#or give him more agency in his quest comparable to the others

[grey-wardens]

not sure how accurate these numbers are but according to chubblot's youtube channel, patch 5 early access wyll had about 4k lines while (as of patch 3?) ea gale, shadowheart, lae'zel, and astarion all had over 5k lines :/

i'm not focusing too much on the exact numbers because i think some of those are for specific races/characters that multiple actors recorded even if they don't make sense for the character. however, considering the overall numbers and the current distribution of content in the full release..... yeah. ugh.

[goofygoldengirl]

Food for Thought: Mithrun as a Survivor of Sexual Violence

While going through the dungeon meshi manga tag here on tumblr and browsing the dungeon meshi subreddit, I noticed there were a lot of posts about experience, agency, and how this would affect a character’s decisions on pursing romantic relationships with others. Many of these posts focused on Falin, her past trauma, and her quest for self discovery. Here, I would like to discuss a character that I notice whose experiences and their impact on potential relationships are overlooked. As for why, it is probable for that for many people this character’s trauma was too close to real life. It comes across as no surprise that many readers have drawn a parallel between Mithrun’s backstory as the lord of the dungeon and loosing his desires, to that of a person who was sexually assaulted or raped.

As mentioned in the paragraph above, this essay will discuss triggering topics such as sex/ sexual functioning, sexual assault, and rape. Please proceed with caution.

Mithrun’s Backstory & The Assault Parallel

In chapter 62, Mithrun recounts to Kabru how the winged lion made him lord of the dungeon. He encountered an enchanted mirror which provoked his insecurity and jealousy over his brother’s closeness to the woman he loved. The winged lion appeared to him as a goat and granted him a life where he did not serve his duties as a part of the canaries. Thus, Mithrun spent five years living a charmed life where he had everything he wanted, including a relationship with the woman he loved. As his desires intensified, the winged lion grew stronger, and bit by bit the facade it had built for Mithrun crumbled around him. Once reaching its full power, the goat cornered Mithrun and proceeded to eat his desires except the one for revenge.

In the beginning, it is notable that the goat demon takes the appearance of a kid, not an adult goat. If Mithrun hadn’t clarified that it was a goat, many readers would have automatically assumed it was a lamb. In many cultures, especially western cultures with a Christian background, the lamb represents innocence, youth, as well as sacrifice. What is presented in this chapter is an inversion of this belief. Here, the demon takes on a trusting, unassuming form to manipulate Mithrun, and it is clear as the flashback goes on that the more Mithrun is immersed in the world of the dungeon, that he is being being fattened and set up to be the sacrifice to satiate the demon’s hunger.

It is revealed that every person, including the woman Mithrun loves, are actually monsters, disguised by the goat to take on elven form. The woman herself is in fact a lamia, a half human-half serpentine being that comes from Ancient Greek mythology. Lamia had were said to prey upon young men by seducing then eating them. The lamia’s presence by Mithrun’s side serves as a reminder to the audience of the goat’s true intentions.

In the panels themselves where the goat eats Mithrun’s desires, the event is reminiscent of a sexual attack. The goat barges into Mithrun’s bedchambers, a place associated with relaxation, privacy, and intimate encounters. It salivates as it begins to eat Mithrin and audibly enjoys the process, which shows that its mouth penetrates through Mithrun’s body. As it dawns upon him what is going on, Mithrun, unable to move, and paralyzed, screams for the goat to stop.

One thing that stuck out while reading this section, particularly in the last panel, is that the goat’s position while eating the desires is similar to that a person might assume if they were giving oral sex to another. In most mainstream media, no matter the country, it is still incredibly taboo to depict or reference any form of oral sex compared to a penetrative act. This framing choice was undoubtably intentional to elicit shock from the reader.

Additionally, when one thinks of desire or lack of, they automatically correlate it to the heart or the mind. If a writer is given to task to come up with a scenario where a villain consumes desires, there’s a chance they would opt for other forms of violence. They may write about a character’s heart being ripped from their chest, or being psychologically drained, which could result in death. This contrasts greatly to compared to Dungeon Meshi’s depiction of the consumption of Mithrun’s desires, and that he survives. While the goal initially eats from Mithrun’s chest, it moves its head so that it settles into Mithrun’s abdomen. Anatomy wise for humans (and assuming elves as well) the abdominal cavity contains the digestive organs and is situated above the male internal reproductive organs. By having the goat target such a delicate area of Mithrun’s body, the line between hunger for food and hunger for sex is blurred. Upon being discovered by the canaries, Mithrun is hanging by a thread. He is scarred both physically and emotionally, and has lost all motivation to live. The only thing keeping him alive is his desire to kill the demon. Mithrun’s precarious state is similar to the situation as well as motivation that is commonly found in media where a victim of sexual violence seeks revenge against their assailant.

Biological & Psychological Response

At the end of the manga, Mithrun has embarked on a journey to regain his desires and to find a new purpose in life. Taking into consideration that the physical toll on Mithrun would be similar to that of an individual who faced an extremely life threatening situation, his body would first focus on getting him back to baseline. This entails in making sure that he digests and stores the nutrients he needs, is able to recharge through sleep, build up the reserves to fight off infection, as well as excrete waste products. Once the body has reached baseline, it begins to focus on other processes, one of them being sexual response. As noted in individuals with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it is common for the ability to become sexually aroused to take a long time to return, as well as the possibility that it could be impaired by stress. For an elf like Mithrun, going back to sexual functioning to how it used to be before the dungeon might take anywhere from months to years. As a male, Mithrun is likely to experience difficulty obtaining and/or maintaining an erection, and perhaps trouble having an orgasm and ejaculating, both of which could be potential sources of stress if he were to be intimate with another person.

Psychologicaly, there are three factors that comes to play as to how Mithrun would confront the possibility of a relationship or sexual encounter. The first is his demeanor. Throughout the manga, Mithrun is described as stoic and lacking emotion due to the absence of desires. By the end, Mithrun is shown to slowly regain his feelings. This is seen in chapter 94 when the realization that he deep down wanted the winged lion to eat him moved him to tears. If post manga, Mithrun begins to process the forty plus years of trauma he endured, the sudden influx of emotion that he hasn’t handled in years may come to him as a shock.

The second factor is trust. In the dungeon, Mithrun lived with a being he believed to be the love of his life. They would have spent time together, confided in each other, as well as shared affectionate and intimate moments together. The reveal that the woman of his dreams, the woman he would have been vulnerable with physically, emotionally and sexually, was a monster, and that the winged lion created her to deceive him would have devastated him. Mithrun is a naturally guarded person, and the betrayal of trust he experienced would cause him to be suspicious of those around him, especially those close to him since in his mind they have the most potential to hurt him.

Thirdly, the possibility that Mithrun’s trauma could resurface while having sexual contact with another person is very high. If the demon eating Mithrun’s desires is taken to represent a sexual assault as discussed in the previous section, Mithrun might be triggered by receiving oral or being in a situation where he is penetrated or he has to penetrate others.

Implications

In an ideal world, Mithrun would be able to seek out or be referred to a professional who specializes in mental health, whether it be getting prescribed medication, going through therapy with a trauma specialist, or other interventions. In the world of Dungeon Meshi, not much is known about the state or evolution of its healthcare services. One of the post manga chapters features a support group for former dungeon lords, suggesting that some form of therapy would be available to him. Mithrun may at first show reluctance to enter a relationship, be untrusting of his partner, and become overwhelmed by emerging emotions he had long repressed as well as his body’s physical reaction to sexual stimuli. A relationship between himself, an established character, or an original one, would need an open line of communication between all parties, as well as a high amount of empathy and patience for it to be successful.

Sources

[fetabathwater]

so can i ask how you see amma and gortash's relationship prior to receiving a knife in the head? ive seen how other people write it and then i found your fics and im interested in how you came to liking the dark urge and gortash

honestly found it due to insanity. < joking.

on a serious note my kryptonite in games has always been some degree of connection between characters, because i have such a love/hate relationship with how it widens the world and interpersonal relationships but can also simultaneously seem to make everything seem relatively small. but with bg3 i kind of really like that balance there because like, anything is quite frankly possible with durge anyway - the only traits are like 1) spawn of bhaal 2) serial killer (?) 3) worked with the other dead three chosen within the last 2 years and 4) was knifed by another chosen of bhaal and tadpoled. you can make up anything and everything because the game is dnd and the rules are whatever, too. yeah you get context clues from other characters, like that ketheric fundamentally can't stand anyone, but the chosen(s) of bhaal more so, and he tolerated the durge bc at least they had a work ethic (LOL), and gortash like plans 500 steps ahead so made it his prime directive to touch base with the bhaalist leader and be like, hey man, wanna go break into some places with me? or wanna take over the world? raphael is also there. yknow.

also definitely the delivery of lines sold me too - not just gortash's VA, but the way orin kind of like looooaaattthhhheeesss how durge was seemingly wrapped up in other shit ( slash sarevok is even like. yeah you thought you were untouchable and didnt notice that orin was making her own move for the throne . idiot. stupidhead. worst chosen next 2 me). also all the other characters as well who have something to say, like kressa, helsik and naaber, never mind all of the moonrise tower and then the quests in act 3, but starting earlier with just partially revealed information.

i . okay yeah like i have seen some interesting sort of takes of durge / gortash and each to their own etc etc but i think that the durge has a lot more agency than ppl wanna give them credit for, and i think people also vastly underestimate that gortash also seemingly underestimated them as well - like just bc durge wrote some like note about forgive me father but i am being charmed by the chosen of bane (however u wanna interpret that ofc), they did still end it with oh well ! i'll probably feel a tiny smidgen of guilt when i backstab him but we're gonna end the world in ur name dad ! praise bhaal! LIKE. THE DURGE WAS DEFINITELY GONNA STILL KILL EVERYONE - EVEN THE NETHERBRAIN WAS LIKE. YEAH YOU HELD IT ALL TOGETHER AND YOU SCARED ME EVEN A LITTLE BIT. YOU WERE GONNA KILL EVERYONE.

honestly though ive barely actually posted anythign i have written for them teehee i checked. it was like 2 fics. 1 of them they were fucking. so i mean take that how you will ... but like i mean amma and gortash's "relationship" extends back longer than what the range of the game gives, at least in my mind and what ive like. got an idea of anyway for her pre-bg3 life / adventures were like. but as far as how they like interact it is barely above tolerable. towards the absolute sort of planning it is running a lot warmer, but theyre just. aware of each other. in some similar circles because of well. lower city activities etc. a general equal partnership with stepping on each others toes, seeing how far to push the other. amma probably does hold on some threatening level a bit more of a . position. just because like (okay hindsight compared to orin), it is literally her own person not having her run gortash through - and he knows that. with orin he makes her basically agree to a magical contract to not harm him, but amma's the only thing holding herself back from just like. killing him. and for the most part she probably would just be mildly inconvenienced and it would probably leave her bed running a bit cold but like. she would bounce back. it would just INCONVENIENCE the plan heavily because chosen of bane are few and far between.

and also she knows that gortash also primarily gives the targets that are convenient for him, and there definitely times when it was bordering on a bit too much pointing and doing - and in her mind not enough equal weight pulling definitely. very much a case of balancing the scales in terms of doing their part, especially with the like multiple heists they perform (at least 3 minimum), and not just being aware of the other especially prior to both being selected as the chosen of their respective god. but yeah. there is no real "love" between them, no love lost either. arguably amma doesnt really know what love is, or in her own roundabout way expresses it much in the way of loving something so much you have the urge to eat it. yeah, amma does have a slight attachment, one that kind of hits a higher speed immediately prior to being knifed and tadpoled, because that is when we get the heists and actual partnership and its not just the introduction of the steel watch and him clawing his way up the social ladder by encouraging favour by lords and ladies and their beds, and its not the bhaalists just kind of sitting by idle and waiting for something to kick them into gear because yeah people are dying but at the same time, its not striking the fear into people's hearts like it used to, just letting them fade into history, despite bhaal's return like 10yrs prior.

amma kind of hates that gortash actually gave her a way to bring them back into the fray, and that she also does have to hold off from not ending him before the plan would have worked completely. a lot of that feeling is in the few times that she does like, strike out at him, either with planned wounds or if she has violently lashed out in general and even when they fuck, honestly. when amma does wrangle herself back into that position of control, especially in a position where gortash is incredibly vulnerable, its messes with her hatred so bad. she doesnt know if he is willingly submitting to her, because yeah she loves a bit of fighting back, hair pulling, scratching, getting told off, what can she say. definitely does something to her. but amma kind of loves when she's almost literally got him underfoot.

she wouldve followed the plan through to the end as well, so it is a mixed blessing for a lot of people that orin took an opportunity to strike at her.

ultimately its not so much that whole like 'i can fix him / i can make him worse' stuff either, because like amma did have a chance at a "normal" life, but she still returned to the temple of bhaal (whether or not by her own choice is ofc . debatable lmao). gortash was sold to a warlock, beaten in the house of hope routinely, escaped only to wind up in street gangs, eventually made his way to being an arms dealer, worked up the social ladder with equal parts sex and money and blackmail, sold possibly his friend into slavery for technology (we just really dont know the full extent of what zariel promised yknow), was the one who reached out to the bhaalist leader and concocted the idea to raid a vault or two, both in faerun and the hells. like, they were choices that were made, to keep them both firmly though on the side of like... theyre not realistically good people, their childhoods definitely shaped them, but they didnt try to change then and there. they just stay the same, and there is no getting better or worse. there just is.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

If you've played The Witcher 3, what do you think about the parts of the game where you play as Ciri? Because I find these sections frustrating more than fun and I'm wondering if I'm alone in that or if other players share my opinions.

I think it's the contrast between the amount of agency you get as Ciri compared to Geralt. Most of the game, you play as Geralt and you can decide to do side quests and monster-hunting contracts, or wander off to look at something that looks interesting on the map. You can solve problems in different ways, or make choices that give you a completely different branch of gameplay (deciding whether to stay and investigate the bears at the feast with one person or go after the people another character thinks was behind it gives you a completely different sequence of events and results in a different character being made ruler of a country). You can choose to kill or spare monsters on multiple occasions, and whether you spare specific ones alters how difficult a later quest is. You pick the equipment you wear. You decide how to spend character points as you level up, giving you a skillset you've built yourself. When it comes to combat, you can throw bombs or shoot a crossbow from a distance, you can use signs, or you can charge in with your sword, and you can prepare with potions and oils that give different buffs and benefits.

