#the whole story is so so intentionally parallel

[dmbakura]

OK so I want to stress that this is NOT a slight against OP of this post or how they feel about the way the game presents certain options, but I've seen sentiments like this before and I feel like people still aren't quite grasping WHY the game doesn't allow the option to do a "slow burn romance where you can show him you truly care about him beyond sex" if you ascend him. So I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about Astarion's route and objectification, and the very intentional limitations of player choice regarding the ascension path.

Objectification is the act of degrading someone to the status of a mere object. It often involves a sexual component, but not necessarily. It's reducing someone to being a tool or toy, as if they have no feelings/opinions/autonomy of their own. In Astarion's case, his objectification is very much tied to his sexuality, but also his own views on power and control, and how that reflects on both him and his romantic partner.

I think people get too fixated on Welch's quote "it's reducing your relationship with him back to being a kink/form of gratification... it's very much admitting you failed to think of him beyond a sex object" and take this as commentary or judgment on the players choices, when it isn't actually that. It's quite literally the story that is baked into the route and Astarion's character as a whole. There are obviously reasons to ascend him that have nothing to do with how you personally feel about him as a character, ie you want stats, you think it's just more fun, or interesting, or you like the tragedy, etc but in regards to the story itself? It's actually more commentary on how Astarion views himself more than anything else. He is an intentional subversion of the seductive vampire trope. You cannot engage with his story without interacting with this aspect of his character.

Even if you had a dialogue option to try and initiate a romance with him without that first night of sex, Astarion wouldn't take it. If you had a dialogue option to "show him you cared and want to protect him" he would either scoff at it or get angry, as he does if you try and express similar sentiments about protecting him from Cazador. He doesn't want to be coddled. He doesn't trust mindless heroism or altruism. He initiates sex because he uses it as a tool for manipulation and insurance of his own safety. You can either play into that manipulation or don't (and he seems to respect you more if you don't, which says a lot about his self worth). You can't initiate a slow burn romance because Astarion is so distrustful of EVERYONE and has no ability to conceptualize genuine care at this point in the game due to his mistreatment as a vampire spawn. This is an incredibly important aspect to his character and to change the foundation of this is to rewrite his character entirely.

(There is ONE exception to this: Karlach. Karlach is the only character that can initiate more of a slowburn with Astarion and won't sleep with him the first night because she quite literally, physically can't. And Astarion doesn't immediately accept this either. He belittles Karlach, to the point of calling her frigid and basically defective, wondering if he's wasting his time, before she chews him out for being an asshole. Again, he has no idea how to approach a relationship without using sex as a transaction and it shows. He only goes along with it because he quite literally cannot do his normal routine. This is the only reason he won't start a relationship with Karlach using sex.)

So anyways, that choice at the start? The way Astarion's romance initiates on the first night? It intentionally parallels the way ascended!Astarion will offer you an ultimatum: become his spawn or leave him. At the start of the game, Astarion intentionally plays into the sexy vampire trope to get what he wants, is highly paranoid, afraid and distrustful of everyone. At the end of the game in the ascended route... he's intentionally playing into the sexy vampire trope, is highly paranoid, afraid and distrustful of everyone, only this time he has power to back him up. Nothing about his views has been fundamentally challenged if you ascend him; he's completely validated in his beliefs about power and control and entirely in the mindset that he has no value without becoming the ascendant.

It's not about whether you personally find him sexy or not. It's not about having sex at this point. It's not about you or your character. Astarion objectifies himself, fully playing the only hand he knows (as he himself puts it) because that is all he knows how to do. In the ascended path, he has been shown no other option. Your character, good intentions or not, has not given him the tools to see himself as anything else. There is no way too make himself see himself as anything else, except by not ascending him! Either you let this man degrade you as he degrades himself, or don't. That is the option provided, and anything otherwise wouldn't make sense without rewriting his character completely.

Do you value what he actually wants (freedom) or do you value what he says he wants (power, because he views it as the only way to get that freedom)? To me the game makes it obvious (ESPECIALLY with the newly added epilogue) that walking in the sun again or gaining the power of the vampire ascendant aren't the keys to Astarion's happiness. Stuff like that, while nice, doesn't magically grant him peace and it's not a substitute for character growth and self reflection. It honestly just feels like people want the personality and development of spawn Astarion but in the ascended Astarion path, which doesn't make any sense with the way the story unfolds.

Anyways, I just wanted to say that objectification can be more than just seeing someone as a sex object, and doesn't necessarily have to do with sex itself. It can tie into views about power and degradation and a lack of self respect. Furthermore, it's not the game telling you you're a bad person or some sex addled freak if you ascend him, it's asking you to engage with what Astarion's personal story can say about sexuality, cycles of abuse, trauma and recovery - for better or worse.

[barrenclan]

How do you decide on motifs? Like sleep being associated with death, roses being associated with death? And how did you go about assigning each motif to a character (especially more character specific ones)? Like I get that Rainhaze was seen as a coyote in omens because of his association with Ranger, but why is Nightberry associated with visions, why is Cootstorm associated with never changing, conservative ideals?

Here's a good way to think about this: PATFW is not coming out of nowhere. Seems obvious, right? But every decision made is one that I had to intentionally choose, with a goal in mind for what I wanted to do with them. So I don't have real animals, or real people - I have certain stories in mind, and the characters are tools that I use to express these ideas. Let's take two examples brought up here, and I'll show you what I mean.

Asphodelpaw's death. For this story, I wanted to have a big, climatic moment that really jerks around the story, much in the same way that Shellspring's reveal did in TDS. I know that I want Rainhaze to be an exploration of a character who starts out good and turns complicated, and that I want him to not be redeemed. Okay, so how do I make sure Rainhaze is beyond redemption? He'd have to do something really awful, like killing someone important. The rest of the Clan wouldn't be as impactful if he killed them, so it should be one of his family members, and someone we really care about. Okay, who do I want him to kill? Pinepaw is my narrator, so if I want him to keep narrating, I can't kill him. I want Slugpelt to feel the consequences of this murder Rainhaze makes, and I want her to later confront him about it, so he can't kill her. I can't quite get into why I want Daffodilpaw to live yet, because of spoilers, but I have a certain message I want to create with Daffodilpaw, and she can't die as part of it. So Asphodelpaw is the only one left. Okay, why would it be impactful for her to die? Because she just came into herself, and apologized to Pinepaw, and is on track to grow into a better person. So it's extra tragic - and extra irredeemable - of Rainhaze to kill her. There you go, that's the reasoning behind Asphodelpaw's death.

The sleep/death motif. I have suffered from personal difficulties surrounding death, specifically involved with intrusive thoughts before I go to sleep. So those two ideas are very linked in my mind, and because PATFW is a darker story, I wanted to explore it. Okay, how do I work it into the story? Rainhaze is a character who's disappeared, presumed dead, by the time the story starts. Alright, maybe I can work it in there. I used it for the first time in Issue 4, contrasting between Rainhaze and Slugpelt's views on what happens after death. Alright, so now I have a thematic parallel between their characters and their views. Okay, how does this affect the future plot? As Rainhaze gets further involved with Defiance, his views on killing change, and that strengthens this association with sleep. So later, when Slugpelt kills him, I can bring this thematic parallel back around and make it really resonate, because I've built up the connection over the whole story. There you go, that's how you create a motif.

I hope you found this interesting. Often I find that a lot of writing advice is vague and nonspecific, so I tried to make my reasoning behind these things as clear as possible. From the outside, it may seem like absolutely anything can happen in a story, but from an internal perspective there are only so many ways to get to a point I want to make, so those decisions have to lead to each other if I want to create a natural thread.

