#most of my original stuff features villainous love interests that I can't help but think some of you will go wild for. go figure lol

[jokerfic]

just reread your pastimes series. still so fucking angry and conflicted over it. I love your writing. please write a book I wanna be absolutely destroyed again.

hi thank you I love this and I also have bad news in that all my future projects with TDK Joker have him acting even WORSE, so if you're angry and conflicted now...

(also original fiction is on the agenda! genuinely considering posting some of it as serials online but I have to finish the projects in question first. we'll see how it goes)

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

That post about writers completely re-inventing characters and ignoring continuity and turning them into basically self-insert OC's (which is generally infuriating for fans) got me thinking about times when it actually worked well to totally revamp a character. I think one of the keys is when it's an extremely minor character, and long dead or out of continuity, so fans are less likely to mind. (Readmore, because damn do I ramble a lot.)

Like one of my favorite examples is the Shade, a Silver-Age Flash villain who had a cane who could create shadows:

It's the guy in the top hat, so old school that he hung out with The Fiddler.

Shade had largely fallen out of continuity when he was picked up to be a major character in James Robinson's Starman, where he was reinvented as an immortal being from the Victorian era who had gained supernatural powers from a magical accident. No longer needing the cane, this Shade could control and project shadows. Starman's Shade was also a significantly more interesting and complex anti-hero type, who had adopted Opal City as his home and is willing to defend it. He is dark enough to rip people to pieces with his shadows, but winds up helping the good guys more often than not, even if it's sometimes for his own purposes. The series also delves into his past history through the present, fleshing out his past and origins. Also, he got much hotter:

That probably helped, too. This Shade is so different from the original he may as well be James Robinson's OC, but i can't imagine even fans of the original complaining, he's a very cool character whose profile was raised enough in Starman that he got a solo mini-series. He also appeared in the live action Stargirl TV series as the Robinson version of the Shade, playing a similar role as an amoral anti-hero who might be helpful but can't always be trusted.

Of course, I may be biased, because I love The Shade.

Another example where I'm definitely biased is X-Men's Changeling transforming into Morph on TAS. Changeling was kind of an interesting character, as a former terrorist turned good with a last-minute redemption, but his redemption was a half-assed flashback that retconned his death to revive Xavier. He probably would have been a forgotten footnote in X-Men history if he hadn't been pulled out of mothballs and given a personality overhaul to become Morph, a much more fun, heroic and sympathetic character. I think it says a lot of that all the alternate versions of Changeling that appeared in the comics since TAS (AoA and Exiles) have been clearly based on TAS Morph's "wacky shape-shifter" personality, and literally called Morph rather than Changeling. The alternate version has largely eclipsed the original. That being said, it would be kind of interesting to see 616 Changeling resurrected on Krakoa with more of his original personality intact. He could join X-Force for sneaky shape-shifter espionage stuff now that Mystique is busy with the Council and Destiny. If nothing else, it would be funny to see a former criminal be absolutely appalled at Beast's actions in X-Force because "I thought you were supposed to be the good guys!"

There are examples even with bigger name characters, like Bucky Barnes being famously brought back from the dead in 2005 as a mind-controlled assassin. Despite turning Bucky darker and grittier, the revived Bucky has become something of a mainstay of the Marvel Universe, was featured in several movies, and shared a Disney+ series with Falcon in which they were clearly dating. It probably helped that by 2005, Bucky was just famous for being dead, and not many people were reading old comics from the 40's and 50's, so Winter Soldier could over-write teen Bucky.

And of course, there are major overhauls to even long-standing characters that add depth, like Magneto going from a standard 60's villain to a noble-but-misguided terrorist, Holocaust survivor, and old friend of Xavier. I think most people acknowledge that to be a massive improvement on the character that made him far more interesting and complex.

It probably helps when the characters are taken in a "good" direction, although it can be fun to watch people go dark as well. Grim and gritty Bucky was still a largely sympathetic character, he was just "cooler" (and also alive). But I'm pretty sure absolutely no one liked DC villain Dr. Light being retconned as a rapist in Identity Crisis, even if it made him more threatening. (There was a lot to hate about Identity Crisis). I'm also not super-fond of Josh Williamson giving the original Trickster a come-back only to write him as much nastier than he was before, although at least he didn't become a rapist. Never write James Jesse again, Williamson.