Sure, when you play as Geralt, there are a few quests that are a little railroady. When you start on a few of the quests, you're committed to that quest until the end, but most of the time you can wander off mid-quest and go do something else if you feel like it.

With Ciri though, you don't get any of that freedom. Most of her sequences are flashbacks and you have a defined start and end point. Take Dandelion's story as an example. There's a cutscene in Whoreson Junior's house and then you have to fight your way out, then you have to ride up a short stretch of road, then there's another cutscene. You don't have any options to deviate or do something in a different way. If you don't fight/escape on horseback then you die, reset to a save point, and have to try again. About the biggest impact you can have as Ciri is deciding whether or not to take a sauna. You get these short sequences that have to be played through in exactly the way that they're presented to you. There are a couple of minor choices you can make that have no impact on the overall outcome of that railroady segment.

While playing as Ciri, you don't have equipment you can use and you don't have signs, so you're basically stuck with sword and dodging. All of that freedom to decide how you want to approach combat vanishes.

It feels like the Ciri segments were an after thought. It feels like while they were planning this story, they realised that there would be a large portion where Geralt is trying to find out what happened to her and will be getting these flashbacks as other characters narrate events to him. They could have been delivered as cutscenes, but it feels like someone went, "Hey, these are a lot of cutscenes, why don't we let the player play as Ciri in these bits so they're not just watching a story?"

But then to justify it, they had to find ways to force an excuse to play as Ciri and give you choices that don't ultimately change anything. Whether you win or lose the horse race to the Baron means nothing. Whether you say that a guy seems nice or that you prefer girls when his sister comments on his crush, it doesn't alter the game's progression. You can't change the story as Ciri because the main narrative for a significant portion of the game is Geralt following the trail she's left. The couple of occasions you play as Ciri later are really jarring because you're suddenly thrown into another character for a brief sequence in the middle of battle in a way that breaks the immersion.

I would have enjoyed it more if they'd either committed to it more, or cut it entirely. Either give the player enough agency as Ciri that it impacts the gameplay you experience as Geralt (and let you control your gameplay style as Ciri through using a separate inventory for her), or just show her journey in short cut scenes and don't force me to play short sequences that I have no control over.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[incesthemes]

okay yeah actually i really like this! very sweet of you to tag me, thank you 🥰

i wasn't considering the actual show we got when i read the original script (an oversight, now that you point this out), but this is a really cool connection i think. because the pilot we got lays out sam as the protagonist who has to make a decision to "go home" (aka return to his family, to his brother) and it sets up his arc very well. but at the same time, it doesn't give dean that same narrative agency; he doesn't receive a quest until season 2, and he's pulled along behind sam until just about season 3. dean's decisions don't really matter because sam is the one controlling the story, and this is reflected in how the pilot is constructed (take joseph welch, the analogue for burroughs: he is largely a bystander dealing with the aftermath of his own betrayal and constance's reaction to it. compare it to, perhaps, dean's betrayal of sorts in that he sides with john throughout their childhood, chooses their father over sam, who is supposed to be the most important person in dean's life, sam needs to be the most important person in dean's life, and then sam's leaving for stanford which transforms dean into the wistful, longing lover who never quite moved on from his wife's death)

the original pilot, then, gives dean narrative agency by paralleling him with burroughs. the show isn't just about sam and his place in the world and his conflict of home and family; rather, it's about sam and dean in equal measures, dual protagonists whose decisions influence each other, neither of them controlling the narrative entirely but both pulling it along with every decision they make. i think the original portrayal of dean supports this as well, with dean dragging sam along and being rather pushy and, what was it, "scary-unbalanced" lol. the dean we got is a lot more mild, someone who gives in to sam's demands rather easily and lets sam have his way. someone who's willing to let go until they get so tangled together it's impossible to have one without the other.

obviously i wouldn't say one is better than the other. if this version of the pilot had been approved, the entire structure of the story would likely have been very different—the mirroring of seasons and rotating conflicts between a sam-season and a dean-season and a sam-season and a dean-season wouldn't have really worked if they both had equal amounts of narrative agency and driving force from the beginning. but at the same time, this pilot delivers the cain and abel story from the very beginning and, like you said, foreshadows the first two seasons (and beyond, honestly, all the way up until swan song) through this allegory of constance and burroughs. it's very interesting!

also i do like that in the original script, the drowned children are instead murdered parents, because it does (imo) strengthen john's role in the narrative as ghost and god, haunting the narrative with his oppressive metaphorical presence. sam "killed" his father (and his mother), but he can never leave his parents behind, he can never forget them, and he will in the end always return to them, his self-destruction inevitable and promised.

I gotta tell you, the spn pilot could’ve been a lot more insane that what we got! “Look at your little girl now” what.

[astro-pioneer]

Oni!Sibling 『Itto』

Had a Thought™ while doing his story quest and decided 'why not' | The reader is a child | Horns and markings on the skin are the only things depicted

⌾ Didn't even knew you existed until Granny Oni brought you home after she, herself, found you in the city

⌾ The two of you kinda stared each other down when Granny left you alone?? Please he's so awkward in the beginning oml

⌾ Grows to get used to you and the fact that you're practically his sibling now

⌾ Like no rebuttals you're his now no one else can have you

⌾ Loves to walk through the city with you perched on his shoulders, even more so during the festivals when they come around - no one has the heart to tell the two of you you're a little too loud since you're having a lot of fun </3

⌾ Whined to you the most when his vision was taken but was hella glad his memories and ambitions weren't taken with it too like he's heard about from many others

⌾ If he forgot about you and who you were to him he might've died right then and there no lie

⌾ Gifted you an onikobuto and it forever resides on your head no matter what

⌾ Said beetle always beats him in battles and he regrets giving it to you (aka he's totally butthurt you're better than him)

⌾ When he got his vision back, he immediately summoned Ushi for you after almost violently chucking him at one of his gang members

⌾ Got you a jacket for your birthday with the help of Shinobu that had the gang's symbol on the back and teared up at your reaction

⌾ Loves loves loves when you compare your oni markings with his to find all the similarities - the two of you almost always find a new one every time

Kojou Sara looked at you with her hands on her hips, a weary sigh slipping through her lips. "Can't believe I've come to interrogating a child," she muttered before sighing again. "[Name], do you remember where you and your brother were these past few days and what you were doing?" Accusing their own brother of something even she knows he's not mentally capable of doing is kind of ridiculous, but it has to be done.

"I haven't seen him a lot today, but we've been mostly at Narukami Shrine and Amakane Island. Look, I was even gifted a mask!" From your bag, you took out the carved piece of wood and proudly lifted it to show it to the general. "He's still hung up on Guuji Yae beating him in an eating contest, so he's been trying to challenge her to another one."

The tengu rubbed her forehead, the young oni's answer just solidifying her thought process about this. I beg they don't grow up to be exactly like him. "Miss Tengu, am I in trouble?" Kojou donned a confused look, urging you to continue. "Well, whenever Itto and his friends are brought here it's because they did something bad." She irked.

"You're not in trouble, but he will be once I see him." You did nothing but laugh, knowing Shinobu would get them out of trouble once again.

You decided to wait at the police agency, knowing that at the end of the day, Itto and the gang are just gonna end up there anyway. The sun was setting when they found him and was able to drag him back, his pouting face next to Sara's exhausted one being the first thing you saw of him the whole day. "[Name], oh how I missed you!" He comically draped himself onto your legs but made sure to focus his weight onto his knees and arm that was on the crate you were sitting on.

Shinobu was talking with Sara about his assault charges but both females looked over hearing your laugh. The bigger oni was crying to you about his torturous adventures and how he was tricked by the "evil" traveler, making sure to mention how a bean the duo threw flared his allergies up just to push the characterization more. When Sara gave the 'okay' for him to leave, he immediately sat you on his shoulders and urged you to hold onto his horns for stability. "Let's go, (name)! We have an onikobuto battle to do! Also, let's paint my horns! How does rainbow sound?"

[keycrash]

and your heart, it was not there when i needed it the most i was floating, it was grounded, getting buried too deep to stay close

art inspired by some meta i was discussing on my analysis account the other day:

i think a lot about junpei and akane's relationship and how they (fail to) reconcile their wildly different stances on the second nonary game. ztd is pretty explicit about the trauma junpei's taken away from the experience-- a lack of hope in the world, substance abuse, even hallucinations or flashbacks. i can't imagine that akane doesn't leave without some of that, too, especially after living and reliving her own death (though ztd doesn't even bother to give her an aversion to fire, unfortunately). but i don't see akane as someone who would view the second nonary game in an entirely negative light. her note from zero is precise and deadly-- i must punish them for the innocent lives they sacrificed. her choice to seek revenge is an active one-- she wasn't forced into this. getting revenge was a choice, and to her, a moral necessity. saving her own life was a choice. and that is how i view it-- saving her own life. junpei played a part, yes, that's important, but junpei's continuously compared to a puppet, and in some ways is simply a means for akane to achieve an end. her choice is to save herself, no matter the cost. the second nonary game is, in some ways, a love letter to herself, as her own savior.

but they do care about each other, deeply. they have a connection that can't be described in words, where they share minds, share emotions, where their identities and senses overlap. akane cares about how junpei feels, in her own abstract way, but her point of view has been shifted and expanded, irreversibly changed by the deep knowledge of the morphogenetic fields, alternate realities, all the horrible ways in which they both can die and the rare few times they find each other for more than a brief moment. abandoning junpei was never about callousness, but instead a sense of duty to the mechanisms that allowed her to live, and the burden and gift of knowledge forcing her hand. she’s willing to be the one to take on the necessary sins that must be committed along the way and become a martyr for a better future. but once she actually gets there, to that one-in-a-million ending where she can be with junpei, where they're safe, how do they even begin to bridge their gap? junpei's control has been wretched from his life, and he spirals in his attempts to regain agency. his quest to find akane is one motivated by their bond, sure, but also one motivated by how helpless he feels. if he can just meet her again, maybe tell her off a little, get some grounding (or, most importantly, and what he won't admit, get her to recognize how he's been hurt), then maybe he can regain some of that control.

but... akane isn't ready to say "i'm sorry that i hurt you. i regret how you were involved, it was a terrible thing." is it true on some level? with a lot more nuance, maybe, but i think akane has a certain pride in the second nonary game. it's her life's work up until that point. it's reclaiming the ways in which she's been hurt, eliminating those who have committed the unforgivable sins that condemned her to this fate in the first place. she's not here to spend the rest of her life haunted by her actions, miserable about how much she's hurt junpei, seeking reconciliation and forgiveness. sure, she wishes innocents weren't involved. she dissociates away from the guilt of that until she's not sure it exists at all. but she has love, in a backwards sort of way, for the opportunity to save herself. for akane, these things can coexist-- her love for junpei and her willingness to sacrifice him for an end. for junpei, love is the opposite-- love is synonymous with sacrifice, sacrificing everyone and everything for the person you care about.

but despite that, finding the end where they have each other is a victory, in their minds. they're both stubborn. akane doesn't know how to operate interpersonally, without deadly stakes at the forefront of her mind, and junpei doesn't know how to deal with the experiences that haunt him, but for better or for worse, they just won't give up on each other.

[nenilein]

Okay, boy is falling back, time to write more propaganda.

First of all, lots of respect to the Samurai Flamenco Fandom here, I totally get why you are fighting so hard. You're pretty niche too compared to other fandoms on the list. We're kindred spirits in that respect, so nothing but success! *handshake*

That said, we Puyo fans won't give up either!

SO, ZERO IS A SWEETHEART. Despite his social anxiety, he does everything he does for other people, and the only reason he ever worked for Time Paradise (the antagonists of Puyo Quest's story) was because he wanted to improve the world for everyone. It's implied he thought his inventions could lead to improvements in accessibility options for people like himself, for example. For that ends, he even did some rather unethical experiments, but he never wanted to do anything that wouldn't be reversible. The moment he realizes that all his boss, Thousand, wants is personal gain, he's immediately out.

He has a cute, strange little bond with the OTHER Puyo boy in this poll, Sig. The two of them barely ever talk (on account of them both being in this poll, lol), but Sig seems to instinctively understand Zero's needs and worries, and is usually the first to try and check if he's okay if the two of them share a scene.

He also loves his machines SOOO MUCH. He gives them all real names, not just unit designations, and gets annoyed when Eight (his friend and coworker) wants to give them all "cool robot names" instead of the cute, more humanizing names he came up with. They have a full-on fight over whether to name an airship Kumoe-chan (roughly "Cloudette") or not. Zero also clearly cares for Eight, because he doesn't seem very uncomfortable around him compared to most people, even though Eight has logorrhoea and is by far the loudest and most talkative character in the franchise.

Speaking of Eight loving his machines to the point his heart bleeds when one of them is damaged, a big reason he ends up bonding with Atari (one of the protagonists) despite being scared of her at first, is because Atari treats Puubot, a companion-robot that was issued to her as a sort of company smartphone (and which was originally designed as a prototype by Zero) like a real, living, breathing friend and cares about it just as deeply as Zero does. In the endgame of the story, Atari and Zero work together desperately to try and save Puubots life when its EPPROM chip is failing. (Does it survive?? Not spoiling it here!))

When Zero does oddjobs for the Spacetime Detective Agency to pay off a certain case he entrusted them with, Puubot uses its text to speech function to talk with strangers in his stead, because it understands how stressful that is for him. In their duo-unit, Zero at all times prioritizes Puubot's wellbeing over his own, even his voiceline upon defeat is all about protecting Puubot.

He's such an incredibly cute person!!!!

Autistic Anime Boys Side B Round 1 Match 16

Propaganda:

Masayoshi -

"Has a special interest in superheroes and has a huge collection of superhero merchandise and can recite his favorite superhero movie word for word along with all of the fight choreography. Became incredibly apathetic throughout high school after finding out superheroes aren't real. His dream to be a superhero is so strong that it literally alters the world and causes aliens to invade earth so he can be a superhero."

