#thinking they have the power to change fate. to fight the narrative. NOPE

[goldensunset]

I'VE BEEN SAYING!!! khux time-loop scenario goes hard as hell. actually both khux and khdr would be banger timeloops. the dandelions (or just select members (probably Brain)) trying to stop what happened in the finale from happening. Xehanort trying to stop Baldr from going on that killing spree.

ARRRUGHHHHHHGH YES!!!!! HAHAHAHAJA YEASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[glassmoonfortuneteller]

ELDARYA NEW EPISODE THOUGHTS - SPOILERS

Alright, so there's something that's been bothering me for a while...

When Erika first met Ophelia, the reincarnation of the oracle, she tells her how her choices will determine the fate of Eldarya and how she must be careful about what decisions she will make (I assume she meant the aengel/daemon paths). After that, Erika talks to her after she returns from Earth, where Ophelia tells her how Eldarya is doomed, that her choices led to this to happening and now she will have to guide the fairies into a new exodus. "Oh, but not you though, someone else will lead the way”, and I'm just here thinking: what was the point of all this then?

Erika hasn't done anything that could have changed the fate of Eldarya since the beginning of New Era. Ever since she woke up from the crystal, she has been trying to figure out what was happening and why, and to find a way to stop the end of the world. And while she was learning about the portals, the templars and the role of her father as the new antagonist of the story, Eldarya was already going to shit, and that had been happening years before the current events. If Eldarya's destruction was inevitable, then her participation on the main conflict of this season was irrelevant.

Yes, she’s being part of the faerie migration to Earth, but I can't help but think that it could have happened without her direct interference either way, mainly because there was already another human somehow related to Charles (the big baddie final boss) inside the guard that was going to be part of the main events too, mostly because he is a LI.

I'm not saying that she and Mathieu have the same role in the story or that things would have been exactly the same without her, but nothing she did on Eldarya or on Earth would have altered the chain of events that followed. How did Erika, “the child of both worlds”, participate in the big climax of the story? Her being “the last of the aengels”? Nothing more than to show how powerful she is and how she can fight now (not as important as in TO). Her being Charles's daughter? Nope, there was already a "counter-organization" working against him on Earth that will help the fairies with their relocation.  

So even if, let’s say, Erika was still trapped in the crystal at this point in the story, Huang Hua would still have died, Huang Chu would have become the Phoenix, gaining the power to stabilize the portal and send the fairies to Earth anyway.

So please tell me because I'm tired and I might me missing something here, but what important choices was Ophelia talking about at the beginning of the season? There are few if not just one episodes left, and I really want to know if any of the "major decisions" Erika has made in the last 19 episodes will make a difference to the story (aengel/daemon - good/bad ends) or if it was just part of the narrative and not really like, something we as players could have done to change the finale.

* If someone is doing the daemon path and the story does change in their gameplay, please tell me, it’ll mean I’m wrong and I just spent way too much time writing this nonsense ^^’ *

[thevalleyisjolly]

8 and 10 for Elrond?

My blorbo! Thank you so much, anon! <3

8) Made-up connections with other characters that weren't in the canon (friends, enemies, whatever)

I mean, I am all about Elronduil, absolutely one of my favourite ships to the point that I wrote an essay about it for a fanzine once. Have they met in any of the canon texts? Nope! Do I find the similarities and the differences between both their in-universe characters and their narratives roles fascinating? Yep!

I am forever changing my mind between Elrond and Sauron never meeting outside of the Annatar thing, and Elrond and Sauron having one terrifying battlefield encounter that technically and barely ends up a draw. On the one hand, I like the idea that Sauron has never met Elrond one-on-one and fundamentally fails to understand him or the way he works. On the other hand, I also like the idea of them meeting on the battlefield once, briefly, during the War of the Elves and Sauron. Maybe Elrond's doing something with Song, and Sauron, who's already hunting for the Elvish commanders, notices and goes for him? Elrond, despite his many skills and accomplishments, is not a match for Sauron in terms of raw power, but what he has got is friends. For the minute or so that they fight, he spends a good part of it losing, but the important part is that he doesn't actually lose and holds out long enough for Celeborn and others to come in with an assist/distraction, at which point he pulls out some Maiar bullshit and summons a magical fog or something which even Sauron can't pierce through that enables all of them to retreat.