[halfnekoslair]

OK. This is not TMNT fanart. It's Redwall. >w<

Martin and Tsarmina have always been my favorite hero x villain duo in Redwall. Although they don't have much drama and events between them, their stories actually have quite a lot in common. Like two parallel lines going in the same direction. Both are leaders with some legacy before them. Both are trying to live up to their fathers' legacy. Or at least how they see it. Both have a slavery theme. Former slave and enslaver. Both are dealing with some loss that they caused. Intentionally or not. They are both almost equally monstrous. With this whole "red glitter of total war shining hot in his eyes, his teeth bared in a wild laugh" thing)) And they both come to the last point completely alone by their own decision. And both would've die there. The main difference is that Tsarmina left everyone behind so as not to risk herself. And Martin left everyone behind so as not to risk them. So there was someone left to save him. There is some beauty in their similarity. It's as if the hero is fighting more than just some villain. It’s as if he is fighting his own crooked reflection. Brings his own ending. Just like Tsarmina herself walked into the lake.

[nyxisart]

Hey I wanted to ask a question about the story you and some other people have been making together.

At first I thought the animal hrt was allegory for transgenderism as I see you are trans and it felt very true to some experiences I've had as a trans woman.

However recently it has started to diverge and I'm wondering if it is intentionally moving to a statement / story about transhumanism directly rather than as the aforementioned allegory.

This may just be my interpretation of it but I'm genuinely interested if it is intended.

(I mean no disrespect, I am a transwoman as well as being a transhumanist ideologically)

I'll say it again but those stories were never meant to be an allegory to trans experiences, those are just artists telling transformation stories about people becoming anthro creatures, that's all.

Most of those artists are trans, so we used HRT (Human Removal Therapy) as means to tell the transformation part, but the only thing in common it shares with actual HRT (Hormonal Replacement Therapy) is the name. Moreover, some of our personal experiences, including those related to being trans, inevitably show in our stories. So yeah, I understand the parallel between the two, but please try to consider the story as a whole different thing.

I'm hoping on the occasion to say that seeing people calling us out for giving bad HRT or trans representation is really pissing us off... Literally, that was never the point.

[destinysbounty]

So here's my conflict. On the one hand, I agree that s12 wouldve been much more interesting if theyd gone with the original idea of having Libber act as a living battery for the game. It would have facilitated more emotional motivation for Jay, as well as a greater sense of thematic cohesion and parallel between him and Unagami. Plus, it would be cool to finally see what happened to Libber.

On the other hand, I feel like Jay never finding out why he was abandoned and learning to heal and move past it anyway has some understated potential to create a really interesting narrative. Like, Jay's whole thing is that he's insecure and worried that people will leave him. So I feel like sure, yeah, itd be cathartic for him to find closure knowing his parents had a good reason for abandoning him. BUT, I think it would be more compelling if Jay's arc featured him accepting that yes, sometimes people just leave you. You might never know why, and you might never get the chance to find out. Sometimes things happen and you never get proper closure. But it's still possible for you to move forward and find happiness in spite of that. Jay finding his mom and learning that she didnt abandon him intentionally is a satisfying story, but an easy one. Whereas Jay learning to accept that his mom is gone and he'll never know why is a much more nuanced one, in my opinion. (I just wish s12 had actually given it the proper development it needed)

Idk. I agree that the Libber plotline couldve added a lot more depth to Prime Empire overall, but I also feel like they could have very easily given that season depth even without her being there.

[pencileraser1]

things i noticed/thoughts about most recent rewatches of dps (plus laserdisk deleted scenes):

whenever theres a group scene i've started watching the characters that the story isn't focusing on to see what they do and i've been having a fun time with that. pitts and cameron specifically seem to almost always be doing something interesting in the background.

hopkins!!!! my favorite minor character who somehow got character development despite having like 2 lines!!!! the last guy to stand on the desk but he did it!!!

sometimes i do like to think about what the rest of the students thought about the dead poets society, esp in alternate timeline neil lives dps keeps meeting universe. like yeah theres this guy in their class whose one of the most credited students in the school and we think he maybe started a cult. idk though. but that group runs out into the woods every few days to do god knows what and one of them keeps talking about "dead poets honor" whatever that means and holy shit welton star student neil perry started a cult.

i watched the movie with headphones. and maybe it's because ive seen this movie Far too many times and mabe i'm listening too hard but it was Really obvious sometimes when audio was added in post production. llke in the sweaty toothed madman scene when you can hear laughing and to be fair the camera is behind their heads. but it does Not look like anyone's laughing. my favorite is at the end of the phone call to chris scene where knox is like i'm gonna seize the day!! and runs up the stairs and the poets are cheering him on and neil is sort of yelling "carpe!!!!" and i could be wrong but i'm like 75% certain that the person singing is Also rsl so now neil is just speaking two times at once somehow. anyways it didn't ruin the experience for me or anything it was maybe just a little bit funny to notice but very sorry if this did ruin anyone's viewing.

people talk a lot about how rsl and ethan hawke really made their characters what they are but i have to add dylan kussman to that list. I get the impression that older versions of the movie didn't really give as much depth to cameron and watching dylan kussmans performance is like. he Knew who his character was so fucking well and it shows!! like the deleted scene of them getting clubs assigned. like i could tell So Much about cameron from that scene

for how little she actually appeared, there is an emphasis put on the fact that neil's mom smokes pretty frequently. and i think that's interesting considering neil is one of two poets shown actively smoking. neil's mom doesn't appear for very long in the movie but during that time it definitely seems like the movie is intentionally making parallels between the two, particularly in the last argument with neil's father. neil and his mother are both sitting for almost the whole time, which contrasts with his father who is standing. they are both almost powerless in this scene. they stand up at almost the same time. anyways there's a couple different possibilities for what this could mean? that i've though of? 1. to show that neil's mother is in a similar situation to the one neil is in in regards to neil's father and 2. maybe a stretch here but the theory that neil inherited his mental illness at least partially from his mother. i'm pretty sure 1 was fully intentional on the directors part, not entirely sure about 2 though

unmanned flying desket scene: it's probably cause he and ethan wrote the scene themselves but the way rsl talks in this scene feels more like the way he talks in general than the rest of the script. like briefly neil perry is talking in rsl's voice. one of my absolute favorite scenes though the sarcastic dialogue is so good.

the light of knowledge at the first shot of the film vs. todd standing on his desk at the last shot of the film paralel

[will80sbyers]

how are u so calm abt this 😭 teach me ur ways bc im consumed by byler doubt like i verbally said “we lost” when i read that leak 😭😭

For now I trust my eyes more than leaks without context! There's really too much stuff inside the show for me to believe it's not intentionally constructing Byler endgame, every single thing I know about television is pointing to that, the parallels don't make any sense if Mike is not queer, the one with Vickie is the most incriminating one because there's no reason for them to parallel Mike specifically to her if not because of byler... If they had only made the parallel between Robin and Will I could have accepted the idea that it was only because of Will having his crush but no they took Mike's dialogue and Vickie's dialogue and paralleled that too

They made countless romantic parallels between Byler and other romantic couples Mlven included in these parallels, why if it's only Will having a crush he's gonna get over with at the end to then date a NPC character??? Makes zero sense.

Plus all the things we found in the background, the queercoding around both Mike and Will, the closets open in the background, the interruption trope used for them, Mike looking at Will with the same exact expression he has when he looks at Eleven in season 1 right before he gets a crush on her...

