#their story is just a very interesting subversion of power and abuse while also

[skinnymeanfaggot]

i really like vanjude because you have this big older man whos the leader of a powerful organization, and then his tiny younger man who works under him, but the abuse Comes from the younger guy. and with as much power over jude van technically has with his age and position, its just subverted. because jude betrays him and has the power over him and holds him prisoner, and also vangarde genuinely is mentally only like 15

[rustystars]

wait why didn't you like kinds of kindness

the simple answer is i am just not a yorgos guy.

longer answer is that I think the movie has a very weird & off-putting view of women. like. okay. spoilers ahead obviously.

like okay. minor issues. aesthetically i'm not a fan of the randomness. like, I get that as an overarching theme life IS random & often meaningless, and having bizarre segues or abrupt scene changes can represent that, but very little of it landed for me? the main scene i'm talking about is the black & white dog montage. it was funny, but completely unrelated. it didn't add to the story or signify any meaning, it was just there. we go from story to videos of dogs fucking. the Emma Stone dance scene did a better job at making sense but it was also very out of place. the abrupt cut to & the dancing itself is absurd, which connects to how absurd that moment of her life is; she has just been raped & ousted from the cult, but at the same time she just found her life's goal. it's interesting conceptually but not very interesting to watch. like the movie had some incredibly atmospheric moments, but the music completely took me out of it.

i also didn't think the stories felt connected? part one features a bizarre yet realistic situation. part two & three feature magical realism. there isn't really a bridge or a reason given as to why fantasy elements are added to two of the three parts & not all three. it makes the first part feel very separated from the rest.

in terms of my serious issues, the portrayal of women was like... discomforting. I don't know how to describe it other than that. all three parts of the movie are very much meditations on forms of power, abuse, and the extremes people go to for human connection. both men & women are controlled & control each other, but there's also a clear sense that men have more social power than women, and the movie doesn't really... say anything about that? like there is no greater point or meaning to it.

in part one, Jesse Plemons (i'm gonna be real with you I don't remember any of the character names & I'm not going to google it.) is controlled by Willem Dafoe, but he also has clear power over the women in his life (he forcibly sterilizes Hong Chau, he disrespects Margaret Qualley, & he manipulates Emma Stone). act one is the most cohesive part & his abuse of women makes sense. the professional & personal abuse he receives makes him feel powerless, so he tries to regain agency by hurting & exerting power over a group with less social power than him (women). it's interesting.

in act two Jesse Plemons plays the abusive cop & husband to Emma Stone's possibly fake wife. this part was my least favorite. he is an extreme authority figure & Emma Stone mutilates herself to fit his perfect wife fantasy; she wears clothes that make her uncomfortable, restricts her diet, (possibly) forces a miscarriage, and kills herself. Jesse Plemons is ostensibly "right" in his abuse; once the false self dies, the real and better wife is saved, but there's nothing really SAID about it. a story doesn't need a moral or a clear message for the audience to understand abuse is bad, but the story still seems to stall. again, a woman is abused, and life continues. it can be realistic to life while also feeling pointless. nothing new is discussed & nothing is interesting or subversive about it.

in part three, Emma Stone is part of a cult looking for a magical healer. this one focuses on the role (often religious) belief & personal values play in control, power, and love. the cult encourages their members to remain "pure" by consuming only the leaders' bodily fluids (help.) and Emma Stone is named contaminated after being raped by her husband, despite cleaning out the semen. She is explicitly exposed by Jesse Plemons, who (implicitly) also exposes another woman in the cult. both the people put through the purification ritual are women; so while implicitly men can be contaminated by fucking, only women are shown to be contaminated. her rape is not taken seriously and is still tallied against her. she attempts to rejoin by kidnapping Margaret Qualley and accidentally kills her. this point is complicated (as one of the leaders, she has more power + privilege), but there's also the aspect that Hong Chau's motherhood is celebrated implicitly because her child is a boy, and Emma Stone's is not, because her child is a girl.

yes, there are greater themes to the movie, but in terms of women, nothing new is said. all three parts show women in suffering positions. & even though most of these women have agency (Margaret Qualley in part one, Emma Stone in part two, Hong Chau in part three) it overall seems to portray their suffering as inevitable in all power struggles. as a whole the movie just kept reminding me of other movies/shows/books where this topic (or like, any topic) was portrayed in a more interesting way.

another big part of my discomfort with how women are treated specifically surrounded nudity & sex. I am not anti-nudity in movies and I don't think nudity needs to be "necessary" in order to happen. sex & the body are HUGE components in conversations about power considering they're huge components of real life. at the same time, it wasn't really like. comforting? I'm trying to think of a better word. movies do not need to comfort or coddle the viewer in order to be good/meaningful/interesting, but at the same time, the use of women's bodies was bizarre.

the main thing is the female nudity to male nudity ratio. the context that we see breasts is either during sex (part two) or in terms of a person's overall value (part three). in part three women's breasts are a direct signifier of how they can be used, with the explanation that there is a specific perfect size/appearance. these women's value as a person depend, to the cult, on their breasts. comparatively men aren't shown nude from the waist above often at all, and while we do see Willem Dafoe's dick, it's in a much different context. we see him nude before he fucks someone; he is a leader of the cult and in a position of power, and he controls their sex. Margaret Qualley meanwhile completely devoid of agency while nude. her naked body is compared to a dog's and dragged across the floor, associating the male body with control & the female body with degradation.

i feel like I sound like Freud. anyway. the portrayal of sex is also weird. men fuck (and are in control), and women get fucked (and lose control). the most clear-cut example of this is when Emma Stone is raped by her husband in part three and shamed for it, but it's present throughout all three parts. sex is a means of control, and while men are controlled, none of them are explicitly fucked onscreen in the same way women are. Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe's sexual relationship is entirely implicit; Plemons gets fucked, but only off screen. Margaret Qualley and Emma Stone's consensual sex scenes are meanwhile explicit and long. Similarly, while his kisses with Dafoe relate to Dafoe's power over him, they are much less explicit and dominating as when Dafoe and Emma Stone make out in act three. When Jesse Plemons asks to watch the sex tape in part two, even though Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie are reluctant, he is allowed to. When Emma Stone proposes a foursome, she is immediately shut down. he is given sexual agency and she is not. we're told that Hong Chau is sexually in power in part three as a cult leader but again, her power is not shown onscreen.

to sum it up: onscreen, men are only ever sexually in control, and women are only ever sexually submissive, or otherwise not able to express sexuality as adequately. even the car crashes show a pattern of men having more power than women. Jesse Plemons is able to kill a man on purpose, but Emma Stone's killing of Margaret Qualley happens entirely on accident.

this is more of a personal gripe, but it also bothered me how in these conversations about systemic abuses of power, race is not a factor at all. characters leverage their power over others as men, cops, and authority figures, but not necessarily as white men, cops, and authority figures, even though racism and white beauty standards are present in almost every aspect of American life & American movies.

ANYWAY. tldr I think the movie is ultimately less respectful of women than men. and also there was too much dialogue

[rndyounghowze]

The Theatre Revolution Will Not Be Televised…Yet. Part One

When you think about the stories of the BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other marginalized communities what comes to mind? Do you think of stories placing them as main characters or love interests or people just living their lives? Or do you picture them as people who are marginalized, being victimized or brutalized? The stories about the joys of people who have been marginalized are just as important if not more so than stories about our struggles and focusing just on our struggles can often victimize us and abuse the people you're trying to help.

There was a time when plays like this were necessary. The verbatim plays, the AIDS plays, and the docudramas of the 80s and 90s all created revolutions because detailing the real, unvarnished truth about what was going on in these communities was like a breath of fresh air. Torch Song Trilogy, Normal Heart, and The Laramie Project led us through the death and agony of LGBTQ community during the AIDS epidemic or at the hands of bigots. The Vagina Monologues and The Janes had the audacity to say the word “vagina” and “uterus” out loud while also taking us through accounts of violence against women or the horror seen performing illegal abortions.  Fires In The Mirror went on tour of colleges across the US because the raw verbatim account of the Castle Heights riots impacted the Black community where they lived. Theatre has an advantage over TV. Theatre can't be turned off. Plays travel. They are subversive because if you can't see them eventually you can read them in the privacy of your bedroom. Especially in the 90’s the theatre was seen as “those artsy fartsy hippies over there” so possibly parents or authority figures let them slide. The raw and unvarnished truth was valuable for a community that would never hear their name in the media. 

The story that immediately came to Ricky’s mind was about their professor Chris Hardin who was their gateway to the LGBTQIA+ community. Back then when they were taking his LGBTQ Theatre History class the only thing they knew about trans people were the horrible depictions that we had in the media at the time (trans people are just “boys in dresses” ready to trick cis men into having sex with them). Chris opened the very first class with the story about the first time that he saw The Laramie Project. He recalled crying in the theater for an hour after the show had ended, gripping the seat in front of him unable to move. There were apparently others in the house doing the same thing. People stuck around and just talked and talked. This was the first time that he felt a community around him and felt safe enough to be out. In 2010 when he said this he was the age that Ricky is now. So we can imagine a 25 year old Chris in a theatre, most likely just out of undergrad and going to a grad program, watching the show that would change the course of his life. This was just the show that he needed to see at the time.

One cannot deny the power of these shows. Ricky recalls watching the Torch Song Trilogy in the class and sobbing. There were so many moments that moved them, letting them know that love between you and your partner could be deep and meaningful even if it was the same sex. They were a recovering Southern Baptist at the time so they lived under a rock for most of their life. They had never seen anyone talking about this before. Dana could not relate in the slightest. They were watching Rocky Horror and To Wong Foo when they were 11. They had childhood dreams about starting their own gender called “Gender X”. One of the ways we bonded while dating was watching all of the movies and TV shows that the adults in Ricky’s life were trying to keep from them. Dana also had to move them past movies that glorified the white saviors . Even though Ricky has Black family members on both sides of their family and was named after a slave that freed himself the amount of history they knew about Black misrepresentation was minimal (trust me you do NOT want a transcript of the Tyler Perry debates). Now one of our favorite things to talk about is pop culture and its effects on society. One of the things that we noticed was that there was a massive fight in the mid 90's trying to get Black, and Queer representation on regular network television. When we think about the representation we saw on TV like Buffy or Roseanne or Fresh Prince and Family Matters or the movies we described, the “Good stuff” was still locked behind the gatekeepers of our parents. If your family didn't want you to see them they could turn off the TV or tell you to go to bed. 

Sadly Chris never got to see the world that we inherited. Chris died in 2012 before marriage equality was passed and before we had better representation in the media. He has never died in Ricky’s heart and Ricky thinks about him every day. However those artists that sat and watched those plays  were the very same artists that created the media that the next generation watched. They created a media revolution that we didn't even notice was happening until we watched a clip from Blue's Clues last year. Queer and Black representation started to become ever present in children’s media (or as Dana and Ricky call it TV). Their existence was not contested. They were just there and this leads us to next week where we have a simple request for creators of new Black and Queer plays. 

[wetalkedaboutthisshinji]

Musings about Amy that kinda wrote themselves

¨(MAJOR WARD SPOILERS) 

I have a lot of complex feelings and thoughts about Amy Dallon as The Red Queen in Ward but a scene that I come back to is that part of the so-called 2nd Shin Crisis (when Cryptid and her show off their otaku side with the NGE references) where she becomes competent for exactly 0.10 seconds and lands one (1) attack that defeats all the hero teams there and a part of me wants to call it badass but besides the awkwardness of applauding Amy for anything its utterly fascinating how she immediately falls apart and is essentially finally convinced to come to jail and give up her attempt at being a Big Villain and its just...such an insane subversion of how arcs are supposed to work? I sincerely felt more could be done to her (but the Ward climax was such a chaotic hecatomb I could say the same about lots of characters) but Im fascinated by the fact that Wildbow completely refused to make her badass and cool in any way and the second he’s about to give us “Amy unleashed” the plotline essentialy concludes (except for the Last Conversation). I went in Ward fully expecting Amy to be a villain and the whole thing to devolve into a sister vs sister fight fest. I was expecting Vi vs Jynx from Arcane, Felisin vs Tavore from Malazan...but Amy is essentially as much of a fuck-up as a villain as she was as a hero and the true danger and weight she poses for the narrative is the very personal, justified fear that Victoria has of her and on a grander scale her irresponsable use of her powers...both of which are fueled in her denial mentality. And IT MAKES SENSE, if Amy could grow up as a person she wouldn’t be the person she is, that’s why there CANT be an Amy Unleashed --”giving in to her anger” would mean accepting she is not the uwu little wictim she needs to see herself as. There’s also something to be said in avoiding making us cheer for a character established as an abuser (but thats a complex topic on itself). Overall I think the thing with Ward is that it just isn’t as “fun” as Worm and I don’t always agree with all the choices made but I think that giving us the Dallon Sister vs Sister extravaganza would have been badass but theres something to be said on about ending such a difficult and uncomfortable plotline with such a...hollow feeling? No, yay, Victoria had her revenge or Wow, Finally Amy is kiling everyone but instead a lingering question with no answer. Also another thing that makes Ward “less fun” is that the vilains are less...cool? Like, the villains here are much less cool edgy nihiliztz and more hypocrites and selfish people and when we see vilains that are “sociopaths” they are shown to truly be struggling with their mental health in a way that is not glamorous. There’s a constant attempt at making all villains some sort of anti-example of the themes the story is playing for, which on a meta-level is very different to the way Worm was all about moral greyness. Ward is the mirror image of Worm and in so it’s really interesting how it tries to reconstruct the super hero genre. And to do so you make the villains true bad guys. But “being a bad guy” is now less about the label of villain and more in truly being a negative example of how to “be” a human being. And I think Amy is a great example of that approach and while I do wish she’d done “more” in the climax after 2 LONG books worth of build-up (again --chaotic Ward ending)...I’m actually okay with how the resolution is handled, all things considered. 

[annyankers]

i will forever think that angel the series would be more interesting if they allowed angel to not be an obvious hero figure. if they didn’t try to make him the knight on the steed like in judgment or claim his heart is pure like in season 1.

if buffy is a subversion of the tropes in horror and action that make the woman the victim then ats should be deconstructing the man/monster dichotomy and tropes surrounding men in horror and noir. angel should be a much more introspective/thoughtful show and character. both because angel the character is older and has different issues and because it pulls in the mundane grimness of noir in to its world and tone.

angel the character should be personally dealing with issues around abuse and grooming-- both as the abused and the abuser-- or addiction since they talk about treating him in his writing like an alcoholic in s1 and treat his old behavior at times like one, or about being vulnerable, emotionality and toxic masculinity.

things like the angel/angelus split should be used to explore the difference between the angel that he’s trying to become -- a better man who’s more open and honest emotionally, who protects, who loves and is loved-- and the man he was -- a toxic, vile sadist, the very picture of all of man’s worst traits-- and then how little there really is standing between those two men and what that means for angel as a person/character.

he’s a vampire as angel or angelus and that means many of those same instincts exist in him at all times. he’s a monster from day 1 so then what does the difference between angel and angelus really mean? where do you draw the line between a man and a monster? 

part of the reason i use benjamin wadsworth, specifically in his role as marcus in deadly class, as a recast for angel is because i feel the writing around marcus’ character works very well as like, a template for what i feel makes sense for angel the show and the character.

you first meet marcus and he’s homeless, he’s an addict, he has nothing. nothing except a reputation for committing an atrocity that gets him into an assassin school and comical amounts of issues. he’s deeply traumatized by his life, emotionally closed off while also being deeply empathetic and desperate for love and affection and desperate for a purpose in life. there’s whole scenes that are just marcus having heavy introspective voice overs and he continually defends being emotionally vulnerable as a man. he has lines like “sadness is just rage turned inwards”, he thinks about this shit a lot. he hates bullies but he’s also kinda fucking manipulative and shitty at times. over the course of the series he does some fucked up shit and has to deal with it, literally and mentally. i think all of this has some thematic crossover with what would make a compelling story with angel in the lead.

i do also think that having angel look younger makes sense with him starting as the love interest in a teen drama but it also helps to highlight the power imbalance between him and Darla and add to his internal conflict. he’s old enough looking to be seen as an adult, but not visually old enough to be truly respected like one. he has to constantly validate his own worth which is exhausting or rely on his old angelus cred when that’s applicable which is toxic to his struggle to break from that identity.

I don’t necessarily think that it’s like, mandatory though, i just think it adds. to me, the major thing should be deconstructing tropes around men and monsters. let angel be a piece of shit, use more of his irish catholic heritage and really fucking dig in there and into his struggle against the sick urges that make him the monster angelus. let gunn play the role of the classic hero, something black dudes don’t really get to do much. stop doing the weird mystic pregnancy shit and also that billy episode is terrible cut that out. but more to the point of the post just like..... let angel explore his own internal life and don’t be scared of what’s gonna come out of it when you do.

