#they retconned dragons into being people and then didn't treat them like people and it drives me nuts

[penofwildfire]

Riyu is literally training to be a ninja alongside the others and has been here since the beginning but people will group Euphrasia, Percival, Jordana, literally anyone else in with the kids before they include Riyu.

[bayofwolves]

Rereading Hunted

I'm doing my first reread of Spirit Animals in years, in preparation for starting my biggest writing project yet, A Revised History of Erdas, and to my delight I'm discovering a lot of things that went over my head as a younger reader. I finished Hunted today, and wanted to talk about some of the more interesting things I noticed -- character details, plot holes and creepy implications. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book so much, but I've found it tickled my brain just the right way.

So, here are some highlights from my reread -- stuff even I didn't pick up on before.

Please mind the tags as there is a brief mention of rape near the bottom of this post.

Conor looks to be strawberry-blonde on this cover, not golden-blonde as he's described in text. I feel like it suits him.

The war has actually been going on for a while, probably since well before Wild Born. Finn was fighting Conquerors when his brothers were massacred, and it's unlikely that event was recent enough to have taken place during Wild Born. There is also a moment in the first book when General Teng speculates that the Conquerors who are laying siege to Jano Rion entered the city over a period of years in order to avoid suspicion. It would be interesting if the authors tied this in more efficiently, and our protagonists had been living in an active war when they summoned the Four Fallen. This opens up a plot hole, though: the Conquerors operate under Shane, and because Shane is 13 when he mobilizes his people for war in The Book of Shane, the events of the main series must have started quite soon after this. Abeke mentions he's only a little older than she is in Wild Born; since Shane is already 13, he couldn't have been waging war for a few years before this.

The only background I could find for Kunaya's name is that it is of Zimbabwe origin and means "rain". Notice the connection? Abeke is a Rain Dancer.

Rollan mentions that his father is dead, in a way that suggests he knew him. This seems to have been retconned in Fire and Ice, as his father plays no part in Aidana's retelling of their past as a family. Indeed, he is never brought up again after this instance in Hunted.

The Earl of Trunswick was burning bodies. Our protagonists notice something off about the bonfire burning outside Trunswick, with Abeke and Meilin specifically noting its unpleasant smell. And most tellingly, when Conor and Rollan are captured, the Earl tells his soldiers to "burn the body with the rest" if Conor does not put Briggan into passive state. Who exactly the Earl was burning is not entirely clear, but a possible clue comes from a later chapter where he threatens Finn after the breakout from the Howling House. "Don't worry, Finn Cooley! We'll burn that troubled bond out of you yet!" he says. I'm inclined to believe the Earl was burning the bodies of spirit animals with the bonding sickness -- in a twisted attempt to cure their human companions, or merely to torture them further. It's possible he was burning human corpses too; Isilla the Greencloak is mentioned to have been killed, and I get the sense he wouldn't have treated her body with respect. In any case, this is a crazy thing to heavily imply and then never fully explain.

Tahlia is noticeably older than the other three kids. She even takes offense to being referred to as a child by Zerif. (In ARHoE, with the other three being around 13, I think I would place her at 18.)

Tahlia's entire existence doesn't make much sense -- she's supposed to be bonded to the Stetriolan legend of the water-holding frog, but this legend isn't even mentioned in the third arc when our protagonists go scouting for these same legends' bond tokens. Instead, it is replaced by Zhong's water dragon. Additionally, why would Stetriol even need a hero to inspire them? They already have Shane. They're the birthplace of the Conquerors -- what more inspiration do they need? It would make more sense if Tahlia was Zhongese and bonded to a water dragon, like Song's Seaspray. After all, if any nation needed someone to sway them to the Conquerors' side, it would be the fallen Zhong.

Ana, the Amayan girl with the Gila monster, was chosen to be a part of the False Four for her "exceeding connections". This makes me wonder if she was intended to be related or otherwise close to the Prime Minister of Amaya. It's never revealed what Zerif meant by this and Ana presumably dies in Fire and Ice.

The False Four in general are a really interesting (and promising) concept and I wish more was done with them. I wanted to see them rallying the four nations to the Conquerors' side and creating more of a threat to the Greencloaks! I wanted to see each of them directly paralleling the True Four! Instead, they all ended up incarcerated, insane or dead by the fourth book. Ah well. That's what AUs are for.

