#mid character arc no less
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help im having the ysayle thoughts again
#headcanoning that my wol tries to kill hraesvelgr because she feels like he let her die and didn't appreciate her#my wol loving her so much but them never getting to start a relationship because ysayle's echo visions made it too difficult to actually un#understand her feelings irt hraesvelgr#my wol being so deeply envious of hraesvelgr having the chance to love her even though he doesn't take it#two girlies hurt and isolated because of ishgard and the horde's bullshit in two different ways who could have healed together but never go#the chance#the future they could of had together#estinien and my wol thinking their attracted to each other because they're both processing their love for ysayle#the yuri of it all#the actual tragedy of square just. killing her despite her potential#can you tell i'm bitter?? my favorite character of all time?? killed in her prime#mid character arc no less#yoshi p fight me behind the shaded bower at 3 am#hfgldhsfjkfss s i have so many feelings about her#help me
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As a concept, I do think Cas could have been very cool, especially as a window into the inherent hypocrisy of hunting. And I think he has glimmers of being interesting. But he's so tied to the misogyny inherent to the show in a way that doesn't even say anything, it's just why he's there, that it fills me with blind rage. And that's on top of how the writers were unwilling to explore the logical implications of his character, and so ultimately went with a very flat "he's made mistakes and always feels bad about it! He's trying so hard" angle. I just...I'm so unable to really feel invested in the character when they never questioned his trustworthiness in season five, after Ruby was stabbed to death for ultimately the same sin, and at the same time as Sam was constantly being observed. Everything he ever does is built on having blackmailed Jimmy into letting him use his body forever, and never addressing that basic point makes any attempt at giving him depth fall flat for me.
i've never paid nearly as much attention to his storylines as you have, anon so i can't give you much in return but you do bring attention to how many abandoned plot points are related to his character. he's like the cw's supernatural's desktop trash bin. i'm sure there's a long non-ship fix-it out there that's attempting to give him a kind of justice that could make you interested in him <3
#i agree though he is very flat to me and not even in terms of his arcs‚ his character is generally mid to me and becomes less#and less intriguing to me the more i watch. on my first watch i thought they really dragged it out‚ personally#especially since his arcs are made to accommodate his absence for sam and dean's conflicts/storylines/arcs#some of his best moments personally were the body horror and his moments with crowley#really and truly i think about jimmy novak more than i do him <- particularly in 5.14. that's the last we see of him in cas :(#AND IT'S HIS HUNGER !!!!#hunger + a vessel's relationship with possession or lack of autonomy is a running theme#quaerit
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Artbook stuff!
More devnotes (and my own rants lol) about some characters from Elheim : Rosalinde, Linharagos, Lydielle and the Celeste gang! (+ Amalia but I forgot her in the Drankengard/Drakenhold posts...)
Amalia first...
Sense of dominance or not, Amalia is towering the rest of the cast (at 2m30!) wielding a giant sword that is totes not inspired by a certain dark fantasy manga, and uses what is basically a door as a shield. Her strikes are wide (and wild) and she is basically introduced as what we would call a Gotoh unit in the FE fanbase in the chapter she's introduced in (basically coming handy in one of the few defence map of the game) however, unless you recruit her early by using cheese strats, by the time you can finally use her after defeating her in the arena (around early albion or late Bastorias?) she's not that impressive anymore : still a damn good unit, but not breaking the game in half
(especially since she can't access her beserk state)
Plot wise : she's a random who's looking to fight strong fighters, to actually manage to beat her and beat her berserk form (that is basically, her ancestor taking over her body to fight), she only accepts to help Gilbert'n'Alain during the Drakengard campaign for one map because Gilbert promised her that if they survive, he'll reopen the coliseum.
Alain's group can then recruit her by defeating her, and her berserk form, in the coliseum!
Design wise, the armored briefs is, imo, completely ridiculous especially given the otherwise okay-ish designs from Drakengard, but fwiw, I like her knees armor, even if I don't know what they're supposed to represent lol
On to Elheim!
I know, I added the image where she's damaged because we can't talk about Elheim and Rosalinde without sighing about, well, the sexualised designs and the overabundance of camel toes.
I know VW is known for its fanservice designs, but damn if Elheim was hit/designed with a "gotta make them sexy" hammer.
Rosalinde then - "deep brown skin" is used for dark elves in this game, it's nice to have some variation, especially when the "really tanned" persons living in the desert from the earlier setting were only... male.
Gameplay wise, Rosalinde might be one of the best units, an offensive nuke who can cheese the penultimate boss' gimmick even if she has paper thin defenses, imo she's basically a glass canon. I also really like her attacking animations with the lance (her weapon, even if she's a mage!), they're really fluid so while I know it's not really about "gameplay" it totes counts as to why I like to field her lol
Plot wise... Well, it's Elheim, and on paper, Rosalinde isn't that egregious, she's basically asking Alain (or more precisely Yahna) for help to save her country and her sister, who were both taken over by Zenoira - Rosalinde's seiyuu has a certain voice range (?) which really plays well in depicting her being worried and super pissed at Zenoira invading Elheim and brining harm to her people and beloved younger sister, but also manages to play her character being relieved when she realises her friend/retained who sacrificed herself to buy her time didn't die (and is ultimately saved by the party) while maintaining some sort of coldness/aloofness with the party, at least until her sister is safe because she doesn't trust humans (after all, they are the ones who invaded!) - after her sister is rescued though and her rapport convos are unlocked, we learn that she is a pretty playful person, who loves to tease people around, takes her duty seriously and wishes the best for her sister/wants to protect her, feeling like she let her down when she faced the Zenoiran forces alone.
That being said... Rosalinde is shoved in the "potential love interest who has a hands on approach" box and while it's only at the end of Elheim arc, the "love interest" angle really soured me a bit on the character, especially since, unlike Berengaria, Rosalinde can ditch her sister to marry Alain and become queen of Cornia, even when part of her arc has been trying to find allies to rescue her dearest younger twin and save her country :/
So plot wise I'm a bit meh about her, but gameplay wise? She's a beast!
Linaragos is our male elven archer!
"Sexy feel" of the design or not, at least on Pixiv, some artists are having a lot of fun about his lack of, uh, pants (and undies?).
While he looks serious, Linaragos can be playful and even entertains goofballs like Mordon, even if he plays the "only sane man" in their rapport convo when Eltrinde - basically the leader of the elves and a traditional "priestress" - ends up drunk by smelling his glass of wine.
Intimacy dialogue wise, in the loc version, Linaragos basically agrees to become Alain's object of desire so, uh, sure it's not as explicit as Alain and Berengaria kissing on screen, but there's that.
Gameplay wise, Elven Archers are basically support units - their conferal (adding magic damage to an ally's attack!) can be pretty busted, later on they can freeze foes with their arrows, and when they're healed, they heal the entire unit - but they need a bit of work to really shine, granted, given all the possibilities they open, I'm not surprised the game gives us three named characters in this class!
Plot wise, Linaragos leads a small army of elves trying to resist/fight back against Zenoira, but they're severely outnumbered - which echoes one of Alain's rapport conversations with, iirc, Hodrick, where they basically point out that Elheim's demography is quite poor compared to Cornia, which might be explained by the elves having a longer lifespan! - our army helps him, he recognises Rosalinde and agrees to help us free Elheim and save Eltrinde!
Lydielle (Ridiel?) is a half-elf who has the same "elven archer" class as Linaragos and Galadmir, but I liked how the devs apparently picked her haircut and hair color to give a contrast with the "pure-blooded" elves, and also her "cheeky and rebellious" phase, fitting since she's apparently 16 lol
Maybe her wearing red and orange also serves as a contrast with the other elven archers wearing primary green clothes?
I wonder what was the plot mentionned where she would have been one of Morard's agents - we know elves think bestrals (beastmean) are "unclean" which might echo the discrimination she faces by being a half elf?
Speaking of which, I really liked how her subplot - being discriminated against for being a half elf - while apparently being baseless since the playable elves never give her flack for not being a fully blooded elf, is actually illustrated by the NPCs! They are the ones who, for some, look down or straight up resent humans, consider bestrals "unclean" and, in her paralogue, rant about her not being an elf.
It's not given more attention because that's not what the Elheim arc is about, and Lydielle doesn't even have a convo with either Rosalinde or Eltrinde, but it plays with the general theme of "get rid of the common enemy and then rebuild the world to make it better than it used to be". I also love her recruitment conversations with Chloe - they become friends sure, but Chloe manages to convincer her that even if she might die and think her fight would have ultimately have been pointless against the Zenoiran invasion, her actions could still inspire people to take up weapons and even if she cannot be a knight of Elheim due to her half-elf status, she can still help people around.
Too bad she doesnt' have a lot of rapport convos, but fwiw, I like Lydielle.
Celeste is, much like Lydielle, someone who cannot become a knight of Elheim because she's not an elf.