Responses are mixed to Moira McTaggert, another long-dead minor character, being retconned as not only a mutant, but a mutant who has been directing and influencing all of the X-Men's history from behind the scenes. Personally, I'm sad to see one of the X-Men's best known human allies turned into a secretive and manipulative mutant, but I could deal with it until Percy turned her into an evil cyborg that wore a Banshee skin-suit. Percy had better keep his claws off Stevie Hunter, one of the few human X-Men allies left alive. (Also she's totally a congresswoman now).

Overall, I think it depends a lot on how long the character has been out of action and how well the writer uses them, and responses will always be mixed. Of course, these positive examples are not meant to justify the tendency of certain writers to take well-known characters with a long established history and completely ignore it in order to write the shallowest and laziest possible version. Everyone reading this probably has a different writer in mind, and you are all right.

[aquaburst3]

There's a lot of rumblings about people debating if TWST would work in a visual novel format. I don't think that would work out very well for the same reasons that a lot of the bigger TWST blogs mentioned. But what I think would work better for TWST instead is the Fate direction.

For those of your who don't know, the original Fate Stay Night visual novel had three separate routes featuring a different love interest for Shirou. In the "true" route, he gets together with Arturia. In Unlimited Bladeworks, it's Rin. In Heaven's Feel, it's Sakura.

While some plot beats happen no matter what (like Archer wanting to kill Shirou), the story completely changes depending on the route you are on. In Fate for example, the turning point is when he didn't use a command spell to stop Saber. However, in UWB, he did. In Heaven's Feel, he walked Sakura home, making her more interested in Shirou. Also, Fate and UBW are similar because of the similar tone and themes, but still have different outcomes depending on the choices you pick. Heaven's Feel is the darkest out of all of the routes, featuring A LOT of character death that doesn't happen in the other routes.

I think this would be a best of both worlds situation. Unlike a traditional Otome, there would character options that are allowed to be strictly platonic no matter what for those who are more averse to romance. But there's a real option for romance for those who want it. It would also be a lot easier on developers since you only have to flesh a few relationships instead of a couple dozen, and you don't have the huge headache of dealing with the butterfly effect changes for dozens of character routes.

There's a catch. For in order for this to work, they need to write an actual female character, not a blank slate. (While this would work for a male or non binary MC too, let's face it—this is Disney we're talking about, and they would never greenlight something like that for multiple LGBTQ+ couples.) Shirou has an actual character and impact on the plot. Doing this with a blank slate wouldn't work since the MC wouldn't be able to have much option to push the story and change things. Another catch is that well...you can't do this with everyone and Yana would have the make a tough choice about who you can romance. (I think the most likely would be the Overblot gang as a whole with Malleus being the "true" route, but that's just me.) Give and take, I guess.

Having said this, people do stuff like this in fanfiction form. Even with me, I have my own "Yuu" named Adriana for my fic series who is shipped with Jamil, and share another "Yuu" named Lizzie with my friend @stormkitty97 for an HP/TWST crossover we're writing who is shipped with Vil. These two are drastically different characters.

Lizzie is a half white and Japanese squib who is able to use her tiny magical core with the help of the pens and crystals like how Luz is able to use magic with the sigils in TOH. She's also a middle class girl from England, who is quiet and bookish, but is also witty, sarcastic and can be quite jealous and vindictive at times. (Or at least that's my read of her, anyways.) She understands some Japanese, but doesn't understand French.

Whereas Adriana from my own works is a rich latina (Cuban, Mexican with a dash of Sicilian for good measure) from Vancouver, Canada, who is an ambivert, who is sassy, bold, analytical, manipulative, secretive and guarded. Adriana isn't a bookworm like Lizzie, but is much more into cartoons, anime and videogames, even making a lot of pop culture references. She also likes to party while Lizzie doesn't nearly as much. Due to her status as a former popular mean girl, she has more "villain" traits than Lizzie in some aspects. Adriana knows a fair bit of French thanks to going to a French Immersion primary school when she was younger and some Spanish thanks to her mom being fluent in it. Her Japanese skills are non existent, despite having a Japanese stepfather.