Zero -

"First of all! Zero's brain is outright stated to work differently from most people. His special interest is robotics and he much prefers to talk to them than actual living breathing people. He has to mentally prepare himself for long conversations with others and can't keep up with them otherwise. He is just like me for real your honor."

[soranis-sunshadow]

Hordak can’t catch a break even on his birthday...

Oh fandom, you really like this sort of drama don’t you? 

A few days ago, on Hordak’s birthday, there was this ‘interesting’ post in the tag – since, apparently it’s impossible to get any peace even on that day.

I was  too tired to answer it at the time after being on call the day before so, here’s my delayed answer to all of that:

First off: this post has this bit in it when asked what that person dislikes about SPOP.

 He doesn’t need to get a redemption and he doesn’t get one in the show. 

None of his actions constitute a redemption arc. The man merely acknowledged his personhood and freed himself from his master and God. That’s what his arc was about: the right to have a personal identity. 

He gave himself a name and wanted to be his own person. That’s it. That’s all he wanted.

The man was merely freed from Prime’s influence- an influence he was born into since he’s been specifically manufactured to serve as a disposable mass produced soldier and worshipper of Prime.

 If the argument that Catra was “forced” to commit crimes and thus she is not completely guilty of them since she was under duress – then the argument doubly holds for a person who has been directly programmed and conditioned to do so under the threat of death or mental rape (purification).\

Even while away from Prime, he was still conditioned to obey and brainwashed by Prime’s cult. He literally knew nothing else – he was not meant to. It’s how indoctrination works.  

Prime’s clones aren’t people to Prime, they are tools. Those clones, while cut off from Prime still want to serve and please him: That’s what Wrong Hordak’s purpose in the show is- to show us just that.

Hordak is not considered “OK”  because Entrapta likes him. Hordak is merely shown – by Entrapta that he could live apart from his cult and have worth outside what Prime tells him he has. 

Just like real life cult victims, he needs an outsider to help him see a way out of the cult. The nature of indoctrination and brainwashing makes it impossible for the brainwashed person to know they are brainwashed unless someone points it out.

Now for my favorite thing:

and

oh and

Oh boy… this makes me just so damn uncomfortable.

To offer a bit of context as to why. I have never been on social media before SPOP or in any fandom and as such, I have never encountered the ‘all men are evil’ discourse that seems to infest these places. It’s been quite a bit of culture shock for me. 

What is it that makes anyone think it is ok to judge a person because of an accident of birth? (being born male)

Why does hate for 50% of the human population get such a free pass on these platforms? Misandry is just as terrible as misogyny. You are being biased against another human because of their gender. I don’t care that males are perceived as ‘privileged’ – that doesn’t make it ok to be terrible to them unprovoked. 

How does hating all men help achieve equity?

Do you realize that this sort of discourse is exactly how you radicalize people against the very cause you are championing? You breed hate and adversity for the rest of us who actually want to to have a discussion on the topic. 

I’m a feminist myself (in a country where feminism is hard-work) and let me tell you, making all men hate us does nothing but push away potential allies and make it a lot harder for our voices to be heard.

Feminism is about equality, not women dominating.

Now onto the second post: the one comparing Catra and Hordak with the question of which of them is a better person. 

This whole war orphans that were personally abducted and tortured into serving the horde HC that some ppl have is really starting to get boorish. This has been going on for more than 6 months. 

I have no idea why everyone thinks he went down chimneys and stealing babies left and right while cackling villainously. The man had a busy schedule of brooding in his lab, wallowing at his inability to use insulated cables and having his device blowing up in his face with the occasional Skype call to Shadow Weaver to see what the Horde is doing. 

And yet, to a part of the fandom, this is what he looked like:

( @bat-burrito​ made this one and it’s glorious) 

And if you don’t believe me about the lab recluse thing, you don’t have to, the show pretty much states it for me. 

and 

+

Hordak is a recluse that stayed in his lab and let the running of the Horde and most operations to Shadow Weaver and later Catra. He did not personally abuse anyone and he is not the origin of the cycle of abuse.

Shadow Weaver was a child grooming manipulative woman before she even joined the Horde – she did this to Micah while she was not “evil” or presumably abused by Hordak.

Even if you want to HC that Hordak abused her somehow, he is still not the one who started the cycle: Horde Prime is. 

The whole fandom seems to forget about the eldritch monstrosity that created a whole army of brainwashed slaves to worship and die for him. Prime is the one that sent Hordak to die and gave him the motivation to try to prove himself worthy of life and love. If you want to point fingers, point them at the origin of all of this. This fandom has a strange Prime blindness. He is never talked about when it comes to being the start of all of this.

If Prime didn’t exist, Hordak wouldn’t exist. If Prime hadn’t sent Hordak off to die, then his clone wouldn’t have accidentally ended up on Etheria. None of the things in the show would have happened.

Adora would have died of exposure in a field, the monarchies on Etheria would have continued as they are and the planet would have continued to exist in despondos. 

He is a dictator, yes. So are the princesses. Monarchies are dictatorships where the ruler is born into power. Hordak gained his through military might while Glimmer was born with hers and enforced it with tradition. I don’t really care to play “who’s the better dictator”. The princesses have their power because of the runestones- magical rocks put there by the First Ones to channel the planet’s magic and use it as a weapon. How come no one talks about that?

Do you think a king/queen keeps their crown without effort or subjugation of their subjects? 

Also, Hordak had never interacted with Catra before SW dragged her before him to be judged. He was indifferent to etherians in general and didn’t seem to care which of them were his underlings so long as the operations were running smoothly. He was more focused on his portal and returning home than on anything else. He did not set out to “ruin lives” or quest for power. What he wanted was to return to his deity and become a mindless part of the whole again – that is as opposite to power hungry as you can get.

Catra was directly abused by Shadow Weaver throughout her childhood. That makes Shadow weaver responsible for 100% of that abuse.

Catra was found in a box by Adora and adopted by Shadow Weaver. Hordak didn’t know or care that she existed.

He is responsible for the war, he is responsible for the war casualties and the property damage. He is not responsible for Shadow Weaver being a terrible person and mother figure.

Again with the orphan thing. We have 5 cadets in the show. 

Adora was found in a field. 

Catra was found in a box. Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio are unexplained. The only lizard ppl we see in the show are in the Horde or the Crimson Wastes. The other two could just as well be the children of some of the soldiers. 

I may harp on about what a bitch Shadow Weaver is – the reason I do so is because she is legitimately terrible to the two girls in her care.

I was the unfavorite growing up, I WAS the Catra in my family who could do no right while my sibling was the golden child. I don’t however hate Shadow Weaver. She is a cartoon character in a show and she does the things she was written to do. Hell, she is a very compelling and believable villain. Her motivations are clear and she is consistent. Her voice actress portrayed her splendidly and her character design is superb. I like her but that doesn’t mean that I don’t acknowledge her role in the story. I don’t however make up parts of the story to make her more evil than she was or treat my headcanons about her as absolute fact. 

Again, sigh: Prime is the worst villain in the show. He is quite literally Nyarlathotep and does this to planets: 

 This to people: 

and this to the people he created to serve, worship and love him: 

How is that not worse?

I love Catra and it genuinely annoys me when people erase her agency or try to paint her as one-dimensional victim. Catra was an antagonist for most of the show and she rocked it! She was 400% more efficient at it than cloneboy. Give the queen some damn respect and recognition! Catra had a lot of agency and her actions moved the plot of the show more than those of the protagonists. (they were mostly reactive).

Catra pulled the lever of the portal in a moment of distress after a breakdown, a Shadow-Weaver related breakdown because that’s how trauma works.

Hordak didn’t make her do it, he didn’t send Catra after Adora either. These were Catra’s choices. They came from a place of hurt but they were her choices still.

The portal was a means of transportation, not a weapon. Building it was not Catra’s mission, it was Hordak’s. He built it so he could contact Prime and either summon him here or go home –whichever course of action Prime wanted. Again, Hordak wanted to go back to this:

...

The only person who knew the device was dangerous was Entrapta and she tried to warn Hordak about it. Catra was the one who stopped her, violently so, then sent her to die on Beast Island- the fate Entrapta saved her from a season ago. Catra then tried to have Hordak open the portal before it was ready.

When he wouldn’t – she pulled the lever herself because that is how desperate she had gotten at that point, to show Shadow Weaver how wrong she was. That is how hurt Catra was by her mother figure’s betrayal and abuse.

Don’t take that away from her. Don’t call it curiosity or naivete or whatever. She knew the portal was dangerous but she wanted to prove Shadow Weaver wrong so badly that she didn’t care at that point. She had been pushed that far. 

Catra’s actions led to Angella’s death but she was not directly responsible for it. She didn’t activate the device to kill Angella, it merely happened accidentally. Catra was however glad it happened and wanted to profit from the aftermath of her death.  

Hordak didn’t care or plan to kill Angella personally. There is no in-show moment where any of that is portrayed. Since he doesn’t care about the specifics of running the horde seem to know what they are conquering at the moment, it seems that that was usually a task reserved for his second in command. 

^ - troop movement ordered by Catra

Hordak doesn’t even know what his own army is doing.

Again with the Hordak “drilling into orphan’s minds”… I seriously doubt that any of them had ever seen him out of his lab or that he came up with the propaganda himself.

Manipulation is more Shadow Weaver’s game not his. For all of Hordak’s faults, he is not deceptive or manipulative. If anything, he is woefully incapable of spotting lies. (it might have something to do with him being born in a society where lies were almost impossible because of the hive mind and Prime being able to browse his thoughts at a whim- as such, it wouldn’t be a skill he would have been able to develop).

Hordak canonically despises deception and lies.  I really don’t understand where this image of a manipulative and cunning Hordak comes from. He wouldn’t be able to plot himself out of a paper bag if his life depended on it.

First off.. S4 Catra was his equal, not his subordinate. Don’t take that away from her. She earned it.

He doesn’t look that threatening here... 

And again:  Prime created the system. He made clone slaves and programmed them to serve. His clones have hardware installed for the express reason to facilitate his control over them. He has a religion in place to make sure their thoughts do not stray from his purpose. I am legitimately boggled by this fandom’s tendency to completely forget about his existence.Does anyone really think that these people that are born “prechipped” and programmed to know nothing but Prime’s Light are really knowledgeable about human morality?

That they would know that conquest is bad when that is the express reason for their creation? 

If I were born in that situation, I’m not sure I would have known any better. Hell, if any of the clones even try to disobey Prime, they would get either mindraped (erased) or killed for the effort. They really have no choice, even if they knew that killing in Prime’s name is wrong (they don’t) they really can’t do anything about it. They have no choice but to be what they were made to be. I find it personally abhorrent when these designer slaves are held accountable for what Prime has made them do.

And to the people that say Hordak was free of Horde Prime once he was stranded on Etheria.. That is not how indoctrination works. The fact that I can’t go to church this Sunday because I’m locked in the house and can’t find the keys doesn’t make me an atheist.

Hordak was serving Prime even on Etheria. He keeps mentioning it to both Entrapta and Catra. He started the war because that’s what he thought Prime wanted of him and that’s what he’s been programmed to do. Personal and informed choice really doesn’t factor into his decision at all.

He is not sympathetic because Entrapta likes him. Notice how I haven’t brought up his relationship with her up to this point?

He is sympathetic because he literally had no choice but to do the things he was indoctrinated into doing. He was build and programmed for it, just like all the other clones. They are not able to deviate from that because of the way Prime functions and rules over them.

There is no point in the show where Hordak relishes over his status as a ruler or the “luxury” it affords him. He does not engage in the same behaviors his progenitor manifests.

There is no point in the show where Hordak relishes over his status as a ruler or the “luxury” it affords him. He does not engage in the same behaviors his progenitor manifests. He attempts to emulate Prime in order to project authority in the only way he knows how but since those are some really big shoes to fill, he is woefully inadequate. 

If Hordak had been power hungry, he would have stayed in despondos and ruled his own faction. Being away from Prime is the most powerful and autonomous he’s ever been and yet, he wants to throw all of that away in order to be a powerless, nameless part of the whole. What Hordak wanted was to be enslaved by Prime because that’s what he had been created for.

“vengeful” – and how did Hordak manifest this vengefulness? Who did he take revenge on in the series?  

“apologize” – when and where in his 3 minutes of screentime would he remember everything after 2 mindwipes, realize that the whole worldview he had since inception is wrong, realize that he had been mistaken into doing the horrible things he did and then go to all of the characters and apologize for it?

Would anyone be convinced of that had it happened in 3 minutes? I’d rather they don’t redeem him than do a shit job at it.

Very true. He’s not a better person. He’s just a person in an impossible situation. Both Hordak and Catra were handed a raw deal, I don’t understand why everyone insists on pitting them against one another. They both did bad things and they were both in horrible situations. The specifics don’t really matter since neither of them would have done the things they did had they been more fortunate.

This is the exact reason for which I don’t hold Cara’s actions against her. Catra’s only model of success was Shadow Weaver. She emulated her abusive mother figure because she had no other example and because she wanted to please that woman. It does not excuse the way Catra acted but it explains it.

I really don’t understand why some people want Catra punished. I’d rather she get love and help. That is what she needs. In time, she will want to do better and be better by herself. She doesn’t need to be forced, heavens know, she’s been forced enough as it is.

They are really different. Catra got an abusive, shitty and violent childhood. Hordak got this:

He was literally robbed of a childhood. 

She was taught by Shadow Weaver that weakness gets you killed. Hordak was not allowed to have emotions to begin with, or thoughts of his own, or a name...

Comparing to victims of abuse to see which one of them is more likable is such a strange concept to me.

Catra was robbed in s5 too. I don’t hold that against her. I  blame it on the writers. S5 could have been a lot better. 

[dalekofchaos]

Rey’s lack of motivation and stake in the Sequel Trilogy

I have a question to ask you. What are Rey’s motivations? What are her wants and goals and why is she even drawn to the conflict between The First Order and The Resistance?

Rey’s motivations in the Sequels.

Rey wants to find her parents.

