged himself up after Kelly told him the world was unsafe, now Chuck has gone there’s no reason why Jack wouldn’t deage himself back to a toddler to finally experience playing on swings, slides and all the fun things with Castiel and Amara by his side. In a way too, the baby Jack is also a coping mechanism, in canon Jack left and Sam and Dean never seen him again, Sam lived at least 40 years without seeing Jack ever again and even in heaven, Jack wasn’t there 😭😭😭 so to draw or headcanon a small child who may need Sam to cut off the crust on his bread sandwiches, or Dean to read him a story and it be Game of Thrones or something... then that’s how that fan is coping with the true sad ending of Jack’s arc. We know he is with Castiel, he’s happy but Sam and Dean never learned that until after they died.

we would consider him a baby age-wise, as he is never older than three. however, seeing as he was born in a body roughly the age of eighteen, give or take a couple years (based on sam giving 2000 as his fake birth year when he was in the hospital and the cut line from 13x06). jack is never mentally an infant. he may have had the mentality of a younger child in his early episodes, but it doesn’t take too long for him to reach the mindset of a teenager. even at the end of the show, his mental age is probably around late adolescence or early adulthood (though that is up for interpretation). while he may be a baby in a very literal sense of the word (ie age-wise), he is not a baby in his mental state or appearance, which is what truly matters.

jack’s autism coding is all up to interpretation, however, i very intentionally use the term coding due to the fact that it is never outright stated in canon. coding typically isn’t confirmed within the actual show, otherwise i would have simply called it canon. another prominent character with autism coding (which was confirmed by ben edlund in the s6 commentary) is castiel, who just so happens to be a strong basis for jack’s character. many of the other angels are seen exhibiting neurotypical behaviours. angels such as naomi, balthazar, metatron, and many more do not display the traits that cas does. significantly, misha has said in numerous interviews that while his initial intention was to portray cas as something unhuman and unaware of human customs, not a single other actor did the same. as a result, this left cas as the odd one out, firmly establishing that this behaviour is just cas being himself, not an inherent side effect of being an angel. furthermore, the angels frequently make comments about cas being an outlier who doesn’t fit in, and make comments about it being a fundamental difference (eg. coming off the line with a crack in his chassis) rather than a learned behaviour. circling back to the autistic coding of cas and jack, it is never outright stated that either one is autistic, however there are traits that lead people to believe they are. this post does a good job of illustrating some potential autistic coding in jack. while it may not be intentional, it is certainly there, and a very prevalent interpretation within fandom. i'm sorry to hear that people infantilize your condition. i respect the fact that you make the personal decision not to make angry posts about it, as that is your prerogative. however, it is also mine to make a post about a pattern of behaviour i (and others) have noticed in fandom. the intention of my post is to encourage people to notice such patterns, and to draw their attention to it as there could be many people who never considered it from this point of view.

i never said they aren’t allowed to post it. on the contrary, i reblog posts about it on a semi-frequent basis. that being said, i find that there is a difference between sometimes posting about it versus exclusively portraying him as a baby and never talking about him as a person. in my post, i very clearly stated that it was about people posting it constantly and exclusively portraying him as an infant, which was my phrasing verbatim. it can be fun to portray characters in different ways, but in my opinion it becomes a problem when you constantly erase his character and backstory just to be a prop for a ship or your favourite character.

as for him wanting to deage himself, he has never indicated that. quite the contrary, he has been bothered when he is not taken seriously or seen as incapable. he wants to be capable and independent. it doesn’t make sense for him to want to limit himself mentally and physically so he becomes entirely reliant on those around him. he would lose essentially all of his autonomy, and i doubt that would be enjoyable for him. if he wants to go on a swing or a slide, no one’s stopping him in his current state. he can do plenty of the typical fun things while still being in his current form.

as it is, i don’t think that jack would be yearning for the stereotypical ideal childhood. no one jack has been around has had a normal, stable childhood. the bros, cas, rowena, etc all had abnormal and unstable childhoods. he was very briefly in his mother’s childhood heaven and that’s about the extent of it. even then, her heaven just consisted of her house with her dog. jack had a house and a pet, which he could easily view it as similar. even the tv shows we know he watches (clone wars, the walking dead, and riverdale) all seem to deal with people who do not get to experience real childhoods. he may not even be aware of the extent he is missing out on. even if he is aware, he may be perfectly fine with that and content with the memories he has already.

citing sam and dean’s preferences in and of itself is endemic to the issue of the constant baby jack posting. to be blunt, i don’t really care about what sam and dean want him to present himself as. they made little to no attempt to care for him as it was, so why should jack sacrifice his autonomy just so they can get some enjoyment out of it? in the finale, they barely even noticed his absence. you mention sam living forty years without him, yet he couldn’t be bothered to include a single photo of him in his house. jack shouldn’t have to change himself to make people happy. he should be himself, with complete autonomy, and loved for that. there is no true sad ending of jack’s arc. he’s happy with cas, just as you said. cas loved him unconditionally and was the only one who believed in him the entire time. cas wasn’t fazed when jack was an adult instead of the baby he had anticipated. he was happy to be with his son, regardless of what form that took.

the way cas and jack operate heaven is also left largely up to interpretation. all we know is that sam and dean are now there in the same place of them. it can easily be interpreted that they are all spending time together if that’s what you so please. it could very well be amara, cas, or another character that runs heaven. we don’t even know if there is anyone who needs to be in charge. it may run autonomously at this point and allow for jack to go off on whatever little hijinks he pleases

there are ways to write about tfw and jack post finale without erasing his personality and turning him into a prop. the entire issue is the fact that jack keeps getting used as a prop, and his tag consists almost exclusively of content where he is used as an accessory for other characters. all i’m asking is for people to stop constantly infantilizing him and to take the time to portray him as a fleshed out character sometimes.

[maxwell-grant]

On The Shadow’s “new” backstory

Poke around any discussion of The Shadow and the movie in particular and you’re gonna find a lot of contention regarding the movie’s biggest shift from the source material, that was inventing a whole new backstory for the character where, prior to being The Shadow, he used to be a murderous warlord on Tibet who was kidnapped by monks and forced to undergo redemption and put his skills to fight evil. 

It was not a popular decision at the time, to put it mildly. It didn’t do anything to improve the film (that text crawl really shoots the entire film in the foot), it soured a lot of fan opinions on the whole thing, and yet it’s become such a fixture of every story told with the character since then, that odds are most people think this is just what he always like, that this lip-service about redemption and being a former bastard turned hero was always what the character “was about”. 

I have some complicated thoughts on it and how it’s affecte Shadow stories since then, most of whom are negative, but the thing is, I get where it’s coming from. I get why they felt the need to change his origin like that, and why it’s stuck around. 

In the pulps, The Shadow’s backstory was, to sum it up, that he was a spy who went to war, learned a lot of skills and did a lot of things, and then pivoted to fighting crime in the late thirties. That was the backstory of most 30s American pulp heroes, actually, give or take a couple of differences. And for a pulp hero, it works. But modern audiences have been taught to expect more.

The movie, in trying to repackage the character for a modern audience, in turning The Shadow into a superhero so he could survive in a 90s blockbuster landscape, needed an appropriately punchy superhero backstory. Superhero backstories tend to be, in general, all about a dramatic hook that simplifies their motivations, powerset or life stories into a one-sentence pitch. Batman lost his parents in a brutal mugging as a child and swore to stop that from happening to others. Spider-Man’s uncle died because of his irresponsibility. Ben Grimm gained superpowers from space rays like his friends, except he got turned into a deformed rock monster who can never look normal again. Bruce Banner got caught in an atomic blast that made him into an unkillable rage monster. A dramatic transgression happened, they must correct it by becoming dramatic figures themselves.

They’ve made 3 John Wick movies with little more motivation to the central character other than “they killed his dog in the first movie”. That’s not a dismissal, it’s just effective storytelling. We don’t need more motivation for John Wick, we don’t need Batman flashbacks in every film, we get a one-sentence hook for a tangible, grounded motivation that lets the characters hit the ground running. “Used to be a savage murderous warlord, now applies said savagery to killing criminals” is a simple, easily understood pitch that’s considerably more dramatic than his former backstory. It works as a superhero backstory, and you can argue it’s even somewhat thematically fitting, since “a villain who turns evil against evil” has been part of The Shadow’s concept from day one. 

So what’s the problem with it?

Well, for one, The Shadow is not a superhero. He doesn’t look like them, he doesn’t act like them, he doesn’t live in their world. They can try and turn him into one, and they have done that several times, but the character’s core traits, central appeal and identity are not only considerably older than the superhero, they run directly counter to what defines a superhero. The movie that tried turning him into a superhero was a box office and critical failure, and the Dynamite comics have largely just succeeded at keeping the character in the fringes of the public eye and nothing more. If turning The Shadow into a superhero was intended to revitalize his success to modern audiences, it clearly hasn’t worked in over two decades, despite superheroes being more popular than ever before. It’s kept him on little more than life support.