Nonetheless, having been saved/raised by elves, she wants to help them and forms a militia, even as a mere human. Bar being the pure, innocent, naive etc etc human raised/saved/who lived with elves, what's most interesting about Celeste is that 1/she's another griffon knight and those units are busted 2/she actually manages to hire/join forces with former bandits we met, and who have a change of heart and accept to work under her orders.
Bar that, I don't have a lot to say about Celeste :(
Gammel!
Bandit 1, who was introduced in early Cornia, terrorising a village and slaughtering people - Alain'n'co defeated him and he begged for his life, saying that he had to resort to a life of banditry to pay for his sister's medical expenses, or some shady shit like that.
Alain can chose to put him in jail, or to let him go (and return to his sister) - the decision to let him go can be very controversial in fandom spaces, but plot-wise, it could be justified by Josef basically telling Alain that after Zenoira's invasion and ten years of them being in charge in Cornia, people are surviving and some might have turned to banditry because it was the only way to survive in this new world...
Alain's basically encouraged not to execute people, and it works with Gammel because, somehow, meeting a moron lord who doesn't execute him for doing bandit/thief things made him reconsider his life - Celeste apparently saved him and his sister and now he is part of her militia to protect, at least in the map when we recruit them all, elves from former members of his gang who want to sell some to make money. Emulating the moron lord who gave him a chance to start a new life, he doesn't kill his former allies, and instead hopes that they will turn over a new leaf, like he did.
So even if he looks like a traditionnal FE Bandit, Gammel really has a sister - and her existence is referenced in several of his supports, and even here, in the dev notes lol, good for him!
And I like how he continues, in the epilogue, to work with Celeste and Mandrin - judging by the notes, the trio "Celeste Mandrin and Gammel" was designed as some "do not separate" lol, if that "fantasy" (a headcanon?) of them hanging out with Gammel's sister is any indication!
Unit wise, he's a thief/rogue like Travis, aka supposed to be dodge tanks and quite fast, but... yeah :/
and Mandrin!
Gammel's childhood friend, who's also a bandit who attacked Sharon's church (earning Ochlys' eternal ire) and who also can turn over a new leaf if Alain spares him.
He joins in the same map as Gammel and Celeste and also became part of Celeste's group, and the epilogue reveals that he and Gammel's sister are getting along together, much to his chagrin.
Also I like his design even if I can't see the "scorpion" thing the devs mentionned :(
FWIW, I liked how he accepts that Ochlys hates him for trying to sack and pillage the church of Rondmort, even if personality wise, we're still on the "bandit with a heart of gold" thing.
I don't have a lot to say about those two, but Mandrin's class - Hunter - is cool and surpisingly useful - one of the few AOE attacks!
#unicorn overlord stuff#artbook stuff#Elheim is not my favourite place#and I feel like the characters got less interactions with each other than the Drakengardians#I like the design of Rosalinde's hair!#and her 'i wanted to become the priestress instead of Eltrinde' thing was interesting because it served as a nice contrast#to the previous Drakengard arc#Rosalinde isn't jealous of being passed over by her younger sister for the throne#but it's more like she believes that if she had been the leader then she would have been the one to have been hurt/possessed by Zenoira#and not her dearest sister#however this angle couldn't have been more developed in the Elheim arc since Eltrinde is rescued mid arc and the second half#is basically the Alcina show#still GG to her to basically tell her to gtfo#her seiyuu did a nice work using a deep and low threatening voice when she's pissed#and a teasing/more lighthearted one when she's trying to troll people around#the 'designated as a potential love interest' feel is even stronger than the one Ren and Virginia got#idk maybe that's why I'm seeing it more negatively but#like the elf twins could have been developed in other ways than this one#how the crap Rosalinde angsting about Eltrinde in the entire Elheim arc can just accept to leave for Cornia instead of helping her sister#rebuild what can be rebuilt and watch over her own people??#that's a writing choice that I really am not fond of#gameplay wise though Rosalinde is stupidly broken
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We do need to acknowledge that The Owl House probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did without Lumity, but some people Also have to acknowledge its still a beautifully written story with diverse representation and complex themes that are helpful for its viewers, even if you were to remove Lumity.
#bird tube show#im tired of seeing people say “TOH would be so mid without lumity and it doesnt deserve its fanbase” because it simply isnt true#it covers grief. abuse. mental health. messy family dynamics and their healing. puritism. finding yourself. etc. etc. etc.#all on top of its diverse representation of race. gender. sexuality. body shape and size. neurodiversity.#its rep for physical disabilities is muchess diverse but its THERE in a main character no less!#we see a character with an invisible physical disability (within the universe of the show) and shes still seen as powerful and strong#and we see when it gets worse and shes not able to cope as well shes still revered and seen as strong and capable#and near the end of the show she literally becomes an amputee and is STILL seen as strong and capable and powerful#none of the representation or themes are forced and theyre all well done and help people who see themselves in the characters#you could remove lumity entirely. make their arc a platonic one. and you still have all this story and tons of other lgbt rep#PLUS BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION MIGHT I ADD#whatever rant over. TLDR yes lumity is amazing but its not the only amazing thing about the show.
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How To Make Your Writing Less Stiff 5
Movement
Dredging this back up from way back.
Make sure your characters move, but not too much during heavy dialogue scenes. E.g. two characters sitting and talking—do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them…
Gesture
Wave
Frown
Laugh
Cross their legs/their arms
Shift around to get comfortable
Pound the table
Roll their eyes
Point
Shrug
Touch their face/their hair
Wring their hands
Pick at their nails
Yawn
Stretch
Sniff/sniffle
Tap their fingers/drum
Bounce their feet
Doodle
Fiddle with buttons or jewelry
Scratch an itch
Touch their weapons/gadgets/phones
Check the time
Get up and sit back down
Move from chair to tabletop
The list goes on.
Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t—what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.
As in, you could say “he’s nervous” or you could show, “He fidgets, constantly glancing at the clock as sweat beads at his temples.”
This site is full of discourse on telling vs showing so I’ll leave it at that.
Epithets
In the Sci-fi WIP that shall never see the light of day, I had a flashback arc for one male character and his relationship with another male character. On top of that, the flashback character was a nameless narrator for Reasons.
Enter the problem: How would you keep track of two male characters, one who you can't name, and the other who does have a name, but you can’t oversaturate the narrative with it? I did a few things.
Nameless Narrator (written in 3rd person limited POV) was the only narrator for the flashback arc. I never switched to the boyfriend’s POV.
Boyfriend had only a couple epithets that could only apply to him, and halfway through their relationship, NN went from describing him as “the other prisoner” to “his cellmate” to “his partner” (which was also a double entendre). NN also switched from using BF’s full name to a nickname both in narration and dialogue.
BF had a title for NN that he used exclusively in dialogue, since BF couldn’t use his given name and NN hadn’t picked a new one for himself.
Every time the subject of the narrative switched, I started a new paragraph so “he” never described either character ambiguously mid-paragraph.
Is this an extreme example? Absolutely, but I pulled it off according to my betas.
The point of all this is this: Epithets shouldn’t just exist to substitute an overused name. Epithets de-personalize the subject if you use them incorrectly. If your narrator is thinking of their lover and describing that person without their name, then the trait they pick to focus on should be something equally important to them. In contrast, if you want to drive home how little a narrator thinks of somebody, using depersonalizing epithets helps sell that disrespect.
Fanfic tends to be the most egregious with soulless epithets like "the black-haired boy" that tell the reader absolutely nothing about how the narrator feels about that black-haired boy, espeically if they're doing so during a highly-emotional moment.
As in, NN and BF had one implied sex scene. Had I said “the other prisoner” that would have completely ruined the mood. He’s so much more than “the other prisoner” at that point in the story. “His partner,” since they were both a combat team and romantically involved, encompassed their entire relationship.
The epithet also changed depending on what mood or how hopeless NN saw their situation. He’d wax and wane over how close he believed them to be for Reasons. NN was a very reserved character who kept BF at a distance, afraid to go “all in” because he knew there was a high chance of BF not surviving this campaign. So NN never used “his lover”.
All to say, epithets carried the subtext of that flashback arc, when I had a character who would not talk about his feelings. I could show you the progression of their relationship through how the epithets changed.
I could show you whenever NN was being a big fat liar about his feelings when he said he's not in love, but his narration gave him away. I could show you the exact moment their relationship shifted from comrades to something more when NN switched mid-paragraph from "his cellmate" to "his partner" and when he took up BF's nickame exclusively in the same scene.
I do the same thing in Eternal Night when Elias, my protagonist, stops referring to Dorian as "it" and "the vampire" instead of his name the moment they collide with a much more dangerous vampire, so jarringly that Elias notices in his own narration—the point of it being so explicit is that this degredation isn't automatic, it's something he has to conciously do, when everyone else in his clan wouldn't think twice about dehumanizing them.
—
Any literary device should be used with intent if you want those layers in your work. The curtains are rarely just blue. Whether it’s a simile with a deliberate comparison or an epithet with deliberate connotations, your readers will pick up on the subtext, I promise.