10) Content about them I'd like to see more of

Oh, where to start? I'd love to see more Elrond content that really engages with the mortal part of his heritage. Very understandably, he's often interpreted through an Elvish lens because he did choose that fate, but I think it'd be interesting to see the ways in which he relates to and identifies with his mortal heritage - and then narratively, that as a way to think about what defines humanity and what being human means.

His reaction to Númenor's destruction is something I think about on a regular basis, as is the founding of Imladris during the War of the Elves and Sauron. I like to imagine Sauron absolutely losing his shit over why he can't find this one haphazard band of refugees and soldiers, while they're camped out in the valley, just doing their best to make it another day, another week, another month, another year. More of Elrond on Númenor, being the best uncle to his nephews and nieces! And post-apocalyptic loremaster Elrond after the War of Wrath, although this is admittedly a little more headcanon-y.

I'd love to see more of Elrond in Aman, and his relationships with literally everyone there except Maglor and/or the House of Fëanor. All my love to every fic writer who has written an Aman fic where Elrond is a main character and he doesn't exist in the story solely/primarily to offer unconditional forgiveness to and advocacy on behalf of the House of Fëanor. I'd love to see Elrond and his parents reuniting, Elrond getting to meet and build relationships with all the family he never got the chance to meet in Middle-earth, Elrond and Bilbo (and sometimes Gandalf) raising very good-natured hell together, Elrond and Celebrían doing literally anything.

On which note, of course, Celrond. I am loving the Celrond renaissance I've been seeing lately, and it's truly something the world needs more of.

[tribow]

So I watched Grimms Notes the Animation

Wow this was basically nothing!

This anime has a problem that I see some stories encounter and its an easy trap to fall into. It's just lore. There isn't much of a narrative and there's very little to no development. What you get is a story that feels like it's just explaining its own lore and nothing more.

You can have all the depth you want, but if that depth is meaningless then what's the point? I get nothing for taking the plunge! Depth doesn't make a story or its character's interesting, you gotta put something in there.

Throughout this show you get to learn a lot about how the world works and what happened to the characters that brought them to where they are now. It's just lore. Sure, I learned a lot about the main cast overtime and I learned how the world works, but why should I care?

Let me loredump right now. In Grimms Notes there exist Story Zones. Inside these Story Zones are people who are all born with a personal book. This book describes their fate. These books are created by what's known as the "Storyteller" These Story Zones are actually adaptations of Western fairy tales. For example, imagine if everyone in Cinderella knew what their fates were because they had a book detailing their entire fate. That fate cannot be changed, life will play out the way the book describes. Also, no one can read anyone else's books. Only the owner of the book can read it. To everyone else, their book will appear blank.

However, there exists people who are born with blank books. These people are treated more negatively because a blank book is strange, scary, and/or sad to everyone else who has a normal book. Even so, you can live a normal life with a blank book. The big difference is that those with a blank book have the ability to influence others off their fated path.

You may imagine the many different ways you can approach a premise like that, but this anime is not interested in doing so. No, it must use its story to just deliver more and more lore. It feels like I'm watching an anime adaptation of a Wikipedia article.

Also guess what? Grimms Notes is actually a mobile game! It was an RPG created by Genki and published by Square Enix. I mention this cause up until now you might think this is a character drama story based off of what I described so far. Nope! This is an RPG where you gotta fight things.

So, what evil must be vanquished? If there is a Storyteller then there are also Chaos Tellers. A Chaos Teller will possess someone with a book of fate and give them the power to enact their greatest desires. Except the the possessed character will basically become a monster in this process. They're given the ability to transform other characters into monsters called "Villains" that will do their bidding. This transformation does not work on those with blank books, so only those with blank books can defeat Chaos Tellers and return their Story Zone back to normal.

If a Chaos Teller fails to get defeated, that Story Zone will collapse and die. Just straight up. It'll be gone with no way to bring that Zone back.

Interesting lore right? Are you thinking of implications? Well good! Those implications get addressed in the anime...but the implications fail to meaningfully affect the characters. Like I said, the anime is more than happy to explain things, but not have it lead to any kind of development. You will simply learn more and more about how the world works and what happened to the main characters with blank books who are defeating Chaos Tellers.

I'm starting to repeat myself here, so I'll at least say the characters are not bad. They have decent characterization even if there's 0 development. Potentially this story could be good, but alas. It's a ton of tell don't show as well. Big shame.