Each of these series will take radically different directions compared to the other. Adriana and Lizzie are completely different people, who make different choices based on their background and personality. Adriana's has zero resistance to magic, which causes a lot of problems.

They also each get closer to a different dorm outside of Heartslabyul due to their respectful love interests. Lizzie gets closer to the Pomefiore characters, including Vil and Rook. Adriana gets closer to the Scarabia Dou and some other residents from that dorm, having more of a coworker relationship with Rook and Vil later on and only being friends with Epel.

In conclusion, I guess, read TWST canon rewrite fanfics with female "Yuus" with a pairing marked off. (You can do the same with male and non-binary Yuus as well, obviously.) You'll get pretty much the same effect that I mentioned here. One rec on the top of my head is Thorns and Ink by @thosebrookfieldgirls.

[13eyond13]

What's your opinion on different interpretations of Light and L's characters? By saying that i mean how they were portrayed in DN Drama, Musical (let's take Japanese version) and Movies.

Personally I find the most interesting interpretation of Light in the Drama, bc he's more soft and sympathetic. I'm not saying that I would prefer him to animanga!Light (animanga!Light is still the best), but at least it's something new and fresh (also, i absolutely LOVE the scene where Souichiro learns that his son was Kira all along and Light is just split bc he can't decide whether he wants to be Kira or wants his father alive and the scene is absolutely gut-wrenching I would sell my soul for it). If we speak about Japanese musical, I don't get Light's character here? In his first song ("Where's the justice?") he sings about unjust world and how everything is "just law, not law and order, but in the next song ("Hurricane") he already sings that he's the god of brend new world? I mean, his motivation moves from "wants to help innocents" to "wants to be god bc of boredom" kinda quickly? And DN Movies, well.... They certainly made Light darker and i don't like the fact bc it feels they made him darker so he could contrast with softer L.

Speaking of L, again, the best version is animanga version and we all know it 🛐. But I think I love his interpretation in Musical too? I love these songs that show us his thinking process and I love the fact that in Musical L and Light seem to obsess over each other like in canon (yk, bc they always sing about how it would be like to see the world through other's eyes etc.). I find Drama!L to be veeeeeeeery fan-servicy, but he's still entertaining, especially when the show allows him slow scenes where he doesn't have to take his shirt off 50 times during the dialogue, but instead speaks about his ideology or relationships with other people (scenes with Near, Yagami Souichiro, Light (esp the one where he tries to make him confess). As for Movies!L, well... I just don't like him. Neither L nor Light are the embodiment of good or justice but the creators made it seem like Light is absolutely evil and L is absolutely good and this pisses me off. L lets Misa Amane go free after Rem's death even though Misa killed tons of people and he tells Souichiro that he was sorry that he couldn't save Light so I presume that he would have let him go too (even if he wouldn't, it's still dumb, bc he let Misa go). Also fans are like "awww look at him giving a candy to a crying child he would've been such a great father". I mean, I'm not against making characters softer or kinder, but even in the animanga, where L tortured people and sacrificed criminals, there's still a huge L fanbase that sees him as a completely good guy. And by making Light darker and L kinder they as well could have said "yep, we have a villain and a hero, they are complete oopposites". Idk I just don't get it.

Your thoughts?

Hi hello! I have only seen half of the j-drama, watched the anime twice, watched the musical once, and saw the Netflix movie when it first came out. And I never really liked any of them nearly as much as the manga, so that's why I always sound like a broken record about it on this blog 😆 I just think the manga is by far the best-written, funniest, saddest, and prettiest-looking version all at once.