[googledocsdyke]

Do you have any thoughts/recommended texts for Cas analysis? I genuinely love the dean gender studies and I just wanna know what people might apply to Cas.

yes absolutely!! while dean studies is my first love i also deeply love cas analysis (casnalysis?) and wanna strive to do more of it. here’s some stuff off the top of my head:

1. gender, sexuality, heavenly embodiment

this is much more theological and less psychological than dean’s whole Deal because there’s so much fascinating stuff around how the angels in general experience express and conceptualise gender (@autisticandroids has a good post about angel gender & lily sunder has some regrets) but for cas in particular there’s this fascinating kind of collective fandom agreement (which i DO also agree with) that cas’ own gender kind of is gay man, that he actively chose gay manhood, but also that he’s kind of..... lacking the Insane Genderishness that dean exhibits at all times, even though he actively chose to engage in male gendering and became so comfortable housed Within Jimmy that he, as some post i saw the other day that i can’t find anymore said, “became his own body” when jimmy died. 

like on the one hand there’s an almost-canonical transness to the whole process but it also never feels fully written-into because 1) the supernatural writers for all their insanity are sometimes very boring and *most* of the time only feel interested in narratively expressing angels As Their Vessels anyways and just like leaving convenient spaces around these questions (boldest thing they ever did was hot girl cas which i WISH i had the range to unpack) 2) there’s a vague inevitabilist shrug to the whole thing since they obviously weren’t gonna recast misha collins (though they HAVE tried to get rid of him) and 3) something amorphous about cas’ entire..... personhood? makes him Empty Of Gender as a contrast to dean’s Full Of Gender (i believe it was @deanwinchestergender who said this) and like is it just the juxtaposition to dean/jensen’s whole insane Deal? or something else? 

like he actively chooses the terms of his own embodiment and yet narratively it feels like a shrug. and we’re all like “well obviously even though he’s a celestial being he was always a gay man” and like WHY. i love it idk idk much to think about! and yeah just in general the theological questions of possession and cas genuinely Becoming a man as he iterates himself consciously towards humanity it almost feels like. by doing the most boring things possible with his gender they made it interesting? idk if that makes sense.

2. discipline, free will, metanarratives

cas is like a tool (“i am not a hammer, as you say”) held in constant discipline and surveillance by the system that enmeshes him and it’s really, really fascinating to watch the way the angels hold each other to conformity. especially pre-god they kind of produce each other as foucauldian disciplinary subjects (which i posted about here) in perpetual visibility through angel radio, generating their own and each other’s conformity rather than being directly ruled through like a single centralised source of power. only the spectre of a god. and obviously cas’ whole thing is that he has ALWAYS disobeyed and the narrative affords him this psychological interiority never given to the foucauldian subject, an internal will and desire for freedom in a way that fits more with the liberal subject (super roughly and not with the same pro-capitalist implications but he has this internal drive for self-liberation. 

and that’s also where the metanarrative comes in ofc! i think it was @dykecas who said that cas is a real person written by people who hate him, and there’s this crack in the narrative (mirroring the crack in his chassis) where cas gets in, over and over, despite all the order imposed by the show’s authorfathergod. like we’ve all seen the analysis about how it was Never supposed to be this way they DID try to fire misha collins in 2012 and yet this gay man literally cannot be stopped! i think actually his appearance in scoobynatural is a neat little distillation of this — he drops into this animated world originally with a singular purpose (Save Sam And Dean) the same way he dropped into lazarus rising with a single 3-episode arc (Save Dean). huge hammer behaviour. his “utility” diminishes within the narrative (he finds that he can’t fly in the scooby doo universe) and so he is no longer a tool/means to an end that salvation moves Through. and in the process (and huge creds to @lesbianyuugi for this) he does something ENTIRELY unrelated to his original cas-as-tool aim, and learns, like, the meaning of laughter from shaggy and scooby. WHICH brings me onto the third point

3. love, queer kinship, family-making

HE’S GAY AND HE’S A DAD! i feel like a lot of tumblr throws around the term “found family” in a very flat and tropey way (which is fine it’s cute and fun no matter what!) but like . GOD there’s so much specific stuff going on here. like the way that cas (unintentionally) obliterates the midwestern white christian nuclear family (made incarnate in the novaks) which like could be uniformly portrayed as an act of deep malice and villainy but instead grows to serve as a surrogate (if imperfect/complex, but DEEPLY loving) father figure for the gay daughter who has now escaped that nuclear family/seen it destroyed depending on how you read it? like he remasters the entire concept of fatherhood and it’s a very interesting (if DEEPLY) unintentional subversion of the homewrecking non-nuclear gay trope. cas is so good because his character arc doesn’t say “look, gay people can be normal and have perfect settled families just like you” it says “gay people DON’T have normal settled families actually and they are full of love anyways! or Because of the abnormalcy itself!) 

to cite ziz lesbianyuugi again he DOES queer fatherhood in his parenting of jack particularly because it really is one of the ONLY parent-child relationships in the show that breaks the incessant cycle of abuse and control and cold indifference perpetuated by the authorfathergod (a cycle reified in 15x20 lol). like god’s treatment of cas and his siblings mirrors john’s treatment of sam and dean (particularly dean) mirrors victor’s treatment of krissy and her crew mirrors dean’s later treatment of jack. there is a CONSTANT reiteration of the story of authorfathergod (often a father tightly entwined in biological kinship) treating a child as a mechanism or a tool or a means to an end. and cas looks at ALL that he has suffered and all that he is ever known and chooses constantly to reject it with every piece of love he expresses for his child. and not to sound like the kind of academic people make fun of on twitter but there is an INHERENT queerness to that. gay love will pierce through [the veil of death/the thick silence of abuse/the mechanism of godly control/hegemonic american masculinity] and save the day

anyways here are some very haphazard recs on everything above for further reading:

angels in america (tony kushner)

histrionics of the pulpit: trans tonalities of religious enthusiasm

the public universal friend: religious enthusiasm in revolutionary america

discipline and punish (michel foucault)

friendship as a way of life (michel foucault)

the genesis of blame (recommended by @pietacastiel who has GREAT theology content in general

all about love (bell hooks)

the chapter “when hated characters talk back” in anti-fandom: dislike and hate in the digital age (is actually explicitly about cas)

also cannot recommend enough following the ppl i tagged above!! most of the unlinked stuff is available through http://libgen.li/ and bookshop is a good alternative to amazon if ur american and want physical copies

[niniane17]

This is an answer to @lives4lovesworld 's question on my Stannis vs Dany's meta:

(Sorry for the screenshot, but I'm on my phone with no access to the laptop)

In my experience, that happens very often with Daenerys. There is a huge, huge tendency in the fandom to take things away from her and give them to other characters. I've lost the count of how many times I saw metas/speculations/fanfictions which are basically "what if X had Dany's plotline?".

Setting aside the (depressingly widespread) misogyny that motivates this tendency, I think it all comes down to the fact that, whether we like it or not, Daenerys is the hero of the story. She is tied to most of ASOIAF's themes, if not all: war vs peace, ruling vs conquering, hard power vs soft power, the intersection of gender and class, free will vs biological destiny, abusive family dynamics, politics, money and, of course, magic and prophecies.

(Lol that looks like a laundry list of dark AO3 tags)

Most of the time they don't even realize they are giving Dany's plotline to other characters: they just want their faves or even their OC/self-inserts to be special, and to be special in the ASOIAF world means to be more like Daenerys, to have the same things she does. And, you know, I understand it. Not everyone has to like the things I do! If some readers think that it would be a better story if, say, Arya, Young Griff or Robert's hypothetical trueborn son were Azor Ahai, more power to them.

What I don't understand is instisting that Daenerys' story line is irrelevant at best or evil at worst, and that either way she is bound to die to make things smoother for other characters. This is like writing a "Neville Longbottom is the Boy Who Lived AU" but claiming that, in canon, Harry is not the Boy who Lived or he is secretly Voldemort. It just doesn't make sense to me.

As for Stannis vs Daenerys specifically, I think it's because a lot of people identify with Stannis and his awkwardness, and want him to win. In his own way, Stannis is also a subversion, given that he's a good Macbeth who sincerely thinks he's doing the best for Westeros and who doesn't push his claim out of ambition but rather a sense of duty. I do feel personal reasons of disappointment towards his brother do play a role in all this as well (see whole "I am the messiah of a foreign religion because this woman says so" thing. I mean, that is definitely an emotional decision), but he certainly isn't a greedy, ambitious bastard. In fact, he is right when he says he is the legitimate heir of the Baratheon line.

That is bound to reasonate with readers, and create interest, for multiple reasons. I suspect that a non-insignificant part of his fandom just want to see the Macbeth trope subverted, which I absolutely get. I myself consider Daenerys as the subversion of a very (in)famous trope: the pyromaniac madwoman, a concept so prevalent that is embodied by the books' main female villain.

Ultimately, though, I believe Stannis is a sympathetic but straightforward example of the tragic hero turned villain. There is a lot of beauty in this idea, however, and I suspect this is why they give his story line to Daenerys. This way, she gets to be the protagonist AND the villain, which I admit it's better than making her discount Cersei or discount Aerys.

While I don't recommend reading ASOIAF solely in terms of "which trope is going to be subverted" (this is how you get crazy stuff like Political!Jon), I do think that, when it comes to the Dany-Stannis conflict, it's indeed a question of whose story is a subversion and why, at least partially. In my opinion, Daenerys represents something far more important, and her story needs to end in a non-tragic way to have some meaning at all. Not because "women need role models in fantasy!" (and what's wrong with that, anyway? So many men take Aragorn or Luke Skywalker as role models and nobody makes fun of them) but because narratively, thematically, even artistically it has to.

What would be ASOIAF if Daenerys, the fire of Ice and Fire, ended up dying a tragic villain, consumed by madness? A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In my opinion, this is the perfect description of Game of Thrones' finale.

[gwynsplainer]

On The Grinning Man and the De-Politicization of L'Homme Qui Rit (a Spontaneous Essay)

Since I watched The Grinning Man I’ve been meaning to write a post comparing it to The Man Who Laughs but I have a lot of opinions and analysis I wanted to do so I have been putting it off for ages. So here goes! If I were to make a post where I explain everything the musical changes it would definitely go over the word limit, so I’ll mostly stick to the thematic. Let me know if that’s a post you’d like to see, though!

Ultimately, The Grinning Man isn’t really an adaptation of the Man Who Laughs. It keeps some of the major plot beats (a disfigured young man with a mysterious past raised by a man and his wolf to perform to make a living alongside the blind girl he rescued from the snow, restored to his aristocratic past by chance after their show is seen by Lord David and Duchess Josiana, and the interference of the scheming Barkilphedro…. well, that’s just about it). The problem I had with the show, however, wasn’t the plot points not syncing up, it was the thematic inconsistency with the book. By replacing the book’s antagonistic act—the existence of a privileged ruling class—with the actions of one or two individuals from the lower class, transforming the societal tragedy into a revenge plot, and reducing the pain of dehumanization and abuse to the pain of a physical wound, The Grinning Man is a sanitized, thematically weak failure to adapt The Man Who Laughs.

I think the main change is related to the reason I posit the book never made it in the English-speaking world. The musical was made in England, the setting of the book which was so critical of its monarchy, it’s aristocracy, and the failings of its society in ways that really haven’t been remedied so far. It might be a bit of a jump to assume this is connected, but I have evidence. They refer to it as a place somewhat like our own, but change King James to King Clarence, and Queen Anne to Angelica. Obviously, the events of the book are fictional, and it was a weird move for Hugo to implicate real historical figures as responsible for the torture of a child, but it clearly served a purpose in his political criticism that the creative team made a choice to erase. They didn’t just change the names, though, they replaced the responsibility completely. In the book, Gwynplaine’s disfigurement—I will be referring to him as Gwynplaine because I think the musical calling him Grinpayne was an incredibly stupid and cruel choice—was done to him very deliberately, with malice aforethought, at the order of the king. The king represents the oppression of the privileged, and having the fault be all Barkilphédro loses a lot thematically. The antagonism of the rich is replaced by the cruelty of an upwardly mobile poor man (Barkilphédro), and the complicity of another poor man.

The other “villain” of the original story is the way that Gwynplaine is treated. I think for 1869, this was a very ahead-of-its-time approach to disability, which almost resembles the contemporary understanding of the Social Model of disability. (Sidenote: I can’t argue on Déa’s behalf. Hugo really dropped the ball with her. I’m going to take a moment to shout out the musical for the strength and agency they gave Déa.) The way the public treats Gwynplaine was kind of absent from the show. I thought it was a very interesting and potentially good choice to have the audience enter the role of Gwynplaine’s audience (the first they see of him is onstage, performing as the Grinning Man) rather than the role of the reader (where we first see him as a child, fleeing a storm). If done right, this could have explored the story’s theme of our tendency to place our empathy on hold in order to be distracted and feel good, eventually returning to critique the audience’s complicity in Gwynplaine’s treatment. However, since Grinpayne’s suffering is primarily based in the angst caused by his missing past and the physical pain of his wound (long-healed into a network of scars in the book) [a quick side-note: I think it was refreshing to see chronic pain appear in media, you almost never see that, but I wish it wasn’t in place of the depth of the original story], the audience does not have to confront their role in his pain. They hardly play one. Instead, it is Barkilphédro, the singular villain, who is responsible for Grinpayne’s suffering. Absolving the audience and the systems of power which put us comfortably in our seats to watch the show of pain and misery by relegating responsibility to one character, the audience gets to go home feeling good.

If you want to stretch, the villain of the Grinning Man could be two people and not one. It doesn’t really matter, since it still comes back to individual fault, not even the individual fault of a person of high status, but one or two poor people. Musical!Ursus is an infinitely shittier person than his literary counterpart. In the book, Gwynplaine is still forced to perform spectacles that show off his appearance, but they’re a lot less personal and a lot less retraumatizing. In the musical, they randomly decided that not only would the role of the rich in the suffering of the poor be minimized, but also it would be poor people that hurt Grinpayne the most. Musical!Ursus idly allows a boy to be mutilated and then takes him in and forces him to perform a sanitized version of his own trauma while trying to convince him that he just needs to move on. In the book, he is much kinder. Their show, Chaos Vanquished, also allows him to show off as an acrobat and a singer, along with Déa, whose blindness isn’t exploited for the show at all. He performs because he needs to for them all to survive. He lives a complex life like real people do, of misery and joy. He’s not obsessed with “descanting on his own deformity” (dark shoutout to William Shakespeare for that little…infuriating line from Richard III), but rather thoughtfully aware of what it means. He deeply feels the reality of how he is seen and treated. Gwynplaine understands that he was hurt by the people who discarded him for looking different and for being poor, and he fucking goes off about it in the Parliament Confrontation scene (more to come on this). It is not a lesson he has to learn but a lesson he has to teach.

Grinpayne, on the other hand, spends his days in agony over his inability to recall who disfigured him, and his burning need to seek revenge. To me, this feels more than a little reminiscent of the trope of the Search for a Cure which is so pervasive in media portrayals of disability, in which disabled characters are able to think of nothing but how terribly wrong their lives went upon becoming disabled and plan out how they might rectify this. Grinpayne wants to avenge his mutilation. Gwynplaine wants to fix society. Sure, he decides to take the high road and not do this, and his learning is a valuable part of the musical’s story, but I think there’s something so awesome about how the book shows a disabled man who understands his life better than any abled mentor-philosophers who try to tell him how to feel. Nor is Gwynplaine fixed by Déa or vice versa, they merely find solace and strength in each other’s company and solidarity. The musical uses a lot of language about love making their bodies whole which feels off-base to me.

I must also note how deeply subversive the book was for making him actually happy: despite the pain he feels, he is able to enjoy his life in the company and solidarity he finds with Déa and takes pride in his ability to provide for her. The assumption that he should want to change his lot in life is not only directly addressed, but also stated outright as a failure of the audience: “You may think that had the offer been made to him to remove his deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he would have refused it emphatically…Without his rictus… Déa would perhaps not have had bread every day”

He has a found family that he loves and that loves him. I thought having him come from a loving ~Noble~ family that meant more to him than Ursus did rather than having Ursus, a poor old man, be the most he had of a family in all his memory and having Déa end up being Ursus’ biological daughter really undercut the found family aspect of the book in a disappointing way.

Most important to me was the fundamental change that came from the removal of the Parliament Confrontation scene, on both the themes of the show and the character of Gwynplaine. When Gwyn’s heritage is revealed and his peerage is restored to him, he gets the opportunity to confront society’s problems in the House of Parliament. When Gwynplaine arrives in the House of Parliament, the Peers of England are voting on what inordinate sum to allow as income to the husband of the Queen. The Peers expect any patriotic member of their ranks to blithely agree to this vote: in essence, it is a courtesy. Having grown up in extreme poverty, Gwynplaine is outraged by the pettiness of this vote and votes no. The Peers, shocked by this transgression, allow him to take the stand and explain himself. In this scene, Gwynplaine brilliantly and profoundly confronts the evils of society. He shows the Peers their own shame, recounting how in his darkest times a “pauper nourished him” while a “king mutilated him.” Even though he says nothing remotely funny, he is received with howling laughter. This scene does a really good job framing disability as a problem of a corrupt, compassionless society rather than something wrong with the disabled individual (again, see the Social Model of disability, which is obviously flawed, but does a good job recognizing society that denies access, understanding and compassion—the kind not built on pity—as a central problem faced by disabled communities). It is the central moment of Hugo’s story thematically, which calls out the injustices in a system and forces the reader to reckon with it.

It is so radical and interesting and full that Gwynplaine is as brilliant and aware as he is. He sees himself as a part of a system of cruelty and seeks justice for it. He is an empathic, sharp-minded person who seeks to make things better not just for himself and his family, but for all who suffer as he did at the hands of Kings. Grinpayne’s rallying cry is “I will find and kill the man who crucified my face.” He later gets wise to the nature of life and abandons this, but in that he never actually gets to control his own relationship to his life. When I took a class about disability in the media one of the things that seemed to stand out to me most is that disabled people should be treated as the experts on their own experiences, which Gwynplaine is. Again, for a book written in 1869 that is radical. Grinpayne is soothed into understanding by the memory of his (rich) mother’s kindness.