The absence of Lady MacDonnell is noted, but never explained. Interestingly, Rollan notices this in the same breath as he does Lord MacDonnell's children being so rigidly obedient. Considering Lord MacDonnell's character, I'm willing to bet he had his wife executed or otherwise removed for some transgression she made. After all, one of the Three Undeniable Truths is "death".

Lord MacDonnell is a really terrible guy. Despite aiding our protagonists in this book and The Evertree, he is a nasty person who keeps his own people in a permanent state of fear. This book is full of despicable characters, for sure.

What were Devin and Karmo intending to do with Abeke? And why her? Because of her connection to the Conquerors, I'm guessing. But it's never really explained. They tell her they're taking her back to Nilo, but there's no way they would just kindly take her home and let her go. Maybe the Conquerors planned to give her the Bile and then use her in some scheme. I wish this book wasn't so vague (but I also don't because it gives me more freedom as a writer).

Devin calls Abeke "vermin" in the final battle. Interestingly, Karmo doesn't seem to approve of this comment. In fact, Karmo is a lot more sympathetic than I remembered.

This is the only first arc book that Shane doesn't appear in, and for no apparent reason. I think it would have been a good choice to include him and plan to in ARHoE.

Finn has PTSD. Poor guy. I kind of like that he didn't return to Greenhaven at the end and instead stayed in Glengavin -- after all, it was the Greencloaks and their talk of destiny that led to Finn's brothers being killed, Donn retreating and Finn being so deeply scarred.

The Earl seems to threaten Conor's mother with rape in the foreboding letter he sends. I've seen several people discuss this. He tells Conor his family will starve if he doesn't hand over the Iron Boar, "and the fate of your mother will be far crueller". It's a chilling implication, and certainly a choice to include in a children's book.

Overall, Hunted is dark. For that reason, it's become one of my favourite books in the series. Beautiful cover, great writing, cool new guy introduced, failure for our protagonists and an epic cliffhanger. This one is a gem.

This is part of an ongoing series.

Wild Born | Hunted | Blood Ties | Fire and Ice | Against the Tide | Rise and Fall | The Evertree

Immortal Guardians | Broken Ground | The Return | The Burning Tide

Heart of the Land | The Wildcat's Claw | Stormspeaker | The Dragon's Eye

Tales of the Great Beasts | The Book of Shane | Tales of the Fallen Beasts

[kimberlyannharts]

actually I would love a rant about how JJ sucks as a character

Merry early Christmas to you then, Anon!

Like I think what makes everyone clutching their pearls over the sanctity of JJ’s character and place in the canon so ridiculous is he is barely a character in the first place.  He is a plot device in SotD, a narrative goal for Tommy, as the story wasn’t about JJ developing into someone worthy of the Dragon Shield or even an SPD cadet - he's already done all of that. The story was about Tommy realizing he should retire and hand over his stuff already.  And you have a son who’s pretty good at being a ranger, so……….he should take it!  Great!  That’s it. I genuinely don't know why they didn't do some kind of Goofy Movie-esque father/son journey together, especially if you really wanted to discuss this idea of him feeling like he's in his dad's shadow. His existence in the show amounts to namedrops and one voiceover line in the Ninja Steel special, and the only bits of characterization these amount to are he’s a kid who goes to karate camp.  To me it comes off like people are attached more to JJ’s POTENTIAL as a character rather than HIMSELF as a character, in like a “well, maybe one day they’ll give him his own book/show/whatever” sort of way, which….it’s been five years since SotD.  Hasbro is gearing up to do a reboot and even then, as we’ve talked about many times, they don’t want to put focus on cop characters.  Unless some stuff is getting retconned, I am not holding my breath.      

The reason I call Minh the superior legacy character by comparison is because there actually was time and space dedicated to showing how she stands out as a person and a character beyond her being Trini’s daughter; in fact, her being Trini’s daughter is the least interesting part about her (in no small part because Trini herself was handled very badly by that special.)  What makes her interesting is her personality, her relationship with Zack, how she’s suddenly thrown into the deep end of the PR world by way of great tragedy, and her arc from a vengeful kid to a true hero (the special’s shaky writing of this arc notwithstanding.  But at least I get what they were TRYING to do here.)  JJ did not have anything CLOSE to that.  