And two, one of the very problems of trying to turn The Shadow into a superhero, and give him an ultra-dramatic superhero backstory pitch, is because it runs counter to a cornerstone of The Shadow’s appeal: the mystery. Superheroes have to pull double duty in being both the impressive, great warriors and forces of change within a story, as well as being our relatable, POV protagonist whose struggles we relate to. The Shadow, in the pulps, split that balance, between himself, and the agents and protagonists of any given Shadow story. @oldschoolcrimefighters  has brilliant writings on The Shadow and his agents that inspired me to do this blog in the first place and you should all read, and I’m going to quote this one in particular: 

“..modern storytelling focuses more on characterization rather than plot. I think a lot of creators come at The Shadow with that in mind, and with a mindset built on other comics and properties: the titular character is the one to focus on. And the radio show, movie(s), and comics – the most readily available mediums for research – don’t do much to disabuse them of this idea.

So creators shine the spotlight on The Shadow. They try to humanize him, make him into someone we the readers will empathize with and relate to and root for and all that jazz. They give him motivations and backstories and banter, a token romantic interest (Margo) and sometimes sidekick (usually Moe) to bounce exposition off of and provide comic relief. 

The Shadow doesn’t take kindly to spotlights. And even if he did, let’s be real, he’s not the most relatable dude. He’s a power fantasy. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.)

Whether or not he should be humanized at all is a touchy subject – I personally think the pulps portray him as a far more empathetic, fallible, playful being than people give them credit for. The thing is, when the pulps humanize him, it’s in a particular context. It’s in his relationships with other characters – especially the supporting cast – that his humanity shines.”

And that brings to the third problem: The Shadow doesn’t need a backstory that takes up so much screentime and focus. It has never factored into what made the character popular in his prime. In the pulps, we jumped right into his presence in the lives of others and his adventures, with only very sparse information about his past delivered every couple dozen books or so. It took over 131 novels for the name “Kent Allard” to even show up with a “proper” backstory, and even then, it consisted of little more than stuff we’d already been told prior about him (he was in the war, he used to be a spy, he traveled around the world with false names). And after a couple dozen stories, Kent Allard appeared less and less, about as often as the fake identity of Henry Arnaud, to the point the final Gibson stories omit him all together and even point to Lamont Cranston as the “true” identity of The Shadow. Kent Allard was just a name he went by a few times, and nothing more.

The most popular version of the character by far, the radio show, didn’t even have that. We knew nothing about the radio Shadow’s backstory other than some of his travels in the past he’d mention on certain episodes and what the opening narration told you. He was our POV protagonist in those episodes far more so in the pulps, and yet, clearly they must have been doing something right, if audiences never once missed the fact that they knew next to nothing about who he used to be before.

The very reason The Shadow became a character in the first place was because of popularity. It was because listeners tuning in to Detective Story Hour found themselves faced with the sibilant, cruel, snake-like whispery taunts of a narrator who talked and acted like no one they had heard announce other radio shows, who was easily the most interesting part of the shows he announced, and whose voice and personality held them in such fascination, even when he was literally nothing but a voice and a personality, that they started demanding to hear more of him, asking for stories starring this dark prince of radio that lived so vividly in their brains, that they didn’t notice, or care, that such stories about him didn’t exist yet. 

And when he was turned into a crimefighting character, his backstory was built in a way that allowed Gibson and any future writers to play around with and insert events and adventures as they saw fit. His adventures with the Tsar in Russia, his travels to India, Africa, Tibet, his war experiences, unrecorded adventures with allies and agents and villains of any kind, his post-war travels as Kent Allard, whatever happened in the years between his crash in the Yucatan and his arrival in America. Hell, if you want to have a period where he really loses it and does immoral things he isn’t proud of, there’s any number of periods you can insert mistakes and bad decisions that would define his actions years down the lane. It was a sandbox of any possibilities, grounded to a strong character who we could follow into any adventure because we’d be interested in learning more about him. 

A good backstory helps, and The Shadow’s motivation was grounded to it, but it was never a necessary component to his popularity. It was never something that needed much focus beyond the sparse information. When handled poorly, a backstory only really threatens to taint that appeal, and that’s what happened.

The “hook” that got audiences to pay attention to The Shadow was his sinister personality and charismatic cruelty. That was what they came for. What got them to stay, and read the stories and form lifelong devotions to the character and his adventures, was discovering that this personality belonged to a character who was, utterly, on the side of good, who used his skills and powers of great villainy to protect innocents, to help and uplift people just like the readers and listeners. That dual nature was a big part of why The Shadow was so enduring and popular in his prime, part of what set him apart from all of his contemporaries and imitators. 

It’s hardly much of a contrast, hardly much of a fascinating and layered character that we want to learn about or spend time with, if he was just always a horrible villain who is only marginally less horrible now, is it? A Shadow who used to be every bit the horrible villain he looks and acts like isn’t really that interesting, it’s just what you’d expect from him at first glance. What’s the point of caring about a man trying to regain his humanity, if we never get to see much of that humanity in the first place? What’s the point of even going into his past if we know all about it?

What’s the point of taking this backstory that was all about open possibilities for storytellers, all about covering the intricate life of a complex and strong character, to reduce it into a quick, punchy one-sentence summation that simply sets down a baseline for all future stories to repeat ad nauseum?

It’s not that I don’t think you can tell stories about The Shadow’s backstory, quite the opposite. It’s not that I don’t think the character having a strong “hook” for audiences is unneccessary (he already has). And it’s not that I don’t think he needs a motivation (he already has). But I have to ask:

What’s the point of shining a spotlight on a shadow, if not to eliminate it?

[vanityloves]

was reading sumn ab Murdoc n i have to agree that his displays of urgency, impulsiveness, resentfulness, etc and his need to prove others wrong after being told/treated like he was nothing, is why hes likeable. he has very human issues which - no offense - contrasts mainly with russel and noodle (2d to a lesser degree? idk) but this is bc theres never been consistency with russ n noodle

tldr: they made the canonly poc charas less relatable in terms of lore/backstory and added more...frivolous, funky stuff, while giving 2d and murdoc human traits/issues that make them easier to connect with/feel for/hate/love/etc

russel being Haunted and Possessed isnt a very...common thing, esp if you dont believe in the supernatural like that. on the flipside, being outcasted from groups and losing people, is very relatable and as human as it can get. but hes never really shown much other than being the skeptic, only to be reduced to a man that makes food jokes for, who knows why. is it cause hes Fat 😁🥴😳 its ok be honest guys. also the weird thing ab growing and shrinking randomly is. weird sjdjjd.

with noodle...she shows up in a box and shes canonly a government project that was supposed to be disposed of and idk man i dont think, anyone can relate to that. wanting to know your origins/self discovery, the need to keep people together, are absolutely human traits. i guess what im getting at is, their lives before gorillaz werent, "normal" in terms of being relatable which isnt me bashin on the characters bc i absolutely love them, they just have no characterization.

2D is different. He's given a childhood and shown to go to school and have friends and hes given depth as a character. Hes been described as an excitable child and he rambles on about all types of things, likes and dislikes: he shows his airheadedness, and his kindness and genuine intrigue. He has that slight confidence boost when murdoc is gone - this is about human traits and when an abuser is Gone, i can only hope theres a sense of relief, which is something many people have experienced, im sure.

i probably have more to say but im tired.

From what i know, hes never condoned or justified murdocs behavior - hes definitely more on the passive side but he has complained ab him before. hes incredibly dense and from my understanding thats why hes relatable. other things though: he didnt really know what he wanted to do after school, liked his lil trinkets and worked a normal job and lived with his family. something many can relate to! which is absolutely why 2d and murdoc are the most popular of the band. i think its very easy to misinterpret 2d and label him as stupid or submissive, or whatever the hell else. But he shows other sides of being resentful and pissed off, confident, etc, and thats why hes likeable!

actually:

its hard to explain idk but, the band member that had trauma stemmed from childhood/parental issue and lived through very undesirable events that i wont mention, was made to be demonized (forget that hes legimate a sa/tan.ist for a second) and literally made Green haha (though i guess its bc Hes 'rotting'). but monster/inhuman physical features that on top of having Undesirable personality traits despite them being apart of nature as a whole its pretty whack imo. had we never act impulsively or had a sense of urgecy, we'd never progress. i guess thats why hes shown like that bc its more untamed n literally... unhinged? but bc we're human we should show decisiveness and more calculated actions so its undesirable to be 'uncouth' and snarky or witty.

anyways thanks for coming to my tedtalks. here they are

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Why do we feel such strong emotions to not existent people? How do people have crush and /or other deep feelings for... for example, Lotor?

