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silverducks · 3 years ago

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Game of Thrones - Jaime Lannister

A rambling character study of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

Part 1a – Jaime’s Character Arc

This post is going to look at my thoughts on exactly how I see Jaime’s character arc in Game of Thrones, based on just the show. But it’s also to set up my future posts where I explain why I find it so darn hard to understand why he had the ending they gave him. At least beside the obvious - because the writers wanted to.

Yeah I know; I’m late to the GoT train wreck of a final series. But I have a lot of thoughts and hence why I’m here typing away.

(And this is where I start to really go all English Lit exam analysis on you, so a warning for anyone who actually might be reading this post, LOL!)

My Intro to this series of posts btw, is here.

So, spoilers be below.

Ok, so to help explain why Jaime’s ending makes no sense, I firstly need to explain what exactly his character arc is in the show, or at least how I perceive it. As mentioned in a previous post on honour vs loyalty, for Jaime I see his character arc being about two, interconnected things – redemption and identity.

In series 1 and 2, he’s not a nice character – he’s a self-righteous, proud, full of himself, snob. He’s arrogant and cocky and says pretty cruel, snide things to characters we do like. And as we see him through the PoV of characters like *Mr Honourable Eddard Stark, Jaime is pretty despicable to say the least. And that is before we even get started on the whole pushing a boy out of a window because he caught Jaime having sex with his own twin sister. Oh and just as an FYI, Jaime is also called the Kingslayer because he killed the King he was sworn to protect. So yeah, most people watching the show don’t like him at the start, and neither do most of the other show characters we do like.

And from a story telling perspective, Jaime’s character can either get worse, better or stay the same as the show goes on. And in this story, he gets better, with a few slip ups along the way, and it’s fascinating and glorious!!

Like, I can think of nothing that even comes close to the amazing way Jaime Lannister’s character develops in Game of Thrones and how we as a viewer change in our perception of him.

But that only makes his ending so much more frustrating and disappointing…

Before I start rambling away though, just as a point to note; I’m using terms like good and better person and right and wrong quite loosely here. Obviously the world, even in a fictional world, isn’t all that simple. As that would be a whole other massive thematic and philosophical thesis, and it’s not really that relevant, just take the “general” meaning of the ideas, but with the understanding I know it’s a bit more complicated. Where I think it does become more relevant, I’ll expand on the ideas in that particular context. If I sound a bit flippant at times, it’s because of the whole black vs white vs grey, and how there are “rules” in storytelling that wouldn’t necessary apply to our own, real life reality. There are things that we need to take into account when we analyse characters in stories vs actual, real people. And on a side note, this is one of my favourite things about Game of Thrones, the complexity and moral ambiguity of both its characters and its story themes. But yeah, that’s a whole thesis in its own right.)

Redemption Arc

So, redemption. In order for us to start to like this character, and see him as a good guy, he has to go through a redemption arc. Like pretty much rule number 1 of storytelling. That means we have to watch him and believe in him becoming a better person. Conversations like the whole oath vs oath issue, or his chat with his father about his nicknames in series 1 makes us take notice of a character, maybe even be more invested in a character and their shades of grey, but it’s not really redemption. And considering how far in debt he is in the good vs bad guy department, he has a lot of work to do.

And my goodness, he does it. Like, I mean, this guys’ redemption arc is astonishing! He goes through so much, rethinks and challenges everything he once thought/knew about himself and his world, faces all his past wrongs and bad character traits and becomes not even a better person, but a hero! He goes from a bad villain who kills kings and pushes kids from windows, to becoming one of the main heroes we’re rooting for by the end of the story.

(A quick disclaimer here, like I’m not saying Jaime is ever, or ever will be perfect, heck, he’s human and this is Game of Thrones and Jaime’s more messed up than most. But when you think back from where he started and where he’s been, it sure is impressive – if we ignore his actual ending that is, LOL!)

And his glorious redemption arc all pretty much starts around the time he starts his fun road trip with Brienne in series 3.

So, just to give a few of his finer redemption points (and just remember his series 1 and 2 actions and our opinion of him in contrast):

He stops Brienne from being raped and gets his hand cut off for the trouble (Ouch! But suffering, especially from doing something good, gives lots of redemption points.)

He risks his life to save Brienne from being mauled to death by a bear. Like, he’s recently lost his sword fighting hand and has no weapon, but he jumps in the bear pit anyway and puts himself between the bear and Brienne. He then helps Brienne out of the bear pit first and then only just makes it out alive himself. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, he basically tells the bad guys that he’s leaving with Brienne, or they will have to kill him. Like he says this to the guy who not so long ago chopped his hand off. (Just think on that one a minute ok.)

He keeps to his promise/oath to Catelyn Stark and continues to help her daughters by giving Brienne a priceless sword and some stunning armour so she can find and help them. (This also helps Brienne, because he knows she’s not safe in Kings Landing, and gives her a purpose, because he knows that’s what she needs.)

Firstly offers to sacrifice his own life needs and goals and those vows he’s now starting to hold more dear to save his brother. When said brother then screws up that opportunity, Jaime then also helps said brother escape from being killed, going against his sister and father, who want his brother dead. (Yeah, the Lannisters are an interesting family… And you wonder why Jaime is a little messed up?)

Takes RiverRun without any bloodshed. (Like pulls off the perfect bluff in GoT siege history so that he can make sure his army succeeds, but no one is killed. (I don’t count the Blackfish, who chose to fight to the death rather than escape/get taken prisoner.)

Joins the fight for the battle against the dead, even if it also means renouncing his entire house and lineage and putting himself at the mercy and judgement of pretty much all his enemies and all he has wronged. (One of which has a habit of roasting her enemies alive with Dragon fire)

Oh and also risks his life in above mentioned battle against the dead.

A pretty impressive list imho, lots of redemption points there and that’s not even including everything else he does. Following the general storytelling themes of forgiveness and redemption, Jaime basically ticks all the boxes by all the good deeds he’s now done. And that’s one of the major reasons why we as viewers now love him so much as a character.

But that’s not all, of course. As we discover also in series 3 (a pretty important series for our Jaime), it’s not even just about him doing good things, but we realise as an audience we’ve (intentionally by the show) completely misunderstood him! Yes, he did kill the King he was sworn to protect, but only because said King was mad and was about to blow up the entire capital city where hundreds of thousands of innocent people live. And not only did he do this incredible honourable thing, but because it did go against his vow as a Kings Guard, he’s ever since been derided as the Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, Man without honour. A horrible set of nicknames that he’s borne, because he doesn’t think people would care or understand anyway. (Of course, I want to add in here that it’s partly the negative trait of pride too, thinking himself as the Lannister Lion, above having to explain himself to the sheep.)

Anyway, all this has worn him down a lot over the years and it’s messed him up good and proper. It kinda makes your own initial dislike of Jaime through *Mr Honourable Eddard Stark’s eyes seem a little unfair. Especially when the guy was barely more than a kid at the time (16 or 17 I think). And his defence mechanism to deal with this is one of the reason’s he is so cocky and arrogant – he uses his dry, often cruel humour, to mask that he does actually still care. In fact, it’s worked so well, I think at the start of the show, Jaime believes it himself; that he is a horrible, hateful person. But he did have that honour inside of him once; he did care and try to do what was right. And when you think back to his scenes in series 1 and 2, they take on new meaning now. He’s no longer such an evil arrogant, cocky knight we all pretty much immediately hated.

And as this revelation happens around the same time as he starts doing all those good deeds, it all helps work together to make us re-evaluate Jaime and grow to love him and become invested in his redemption arc even more.

(*I feel the need to add a disclaimer here, I do like Ned Stark a lot as a character. But it is interesting that as the show goes on, he almost does the opposite to Jaime – we see he actually isn’t always as good as we thought, that perhaps honour tripped into bitterness and prejudice a few times. That perhaps Ned, as much as we like him, is less full white and more speckled in shades of grey after all...(which makes him a more interesting and nuanced character imho, so rather than undermine him, it makes him more human.))

And when I rethink Jaime’s scene with Robb Stark when he’s captured, where he gives Robb the choice of ending the war if Robb can beat him in single combat, well, it adds even more depth to his character. Of course, Jaime knew he would likely win, as did Robb, so Robb refused. And as a viewer who was all Stark=Good, Lannister=Evil (except Tyrion) at the time, I was glad Robb wasn’t stupid or arrogant enough, like the Kingslayer Mr Jaime Lannister, to fall for that.

But then I remember the parallel in series 6, when Jon Snow (Stark=Good) gives exactly the same choice to Ramsay Bolton (Bolton=Spawn of Satan). Ramsay can either fight Jon in single combat, or they can all send their troops to die in their war. And as a viewer now, NOW! I think Ramsay is weak and awful for not agreeing (because he knows he can’t win too) and so sending all these soldiers to an early grave. Which is like 100% opposite for pretty much the same scenario of its series 2 counterpart. Of course, we HATE Ramsay and he has no, I mean literary NO! redeeming qualities, unlike Jaime, who we never, ever hated in the same way. But it does make you think about the whole idea of perception as well as actual deeds here. And that actually Jaime, you could argue, was doing the honourable thing by asking Robb for single combat, to spare the lives of both of their armies… I mean, obviously he wants to win the war, but maybe, he also wanted to spare as many lives as he could, too – like Jon in the series 6 equivalent. Maybe not so arrogant a request from our Jaime after all…

And another point to add in here, which further adds up to Jaime’s redemption arc, is Lady Brienne of Tarth. Yes, I’ve saved her to last for a reason, as she is, imho, THE catalyst for this amazing change we see in Jaime. If you’ll notice, a lot of Jaime’s good deeds involve Brienne and start happening around the time the two characters meet. And that very fact further proves that Jaime was and can be a better person.

He does not like her at first and she’s not quite your typical maiden. Not only is she a “beast” (to quote Jaime), but she’s a fighter, full of honour, self-sacrifice and steadfast in her purpose, and more than a match for him. Oh and she’s also his captor, dragging him to Kings Landing with a rope around his hands so they can trade him for the Stark girls.

So yeah, not the most cordial of first meetings. He pokes fun at her, trying to get her to snap, to prove she’s not as good as she seems. But she doesn’t, because she is that person, she is true to herself and not pretending. Unlike so many people Jaime knows, she is genuine.

And he’s impressed by her skill and courage as a fighter as well. She is able to best him in the sword fight (granted when his hands are tied and he’s been sat in a cage for over a year, but he is like renowned for being one of the best sword fighters in the entire realm). Also when she fought the men who had murdered the women they found hung along the road – both as justice and to give the murdered woman a proper burial. She isn’t all talk, she can, and does fight. I bet Jaime wasn’t expecting that! And as sword fights are his thing, what he pretty much defines himself by and is most proud of, that’s a pretty big for tick from Jaime for Brienne right there.

Basically, she is a) an honourable person b) sticks to her oaths c) also able to fight (and therefore protect people) and d) refuses to let him get the better of her. The perfect, chivalrous embodiment of a brave, honourable Knight. A true Knight in all but name, whilst Jaime is now a Knight in nothing but name.

Now, I’ll discuss this more in the identity arc bit, but basically all this challenges Jaime, makes him rethink his own bitter images of himself and his world. She reminds him of his younger self, when he wanted to be that honourable Knight. And seeing this reflection of his younger, naïve and less world weary version of himself in Brienne, it helps to trigger this change in Jaime. It makes him remember who he once was, what he once stood for and believed in; that ideal that Jaime once believed is actually possible - of the brave, worthy Knight people sing songs about. And it started to make him want to be that person again. And this in turn, makes him want to start to do the right thing, to start to put honour first, which paves the way for his redemption arc very nicely.

I won’t talk too much more about Brienne here, because I think her relationship with and influence on Jaime deserves its own post. But I do think it is the specific personality of Brienne, together with the very fact that she is an ugly, “beast” of a woman, that triggers Jaime’s arc in just the right way and enables it to be so profound.

One last note on his redemption – I’ve said before it was partly his Lannister Lion pride that caused some of his suffering in relation to his nicknames. And indeed part of his arrogance is because he does think he’s better than everyone else (although not to the extent we first thought). He is the Lannister’s golden son after all and the Lannisters are basically the most powerful and wealthiest House in Westeros. It is a bad trait, yeah. But even this, even this! gets sorted out in series 8. From my list of redemption points, see the second to last point above – he faces judgement. Like a guy who had too much pride to admit he actually killed a King to help save hundreds of thousands of lives, actually, of his own volition, faces his enemies to be judged and to atone for what he has done wrong. Yeah, he also offers excuses at said trail, but if I’m honest, they do sound quite genuine to me. Is it any worse than what your typical soldier would do in a time of war? Fight in a battle and kill people? Try to capture the person (Ned) who’s wife captured your brother to avert a war? And we already know now he was justified in his killing of the mad King.

So, all in all, with this new insight into Jaime’s character, especially also seeing him through the increasingly positive eyes of Brienne (more on that later), who we know really is good and honourable, we have both a better understanding of his past actions, see his ongoing internal struggles and conflicts as he strives to do what is right and along with all his good deeds as the show goes on, we see him slowly (with lots of unfortunate set backs as well) become a better person. So come series 8, his redemption arc up to THAT scene, is glorious and basically complete.

And then there’s his identity arc. The other side of his character development, which is just as important for me and very much interconnected with his redemption.

(Like, seriously, there’s so much going on with this character that I could write essays, no a whole thesis I bet! I seriously can’t wait until I get to read him and Brienne’s chapters in the books and discover even more sides and shades to this character.)

But I’ve rambled on for far longer than I intended on his redemption arc, so I’ll save his identity arc for another day. (And hopefully it won’t be as long). Then we can get into the fun stuff like that hand he lost, that famous bath scene and his, how to put this, interesting relationship with his sister…

#If you were brave enough to get this far #Thanks for reading #And hope this made sense #Just my rambling thoughts #Yeah, I have a lot

#Game of Thrones #Jaime Lannister #Brienne x Jaime

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sapphicambitions · 4 years ago

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what are your thoughts on luke asking annabeth if she loved him in TLO? many fans who dislike luke tend to use this example to portray him as manipulative (and slightly paedophilic given their age difference)

ah yes ive given this a lot of thought and honestly i have many thoughts head full. thesis: i dont think luke was asking in a romantic way. i think annabeth took it in a romantic way, and she was supposed to via the writing choices and what the narrative needed.

