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nyerus · 4 years ago

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Musings about Mu Qing’s Feelings Towards Xie Lian

Since Mu Qing won the “polls” on twitter last night, I thought I’d bully him a bit and publish this pseudo-meta. I had trouble understanding him at first, until it hit me at some point that it’s not entirely impossible that he may have harbored unrequited romantic feelings for Xie Lian--which helped explain a lot of things.

This is super rough since it’s what I tossed out on one of my discord servers, so it may have some typos/etc. And it’s just my personal interpretation, so take that as you will!

MQ probably felt Some Way™ for XL ever since their childhood days, and you see it during book 2 especially when you get to see XianLe trio's happy background. It's easy to fall in love with someone who essentially pulled you out of the dirt, and then continuously protected you from scrutiny by taking it on to themselves. Easier still when that person is someone like XL. For all that MQ b!tches, he didn't actually hate being XL's servant back then. He didn't mind the work, and he definitely was grateful for the opportunity to be so close to XL, all the time. But what he resented was undoubtedly the fact that his status was so much lower than XL's to the point that XL was completely and utterly unattainable (not just romantically, platonically as well). And his frustration and anger over this often presented itself whenever XL did nice things for him. Because it wasn't that MQ didn't appreciate that, but that it further cemented the idea that XL was beyond reach. XL could do as he pleased, as the crown prince, and it was clear he would never see MQ the way MQ wanted to be seen. An equal, on the same playing field.

CONTINUED UNDER THE CUT DUE TO LENGTH:

And thus when XL fell from grace, MQ had mixed feelings. Finally, XL was off that pedestal, but somehow he was even harder to reach than ever. And it hurt MQ to see him that way--frustrated, reckless, and so so so human. Because it forced MQ to confront the nature of his feelings towards XL and it just wasn't something he could do because he himself at the time didn't understand how he felt, or why. So he LEFT.

But he didn't leave out of malicious intent--he needed space to process, and furthermore, he couldn't see XL suffering. "Maybe I can find a way to fix this." Which is why he probably cultivated like crazy to ascend, so he could drag FX and XL up to middle court, and keep them safe and provided for. MQ is not at all in tune with his emotions at this point, though, so it came off all sorts of wrong. And he's also the type of person to be like "the ends do justify the means" which is why his 'betrayal' on the mountain, with the other heavenly officials, happened at all. He could stand up for XL then, but then alienate himself from the others and hurt his chances at being able to help XL in the long run. Or he could just keep his mouth shut for now and find a way to make it up to XL later. (Which is what he tries, with the food he brings after that.) But he doesn't understand that this betrayal is so fundamentally damaging to XL, because XL has only one thing left at all: the notion that friends will stand by you. MQ already damaged this by leaving, but when he betrayed XL on the mountain, that was the final straw. XL's trust and the last shred of hope he had was shattered. That's why XL lashed out so badly (and would do so later at FX), but MQ didn't understand how important it was once again--because he himself isn't that introspective or good with his emotions. But this event cemented itself in MQ's mind forever. It's the one thing he holds against himself the most, even if he doesn't admit it. Because that's when he broke the person he was trying to fix.

MQ definitely tries to get on with his life after this, and he does, but he never lets it go--because he never lets anything go. And when XL ascends, it's finally his chance to do right by him, but he is still repressed as hell and doesn't know how to do that straightforwardly. He camps in the communication array from the MOMENT XL ascends to look out for news about XL. LW even remarks on this like "wow you seem to have a lot of time on your hands--you've been in the array 24/7 lately." It's because, well, he has. He's keeping watch. And the second he gets the info he needs on XL's first assignment, he (and FX) absolutely yeets down there to help because what else is he supposed to do? He's not gonna let a spiritual energy-less XL fend for himself. He still has a sense of duty towards XL, and that massive guilt he's been carrying around all this time. But he's too proud to admit that he wants to help, so he and FX just disguise themselves and do it anyway. MQ is continuously perceptive during this to XL's situation and is equal parts shocked/taken-aback and oddly satisfied. Once again, XL seems so so so far away. Still unreachable, but now differently so.

Which is why he has SUCH a distaste for HC, moreso than FX does, because HC has managed to weasel his way into XL's life and make himself a somewhat permanent fixture. That's what MQ wanted to be, and was never able to achieve, so “how the hell did HC do that in a matter of days?!” But it becomes clear to MQ, especially around book 3, that HC has already "won" so to speak. (And as an aside--MQ was genuinely upset at the Battle of the Lanterns not because XL won, but because it was such an overt romantic gesture from HC and he knew it. FX was really chill about it because he didn't realize that and also didn't really care. But XL notices that MQ's expression was very dark and unreadable at the time, and it's easy to see why.) When MQ taunts HC at the end of book 3, it's INCREDIBLY revealing. Because he accuses HC of a lot, and a lot of it is straight-up projection too. Which HC immediately recognizes and throws back at him. HC has also probably known from a very very long time, too, because he would know desire for XL when he sees it, better than anyone. (Not to mention the bad blood between HC and MQ ontop of all this! Big RIP there.)

But MQ is, if anything, at least a gracious loser. In a way. In book 5 he admits that he finds XL spectacular, and that he would like to try to be friends from thereon. FX and XL are almost baffled by this because it feels unspoken that they already were, but to me, it always felt like MQ was purposefully re-defining their relationship for himself. Which is a healthy step forward! And by the end of the Ghost King's Birthday extra, he understands that Hualian are a paired set and while it still annoys him, he's coming to terms with it. He's one of the few people that really get even a fraction of Hualian's love for each other, because he knows what it feels like to love XL.

*Keep in mind that these are just my personal musings based on how I chose to interpret things. None of this is confirmed, just fun to consider! This is less a straight-up MQ meta and focused particularly on his feelings towards XL, so I’ve left a lot of things about his characterization out as well. He’s a complicated and interesting character and that would take a whole ‘nother post, whew!

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far!~ (*¯ ³¯*)♡

#tgcf #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #hob #mulian #well one-sided at least #RIP mu qing i feel u bro like has everyone SEEN taizi dianxia #meta #nyerus.txt

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darkdevasofdestruction · 4 years ago

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BakuSquad In Jail

I saw these pics randomly and talking with my friend, @thatweirdfrenchcanadian , we came up with some funny HCs for the BakuSquad and the reason they got in jail.

I have no idea who the artists are, I’ve been having the pics in my phone for a while, but if anyone knows the artist, please let me know so I can tag them appropriately!

Beginning:

They were at a party, just the 5 of them, and they were happy for getting into Pro-Hero agencies, and now they weren’t side kicks anymore, so of course, they had to celebrate accordingly!

A huge party where they all let loose and have fun without anyone judging!

What none of them were expecting was to get shit faced drunk and do lots of weird shit, enough to somehow get into jail for whatever reason.

Kaminari Denki:

Baby Pikachu got so drunk that he made Momo make a Pikachu onesie for him, on the spot, along with a Naruto headband, and made Mina do some lines on his face, to resemble Naruto, then went out to the nearest monument and threw paint at it.

If they were human statues, he’d draw lightnings on their foreheads and write “VOLDEMORT WAS HERE” on their torsos.

If they were animals, he will paint them in weird colours.

And if they were some new art, he’d just throw random paint and say “IT’S MODERN ART, YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND, NORMIE!”

If that wasn’t enough, he stole a shopping cart and made Kirishima push him in it down the street.

Street that was actually a slope made by Todoroki in an attempt to ice skate and show off.

Unfortunately, Kirishima got distracted by a pigeon and started running after it to become the new Snow White, and Denki kept going down the ice slope, shrieking in the cart, thinking he was in a roller coaster.

When the policeman got him, he started giggling, saying he’s not drunk, just super LIT, FAM, and started doing a super fast triple dab.

Triple dab that he ended up slamming his arm into his head so hard that he knocked himself out and he was out like a light.

Bakugou Katsuki:

You can’t blame a guy who goes to sleep earlier than 9pm and barely drinks alcohol, so he can have a perfect hero-training schedule that he got drunk from very few shots of vodka and now he was feeling light like a feather and wants to entertain people...

More or less because their awes and gasps of wonder boost his ego so much that he wants to show off his explosions.

Katsuki starts doing random explosions around the house, then, when people tell him to do flashier tricks, he goes out and pulls lots of different typed of explosions, flashier, with more light, with more heat, with more colour, with more sound and whatever else the audience wanted.

When the cops came, they wanted to charge him for illegal use of fireworks, which sent Bakugou into a blind frenzy since NOBODY CALLS HIS EXPLOSIONS MERE, LAME FIREWORKS, OKAY?!

He started roaring and growling at the policeman, showing him that he can do EXPLOSIONS not some stupidly lame fireworks, which only ends up with lots of curses, fighting, and it takes a lot of new policeman to get him an elephant tranquillizer to make him stop.

Of course, they needed special restraints for him, since he’s so violent, but that wasn’t a problem, and Bakugou was used to these restraints, since he was forced to wear them twice before.

SERO HANTA

Poor Sero was mostly innocent, and he is pretty used to light drinking and these types of parties, but he really wanted to let loose this time around, so he started playing beer pong, never have I ever with vodka and tequila shots, and many other drinking games that made him SO happy in his drunken state.

As well as that, he had some weed joints that he really wanted to smoke...

And some LSD, because what could be better than trippin’ at a party when you’re so happy?

Always time for first times!

He used his tape to get into a spiderman position, hanging down from the ceiling after getting the LSD and started smoking some joints, letting the euphoria take effect on him.

Hanta started grinning and giggling, swaying back and forth with that tape, until someone, that he still has no idea, even to this moment (Definitely Denki) dared him to play Tarzan out in the city, so he started jumping from building to building, yelling incoherently that he is the KING OF THE URBAN JUNGLE...Or something like that, it was mostly unintelligible.

When he got arrested, he got into a spiderman position again and winked at the policeman, asking if he wanted to be his Mary Jane.

Then passed out and fell on the ground...For some reason, giggling in that unconscious state.

Ashido Mina

Mina was drinking cocktails, martinis and tequilas with each costume she would do for the catwalk she created in the house, each time, flashier and more ridiculous outfits, but hey, they were fun, and for some reason, most of them had holes...From accidental acid drips.

She MAY also be on acid anyway, who knows...Mina says her name is symbolic for more than her Quirk...

She got dared to recreate some iconic make ups from James Charles and mid-way to her look, she realised she didn’t have everything she needed, so she went to the closest shop and raided the make up isle, trying out each and every one of the products there, using her selfie camera as a mirror and trying to do her best.

The shop assistants were horrified at the girls behaviour, but her only answer was “Hi, I’m the Alien Queen, wanna be my Predator?”

When the cop car came over, and the lights started going red and blue, she thought she was being photographer by the paparazzi, so she brought a random pair of sunglasses, with the tag in the middle of her face, and put her fluffy boa around her shoulders.

And started posing.

She didn’t have perfect balance for most of the posings, but she tried her best to mimic all those cool fashion pics she saw in magazines.

At the end, she asked the cop if he wanted an autograph, and when he refused, she giggled, took out her eyeliner and wrote on his forehead ALIEN QUEEN XOXO

Kirishima Eijirou

Kiri was the most innocent in all of this, and he shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place, but he wanted to be where he best friends are, so that’s just that.

Well, he was convinced by the rest of the BakuSquad that it’s MANLY to drink, so he had a drinking contest with TetsuTetsu, that ended up with both of them under the table pretty fast.

The bet of this contest was that whoever was the first to wake up would win, and since TetsuTetsu won, Kiri had to take the water gun that Tsuyu brought and pretend to play CS:Go in the nearest store.

Of course, he did just that, but he was completely oblivious to the fact that Tokoyami wrapped his bandana to his face, instead of his forehead, to look like a funny western cowboy or whatever, and when he got in the store, all not-so-stealthily, the shop assistants hit the alarm and called the cops for having a robber.

With all that loud noise, he started squirting water everywhere, shrieking and saying WATER IN THE HOLE, THROW THE GRENADE, TAKE COVER, HIT SPACE, AHHHHHH!

Needless to say, the assistants and customers were more confused than scared.

When the cop came over, he blinked at him confused, saying that he can’t get in jail, since he’s a shark, and then shoot water in the cop’s face.

Oops?

The end:

When they all woke up, Mina was the first to realise what happened, due to her phone buzzing like crazy to her Snapchat stories, and only then she realised what happened...At least to her.

Then, her jailer told her how she got there, and she could only laugh at how bad she was in only a few hours of the night.

Of course, Yaomomo was graceful enough to bail them out of there, was the caution was nothing more than a breeze and they didn’t actually do anything too bad to actually keep them there anyway.

All that, while Midoriya was bawling his eyes out like a waterfall to some random jailer, telling them how amazingly kind hearted and nice heroes they are, and that they did a mistake, and it won’t happen again...

Blah Blah Blah.

He didn’t even realise how Mina walked out of her cell and sprinted to the boys’ cell, where she stood on the ground, telling them what Jirou, Tsuyu and Tokoyami told them happened that night and how they all ended up there.

Of course, it was all in good fun, despite the fact that they were sure Aizawa was going to hunt them down and kill them for the idiocy they did...

But they aren’t called the 1-Braincell Squad for no reason, right?!

To commemorate such a weirdass experience, Mina took the picture with her phone, telling them all to look natural, so they did as told.

Except Bakugou, who was beyond pissed off at what happened and kept grumbling something about stupid fireworks.

They were SO doing this shit again.

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the-trashy-phoenix · 4 years ago

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Supernatural season 6 review (part 2)

Link to part 1:

Irene and I have already finished watching season 6 and I have mixed feelings on it. I immediately noticed the difference between this season and the previous ones, and I think it's not necessarily a bad thing, although probably the whole season can't compete with the previous two. All in all I didn't mind it at all, despite it definitely not being my favorite season, because it contains some new elements that add depth to the characters.

It starts with Dean trying to live a normal life with Lisa and Ben, after he promised it to Sam, but we can immediately see that, despite being a good life and him being fine with them, he feels that he's missing something, and that something, more than it being a life as a hunter (because Dean already said before he would have liked to retire), I think is his brother's presence. Dean's attempt to live with a family is destroyed by the moment Sam miraculously reappears in his life, along with a number of new family members, the Campbells (including their mother's father Samuel, killed years earlier by the yellow-eyed demon), who doesn't seem to particularly like Dean (and the feeling is mutual) and who keeps the purpose of their monsters (and the alphas of each species) hunts a secret from the brothers.

The first and I think most important mystery of the season comes when Sam admits he doesn't know how he got out of the cage and especially when Dean realizes that his brother has changed drastically. I feel like this season, much more than the others, is shown particularly from Dean's point of view from the very beginning (as we see what his life is like without Sam) and so we find out with him as the season goes on what is the next situation he (with his brother) will have to deal with, since it's not clear as it usually is, indeed one of the things that makes this season particularly different from the others is that we don't immediately know who's the villain to defeat. The first problem is finding out who brought Sam and Samuel back, although it seems to worry Dean mostly than anyone else.

Another problem is added when, on episode 06x03, Castiel (called by Dean after many attempts from Sam, who soon finds out Dean's try actually works because of his brother and the angel's "profound bond") informs the brothers that there is a civil war in heaven and that he is fighting Raphael, who wants to take control of the angels and restart the Apocalypse, considering that the plans did not go as the angels would have liked. Castiel is rather mysterious and secretive about the war and the brothers don't know much more about it, considering they focus more on their individual cases and Sam's situation.

I have noticed that the brothers often tend to focus on their problems rather than giving importance to the others' as well. They don't seem too willing to help Castiel (though he doesn't seem willing to be helped) and even when they know Bobby made a deal with Crowley they don't try to fix it. Their attitude emerges especially in episode 06x04, in which we see everything from Bobby's point of view and discover many sides of him that until now we did not know. The episode shows how Bobby behaves during his typical days and we can immediately notice how many things the man does both for himself (in case of finding a way to untie the deal with Crowley), but also for other people (like Rufus, his friend who's also a hunter we've seen already multiple times before and whom I'm pretty fond of), and especially for the Winchesters, who call him for whatever problem they have during a case and for which he wastes hours of his day. They don't pay him back with much and Bobby finally makes them realize how selfish and self-centered they are. The two then help Bobby and the man manages to recover his soul. In addition to his altruism, I also appreciate Bobby's efficiency: he manages to get his soul back in an episode, while the Winchesters can't do it even with a season available.

Going back to episode 06x03 we meet Balthazar, an angel who initially seems to be against Castiel and the Winchesters, but who we discover, as the episodes continue, that he is on the side of "team free will", as he helps them multiple times. I hated when Castiel killed him, since he is one of my favorite angels, both because of his personality and because, despite appearing to be the usual indifferent angel, he actually cares about the cause of the protagonists (and thanks to him we have one of the funniest episodes of Supernatural, 06x15, in which Sam and Dean are catapulted into "our reality" and take the place of the actors who play them, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, continuing that strand of metanarrative and bringing it to the next level of fun, since at this point this episode isn't just making fun of the Supernatural storyline, but also of the show and the actors themselves).