#writing#writing advice#writing a book#writing resources#writeblr#writing tips#writing tools#literary devices#character description#character development
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I keep thinking about it 🫣
Looking at Zelda, I think it's really interesting to examine why, ultimately, she chooses to go through with draconification. There's definitely something to be said about her as a person, her sense of love toward the Hyrule she left behind and towards Link. I get a sense that she makes that sacrifice not out of any obligation as their princess, but because she genuinely loves Hyrule and its people and doesn't want a repeat of the calamity. There's also tragedy about it. How she is so used to having to make sacrifices that it's become second nature for her. It's just really fascinating to wonder what was going on in her head at the time and definitely makes for good fan material fuel.
On the other hand, I'm not really the biggest fan of how it's framed in the narrative. I get the feeling that the writers wanted her to seem more like a character with agency and choice, and in some ways it succeeds (she forms the plan by herself and Rauru trusts her) but swallowing the secret stone comes across more like an illusion of choice. Zelda's options were either to stay in the past, losing all her friends (again) and leaving Link by himself to fend off Ganon, or the draconification. Ultimately she makes her own choice, but also what other choice did she have? Either option is tragic for her. And I understand what the writers were trying to do, but the impact just doesn't really work as well as it should, because the narrative traps her between two very difficult options.
I still don't know how to feel about the whole dragon thing 😭
#totk spoilers#tears of the kingdom spoilers#ultimately I find it quite interesting but not necessarily the most satisfying end to Zelda's arc they could have done#I do think the main issue with the narrative itself is just cos the story's so mid#Under different circumstances the draconification would hit much harder I think#not sure what circumstances but yeah#tldr cool from a character standpoint less so from a narrative standpoint#also Zelda desperately needs an Adora and Mara “your feelings matter too” moment ok
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Team 7 gets zapped into the warring states era but it's like, team 7 either mid or directly after wave-arc.
They're babies!! They're untrained little babies!!! None of them have gotten that good good character development yet!! Kakashi is still actively desperately wanting to not teach them!! (tho he may have just gotten his "ahh fuck. I actually have to teach them, huh." Moment)
Sasuke looks like a carbon copy of a younger Izuna and it's going to cause problems
Naruto thankfully doesn't look much like an Uzumaki, but his tendency to very loudly introduce himself is going to get him into trouble
Going w my usual flavor of "the Hatake are a very small but very famous clan known for being fucking insane", people are seeing Kakashi and going "oh god oh fuck what are one of THOSE guys doing here oh sage preserve us please don't eat me" as Kakashi just kinda stands there like 🧍♂️
Sakura is the only one safe from not being fucked up and over her clan, good for her!
-> back to the Hatake thing.
The kids still know virtually nothing about their sensei so they're learning all this stuff about his clan and believing every word of it, from the believable rumors to the insane.
Sakura, in a hushed, worried voice: "Sensei,, is it true ur clan eats people??"
Kakashi, who's father died before he could tell him almost anything about their clan and genuinely doesn't know but at this point is starting to get a little worried about it:
Kakashi, who also never passes up the opportunity to fuck with someone: "only stupid little students who ask stupid little questions <3"
Sakura and Sasuke: *worriedly look at a confused Naruto*
For convoluted reasons they run into the Hatake of the era and after introductions they look at the kids and are like,
"Oh!!! Ok, so this is your kid, right? :)" pointing at Sakura.
And Kakashi is like. ",,no."
"Ohhh, ok. So this one is your kid then?" *points at Naruto*
",,,,,,,,no."
They look at him confused then nod at Sasuke. "So then that one's your kid, right?"
"None of them are my children."
*visibly disapproving / disbelieving side eye*
One big difference between this and the team ro time travel one is how much less trustworthy Kakashi comes off to literally everyone who looks at him.
He's a trained adult shinobi, probable bloodline thief (with no way to prove his innocence), and he has 3 children from 3 different clans (2 of which are indirectly enemies bc the Uzumaki is a Senju ally) (1 of which might have a direct relation to the Uchiha main house) and comes from an infamously volatile "wild clan" from another country entirely (Iron country)
He is NOT getting out of this with talk no jutsu bullshit. He has a target on his back from day 1 and it will take a minor miracle to get even a single person hear him out
Anyways uhh—
Saying Tajima and Butsuma are still alive but due to die in some months (till team 7 accidentally interfere and somehow accidentally save Tajima, maybe also Butsuma but I'm more biased towards Tajima so I'm thinking just him actually)
Kakashi sees baby Kagami and feels like he's been hit by a truck bc he looks just like a miniature Shisui and he has hang-ups about his "suicide"
Half-Hatake Tobirama is catching HEAT from Kakashi's antics. Why does one of ur cousins have a sharingan. Where did he get those children. Do you know anything about this. Is it your duty to help hunt him down bc hes your blood. If not yours then it's definatley the Hatake's, call them immediately and tell them to clean up their mess.
Bloodline theft is like THE ultimate no-no for all shinobi, especially in this era. To the point that even ancient enemies will sometimes temporarily set aside grudges to kill bloodline theives. Kakashi is so fucked, someone get him out of there
Mmmm there are like still bits and pieces of thoughts floating around in my head for this but I can feel myself getting distracted and want to get back to art fight so I'll leave it here for now
#birds fic talk#naruto#time travel#kakashi hatake#hatake kakashi#sakura haruno#haruno sakura#uzumaki naruto#naruto uzumaki#sasuke uchiha#uchiha sasuke#team 7#team 7 naruto#naruto team 7#senju tobirama#tobirama senju#half hatake tobirama#hatake clan lore#dogteeth kakashi#dog teeth kakashi#warring states period#warring states era
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There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.
The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.
She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.
My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman
To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.
Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.
That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.
"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31
We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.
The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:
In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.
The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.
Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.
She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.
She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.
She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.
Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?
That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).
Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.
Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.
So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.
Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction
Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.
By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith
Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.
Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.
#superheroes#dc comics#suicide squad#amanda waller#john ostrander#kim yale#dcu#dc#comic books#superhero comics
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David Gaider on Cassandra (the last of these retrospective character threads), under a cut for length:
"This is the last of the (major) characters I wrote during my time on Dragon Age. I could go into others, and considered moving onto Stray Gods... but I feel like fewer would be interested, and I honestly can't keep up the pace. So let's make this the last, for now. So, yeah. Cassandra. We knew early on that Cassandra would come into DAI as a companion, along with Varric, that this was part of what DA2 set up for the sequel. Now, I'd written Cassandra's short scenes in DA2, yes, but I wasn't her writer for DAI. Initially, she was Jennifer Hepler's character. By mid-project, in fact, Cassandra was more or less fully written. Jennifer did a great job - solid character, solid quest. The sticking point, it turned out, was her romance. Now, to be fair, Jennifer told me straight up when we began that writing romance wasn't her forte, but she'd give it a go. The problem with the romance as she wrote it wasn't in its execution but more a clash between the character as Jennifer envisioned her and the requirements of her being a romance. See, I mentioned previously that a romance arc inherently limits the kinds of stories you can tell with a companion. Many responses I got can be summed up as "lol skill issue", but consider this: a companion romance isn't a fic you can just throw up on AO3. It's an investment of a lot of resources. If a companion has one, most of their resources need to be devoted to it - it's not "now let's ALSO add a romance"."
"That means it needs to take priority in who they are as a character and their arc. What's more, they need to be *appealing* to a big chunk of the player base - or at least someone we can imagine being broadly appealing, anyway. Thankfully, there are still many many stories this can accommodate. 😊 This, however, wasn't one of those. Was Cassandra a fascinating character? Absolutely. Her romance, though... Well, Jennifer DID warn me. She'd written Cassandra as a serious, self-righteous, pious woman who put the Inquisitor on a messianic pedestal. Romancing her meant changing her view of you. You did this by being... pushy. Jennifer didn't mean it to, I'm sure, but sometimes it came off as, at best, negging. At worst, a bit harassy. And Jennifer would have fixed it. This was a 1st draft, and the issues - while serious - were something a skilled writer like her could handle. No problem. Thing is, Jennifer left. You may not remember, but this was around the time a bunch of GamerGate dudes decided Jennifer was somehow responsible for ALL of BioWare's faults. Oh, the power she wielded! She, a writer, could even command the combat Bio made! The result was a LOT of ugly harassment. 😞 Is this why she left? You'd have to ask her, but it undoubtedly didn't help. The important thing is, she left - and there was nobody as senior nor as superhumanly fast as her to take over any unfinished work. This is where Patrick Weekes comes in: a solid, senior writer who could fill her shoes."