Hi, anon! Wow, great question! A lot of researchers and psychologists have asked similar questions. The term “parasocial relationship” was coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956 to describe the deep relational emotions that fans were attributing to celebrities who had never actually met them before. Over time, the phrase “parasocial relationship” has moved to also mean the one-sided relationships that viewers can make with fictional characters as well, whether those bonds are based in friendship, romance, or even vicariously living through that character (kinning).

So when you talk about a fan connecting deeply with Lotor, then we’re talking about that fan’s parasocial relationship. And that phrase might help you find more psychology research about this if you’re interested!

To answer your question about “why” people make these kinds of bonds:

A 2018 academic article (Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in Therapy) by Kathleen Gannon states, “Parasocial relationships can build overtime, and the more that someone is viewing, playing or reading about a character’s story the more likely that this connection to them will become more intense (Hall, 2017).” In other words, the more you’re exposed to the story of a character, the more likely you are to develop emotions for that character, and for those emotions to grow.

The types of emotions you might have for a character can depend on many factors, of course. But Gannon’s article and various others go on talk about how you might see yourself in a character, or see them experiencing a struggle you’re facing in real life, and those details inspire you to create empathy bonds. Some people admire the looks or traits of a character and want to be them, etc.

So that emotion you have for a character, whatever the emotion, is real, even if the fiction inspiring that emotion isn’t. And those emotions then help to dictate the type of bond you might have toward that character.

This article by Catherine Anillo (”Why we mourn fictional characters: The very real emotion behind fake death”) adds that the social phenomenon of several people coming together over a character further heightens that parasocial relationship. Because now, even if that character is fictional, the community based around them is in fact real, and your conversations about them are real, etc. That character becomes part of an actual, real-life culture and can even inform the real-life friendships and relationships you build, as well as your own personality or identity. 

But is “level of exposure” the only factor for why someone might build a parasocial relationship? 

Tilo Hartmann in his 2016 paper, Parasocial Interaction, Parasocial Relationships, and Well-Being, explores this:

There’s some research about how parasocial relationships may be a stand-in for lonely people who don’t have such relationships in real life, have been rejected in real life, or don’t have the social skills to have real relationships. This is called the Compensation Hypothesis, and it’s a little controversial. While there are some studies supporting this, there’s also several other studies showing that the Compensation Hypothesis can’t explain why so many well-adjusted people engage in parasocial relationships. In fact, Hartmann reveals that a lot of people who engage in parasocial relationshps aren’t lonely in real life and showed strong interpersonal skills during the study:

“Contrary to the skill-deficit compensation idea, research has found that people who are both motivated and able to develop social relationships, e.g., extro-verted individuals, may develop both more intense real and parasocial relationships. For example, in a study by Vorderer and Knobloch (1996), individuals who were not very motivated to mix with other people, but also were not shy, maintained the strongest parasocial relationships. Likewise, Tsao (1996) found that socially skilled people, i.e., individuals with higher cognitive and affective trait empathy, maintained the strongest parasocial relationships. In addition, in his study, trait extraversion was positively related to parasocial relationship intensity, whereas trait introversion was unrelated. Taken together these findings suggest that, contrary to the skill-deficit compensation hypothesis, people with greater – not weaker – interpersonal skills develop more intense parasocial relationships.” - page 135

Hartmann’s collected research overview goes on to suggest that there are levels of parasocial relationships and different kinds of attachments—in that some people have very, very intense attachments while others have a milder form of attachment. The research does seem to indicate that people with social anxieties might experience a more intense parasocial relationship with a fictional character or celebrity, compared to a person who is not as afraid of social rejection. And that explanation makes sense because…in a parasocial relationship, you’re the one in control of the relationship. The fictional character can’t actually say “no” to you or disagree/be cruel unless you envision them doing this. The fictional character satisfies the need to belong.

But according to collected research in Hartmann’s paper, it seems a willingness to engage in a parasocial relationship at all is part of what drives the entire entertainment industry and makes fiction a fun pastime for everyone (mentioned on page 137). If people can’t build a parasocial relationship with a show’s characters, then that show isn’t going to be seen as particularly likeable either. And even having relational emotions about social network blogs or twitters, etc. is a form of a parasocial relationship.

But is all of this bad?

That first article I tossed out, by Kathleen Gannon, talks about the use of parasocial relationships in therapy environments. So it seems that psychologists have become increasingly interested in plugging into this social phenomenon to help patients overcome things like trauma and anxieties, etc. And even Gannon herself acknowledges the type of fun and enjoyable communities that people build within cosplay circles, conventions, which also can feed into one’s own career.

So it seems like the answer to “why do we do this” involves a combination of these things:

Humans can make pack bonds with literally anything because we are emotional jelly bags, and very few people are immune to creating empathy bonds. The whole entertainment industry feeds off this very basic phenomenon and actually tries to hook you so that you’ll support a show or celebrity.

Parasocial relationships can help people overcome or face real-life issues or have an escape from real-life pressures.

Parasocial relationships are a known means of accessing fun communities and friendships with other like-minded people and can healthily add to a sense of well-being, social community, and identity.

(Note, the research from Hartmann does caution that a parasosocial relationship can become unhealthy/pathological, such as in the case of people who fully substitute real-life relationships for parasocial ones and isolate themselves from real people, or delude themselves into expecting that the character/celebrity can and should reciprocate the relationship. - page 138. So just like any relationship or social bond, a parasocial relationship has to exist within certain parameters for it to be a healthy and fun/meaningful addition to your life.)

But “why do people make a parasocial relationship with Lotor” specifically?

It seems the Lotor fandom is composed of many people with many different reasons for why they like this character:

The Lotor character is dynamic with several talents and flaws, so that makes him feel more real to begin with, as opposed to some wooden/static heroes or comic book villains. He’s very complex with a wide range of emotion and thought processes and motivations. He’s relatable because he’s imperfect, more fleshed out. More capable of being unpredictable, like real people are.

People seem to identify with his struggles as a person of mixed heritage and as a person who has suffered abuse and psychological trauma from his parents.

A lot of people admire that this character also doesn’t allow himself to be defined by a victim card. So for many, he takes on even a “role model” vibe in relation to overcoming abuse or prejudice.

A lot of people like that he has nerd vibes while also being physically powerful and commanding with weapons. So he’s both mentally and physically capable as a character. They might either want that for themselves or else are attracted to those traits existing in the same character.  

He’s a very aesthetically pleasing character to many, with a complex visual design, so I do think people admire that about him, and that inspires other types of emotional bonds as well.

His darker, more dangerous side makes him an interesting springboard for typical power fantasies, potential Jungian “Shadow Confrontation,” or some kind of wish fulfillment.

The VLD show itself really played on viewer emotional bonds with this character by consistently showing his backstory in a sympathetic light, down to even flashbacks of him as an innocent child being brainwashed by toxic culture and growing up in an environment without Voltron to save him. So the way the show presented Lotor really heightened people’s already established connections with Lotor.

There’s probably other reasons that I’m just not thinking about why people connect with Lotor, lol. But either way, I hope at least some of this info helps answer your question or gives you resources or ideas to research further! 

[canadian-riddler]

Hi Indy! I know Arkhamverse Riddler is definitely your specialty. Do you happen to have a rough ranking of Riddlers that you like from most to least? And which do you think is the most definitive version of the character?

I THINK that’s what my blog description says, anyway

Yes, at all times I have a rough ranking floating around in the back of my mind.  It is going to be very long so I will answer the last question first.

For most definitive version of Riddler I’m going to have to go with BTAS.  No recurring villain really had a distinct personality from their original (1940s) version, and while I am not knocking Frank Gorshin the 1966 Riddler absolutely was a bit Joker-y.  Most importantly (if I am not mistaken, which I could be), BTAS gave Riddler what became his most important trait: his intelligence.  Before that he was mostly an average weirdo who wore a green suit (sometimes) and liked riddles and sometimes built puzzle traps.  After BTAS, though, the Riddler’s intelligence became the driving force of his character.  Batman ‘66 saved Riddler from obscurity, but BTAS made him both relevant and future-proof.  Will we ever see a Riddler of average intelligence who doesn’t specialise in computer programming/engineering ever again?  I doubt it, and that’s because of BTAS. 

Onto the list.  It does not include EVERY Riddler ever because I have not read every Riddler story ever, but it should cover most of them (or at least the ones you’ve probably heard of).