Dean, from episode 06x03 and as others go by, realizes that there's something wrong with Sam, since he seems more cold and heartless than ever, the feeling is fortified when he thinks Sam purposely let a vampire bite him so that he could find out who the vampire's alpha was and where he was (in order to bring him to Samuel). The transformation (that Dean thinks is definitive) leads him to want to say goodbye one last time to Ben and Lisa (with whom he had previously made a deal that allowed him to continue hunting with his brother, who needed him, and return to the two as soon as he could). Being a vampire, he tries to stay as far away from the two as possible, but loses control and throws Ben to the wall, running away soon after. Because of this episode Lisa breaks up with him and Dean, as much as he's hurt, realizes that it is better to get away from his family, to prevent them from being in danger. As much as I love Dean with Castiel, I like Dean with Lisa a lot too. It is probably due to the fact that he has a normal life with her (and I love seeing a domestic Dean), that I like Lisa's personality and that he manages to be a good father figure to Ben (we can see he's quite good with kids even in episode 06x02, when Sam and Dean have to deal with a baby shape-shifter). I hated seeing in episode 06x21, after Crowley captured Lisa and Ben, Dean deciding to erase their memories and going away from them permanently. I felt like the whole situation needed more closure. Back to episode 06x05, he manages to return human at the end of the same episode, but the feeling that Sam has a problem only intensifies when he realizes his brother was smiling as the vampire bit him.

One of the things I've enjoyed the most this season is definitely Sam's status and Dean's emotions about it. He finds himself in a position where he doesn't know how to trust his brother (and in the meantime he also has to endure the breakup with Lisa, which Sam seems to just pretend to care about). He's sure Sam has a problem in episode 06x06, where Sam in front of the goddess of truth manages to keep lying, so she yells at him that he's not human, shocking Dean. After defeating the goddess, Sam confesses everything: he has let him be vampirized and he knows there's something wrong with him, although he doesn't know what it is. Thanks to Castiel in episode 06x07 they discover Sam was brought back without his soul, which is still in the cage with Lucifer.

I love soulless Sam, especially for the new dynamics between the brothers, among whom Dean is now the one most responsible and empathetic, and for Sam's indifference to any human emotion (for example in the episode, in which Dean is kidnapped by "aliens" and Sam seems to be totally serene about it). Of course Dean wants to recover Sam's soul, while Sam does not seem particularly concerned about his lack and, on the contrary, believes that soulless he is a better hunter (and, since Castiel points out that all that time in the cage with Lucifer has most likely damaged Sam's soul irreparably, he's not even convinced it's good to have it back). As true as this may be, soulless Sam seems to become more and more dangerous and Dean finds himself looking for an extreme solution: thanks to Death he manages to recover Sam's soul and separate his memories in hell from the rest of his soul with a wall.

Sam returns with his soul, but without the memories of the last year, so he gradually discovers all the horrible things he has committed without a soul: he is shocked and feels very guilty, even if his brother tries to convince him that that was not really him and that therefore he should not feel responsible. I don't know why but I particularly love the relationship between the two brothers after Sam recovers his soul: first of all you can see the huge difference between soulless Sam and the Sam that we all know and love (I think his emotions and sensations emerge exponentially now, and as much as I liked him without his soul, this shift made me love the "normal" Sam even more), second of all there's a feeling of protection and understanding from Dean and Sam respectively, which leads me to think that they matured even more after the end of season five (in fact I was particularly surprised to see that Sam didn't seem upset by the fact that Dean didn't immediately tell him what had happened to him). Although this situation seems momentarily overcome (even if Dean is afraid that the wall will sooner or later break) the Winchesters have to face two other unsolved problems.

The first one is Crowley, who, once he becomes king of hell, we discover wanting to find Purgatory (to expand his kingdom). We also find out Samuel is working for him by capturing monsters that would eventually tell him how to reach the place (and he's doing it because Crowley promised he would bring Mary back as a reward). If Dean's esteem for his grandfather was already low, this new information gives him the opportunity to completely separate from him and the new relatives, realizing that he doesn't always need to have a family connection if there's one of blood. His grandfather's last misstep comes when, while Sam and Dean, with the help of Castiel and Meg (who wants Crowley dead as much as they do), he misleads them and imprisons them at Crowley's behest. The team manages to break free and Castiel appears to be able to kill Crowley once and for all. The Winchesters meet their grandfather during a hunt in which he dies, as does Rufus. The difference between the reactions to Samuel and Rufus' death is obvious, underlining the further difference between a family formed by blood bonding and a family born by love. I think the introduction of the new relatives, apart from to deepen the concept of family, was rather useless, created more to add mystery to the whole Sam affair than anything else.

The second problem concerns the Mother-of-all-things, Eve, who managed to get out of Purgatory and bring with her a series of monsters, intending to take revenge on Crowley for trying to appropriate Purgatory and the soul of its monsters (of which Eve is the mother). I didn't love this villain that much, it seemed to me introduced rather hastily and without any anticipation, moreover, in comparison to everything that was there before her, Eve seems rather weak, in fact Dean manages to kill her all in all pretty quickly.

On the other hand, I'm glad she was a passing villain and she died already in the episode 06x19 because that gave the brothers and Bobby the opportunity to find out that what Crowley really wants is souls, that he will get them by opening Purgatory and that he's actually still alive. We soon find out that all the unresolved things (like what concerns Crowley, the war in heaven and Sam's soul) leads to one character only: Castiel. I think this revelation is the best (and saddest) part of season six of Supernatural. At the end of episode 06x19 we already see Bobby and Sam suspecting that Castiel is hiding something from them, as it seems impossible that he failed to kill Crowley. The only one who can't even think Castiel would do such a thing is Dean (too blind because of his love for him).

In the next episode, 06x20, which has to be one of my favourite Supernatural episodes ever, everything starts to make sense, since it's all narrated by Castiel. After defeating Lucifer, he retrieved Sam from the cage with enormous difficulty (unintentionally leaving his soul there) and returned to heaven, discovering that Raphael would start a new Apocalypse. He decided to oppose him, although he did not know how to do it, so he initially thought to ask Dean for help, even if he wanted to leave him alone. Indeed, when Crowley proposed to him a deal to access purgatory and share the souls with which they would both strengthen (and Castiel would do it so much he could defeat Raphael), the angel accepted, and since he knows the boys will not like knowing he's made a deal with the king of hell, he doesn't tell them, carrying out the plan with Crowley on his own. As much as I understand Castiel's reasons for working with Crowley, I think he handled the whole situation in the worst possible way and it now seems like a hallmark of the Winchester family choosing to hide their secrets rather than get help from others. Throughout the episode all the tracks seem to trace back to the idea that Castiel is collaborating with Crowley, but Dean continues to trust the angel, trying to defend him in every way.

I think from this episode we can see a further change in the relationship between Dean and Cas: betraying the Winchesters is the last thing the angel would like to do and Dean would rather not see all the evidence that leads to Castiel's betrayal than to admit his best friend has plotted behind his back, because that would be the thing that would hurt him the most. When the Winchesters and Bobby find out by Castiel's mistake that he's been spying on them, Dean realizes he should deal with the fact that his best friend has betrayed him and so he calls him to confront him.

This is probably the saddest scene in this episode: when the Winchesters and Bobby trap him, he continues to look for excuses, until Dean asks him to look him in the eyes and tell him he's not cooperating with Crowley. At that point Castiel can no longer lie, but tries to show the others his point of view, which the three of them do not share and condemn heavily enough. I understand that in this case they have the right to feel betrayed by Castiel, but this is not the first time someone has kept something hidden from the others (it happens literally all the times) and that someone has worked with Crowley (they did it just on the previous season), so it seems to me a bit of a hypocritical attitude to be so upset with Castiel, since the angel has done nothing but help them from the moment he sided with them, while they haven't even tried to help him with the angels' war. Indeed I think they should have found a sort of compromise to resolve the situation in the best of the ways, instead of hindering each other. But I think Dean is mostly hurt by all of Castiel's lies and the fact that he totally fell for it rather than the betrayal itself, so, knowing him, that would have been the hardest thing to do. In my opinion the whole episode focuses on Dean and Castiel's feelings the most, to a point which it almost touches a romantic level, and that scene is the icing on the cake (is it because of the scene, and the script, itself or of Dean and Castiel's intense, longing and hurtful stares? We'll probably never find out, but I love to suffer with them).

In the last two episodes we can see the consequences of the previous episode: after trying to convince Castiel that opening the doors of purgatory was a bad idea and failing miserably, Dean understands that all he can do is hinder him. We can also see the difference between the two brothers, as Sam is more willing to interact with Cas, meanwhile Dean doesn't seem to want to deal with him anymore (even when he should ask him for help to find Lisa and Ben, although in episode 06x21 Dean asks Castiel one last favour, which is to erase Lisa and Ben's memories).

Castiel, on the other hand, tries multiple times to convince Dean (and the others) to trust him with his plan. They can't, so when they try to stop him the angel has to intervene. While I could justify Castiel actions until 06x20, I couldn't after that: after returning from the death and assuming it was God who brought him back, he started to believe what he was doing, making his own choices, was right. So far I couldn't agree more with him, but this security has turned into arrogance and Castiel seems to realize this, as episode 06x20 ends with a desperate demand for an answer from God, since he doesn't know if he's on the right path anymore. Despite these insecurities in the last episode, 06x22, he completes the plan, depriving Crowley of his half of the souls and blocking the Winchesters by breaking the wall in Sam's mind. I understand he didn't know how else to stop them, but until the previous episode he wouldn't want anyone to lay a finger on the Winchesters, so that seems kinda hypocrite. Despite that, Dean and Bobby tries to find Castiel and Crowley before it's too late, but when they find the demon, on Raphael's side, once he found out that Castiel would not comply with the plan, the angel comes back already full of souls and power, after tricking Crowley and completing the plan on his own, and finally kills Raphael. Season six ends with Sam that somehow has reached them, despite being fresh of memories of the time he spent with Lucifer in the cage, with Castiel believing he's the new God (and having all the powers to do so) and with Bobby and Dean knowing the next problem will be how to stop Castiel before he causes another disaster.

I think this season has a lot of great elements, like soulless Sam and the plot twist around Castiel, but also many weaknesses, like the Campbells and the enemies like Eve and Raphael, who in my opinion didn't make such an impact, making Castiel certainly the most interesting villain.

I already know what will happen to Castiel and the boys, but watching them like that always breaks my heart.

- Carly 💚

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crusherthedoctor · 4 years ago

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Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 15: DR. EGGMAN

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a mini-series of mine, in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, it’s finally time for him. The bad doctor himself. Gather round ladies and gentleman, for the spotlight is on the arch-villain that shines above them all... Dr. Eggman.

The Gist: It's the dawn of the 90's. A little company called SEGA had an ephiphany. They wanted to make a video game juggernaut that could rival the quality and iconic appeal of the then-unmatched Super Mario Bros, and their current star, Alex Kidd, just wasn't doing it in the way that they hoped. They promptly set about starting anew, as a worldwide phenomenon wasn't going to make itself.

So a gentleman named Naoto Ohshima created a selection of design concepts for this brand new mascot. One of these concepts was President Roosevelt in his pajamas.

Seen here with his catgirl body pillow.

The response to this character was “This is good, but we think kids would prefer kicking the shit out of him”, and so he was given an antagonistic role instead. In the meantime, after juggling the rest of their ideas, they eventually settled on a rabbit hedgehog named Sonic for their main protagonist, knowing his Mickey Mouse-like aesthetic would help endear him to the audience, and the franchise as a whole would have an easier time gaining a DeviantART fanbase later on down the line.

Initially, the character of today's review was but a mere lackey among many, seemingly little more than one of numerous minions working for Sonic's originally intended main villain, the Nonspecific Goblin. He was also dressed as a bee for some reason.

Which is the least weirdest thing in this image.

At some point however, they all got together and decided that actually, the guy with the moustache was the only one worth shit, and so he was upgraded to the role of main villain himself. With a spiffy new attire of red and black, he was given the bold title of Dr. Eggman, because with a shape like that, what else are you gonna call him?

“Funny you should say that”, laughed SEGA of America, as they rebelled like an angsty teen and named him Dr. Ivo Robotnik instead. While this name does make equal sense for the character, as he is indeed a hard worker who also happens to like robots, the reason for this name's existence seems to have been mainly because they thought Eggman was too out there of a name for an egg-like man. Whatever the case, this would confuse a lot of fans for years, and remains a point of divisiveness to this day... Unless you're like me and your first game in the series was Advance 2, in which the manual clears it up right away, and you accept the idea of a character having two names and immediately carry on with your life.

He would have aimed it perfectly if it weren't for the Sonic Heroes Parrot distracting him.

And that was that, really. It didn't take long for them to come up with his characterization, which was that of a cackling fiend with an ego to end all egos. This guy was the Narcissist Alpha, more king than actual kings, no strings attached. Other villains would build statues of themselves, but only Robotnik would deface Ancient Egyptian monuments to improve them with his face. Other villains would think “Nah, refacing all four in Rushmore would look silly”, but only the Eggman, the Eggmyth, the Egglegend, would go “Well fuck you, I'm doing it anyway.” Then he'd do it anyway, and proceed to address to the entire world that he did in fact do it anyway.

It also didn't take long for them to develop his primary schtick. With the dynamic of Sonic VS Eggman, you had a classic rivalry between nature and technology. Interestingly enough however, this turned out to be executed more tactfully than your typical Amish-abiding examples in similar media. Never was technology itself regarded as a corruptive influence that you should never utilise no matter what. Rather, it was only as good or as evil as the person using it, with it just so happening that the villain loved machinery only slightly less than he loved himself, and it was countered by Sonic’s best friend being a techno wiz in his own right anyway. Anyhow, with his machinery, the doctor would make a name for himself among video game baddies by confronting his enemy as the boss of nearly every zone in each game, rather than hide away until the endgame.

And all without a driver's licence.

In his soon-to-be-30 years of activity, he has largely remained the same since his inception. Other characters have been introduced, other villains have came and went, but Eggman has remained THE villain of the franchise, and he's remained a vital part of the Sonic the Hedgehog universe... with a slight redesign along the way.

The only ad I don't want to skip.

The Design: Eggman's design may be more simplistic than the likes of Bowser and Ganondorf, and he may not look as openly threatening at first glance, but it's still a very iconic look no matter what look it is. His original appearance was devised so that kids could have an easy time drawing him, which only makes me feel worse about not being able to do it as a grown adult without it looking like a Sexy Legs Kirby.

Still, it's a classic for a reason. With his to-the-point colour scheme, contrasting heavily with Sonic's blue, and his capelet collar resembling walrus tusks, it was an instant winner and made everyone goo goo for g'joob.

The Emeralds he’s juggling are a metaphor for the divided fan community.

And when it was time to give the cast an update for Sonic's first real 3D adventure (or at least the first one that didn't get axed for being a magic eye seizure), Eggman got a respectable change of his own. He was taller, his getup was militaristic, and his body was more legitimately egg-shaped rather than basketball-shaped. He also gained a pair of goggles that he never uses, except in scenes where he puts them on and then never uses them.

“How do my chicken legs not collapse under the might of my gluttonous mass? Find out in an unrelated tie-in novel that you have to pay additional money for.”

There was also that one redesign from 2006, but...

Be it Classic or Modern, I've always loved his design. Before he even says a word or does anything, you know from his appearance that he's a bit of a clownish sort. But he also has a subtle creepy vibe going on, with the way his glasses often obscure his eyes, and how this only makes the pearly-white, unnecessarily wide grin on his face that much more empty and unsettling. This little bit of eeriness hiding among his cartoonish physique reflects the full extent of his character pretty accurately, as we’ll delve into soon enough.

If nothing else, it's more effective than him having no eyes at all.

GRRRRRRRR FUCK YOU BUNNIES THAT I CAN'T SEE

The Personality: If you've seen my villain reviews, then you'll have gathered that Sonic's rogues aren't known for having much in the way of personality. There are exceptions, but they are indeed the exceptions. More often than not though, whether it's an alien conquerer, an ancient monster, or Dan Green the Recolour, they can be summed up thusly: They're evil, they want to destroy the world, and the heroes stop them because they're evil and want to destroy the world. If they're feeling particularly daring, they might go for a second colour.

Luckily, as if to counter all these cardboard drawings, the central adversary of the franchise makes up for these voids of personality by actually having one. And what a personality it is.

The writers of SatAM looked at this and thought “No, this won't do, there's no character to work with here.”

He really is brimming with comedic charm. Every moment that he's present...

Every moment that he shows off...

Every moment that he basks in his own glory...

Every moment that he unveils a new wicked scheme...

Every moment that he puts his enemies to the test...

Every moment that he challenges the world...

Every moment that he laughs at the world...

Every moment that he lives, nay, every moment that he breathes...