"It was great timing - not only did Cassandra need a writer, I'd slowly fallen more and more behind. It was clear by that point that I'd never be able to write Dorian AND Cole AND Solas as planned. They needed to pick up two. And I let them choose the ones who interested them, like all my writers. Patrick taking Solas was no surprise, and while I had Big Plans for Solas in the future I knew at least he'd be in good hands. I was reeeeaaaally hoping Patrick would then pick Cassandra... but they wanted Cole. My baby. Who I created in Asunder. I grumped, but Patrick clearly loved the character. They had ideas for Cole which... yeah yeah, sounded cool. Fiiine. 😅 Now I had to figure out what *I* was going to do with Cassandra. We couldn't move the romance to someone else, all the other female characters were well underway, and I didn't know the character well enough to fix her with tweaks. That meant a re-write. I didn't WANT to erase all that good work, but I needed to start from scratch. Yet how? A pious, self-righteous character was already a risk in terms of romantic appeal. There are only a small number of traits sorta considered universally unappealing but they're on that list. In this instance, Cassandra already being a known character helped. I came across a webcomic (by aimo, I think? AHH I wish I could find it now) that made a joke about Cassandra reading Varric's books. Off-hand, no basis for it, but funny. 😆 And I thought: YES. THAT'S IT. THAT'S WHAT I'M MISSING."
"I sat down and wrote the "fangirl" scene, just to test it out. Everyone loved it, and it served to change my image of who Cassandra was - a view of the inside, at the idealistic and awkward passion she felt, for so many things... AND the Maker. "Yes," I thought. "I could fall in love with this." Who knew Cassandra could be funny? Not anyone, coming out of DA2, yet here we were. It worked so well and her voice came so easily. Miranda Raison was game ofc, and amazing. Though Caroline did gripe that, if we ever met more Nevarrans THAT accent meant we'd have the Tali Problem all over again. 😅 Cassandra's romance is burned into my brain as the time when we THE most awkward conversation with the animators ever. See, that moment during the sex scene on the picnic blanket when she leans back and... there were suddenly these strategically-placed candles, juuuust covering the Sordid Bits. Thing is, they were so obviously placed just to do that. Plus, we'd already decided to do full nudity in DAI, hadn't we? WHY WERE THEY EVEN THERE? Turns out, the nudity thing was still pretty new to the team. They'd forgotten and put the candles there almost as a reflex. So prudish. So Canadian. 😂 I do find it kind of funny that, these days, what I mostly hear about Cassandra is from female fans upset at me because she wasn't a lesbian option. I mean, right? Who wouldn't want that? Technically not my decision, but I guess I WAS behind the companions having set preferences so... fair enough?"
"Some of them do take it to an entitled place, though, like Cassandra *should* have been a lesbian. Why? Because she looks like one, apparently, and that that's a bit of stereotyping which feels... odd? But it's not as if lesbian players are spoiled for choice left and right, so again: fair enough. It did lead to the best end credits VO perhaps ever, and overall I'm pretty happy with how Cassandra panned out. Things never end up like you expect, right? But such is game dev lyfe. 🥸🖖 Did you know Cassandra was THE most-romanced DAI character, by a good margin? Least, by a good margin? Dorian."
[source thread]
User: "Did you have any hand in her writing for Dawn of the Seeker?" David Gaider: "No, none. Nobody at BioWare had any hand in Dawn of the Seeker, outside of maybe Mike approving the script or direction? Only he could say for sure." [source]
User: "Was Miranda a specific casting choice by anyone on the team (similar to your picks for Merrill/Fenris/Solas), or was she simply a lucky find? I loved Miranda on the BBC series "Spooks", so I was very pleasantly surprised to learn she voiced one of my favourite DA characters" David Gaider: "I don’t remember how Miranda was cast. Auditioned, I expect, and she had a good “steely warrior voice” which is surprisingly uncommon among actresses. The accent she made up was all her, as well." [source]
User: "What's the Tali Problem?" David Gaider: "When Tali was the only Quarian, the actress doing a made-up accent was fine. Once there were others… do we get them all to mimic her? That’s a tall order!" [source]
User: "I'd say Solas is the most popular nowaday, but you need to be such a specific race/gender combo + most straight guys wouldn't go for him, i get hes not on top of the list, but I'd have expected Josephine over Cass." David Gaider: "You can’t go by how fans online talk about playing the game. There is almost zero correlation between the playstyles of the vocal hardcore and the masses." [source]
User: "I was a Dorianmancer. The cut content in Trespasser DLC was sad to read, it definitely felt short/abrupt for Dorianmancers. Anyway to share what was cut at all?" David Gaider: "I don’t know what was cut out of the conversation, as I never played it. I just heard about it after the fact." [source]
User: "Those end credits are truly incredible. Do you remember who wrote them? I'm guessing a combination of Mary Kirby & you?" David Gaider: "I wrote them, but I recall the entire team kind of took part in brainstorming the pieces of it." [source]
User: "I’m very curious- Do you know what direction you would have taken Cole and his story if you’d kept him?" David Gaider: "It's hypothetical at this point, but I suspect I would have been less willing to lose the serial killer aspect... or, at least, would have made that transition occur as part of his arc in DAI. Yet that's easy to say from this side of the divide. Who knows, really?" [source]
User: "With Cassandra you created one of the best characters in DA history." David Gaider: "Personally, my favorite response of hers is where she gets mocked for loving romance and she comes back with a retort about how it's a strength - how loving something and striving for the ideal takes courage. To me, that's central to her core." [source]
User: "inquiry: did you not write any of the Awakening characters?" David Gaider: "I wrote Anders, Justice, and Nathaniel in Awakening - but it was such a hurried project, my memories of it are pretty much a blur. "Yes, I worked on that" is almost all I can say about it, I'm afraid." [source]
#dragon age#bioware#cassandra pentaghast#my lady paladin#video games#long post#longpost#solas#cole#spirit boy#harassment cw#mass effect#fenris#the fenaissance
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(OC Lore and design time!)
(it got longer again ... sorry ... idk how to make things short, i just need to talk, but i guess if you can read the written stuff in the pic thats the barest bare bones of what i wrote here)
i was asked what new lore story stuff i had thought about that made me sad which i mentioned a bit ago, and while that is too hard to explain given all the missing context i thought i could at least talk about lore having to do with it :D
so, (Lord) Eadrya is one of my fav OCs (big blue lad, here a rough sketch in humanoid form) they are both one of if not THE most powerful demon alive and the most battle trained;
at the mid point of the story the demon world gets invaded by the celestials (the angel inspired things i talked about in the previous lore post with Xaror) and Shargon, as the king, should be their first and only frontline, but at this point his life is only being sustained by maschinery after being mortally wounded, he cannot fight (he realizes what is going on, rips himself off the maschinery to get at least his youngest child to safety, barely managing it before dying- the guardian, the demons god, takes over his body to attempt to fight against the celestials but cant keep itself alive long enough since its host is already dead) Eadrya takes the role of the frontline fighter (despite being very full of themselves and aggressive they care about their 'job' of protecting their own, also giving them the chance to show off just how strong they are); the fight was going well for them all things considered, but when the guardian activates it drains the power of all elemental lords (which Eadrya is one of, and since they have the most strength it also takes the most from them), so much so that they lose the fight and suffer deadly wounds (the worst being a spear through the chest made of a material that grows hard, root-like formations when in contact with demonic blood like a fungus but worse, also stopping any self healing processes) after the guardian falls apart it creates a huge shockwave of energy that stuns every living thing within a certain distance and possibly more-
Eadrya (in true demon form, so like a blue whale in size at least) was likely taken through an active gateway to the human world in a large tidal wave also created by the guardians fall; they wash up in the harbor of a small secluded village, the head of which is 'lady 13'; although never having seen a demon before and everyone being afraid (largely thinking its a strange hurt animal, only she suspected otherwise), they still gather all villagers to pull out the celestial spear, which is diffcult and brutal given that its already taken root, but the village lacked both knowledge and means to help any other way- doing so damaged their heart which is how they were able to collect samples of all three demonic blood types ('normal' -red like humans-, energy -essentially purely magic- and heartblood -highly concentrated energy only found within the heart of a demon and the only one to contain genetic material) (this is the start of Eadryas character arc, having to deal with the fact that their world is likely destroyed, them failing what they didnt think they could fail, having lost a battle so badly (even if not really their fault) for the first time and not knowing if literally anyone else has survived .. also being now stuck in the human world, which they dont like)
Lady 13 (placeholder name? stands for experiment 13) is a human that was tricked by demon hunters to enroll into a series of experiments trying to create hybrids of demons and humans, which they hoped would be powerful and easily controllable tools for their endeavours, though the two are inherently not compatible, they tried grafting body parts of demons on humans to make them compatible- all experiments failed except for her, more or less, though she never got to see the hybrid she carried and was then told it had died too, they threw her out believing she wouldnt survive much longer either and all such experiments were cancelled due to the high cost of human life, research material (demons are still rare) and upkeep with no successful results Lady 13 survived though (perhaps even via the pirates picking her up?) and she ended up living in said small village far away, hiding her half demonic body, though most know there soemthing 'wrong' with her (her being this tall when it doesnt fit the rest for one), only few know the full extent; she enjoys the life she has now, perhaps on the more poor side but safer and more loved than ever before; she largely lead the efforts to try and help Eadrya when they ended up in the harbor, though there wasnt that much anyone could do it was still enough- they leave immediately after waking up, but return after really having nowhere to go and struggling to deal with everything that has happened; over time (probably years) they start to open up towards the people there (though not .. very much) enough to get rather close with Lady 13 too- she actually falls madly in love but after Eadrya (extremely aro/ace) rejects all her attempts quite clearly she respects their boundaries