Wants to bring back Luke Skywalker

Rey wants to find her place 

Wants Ben to return to the light

Has no real motivation to be on either side of the conflict, but chooses The Resistance anyway

Says she wants to kill Palpatine in cold blood, was close to giving in

Now she chose to fuck off to Tatooine and we see very little in her motivation to do....ANYTHING

Let’s compare Anakin and Luke’s motivations.

What are Anakin's motivations?

Wants to leave a life of slavery and come back and free his mother

Wants to become a Jedi and become a hero

Wants to protect Padme

Wants to save Obi-Wan

Wants to stop Dooku and end the war before it can begin

Wants to be a good master to Ahsoka

Wants to clear Ahsoka’s name

Wants to stop the war

Wants to save Padme and his children's lives at the cost of the Jedi and doing whatever it takes and becomes Darth Vader

What are Luke’s motivations?

Luke is a farm boy who dreams of leaving his mundane life.

Luke discovers that his father -unlike what his uncle told him, was a heroic Jedi Knight

Luke, is reluctant and refuses the ‘call to adventure’, but after the Empire murders his Aunt and Uncle, he decides to Join Obi-Wan on the quest.

Save the Princess

Luke is angered by Obi-Wan’s death at the hands of Darth Vader, and seeks retribution.

Destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion

To be trained by Yoda

Save Han and Leia

Luke discovers his father, the heroic Jedi, is none other than Darth Vader. After years of training, he sets out to redeem his father and turn him back to the light.

After the redemption of his father and fall of the Empire, Luke goes on a journey to restore The Jedi Order

Compare Rey and Luke’s journeys in ANH and TFA. Rey wanders around and stuff is handed to her. Luke takes initiative and works for what he has. Let's compare ANH with TFA

Luke screws up on watching R2, then chooses to chase him down. He makes another mistake by spying on the Tusken Raiders instead of getting the hell out of dodge. This leads to him being knocked out, and rescued by Ben Kenobi.

Luke initiates the meeting with Ben Kenobi, and it happens because of his early bad decisions.

His aunt & uncle are killed, but thanks to his screw-up with R2 & the raiders, he and the droids are spared.

He chooses to follow Kenobi to Alderaan instead of staying on Tattooine.

He chooses to accept Kenobi's instruction in the ways of the Force, even though most people think it's a myth and a joke. Even though he's bad at it and doesn't seem to get any results at first.

He makes the decision that they're going to rescue Leia, potentially dooming their escape from the Death Star. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Kenobi's death.

Then he chooses to help fight the Death Star, even though he's not a member of the rebellion. He was offered a job with Han, and he could have ensured his safety by leaving with them. Instead he chose certain death.

Finally, he chooses to trust a literal voice in his head instead of the targeting computer.

Let's contrast that with Rey.

BB-8 runs into her. She tries to send him away, but relents and lets him follow her home.

She chooses not to sell him for food.

Finn wanders into camp on his own initiative.

The camp is attacked because BB-8 is there. The camp would have been attacked no matter what Rey did. The other scavenger was, I'm pretty sure, from the same camp. And if she'd sold him, BB-8 would also have still been in the camp.

She is forced to take the Millennium Falcon when the ship she wanted to use was blown up.

She chooses to go with Finn and bring BB-8 to the Rebellion Resistance.

She stumbles upon Luke's lightsaber, and runs away from it.

She accidentally runs into Kylo Ren while hiding in the forest.

He chooses to kidnap her because he senses something special about her.

After her first exposure to the Force, she learns how to use some of it, successfully, and escapes from Ren. And to her credit, escaping and trying the Force out is a choice she made, rather than something that passively happened to her.

Then she, um, is standing there when Han is killed.

She chooses to fight Kylo Ren, and beats him in her first lightsaber battle after closing her eyes and thinking about the Force.

She sort of chooses to go summon Luke back to civilization - I say sort of because it's not clear why she was picked to go over, say, Leia.

Luke makes mistakes, and he is an active participant in his story. Rey is just kind of there, most of the time. She doesn't make mistakes, but she doesn't really do much else.

Rey has no personal stake in this war or motivations and she’s supposed to be the main protagonist.

Rey has never left Jakku before TFA and she tells Han that ”she never knew so much green existed” when they go to Maz’s castle.

In other words Rey must have had very limited knowledge of the world outside of Jakku and all she has heard from it are stories.

Rey who barely knows anything about the rest of the galaxy, to the point that she didn’t even know that forests existed what exactly is her personal stake in the current galactic conflict?

In TFA we saw The New Republic’s capital systems blown up by Starkiller Base and we never saw a reaction from Rey. We do see Finn and Han’s reactions. Also worth noting about Rey is that if she was unconscious throughout her involuntary travel to the Starkiller Base she was never actually aware of the Starkiller Base until just before Han, Finn and Chewie started planting the explosions in order to sabotage it.

Luke, while he had no personal attachments to Aldeeran did actually get to see the horrible aftermaths of it’s destruction.

But Rey was barely affected by the destruction of the Capital systems. Most characters were not as affected as they should have been in my opinion but we didn’t even get to see her have an emotional reaction to it.

This was probably the greatest genocide in Star Wars history and our main heroine is unaffected by it? Finn has a reaction to it and he’s supposedly NOT the main protagonist?

Rey really has no reason to care about the state of the galaxy. She only seems to care if people she knows are in danger.

The fact that she is supposed to be our main hero of this trilogy when she has next to no personal stakes in the well-being of the rest of the galaxy feels wrong to me.

Finn actually has stakes in this conflict since the FO took his family and childhood away from him and Poe has stakes because he actually lives in the New Republic and doesn’t want it to be under FO’s rule. Yet neither Finn nor Poe are considered the main protagonist? But oh wait, I forgot we can’t have a black or Latino man be the leading protagonist in Star Wars

The more I think about it is Rey has no goals or agency as a protagonist. She’s just whatever the plot demands her to be. Rey doesn’t actively take the initiative and make decisions, and simply react to the world around her. There is never a reason given as to why she wants to be a Jedi. Sure, she’s heard the stories about them, but she doesn’t dream to be one like Anakin, and the writers are so obsessed over her parents that they never develop any other motivation besides that. She has to be strung along the story so she can take part in it, hence she is repeatedly chased and kidnapped throughout TFA to get her to the Resistance where she decides to find Luke because she has nowhere else to go. Part of the reason she doesn’t even train with Luke is because she has no reason to, as she’s just supposed to find him. Rey joins the fight simply in reaction to learning that Luke is responsible for Ben’s fall. She’s only ever a Jedi and a member of the Resistance out of necessity- she has no where left to go and has to fight in self defense- so they try hamfist in some motives that she needs to stop herself from becoming like Palpatine but there is no tension as it’s the final act. By the end of the trilogy it’s not even clear if the Jedi Order will return because Rey never seems to want to be one and we can only assume they will return for meta reasons- because the audience knows the ST is a copypasta of the OT.

What exactly was Rey’s motivation for getting involved in the Galactic conflict before TROS? Luke was told that his father was killed by Darth Vader and later his family gets murdered by the empire so he had personal stakes to get involved in the conflict.

Anakin was a Jedi and had lived in the Republic for ten years by the time of the Clone Wars begun so he had personal reasons to get involved in the conflict.

Rey meanwhile grew up so isolated of Jakku that she had no idea forests existed and she didn’t lose anything and the FO attacked her on Jakku. In fact she wanted to return to Jakku after she had dumped BB-8 with the Resistance. Her primary motivation in TFA was to reunite with her family but the movie never establish that her family’s absence was connected to the galactic conflict in any way.

That connection isn’t established until TROS so what was her motivation until than? The Death of Han? A guy she had known for two hours? Finn? A guy she also had maybe only knew for about two hours total by the time of their hug in TLJ? Also she seemed to have completely forgotten about Finn by the time she want on a quest to redeem the guy that has far as she should have known by that point was still in a coma with his spine permanently damaged because of Kylo.

Rey’s motivation seems to either be finding her family or her dealing with her existential crisis neither had much of a connection with the galactic conflict until TROS

[skullsandwineglasses]

Love and Redemption Review

Overall, I have to say that the story was really good, maybe even better than the popular xianxia romances that came before it like Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Love and Destiny, and Ashes of Love. The romance may be comparable to AOL, but as a whole, the plot in L&R was more interesting and cohesive.

****SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LOVE AND REDEMPTION AND OTHER XIANXIA DRAMAS****

Plot

What sets Love and Redemption apart from the other 3 xianxia romances is that Love and Redemption also feels like a quest/adventure story, while also delivering a gut-wrenching, star-crossed romance plot. What’s interesting about L&R is that the main focus is on the mortal realm and the FL and ML’s current mortal incarnation, as opposed to the heavenly realm and their immortal identities.

The actions of the mortals have consequences across the 3 realms, as opposed to other xianxia romances that only use the mortal realm as a temporary stage for the leads to fall in love. The other 3 xianxias that I mentioned all opened up in the heavenly/celestial realm first, while the mortal realm was just a brief trial that the leads have to endure before returning to the immortal realm. The moral realm in L&R therefore feels livelier and more eventful, and the mortals have more agency and are not easily influenced by celestial beings. Whenever a celestial being does come down to the mortal realm, their powers are limited and are they are bound by the rules and restrictions of the mortal realm (which means that celestial beings can’t use their powers to mess with the emotions and decisions of mortals). 

The drama opens up with a tournament being held at the FL’s sect and members from all the other sects are arriving for the tournament. When the FL and ML meet, they are on equal footing (well, equal in terms of status as disciples, but not so much in terms of magical prowess). It’s like when you were in high school and you meet the visiting basketball team from a rival school, and then end up becoming friends with them.

Love and Redemption also takes the audience through a mystery. What is the true immortal identity of the FL? What’s her relationship to the Star of Mosha? Is she the saviour or the doomsday harbinger? Does the ML have an immortal identity too? Why do they have the same birthday? The drama keeps us on our toes because we learn about the truth and the history of the characters as they’re discovering it, as opposed to the other xianxia dramas where there is very little mystery and few plot twists.

Because of this mystery, the drama is tight and well-paced, since a new piece of the puzzle is always being revealed. Just when you thought that the mystery is solved, there’s a twist, and you realized that the twist was set up from the very beginning of the story, but you just missed it. 

The story also doesn’t stray from the main leads. Yes, there are subplots (as all dramas do), but the subplots here are brief, and they usually relate back to the main leads. Unlike in AOL where the later half of the drama derails and focuses on the two other supporting couples, while the main leads only get about 10 minutes of screen time. 

The Male Lead - Yu Si Feng

Before starting the drama, I read a lot of comments about how much whump and emotional torture the ML goes through and how much he sacrifices for the FL. I thought this was an exaggeration. I mean, Xufeng in AOL went through a lot of Jin Mi too, (and you could make the same argument for Ye Hua in TMOPB, or Bai Zi Hua in Journey of Flower), so I was a little hesitant about the premise since it’s such an old trope, and I was doubtful that it could top the sacrifice that other MLs have done in other dramas. 

But reader, boy was I wrong. Yu Si feng is the definition of limitless, unconditional love. I lost count of how many times he almost died for the FL (not including the 9 times she killed him in their previous 9 lives). He’s spitting up blood and stabbed in nearly every episode. Episodes 37-47 were the hardest to watch because of the escalating chronic angst and misunderstandings between him and Xuan ji that caused irreversible damage to their relationship. Even when she tries to kill him and tells him she regrets having ever known him, he still drags himself back to rescue her. To quote Si feng himself, it’s not a question of whether or not it’s worth it, but it’s a question of whether you are willing to do it. And Si feng is as eager and willing as ever to sacrifice everything for Xuan ji. 

I mean, even Xufeng in AOL and Ye Hua in TMOPB snapped at the FL’s cruelty and aloofness at one point, but Si feng seems incapable of ever being angry with Xuan ji. Even when Si feng purposely tries to avoid her, it’s out of protection for her, not out of anger for everything she’s done. Like??? Si feng is impossibly perfect, even by the impossible standards of xianxia. 

Cheng Yi plays Si feng to a T. He conveys a different type of pain in every crying scene, and so Si feng basically experiences like 59 different types of crushing pain, and you feel it in your bones every time you watch it. The man’s eyes speak volumes.

While it would be easy to say that Cheng Yi carries the drama with his portrayal of Si Feng, the actions of the ML would be meaningless if there were no romantic interest that he was doing this all for.  

The Female Lead - Chu Xuan Ji

Some people may feel that Xuan ji isn’t worth Si feng’s devotion. But, I would argue that the first 37 episodes shows us that she is definitely worth it. 

Xuan Ji is similar to Jin Mi from AOL in that she is incapable of feeling or understanding love. Because Xuan Ji was born without her 6 senses (and also without a real heart, unbeknownst to the other characters), she’s naive and juvenile. But despite not having feelings, she’s still able to care completely about others. She cares about her sister, her father, her sect brothers, and Si Feng. She’s fiercely protective of them as they are of her. To the best of her limited abilities, she is devoted to people as much as she can be. 

Because of her sensory deprivation, Xuan Ji is really curious about the world. She wants to be like everyone else, to feel like everyone else, in hopes of being able to properly reciprocate people’s love for her. She envies people who are able to cry because she thinks that’s an unhindered way of showing love. She regrets not being able to cry when her mother died. Xuan Ji is therefore a self-aware character, unlike Jin Mi, because she knows her shortcomings. She wants to be able to feel, understand, and share pain. 

As such, she’s quite an active character because she has this goal of reviving her senses, which has ripple effects for the other characters in the story since they become a part of her journey, whether by choice or by force. 

Why Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji

Xuan Ji and Si Feng are very opposite characters, and not just because of the obvious difference in their personalities. Si Feng is a boy who feels too much (we later see that he gets his persistent sentimentality from his father), but was taught his whole life to suppress his emotions (I mean, the mask both literally and figuratively prevents him from emoting). Si Feng wants to express his feelings, but cannot. 

On the other hand, Xuan Ji is allowed to be as expressive as she wants, but she is empty on the inside. Xuan Ji represents everything Si Feng wants to be and is expected to be: free and emotionless. 