Yes, the man has plenty of humor, and it's part of what makes him so enjoyable and memorable. However, if you think being a clown is all there is to him, then prepare to have your expectations subverted initial assumptions taken in a unexpected direction, because although he puts the goof in goofy, he ALSO puts the “oh...?” in “oh shit”.

For you see, Eggman is by all means the epitome of Laughably Evil, but do not, under any circumstance, take him at face value and write him off as a joke. He is anything but.

For starters, he can swing a planet.

There is a rule of thumb that I personally go by with Eggman’s characterization, one that I believe is an immediate make or break factor in regards to whether or not you understand what makes this villain work. Eggman - when you put all his secondary traits aside - is made up of two prominent halves. There’s the egocentric meme machine that bounces up and down like a kid with his N64 and laughs like Santa... and there’s the monster buried within that remains completely and utterly unrepentant for everything he’s responsible for. This is very important. Despite the character’s simplicity at his core, many writers have failed to grasp this, official writers included, and I for the life of me cannot understand why this is such a recurring problem. Eggman is funny, AND Eggman is evil. Both are equal. When you take away one or the other, you may have a funny character, or you may have an evil character, but you don’t have Eggman. Simple as.

Armchair intellectuals may argue that Eggman’s deeds aren’t that evil, since he tends to be merely callous rather than actively trying to hurt or kill people. Those people are probably the types on TV Tropes who weigh a villain’s evilness and effectiveness purely through the surface-level scale of their goals rather than what they actually do to achieve them. While it is true that Eggman tends to be more apathetic about the aftermath of his actions, that doesn’t - and shouldn’t - negate how dangerous he is. It shouldn’t negate what he’s capable of. It shouldn’t negate how far he’s willing to go. And it shouldn’t negate the consequences and casualties that can and do result from his many schemes.

Seriously, think about this for a second. If you confronted Eggman about his current plan to... I dunno, make a water park in Africa or some shit, and you informed him that there has been unexpected mass suffering as a result of this, how do you think he would truly feel about that? What do you think he would actually say to that?

Spoiler: No fucks.

If anything, that he “merely” doesn’t care either way as long as he gets what he wants is more uniquely horrific and deplorable than if he were a generic baddie who committed his evulz specifically for evulz’s own sake and nothing more. At least you’re inadvertently acknowledging that other people’s lives have value when you act one-dimensionally gleeful over ending them, but when your immediate response to the side-effect of a million potential deaths and environmental disasters is “Oh well, fuck ‘em, Eggmanland time baybeeee”, that’s a new level of cruelty.

Besides, even in the Genesis era, he was carpet bombing Angel Island...

“Good thing I have this shield. Sucks to be this forest!”

And he’s only gotten worse since then, indulging in such acts as going full suicide bomber with a missile, after his initial plot to destroy and rebuild Station Square through the means of Chaos and the Egg Carrier didn’t work out...

But don’t worry, he kept it lighthearted by making it look like a penis.

Making one of Sonic’s friends go insane with power against their will, forcing the Blue Blur to put them down personally...

It’s ironic, cause he’s metal. Or do I have to awkwardly explain the joke two more times before I’m a proper YouTuber?

Capturing thousands of innocent aliens, and forcefully converting them into mindless beasts...

I’m pretty sure I saw Alfred Molina conduct this experiment one time.

He even removed the heroes’ collective IQs so that he could shoehorn a cliffhanger on an already terrible game.

Thanks, cunt.

And honestly? When it comes to Sonic and chums at least, Eggman does let out a more openly sadistic side now and then. Need I mention that time when the doctor forced Sonic and two random buddies to make their way through a trap-infested island of his own creation? Not for the sake of nabbing Chaos Emeralds or anything of the sort mind you, he just wanted the blue motor mouth to suffer.

Images you can hear.

To make matters even worse, as befitting of his manchild tendencies, he’s ridiculously petty. How petty? Petty enough to abduct a little girl’s mother for no other reason than because Cheese completely trivialized his forces the girl was friends with Sonic and helped participate in the latest kicking of his own ass.

He only picked Vanilla because there was no Strawberry.

But at least his captives can admire the sheer variety that their captor has to offer. One of the greatest things about the doctor's style is that anything goes. With all due respect to Bowser, he tends to stick with his fiery castles (although he has been branching out recently), and plenty of other villains in gaming tend to be similarly stuck in their ways when it comes to tastes. Eggman, on the other hand, will create all sorts of fortresses and reside anywhere on the planet and beyond. It can be in the sky, in space, somewhere hot, somewhere cold, under the sea, in a circus... and every now and then, he might combine some of them together and thensome. So long as it's even vaguely mechanical in some way, his ground rules have already been ticked off.

Hang on a minute...

You know what else Eggman is? Relentless.

Persistence is a quality that most villains by their very nature share, lest they cease to be an effective antagonist. But once again, Rrrrrrrobotnik maxes out more than any other, and will often go to insane lengths to keep the current plan going, or if not that, then to spite Sonic.

Exhibit A: Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in which the grand finale consists of the madman throwing a gravity-shifting contraption your way, busting out a Kaiju-sized robo, escaping with the Master Emerald after his defeat, continuing to escape even after the Death Egg has been thoroughly destroyed, getting chased through the asteroid fields in space by Super Sonic, and only finally going down when the escape craft and the piloted mech controlling the escape craft are down. And all of this came after a grand adventure where, among other things, he destroyed an entire level just to kill you.

There are immortal omnipotents that put up less of a challenge.

“Looks like it’s time for Plan... *checks paper*... F.”

His relentlessness also reveals another side of the doctor that is simultaneously admirable and terrifying: He bows to no one. No one. Doesn’t matter who it is. Doesn’t matter how powerful they are. Doesn’t matter how much the odds are stacked against him. If another villain were to demand that he cower before them, the scientist would laugh and show through physical demonstration that this is not the way the egg rolls. Unless he’s absolutely unable to do so, he will give it his all every time, and even if he can’t, he’ll use his crafty mind to find some other way to get around the issue. You can beat him in battle, you can foil his plans, but you absolutely cannot break his resolve.

“Dad said it’s my turn to play with the Ruby. I know this, because I’m your dad.”

What about his relationship with those who actually serve him? Specifically, his own robots? Well for the most part, he treats them like absolute crap, what with verbally abusing them at every corner and being all too willing to go full Vader on them the moment they mess up. He IS capable of expressing fondness and giving praise to his more successful creations, like with Metal Sonic and Gamma, but even then, it’s a roundabout way of praising himself, since he’s the one who made them what they are. So basically, you’re only valuable to him if you make him look good.

Gaming in the Clinton Years in a nutshell.

And as for Sonic? Yeah, like with any legendary and long-lasting hero/villain dynamic, it’s obvious that Eggman has some degree of begrudging respect for his opponent. But if you think this respect would dissuade him from actually going through with his ambitions of rulership...

As the hedgehog’s apparent demise in Sonic Adventure 2 proves, as well as his defeat at the hands of Infinite and the subsequent six months of brutal conquest in Sonic Forces, Eggman is dead serious about his goals. If you think he’d get bored after conquering the world, he would simply expand his resources and have a crack at conquering the rest of the universe. When he says he hates that hedgehog, I’m inclined to believe that he means it, and although he may enjoy his “games” with Sonic to an extent, I also can’t see him wanting to remain stuck on square one forever.

If this were Sonic X, he’d just grieve.

By the way, the scene above? Undeniable proof that for all the doctor’s boasting, he’s not actually lying or exaggerating when he prides himself on his brilliance. Because when you get past his goofy exterior, when you look beyond the occasional, relatively minor mistake (*glares at IDW*), you’ll see that... yes. He IS brilliant. And not just in the science department either, although his countless robots and strongholds over the years are no doubt a testament to his credentials there. While he may prefer to go in big and bold, he can also be shrewd with his strategies when he wants to be.

Sonic’s aforementioned near-death experience, for example, was the result of Eggman turning the heroes’ own cunning plan on its head by being one step ahead of them. And in Sonic Unleashed, he lured his enemy into a trap, culminating with him cancelling out Super Sonic.

“...and pay the price for your Werehog gameplay...”

And after all those years of struggling, he finally got a giant monster under his complete control. “But he had help!”, you say? Yeah, from himself.

Did Flynn sleep through all this...?

Much like his inner nature as an evil bastard, Eggman's effectiveness is likewise commonly underestimated by writers. Yes, he occasionally makes mistakes. Yes, he occasionally overlooks details. Yes, he occasionally lacks foresight. But he is NOT stupid. A hero is only as good as their villain after all, and if Eggman is portrayed as a bumbling fool, then how can Sonic be a truly great hero? Eggman is humorous, sinister, and when the chips are down, competent.

...Did I mention that he's also a master Olympian?

The Execution: There's no surprises here. You knew from the moment you saw this review that my stance wasn't going to be anything less than 100% fanboy adoration. In that respect, this section almost feels redundant, because there's only so many ways I can say “Dr. Eggman is the fucking shit and I'm eternally grateful to Mr. Ohshima for bringing this absolute masterpiece into our world” without it getting repetitive. So to cap this review off, I'm going to very briefly compare his portrayals in other media, and explain why they tend to not be as good as the original SEGA Eggman.

“Cause they’re not balanced, right?” you ask. “Cause they veer too far in a particular direction? You're so predictable,” you add. To that I say:

1. Yeah, basically.

2. ...S-Shut up...

3. While the conclusion may be obvious, it's nonetheless important because as I mentioned previously, despite how straightforward this villain is, writers seem absolutely intent on not getting the point. There are loads of villains out there who share Eggman's talent of mixing hilarity and evil together with a bow of competence on top. Two of those villains are among the most famous supervillains of all time, in fact. You might have heard of them.

Joker can do it just fine. Green Goblin can do it just fine. And plenty of others can do it just fine. So why is it such an issue with Eggman? What is it about a round body and a long moustache that gets people to think “No, this guy is absolutely incapable of being comedic and threatening at the same time, no question, end of.” Is it because he’s a more cartoony franchise? Well, that can't be the case, because even Mario has a couple of beloved examples. Fawful, anyone? How about Dimentio? Cackletta? King Boo? K. Rool? Hell, you could even count Bowser himself depending on the portrayal.

Anyway, the point is, writers tend to miss the mark for one reason or another. With Sonic X for example, he wasn't too bad in the beginning, but as the show went on, he became exactly the toothless non-villain that many people misjudge him as. We all know that scene where he berates Black Narcissus for harming their captives (not for pragmatic reasons mind you, he genuinely took issue with the act on moral grounds, even though his own hands weren’t exactly clean either), but even before that point, he was doing such things as healing an injured Sonic without an ulterior motive, not taking any opportunity whatsoever to start conquering Sonic's world because he was pining for Sonic's attention, and being the Jiminy Cricket to Chris Thorndyke's Pinocchio. Why they thought the goddamn villain should be the moral conscience of this show remains an unanswered question, but at least it no longer influences how he's portrayed in the games.

Then you have the IDW comic, which is a similar tale of starting off decent and then careening wildly into the abyss, but for different reasons. Initially, he was built up to be in-line with his competent, foresight-packed self from Forces, with his inevitable return being met with dread, and a delightfully devilish scheme to match when he finally did so. But somewhere along the way, Ian Flynn thought that Eggman coming back from his amnesiac period and returning stronger than ever with a new minion and a deadly virus wasn't enough to up the stakes... so they decided to “up the stakes” by turning both the doctor and his new minion into massive imbeciles so as to justify their plot getting hijacked by the Deadly Six, a move so predictable yet infuriating that it got even me to turn against the Six. And the reason the Six got invited in-universe is because Starline decided he didn’t like being unique and devolved into Snively 2.0 behind Eggman’s back. All this from the alleged “best writer” for the series...

Yeah, same.

And then you have the Boom version, which shares basically the same issues as Sonic X but in a more mundane fashion. It's easier to dismiss because it's a comedy-centric show and his redesign makes it easier to separate him from mainline Eggman, and I'll gladly admit that he does have a lot of genuinely funny lines that redeem him a little bit. But yeah, too much of not being a true villain for my tastes.

Now this isn't to say that there haven't been portrayals in other media that are up there with the original. The versions that I consider better off than the ones above include...

- The OVA Eggman is pretty faithful all things considered, aside from his romantic feelings for Sara, which feels slightly off since the idea of Eggman loving anyone other than himself is incredibly unrealistic at best. But it doesn't actually soften or undermine his deviousness, so I'm willing to let it slide for an alternate take. Especially since he gave us the best Metal Sonic out there.

- AoStH is far from a perfect show, but there's a reason why even its detractors tend to treat its version of Robotnik like a national treasure. Admittedly most of that is because of the legendary Long John Baldry and the endless memes associated with this incarnation, but despite hailing from a comedy-focused show like Boom Eggman, this Robotnik still had a lot of legitimately dangerous moments, more than you'd think.

- And of course, Jim Carrey's Robotnik in the Sonic movie is just... *chef's kiss*

So obvious aesop though it may be, but you see what the more effective portrayals have in common, I assume?

Granted, this also isn't to say that SEGA Eggman himself has had a perfect track record. The decade's worth of upstagings and backstabbings by other villains should be enough of a counterpoint to that claim, and I've also made it clear now and then that I take issue with certain games regarding what they do with the doc, no matter how revered they may be by other fans. Sonic Adventure 2, for instance. I praised the fake emerald scene, and I do sincerely believe that he has a number of other badass moments in that game, but because Shadow was playing him like a fool the whole time, I can't help but have a bitter taste in my mouth when I look at the bigger picture.

So close to greatness, yet so far...

So in that case, which game do I think has Eggman's best showing overall? That's not in any way an easy question, but lack of dialogue aside, I'm gonna go with Sonic 3 & Knuckles again, as the classic journey through the sights of Angel Island plays out in a way that highlights just how determined, ruthless, and underhanded he is with carrying out his mission to revive the Death Egg by any means necessary. Other games do win out in other areas - SA1 for how bastardly he is, Forces for how cunning he is, Colours for his hilarious announcements, CD for using the scenery to show the effects of his actions, Mania for not letting the other villain walk all over him - but for the purest essence of the doctor at his cartoony yet competent best, I'd say S3&K is a reasonable bet.

And when it comes to all his many traits, which one do I find the most special one of all? Well again, far from easy to answer, but I think the coolest aspect about him is also one of the most overlooked. Robotnik, despite whatever superhuman qualities he may occasionally unveil, is for all intents and purposes a regular guy with a big brain. This might make him appear unimpressive when compared to your average Final Fantasy villain and the like, but if anything, it paints him in a more flattering light than expected, because he doesn't even need to be on their level to still be on the radar. It's easy to be a big bad threat when you're an ancient demon or an almighty god-like being, and you only have to wave a hand to cause armageddon. But when you're just Some Guy™ going up against superpowered opponents, meaning you have to earn your threat level the hard way, and you prove to be a challenge every step of the way regardless, because you're just THAT much of a genius... that's fucking awesome, no other way to put it.

And you know what else is awesome? You may not like Eggman, and you don’t have to like him, but like it or not, he is directly and indirectly responsible for a vast majority of the coolest and most loved moments and aspects of this franchise.

The opening to Unleashed? Eggman set up the scene.

Shadow running around and continuing to be part of the franchise? Eggman released him.

Blaze getting involved with Sonic’s world and continuing to be part of the franchise? Eggman’s half-responsible for that.

Metal Sonic? Eggman made him.

Egg Dragoon? Eggman.

Big Arm? Eggman.

Monkey Dude? Eggman.

That text is missing a blue checkmark.

This review is probably longer than the echidna family tree in Archie at this point, so I better finish it off. If it wasn't obvious from all the paragraphs I've belted out in this post, I'm very passionate about Eggman and the way he’s portrayed. Ever since I got into the Sonic franchise in 2003, I immediately took a liking to the doctor, and to this day, he remains not only my favourite Sonic villain, my favourite Sonic character, but also my favourite character period. Some may find it a weird or lame choice compared to other, “better” characters, but that's the way it is, and I ain't about to change it. I am very unlikely to ever stop enjoying the hell out of this villain, and even if he got irreversibly ruined in some way, I'd still continue to love what he was before that point.

Because yeah, he's not the deepest character ever, but... who cares? Is it not enough that we find something that appeals to us? When I got into Sonic, I was introduced to fantastic games, a likable cast, high quality soundtracks, beautiful worlds, numerous friends on this very site, and of course, the lovely treasure that is my partner. I may not have been with this franchise during the 90's, but it's given me just as much fun, nostalgia, and happiness as those who were. Despite the flawed titles, despite the fandom conundrums, I still love this series.

And I still love this absolute prick.

Crusher Gives Dr. Eggman a: TWO Thumbs Up!

#Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite?#Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Dr. Ivo Robotnik

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anhed-nia · 4 years ago

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BLOGTOBER 10/4/2020: SOCIETY

Without having a survey to back me up, I feel comfortable asserting that as a horror fan, you go through different phases with SOCIETY. It’s a basic fact of life, and yet it morphs and mutates underneath you, shocking you anew just when you think you’ve got a grip on it. You never forget your first time, because there is simply nothing like it. Then, after you get over the initial shock of its patented brand of body horror, you start to take it for granted; it's so broad and monolithic that it becomes something like the Grand Canyon--when it’s not right there in front of you, you begin to experience it more iconically, as part of the wallpaper of existence, rather than an in-your-face confrontation with the limits of experience. Then, you revisit it every few years (or months, depending on what sort of person you are), and the prophylactic layer that your brain has wrapped around your memories of it--the one that allows you to think of SOCIETY as a fun, wacky cheap thrill--begins to crumble, and you realize all over again how iconoclastically vile it is. Wherever you happen to be at, with this inimitable genre landmark, you'd be hard pressed to deny that it earns its royal status among horror movies, just for being so uniquely fucked up.

Filmmaker Brian Yuzna is best known as the co-creator of the indispensable RE-ANIMATOR (or as the co-writer of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS...depending on what sort of person you are, again), itself a milestone achievement in the blending of sex and gore that so characterized '80s horror production. That film clearly brought out the best in Yuzna and frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon (also of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS fame...among other things), but it's interesting to see how they operate apart, to understand the unique ingredients that each filmmaker brought to the more perfect union of their classic Lovecraft adaptation. Gordon skewed darker and more intellectual, as evidenced by the end of his career with the shattering mob thriller KING OF THE ANTS, the disturbing true crime drama STUCK, and the Mamet-penned EDMOND. Yuzna, for his part, is almost anti-intellectual, preferring to cook up blackly comic, semi-pornographic nightmares like his two increasingly horny RE-ANIMATOR sequels, the terminal S&M fantasy RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, and the shamelessly hokey comic book adaptation FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED. Yuzna's lack of shame is really his defining feature as an artist, and nowhere is this more obvious than in his directorial debut and signature masterpiece, SOCIETY.

Salvador Dali's "The Great Masturbator," a chief visual inspiration for SOCIETY.

Yuzna was able to leverage the success of RE-ANIMATOR to lock in two directorial opportunities, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, and a bizarre body horror exercise about a Beverly Hills orphan who discovers that not only are his adoptive family from a different bloodline, but they're not even from the same species. That both pictures employed the writing team of Woody Keith and Rick Fry gives you a little taste of what to expect from SOCIETY, but to be frank, the latter threatens to make the former look like a very special episode of ER; "overkill" barely begins to describe SOCIETY’s ambitious assault on the human body. In a recent interview, the philipino-american director giggles perversely, "I think my friends were a little embarrassed for me (when they saw SOCIETY)," and this sound bite reminded me that the last, most important ingredient that Yuzna contributes to any project is unabashed joy. It's a little hard to imagine stomaching SOCIETY without it.

In this unusual scene from the class struggle in Beverly Hills, Billy Warlock (son of HALLOWEEN 2's Michael Myers, Dick Warlock) plays Bill Whitney, a rich, handsome, athletic high school student with a heavy duty anxiety disorder. Although he appears to have it all, he is plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, reflecting suspicions that the family that spoils him is also out to get him. Perhaps this is all understandable, though. Bill is under a lot of pressure these days, with his parents devoting all of their attention to his sister's coming out party, and his narcissistic girlfriend pushing him to ingratiate himself to the assholes higher up the social ladder; it's enough to make any teenager feel alienated and insecure. But, do these garden variety anxieties account for his visions of his sister's body deforming itself unnaturally, or the dubious evidence he finds that her debutante ball involves incestuous orgies and human sacrifice? Is Bill simply crumbling under the strain of societal expectations, or is the friction with his shrink, his parents, and his peers all symptomatic of an elaborate plot against him by elites who are truly less than human?

I can’t believe they use this cheapo blanket trick MORE THAN ONCE in a movie that is famous for its unforgettable special effects, and I guess I kind of love it.

In case I haven't made the answer abundantly obvious, I'll add that while SOCIETY is the purest expression of Yuzna-ness on the market, it has an important co-author in Screaming Mad George. The eccentric japanese FX master, whose name is apparently an amalgamation of Mad Magazine, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and...George, has produced some of horror's most outrageous makeup and visual effects, mostly for Yuzna, many of them in SOCIETY. If you've seen even a trailer for Alex Winter's 1993 oddity FREAKED--which is itself a grossout criticism of American social standards--then you are already familiar with SMG's trademark style. He specializes in twisted perversions of the human form that would make a cenobite blush, driven by a penchant for puns, and influenced equally by THE THING's Rob Botin, and Big Daddy Roth’s Rat Fink style. Screaming Mad George is instrumental in articulating Yuzna's premise: that behind the shimmering veneer of success and sophistication, the upper class are just a bunch of degenerates, who literally degenerate into something unimaginable behind closed doors. It's impossible to imagine SOCIETY without his sinuous, slithering monstrosities, or his indescribable realization of their most important social event, "the shunt".

One of many great images from a zine I wish I owned, on SMG’s Facebook page.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by SOCIETY's visual impact, but its message is just as potent now as it was at the end of the Reagan era: Rich people are not only different from the rest of us, but in fact, they aren't even human. Writers Keith and Fry make an interesting choice of hero to help put this across. A lazier writer would have selected any archetype from the Freaks and Geeks set to create an easy Us vs Them tension, but SOCIETY is led by a promising young man who, for reasons he himself does not yet understand, is just not "the right kind of people". Bill appears to have every advantage in life, including a level of popularity that wins him presidency of the debate team despite his nerdier rival’s superior prowess--and yet, he suffers from a stigmatizing psychiatric disorder that is the natural result of feeling indefinably different from one's peers, and intuiting that, as a consequence, they don't even really like you. The shallow jock with deep-seated emotional problems is a much more interesting protagonist for this kind of social allegory than the charismatic outcasts that you get in movies like THE FACULTY and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, for whom the idea that the elites could be aliens is just de rigueur.

It's worth noting that this complexity of character extends to Bill's love interest, sympathetic society girl Clarissa Carlyn (Playboy Playmate Devin DeVasquez). At first, she seems villainously eager to introduce Bill to the many splendors of "the shunting", but as the plot against him mounts to its horrifying conclusion, she defects. There appears to be a reason for this, although honestly, this is the most difficult part of SOCIETY for me to wrap my head around. Clarissa lives as an essentially independent adult, only burdened by her mother (Pamela Matheson), a possibly brain damaged hulk who lurks in and out of various scenes just to be disturbing, always announced by some toots on a tuba, before eventually siding with our heroes. I'm really not sure what's supposed to be going on in this part of the movie, except that this character contributes to a number of distasteful jokes. But, I hold on to the idea that by virtue of whatever disorder Mrs. Carlyn suffers from, she serves the purpose of priming Clarissa to rebel, since her very existence makes her daughter something of a societal outcast herself. That's the best I can do.

In any case, everyone working on SOCIETY commits completely, with Mrs. Carlyn being no exception. The movie's climactic orgy of the damned is an all hands on deck operation, just as reliant on Screaming Mad George's artistic abilities as it is on the actors' responsibility to make you believe that this fucked up shit is really happening. There's a visceral patina of sleaze spread over the entire film, dripping from the way that characters talk to and touch each other, flirting and flaunting their bodies in a distinctly unseemly fashion, even when it stays within the realm of mundane reality. This constant sinister, insinuating attitude on the part of the whole cast lays the foundation for what is to come, and while I appreciate everybody's hard work, my favorite performance is from an actor who only comes in at the very end: David Wiley as society king Judge Carter. Wiley's career consisted almost exclusively of the most ordinary sort of television work, which makes his outrageous turn in this alien porno flick all the more respectable. While other characters transition from suspicious pod people to full-on mutated perverts, Judge Carter has to show up just for the finale, establish his authority, rip off his clothes, and plunge straight into a sea of slime, happily fisting his way through the cast. Wiley meets this challenge with aplomb, making of himself a hybrid of Robert Englund and Gene Hackman, perfectly embodying the movie's joyful absurdity, and never betraying the slightest hint of embarrassment.

SOCIETY is very much a don't-look-down type of endeavor, a fairy that could expire at the slightest lapse in faith. There's a visual pun in the last act that's so gross, so offensive, so frankly idiotic, that I don't have the courage to describe it; my whole body tenses up when I know this scene is coming, as if it were the meat hook scene in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or the brutal rape in the middle of SHOWGIRLS. I don't like it, but at the same time, I respect Yuzna's unhesitating commitment to show it to me, and I think that actor Charles Lucia should get some kind of award for shouldering the burden so valiantly. SOCIETY is a daring movie in the truest sense, a film with more balls than brains, and in this it exposes the limitation of intelligence and taste, and the real need for pure transgression, in producing art of any real value. You might argue with me about whether Yuzna's masturbatory magnum opus really qualifies as art, but to respond to that, I'll quote the great transgressor Alejandro Jodorowsky: "If you are great, EL TOPO is a great picture. If you are limited, EL TOPO is limited." So stick that in your shunt and smoke it.

youtube

PS Here, have this stuck in your head for the rest of your life.

#blogtober #2020 #society #brian yuzna #screaming mad george #woody keith #rick fry #billy warlock #Keith Walley #devin devasquez #david wiley #horror #black comedy #satire #body horror #social criticism

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chelseacatgirl · 4 years ago

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Recently, Nicholas Kole revealed concept art of Nitros Oxide and his Gasmoxian Henchmen from Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, also detailing his race: https://mobile.twitter.com/FromHappyRock/status/1336465139407626241 That inspired me to make Gasmoxian OCs, so meet Kaisui and Ensui, who are twin good-hearted Gasmoxians raised on planet Earth. Kaisui Natsumi *Name meaning "Seaweed" in Japanese* Voiced by Max Mittelman (Like Yusuke Ninomiya from Ni No Kuni) https://youtu.be/ScH3gbQoQcA?t=160 Ensui Natsumi *Name meaning Sea Water in Japanese* Voiced by Cristina Vee (Like Miki Makimura from Devilman Crybaby) https://youtu.be/q4VyfvN0NkI?t=27 Biography: Kaisui and Ensui are born on the planet Gasmoxia, as newly born baby Gasmoxians, their pacifist parents have sent them to a better planet before they were killed by Emperor Velo XXVII' forces for being against them. The planet they were sent to was Earth, where they ended up on the beaches of N. Sanity Island, where they are found and raised by a 15 year old Japanese orphan, Maki Natsumi, even guessing they are siblings, even naming them Kaisui and Ensui she first raised them as pets as they remind her of cuttlefish, but three years later, the twins take on an anthropomorphic appearance, as Maki decided to raise them like a son and daughter, where they are known as Ensui Natsumi and Kaisui Natsumi. While young Gasmoxian twins were still little, Maki made them gifts, a scarf for Kaisui, and a bracelet for Ensui, something they will always treasure. However, years later, when they are all grown up, when Kaisui went home, their home was under attack by Dr. Nefarious Tropy, who was joined by a mysterious group of 5 cat-like aliens from the planet Nekohitomi *Name coming from the Japanese word for "Cat's eye"*, led by the captain of the royal guards, Captain Klaws, where N. Tropy murdered their foster mother Maki for when they thought she was harboring Gasmoxians, because Nitros Oxide, the one who turns losing planets into parking lots, is from that alien race, which the Nekohitomions found them a threat, right before kidnapping Ensui, planning to lock her up in their home planet, but first have to find the crystals, and bring back the Elementals Rok-Ko, Wa-Wa, Py-Ro, and Lo-Lo for Dr. N Tropy to conquer the universe, while these five Nekohitomions are secretly evil who planned to overthrow the royal family from their planet. So Kaisui went off to find his sister throughout the Wumpa Islands and avenge their adopted mother's death. While he went swimming, he met a mutated Woylie Joey named Bumpy, who was also out swimming looking for fish to catch, the two played in the waters for a whike before getting dressed and taking him to meet his friends Coati Jake, Kooky Burra, Sugarchidna, Splatter Platypus, and Outfox Fennec, in the abandoned ancient temple they live in. After Kaisui told the mutants about Maki's death and the kidnapping of his sister Ensui, they agree to help him find and rescue her from N. Tropy. Later, on their journey, they met the Quantum Masks Lani-Loli, Akano, Kupuna-Wa, and Ika-Ika, who warned them that N. Tropy *While he has female Cortex Commando mutant with him being Veronica Fennec, Feisty Jaguarundi, and Quollaby with him and Klaws and his men* has freed the Elementals and are now helping him find the crystals, so they must find them before they do. While searching for the crystals, they would encounter monsters the Elementals created, and had to fight them, they suddenly get help from the younger sister of a N. Tropy, Dr. Madelyn Tropy, who help defeat the monsters and retrieve the crystals, M. Tropy was even told that they have to rescue Ensui too, and she can even tell that they're biologically siblings. They would then finally made it to the space station *The one from Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time* where the rift generator is, where they are to confront N. Tropy, Veronica, Feisty, Quollaby, and the Elementals, as well as Captain Klaws and his henchmen, who are powering it up with the one of the master crystals and the power of the Elementals too. Even having to find Ensui, so they battled the villains as M. Tropy and N. Tropy's clash, and as well as the Quantum Masks and the Elementals' clash, combined with Kaisui destroying the Rift Generator caused the phenomenon called the Radical Wave *Referenced to the game company Radical Entertainment, also similar to the Super Genesis Wave from Archie Sonic Comics, except it doesn't alter the continuity* that altered how the universe looked as well as everyone looking different *Where the events of Crash of the Titans and its cartoon shorts that place before then, Crash Bandicoot: Mutant Island, Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Crash Nitro Kart 2, and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D took place*, except for those aboard the space station and the planet Nekohitomi and the ones within it, the master crystal had also transported them to that said planet. Unfortunately when they are stranded on planet Nekohitomi, they were separated from each other where Bumpy, Jake, Kooky, Sugar, Splatter, Outfox, and Ensui *Who found her brother's scarf* are with the Tropy Siblings and Captain Klaws and his four henchmen, who are in a nearby Nekohitomion city where Klaws took them to the royal castle meeting King Li Meozo and Queen Fee Meozo of planet Nekohitomi and their daughter, Princess Kitticatti Aletheia Meozo, the king is not pleased with outsiders, especially a Gasmoxian Ensui, while N. Tropy lies about the good mutants harboring two Gasmoxians and insists they will be locked up, much to their dismay because they're nice to them, while M. Tropy detests the idea and asks King Meozo to spare them as she promised to watch them. King Li allows them to stay, all while Kitticatti *Nicknamed Kitty* instantly befriend them. Meanwhile Kaisui is all alone in the wilderness of the planet, where he then went of to find his friends and go back home to Earth. Later, he was captured by the younger brother of Captain Klaws, Dr. Prowlzer, a mad scientist, who has a gang of his own, who locked him up like if he were a pet. Prowlzer is also allies with his brother plotting to betray the royal family. As for the Quantum Masks and the Elementals, they were in suspended animation on the planet. Princess Kitty is the only one who is suspicious of Captain Klaws' evil plans, all while her mother is more understanding than her father, so Dr. Madelyn Tropy decided to bring Ensui and the good mutants with them to find her brother which and the Quantum Masks and the Elementals, as of right now due to the Radical Wave nobody is able to leave Earth. After rescuing the Quantum Masks around the planet *Which causes the events of Crash of the Titans to change from the mobile version, to GBA version, two DS versions, then into the console version through resets* had to face each of the Elementals before freeing them from suspended animation. Then afterwards are able to rescue Kaisui from Prowlzer as he was reunited with his sister, before they were confronted by Klaws and his gang and N. Tropy and the female Cortex Commandos, who attacked the kingdom and took the crystals, right before Klaws himself betrayed the Commandos, much to N. Tropy's dismay as they were attacked by them before kidnapping the masks, now they have to stop Klaws. The Gasmoxian siblings and their allies have returned to the city to see Klaws gaining power from the Quantum Masks and Elementals so they worked together to fight him, until he was defeated and the masks were freed. Captain Klaws, Dr. Prowlzer, and their gang were arrested for treason by the King as he apologize for doubting them and admitted that Ensui and Kaisui are not bad at all. Meanwhile the Quantum Masks informed them that the Radical Wave will end in about a year which will break the barrier, so they stayed on Nekohitomi until the Radical Wave expired *Which happened after CBNK3D*, where the whole universe, including all within it returned to their previous appearance while it is now safe for them to return to Earth, hoping to see Kitty and their people someday. To their surprise, Kaisui and Ensui saw their foster mother Maki, alive, as the Quantum Masks learned she resurrected from the end of the Radical Wave, she did not remember her own death but was happy to see them again, even meeting their new friends, while they continue to live happy lives in the Wumpa Islands. They would meet Crash Bandicoot and his friends and foes, as well as Nitros Oxide and Emperor Velo XXVII's empire 3 years later. Drawn on ibisPaint X on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A. Crash Bandicoot series (c) Activision Kaisui Natsumi and Ensui Natsumi (c) Me