Something else about him that’s funny but also frustrating because it’s obviously not intended by the writers, but still happens WAY too often for my liking, is how his existence is honestly a detriment to a lot of women in this franchise kjkfdj he was the catalyst for the old SPD ranking drama, as him being green meant Syd and Z had to stay as pink and yellow (and no, them throwing in some random female OC no one remembers as blue does not make up for it.)  And then….Kat……well…..I think this belongs in a discussion that covers more than just JJ, as in a way how they handled Trini in OaA is a very similar situation, but the fact of the matter is that since JJ’s inclusion in the canon Kat’s existence has boiled down to being his mother rather than a veteran ranger with her own life and work, no matter how many times the show and books TRY to be like “No look!  See!  She’s a super cool badass wife who keeps everyone in line!  She’s off doing her own things, too, we swear!”  my brother in Christ the same 30th anniversary story that tries to show off how cool and independent she is ALSO has a scene where she’s like “it’s okay honey, you take care of the Ranger missions while I stay home with JJ, it’s fine :)”  They’ve made it very clear that JJ is Tommy’s son, Tommy’s legacy, while Kat is his stay-at-home caretaker, WHICH IS FINE FOR A WOMAN TO BE, but not in this narrative, where Kat’s time as a ranger is treated as irrelevant compared to Tommy’s. (A good example is how, in SotD, only Tommy was listed as JJ's emergency contact, with no mention of Kat. I'm almost certain there was an early draft of this book where Tommy did not have a wife.)  How do we have two (2) comic stories where we have married TomKat but Kat doesn’t morph.  And not as a plot point or character bit or something (I think it actually would be very interesting if Kat not having much attachment to her time as a Ranger was actually intentional) but just in a “we don’t feel like involving Kat in her husband’s adventures” situation.  Hello????????  I know that kind of feels off-topic to why JJ sucks but trust me, it’s partly his fault.  And it’s why I’m making such a big deal over the potential mother/daughter Ranger teamup for Kim and Olivia, because the alternate mother of Tommy's alternate kid has gotten such a raw deal.     

And the SPD/Dragon Shield combo is ugly.

[nerves-nebula]

YOU'RE SO RIGHT SO RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT

Stoik was NOT a good father in the first movie until LITERALLY he thought Hiccup had died. Which means that had Hiccup NOT gone through an incredibly traumatic experience Stoik would have still been like that! Had Hiccup not risked and sacrificed his life for people that canonically didn't care about him (he never owed them that, honestly I wouldn't have blamed him if he didn't go to help) he would likely have been driven out of the town!

And AND AND how they downplayed Toothless's character in the last movie still upsets me like, in the first movie he's treated like a very smart but wild animal (which he IS). In the second movie Toothless goes from more animal to more separate person who has goals that align with Hiccup. In the third movie?

"oh haha look at this silly dragon he just wants a girlfriend. let's watch him abandon the person that saved his life and has lived as best friends for years because we gotta have that romance".

Like one of the background music in the movie name's is "forbidden friendship" because EVERYTHING happens because they both choose to become friends. Not because Hiccup "tames/controls" toothless and not because Toothless did the same to Hiccup.

They REALLY changed Stoik's character in the third movie. Like Stoik in the first was practically ready to lock hiccup up if he "stepped out of line" too much (Hiccup only got some level of freedom because he lied. Totally a healthy loving relationship). In the third movie the memory scene makes it seem like they were friendly, which like Hiccup was afraid of Stoik in the first movie?? In MULTIPLE scenes not just a few key ones?

sorry for the rant but YEAH YOU'RE RIGHT AND THERE'S A LOT TO BE SAID HERE AND AERLKGMALEKRMG

you and me are shaking hands about Stoick being a bad fuckin dad good lord. i hated his ass in the first movie when i was younger, i was like what are you my MOM ? ? ? what IS this bullshit??

i dont know whats worse retconning Stoick as a good dad, or implying that he used to be kind and gentle with with Hiccup but at some point began treating him like trash along with the rest of the village. oughagsdghahhgghh

[aotopmha]

And chapter 82 of the Dragon Ball Super manga is out!

I actually think most of this chapter was very fun.