The drama might actually be my favourite alternate version Light as well out of all the things I've seen too, because that adaptation was also funny/entertaining and sometimes sad, and it often surprised me in a good way. And yeah, drama!Light was like an entirely different character, and maybe that's why he was more interesting and sympathetic to me than just a more watered-down/cardboard version of the original complicated manga guy. I find Light often gets turned into a privileged Mikami sort of character in adaptations, rather than the oddly-chill-at-times one with the weird sense of humour he was in the manga to me. And L is just almost always made more cartoony and goofy and/or emo and somehow cast in a heroic light while simultaneously still being a shady dude in everything he does, so I haven't ever really liked L in anything else very much. I do often hear people like musical!L a lot. And I feel like a wet blanket especially when talking about the musical in the fandom, because I just didn't really like it or feel particularly moved by it most of the time. Especially when it came to L and Light and the Lawlight aspect of stuff, which was boring and lacking in chemistry to me. I found most of it too sincere and serious and somber to be entertaining, as DN easily becomes extremely tedious to me when most of the dark/goofy humour and ironic slyness is sucked out of it like that. I feel a lot of adaptations focus so heavily on Lawlight that it actually gets boring to me too, even though it's also my favourite ship. It's a bit hard to explain, but I prefer Lawlight to almost be left as this curious little unspoken background thing going on in addition to all the other interesting stuff, rather than featured as this big, obvious central element of the plot. At least outside of fanmade stuff.

My next favourite version of DN overall after the manga is definitely the anime, simply because the voice acting and soundtrack is so good. But even that is still like "why the heck would you watch the anime when the manga is right there??" to me most of the time... 😆

[rebelsofshield]

I'm in the animated fandom, and I thought TLJ was a pile of garbage. While I loved the creatures, and they are definitely Filoni-esque, I was not satisfied with many of the story decisions in the movie, along with many of the 'jokes' in it. Everyone's going to tell me that "Luke wasn't the same guy he was when he was young" but I can't imagine Luke entertaining the idea of killing his nephew. I didn't like the "Reylo" stuff, or the fact Kylo chooses to become a one dimensional evil tyrant. (tbc)

I’m going to consolidate both into a single post so I can respond to them all at once:

I hated that Hux was reduced to comic relief even though he was a threatening, cunning villain in TFA and in the books. I was so excited about Finn’s arc, and Rose, but that ended up feeling pointless and with no payoff. Rose really came off as boring, they should’ve tied her into the story more than her just being Finn’s sidekick. Oh, and Snoke was pointless. I don’t care if he gets a book or whatever in the future, it still felt like a waste in the film. Also the movie draaaagged. Just a mess.            

First off, I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t enjoy the movie. I don’t think it was perfect, but I think The Last Jedi is a genuinely good film that does a lot really well. I’m going to respond to your individual critiques, but I want to stress that I don’t want you to feel that I am attempting to criticize you or change your mind about the movie. If you didn’t enjoy it, that’s totally fine. I can’t change that about you and you’re unlikely to change my opinion of it. Regardless, here are my thoughts.I’ll address the small stuff first.I never really cared for Snoke. Snoke was always a character that was more interesting in terms of what he was rather than who he was. He’s a big scary evil man that tempted Ben Solo into being Kylo Ren, but he doesn’t really serve much else of a narrative function in both The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi outside of this. I think fan’s latched onto him as a concept and started theorizing about him because JJ crafted him as a deliberately vague character. At the end of the day he is an uber powerful Dark Sider that is not very different from the dozens of ones we have seen in the past both in canon (film, comics, television, novels) or the Legends continuity. Kylo Ren as an extension is a newer form of villain and, in my opinion, significantly more interesting. I really enjoyed how The Last Jedi doubled down on Kylo’s varying aspects of instability both in his volatile emotions but also in his unpredictability. He’s a tortured man who is haunted by a legacy more powerful than he is. That’s a more interesting villain to me than another Force Big Bad who seems to demand some complicated origin story. Snoke’s death also doesn’t prevent him from being discussed in future movies. Kylo could just as easily have a line of “An ancient Dark Side prophet from the outer rim discovered me as a child and crafted me into his apprentice,” or something along those lines and it would cover the majority of the needed background.I also never really got the impression that Hux was really anything but a sniveling “Yes, Man.” His biggest moment in The Force Awakens is when he cries delivering a speech regarding the destruction of a Republic government. I also am pretty caught up on the novels and comics and if I remember correctly, he really isn’t featured much. In general, I enjoy the sort of allegory of the First Order being a well-funded fascist organization that is more or less lead by impetuous man-children (Hux, Kylo Ren)  and opportunists (Phasma) who are more concerned with the legacy of a past dictatorial government than in any actual real world politics. Sounds a little familiar right?