#Crash Bandicoot #Kaisui Natsumi #Ensui Natsumi

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batsupes-love · 5 years ago

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My DC Fanfics

Ancient Age - Joker x Batman. Omegaverse. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Memories of ancient days long since passed are triggered. Memories one man doesn't want to remember and that confuses another. Memories stir of long ago when monarchies did reign before that of a lovers woe his wrath unable to contain did the blood of enemies flow his anguished cry full of disdain for they'd dealt a fatal blow and so he grew beyond insane Shining in the Dark - Joker x Batman. Elseworld AU. Omegaverse. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Bruce Wayne, too, has survived the world after a missile attack though he was buried alive - unknowingly - by one of his superfriends that doesn't stop him from his quest. Simply survive and learn all that he can about his new world despite the pain of loss. However, there is the little thing niggling at him. If there are no Omega's who survived, a protandrous individual like himself might just wind up in trouble he never imagined he would. His Unsettling Demands - Joker x Batman. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Bruce Wayne gets a disturbing call from the new director of Arkham Asylum in regards to The Joker. When The Joker makes his demands known, what lengths is Bruce Wayne really willing to go to, to ensure The Joker does not escape? Voyeuristic Gals - Ivy x Harley. COMPLETE Rated: Explicit Summary: Poison Ivy and her lover Harley Quinn have stolen some very private videos featuring The Joker and Bruce Wayne|Batman. The two lovely ladies delight in each other's bodies while watching and commenting on the rather risque video footage. Unsettling Urges - Lex Luthor x Superman. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Superman, after a minor argument with his friend Batman at Nightwing's twentieth birthday party he returns to Metropolis with Lex Luthor on his mind in a way which confounds him. Then overhearing a strange conversation he decides to pay his arch-nemesis a visit, and follow through on his Gotham friends out of the blue suggestion. Unsettling Riddle - Riddler x Nightwing. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: After helping out with renovations at Arkham Asylum, where The Riddler helped keep him from injury, he's decided to offer a hand in friendship, or... is it more? Unsettling Shores - Black Manta x Aquaman. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: After a late evening meeting with the Justice League and the 'strange' events that took place there, Aquaman decides to take refuge on a small deserted beach and give himself some time alone having been aroused thanks to the 'display' of a certain pair of couples that just didn't seem able to keep their hands off of each other. Though his interest isn't in them they did set off something. Unsettling Pursuit - Lobo x Kon-El. WIP Rated: Explicit Summary: Conner goes for a flight after getting an eyeful of his friend Dick Grayson and The Riddler during one of their role-play sessions. He's feeling a bit embarrassed and just wondering about the Kryptonian side of his biology when the space traveling bounty hunter who rides a space-hog descends from the sky to speak with him. Is Lobo hitting on him!? Cruise Calamity Capers - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: When a new owner purchased The Daily Planet, Clark Kent is sent on a five-day cruise. It wouldn't be so bad if an Alpha hadn't been booked into the same cabin as him while he's nearing his heat. And not just any Alpha, but a well-known playboy. But Clark finds he's not as terrible as he thought. Unfortunately, there happen to be trouble afoot and more secrets than that of hiding an omega status.

Caught by Surprise - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Clark has been married for some years now. But his spouse doesn't know he's Superman and decides to punish him. Which makes things awkward at the Watchtower when it's just him and Batman's turn for Monitor duty. You’re My Destiny - Batman x Superman. Sequel to Loved You to the Last. WIP Rated: Summary: Clark Kent didn't have a soulmate, or at least he didn't think so, because he didn't have a soul mark. The humans of Earth were born with their soul marks. He hadn't been. None of his relationships lasted. Humans wanted their soulmates.Bruce Wayne was born without a soul mark. He thought it was because the Universe knew what would happen to his parents and so he didn't deserve one for not being able to save them. But then one day a mark appeared. Instead of being elated, he cursed the Universe for its bad joke. Loved You to the Last - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: T Summary: Clark Kent loved Bruce Wayne. It was a Universal Truth. Except for as long as the Earth's Sun was Yellow, Clark could not die. But Bruce was never far from Clark's thoughts throughout the eons he lived until finally the sun turned Red. Take My Hand - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: T Summary: Before the horrid evening in which Thomas and Martha Wayne lost their lives, their son Bruce was told of a decision his father had made which would change the course of part of his life. And so began his yearly summer vacation at a farm in Kansas. Brighter Than Gold - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: T Summary: Even though they're now engaged, Bruce still has some reservations. Clark isn't too happy about this and asks some difficult questions. To Dream Again - Batman x Superman. Omegaverse. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Lois has just dropped a bombshell on Clark after five years of marriage and the miracle that is their son, Jon. Unable to stand the thought of going to their apartment even during his week off of work, he visits Wayne Manor where Jon is being babysat by the Wayne family and his elder adopted siblings. A Sky Full of Stars - Omegaverse. WIP - Rated: Summary: The King of Krypton and his family find themselves in dire circumstances as one of their top Generals turns on them and orders an assassination. Only the King's brother may be able to help keep the young prince's safe by leaving the lands of Krypton for those outside the veil. Gotham, one of Earth's great kingdom's soon faces a tragedy of it's own and it's two young princes will have to learn how to deal with the nightmares the traumatic scene instilled in them. But can they let it go, or will the thirst for vengeance be all that keeps them going? Feel Again - Batman x Superman WIP - Rated: Summary: Superman is visited by his future self who asks him the impossible. Of course, he decides to go along with it, until he doesn't. His path takes a very different direction than that of his other self, or even what his other self had planned. Will he manage to befriend Batman, or just make things worse? Ultraman’s Dilemma - Owlman x Ultraman. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Ultraman had no idea what was happening, until he did, and then he was filled with rage. Not that he could do anything about that rage. Of course Owlman had to take advantage of his weakness. And there was only one way Ultraman could think of to get back at the bastard. Mine Tonight - Batman x Superman. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Superman is tired of denying his feelings for Batman. It doesn't matter that they don't know each others identities. When he makes up his mind to confront Batman with his needs, he finds Batman has found some incriminating evidence. I’m in Love with an Angel - Batman x Superman. WIP - Summary: Clark can't believe that Bruce is being taken away from him. Again. However a chance is soon offered to him that will keep him in Bruce's life. But he learns some unexpected details along the way. Legend of Valors Echo - Batman x Superman. WIP - Summary: Clark Kent has entered the game, Legend of Valors Echo, and one of it's long time players who preferred to do just about everything alone needs help with a quest. Paranormal Phenomena Investigators - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. WIP - Summary: Bruce Wayne, a doctor who works for a government agency has just been assigned a new partner after years of not having one. Just, why did it have to be someone with eccentric beliefs?Clark Kent has no idea about who, or what he is. He's just a rookie at a government agency who just happens to be interested in all things not of the Earth. Potential Disaster Averted - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: M Summary: Bruce wakes up and discovers he's not alone. But it's who is in his bed that has him wondering what happened. Invisible Chains - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: E for Explicit Summary: With Jonathan "Pa" Kent gone, they can't make the payments to the bank. But the bank is now owned by a notorious mafia family. The boss of which is visiting the Kent family farm household and when Clark walks in, things spiral out of control from there. Written for Superbat Week 2020 Day 7 Prompt, Mafia AU. Taking Chances - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Summary: One hero decides it's time to take another chance on love. Another hero is the target of his heart. Written for Superbat Week 2020 Day 6 Prompt, Blindfold All of You - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Co-written with Leo_Our_Queen. Clark has been hiding something and Bruce is determined to get to the bottom of it. But once Bruce learns what it is, he just can't help himself from invading Clark's privacy. The whole ordeal leads to serious confrontation but an understanding revelation. Written for Superbat Week 2020 Day 5 Prompt, Free Day.

Backward in Time - Bruce Wayne x Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: T Summary: Batman finds himself two years into the past. Before one awful eventful day. What will happen to his determination to put an end to the alien threat as new lessons are learned? Written for Superbat Week 2020 Day 4 Prompt, Time Travel.

Only For Master - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: They do not fall to their knees for a villain, only for their master. Together he and Master thwart the villain and reassert their roles in the privacy of one of their lairs. Written for Superbat Week 2020 Day 3 Prompt, On your knees.

Cutting the Red Tape - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: T Summary: Bruce Wayne, in order to cut through some red tape is in need of a relationship, but no one he currently knows seems suitable. That is until he bumps into someone who may be just the ticket. Written for Superbat Week 2020, Day 2 Prompt - Fake Dating.

Nightbright Brothel - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: One member of the Justice League thinks there's something shady with the latest brothel to popup on the outskirts of their city. What they learn is something unexpected and they're not sure if they like this new information or not. Day 1 of Superbat Week 2020 - Day 1 - A/B/O

For Your Sake - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: I helped Leo write a portion of this. It was so fun working with them. Batman has discovered something affecting the health and wellbeing of Clark and seeks answers to help him. The knowledge he gains leads to him giving into instincts he may otherwise have tried to ignore. Got You in My Sights - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Omega's have gone extinct upon the Earth, but one may wonder if that is truly the case and if it is, why? But no matter how one lonely Alpha tries to find a reason for it, and even a cure, he's got other responsibilities. His mission. And one of his missions is to see to it that a certain extra-terrestrial wasn't going to become a problem once it came to light that there was one among them. Close Enough to Kryptonian - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Kal-El was sent on a diplomatic mission to Earth. He hadn't expected to receive the call he had, or to go into heat while away from home. Written with JusticePlague who did the majority of the writing. Temptation at the Gala - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: This was written for the Batsupes Secret Valentines Exchange event of 2021.1. Prompt: DCEU: BVS - Bruce and Clark bang in an empty room at Luthor's gala *Rating of Fic Preferred: * Explicit Up to Four Deal-Breakers: Bottom Bruce, choking, deepthroating I especially enjoy: Daddy kink, d/s dynamics, mirror sex, rough sex Reward for a Good Man - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Clark's day was horrific, but he hadn't expected to meet someone with some integrity at the place he'd wound up. Child From Another Universe - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: I was a Batsupes Secret Valentines Exchange pinch-hitter for the following prompt.12. Prompt: There‘s a child that looks suspiciously like them and the kid says they fled from a universe where their parents died and now need a new home???? Rating of Fic Preferred: any and all! I enjoy whatever! Up to Four Deal-Breakers: I especially enjoy: fluff, seeing my favourite characters cry, bruce and clark actually being able to show feelings..... (if you decide to go for smut, I do enjoy some of the more harmless/usual kinks. Bondage, spanking, daddy, stuff like that. Generally stuff that makes people feel /safe/ and /loved/, too, by giving them attention.)There is also the addition of the Bottom Clark 2021 prompt for Day 54 which is "Grief". Good End to a Bad Day - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Mature Summary: After a soul-wrenching search and rescue due to a natural disaster, Superman overhears something he wasn't meant to. One Dark Valentine Night - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: Clark wished he'd known at the beginning of Bruce's visit. When Idiots Give Flowers - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Clark just wanted revenge, how did it end up like this?Or:That time an idiot gives another idiot flowers in the most annoying way possible. So the other Idiot must get revenge and it blows up in his face. Written with JusticePlague. Concerned and Caring - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: Batman watched in horror as Superman plummeted from the sky, and is determined to help in regards to recovery. Not Really a Boyscout - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Clark flustered Bruce. Bruce couldn't ever let Arthur win. Really, they had Barry to thank. JusticePlague wrote the majority of this one. It Started as a Simple Netflix ‘n’ Chill Date - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: Batman watched in horror as Superman plummeted from the sky, and is determined to help in regards to recovery. Happy Ironing - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: Bruce has a rather important reason to take a break from being Batman. He has to do something while hiding at home. At least Clark is there, when he's not called out on a mission himself. Romantic Date Plans Gone Wrong - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Like it says on the tin, any romantic plans Bruce and Clark have had of late have just gone wrong for one reason, or another. That doesn't stop them from trying again of course. Hot Coffee Break - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: During Bruce Wayne's coffee break a surprise visitor drops on by and things get a bit out of hand. There's also the surprise news his visitor can't wait to tell him. Love at Second Attempted Murder - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Teen Summary: Batman and Superman have a problem with each other. It takes an inopportune moment due to worrisome news for them to learn that neither is as bad as they seem. Consummation - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent begin their new lives together. Shooting Stars - Jonathan ‘Pa’ Kent/Martha Kent COMPLETE - Rated: Gen Summary: The night the Kent’s dream came true. Caw Rok - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: When Superman starts hearing strange things the closer Samhain approaches, he speaks with the league and Batman decides that the two of them should investigate. Little do they know what tests they'll be put through. If they fail they may forever be trapped, or worse, lose their very lives. What Has to be Done - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: When they meet a discovery is made that may just keep the people safe, though it is not without its cost. Gotham’s Lost Hope - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Gotham, a living entity decides to give their most favorite a gift, only for that gift to be lost and with it the hope of the city. Moonlight - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Mature Summary: Underneath the Moonlight a pair of lovers meet. Trapped - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Mature Summary: Superman is trapped by his arch-nemesis. It's up to someone else to save him from whatever plans said arch-nemesis has in mind. Proposal on Ice - Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent. COMPLETE - Rated: Mature Summary: Clark is nervous at the ice rink, because he has an important question to ask, but that doesn't mean he'll get the answer he seeks, does it? After I Win - Darkseid/Suprman. WIP - Rated: Explicit Summary: Darkseid sets his eyes not on Earth, but on its mightiest guardian, Superman. A Superseid fic. Engulphed - Batman/Suprman. COMPLETE - Rated: Explicit Summary: Clark tries to hide in the Fortress of Solitude when things get a bit strange, but they only get weirder. Luckily for him there's someone willing to stick it out with him despite any oddity he might find he has.

#Superbat #Batsupes #Batjokes #blackaqua #riddlebird #riddlewing #Loko #Loco #Clex #So many WIPS #Must write #Which to choose #All of them #I have no favorites #All are my favorite #Who has a favorite #I love writing

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secretlyatargaryen · 4 years ago

Text

Tyrion and Zuko: Puppets Dancing on Strings

This is part two of a series comparing these characters. Click here to read part one.

"The seven-faced god has cheated me," he said. "My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay, twisted into this rude shape you see before you."

The above quote is from one of the most meta-textual moments in the ASOIAF series. In Essos, Arya witnesses a play portraying the events of the series from a very skewed viewpoint. It’s Lannister propaganda, and Tyrion is portrayed as a Richard III-esque villain in contrast to his father and siblings of “purest gold.”

Similarly, ATLA also shows its awareness of its own narrative in the episode “The Ember Island Players,” in which the gaang witnesses a play of the events of their adventures. This play is Fire Nation propaganda, and portrays Zuko in the most negative light, as incompetent and then eventually killed as the villain of the story.

What these two moments in each narrative show us is not only both series’ meta-textual awareness, but also serves as a commentary on the story and characters from within. By the time we see this episode in ATLA, Zuko has joined the gaang and so we are inclined to sympathize with him and see the portrayal as skewed. In ASOIAF, the last time we have seen Tyrion is after he has been exiled from King’s Landing, and we know that the propaganda put forth is specifically meant to villainize him and portray him in the most inaccurate way possible, as we also know that he was not guilty of the crime of which he was accused.

What’s also interesting about the play, though, is that the words said by the Tyrion character mirror the fascist ideology of House Lannister and identify what marks Tyrion as separate from them. This fascist ideology is also present in the Fire Nation and is the reason for Zuko’s conflict with his family.

This article discusses the “fascist aesthetic” and how it often appears in science fiction and fantasy narratives, as well as its use in ASOIAF/GOT. It’s common with villains, who usually also represent a fascist ideology, but, as the article points out, it can also crop up with heroic narratives in some insidious ways.

Fascist art depicts, in Sontag’s words, “unlimited aspiration toward the high mystic goal, both beautiful and terrifying.” It “celebrate[s] the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader.” It focuses on “the contrast between the clean and the impure, the incorruptible and the defiled, the physical and the mental, the joyful and the critical.” It fetishizes “the holding in or confining of force; military precision.” Its characteristic subject matter is “vivid encounters of beautiful male bodies and death.” In short, fascist art depicts the perfected, disciplined body in service of the perfected, disciplined state. Its aesthetic principles are, in visual terms, clean geometric lines, chiseled physiques, and slow motion; and in musical terms, brass fanfares, pounding drumbeats, and pipe organs. Its moral principles are strength, skill, obedience, order, joyful submission, and apocalyptic dissolution… and it’s this last that really set it apart from other aesthetics that glorify strength (of which, to be sure, there are plenty to go around).