I think when we look at choices authors made we have to examine WHY they made the choices. Not just as the character but as the author who is moving the story along (thank u to my play analysis professor for sponsoring this post). we don’t always have to agree with the choices the author made but like sometimes you gotta look critically at the work and analyze it if you want to understand why a choice was made. (also shoutout to my friend kara who keeps telling me that im getting a phd in analyzing ya lit with all my long pjo posts)

rick is a guy that’s HUGE on romance and pairing everyone off. the main reason annabeth is smitten with luke the whole series is to put tension on her and percy’s relationship and so they wouldn’t get together too soon. luke has to be older in order to be taken seriously as a villain. annabeth had to confirm in front of percy that she didn’t have feelings for luke so that percabeth’s relationship could move forward. Annabeth wasn’t just going to stand over luke’s dying body and be like “haha i don’t have feelings for you” unprompted after like a fucking battle, so dramaturgically luke had to ask her “did you love me” in order for her to shut it down so percy could see it. i don’t think it was the BEST writing choice because percy could have asked her about it later, but also, it’s the climax of the whole series. climaxes are supposed to answer questions. the question in that moment was “does annabeth have feelings for luke?” and the answer was no. i think also “did you love me?” was written purposefully in that way so that annabeth would take it to mean in a romantic sense so she would answer in a romantic sense so we could wrap up that plot point.

but like lmao honestly i do not believe luke meant it romantically. “did you love me?” can mean a lot of things. love doesn’t always have to be romantic. they knew each other for almost a decade. annabeth was basically the only family that luke had left. y’all think he didn’t love her? i think he loved her like a little sister ABSOLUTELY. because also he asked annabeth if she loved him, and he didn’t say “ive always been deeply in love with you” or anything confessing his own feelings, so miss me with that “he was trying to manipulate her” shit like HOW WHAT WOULD THAT ACCOMPLISH HE’S LITERALLY DYING. luke did a lot of bad things. he made a lot of mistakes. a lot of really, terrible mistakes. i think at the end of his life, he was wondering if the one person in the world he actually cared about loved him. it even says when annabeth says “you were like a brother to me” he nods like he expected it because i think that’s the answer he was looking for all along.

also lmao anyone who knows me knows that i 100% believe luke was gay

but lmao actually i do think the phrasing of it is lowkey bad writing on ricks part and he could have phrased it in another way but even so looking at the choices he made leading up to that moment i think it was more about giving annabeth permission to move on from luke (because incase y’all forgot there was a LOT of tension between her and percy about her still excusing luke) so she could be with percy than anything else. No, I don’t think luke had a crush on annabeth. I think she was his family and i dont think he was trying to manipulate her. (like manipulate her to do WHAT i literally dont understand) i think rick needed to write a climax and that’s the choice he made to do it.

#lesbianlaynie #im out here leading the luke castellan apologist charge #laynie rose answers #luke castellan #percy jackson #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #annabeth chase #laynie's pjo essays

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moonlitgleek · 5 years ago

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I really enjoyed your post on the Sansa/Daenerys feud. Something I hated about the Starks in Season 8 is Sansa/Arya's kneejerk dislike of Daenerys (at least, before episode 5). They actually had Sansa say "She's not one of us!" And that recalls nothing so much as Cersei telling Joffrey "Anyone who isn't us is the enemy." When Season 8 validates Cersei and repudiates Ned Stark, things gone done got crazy.

It was actually Arya that said that but it’s not like the scene didn’t frame this as a shared sentiment among the Starks. That was basically “we don’t like your girlfriend who we don’t know and don’t care to get to know. She is not one of us and that makes our hostility and pettiness totally justified”. My god, do I hate that scene.

It pains me that they did this to Sansa and Arya. It infuriates me that their supposed victorious ending not only rewarded and validated a rather prejudiced attitude but also leaned heavily into making their abusers define who they are. To be clear, this is not because I expect them to be “good victims” who can only rise above their trauma or behave in the most moral of ways, neither am I saying that experiencing a change due to a trauma is necessarily a bad thing, but the show fundemntally changed who Sansa and Arya are to become some distorted version of their abusers. Sansa was turned into a cross between Cersei and Littlefinger, a person willing to betray and manipulate even her own brother to her advantage and who honest to god smirked over the death of an innocent woman and used it to goad Jaime. Arya became someone whose first instinct is to kill and who absorbed an exclusionary xenophobic view that came out of nowhere. I’ve mostly put the stupidity of last season’s conflict between Sansa and Arya out of my mind because it was so illogical and forced, but the writers genuinely tried to affirm that this is who these two women became (and pls don’t @ me about how they were totally plotting together from the start to bring down Littlefinger. No, they were not and the show’s attempt to make it look like that post-fact was painfully transparent)

The show changed the core of who the Starks are in service to the plot then inexplicably framed this change as a good thing we should side with, which hits at the heart of this series. I am admittedly very attached to the book!Starks but this goes beyond my preference for my favorites to be about changing the very meaning of ASOIAF. This series was never about rejecting ideals or branding those who believe in them idiots. It was never about validating the worldview of the Cerseis and Tywins and Petyrs of the world. It’s about the struggle to hold onto your idealism in a cold and corrupt world that tarnishes it and hollows it out, a world that tries to convince you that idealism is a chain that brings you down and that ruthless pragmatism is intelligence. It’s about our heroes looking into an abyss that tries to convince them that letting the cold in is the smart thing to do, fighting against a world that tries to strip them of their beliefs and saying “no, you move”. The theme of this series lies in characters like the Starks, Davos and Brienne trying to do the right thing even when it looks hopeless. Especially when it looks hopeless. It lies in “he could have tried, he could have died”, in “is there no true knights among you?”, in “he was no true knight”, in “the North remembers”. The message is that honor lives on and trying to do the right thing always matters even if you lose your life. And so yes, it absolutely does go back to Ned Stark, not only as the person whose teachings and ideals the Starks espouse but as the first casualty of the show’s misunderstanding of the main thesis of ASOIAF.

Game of Thrones took the surface victory of nihilistic players and made it its core message. It genuinely embraced Cersei’s sentiment that you either win or die in the game of thrones, and affirmed the worldview that honor is futile and stupid and gets you killed. Oh and also that you cannot escape your past, your trauma or your paternity. Screw idealism and trying to do the right thing. That’s pointless and hopeless. Except that it is not pointless in the books, it never was. Ned died but his legacy, his benevolent ruling ideology, and his honor won by inspiring not only his children to hold onto their ideals but the entire North to rise up in his name. Ned stands as clear proof that Cersei and the entire Lannister ideology is wrong. ADWD openly goes to bat for Ned’s legacy and what he stood for. It proves that the argument that honor is stupid and manipulative pragmatism is better is bullshit.

But the show did the exact opposite and actually went to great lengths to frame honor as this hollow thing that only forestalls and impedes. It scoffed at idealism and made it this naive thing that brings the characters down, which is exactly how Littlefinger described it to Ned in the first book. The show made the North abandon the Starks despite setting up the Northern plot from the books and having Sansa deliver an impassioned speech about loyalty, only to prove her painfully wrong. Jon failed when he bargained on how Ramsay’s apathetic view of his men’s lives would make them abandon him, even when these men watched Ramsay coldly fire at his own forces, but Sansa succeeded when she withheld the information about the Knights of the Vale. It was only natural for Sansa to then brand Ned and Robb as naive men who made stupid mistakes. Why wouldn’t she when the show turned Robb’s story into a simplistic tale of a guy who was led astray by love and who was blamed for the horrendous treachery of the Freys and Boltons, when Ned’s honor was scoffed at and undercut by the show itself at every turn? See also that lovely detour in the Dragon pit scene last season where Jon’s refusal to lie to Cersei was designed to have everyone roll their eyes at the stupid idiot who put his precious honor above a needed cease fire.

It sure fits the story then to have Jon bending the knee to Dany stripped from its foundational motive of her earning his loyalty by answering the call for help to become about his feelings for her. It fits to have Sansa try and push Jon’s claim without caring about his wants or the precarious position this puts him in or even his emotional state because she knows he loves Dany. It fits to have a stunning mix of manipulation, xenophobia, hostility and ungratefulness framed as not only smart but something to be validated. It fits to have the Starks’ triumph be so soured and so meaningless in its willingness to sacrifice people for their advantage. By all means do have them pursue a plan that would necessitate a conflict between Jon and Dany all for Northern independence, or hint that Bran might have known what was going to happen and kept silent.

And when you pair that with them trying to evoke sympathy for Cersei but make Dany into a fascist (don’t think I missed the Nuremberg callbacks) and demonize her visually, with them validating Cersei’s racism by focusing on the Unsullied and the Dothraki brutalizing the King’s Landing population, just what message are they trying to send. Whose worldview are they trying to validate and why?

I missed the Starks this season, especially the girls. I missed the Arya who makes friends with everyone despite rigid Westerosi attitudes towards class and race, who is extremely sensitive to injustice and who would be the first to cheer a Breaker of Chains. I missed the Sansa whose compassion extended to even enemies and whose entire conception of rulership was about protecting people. I missed the Bran who is so connected to Winterfell that he compares its survival and its perseverance to his own. I missed the kids who held onto their compassion, their loyalty and their ideals in the face of a corrupt world trying to convince them such sentiments are futile. I missed the Starks.

#anti got

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alatismeni-theitsa · 5 years ago

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Hi, I tried to read LO a while ago but I couldn't get pass the first 2 chapters b/c it was like watching The Kardashians. Its basically the celebrity news in webtoon form borrowing names from Greek mythology. I'm not even Greek, I just find the storytelling in LO really boring and basic. Why is Persephone now reduced to some persecuted Disney princess and Apollo into this really one dimensional jackass? Like he did some shady things in the myths but he was never just plain bad like in LO. (1/4)

In another response, you mentioned that even Percy Jackson was more respectful than LO and I agree. While I have many MANY issues with Percy Jackson at least its storyline was more interesting and entertaining. While its not high literature, its not the stereotypical young adult romance with all the bitchy drama and protagonist victimization that goes on in LO. IMO, although LO has interesting art, the story itself is bland and trashy. I feel my last braincells dying as I read it.

Btw do you have any posts on your view on Percy Jackson? Being an American I could not escape the hype over it and actually read the first part of the series. It was entertaining but since I didn't read it as a 10 year old, I found so many problems. The characters are FLAT! The portrayals of the pantheon and their respective offspring are so stereotypical. Like all Aphrodite kids (except the one tomboy) are apparently vain and superficial and Ares and his kids are all muscleheads.

Also, I just can't understand why Athena, a virgin goddess has kids? Apparently she has the power to think them into existence?! Finally, I like Hera but Riordan just portrays her extra disrespectfully. No offense to him but if there is literally a camp's worth of children resulting from cheating spouses, and said spouses are not a bit ashamed, I'd be pissed too. I could write a whole thesis on why I dislike Percy Jackson lol. Anyway I'm interested to know your thoughts. Have a nice day.

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Ya su! Let me rant with you xD I have many times said that the characters are just characters she made up and she slapped the names of the Greek gods on them - as many writers of such fics do. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to do, although it’s not good writing and the gods are out of character. I also didn’t like how the characters were almost one dimentional and Tumblr stereotypes. It would be better if she had made her own story with her own characters because that would be some much better and accurate.

I was really annoyed when she made Apollo the bad guy. The rape scene just... uuugghhh! Let me repeat it for those in the back: Greek.gods.cannot.be.the.bad.guys! Greek mythology doesn’t work that way and if she had studied properly she would have known it! It’s like taking saints from the Christian tradition and taking their flows or bad moments and using them to transforming those saints into villains.

Ooooh shit I didn’t know that about Athena😂The plot device that she just wished them into existence is... bad, I am not gonna lie :P Mainly because THAT’S NOT HOW ATHENA WORKS! Zeus could do that - and I think he has done it - but not Athena.

As for percy jackson, I read it when I was a teen and I enjoyed the series! It had the problems you mentioned and some things were stereotypical. But it is a book for young kids so those things didn’t do damage... I think the book is written in a way that it’s easy for the reader to not take the misinformation seriously. At the same time I feel the gods were presented more like references for someone who already knew Greek mythology. He mispresented them in a way that - kinda - made sense if you know who the gods were and what the changes of the modern world had done to them. As you said “While its not high literature, its not the stereotypical young adult romance with all the bitchy drama and protagonist victimization that goes on in LO.” Sooo it gets some points :P

Maybe I am too lenient because I am desensitized to mediocre/plain bad fics with Greek gods. This kind of fics was all I knew for many, many years and no beacon of light - a good researched and respectfull fic - came to my rescue. As most of Greeks, my standards are low cause we never had anything better. And at the same time we hear “you are white and your mythology is the most known in the world so you shouldn’t have any complaints”. So... we are supposed not to say anything when our heritage is butchered and turned into pop culture for one of the most priviledged and rich nations on earth.

I have the tags #percy jackson and #rick riordan and you can search there to see more of my posts about it. A Greek friend liked the series but she noticed there was no Greek representation or presentation of Greek culture, despite the Greek mythology being the central theme of the book. I think you will find this post in the tag as well.

Aaaanyways! Thanks for stopping by! Have a good day as well :D

#answered #anti lo #anti pj #anti lore olympus

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basketballandtextbooks · 4 years ago

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disaster take

i saw this discourse on other blogs and come to the realization that most people probably won’t agree with me but... here’s my two cents:

wendy and kyle are very similar characters, not identical, but the character writing in south park is usually quite shallow (for any character in the cast) and normally any depth that can actually be found in any one character is entirely coincidental or accidental on the part of the observer. For example, in a previous post I mentioned that Kyle probably learned to dance after the events of the rain forest episode, and we know he must have because of highschool musical. This creates and interesting nugget of character depth that fits with his overall character but the connection is most likely entirely accidental. Did the writers think that deeply about Kyle’s character, or did they just forget the throwaway joke they kin-assigned Kyle for one episodes purposes?

for me these gaps between writers intent and interpretation are entertaining and it’s very fun for me to play detective, putting together the whole characters through the lens of ‘death of the author’ and figuring out how the characters behave based on not only their behavior in any one individual episode, but how the inconsistent and shallow character writing makes an overall character-arc (no character is more fascinating in this fashion than Eric Cartman, who has the most cohesive and entirely accidental character arc that spans from episode one and showcases a fascinating and horribly flawed individual)

All of this stated, the similarities in how Kyle and Wendy are written may not be intentional, but the fact is that given the same exact situation they respond similarly and to varying degrees. A good example of this is when they are jealous or their ego is bruised, they both have a tendency to have excessive if not murderous reactions (teacher into the sun, nuke canada, burn down the school, bully your friends)

I don’t think anyone can really make a good faith argument denying that they have strong similarities. There are of course differences, during the smurfs Wendy showed a much cooler head than Kyle would in the same circumstance. They do not need to be identical to share strong similar characteristics

Now for how fandom has perceived Wendy.

There is good reason that some individuals feel that the fan-reaction towards her isn’t entirely based on her writing being inherently ‘worse’ than Kyle’s. It also isn’t true that everyone who loves Kyle and hates Wendy is sexist or suffering from a case of internal misogyny.

That said, Wendy is held to a higher standard than Kyle is. Or more accurately, she is held to account for her actions in canon and Kyle is not. A primary example that I’ve heard multiple times in explaining why she’s a ‘bad’ character or a ‘bad’ person is that she broke Stan’s heart by dumping him. Some accuse her of cheating on him (with either Gregory or Token, pick your poison).

We can dismiss the cheating accusations immediately, there isn’t even a sliver of evidence she ever cheated. The times where she pursued other love interests they were either broken up or not together.

But the underlying message that hurting Stan makes her a bad character and not holding Kyle to that same account when Kyle, as early as the super best friends episode and as terribly as the assburgers episode, has a pattern of hurting Stan and in worse ways.