There's just too much stuff for me to accept that it doesn't mean anything, and then remember when people for years said Will was gay because of the background stuff and the little moments and then it happened!? We are not crazy. They have put all of these things intentionally inside the show, they have written the story in a way that makes sense only if Mike and Will end up together at the end, they have done countless parallels with byler and other couples even outside the show like Byler and Benverly (I made a whole gifset about this, click on the GIFs!) or Laurie X Amy, etc etc

Even just the painting alone.

Multiple movies of the ones in the list of S4 had love triangles that were like the willelmike situation...

It would simply go against all logic and whatever happens I need to see it with my eyes, I can't rely on words on the streets, I said it once and I'll say it again the only way I'm giving up on Byler is if the Duffers themselves say it's not happening - no one else! And even if they say it I'll be probably watching the new season low-key hoping they were lying because it just doesn't make sense for byler to not happen in my brain at this point 🌈

[toyota12]

Gravity Falls Parallels: Stanley and Stanford Pines

To start off, aside from the similar names, both these characters endured great hardships in the 30 years before the events of the show took place.

Similarities

Both of these characters more or less project their insecurities onto the younger Pines twins, are both insensitive to each others' each interests, and have a lot of pride about themselves as individuals. However, both also care deeply about the younger twins' safety, and are willing to show their more softer sides around them. Furthermore, while both primarily connect more with the younger twin who (on the surface level) identifies with them the most, they also deeply care about the other as well. In A Tale of Two Stans, both also omit important information in their stories, such as Stan, with being homeless and Ford, with his history with Bill. Both are also easily deceived by anyone who pretends to show them the slightest amount of affection or kinship (like Stan with Darlene and Ford with Bill), and finally both were social outcasts when they were younger.

Differences

Stanley

Stan is more emotional than Ford is and is thought to be both and idiot and screw-up by most, including his father. Though he puts on a facade of being emotionally distant, others can see through it very easily. He was also somewhat clingy with his twin brother, believing he couldn't make it without him and still holding onto the idea that they could eventually travel the world together, even after Ford showed interest in a school that valued his intellect. Due to these factors, and showing more concern with his plans for the future rather than thinking about Ford after he unintentionally costs Ford his dream college, Stan is disowned by the whole family for over 10 years, and is left unable to provide for himself, becoming a criminal in the process. However, this (and his history of lying and cheating) led to Stan becoming an excellent scam artist who had to create fake aliases for himself to sell his material to anyone gullible to buy from him. This also helped him not only sell his merchandise under Ford's name when the latter was accidentally pushed into the portal, but also hide Ford's portal and ward off suspicion it and the real Stanford's whereabouts for 30 years, which demonstrates a level of cunning on Stan's part. After seeing how his feud with Ford has endangered the younger Pines twins, he convinces Ford find an alternative way to defeat Bill without giving into the latter's demands, even if to save the kids. Both because he doesn’t trust Bill to keep his word to leave Dipper and Mabel alone and how he knows that giving into Bill's demands could put the whole world at risk, which helps him see things from Ford's perspective as well.

Stanford

Ford is more intellectually gifted than Stan, and was considered the favorite of the Stan twins by his father. In spite of being not being one to act on his emotions, Ford is more open about his than Stan is. Due to this he takes, pride in his accomplishments and immediately jumps on the offer to go to a highly prestigious college, not showing much concern in Stan beginning to feel left behind. He had also come to view his relationship with Stan as suffocating by this point. Because of this, when Stan unintentionally sabotages his science fair experiment (and admitedly shows little concern over this), he accuses Stan of doing so intentionally and doesn't protest to Stan being disowned by the whole family. Both because he was born with an extra finger and his high IQ, Ford began to think of himself as someone with a greater purpose, which in turn led him becoming incredibly arrogant. This is exploited by Bill, who tricks Ford into building a gateway for the former to enter through. Ford is later sucked into said portal after treating Stan like his errand boy who Ford expected to hide his first journal without protest, or considering Stan's feelings. This demonstrates how, much like Bill (although unintentionally) Ford viewed others as tools to further his own agenda. While still problematic in present day, he is becoming more considerate of others' feelings, allowing Stan to stay to tend to Dipper and Mabel, and expressing concern at the revelation that Mabel didn't take his apprenticeship offer to Dipper well. He fully grows willing to take his family into consideration after seeing how his feud with Stan has endangered the younger twins, working with Stan to save them and finally accepting how damaging his idea of being a lone hero is, realizing that Stan has to be the one to sacrifice his memories to put an end to Bill, and not him.

[my-coven-is-claudia]

Daniel, Louis and their “strange alliance”

this quote from eric from a pre-season 2 interview has been rattling inside my brain for far too long so i want to break down a scene from season 1 that has gained some newly-found importance.

in 1x02 daniel and louis sit down to have dinner as louis recounts an experience of attending the opera with lestat and its bloody end. what’s most interesting about this sequence is less so to do with what happened at loustat’s opera date but more so this surprisingly touching moment between louis and daniel.

it starts off with louis mentioning how the dessert served for him and daniel is taken from a off-handed remark in daniel’s memoir.

this suggests A LOT. it seems to imply that louis has attentively read daniel’s memoir and likely has a genuine vested interest in daniel as a person outside of what he can do for him in relation to rejigging his jumbled memories. you can’t tell from this screenshot but he almost seems embarrassed that he went to such lengths with making sure to serve up this exact dessert that daniel mentioned. and the fact that it was an “offhanded remark” also drives me insane. he either read through daniel’s memoir and specifically noted down this mention about the dessert or realised that he wanted to share a meal with daniel and proceeded to scour his memoir in order to find mentions of food he likes. there is also the possibility that he asked one of his servants to read through the book again but we know for sure that louis read daniel’s memoir himself at some point. whatever the case louis went to the effort of making sure daniel would get to eat something familiar and that he most definitely liked. he did that to make daniel feel comfortable.

this is especially significant as louis chooses to eat this dessert alongside daniel, despite the fact that it tastes like “paste” to him. he is actively choosing to eat something that tastes like gruel to him essentially and for what?? to appear less monstrous? to comfort daniel? maybe show that he still has some humanity left in him. it’s important to mention that this is in the aftermath of daniel confronting louis about how human readers likely won’t be sympathetic to louis and lestat’s need for blood to survive. however, it doesn’t come across as a calculated move to appear more appeasing to potential readers. this seems wholly for daniel’s sake.

louis - for whatever reason - is intentionally presenting himself as approachable and human to daniel.

this is followed up by daniel seemingly picking up on louis’s offer for connection and opening up about the woman that’s on everyone’s mind currently: alice.

daniel details how he proposed to alice in paris in a cafe (which lines up with the story he tells in 2x02) and names the street that it was located on. louis recognises this and verbalises it.

this is yet another grasp for connection, of understanding, between louis and daniel. louis wants to show daniel that he’s genuinely interested in his story, in him as a person by showing that’s he actively listening to him.

now, what we’ve all been waiting for.

this moment is the whole reason why i want to tear this scene apart!! this is probably up there with daniel offering louis a break in 2x01 as one of the most sincere and vulnerable moments we’ve gotten from daniel, a typically cold and sarcastic character. whatever you think about the alice-armand parallels and who exactly he is truly talking about here, daniel is fondly speaking of someone now estranged from him. he remembers the little details about her, an insecurity that she was ashamed of that he completely adored! he loved her for who she was, imperfections and all.