Both the Fire Nation and the Lannisters embody these fascist aesthetics, as well as fascist ideologies. To understand what I mean by fascist ideologies, and how that ties into fascist aesthetics, look here:

Common themes among fascist movements include; nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, militarism, quasi-religion, masculinity and philosophy. Other aspects of fascism such as its "myth of decadence", anti‐egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas. These fundamental aspects however, can be attributed to a concept known as "Palingenetic ultranationalism", a theory proposed by Roger Griffin, that fascism is a synthesis of totalitarianism and ultranationalism sacralized through myth of national rebirth and regeneration. (source)

A lot of fantasy fiction uses these ideas as shorthand for villainy, even just using the aesthetic without a particular ideology behind it, but in both ASOIAF and ATLA we see both fascist aesthetics and fascist ideologies. Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family have an obsession with national honor, pride, and debt. Both are capable of unspeakable cruelty in the name of superiority. Both also follow this narrative of rebirth which is upheld by Tywin when he restores House Lannister to a terrifying state of glory after his father’s disgrace, and Ozai when he tries to become the phoenix king. Both also have a frightening obsession with perfection, which is the heart of Tyrion and Zuko’s traumatic relationships with their families.

The above linked article on fascist aesthetics discusses Tyrion as a character who challenges fascist aesthetics, not just due to the fact that he has a congenital disability but because of the traits that make up his character.

The real challenge to fascist aesthetics comes from the series’ unperfected bodies. Some bodily abnormalities can be reconciled with fascist narratives — Jaime pretty clearly loses his hand just so that he can, through agonized struggle, climb the mountain, touch the peak, and reclaim his status as a perfected instrument of death. Brienne’s harped-on ugliness is there so that we can focus on her bodily perfection in terms of skill and strength. Varys’ castration is tied in with his utter dedication to serving the realm — the fascist body needs to be disciplined and perfect, but in all three of these cases bodily imperfections are just opportunities for more and further discipline. But the same can’t be said of Tyrion. He is quite precisely undisciplined. He drinks to excess. He likes his food. He has sex — he doesn’t make love, he has sex, and often, and never in idealized terms. He pisses. I don’t remember whether he shits or not, but others shit in his presence. He cracks jokes. He loses his temper and alienates his friends. All of this brings in the spirit of the carnival and the grotesque, which is the mortal enemy of fascist self-seriousness.

Here I discuss Zuko’s attempt to fit into a fascist aesthetic which is introduced only to be undercut in the narrative pretty early on - Zuko, despite the appearance he wants to project, is decidedly undisciplined - and then slowly eroded as his character undergoes a change. Tyrion undergoes some similar costume changes, going from proudly wearing his Lannister colors to wearing clothes that are not his own while in exile and having a crisis of identity. Tyrion’s dwarfism, like Zuko’s scar, is something that marks him as the unperfected, as it is something that he cannot change about himself even if he changes his appearance.

Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family also embody fascist ideologies on a personal level within their own family structure.

Warning for in-depth discussion of abuse below.

At the beginning of ASOIAF we get the sense of Tyrion as someone who was fairly directionless. This post speculates about what Tyrion’s life may have been like pre-series. He’s the son of a wealthy lord and technically the heir, although the unspoken truth - until Tyrion’s conversation with his father in ASOS - is that Tywin will never let him inherit Casterly Rock, and indeed Tyrion was never treated as the heir, which is why Tyrion realizes during that conversation that it was something he “must have always known.” Tywin sees Tyrion as unsuitable to inherit because of his dwarfism, but cites other traits - real and imagined - as reasons why he will never let his son inherit. But the kicker here is that a lot of this is stuff that Tywin created and nurtured. Tywin creates Tyrion’s complex with regard to sex workers and then treats it as a sign of inherent weakness. He dismisses Tyrion’s intelligence as “low cunning.” He humiliates and belittles his son in private and in public, and then treats Tyrion’s justified frustration and anger as if it is a natural state that reinforces his unworthiness. Tywin’s abuse of Tyrion is systematic, punctuated by brutal violence but also infused with subtle gaslighting, to the point where Tyrion internalizes this belief.

This is strikingly similar to what Ozai does to Zuko, who is similarly directionless at the beginning of his story, removed from succession, and on an impossible mission to chase the Avatar, who hasn’t been seen in a hundred years. There are many points in the series, in the flashbacks to his childhood, in how Zuko thinks about his father, and in his relationship with Azula, that tell me that Zuko’s banishment was not just the result of one incident of defiance (and I will talk more on the actual incident of Zuko’s banishment later). It was the result of years of failing to live up to his father’s impossible standards of perfection. There is something in Zuko from even his earliest childhood that is abhorrent to Ozai’s fascistic worldview. Zuko’s inability to be as good at bending as his sister - and what’s worse, his younger sister - his emotional nature, displayed both positively (shown in his love for his mother and his tendency towards nonviolence in the flashbacks), and negatively (displays of frustration and anger which show a lack of control), and his inability to control himself when he speaks out in the war council, all of these things mark him as imperfect and therefore weak. And Ozai’s response to this is to put everything into his other child, grooming her as his true heir, while treating Zuko in a way that only reinforces the perception that Zuko is unworthy. Zuko absolutely believes this about himself at the beginning of the series.

Zuko: You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky; he says I was lucky to be born.

The way that Ozai scars Zuko during the agni kai that results in his banishment is an outward physical manifestation of Zuko’s (perceived) imperfection. The difference is that while Tyrion’s physical imperfection - his dwarfism - was something he was born with that caused Tywin to perceive it as a symbol of all that was inherently wrong with Tyrion’s character, Ozai scars Zuko to make what he sees as Zuko’s flawed character appear outward for all to see. Both these things stem from the same source, or rather, the same two things, inextricably linked: pride and shame.

Iroh: Pride is not the antidote to shame, but its source.

I’ve written a lot about how Lannisters are obsessed with shame, because Lannisters are obsessed with pride. This is shown symbolically in their association with Lions (”Hear Me Roar”) and the colors red and gold. The Fire Nation colors are also red and gold, evoking royalty and strength, plus the added symbology of fire, which actually is also associated with the Lannisters. Game of Thrones made good use of this imagery as well to show the Lannisters’ power in King’s Landing:

Compare to the Fire Lord throne in ATLA:

This is all part of the fascist aesthetic, of course. Both ATLA and ASOIAF acknowledge that fire can have other, less destructive meanings as well. More on that later.

Aside from the history of constant emotional abuse, Tyrion and Zuko also have a striking parallel in what is the most traumatic moment of either of their lives. For Zuko, it’s when his father burns and scars him during the agni kai. For Tyrion, this is when his father forces him to participate in Tysha’s abuse. These two acts are horrifically similar in their motive, the way they are carried out by the abuser, and what they were designed to do to the victim. They also both happen when the victim is thirteen years old, an age when children start to begin their long journey to adulthood, but still have far to go before they can be considered separate from their parents.

Upon first viewing the scene where Zuko's father challenges him to an agni kai, it's framed as being about honor, and Zuko refuses to fight his father on the grounds that it would be dishonorable, but that's exactly why Ozai challenges him in the first place. Because Zuko has already challenged his father by speaking out against him in the war council, and this is the point of Ozai's lesson. He is saying to his son, you have no honor and no right to challenge me, in any and all ways. I control you. And when you look at it after viewing the entirety of the history of abuse in that family, it becomes something deeper than just being about honor and it's not even about what Zuko did. Because the constant dynamic in that family was one in which Zuko was repeatedly dominated and taught that he was inferior. And the way it's framed by Ozai, as being about regaining lost honor, is a lie. Because in Ozai's eyes, Zuko never had any honor to begin with, and that's what he shows him by burning him and scarring him. In that context, Zuko was never going to be able to stand up to Ozai, and it becomes less about a child refusing to fight his father and more about a child too terrified and downtrodden to even know how to stand up to his father while his father mutilated him. Ozai knows this and does it deliberately, which makes the whole thing even more horrifying. And at face value, it initially appears that Ozai's burning of Zuko is much more violent and motivated by anger than Tywin's abuse of Tyrion, but realizing the dynamics at play here and realizing that Zuko would have never been able to fight back and that Ozai deliberately intended it that way, this makes it a much more cold, calculating attack on his son in the context of a lifetime of convincing his son not only of his own inherent unworthiness, but that Zuko was actually to blame for it. Which makes Ozai very like Tywin in his calculated cruelty, his ability to convince his victims that he is right and all-powerful, and his campaign of dehumanization against his own son.

Similarly, when Tywin forces Tyrion to watch and participate in the gang rape of Tysha, his first love - raping Tyrion as well in the process - he frames it in the context of honor/shame/pride. He tells Tyrion that this is a lesson about marrying below his station, and manipulates Tyrion into believing it. I’ve written a lot about Tyrion and Tysha on my blog so I’m not going to rehash all that. What I am going to say is that these two incidents, both violations of their victims’ bodily autonomy, are horrifically similar in their ability to convince their victims that they were the cause of the abuse, and unfortunately in the ASOIAF fandom there are a lot of people who seem to believe that Tyrion is at fault. The difference, I suppose, is that Tysha was also abused, whereas Zuko’s action of defiance hurt no one but himself, but I would argue similarly that Tyrion had no possible way to stand up to Tywin; that, similarly to the impossible situation of the agni kai that Ozai puts Zuko in, it would not have mattered whether he had fought back or cowered in fear. The purpose is to ensure that the victim believes that the abuser is the one in control. The effect is an inability for the victim to trust their own judgments and perceptions, thus keeping them dependent upon the abuser. We see this in the way that both Zuko and Tyrion have internalized the guilt of what was done to them. Both of their narratives hinge on unlearning what their fathers have taught them in the most violent way possible.

And all this creates a never-ending cycle of shame. Tywin and Ozai attacked their sons because of perceived weakness which was seen as a shameful reflection of their own self image, because of the intolerance of any sort of imperfection in both men’s worldview.

We don't actually get a whole lot of characterization of Ozai as a person. What we get is mostly through others, how he treats his son, how he treats his daughter. But another way that we can understand Ozai and learn more about the dynamic in that family is through Iroh.

Iroh is a character who we are introduced to as something of a mirror to what Zuko could be. While Zuko is indoctrinated into the Fire Nation ideology, Iroh has already undergone his transformation from star general to the wise mentor and guiding light that he tries to be for Zuko by the time the story begins. And Iroh's story is one that is firmly opposed to the fascist belief in superiority and particularly, military greatness. Iroh is another example of the unperfected, both physically and mentally, although it might be more accurate to say he is the once-perfected. Iroh's biggest tragedy is his military disgrace following the death of his son, who he loved deeply. Even before this occurrence, though, Iroh is identified as weak by both Ozai and Azula, and this is used by Ozai to usurp him in the line of inheritance. But it's his emotional breakdown after his son's death that really cements him as a character opposed to the fascist ideology, because it's a firmly anti-war, anti-imperialist message. An acknowledgment that you can have all the power in the world and still lose what is most valuable to you. By the time we see him in the series, he is fat and elderly, kind to even his enemies, makes clear both his love for his son and his love for his nephew, and indulges in simple pleasures, like tea and pai sho. He's a pretty identifiable "good" character, although he does sometimes enable and justify Zuko's bad actions, particularly in the first season.

There are several characters who I see as parallel to Iroh in Tyrion’s narrative. One is Tytos, the father that Tywin despised and sought to distance himself from due to his weakness, who dies fat and old and disgraced and informs much of Tywin’s ruthlessness, and whom Tywin projects onto his son. Another is Gerion, laughing, kind, something of a mentor to Tyrion before his disappearance. The third is Jaime, who, like Iroh, is an older figure who tries to protect Tyrion but who can’t protect him entirely, partially due to a certain aloofness of personality. Tyrion also has the moment in ASOS where he rejects Jaime’s apology with the Tysha revelation and by the end of that chapter identifies himself as Tywin “writ small,” while Zuko has the moment under Ba Sing Se where he rejects Iroh’s advice and chooses to side with Azula instead. Both are morally gray actions tied to the abuse and gaslighting the characters have experienced. Tyrion feels betrayed by Jaime because of Jaime’s role in what happened with Tysha, while Zuko is pretty clearly manipulated by Azula.

Another similar familial relationship is Zuko and Azula and Tyrion and Cersei. Both Tyrion and Zuko are abused by their sisters, who are cruel, ambitious, and totally subsumed by the fascist ideology of their fathers, and who abuse their brothers out of a sense of identifying with their abuser.

One of the main differences between Tyrion and Cersei’s relationship and Zuko and Azula’s relationship is that Tyrion is MUCH more capable of seeing through Cersei’s manipulations than Zuko is, and I feel like that has to do with the gap between their ages. Although Zuko is the older sibling, Azula is much more dominant than him and the closeness in their ages makes that much more personal.

I’ve talked before about Cersei’s abuse of Tyrion and why it’s important to recognize that she is abusive to him and his negative actions towards her are not equal to her abuse of him, and one of the things that highlights that is that there is such a wide age gap between them. I’m looking at this partially from the perspective of someone with an older brother and sister with a similar age gap (and a younger brother who is much more closer to my age). And when I was a kid I tended to see my older siblings as other adults that lived in my house. I am close to my siblings and we never had a hostile relationship - although I did feel somewhat jealous of my sister growing up - but I am much closer to my sister now as an adult than I was when I was younger, and we have a much more equal relationship. But given Tyrion’s lack of non-abusive adult authority figures in his life, Cersei’s treatment of him becomes a reinforcement of Tywin’s abuse, and that’s why his hostility to her is not equal to her hostility towards him.

Zuko and Azula’s relationship is different. He is an older sibling but because of their closeness in age, they experienced abuse in the form of Ozai pitting them against each other. Tyrion and Cersei have a similar intense rivalry but it’s much less personal and much less tied to shared childhood trauma. And it’s the fact that for Zuko and Azula, that trauma is shared and experienced together, that makes it easier for Azula to manipulate Zuko and play on his inability to trust his own perceptions even though he definitely doesn’t trust her.

I also think it’s a difference in personality. Tyrion’s much more extroverted and analytical which makes him much more able to question Tywin and his sister despite Tywin’s repeated gaslighting and despite the fact that it does often work. One of the things that Tyrion and Zuko have in common is that they simultaneously realize that their family’s beliefs and especially the way their family has treated them is wrong, yet they also consistently internalize those beliefs. Yet Tyrion never feels inferior to his sister the way Zuko feels inferior to Azula, and I feel like that has to do with Zuko’s tendency to internalize more and withdraw inward.

Another difference would be that whereas Azula is the star sibling to Zuko’s disappointing sibling, Jaime plays that role for both Tyrion and Cersei.

Finally, both Tyrion and Zuko have moments of calling out their abusive fathers on their bullshit. Zuko has the one central moment of speaking out against his father’s ruthless military strategy with disastrous results when he is thirteen. Similarly, there are several moments in ASOIAF where Tyrion calls his father out on his ruthlessness and Tywin rebuffs him with gaslighting and plausible deniability. Both Ozai and Tywin are masters at gaslighting, and it takes a long time for both Tyrion and Zuko to be able to resist. However, both Tyrion and Zuko have similar moments of declaring independence from their fathers.

And I’ll talk about that in part three, which will focus on recovery, resolution, and redemption.

#tyrion lannister #valyrianscrolls #avatar the last airbender #zuko #atla meta #asoiaf meta #abuse cw #house lannister #the fire nation #rape cw

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scientifically-strange · 5 years ago

Note

For a danny phantom avengers prompt from your reblogged list, maybe "could you blink, or something? Youre starting to freak me out." please?

Danny groaned as he sat up, blinking his eyes furiously in a futile attempt to make his vision more clear.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the sounds of combat around him drowned out everything else. Everything hurt, but didn’t at the same time, and he didn’t understand why. There was something that was lighter about him too. Sure, he could float anytime he wanted, but he still felt weight when he did so. Now he felt like he would disappear completely if a strong breeze came.

When he opened his eyes again it was less intense, and his vision had more or less corrected himself. He got up, allowing himself to float a couple of inches off of the ground, and looked around.

Buildings and streets were in complete ruins, a fire hydrant was, well, on fire, and the sky was stained with ash and smoke. He flew around for a minute longer, looking for any signs of his team.

“Oh my god,” someone said behind him. He turned towards the direction of the sound, and came face to face with Hawkeye, who was looking at him like he had two heads. That had happened only once before, and it hadn’t even been that bad, because Danny having two heads was most certainly not the weirdest thing that Clint had ever seen. He knew that for a fact.

“Clint, where are the others? And the villains? Did we win?” Danny asked him. But Clint didn’t say anything. he just kept staring. He was so distracted he dropped his bow.

Danny, thinking lint probably, hopefully didn’t have his hearing aids in, signed his questions. Clint still didn’t answer. It was like he was frozen, rooted to the spot, as if Medusa had come out of mythology and looked him in the eyes.

“Could you blink, or something?” Danny asked, exasperated. Clint acting like this was getting annoying. “You’re starting to freak me out.”

Slowly, his hand moved towards his ear, and he called for the rest of the team to get there. If he was doing that, then they had won.