Wendy dumped him, that’s awful, but she’s allowed to have different feelings for other people and she’s allowed to end a relationship with a boy who constantly vomited on her. But the fan perception of this is “what a bitch” while the reaction to the style friend breakups is “oooh the angst”

This is only one of the ways we can see her being held to a different standard than Kyle. Not every fan is guilty of this, but enough people share this sentiment that is entirely justified for people to point out what appears to be underlying misogyny in how the characters are treated.

There are arguments based more on her writing than her actions, I have heard the ‘she’s always right and that’s not realistic’ on at least four different occasions now. But not only is this factually untrue if you’ve actually watched the show, it ignores the many times Kyle has also been right for seemingly no other reason than the writers convenience. Making him the moral center of the episode or a center of a joke. I find the ‘she’s too perfect’ to be a bad faith argument because the research behind it is shoddy and even when the person behind it acknowledges cases where she was wrong (killing her teacher, bullying, petty grudges to name a few) it’s always hand-waved away as ‘oh, okay, that once, but other than anything that disagrees with me, she’s too perfect. This is a very clear case of confirmation bias. Any evidence that backs the argument that she’s too perfect is guarded and anything that refutes it is discarded.

There will be some fans that hate her and love Kyle for completely unrelated reasons to holding her to a different standard, sexism, or internalized misogyny. But it is a fact that a significant amount of the fandom holds her to a completely different standard and a very possible reason for that is either her gender or how she disrupts their precious ships.

I would make the argument that she has a far stronger and more engaging characterization than Clyde using the same standards I set above where I judge characters based on the totality of their appearances rather than on individual episode. A even removing that framework and basing solely on episodes that focus on them individually, she has a stronger character. And yet I have never once heard or seen anyone making the argument that they dislike Clyde because his character is too flat. This is another case where she, and the majority of the female cast, is held to a different standard. I’ve never seen anyone say ‘it’s hard to write Gregory because he has very little character and the writers only created a flat stereotype’. But I see that sort of perspective all the time for female characters that have more screen-time and development than Gregory ever had.

I love all the characters above and I find their characterizations and lack thereof to be a fascinating puzzle that I spend my free-time putting together.

But female characters in South Park do suffer from what I would consider a form of internalized misogyny. Most fans don’t do this on purpose (thus internalized) but the society we’ve been raised in has a tendency to put men and women on different scales.

This isn’t a scale that’s fair to either sex. The unconscious mentality that “its okay if he has no personality because he’s a guy” does men a disservice too. If you do fall under the category of someone who judges the female characters more than the male ones, I’m not trying to say you’re a bad person or even that you’ve done a bad thing. I want you to reconsider your opinion. Take a moment to actually think about it. I know I’ve been guilty of holding men and women to different standards. In both real life and fiction, I expect less from men. I look down on them in an unhealthy fashion that if I don’t address, could lead to ending up in harmful situations or harming someone else.

fiction is a lens that we can use to better understand reality. I am an advocate that you can treat fictional characters in any way you like and it doesn’t fucking matter. You want to kill Wendy because you think she’s an annoying bitch? Go for it. It doesn’t matter. Wendy is not real.

I don’t want you to change your fandom behaviors, I want you to reexamine them and ask yourself how deeply the disparity in how you view men and women goes. If you use fiction as an outlet for misogynistic or even misandrist feelings, I think that’s valid, but I want you to know that you’re doing it.

If you hold men and women to different standards, whether in fiction, real life, or both, I want you to be aware of it.

Now the elephant in the room.

Damien is one of the most popular characters in South Park and he has one episode focusing on his character. His personality is frequently discarded because in canon, he’s an uppity little git who is both petty and weak. He wants to be liked, is affected by bullying, and cries to his daddy about it.

In fandom he is frequently portrayed as a cool and collected impervious person who, yes, has a temper but instead of how petulant and bratty he appeared in canon, fandom portrays this as ‘badass’.

To put it simply, fandom has a tendency to ignore canon entirely in the name of what’s ‘hot’. They want the prince of hell to be sexy and dangerous, so he is just that.

The majority of popular fanon characterizations fit these same molds. They want Butters to be cute and sweet, so every character flaw he’s ever had is hand-waved away.

How does this relate to my topic?

Fans of the female characters are not impervious to this. Heidi Turner is an extremely flawed and vicious individual who would stoop to any low to protect her damaged pride. She is also a victim in a toxic relationship that put her through a horrible experience. And so the fandom either acknowledges one half, how cruel she can be, or the other, how pure a victim she was someone protect her. And neither combine her to a whole character. A person who was in a bad situation, had a lot of positive traits, bad things happened to her, and she didn’t bad things in return. Her penitent for cruelty in some earlier episodes when she was still a bg character is completely hand-waved away by both camps.

She’s an interesting character and she’s dumbed down for the pleasure of the audience, isn’t this the same treatment the men receive and thus invalidates my entire thesis that they’re held to a different standard?

For starters, the idea that an argument is entirely invalid because of one exception is in itself a fallacy, but to avoid acknowledging her existence would be confirmation bias. She is an anomaly, a female character given the same treatment as the male characters. Is it because she’s deeper or better written than the other female characters? I would argue no, critically watching her episodes she has tons of the same troped behavior that the fans love to despise in the rest of the female cast. Although unlike the other characters (both male and female), where I must do an in-depth watch of the series over the course of 20+ seasons in order to create a whole understanding of them, the majority of her arc happens over the course of two seasons.

An easily digestible amount of content. No one needs to put together the puzzle pieces to understand her like you do with the majority of the cast, it’s all there.

Except it isn’t, and this is why I mentioned her behavior in earlier seasons is discarded. The way people frame her is solely from the seasons where she’s a primary character, ignoring the clear characterization we got from her in earlier seasons that do help to create a more whole understanding of her personality and character.

That all said, there are still portions of the fandom who hate her purely because she blocks their kyman or style or insert-gay-ship-here. There are fans who hate her not because of her flawed personality or even that they find her character flat, but purely because they want to see ‘two hot boys kiss get the gross girl out’. Which is a pretty common mistreatment of Wendy as well.

Now, male characters are on occasion given this treatment but nowhere near as often. While creek shippers and crenny shippers might fight until their last breath, neither group seems to actually hate Kenny or Tweek. But in the ship wars of a ‘het ship’ vs a ‘gay ship’, the female character is frequently trashed by the gay side.

I could go into an aside about the troubling fetishization of gay men that borders on outright homophobia at times, but this has been surprisingly alot.

I guess my point is that any which way you fandom, try to at least understand that sexism is real and be aware when you might be perpetuating messages that can appear unbalanced. And maybe, ask yourself why you do that.

#meta #and this is when everyone unfollows #sometimes when you're being perceived as problematic #it's because there's a problem

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purplesurveys · 5 years ago

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774

How many times a day do you talk on the phone with your significant other?: I just answered this on another survey lol. Idk it really depends how long or short our conversations are so there’s no one definite number of times, but generally I talk to her throughout the day. If we’re both busy, talking in the morning and before turning in for bed would be enough as well.

Other than English, what was the last language spoken to you?: Filipino.

What math level are you currently taking/did you last take in school?: I’m taking up a journalism degree so there’s very little math required for me to take. The one and only math class I had was Math 1 in freshman year and it was so basic we didn’t even take up actual math – it was a class on the history of math lmao.

Who was the last person to ask you for relationship advice?: Kate. I haven’t checked up on her and the guy, actually. Last time she went to me she seemed stressed and I never heard a rant from her after that, so I dunno if they fixed stuff or just broke up altogether.

Do you have a sleeping problem?: No, I sleep just fine.

Have you ever taken a survey with a friend, listing both answers?: Nooooooo no no hard pass. I wouldn’t want my friends to know I do surveys.

Where would you order your favorite burger from?: Pound’s burgers are so good. I stopped looking for other burgers once I got to try theirs.

Who have you been hanging out with most often these days?: Myself...and by default Kimi, who follows me literally anywhere.

Do you know a guy who has hair longer than yours?: Yes.

What color was the last cup you drank out of?: It was just a clear glass.

If you’re in school, what do you do to fill in time between classes?: I go to our org lounge, which is a place in the college we call Skywalk since it’s a walkway on the second floor connecting two buildings. There’s always stuff to do or people to hang out with there, so it’s my favorite place to go to and kill time.

Do you have friends in your classes? Not always. I wasn’t one of those people who needed to enroll in every class with a friend. I just walk into my classes to do my acads, submit shit, and finish off the class with a good grade. It’s cool if I spot a friend, but otherwise it’s not my priority.

When did you last encounter someone you disliked? Today and generally daily, pretty much.

Ever been to a real haunted house?: I don’t think so. Though when we went to Laurice’s house she told us that the house in front of theirs is abandoned – and it did look creepy lol – so we just assumed it was haunted. A couple of the boys went in to check it out but the rest of us just stayed at Laurice’s.

Where was the last place you got lost?: Probs the last time I went to BGC. That place has so many fancy schmancy traffic rules of its own and so many one-way streets and stoplights that anyone who isn’t from there can easily get lost.

What windows are open on your desktop right now?: I have a Try Guys video paused on YouTube, the Google Doc file for my thesis, the Google Forms file for my thesis questionnaire’s results, and a digital copy of the book I’m currently reading.

When was the last time you had cheesecake?: The other day I had ube cheesecake. It was supposed to be my dad’s Mother’s Day gift for my mom, but I asked for some heheh.

When you last shed tears, was it because of a person?: Technically? I cried from of a song, but it also kinda reminded me of a person.

Which music artists were at the last concert you attended?: Paramore <3

What was the last thing you discussed through text messages?: I spent my last peso texting Gabie we had no internet at home for the night so I won’t be able to talk to her, and that I’ll try again the next day.

How many songs are on your iPod/MP3 player?: I don’t keep one anymore. Technically, any songs I wanna listen to are accessible to me on Spotify now. Though it’s safe to guess that my iPod probably reached a peak of 500+ songs.

Other than yours, whose house did you last fall asleep at?: Gabie’s, most likely.

Have you ever had a significant other whose parents didn’t like you?: I don’t think so. I get very insecure about this every so often given that we’re in a same-sex relationship and that I don’t always have the money to woo her parents and buy them pasalubong, but Gabie always reassures me her parents are more than alright with me. And there’s zero reason not to believe her when I do meet up with her parents as they’re very lovely people, so I guess it’s all good in the hood.

What’s so unique about your computer?: The stickers I’ve placed on my laptop case are probably the most unique about it.

How was life for you six months ago?: November was mostly uneventful for me. I think I was still mostly reeling over Nacho’s death.

How much is gas in your area?: I dunno, I never check lol. There’s been a series of rollbacks since March because of the virus, but this week my dad mentioned something about a price hike so it might be starting to come up again.

What’s something interesting you learned in the past week?: A bunch. I just got into a YouTube channel called Oversimplified which posts hilarious narratives of historical events (mostly wars) complete with doodles to make them easier to follow. Yesterday I learned about the Battle of Hastings which would also apparently become very influential when it came to the English language, so it was pretty cool to learn it was more than just a physical war.

Do you know what you plan to do for your next birthday?: Out-of-town trip or an overseas one altogether. Either sounds ideal.

Was the last book you read for fun or assignment related?: For leisure.

#survey #surveys

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xenophanatic · 5 years ago

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Not my Austen???

Okay, I know this is going to be an annoying post for those who are much wiser and mature than myself. It’s like that college student who has taken their first Austen class and tells all Janeites ‘Did you know that the lake scene never happened in the book!’

However, I need to talk about two texts that are based in our reality, where Austen novels exist, that aim to celebrate Austen but - imo - they fail to either understand Austen’s original works or execute their mission statement poorly. These two texts are Lost in Austen and The Jane Austen Book Club respectively.

In Lost in Austin, Pride and Prejudice avid-fan Amanda Price, who is unsatisfied with her modern life and romantic prospects, switched with Elizabeth Bennett. She finds that not all her favourite characters are what they seem and unintentionally changes the plot to her favourite novel.

I didn’t mind the set-up. Actually, I found it quite enjoyable. However, some things were forced. Amanda, knowing Darcy’s arc, falls for it. By that I mean while before entering the world is in love with the character and wishes her boyfriend was like Darcy, when meeting him she instantly dislikes his rude behaviour, however then gets to know him and falls for him. THAT IS THE WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK. So, as a fan - how can you not see this rude behaviour as just an exterior coping mechanism. Though I haven’t watched this series since it aired, that was something I remembered not understanding from a character point of view.

Though the series explored several secondary characters well, the main issue I have with this text is the ending. Amanda has taken Lizzie’s place and therefore her and Darcy have fallen for one another. Knowing the this is not how it supposed to end, she tries to get Darcy and Elizabeth together. Elizabeth this whole time has been living in the modern world and knows her existence as an Austen character who marries Darcy - umm... hello? this could have been a great existential crisis narrative, but lets ignore that for Amanda’s self-fulfilling prophesy. So, instead of ending up together, Elizabeth and Darcy decide to go separate ways and Darcy ends up with Amanda (leaving her modern day life), while Elizabeth goes to present time as a modern woman.

Contrast Amanda’s arch to that of Catherine in Northanger Abbey. Amanda is obsessed with P&P to the point where she compares all men to Darcy and rejects living a her life to instead read about Lizze’s. This is similar to Catherine who is obsessed with gothic lit that is all she talks about and has not knowledge of what is happened in the real world. She also projects her knowledge of gothic lit (tropes and plotlines) to her love interest’s life - which cause a rift between the two and others around them. In the end, Catherine learns that she should not live in the fiction world and accept the reality of life. She grows mature and marries said love interest. While, through Northanger Abbey, Austen tries to illustrate the downfalls to individuals who engross themselves in fiction and encourage them to instead accept reality, Lost in Austen encourages audience to submit themselves into fiction and reject reality. I believe that the creators of Lost in Austen - or maybe just Amanda - has never read Northanger Abbey. In my opinion, Amanda should have returned to her reality and understood that while fiction is enjoyable, it is not where she belonged. Amanda crashes into fiction, makes many mistakes - derailing the original story - yet gets ‘rewarded’ by ending in her favourite novel and male hero.

What about your career Amanda? What about your right to vote? What about any autonomy or agency you will get in the modern world?

In all honest, I would love to see a sequel where Amanda misses internet, electricity and Independence; or where Darcy thinks about what could have been with Elizabeth. I mean they were, in the world of Austen, created for one another. I dislike the ending and therefore dislike the series as it’s thesis statement is... Why can’t I be Elizabeth!

It’s funny how this text wants to celebrate Austen by creating something that she would not agree to. Not because of the liberty they took with her text, but with the message they are trying to send.

The second text, which I recently viewed, is the film The Jane Austen Book Club. I had previously seen it, but didn’t remember it or why i didn’t enjoy it. I chose to re-watched it because of my love for Hugh Dancy and how his relationship was shown in trailer made me want to see it again.... yeah... not good. It feels the mission statement was ‘Friendship, Love, and Jane Austen’, but really it didn’t do any of it right.