and to top this all off daniel closes his laptop! he ends the session! he likely does this out of a mixture of embarrassment that he’s rambled about his ex-wife live on tape but also maybe a sign to louis that he’s taking this seriously. that he’s appreciative of him trying to meet him on his level. that this moment was real. by stripping away the symbol of the supposedly strictly professional nature of this reunion he may be signalling that this conversation is indeed important to him.

and the fact that daniel is able to even have this vulnerable moment with louis at all, reminiscing over his lost love (whilst louis is doing something very similar with lestat) is so intriguing! obviously louis and daniel are most definitely not strangers to one another but they aren’t best friends either. they haven’t seen each other in decades and for daniel especially this has been a very abrupt reunion. whether he likes it not, daniel likely relates on some level to louis’s complex feelings towards lestat, his lover. like louis, daniel may not miss his relationship with alice in relation to the toxic dynamic they shared (slight guess here but the revelation that she initially rejected his proposal suggests to me that their relationship was a bit rocky at least) but he most definitely misses her as a person and the memory of their time together.

finally, what closes off this scene is this… odd expression from louis. not entirely sure if i’m being too optimistic when i say that louis may be sympathising with daniel here but admittedly he does seem a little confused as well. but if this truly is meant to be a look of contempt i feel like it would’ve been more akin to louis’s more obviously disgusted reaction to the coven’s play in 2x02. instead, in this scene, i think louis simply did not expect daniel to so openly accept his offer of connection and is just stunned to hear this bristly old man reflect his own feelings so accurately. he’s finally found someone who understands his situation with lestat. someone who understands this dichotomy of longing and anguish all at the same time. obviously, their situations are not a 1:1 but this scene has always stood out to me as a parallel between daniel and louis’s previous relationships.

a key part about this whole daniel and louis form a “strange alliance” thing is that it seems to stem from the two men realising that they have a lot more in common than they initially believed. that’s why it’s “strange”: because it’s unexpected.

although in recent episodes they’re definitely at odds with each other, this scene combined with other sprinklings of subtle moments of connection suggest to me that daniel might become a genuine friend to louis. it is a strange friendship but they both want to get to the bottom of louis’s memories. no one else in dubai is able to tell louis how it really is and is able to actually push him to question the lies he’s been fed (and that he’s fed himself). intentionally or not, daniel is looking out for louis and is indirectly helping him to accept his past mistakes. maybe he sometimes pushes him too hard or says some stuff he probably shouldn’t but ultimately daniel is the catalyst for louis actually remembering the truth. without him louis would not have come as far as he as over the course of the series

[rainybyday]

My second (thrid?, nah second) time travel au

Team Minato Era

If we get a Minato Era man, Let. Me. Tell. You!

No Obito, Sai or Tenzo for this one

Pure og Team Kakashi for this one

Time period

I would say when Team Kakashi is after Wave arc but before the exams

So only Kakashi, Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto

With Team Minato having at least a few years (maybe 1 actually) before shit starts for them

Minato, Kakashi (mini), Obito, and Rin

So Team Kakashi has seen death and all but not war

With Team Minato still in their “needs Minato to mediate” stage

Or….

You know what

Have you guys read those Team Kakashi stories where Kakashi does step up to be a more attentive sensei and Team Seven is more prepared and badass but still acts like little kids?

I will link some stories that are like this, you will see what I mean

Theres the series How to Make a Team by Pleasedial123

Of Harrowed Hearts by Sable_Scribe

Parallel by Sora2131 and stacyb

Maybe a more tight knitted Team Kakashi meets a Team Minato

That

That would be pretty funny and sad ngl

Ok redo the timeline once again

Intro Take 2 - ACTION!

Team Kakashi has a sealing incident in their training grounds made by both Naruto (intentionally) and Sasuke’s Sharigen (unintentionally) 

This ends with them being transported back in time, still in the same place, but ending up in the middle of Team Minto’s own training. 

It… well it doesn’t go well with anyone

First off this is during a war so the first thing that is going to happen is Team Minato attacking Team Kakashi, no questions asked

Team Kakashi has to go into defense mode because they are getting attacked thank you

Commotion is made, anbu will arrive (add root here too) and push comes to shove a lot of people will get hurt

Off to a great start everyone, -100/10, will not recommend

So Team Kakashi will definitely be shipped off to the I&T

For one, you have a shinobi who looks like one of their own and Sakumo who fucked die, but also is an unknown 

You have an Uchiha so of course you would think he was taken and will be the Uchiha’s problem until you realise that no such Uchiha like him exists in the first place

Then you have Naruto who looks like a certain someone (but also to those who know so enough, that he has THE seal), Naruto is a whole different problem

The only one that seems clean in Sakura, but let me highlight, SEEMS. This girl is trained by Hatake Kakashi, The Hatake Kakashi. While the Minato timeline sees Kakashi as a genius son of the failure Sakumo everyone in Team Kakashi’s timeline seen his transformation of not only on himself but on his team. His name means something. Plus she also spars with an Uchiha mainline and a jinchuriki uzumaki and can win. Say no more. 

So yeah, I&T

Will they use a yamanaka? Probably, the thing is that they are from the future, maybe a future, but a future nevertheless. So, thats a big no no. 

I think they would do it on Sakura for both logic and plot reason

The plot reason is so that they don’t find out more about Kakashi’s future, Sasuke’s clan massacre, and Naruto’s life as a whole

The logic?

Well she will be the easiest to mind break in their opinion

For one the man (kakashi) is a jonin so he will take awhile to get information out of him. The boy looks like an Uchiha, is doesn’t matter if they find out if he is a part of the clan or not, if they mistake of going through his mind and he is an Uchiha then they will have a clan conflict on their hands. 

Which leaves Naruto and Sakura

Perhpes it would have been easier to get to Naruto but heres the thing, he is not the normal naruto as he would be in the anime/manga, he is a Naruto that grew with Kakashi giving him a fair amount of attention and trained him right, so no, naruto is not naive in any sense of the word, but he does know how to act it

Another note is that Karum might stop any attempt on mind reading for varies reasons

So that leave Sakura, the civilian born

Which is the best optionin to do so

As said she is a civilian, she doesn’t know many major events that aren’t told to her in a sheltered way. Such as the nine-tails attack? The fourth Hokagae was brave and fought valiantly and we honor him. Uchiha massacre? On Sasuke wasn’t able to come to class because something happened to his family, but don’t worry Sakura, everything is fine! Treatment of Naruto? He’s such a trouble maker!! 