It didn’t take very long for the others to get there. When everyone but Iron Man was there, they all had the same reaction as Clint. Dumbstruck and speechless.

“Can somebody please tell me what is going on?!” Danny cried out.

Just at that moment, Iron Man landed, and what-who he was holding made Danny’s stomach do flips.

Iron Man was holding him. His body. Danny looked at himself in Iron Man’s arms for what seemed like years, before finally building up the courage to look down at his own hands, which is not something he had done before.

He could see right through them. His hands were there, he could see them, but he could also see the broken road through them as well.

“I’m...I’m fully dead...”

“Kid,” Iron Man said, laying down Danny’s body gently. There were gashes everywhere, but the one that had caused him to die was a deep one at his throat. His hands were covered in dried up ectoplasm.

Then it all came back to him.

The fight. The energy slice he’d been hit with. It had thrown him back, and he hadn’t been able to breath, even in his ghost form. Then he blinked, groaned, and got up. He had walked right out of his body, unable to bond with it now that his human half was dead.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked, taking a small step forward. His voice was soft and caring. He had gone into Therapist Mode.

“...Yeah...I mean, I’m still here. As a ghost.”

“Then why are you transparent like that?” Natasha asked. She looked legitimately sad. He knew she would probably drinking a few later.

“Because he’s lost a lot of ectoplasm.”

Everyone turned to the side, only to see Clockwork, floating a few inches off the ground and looking forlorn. He turned into an old man. “He needs to return to the Ghost Zone to, how you say, recharge. He’s weak at the moment. Earth won’t help you survive now, Daniel.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Danny asked.

“It was one of the possibilities. In the line of work you’ve chosen it always has been. It just so happened to be today, rather then next time you fight off an alien invasion. I’m...Sorry, Daniel.”

He meant it. Danny knew he did, and he wanted to be mad at Clockwork, but...He was right. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Unfortunately for him it had been sooner.

“So...What now?” He asked. His voice was quiet, but Clockwork still managed to hear him perfectly.

“We go to the Zone, and you can finally enter your layer. I’m sure you’ll find it...Unexpectedly warm.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Iron Man asked. He was legitimately angry with the older ghost.

Clockwork sighed. “I’m sure a few of you know about his battle with Pariah Dark, the old tyrant king of the Ghost Zone. Danny defeated him, and now that he’s a full ghost, he’s now the king.”

This was the least cryptic thing Danny had ever heard him say, and he was taken aback. Him? King?

“Have your funeral, for it is still a sad day,” Clockwork told the Avengers. “But rejoice, for he had a second chance to do some great work, both in this one and his. Now, come Daniel, we must get going.”

Danny nodded, and turned to the Avengers.

“I’m sure you know that if I could hug you right now I would...And I’m sorry. But I’ll...I’ll be back. I promise.”

---------

They had the funeral less then a week later. They and several other heroes that Danny had met came and said something sappy and sweet about him. By the end of everything there wasn’t a single dry tear in the crowd.

Danny had had a favorite park. It wasn’t Central Park, but a smaller, more mundane one, where the trees were plentiful and there were happy kids running around. Whenever he was upset that’s where Steve or Tony would always find him, and always under the same large maple tree. They dedicated the tree to him, and built him a statue in the middle of it.

Tony visited that tree for an entire month straight. Steve filled up three whole sketchbooks of Danny. Clint and Natasha hit up a new dive bar every night, to forget about the death of their friend. Sam wrote out his feelings, and it still wasn’t enough. Not until he cried for four hours the third night he tried doing so. Thor went to Asgard, and held a ceremony for Danny, praising his efforts as a Midgardian hero, and as the new King, Slayer of Pariah Dark. Bruce locked himself in a lab, or in his room with a good book, but when it wasn’t enough he would take a walk to the flower cart two blocks from the tower, buy some white and pink carnations, and lay them at Danny’s grave.

They all knew he’d be back eventually. But everyday without him still hurt. It cut them deep like nothing every had before. They had lost a loved one, the best of them, and they weren’t ever going to get him back.

---------------

It was five years later when it finally happened.

They were all sitting in the living room, doing something to entertain themselves, but all still enjoying each others company equally when a bright green, swirling portal emerged out of nowhere.

Danny, taller and older, stepped through. He had a crown of ice, and a long, flowing cape. He smiled at them warmly, despite the temperature of the room having gone down.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “Sorry it took me so long.”

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mightyhydrator · 5 years ago

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There is a level of hypocrisy in Andrew Hussie’s statement.

This may end up in having my points be out of order, but whatever.

One of the things that I felt kind of aggravated by was the bit at the end:

“Wherever the most conscientious and invested members of fandom want to drive this universe...”.

Obviously you can’t have all members of the fandom be involved, so you pick out the biggest and most loyal ones, but even then, why alienate half the fanbase with something you made bad on purpose (I am sure that most of those who stopped being part of the fandom because of the epilogues would have otherwise fit the description)? Why make something stupid to “challenge” the fanbase to think critically when you can simply make something good? There isn’t really any reason to make something bad unless you are doing a big subversion thing by proposing an alternative, which Andrew is clearly not going to do, as he’d rather continue the epilogues’ arc, just with the “help of fans” (all of whom, no doubt, loved the epilogues).

There is also a level of blaming the fans for wanting things out of this.

And by peeking into the imagined realm of "happily ever after" to satisfy our curiosity, we discover that our attention isn't so harmless, because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored. Nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch, when several teenagers are handed god-status. It turns out the gaze we cast from the sky of Earth C to revisit everyone isn't exactly friendly, like warm sunlight. It's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this.

Calling this paragraph a thermian argument would be very weird, as the nature of the epilogues and its themes (which are part of the universe, mind you) are incredibly meta, but he tries to blame the fact of this being written as the fault for all the terrible things that happened. But it’s simply not true: you chose to write this, you chose to present the attention as a “ravaging beam”, and only you made the troublemakers like this. (also the realm wasn’t “happily ever after”, calling it that is just being dumb).

His fable about the meaning of words applied to media is also somewhat inapplicable? “Intermission” was kept consistent in Homestuck for the most part, there were just a lot of them. “Intermission” always meant “a break between parts of the current Acts”. A break betwen act 3 and 4, a break between Act Acts (where the attention moves away from the alpha kids onto other characters), and a break between Act Act Acts (where the attention moves away from Caliborn onto other characters). If anything, if Andrew called these intervals “entr'actes”, his questions would be more applicable. (Disclaimer: Homestuck was my first piece of media where an intermission is present. I may not actually know the exact way people use these words).

Same with “epilogue”. As far as I know, there is no unspoken rule as to what an epilogue can include, as long as it concludes the story. Honestly, from what I know, it might even be allowed to have a cliffhanger. His “epilogues are kind of an afterthought” thing is no more than drivel about his own interpretation of the way the word is applied. The only way the Homestuck Epilogues challenge the word is “Can an epilogue act as a) a story in its own right, and b) Segway directly into a new narrative?”. A) has been addressed by the stamenet, in a way, but b) is just left there.

And the stuff about unreliable narrators.

Like the fact that all narratives have perspectives and biases, depending on who is telling the story, even in the case where it's unclear if the narrator has any specific identity. The suggestion that all narratives are driven by agendas, sometimes thinly disguised, other times heavily.

The one narrating simply can’t be an unreliable narrator if they are the author. The author, as the one who creates the narrative, has an agenda to convey the events, and in most cases even thoughts, truthfully. There are cases where this isn’t super applicable, like interpreteable events, unconcluded plot threads, red herrings, etc., but the author, as the one with inherent authority over everything in their story, has the answers to everything, and their every whim dictates what is part of the story and why. An author can’t be an unreliable narrator as the author has neither any reason to have their narrative lie about its contents nor is a fallible source of information about the narrative. (Outside of narration, however, these are possible, but we are talking about narration here).

“Heroes of Olympus”, since every book is written in third person, doesn’t have unreliable narration coming from the author-narrator (Rick Riodan), as he has every interest in keeping his story truthful. “Trials of Apollo”, as it is written from the first person perspective of Apollo, is subject to being unreliable (in the moment, overall everything is true), as Apollo is a real person within the diegesis of the books and has every interest in being seen as infallible, wronged, etc.

Andrew’s narration is more like Rick’s, no matter what he says, whereas Calliope’s and Dirk’s is closer to Apollo’s, no matter what they say.

Now here is the last bit:

It's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. Sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it's an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art. I think not only can creators develop their skills to create better things by practicing and taking certain risks, fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time.

So the reason he decides to show us that it’d be a good idea to better the fandom and develop frameworks for helping us deal with negative emotions created by pieces of media is... by worsening the fandom and instilling negative emotions? This is like breaking someone’s leg so that it’ll heal, or giving the King of England the plague so that he gets well soon and then later could have a better immune system (not like a vaccine, but a genuine plague).

I am all for fandom being a better space to be in and for frameworks to help deal with negative emotions, but again, nobody forced him to cause problems for us to solve (this also applies to conflict in the epilogues, where nobody forced Hussie to make more villains).

If you wanted this to happen, Andrew Hussie, then you should have given people something that would inspire them to do what you want them to do, not blame them for not doing it when the only thing you gave them makes them feel like shit. You’ve done this with Homestuck, you are capable of this, don’t chicken out.

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #hydra talks #Andrew Hussie

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arlingtonpark · 5 years ago

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Frozen 2 Review

You know, I’m starting to notice a trend with me and these Disney kid’s movies: I don’t like them.

And not because I’m not a kid, but because they really are badly written.

I’ll start with what I liked.

The animation was great, like in all Disney movies. Animation for Disney is like John Williams’ music in Star Wars - it’s good no matter what movie it is.

The song sequences, taken on their own, were show stopping. The action was grand, the singing was commanding, and the visuals were gorgeous.

…OK, now on to the stuff I didn’t like.

The movie starts off with Anna and Elsa playing together as kids. You know, before Elsa almost killed Anna. I don’t think this is bad per se, but I do think it undermines the gay subtext people read into Elsa’s character, and I’m sure lot of people will see that as bad, so I’m putting this in the “bad” section of this post.

Why do people read Elsa as a lesbian? Because she has to hide her powers, the thing that makes her different, like how gay people have to hide their gayness.

This has always been the case, but this movie really reinforces it: Elsa was only forced to hide her powers after she showed the capacity to harm others with them.

In other stories, people with superpowers have to hide those powers because they have powers, not because they can harm people with them. It’s about the power itself, not the burden of having them. This is a good metaphor for things like homosexuality.

In Frozen, things are kind of a mess. Elsa was forced “into the closet” because of the demonstrable harm she posed to others, not because she had the powers to begin with. Frozen 2 emphasizes this point: Elsa’s parents were accepting of her powers up until she showed they could be used to harm others.

Gay people are forced to hide themselves because people in polite society are expected to conform to certain standards. There is an element of rejecting nonconformity in Frozen. In that movie, people see Elsa using her powers and dub it witchcraft.

So there are some elements to the movie that support an LGBT metaphor, but other elements contradict that reading, so it all ends up being a big mess.

Frozen 2 is about how different groups need to get along and how past wrongs need to be made right.

The story opens with some storytime by Elsa and Anna’s dad:

Anna and Elsa’s granddad made contact with an indigenous group of people called the Northuldra. These Northuldra were not magical, but they were able to harness the magic that was endemic to their land.

Granddaddy had a dam built in the Northuldra’s territory as a peace offering. But during a celebration of its completion, a fight broke out and grandad was killed. Why the fight happened is unknown, but the forest spirits were angered and a mist overcast the whole region, locking it away.

And that is how Elsa and Anna’s dad became the king.

Seriously. That’s the payoff to the king’s story. Interethnic conflict and it’s all setup for how he got his cool hat.

I think that was smart!

Lots of awful historical events are glossed over for the sake of relatively trivial bullshit. I mean, I’m writing this on Thanksgiving. A holiday about being thankful is great! But the peace between colonists and natives that this holiday is built around is negated by…how there was no peace in the end. We all understand that on some level, right?

So I think this is a cool nod to how historical events, even historical atrocities, are mythologized.

The motivator for our heroes is uncovering the true history of Arendelle so the angry forest spirits can be calmed.

The true history is this:

Grandad actually hated the Northuldra. He built the dam to make them a vassal of his kingdom…somehow.

The ceremony was just a way for him to size up the Northuldra and determine their strength. He was the one who started the fight.

So…

Why did grandad use the ceremony to size up the Northuldra if that same ceremony was a trap to…kill them all, I guess?

Grandad uses the ceremony to learn of their numbers and strength, the same ceremony he uses to kill their leader and incite a conflict. You’d think the king would have learned the Northuldra’s numbers and strength before this. Just, you know, in the course of interacting with them and coordinating construction of the dam.

And why did King Grandad go to all the trouble of building the dam if he was just going to start a war with the Northuldra?

That’s a big ass dam! The king had it built and for what? Was he going to enslave them? That hardly seems worth it.

I guess the king was just a greedy bastard, but…he’s barely a character at all, so it’s just bad writing.

The point, though, is that the past!Arendellites did something awful and this needs to be set right. The dam still stands and its existence angers the forest spirits. But if the dam is destroyed, the water behind it will flood the area and destroy Arendelle.

So……

Arendellites of the past are big meanie heads.

This has repercussions through to the present.

This has to be made right.

That means destroying Arendelle.

Is this supposed to be applicable to our world?

White people of the past are big meanie heads.

This has repercussions through to the present.

This has to be made right.

That means…destroying white people?

Yes, the institution of racism still exists, and yes, that has to be made right. But no one is saying white people have to lose their homes. What is this movie even talking about?

Radical leftists, the ones who aren’t shitheads, want to sweep away the current order, but that’s because they want to replace it with a new one.

Reparative action means destroying the old order to replace it with a better one. This movie casts reparative action as just destructive.

I like to think of this as being like global warming. Many people think that to fight global warming we have to basically ruin our lives and sacrifice economic growth. We need to give up all our environmentally harmful practices and this basically means living Extreme Paleo. It’s that or a world with no ice caps.

But that’s not true. We don’t have to make that choice. We can have an environmentally sustainable economy and be just as prosperous as we’ve always been.

This movie seems to believe that making amends for the past requires some sacrifice by the descendants of the perpetrators.

If the racial hierarchy were destroyed, white people would no longer benefit from it, so in that sense they would lose out, but that’s not the same thing as losing your home!

The movie is clearly a commentary. It tries soooo hard to be topical and relevant; it only succeeds in being irreverent.

Why do the people at Disney keep trying to talk about racism? They suck at it! They have no idea what they’re talking about.

First Zootopia, now this. They keep trying and trying; I wish they’d stop.

Do they have any self-awareness? If they did, they’d realize they’re just confusing children with these badly designed messages.

The movie tries to be a social commentary. It does so by elucidating a dilemma that doesn’t exist. There is no trade-off between righting the past and continuing our livelihoods.

Ah, but you see, this movie is multilayered in how bad it is.

In the end, Anna decides to destroy the dam, Arendelle be damned. The dam breaks and the kingdom is about to be swamped.

And then, in an almost literal deus ex machina, Elsa swoops in on a magical contraption and uses her powers to BS the tension away.

So………

On one level we have the silly trade-off the movie proposes. Do the next right thing and fix racism, but lose your home. (If this movie were a person, it’d be an old man yelling at clouds.)

On another level, if we take this proposal for granted, we’ve got a completely uninspired message about how doing what’s right will never backfire on you.

*vomits*

Returning to the social commentary level, this means the message is that we need magic to solve the dilemma that doesn’t actually exist.

We need a special, almost magical someone who can BS away all the BS sacrifices white people need to make to right the sins of their ancestors.

(It’s not just the politics, this movie is poorly thought out in general.)

This movie has a very unsubtle theme about change. It’s so horribly done, I can’t believe it’s real.

By the end of the movie, Anna is queen now and Elsa decides to live with the Northuldra. That’s the only meaningful change and the implications of it are not shown to us.

The movie ignores the burdens of statecraft, so how much being queen now affects Anna’s life isn’t important to the narrative.

And we don’t see much of Elsa’s new life either. All we see is her frolicking on horseback through a field with a wide smile on her face. Really.

Elsa struggles with alienation in this movie, except we don’t really see it. We are told that she feels out of place, but there’s nothing in the movie to suggest a fundamental disconnect between Elsa and everyone else.

I mean, I get that Elsa’s magical and Arendelle isn’t, but Elsa doesn’t seem unhappy when the film picks up. Whatever angst she has in the first act is because of the voice she’s hearing. If she feels that Arendelle is a poor fit for her, it wasn’t communicated well.

This is to say that Frozen 2 is only tepidly about the dynamism of life. There’s no change for the worse, and what change for the better there is lacks gravitas.

Elsa’s decision to live amongst the Northuldra is another example of the writers not paying attention.

Another attempted example of change occurring is the unification of the Northuldra and Arendelle. A statue of Elsa and Anna’s parents, who it turns out were each from one of the groups, is erected to commemorate this newfound unity. Anna remarks that the races have “finally” been united.