Goku teleporting Gas around is a really fun mixture of goofy and smart battle strategy.

Everything in these last few previous chapters, especially the stuff that took place in the past, was mostly pretty boring, so just getting back to this and just having a single fight with characters I care about is good.

I like that the Heeters are such scheming and expressive characters – every single character in the prison just making fun of Gas was fun because he genuinely took offense. I feel like it's been a while where the story has had a group of antagonists with distinct personalities like this.

But then we go back to Bardock at the end and my interest is immediately gone again.

From the full chapter it's pretty clear Goku regaining his memories from when he was sent to Earth places the importance on survival.

It's pretty clear this can be used as a springboard to make him realise there is more to life than just fighting and he should work to make sure everyone he loves will stay alive because that's how his parents treated him.

I went into the issues with the Minus retcon in my last few DB posts, but to put it more concisely: Dragon Ball Minus adds implications to the story that downplay the nurture aspect of Goku's character.

Whether it's intentional or not, Minus implies Goku is nice because his mother is nice, not because he bumped his head and met good friends.

There are mental gymnastics you can use to excuse this: Raditz turned out to be pretty horrible, technically Goku still bumped his head because he didn't remember his Saiyan name and technically the mission of Saiyan babies is to destroy the planet they are sent to, but the problem is exactly that, the narrative focuses on the details that deny his individual journey.

His mission wasn't actually to destroy Earth because Bardock told him to survive.

The fact that Gine is this nice and bubbly character clearly draws attention to the fact that she's not a regular Saiyan.

And the story, while drawing some minor attention to Raditz, doesn't really focus on the fact that he's so different from Goku despite their parents.

It's a matter of framing and focus. The focus is on the idea that Bardock wants Goku to survive and he connects with Granolah's mother because he has a family.

The focus is still on how Bardock wasn't actually that bad, even if we see him being a typical Saiyan, too.

Goku recovering his memories actually makes sense in a comic book simplification way like DB tends to do with this kind of stuff.

But even if the story brings up a number of explanations and nuances for this, again, the framing and focus tells you otherwise.

The story just wants Bardock to be nicer, whether it be for fanservice, a morally softer backstory for Goku or whatever else.

To me this is just pretty boring writing.

The contrast the anime version of Bardock provided made for a much more interesting and confident thematic statement: blood alone doesn't make people.

For this it's much less muddled: survival of those you care about takes precedence over destruction and I love that theme myself!

It's just so poorly told here through such uninteresting tropes and execution and, to me, has zero emotional resonance behind it.

Bardock continues to be the worst aspect to his arc and I just want to move on from this side plot.

And again, I could ignore it when these implications were from a couple of characters in a small side chapter serving as a punch line for a completely different story.

Now these much more uninteresting implications matter in the main story and I can't ignore them anymore.

It's such a sucky subplot in an otherwise pretty solid arc.

[takaraphoenix]

what do you have against valka? im curious, i didn't realize anyone didn't like her

Oh no, I don’t have anything against Valka. I hate Valka. I normally do the opposite of this by smoothing the asked hate down into something less, because I rarely hate something fictional because at the end of the day it’s just fictional and doesn’t really do anything to me.

I see Valka as a personal offense to my believes in DreamWorks.

Okay, so. Let’s start with her name. Originally, her name was Valhallarama in the books. I do not understand this need to change canon so significantly when adapting something, so part of my hatred is the blatant disregard for source-material here.

With most the characters, they stuck close to the original designs from the books. No idea why they canned the original love-interest completely and replaced her with OFC Astrid, but sure. I guess.

Now, Valhallarama was originally supposed to be in the first movie. I own the artbooks of both movies and there is actual concept art of what Hiccup’s mother was supposed to look like in the first movie. Here’s the only image of her I could find on the internet.

Now. There were four years between those two movies. Four years of me treating cute, round Valhallarama as Hiccup’s mother, just for them to nope out of it.

Valka’s design is just ridiculous. That woman is a twig. All of the first movie, we had to listen to how Hiccup wasn’t a good Viking based on how fragile, small and thin he was. Like that was maybe an after-effect of having been a sickly child.

Now it’s more of a “Nope, he got that from his supermodel-thin mom’s side of the family *lol*” kind of situation.