I’ll give one more point of credit. I loved that there was a happy ending. But maybe that’s just me. The cast was stellar, and the puppetry was magnificent. I wanted to like the show so badly, but I just couldn’t get behind what it did to the story I loved.

[ignitification]

at this point d.ku saving shiggy would just feel hollow. of all these 10 solo d.ku chapters he hasn't had any emotional or mental development/understanding. Like d.ku just isn't where HK's writing shines. Not giving him any tragic backstory may have seemed like good subversion at the start but rn my emotional attachment to his growth/lack of it is just at an all time low. And yass way to make another pro hero look infantile due to MC-armour. Istg as soon as any character interacts with either en.dv or d.ku they take negative infinity in power, potential and likeability. Even the vestiges went down on the likeable scale. Also, these chapters were deserved more by literally any other character.

I'd begin addressing your last point anon, and by saying that while on one hand I agree with you, on the other I really understand that on some level (except physical) these chapters are needed for two reasons. First of all, because BNHA has picked up at ‘intense pace’ which translates into a lot of stuff happening all at once (It took us 285 chapters for Bakugou to admit that he cares about Izuku, and then we got in the span of 20 chapters Touya’s reveal, Mr. Compress face reveal, Mirio is back, BJ is alive, Todoroki’s backstory, Tartarus breakout, the name of the 1st OfA User, Izuku dropping out of UA, Overhaul and Lady N - just to name a few), which consequently means that we are fast approaching the final battle (excluding the Traitor affair, the grounds for the last arc are all already in place) of AfO against Midoriya, which bring me to the second point being Izuku, as also confirmed by himself, would not be able to save Shigaraki and also destroy AfO in the shape he is (or rather was, when leaving the hospital), meaning that he needs an upgrade of his abilities, and he needs it quickly. These chapters, unfortunately, are exactly that: a boring build-up needed in order to show us Izuku’s progress in managing OfA. Therefore, while I do agree that it would be nice to have other characters (from which we haven’t heard from in ages, like Toga and Bakugou), I also sadly understand why exactly we are at a halt in terms of ‘story progress’. And this is mainly due, as you pointed out, to the fact that Izuku is definitely not where HK’s writing shines, not in the slightest. 

Izuku’s main flaw is that he does lack some sort of baseline growth which in his case should translate into less hero worshipping and more concentration into his rightful mission of wanting to change the status quo (by saving the villain). HK planted the seed, and at some point it feels like he forgot to water it, and while still holding the principle (on some level, as we saw in his fight with Muscular), it still feels very superficial for something that should be the main goal and more interesting lapel of the manga? I totally understand how someone would feel dejected when faced with this characterisation, especially if the character in question is the Main Character, the story is ending and he STILL appeals to the only thing which caused the entire problem. 

As for me personally, I am still very much attached to Izuku and the Vestiges (because nowadays they represent an interesting development in the Quirk area, in a scientific and symbolic aspect, which I’d like to be explained and explored more, but let’s be realistic - this is a shounen and fans eat this content like famished lions just because it is content, with no critical thinking whatsoever), but I do admit that sometimes I feel frustrated because my main issue with BNHA is how is actually treats its victims and the way people feel attached to toxic traditions (and in particular Izuku’s attachment to the notions of hero as represented by AM, and his will to copy him in the slightest detail). This is even more evident for Endeavour, who seems a catalysis for bad decisions and just a cluster of condoning actions which would not be accepted if done by anyone else, and a lot of crap justifications about themes like violence and abuse, and the implicit lack of consequences each of these actions have in the manga (because preoccupied with more important things, sure - but I think a line would be enough).

Nonetheless, yeah - Izuku should have shown some kind of advancement (not Quirk-wise), but instead in a way to contrast Gran Torino’s view and the example set by older heroes, but instead we get a team up with those same heroes, with Izuku as a bait (which, very much is a problem for both him because he still disregards himself, and the heroes who accept this condition voluntarily) and now that they get separated and Izuku is fighting the possibly only threat (besides the remaining villain at large - and because I really cannot define Lady Nagant as a villain, more like an anti-hero) and he is still winning? Where is the realisation that maybe, even with his Quirk - what Izuku is missing is actually the experience of the pain and grief of this world, which he should have acquired since he appositely left UA? I would agree that until Izuku reaches a level in which he can admit to himself that heroes are not what this world needs, but instead a more inclusive and less-Quirk based society (and the fun fact here, is that he himself is a victim of that and instead he just lets it happen because he is selfless that way) which does not allow loopholes in terms of bad behaviour and where villains are not villains by default when they spur on a bad action, but instead can be guided on a different path - since no such injustices exist in the first place, it would feel very superficial and forced for him to save Shigaraki. It would be seen as a duty, he is forcing himself to make because he consider himself a hero, instead of the contrary and that he is a hero because he decided to save Shigaraki. I hope this can change in the next few weeks, and a good first step would be to have Izuku being overpowered by Lady Nagant - finally showing Izuku that weaknesses are real and that he is still human, and that there is no concrete rule by which someone could be judged as weak or strong (especially if we talk Quirks), and then finally brought forward to AfO, so we can see how he reacts to a. Overhaul; b. AfO; c. ShigarAfO. 

I do not want to hope too much, but at the same time there are reasons for which I am still holding a candle for that. I hope this helps believing, even a little, that hope for a better narrative is still possible. Thank you for the question and thank you for reading.

[wonda-cat]

You mentioned rewriting that one analysis post on Tommy’s revival stream and I’d really look forward to it! I never got to read the full og post and that’s the only place I saw these takes. Especially the one about the afterlife being too depressing. It’s not even just about Tommy, the implication that even if every character is safe and happy by the end, this is their inevitable fate is messed up. It’s not “a neat subversion” it’s just depressing and doesn’t add anything.

Hey, anon!

I sorta decided to not rewrite it? I feel a bit differently about the essay in the end, although I still believe in most of my points. I’m also just not nearly as passionate about it as I was when I wrote it (I finished it in a single sitting, which was... interesting.) However, yes, the afterlife stuff still bothers me just the same, as well as the odd changes to Wilbur’s characterization... post mortem.

But—just for you, anon—here’s the entire meta-analysis essay anyway, with some minor edits to the stuff I don’t agree with anymore!

My Many Narrative Issues with Tommyinnit’s Revival Stream

I want to preface this by saying that I dearly love the Dream SMP and understand it isn’t exactly comparable to other mediums like TV and film. With this being the case, most criticism against it is generally in bad faith or strange in foundation. Complaining about streamers for bad acting is the best example that comes to mind. 

These aren’t professional actors. Most have never acted in this sort of setting, or even at all. Quite a few have admitted to never roleplaying before. Which is why it’s warranted to praise Tommy, Dream, Wilbur, Ranboo, and others when they deliver stellar performances. The same applies to criticism of music choice, dialogue delivery, focus, tone, etc. 

However, one such category I cannot overlook is in regards to its writing. The writing of a story is its entire foundation. It encompasses many things—conflict choice, character development, themes, and morals. The author creates the blueprints for the architect, who then expresses the story with light, sound, color, pacing, and music. It is in its execution that we see if this connection is made or broken. 

The reason I find poor writing mostly inexcusable is because it is one of the most available skills to practice and perfect. I don’t mean to say that it’s easy, I mean to say it is something anyone can attempt to cultivate. Whether they do it well or not depends on their methods and experience. If anyone can self-publish a novel and be criticized online for its quality—and even compared to the works of Mark Twain—then I find critiquing the writing of the Dream SMP to be perfectly reasonable. 

However, since the Dream SMP script is a set of loose bullet points, tearing apart dialogue and scene continuity—which is nearly all improv—is rather useless. It doesn’t exactly have a clear focus as the plot plays out. The characters talk in circles until they hit the story beat required, and then they move onto the next. Thus, when criticizing it, one should generally critique grand events and narrative-specific shifts, more so than small-scale character interactions. 

Which brings me to my main point: The broad narrative choices taken in Tommyinnit’s most recent livestream, ‘Am I dead?’ may lead to disastrous writing pitfalls in the future. 

I’ll be outlining each of my issues below, in hopes of creating a better understanding as to why I feel this way. 

This might become quite lengthy, so please bear with me for a bit.

Tommy’s relationship to Wilbur has flipped. This change is jarring and seems out of character.

Tommy and Wilbur’s friendship is rather complicated. While Wilbur does care for Tommy immensely, especially during the L’Manburg Revolution and the Election Arc, his mental spiral during exile put a massive strain on their relationship as a whole. Wilbur brushed off Tommy’s feelings and wants, while clinging to him and pushing everyone else away. He was simultaneously distant and suffocating. 

Tommy, on the other hand, has an unclear view of his mentor. Since the beginning, and even long after Wilbur’s death, Tommy held him in especially high regard. He saw him as a brother-figure and a wise leader. He followed what he said and did everything he could to impress him. Yet, Wilbur still hurt him while the two were together in exile. 

When speaking of him, Tommy tends to flip infrequently between remembering Wilbur the way he was before his mental decline and thinking of him as a monster. Both of these images conflict with each other, but they weren’t nearly as extreme as what Tommy described Wilbur as when he was revived from death. The fear Tommy displays to Wilbur is beyond intense—it feels as if the audience may have missed a month’s worth of character development. 

This can make sense, especially since it was stated that he’d spent what felt like two months in the void. However, this shift is still deeply at odds with Tommy’s previous impressions of Wilbur, which is both disheartening and confusing. The fact that Tommy would agree to stay with Dream—his abuser and murderer—over his past mentor is simply head-reeling. It paints a very different picture of Wilbur’s character, somewhat conforming to the fandom’s ableist impression of him—the idea that Wilbur is insane and irredeemable, and always will be. 

It also ignores Dream being the driving factor in Wilbur’s downfall, as well as the double-bind deal with Dream which required him to push the button, no matter the outcome. Others have pointed out that Tommy may be lying to get Dream to bring Wilbur back, and there’s compelling evidence for that. For one, Tommy and Wilbur’s conversation seemed uncomfortable, but it was certainly nothing like Tommy implied. (Unless this fear comes from something Wilbur said off-screen.) 

Tommy also begged Dream to not bring him back multiple times over, which he should know would make Dream even more tempted to, simply because he likes seeing Tommy in pain. Tommy is also a known unreliable narrator. He may be making Wilbur out to be worse than he is by accident (even still, I’d argue this is a bit of a stretch.) 

However, there are some issues with this theory. Tommy offered himself as payment to Dream if he chose to let Wilbur rest. This is a deal Tommy knows Dream is extremely unlikely to refuse. Tommy is what Dream has coveted all this time. If Tommy genuinely wanted Wilbur back, he would not offer this. This sort of compromise is Tommy’s greatest nightmare—something he would only do in response to his friends being threatened or his home being destroyed. 

To add, Tommy is not great at lying. Unless he was taught by Wilbur for those two months* in the afterlife, there’s no chance Tommy would be this good at it. Thirdly, Tommy is terrible under pressure. He uses humor to cope. When he can’t, he cries and shouts and spills his heart out. While cornered, Tommy will tell the truth about anything, especially if Dream casually debates killing him again, just for fun. 

For now, it’s too early to tell how the relationship shift will play out. In the grand scheme of things, this issue is rather minor.

Season three’s writing is needlessly bleak. The portrayal of the afterlife is a nightmare. There is no rest, not even in death.

I adore the Dream SMP storyline in its entirety. I believe the first season is fantastic, and while the second season has some narrative clarity issues, I enjoyed it just as much. Although, I would argue season one had a more concrete understanding of its Hope-Conflict balance. 

To briefly explain, the Hope in stories are its ‘highs’ and good moments. These appear when a character the audience is rooting for is narratively rewarded. They happen during character building in the text—it’s the downtime and peace that allows for connection and relatability. It’s a moment for the viewer to breathe easy. 

The other half is Conflict, an obstacle in the story that gets in the way of the main characters’ goals, beliefs, and motives. These are the ��lows.’ They give the narrative focus and weight. They make the highs feel even higher. They establish consequences and force the characters in the story to change in order to adapt and overcome them. 

I bring up the Hope-Conflict balance because a traditional hero’s journey would have an appropriate amount of both. Their highs and lows are generally equalized, as the name suggests. However, this balance has been awkwardly skewed in the latter half of season two and in the current plot of season three. To clarify, it is perfectly reasonable, and even common, for some stories to tip the scale more to one side. 

But a common mistake for amateur writers is to create their stories as either hopelessly dark to cause the audience continuous distress for the sake of distress, or to keep everything entirely conflict-free for most of the plot. What do these both have in common? They each make the story boring and predictable. 

Season three has taken this concept and thrown a monstrously heavy weight onto the Conflict side and flipped the scale so hard it has crashed through the ceiling. The viewers are hardly given time to find any joy in Tommy’s character, as he’s thrown into yet another abusive situation, just barely after his first narrative reward. The world is painted as relentlessly violent and traumatic. 

Every person Tommy meets is morally grey, unhinged, or out to hurt him. Everything most of the characters love is taken from them by those in positions of power. Ranboo cannot even grieve properly because it scars his face. Puffy, Sam, Ranboo, and Tubbo all blame themselves for what happened to Tommy. 

The audience watches lore stream after lore stream with the same depressing tone (with the exception of Tubbo’s, but I assume that’s unintentional.) Tommy is revived after being brutally beaten to death by his abuser, surrounded by all of his greatest fears. The afterlife is revealed to be akin to inescapable torture. It’s a colorless void that wraps the individual like fabric. 

Time moves thirty times slower within. There’s nothing—nothing but the voices of others who’ve passed on before him. Dying in a world already devoid of happiness takes the characters to a place worse than hell. When a narrative delivers unfair suffering to the entire cast without a moment of joy to speak of, the story will feel simultaneously overwhelming and pointless. 

Why watch characters suffer when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel? What happiness could they strive for when we know they’ll never get to keep it? How can I be satisfied with a good ending, if I know that an afterlife too terrible to name is what awaits them, truly, at the end of their story? Death isn’t even a white void that offers rest—it is eternal torment. 

Obviously, it isn’t a good message to send by making the afterlife seem like a quiet, perfect place or an escape from pain. But making it an unspeakable anguish which awaits, assumedly, every character who will die in the future? I deeply hope Tommy was only being an extremely unreliable narrator. 

More likely, I hope the place Tommy was taken to was a Limbo of sorts, not an end-all-be-all destination for everyone.

The degree of Tommy’s narrative punishment continues to escalate, to an almost absurd degree.

Tommy is one of the most tragic characters to exist in the storyline. He was sent into war at a young age and experienced two traumatic events during it. He was exiled by the newly elected leader and witnessed his mentor Wilbur spiral and break down with paranoia. Tubbo is executed publicly in front of him. When expressing rightful anger at the person who murdered him, he’s beaten nearly to death and never receives an apology. 

Schlatt dies right in front of Tommy, after his initial refusal to hurt the ex-president. His brother-figure and mentor is killed in assisted suicide on the same day his nation is blown up. His best friend exiles him from his home for the second time. He routinely self-sacrifices to protect his country and those who live there. His most treasured possessions were taken from him and he was called selfish for trying to retrieve them (although his methods were self-destructive and volatile.) 

He was pushed to the brink of suicide after being relentlessly abused and isolated in his exile. He was horrified when he thought he was responsible for drowning Fundy. After making an objectively good decision to stand by his old friends and change for the better, his country was obliterated by the man he once idolized, his father-figure, and his abuser. 

He was left scattered and without purpose for many days. Then he fights against Dream and loses, while also reliving his trauma. He watches Tubbo almost die at the hands of someone he once thought was his friend. He doesn’t tell a single person about what happened to him in exile. The day he tries to sever his connection to Dream and heal, he’s trapped with him for a week, surrounded by everything that terrifies him. 

He threatens to kill himself, speaking about his own life as if it were an object—something to hold over Dream’s head. He blames himself for everything bad that’s ever happened to L’Manburg and his friends—internalizing a mentality as a scapegoat for everyone around him. He is forced into the role of ‘hero’ despite the title being unfair and distressing to him.

As if that weren’t enough, he’s then beaten to death by his abuser and spends what feels like two months in an afterlife that is worse than hell. When he returns, his senses are excessively heightened. Dream can cause him excruciating pain, just by pinching him. He can send Tommy into an instant panic attack, just by raising his voice. 

The punishment Tommy’s character receives is a thousand times worse than everyone he has ever met, or ever will meet. And it shows no signs of stopping, as Dream now has control over Tommy’s very mortality. Tommy now fears the slightest damage and feels as if he’s losing his best friend all over again. He is also forced into a position where he has to kill Dream out of necessity, to protect everyone he cares about.

Characters need fitting punishments in relation to their actions. Not always, but in order to be satisfying? Yes, they do. It is preferred that a main character deal with unfair situations and difficult conflicts, but this is borderline torture p*rn. Putting Tommy in these distressing and abusive situations on repeat and punishing him for doing objectively moral or healthy things is exhausting to watch. 

To quickly add, I find the general insinuation of Tommy going to hell distasteful, especially considering the contents of his storyline. I know this may be hard to believe, but Tommy is one of the most moral characters in the plot, besides Puffy and Ghostbur. He’s also the only character, followed by Ranboo, to recognize that they can be wrong and make mistakes. He changed himself in order to heal and be a better person. He was in the process of paying people back for the things he’d stolen. 

He’s learned to be hard-working and less violent through the guidance of Sam. He has apologized to everyone he’s ever hurt (with the exception of Jack Manifold, because that man is allergic to communication.) He puts himself in harm's way to protect others. He doesn’t set out to purposely hurt anyone. He goes out of his way to make connections with people and maintain them, even if others don’t reciprocate. 