1. Anything Paul Dini wrote.  This actually covers a few different Riddlers, which would be the first two Arkhamverse games, the most notable PI Riddler stuff, and of course the Riddler from BTAS.  Paul Dini can write the Riddler as both being a bad person and sympathetic at the same time, which is actually harder to pull off than it sounds.  AND he does it without using backstory as a crutch, which really is hard.

2.  Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee’s Riddler from Hush.  He only actually appears for two issues, but it’s one of the best Riddler stories merely because it allows him to do all the things Riddler SHOULD be able to do, but can’t because then there would be no Batman comics because he would have ended them.  619C is also, in my opinion, the best Riddler cover of all time.

3. Jim Carrey’s Riddler from Batman Forever.  Why would I put him this high on the list, you ask?  Because some writers forget that the Riddler is half just in it to have a good time and he doesn’t really care about how other people perceive him.  This man is living his best life and he’s doing it in glittery spandex and a light-up jacket.  Is he over the top?  At the time, no, not really.  At the time Riddler kinda just acted like that.  And he should be able to do so, in my opinion. 

4. Current Riddler (James Tynion IV).  While this Riddler has some issues with consistency (though this probably has to do with being shuffled from a main comic story into a Catwoman story), he returns to being almost self-cripplingly paranoid and absolutely losing it when he’s bested, which I think are important traits for Riddler to have.  I’m also actually really amused that they gave him the Batman Forever hair.

5. Batman ‘66.  While it did likely rescue Riddler from pending obscurity - he actually never appeared in a Batman comic before 1965, and before that was featured in only two issues of Detective Comics - and he definitely checks the ‘charming’ and ‘having fun’ boxes, there isn’t a whole lot differentiating him from the Joker he’s playing alongside.  If you watch the Batman ‘66 movie they’re almost the exact same character, just one likes jokes and the other likes riddles. 

6. Hush Returns and its aftermath.  This stuff is weird and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because it mostly involves Riddler running away from Hush and retcons certain things from Hush, most importantly the part where Riddler got everyone to work together because he gave them what they wanted.  Hush Returns (which also contradicts itself during the story) for some reason has everyone angry at Riddler for tricking them and it ends with him getting the shit beat out of him and puts him into a coma for a year, which leads into him getting total amnesia and becoming a PI.  That’s the reason it’s so high on the list.  The story is weird and makes no sense at all for any of the other characters in it either but it gave us a reason for PI Riddler and that makes it matter.  Sort of.

7. Brave and the Bold/The Batman Riddler.  I’m putting them both together mostly because BatB Riddler features in I think only one episode and he deserves a mention because he’s adorable.  TB Riddler was an interesting experiment into a Riddler that, for whatever reason, never really came into himself as a person and instead sort of enacts revenge for his existence on life.  If I remember correctly he’s also pretty low-key about his intelligence, which is another interesting character choice.  I respect the things they went for but this Riddler overall gives me the impression of a person who always says no when invited to something but gets upset when people stop asking which, while definitely something the Riddler would do, isn’t really my preferred take.

8. Snyder Riddler (New 52).  The problem I have with this Riddler is that I have no idea what his motivation even is.  I was told a long time ago that a backstory for him WAS written but didn’t make it into Zero Year because the story was already too long, which is... not a great look for a professional storyteller.  And because we don’t know anything about this Riddler, this story consists of a dude who wears green to impress women (which he never shows any interest in), gets the mob to work for him... somehow... and decides to spend a YEAR watching the people in Gotham die because... I’m not sure?  If it amused him, sure, I could understand that.  But he just seems super bored during the entirety of the story.  He doesn’t even seem particularly excited when Batman actually shows up in front of him.  Beyond Zero Year his appearances are, to my knowledge, limited mostly to two issues in Batman Eternal, where he’s hiding, three issues of The Flash, where he speedruns Zero Year and is undone by the Flash villains teaming up against him (which I don’t know enough about Flash villains to comment on), and Scarecrow 23.2, where he for some unexplained reason seems to look up to Scarecrow.  And then there’s Detective Comics: Future’s End, which is just the worst thing ever.  Snyder didn’t write all of these stories, but they are based on his Riddler.

9. Gotham Riddler.  I didn’t watch past season 3 so I can’t comment on too much after that, but the arc with Mad Grey Dawn and ‘I knew that you knew that I knew’ was some of the greatest Riddler stuff we had gotten in years and if they had just kept on with that they would have had one of the greatest Riddlers of all time. 

10. Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Riddler.  Full disclaimer I haven’t read Catwoman: When in Rome, but I have read The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.  The reason I don’t like this Riddler is because he actually bears no resemblance to him.  He’s a literal moron who just stumbles around incompetently for the duration of his relevance to the plot.  It’s like they decided to make an ironic Riddler who is actually stupid and also for the first time in his life does not have the ability to locate a tailor.  I don’t actually understand the point of this Riddler’s existence.  He isn’t even really Riddler, he’s just some sort of vaguely Riddler-coloured person.

[aqvarius]

I hope the rmd mc for kasumi is a bit different cuz she rly be hittin on my last nerve and I don’t think she would rly v✨i✨b✨e with kasumi in her current given state

i’ve decided i need to play matsunaga and cc before getting a better sense of the eicu guys but honestly some of these recent asks feel like my own brain jumped out of my head and started sending me anon asks lmao bc i totally agree. anyway i know it’s a controversial opinion to not like the rmd mc and i’m TRYING to be fair and put aside my bias against her and try to analyse what exactly it is that i don’t like, but yeah i just don’t really find that she has romantic chemistry with the characters (that i’ve read, i.e. takado and hosho). not that anyone ever asked for this, buuuuuut this ask has basically triggered yet another mc rant so stop reading here or get ready and settle down with some popcorn lmao.

DISCLAIMER: this is all just my personal opinion! and i’m sure many of you will disagree with me. please place a “i think/believe/feel” before every claim i make as everything i say here is just my own feeling towards her. i also need to disclaim that i have only properly read takado and hosho’s routes (bc i’m still...mad at sen’s route, and i’ve only made it through one chapter of matsunaga so far) and i understand (and fully subscribe to) the idea that mcs read differently depending on the route as well. and as always, please don’t let my opinions affect your own enjoyment of any characters or titles that you love!

ALSO as i was writing this, i went back and read my previous rant about her and i realised that i’m more or less reiterating the same points i made there but in a (hopefully) more structured and slightly more developed manner whoops. 

so here’s almost 3000 words and a whole bunch of screenshots under the cut because i don’t want to spam everyone’s dashboards with my unprompted Opinions(tm).

so anyway i’ve been thinking it’s a translation/tone thing. when i have the time/energy, i might sit down and really try to analyse the actual language, but just going off my intuition, i think maybe it’s because:

1. sometimes they choose to express something idiomatically and so that tone doesn’t come across as sincere. this isn’t a real example, but let’s think about the difference in tone between “oh no!” and “yikes”. because of modern day vernacular, we kind of associate “yikes” with a sarcastic and judgmental tone, whereas “oh no!” might connote a more genuinely concerned reaction. so sometimes i think that the use of very contemporary vernacular (which, lbr, trends towards a more sarcastic tone in general bc us gen z kids are mean) results in a lack of sincerity which makes the mc come across as a little more callous and less... actually kind and nice? i did get the feeling that hlitf mc has recently swayed towards this sort of tone as well and suspected that they had the same translator (which was confirmed later in a voltage Q&A). i’m definitely #biased but i can forgive this more because we had a good amount of content with her being adorable before the tone switch so i have a pre-established impression of her in my mind. 

by the way, i just want to say that while i do have this critique, i do really admire and respect the voltage translation and localisation team (and am... super indebted to them) and i do think they do fantastic translations generally. 

anyway, i believe this linguistic issue is at least partially responsible for my personal perception of the rmd mc’s personality that i expand on in the succeeding points, but my next point has more to do with the writing and characterisation of the most recent wave of mcs.