However, after hearing news of potential demon sightings Eadrya decides to leave in hopes of not being the last demon left after all; Lady 13 then decides to reveal her secret to them (though hearing and seeing what lengths hunters would go to for their experiments makes them absolutely seething with rage- she insists on not being out for revenge) and asks if they would be willing to donate a small amount of heartblood; shes always wanted to be a mother but is now incompatible with humans too- through things she picked up back at the experiments facillity, hers and her doctors research she is sure that is all that is needed, she dares to ask since she does not know when, if ever, she will meet another demon, much less one she could actually trust enough for this though Eadrya hesitates (why would she want to go through the same thing again that didnt work and threatened her life, if it does work, do they want to be involved with any of this? what if hunters find out it worked after all?) but after her ensuring that they would have no part in it other than giving up a little blood and would not be considered a parent in any way, nor made responsible for anything that might happen to her, but considering it all in the end they agree to it
only for her to reveal shes had a small bottle of it already, along with multiple samples of the other types, which she collected when Eadrya was bleeding out into the harbor not knowing if they will survive, though not wanting to make use of it without their consent either way (they are actuallly rather touched by this)
alot later the main group returns here and it turns out to have worked (though she is unable to walk/bedridden for a long while bc it did alot of damage to her body, which can heal since its demons parts, but only really slowly bc she does not have a full functioning system and no demonic blood of her own -she uses the other samples for the healing process-) though its a little awkward to explain, especially considering that 13.1 took alot after Eadrya xD (their theory as to why it worked so "well" that time is that even though the sample was already taken, them giving their consent for it still made it less likely to be rejected; demons dont need partners to have offspring, and all can do it, they just have to decide to- so them agreeing to it, even though its long been outside their body, still had an effect on the blood sample)
#ganondoodles#art#ocs#original art#oc lore#demons#monsters#WHY does writing things liek this take me so long#i spent two hours again on this and im falling asleep as we speak bc its almost 2 am#ANYWAY this was alot again ... sorry#but its a relatively new storyline that i have been afraid of telling#since it touches on things im afraid might come across wrong and uses themes im a lil uncomfy with#but i found it interesting ... and works well with eadrya as a character bc it challenges alot about them#yes im wrote and mean this genuinely#i would have made the cut from her human body to the demon parts more smooth ... but this hard cut is the point#so that she looks rather normal on the upper part and can hide the rest#thoguh im unsure about the color scheme and if maybe i should be more creative with the demons parts#then again its largely just legs lol#if anyone actually reads this ........ i hope it comes across correctly#i like to use darker and more mature themes but am riddled with anxiety over how it will be understood#im gonna work on zelda comic stuff again now .. sorry for all the oc spam#but if there are questions PLEASE feel free to ask im pretty sure i have answers to almosst anything?#also i havent thought of a name for her or the kid .. though im starting to like lady 13#13.1 wont do as a name though poor kid deserves a proper name after already being a weird hybrid that shouldnt exist#either way ... going to bed now GOODNIGHT q-q#(any typos are excused by me being deadly tired ok)
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Started thinking about Riku-Kairi parallels and symbolism wrt the ending of kh2 so please hold while i get needlessly verbose about it-
specifically it started with this gif
and ofc adhd is as adhd does and started going down the rabbit hole of connecting the dots.
The act of reaching out a hand/hand holding is a recurring thing in kh, the vast majority of which is chock full of meaning and symbolism, and this is no exception. This is the culmination of The Hero's Journey part of Sora's tale, the return home, and the heartfelt reunion between long-seperated friends. fun fact the heroine's journey follows the hero's journey for the first third or so before continuing on. kinda like how kh continued on long after things seemed to be 'resolved'. weekly plug to look up Howler's Heroine's Journey essays if you haven't yet
The angle from which I am viewing this scene right now is in regards to ofc Riku, and his own iconic pose that we see the first time in the intro to kh1 (and many, many times since)
And this is where my riku-kairi-are-inverted-parallels-to-each-other brain starts barking like a dog because oughghghghggh same pose opposite side completely different body language- AHG.
And this matches their character arcs (as well as their respective combined arcs with sora) to a T as well. Riku's pose is the first we see, way back in kh1, and his hand is as much a taunt as it is an offer. Very befitting his relationship to sora in that game, which was coloured by a forged rivalry and intense jealousy (to quote the ultimania; Complicated Feelings) of/for sora.
(it is also notable that to date this gesture has yet to be resolved. the closest they've gotten is when sora grasped Riku's hand in kh2 on finding him- albeit in Ansem's visage.
Symbolically this is Sora attempting to accept the gesture, but this time it is Riku who fails to meet him halfway, too deep in guilt and regret to feel worthy of it. his hand is turned downwards, limp and unresisting.
And again in DDD when Riku grabs sora's hand/wrist in an attempt to wake him from his nightmares, but this time sora isn't capable of reciprocating. like two ships passing in the night, always reaching but never quite meeting)
(this one isn't quite as strong in the visual symbolism specific to the Riku Pose, but i did think it bore mentioning)
to return to the first gif however, for Kairi her posture is much less stiff, leaning forward with palpable releif at Sora's return. Honestly the fact that she holds out her left hand (which as far as i know is not her dominant hand) marks this as a very deliberate choice to parallel her as opposite to riku. and much like the rest of kh2's ending, it FEELS like a culmination, a completion of their arcs.... and most certainly isnt.
Which i mean to say, it's a mid-point. And the reason I say this is because of one little thing.
The seashell charm.
There's a sort of irony here in that the charm that was meant to reunite them in this moment is also symbolically like a wedge between them. A heartfelt and meaningful gesture, don't get me wrong! i love this scene and the genuine emotions within, but i do love chewing on the way this gains a slightly different meaning in the greater context of later story beats; specifically that of kh3.
With how pointed and direct the parallel is between kairi and riku in these scenes, it did make me pause for a moment thinking about kh3. i know we've all seen a thousand and one analysis' of the paopu scene at this point, but forgive me as i must do so again under this specific lens.
'how does the paopu scene relate to the hand extended gesture at all?' i hear you ask, and on the visual surface not much. it has more to do with sora and kairi's relationship arc through the games and, of course, the lingering loose thread that was the cave drawing.
The paopu scene is a touching recreation of that cave drawing, one enacted by a pair of kids who didn't know if they would live to see another sunset. It's also probably the most symbollically dense thing in all of kh and that is saying something so I'm going to try and keep my observations limited to just what is relevant to this post- and that would be the way that the paopu scene is a direct continuation of Kairi's 'you're home' gesture in kh2.
shooting stars are also a common recurring symbol in kh, and that's the symbol that ties these two scene's together. if kh1 is two disparate stars each trying to reach the other (the cave drawing, the seashell charm, the way their hands are seperated at the end of kh1), and the end of kh2 is that of the stars finally meeting (the single seashell star charm pressed between their palms), then the paopu scene is that of the stars passing each other by and beginning their own journey's anew (two stars held by crossed arms, each now holding a small piece of the other (bitten fruit) to show that their meeting may have been brief but it was meaningful)
it is in this way that kh3 quietly and tenderly closes out sora and kairi's combined arc, as two unlikely friends who then drift apart again, shining brightly for the shared experiance, Remind mostly serves to support that finality, tying up the last couple loose ends between them, and leaving the two far more comfortable with each other than they ever were while that arc was still ongoing (which i read as them no longer being uncertain as to what their relationship is; that of friends, and not whatever so many others around them had pushed and assumed)
(seriously look at how much more comfortable they are with each other the second the pressure to be something they're not is off. the awkwardness is completely gone i love it)
All of this is ofc still in parallel to Riku, who boasts no such star imagery (instead he has the iconic Heart of KH itself), and in fact while he symbollically continues to reach out to sora, physically he has completely refrained from doing so at all- in fact most examples of the Gesture in kh are deliberately invoked by other characters in order to bring riku to mind in some way (and often more for the players benifit than sora's)
axel in CoM,
(i have given up on tumblr gif search)
YMX in DDD,
which then immidiately cuts to riku in kh1 just to make it as blatant as possible that yes the reference is intentional (i guess CoM was too subtle somehow so they had to make sure this time)
and even Riku himself to Namine at the end of kh3, representing Repliku's final wishes in a funny sort of symbolism oroboros.)
and it's not a coincidence that the completion of that connection provides definitive closure to the arcs in question; that of namine to repliku, but also a little bit to riku himself. namine still has a role to play, but that role (i think) is more or less exclusive to her relationship with sora. namine and riku's relationship arc, background as it is, is complete, and now both are connected primarily through their incomplete arcs with sora.