One thing that really peeves me is that this anime does not only adapt "Grimm" fairy tales. They got Alice in Wonderland, Snow Queen, Don Quixote, and fucking Treasure Island. Those aren't Grimm! What's the deal here...waaaiit a minute.

Square Enix published this... don't they make Kingdom Hearts? They have a partnership with Disney, and all the western fairy tales that aren't Grimm are ones that Disney have also adapted at one point. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I think this story wouldn't exist without those IPs being available to Square.

Was this idea created in a board meeting? Maybe that's why I can't feel any passion in this anime. The premise could have been cooked up by executives wanting to profit off of the properties they own. Just make a bunch of fancy anime designs for all of these fairy tale characters and make a mobile game! The mobile game market was popping off in 2016! We can even make an anime about it to get more eyes on the game!

Anyway that lasted 4 years. In June 2020 the servers went down and the game was done-zo. Funnily enough June 2020 is also when the anime started to air in the US. Another Square Enix flop....maybe. It's hard to say whether or not it flopped since it did last 4 years. Maybe it did well in Japan, but it died very shortly after the anime's release.

Brain's Base was the studio behind the animation. It's funny to see the quality continually drop over time. These animators had to have known that Grimms Notes was dying on the later half of production because they get real lazy by the end of it. The first episode genuinely has some good quality to it, but they dialed it back QUICK.

Well, is what it is. Grimms Notes is not good. I wouldn't recommend this anime. There isn't even much to make fun of, it's just not good. Nothing to salvage here, leave it behind. Brain's Base has something on their portfolio and that's about it.

There is one cool thing that happened at least. Grimms Notes is not lost media! Genki made all of the visual novel bits of the game available to play even if the servers are down. You can't play the actual game anymore, but they did provide an alternative instead of letting their work die. Maybe the game tells a much better story than the anime does.

[nadziejastar]

NO FEAR: IsaLea is still subtly canon (ill take what I’ll get) and Skuld comes and they become a platonic trio. No Isa/Skuld or Lea/Skuld (writers could try to flip it on us). FEAR: Skuld eats up all the attention in the trio. Isa and Lea’s characterization gets reduced to one dimensional fanboys. Skuld paired up with Isa or Lea. We stick in forced pairing hell and there will be ship wars.

NIGHTMARE: The writers make Skuld and either Isa or Lea get married and have a kid. I don’t think push it THAT far. I dunno if they’ll truly go through with a romantic pairing. But I’m gonna lose hope and interest if they do. 

Sora: Kairi, I’ll keep you safe.

Kairi: Let me keep you safe.

Well, if you ask me, Lea and Isa were already reduced to one-dimensional fanboys in KH3. Lea was more of a one-dimensional fanboy for different characters, though. And in future games, he’ll probably continue to be portrayed that way. I’ve already lost interest. The only hope I have left is the sick humor I’ll get watching all the characters get destroyed. Lea and Kairi’s role in the final battle was supposed to be saving Isa from Xehanort’s control. But since that idea was thrown in the trash, they had no real reason to be there anymore. Thus, they became totally irrelevant to the plot. Roxas conveniently arrived just in time to take Lea’s place, while Xion arrived to take Kairi’s place.

Saïx: You’re the fire that feeds Sora’s anger.

Kairi: No… Sora’s in danger because of me…

Kairi wanted to prove herself during her training. She wanted to keep Sora and the others safe for a change. And she does! She becomes a real hero instead of a damsel-in-distress. Psyche! She actually regresses to be an even MORE useless damsel than ever before! 

Her new friend Axel doesn’t even react when she’s kidnapped. Kairi, who? Who cares about her? Roxas Stu and Xion Sue are here! Time for a big snuggly hug! But wait. Now there’s more Guardians of Light than necessary. Kairi is superfluous. How can we make her important? Well, I guess she can motivate Sora again? A-hyuk! How does her fight with Saïx go? Exactly like it did before she could wield a Keyblade, of course! She is simply the fire to fuel Sora’s anger…again.

Kairi: I’m training to become a Keyblade wielder like you. That’s right. No more waiting for you to come back from your adventures.

It’s okay. She still has a happy ending! While everyone else celebrates, she gets to imagine Sora is with her while crying to herself. Sure, everyone starts to worry as she’s hallucinating. But it’s okay. Sora will be back. 