2. rmd mc has very few visible vulnerabilities. i think this is one of my biggest qualms with the new title mcs like rmd, destind and mk but i think stories are at their best when you get to see the mc fail and be vulnerable and wallow. the reason why i love certain mcs - particularly the ones whose titles and storylines centre around their careers (hlitf, irresistible mistakes, my last first kiss, scandal, celebrity darling, kiss of revenge, sleepless, otbs, arguably msb, etc.) - is because we get to see them fail and then grow. not only that, but you often get to see the relationship between the mc and the love interest deepen in these moments. but if you have a ‘perfect’ mc, then there’s no room for growth, so plotlines are forced to fall back on drama and trauma on the love interest’s side which... is exactly what rmd and mk do. 

this is not to say that rmd mc doesn’t make mistakes, because she certainly does, but i don’t find that they’re ever genuinely serious mistakes. for example, think about hlitf mc’s repeated mistake in season 1 of going after small crimes without seeing the bigger picture and thus potentially messing up an entire investigation. they allow her that space to mess up and be completely wrong for public safety. then they give her the time to be self-reflective and run away back to nagano really think about what her mistakes are, and where to go from there. she is confronted with humbling failure, and is forced to address issues about her own pride/ego, and matures into someone who has a more nuanced idea about justice. on the other hand, rmd mc never has to (consistently, afaik) go through a genuinely humbling experience, so she her pride/ego/arrogance never gets seriously called into question. maybe this is because the premise of rmd has to do with life and death and they don’t want to make it seem like she’s directly responsible for someone’s death, but hlitf also deals with life and death issues and the mc learns that if she messes up to save one civilian, she may actually be jeopardising the lives of tens or hundreds or more. 

anyway, taking takado’s route as an example, because this was our exposure to her as a character, the most frustrating thing is the way that she tries to lecture takado that he’s wrong about his attitude towards amputations, and never actually has to personally experience the potentially disastrous consequence of putting her ideology into practice. i think i would have enjoyed the route a lot more if she had gone over his head and naively made the decision not to do an amputation and then the person ended up dying or having to have a larger section amputated all because she was like uwu we can’t just cut off people’s limbs without waiting. i think if that situation had happened, we could have seen her actually have to confront her own naiveté and realise that she’s a noob and too idealistic and that reading a lot of medical journals does not translate to having actual field experience and intuition and who is she to question him like that when she knows nothing. she only realises that omg... we may have to consider some things with something called nuance... basically when more of takado’s backstory is revealed.  

(maybe this is because i work in academia so it extra-frustrates me, but omg if i had to one-on-one mentor a student like her, i would genuinely go nuts. she reminds me of some students that some colleagues and i have had where they  “well, actually” at everything you say bc they read some stuff on reddit or twitter that has absolutely not been proven through practical application of, or research conducted through the lens of, their theory. like imagine i told my advisors “despite being experts in [their respective fields] and having written numerous very important books, you’re wrong because i don’t agree but i have never myself conducted proper research to counter that!!”)

basically i wish they treated takado’s route like kaga’s routes (bc lbr takado and kaga are maybe... the same person?). look at the self-reflection here:

and here:

she does get down on herself at times, but look at the way that she humbly accepts her mistakes. sometimes she wallows on her mistakes, as anyone would, but look at the way she examines her failures and turns that feeling of inadequacy into motivation to work harder and smarter. 

by the way, these screenshots are from his ms1 and ms2 - so pretty early on - and we get to see her learn from these mistakes because she’s allowed to make them. we also get to learn more about kaga’s strictness and his kindness because of these mistakes.

i don’t know if the whole refusal to allow rmd mc to make significant errors is a response to readers who are like “omg.... why are voltage mcs so weak, why can’t they be perfect women who never get anything wrong” but ANYWAY i just feel like they never confront or address her hubris properly. 

3. following on from point 2, i find her one-dimensional. i’ve mentioned this before in a rant, but i don’t find her to be a very deep character bc to me, she reads as mostly surface level sass. i said: “her dialogue with them often reads as like they put 100 points in “snark” and 0 points in any other personality trait” lmao. so she’s great in one-off screenshots where you can see her bite back with a very screenshottable one-liner, but i find it tiring to have 30 chapters of her just literally running her mouth. because of this constant tone that they keep giving her, i find it really difficult to see any emotional depth in her character. because she’s the perspective character, her internal dialogue is just as, if not more, important as the love interest’s external dialogue in terms of carrying the emotional weight of falling in love, and i just don’t understand how there’s any sense of two people falling in love and getting to know each other when every sentence out of her mouth is just sass. can you imagine you meet someone and you get to know them but never have any genuine conversations bc every line out of your mouth is sarcastic? like your date is opening up and telling you about some difficulties he’s going through (which i’m sure you all know is a very vulnerable and scary thing to do) and instead of being empathetic and kind and understanding, you’re just like “sucks to be you dude”. and instead of saying “you don’t need to carry everything on your shoulders”, you say “you’re STUBBORN and i’m RIGHT”. OF COURSE i’m being kind of hyperbolic here (not even that much tho, see screenshots below) but that’s basically the tone she constantly takes. 

so when takado opens up about the rina thing, instead of being like “oh shit i’ve been judging him all this time and i’m genuinely sorry because i didn’t know a thing about you and yet i’ve been running my mouth”, she says “your head is as hard as a rock ya know?” and then KEEPS GOING. 

where’s the empathy sis? where is it? i’m looking but i can’t find it.

EVEN TAKADO WAS LIKE “I WAS TRYING TO TALK SERIOUSLY ABOUT IT”

and then the writers just push off her rudeness as like “it’s okay it’s chill!! takado laughed about it afterwards and it made the issue sound insignificant!!” even tho it’s obviously an extremely traumatic thing? WHY does he even fall in love with her??? i don’t UNDERSTAND alsdkfjs she has NO FEELINGS!! i just want genuinely romantic moments... is that too much to ask... it’s called romance md...

once again, let’s compare that to hlitf mc, when she finds out about kaga’s trauma. literally the FIRST reaction she has is to consider his feelings.

without even hearing his side of the story, she defends him because she trusts him and immediately empathises with him and the first thing she does is try to understand him and where he’s coming from. 

later on, when she hears him just dismissing things and playing callous, she actually cries on his behalf, which shocks him because he’s not used to people caring about him:

isn’t that a MASSIVE difference in reaction to essentially the same character opening up about their trauma? which do you find more conducive to developing emotional intimacy? in my opinion, it’s so much easier to fall in love with someone who supports you and has your back and trusts and believes in you and tries to understand you and can have a genuinely caring conversation with you when you need it. by the way, it’s not like kaga’s mc doesn’t sass him either! they have great bantery chemistry and she shit-talks him ALL THE TIME (a lot of the time under her breath and he’s like HUH? it’s great). 

and yet... we still actively see her caring about him... instead of being like WHOOPS my tongue slipped, i can’t help that i’m naturally insubordinate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by the way, i’m not trying to put the onus on female characters/heroines to be caring/empathetic/kind/loving. i’m putting the onus on ALL characters to be caring/empathetic/kind/loving in their own ways if we’re supposed to be convinced that they’re falling in romantic love. sure, kaga’s mc is exceptionally loving but kaga returns that love with his own ALL the time ;~~; anyway i’m gonna stop talking about them for now bc otherwise i would just completely derail and keep going on and on about them. 

anyway, back to takado, i actually find him to be more caring and loving than his mc? i actually genuinely like takado as a character and i think that real life me and him would be great together so i’m like extra offended that he’s with her rather than ME??? i would treat him so much better. 

i consider this lack of emotional depth to actually be a bigger hindrance on my enjoyment of the game than the lack of flaws thing. voltage’s recent wave of mcs with the love choice titles have been trending towards the ‘perfect woman’ type of mc, but while i have some Thoughts(tm) here and there about the other protagonists, none of them strike me as being as hard to get along with as rmd’s mc. so i’ve mentioned my issue with the masukisu mc’s weird moral boundaries (more an overall voltage issue that manifests the most strongly in her character), but i also do find that they don’t let her make big mistakes and they present her as this perfect superwoman figure with no weaknesses which like... unrelatable. but at least her banter is flirty banter and there’s a lot of chemistry there (even if it’s sometimes lacking emotional depth, as in some of kazuomi’s scenes - and that’s not her fault, that’s 100% on kazuomi lol). you can definitely understand why they’re attracted to each other at least, and you can definitely see real, deep love form between her and yuzuru the most. even though the masukisu mc is a ‘perfect woman’, the premise is designed to spark relationship conflict and the writing really helps us understand the emotional turmoil of falling in love with a target because of how much it lets the mc dwell on it. destind too basically has a perfect mc in terms of work/career, but they let her have her very glaring weaknesses and, once again, the premise forces her to address her shortcomings with regards to her idealistic view on soulmates/destiny and explores the head vs heart thing where she has to really examine her emotions and how they potentially come into conflict with her preconceptions of and preoccupation with numerical compatibility. 

thinking about it objectively, i feel like takado’s mc and mlfk ayato’s mc have a couple of similarities in the way that they don’t realise they’re in love for the longest time (although obviously childhood friends to lovers provides a better context for not realising that love - same with my boi natsume), but there’s just something lovable about mlfk’s mc that i don’t see in rmd. without going too deeply into it bc (1) i’m tired and (2) i’ve been going on about this for WAY too long now, i think that comes back to tone or writing (and possibly translation) style. i think at some point, i might actually go and compare the language in the “omg am i in love...?” scenes between takado’s mc, ayato’s mc and natsume’s mc but uh... not tonight haha. 

actually, at some point, i genuinely wondered if rmd mc was aromantic. i really just thought she did not experience romantic attraction because i literally got no sense of it through her internal monologue bc they kept pushing the whole like “i only relate to people’s ~aesthetics~” thing. and then i wondered how they were going to make an aromantic mc fall in romantic love...? because... it’s an otome game? (btw i’m not saying that aro people can’t enjoy otoge, i definitely know people who do! but there’s a big diff between someone playing an otoge vs someone being a character falling in romantic love in an otoge. but please call me out if i’m misunderstanding aromanticism!). anyway, long story short, rmd mc (takado’s especially) falling in love is absolutely unconvincing to me because i find her dialogue - both internal and external - rather unfeeling. 

these three points (1. translation that favours colloquialism over communicating emotional tone; 2. characterisation of a hubristic mc who doesn’t need to overcome significant challenges; 3. lack of emotional depth and empathy/understanding) are basically why i don’t think that she has good romantic chemistry with the love interests in romance md that i’ve read so far. i also have some very petty personal gripes (sekai...........) but they’re not relevant to this particular topic and frankly just... really petty so i don’t want to get into them here.

so anyway, long story short: i agree that i don’t think she would really vibe with kasumi in her current given state. like, they could be friends, maybe.