Which doesn’t make sense.

The first movie made a big deal out of Stoick giving Hiccup his first helmet. Saying it was one half of the chestplate of Hiccup’s mother.

Valka has no tits. Valka is flat as a board. Because that woman is, again, a twig.

She looks nothing like a Viking. It’s already a bit annoying to me how Ruff, Tuff, Heather and Astrid are all pretty and thin and lean, even though the franchise used to make such a point of Hiccup being too fragile. Sorry, but Astrid does not look strong or buff either.

This franchise had the opportunity to be a bit more positive when it comes to body-images. Every animated movie ever always features only super-thin “break in the middle because damn that waist”-characters. Always. Unless it’s the funny, harmlessly cute comic-relief character.

So. Yeah. Generally already agitated by the fact that aside from Fishlegs, they’re all essentially the same body-type.

But that they retconned back from their original claims of Hiccup’s mother being a woman of curves. It annoys me.

Now to the reason why I really hate her.

She is the fucking worst mother I’ve ever seen in an animated movie.

That bitch left her son alone? Because “Oh, woe is me the Peta activist who can’t stop them from harming those poor, defenseless animals”. Fuck you, Valka, fuck you hard. Those dragons used to fucking burn down all of Berk. I can not imagine how many of their people died in those dragon-fires.

Of course did they fucking hunt dragons.

When Hiccup came around, at the very least he had proof that dragons weren’t inherently bad. All Valka had were “kiss the trees and free the animals”-hippie nonsense. And because her husband, who was trying to protect his tribe and people, didn’t back down in this stupid, stupid argument…

She decided to abandon her husband and her son. Just like that. Never turning back in all of those years.

Okay, so, fair point, I take personal offense and get extremely protective when mothers abandon their children because shit like that happened in my family and I am still witness to what that fuckery did to the kid. I’m not even going to drag the “Mother’s natural instinct to protect her child always”-thing into this, just the basic human decency not to simply leave your kid behind and never turn back.

And it makes even less sense considering the TV show.

Five years have passed between the first movie and the second movie. Five years in which Hiccup is literally gathering a network of trusted allies, where he has made a name for himself and for his whole tribe as Dragon Riders throughout far beyond their archipelago.

Valka, who was supposedly hunting the dragon hunters, must have heard of Hiccup the Dragon Rider, because the dragon hunters never fucking shut up about the boy on his Night Fury and they all know his name.

Fuck this, there was an instance where there were literally wanted posters and a bounty out on Hiccup’s head.

That’s not even taking into account how thoroughly Hiccup has been mapping their known world on the search for dragons. Apparently, Valka lived right around the corner. Buuut coincidentally not only did Hiccup not find her home - they never ran into each other in those five years either.

The point being, she was completely retconned in. Her still being alive and doing what she does makes absolutely no sense in canon whatsoever.

And the fact that oh, she did the “I trust dragons”-thing too, to me it just takes away from how special Hiccup is. A big point about Hiccup was that he trusted dragons. Now, all of a sudden, it’s “Oh, by the way, your mom used to trust dragons too, ahahaha”.

Moving on from that point to her personality.

She shows more affection and interest in Toothless than she does in her son. She first hugs the damn dragon instead of her own son. She is more affectionate toward Toothless than she is to her own child that she abandoned after it’s revealed who Hiccup is. That’s just… She’s not even trying to make up for the years of abandonment. All she’s really interested in is the shiny new dragon she never met before, not the child she abandoned as a baby.

Also the highly illogical thing where she suddenly can split Toothless’ spikes? Like? Toothless is literally the last Night Fury. Valka has never met a Night Fury before. There are no books studying dragons beyond studying to kill them. How would she even know that trick? Aside for plot-convenience of “Look! A bonding moment!”, which, again the bonding moment happens over the dragon.

You can not tell me that she loves Hiccup. She finds Toothless far more interesting than him. She never turned back to check on her boy, fuck she never turned back to check on her husband and people and to see if, I don’t know, something changed in the past fifteen years.

She is not just really badly retconned into the franchise, she is not just a bad revamped version of a first character design, she is not just a bad adaptation of a canon character - no, she is also a fundamentally bad person.