The issue I have is that there is so much going on... but nothing at all. It is all surface level. Most characters are also unlikable, except for Grigg (Hugh Dancy) - mainly because I like the actor. None of the romances were appealing, the friendship was told not shown, and Austen was discusses on surface level as if just in background... like a jukebox musical. Again, the best one was Grigg with Northanger Abbey because he actually put effort into it and I did like the Henry Crawford discussion because I agree with it. FannyxHenry Forever!

The friendship between the women, and the men, were so weak that I’m not sure why they are all hanging out after a year. Was the club that impactful to your life? This film was based on a book - which I haven’t read. However, here are some changes I would have made.

1) Have it a mini-series rather than a film. Consisted of 8 Episodes. First episode called Juvenilia, introducing all the character and getting the book club set up. Each following episode is titled by the Austen novel and focuses on the person hosting the bookclub for that month. Giving the characters a whole hour to explore themselves and the novel, whilst building the over arching plot. And the final episode titled Love and Friendship, concluding each character’s arch.

2) Have it more with strangers rather than friends. Or maybe even friends that have been out of touch - who got together because of an Austen class or something. Oh, maybe a recent death of a friend - therefore leaving the sixth place empty for Grigg. By having familiar friends talk about these books, there’s no character building - because the character known each other for a long time. The film also doesn’t given enough time for Prudie or Grigg to feel apart of the core-group.

3) Focus on female friendship. Prudie is an outsider and other often make fun of her or judge her relationship with her husband. I expected to see a scene where the friends help her out - like in Skam when the girls help Vilde and the iconic imagery of Sana carry Vilde. Have Prudie throw away this image she has and talk to the ladies about her fears and past. The girls talk to her and make her feel better and they all bound. But nope. Prudie’s arch was to make her husband read Austen... ehhhh....

4) Have someone else, other than Jocelyn, be the one to introduce Grigg to the group. From the trailer, it seemed that Grigg was someone Jocelyn didn’t want in the group because he was a man, but then saw him as a rebound guy for her friend and then end up liking him. I wanted that rather than Grigg clearly being interested in her and her stringing him along. I did LOVE the Grigg moments about science-fiction and Jocelyn’s arch of reading the sci-fi books as a symbol for letting him in. However, if we get this disinterest for one another at the start it would be similar to Pride and Prejudice, therefore fitting into the Austen theme. Though I liked Jocelyn as the Emma character, the P&P romance would have worked too.

I don’t know... I just want to re-work this whole thing. Ideally a Sunny meets Jane Austen. Old friends, that have been out of touch for years, come together after the death of a friend and decide to re-connect through what brought them together... Jane Austen.They find that they no longer connect with the character/book they once love and instead connect to different characters and book. Dead friend’s younger brother, feeling he never knew his sister, joins the club to understand his sister more.

Oh man I want to write this mini-series now!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my rant. If you feel the same or even disagree, comment! Let’s talk!

#jane austen #the jane austen book club #lost in austen #xenophanatic

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maverick-werewolf · 5 years ago

Note

This is a weird one but I'm curious. With werewolf stories there come a couple of cliches/tropes used when telling a story. I want to do a story about cliches and the topic of werewolves come into it. So my question... what cliches/tropes do you associate with werewolves? Can be what you like or don't like - thanks and sorry for such a weird ask ^^

(Sorry this took me so long to get around to; I really need to catch up on my ask backlog.)

I love all asks, including weird ones! Not that I’d call this one terribly weird, really.

There are a lot I associate with them, and plenty I do not like. Let me see if I can do a quick list. I said “quick” when I first wrote this post, then I wrote a small book, apologies in advance.

Note that pretty much any of these can be done well, and I’ll probably mention that. But there are some I truly cannot abide on a personal level.

One of these lists is longer than the other. Note I am doing tropes I actually have seen in popular culture, not ones I’d like to see, since that’d be a totally different topic and an even longer post! I also have a post here for a few little tips about writing werewolves/werecreatures.

Ones I like:

Eating people - Okay, so it was weird to open with this. But I like werewolves that eat people. Some people don’t. I do. I like them being big scary man-eating monsters. They can eat people and still be good (only eat bad people!), or they can be feral monsters with a taste for human flesh. I just like werewolves that eat people because… I just do. I also like them eating people alive in every sense of the word, as I covered in another fact (but not being mega stupid about it like wolves often were in later folk tales).

Voracious in general/insatiable - And taking off that first one, I do like werewolves that are voracious in general and/or have insatiable appetites. It’s a wolf trope, yeah. But I love it. The normal guy eats a steak. The werewolf eats like 8 giant steaks and is hungry again in a few hours. It’s fun!

Werewolves as wolves - In contrast to one on the list of things I don’t like, I enjoy werewolves exploring their wolfish side and/or exhibiting it, even in human form. It can be done horribly, of course, and I think it is immensely, endlessly silly when all werewolves in a setting are this way, but a few of them ending up like this (especially ones closer to their wolf side somehow) can be great. I am biased, of course, because the protagonist in a series of medieval fantasy werewolf novels I’ve been working on my entire life is a lot like this. The instincts, the love of raw meat… all that stuff. Not the overly silly stuff (more on that in “werewolves as dogs” and “dog jokes,” but the interesting, badass, wolfish stuff.

Moon association - I do actually like the pop culture association with werewolves and the moon.

Werewolves as guardians/protectors - This is a fairly rare one, but I do enjoy it when werewolves are guardians or protectors of something, like goodness in general, or guardians of nature, and all that sort of thing. Now, if they’re just guardians to some macguffin thing or some other very specific thing and it turns them into basically guardian golems or something? That’s pretty lame. But it can be cool. And werewolves as protectors of the innocent, that kind of stuff (like occurred in legend pretty often, as I’ve mentioned in several werewolf facts).

Dark forests - I love me some classic dark forest setting with a werewolf in it, and a distant, chilling howl when in creepy, foggy woods at night.

Loyal to the core - A trope among some werewolves is that they are super loyal. I like that.

Bloodthirsty - This doesn’t mean “evil,” this just means… well, bloodthirsty. I don’t like it as a trait for “all” werewolves, like all werewolves in a setting, but a bloodthirsty werewolf character, always itching for a fight and enjoying the smell of spilt blood? I have biases. My protagonist in Wulfgard is one, and I love them.

Basically the Hulk - The Hulk would be awesome if he was a werewolf, because he’s a lot of my favorite werewolf tropes. You won’t like him when he’s angry/volatile temper that will destroy everything, but when turned, he’s actually a good, gentle giant who saves people, despite his own opinions about his other form. (I am talking classic Hulk; newer Hulk stuff has, IMO, not reflected this very well, or else chosen simply not to do that/explore it)

Painful/traumatic transformation - I love painful transformations. I do not like some kinds of transformations (I detest the skin flaying/wolf bursting out of a person/etc), but make it hurt. Make them scream. Traumatize anyone who has to see or so much as hear it and traumatize the werewolf if they remember it. I am cruel.

Werewolf angst - Okay, so I know a lot of people in werewolf circles moan about “werewolf angst.” I like it. There. I said it. It can be done horribly, of course, and it’s often overused, but this is absolutely no reason to condemn it altogether. It can still make for a truly awesome story.

Noble werewolves - A personal favorite, obviously!

Werewolves are sexy/more attractive than most people - I mean. I’m okay with this. I like the whole primal sexiness thing, as silly and overdone as it can be at times. Don’t you want someone with a wild side? And all that.

Involuntary transformation - I also like this in general. It can be done horribly, just like anything else, but usually I like it a lot and prefer it to werewolves just being a superpower you can flick on and off (although those can be done well, too, for sure, and I do not dislike voluntary transformation).

Ones I do not like:

Dog jokes (barking, sniffing crotches, peeing everywhere, chasing things, etc.) - Unpopular opinion time! Get all of this away from me. Far away. It is not funny, it is so old and worn out and absolutely overused and predictable now, and can we please stop turning werewolves into jokes and actually take them seriously ever? It’s truly terrible and the biggest factor that set me on this path to try to convince the world to take werewolves seriously again. And the second a werewolf barks, I am out and you will never see me again. Wolves. Do not. Bark. (It felt very good to vent this, even if I will probably get trolled and flamed into oblivion later.)

Werewolves as dogs - Generally having any dog-like qualities; goes hand in hand with the previous one. Please at least treat them like wild animals, because they are wolves, not domesticated. They do not have domesticated dog instincts. They do not have domesticated dog qualities. They are half man, half wolf.

Plague - I do not like this modern idea that werewolves are basically disease victims, especially since lycanthropy was not considered a “disease” until fairly recently. That they are only dangerous because they are diseased, not because they’re giant hulking intelligent monsters that can kill you with ease and are borderline invincible. I don’t mind the “lycanthropy as a disease” thing, or the transmission by bite - I think it can be done well and I use the bite transmission myself. I just do not think it should be presented as a plague, and anything that uses phrases like “werewolf infestation” will immediately raise my ire. Werewolves are not plague rats.

Only dangerous in packs and/or giant hordes like zombies - This goes a lot with the previous one. In a lot of things, werewolves are only dangerous in giant hordes and are basically zombies. I also don’t like the idea that werewolves are only dangerous in a pack. An individual werewolf should be more than capable and terrifying enough on its own.

Always evil - I hate this so much. This is easily one of the main things I am fighting against with werewolves. That’s all I have to say, except for things I have already said, and unless I want to rewrite my entire 150+ page thesis here in this blog post.

Werewolves as just plain stupid - This infuriates me. This is a thing for wolves and werewolves alike: they are often just stupid. Dumb. Unintelligent. They do dumb things. In folklore, the wolf is even described by scholars from the Middle Ages as “stupid.” That is absolutely ridiculous. Werewolves were very smart in folklore, and in fact that was a huge part of what made them scary (their human intelligence), and not the modern day “don’t worry it’ll bash itself against the wall in a mad fit until it dies” werewolves.

Scared of fire and/or weak to it - Berserkers and some other werewolves were specifically described as being “immune to fire.” And why would a werewolf be scared of fire, like someone waving a torch around? They’re half human. They know what fire is.

Random encounter/common monster - Werewolves should be powerful, scary, and viewed with at least some amount of awe. There shouldn’t be something such as monster hunters hoping for “a run-of-the-mill werewolf attack.” There should be nothing run of the mill about werewolves, that cheapens them immensely. A werewolf or werewolves shouldn’t be the random encounter you roll in your tabletop game (they are also often immensely low level and it pains me), because that’s also cheapening them into simple, unscary, uninteresting cannon fodder.

Werewolves as sexual predators/serial killers/cannibals/crazy people in general - This came from werewolves being turned into crazy people/being a werewolf being considered merely a form of madness. It’s… bad. It helped spawn the whole “all werewolves are evil” thing that the Early Modern Period tried to popularize (and succeeded), and werewolves were never associated with sexual assault, etc. And yes, I know of the “werewolf trials” that were rebranded into werewolf trials that were about people who did things like that, but those were witches (more on the main culprit here).

Werewolves vs vampires - It’s very overdone. It can be done well, but it usually isn’t, and it’s considered the “default” today despite having no folkloric precedence and that just kind of irks me. It also considerably cheapens them both and makes pretty much all the characters of either type just end up revolving around each other and/or the conflict in some way or another, and they basically never get to be their own character(s).

Association with Victorian England - I am very tired of this one.

Association with demons and/or witches - Werewolves are not unholy and they’re so much more than just witches. The latter is a theme throughout my werewolf facts.

“I’m not actually a werewolf”/Just call them werewolves - Okay, so this is a pretty big irksome one for me. A werewolf is a werewolf is a werewolf. Werewolf means someone who turns into a wolf or wolf-man hybrid. “Wolf shifters” are werewolves, regardless of if they follow Hollywood werewolf tropes (because those are just Hollywood, too!). Worgen are werewolves. You don’t have to call them something weird in order for them to be cool and/or to justify them not holding to Hollywood werewolf tropes, especially since most things call vampires “vampires” and that’s just fine. Let’s remove the weird stigma around the word “werewolf” (back to the not taking them seriously thing, and in some cases, assuming they are all/making them all evil). This also applies to things like Twilight (side-note: I do not hate Twilight), where the “werewolves” turn around and say oh, no, we’re not werewolves, we are just people who turn into wolves [which is what werewolves are], werewolves are evil. Right, okay.

Gornography - I like werewolves and gore just fine, don’t get me wrong. Werewolves would maul people. Yes. They are huge and have huge claws and fangs and they’d be covered in blood. Werewolves and gore is awesome. But I do not like werewolves existing solely for the gore shock value and/or people who are into all the gore. They are often cheapened in this way, and it’s lame.

Werewolf names - I mean, sometimes they’re okay, and they can be done well. But Remus Lupin? Fenrir Greyback? Ms Lupescu? Can… we please make the werewolf character(s) have any character traits other than “I’m a werewolf!”? And maybe they shouldn’t broadcast their lycanthropy to the world. Characters with names like these come across as insanely contrived, namely (pun intended) if they aren’t born as werewolves to proud werewolf parents who want to name their kid(s) something like that. If they were turned later in life? That’s… convenient. And names like that really imply they are one-note characters, whether they really are or not (though they often are, sadly).

Werewolves super easily and sometimes instantly killed - “All we need is a [one] silver bullet!” says pop culture. Good grief. Gimme a break.

The werewolf always dies - This is a thing. The werewolf always has to die. Individual werewolf, a group of werewolves… they always die and/or are wiped out. The Wolf Man (1941) kind of started this, and everyone picked up on it (look at the overwhelming majority of horror movies after that, with a rare exception of Wolf [1994]), right down to werewolf side characters like the ones in Harry Potter and The Graveyard Book. For some reason, the werewolf and/or werewolves usually have to die, and often we see an end to the “curse.” Put frankly, that’s lame. This is one of many reasons why I love that Red Riding Hood (2011) movie so much (I have another post on that, for anyone interested).

Okay, so not all of those are tropes, but I had an opportunity to rant and I’m afraid I went and took it. Sorry!

I, of course, can be made to like most any werewolf as long as they are scary, intimidating, preferably big, do not have to work in groups in order to be formidable at all (a single werewolf should be a huge problem), are taken seriously (preferably no dog jokes; dog jokes instantly fill me with primal rage because they are dumb and overused and cheapen werewolves immensely and I hate them and sorry if that was candid), are not plague rats/zombie plague (there are not thousands of them in droves, are only dangerous in hordes, and are slaughtered en masse with great ease, and are only dangerous because they can “infect” others), aren’t always villains, don’t always have to die, and… that somewhat covers it. And I already said those things. Why did I repeat myself? I really dunno.