And on and on and on

As a civilian who is more sheltered by the world she won’t have all the information until she trains under Kakashi, but the yamanaka will probably be told to hold off from going to far or is forced to get out

The future, no matter what bits of information one gets, is precious

The Yamanaka might leave on their own violation because of what they are staring to understand what their seeing, or might be stopped by a person they might bring with them in the mindscape of it all

Maybe even Sakura might block her most recinet memories, memories of her training in Team Seven since she is trained and strong enough to do so

(Also she is friends with Ino, that says enough)

Or they simply don’t, they might go through the whole sequences of Sakuras life and yet still won’t get all the important bits of their timeline

As I said again, civilian born 

So because of this, Sakura will be the only one to be given an indeepth sweep of her min because of the future information

And things like Shinobi from teh future traveling to the past will be reported to none other than the third Hokage himself

Joy 

[summerstrash]

someday I want marvel editorial to let quentin quire out of the closet because I think it would be extremely funny to have him just kind of go "you thought I was straight this whole time???" at someone, because, like, out of all of the currently "straight" male x-men characters, quentin is like, rachel levels of glass closet.

examples:

inspired to radicalism by the hate crime death of a fashion designer in conjunction with an identity-destabilizing revelation about himself.

has maintained a pink undercut/mohawk since 2003 and gives off exactly the same energy as the most insufferable white queer radical teen/20-something you know.

his legal human name is quintavius quirinius quire. you cannot tell me he didn't name himself that after transitioning at like, age 8, during a roman empire phase.

the only human male psychic we've seen as a destined, legitimate Phoenix vessel — a story role typically played by presumed-cis women from a specific bloodline

owned a speedo that put a radioactivity symbol over his junk

kept a reservoir dogs (the most homosexual tarantino movie) poster in his dorm room at the jgs

served as the first and only boy to ever hold the role of "wolverine's dykey teen protégé" (previous girls in the role include kate, jubilee, movies!rogue, and laura)

The now-defunct official JGS Twitter accounts included a tweet stating that Quentin tried out for the school cheer team in a skirt.

the sexy Phoenix nuns were intentionally not all girls, Jason Latour said that to my face with his human mouth.

his version of a Dark Phoenix Saga ("Tomorrow Never Learns") explored his relationships with evan and idie in ways that likened evan to new-mutant-rev!scott and clearly paralleled logan and idie, which, like [gestures]

When Evan and Idie take Teen Bobby to his first gay bar, Idie chalks up her confidence in the space to having dated Quentin.

Percy had him literally trying on bodies during a period where he was trying to find himself after a straight breakup, including female bodies.

the script for X-Men/Fantastic Four #1 included a reference to Quentin hanging out with Akihiro (notable undercut/Mohawk bisexual adoptee with wolverine-related Daddy issues) in the background

Like, I wouldn't be surprised if people at Marvel literally have forgotten he's not canonically explicitly queer yet. The vibes are just so powerful.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

(I actually think TTPD is full of so many parallels to older work that I could like, quote the entire album.)

Do it (inserts image of Kermit the frog wearing a black cloak)

Jokes aside, I’d love to read what parallels you found with her older work

OK well now that you’ve put me on the spot, I can’t actually think of them that freely 😂

This isn’t going to be exhaustive, nor particularly accurate I guess, but maybe more like… similarities? (Man, I’m gonna fumble the ball here.)

This is kind of out of left field, but from the very first listen, for instance, But Daddy I Love Him reminded me of Love Story. I joked on release night that But Daddy was just the unfiltered version of Love Story; the girl is the Scarlet Letter because she’s the loud, mouthy heathen who’s been caught with her dress unbuttoned iykwim. The girl in LS feels misunderstood, is infatuated with this boy, begs to run away with him away from the prying eyes and judgment… Which is exactly what the narrator in BDILH feels too, except more explicitly. The girl in LS is demure and mindful, the one in BDILH gives zero fucks. Which is reflective of Taylor’s own evolution in her relationship to her public image, I feel: she strove to be a perfect role model never putting a foot wrong in her younger days, but the whole point of TTPD is that she is done listening to anyone else’s opinions on how she lives her life. In LS, the boy talks to her dad and pulls out a ring, and in BDILH, no one else is invited to that wedding after everything she’s learned. For all we’ve talked about how one of the major themes of TTPD is about reclaiming her youth, I think it’s kind of genius that BDILH, intentionally or not, plays on the song that launched her megastardom as a teenager and gives it a grown-up bite.

This is maybe less parallels and more just a continuation of a story, but I think one of the obvious ones is You’re Losing Me and So Long, London. One of the immediate callbacks is the thread from “I can’t find a pulse, my heart won’t start anymore” to “I stopped CPR, after all it’s no use.” YLM comes at a crisis point, the make or break moment of the relationship, and SLL is the aftermath reflecting on that. Her stopping the CPR after that moment in YLM is what leads to the dissolution of the relationship and the reflection in SLL.

The rest of the two songs mirror each other so painfully well. “Do I throw out everything we built or keep it?” To “You say I abandoned the ship, but I was going down with it.” “How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying?” To “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?” “I know my pain is such an imposition” to “Just how low did you think I'd go before I'd self-implode?” “How long could we be a sad song 'til we were too far gone to bring back to life?” To “So how much sad did you think I had, did you think I had in me? How much tragedy?” “I wouldn’t marry me either” to “I died on the altar waiting for the proof.”

And I think the one that really brings it full circle is the evolution from “My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick,” to “And I'm just getting color back into my face, I'm just mad as hell cause I loved this place.” In YLM she’s dying a slow death at her partner’s ignorance (unintentional or willful) of the crisis she’s in, and in SLL, the decision to leave has brought her back to life, even if she mourns everything she had to give up to get there. To go from sitting in the room that was once lit with what they loved to sitting in the dark mulling this life-changing decision, to reflecting on the moment of “warm sun” in her life that this relationship will ultimately end up being in her memories (but just that: a memory, not a life) is really nuanced, and really shows how it’s the end of a chapter but not the end of the book.

Another parallel that is so powerful is between The Manuscript and, among others, All Too Well, but really so much of her work from her younger days, as well as the ATW music video. This is maybe cheating because it’s not like a 1:1 parallel, but just the way that The Manuscript reframes so much of her older work and experiences is illuminating. The way in ATW the early memories are wistful, feel like home, etc., and you can feel the warmth radiate through the music and the lyrics, but the slightly unsettling melody of The Manuscript highlights the unease in which that situation actually occurred. To go from sweet disposition and wide-eyed gazes heading out of town to be together, to realizing a decade later that that might have been less romance and more manipulation? What a gut punch.

Similarly, when you think about “nights when you made me your own” in the context of “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was, soon they'd be pushin' strollers,” you really feel how her youthful naivety about their relationship was heavily influenced by the way this person laid it on thick. Like, all these years later, she wasn’t wrong to feel like this thing was serious, or for being so bewildered when it ended. It’s just that what she failed to realize at the time is that what she took as a promise, he intended as foreplay. Then the way the bridge of The Manuscript reveals what is presumably the shooting of the ATW video, where she comes to the realization of just what she went through and how she’s been able to use it to make her art and heal? That’s beautiful.

There are soooooooooo many more, but I’d be here all day, and similarly, I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Hi Kym! I apologize if you have answered an ask like this before, but I am curious for your opinion.

You've talked a lot about how intentional all the Buddie parallels are in terms of costuming for several seasons now, both with Buck and Eddie together, then with their respective girlfriends, and in comparison to Bathena. We are now even getting throwbacks to season 2 and Eddie's first episode with Buck's stonewash jeans! Tim is adamant in interviews that he never planned this bisexual awakening in advance (we know that Eddie was originally meant for Maddie ofc) and that he doesn't know where the characters are going yet, but even Oliver has said he intentionally leans into the Buddie of it all with his acting, or at least into Buck's then-presumed bisexuality.

My question is, with just how pointed and intentional the costume choices have always been, is Tim is lying? Or are the costume designers secret Buddie shippers and intentionally lean into this storyline too? How much of what we see in terms of costuming is the decision of the show runners/directors vs creative expression of the costume designers? Is there a point in the show for you where it became clear how intentional it was becoming with the costuming, where they may or may not have said, "we're going to commit to telling this story in subtext until we are allowed to tell it overtly"?

Thanks :)

Hey Cookie-Kat!!

How lovely to have you in my inbox, and what a great question!

putting my answer under the cut - because it got long!!!