And I don’t like bad people. A character needs some redeeming quality that can make me like them. But if a character is just a bad person, then I can not like them. (I don’t like most of the villains the internet hypes either, because I fail to see how they have anything likable about them. They’re just villains, bad people.)

[underthebluerain]

me before rewatching merlin: just a casual rewatch I know what happens so I won't get mad haha

me while rewatching merlin: what the fuck. what the fuck!! all the women in this show are horribly treated, merlin worked against magic almost for the whole show, instead of fighting the oppressiveness and genocide that was going on in camelot he eliminated any threats to it and protected its two main enforcers because he was told by a manipulative lizard that one of them would get better one day, this fucking self-righteous shithead is the biggest hypocrite I've ever seen, he fucking left morgana to die and then poisoned her because she was acting suspicious yet never lifted a fucking finger against uther aka actual genocidal dictator because it "wasn't the right thing" apparently, the morality of this show is so messed up that if it had any self-awareness arthur and merlin aka good guys would be the villain protagonists, uther's been carrying out a purge of magic users including children for years yet apparently they are bad for wanting him dead, gwen is the only main good guy who is actually good but gets constantly sidelined and mistreated and why the fuck did no one ever find out she was enchanted into cheating, also why did arthur never fucking apologise for banishing her and breaking his promise of letting her live in her family's house forever, the way morgana turned evil makes no fucking sense they just skipped over the development and twisted her character into something she was not, merlin keeps killing left and right yet never gets off his more-ethical-than-you-morgana high horse, they literally had to bring morgana down to uther's and merlin's level so that she would seem like the villain and it still didn't make them look good, there wasn't a single episode centered on gwen except her storyline about being tortured and brainwashed and the other episodes that could've been about her ended up focusing on someone else or on her romantic relationships, instead of treating uther like the villain he was they made him appear progressively softer and more sympathetic, made it seem like he loved his people and was loved by them and even got a heroic death, the dragon pushed merlin to mistrust a persecuted orphaned child and a terrified lonely woman because it was necessary for camelot's great destiny but didn't give two shits about that when he tried to burn camelot kill as may people as possible and roast arthur alive, yet merlin still considered him a friend and listened to him and turned morgana and mordred into villains himself by mistreating and mistrusting them and trying to get them killed, elyan the only prominent black man gets killed of course, arthur never found out the truth about his birth and his father's hipocrisy, what the fuck was up with only freya's hand coming out of the lake instead of her, many villains were in the right but were depicted as completely evil nevertheless, the merlin&arthur relationship eventually became a parody of itself and kept being retconned and anyway they were awful to each other, gwen ended up fucking nursing uther after he'd condemned her to death twice, vivian remained enchanted possibly forever and it was played for laughs, no queer characters but a whole lot of queerbaiting that got progressively ridiculous in merlin&arthur's case and was a disservice to their friendship, why did freya and nimueh and lancelot and gwaine and morgause and balinor and so many other good characters die, we never got the full backstory of the previous generation, merlin and especially gaius just watched as morgana became more and more unstable and lonely and scared and didn't do anything to help her realise or actually control her magic except lie to her and drug her, merlin couldn't even have a single bad vision of the future without losing his shit and trying to kill someone while morgana endured countless alone, there's like 3 non-white characters and they either die or are mistreated, there was never a big collective reveal of merlin's magic and then the dealing with it, pretty sexist that elena is only a clumsy tomboy while possessed by an evil fairy but becomes a proper feminine lady when she's back to normal, they just did away with gwen and morgana's relationship as if morgana never cared about gwen and gwen never found out why morgana changed, morgause went from a mysterious capable antagonist to an ineffectual villain who gets taken out by being thrown against a wall twice one of those times by gaius are you fucking kidding me, arthur never became even a good king and his stance on magic never changed he didn't even pull excalibur from the stone why the hell was it merlin, morgana turned into a cartoonish 100% evil villain when she should've been an interesting morally grey antagonist at worst, how can arthur hold a sword to a child's neck and still be a hero, why do so many women disappear or get killed for mangst or male motivation, gwen and arthur never found out about the things merlin did neither the good nor the bad, why the fuck was gwen left so alone in the end, we never got to see the promised golden age of camelot with magic becoming legal and seen as good again so the whole show seems pointless, wHY DID I FUCKING STAN THIS SHOW FOR SO LONG