*deep breath*

That doesn’t cover all of the tropes on either side, by any means - I think about werewolves all the time, so I could definitely think up more, and I’m sure there are a lot more out there. But this is a honkin’ big list anyway, so it’s good for starters. Hope that helps! And thank you for asking. :D

#asks #theevilemster #werewolves #werewolf #lycanthropy #lycanthropes #werewolf tropes #tropes #cliches #creative writing #fiction writing #movies #games #giant post #wolfmen #wolf shifters #shifters #folklore

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scarlettlawyer · 6 years ago

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Phantoms and Mirages Fic Commentary, Part 1

So. I’ve basically written up over six thousand words of reaction/commentary of @renegadewangs‘s fanfic Chasing Phantoms, the first instalment in the Phantoms and Mirages series. This post’s commentary covers the first ten chapters, but I still reference parts beyond that excluding Tracking Ghosts, which I still have yet to read (so the commentary itself is spoilery in the sense that it jumps about at times and references stuff beyond the chapter at hand). So please no spoilers regarding the final instalment! Meowzy, I hope this was okay for me to do, please let me know if it’s not! The way I’ve written this up is kind of like a review where I’m talking to you, but other fans are more than welcome to comment on and engage with this post if they wish. I plan to cover the series at least up until the end of Lifting Spirits with these commentary posts.

Sorry for Very Long Post!

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 1

First off, already, in the first few sentences, you present us with something to contrast SO strongly with the changed Bobby we see later – specifically to contrast as much as possible, basically. The difference here between this Bobby and Randy Liberate, it’s, aaaah…! You specifically draw attention to this, in the very beginning of the very first chapter… You didn’t HAVE to make the contrast so stark, but you did, and god damn it hit me hard. XD. NOT GONNA LIE IT MADE ME KINDA “ANGRY” THAT YOU DID THIS LIKE, hahaha. You did this on purpose, didn’t have to make that the content of the first few lines of dialogue.

Man, you know what occurred to me when I was starting to read this fic? In the past there was at least one fic on the PWKM that a friend linked me to that was also a Bobby Lives AU where Bobby was also traumatised – but it was basically one where Bobby had been held captive during that whole year. And I read a little bit of it then basically shoved it aside and couldn’t read it anymore. It was just too off-putting for me, the horror and level of trauma Bobby must have suffered over such a long period of time too much to think about, making me feel ill and sick to my stomach at the time. Now that fic – based on what my friend told me and what little I read of it – focused on Bobby and his slow recovery. The phantom was not really present, they were not a character – they were merely a part of the fic’s background formation, the referred-to and merely alluded to entity whose prime influence over the fic was being the source of – having inflicted Bobby’s trauma, the trauma already having played out.

Now there’s more than one reason I didn’t continue reading that fic, and what they have in common is that they stem from the fact that I like the phantom a lot as a character. Therefore, I want to read fic with a focus on the phantom and with the phantom as an actual character who does stuff in the fic, and that fic did not meet those requirements. SECONDLY… I was not, and until reading Phantoms and Mirages, was never really in the habit of giving Bobby Fulbright as a character much focus. Reading about Bobby shell-shocked and traumatised was a fundamentally uncomfortable experience (as it should be) because naturally it made me feel very very bad for the guy, but also because the fic wanted to (rightfully) position the phantom as an abhorrent and detestable being. Now usually I got no problem with that but the way that fic went about it felt somehow different – it made my insides twist, perhaps because it was shining a spotlight on the phantom’s victim(s) as opposed to the phantom themself. It did not encourage my love for this awful fictional character, it did not give me anything to “fangirl” over, it just made me dislike the phantom in the context of that fic, and I wasn’t about that life.

So back when I’m starting out this fic written by you, where Bobby is actually a player on the chessboard getting a bunch of focus, and I’m like oh, boy. Is it going to be like that again? Is this fic(s) going to make me feel super, duper bad about Bobby Fulbright and by extension, just make me feel sick when thinking about the phantom? Is this series going to encourage me to hate the phantom and have a certain degree of success? I was a little worried.

…Phwwhwhh…. Bahahaha. Oh, past me. If this fic series has a thesis, I can tell you it’s NOT “this person known as the phantom is bad forever and you should hate them.” Can you believe this was ever one of my concerns? : D Hehehehe.

Oh my god… Oh my god… Reading over this again, it just hit me – the IRONY of that corpse being labelled a “John Doe” and referred to as such… goshdangit Meowzy!!! I know you love your irony an awful lot. Is there no end to your amusing twists and reversals?! XD. I’M TRYING TO THINK, DID THEY ACTUALLY CALL THE CORPSE A JOHN DOE IN TURNABOUT FOR TOMORROW? THAT MIGHT’VE BEEN WHAT GAVE YOU THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SHELLY IDEA… HMMMM.

Now as much as I poked fun above about the possibility that this series would make me dislike the phantom, man did this chapter make me feel bad for Bobby Fulbright. It really manages to put you in his shoes. Struck me REALLY heavily just how absolutely mind-breaking it must be for your captive to step into the room and they’re, well, you. To have the spitting image of yourself calmly and coldly hold you at gunpoint… goddamn. That’s some shattering stuff. Honestly even if none of the Shelly death happened, poor Bobby, the guy would already have a lot of baggage that would take a lot of time to work through based on that alone.

The “highly respected nobody” and “devoted your life to justice, but in doing so forgot to pursue close bonds with loved ones” comments and Bobby’s reaction was flippin’ heartbreaking for me. I’ve seen plenty of meta written before supposing about Bobby not having any real close loved ones and how that would have made impersonation easier, and for the people doing that analysis there is always an air of “huh that’s kind of sad/depressing, actually” – a level of acknowledgement there that I would register when reading such analysis, but here in this chapter I’m hit with the absolute full force of it and just how depressing it is when Mr Bobby Fulbright himself is confronted with that analysis (or at least, that’s what it really felt like the first time I read it!). It really hurt to think about! This is what I mean when I say I’m impressed that you gave Bobby Fulbright agency as a character – in fics where he is dead, or in meta passively analysing him, this analysis is basically applied to him post-mortem. He’s an idea, a thing to be dissected, with no concrete shape or form (because we can never know how accurate the phantom’s impersonation was). And in later chapters the text itself lampshades this. Bobby’s later comments about being treated as a martyr of justice by the public struck me as basically how the fandom as a whole tends to treat him, and that may have been intentional on your part. We, the fandom and the players, just like Simon Blackquill, never actually got to meet the real Bobby Fulbright. But here, here? As a character in your fic, Bobby gets to take shape as a concrete entity as opposed to the multitude of possibilities that he is in much of fandom. But importantly, he gets to react. He gets to react to things, and he is the one reacting to this very analysis of himself. As shattering as it is for him, in this chapter he gets to basically hear a solemn takeaway that parts of the fandom have made about his person. And in subsequent chapters, he is given the chance both to respond and overcome it.

It’s kinda funny, you know what these scenes made me think and wish? “Man, it really sucks that Bobby Fulbright died, actually. It really, really sucks. I wish he hadn’t died.” Keep in mind that I was kind of, err… too distracted by the phantom to be truly sad over Bobby when playing the ending of Dual Destinies for the first time. Hmm. Well, this chapter certainly helped me out with feeling the anguish that the average player did over Bobby!

“Wish Bobby didn’t die. It’s not fair! Wish that Bobby was, you know… still alive. Somehow.” Hah! Meowzy, you were just standing there like “don’t worry bro I got you covered.”

When I read this chapter for the first time, I didn’t actually know for certain that it was a Bobby Lives AU. I mean, it was telling me that Bobby Fulbright was gonna be a character, but all signs so far seemed to point to “yeah, he’s a character… in flashbacks.” The fic tags were saying Blackbright, and yet the entire setup seemed to be saying otherwise. It left me kinda confused and wondering how, in what capacity would our man Bobby Fulbright be playing a role. This chapter had made me so certain he was dead, that I actually thought supernatural elements would be involved. Ghost Bobby! : D

And I honestly don’t know why, but for some reason I’d always assumed Phantoms and Mirages as a series was some Fun Wacky AU With Actual Supernatural Elements for the longest time back when I didn’t know anything about it. It’s part of why it took me so long to finally get around to reading it. I blame both the chosen titles involved (why I failed to realise back then that they were not actually meant to be taken literally, seeing as the canon “phantom” character has no supernatural elements, I really don’t know) and the fact that “Bobby Fulbright” and “the phantom” were both listed as characters co-existing in the same fic. My mind just went “does not compute” to the point where it straight-up assumed it mustn’t be canon compliant and/or have fantastical elements. Heh. Joke’s on me.

So yeah, you made me really sad and wish Bobby hadn’t died and he was still alive… in an AU where he lives! Excellent work ;D

Just also want to randomly say again(?) that I can’t believe you managed to write canon compliant Bobby Lives “AU” fic. You took two of the main issues/problems I’ve seen raised by fans; “why did it take a year for Bobby’s body to be found” and “why did the phantom allow that evidence to be discoverable”, and managed to actually solve them in a manner that supports a Bobby Lives “AU”. Brilliant!

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 3

The guard by the man’s side exchanged a meaningful look with his fellows on the other side of the glass as the tirade was still ongoing, though the next few words were in a foreign language. French? Then Cohdopian? He switched back to English soon enough, which didn’t diminish the oddity one bit.

The Phantom was losing it.

Gosh, I can’t emphasise enough how much I loved the language switching here. That’s another thing this series does REALLY well: acknowledging other languages and having characters change between them. An international spy is naturally going to know more than one language, that’s just kind of a given, and I don’t see much meta or fics acknowledge that, so I really do adore how strongly it’s a given in your fics. The way language switching is done and discussed, and just discussion of listening to other languages etc is usually really well done in this series and I always enjoy it.

But I just especially love this particular scene – the phantom inadvertently changing languages because he’s just that far gone is… iconic. I’d almost say it’s kind of a miracle that they were able to stick to the one language throughout their entire breakdown at the end of Dual Destinies, but then again, they only used the faces of “English” speaking characters I guess, flitting between their voices, so it does make sense!

Interesting that, when I read through this chapter for the first time, when the phantom started actually making threats and being like “I’M GOING TO BREAK OUT OF HERE AND YOU WILL PAY, SEE YOU SOON!!” I was, well, sceptical. I was like, hmmm, huuh…? “That doesn’t really, um, make sense, does it? Isn’t that a little out of character for the phantom?” and yet, the narrative itself acknowledges this, through Blackquill, later on when things come to a head. I was awfully foolish to ever doubt the Great Meowzy. :P

Now this time around, of course I know exactly what’s going on here and register precisely how this seemingly odd behaviour slots into the phantom now.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 4

”Bobby Fulbright.”

Fulbright stiffened at the mention of his own name, just for a few seconds.

OH, HERE WE GO. YEAH. HERE WE GO, HUH???

Yeah, you might have seen/noticed from my posting in the discord chat, but this? This inspired quite the reaction in me. This made me livid, frothing at the mouth. Not in any way towards you, the author or the writing, but towards the character. Mission accomplished via good writing!

Well, I wasn’t angry at first, I don’t think. Initially it was just a kind of, delighted bewilderment when he showed up – I am pretty sure I found it pretty, well, amusing. Funny but in a sense you’re laughing out of shock and bewilderment more than anything. LIKE… IT /IS/ PRETTY FUNNY IN A SUPER WACKY KIND OF WAY… the narrative has kind of said in no uncertain terms over and over again, that this character is dead. And here he is, in the flesh, alive, just like that.

The phantom: lol Bobby Fulbright is dead and I killed him

(Except he’s lying through his teeth.)

Like, YES, we have the narrative undercurrent of Simon’s creeping suspicions leading up to this point – it’s most certainly not something that happens out of nowhere, textually speaking. The groundwork HAS been laid, and alternative explanations have been hinted and implied. (An AU of this AU would be some grimdark angsty thing where Simon follows the “maybe he’s not actually dead though” trail and gets his hopes up only for it to end in despair because nah, he’s really gone dude, and it was all your imagination and yearning for something that will never be, but anyway).

It’s awkwardly funny and funny in an awkward way. This guy presumed dead, another guy claiming to have killed him, the funeral has taken place, THE BODY SUPPOSEDLY IDENTIFIED AND /BURIED/, THE LOCATION OF THE MURDER SUPPOSEDLY IDENTIFIED- People are in mourning.

Bobby: Oh. Hey. Hello, um, yes. I’m alive haha

Part of it is that it’s so sudden too. I kind of love it. He’s just there at the cemetery, Simon chases this random man down and it’s Bobby flippin’ Fulbright.

So at first it’s like

:O [laughing confusedly] what the heck? Bobby, you’re aliiive! : D

Then it’s like

Bobby, how the hell are you alive?

…And what the hell are you doing here?!

Then finally reaches a crescendo in a sort of WAIT, HOW DARE YOU BE ALIVE?!

My standard expectation for a fic scenario like this – “Bobby is alive post-DD” is him being found, hidden away somewhere – him having been forcibly hidden away from the outside world with no way to make contact with it if he wanted to. He needs to be uncovered. He’s certainly not casually hanging out in the background at cemeteries, walking around outside freely, that’s for sure, hahaha.

But no, he was not discovered in some dark cellar, chained to the wall. He was discovered walking around out in the open, nothing really preventing him from making contact with people.

My amused surprise quickly and rapidly gave way to rage.

Rage at this man!!! Rage, as the story progressed and unfolded in the immediate aftermath of this initial scene.

All thoughts of the phantom – the god damn phantom, the entire reason I started reading this fic in the first place – vanished from my mind. Stuff the phantom. Who cares about the phantom?! All of my thoughts and feelings and reactions were all focused on Bobby. For the next small chunk of the fic, the phantom is not relevant, and I couldn’t care less, because he was completely irrelevant to me at that point too, and for me that’s kind of a big accomplishment writing-wise in and of itself.

“You’re a real doll”

“Y o u ‘ r e a r e a l d o l l”

HMMMMMMMMMMM

Me: BOBBY FULBRIGHT ARE YOU OKA

“shooting her a playful. WINK”

UHHHHGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

I FORGOT HE ACTUALLY SAYS THAT BEFORE THE SMOKING REVEAL but I was already blind rage at that point anyway sdklsdklsd like… Bobby Fulbright just… Existing “freely” and not having contacted the authories or anything… was more than enough to tip me off that something was horribly wrong, that this Fulbright had fundamentally betrayed himself and what he stands for in some capacity. That much was already clear to me – I was essentially infuriated over certain reveals before they even happened. I already Knew, really. Looking back, the “doll” line MIGHT not have been intentional? But basically: I am Very Certain it really doesn’t suit Bobby’s character back before the phantom happened and kinda ruined his life for a while there. When he said that to Olga… It was really Randy Liberate speaking imo. Post-phantom Bobby though, I guess would possibly say that line too. But it was a line that just made me uncomfortable and be like [holds out cross in self-defence] “I Don’t Trust Like That.” (And my friend agreed when I told her about the line hahaha). The main point is it’s a small but stark contrast to Original!Bobby and I was like bro. oh no.

Wait no what am I saying – as far as Phantoms and Mirages has established, Bobby is Very Gay (unless he’s also attracted to women but I don’t recall it being mentioned. Huh!) and also had never acted on his sexuality originally. He just wouldn’t be the type to Wink And Act Like That. Post-Randy-Liberate-Bobby would but probably only in a purely playful and innocent sense, obviously with no actual interest there. I could be wrong but Yeah! Anyway

”What’s this?” He snatched the last item up with one hand to inspect it. “You don’t smoke.”