The answer I give is going to have to be a bit vague I'm afraid because the reality is that as I don't work on the show and I'm not 100% sure on the set up of their various departments, I can't categorically state how they are going about things in 911 land! I can share my experience and knowledge of how things can be done and try to give you some sort of framework - but I can't definitively say that this is how they are doing things.

First up let's address the whole Tim lying thing.

Tim is all about subterfuge in interviews - its literally his job as a showrunner. I would take every thing he says in an interview with a giant grain of salt. the entire purpose of his interviews is to tease and hook people, without giving anything way becasue why would he spoil all the things he has planned that make people watch the show he is creating. If he came out in an interview at the start of the season and said

'yeah, we're going to do a cruise ship disaster and all these things are going to happen, and in episode 4 Buck is going to get kissed by a guy and figure out he's bi and Eddie is going to find out his girlfriend was a novice nun and its going to send him into a catholic guilt spiral, and maddie nad CHim are going to get married, but x, y and z are going to happen before they can get down the aisle'

Why would anyone tune in to watch the show? we'd already know what was going to happen so there wouldn't be any point - there would be no buzz and the viewing figures might be ok, but they wouldn't be remotely close to what they are. I know for a fact I probably wouldn't be tuning in - people like to be surprised, they like to speculate - we in fandom take it to a higher level, but even the general audience speculate - water cooler conversations about what you watched the previous evening and how you think it's going to play out are part of a show's appeal - part of how it keeps people watching - shared experiences are a powerful commodity, especially in network television and they cannot be shared if we all know what is going to happen.

I would also add that this season is the most explicit acknowledgement of buddie that we've had in interviews and that means something. The show - writers, actors etc have all been incredibly careful before no to ensure that they haven't crossed over into queerbaiting the audience - which is something I really appreciate them for. But this season, things have definitely changed. whether that is down to being on a new network, that actually has a marketing strategy and that actually seems to care about the show and the stories that they have wanted to tell, I don't know, but it is so refreshing and exciting to see.

Tim is a clever person - he knows exactly what he is doing and every single season, without fail we have him saying things in interviews that can be read in multiple ways - none of them have ever been lies - subterfuge is the name of the game - then if you reread them in the aftermath of the season, you can see what he said did in fact play out as he hinted at - he has the context that we didn't have at the time and that is why he can subvert and talk his way around things.

I genuinely don't think Tim planned to give Buck a bisexual awakening from the start - we know he never planned on the buddie of it all, but a good writer will go where the characters take them. As soon as you create something and put it into the hands of others (the actors, directors and crew) things can very quickly take on a whole new direction and a life of its own.

If you ask me, I genuinely don't think Buck could've had a bi awakening before this point - it wouldn't have made sense from a narrative perspective (and his death and rebirth actually make the perfect jumping off point to explore) until now because of the very nature of Buck.

There isn't a single show (by show I mean one that isn't a limited series which will by definition have a planned arc) on network television that knew where each and every character would end up at the end of the show or that characters journey (by this I mean when cast chose to leave a show). Yes they might have planned a few beats to hit along the way, but they wouldn't know the end point for the character. We have a perfect example on 911 - Michael - the show hadn't intended to end Michaels arc in the way it did - his journey as a queer man coming out later in life was an important part of the show - important for representation as much as anything - they had to adapt and change in light of what was going on with Rockmond and write out a character that they would've had other plans for.

The other thing I should mention is that When Tim says he hasn't decided or written the scripts for upcoming episodes, that doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan. He very much will have a plan. There would've been clear arcs for each character laid out at the start of the writing process for the season - they would want to get character a from one point to another by the end of the season. Its the how they get there that is the unknown - at this point we don't know the end points for any characters this season, but if we take season 5 Eddie as an example - at the start of the season he is post shooting and back at work, seemingly perfectly fine. By the end of the season he is genuinely in a good place having gone through his trauma arc. The arc they would've decided on for Eddie that season was to explore his trauma and how to get him from a 'seemingly' good place to a genuinely good place. From there they would've decided on various touchstones - so Ana being mistaken for Christophers mother and them being a family is his trigger to launch his arc. Chris being scared of loosing his father a major touch stone, pushing him into leaving the 118. His then feeling on the outside - left out and replaced by Lucy is his next one, followed by the fact all his army buddies are gone, another touchstone - coming in quick succession to build momentum and leading to his breakdown. Pushing him to actually get help - therapy is another touchstone - one that helps to get him to the end of the season in a vastly different place - healing but still working on things.

So you see - they generally plan an overall direction, but how they get there is the bit that is a bit fluid and can be determined to a certain extent by audience reaction (I don't mean that they would out and out rewrite the entire plan for the season for a character, but they might chose to lean into different aspects if the audience react in a certain way - we saw this with Lucy - planned for a bigger arc, but the audience reaction to her was pretty negative, so they changed direction with her character and cut her part down).

In terms of Bucks bi arc - they will have been waiting on how it was received before fully determining how to play it out for the rest of the season - I genuinely think we'll be seeing more of Lou as Tommy later in the season as a part of Bucks arc - The way Lou has spoken about it being initially a 4 episode arc, suggests to me that its always been intended to run it longer if reaction was good - which we know it was. My explectation remains the same - that Tommy will be around until either the end of episode 9, or the middle of episode 10, to get Buck to where he needs to be by the season end.

I am on the fence as to where exactly that is - Everything from set, costuming and the script is screaming at me that it's about Buck figuring out not only that he is bi, but that he is also in love with Eddie. That is his arc for the season. What I am unsure of is how they are going to leave things at the end of the season (and I think a part of that will have been determined by audience reaction), whether or not we'll leave him acknowledging his feelings to himself, to a third party (Tommy and or Maddie), or to Eddie himself. Of course part of it will be determined by Eddies arc and how far they plan on getting him in regards to dealing with his catholic guilt and what form and direction t hat is going to take, but I cannot see any reason to start exploring that aspect of his character if you weren't going to use it for a queer arc of some description.

In terms of costuming - which was the main point of your ask - sorry I get rambly in these replies some times - I always view it as the first 2-3 seasons at the very least will be about establishing a characters look and vibe within the wider show, and from then on you can start to play into themes and colour theory etc. Somethings you can establish earlier - especially if they are centric to a character more widely. Examples of this are Eddies army green tees and shirts - establishing him visually as ex military, or the black singlets that he wears when in an emotionally vulnerable place, or Buck wearing his white trainers as part of his search for self, or his white shirts as a signal of him being in danger. You can do this, because they aren't playing on anything in relation to other characters at this early point.

So the decision to take Buck out of jeans (stone wash jeans specifically - he's been wearing jeans they've just been black or dark navy) and have him in very obviously shorter trousers, creating a specific aesthetic for him - this smarter, fitted clean cut style that is different from his season 1 looks, has been about playing into his journey of searching for self - that is his big overarching arc - the one that spans multiple seasons.

The intent to do that, wasn't about Buddie (or bi Buck) when they started to use it as a visual marker for him. It was (and always has been) about Buck. about his search for meaning in his life and who he is, who he wants to be - about being his authentic self.

The reason I got so excited about seeing him in jeans once more, when the first stills dropped at the start of the season - was because I knew that it was a signal that this bigger arc was coming to fruition and moving into its next phase. The costume team have been sitting waiting for when the time was right to do this - its being done with such intention.