Donald: Kairi, you were great!

Kairi: Oh?

Sora: You are different, Kairi, but I’m just glad you’re here!

Kairi: You and Riku never came home, so I came looking for you.

Any minute now. She’ll just wait right here for him to come back.

Lea: Ah, I’ll catch up with ya in no time flat.

Sora: What? You wanna be a Keyblade Master?

Lea: Yeah. I mean, I came here to learn how to wield one.

Lea wanted to prove himself as a Keyblade wielder as well. He put himself at risk using the D.T.D just to find Mickey. All so he could become a wielder and find Isa. He believes that inside people’s memories, he can live forever. He spends the whole game training with Kairi in preparation for the final battle. Yeah…Lea was a pretty cool character. 

Xigbar: Axel!

Lea: Axel? Please. The name’s Lea. Got it memorized?

Xigbar: You’re not supposed to be here!

Xigbar was right. Lea, you aren’t supposed to be here.

Axel: You kidding? Do you know how popular I am? I got loads of people rootin’ for me. Sorry, boss. No one axes Axel. Got it memorized?

That’s better.

Sora & Riku: YOU!?

Lea: Hey, thanks for the vote of confidence. You know, I was gonna come swooping in, Keyblade in hand! But I just couldn’t get mine to materialize. Must be in the snap of the wrist or something.

For some reason, Lea stopped caring about Isa, and his sole purpose in life became…Roxas…again. A character who he has…no ability to bring back, actually. Not even with his snazzy new Keyblade. So, what now? How can he still be useful?

Lea: You had your perfect little script, but you kinda forgot to write the sequel. Now, let’s find out what happens!

Few people realize that Lea—excuse me, AXEL— was breaking the fourth wall all the way back in KH3D. He knew exactly what would happen!And instead of braving the darkness, rescuing his friend, and becoming a hero…Axel gets benched. Literally. He gets to watch from the bleacher seats.

Lea: Promises to keep. I’ll always be there to get my friends back. What, bad timing? 

Well, whaddaya know? It turns out that getting his ass handed to him was just the magic spark Roxas Stu needed to magically arrive and save the day. Axel fanboys over Roxas Stu’s sheer awesomeness! Roxas Stu smiles at Axel with a cool expression. Roxas Stu is back, so Axel has served his purpose. He tells Axel that his five minutes are up now. It’s HIS turn.

Xemnas: Ah, ever the rogue pawn. Knocked from the board early in the game. Utterly useless and forgotten.

Whoa, Xemnas can break the fourth wall, too? He sure called it ahead of time. But it’s okay. He is more than happy about it. He compliments Roxas Stu and Xion Sue for their amazing prowess with the Keyblade! Those two are old pros, unlike him, after all! A-hyuck!

Saïx: Do you know what happens to those who lose their true purpose? Inevitably, they destroy themselves.

This picture is a fairly decent representation of KH3′s Isa. He’s on his knees, alone, being looked down on by everyone. Lea is disgusted with him. He’s lost all sense of purpose…in the story, that is. If you think about Isa’s canon story, he and Lea try to rescue a girl that they barely know, and are not sure even exists. They become apprentices just for her, then get turned into Nobodies. They devote their lives to finding information about this girl, and they conspire to make Saïx Xemnas’ right-hand man. Saïx is so obsessed with this random girl, he drifts apart from Axel and becomes…a sociopath. Yep, that’s all folks. You were expecting a tragic backstory? Nope! There’s no intriguing human experiment plot! Just girl drama.

Maleficent: You see? It’s just as I told you. While you toiled away trying to find your dear friend, he quite simply replaced you with some new companions. Evidently, now he values them far more than he does you. You’re better off without that wretched boy. Now, think no more of him and come with me. I’ll help you find what you’re searching for…

Roxas Stu and Xion Sue observe with pity as Axel’s OLD best friend gets put in his place. As his NEW best friends, they are rewarded with brand-new DLC packs…starring them, of course. They were always special after all. The only Keyblade users in Days. But it wasn’t enough for them to simply steal Axel and Kairi’s first and only fight as wielders. Now they need MORE screen time so we can bask in their glory.

Axel: You let them reduce you to this?

Axel does break the fourth wall a lot in KH3. Well, he was actually doing it here, too. He’s not referring to Organization XIII when he asks this—he was talking about Square Enix and Disney. He’s asking Isa how he let himself get turned into such a pathetic character. And the answer is simple: Axel went off and made other friends. More POPULAR friends. So he got left in the dust. From a narrative standpoint, that’s exactly what happened.