”Bobby Fulbright didn’t smoke. Randy Liberate took it up last year,” the other man corrected him. “It relieves stress.”

OH MY GOOOOOOD HERE IT IS……………..THE H

YEAH. YEAH YOU PROBABLY SAW ME TALK ABOUT THIS IN DISCORD I GUESS FOR SURE.

CONGRATULATIONS, this just……. The narrative absolutely achieved its goal here. This, I was so… The IMAGE. The image just gave me such a visceral reaction it was just like yeah, yeah, okay. Bobby would Never, but here we are I guess, I was ready to throw hands. Man I was so mad, this man I swear… Once again… The good writing absolutely resulted in Mission Accomplished for what it was going for.

Worth noting that there was a kinda misconception I had here initially – from the information the fics give us later on, it seems that Bobby actually had pretty free reign when it came to shaping who Randy Liberate was? Even if he had some rough guidelines he needed to follow maybe, guy was pretty free to do and be what he wanted. At this point I actually thought that Randy Liberate was already a set personality that Bobby had to fake, and that he Could Not Stray from the mould that was given to him. I figured that Randy Liberate smoked, and when Bobby became him, he’d no real choice in the matter (but also genuinely wanted to just Become this new person so ultimately, he didn’t care, he just did it cause Whatever, if he’s Randy Liberate then smoking is cool now, who cares! Not Bobby Randy!) Guess the “took it up last year” should have tipped me off? But oh well.

…Oh! I also just want to say it’s worth noting that the “Bobby found, was kept prisoner in a cellar for a year”-type scenarios don’t work for me, and they’re part of why previously I was never really able to accept Bobby Lives AUs – I just found it too unrealistic for the phantom to hold Bobby captive for so long, cause it was like, why? For what reason? The scenario you give is so much better imo and I can, yeah, I can buy it! I love Blackquill kind of actively lampshading it though hahaha. “Literally what reason would the phantom keep you alive for? You’re a liability, it would be Too Dangerous for them, makes no sense to me” – Simon Blackquill, anticipating my objections ahead of time and voicing them. God, I love that.

Simon watched as Fulbright slipped a cigarette into his mouth and lit it.

Skjnsdndskjnsd thanks, I hate it! SDKJDKJDKJB OK SORRY I JUST. I just have to put this here for the extra “Oh my God… this is really happening huh… the level of discord shoved into a single sentence.” Simon comments on Fulbright acting nonchalant. You know what else is nonchalant? This sentence. And it’s all the more effective as a result.

I should pull up some of Ye Olde Liveblogging messages I sent to my friend over this, consisting hugely of “[cocks gun] you’re not Bobby. Who are you.” Exactly the point, of course.

(”the two of us” here refers to my friend and I).

Heh, don’t worry, I won’t kill Bobby. Bobby is fantastic. At this point of the fic it was really something though

”[…] it was the only life I could still have. A second chance for a dead man. I was lucky to be given even that much.”

Just like the phantom gets in Lifting Spirits.

WAIT I FORGOT ABOUT THE CASUAL SWEARING TOO OH YM GOOOOD. The “I stopped trusting in justice” I just CAN’T.

Me, screaming: GET OUT!!!! HOW DARE YOU STAND WHERE HE STOOD

Sdlnsdlknsdkl

I always just think about this one AskAceAttorney post where they go “Bobby would never swear. It’s not just.”

The casual marriage reveal too just slays it, hits it out of the park… “Crashing parties” Bobby,,, is gone. He’s not here anymore. I can tell you that. That was Randy.

”Pathetic!” he slammed his fist against the wall behind him, causing both Fulbright and Taka to give a start. “Absolutely pathetic! I’ve yet to decide who is more detestable, you or the Phantom!”

I AM BLACKQUILL, BLACKQUILL IS MEEEEE, at least the first time I read through this, that is. Love when the POV character is on the exact same wavelength reaction-wise.

The newcomer seemed confused for a few seconds, if only because despite their viably different situations, there were two men in the room who looked virtually identical.

IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING THIS IS LITERALLY SO FUNNY… LIKE LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE ABOUT THE SITUATION IS FUNNY BUT THIS ONE SPLIT SECOND? HILARIOUS. I LOVE IT. The image of Shelly just pausing and looking at what he’d just abruptly burst in on is GOLD. Ahahaha. “oh GEEZ which one is the target?!” (that quickly becomes kinda obvious, but the brief confusion is everything to me). Well I suppose it would have been bad news for Bobby if he’d been able to subdue phantom by some miracle and the situation WAS reversed, that’s for sure!

God. Literally everyone in the room at this point is in an awkward situation tho im

Shelly, having come across this weird scene with Two Identical Men: what

The phantom, his almost-murder he was about to commit having been interrupted and his Secret Hideout having been intruded on without warning by an annoyingly persistent assassin that just won’t go away: what

Bobby, being held at gunpoint and About To Be Murdered: what

It’s so great.

Still, fast as he was, the stitched man was faster.

I concur. I always figured that, if at point-blank range or whatever, Shelly would win. Killing is his trade, after all. It’s his specialty. It’s not the phantom’s specialty in the way that it’s Shelly’s specialty – the phantom has his Cool Spy Moves and is good at being a spy but like, that’s just not equal to Shelly and his craft, man. The phantom’s only hopes with Shelly are just to avoid being caught amidst his many identities. Or an unlikely person saving his life.

Oh and it’s super interesting because there’s actually fanart of Shelly and the phantom (fully decked out as Bobby Fulbright) running at each other for a throwdown match, the text of the post just saying “killer vs killer”. I wonder, have you stumbled across this fanart before? Could it have at all served as a kind of inspiration, perhaps? Or maybe your fic actually predates it, and the inspiration was the other way around. Or maybe it’s just an amusing coincidence, and neither influenced the other – there just happens to be fic of a certain piece of fanart and fanart of a certain scene from a fic, this unintentional on everyone’s behalf. I actually think that’s pretty damn cool. Well, no matter what the truth is: neat!

Anyway, there is honestly so much that happens in this series – it is so completely filled to the brim and action-packed that I essentially forgot that Shelly de Killer got killed way back at the start until it became relevant again. In the grand scheme of things, it just feels so… understated, almost. When I read it, I was like “whoa, dude, you just killed off Shelly de Killer. Whoa. What!” And then it promptly got swept away amidst everything else, you know? My mind just had SO MANY other things to focus on.

Well no, it’s not understated – Bobby suffers severe trauma, and he can never truly purge that horrific scene from his mind. BUT what I mean is, from the way the narrative handles it, it becomes more “that thing Bobby was traumatised by and needs counselling for” and “that event that led to a body being confused for Bobby’s own corpse” (I swear I literally kept forgetting that was Shelly, that’s actually Shelly’s corpse). The powerful impact of “SHELLY DE KILLER IS DEAD!!!” got lost somewhere along the way, and then fast forward to Lifting Spirits and Benny shows up and OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

And by the way, the fact that it even becomes relevant again, in the first place? Storytelling and writing at its finest. Like… You didn’t have to make everything come full circle like you did. I had long-dismissed the Shelly incident as, well, a wacky incident where an iconic canon ace attorney character gets killed off and practically FORGOTTEN about it, never actually expecting it to really get expanded upon beyond that, but by hell it sure did. You are awesome. I would never have guessed this one scene would send out shockwaves that would come back full force to haunt the phantom fics later. At that point, he’s no longer the phantom of course, but well, we’ll get there… : ) But it really goes to show that Nothing is really wasted in this series, honest-to-goodness, and that’s such good writing, it’s so cool.

I also forgot that, even back here, way back then, Bobby saved the phantom’s life. He really Did that huh.

ALSO I FEEL LIKE THERE’S LOWKEY IMPLICATIONS THAT THIS IS JUST, an average day in the life of the phantom, and that’s really funny to me too. ‘Cause it kinda IS standard to an extent, I guess.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 5

”Aura, I have a question. Do you believe it’s right to start a second life when your first one has gone to hell?”

Oh? You mean kinda like… Lex does in the end? :P

Well I suppose this fic series raises that debate early on. XP

”Of course I don’t think it’s right. Who would even get a second life? Cheats like the Phantom, that’s who!”

OH,..

Now obviously the first time reading this I read it in the context of “yeah, bc shedding identities and all” BUT THIS TIME AROUND, IT TAKES ON A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT MEANING… HEH. Actually you know what, the first time reading this I don’t think I even dwelled on it or how it connects to the phantom having so many identities he sheds and takes up, it just seemed like an easily-overlooked “the phantom is awful and a cheat” comment and I’m kinda. Yelling at the resonance of this line now.

Oh, and her bringing the word “cheat” into it, and I think I recall a line in Lifting Spirits at the end where it says they “felt like they were cheating”… heh. Heh.

”Genuine humans only get one life and we have to make the best of it.”

Her exact sentiments in Lifting Spirits… I didn’t even think about how this aspect also comes full circle. A similar kind of question is posed, first about Bobby Fulbright (or rather, “Randy Liberate”) in the beginning, and then about The Man Currently Known As The Phantom in the end. The answers and the outcomes that the fic provides to these rather similar kind of questions are quite different. Aura’s stance never wavers, not even once.

…This fic series’s meta writes itself tbh.

OKAY. ANYWAY I LEGIT TEARED UP A LITTLE READING THE MESSAGES THAT WERE WRITTEN TO BOBBY IN THAT BOOK, NOT GONNA LIE. The feels.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 6

Anyway yeah this is just so good and well-written, the whole play on Bobby actually needing to fake his old persona for the sake of other people…

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 7

…You know, I just realised, I’d actually been very sceptical of Bobby’s level of proficiency in Borginian, given his job and lack of opportunity to use it previously when he was a detective, the fact that he learned it years ago and thus a lot of the knowledge had probably faded over time (although obviously I know it had the chance to be brought up to speed again over the past year, I just had strong doubts over that being enough). But then I realised that my only experience with knowing another language is Mandarin Chinese, so uhh…. It’s OBVIOUSLY going to be far easier if the other language Bobby knows is, in fact, much closer to English. Huh.

Me, with a smarmy voice: actually Bobby being fluent in Borginian is unrealistic, there’s no way given that he would have had so little opportunity to use Borginian over the years

Me, realising that Borginian would probably be way easier to learn for an English-speaker than Chinese is and therefore my perception is skewered: …OH.

I actually felt so bad for Fulbright’s “wife”, because tsk tsk, just like Simon I too had made an assumption there. But imagine marrying this guy and DURING the divorce proceedings you find out the identity was fake and the circumstances that led to it… that’s so screwed up.

Me now @ past me, thinking about how Domestique already knew: HAHAHA

[narrows eyes] oh. Here we are. Our first phantomquill. …………..hmph. I’ve still not the full capacity to confront this – I’m still trying to figure it out for myself. Nnh. Well, more on… this later, I suppose. It will come up again. ;P

I uh, wonder how long it was until you changed gears on your original plans. Kinda feels like you were still gunning for full-blown one-sided phantomquill at this point, ahaha.

When was the last time anyone had touched him with such kind intentions?

>kind intentions.

Yes, I am sure the intentions are wholly kind, I’m sure there is nothing awful or twisted or empty about them. God damn it, Meowzy. :P

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 8

”Don’t worry, detective. I’ll put you out of your misery now.”

“Ok you helped save my life but I’m still gonna kill you lol.”

Whew… So we have the phantom outlining the full extent of Randy Liberate’s exploits. By this point though, I’d basically already dealt with and come to terms with, well, just how much Bobby had changed. I’d already presumed most of the phantom’s bombshells regarding that, but the extent of it still came as a surprise. I also hadn’t expected the text to make it this explicitly clear, and truly highlight it all, underscoring just how much it positions Bobby at the opposite end of a scale compared to how he was before.

Although, it didn’t really affect me too much, since I’d already done my fierce reactions to changed!Bobby towards the start – even if it was even worse than I’d assumed, I’d already mourned TotallyInnocent!Bobby, to the extent that hearing all this resulted in a kind of deadpan “well this may as well be the case, huh” within me – the most impactful fact was that Innocent!Bobby was gone, back towards the start. To what extent he had vanished, how far gone Bobby was, therefore didn’t change that fact, if that makes sense.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 10

Athena’s “phantom menace” comment really cracked me up. It’s little things like that which are not only funny, but they’re authentic, and I love that.

I really like how the narrative of this series handles names and identities, how in the flashback scene they’re called Randy Liberate and Bobby Fulbright – that’s just how it is. Because those ARE effectively their identities at that point.

…Okay this is random but I’ve needed to go through airports recently and digital fingerprinting was part of the process to get through at one point; it’s a relatively new addition though. Though I still took flights that didn’t involve it, but I just thought, man, Randy Liberate would be screwed, what with having no fingerprints. Although maybe Mr Liberate has a valid reason and there’s an alternative security check he could use – I’m sure the phantom would have thought it through and had everything covered for him. What a great guy! Very helpful, very considerate, amirite? And generous for allowing Randy to use his funds, too! Okay I’m done XD

No actually I’m not – one more joke:

”Don’t lose track of your phone, alright? You never know when I might call to check up on you.”

Awww he really cares uwu uwu uwu how sweet!

”Now Randy, remember to behave yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

THAT was unnecessary, phantom, stuff you. This and the “stress could be the death of you” comment… HMPH.

So this chapter really drills home just how formidable and terrifying the phantom on the loose can really be. A horror movie thriller really could just pick up this whole concept and run with it freely – needing to keep your loved ones in sight at all times, lest they be replaced by an emotionless killer. The constant fears and paranoia and always second-guessing yourself whether such and such loved one is REALLY them or not or someone who would kill you without a second thought. Hmm! I was kinda excited/thrilled at reading of the phantom’s escape, only for it to all come crashing down on me how genuinely scary and awful that is for all of our protagonists and the characters that I actually, you know, care about!

THE SUSPENSE IS REALLY GOOD, WITH TIME PASSING AND NOTHING HAPPENING AND THE QUESTION BEING BEGGED “where is the phantom? What are they up to? What do they plan? They could be lying in wait anywhere. They could be just outside or in another country.” It’s SO GOOD.

At this point, I actually didn’t really… care about the phantom? I felt a kind of disconnect, wherein I had this absolutely hilarious and unfounded in retrospect assumption that the author didn’t really care too much for the phantom as a character, and would rather just focus on Bobby and Simon while the phantom terrorizes them somewhere far off in the background.

Me at the time: don’t get me wrong this fic is pretty fantastic and well-written, it’s just a shame that the phantom’s role is kinda minor I guess

(PFFFFFFF)

Yeah because the phantom will totally never have a prominent or pinnacle role in this series with “phantom” namechecked in the title – suuuure.

Well, to be clearer… The fic was/is still 100% my thing. The narrative was calling him a monster because he kinda is. This is the exact thing I’m usually looking for to read. So why was I feeling weirdly… hurt over that at the time of reading this initially? Well, it just so happens that around that time I’d just reread over the bulk of another phantom fic which in no way excuses the phantom’s crimes, but does portray them rather sympathetically. And it has them faux-getting along with Blackquill except some blurred lines where it becomes genuine getting along. Blackquill uncovers some tragic truths about the phantom’s past and you know, that kind of thing, where Blackquill finds themself caring and they hate that they do but they can’t help it (I’m not talking about Pengy’s fic if that’s what you’re wondering, pff).