In this mortal incarnation, SF has responsibilities to everyone, from his spirit beast to his sect. Xuan Ji is the only one who doesn't ask or expect anything of him and yet, for someone who can't feel, she's always thinking of him. she stands up for him, she brings him snacks to comfort him when he’s being punished, she helps steal back his mother's hairpin. These are very simple gestures, but they mean the world to him (no one else has done these things for him before, and he doesn’t understand why she would unconditionally do these things for him), and that's why he's so quick to risk everything for her. Thus ironically, Si Feng actually learned about unconditional love from Xuan Ji. 

He’s never known love, warmth, or friendship in his lonely years growing up in the Lize Palace. And so, when you’re just a 16 year old awkward, hormonal, and introverted teenage boy, it’s easy to fall for a selfless girl who invades your personal space and has no sense of propriety. 

Why Xuan Ji fell for Si Feng

We see that her love is gradual. She falls in love with him without even realizing she’s fallen in love. She cares for him as a friend at first. After all, like she said, Si Feng is the first friend she’s made from outside her sect. But soon, her caring for him surpasses that of what she feels for her sect brothers. Si Feng teaches her about the world, from what different food tastes like, to naming colours. Si Feng doesn’t infantilize her like her sect brothers do. Her sect brothers are either dismissive or protective, like Ming yan, but she is able to find a proper confidant in Si Feng who is willing to be patient with her and listen to her. 

Their 4-year separation when they each undergo training and achieve a boost in their abilities, only made Xuan Ji’s heart grow fonder. She misses Si Feng, and is frustrated to see that things are different between them when they meet again. She doesn’t understand why he’s so cold and distant, and all she wants to do is close the distance between them. 

It’s a meme that Xuan Ji is the one who wears the pants in the relationship. She’s assertive and bold, and I think part of the reason why she fell for Si Feng is because he gives her that space to be best and biggest version of herself, whether in the heavenly realm or in the mortal realm. She’s also fascinated by him. A person outside of her sect who has an endearing personality unlike anyone else she’s seen. He piques her curiosity, and so she’s drawn to him. He’s as much as her romantic and sexual awakening as she is his. 

It’s apt that their ship name is the combination of their last names “Chu Yu”, which sounds similar to the words 初遇, which means “first encounter”. Not only is this drama about capturing the feelings of first love, but Si Feng and Xuan Ji have also had 10 different first encounters because of their 10 reincarnation tribulations. 

The Romance

It’s actually quite fun and endearing to watch because both Xuan Ji and Si Feng are playing hard to get, which frustrates the hell out of both of them. Xuan Ji is trying to win back Si Feng and convince him to stay, while Si Feng himself is trying to win Xuan Ji’s heart, and she doesn’t even realize it. They’re both trying to woo each other, but they’re both being resistant, intentionally and unintentionally. 

I have to admit, though, that the first few episodes were slow. 

There aren’t major sparks during the first meeting between the leads. She just falls out of the sky into his arms, and he’s flustered by her sudden appearance and clinginess. The love story didn’t feel “epic” during the the first 4 episodes because it didn’t feel like there were any stakes. These were just 2 young disciples from different sects who had a stereotypical meet-cute. It was like watching a high school coming-of-age romcom. 

Things start to get serious when Si feng is forced to wear the lover’s curse mask, meaning that he cannot love, or else every time he’s hurt by the one he loves, that mask will release a feather to his heart and he’ll feel unbearable pain. When all the feathers are released, he’ll die. This means that he has to stay away from Xuan Ji, but obviously, the drama can’t let that happen, so he’s constantly thrown into situations with her, he can’t stay away from her, and he ends up falling for her harder and harder against his will. 

Xuan Ji trusts Si Feng completely and unconditionally (until episodes 37-47 that is). She is willing to go against her father and sect in order to protect him. She’s willing to sacrifice herself to save him. She’s willing to go rogue with her powers for him. When no one else trusts him, she does. 

This makes Xuan Ji a very cathartic character to watch because she isn’t frustrating at all. She isn’t easily influenced and has her own views. She doesn’t share the same prejudiced views as the elder sect leaders. She is willing to disobey if it’s the right thing to do. She immediately clears up misunderstandings, like the one between her and Ming yan. We see her gradually become more mature through her increasing protectiveness over Si Feng. 

I think because we see this rational and loyal side of Xuan Ji, we’re able to have a higher tolerance for her ignorance and mistakes later in the drama (but only barely). 

The Reincarnations - What Does it Mean to Love a Soul?

Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji 10 times in the mortal world, not including the very first time he falls for her when they were immortals in the heavenly realm. 

I explained why I think Si Feng fell for Xuan Ji is this 10th reincarnation, but why did he fall for her in the past 9 lives? In the flashbacks, we see that in each life, Xuan Ji is cruel and heartless, and she still had the same unforgiving and ruthless demeanor as when she was the god of war. Is it because Si Feng’s soul is always going to be automatically attracted to Xuan Ji’s soul?

Because we only see brief glimpses of the past 9 lives (more specifically, we only see the ending of these lives), we don’t really know how they met or how Si Feng came to love her in each life. But, I would assume that there was something about Xuan Ji in each of her reincarnations that attracted her to Si Feng and completed him. Also, we know that Xuan Ji is capable of tenderness. As the god of war, she disliked fighting. As Mosha, she cared about Bailing. So, while Xuan Ji’s nature might be violent and cruel, I think that with each life, she learns about love and sincerity. If we assume that the flashbacks of the 9 lives are in order, then it would seem like Xuan Ji becomes more and more affected by Si Feng’s death with each successive lifetime. In the first life, she is completely indifferent to his beheading. but we see that she begins to become affected in the later lives, but tries to shove those emotions aside because they’re foreign and unfamiliar to her. 

We get even less context for how Si Feng might have fallen for the god of war in the heavenly realm. We only know that Si Feng was the Jade Emperor’s son, and only gained a celestial anamorphic form after 10, 000 years. His true form is the Golden-feathered bird. He’s always appearing by the god of war’s side to listen to her vent, but the god of war only sees him as a stray bird who comes by to visit occasionally. Why did he fall for her? Did he empathize with her loneliness? Maybe she was his only friend, like he was her only friend, but she didn’t even realize it. 

We also see that Si feng loves Xuan ji no matter who she is or what form she takes. Her gender doesn’t matter to him, and gender was never even an issue in the drama. The drama doesn’t give an explanation for why Bailing created a female body for the god of war (besides that he wanted to disguise Mosha’s appearance), but it also doesn’t matter. It’s a non-issue, and I love it. We just need to accept it, because the “why” isn’t important.

Xuan Ji has 3 different identities: The Star of Mosha (Luo Hou Ji Do), the god of war, and Xuan Ji the mortal. The god of war and Xuan Ji have the same “soul”, and that soul came from the glass of Mosha’s imprisonment lamp, and also from Mosha’s altered corporeal body. So, she is a part of Mosha, but has also become her own entity. 

To Si Feng, all 3 identities are Xuan Ji. The memories, emotions, and experiences of all the identities are what made Xuan Ji Xuan Ji, and so he loves all of them. 

But what made Xuan Ji finally crack so that she’s now able to love Si Feng in this 10th reincarnation? I think it has to do with her upbringing. We see in her previous 9 lives that she had a troubled upbringing filled with scheming and violence. So she was consumed by the darkest side of humanity and Si Feng couldn’t pull her out. But in this life, she grew up with an abundance of love, which made her want to learn how to love, which allowed her to open up to Si Feng. In this way, the drama shows that Si Feng alone isn’t enough to redeem her, but it took the love of her friends and family to help her grow a heart. 

The Angst

Okay. So. Si Feng has probably suffered more than any male lead in xianxia history. I think someone said that he has a martyr complex. But, I’d like to break down the type of angst that are present in dramas. 

There is angst that is harmless, and there is angst that is damaging to the relationship. 

Harmless angst is usually angst by external forces. Like parents who don’t allow their kids to be together. Like in AOL when Xufeng mistakenly thinks that Jin Mi might be his sister so he can’t be with her. In L&R, this kind of external angst happens when Si Feng mistakenly thinks that Xuan Ji likes her 6th sect brother Ming yan. Xuan Ji isn’t purposely hurting Si Feng, but it’s an unintentional misunderstanding. 

Damaging angst is when the couple turns against each other and become enemies. This happened when Jin Mi kills Xufeng and says she never loved him (which technically is true since her heart was re-sealed so she didn’t even understand what love was when she said it). In L&R, this happens Xuan Ji sides with her sect and attacks Si Feng when he reveals his demon form. This happens again when they confront each other outside the Lize Palace and she announces that she’s done with him and breaks ties with him. This happens again when she stabs him, says she regrets having ever known and loved him, and proceeds to try to stab him again. In Love and Redemption, Xuan Ji keeps saying hurtful things to him. There’s not just one moment of betrayal, but a constant onslaught of betrayals over 10 episodes that make the relationship feel like it’s entered a point of no return. 

The masochistic side of me likes love/hate relationships and damaging angst. I grew up with it. TVB dramas have a lot of it. My favourite is the angst in Raymond Lam and Charmain Sheh dramas like Drive of Life and Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion. But despite over 20 years of watching dramas, I was still not prepared for the pain and suffering in Love and Redemption. 

The good news is that they make up fairly quickly, though some may argue too quickly and easily. 

What I Enjoyed

Other xianxia romances usually only have 1 mortal reincarnation. This has 10 reincarnations (even if only shown briefly), and I love that. The leads have already had such a rich history together, but they don’t remember, and so the romance is about them falling in love all over again in this life, while also slowly remembering the love they had in their previous lifetimes. 

The world-building was also compelling, and the supporting characters were great. They were the voice of reason and talked sense into the main leads to help move the plot forward. I also liked how the ML and FL each had their own personal relationship with the supporting characters separate from each other. For instance, Ming yan has a childhood friendship with Xuan Ji, but he also develops his own friendship with Si Feng. Wu Ziqi was once Mosha’s helper, and also knew the god of war, but also forms his own friendship with Si Feng. Zi Hu is also friends with both Xuan Ji and Si Feng. Having separate friendships with the leads means that the supporting characters are unbiased. They’re not likely to help the ML more than the FL or vice versa, but they’re able to see both sides of things. They help the leads, but they’re also critical of them, and is therefore able to help the leads make rational decisions. It reminds me of the friendship dynamics in Avatar where the characters have unique relationships with each other. Like Toph has her own relationship dynamic with Sokka and Katara, which is different from Aang’s relationship dynamic with them. 

It goes without saying that Si Feng is the best part of the drama. He plays an emotionally repressed character, so it always feels like the heavens opened up when he smiles, and Xuan Ji seems to be the only one who can make him smile. SF's best moments are when he shows moments of vulnerability, like when he begs Xuan Ji not to cut ties with him, or when he's so happy to the point of disbelief and he's afraid of it being true that he begins to slightly quiver, like when he kept asking XJ if she was really the one who took off his mask. You can see him break down and not being able to contain his emotions and how much he’s desperately yearning for his love to be reciprocated. 

I like that the FL has the same personality throughout the drama. I'm always annoyed when the FL's personality takes a 360-degree turn when she has a sudden "awakening" when her past life memories come flooding back and she instantly matures and becomes jaded. In Love and Redemption, Xuan Ji stays her bubbly self, even when she’s burdened with responsibilities. Hell, even when she becomes a mother, she’s still aloof and playful. In episode 52 or so when she burns her leg and refuses to leave Si Feng’s house, she acts like a helpless little girl again. Si Feng tells her that such a small injury wouldn’t even faze someone as powerful as she is, but she reminds him that he once told her that even if she didn’t feel pain, her body would know the pain, and so she should always tell him when she’s hurt. I just like this throwback to the earlier episodes to show that while Xuan Ji has grown and matured, she’s still the same person who wants to be loved and pampered. 

Weaknesses of the Drama

Xuan Ji is a really multi-faceted and complex character (because of her villainous tendencies), but Crystal Yuan doesn’t completely deliver in all of her performances of the character. Crystal Yuan is great when she’s acting cute (though it reminds me a lot of Zhao Liying’s acting in Journey of Flower, even the voice actress is the same actress), but I feel like Crystal Yuan’s crying scenes are a little lacking. Also, Xuan Ji is a character who is often in moral and emotional conflict because she starts to feel emotions that she doesn’t understand since she’s never felt them before, but sometimes Crystal isn’t very convincing when trying to convey this internal conflict. For instance, in the scene when she thought Si Feng was getting married to Ah Lan, I thought that her devastation at seeing that should have been a bit more palpable. I mean, you finally found the love of your life after searching him for over a year and now he’s in front of you, about to get married to another woman. There should be more pain, anger, regret, disbelief, a battle of emotions unfolding on the face. There should have been more deflation, more staggering. I think back to when Tang Yan was watching Luo Jin get married to someone else in Princess Weiyoung, or when Jin Mi was watching Xufeng propose to Sui He in AOL, and the desperation and shock was subtle, but still so strong. You could feel the drop in your own stomach when sympathizing with the female character. 

I also obviously disliked how Xuan Ji didn’t believe Si Feng. But I would have understood why she didn’t believe him (even when he logically explained his innocence) since there are so many people pressuring her judgment, but what I can’t get over is how she had it in herself to physically hurt him. And she already hurt him before too, so she knows how much it pains her to hurt him. She already regretted the act before. But because she mistakenly thinks that he killed Hao Chen, she decides that she needs to kill him? Does Hao Chen mean that much to you that you’d be willing to sacrifice Si Feng in order to avenge him? That was my breaking point for her character. 

I didn’t like how Hao Chen’s arc was resolved. For 1000 years, he thought he was right and never had any regrets. He was obsessed with controlling his friend Mosha to the point of killing him and sealing his soul away. He then created another being, became possessive over that being to the point of falling in love with it (without admitting it), and then follows his creation down to the mortal world, and wrecks havoc on the mortals, especially Si Feng. And when Hao Chen learns that he can no longer control or redeem Xuan Ji, he decides that he needs to kill her in order to prevent Mosha from coming back. But then suddenly, because of a few words and visions from the Jade Emperor, he immediately has a change of heart and sees the error of his ways. It’s just so anti-climactic. Yuan Long’s ending was also underwhelming. I just wanted the good guys and bad guys to fight it out without divine intervention. 