Riku: Take care of her.

Somewhere along the way, Saïx became part-Xehanort. The implication in KH3 was that he willingly became a vessel, since he wasn’t being controlled like Terra was, and Lea was disgusted at how he let himself get reduced to his state. So, he basically sacrificed his humanity JUST to find this random girl. Totally believable actions from a complex and multi-dimensional character, right? Then he became obsessed with power…or something? Meanwhile, Axel makes other friends. Saïx gets jealous and becomes a giant asshole, and now he has to redeem himself by getting replicas for Lea’s NEW bestest friends. 

He then quietly fades away in the background, out of shame. It’s an utterly sad and pathetic story, really. One more fitting for a tragic villain than someone on the side of the good guys. I can’t decide which would be worse. Isa and Skuld actually getting together, and rewarding this horrible characterization…or Isa continuing to degrade himself for her while his feelings go unrequited. I remember how much I despised Riku’s character arc in KH1, and how pissed off I was during his ending scene. I was SO grateful that the future games stepped away from shit like this. But now, it’s back, I guess.

Roxas: You’re me, so you can feel what I felt.

Sora: No. Roxas, you’re you. We’re not the same. I wanted to tell you that. That you deserve as much as I do to be your own person.

Personally I doubt that Isa and Skuld will actually become a couple. I think Isa’s fate is to be the same as the Riku Replica. Naminé brainwashed him, and implanted false memories inside of him to make him think he was in love with her. He became obsessed with a phantom girl to the point where he wanted to kill his childhood friend, Sora. He finds out the truth about how their relationship was a fraud and never existed in the first place. Then he dies.

Then comes back! But…he sacrifices his only chance at having his own life. Like Isa, he did it “all for her”. In a narrative sense, he was sacrificed as a pawn in order to bring back Naminé. She needs the replica more (ie. is more popular) than him. And nobody needs him, since the REAL Riku is already around anyways. A faithful replica until the very end. Isa served the same purpose in KH3. His arc was sacrificed in order to concoct an excuse to bring Roxas and Xion back, and also to put the spotlight on Skuld from now on.

Riku Replica: So…it’s over. Hmph. Death doesn’t frighten me. Good riddance to a phony life. My heart was never real. I’m sure even what I’m feeling now is probably all fake.

Riku: What are you feeling?

Riku Replica: What happens when a fake dies—one like me? Where will my heart go? Does it disappear?

Riku: It’ll go somewhere. Maybe to the same place as mine.

Riku Replica: Tsk. A faithful replica until the very end. That’s…okay.

Riku Replica had a MUCH more dignified death in CoM. He rejected the fake memories he had. He resented the fact that he was a fake replica. He didn’t have to go to the Dark Realm or the afterlife. He was always a part of Riku. So ultimately, he went back to him. They had the same heart—they were the same person. I thought that was a fitting end, and his final words were quite compelling actually. KH3 plays up the fact that replicas are totally unique individuals, yet treats Riku Replica as being even more disposable than before. But it’s okay. He’s happy about it. A-hyuk!

[mittensmorgul]

Not all choices are created equally.

I'm really tempted to write something about free will vs Dean's "I don't have a choice" in 13.23, because he did have a choice... but the other option was to drink copious quantities of alcohol and wait for the inevitable blast wave, you know? Everyone keeps quoting the "we'll always end up here" nonsense from 5.04 as if it proves they never really had a choice. But the thing is, they absolutely didn't "end up there." Lucifer is DEAD.

DING FREAKING DONG, BITCHES.

They're in the bizarro world version of that original "end" because all their previous choices had led them here-- all those times they chose wrong (and right, or just chose what they could live with in the aftermath), all those times Lucifer didn't get shoved back into the box, and God's choice to leave Lucifer alive in the first place after 11.22. This is the result of Sam and Dean being left to clean up God's mess… So in a way it was inevitable, because you can't just lock up problems and hope they stay locked up. And AU Michael is actually a problem of Lucifer's own making… if he hadn't deliberately tried to spit in Chuck's face by making a nephilim, that doorway to AU Michael's world would never have opened in the first place.

At that point, Sam and Dean absolutely DID have choices. But by 13.23, all their choices boiled down to "which is the lesser of two evils."