He’s hopelessly optimistic, despite his outwardly bitter façade. He loved so much and put meaning into the smallest things. The thought that a person like him—a suicide and abuse survivor—would go to hell after being beaten to death by the man who took everything from him; it makes me sick to my stomach. 

The only thing more morbid than Tommy’s afterlife being different than everyone else’s, is the concept that everyone will end up in this same eternal torture, no matter what they do. Take your pick: Tommy is sentenced to anguish until the end of time for no reason, or everyone will receive the same disturbing ending, regardless of their actions.

The narrative weight of Ranboo’s character is potentially out the window.

For the past few months, I’ve watched all of Ranboo’s lore streams faithfully, curious to see what role he would play in the future. His ‘hallucinations’ of Dream seemed to be sowing the seeds for a plot that has Ranboo taking the fall for every single insidious thing Dream has done. It would also be a tragic parallel to Tommy’s trial. 

Ranboo being convinced he was the one who blew up the community house, when Dream himself admitted to doing it, was one of the bigger indicators for me. This is just one of many other unexplained occurrences. Dream seemed to be making an effort to trigger and control Ranboo, especially after Sapnap’s prison visit. It appeared, from the way he went about this, that Dream had some grand use for Ranboo as part of his plan to be freed from Pandora’s Vault. 

However, after Tommy’s stream, the way Dream explains himself makes it seem like there was no plan besides seeing if the book worked on people. And if he didn’t after all, then what was Ranboo for? Was Ranboo unimportant? Was Ranboo just some weirdo who happened to phase out when seeing smiley faces and imagined conversations that may or may not have happened? 

I bring this up more as a worry, and much less so as an active problem in the narrative. They haven’t actually thrown Ranboo to the way-side or written themselves into a corner yet. In future streams, this could very easily be explained away or developed as more information is revealed. 

Only time will tell.

The potential for Wilbur’s future development and importance to the plot is unfeasible.

I feel as if I am the only person on earth who doesn’t want Wilbur Soot or Schlatt revived. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is not a dislike for these characters. I especially adore Wilbur, as he’s one of my all-time favorites. I don’t want either of them resurrected because their stories have already been told. They each had a fitting conclusion that ended their involvement perfectly. 

Bringing Wilbur back would especially cheapen the impact of the War of the 16th. It’s the end of a man who was brought to the absolute edge and out of desperation, shame, and self-hatred, he destroyed himself alongside his creation. Bringing him back would leave the climax of the previous story hollow. My biggest issue, however, is that a lack of story importance would likely follow his return. 

The only real impact I’d like to see is through a healing arc with Tommy, an apology to Fundy, or a confrontation with Phil/Niki. But that’s really all the potential I can realistically see. While I don’t doubt Wilbur as an agent of chaos, able to create plot out of thin air; what is he going to do now? His country is gone, his friends and family are scattered about, and his mission from the 16th is already accomplished. 

What is a well-educated, charismatic politician supposed to do in a world already broken and without nations? Read poetry to himself and cry evilly? However, this is working off the assumption that Wilbur would be returning as his old self. 

If Wilbur is resurrected as a ‘villain’ of sorts, then what? He’s not good at fighting in the slightest. He would have no materials. There are no real allies he can make, other than the arctic group. On top of that, there are already more than enough villains to last a lifetime. 

We don’t need any more, I promise. Quackity seems to already be shaping up as another antagonist, alongside Sam’s slip into darker and darker shades of moral ambiguity. We also have Philza and Techno, which are already overkill. But then we have Dream who, despite being in a prison, has the ability of selective revival. This is mercilessly overpowered, especially if he makes many allies. The dude could just bring his dead friends back so they can keep fighting forever. 

Then there’s Jack Manifold and the Crimson followers; Antfrost, Bad, and Punz. That’s not even including characters who are refusing to get involved. How are Tommy, Tubbo, and Puffy expected to do literally anything to fight back?

Dream’s experiment on Tommy implies he had no backup plan to begin with. This makes his character seem both short-sighted and foolish.

When Tommy woke up after being brought back to life, Dream sounded surprised that the revival worked at all. This instantly shatters the perception that Dream was highly intelligent and thought ahead. With just a few lines of dialogue, it’s implied that Dream killed Tommy, unsure of if the resurrection would even be possible on humans. 

Which, to risk something that important, seems unbelievably stupid. Dream needs Tommy, from his perspective. Tommy is his ‘toy,’ the one who makes everything fun. If he lost him and couldn’t get him back, what then? Oh well, everything Dream was doing was all for nothing, I guess. 

Why not attempt this experiment on literally anyone else first? Like Sapnap or Bad or, hell, even Ranboo. I suppose it could be that, as soon as Dream got the book, he experimented with it after the 16th. This appears to be insinuated with Friend and Hendry’s revival, although this is uncertain. But even then, he was still unsure of the book’s effect on a human being.

Also, this means, hypothetically, Dream’s entire plan of escape hinged on the experiment working, to begin with, and also on bringing back Wilbur if it somehow did. I find this even more ridiculous. Why Wilbur? That man couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag, let alone get through the traps in Pandora’s Vault. Even if he is intelligent after years* in the afterlife, that’s also a strange assumption. 

How do people learn things in the void? Where do they even get this knowledge? I’d honestly argue Techno is a far more competent choice than Wilbur. And even if Dream did bring him back and tell him he owed him his life, what’s to stop Wilbur from just killing him permanently? Or killing himself, continuously? 

No way would Wilbur want to be controlled by anyone, ever. The dude would sooner fuck off into the mountains and become a nomad than help a neon green bodysuit cosplay as Light Yagami.

Dream’s discussion about Sam implies that he wasn't playing any part in Dream’s plan, making Sam appear entirely incompetent and neglectful of Tommy.

Dream talked about Sam in a way that seems detached and unaffiliated. He also mentioned him being broken up about Tommy’s fate and not being aware he’s still alive. Dream not being partnered with, or not using Sam in his plan leaves many plot holes. I’ll go through each one. The initial incident was an explosion, coming from the roof of Pandora’s Vault. This did not affect the Redstone mechanism for the doors or dispensers. 

Meaning, Sam could’ve had Tommy leave the way that was expected for visitors after he investigated and found no issues. This likely couldn’t have been done in less than a day, but it would be better than an entire week. If Tommy was required to stay for longer, due to protocol, he could’ve gotten Tommy out and then placed him in one of the minor cells for the remainder of the time. 

Also, no one else lost a canon life for leaving via the splash potion of harming and returning outside the maximum-security cell; why would Tommy? To add, Sam being uninvolved means that the explosion could have only been caused by Ranboo or Foolish. That, or it was placed long before and timed for the moment Tommy entered the main cell. (I’m going to ignore how ludicrous it is that someone would know the exact time Tommy would’ve entered the room with Dream.) 

If Ranboo was the person behind the detonation, this implies he was necessary for Dream to kill Tommy to test the book. But that makes it even stranger. If this was Dream’s goal all along, why not kill Tommy the instant he was trapped with him? It makes no sense for him to wait so long. 

Sam is also directly at fault for not letting Tommy out, even after the week was up. There was no reason not to. He already knew there were no issues with the prison at that point. Although, to be fair to Sam, his character may have been paranoid and checking everything more than necessary, just in case. But this still isn’t a good excuse for him ignoring protocol in this one instance, and yet, not in any of the others. 

All of these plot holes or inconsistencies would be removed if it was revealed that Dream was blackmailing Sam in some way, or Sam had been working with him since the get-go. That Sam was the person who set off the explosion in the first place to trap Tommy inside. It would also explain Sam’s refusal to let Tommy out and by keeping him in there for longer than necessary. 

This can also coexist with Sam’s attachment and care for Tommy. He probably wasn’t told about Dream’s plan to test the book and genuinely believed Dream wouldn’t hurt him. On top of that, Dream is known to be a pathological liar, so his statements about Ranboo and Sam could be entire fabrications. 

Who knows?

The Book of Revival invalidates death entirely. The narrative now lacks both tension and consequence.

Another way the Dream SMP differs from other storytelling media is in the way it goes about its character deaths. In a TV show, for example, there will be characters who die just because, or when it’s important to the plot. However, it seems as if the Dream SMP is hesitant to commit to killing its characters. And there are many reasons for that. 

The most important one being, killing someone’s character excludes them from the story and some of their livelihoods depend on them regularly streaming on the server. There is also the issue of the cast becoming extremely sparse if characters keep dying. Typically, in stories, when you kill a character, you should introduce another. 

This keeps the cast from dwindling as the storyline goes on. This means the writers would have to find new streamers to join, who will develop their own characters and relationships with the plot’s continued momentum. This can be stressful and daunting to those who may be newly added in the future. 

Keeping this in mind, the Book of Revival is annoying from a writer’s perspective. When death is no longer an issue for a story hinged on its characters’ mortality, then what do you have as a consequence anymore? We’ve explored every kind under the sun; from abuse, to betrayal, to loss, to destruction. 

In stories, traditionally, death is a finality. It’s a conclusion. Whether it’s good or not depends on the character’s actions, its build-up, and the event’s execution. Without this lingering sense of danger, tension evaporates from the story. 

Why should I care if Tommy loses in a fight to someone, if he’ll just come back a day later? Why should I care about what happened to Wilbur, if he just returns as if nothing happened? The answer is simple: I won’t. I will no longer care if Tubbo or Ranboo or Sam die in the story, because the idea of revival even being a possible outcome leaves me unenthused and uncaring. 

The Dream SMP likes to flirt with death. It teases the demise of its main characters many, many times. More so Tommy’s than anyone else’s. Wilbur’s failed resurrection, which had unforeseen and unfortunate outcomes, is now strange in comparison to Tommy’s, which happened without a hitch. 

To be fair, we actually don’t see how many attempts it took. But here’s the problem; Dream could do it without the book being physically present. He’s trapped in a prison with nothing on him, meaning he doesn’t need any materials either. It’s also implied he could do this as many times as he feels, for anyone he wants. This would be exceedingly overpowered, if not for one thing—Dream himself is mortal (at least, I fucking hope he’s mortal.) 

If someone kills him one last time, that knowledge is gone forever. And I’m glad they’ve established at least some way for Tommy to win. Because at this point, I was losing faith. 

There is also the bare minimum establishment that Dream can refuse to bring back those he doesn’t care for. He can also use it as a shield, holding this power over other people. If Dream is gone, death is permanent. But isn’t that how death is supposed to be, anyway? 

What a bleak premise—the afterlife is pure eternal torture while life is cheapened by a lack of consequences.

Conclusion

All this to say, I am cautiously optimistic for the future. I hope dearly that every single one of these can be disproven or developed in the coming livestreams. Obviously, there’s not enough information to really determine what the end result will be, or how everything will fall into place. 

Every time I have theorized about the story, it has done something completely different and pleasantly surprised me. I want this trend to continue. 

Surprise me again—I’ll be here to see where it goes.

[sketch-shepherd]

30 Day Ginga Challenge, but I do it all at once

Yeah fuck it, like I said in my previous post every time I try to do this new Ginga challenge I fuck up and never finish it. I think I only ever got past like Day 6 on this list but this is the only way I’m gonna finish it now lol. 

As I said before... ik this isn’t the write way to do a Ginga challenge but what the hell. Prompt list created by @jersokoi

Also these are just my opinions, please don’t take them personally or as the gospel. If you’re upset by me liking/not liking something then feel free to do your own version of this challenge. It literally costs you nothing. 

This is gonna be looooong so here we go 

Day 1: Favorite Character Kyoushiro, excluding The Last Wars and Densetsu Noah. I know Ginga characters are rarely consistent and almost all of them end up being ruined in some way at some point but I still love Kyoushiro for his character in his debut and most parts of GDW, especially the Russian arc. You guys know me and my soft spot for “jerk with a heart of gold” characters, and Kyoushiro is just a really layered character when it comes to his backstory and his role in the story as a leader who protects abused pups. 

Unfortunately like many I’m not fond of the way Teru’s dad’s redemption was handled and how Kyoushiro agreed with Weed straight up bullying Teru into having to forgive his abusive father for no other reason than “He’s your dad no matter how bad he was to you!” yada yada (something we rewrote/removed in our dub if that counts). And I’m not even gonna get started on his Jyoushiro persona in GDN. 

But Kyoushiro still holds a special place in my heart. I stanned him a lot as a kid because I literally saw myself in him back then, and honestly still might do now. Other runner-ups for this spot include Riki, Orion, and Tesshin.   Day 2: Favorite Pack/Clan The Koga clan! I know I’m just being a basic bitch with this one but I honestly don’t think this prompt needs a lot of thought put into it. I love the breed designs, the major characters like Kurojaki and Tesshin, their backstory, the entire Iga/Koga arc pretty much, and how they go from minor villains in GNG to the Ohu army’s allies in GDW and onwards. They have such a cool aesthetic and they’re all just very memorable. They’re fun to design and have a lot of interesting story potential when it comes to making Koga OC’s lol. 

My second favorite would probably be the Russian dogs. 

Day 3: Favorite Leader/Platoon Leader Riki, no contest. He’s such a simple character who’s a fatherly figure to everyone including Gin, despite not even remembering him as his son for most of the series. He’s compassionate, determined, and has such a warm and understanding personality and only does the best for his soldiers and his home. There’s a reason he’s such an iconic character.

Day 4: Favorite Villain Kaibutsu, another character I’ve talked a lot about before just for how sympathetic he is and how he’s a subversion of most giant monster villains. While his tragic backstory and broken friendship with Jerome does seem a bit more one-sided than I felt it did before, I can understand the intent to try and make him a sympathetic but also irredeemable villain, and he delivers that pretty well when it comes to his story and his scare factor. 

My other favorite villains include Kurojaki and Masamune. 

Day 5: Emotional Scene Oh boy this is a hard one. For a scene that isn’t a death scene... I really love Ben and Cross’ conversation in GNG episode 18 before he went off to fight Sniper. The music, Ben and Cross’ exchange where neither of them knew if Ben was going to die, and the raw ass quote “I’m not going out there to die; I’m going their for the sake of my honor”, such a powerful scene between a parting husband and wife. 

Other emotional scenes I considered putting here are Tesshin delivering Gin’s speech in GDW episode 15 and Gin and Daisuke parting ways in GNG episode 8 and 21 

Day 6: Favorite Scene Again, this is just one of many but I’ll have to go with the extremely iconic scene of Akame burning down the Iga Manor. In concept a lot of people have found it hard to take seriously since the entire feud hangs on dogs trying to retrieve century-old messages they can’t even read for their human masters that already died out long ago. But the weight and the characterization just somehow makes it work in execution, and it still manages to be an emotional albeit campy scene. 

Day 7: Character you wish had more screentime Koshiro, the infamous member of the Ginga Hall of Mysteriously Disappeared Characters. Sucks that his last moments were him getting fucking beaten up by his asshole dad. Also Nobutora and Harutora who barely even have any LINES for all their appearances. They’re literally Kurotora’s sons too for fuck’s sake, why is it only Kagetora who has to have all the fun?  Day 8: Favorite Parent I already mentioned Riki so I’ll put down my second favorite parental character in Ginga- Cross! She’s a simple doting mom and reasonable authority figure as well as a surrogate parent to other puppies, and she can go from sweet and nurturing to sassy as hell. What’s not to love? 

My other favorite parents/parental figures would include GB, Moss, Jerome, Lydia, Izou, and Terumune Day 9: Least favorite Parent Fuckin WEED. The reason I put him over more obvious characters such as Kamakiri or Teru’s dad is because those guys are fucking villains so no surprise comes out of them being abusive shitty parents. Weed on the other hand is supposed to be one of the protagonists for fuck’s sake, yet his only kid he gives a damn about his Sirius, he straight-up lied and said that Kamakiri aka the invader who killed his own fellow soldier’s father was actually a brave soldier who died nobly just to make Akakama aka another villain happy, and everyone just blindly stands by and does nothing as he’s beating the shit out and banishing Orion for wanting to help Izou avenge his family that Masamune fucking slaughtered. This. fucker. literally. picked a goddamn serial killer over his own SON.  Yeah... doesn’t help that as much as I love Gin all he ever did was constantly enable Weed’s behavior. You can say that he didn’t have Riki to show him how to be a good parent but it’s not like there weren’t other fathers in the Ohu army like Ben or Moss who could have showed Gin the ropes. Also fuck Joe, couldn’t talk about shitty Ginga parents without bringing him up too Day 10: Favorite Human Daisuke, though tbh not like I had much competition for this one lmao. I know the fandom likes to ignore him because “hnnn human boring give us more doggos” or because he takes away the focus from Gin in the first eight episodes of the anime. I beg to differ, since I think he has decent characterization and development, along with an important role as Gin’s childhood friend and helper towards the dogs in GDW and the later manga series. 

Hidetoshi is too much of a hypocrite for me to like, going from John’s hunting partner to mercilessly wanting to shoot him and having no qualms about killing Daisuke’s childhood dog friend either. Gohei... he’s neither my favorite character NOR do I hate him AS much as some other people do, I just blame it on Gohei being a very culturally outdated character even though he has his moments. But Daisuke is by far the most consistent human character, and he’s a genuinely likable and helpful person Day 11: Least Favorite Character *DEEP BREATH* Fuck, you guys know I’m obviously going to say Sirius so let’s keep my explanation for him brief. He’s obnoxiously preachy, thoughtless, selfish, and has an ego and mesiah/superiority complex bigger than fucking Akakabuto himself. Literally all the reasons people hate Weed’s overly merciful nature but fucking WORSE. Let’s see, he puts all the fucking blame on the Ohu army and makes THEM the bad guys for rightfully wanting to axe off his boyfriend Monsoon, whom may I reiterate, is a fucking psychopath who tortures and eats helpless puppies, has repeatedly injured and emotionally abused Bob his whole fucking life, literally wanted the Ohu army to farm their own fellow dogs to be his food, and shows ZERO REMORSE for any of this shit and ONLY ever shows kindness towards Sirius and none of the fucking dogs he’s actually hurt. 