(which makes the way that sora and kairi's example in kh2 is a complete outlier really interesting tbh. smth smth thinking your relationship is one thing and if it was that thing then yes that would have been the end, but it wasn't that thing and thus it wasn't the end smth smth comphet metaphor smth)
which brings us back to how riku himself hasn't really reached out to sora directly since kh1, the act that set off both of their journey's. The reasons for that are many- guilt, fear, a certainty that sora will not reach back and that he doesn't deserve it anyway- but despite that the Gesture is still subtly affirmed as being Riku's over and over again, never quite letting the audience forget it... because eventually this bit of symbolism so consistently portrayed throughout the series will reach its own conclusion, starting how it began with one deuteragonist reaching out to the other, and this time the other reaching back to complete the gesture.
#i'm sure there's more layers here but i have successfully excised the hyperfixation brainworms so goodnight#and yes this is all written with full soriku endgame actually bias i freely admit#idk man i love the way kh uses symbolism#kingdom hearts#stop talking to yourself flight#flight's making things again#meta#soriku#long post
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‘Nate hasn’t earned a redemption arc yet!’ my dude no-one on Ted Lasso ‘earned’ a redemption arc, that’s the whole damn point
‘redeem’ literally means to compensate for. to give something good in repayment for something bad, to ‘buy back’ the shit you’ve done. And Ted Lasso has never tried to do this. Rebecca didn’t ‘earn’ a redemption arc: she couldn’t unsay all the cruelties she’d said to Higgins, couldn’t bring Jamie back from Man City, couldn’t undo the damage that let to Richmond being regulated. Jamie couldn’t unsay his ageism to Roy or his snottiness to Ted. he couldn’t buy his way out of the bullying he’d imposed on the team – he tried, don’t get me wrong, and then Ted put the breaks on buying the team’s love because he knows how poorly that’s going to go down. earning redemption is an exhausting arc, and Ted Lasso’s been very clever in never really doing it.
what these characters did, however, is resolve to change.
Ted Lasso has never been about redemption: it’s been about reformation. reforming your life, and giving other people the space to acknowledge that and appreciate that. former ‘villains’ in Ted Lasso don’t abase themselves or spend episodes earning back people’s good opinion or their trust: they acknowledge that they’ve done something wrong, and they resolve to turn themselves around. and vitally, they can’t do that until they’ve escaped from the shit place they are in their lives, from their own personal dark forest. Rebecca can’t reform until she’s removed herself from the mental state of obsession with Rupert and instead finds herself in a place of community. Jamie can’t reform until he extracts himself from Man City and his desire to get his father’s approval. mentally, they have to be in a better place themselves before they can start being better for other people.
And then, crucially, I think the crux of a Ted Lasso reformation is a demonstration that you are now a safe space for others when before you weren’t, even if it means putting yourself in a position of vulnerability. for me Rebecca did this not just when she apologised to Ted, but when she offered him an out to share her whole story with the press – risking the press intrusion she so hates. Jamie did this when he joined a potentially risky protest against a prominent sponsor, risking further potential reputational damage (at a time when Jamie’s brand has never needed more of a boost) if it means being part of a team.
and because of that, I think it’s impossible to argue that Nate isn’t in the middle of his reform. He’s already extracted himself from his dark forest: he’s put Rupert behind him, he’s sorting his father issues, he’s proven himself to be less dependent on external validation while having greater confidence in himself. and he’s also starting to show that he’s a safe person to be around, even at the risk of vulnerability. he owns a humiliating nickname that we know carries a lot of painful baggage for him for the sake of conveying to Will that he was wrong, and I think for someone who’s had so many self-esteem issues as Nate, owning a name which he saw as minimising and infantilising and humiliating was a big gesture.
I don’t think that Nate’s arc is finished yet. but I think it’s impossible to claim that he isn’t ‘mid-turn’. and no, he hasn’t ‘earned’ redemption, but ma’am, this isn’t the earn your redemption on your hands and knees show, this is the make the changes to your life that are needed and accept other peoples’ grace if it comes to you show. And there’s a big difference between the two.
#i have a lot of feelings about redemption v reformation#ted lasso#ted lasso spoilers#nate shelley#rebecca welton#jamie tartt
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DM Tip: The Debt Always Comes Due
Isn't it weird how little we engage with gold as a real gameplay system? Sure, at low level wealth makes a great questhook, the party is usually hurting for a payout so that they can afford necessary gear upgrades/ubiquitous healing potion restocks/their next trip to the magic item shop. After a while though the promise of raw wealth loses its lustre, and the party is less likely to go out of their way to accept bounties, go off chasing treasuremaps, or accept gigs from shady patrons.
Generally I'd advise that this is a sign that your party are done being run of the mill sellswords, and it's time to hit them with a big epic questline that's focused more on emotional and narrative stakes than base currency. That said, sometimes you want to run a longer adventure arc that's centred around the acquisition of wealth, but to do that, you're going to need to go against the grain on one of the foundational assumptions that underpins D&D both mechanically and narratively.
TLDR: If you want your party to be motivated by gold past their first big pay off you should consider using a "wealth hurdle", which in short is a narrative and gameplay challenge that forces them to collect not only more gold than they already have but also more gold than they could get doing what they've been doing so far. This can be anything from a crimelord calling in a debt on them or one of their allies, a powerful monster swooping in and demanding tribute, comissioning some grand construction, or funding the defence of a region. Having the hurdle active should cause problems for the party, and not clearing the hurdle before a perdetermiend deadline will immensely bad things to happen. This will force the party to take risks they otherwise wouldn't, giving a high degree of focus to their subsequent adventures that they wouldn't have if they were content.
What we're trying to fix:
At it's core, D&D is a power fantasy, and a good chunk of its gameplay mechanics regardless of edition are about acquiring new strengths, options, and assets. These assumptions are likewise built into the genre and narrative structure of most campaigns: Heroes undertake quests usually for the promise of some reward, gain experiance/hit milestones along the way, and eventually stumble across some kind of loot drop at the end. There's nothing strictly wrong with this, but it does mean that all the resource problems the heroes face in the early game (and the inbuilt motivations that come along with them) are all but resolved by the time they hit the next gameplay tier.
This is complicated by the fact that outside of 3rd party options there's not much to spend money on. The DMG (which you should totally ignore) say you shouldn't let them buy magic items, and the common wisdom would say "let them buy a keep", but that solution only appeals a niche selection of adventuring parties.
Using Weath Hurdles turns acquiring gold not just into a quest goal but a gameplay challenge, forcing your party to scour the land for potential sources of wealth (and risk upsetting whoever or whatever happens to be currently holding it) and take on challenges they'd never normally attempt if there was only survival/personal enrichment at stake.
Food for Thought:
Tradional d&d structure has the party getting a huge payout at the end of their adventure in the form of a bosshoard or questgiver reward which is a very backloaded "you can have your dessert after you finish your greens" sort of attitude. Consider switching it up sometimes: have the party's patron or employer give them a small stipend to spend on kitting themselves out, have an early game treasure haul so the party can have a mid-arc shopping episode. This is especially useful in higher level games where your party may go weeks to months without a level up as it preserves the feeling of progression and gives them new toys to play with in between the big character defining abilities.
Recently I've been learning my way around blades in the dark (can't reccomend it enough btw), and just like any other time I've wanted to learn a new ttrpg system I'm having to do a bit of neural rewiring when it comes to figuring out how to write and run sessions of the game. Coin in BitD is both an XP (used for upgrading the party's shared crew sheet) a resource (burned to upgrade the results of various rolls) and a stat ( rolled to see if the players can lay their hands on various hard to come by items). It didn't really click for me until my first group messed up really badly on what was supposed to be their introductory adventure and pissed off the local crimeboss. I was just going to have him bully them, lock them up and then have a jailbreak the next session ( it's what I'd do in d&d), but on the fly I had the idea that he'd let them go with a massive debt they needed to pay off, which forced them to either pay him a percentage of their takings on all future jobs, or do small jobs in utmost secrecy so that they could build up their own strength under his nose.
Interestingly enough, the d&d game where I thought player wealth as a resource was most interestingly used was Dimension 20’s starstruck Odessy, which was a conversion of the amazing fanmade starwars5e system. Starstruck is a parody of hypercapitalism and aptly uses money as both a narrative and gameplay feature. One character is stuck paying weekly insurance premiums on a debt he would never be able to pay down forcing him to act recklessly to acquire wealth in the immediate future. Another character was a economic and political power player and some of the best moments in the series come from her high stakes wheeling and dealing and bouncing money between accounts while the rest of the group engages in epic space battles; the rest of the crew might’ve barely got their ship out of the dogfight, but she’s the one who ensures they can pay for the repairs once they get to the space dock. None of this would be possible without completely ignoring the normal constraints of wealth per level: gaining and losing huge sums based on moment by moment player decisions, The need for them to play along with the absurist gig economy to boost their rating and get better paying jobs, making a devil’s bargain with a corporate sponsor all so that they could risk their lives in a deadly arena fight all for the (very unlikely) chance of winning the equivalent of a million GP. Not every campaign should, or even could so focus on money in this way, but it was FASCINATING to watch it in action.