So I was still stuck in “sympathetic phantom” mode from that fic where they’d been, well, kinda humanised. Even though I usually love the standard (accurate) “they’re a killer, they’re a monster” take, at that time I was sitting there kinda like “…aww. Right now, I kinda want just a slightly lighter take? Kinda bittersweet, like that fic… I kinda want. MORE.”

I bring this up because it amuses me to no end that I was, on some level feeling complain-y over the phantom a) not getting enough focus and b) not being… humanised enough??? IN THE SAME SERIES WHERE LIFTING SPIRITS LIKE… EXISTS. CAN YOU BELIEVE. I really had No Idea huh, was just completely and utterly clueless. But I never would have thought, never would have guessed in a million years what the endgame was actually going to be. Like, @ past me please have a tiny bit of patience and sit the hell down. You’re reading Chasing Phantoms and feeling lowkey sad because the phantom’s got such a bad rep (that they totally earned btw)? You’re actually assuming the author wants us to only ever see them as a monster? Pff, please. Honey, you’ve got a big storm comin’.

Little did I know that this series ultimately makes the phantom even MORE “friendly” and MORE likable than the other fic that made me crave that...

But yeah ‘cause of that at the time I was kinda like “ok I’m just gonna, tune out the phantom and how they’re an empty monster for a while cause it makes me kinda sad to think about.” LOL. Well Meowzy will leave no stone unturned, rest assured!

It’s the equivalent of having a nice pizza and the pizza’s absolutely great, there’s nothing wrong with it, but you just happen to not be feeling it at that very moment and are kinda craving icecream instead. (But on a normal day, you’re usually 100% down for pizza!)

[Meowzy voice] “not to worry, I brought pizza AND ice cream. The best damn ice cream you’ve ever had. But you have to finish your pizza first!”

#Phoenix Wright: [loses his badge]#Me showing up on my ace attorney blog with thousands of words of phantom fic commentary: Oh. bad timing?#renegadewangs #Phantoms and Mirages #Phantoms and Mirages commentary #Bobby Fulbright #Simon Blackquill #the phantom #long post

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jenniferisacommonname · 6 years ago

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Swallow Your Dreams

All languages, but English especially, like to pilfer foreign words for concepts we wish we’d thought of first. Burrito. Kindergarten. Cul-de-sac. (Direct translation: “ass of the bag” in French. Which I think we can all agree is spot on.)*

But the reverse is also true: we sometimes dislike an idea so much that we can’t stop naming it. Utopia. Shangri-La. Eden. Zion. Arcadia. Erehwon. Cockaigne. Camelot. Xanadu. Beulah Land. Lotusland. Neverland. The Good Old Days. We may think we’re into it, but trust me—the more names something has, the more we despise it.

In the case of utopian fantasies, I think we love-hate them so much because we know ecstasy must come with suffering. Not in a ‘moral justice of the universe’ kind of way, but in a ‘how can you know what wet is if you’ve never been dry’ kind of way. Sometimes the suffering itself gives us hope—sincere pipe dreams tend to crop up when the news is at its worst. Conversely, a lack of suffering makes us nervous, giving way to satirical illustrations of paradise that either chastise our disappointment with mediocrity, or exhort us to fly a little closer to the ground. The only time we drop the subject is when, God forbid, we surpass one standard deviation on the joy curve, at which point our fear of jinxing it forces us into a superstitious, but no less aware, silence. Spectacle is the lens through which we first recognize boredom, and other punning metaphors for what is ultimately a pretty basic philosophical idea.

Anyway. By general agreement, we now find ourselves in one of those Bad News Eras, and the little Dutch boy has long since run out of fingers to hold back the flood. Idealism is rampant, regardless of how angrily it may present itself (and usually in opposition to other forms of idealism.) Meanwhile, the incorrigibly cynical among us can only sigh as we wait for the waters to recede. All of which is to say, I read an article recently. And it annoyed me.

We’ve all heard some version of the old saw that "the world needs garbage collectors;" i.e., polite society has needs that presumably no one would cater to in the cloud-cuckoo land where everyone Follows Their Dreams. Personally, I tend to side with Drew Carey and Mike Rowe on the matter. This annoying article, in contrast, promoted the central thesis that technology would render the “dirty jobs” problem obsolete, thanks to ever-increasing automation. It predicted that in the near future we would achieve, if not Utopia, then at least the particular sliver of it that oversees labor markets.

And honestly, the author could be right. Maybe we'll all have a housecleaning sex robot, and the self-driving firetrucks will aim their own hoses, and the farm machinery will pick the fruit and monitor the soil conditions far better than humans ever could. Maybe we'll all get to be painters, and singers, and writers, and comedians, and movie stars, and the indoor plumbing will sort itself out. There are, we must admit, significantly more jobs in the creative sector now than there were 50 years ago—we're at Peak TV, y'all!—and that pattern can surely only continue.

Aside from the obvious practical considerations, however, this wonderland has a particular Achilles heel that I want to address: everyone will be miserable. (Which, if you’re keeping track from earlier, makes this post one of those Dystopia We Never Saw Coming, Be Careful What You Wish For, Icarus Get Your Ass Back Here kind of stories.)

The thing is, humans like to work. Or more accurately, humans require validation, and hard work provides it with very little outside help. Chop the firewood and feel its warmth through the winter; tend the seedling and taste its delicious fruit. But can you write a song that no one ever hears, and still feel good about it? A few can, and they generally end up draped with popularity they never needed, because output unbridled by fear is the best kind. But most professionally creative people will admit they are inborn approval junkies who have only found success in the business by forcefully taming their instincts—reminding themselves on a daily basis that haters gonna hate, as they say.

The misconception is seductive, though, especially when the known goblin of “fame” is replaced by less vain euphemisms: successful artists are “beloved,” and “respected,” and have “earned their creative freedom” (don’t get me started)… and bystanders tend to assume that all that apparent validation must be pumping through their veins at great speed. To work in a creative field is to install a zen-secreting organ just behind the pancreas, while the rest of humanity is left staring wistfully into the night screens, watching the elite get high off their stash and telling themselves that if only they had the time, or the money, or the housecleaning sex robot, they too could spend all day being creative, and feel just as good as their successful counterparts appear to. Give one of those folks a toe in the door and a deadline, and it won’t be long before they project their individual craving onto us all—say, for example, in an article from a well-known tech platform, which imagines just how great it will be when we can all follow our surprisingly-similar dreams in a tight spiral around one another, gaily refusing to look down at the sink drain below.

But in fact, a microcosm of that supposed nirvana already exists, here and now: it’s called YouTube. Millions upon millions of users with eight views, zero validation, and a numerically-proven feeling of worthlessness. They were creative, and no one cared, which was all they actually wanted in the first place. They tried to make a deal with the devil but even he didn’t bother to show up. And when the milk and honey dispensers become fully mechanized, the pain of that realization will only come harder and faster: creativity doesn’t provide validation. Creativity flows naturally after validation has been secured elsewhere.

When I wake up already knowing that I’m worthwhile, I am able to be creative. When I have the love of a family—biological or chosen—I am able to be creative. When I consider secret personal accomplishments to be as meaningful as public ones, I am able to be creative. Unpleasant tasks and hard work don’t stand in the way of my dreams; they fill a hole that my dreams were never going to fit into properly anyway. To envy a creative person’s life is to look at a garden and assume it’s flowers all the way down, rather than a deep slurry of mud, worms, and fertilizer that allows beauty to spread freely over its surface.

The only real way to follow your dreams is to forge ahead on your own and trust that they’ll keep up. If you can already write the book assuming that no one will read it, congratulations—this message is not for you, and you probably stopped reading a long time ago anyway because you’re not looking for answers. But if you dream of a creative life free from worry, pain, sadness, frustration, and all the rest of the working world’s supposed drudgery, then you’re better off not knowing what you’re missing. And if you’re writing utopic articles suggesting that universal creative employment is a desirable—let alone inevitable—reality, then you’re especially foolish, because you’re promoting a cult of chugging when you’ve already sipped and found it lacking in flavor.

*Side note: Let’s all say a sad farewell to the phrase “literal translation,” whose first half has by now been thoroughly co-opted by the totally-seriously-for-real crowd. Like oh my God you guys, it literally translates that way. Totes McGoats.

#amwriting #creative process #creativity #artist #validation #writers #poets on tumblr #art on tumblr #singerslife #songwriter #actorslife #actors on actors #writers on tumblr #writers on writing #authors on tumblr #artists on tumblr #validate me #validate yourself

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appxssionato · 6 years ago

Note

⚖ let me hear the tea

MUNDAY

⚖ - Opinions on the fandom your muse belong to?

well, there’s this rper samii who always make me sin with crack ships and i– LMAO LOVE YOU. but okay here i gO.

i don’t like this fandom. i try to stay away from it as much as i can and here, in my detailed thesis i’m gonna explain you WHY!

okay, not a thesis but i dislike the UNHEALTHY behaviour of most people inside the fandom. not to mention that what i see nowadays here or on twitter are stans around 14/16 years. i don’t mind though, i was really active on fandoms at that age and they have some funny posts out there. but i really, really, REALLY don’t support the toxic behaviour of being OBSESSED with a fictional character.

‘shut the fuck up, kyo! you are probably obsessed with a character’. well yeah, but there’s a thin line between liking a character and believing he is real and that he is your boyfriend.

okay guys i’m sorry, i’m a therapist in the making, and i just can’t see this healthy in any way. i have seen some kids inside the fandom feeling BAD for having merch, saying they’re not valid fans or that x character deserves someone else like ?????W H A T. IT’S A FICTIONAL CHARACTERS GUYS, WHY ARE YOU DEGRADING YOURSELVES????????? not to mention the “x character is my boyfriend”.

yeah i get it, they are from an otome i even joke with masato and camus’ pictures saying they are my boyfriends but i don’t mean it? i mean, i have a life, i have friends, i’m in a stable long-time relationship. i don’t know these people, but from what i’ve seen, they’re so trapped in this fictional world that they don’t try to interact with real people.

‘but kyooooooo you just said you were a therapist in the making’. yes, those are signs of DEPRESSION. i’m not gonna invalidate that, but this is not healthy for anyone. ‘but coping mechanisms, kyo!!’. maybe you should learn what an actual coping mechanism is, because i used to think it was one, but it’s not. coping mechanisms are so different that you could never imagine what those words actually mean ( and i would explain in rn but i have a migraine and i don’t want to word vomit this stuff, i’ll save it for my exam or another post idk. i doubt people want me to babble about psychology here lmao ).

it’s something serious, and it makes me wonder how much those kids are suffering at the point of believing a fictional character is dating them, or even going as far to degrate themselves over drawn lines. loving a character is okay, and everyone is allowed to. but have you thought if your love is healthy or if it’s become so obsessive that it could actually be dangerous to yourself? isolating is not good, it’s unhealthy and it won’t take you out of whatever you’re running away from.

#artificialidol #( answered. )#( munday. )

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colorstreammind · 2 years ago

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GVF fandom rant that probably no one's gonna read or agree with — I need to vent

Since this is the only fan account I have, I decided to rant a little, in English this time — that wasn't my goal at all when I got on Tumblr, I just wanted to read fics, post about the boys and say my personal things in my first language, but I've been feeling like this for so long now... Hope my English is alright

Heard from a friend that some US fans are priv quoting latin poc fans' tweets (so mature of them) and being xenophobic and racist... (Racism and xenophobia in the peaceful army? Nothing new, but it seems like I'm one of the victims this time) Seriously, I love GVF (I've actually been writing a looong text about how I had become a fan and have had the most amazing experiences so far, it's so long it could be a thesis lol) but I hate this fandom since the beginning, I never get involved in any of the feuds I usually see in my twt tl because 1. I don't actually know or talk to any gringas fans and it's not like my opinion ever mattered 2. I don't have a stan account there, I try to socialize and people never answer me or follow me back so fuck it 3. I never know enough about the subject they're talking about, and even so, with the little things I know I can realize 4. It's always so annoying. From my friends' pov and mine, it feels like if a gringo fan is feeling bored, they just choose the tinyest problematic thing and try and start a new conversation or get back to another unecessary disagreement just for show, or even worse, they say the worst things and end up being hypocritical, prejudiced... It's like they always need attention...

People can't make mistakes, they have to know everything, they have to be perfect all the time, and if they apologize in a way fans don't like, let them brace themselves for what's coming next... some fans think they have the right to demand anything from the boys or from mutuals, like "someone likes Danny, unfollow them now or I'll unfollow you" like who are you??? And don't get me wrong, I'm all about taking accountability but what is an unfollow spree gonna do for the cause you're supposed to defend?? I don't know if I was priv quoted because I don't hate Danny (I don't care anyway, if that's the case) or just because they are mean, immature people, but one thing I still can't understand is the years of cancelling Danny for some things he already apologized for, AAAND the most nonsensical thing is when those people demand that their mutuals unfollow other fans that like Danny, but still looove the Kiszkas, who are very good friends with him and his bandmates, and those same fans still stan and listen to GVF, I mean, they must know Danny is still profiting from all the streams, tickets and merch sales, as he's still a part of the band as important as the Kiszkas, right? So why the act?? Hate for hate? That's why I have "If you're a Danny anti, leave me alone" in my bio, if you're a fan and you want to interact with me, you can like or dislike who you want in the band and I'll treat you well like I treat everyone else, but don't come with that nonsensical cancelling bullshit on me.

When fans were using the #SpeakUpGVF and Josh wouldn't say anything anytime soon, I've read someone saying — just after they demanded that Josh spoke up — that they wished Josh died in a car accident, like what the fuck?? When he finally apologized and held accountability, people that were saying they couldn't stand it anymore, that they would deactivate and shit just switched to "I knew he would do the right thing, I love him again" all of a sudden... What's the point?? Besides, can't people change? Can't people with different interests coexist and interact without those kinds of arguments all. The. Time? Why aren't those people more reasonable and sensible?? That's not what the guys stand for. I'm so kind and patient all the time but I'm fucking tired, I felt like I should say something. I won't be surprised if this pops up in anti's tls and I'm the one who's getting cancelled next

It's so ironic that it's called the peaceful army and we can't have one peaceful day

#gvf #greta van fleet #sorry for the rant #just ranting #i hate this fandom #peaceful army #what a joke

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tolkien-feels · 3 years ago

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Tagging @stormbeyondreality @scyllas-revenge @blue-starlight @b2ggins and in my heart, all the nice anons who asked for the essay 🥰

And I do mean it’s an essay. You guys activated my “I care about this a normal amount” mode, so uh, this may or may not be over 3.5k words,,,, sorry,,,,,,

I should start with a couple of disclaimers:

The definitions of both “fairy tale” and “courtly love” are very fluid , and you’re likely to get very different takes depending on who you ask. Scholars have debated this since before I was born, and I’m sure I won’t be the one to untangle things once and for all on tumblr dot com.