And once again... we are supposed to see Sirius as some fucking hero where all he did was screw everyone over and tell them that he’s right and they’re all wrong. Even back in GDWO he was just annoying and whiny half the time and preferred hanging around with the Kamakiri brothers over his own family. Little blueberry shitstain deserved to die and I have no sympathy for his self righteous ass. 

Other characters I can’t fucking stand also include Monsoon, Yukimura, Koyuki, Weed, Shion, Jyoushiro, and the Aka’ari. 

Day 12: Most heroic moment hhhhhh this was hard to pick from ngl, so I’m gonna talk about the top three that came to mind. First one would probably be GB tricking Hougen’s soldiers in GDW episode 19 by pretending to be one of them to the point where he found out where they were keeping Gin. For a character that started off as cowardly and insecure, this was a huge step in GB’s character development and a great way to show GB making good use of himself in battle in an unexpected way.

Second would be Reika tricking Hougen and throwing him into the river in GDW episode 24, for all the obvious reasons. It’s a rare empowering moment for a Ginga female character in the series who tries to put up a fight even though she doesn’t succeed. Reika already has a more interesting personality and useful role than most of the other boring females and this moment wasn’t an asspull at making her more empowering in ONE scene and then just instantly forgetting about it by having her constantly cry over shit afterwards COUGHKOYUKICOUGH so this was also a very heroic turning point for her character

Third that comes to mind is the iconic moment of Riki protecting a newborn Gin form Akakabuto in literally the first episode. I know everything Riki does could be considered heroic but it’d be wrong of me not to talk about this scene in particular. We have a dad putting his life on the line for his son he literally JUST MET I’m not sure what more you could ask for really

Day 13: Favorite Quote ”I’M WEED, THE SON OF GIN! FUCK YOU KAIBUTSU, IT ENDS HERE!” from episode 3 of the GDW English fandub, next. 

Nah jk. I do have a few favorite quotes from both the mangas and the animes. I’m not gonna write them out word for word since the translation constantly changes. Instead I’m just gonna write out the scenes where they were stated and explain the context so here goes:  - Kurojaki’s last words bragging about mission to his deceased masters before he commits suicide  - Ben and Cross’ conversation before Ben goes off to fight Sniper, as previously stated - Riki’s “that blood won’t be ours” speech to the Ohu army in episode 17 - Gohei tearfully refusing to give Riki an audience during his death, and also praising the dogs for accomplishing what the humans couldn’t - Kyoushiro telling Weed to let out his feelings and cry in the GDW manga - Tesshin delivering Gin’s speech at the hot springs in the GDW anime - Gin praising Maxim and Lydia for instead choosing to fight for Ohu in the Russian arc - Orion also telling Yamabiko it’s okay to cry - also every fucking quote in The First Wars. Because TFW is awesome.  Day 14: Favorite Character Design That’s a bit of a hard one but after some thinking I decided on Fuji, Lenny, Lucy, Bellatrix, and Kamakiri’s mate solely because they’re some of the few female characters I can name don’t have boring white coats and hyper-feminine features like most of the other female Ginga characters do (Even as much as I love Cross as a character it was obvious a saluki was chosen for her breed for her long girly hair. And Lydia despite also being my favorite female character in the entire Ginga franchise has such a BLAND design that makes her stick out like a sore thumb, you can barely tell she’s supposed to be a German Shepherd among the other normal-looking GSD in the Russian army), though it seems like the other default color when females aren’t white is brown/red like Chako and Reika lmao. 

I just like the down-to-earth designs for Fuji, Lenny, and Lucy for how they resemble their normal breeds, Bellatrix for being the only female tora-ge in the series even though Yoshi doesn’t do jack with her character (I only count her First Wars counterpart as canon), and Kamakiri’s mate for having such an unusual mutt design you can’t tell the breed of. 

I also enjoy Aram’s absolute nightmare fuel design, as well as Kaibutsu’s.  Day 15: Favorite Breed Design Once again, the Kogas lmao. Just because of how weird and funky they look. There’s just so many different ways to design them since they are a fictional breed; even in canon no two (non-background) Kogas look alike when you take other manga like Densetsu Akame into account. 

I also like the designs of the huskies- the Mutsu brothers, Kisaragi’s sons, all of them have such varied color and markings, some of them looking like normal huskies and others looking weird and unnatural, the diversity is fun to look at. 

Even for how weird the wolves look in the equally weird wolf arc, a few of them do have neat and creative designs that make them stand out.  Day 16: Favorite Death Scene Good god don’t make me choose... but if I have to, my top three are John’s, Benizakura’s, and Toube’s. John’s death makes everyone cry like a fucking baby for all the obvious reasons. He was a character we all knew and loved in GNG and seeing him go out with such a prideful death scene that shows how far he had come as a character really fuckin hurts. 

Benizakura we knew for an even shorter time but the audience really grew to love his benevolent and energetic personality so it’s also heartbreaking to see him sacrifice his life so soon. His parting was so epic that it really just broke the boundaries of realism so that his blood droplets could form the shape of a cherry blossom in the water to honor him 

Toube is one that I feel people don’t talk about much, but I still think his death scene was really powerful considering how prideful he was in his last moments much like John. I always found him an underrated character (more on that later) who played the “redemption equals death” trope in a really powerful way. Plus that image of him standing up frozen to death in the sunlight is really haunting. 

Other deceased characters that would be wrong for me NOT to mention would include Akatora, Riki, Kurojaki, Hyena no GDN doesn’t exist, and Aram.  Day 17: Least Favorite Death Scene Ben, no doubt. It especially doesn’t help that after being a mostly useless senile fool in the GDW manga he’d go out with such a boring, unceremonious death. Half the time I literally forget Ben even died of old age. Also it’s just really cheapened by the fact that most GNG veterans live to the ridiculous old age of over 20 years, so just goes to show that realism doesn’t make a story better. It just makes it inconsistent. 

Also GB, Hiro, Lydia, Jaguar, Musashi, and Tama... though these are more out of me being petty over my attachment to these characters. However I still thought their deaths were pretty pointless and hardly contributed story-wise or character-wise. Also Sirius and Monsoon’s because it’s really framed like it’s such an emotional heartbreaking scene of two friends/lovers dying while facing each other even though you literally couldn’t PAY me to be remotely sad that these clowns are dead.  Day 18: Favorite Arc For GNG, the Iga/Koga arc I’ve already discussed for reasons above as well as the Shikoku/fighting dog arc. I really love the setting and backgrounds of Shikoku, and it’s a great introduction to great characters like Musashi and Benizakura, with some room for character development and emotional moments as well. 

For GDW, the Russian arc as long as I forget that fuckin Weed and Koyuki exist. We’ve got intimidating villains in the form of Viktor and the invaders, some engaging redemption arcs with Lydia, Maxim, and Aram, a lot of heartfelt moments such as the death scenes of Hakuro and Moss or  Daisuke calling out to Gin in the canyon, and other characters such as Gin and Kyoushiro having their strong points in battle. Too bad a lot of it is roped with Weed and Koyuki’s gross Oedipus complex romance and other characters literally having to force Weed to stop flirting and being a shitty irresponsible leader. 

Day 19: Underrated Character The aforementioned Toube. Yeah, kind of surprised I don’t see a lot of people talking about him when it comes to the famous character death scenes nor does he get a ton of fanart and stuff. I guess in hindsight his role and death are a bit similar to Terry but, idk... I feel Toube had something more going for him. He actually got a proper introduction, backstory with Musashi, catalyst to start changing sides, and contributing role in actively saving Gin in the GDW anime. His arc was really well done and I always thought it deserved more recognition. 

Also in terms of more minor characters that somehow don’t reach “ensemble darkhorse” status in the Ginga fandom... Pepe! How can you not love this cute little monkey ffs? He’s such a simple character who has an adorable friendship with the Ohu soldiers and sympathetic side when it comes to him losing his parents and being a victim of Yukimura’s sadism. Also he’s not without his character development when he tries to fight off Shogun. Pepe is a good monke and I luv him 

Day 20: Favorite Character Development *thinks hard* Hyena. Not much I can say about Hyena’s character that others haven’t before. It was easy to just make him a sniveling weasel of a villain sidekick but once again he was a surprising subversion of that trope. His development was gradual and he didn’t earn the Ohu army’s trust right away, but he did prove himself on multiple occasions and had an honorable death scene. Once again, he stayed dead as far as I’m concerned.  Also GB, because why not? Another simple character who starts off as a wimp and then grows into Weed’s foster father, an Ohu soldier, clever battle strategist, and hill-area-ass slapstick comic relief in the manga. Such an enjoyable dork who changes for the better over the course of the series. 

Other choices include Lydia, Maxim, Aram, and Masashige Day 21: Something you would change in the series Something aside from obvious shit like the sexism, outdated cultural morals, glorification of abuse, and characters constantly being derailed left and right? ...maybe not write so many goddamn arcs and characters I guess? 

The GNG wolf arc didn’t need to exist. Yoshi literally didn’t even wanna write it but executive meddling demanded more Ginga from him. GDW is the longest series by far in which it spans exactly 60 volumes, but I frankly find the hybrid bear arc to be one of the most boring and repetitive arc. All I remember is that it introduces Joe but was there really no other previous volume where you could have introduced Weed’s second long-lost brother? 

GDWO is... a LOT to take in. I know that unlike the previous series it’s balancing out like five different story arcs for each of Weed’s kids as well as the Ohu army so it can be hard to keep track of everyone but come on. Do characters like Gennai and Tenka need to exist? I hardly remember Rigel’s arc except for the fact that he was just there when Terumune got killed. Since Yoshi insists on making Bella as useless as possible why not combine hers with Rigel or something? And Andy literally has no reason to exist aside from being a baby John replacement. 

Christ even as much as I despise TLW and GDN, I STILL felt GDN had the potential to be an interesting series if it was JUST a short story about Hyenoah helping Orion deal with his trauma from the events of TLW instead of bringing more pointless big bad villains who wanna fuck up Ohu for the billionth time, lame character death retcon not withstanding

Day 22: Favorite Introduction Scene Frickin HIRO, what more can I say lmao. You can name literally no other anime where a character is introduced literally by ripping a bad guy’s balls off. The dark humor from Hiro’s sheer non-chalantness just gives you one hell of a first impression Day 23: Favorite Relationship This is also gonna be a long list, shit. I don’t think I really need explanations for these since they’re all for the same reason in which the characters have a strong, healthy bond regardless of whether it’s between friends, parent/child, student/teacher, etc... So here goes:

- Gin and John  - Gin and Smith - Gin and Riki - Gin and Daisuke - Moss and Tesshin (and any puppies he’s doted over really)  - Weed and Smith - Kyoushiro and Teru  - Pepe and the Ohu army - Orion and Izou - Orion and Yamabiko - Rigel and Andy (despite my previous complaint about Andy being a very bland character his friendship with Rigel is cute in the way it’s supposed to parallel John and Gin)  Day 24: Favorite series/adaptation Kinda funny how to this day I still don’t really have a favorite series. When I was younger it was definitely GDW, but nowadays I feel like even though Ginga as a whole is objectively problematic, each series seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses so I honestly can’t pick. 

I can say that GNG has the fewest problems in terms of story and a lack of character derailment, but GDW also has its fair share of strong scenes and characters and I like a lot of them more than the GNG characters. Fuck, even GDWO even though it’s more of a clusterfuck has a large number of interesting characters to keep me engaged, so I really can’t just pick one. 

But in terms of consistently good writing, characters, and plotlines? The First Wars lmao 

Day 25: Character you relate to the most Oof, now I actually have to EXPLAIN why I said I related to Kyoushiro before ok. As a kid, I was in my massive angst/hormonal phase during the time I started watching Ginga so I just liked that Kyoushiro was an angry lil shit like me lolz

Real talk, as an adult I can relate to Kyoushiro when it comes to dealing with shitty people in my life. Obviously I don’t go throwing my online/irl enemies off cliffs and shit but I do strongly believe bad things should happen to bad people and I can fucking tell when abusers are genuinely remorseful or if they just wanna quick way to get out of trouble. But I also feel like I’ve learned to set boundaries, much like Kyoushiro taking time to decide if Teru’s abusive dad should be killed or not, or when he chose not to kill Buruge when he asked him to put him out of his humiliation. Also I still have anger issues and a pretty short temper, something I’ve still retained when it comes to how much of myself I see in Kyoushiro. 

I know I got kinda creepy by talking a lot about myself there but that’s just my genuine explanation on why I relate to this angsty scarred dog so much lmao. At least before he completely abandoned his own morals and decided “teehee nevermind abused children should definitely forgive their abusive parents” 

Day 26: Favorite Couple (canon or not) Ben x Cross duh. It was pretty clear they were an established couple when they were first introduced but they work together so well. Their chemistry, their their dialogue, and how much they believe in and support each other, ugh... they’re just such a strong pair

My other favorite ships include Jerome x Lydia, Hiro x Reika, and Orion x Yamabiko.  Day 27: Favorite Fight Probably would be a bit cliche if I just put the bigass kaiju battles like Akakabuto and Kaibutsu, so I’m gonna say the fight between various GDW characters and three of Hougen’s generals in the anime- Kyoushiro vs Buruge, Tesshin vs Kite, and Ken/Kagetora vs Bat. 

I liked the addition in the GDW anime of Hougen’s generals having their own special abilities that the Ohu army had to overcome in unique ways. Ken and Kagetora synchronizing their attacks to evade Bat’s Mind’s Eye, Tesshin being in his element and using his ninja skills to trap Kite when he couldn’t dent his prosthetic legs, and Kyoushiro giving himself the confidence to beat Buruge enough so that he can’t use his weird resurrection attack on him. 

Even though most of the changes the GDW anime did from the manga were shit and counterintuitive, this was one of the few adaptational changes that worked. It was a really nonconventional combat between characters that was solved in unique ways and gave various characters time to shine. 

Day 28: Favorite Technique/Fighting style The Zetsu Tenrou Battouga, no doubt. It’s definitely the most commonly used attack in the series and for that reason it’s just that memorable. Even the other wack Battougas in the wolf arc are somewhat interesting in concept and their different variations. Also you can’t go wrong with Kyoushiro’s grave-digging attack either

Day 29: Overrated character This was originally “favorite arc” but that was already a prompt for Day 18 so I made my own lmao. But yeah, for this one I’m gonna say Yukimura. I probably just made most of Gingaboard hate me but I’m sorry I just don’t get the appeal of this guy to the point where people literally compare him to Riki whom he’s nothing like. Yeah a lot of people say he had the potential to be a good foil to Weed’s pacifist personality but sorry sweetie the execution of that potential don’t reconcile 

He’s basically just Kyoushiro if Kyoushiro enjoyed attacking innocent parents who didn’t do anything wrong. Yeah I get that being attacked by monkeys at a young age was a traumatic experience for him but that doesn’t excuse him being an absolute fucking monster with a monkey hateboner, literally to the point where he tried to force literal CHILDREN to kill an innocent baby monkey, starting with FEEDING THE MEAT OF PEPE’S DEAD PARENTS TO THOSE PUPPIES. 

Oh and what makes this worse? Yukimura shows little to no remorse over this. Literally when Jerome is chewing out Yukimura for how fucked in the head he is he just responds with “We were just killing monkeys, so what?” almost word for word. 

And his redemption in learning not all monkeys are bad was lame and half-assed, also not sorry. If you’re going to redeem a character give us a REASON we’d WANT to see the character redeemed. Going from an infanticidal monkey-hating psycopath to siding with the monkeys isn’t character development, it’s just lazy writing.  Day 30: Favorite Thing About The Series The sheer corniness of it all. It’s just dogs killing shit. That’s literally my aesthetic when it comes to animal xenofiction. Yet you also got literal ninja dogs that carry weapons and dogs that repeatedly front-flip to decapitate bears. It’s fucking great. 

There are a lot of factors on why I fixate over stupid poorly drawn dogs fighting so much. A lot of it probably comes from my nostalgia obsessing over this series as a child and another part comes from the charm of the simple premise that offers a lot of room for interesting storytelling. 

I know objectively GInga as a whole is... not that good and super problematic, but there’s just some stupid charm about the whole thing that draws people in at almost any age. Ginga is flawed as HELL but there’s also just so many iconic characters, story arcs, and the like so sometimes it’s just a series where you gotta turn off your brain to enjoy it. 

Ginga is simultaneously the best and the worst thing of all time and it’s my comfort series, thank you for coming to my TED talk 

[nerdybutcute]

Themes in Cyberpunk Generally and Shadowrun Specifically

What is Shadowrun about? Aside from elves with mohawks and machine guns, I mean. That much is obvious. In all seriousness, though – what should we expect from a Shadowrun game? How is the Sixth World different from other “cyberpunk” settings? What does this particular game do well, maybe even better, than other games of a similar stripe? We can answer these questions by taking a dive in the roots of cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction, but even that journey must start with the very foundations of the modern mindset, because cyberpunk as a literary movement has a real problem with modernity.The central moral concepts of the Enlightenment are autonomy and authenticity. The arguments for liberal, democratic government, capitalism, and the Scientific Revolution alike are rooted in an assumption of the importance of liberating the individual. “Liberty” is the moral center of the modern paradigm, and all the other appurtenances of modern life mentioned above are to be interpreted as mechanisms of that liberation. As imaginative fiction reflects the tenor of the times, the through-line of early 20thcentury science fiction is a utopianism based in the modern ideal, with emphasis on the liberating power of science.