While I sympathize with Si Feng and agree that it's like watching a puppy get kicked over and over again, he honestly gets jealous way too easily and is too insecure. He also keeps everything to himself and sucks at communicating. We blame Xuan Ji for being too quick at jumping to conclusions, but Si Feng also jumps to conclusions too and causes unnecessary pain for himself. 

Overall Impression

Overall, despite the frustrations, I really liked the consistency of the drama. It flows as one complete narrative and all the subplots are well intertwined with the main plot. With other reincarnation xianxia dramas, you could divide the story into distinct arcs, but it’s harder to do with this one since you have arcs that overlap and transcend other arcs. There’s the mask arc, the god of war arc, the reincarnation arc, the demon identity arc, the Mosha arc, etc. Before one arc is completed, another arc is introduced.

If you’re looking for a be-all-end-all, til the end of time and end of the world romance, this is it. While it has many similar tropes to other xianxias like AOL, I think this executes the tropes better. Although if you’ve already watched AOL or other xianxias, you might be more immune to the angst (even though this drama is angstier). But if you watch this drama first, I think it sets the bar pretty high for other xianxia dramas.

The chemistry and sexually tension is also through the roof (and the BTS will have you raising your eyebrows - are costars normally that flirty and touchy feely on set?)

So yes, this drama does live up to the hype. More meta posts to come because I’m still going through withdrawal. 

(Just checked the word count on this review, and it’s over 4700 words. I’m clearly an obsessed mess). 

Other meta posts:

Recurring details and motifs in Love and Redemption

Similarities to other stories in movies and literature

[kdramafeminist]

Performative Badassery & Women in Kdramas

When I said I wrote an essay, I meant essay. This is a long one! Grab a snack and venture below the read more. I’ll see you at the end!

----------

You know the feeling. The drama begins. Our female main lead walks onto screen. She’s a successful businesswoman, a hotshot detective, clever lawyer, smartass retail worker, etc, etc. She stares down a random man to prove she’s the powerful one here. Or kicks some ass. Or rattles off a bunch of demands to her workers. Or talks fast to show off her intelligence.

Then she meets the male lead. There’re fireworks. Slowly we find our female lead has a softer side. Good to know. 3-dimensional and complex characters are important. It’s nice to see women on-screen who are both capable and emotional. Kick ass and feminine. 

But slowly... something starts to go wrong. She seems to be crying more than showing literally any other kind of emotion. And is it just me or is she getting saved and manhandled and flustered quite a lot for a woman who we were told was so well put together? Sure, the circumstances are extreme. But they’re extreme for the male lead too and he seems to be managing just fine for some reason. Also, if both of them are ordinary people with no on-screen fighting experience, how come he’s so great at throwing fists out of nowhere and she’s busy keeping hidden or needing rescuing? Exactly how many times can one person just faint like that without anyone checking to see if she has a medical condition?

By the drama’s end our lead has gone through trials and tribulations. She’s fallen in love too, I’m happy for her. But... now that the story’s ending and she’s getting in one last chance to show us she’s a “badass”, why am I left feeling hollow? She’s showing us how tough she is but... we ALL spent this whole drama watching her have absolutely no agency or such a little amount that she might as well have been trying to put out a fire with a water-pistol. It’s almost like her previous badassery (in whatever form it may have been - I don’t mean badass only in terms of being able to throw a good punch) was just a façade. A way to hook in female viewers like me who want to see something more than a wilting wallflower or one-trick Cinderella. But the tiniest knock and the cardboard house collapses.

And no matter how many times we get throwaway lines about her being “the smartest/toughest/scariest/most capable one here” it doesn’t ring true compared to the actual character we’re watching.

Rom-coms, melos and sagueks especially (but many more genres besides), have a real problem when it comes to performative badassery in their female characters. The writers give us a female lead they claim is hyper competent, but the reality is totally different. Any plot that features romance, almost always features this. Honestly the way the start of the relationship in dramas actively MURDERS the female character’s agency could be its own essay so I won’t go deep, just know the two are 100% linked.

The “Faux Action Girl” Problem 

A Faux Action Girl happens when a writer wants the popularity that comes with having a cool action girl character, or they want the praise that comes with writing a lead that breaks gender norms, or they want to be lauded for writing a FL whose more capable & progressive than the female kdrama lead we’d imagine, but they don’t end up actually giving us her. Instead we get the fake or faux version. The reasons are usually a combination of:

Relying on outdated tropes. Wrist grabs, damsels in distress, a girl fainting so she misses some vital plot related moment to increase runtime etc...

Sexist worldviews. As a by-product of being Korean which is still a heavily sexist country because of the holdover of Confucianism mixed in with the Christianity westerners brought over that leads many writers to (often without even realising) inserting moments that inadvertently reduce their female leads because they think that’s what correct or natural for the female character based on their opinion of women in general. Even if it doesn’t actually fit the type of character they’ve set out to create.

Executive meddling. Producers who think their demographic wouldn’t be able to handle a real badass but also know their female viewers want more complexity and agency in their FLs these days and so give us the paper-version instead of the 3D model.

This character’s more “badass” traits are nearly always just an Informed Ability (the writers tell us via other characters what she can do but never actually show us on-screen these same things) or we only ever see her utilise them once/twice at the beginning and maybe if we’re lucky once at the end, but never again. 

It really hurts.

The “Badass Decay/Chickification” Problem

Sometimes she really is a legitimate action girl though. She’ll be a cop whose good at her job or an ordinary citizen whose well-versed in taekwondo. She has actual moments on-screen to prove herself. 

Well. She has moments in episodes 1 and 2. Then she almost always goes through Badass Decay/Chickification. Which means that writers (& producers) believe that if we don’t see her having a softer side, she’ll become unrealistic or unlikeable. 

They fix her. So she becomes more vulnerable. As the only girl on the team (usually), she becomes the one who ends up injured more often or needs rescuing most. Her life begins to revolve entirely around her romance and nothing else. (Meanwhile the male leads gets to have the romance and keep his side-quest - have you noticed that? If the FL is really lucky she gets to keep one side-quest too, maybe a dream job or solving some family mystery. Never more though.. only men get to be complicated here). Once she was competent... now it feels like she legitimately had a personality transplant. 

Is this even the same person we began with?

The “Worf Effect” Problem 

Worf Effect is when the danger/power level of a villain is shown to the audience by making him successfully attack/hurt/ruin the plans of someone that the audience knows is skilled. This isn’t a bad thing alone and writers use it all the time. We need to acknowledge the villain as a proper threat and this is a useful way to do it!

But in kdramas it’s something used almost always against the lead female character. The one we’ve seen is intelligent, or strong-willed or quick-witted. 

And because it’s always her, this character begins to look weak. If this writing trope is abused, her reputation as the "biggest, toughest" etc. begins to look like it never existed and we’re back to her having an informed ability. 

That this is something that happens to the female characters not only more often but almost exclusively is a sign of sexism. Plain and simple.

Competent, Real Badass Female Characters Aren’t Scary

 If you’re going to sell me a capable woman, give me her. 

Not someone who has one very unique, specialised skill but otherwise can do nothing else except for that one time when her one skill is useful. 

Or has built up her own empire, implying a certain level of smarts, business ability or networking skills, but then once she’s removed from it she becomes so utterly useless it begs the question how she built that empire in the first place. 

Or has a rep as the detective whose taken down the toughest guys off-screen, but whatever skills she used to do that seem to disappear the moment anything really challenging happens on-screen. 

I’m not saying she needs to win all the time. Of course she doesn’t, how boring is that? All I’m asking is that when she loses, it’s in keeping with the character I’m supposedly watching. A woman that can kick ass can still be outwitted. A clever woman can be physically beaten. A street-smart girl can be foiled by rules and regulations. A leader-type can be beat by someone whose more unconventional.

It’s not difficult to write someone like this. I know the writers can do it because every male lead is written this way. I’ve never once, whilst watching a badass male lead lose, get beaten and cry, thought “oh no, his badassery was fake all along!”

Because when he loses it makes sense. It’s in character. There’s a solid plot reason behind why it happens.

Meanwhile my ladies who are meant to be able to kick ass and take names somehow just got kidnapped out of nowhere?

Make it make sense!

Consistent Characterisation is Good Writing

I get wanting moments where one is injured and the other fusses over them. I love those moments! All I ask is more imagination taken to get us to that point. Make it in-character. If my taekwondo black belt is kidnapped, I want to see her really fight. I want the kidnapping to be shown as genuinely tough on the people trying to nab her. Imagine how much more satisfying it would be to see her fight off all these bad guys, yet still end up losing? How much more heart-breaking?

We’d be so much more invested in the mind games or politics the villain is playing if the female lead we’ve been told is good at that stuff is playing the game just as hard. When she loses it’ll hurt more.

Writers need to stop being afraid that her remaining capable in some way diminishes the masculinity, attractiveness, prowess or “hero” status of the male lead. Trust me. It doesn’t. Ever. 

It’s not a case of either/or. We don’t think less of the male lead because his partner is as capable as him in whatever way that may be. Instead, we think more of them both. Once a romance begins, the heightened worry both characters have for each other should only make both of them stronger in whatever area they’re skill lies in. Not just make the man a sudden defence wall and the woman a worrying mess. 

I’m sure everyone who reads this can immediately think of at least one drama with a FL who is a Performative Badass. I know I had about ten in mind as I wrote this. 

There are exceptions. Cases where the badass gets to stay a badass. Usually these cases happen in genres without romance because like I said above, those problems are linked. But I can think of a few romcoms/sageuks/melos where it happens too. 

But those are the minority.

Women in kdramas. Give them agency. Make their characterisation genuine, not just a bit-part for the sake of a cool trailer. Not just one moment someone can edit into a “badass multifemale” video edit - only for us to watch the drama from the clip and discover we���ve been sold a lie. 

How satisfied would we be?

Writers! Give us a story we enjoyed because of the excellent characterisation. A new female character we can add to our lists of faves. Women who proved themselves as consistently badass as their first scenes claimed. Women in kdramas who, no matter what problem they faced, don’t become echoes or paper-thin versions of who we were promised.

Actual, complex, layered, enjoyable, KICK-ASS AND BADASS female leads.

Wouldn’t that be a miracle.

----------

PS. This is an open notice that it’s OKAY to reblog with added commentary/thoughts/rambles of your own. I would *love* to see it if you have anything to add.

---------- 

(Disclaimer: This essay was written with a specific female character type in mind. I am not saying every FL needs to be a badass or hyper competent. Soft, shy, physically weak female characters exist and can be just as realistic and complex. There’s a few I can think of who I adore. Instead my essay is very specifically about characters who are *meant* to be badass from the start but then... don’t end up being. So, yeah, before anyone claims I’m some angry feminist who needs every FL to be some tough martial artist or something. Absolutely not! Diversity is amazing and interesting. All I ask is that when I am told I’ll be getting a badass in a drama I get her. Not have my heart broken by the fake wilting flower I find in her place. Ok. End disclaimer. ^^)

----------

Also I’m tagging a bunch of you because you reblogged my post saying you wanted this so here! TY for making it to the end ^^

@kdramaxoxo​ @islandsofchaos @storytellergirl @vernalagnia-blog @lostindramas @salaamdreamer​ @planb-is-in-effect​ 

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 139 Review Part I: On Eren Jeager and Genocide

Why?

Why is this happening?

Folks, I’m going to be honest here: there are no words for this. The main thrust of this chapter is completely inexplicable. It’s stupid. It’s ill conceived. FML.

Just…just the term itself is laughable.

Eren redemption arc.

Sksksksksksksksksksksk

After everything he’s done, everyone he’s killed, you’re going to try redeeming Eren in the final chapter?

Eren didn’t need to be redeemed. He was a bullheaded kid who didn’t let anyone stop him from doing what he thought needed to be done. He sees the titans outside the walls as enemies to be exterminated. When he learns that his real enemies are other humans, who have a right to freedom as much as he does, he can’t accept it and decides to just exterminate them too. That mindset led him down a tragic path of genocide.

That’s not a bad character arc!

In fact, I’d say it’s very compelling. Nonconformity and obstinance are often presented as virtues; flipping that paradigm on its head and showing the vices of those virtues was legitimately smart and provocative.

Making people rethink what traits are virtues and vices is a great moral to the story, and it paired well with the other moral of cooperation and loving your fellow people.

Then this chapter came out, and they threw all that away.

Eren’s arc once made me think of Aristotle, who argued that true virtue lied between extremes: neither too submissive nor too rebellious.

Now Eren’s arc makes me think of pseudointellectual 4chan philosophy, and dumb teenagers: “He’s not a bad guy, he’s just human!!!”

Eren’s motivations are a mess now. He had no free will, but he also had a plan, but deep down he wanted to do the rumbling no matter what, but actually he really wanted to be with Mikasa.

Oh, and B T dubs, he killed his mom too.

You can tell Isayama is desperate to make Eren as sympathetic as possible to justify making him the anti-hero because he’s throwing everything he can pull out of his ass at Eren.

Really, though, all he ended up doing was smearing shit on the character.

Eren’s plan was to kill a significant part of the human population so the world wouldn’t be as overwhelming a threat as before. Simultaneously, he planned (“planned”) for the alliance to become vaunted heroes to the world when they killed him, thus paving the way to peace.

This…makes no sense?

There is no reason Eren should have believed this would work. During the battle of Trost, Pixis asked him if humanity could unite if threatened by a common enemy. Eren said no.

Eren is a pessimist about people. He sees how much the walldians fought with each other and concluded that people would always be at odds.

And the Tybur family helped defeat the Eldian Empire, but only the Tyburs were seen as heroes by the Marleyans. That good will was not imputed from the Tyburs to the other Eldians on the continent. There’s no reason to think that would happen here when it didn’t back then.

I’m assuming, anyway, that the alliance becoming heroes is supposed to lead to a world where Paradis is safe since that’s supposed to be Eren’s goal.

I’m willing to grant that maybe this part of Eren’s plan was more of a hope on his part. Peace would come only after his death, so he can’t truly “plan” for anything afterwards.

I think it’s safe to say that killing the world’s population was the main part of his plan, since that’s the part he had the most control over.

To the extent he had any control over his actions, which brings me to the next point.

So, turns out Eren had no free will.

Can you not feel Isayama’s desperation?