As far as I know, there’s no direct evidence Tolkien even liked, let alone intentionally wrote, courtly love stories. (If anything, I think I could prove in a few different ways he actively disliked the whole thing!) This essay is less of a likely thesis and more of a “Look at how fun it is to play around with these coincidences!” situation. Take it in the non-scholarly, for-amusement-purposes way it’s intended!

Beren and Luthien as a Fairy Tale

There are as many ways to study fairy tales as there are folklorists. I’m hardly a specialist but one thing I do know is that everything is hotly debated. Sometimes the theories are in incompatible opposition but sometimes they’re just complimentary ways of exploring the same stories from different angles.

Fairy tale studies get really complex really fast, so for the purposes of A Tumblr Post, I’m going to pick one of the simplest ways of picking a tale apart, the 7 Spheres of Action described by Soviet folklorist Vladimir Propp.

A sphere of action is simply a storytelling function performed by a character. For example, whether the villain in a fairy tale is a wicked stepmother or a dragon, you know the reason they’re in the story is to create struggles for the hero. If, on the other hand, you had a fairy godmother or a friendly bird, you would not expect them to hinder the hero, because that’s not what they’re in the story for. I know that sounds obvious, but compare that to a novel, where, broadly speaking, any character can do anything. Fairy tales have somewhat strict patterns of action for different roles -- and that’s what Propp means by Spheres of Action.

Note that there isn’t necessarily a 1:1 relationship between character and Sphere. You can have multiple characters performing the same function (eg, more than one Villain), and you can have a single character who has more than one Function (eg, the Princess and the Helper are the same person.)

Now let’s discuss the 7 Spheres of Action and see if we can identify them in Luthien and Beren (I’m going with the Silmarillion version of the story simply because it’s the most well-known, but have fun thinking about the variations):

The Villain: The bad guy, of course! An evil character who creates struggles for the Hero. While he must be overcome in some way, what that victory looks like varies from story to story; he can be destroyed, outsmarted, escaped, rendered powerless in some way, etc. I’d say Morgoth, Sauron and Carcharoth are clearly Villains. Celegorm and Curufin could arguably go here too but I have better suggestions for both.

The Dispatcher: This is the person who sends the Hero on a quest. Often a king, probably the father of the Princess if there’s one, or else the parent(s) of the Hero. They can be benevolent and just genuinely need help, or they can be hoping to get the Hero killed, or anything in between. I mean, that’s gotta be Thingol, right?

The Helper: I like how wikipedia defines this one, actually: “a typically magical entity that comes to help the hero in their quest.” The Helper often (though not always) acts on behalf of the Hero, handling tasks the Hero is unable to for any reason, including potentially overcoming one or more of the Villains. Huan and Finrod are probably both Helpers. There is also a subtype of fairy tales (called the Magic Flight) where the male Hero has a female Helper who helps him escape an undefeatable Villain; typically, the Helper is either the Hero’s sister or his bride-to-be -- I’d argue Luthien plays this role.

The Princess: Not present in all stories, and not necessarily either royalty or female. When present, she’s the Hero’s prize. He deserves to marry her throughout the story, but only after performing the quest is he allowed to do so. (If that sounds extremely sexist, flip it around and think of Prince Charming -- it’s the same Sphere.) This is definitely Luthien.

The Donor: When there is one, the Donor is the character who provides physical items that help the Hero in his quest, often after testing them. Note that the Donor can be unwilling to provide said physical items -- if the Hero steals the wicked witch’s potion and this later helps him succeed, the wicked witch is a Donor, even if she’s a Villain too. Because of that, I’d argue Curufin is a Donor, since it’s his Angrist that allows Beren to steal the Silmaril. And while a test is not required, I feel like the Leap of Beren is one, just because of how Tolkien draws attention to it. Beren does a lot of amazing things, but the Leap is highlighted as one of the greatest, and it leads to Beren getting Angrist.

The Hero: Once again, wikipedia does a good job summarizing it: “the character who reacts to the dispatcher and donor characters, thwarts the villain, resolves any lacking or wronghoods and weds the princess.” Often (though not always) the Hero has dead or absent parents, and it’s very common to have a Hero who breaks a taboo (disobeys an order, enters a forbidden place, etc.) So while Heroes can be of any gender, I feel like Beren fits this Sphere better than Luthien.

The False Hero: This is an optional character, someone who tries to take credit for a victory of the Hero and/or tries to marry the Princess - think Cinderella’s stepsisters lying to Prince Charming that the shoe is theirs, for example. While a fairy tale doesn’t need a False Hero, I’d say Celegorm fits this role hilariously well. Sorry buddy, you’ve been assigned Cinderella’s stepsister, I’m sure that’s not glorious enough for you but it is what it is.

Isn’t this super neat? I realized this during the quarantine and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Now, what would happen if we tried to assign Spheres for the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen? You... can sort of do that, but not really? Let me put it in a different way.

Imagine you have a child. And you say “I will tell you the story of how once upon a time, an orphan married a fairy princess.” Then you told them the Lay of Leithian. Sounds fine as far as I’m concerned.

Now imagine instead you say “I will tell you the story of how once upon a time, a king married a fairy princess.” And then you tell them LotR. Uh.... Arwen is not even there? Okay, scrap that. Tell them the Appendices version of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. Now Arwen is there but Aragorn’s entire quest is missing? Um. Blend both? Fine I guess but why is our king a side character who plays Helper to a lot of different characters but has no Helper of his own -- and actually isn’t the whole point of the story that Sauron thinks Aragorn is the Hero to his Villain but the Hero is the tiny hobbits? That’s not very neat, right?

The problem we’re running into is that while the War of the Ring has only the slightest connection to Aragorn and Arwen’s love story, the Quest for the Silmaril is the Tale of Beren and Luthien. If you try to make the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen into a fairy tale, you’ll only feel disappointed, because things don’t line up in any way that makes instinctive sense -- and most people have a good intuition for fairy tales due to being extremely familiar with how they’re supposed to play out. But I don’t think Aragorn and Arwen are even trying to be a fairy tale, and I feel like they happen to fit a completely different tradition altogether.

Aragorn and Arwen in the Courtly Love tradition

I think most of you are less likely to know stuff about courtly love than about fairy tales, because the former has largely fallen out of favor but the latter hasn’t. So I thought it’d be helpful to clarify what even is courtly love.

The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable defines it as

A highly conventionalized medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, first developed by the troubadours of Southern France and extensively employed in European literature of the time. The love of the knight for his lady was regarded as an ennobling passion and the relationship was typically unconsummated.

(If you’re thinking “Arwen isn’t married, and Aragorn isn’t quite a knight” -- I’ll get to that!)

What are these “highly conventionalized” traditions, you might ask? So you won’t have to take my word for it, I’ll share an excerpt from The Courtly Model by Georges Duby, which is not my favorite text ever (it’s so cynical for no good reason!) but it is concise at least.

The model is simple. A female figure stands at the center: a "lady" (dame). The term, derived from the Latin domina, signifies that this lady is in a dominant position. It also defines her status: she is married. A young man, a jeune (at the time the word referred to an unmarried youth), notices her. . . . Everything begins with a glance. . . . The "lady" is the wife of a lord, often his own lord. She is in any case the mistress of a house he visits often. According to the social hierarchy of the time, she ranks above him. He calls attention to this fact through various gestures of allegiance. He kneels down, assuming the posture of a vassal. He speaks, pledging his faith, promising, like a liege man, not to offer his services to anyone else. He goes even further: in the manner of a serf, he makes a gift of his person.

He is no longer a free man. The woman, for her part, is still free to accept or reject his offer. . . . But if . . . she lends an ear and allows a web of words to be woven around her, she in turn becomes a prisoner, because in this society it is understood that every gift calls for a countergift. . . .

At this point you could go read almost all of the Appendix, but if you don't want to, just compare the definition above to this section, where Elrond speaks to Aragorn:

Your own eyes have betrayed you. But I do not speak of my daughter alone. You shall be betrothed to no man's child as yet. But as for Arwen the Fair, Lady of Imladris and of Lórien, Evenstar of her people, she is of lineage greater than yours, and she has lived in the world already so long that to her you are but as a yearling shoot beside a young birch of many summers. She is too far above you. And so, I think, it may well seem to her. But even if it were not so, and her heart turned towards you, I should still be grieved because of the doom that is laid on us.

Now, a young man falling in love with an unattainable lady is hardly all that’s necessary for a courtly love in its classical sense. We need a third person, but Arwen isn’t married, and Aragorn, not being a knight, is sworn to no king. Like we did with fairy tales, though, I think we can easily figure something out if we think of the function the third person plays in courtly love. This varies greatly from author to author, but in general, the third person represents two things:

For the lady, safety. While she’s married to a powerful lord or king, she will be taken care of. Can the young man offer something which matches or surpasses that? Shouldn’t the young man be willing to give up his happiness with the lady for her sake?

For the young man, faith. The idea of faith - in the sense of keeping promises, not in the sense of belief - was extremely important in medieval thought. The lady’s husband was almost always someone the young man would hate to betray. A dear friend, his lord or king, perhaps someone who fostered him or taught him the way of knighthood.

You probably see where I’m going with this. Elrond fulfills this role perfectly, no adultery required. I’d explain it in more detail, but Elrond himself does it already:

But there will be no choice before Arwen, my beloved, unless you, Aragorn, Arathorn's son, come between us and bring one of us, you or me, to a bitter parting beyond the end of the world. You do not know yet what you desire of me.

Although there are fairy tales with unhappy endings, most of them have happy endings. Likewise, although there are courtly love stories with happy endings, most of them end up in tragedy not just for the couple, but for everyone involved in it. (In part, due to the morality of the time: you can portray adultery as being Great Actually, but make sure to make everybody miserable by the end of it and preferably break down the whole of society so we know what you’ve been describing in loving detail for pages and pages is A Bad Sin No Good Very Bad 0/10 Do Not Recommend.)

In the fashion of courtly love, Aragorn and Arwen’s love is measured by pain. Arwen is devastated by the end of the story in a way Luthien is never shown to be, but that’s not proof of regret, it’s proof of love. Look at the pain they’re willing to face just to be together for a (relatively) brief moment!

And I don’t want to make light of the sorrow of Thingol and Melian when Luthien leaves them, because it is a very real and heartbreaking sort of grief, but even that is not comparable to the horror of Aragorn realizing that by falling in love with Arwen, he will force her to watch him die, get her dead, and cause an eternal parting between her and her family, who he’s watched mourn Celebrian when they were, you know, lovingly raising him.

Yes, the love between Aragorn and Arwen is a good thing and I don’t believe for a moment either of them would’ve been happier if they’d decided to forget about each other, but their relationship also has an element of heartbreak that, say, Faramir and Eowyn just don’t have. Even Beren and Luthien just don't have the overtones of guilt that keep being mentioned in the Appendices version of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen.

As Arwen sums up:

And she stood then as still as a white tree, looking into the West, and at last she said: "I will cleave to you, Dúnadan, and turn from the Twilight. Yet there lies the land of my people and the long home of all my kin." She loved her father dearly.

Cheerful stuff!

While this section is already very long, I must address something else, which I feel is key. Remember that Oxford Dictionary quote I shared? Towards the end of its definition of courtly love it mentioned that “the love of the knight for his lady was regarded as an ennobling passion and the relationship was typically unconsummated.” What do they mean by that?

I... don’t like this essay at all, but Emmanuel-Juste Duits actually explains this particular point well:

In the light of this, what relationship was formed between the lady and her lover?

By means of her conduct and beauty, the lady would acquire more or less pretz (worth). . . . The lady was worthy of love, meaning that she was something that could be yearned for, and could be loved without any risk of disappointment. . . .

The [young man] sought to acquire merit and spread his reputation, in order to be worthy of his lady. He would compose and sing fine poems, live a life of poverty and simplicity, and would act valiantly. He was the ideal knight and the ideal poet combined. After he had journeyed through a sufficient number of lands, he would end by going to the court of his lady.

Scholars who study courtly love are very interested in this aspect of it. There’s a Whole Philosophy about it. Just like I could (but didn’t) go into how the individual plot points of Beren and Luthien’s story also adhere to fairy tale conventions, I could (but won’t) go into detail about Love As An Ennobling Thing for Aragorn and Arwen.

The tl;dr version is this: since the young man is the lady’s servant (in his heart if not formally), he becomes an extension of her, and by becoming praise-worthy he is, in fact, praising her. So by loving someone extraordinary, he’s driven to perform extraordinary feats. At the same time, when facing trials, the memory of their beloved is enough to comfort and encourage them, even if all seems hopeless.

See the subtle distinction between courtly love and fairy tale? Fairy tales involve an external imposition: do this and you will have this lady whom you love. Courtly love is internal: I do this because I love this lady, whether or not I will be rewarded.

So while I don’t think Aragorn cares about saving Middle Earth in the way Beren cares about getting a Silmaril -- as a means to an end, to prove to Arwen (and perhaps to Elrond) that he’s good enough for her -- I do think Arwen is a large part of the complex web of motivations that drives Aragorn. If it helps, compare him to Frodo: Frodo wants to destroy the Ring because it’s The Right Thing To Do and also His Fate and at the same time, he draws strength from his love for the Shire. I’d say Arwen is for Aragorn what the Shire is for Frodo. It’s the most emotional of his motivations, which sometimes comes through but is often treated as something to be silently treasured, the last wall of defense against the Darkness around them.

In fact, there’s some evidence for that. When Arwen gives her gem to Frodo, she says “When the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you, this will bring you aid,” and that brings to my mind that one scene in Lothlorien when Frodo sees Aragorn and says the latter was

. . . wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namárië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

In a story about fighting Darkness, the lady who holds Aragorn’s heart is someone who can make night beautiful and blessed and without fear. That’s major, and that Aragorn doesn’t go around speaking of Arwen 24/7 doesn’t mean that she isn’t almost akin to a guardian who keeps him from despairing or losing his way. Insert here metaphor about Arwen making his standard, etc.

So where does all that leave us?

So my point is: Beren and Luthien and Aragorn and Arwen have very similar love stories on surface, but they’re told through very different genres, and I feel that both are better appreciated if you take that into account.

I’m no musician, but if I can risk a metaphor: if I were writing a musical, I’d write a fairy tale leitmotif in major and a courtly love one in minor.

While Beren and Luthien are on an external quest towards a bittersweet happy ending, and that’s easy enough to understand, Aragorn and Arwen are on internal quests leading to a bittersweet tragedy, and their love is still worth it. Or, as a friend of mine likes to put it, the difference between reading Adventure with Established Relationship and Epic with Mutual Pining :D I think that works just as well and could sum up this entire essay?

As a final note, I just wanna say I really think these stories complement each other wonderfully well. They’re both clearly about Love, and also about the Shadow that’s always present in Tolkien’s works. Put together, we can see that neither impossible challenges nor difficult choices, neither forced nor self-imposed separation, neither foolish courage nor trembling hope, can truly keep apart two people who are determined to be together.

The difference between Beren and Luthien and Aragorn and Arwen is that the former follows the conventions of fairy tale and the latter follows the conventions of courtly love. In this essay I will

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