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Usually, I like to finish reading a fic before recommending it properly, but I've been sucked into about five different STAR WARS fics recently that I've gotten far enough into that I'm willing to trust my heart to them because they're scratching a very specific itch for me--namely, that I want deeper explorations of both the Jedi Order and of Anakin's character. I want fic to punch me in the feelings over both of these aspects of the story. I want fic to sometimes set Obi-Wan and Anakin aside and focus on Ahsoka for awhile, really tell her story. I want Jedi themes woven into a story. I want an exploration of Anakin's mindset that reminds me of just how much I love him and have sympathy for him. And fandom has delivered for me.
DO YOU WANT FIC TO BLACK OUT TO AND LOSE AN ENTIRE WEEKEND OVER? HAVE I GOT SOME RECS FOR YOU:
✦ Out with Lanterns by SkyeBean, ahsoka & mace & jedi & clones & cast, 312.5k In another universe, Jedi Masters Plo Koon and Depa Billaba decide a Padawan could do Mace some good. It takes a while, but he eventually agrees. When he takes Ahsoka Tano as his Padawan, Mace knows that he's broken through a Shatterpoint and changed the course of a life. How, he doesn't know. This fic accomplishes several things that have sent me over the moon: 1) At its heart, it's an Ahsoka fic that shows her growing up as a Padawan, going on missions, learning lessons, and having character growth. 2) It weaves in so many other characters around her, that Mace is there in almost every chapter, serious but warm in the Force, just as beautifully characterized as she is. 3) The other Jedi get their moments of excellents, Shaak taking Ahsoka on her Akul hunt was wonder to read, seeing Obi-Wan show up for a chapter had me over the moon, Adi taking care with Ahsoka was lovely, Depa was a shining star when she took Ahsoka under her wing, Fox growing used to these strange Jedi and growing into himself through Ahsoka's eyes was wonderful. 4) The writing is that kind of solid that I don't mean as mid-tier, but the kind that I feel like can bear weight on it, I can pick it up and read for 30k and barely realize any time has passed, despite that I've gotten through an entire arc of the fic. 5) It does an incredible job of balancing that feel of The Clone Wars show, without directly copying anything, that it's like these are arcs that I could have seen on the show itself, the lessons woven in, but still with enough plot moving forward and action to make it exciting. If you want more Jedi-centric fic in your life (where they don't have to be perfect! sometimes they can be less than perfect and it's okay because they're still good! ohhhh, my heart warmed at that) or you want to read a lovely Ahsoka-centric fic in a different life, but still so recognizably herself, then this is one I want to shove right in your face immediately.
✦ Take it from the top and try again by mauvera, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & padme & mace & dooku & cast, time travel, 116.k wip Five years into his self imposed exile on Tattooine, Obi-Wan Kenobi is gifted the chance to go back and bring hope back to the galaxy. With hindsight on his side, he fully intends to save his master, save his padawan, make some new and old friends again, prepare the Jedi for a war they’ll hopefully never see and begin to pull apart all the many tangled threads of the Sith Lord’s plans. Should be relatively easy. Right? I got sucked into the first fic in this series (which is complete, if you want to read it--it's not the end of the story, but it's a good stopping point and feels like it should have some solid resolution if you don't want to get into a wip) and read the first fic over the course of about three days because I was sucked in so thoroughly. I can never get enough of Obi-Wan time traveling back to the past, where he loves the Jedi and they love him, and I love this one because he has to make genuine plans for changing things--things change and I have no idea how that's going to affect Palpatine's machinations! Exciting! But it's also a lovely look at Obi-Wan's dynamics with multiple characters--I found the Obi-Wan & Padme scenes a hightlight personally, their friendship really blossomed as they both flung themselves into trying to better the galaxy, even if she doesn't know he's from the future, that he's working so hard matched a lot of her energy and I really enjoyed that--from Qui-Gon to Mace to Padme to Anakin and, as the sequel progresses, Dooku as well. It's another Jedi-positive fic, it has me invested in the plot, it's a joy to see competent!Obi-Wan, and I would love to shove it at more people.
✦ Post Order 66 Exile AU by Livsy, obi-wan & anakin, 46k (wip-esque) After a failed order 66, in which many Jedi still died but the Sith were defeated, an exiled warrior and a boy wander a distant planet and attempt to get along. This is probably the shortest fic on this list but I'm including it because it genuinely felt longer than that, for how dense the emotional intensity of it is. It's an AU where the Jedi barely eked out a victory, still on the edge of extinction in many ways, and Anakin deep in the pits of the dark side, so Obi-Wan takes him to a backwater planet in exile for the both of them, traveling through the countryside and just trying to make it from day to day. What punched me right in the feelings place is that this fic doesn't shy away from the hurt and the anger on both sides, that both of them are allowed to be unreliable narrators that have their own points of view on what's transpired and what lays between them. It doesn't back away from the hurt they both feel, the despair they both feel, yet there's hope here. It's ultimately a story about clawing yourself back from the dark side, and it's beautifully characterized for both of them, that unkind things are said on both of their parts, but you understand why the characters are in the place they are. It's wrapped up in a lushly written backdrop, with some lovely Japanese feudal era details woven in, but also with a Star Wars patina spread across all of it. It's not necessarily a kind fic, but if you like fic that bites down on a wound, I enjoyed this series a lot and would love to see it continued--but, honestly, what's here is already enough resolution that, looking back on it after the initial "Noooooo, I need more!" feeling has faded, I'm actually very satisfied with. ✦ Men of Power by AlabasterInk, obi-wan & anakin & mace & yoda & jedi & palpatine & cast, 86.1k wip When an old powerful man suddenly comes in and sweeps your underage Padawan away without so much as a by your leave, that’s the time to start asking questions. I'm only about 20k into this fic, so I can't say what shape it will take later on or how much pairings might come into it, but I still had to come running over to shove this fic at people, because it's scratching the itch I have for Jedi-positive fic that explores the idea of Anakin's trauma from his childhood as a slave, that this is a child who is wound so tight and comes from such a horrible thing having been done to him, having been owned as a person, that I understand why he stays silent on some of the things I desperately wish he could talk about or he doesn't really believe some of the things the Jedi tell him. It's a fic that takes a lot more care with Anakin's character than I think canon ever intended, weaving in a lot of the heartbreaking stuff from Legends' supplementing the canon, and is creating something that punches me right in the feelings place for him, that he's such a bright, brilliant boy, but I see why he struggled and it's not about assigning blame in any direction. It's about deeply caring people who fate has take a few steps to the left and something shifts just a little--and I appreciate that there's something very delicate feeling here, that the Jedi just don't have any real reason to be suspicious of Palpatine, his actions make sense, they genuinely can't feel any ill intention from him in the Force, they discuss why it would make sense that he'd want to support Anakin, all while we the readers can see, in hindsight, where the shadows have been creeping in. If you want Jedi-positive fic that also leaves some teeth marks over Anakin's trauma being explored in a way that is entirely sympathetic to him, then I want to shove this fic at you, too.
#lumi.txt#star wars#obi wan kenobi#anakin skywalker#mace windu#yoda#ahsoka tano#jedi order#fic recs#star wars fic recs
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Introducing; Yuichi Usagi-Cuddles!
There’s a slight typo in his basic character bio, (first, grey image) other than “yuich,” his family in America lives in the part of the hidden city under Jersey. He lives in Jersey. He’s a Jersian. So in terms of leosagi, it’s gonna be an enemies-to-lovers comedy-of-errors muahahahaha!!
More (a LOT more) info about him as his own guy under the cutoff :D ⬇️
Basically; He’s a silly guy! I feel like his kinda buffoonish, embarrassing personality in canon is simultaneously PERFECT for Rise’s writing style & grievously underrated in fanon depictions. So he’s this clownish type of character, haha.
Okay, time to go hyperfixation mode.
Adhd & his stubborn attitude;
He has ADHD! Executive function issues makes it hard for him to start tasks & manage himself, so he relies on his teams (the Mad Dogs when he’s training & the Rise equivalent to his canon friend group on his own time) to not only instruct him, but also hold him accountable & keep him on task. He’s body-doubling without even realizing it.
Although, he resents the things he does to accommodate his disability. He doesn’t notice that doing the things he does genuinely helps or why so he thinks he’s using them as a crutch because of incompetence. Every time he gets stubborn and ignores the things he needs to do, he crashes and burns. When he was new in town with no teacher & no friends who liked martial arts, he became a huge sad sack until the kraang invasion.
His character arc is about being able to rely on other people & accommodations. That relying on a bit more help than other people doesn’t make you incompetent, choosing to seek out the support you need so you can do your best is the true mature thing to do. I was inspired by canon Yuichi’s struggles with paying attention and Rise’s themes of cooperation. (& also my own experience with adhd and learning with executive function issues & junk)
Relationships w/ the turtles;
The Mad Dogs agree to let him like, intern with them? So he can see what it’s like to be a vigilante, they offer him advice and they occasionally go on low to mid-tier missions with his help. They take him on cause they think more heroes and allies out there, the less work they have to do haha. Also, one of the writers mentioned a season 3 would have them adjusting to being ~official heroes,~ I think this would be them trying to be “real.”