Of course I hoped that it would be buddie related - things were pointing in that direction from other costuming choices. And to me at least, I still think its very much buddie related - because to do this now - for this bi awakening arc - its too loud and too big for 'just' a bi awakening arc - its about something bigger for Buck - something long term (and I'm not saying Buck being bi is't long term, because obviously it very much is - bi rep is so important!) him figuring out he is bi is a smaller part of a bigger whole for his character. The implication of the jeans returning is that this part of himself he has unlocked plays into a bigger story. Bucks search for self has always been about finding love - about being wanted and seen and accepted for who he is. As a costume designer, I wouldn't personally be putting him into jeans at this point unless it was related to his endgame - being bi isn't enough on its own for them to decide to visually show that he has fully found what he has been looking for on his search throughout the seasons (the white trainers still being in used also play into this) because he is still looking for that lasting happiness - he's just taken a massive step forward to figuring out what it is and where it lies.

With regards to colour theory and the paralleling of Buddie with other ships such as Bathena or Madney. Colour theory alone it wouldn't be enough to convince me, it is in combination with other factors such as the paralleling of Bathena and Madney that it comes into play. The thing is, creating those parallels and colour theory combinations doesn't have to lead to something. I'm going to do a terrible job of trying to explain this, but I'll give it a go.

Various people, who work on the show in some capacity have all commented over the years that they weren't expecting the level of chemistry that Oliver and Ryan have. We also know that they have played into the buddie of it all with some of the scene choices they've made - sort of an acknowledgement of what we're seeing - the elf scene in s2 is a prime example - a nod to fandom and the fact that they are being shipped together - and an acknowledgement of the chemistry - without it necessarily needing to mean more (the same goes for things like the text comments on the botfly influencer livestream call etc).

Back then wardrobe are still very much in character establishment mode - creating and defining the looks of the characters, and playing into colour theory on an individual level, not necessarily on a partnership level (S2 Bathena would've been treated in this way as they were already intended to be an end game couple so you can play into colour theory much earlier), that comes later. I wouldn't have been able to write costume metas in season 2-3 in the way I do now, because the parallels didn't exist and the ground work hadn't been laid.

Once you get past that intial establishing phase, hat is when you can start to play into the colour theory much more in relation to specific characters and pairings. One of the clearest examples of this is Eddies black shirt green trousers combo that he wears at the loft when having serious conversations with Buck. He first wears it in season 3 at the end of the lawsuit/fightclub arc (3x09), and then we dont see it again until season 5 (5x04) at yet another scene in Bucks loft.

The meaning of the colours in that scene are important sure, it is playing into colour theory, but what is happening visually is that we're subconciously connecting dots and remembering that Eddie has worn this outfit before to talk to Buck - that means it must be a serious conversation, one very much focused on something Buck has done (or hasn't done depending on which way you look at things). Eddie has been in Bucks loft on multiple occasions between those two scenes, and Buck and Eddie have had multiple serious conversations in the intervening episodes as well. so why that scene if its not meant to make us connect dots?

Now on a fundamental level, those two scenes can be read as establishing the close friendship Buck and Eddie share - that they are following through on their s2 promise to have each others backs. its entirely correct to assume that - it is after all what those scenes are establishing. But what it is also doing is laying the ground work for if they want to take Buddie further. we know that the conversations about Buddie have been happening in the writers room and on set for a good long while, and even if you don't yet know if you're going to go in that direction, you would be foolish not to lay the ground work in a subtle way if you can, so that the option is there if you did decide to take that direction.

A show will use what ever tools are at its disposal to lay various foundations that it can then pick and choose to build on as it wants or needs to. It is why we see the pictures in Eddies house moving around, why things on the fridge change (fridge theory is not as out there as some people would have you believe - there is a whole thing coming up on Eddies fridge in reaction to guts and the digestive system - which will very much be playing into his catholic guilt arc!) in Christophers room move around and change - its not just about him being a growing (soon to be teenager) boy, its also about laying foundations for story arcs they might choose to develop down the line and the Buddie groundwork is no different.

Its not about the wardrobe team being shippers of Buddie - its much more about them knowing where a season is headed (in brad strokes, even if they don't have specifics) being really good at their job and now being able to bear the fruits of their labour from earlier seasons - they had been doing the same with buck and Taylor - now they're doing it with Buck and Tommy (and Eddie). It would've been super easy to spin the costuming for Taylor into more positive colours - especially on Buck - in season 5, but they had the bigger picture and knew she wasn't going to remotely be endgame, so they were able to play into that throughout the season. Establishing Tommy as a version of Eddie is building on the Eddie groundwork they laid and using it to make it very clear that we are supposed to see the similarities between them - its steering us as viewers towards thinking 'oh Buck has a type - He's dating someone like his best friend - he should just date his best friend' is all about subtly nudging the audience in the right direction - towards Buddie - its just most people won't pick up on it in a conscious way.

I'm not sure if this makes any sense or if it even answered your ask, but essentially the show is using everything at its disposal to tell the story its telling and they have been laying groundwork that can take things in various directions - they are just choosing to push the buddie agenda to an increasing degree (and I have said groundwork far too many times in this post!!)

Thaks for the great ask 💜💜💜

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

😑😑😑

"Aang is a bad main character because the world has to adapt to his world view. Meanwhile I love Zuko for his brilliant arc that concludes with him making his nation to adapt to his world view now that he is in charge" fuck these people. "Younger generation fixes the problems the old ones created" is only bad as a theme when they don't like the kid in question.

"He has to save Katara, the weak damsel in distress" So we're really just gonna ignore all the times she saved his ass, and how she literally BROUGHT HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD just to pretend the show is sexist?

"He has to pretend the world isn't in agony" Are you high? Aang is constantly pushing himself to do things he doesn't wanna do (go with Zuko willingly, confront Hei Bai, go to the Fire Nation on the solstice, intentionally trigger the Avatar State, cross the serpent's pass despite having permission to go through a safer path, let go of Katara and risk losing her in the battle for Ba Sing Se, and even accepting he'll have to kill Ozai in the finale) just to innocent people won't suffer. For fuck's sake, he has plenty of compassion for the guy that SENT AN ASSASSIN AFTER HIM. Just because he's still holding onto whatever childhood innocence he can, doesn't mean he's blind to the issues around him.

"Zuko's arc is independent from Zuko's" They have a fuck ton of parallels, and entire EPISODES dedicated to said parallels. Zuko himself said chasing Aang fueld his fire - and he said that when he learned a higher form of firebending ALONGSIDE AANG, who had just saved his ass from being burned alive by the dragons by figuring out they were supposed to dance together.

Zuko was so obsessed with Aang he tried to engage in a conversation AFTER AANG'S SOUL LEFT HIS BODY, and he had a weird fever dream where he literally BECAME Aang. We get confirmation in book 3 that Zuko never forgot how Aang mentioned the possibility of them being friends if things were different, and the show ends with them as best friends in an obvious parallel to Roku and Sozin.

You know who had fuck all to do with Zuko's arc though? KATARA, yet these people keep insisting she's totally important to it.

"Episodes centered on Katara and Sokka are good because they ignore Aang" No they don't, he's just not front and center, same for Toph, or Zuko, because that's how FOCUS works.

Also, for all the shit "The Headband" gets for supposedly being "filler", it's shocking to me how people act like "Sokka's Master" was briliant and not at all rushed. It's honestly as irrelevant as "The Great Divide" for me.

"Aang had lots of Deus Ex Machinas" He had one, the lion turtle. The Avatar state is introduced right away, and explained in depth a whole season before the finale, AND it was not that easy to use.

Katara bringing him back from the dead is even less random. In the first episode of season two, we are introduced to the concept of "Aang can still be killed in the Avatar State and that is REALLY bad", to the the character that will kill him and how she'll do it (Azula with her lightining), and to the water of the spirit oasis - which the show goes out of it's way to remind us of before Aang is even dead. That's a fuck ton of foreshadowing and proper narrative set up.