[frenchibi]

A rant-essay about The Witcher books (and comparison to the show)

((after having read book one, and started into a good chunk of book two.))

Proceed at your own discretion, there will be a lot of frustration and swearing. Also, spoilers for basically the entirety of the Netflix show. Also, there is discussion of sexual assault and objectification and lots and lots of sexism.

The structure of my rant is as follows (because yes I structured it):

 1. Things that I enjoyed in the books

1.1 Geralt talks more

1.2 Geralt and Jaskier have a better relationship

1.3 The fairy tale theme

2. Things that made me want to scream

2.1 Geralt (is not a good character)

2.2 Yennefer (deserves better)

2.3 Jaskier's sexism (Netflix!Jaskier would NEVER)

2.4 Female Characters; Sexy Fantasy That Fucks (it's bad)

2.5 Narrative devices and structure (it’s bad)

3. Bonus: Why the audiobook grinds my gears

Total length: 4k words :’) Click to proceed.

(So, we’re doing this? I think forty likes is sufficient general interest, so... okay. Obligatory disclaimer here: This Is My Opinion. However, I am not fabricating any of the… grounds for my opinion, it is based on the content of the books, that I read, and which are broadly available, so anyone can read them and see for themselves. Personally, I would not recommend the experience, and below I will detail the reasons why. If, like I was, you’re hesitant about reading them, this essay might sway your decision either way. You might go “oh thanks op now I know I won’t like it” or “huh I think I wanna see this for myself because you’re yelling a lot”. It’s all equally valid. Anyway, let’s proceed with “things I enjoyed”.)

1.1 Geralt talks more Geralt in the books is a bit of a mess as far as characterization goes - but I don't hate that he's less stoic here and less... idk, arrogant/superior towards humans than he is in the show. He talks to people, engages with them, discloses opinions and thoughts and… it's a good look. We even get several pages of monologue from him at one point (because he is talking to a priestess who has taken a vow of silence, but I’ll take it – the books in general have a monologue/structure problem which I will address in 2.5) which is way more than the show ever provided us with. I’d like to say it gives us an insight into the character but maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, see below (2.1).

 1.2 Geralt and Jaskier have a better relationship

Geralt and Jaskier are FRIENDS. And I mean that literally the first thing we hear Geralt say about Jaskier in canon in book one is "of course I want to see him, he's my friend". Which - Netflix!Geralt could NEVER and I'm salty about it. Jaskier in the books has his own problems (2.3) but I still think he's my favorite overall, he's fun and Geralt genuinely enjoys his company. They travel together and ENJOY it, they joke, they reminisce and it is Good. Netflix, take notes.

 1.3 The fairy tale theme

This gets lost in the Netflix adaptation altogether but. The idea in the books is that all these monsters that Geralt encounters are dark twists on fairy tales and I'm HERE FOR IT. Renfri is literally Snow White But Badass. Cinderella, Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin’s stories are mentioned in passing, and other ideas that are explored here have fairy tale elements, e.g. slaying the dragon. It's cool, but apparently the story loses this aspect in later volumes so I guess it makes sense that the show decided to omit it. Still a bummer tho bc I liked that.

 So. Now on to Things that made me want to Scream, which is what we’re all really here for.

2.1 Geralt (is not a good character)

Geralt, oh Geralt, I wish you weren't such an obvious Mary Sue, Saviour™ and thinly veiled Jesus allegory. Geralt is always, ALWAYS right and it pisses me the fuck off. Geralt gets all the women he wants with NO PROMPTING and it makes me angry. Geralt always has the last laugh in every and any situation. Geralt is always smarter and more powerful than the Idiot Humans. Geralt ignores advice and suffers no consequences for it. Geralt has no well-thought out character, no consistency - he just is the "main character" and "hero" that the story needs - if the story needs him to be smart, he is, if it needs him to make a mistake, he does - he has no AGENCY and it’s BORING. Why am I supposed to care about him, exactly? Because the plot tells me to, and because everyone else is framed like an idiot in comparison and you’re supposed to like strong and smart characters. Cool. Bleh.

 2.2 Yennefer (deserves better)

Strap in, because this is the longest part.

Yennefer in the books is… a badass (but sexy) until the plot needs her to be a damsel (but sexy). She also occasionally has one (1) other character trait and that trait is Crazy Bitch.

I’ll admit I was not her biggest fan after the show (I didn’t really connect with her that much after she became vindictive™, though I gotta say her role in the last battle was Very Cool) but in the wake of what I have read so far, I have decided to AGGRESSIVELY STAN because she fucking. Deserves better. Oh my GOD it makes me so angry. Here’s how I think her character creation probably went:

"Ok so here we have Geralt, who is a badass, and So Cool, and he could have any Female he desires. But his Female can't be inferior and giggly and vapid like literally all other women - she needs to be the ideal fantasy Fantasy.

First: she needs powers. So we'll make her a Cool Sorceress! And more powerful than the other sorceresses because Geralt deserves the BEST. But also, he needs to be able to be Cooler and save her so she needs to be (like all females are, because they are inferior) emotionally volatile and vulnerable, and Geralt will also be the only one who gets to see that Vulnerability because Geralt has the biggest dick is her love interest. So she will be weak around him because he's just so hung wonderful.

Secondly, she needs a believable weakness (besides being too emotional because all women are too emotional), and as we all know, women have one purpose: to bREED. But not Yennefer - oh no, Yennefer is (wait for it, this is the dramatic backstory, hold your breath) broken, she's BARREN, USELESS AND EMPTY AND SHE HATES HERSELF FOR IT!!!!!

*pause for dramatic effect*

I know right that's so SEXY

[This is the point where I’m like… this might, possibly, maybe, under very different circumstances have been a compelling storyline if the author had ever consulted a woman. Or, you know, if the story was written by a woman. This is objectification and fetishization of the worst kind and I hate it. The show has this element too and it’s bad there too but it’s nowhere near as pronounced as in the books. Anyway-]

Speaking of sexy - obviously Yennefer is the sexiest of all the women Geralt has ever encountered. And because I, as the author, am aware that's unrealistic, I will drop in YET ANOTHER PIECE OF DRAMATIC BACKSTORY: She used to be a HUNCHBACK!!! *air horns* I KNOW RIGHT OH MY GOD and now she made herself SEXY with MAGIC because YOU KNOW ALL WOMEN WANT TO BE OBJECTIFIED BY MEN!!! SEXY FANTASY THAT FUCKS!!!!

[also? This is revealed to Geralt (and the reader) not by her telling him, or by a flashback, but because he "sees that she has the eyes of a hunchback". I can’t even begin to state how much I hate this.]

Anyway every time she shows up it will be mentioned how shapely her legs and breasts are and how young she looks despite the fact that she must be Old. She will turn heads and men will scorn her because she is too pretty and not interested in them and men hate anything that has any amount of sexual power or agency. but not Geralt, no, because he gets to fuck her at the end of the day so he's the only one who doesn't objectify her out loud. (but he does in his internal monologue. hooray.)

Also, to emphasize this point, we will have a side character sexually violate her while Geralt is tied up because that is The New Hotness™"

And if that wasn't enough, she as a character subscribes to what is known as "Female Hysteria For No Reason" and will become a Woman Scorned over absolutely nothing if the plot needs her to be angry.