After all the awful things Eren’s done, Isayama’s brilliant idea to make him sympathetic is to strip him of all agency.

This is done by two routes throughout the chapter.

The first is by building him up as a victim. Eren’s mind is fucked; he can’t really control himself. Any decent person would feel pity for him, which is reinforced by the sorrow Armin visibly feels for him.

Then, like a shotgun blast to the face, we are told that Eren killed his mother in a moment that is clearly supposed to endear us to him.

This is such a transparent appeal for our sympathy. Isayama’s desperation leaps off the page and mugs us of it.

The only thing that this revelation adds to the story is that it gives Armin a reason to take up Eren’s hand, and show him support. You can see Armin’s heart breaking for Eren in that moment.

That’s mostly why this is here: to give the mass murderer a hard luck story so our hearts melt for him.

The second route is that depriving Eren of agency absolves him of blame for what he did.

Eren beat Armin bloody, but you can’t really blame him for it. He was drugged out on the Founding Titan and didn’t want to do it. He was acting on impulse, just going with the flow, so he deserves, at the very least, some leniency.

Eren both having a plan and not having much in the way of free will is contradictory. Everyone still talks about Eren as if he’s someone who is doing stuff even though we’re told he’s not really capable of rational decision making.

I’m going to be nice and assume Isayama’s intent is that when you parse this all out, you end up in a place where Eren is not truly responsible for what he did, and in any event this all ended with the titan curse broken and the world at peace, sooooo break out the champagne everyone, we achieved world peace!

…

Yeah, bub, I’m not partying right now.

Isayama’s ploy to absolve Eren of blame didn’t work. Eren is still responsible for the people he killed and his Founding Titan lobotomy counts for shit. Turns out it helps to know how free will works when you’re writing about free will.

Free will is the quality of being in control of your actions, at least to the extent necessary to be held responsible for them.

Eren was just going with the flow (wonder what Annie thought of that…), acting on impulse, and getting dragged along by fate, but that’s not actually important.

It’s been known for centuries that current events are caused by previous events and that the current events will bring about future events in a never ending chain of cause and effect. One domino causes another to fall causes another to fall and on and on. This is called determinism.

And that’s ok because we free will exists. It exists even if we can’t do anything other than what we are going to do. It exists in spite of, or even arises out of, determinism.

This premise, that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive, is the foundation for a family of theories about free will called compatibilism.

Compatibilist free will is the most popular theory of free will. There are a couple of variations on the basic idea, but the gist is that free will exists when your actions can be linked to an aspect of yourself that you identify with.

For example, if you had no choice but to do something, but you’re ok with that because it’s what you wanted anyway, then you have free will.

Even if I didn’t know you’d stop me in the end, I think I still would have flattened this world. 

-Eren Jeager

That’s all I needed to hear.

EREN, FUCK YOU!!!!

Eren had free will, at least as much as necessary to blame him for his genocide.

Isayama threw this curveball at us and all it did was ruin Eren as a character while leaving him just as repugnant as before. Incredible. It’s the worst of both worlds.

Before this chapter Eren was a guy who believed in something and followed that belief no matter who got in his way. That was great! It was tragic and sad, but great storytelling.

Where does this chapter leave us?

What we learn in this chapter is that Eren didn’t really believe in anything. He may have free will enough to be a shithead for what he did, but that doesn’t mean he has free will enough to be an interesting character.

Eren coming to grips with him not being free, in an absolute sense, would have been so much more interesting than what we got. Eren started the series comparing humanity to cattle in a pen. He ends the series being literally sheparded by fate to his death like cattle to a slaughterhouse.

And yet we get no exploration of that at all.

It’s lame. Everything about this is lame. From a storytelling perspective, Eren was just along for the ride. Who would want to reread this series now? A story about a boy who’s quest for freedom neither ends tragically nor happily, but is just forgotten about by the end. What’s the point?

There is none.

Eren’s journey ends up lost in the author’s own ignorance of the very thing this is supposed to be about.

Unfortunately, SNK isn’t interested in 80% of the world being dead. If it were, Eren wouldn’t have gotten such a warm send off.

I was honestly shocked when I read this chapter.

I thought it had been made clear. SNK had come firmly down against genocide. I never imagined Isayama would try a 180 in the final chapter.

And, well, he did, and here we are.

SNK is pro-genocide.

To wit:

Once Eren’s abominable plan is explained to everyone, he is lavished with love and comfort by his friends.

Armin did punch Eren for being callous about Mikasa, but overall all Armin had nothing but sympathy and understanding for Eren. They held hands and hugged and gave Eren a tender farewell.

All they talk about is how great a sacrifice Eren is making.

Not the sacrifice of 80% of all people, but the sacrifice that Eren personally is making of himself.

I don’t know what deranged mindset Isayama has that made him think this was sensible, but no, Eren is not sacrificing anything. He was always going to die. We’ve known this for several dozen chapters. It’s not a sacrifice to befall the fate you were always going to suffer.

He lost nothing. If anything, he gained from this ending.

Eren died knowing he was loved and appreciated by his friends. What more could a dying man ask for?

Eren is rewarded by the story for killing 80% of humanity.

His ultimate fate was no worse than was expected even before he committed the genocide, and he went out in the knowledge that his friends loved him for it.

It doesn’t even make logical sense that his friends would be so receptive to what he did.

There is no difference between Eren’s plan and what we thought Eren’s plan was before this chapter came out.

Armin thought Eren’s plan was to murder humanity to ensure his safety, and Armin was appalled. Armin was willing to sacrifice his life to ensure Eren failed. He was truly acting for the greater good of humanity.

In this chapter, Armin learns that Eren’s plan is actually to murder most of humanity to ensure his safety, and Armin loves him.

Again, hand holding, hugging, “thank you.” No mention of the unfathomable harm caused. The 80% killed are not even a footnote in this chapter.

Even after the fact, Eren’s friends showed no qualms with Eren essentially winning and procuring their safety through genocide.

When previously the mere thought of that was what motivated them to lay down their lives to stop him.

I don’t think Isayama believes this genocide is supposed to bear on how we think of Eren. I say, having just read the chapter that’s all about Eren, in which his genocide doesn’t bear on how his friends think of him. At all.

Was that too great a leap in logic? I apologize if my rationality offends you.

Eren may have died, but he won in the end.

His friends are safe and the world looks set to conclude a peace treaty with Paradis.

I don’t buy for a second that the world is a threat to Paradis anymore, and I don’t buy for a second that there won’t be a peace shortly after the end of the story.

It’s very telling, to me, that it’s the world that’s come to grovel at Paradis’ feet, begging for peace, when previously it was the other way around.

The contours of this “peace,” if you can call it that, were made pretty clear in the epilogue. The world is in ruins while Paradis is stronger than ever, so the world sues for peace for fear of Paradis attacking further. 

This is the moral of the story. Frankly, it’s been staring at us in the face the whole time.

How do you end the cycle of violence?

The answer is to win. To be stronger. More determined.

The only peace is enforced peace through domination.

Peace through the barrel of a gun.

To be continued in part II (and possibly part III)

[californiannostalgia]

Tangled the Series Character Analysis: Childhood Trauma POV

I can't believe Tangled the Series really created two incredible antivillains and threw them in direct contrast with the pre-existing golden couple. I love what the showrunners did with the main quartet, so I made a very subjective analysis post about it from a Childhood Trauma POV. (Spoilers, obviously.)

The Boys

The series' focus is on Rapunzel, and by association her direct opposite, Cassandra, so the boys get comparatively less screen time. But it doesn't take long to figure out that Varian is meant to be a parallel for Eugene—these are two people dealing with the absence of parental guardians, struggling to reconcile the lives they previously had with their changing ideals in relation to a less-than-perfect Father Figure.

They both respond to the helpless state of being young, alone, and powerless by trying to take back power in any way they can. Eugene reinvented himself and buried his desires for a family. Varian throws in everything he has into recovering what he lost, because he's a child and the best solution he can think of is to return to the familiar safety of his father's presence. A significant portion of his desperation is fueled by fear of his father’s disapproval, because as much as Quirin loves Varian, he wasn’t the dependable voice of support. Varian needs approval from outside sources, which was also Flynn Rider’s purpose in life, once upon a time. (Again, parallels.) 

Throughout the series, the boys' relationship with each other transforms from exasperated incomprehension to easy understanding. The process is hastened as Eugene lets himself realize he cares a lot about troubled kids who remind him of himself. He becomes aware that children should not be required to survive on their own like he and Lance had. Spurred on by his significant other's love and encouragement, Eugene is able to acknowledge the adverse affects of his childhood on his life and start moving on. His extending a ready hand to Varian is his process of healing. Though Eugene's first priority will always be Rapunzel, he truly wants to save Varian from the uncontrollable volatility of risky decisions because he knows that downward spiral intimately.

Of course, there is a difference between thieving from the rich and planning the destruction of a kingdom. We'll get to that later.

The Girls

Rapunzel and Cassandra are the biggest driving forces of narrative power in the show, and they are survivors of child abuse. Every one of the main quartet has Parent Issues, but Rapunzel takes the crown (figuratively speaking) with this one. She was kidnapped and groomed into a life-giving doll, and she was only able to escape her abusive adoptive mother through incredibly traumatizing means. For Cassandra, it was neglect, and even her loving adoptive father couldn't leviate the scars left on her childhood mind.

They're a classic case of Golden Child vs. Scapegoat, which is a common case seen in siblings raised by Narcissistic parents. When one child is "favored" more than the other, the kids experience vastly different childhoods, resulting in resentment that stems from their inability to understand each other. Rapunzel and Cassandra are both jealous of what the other had—Rapunzel wants Cassandra's casual, practiced ease with freedom and personal agency, while Cassandra wants the attention and respect that Rapunzel is given by the status of her birth. Because they're unwilling to speak candidly about the unique hardships of their childhood, what results is a series of miscommunications that put a strain on their friendship.

Cassandra and Rapunzel both want the other in their lives, but how they attempt to make that connection is very different. Cassandra wants to be a helpful, essential force in Rapunzel's life. Unfortunately, Rapunzel has been raised on the idea that when push comes to shove, no one will help her survive. Cassandra interprets Rapunzel's desire for independence as Rapunzel scorning the connection that Cassandra is attempting to create. Add in some manipulation from an ancient evil, and Cassandra decides she is done exhausting her emotions for Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, on the other hand, wants absolute honesty in her relationships. Gothel raised her on lies, so she spurns deception. But Cassandra knows the merits of protecting herself by holding her opinions in, which is where the misunderstandings occur. Rapunzel cannot trust someone who isn't completely forthright with her. She's tired of dealing with liars, and she grows afraid that Cassandra will cause her the same pain as Gothel did. But the thing is, Cassandra is not Gothel, and Rapunzel loved Gothel. She couldn't save Gothel, but maybe she can save Cassandra. It's not too late.

Rapunzel doesn't know when to give up on Cassandra because she is aware that she and Cassandra are similar people. Giving up on Cassandra would feel too much like giving up on her own hopes for a happy life. Rapunzel can't let Cassandra be unhappy. This princess cares too much, loves too hard. She never learned how to write people off because you can't survive a childhood like hers with that much cheer if you don't hang onto your optimism like a goddamn lifeline.

This is Rapunzel’s method of taking back power for herself: saving others. Rapunzel could have been Cassandra. Rapunzel is trying to believe she herself is worth saving—therefore, Cassandra must be worth saving as well. Rapunzel's significant other is giving her a stable source of love and support, but without a proper resolution to Cassandra's struggles—a final proof that despite Gothel's influence, they can both be happy—Rapunzel would feel incomplete.

The Golden Couple

At the end of the day, Rapunzel and Eugene are fundamentally good people. If it comes down to it, they would be unable to sacrifice the world for their own desires. (Eugene's thievery doesn't count as an expression of true desire because it was literally his method of survival. An expression of true, selfish desire for him might've been something like manipulation and abduction for the purposes of making people stay, but Eugene is not Gothel and he would never do that to anyone in a million years.) (On a side note, Rapunzel's selfish desire might've manifested in the abandonment of all duties and personal connections in favor of eternal exploration, or revenge towards a kingdom that failed to save her, or a thorough destruction of authority figures—but she loves people too much and would never be able to forsake her family.)

Life threw a lot of rocks at them, but these two came through it marginally well-adjusted. They affirmed their love for each other in a violent, unforgettable manner, which makes it easier for them to trust in each other's affection. Eugene would've been okay with never finding his biological father, just as Rapunzel had been okay with her biological parents' inability to protect her. They have no wish to punish the world for what they suffered. They’re content with who they are. They're just glad they made it, that they're finally allowed to love someone without being afraid. They're each other's saving grace.

The Antivillains

This is the difference between Hero and Antivillain: Cassandra and Varian are willing to punish the world for what happened to them. There’s a very faint line between justified retaliation and venting. In their desperation and anger, they cross the line, and they’re unable to stop themselves once they get going. Unlike the Golden Couple, Cassandra and Varian refuse to settle. They want what is owed. 

Also, they really, really hate themselves. (This is important.)

Varian believes Quirin is the ultimate source of affirmation. The fact that he lost his father by way of his own dangerous experiment, coupled with the fact that no one prioritizes his call for help in the face of national disaster, is enough to make him feel isolated from the world. Though he is burdened with a growing sense of remorse for his deeds, he doesn’t stop resorting to drastic, harmful measures to get his father back until he is forcefully stopped by betrayal from his allies. He finally makes the full transition from “antagonist” to “protagonist” when Rapunzel risks herself to save Quirin from the rocks. If Quirin could not be saved, there’s a possibility Varian might have stayed an antagonist, unenthusiastic though he may have been in his villainous role. As long as Quirin is trapped in those rocks, Varian remains the villain who put him there.

With Quirin safe, Varian allows himself to take huge steps in healing. He slowly rediscovers his self-worth, one that is separate from Quirin’s approval. Rapunzel—and by extension, Eugene—play the friendly, supportive role to Varian’s ingenuity, helping him along in his quest for self-acceptance. Varian still has trouble working through the heavily ingrained self-hatred, but he recovers enough confidence in his own judgment that he takes Eugene’s warning to heart and is able to install a safety device in his father’s helmet, just in case.