But postmodernist critics soon began to question the validity of this vision. The Holy Trinity of liberal society, free markets, and scientific progress began to seem, in their analysis, less likely to free the individual than to enslave them. They posited that under capitalism, science would always be a tool for subverting democracy, and genuine freedom required taking a skeptical stance toward all three. Likewise, the cyberpunk movement in science fiction was born of these post-modern fears, envisioning a future where high-tech has ensnared the individual in a web of consumerism, drugs, virtual reality, and technological serfdom. Indeed, in the idiom of speculative fiction, cyberpunk literature could pose questions about even the moral center of the modern world, as exemplified in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – in a world where the barrier between man and machine has eroded to the point of invisibility, what is autonomy? What is authenticity?

Cyberpunk literature, like all science fiction, leaned heavily on the science aspect – hence the “cyber” – but it was skeptical, rather than laudatory, of technological progress. The “punk” aspect encompassed the postmodern rebellion against existing structures of power – capital and government – which are posited in punk philosophy not only as hopelessly intertwined but fundamentally flawed, inevitably enslaving those they propose to serve. Punk is inherently anarchist, seeking to tear down the mechanisms of domination; cyberpunk takes special interest in the high-tech aspect of these structures. But just as punk has a difficult relationship with capitalism, constantly courted and tempted by the urge to commodify and merchandise the punk aesthetic in the name of wider exposure and increased social capital (all in the name of the movement, of course), cyberpunk replicates this relationship with technology – the interface of man and machine chips away at our essential humanity, threatening to turn us into objects that can be programmed and directed rather than free and authentic individuals, but the technological marvels of the setting are indispensable in fighting the very structures that produce and control them. The tools of the oppressors can be used against them but likewise constantly threaten to co-opt those who oppose them. And most disturbingly, of course, even the anarchist subculture of resistance in cyberpunk literature is presented as violent and nihilistic, raising questions about what the world will look even if the “punks” win – is there any hope at all?

Cyberpunk can quickly drift into transhumanism, usually when the technology of the setting is fetishized rather than approached skeptically, but also when the central characters are unproblematically portrayed as agents of the structures of power rather than subversive elements in society. But pure punk characters are rare as focal points – it’s more interesting and certainly more in-genre to focus on those who were in some way caught up in the structures of power and then cast aside by them, damaged and discarded. Gibson’s Neuromancer provides excellent examples in Case, Molly Millions, and Riviera, brutalized by the powers-that-be but still used them as disposable commodities to advance the interests of the wealthy and connected. Case is a pitiable figure, arguably the most abused by the agents of power but also, in the end, least willing to reject their blandishments. Indeed, the titular AI is perhaps the only truly free character in the story, exerting its autonomous will on the world, and reaching even beyond.

The original cyberpunk roleplaying game, called quite simply Cyberpunk, followed the style of that era of games in providing little guidance to new players in how to create characters while assuming a knowledge of the relevant genre – the fact that players could take the role of Corps and Cops was not a mistake, as it was likely assumed that these characters would, ultimately, embody the ambiguous relationships to power of their literary counterparts, rather than being uncritical servants of the authorities. The game fittingly portrayed corporations as sinister and government as largely ineffective, but the most telling design feature was the inclusion of rules for “cyberpsychosis,” a gradual disintegration of mental faculties brought on by excessive use of cyber-enhancements. This mechanic “game-i-fied” the postmodern skepticism about the liberatory power of technology and fears about loss of autonomy when the human – the free and authentic person – becomes continuous with the thing, the servile commodities produced by those structures of power.

Other “cyberpunk” games followed, missing the point to greater and lesser degree, until Shadowrun, which wedded fantasy elements to the setting. The inclusion of elves, dwarves, and other magical things might seem to dilute the point of cyberpunk as a genre, but the history of the setting makes the additions apt. Because of the precise way in which Shadowrun integrated fantasy with science fiction, the core conceits of the cyberpunk genre may well have found one of their best expressions to date.

The return of magic in the Sixth World, as the setting is called, provided occasion for the Native American people of North America to rise up, using their traditional spiritual practices – now terrifyingly efficacious – to destroy the United States. As acts of resistance by oppressed outsiders goes, this one is impressive, an apotheosis of the “punk” element of cyberpunk. And the resistance is non-technological, but rather magical – a non-technological resistance only being possible in a setting like Shadowrun’s, despite other works like Neuromancer playing with the idea of “urban primitivism” before this. The triumph of the Native American Nations in the Sixth World is a triumph over all three elements of Enlightenment culture – science, capitalism, and liberal democracy – given the self-proclaimed role of the United States as their standard-bearer in the modern world. True, this decisive defeat does not recapitulate the angst brought over into cyberpunk literature from the noir genre, but the triumph of the indigenous peoples is not the end of the story.

In the Shadowrun setting, major cyberpunk tropes are preserved – the government is corrupt where it is not ineffective, and true power mostly lays with the corporations. “Mostly” is an important caveat there, however – other power blocs exist, such as dragons, the Native American Nations, and the nations of the elves, quite aside from such mysterious antagonists as insect shamans and other foul creatures. Again, this might seem to dilute the essential conflicts of the cyberpunk genre, but Shadowrun envisions those conflicts in a different way, the clue to which is found in the dissolution of the United States in the setting’s backstory. Rather than pitting inchoate punk anarchism against rampant capitalism, rather than pitting urban primitivism and the struggle for authenticity against the insidious creep of technology, it quite literally pits the pre-modern against the modern – mysticism and tradition against the values of the Enlightenment. The outcome of the struggle is no longer pre-ordained, so the sense of futility of classic cyberpunk is lost, but a different sense of doom has taken its place: between the modern and the archaic, there may be no good choice.

Classic cyberpunk is skeptical toward the machinery of democracy and other modern accoutrement, but presents no alternative except anarchy (in this, one might imagine that blighted dystopias like Mad Max are a sort of cyberpunk, but that’s another essay). Shadowrun presents a different choice – rolling back the clock on the Enlightenment is now perhaps a realistic possibility, but one that carries dangers of its own. And it is a choice that must be made. Corporate rapaciousness threatens the natural spaces that embody the magical Essence of the Earth, just as cyber-enhancements threaten the individual character’s Essence, with the end result of too much reliance on cyberware being, in this game, death rather than psychosis. But magical threats abound, as well, such as the insect shamans of the first major myth arc in the game, and this aside from what else might be lost in the unraveling of the modern order – ideas of democracy and equality and so on. Shadowrun pointedly presents the corporate order as practically a feudal one, with employees treated more like serfs, indentured to their lords, while the reflexive Japanophilia of the cyberpunk canon is here leveraged to a different purpose – as an alternative social model based on ancient ways, another refutation of the Enlightenment. Such pre-modern subcultures abound in the setting, but they are pre-modern, which is to say authoritarian, sexist, racist, culturally chauvanistic, and so on. Classical cyberpunk fiction critiques the modern order and offers petty acts of resistance to it; Shadowrun fragments and partially overturns it, but with the caveat that what stands to replace it probably isn’t any better.

Shadowrun, therefore, while an offshoot of the traditional cyberpunk concept, is undoubtedly faithful to the core element of the genre, the critique of the modern. It dissolves the tension of fruitless struggle against it, but replaces it with a diabolical choice. Mind you, as with cyberpunk literature, this can easily fall into transhumanism; the setting-specific counterpart misstep is the glorification of the oppositional pre-modern traditions that now hold a place of honor in the world. The true cyberpunk essence of Shadowrun is best expressed in emphasizing both the intrusive, dehumanizing elements of technocracy as well as the de-individuating aspects of traditional culture paired with the cosmic horror of the magical world.

[luminousbeansarewe]

what are your takes/version of how the sequel trilogy went down? because i also have my own version in my head, not.... that, but im really interested in the ideas other people have had for it

hoo boy there’s a lot of ground to cover here lmao i will try to keep them as short as i can... i also enjoy multiple versions of events and outcomes for the sequels as long as they’re in-character so i’m not trying to say no other version of the sequels is good or cool bc only a sith deals in absolutes amirite? (i won’t apologize for that dumb joke.) first the jumping-off points:

first of all, i fully support Force-sensitive Finn. even if he didn’t become a full-blown Jedi, if the entire concept of the Jedi was reforged and we don’t see him become the kind of Jedi we saw in the prequels (more on that later), i see him as someone who was attuned to the Force in a way that is similar to how i conceive of Barriss; empathetic to the suffering and joy of others. this would drive him to defect from the Empire and fear it, too. i also saw him becoming a reluctant leader for the rebellion, and there’s a GREAT fic which i’ll link here that riffs on the idea that he creates a spark within the stormtrooper ranks and more and more of them begin to defect... which i love

Rey being a nobody is cool to me. the ONE character moment where she became super relatable for me was when she realized how frightened she was of her own Force abilities. but i don’t think she has to be the legacy of Palps to have that. she doesn’t need supercharged powers to be spooked by them in a post-Jedi Order world where the most recent memory anybody has of the Force is Vader. (also Rey being a Kenobi seems more out of character for Obi-Wan than anything else lol he was pretty committed to the ways of the Order even after they were destroyed, plus he already had one kid to furtively watch over... just imo). this also ties into my expansion on the Force.

Poe being not a carbon copy of Han. i think Leia looked after him, found him somehow after she sent Ben to the Jedi Academy and was a motherly figure in his life. i like the idea that he was a little shit, and she’s the one who taught him to turn his reactive defiance of authority into bravery when fighting for the rebels. i think he looked up to her, wanted to be a leader like her. i saw him in the position of generals like Akbar by the end, as he learns to balance risk-taking with steady leadership. I wanted to see that growth, how those leaders are formed, see Leia get to impart her wisdom to someone. (also i fully support Finn/Poe and Finn/Rey/Poe, i’m not a committed shipper so i’m down with no romance at all between them but those ships are choice af and Stormpilot is all Oscar Isaac wanted anyway, so...) plus can u imagine the dichotomy of Ben the fallen son with Poe, the “adopted” son who became what Ben couldn’t? the guilt of Leia for not knowing how to teach her son about the Force, doing better half-raising a nobody who had the same shitty attitude as Han when they met but no Force ability? THIS IS JUICY CHARACTER CONTENT

Rose was given cheesy lines to introduce an important topic: that fighting is all well and good but throwing away your principles defeats the purpose of the fight in the first place (an important theme in the Clone Wars era, too.) she was there to be the voice of the truly little people in the gffa, who we don’t hear much about in the other trilogies. Finn’s sensitivity puts him at risk of the sorrow-to-hate arc i described for Barriss; Rose is there to be the empathy that sustains hope rather than becomes a crushing weight. i love the idea that she might rally volunteers from blue-collar places (like... Lothal, for example?) and spearhead the notion that the New Republic should be very different from the old one, calling out the fact that working conditions didn’t change with the shift from republic to empire and the First Order simply took it to an extreme that left her and her sister with nothing else to lose.

Ben Solo, hoo boy. so here’s the thing, we don’t KNOW Ben Solo. we were expected to want him to be redeemed because he was the son of Han and Leia, and that’s it. that’s lazy as fuck. him killing Han in the first movie (if it happened it should have been in movie #2, that’s how fucking second acts work) was an excuse to shock people, subvert the ‘i can’t kill my own father’ thing, and make sure we knew he was “evil” even though we’re supposed to also want a redemption arc? you have to read the Rise of Kylo Ren comics to learn that he was a) hounded by the voice of Snoke in his head from childhood, manipulated by it, which is horrific bc it’s like grooming... or b) that he felt HUGE pressure as a legacy Force-user to save the galaxy, lead the New Jedi Order, etc. these are much more empathy-generating and we should have learned them in TFA. echoes of Anakin much? which is why i think him being redeemed in a way other than self-sacrifice (which made sense for Vader given his long history of being a terrible person, knowing it was too late for him in the end, and really just wanting to save his son rather than “become good again”) is more interesting than him just falling (which is too much the same as the prequels.)

it should have been Finn’s call, a moment of Truth that held the balance of Finn as either falling prey to darkness or learning forgiveness, whether or not Kylo got redeemed. Finn and Rey working together to get to that point while Rose and Poe took on the military aspect of the Big Finale would have been great. Finn with a lightsaber to Kylo’s throat, feeling the temptation to murder him instead of making him face what he’s become in a meaningful way? Rey trying to urge him away from darkness as she’s been tempted before, but this is the first time Finn’s really been tested, and he was the one who so often reminded her of her own humanity? Rey calling up Rose’s point of creating a new paradigm instead of recreating the old one, of Poe’s growth or Leia’s willingness to take Ben back showing it’s possible? shiiiiiiit

the rest is going under a cut!

SO... given those things as a basis...

there being no scene where Force-ghost Anakin bops Kylo on the head (but you know, more subtly and with gorgeous metaphor ofc) was a travesty. we needed some version of that, also imo that reaffirms that Anakin was the chosen one... as him redirecting his grandson away from that path would be restoring hella balance

Snoke should have had his own fucked up backstory, if he was even there at all. a dark sider fucking with Ben Solo is reasonable to me, but Snoke could have been someone who looked up to Palps as much as Kylo supposedly looked up to Vader. that would have been interesting... maybe there are multiple “nobodies” who are being touched by the Force, just like there always were in the prequels era, but some are going dark with no Jedi to try to convince them otherwise? or, maybe Snoke’s life was ruined by the Empire and he chose to become the beast that harmed him, whereas Kylo becomes the version where you think you want to do that but then realize that it’s just as bad and you still have empathy and regret what you’ve done?

Thrawn being the main military antagonist, since they couldn’t be arsed to make Hux into anything but a sniveling baby fascist (despite his really upsetting backstory of an abusive father, also found in the comics... noticing a trend here?). Thrawn was already established and beloved in the legends. why would you not use him. whY?? he’s like a foil for Tarkin. contention between him and the Force-users in charge (Snoke and Kylo) would have been VERY interesting, esp with the character of Thrawn in the new canon seeing the Empire as a ‘necessary evil’ and now maybe having the potential to make it into something else? how’s JOINING WITH THE NEW REPUBLIC for a subversion of the classic tropes, Rian?????? you fucker????

if Thrawn’s history is “too storied” for a bunch of cowards to "fit” into a new movie trilogy, invent another antivillain to take Thrawn’s place whose history is a little more concurrent with the sequel era... you cowards

Luke fucking off after his failure isn’t out of character IMO. he was THE STRONGEST JEDI EVER and his star pupil still fell? maybe he broke under the same pressure Ben did. maybe that’s what allows him to reach back out towards Kylo and reconnect, admitting his failure. i want to hear more about him cutting himself off from the Force bc i LOVE KOTOR 2 and Kreia, but maybe that’s too much for one trilogy to delve into meaningfully, i dunno

Han fucking off after Ben wrecked the temple isn’t OOC either. i think Han was always a little frightened of the Force, the way many non-sensitives are. I think he was critical as a father, because he was critical of himself and Han is the king of projection. i wanted more of the dysfunctional relationship between him and Ben.

if Kylo kills Han, the scene needs to show more of the fact that Kylo actually regretted it, which Snoke only alludes to in TLJ, foreshadowing his future. i rewrote Han’s death scene for a friend and got a lot of good feedback about it so maybe i’ll post it here sometime. i can get behind a version where he doesn’t die, too, i just haven’t fleshed it out in my own head.

i like the idea that the Jedi Order needed to be remade, and that Luke saw the failure of the old order when he saw Ben turn like so many of the Jedi in the Order did. i like that Rey and Finn might spearhead this, and maybe Kylo’s role is to know the dark side intimately enough now that he can actually teach how it works, how to deal with it... how inevitable its temptation is. because...

in this canon, i don’t think the Force has light or darkness. i think it’s Force-users who do. it is their internal landscapes which cause them to “fall” or be redeemed or not, after all. Finn can attest to the same, so can Rey and Luke... so like, all the Jedi need DBT therapy or something i guess. lmao hold the dialectic, you nerds

the Force has shown time and time again that it cannot be “balanced” so maybe it is ourselves who need to become balanced instead

the Force is chaos, a never-ending series of colliding butterfly effects that to us will always and inevitably be seen as turmoil, cause and effect on a cosmic scale. if you drink too greedily of its power, or try to exert total control over it, by its nature it will consume you because it is beyond your mortal ken. whatever you hunger for, the force will give you more and more of it until you are overwhelmed, drowning in it

this is why peace was a central teaching of the Jedi... peace, the antithesis of chaos, which can only ever be created from within, the eye of the storm which must be sought time and time again

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk? i’m always down to hear other people’s ideas for these characters tbh. and always down to get more into these topics if you want to know more... esp as it relates to the failure of the Jedi Order, or KOTOR 2 and Revan and Kreia, or OF COURSE my OCs because Sol has a very interesting relationship with the Force.

thank you for this ask lordimperius!! ^_^

[arecomicsevengood]

More Movies I Watched. Should I Just Join Letterboxd?