The Finn and Rose stuff I do have to agree with you on. I didn’t dislike Rose as a character, but she really failed to make much of an impression on me after my first viewing. I did like Kelly Marie Tran’s performance though and am open to seeing more of the character.

Finn was a disappointment and I totally get why if he was your favorite character in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi would have been a let down. Personally, I left The Force Awakens with Finn being one of my favorites in the ensemble in that film due to his complicated narrative arc and John Boyega’s incredible energy and charisma. While this remains here, it doesn’t help matters that the narrative Rian Johnson crafts for Finn and Rose just feels like a distraction from the two other narratives occurring which are more emotional involving and more exciting as a narrative. When both characters are playing off the Resistance I think it works rather well, but their sojourn to Canto Bight is by far the film’s low point. That being said, I really dig the fight scene between Finn and Captain Phasma or most of their narrative on the Supremacy.On a surface level, I do understand the frustration with Luke’s portrayal. However, I honestly think it’s my favorite narrative arc for the movie both for who it means for Luke as a character and for the larger meta-narrative of the sequel trilogy. The Last Jedi continues an appropriate reality set up by The Force Awakens where Luke Skywalker is a legend and something approaching a mythological figure: the last of an ancient order of a magical beings that stood at the forefront or a movement that defeated a galaxy-wide totalitarian government. It works because it makes sense in-universe and in our own world because that’s what Luke Skywalker has become for us as viewers. Just as Darth Vader is a paragon of evil, Luke is that light hearted spirit of adventure that ages into adulthood that made the original trilogy so special. He has ceased to become just a person but a larger than life figure, even one that may have something akin to biblical or mythological importance.

However, Luke has always been defined by a push and pull to the Dark Side, even in his redemption for his father there are moments where he hesitates. When he goes to see Ben Solo in his tent it isn’t to kill him but to confront him, but in that moment he is tempted as many Jedi are. He knows that Ben Solo has the ability in him to cause great pain and suffering and to plunge the galaxy into war and further genocide and instability. One of Luke’s defining personality traits has also always been his eagerness and impatience. It’s what Yoda had the biggest difficulty in training him to do. He even has to beg him not to rush off to attack Vader in The Empire Strikes Back before he is better trained because he fears what a conflict such as this would do to him. He is tempted by the Dark Side because of its relative ease and here killing Ben Solo is the quick act that is easiest to solving what he sees as a potential disaster. It’s important here that Luke checks himself though. He feels the pull to the Dark and pulls it back because he realizes that what he is doing is fundamentally wrong. If Luke had gone through with this and tried to actually murder his nephew, than yes, I would be on your side regarding the a potential assassination of Luke’s character, but having that temptation there is important to both him as a character and of the Saga. You can argue that it is maybe a tad too convenient that Ben would wake up to see this and I would be inclined to agree, but hey that’s how stories work.From here I think is where we get into the really meaty stuff with how Johnson and Mark Hamill have characterized Luke here. Luke realizes in this moment that he has failed dramatically. Not only did he let down his nephew, but his sister, his brother-in-law and best friend, and perhaps most damningly this perception that he is some infallible legendary figure. It’s a crushing moment and one that does realistically stick with him for years. What The Last Jedi does that’s really beautiful with Luke’s character is stress just how important these emotional and symbolic heroes can be to those who need them. This is a narrative of Luke coming to understand that he is greater than his failings, but also that the galaxy at large needs heroes like him and that he can still do a great thing for the world and galaxy at larger. So he saves his sister. He saves Rey. He confronts Kylo and he inspires a galaxy. This is what the shot of the little boy at the end of The Last Jedi is meant to symbolize. He’s a young Force sensitive child who carries on through slavery and oppression because of the inspirational symbol of rebellion and of heroes such as Luke. It’s here that The Last Jedi realligns what we know of Luke with what we have come to expect of him. In times like the one’s we are living in now, heroes matter and coming to respond to that and accept that is really beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the film.