The plot regarding her relationship with Geralt is also a bit different - in the show, she gets angry once she finds out Geralt's third wish ties them together (whether this is justified may be subjective - except yeah, no, she’s absolutely right, Geralt what the fuck??). In the book, she hears his wish as he makes it because MAGIC and is somehow SUPER INTO IT because this author has never met a human woman before.

...and then I need to complain about the storyline with the dragon. Because, you will remember, in the show, she gets angry and storms off after learning of the third wish, but that can’t be the case because she already knows about it in the books, right?

Well.

 The story in the books goes like this:

Six years ago, after one of their affairs™ Geralt leaves without waking Yennefer (but like. Leaves her flowers instead) and admittedly that's kind of rude but also like... ok. That doesn’t seem too strange a thing for Geralt to do. Maybe he just wanted to let her rest? Anyway.

They don't meet for six years, in which Geralt idk... idly misses her or something, and Yennefer develops a deep lasting hatred based on her abandonment issues…? (I am. grasping. there's no good reason if this relationship is as casual to both of them as they have made it sound, but she is SUPER MAD because the plot needs her to be ANGERY).

So with his backdrop, cue the search for the dragon. Geralt is like "eh I'll join them. I have nowhere better to be, also Jaskier is here and he's not boring so ok" and then he hears Yennefer will also be there and goes "oh well all the better, haven't seen her in a while"

And when he follows her to her tent to greet her, she spits verbal FIRE at him and is like "bitch you're lucky i didn't gouge your fucking EYES out" and other lovely statements of a similar calibre, and Geralt just stands there and takes it and tells her he missed her.

which implies either a) he knows what he did and he thinks he deserves this, or b) he has done nothing wrong in his own eyes and this is just "bitch crazy" to be ignored. It is heavily implied to be b), because, in our third person POV narrative, we get NO REMORSE from him, no indication as to what he thinks about this whole thing Yennefer is accusing him of, nothing at all in terms of emotional response to her. Cool. She yells at him and then storms of, and he just… idk, shrugs I guess?

So, they travel, Yennefer is Icy Bitch Queen but also everyone hates her and insults her to an absurd degree (see above, she's Too Sexy and Powerful and also like, a Woman) and she takes it without saying anything back but it's obvious that everyone's trash talk is affecting her (so it’s obvious that at some point she will be Vulnerable again). Jaskier, who seems to have no personal grudge against her at this point in the books, joins in the teasing because he's there to make fun of everyone I guess? (boy.) No deeper malice from him than from anyone else though.

And then, for drama, the party reaches a narrow bridge. They’re debating whether or not it is safe to cross with all their supplies and then BAM! there's a landslide so they have no choice. The events go like this:

- Geralt lets the others cross first. Right as he wants to cross, he hears Yennefer yell because her horse fell over, because of course it did

- Geralt abandons his own means of escape to go help her up, and then she proceeds to save his ass because SHE HAS FUCKING MAGIC THERE WAS NO POINT IN YOU GOING TO SAVE HER YOU FUCKER she just makes a shield so nothing hits them and they stumble to the bridge

- they get caught on the bridge as it collapses, and of course Yennefer is the one who falls first, and he catches her, so they're both hanging there and he's holding on to her suspended over this. Canyon or whatever.

- Jaskier, from above, yells to the others to get a rope to help pull them up but they respond to "wait until the bitch has fallen, then we'll pull the witcher up"

which. wow. but ok.

Yennefer can barely hold on, and HERE is where Geralt asks her to forgive him for… his wrongdoings…? (you know, can't have her die with a grudge, I guess? Or whatever?) He's like "Yen, forgive me" and she says "NEVER"

((and also, she has consistently kept telling him to stop calling her Yen (which he first started when they started... having Relations™ so obviously now it has bad memories attached to it for her), which he blatantly ignores because her feelings don't matter))

In the end, Jaskier gets the others to help despite their reluctance and hatred of Yennefer and they travel on. Yennefer's back to being Ice Queen - and then they find the dragon. Some fucker tries to fight it alone and gets injured. Yennefer is in charge of healing this dude, and so she ends up alone with Geralt in a tent – where she asks him to double-cross everyone else and kill the dragon himself (after telling them all she would cooperate with them) - "for me. I want the dragon, Geralt, for myself. All of it. I don't want to share. Kill it for me" and then explains that not all is lost because with certain parts of the dragon, SOMEONE CAN CURE HER BARRENNESS and i want to launch myself into the fucking sun

Geralt is like "uhhhh"

she says "on the bridge, you asked for my forgiveness- if you do this, I'll forgive you"

and then HE GOES "well, that no longer matters to me. I'm over it now" which hsadjlkfhsajdklfhsajkldfhaskdfsj I cannot begin to impart to you how many levels of “UGH” I felt at the predictable reversal of roles because he can’t ACTUALLY have to apologize to her – it’s HER who has to apologize to HIM for being an irrational Female

and now SHE'S all like. quivering lip and wanting him back or whatever and I am SICKENED that SHE IS THE ONE WHO HAS TO GROVEL NOW BECAUSE THE PLOT CANNOT HAVE GERALT EVER MAKE A MISTAKE AND OWN TO IT?!?

Thanks, I hate it.

 Oh and I almost forgot in all my rage about that storyline – when we first meet her, we learn that Yennefer apparently doesn’t “bother with the whalebone [i.e. corset] nonsense other women use” (literal quote from the book) so I guess her tits are magic???

This just in, if she needs boob support SHE’S A THOT, if your knockers don’t stand on their own you’re INFERIOR and NOT DESIRABLE, GTFO.

 2.3 Jaskier’s sexism (Netflix!Jaskier would never)

Jaskier, you have been done dirty.

It could have been so cool too - Jaskier in the books is witty and likeable and makes friends wherever he goes because everyone likes a bard?? Also he's really smart and knowledgeable because "a bard needs to know about many things" which is SO VALID??? And Geralt trusts him and cares about his opinion??? And also it's clear Jaskier likes Geralt, not just for the purpose of writing ballads about him, but because they're old friends, they've travelled together a lot - yes, their relationship is good here, regardless of your shipping preferences. (Also, he wears a hat with a large feather on it, which is how Geralt recognizes him in crowds, and it's amazing and hilarious.)

HOWEVER.

Jaskier treats women terribly. At his first introduction, he literally gropes a priestess (and then makes fun of the high priestess for chastising him for it). He sees women very much as objects to be… maybe not “won” but, well, persuaded, which makes him a tiny bit better than most of the other men, who are basically straight-up rapists. But then there's the scene with Yennefer which. Made everything turn sour tbh. It goes like this:

Yennefer wants to go after the dragon alone (see above), but before she can get Geralt to do it for her and double-cross everyone, she's overwhelmed by some of the other men in the party and they're all tied up (Jaskier, Geralt, some other pacifist sorcerer who is around, and Yennefer). And one of the men, who hates her for her (sexual) power, rips open her blouse and exposes her and assaults her while she screams, so then he gags her. And then when he’s done he walks away and leaves her exposed. Geralt looks away after she screams at him not to stare (wow, points for chivalry, the standard is literally So Low - also his justification for obeying her wishes is that he’s already seen her boobs so it’s not a big deal to him anymore) but Jaskier shamelessly stares at her even after she makes it absolutely clear she does not consent to ANY of this and has no choice because SHE IS TIED UP, and he even jokes that he'll write a ballad about her perfect breasts. And I'm over here like.... no. no, no, no, no, no. Jaskier deserved better characterization and Yennefer deserves a better fucking franchise.

 2.4 Female characters; Sexy Fantasy That Fucks (it’s bad)

I have touched a lot on this already so I'll try to be brief, but. Ugh.

Sexy Fantasy That Fucks™ is practically a legit genre and sadly a lot of semi-progressive fantasy falls into this category - where we have moved on from having only like one or two named female character (see: LotR) to having several, and look, they can even fight, but only as long as they're aggressively sexually attractive to men while they do it. Poor Harley Quinn suffered the same treatment in Suicide Squad - The Male Gaze Filter.

Here in the books it goes like this: Oh look, “vaguely tribal” women who fight - but they're also the most overtly sexual and involved in a canon off-screen orgy with Geralt and an older (practically old) man and are portrayed as Perpetually Horny. Oh look, Yennefer, a badass sorceress who falls apart when Geralt so much as looks her way because Geralt is so fucking great I guess. Then there’s the 14-year-old striga princess who needs to be described, once her curse is lifted, with emphasis to her “perky breasts”. SHE'S FOURTEEN. And there’s the young priestesses, who are subtly flattered by Jaskier's direct "advances" because, you know, they've dedicated their lives to serving a goddess but understandably they just WANT TO FUCK™.