He’s closest friends with Mikey out of the whole group! (Adhd solidarity) Then it goes Donnie -> Raph -> and finally Leo (for now muahaha)
I tried to give Leosagi an interesting dynamic with constructing his character like this; They have similar insecurities from drawing self-worth from technical capabilities that they can develop past together, but Leo is clever and calculating about it vs Yuichi being rash and impulsive. So like smart x stupid but they’re the same actually.
His Family in Jersey;
He speaks english fluently because he’s visited his American family frequently his whole life, they’re very close. He has an accent though since he mainly speaks Japanese.
I haven’t fleshed out this concept enough, but I think members of his jersey/Cuddles half of the family would be spoofs of characters from the original yojimbo comics, implied to be reincarnations? Except Miyamoto ofc. (i’ll explain later..)
Reusing the ninja orphans plotline from the original show, his family utilizes their cute appearances to run an orphanage too. They wonder why this Chizu lady is constantly showing up with unhoused children, but they’re just grateful they’re safe now.
Everyone in his family HATES Mrs. Cuddles, they all think she’s in prison and are happy about it. She might’ve given him that scratch on his face.
Additional;
He is gay.
Thank you for your time.
#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the tmnt#artists on tumblr#rottmnt#leosagi#leoichi#tmnt#tmnt fanart#adhd#adhd character#rottmnt usagi#tmnt leonardo#rottmnt leo#gonetoforks’ art
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Sooooo... How do you feel about the season 5?
In short? Mid. 6-6.5/10.
In long…?
A severely rushed season that bit off way more than it could chew. A season that had the characters pull powers from their asses more frequently than ever before. A season that had shitty “dramatic” moments for the sake of having dramatic moments. A season that lampshades issues instead of fixing them. A season with so, so much wasted potential.
It basically boils down: everything they wanted to do COULD have been good, but they just didn’t have the time.
I’ll go into some varied details below. I’d also like to make clear- I’ll be tagging all of my Season Five Posts with “Lego Monkie Kid Season 5” and “LMK Spoilers” until August 1st. Then the gloves are coming off and I’ll stop tagging them.
(I still liked the season, for what it’s worth- and you can watch it in full here! I’ve got some drafts and bots cooking as we speak!)
This was a cute send-off to Flying Bark! It was nice of them to acknowledge, in some way, everything that those dears did for the show- because Lego Monkie Kid would NOT be where it is without them.
Significantly less cute-
The absolute kick in the fucking face that constantly superimposing old footage over newer, worse footage is.
You don’t want us to be constantly reminded of the animation downgrade- that’s the literal last thing that anyone wants. Why would you constantly remind us that it used to be better?
What the fuck does this accomplish? Okay, let’s make comparisons, cause that’s the only thing that can result from pulling this shit-
This is what happens when you constantly reference the older, superior content.
PEOPLE CONSTANTLY NOTICE THAT YOUR CONTENT IS WORSE.
Also, why is it so saturated? How do you make a Lego Minifigure look like he has jaundice?
It’s just a bad look to constantly reference content you can’t live up to. I’m hoping they’ll just recreate old content instead of sloppily pasting it into the background of the show- it’ll be less jarring.
Alright, what else…
———
Yay, I called it! Nuwa is not MK’s “loving though bereft mommy”! Which I had been guessing ever since the Celestial Pagoda leaked, actually-
I mean, come on. He’s literally stealing the stones away from her as she reaches to take them back.
And the Season confirmed it! Nuwa might’ve be been MK’s creator, but she certainly wasn’t his momma.
And you know how the series subtlety clues you in to how little she cares about her “son”?
Nuwa didn’t give him a name. She had hundreds, maybe thousands of years to think on it- but no. No name.
We mortals name our pets, our vehicles, our art. We love them enough to bestow monikers.
Nuwa didn’t even bother to name her own sapient mortal creation.
But when he makes a move against her, does something she doesn’t want, takes destiny into his own hands?
She calls out to him with one word- not “son”. Not ��MK”.
Nuwa angrily calls him “mortal”.
Becuase that’s all he ever was to her, really. A mortal pawn. A handmade puppet.
Someone designed to fulfill a sacrifice. Even though her intentions were good, MK’s sole purpose by her hand was to shoulder the weight of the world like a good little hero.
So… a potential “villain” in the making?
———
Lampshading the fact that you’re doing the “macguffin hunt” again does not excuse doing the “macguffin hunt” again.
Lampshading the “apocalypse after apocalypse” plots doesn’t make them any less exhausting.
Lampshading Macaque’s lack of narrative consequences does not undo the awkward and weak redemption arc.
———
They changed Mei “no longer wielding” the Samadhi fire, I guess.
Ignore that she never displayed a hint of concern or sorrow over “losing it” because now she’s sad and worried (after backlash from the fans over her losing it) about losing it.
Like, Subodhi knows so much about the world and the universe that he’s aware of his existence in the ink scroll- but he gets Mei not having an interplanetary level threat inside her wrong?
I smell a retcon.
———
Macaque’s redemption arc is still shit. I’ve got a whole rant queued to release soon, actually- I imagine it might be the final time I comment on his arc until Season Six.
To put it short- Macaque still falls upwards into redemption. No pushback or difficulty or introspection. He’s just a magically better person without any onscreen development to make the change believable.
But they reference this at one point?
Sun Wukong points out that Macaque escapes the trial without any punishment, and is just allowed to mope in place of an actual consequence.
So maaaaaayybeeeee they’ll do something in Season Six? I’ve lost all faith that he’ll ever be an interesting character again, though.
He’s essentially just “brooding rival #80058”. Instead of being a character that calls back to Seasons 1-3, from 4 onwards he’s just a brand new dude who totally didn’t commit any atrocities with a smile on his face- and he’s a worse and more boring character for it.
———
If I haven’t misjudged the intent, I think Monkie Kid will be going back to being an episodic series for the extent of Season Six. Again, they lampshade the “apocalypse after apocalypse” thing, yeah?
And now they have a perfect formula- find someone who’s having trouble with their new power, and help them.
And we might see Bai He again???
Let’s hope for a good breather season!
———
Rest in piss Li Jing their asses did NOT cook with you sorry papa
You could’ve been interesting in the writers didn’t try to pull a “loving father” bait and switch after you got like four scenes of being a raw jackass
If they were going to deviate from the source material and make you a good dad couldn’t it have just been:
“Li Jing, you were not invited to the trial!”
“STF that monkey son of a bitch hurt my baby boy-“
“Father I’m 300-“
“Hush son, let daddy take care of this- that monkey son of a bitch hurt my baby boy when he stole the Samadhi fire map!”
Maybe next season you’ll get to be interesting, hun.
(I’m still writing for Lotusfam though)
———
Drama for the sake of drama. 0/10 scene. Could’ve just had the interruption come AFTER they held hands, but no. Gotta drag shit out for the shippers or whatever. There was no reason to prolong this reunion.
I’m really not a fan of the “just wait another season for it”, mentality. Stop stretching shit out. You had a chance to do something sweet and heartwarming, and chose not to for the sake of trying to drag a conclusion out.
Ugh.
———
Characters just pull powers out of their ass for the sake of forcing dramatic scenes.
THESE ARE DOGSHIT SCENES
THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. THIS IS DONE SOLELY FOR THE SALE OF “MUH DRAMATIC FINALE” AND IS BAD
ITS BAD WRITING TO HAVE CHARACTERS PULL NEW MAGICAL POWERS OUT OF THEIR ASSES FOR THE SAKE OF DRAMA
IF WUKONG HAD THIS POWER FROM THE START HE SHOULD’VE USED IT AGAINST HIS FUCKING LETHAL ENEMIES AND NOT SAVED IT FOR HIS PRECIOUS STUDENT
MK NEVER LEARNED TO USE THE FILLET SPELL. THE WRITERS PULLED IT OUT OF THEIR ASS TO FORCE DRAMA BY HAVING MK TORTURE HIS MENTOR LONGER THAN EVEN THEIR ACTING ENEMY LI JING DID WITH A CIRCLET THAT IS CANONICALLY TIGHTER THAN HIS FIRST
WE SEE HOW FAST HE IS WHEN HE FIGHTS THE AZURE LION
MK CAN MOVE FASTER THAN WUKONG
HE COULD’VE BEATEN HIM THERE IN AN EQUALLY CLIMATIC RACE
I FEEL NOTHING WHEN I WATCH THIS BECAUSE IT IS FORCED DRAMA FOR THE SAKE OF DRAMA
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#Lego Monkie Kid#LMK#Lego Monkie Kid Season 5#LMK Spoilers#LMK Critical#LMK Analysis#Adding it here too#I LIKED SEASON FIVE#I JUST HAVE A LOT OF CRITICISMS
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