This is the Varian who meets Cassandra in the Tower that once belonged to Gothel. At this point in time, Cassandra has been manipulated into thinking of herself as weak and unimportant in comparison to Rapunzel. Her adoptive father, much like Quirin, was too gruff to be vocal with approvals. Her efforts have not been met with successes. She feels like a failure, and she hates feeling like a failure. This is Cassandra’s method of taking back power: by turning herself into someone unforgettable. If she can make something of herself, she’ll finally be able to prove Gothel wrong. She can be just as special as Rapunzel, if she’s given the chance. She wants that chance.

Similar to Varian, Cassandra doesn’t stop her downward spiral until her supposed ally and mentor betrays her and forcefully takes her power away. Only when there are no options left does she allow herself to admit that she was wrong. She is then rewarded for her honesty with Rapunzel’s love and trust. Armed with a new confidence, the sisters vanquish the evil together in an epic showdown that will long be remembered. Cassandra finally gets her dramatic hero’s tale.

Rapunzel and Eugene have an internal compass that lets them make snap decisions. They don’t have the healthiest self-esteem, but they can at least stand by what they think is right. Comparatively speaking, Cassandra and Varian have terrible self-esteem. They don’t trust their own judgment and are heavily influenced by outside forces. Without the constant barrage of trust and affection from Rapunzel, who is akin to a blazing sun when it comes to personal loyalty, these antivillains might never have reached their redemptive ending. They wouldn’t have been able to let go of their twisted priorities without outside influence. Can’t blame them for it, though.

It’s no surprise that Cassandra and Varian are relatable to many people. Who wouldn’t want to reclaim what was taken from them during childhood? (Of course, the problem occurs when you start hurting others to reclaim what you lost.) Their journey is a different kind of vulnerable from Rapunzel and Eugene’s journey, and it’s extraordinary in its detail. This show is essentially a long exploration of the various ways a parent can mess you up and the coping methods of kids who want to become more than their past, which is totally up my alley of expertise. I’m grateful I got to watch them grow taller than their trauma.

Finally, here’s a parting gif of Lance, because I love him and he’s a well-adjusted ray of sunshine. We all wish we could be as mentally stable as Lance—the main quartet included.

[superanonymousthethird]

In the recent ign interview they were like "We could've substitute content for evil run but then it wouldn't be a consequence! The agency is in getting less quests and getting stuck in combat more often" lmao.

Larian. Guys. It's a game. Whether in games or irl most ppl don't do evil out of nowhere. Most ppl are evil for their own gain. A game typically offers a reward for being evil, some *power*, influence!.. Unique quests if it's an RPG!..

Devs seem to think that the only evil that a player might enjoy is chaotic evil where they just attack everything on sight. For ppl who talked of how they felt like ppl would enjoy trying the evil route too, their approach just feels like intentional punishment of the players.

"But you get into more combat encounters!"

You mean you get less allies, companions and resources (choosing Minthara and not Halsin makes you lose the owlbear, Arabella, Rolan, Zevlor, Mol and Halsin as allies in the final battle; going with the Durge quest or choosing to try out Shadowheart's Dark Justiciar run makes you miss on Jaheira and her haprers + all the listed above allies + the gnomes + Minsc, and within act 2 you storm moonrise towers with just 4 people) AND GET ASS KICKED MORE OFTEN???

Gee thanks.

Also. Okay. Rewards. Halsin, Rolan, Zevlor, Mol, Owlbear and Arabella are *allies* as in they give you a buff/can be summoned in final battle. The choice is between all of that and Minthara (which is already insane enough of a tradeoff).

Lets compare Minthara and Halsin. Minthara is not an ally. No buff from her in the final battle (god how is some shitty cop, a child, Shadowheart's abuser and a hag are all allies but not Minthara???). Halsin's personal quest (well it's impossible without his present) is crucial for act 2, Minthara has no personal quest.

Halsin has different lines when you're dating. Minthara doesn't. Halsin can be kissed, other characters react to you kissing him and he was the first to get an updated kissing animation. Minthara can't be kissed. Halsin's sex scene is unskippable in act 3, Minthara can be romanced without massacre but her sex scene requires you to murder the tielfings (and happens before you even know her truly as a person :( ). Halsin can be broken up with. Minthara can't be. You can ask Halsin about what he thinks of you. Minthara can't be asked that. And she still has several bugs plaguing her and her romance.

I also find it funny how they talk about Minthara. It almost feels like "Yes she's very likely to only be naturally recruited by murder hobos so we added the line where she asks *why* did you kill the tielfings to make you feel horrible". Yay thanks for giving evil so little content, giving one (previously) exclusive to evil companion to only later have them turn and morally judge you for evil ways.

They keep talking about choices and reactivity but is it really a choice when choosing "wrong" in the devs' vision path just makes you *lose hours of content*?

Also lol her writer said that if they were to add more to Minthara it would just be "a few more lines about Orin". Huh? Sorry, Halsin who was added because ppl were thirsting after him and who has no big plot reason to hang around with the party in act 3 (he doesn't even have a tadpole) has a more developed quest and romance content than Minthara, basically main reward for trying out evil... and you'd only add more lines about her traumatic past?.. Like cmon she's much more than was done to her by Orin :(.

She is also being inconsistent! Her approving of accepting Bhaal feels OOC, her reaction to Durge killing themselves is bland af, she is the only character to not say anything about the Slayer, she quite wierdly approves of giving up Scratch even though verbally she says several times she likes the dog... She lacks a lot and what is there has a bunch of conflict in act 3!..

What's also interesting that act 1 does show *signs* of evil run being... something rewarding.

Sided with Minthara? Oh you got the spider lyre and she explains how to get to Moonrise. Also, most explicit sex scene. Also the tielfing battle is easier. Sided with Nere? Yeah he tells you about Minthara and the shadowcursed lands. Spared Ethel? Get her hair piece.

But then you get to act 2 and it's like... Ah yeah Minthara has no personal quest, the cult still is against you (and tbh you have no reason to side with them in the first place), you're missing shitton of content and items because tieflings were extremely crucial to this whole act and Nere randomly dies offscreen and can show up as a zombie...

Ah and recent patch made it so *Nere doesn't mention Minthara at all*, and gives you *a spider lyre of his own*, so there's 0 hints to Minthara being anything valuable and recruitable snd no reason to help her.

Also the game *shames* you for not lifting the curse.

As an evil player if you killed the grove you walk in and have no idea the curse can be lifted. You're also likely to continue and make Shadowheart a Dark Justiciar. Yet when you leave act 2, Shadowheart says she's sad about not lifting the curse (hello? you worship Shar??? that's her darkness??) and your evil bastard of a character also feels very sad about not lifting it!.. Firstly I had no way to lift it, secondly why does narrator decide for me that my evil character is sorry about keeping it as is?..

There's also a Durge moment where you can reject Bhaal and think "ah now I can be evil for my own sake, without Father's control", but then everyone praises you as a hero, most dialogue choices seem like you're abruptly good and narrator goes "you're sorry you killed Isobel :(". No I'm not sorry for that, I'm sorry how the evil ending is the shortest out there!.. But evil ending is a rant of its own.

About the new "knock out" Minthara method to recruit her, I get why they put it in, but I will say, I consider it a lame cheap bandage solution. Are we seriously supposed to believe that our Tav that have been slaughtering Absolute cultists the whole camp coming in, and tasked with eliminating the goblins leaders, would just be like "ok that one lives". It's not like there's a special dialogue after you down her to 0 hp to spare her or a cinematic in which she run away. No, we just see a cultist and arbitrarily decide to knock her down because of meta knowledge. It's lame, it's cheap and it needed a serious narrative rework to be interesting for a good aligned player.

The fact is Larian put one of their companion behind a deeply unpopular choice. You either kill her, the most common option, you leave without saving or killing the grove, the boring option, you kill the refugees, the chaotic evil option. Both leaving and genocide cut ton of content afterward with little reward in return. Larian really should have included better alternatives if they wanted it to be played. They treat you being evil like you're a complete psycho, it's a very lackluster and disappointing path overal.

[fistofgork]

Broken Realms: Teclis & Lumineth Battletome

So I finished reading both now, can move on to End of Enlightenment next.

The Battletome I don’t have much to say because the additions are mostly mechanical. Glad to be introduced to two of the Tyrionic nations now, and curious to see what the other two will be, but I’m going to largely talk about Broken Realms.

Since a lot of it might be spoilers I’ll put it under a divide but to give just a sum of my overall opinion: Overall I enjoyed it and it is a very good example of doing right one thing 40k does very poorly in lore, but I do have issues with the treatment of Nagash in it. 

So, in simple terms, Broken Realms Teclis is the story of Teclis and the Lumineth successfully baiting Nagash into a trap. The end result of this trap is that the Necroquake is undone and Nagash is, at least for a time, bound in Shyish.

It is, out-and-out, a victory for the Lumineth and a major display of their agency and efficiency within the lore.

With this and the Morathi book the trend of the Broken Realms seems to be that the protagonist of the book triumphs (a normal enough trend) and unlike in 40k the protagonists can be from many different groups. I hope this means that Be’lakor, coming next, will triumph in his book as it will suck if two Order characters triumph in their books only to buck the trend once there is a Chaos Protagonist.

Overall there is a lot I like here. First of all: as a fan of the Lumineth I am of course just pleased they are depicted as competent, intelligent and capable, that goes without saying. But, there is a lot more to it than that:

I am glad that during the Lumineth invasion of the Ossiarch Empire the book is at pains to stress the Lumineth know they can’t successfully conquer the Ossiarchs, they are just launching pinpoint strikes to undermine the dread the Ossiarch’s inspire by showing that you can hit them where it hurts and live to tell about it. This stops the Ossiarchs from losing ground but still gives the Lumineth a victory.

I am glad Katakros is not present as this prevents him being served up as a Worf when he’s just started solidifying an impressive reputation for himself.

Teclis’ final plan to defeat Nagash, and that clash, in isolation, is largely fine. I agree with the overall outcome of Nagash being high on Necromancy being individually stronger than Teclis, but losing to Teclis’ use of allies and his own arrogance. Those are classic weaknesses of Nagash. So, in isolation, the final fight is fine.

Then, a major positive, is this book shows a serious thing I wish 40k could do. It gives more than one faction AGENCY!

In 40k Lore, particularly of late, NOTHING can be achieved by anyone unless it is the Imperium, or Chaos over the Imperium. All agency HAS to be connected to the Imperium and Imperium alone, often not even that, Space Marines and Space Marines alone.

The other factions can’t ever star in their own plotlines. They are always sidekicks to existing Space Marine plotlines at best.

The clearest example is, of course, the atrocious handling of the Ynnari plotline. Taking the single largest Xenos development in ages and just making it almost nothing but an excuse to write more about the Imperium whilst the Ynnari practically vanish from existence. It is incredibly depressing.

In Broken Realms: Teclis, however, we see AoS once again just do better than 40k. Stormcasts don’t show up AT ALL in this book. Sigmar either. This book gave the Lumineth their own major plotline, their own major triumph, had them achieve something Sigmar and his Stormcast had so far been unable too, and it didn’t feel the need to second them to Stormcasts or make them sidekicks.

Again; just compare how the Ynnari, and Aeldari as a whole, are treated compared to the Lumineth. It is such a breath of fresh air in AoS that more than one faction is allowed to actually be the stars of their own stories!

So what are the things I dislike? really there are two points I didn’t like:

Neferata and Mannfred continue to suck. I have said before I am bothered by how low-tier these two are presented as. Neferata’s first appearance, seemingly depicting her as being awed by a low-level Stormcast, was always annoying. Olynder and Katakros, the newest Mortarchs all have major successes and victories to their names. But these two? Two of the oldest beings alive? They suck. They just constantly fail and get shown up. This story is no different. Both Mannfred and Neferata hatch schemes and both just fail. I feel this was unnecessary. Since the overall ending is Nagash’s defeat I don’t see why Mannfred and Neferata couldn’t have been allowed smaller victories to at least give Death some triumphs in this.

Nagash was perhaps the one major antagonist who SHOULDN’T have been beat up again. Archaon, Gordrakk, any Mortarch, Sigvald, fine, but Nagash? he is the memetic loser of the Gods. Of the pantheon only one God has gotten himself ever ‘destroyed’ in a battle (Alarielle just spent so much power she retreated into a seed pod). That god is Nagash. He’s also done it TWICE now. Archaon beat his ass. Now Teclis did. Nagash also has VERY few personal triumphs. Yes, during this period, Death has done well, because Olynder bested the Celestant Prime and Katakros personally lead the first and only successful counter-invasion into Chaos’ own heartlands. But, Nagash himself? Almost every time he personally is involved in a fight it ends in failure. As always he is a bit hard to take seriously when every time, about, he’s shown his face in public its been to get his ass handed to him. Again; in isolation the actual way the Teclis v Nagash fight plays out I am fine with, Nagash is individually stronger but cannot understand the merits of friendship like Teclis, seeks to dominate rather than live in harmony, and underestimates due to his arrogance and thus is brought low by Teclis cooperating with others. That’s honestly a perfect way to structure Teclis v Nagash. But...they just had to let him have some wins himself or make it that more time passes since he got his ass kicked by Archaon. This just makes it look like Nagash really sucks at fighting.

Beyond those two complaints, overall, I still enjoy the book. If the trend holds that the protagonist of the book wins I will be pleased as we’ve had two Order books now where their characters won, so we should at least have one character from Destruction, Chaos and Death also get a win.

A last little note: we have some more info on Tyrion. Not much though. It seems in response to Archaon breaching into Slaanesh’s jail Teclis and Tyrion both went there. Teclis returned to fight Nagash, but not Tyrion. When Nagash queried this Teclis’ direct answer was to say that Tyrion couldn’t come because he was busy fighting his own battle against a foe ‘greater than Nagash’. The implication is maybe Tyrion is currently trying to keep Slaanesh suppressed alone in the Hidden Gloaming then due to the weakening wards?

At the same time an earlier segment did mention Tyrion has gone on some secret quest he set himself for and has not been seen since. So, at this stage, mostly I think it is just GW giving an explanation for why he seems so absent despite the desperate times, and writing in some plot hooks they can use for when they decide to make him.