There is a single female character who is not sexualized - the head priestess, Nenneke. She's described as fat and old (and wise though, throw her a bone). Geralt respects her because of her wisdom but that's it - she has a Use™. And also, he ignores her advice in the end anyway. Pity she wasn't more beautiful I guess. I am Sickened.

 2.5 Narrative devices and structure (it’s bad)

Now, we get to the bones of the thing. There's... one main thing that really bothers me and that's a CLASSIC - the fact that this author prefers to have action explained to the reader through monologues by characters that inexplicably have All The Information, rather than have us, you know, experience the action first hand. There are a couple of fight scenes of Geralt vs A Monster, sure, but that's all we get - everything else is told to us through monologues. (and yes it's still a monologue even if Geralt interrupts to say "go on" or "get to the point". It's not really a dialogue if the other person is only being expositioned at. Now Geralt just looks impatient and annoying.) Even the short story format (of the first two books) is explained this way: the individual short stories are monologues within conversations in the base timeline, explaining to the reader (and to Nenneke in the narrative proper) backstories and how characters met.

Which... it's a choice? It makes more sense than the show with it’s wack-ass timeline with absolutely no conext. But like. Why can't you have us at least discover the respective monster through someone else's POV though? I get that we're always staying with Geralt because Geralt is oh so great, but rather than have some Constable explain to him for like twelve pages how the princess (who is, without any intrigue, an incest-princess - this is not a mystery, everybody is aware of this at the beginning of the story and freely provides this information without prompting) became a striga and how many people she has killed and what people say she looks like and how to allegedly cure her - can’t we see that shit happen? Like... ok, thanks? I hate it. The show did this better.

 3. Bonus: why the audiobook grinds my gears

Last and definitely least - the audiobook is BAD (but I don't want to buy physical copies, and my library won't have the English version because I live in Germany, so I guess I'm stuck with it). The guy who reads it is Bad At Reading Out Loud because his emphasis/cadence is incredibly unnatural (also regrettably all the books are read by the same guy) and his pronunciation of names (most notably Jaskier, who is called Dandelion in the English version of the books) is inconsistent??? He started out by (correctly) calling him dandelion in book 1 and now has changed to pronouncing it dandelion, like the flower, which is not how you say his name (and... no offense if he’d started out that way because I, too, thought that was how you said it just from reading the word - but he says it CORRECTLY in the first book and then changes it to the wrong pronunciation in book two so I’m confused?? How does that happen?)

Also - different accents for different characters are only a good idea if a) you're good at accents and b) they aren't overtly connoted? Like. Don't give a guy in a fantasy setting a bad russian accent??? Also what part of Geralt as a character made you think SCOTTISH???? Oof.

And another thing - these little descriptors after direct speech? They MATTER.

"Don't touch me," Yennefer hissed

and

"Don't touch me," Yennefer screamed

are two very different sentences and should be read as such. You can't just. Say "Don't touch me" seductively and then add "she yelled". That's not how voice acting works. Please, pLEASE I'M SUFFERING. I was already struggling enough with some of the content of the books and now you’re making consuming them really difficult and irritating :’) Oof.

 In conclusion – I don’t even know. I was mad and now I’m tired.

  Anyway, all this to say – I didn’t hate every aspect of the books. I will keep reading (in my case listening) because I’m stupid, I apparently love to suffer and I am, thanks to the show, invested in the storyline and want to know what happens. But I will most certainly keep complaining about them because that’s the only way to make this fun for myself. And are you not entertained?!

Who knows. Maybe stuff will get better.

Take from this post what you will, and if it’s only my personal hypocrisy then that’s fine. I hope you had a nice day – I’m gonna go make myself some tea to calm down. And I’ll have you know that despite what you may have heard, I have never worn a bra in my life, because I’m not like other girls.

[benisasoftboi]

Unorganised thoughts on Trails to Azure:

What a depressing ending!

Also spoils what I’m assuming will be a big twist in Cold Steel 2 re: Osbourne, but like... ‘they don’t know where his body is’? Come on, we all know what that means

Also Lloyd shut up about goddamn barriers, Jesus

But like in all seriousness, I heard a lot of people call this the best Trails game, and while I personally liked Zero and SC a little more, that’s not an unjustified statement. The beginning’s a little slow, but everything after the intermission is pretty much non-stop great

It had been bothering me SO MUCH that Estelle and Joshua weren’t in Zero’s opening flash-forward, but were there when we returned to that point... the reveal that it was actually a different goddamn timeline was immensely satisfying 

KeA’s powers in general are great. I love reality warpers

I absolutely knew from the moment I saw her that Mariabell would be no good. That is just an evil looking woman, right there 

The Grimwood twist felt a little last minute. Also, goddamnit, the ‘oh I didn’t ACTUALLY kill him I just made it LOOK like I did for no reason’ thing. Like why is this series so afraid to kill characters off (outside of backstories, because everyone is required to have a dead relative, obviously)

But speaking of dead relatives, I loved everything we saw of Guy Bannings. He reminds me a lot of Phoenix Wright, lol

It was really exciting to see my boy Kevin - I love his Japanese voice!

Oh and Olivier and Kloe and Mueller and Julia cameos, yesss!

Ries was also there and I like her just fine, but not as much as the rest. Sorry, Ries

So,

Lloyd: I really like Lloyd. Way more than Rean. I guess it’s that he feels like more his own person than a player avatar, and also doesn’t have multiple bullshit super powers. God do I hate Rean’s super powers. There’s also just the fact that I find lots of girls liking Lloyd way more believable than lots of girls liking Rean. Lloyd is cute, and sweet, and he’s kind of a huge dork, and he’s that very adorable combination of extremely smart and extremely dumb. Rean has the personality of a plastic bag, and is friends with multiple guys who are far hotter and more interesting than he is, and yet every girl wants him. It’s a blatant self-insert player fantasy 

Seriously. There is literally zero reason any of these girls would be into Rean when Gaius is right there. Gaius is just Rean but less whiny and much better looking

Anyway Lloyd is great

Elie: I still really love Elie, she’s just so consistently good, man. I’m glad she’s the ‘canon’ love interest, and I thought her confession scene was lovely - she and Lloyd are good together. I only wish there’d been more focus on how she felt about the Mariabell reveal

Randy: I liked Randy so much more in this game. His backstory was well handled, and his more annoying traits were toned down. I really enjoy his relationship to Lloyd, I think that’s excellent

Tio: Didn’t get to do as much in this game, shame, but still great. I’m assuming she’s the most popular Crossbell character, right? She’s very funny and I’m glad that the game acknowledges that the cult stuff is still traumatic for her to remember even after Joachim - it feels more realistic than ‘we defeated it and I’m better now!’

Noel: Uhhh... I don’t dislike Noel or anything, she’s just... kinda boring? Compared to the others? She was easily at her most interesting during her short time in the state guard, and then that was undone almost immediately. I wish that they’d kept that up

Wazy: Wazy’s my favourite Crossbell character. I have a weakness for the sassy long haired pretty boy archetype, I guess. I would have liked to see more interaction between him and Kevin. I love his relationship with Wald though, and I’m so glad the epilogue establishes that they go off together with Abbas after everything. I really didn’t want them to go their separate ways 

I thought it was... interesting that they specifically called attention to the fact that we never see him shirtless

Dudley: Underused in this game! More Dudley!

KeA: This girl deserves the world (no don’t give it to her Mariabell PUT IT BACK)

Arios: Aww, man. Poor Arios. I’d like to play like, a short spin off about his perspective on the story. I think he’s a fascinatingly complicated person

That’s something I really like about this game, by the way - none of the antagonists really change personality or temperament when their true natures are revealed. It just takes a different meaning in this context. I think that’s much better than total personality shift (it worked with Weissman, but it would suck if that’s how they did it all the time)

Shirley and her dad whose name I already forgot lol: Fine as accessories to Randy’s backstory. Don’t know why Rixia and Shirley had to have a rivalry. I’m assuming we’ll be seeing Shirley again. I know Fie mentions her in CS2

Rixia: Rixia’s another interesting one. Her backstory was really good. To be honest, she feels a *little* superfluous to me, but I don’t dislike her

Uhh, what else

Nice little cameos from Renne, Estelle and Joshua - noo, Pater-Mater!

I know why Anton and Ricky aren’t around but also :( 

Liked seeing Ellie and Armand from Rolent, though. That was nice

I knew Shizuku was going to get her sight back, because I know how stories work. I just didn’t know how it would happen, and I was prepared to hate it. I liked how it happened

Seriously I never want to hear the word barrier again

Trails to Azure is very good. I can’t believe I’m now more than halfway through this franchise

Man am I excited to go to Calvard, whenever that happens!

Oh, also I got a Liberl Bracer Guild t-shirt for Christmas, because I’m going Full Nerd for this series. I am extremely cool, you guys