"Deus Ex Machina" does not mean "Protagonist survives major battle" or "Hero defeats a super powerful villain", it means "Day is saved by a thing that had never been mentioned in the story before so the audience could have never guessed what would happen." These people want to talk shit, but only show they have no fucking clue how some REALLY basic storytelling stuff works.

[aa-400]

why i dislike arcane’s characterisation of viktor and his subsequent vgu in league

the tl;dr of it is that they essentially rewrote him into an entirely new character by ridding him of everything that marked him as a zaunite champion and made him interesting and replaced it with “eldritch possession”.

the whole show suffered from it refusing to engage with the zaun—piltover politics (that were the heart of the first season imo) and the same goes for viktor’s character.

the above quote is from legends of runeterra. in his league lore, he's not only disillusioned by piltovan society and academia, but actively pro-zaun (however, it's also important to note that said attitude is in large part due to personal embitterment rather than altruism).

and the funny thing is! his being from the undercity is significant to his character and the overall story in season 1! we see glimpses of his childhood, and he talks about the challenges he's faced trying to establish himself as a zaunite in piltovan academia — not to mention the scene i've screenshotted above, which is very intentionally set in the midst of jayce getting swept up in the "zaunites are dangerous" rhetoric.

but all of that is swept under the rug in season 2 because god forbid we have a villain (because, yes, viktor league of legends is a villain) who is complex and flawed. in league lore, viktor is not only a mirror of jayce, who is written as his piltovan counterpart, but also ekko, who is very much from zaun and stands for the people of zaun. the viktor and ekko parallels are very strong in the game universe but the show is more interested in making jayce and ekko foils to each other.

speaking of ekko parallels, not only does the show drop viktor's politics, but it also removes what connects viktor to one of the core facets of zaun's identity as a region—zaunite innovation, or ingenuity. the whole thing that sets zaun apart from the other regions in runeterra is the way its people take the scrap and toxic waste piltover dumps on them and use it to invent unique ways to thrive (in ways good and bad). viktor's whole thing was using steel and hextech to augment people, in a way that was very true to zaun. all that? thrown in the trash in favour of "the hexcore is eldritch goop magic now".

to reiterate, arcane removed viktor's distinctly zaunite identity. there's very little machine herald left in there.

which brings me to my second issue: the glorious evolution.

for one, the show makes viktor's main motivation for the glorious evolution internalised ableism. while the leg has always been a part of his visual design, trying or wanting to "fix" it has never even been hinted in his original lore.

instead, his transhumanist ideology (while problematic as hell—again, he's a villain!!) develops over time and over several instances, which have to do with things like instincts and emotions rather than disability.

(sure, one could argue that viktor speaks to jayce about human contradiction in that final scene they have together, but given jayce's "You've always wanted to cure what you thought were weaknesses. Your leg. Your disease. But you were never broken, Viktor." the show's messaging is quite clear.)

which finally brings me to his design.

which, yes, fucks. on its own. but not as viktor.

because again, it's not the machine herald from zaun, it's some eldritch being that at at the end of the day could have come from essentially anywhere in runeterra.

because viktor, for all his hextech augmentation, has to be a human underneath.

(screenshot from convergence / a perfect life, a league of legends comic by john o'brian etc)

the mask is a mask for a reason. he wants to escape humanity so badly, but ultimately he can't reach the ideal he himself preaches, and so he hides the parts of him that remain human. it gives him an edge that just isnt there with the new inhuman appearance.

[james-stark-the-writer]

terrible news, i tried to watch the Friendly Space Ninja Riverdale finale video again and i think i've pinpointed my problem with his videos, specifically the Riverdale ones but also just his general approach to media criticism, it's just the terrible wave of "objective criticism" we had on youtube with shitheads like Mauler but framed as just a more subjective opinion and it tries to pretend like that makes it any better, which it doesn't, like it really doesn't, because the underlying assumption that there is only one way to tell any type of story is just such a terrible thing for art but also he just fundamentally doesn't understand what type of art Riverdale is and there's just such a sheer lack of even attempting to treat it as a serious piece of art because the assumption is already that because popular consensus is that it sucks (the critical consensus has actually been consistently fucking great, you could just go look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores or even check out the legacy section on Riverdale's Wikipedia page), that means it automatically is trash, it never gets the opportunity to fight for itself because it's never given the chance to be thought of as a piece of art. it's an insistence that writing is the only way to analyze an audio-visual medium and like sure, writing doesn't "age" the same way other elements might, but audiences do age and change and evolve, media criticism does too, there's a reason people appreciate the Star Wars prequels more now than they ever did at release because we understand different ways of appreciating art now beyond the base insistence that conventionally "good" writing is the only thing to aim for (the prequels are actually well written but let's not get into THAT rn), that doesn't make the prequels "bad," it just means the prequels are different. i find the whole good/bad paradigm pretty suffocating in the first place but this is just so exhausting and i cannot believe that I've just managed to articulate it bc it seems shockingly obvious in retrospect.

also the video in question is just like factually wrong multiple times, he flat out admits he skips a lot of the season but then complains that the season doesn't make sense when he's jumping in at a random point, he complains that the previous seasons are meaningless but it's like has he forgotten that the audience doesn't forget stuff even if the characters have (and they even get their memories back in a thematically important and resonant moment the defines who the characters want to be so it's not really even entirely sound criticism) and that the show is intentionally trying to do interesting parallels and reversals of the stuff we've seen before, it's like commenting on itself because season 7 is a nostalgic look back at what the comics have been and what the show started from, and about the nostalgic feelings of that time and their appeal contrasted with the brutal truths of the reality of the situation, like this is just basic art criticism, i'm not even like trying to defend the season, like i don't even like season 7 that much, i think it's one of the more boring seasons and it ranks towards the middle for me, but like this is not like deep criticism where you're thinking and analyzing a lot, this is just seeing what the plot of the episodes is and what they're trying to communicate, it's just really irritating how fucking exhausting the objective criticism shit is but it's actually even more grating when you don't pretend to be superior about it because it makes it seem like you're not even bold enough to stand by your opinions and actually embrace the implication present in the shit you are saying, like it's just cowardice, honestly. but anyway, glad i figured it out, because it was honestly irritating me that i couldn't articulate why i didn't like those videos beyond just them being wrong about Riverdale on like a factual level and him just not understanding what it's trying to say as a piece of art.

the point of this isn't to say that i think he's making these arguments in bad faith or anything, i do think these are genuinely opinions he holds, and they are valid opinions for him to hold, i'm not saying they're invalid, you can prefer one aspect of a piece of media over other aspects because it's more important to you, that's okay, i'm just saying they're misinformed takes and generally display a shocking lack of imagination and respect for art and no desire to broaden his horizons.

anyway, if you actually want to understand the appeal of Riverdale, go through the Riverdale tag on my blog for my own analysis (but here's somewhere to get started), or if you want videos, the Super Eyepatchwolf video is pretty good, i still disagree with it a lot but at least the man tries to understand why people like the show and he even gets some part of the appeal, and we are going to get 4 5-hour videos from Lily Simpson over the next few months so i'm looking forward to those, bc Lily generally tends to at least understand the appeal of the stuff she talks about, and the title of the first video ("the captivating madness of Riverdale" [though i don't love the use of "madness"]) is already enough to make me feel like somebody kinda gets it and hopefully it'll be more coherent actual art analysis.