Is Letterboxd fun? Not really sure if anyone gets anything out of these posts being located here, but also not sure I have any desire to join a website I’m not sure anyone I’m friends with is on, don’t necessarily feel a yearning to be around more people with too many opinions, who are maybe trying to parlay their “expertise” into writing jobs.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2020) dir. Celine Sciamma

I’m going to consider this a 2020 movie as that’s when its wide release was in the States; also, this movie’s great and if considered a 2020 movie is easily the frontrunner for best of the year. Well-shot enough I felt I was in good hands from the very first minutes, which feel vaguely reminiscent of The Piano (which I don’t remember super-well), this movie ends up also have a very intense relationship with music as well. This is a lesbian love story between a woman betrothed to be married to a man she’s never met and the painter who is making her portrait for the approval of said man. The painter is initially working on the portrait secretly, the film’s attention is tuned to the two leads’ furtive glances and studies of one another, the gaze intensely felt, but returned and mutual. Lots of great stuff, real delight taken in faces, the ability to change another’s expression by making them laugh. the power of music, the incommunicable aspects of subjective experience. I watched this director’s other movie, Girlhood, but don’t remember it, and this is a lot better. This is also a lot better than Blue Is The Warmest Color, where the only thing I remember is the long and graphic sex scene. This movie has no such scene. One of these actresses led the walkout when the French film industry gave Roman Polanski an award.

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Oliver Assayas

Just did an IMDB search and found out Assays cowrote a movie with Polanski a few years ago? That sucks. This one’s about an artist’s estate being sold off after a widow dies, as the kids need money. Plenty of nice bits about the subjective value of art and nostalgia. Assayas is not my favorite filmmaker by any means but he’s consistent enough. I guess Personal Shopper is my favorite of his?

Two Friends (1986) dir. Jane Campion

TV movie about two teenagers, told somewhat in reverse order for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Not great.

The Day Shall Come (2020) dir. Chris Morris

Beginning with like a series of “establishing shots” of Miami that eventually get to college kids partying is such a terrible way to begin a movie, really signals a degree of indifference to the language of film in favor of a a product of constant churn of content that “television” once served as shorthand for. Chris Morris comes from TV, of course, so I should know what I’m in for, and British comedy of a subversively-intentioned sort puts it in the wheelhouse of things I pay attention to anyway. That’s not to say I laughed at this thing, but I sort of observed it and its intentions — it never really wants you to be comfortable enough to laugh, and while the posture it takes to its black leads is sympathetic there’s still a feeling of anthropological indifference as part of its satirical thrust. Film comedies are meant to work in a theater because of the contagious properties of laughter, and when you lose that you end up with a thing that, even if I don’t want to subject it to “Hm, this seems kinda racist” thinkpieces that are the worst-case scenario, everything about the movie seems like the best case scenario is a reaction of “I see what you did there.”

Midnight Special (2016) dir. Jeff Nichols

Fits into the tradition of not-a-superhero-movie-but-basically tradition of Scanners and The Fury, but while those are basically the X-Men, this kid, kept from the sunlight because his dad think it will hurt him but really it’s good for him, is basically The Ray, of the 1990s Christopher Priest series I didn’t read consistently but liked a few issues of. The first half of this movie, spent speeding down streets at night, while some weird things happen, involving government agencies and a cult, is considerably better than the payoff, which is the child (a kid from Room and later, Good Boys) is an angel and is going to ascend to heaven. Part of it is so low-key and tense (but in a way where it feels like if it were on mute nothing would appear to be happening) and then the other part of it has these special effects that are fairly corny? So while the whole “indie guy makes a more mainstream movie” thing generates some interest, the idea of what constitutes a mainstream movie at this point in time (while also being a throwback in some ways to eighties Spielberg, or riding an It Follows/Stranger Things wave) means being forgettable.

Atlantic City (1980) dir. Louis Malle

This was a rewatch, which normally I avoid doing, but it turns out I had forgotten basically everything about this movie, besides vague memories of shots of stairwells, the sprawl of its plot, the roaming camera. That, still, is sort of the main thing to take away, because I love how the plot sort of swirls around this apartment building, and the streets of the city, the casino where Susan Sarandon works. She plays a woman whose husband left her for her sister, and they have rolled into the city with a large amount of cocaine. Burt Lancaster plays Sarandon’s neighbor, who lusts after her, but watches after another neighbor in the apartment, an old gangster’s ex-lover. Maybe I would suggest this as a good first Louis Malle movie to watch? Then you could watch Au Revoir Les Enfants, Murmur Of The Heart, Elevator To The Gallows, and My Dinner With Andre, and some of those are maybe better movies but this is arguably the most “accessible” in terms of its relationship to gangster/crime stuff while nonetheless feeling expansive and deeper than that. It relates to Burt Lancaster’s larger career but also has such a depth of feeling it’s not just a film history thing. Wallace Shawn has a cameo as a waiter also, it’s nice to see him.

Cat People (1982) dir. Paul Schrader

This movie’s a rewatch but I remember it being “watchable” but not really good, at least not nearly as good as the original. If memory serves, this has pretty much nothing in common with the original, but there’s a scene in the original that’s very memorable that’s reprised here. There’s a lot of gratuitous nudity in this one, and it even ends with a scene that seems perverse enough it should be memorable- Where Nastassja Kinski’s limbs are tied to a bed in a bit of bondage before she has sex and gets turned into a panther, so she can safely be put into zoo custody, but I didn’t remember at all on account of it feeling more perfunctory than indelible. Also I thought there was a scene where you see a naked man climb out of a cage at the zoo but maybe that’s in another movie too. Remember when Paul Schrader made a facebook post asking whose were the best tits in the history of art?

Affliction (1997) dir. Paul Schrader

When there was a little featurette documentary on Criterion Channel where Alex Ross Perry interviewed Schrader, Schrader cited Affliction as one of his best movies. Takes place in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Fargo and A Simple Plan, the vision of small-town life feels slightly familiar from Twin Peaks too — all of these things feel “nineties” in a way. About the cycle of domestic violence being passed on from fathers to sons. Stars Nick Nolte, with Willem Dafoe as his younger brother, who narrates intermittently. Mary Beth Hurt plays Nolte’s ex-wife, Sissy Spacek plays his current lover. James Coburn plays the abusive father but I kept thinking it was Rip Torn.

Rancho Notorious (1952) dir. Fritz Lang

Another solid Fritz Lang movie, that I believe was a favorite of the French new wave filmmakers? (Who didn’t like his German stuff for some bullshit reason.) This one’s a western. A man’s fiancee gets murdered, and he tries t to track down the guy who did it, in search of revenge. There’s a recurring bit of a song narrating his desire for revenge that’s pretty bad. It turns out there’s a large ranch, run by Marlene Dietrich, where criminals can hide out if they don’t ask questions of one another and give her a share of their haul. He forms alliances, does some crimes, gets his revenge, there’s some great technicolor shots of landscapes, it’s unclear how real his feelings are for Marlene Dietrich or if they’re partly put on to win her affections, I don’t think Dietrich is that appealing personally. The thing that makes this movie cool or interesting (and maybe makes it feel particularly American, but seen from an outsider’s perspective) is this sense of bonhomie that is maybe just a total front for long-standing resentment, with love as a conditional thing.

Slightly French (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I found this one pretty watchable. A rough-around-the-edges fairground actress is recruited to play a French ingenue in the press as part of a long play for a director to get his job back with a studio he was fired from after alienating the original lead actress and everyone above him. The director basically only cares about making movies, and is sort of a psychopath, but she falls in love with him. The director’s sister, who warns that she also has no feelings, ends up being paired off with the producer who competes for the star’s affection for a while. Written by a woman, and feels very psychologically insightful and unjudgmental about women’s tendency or willingness to fall in love with people who treat them poorly, and to allow for the movie/genre expectations to respect that choice as the right one.

A Scandal In Paris (1946) dir. Douglas Sirk

Apparently Sirk considered this his best movie. It’s before his melodrama period, and is based on a memoir, so there’s a bit of a biopic quality to it, though it does try to be fairly concise and well-structured. About a criminal who solves a crime he committed in order to become chief of police, ostensibly to become an even bigger criminal who pulls off a huge robbery, who then goes straight instead. The criminal is also a casanova type, who seduces a series of women and makes them fall in love with him and forgive him his crimes. I would probably have liked this movie more if it was a stylized seventies thing and/or liked the actors better.

Story Of A Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

This movie’s wild! One of the best credit sequences I’ve ever seen, establishing a pattern that the whole thing will be told mostly via narration, and this narration goes on to tell so much of the story that the visual storytelling almost seems redundant, or illustrative of the text, in a way I’d never seen in a movie. It’s structured as a man writing his memoirs, and is more literal about that structure than we normally see. But then there are parts where his writing gets interrupted and these scenes use dialogue and employ elision to discreetly set up punchlines… Really cool. Criterion’s website says this was an influence on Orson Welles, and maybe they mean F For Fake?

The Immortal Story (1968) dir. Orson Welles

I hadn’t seen this one, despite being an Orson Welles fanatic, I guess because most people would not consider it a feature film, as it’s under an hour long, and made for French television. It’s not great, kind of feels like a long short film. Welles plays an old rich man who hates the existence of fiction so much he tries to make a story that’s basically a Penthouse letter become true, casting Jeanne Moreau in the role of the woman and a much younger man as the dude who has sex with her. Based on a story by Isak Dinesen, which I’m just learning now was the pen name of a woman.

If You Could Only Cook (1935) dir. William Selter

So I kept on watching Jean Arthur movies, binging them before they left Criterion Channel at the end of June. You would expect them to blend together, and maybe they will in time but having just watched this one it’s great. Totally absurd premise becomes legit funny. The master chef from History Is Made At Night here plays an Italian gangster. The two movies would be a pretty solid double feature, as both feature pretty involved, absurd plots, based around love stories, but also featuring this weird comedic element. This one features Jean Arthur as a down-on-her-luck woman who strikes up a conversation with a guy on a park bench, convincing him they should get a job together working as a butler and cook team. He is secretly rich, and gets lessons in being a butler from his butler, and falls in love with her, a week before he is scheduled to get married to a rich woman he doesn’t actually care about. This movie is just over seventy minutes long. I am pretty unfamiliar with the screwball comedy genre and really wonder how they play with a different lead actress.

The More The Merrier (1943) dir. George Stevens

This one’s great too. Super comedic, with sort of intricately choreographed visual gags, but then the romance culminates in a scene that’s wildly horny, bordering on the pornographic despite the absence of any nudity. That’s a seduction shot in close up, where a sort of oblivious and distracted conversation occurs absentmindedly as kisses move from hand to neck. Jean Arthur rents a room to a domineering older dude (Charles Coburn, the guy from The Devil And Miss Jones, who’s funnier here) who then rents half of his room to a man he thinks would be a good for her. Feels like a big part of the comedy in these is people being absolute nightmares who force other people into going along with things they absolutely hate, and as much as I hate the idea of being someone who can’t handle an old comedy because of my modern cultural mores, such scenes are pretty nerve-wracking to me. Still, there’s something to the storytelling in this, how the initial gags build on themselves when it’s just the two of them, then the introduction of the second man sort of continues the sort of jokes that were already being made, how the comedy sort of snowballs but then takes the shape of this very real romance.

The Impatient Years (1944) dir. Irving Cummings

This was originally conceived as a quasi-sequel to The More The Merrier. It is a weird one, with a vaguely comedic premise it takes a pretty emotionally intense first act to set up. The first half hour has these long dialogues filled with tension of people not really being able to communicate. It’s written by a woman and you can really tell, holy shit, it’s closely observed. But the whole premise is fucked! Begins with a court hearing for a divorce. Jean Arthur has been hit by her husband, and her father (Charles Coburn again) who witnessed it says he can’t recommend a divorce, because then the judge would have to give a divorce to all the couples who got married too quick before the man shipped off to war. A flashback structure shows him, freshly home, smoking cigarettes above the crib of the child he’s never seen before and pretty irritable. The father argues the issue is the married couple has forgotten while they’ve fallen in love. Coburn basically sucks too- he’s in all these movies as this railroading paternalistic figure, and apparently was in his real life a white supremacist? And while The Devil And Miss Jones shows him learning to not be a piece of shit, this movie basically takes his side and argues for him being right. The judge agrees with this plan that they should spend four days retracing the steps of when they first met, before he shipped off to work. And it works, they fall back in love in the movie’s second half. But basically Jean Arthur’s whole behavior at the beginning of the movie is predicated on her having the responsibilities of a mother? And the movie just sort of argues that she’s got to learn to be a wife too, and she agrees, pitching it as this sort of romantic thing, but the actual central cause of tension is never resolved. So this movie is flawed and kinda nonsensical, but it’s interesting, partly because the beginning is like Bergman-level brutal before the contortions of a plot push it into this unnatural light comedy shape.

Arizona (1940) dir. Wesley Ruggles

This one has Jean Arthur as the female lead, opposite William Holden, but is more notable for its scope as a Western. A pretty good example of the genre being about society in microcosm, being forged from this conflict between the wild and domestic spheres. Jean Arthur both brings this semi-feminist sense of freedom to all of her roles, and she also built up a body of work of populist politics and class consciousness. This one has her as a rugged individualist frontierswoman, who runs a series of businesses as a way to make more money and accrue wealth, which ends up being a good vehicle, from a storytelling perspective, to increase the scale of action consistently. The villain runs a series of scams/conspiracies to win a profit via dishonest means. This culminates with a wedding where the man leaves his bride immediately afterwards to murder the person who’s been trying to take over her property. Probably the best western I’ve seen where the threat of Native American violence is a major plot point. It does lack the sense of atmosphere and landscape I value in a western, favoring a more storytelling more focused on plot and characters. Ends with a scene where a dude gets married and then immediately leaves to go kill someone waiting in a bar for him. (I should try to track down the George Stevens western Shane, that also features Jean Arthur.)

Whirlpool (1934) dir. Roy William Neill

This isn’t as top shelf as the other Jean Arthur movies but it’s pretty good. A man goes to prison, fakes his own death for the sake of his wife so she’ll move on. Jean Arthur plays the daughter, who meets him once he gets out, but needs to keep him a secret from her mother, who has remarried but would probably wreck her life for the other man’s sake. This is a pretty weird movie, both structurally, and because the father-daughter relationship feels quasi-incestuous: She abandons dates with her fiancee to spend time with her father, etc. The movie handles it semi-innocently, but I guess I had just been hearing about how when things like this happen in real life, and adult children meet their parents for the first time as adults, there often is an irresistible desire between them. So the movie kind of feels like it’s basically about something super-fucked-up but is trying to depict it as innocent, but also just the raw emotion Jean Arthur displays as she cries when they meet for the first time is really intense! She doesn’t even show up until like 1/3 of the way through the movie but she gives it such emotional weight.

Party Wire (1935) dir. Erle Kenton

This movie’s charming and watchable but yeah not one of the better ones. It’s about a pretty interesting thing- In small towns in this era basically cheaper for there to be a telephone line everyone can listen in on. This ends up being a movie about small town gossip and resentment, where the villains are old women with too much time on their hands. It’s also about Jean Arthur being a wildly charming “real” person who wins the heart of a rich man who every woman is after, so while she’s good in the part there’s an element of formula executed better elsewhere. Here she has a father who’s drunk all the time, his alcoholism is a big running gag that gets a little exhausted. Also apparently there’s an app now that’s basically a party wire?

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) dir. John Ford

Felt pretty ambivalent about this one too, which is more of an Edward G Robinson vehicle. This is meant to be a comedy, but I don’t really think the jokes come off that well, and the sense of reversals feels a little pat. Realized my best friend from high school looks sorta like Edward G Robinson now and worked out a way to remake it starring him. The Robinson version is about a guy who works as a clerk in an office, writes on the side, but learns he is the doppelganger of a killer gangster who just escaped from prison, who’s played by Robinson as well. This leads to his worldly coworker he has a crush on developing an interest in him, but also a lot of cases of mistaken identity with the police, who give him a note saying that while he looks like the person they’re trying to arrest, they’re not the same guy. The gangster then reads about this in the news and breaks into his apartment to get this “passport” from him. The remake I envision plays off of the fact that people are no longer famous for doing crimes enough to attract the attentions of a savvy young woman. But what if it was some dumb Youtube prankster, who is constantly committing crimes, that has the police after him? And then it’s basically the same movie.

Public Hero No. 1 (1935) dir. J. Walter Rubin

More of a heavy-duty crime thing, about the head of a gang busting out of prison, reuniting with his gang to do crimes, not knowing the cellmate he broke out of prison with is an undercover cop. Jean Arthur ends up caught in the middle, falling in love with the cop (not knowing he’s a cop) while being the sister of the criminal she hopes goes straight. She enlivens the movie quite a bit but it’s a  familiar enough plot to still come up a little bit short. Would maybe benefit from more atmosphere in the crime bits and less comedy bits about an alcoholic doctor slowing it down.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

Watched these for Jean Arthur, though they are classics for being Frank Capra movies, Jimmy Stewart movies, and sort of archetypal in their depiction of sincerity and the opposition of the rich and powerful. So that is to say that while my favorite movies I’ve watched recently have felt genre-less, or like they participate in every genre, these feel far more like you know where they’re going pretty much from the start: In the case of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that’s partly because of things like there being an episode of The Simpsons that parodies/reuses it.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) dir. Frank Capra

Also has Jean Arthur as the female lead, here playing opposite Gary Cooper. When they remade this as an Adam Sandler vehicle, Winona Ryder took the Jean Arthur role. Gary Cooper inherits money, comes to the big city, everyone wants the money, Jean Arthur writes news articles mocking him as a rube while slowly falling in love with his sincerity. In the end his decision to give the money to the poor outrages everyone in power and they try to argue he’s not mentally fit. All these Frank Capra movies are longer than the other Jean Arthur movies, (two hours, as opposed to an hour and a half) and also are not really focused on her, though she’s the best part of them.