Unfortunately, the implications of this unity are not shown, so it’s all meaningless.

You would think there would be an exchange of ideas between the two groups. Things like music, food, ideals, etc. We don’t see that. So the change that this movie talks a lot about just isn’t there.

Back to Elsa living with the Northuldra, I take it as implying that there won’t be much real coexistence between the Arendellites and the Northuldra. Because if there were a real cultural exchange, I don’t think Elsa would’ve made the move.

She felt she had to live with the Northuldra to feel more at home. This implies there will continue to be a meaningful disconnect between the two groups.

Instead of Elsa moving, why can’t the people of Arendelle integrate magic into their daily lives like the Northuldra?

Are human settlements just inherently anti-magical?

That’s problematic, because the Northuldra in general smack of being noble savages.

The noble savage trope is a stereotypical depiction of native peoples. The stereotype is that natives have a primitive way of life that lets them be one with nature. It romanticizes native culture.

Frozen 2 leans very heavily on the noble savage trope to communicate its ideas. The Northuldra are one with nature, but this is disrupted when the dam is built. Human civilization is a taint upon the Northuldra’s communion with nature, as represented by the forest spirits.

The whole point behind the noble savage trope is that the native way of life is uncorrupted by human civilization.

Exactly how the dam’s existence is a blight is never explained; the movie uses the noble savage trope as a cheat to get across why the dam is a bad thing.

“Why is the dam bad?”

“Uh, er, well, it’s civilization!”

The movie tries to be about how the races need to coexist, even as it sets one side up as being superior to the other, while showing no sharing of ideas or even goods.

In Frozen 2, “coexistence” means separate but equal.

This movie tries to do a lot.

There’s an arc for Anna about doing the next right thing, an arc for Kristoff and Anna about getting married, the social commentary about uncovering the true history and atoning for past misdeeds, and two major arcs for Elsa. One about her feeling alienated and another about her having this savior complex. She thinks she has to be the one to save everyone.

Subsequently, many plot beats feel half-baked and rushed. Elsa’s alienation wasn’t really established. Anna’s decision to destroy the dam wasn’t dwelled upon, so it didn’t have the emotional weight it could have.

Elsa’s arc about trying to go it alone is very badly handled.

The point of the arc is that teamwork is golden and relying on your powers is as valuable as a shiny penny.

But once again, it is clear the writers aren’t paying attention. One scene in particular was a galaxy brain fuck up.

A forest fire breaks out and Elsa tries to put it out. Anna jumps in because it looks like Elsa is going to be overwhelmed. You would think that Anna will get Elsa to drop putting the fire out and save herself.

But nope.

Anna is the one who needs to be bailed out. Elsa successfully puts the fire out.

Just, ugggghhhh.

Then later on, some rock giants are lumbering about and everyone has to avoid their notice. But Elsa tries to go off on her own again and follow them.

Because she thinks she can tame them.

Huh???

Elsa’s arc here is about teamwork, but trying to tame these things is just a stupid idea. With following the voice, it’s clear they have to do it if they want to get things to normal. It’s their mission.

Why tame rock giants?

The problem with this moment is that Elsa isn’t just being arrogant, she’s being an idiot.

Then we get to the finale and Elsa’s arc about teamwork just peters out and isn’t a factor in it. Everyone has a role to play in the climax, but it’s all serendipitous.

The kind of teamwork the movie tries to uphold up to this point entails not just trusting other people, but actually working together.

They learn they have to venture into the unknown. Elsa tries to go alone, but relents when Anna argues she should go too.

Later, Elsa tries to go alone to the mystery river and sends Anna away against her will. This is presented as a bad thing.

The lesson, so far, seemed to be that you can’t go it alone.

In the finale, they all go it alone while still working with each other. The finale emphasizes trust, while the rest of the movie emphasizes actual teamwork.

It’s not that they’re all a team working together, it’s more like they’re all playing off each other and making it up as they go.

Elsa learns the true history and communicates it to Anna.

Anna takes it upon herself to go dambusting.

Kristoff helps, but he doesn’t know what’s going on. Teamwork implies everyone is of the same mind. That’s not the case here.

The guards try to stop Anna, but they eventually choose to trust that this is the right thing to do. They don’t really know what’s going on either.

Then, just to really drive home how much they don’t care, at the very end Elsa uses her powers to save everyone singlehandedly.

Because you can’t go it alone.

You can’t just rely on your own power.

Every bridge has two sides, so even Elsa needs help from others.

(That bridge metaphor is the dumbest line in the whole movie.)

The people behind this movie obviously didn’t care. They put no thought in this. See Kristoff’s in-movie MTV music video.

Yes, really, that happened. In it, Kristoff laments being unable to really connect with Anna.

I’m about to sing a song lamenting the future of this franchise.

#frozen 2 #spoilers

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popwasabi · 5 years ago

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“Stranger Things 3″: The Pain and Love of Nostalgia

(Warning: SPOILERS ahead for “Stranger Things 3″)

“Stranger Things” most obvious core appeal has always been its campy 80’s throwback.

From the bright neon clothes, its brilliant synthesizer-based soundtrack, use of catchy 80s tunes and references to classic 80s horror and sci-fi, “Stranger Things” undoubtedly harnesses the power of its time period to hook viewers into its show. It’s a show that is rooted firmly in nostalgia and wields it prominently to attract viewers from Gen Xers who grew up in this time period to curious Millennials like myself who watched plenty of the referenced movies.

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(How do I both love and hate this at the same time??)

But “Stranger Things” aesthetic callback is more than just a style; it’s a narrative choice that plays directly into the themes of the story. By playing on viewers’ sense of nostalgia the show is forcing us to see how these characters react to growing up, by literally looking back on a period we cannot go back to, and all the complex emotions that come with these feelings.

To understand this further, we need to look back on etymology of the word nostalgia. In ancient Greece the word has a far more complex meaning that simply reminiscing on the past. It’s root definition actually has more to do with feeling pain than happiness about the past.

You see, nostalgia back then use to describe a condition of deep homesickness or longing for a period we can never return to and the melancholy that comes with it. “Stranger Things” is deeply rooted in this condition and expressed at times quite explicitly by all its characters.

From the very beginning “Stranger Things” nostalgic feel is about how these characters grow up and often times grow up too quickly. From Will being ripped away from his D&D pre-teen friends in season one and his mind infected by the creatures of the Upside Down, to Elle being experimented on before she can even have a childhood, the show takes us on a journey through the emotions of this pain of leaving the past behind and how innocence can be snatched away all too often by meddling adults and/or monsters in this case.

(Some VERY big monsters in many cases.)

This theme is by far its most present in “Stranger Things 3” as our band of nerds are now all teenagers trying to navigate hormones, young love and looking back on a childhood they can never have back and all the real horrors in between. It’s not just the youngest characters who deal with the pain of nostalgia, however; our adult heroes and heroines also inevitably deal with the pain of reminiscing on the past on lives that are permanently changed.

But the ultimate theme here isn’t just about the pain we associate with the past but that despite many things inevitably changing in your life, if you hold on to those closest to you in this journey that won’t change at least and the pain you feel is only a reminder that what you felt was real.

(#Feels)

“Stranger Things 3” does a great job of immediately telling the viewer how different things are this season compared to the previous two. Elle and Mike can’t stop making out, as does Lucas and Max, and Nancy and Jonathan are trying to navigate the complex and often humiliating adult workplace. There’s even a new monument to capitalism in Hawkin’s new Star Court Mall. But many of the other characters aren’t handling change all that well. Still new dad Hopper is having a hard time processing that Elle likes boys now, Dustin has spent most of the summer away from his best friends who seem disinterested in his new projects (and suspected made-up girlfriend), all while Will struggles mightily to keep the gang’s old D&D interests alive while his friends suck face.

There’s a tremendous sadness here reflected with these characters that viewers who watched these kids in the previous two seasons will immediately feel. They aren’t quite the same kids they used to be and they’ve grown a bit a part as they’ve grown up literally. We feel Dustin’s and Will’s pain (especially the latter given what he went through) that things are different and will never be quite the same between these friends. It’s a pain that many of us have definitely experienced growing up as we age out of hobbies, places and in some cases our friends.

Another character that has to deal pretty personally with nostalgic pain in this season is quite clearly everyone’s favorite dad Steve Harrington. The once king of Hawkins High has now been reduced to scooping ice cream at the mall to eke out a living. It’s a humiliating fall from grace for a young man who was once the most popular person in town. He’s spends much of this season trying to desperately to hold on to appearances, whether it’s only being interested in women who can up his status or pretending he doesn’t understand nerdy platitudes.

(Seriously, who hasn’t felt inadequate as fuck working a shitty customer service job before?)

Meanwhile Hopper, who probably struggles with change the most this season, gets quite aggressive with Mike and his advances on his adoptive daughter Elle. This isn’t helped by the fact that he still struggles with feelings he still has for Joyce and he often has self-destructive ways of dealing with these emotions. Though his actions border on problematic during the season Hopper’s transformation and acceptance is perhaps the most touching of the series as he lets Elle spread her wings and accepts change in the season’s finale in a bittersweet sendoff.

It’s season’s 3’s “villain” Billy though that we get the saddest feelings we associate with nostalgia. We learn that Billy’s attitude and views on others are more tied to his past than anyone else as we see a much sweeter more innocent kid who just loved his mom when he was a child who has changed so much. As with the series overarching messages its again tied to how easily innocence can be ripped away by bad adults whether its story’s primary villain of secret government agencies running lab tests on children and Interdimensions or in Billy’s case simply a drunk, evil belligerent father. This season finally explains where Billy’s bad attitude comes from and how much he’s changed for the worst because of the way his upbringing has treated him.

This season really shows how when we’re all at our lowest we all wish we could just go back to the way things were and journey back to a simpler time. It’s why nostalgia, no matter how happy the memory is, has a sadness to it; because we know we can never go back.

(I mean yeah, but it doesn’t get this dark.)

It’s through the events of season 3’s story though that we see how nostalgia isn’t all about pain and that there are still constants from our past that we can rely on in the present; namely those we love. The season begins by splintering the huge cast of characters by pitting their emotions against one another, but they each pick up a single piece of the larger puzzle of the plot that ultimately leads them back to one another and because of their past ties they are able to quickly move on from their pain and work together once again as a team. In this way nostalgia reminds us that it’s not all about pain but about love and more importantly and how they make our lives worth living. Though hormonally these kids have changed and their interests are more related to puberty now than Dungeons and Dragons they still care about one another and will do anything to keep each other safe (not to mention save the world). The adults in this story function the same way, quickly setting aside any past bitterness for the greater good.

Love is the ultimate uniter here that brings past to present and its why this fellowship of characters are able to win in the end.

(Daaaawww..)

Growing up is an often painful process and that occurs no matter what stage of life you’re in. Whether it’s like our pre-teen gang of nerds going through puberty, working our first humiliating job like Nancy or Steve as young adults or reminiscing on past what-might’ve-beens or child-rearing issues like Hopper its difficult when we all hit our next inevitable change in our life. We don’t want things to change because we often are happy with whatever stage we were once in. Sometimes we fight it, alienate others in the process and cause even more heartache for ourselves than we ever should.

But what “Stranger Things” reminds us is that despite all this, if we keep those we love and care about closest to us these changes won’t be so painful and drastic. We’ll at least get to go through all of it together.

So yes, nostalgia can be quite painful at times. There’s always going to be melancholy and some level of sadness we associate with the past and though we may fight it there are still friends, family and loved ones who will remain constants through it all in our lives.

All we can do is hold on to them for as long as we can and through those we love maybe we can keep a bit of that past alive forever.

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*sniffs* I’m not crying, YOU’RE CRYING!

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friendlycybird · 6 years ago

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The Magnus Archives Characters

If you’ve been reading all my TMA posts, you’ve probably gathered a little bit of how I feel about each of the characters. I figure I’ll just take a moment to be plain about each of them. To keep this brief, I’ll only be discussing characters whose voices we have heard more than once, who are currently alive. So obviously there are a few characters with a lot of weight in the overall arc or even just that make my shortlist of favorites who I won’t be getting into. Yet. Lemme know if I forgot anyone who fits those qualifiers.

Jonathan Sims - The Archivist.

I...I don’t even know what to say about Jon? He made me angry a lot in the beginning, but I always knew I’d grow to love him. I think I was helped a lot by coming into TMA direct from Gravity Falls? In that Jon seems very much cut from the same cloth as Ford. So it was always a familiar sort of irritation I felt with him, and still feel if I’m honest. Placing a “save the world” flavored burden on him doesn’t really help with the parallels there either. I think that...ultimately I just want to help him? I’ve noticed a lot of my affection for other characters tends to be built on how much they care about or want to care for Jon. Really I just wanna wrap him in a blanket, give him some tea, let him sleep for a week and then give him a nice safe job where he gets to do a lot of quiet reading.

Martin Blackwood

My baby. I don’t think you understand how much I love this man, alright? I fucking *adore* Martin. He’s the best. He’s just. Doing his best and he’s totally overwhelmed and probably always has been because he’s neck-deep in a job he’s not technically qualified for that just became a HELL of a lot more than a job and he’s just genuinely *sweet* and fucking...naive. But he’s learning, and when it comes down to it he steps up. He’s my favorite, and I don’t expect that to change.

Tim Stoker

Tim is like a housecat. Pound by pound he ought to be nature’s perfect predator...except for the fact that he’s the smallest animal in the room and it pisses him off. He actually reminds me a bit of a character you might see on a show like The Good Place. Genuinely fun, professional, flirtatious, - and utterly consumed by a situation so far beyond him that it’s all he can do to even imagine that he’s still a good person. While Martin is stepping up to do what he needs to do, what’s expected of him, Tim is just trying to survive with his...sense of self intact. I’ve been told Tim gets some “interesting development” that makes a lot of stuff around him spoilery, and honestly I haven’t asked if I’m there yet because I find his development so far extremely interesting. Assuming he has a secret to be revealed though...I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Elias Bouchard

I wish I could hate him. I wish I could dismiss him as evil and be on my way. It’s not that simple though, is it? Elias is an avatar of The Eye. He may or may not be the same Elias Bouchard that shares his official record, and I’ve recently realized that can’t possibly be the first name he’s used. Whatever else is happening, Elias wants to stop The Unknowing. Or, more precisely, he wants to train Jon to stop The Unknowing. At this point it seems he is almost completely unrestrained by any human limitations in terms of knowledge and ability, but his hands are almost completely tied by the workings of something...higher. He’s...a genuinely fascinating character. Surprisingly so for someone with so little affect.

Sasha James

Okay, I know I said I’d stick to the ones who are still alive I *know*. I Just. I couldn’t leave out Sasha. That was the team, right? Tim, Sasha, and Martin. Sasha was empirical without being blinded by a need for evidence, and arguably the most courageous character we’ve had yet. Coming out of months working in Artifact Storage and not being as desperate to leave the Institute as later season Tim? I Miss Sasha, and giving up hope of getting her back has been the hardest thing this show has made me do yet.

Melanie King

If someone had to replace Sasha, I’m glad it’s Melanie. She’s a good foil for Jon, I think. She’s practical, but seems like she’s a fun person when her life isn’t totally falling apart. Maybe I just have a soft spot for characters with backgrounds in media production, I don’t know, but I’m definitely enjoying her.

Basira Hussain

I love her? I don’t know why, or when this happened I certainly didn’t straight-up love her coming out of the initial Section 31 episode but somewhere along the lines... and like. I’m perhaps more amused than I should be by the reactions to people thinking she’s romantically linked with Jon - and as I type this I realized what I love about her so much. She gives me something of a Donna Noble vibe. I can’t back that up with any textual evidence but...

Michael

Effortlessly alien. Naturally other. He wears his status as something inhuman so well that the implication he may have been human as recently as 2007 is utterly jarring and I’m *desperate* for an explanation. I’m glad he’s the first...avatar...we’ve actually heard from in its full capacity as such? Because he’s such a perfect example with the kind of...otherness...being featured here.

Alice “Daisy” Tonner

She appeals to the part of me that watched Nine Seasons of Supernatural, honestly? She fits that...Hunter Mold, in an increasingly “(s)he who fights monsters...” sort of way. I don’t blame her for wanting to kill Jon. I don’t blame her for backing down when Elias played her relationship with Basira against them both.

Georgie Barker

She’s coming for my “Favorite Character” Spot HARD. She’s already knocked Gerard Keay out of his second place spot and if Martin hadn’t been so wonderful in Light’s Out she might have pulled first. She’s AMAZING. She *Recovered* from a brush with well, That! She recovered and she’s living her life and she can’t feel fear but that doesn’t for a moment make her stupid or reckless - or make her lose compassion for people who are scared. She’s a master a tough love and has been so *good* for Jon this season.

Also, her cat is fucking adorable. ...and now I’ve said that I’m actually really worried about the cat.

#Cybird Says Things #about TMA #The Magnus Archives

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