Ball Of Fire (1941) dir. Howard Hawks

Billy Wilder cowrites this, and it’s maybe his best comedic script? Lot of good jokes in this, feel like this would’ve blown people away in 1941. Gary Cooper plays a naive nerd grammarian who in the course of realizing he needs cover modern slang for his encyclopedia runs into Barbara Stanwyck, as a gangster’s moll, hilarity ensues, they fall in love, both leads are great, supporting cast is big and funny, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds plays a somewhat naive hayseed, the character here is similarly out of his element but it’s because he’s a big nerd, which is a lot funnier. Stanwyck’s world-weariness giving way to affection for a bunch of old people while continuing to use language they don’t understand and sort of run all over them as they fall over here is a great bit. Really well-written, there’s a Billy Wilder movie starring Jean Arthur (A Foreign Affair, from 1948) I haven’t seen but would like to track down. Sort of fascinating preoccupation with gangsters in these movies, but also positing innocence as a virtue, but in a way that runs counter to “virgin/whore” reductionism. I guess a lot of this comes about because it precedes the post-war mass migration of white people to the suburbs? Organized crime was a big part of people’s lives. I hadn’t seen any Howard Hawks movies until recently I think? Unless I saw one of his westerns or screwball comedies in college. He’s good!

The Sniper (1952) dir. Edward Dmytrk

This one’s interesting in terms of feeling very ahead of its time but also like it would never be made now. About a dude whose misogyny causes him to shoot women with a sniper rifle, the same rifle that apparently any ex-soldier would carry. Probably a pretty tough and upsetting watch, as it’s just about a dude being insane, hoping the police arrest him, and him having interactions with women where he very quickly becomes upset when they realize he’s weird, so he follows them with a gun. Director was blacklisted, the only real overt political sentiment is “get perverts and people who assault women serious mental health care after their first offense.”

[dicecast]

The Paradox of Draco Malfoy

Or: Why do People like Draco Malfoy

      Who are the most important characters from Harry Potter?  If you were a marketer and had to design a set of I  don’t know, candy for each of the main characters, who do you include?  You only have 9 slots.  The Trio obviously are the main characters, and then Voldemort, Snape and Dumbledore. Neville, Hagrid, and then in the last slot you’d probably put Malfoy.   And the question is…..why?

(character looks much cooler than he is)

See Draco Malfoy is an iconic character of franchise, easily one of the most memorable and beloved characters, certainly he has received the most fanfiction, but looking at the books…Malfoy isn’t that important.  He only majorly effects the plot in the first and 6th book, and even then he is never the central forces of either story, his role in the story is usually just him showing up, being kinda of a dick, and then something bad happening to him.  Barry Crouch jr and Sr, are in every way more important characters to the plot and themes of the story, and yet they aren’t really registered as major characters.  

(this character matters a lot more)

And it isn’t just that he is iconic, I mean Boba Fett is iconic and he barely does anything, but Malfoy is loved.  I mean there is a Tv Trope “Draco in Leather Pants” for a reason, in fact in many ways he is more beloved and admired than Ron, who is an actual character who does stuff.  And I can’t empathies this enough, the sheer amount of Malfoy fanfiction out there is overwhelming, I know fanfiction will elevate any character given enough time, but there is a reason why I know about this, despite never reading HP fanfiction.  I mean the Very Potter Musical makes Malfoy the secondary protagonist on equal billing to Harry Himself, and honestly gets more of an arch.  Which is particularly puzzling because again

Malfoy isn’t that important of a character.  

   Almost every Malfoy scene actually in the books follows certain beats, and you can break them down.  Malfoy approaches Harry, Harry’s friends, or some helpless weak kid who Harry feels obligated to protect, Malfoy is a colossal asshole, and he either leaves smugly or is humiliated.  Or Malfoy actively tries to do something dickish like dress up like a dementor, or ambush Harry &co on the train, which inevitably back fires and he ends up humiliated.  Even random lines that mention him basically boil down to “Malfoy did something dickish”.  Occasionally you will have a scene where some element of the world is explored by something bad happeing to Malfoy, like Harry using the invisibility cloak to fuck with him, or Malfoy being forced to go into the woods, or Malfoy getting turned into a ferret.  Until book 6, he is basically just a bit character, who shows up, does something dickish, and then usually gets the shit beaten out of him.

In short

Malfoy in Fandom

Malfoy in the Books 

Now there are many reasons why we like Malfoy, some to do with his design (especially in the movies), the fact that Slytherin has the best color scheme (snakes are cool yo), our societies complicated feelings toward aristocracy, and the overall popularity of villians over heroes, the latter point could be its own video.  But I’m going to narrow in on three main points, which as an academic, I’m required by law to spell out to you before I explain them

Reader Rebellion and Slytherin’s appeal

Malfoy’s status as “the Bully” vs. his actual character

SHIPPING

(trying too hard)

   See, part of the reason why people like Malfoy is because what I call “Reader Subversion”, basically when the audience rejects what the text is telling them to do.  The most obvious example is watching bad movies for fun, these movies want to be seen as serious or dramatic, and instead we are just laughing at how bad they are (The Dungeons and Dragons movie is one I recommend).  So when the narrative is telling us “Hate this character, look how unlikable we made him” its very tempting to just be like “Screw you, I’ll sympathize with the character”.  Another example of this in HP is the embrace of Slytherin, which at least memetically is tied with Ravenclaw for most popular house.  Its associated with sexiness, coolness, ambition, and cunning but frankly…those traits aren’t really on display in the books.  

(Slytherin in the Fandom)

The vast majority of Slytherins we meet are…kinda stupid, just selfish cruel vindictive spoiled assholes who only care about protecting their status.  Its less sexy vampires, and more Trump administration entitlement.

(Slytherin in the books)

 But because the books are telling us so much how bad this house is, how much they suck, how much they are the “bad guy house” it’s pretty tempting to reject the narrative and find reasons to like them.  Topic for another video, but I notice this is popular when the narrative is very obvious about how much we should hate an antagonist ,and when the antagonists are more annoying than actually threatening.  

This instinct is especially important because that is one of the major themes of the book in the character of Snape.  Everything about the character is designed to make us dislike him, he is cruel, selfish, petty, vindictive, and is actively abusing his position of power to psychologically torment children.  He is given all the “bad guy” physical characteristics, he dresses in black, and pretty much does something dickish in every scene he is in.  And critically…he is the good guy.  The point the book is making is that even if somebody is a massive asshole, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t possess positive qualities.  This is arguably the main theme of the series, that people have more to them than we first imagine, we see this with Neville, the Crouches, Dumbledore, McGonagall, the Marauders, REB, Fudge, and Dudley all relate to this them.

The inverse of Snape is James Potter, who is revealed to have been an arrogant bully (and incidentally my second favorite characters in the series).  Now this is a topic for another video, but I think that the greatest failing of the HP series is not really following through with this theme, for every character who learn more about, there are others who stay the same, Lilly Potter and Voldemort being the worse examples.  But this finally gets to the problem of Malfoy 

See from the start Malfoy is coded as somebody who isn’t just a bad person, but also a simplistic one, he has a very clear role as a character, of “The Bully.”  Basically, the Bully exists to be a minor antagonist to the hero, and possibly embody the writer’s childhood issues.  This character is like the terminator of petty spite, he will go out of his way to make the protagonists miserable in the most needlessly cruel way possible.  They will relentless pursue fucking with the protagonists at the expense of even their own basic self-interest.  This is one of the most overdone, tired, and uncreative roles in fiction, I’ve always hated bully characters and I feel they make the problem of childhood bullying a lot worse because it doesn’t recognize where the instinct to bully comes from, and how complicated it is.  What the stranger in a ski mask is to understanding rape, so this character is to understanding bullying.  Bully characters exist to be generic antagonists, so they are almost anniversary awful.  The only examples I can think of who are good are Cordelia from Buffy…and Draco Malfoy.  

Cause when you break it down, Malfoy has motivations, relationships, goals, ideals, insecurities enough to make a full character, or at least a resemblance of one.  He truly loves his family, he has some massive set of issues and he loves his family.  Its honestly kinda compelling how he like “yeah I’m going to be evil when I grow up” but that same wimpness that makes him less threatening to Harry is also his greatest virtue, he simply isn’t strong enough to be truly evil and that is kind of a good thing.  Honestly its sort of the anti-Neville, while Neville is a giant coward except when the chips are down and that is his greatest virtue, Malfoy acts tough until shit gets real and that is also his greatest virtue.  Cowardice makes him a better person, in contrast to Crouch or Riddle who are extremely brave and cruel.  

Also when compared to his father, you realize Draco is basically desperately trying to be something he isn’t, a cross between a Lannister and a Bond villain and he just can’t quite manage it.  And his frustration with Harry comes in large part because Harry kinda has everything Malfoy desperately wants all without “earning it”.  Draco is obviously somebody who is pressured a great deal by his family to succeed and has a lot to live up to, and deep down doesn’t’ really think he is up to the task.  And as we see in book 6, he isn’t.  Harry meanwhile basically has what Malfoy wants the most without even trying, which makes Malfoy risk thinking about his own inability to live up to his father’s standards which leads him to lash out.  It isn’t a super complicated character but there is potential, which is never really explored in the books because Rowling doesn’t like him.  

There is potential for a fully character there, and it honestly reminds me of Snape, we are given a character whose every action is coded bad but if we pay attention we realize there is more personality there than our initial impressions give credit for.  But unlike Snape, we don’t actually get rewarded for looking closer to Malfoy, if you pay close attention you realize there is more to him but the narrative basically doesn’t care about him.  The reader isn’t rewarded for taking the book’s advice and examining the character beyond the trappings of his presentation, which is one of the most frustrating experiences you can get as a reader, feeling all the work you put in was for nothing. And that frustration is, along with radiation poisoning, the greatest impetus for the creation of fanfiction, which is basically the result of stories cockblocking the audience.

(did this happen in the movies I don’t even remember)

This goes to the shipping thing. Full up, I don’t ship Harry/Malfoy, in large part bceause of how much of Harry’s character is determined by his internal narration, and that to me disproves any indication that Harry likes Malfoy.  He spends so little mental energy on Malfoy, when ever he encounters him he is like “oh yeah that guy is a shit..I bet he likes Thatcher” but when Malfoy isn’t on screen Harry doesn’t really care, he has more important things to worry about like being British and having a shockingly high pain tolerance.  The only time when Malfoy seems to occupy Harry’s thoughts its the 6th books, and only when there is a plot reason, and in the 7th he doesn’t care again.  Compare this to how he thinks about Cho Chang, where he spends mental energy on her even when she isn’t on screen.  Harry just doesn’t care.

BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Malfoy does.  Malfoy over the course of the book goes dramatically out of his way to fuck with Harry Potter, he dramatically inconveniences himself in order to fuck with Harry.  in the first book he sneaks out at night to try to fuck with Harry Potter for its own sake and gets caught for it.  He dresses up in dementor robes to mess with him, he waits in hallways to make fun of him, he designs a bunch of badges to mock him, like Malfoy seemingly goes out of his way to fuck with Harry above and beyond the norm.  So...why

(I”M AN ADULT)

Well the actual reason is that Malfoy is the Bully character and that is what Bullies do, which is why bullies in fiction are often so boring and don’t resemble real life bullies, who are much closer to Snape or James Potter.  But this doesn’t work with Malfoy because the character is just well written enough that you have to ask “wait why is this guy acting so obsessed”

(WTF is he doing in this shot?)

And that is where some of the shipping comes from.  Its not necessarily true, since you could just read it as Malfoy being super insecure and envious, but you could easily also read it as just “Malfoy has a crush on harry and is a shithead”  Repressed homosexual lust is as good explanation as many for his weird fixation on Harry.  It certainly makes more sense than “he is just evil” which 

seems to be the canon.  

TLDR, Malfoy is interesting because the writer seems to actively dislike him and dismiss him like the Tory punk that he is, but the fandom loves him so much that they have turned him into a whole new character the reason why is that he is just well written enough to be intriguing but has no follow through.  

Also who names their kid Scoripus Hyperion Malfoy jesus christ this guy is the Jacob Rees Mogg of the HP series.

[valkerymillenia]

Now that I've finished season 3 of Young Justice, I'm adding on to my previous thoughts/review.

Anyway...

There's a criminal lack of Spoiler and Orphan, for starters but it's understandable why, this isn't a BatFam show after all (but I'd sooooooo watch a BatFam spin-off of this universe).

Got to see a hint of Suicide Squad! That was a surprise (not really but it's awesome).

Vandal Savage's backstory and development? Literal gold if you like villains (I never liked Savage and yet this interpretation of him just has so much potential!). I do wonder if they will ever approach the "Roy Harper is Savage's descendant" detail...

Thank you, Lord, for all the Klarion! Boy needs to show up more in DC media.

So Halo is bisexual and non-binary? That's pretty awesome but it sucks that nobody in the show seems to get the NB part and everyone codes her as female throughout the whole season, kinda defeats the purpose of having a NB character.

Still annoyed that they used the hijab for hype but removed her actual faith from the character (she literally says "I'm not Muslim", they could have at least left it undefined), you can't bank on a character's traits for "representation" and ignore the meaning behind them, otherwise it's pointless and insulting.

Also, making the Muslim girl the immortal? Badass (and works well with the character). Making it so you can repeatedly kill her to very graphically highlight the seriousness of the situation? A little fucked up, dude.

Still, she's powerful as hell and saved everyone in an amazing display of power.

So yeah, I totally love Halo and her concept is awesome but she was a bit disrespected by the writer and deserves better on some aspects. Oh, and I like the whole "Halo and Cyborg are now related" thing more than I anticipated.

Really happy to get bi Harper Row in the story! Bluebird is such an underappreciated character of the BatFam. The abuse subplot was also very good because it's a topic that needs to be approached in media, victims need to see positive representation.

The Bumblebee baby subplot was... Tricky. It really messes with an important ethical conundrum (yikes, eugenics) that is definitely too complex for younger audiences but I think the goal was to create another future super-kid for the next seasons (still a little icky though but at least they tried to frame it as controversial even to Karen's own feelings). I guess we'll find out.

Granny Goodness has always been a brutal villain and I hope we see more of her. Also, MORE BIG BARDA, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!

Wyynde and Kaldur are SO CUTE! GAH! I need more of them! I just love their relationship so much.

"Who is Dick's family anyway? Is Grayson's father Bruce Wayne-...?" *cue someone immediately redirecting the conversation*

I'm sorry but that what AWESOME and kinda hilarious too. (Yes, Brion, Dick is one of Bruce Wayne's several children, get with the BatFam).

The Anti-Life Equation thing was very well done, I didn't expect it to go so well but every player involved played a great role and the idea of a world with no free will? Shivers, man. Now, it just needs to be readressed in the future because no way would any villain give that up so easily with Halo still alive.

The Geranium City subplot was quite sweet, it brought back some intriguing questions and finally touched a piece of Conner's story that has been hanging since season 1.

Will x Artemis is NOT a thing, thank God! They made such a big deal about it that I was scared and I get the appeal but they are in-laws, it would be so messed up.

I mean, I want Artemis to heal in a healthy way and move on as much as any fan (that limbo sequence made me cry my eyes out, so heartbreaking) but there's no need to force a thing with Will, so I'm glad for the way things got resolved.

Luthor's Infinity Inc reminds me waaaay too much of the Seven in "The Boys"... Still, a smart move. Kinda wondering where it's gonna lead in the future now that they basically belong to Brion.

Terra actually choosing redemption and the Outsiders before trying to kill them was surprising (as was everyone knowing she was a mole), I expected a big fight against her and Deathstroke because that's always been the Terra schtick but instead we got a power crazed Brion, which was a beautifully executed plot twist and as much as it hurts me to see Brion fall (and break Violet's heart) I have to give kudos to the writers, that was well played to wrench our hearts to pieces.

And that new psychic asshole manipulating Brion and making Markocvia into the Light's puppet? Interesting addition.

I really hope Brion gets his own redemption in the next season (orrr maybe he degenerates further into full blown villain? I don't think he has it in him and by the very end he seems to be depressed, lonely and disgruntled with his position already so there might be hope for him yet, but it would be interesting to see him fall further and further beyond redemption and I don't see him infiltrating the Light for the good guys because that would just be a rehash of Kaldur in season 2).

Loved how Lex Luthor got taken down from that bullshit UN position. He's a brilliant villain but he was soooo getting on my nerves in that particular position and it was such a relief to see him fall (which is a sign of how well written it was).

Black Lighting as boss!!!!! Ahhh, that was such a goddamn good choice in this particular universe, especially after he spent the whole season being a voice of reason while going through some growth himself. Still, feels a bit odd merely because he was barely in the bg in previous seasons.

Funny how Conner and M'gann never speak out loud even at home, damn I love this ship (miss my classic timkon though).

That little Robin laugh at the end of the season was such a nice touch, really nostalgic.

What's with the Legion Flight ring on the waitress?

What's with Lobo's finger? So messed up.

Oh boy, now I need Jason and Damian in future seasons (hell, Jon too, give us the Super Sons!!!).

All in all, the third season seems to bring a lot of things full circle at last but also feels like the beginning of something completely new, opening doors and raising questions for a lot of possibilities. It was a very intriguing subversion of a lot of DC plotlines and mythology.

Still... Can we just call the Outsiders the alternate Teen Titans? because that's basically what they are.

CAN'T WAIT FOR SEASON 4!!!!!!