Sometimes there just aren't any GOOD choices.

And anyone suggesting that Dean should've just locked the door to the bunker and waited for the end, as if that was in any way the better option… well I’ve got to really side-eye the rest of the entire season worth of choices and consequences. Because that’s the rub of free will. Dean said it way back in 6.20:

CASTIEL: I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN: Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL: You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will-- DEAN: You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!

Since then we’ve learned a lot about not only what Free Will is, but we’ve been more and more blatantly reminded about the fact that all choices have consequences. And sometimes Big Choices have Cosmic Consequences. Consequences that affect the future, narrowing down the potential future array of choices.

It’s no longer a matter of Free Will vs Fate at that point, it’s a matter of navigating through the consequences of PAST CHOICES until-- like Jessica the reaper told Sam and Dean in 13.19-- the only option is to go nuclear or go home.

Jessica: Rowena’s changing people’s fates. She’s killing them before their time and when a reaper shows… Sam: She torches them too. Jessica: Yes. Dean: Why? Jessica: You’ll have to ask her when you stop her because if she keeps this up she is going to throw off fate…. The whole greater machinery of death. Sam: That means? Jessica: Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? Dean: Ashton’s second best movie! Sam: { looks at Dean incredulous} Yeah of course….. one small mistake can cause all kinds of bad. What about it? Jessica: If just one person dies before their time a lot of things that were supposed to happen… don’t. The ripple effect from just one early death can affect hundreds of lives and changing their fates changes even more fates until things just become sincerely unfortunate and we have to hit the reset button. Sam: What does that mean? Jessica: Usually? A mass kill off like the Black Plague or a mid sized war… Something to wipe the board clean. So… you’re help in avoiding that would be greatly appreciated by everyone.

So there is a sort of “fate” attached to death, because dying is the one thing we’re all fated to do, you know? It’s the one thing nobody can wiggle out of (well, unless they’re Winchesters, apparently, but the whole premise of the show has always been that they’re different-- and yes I’m including Cas in that because duh). And messing with life and death this way-- not to mention messing with alternate universes which was Billie’s concern in 13.05, wherein resurrecting Dean to deal with that mess was the lesser Cosmic Consequence-- has a wider-reaching series of consequences. It’s not fate, but the inevitable result of screwing with the Natural Order.

(and quick lil reminder that in 13.05 DEAN CHOSE to die, accepted his death... and Billie basically said... NOPE THAT’S NOT AN OPTION TODAY, in a tidy flipping of everything Dean ever thought Free Will was about.)

And this is what Death has been teaching to Dean since… ever. (see 6.11 for the major exposition on this point)

I've seen people saying it was pointless to have Dean say he didn't have a choice (and people who then make the entirety of his decision based on saving Sam and no one else), but Free Will doesn't mean there's always going to be a GOOD choice to be made. I mean, that's not how life (and the inevitability of death) works. It's not always "easy 100% virtuous option" vs "terrible and easily condemnable option." Sometimes the choice is between fighting and surrendering entirely, and there is no other viable option. (and on a meta level, from outside the narrative, this is the sort of narrowing down of options that drives the story to this sort of do-or-die choice that makes season finale cliffhanger drama happen.)

(and again, Naomi reminded us again in 13.18 that everything eventually ends... even when it doesn’t)

And surrendering entirely is just... not an option for Dean in any universe.

And of course Dean chose to fight, and NOT JUST TO SAVE SAM >.>

I mean he could have let Sam die and felt helpless, but there were absolutely stakes beyond that, like seeing Lucifer eat Jack's grace, and knowing what Lucifer would do with that sort of power. He hadn’t been up to his usual Threat Level all season long. Dean had seen a much weakened Lucifer in 13.13, but boosted with Nephilim Grace, and lacking any other reason not to just burn the world down, this was absolutely a DEFCON 1 situation here. Nuclear war was imminent.

(and largely out of Dean’s potential array of choices, here. It was basically a choice between which nuclear warhead he was gonna fire, and he chose the one he had at least a remote chance of being able to pilot himself)

(*spends 30 seconds imagining Dean waving a cowboy hat around as he rides the nuclear bomb as it’s dropped a la Dr. Strangelove*)

Lucifer’s depowered state and general apathy, and then his desire to get his hands on Jack to use him for his own purposes of elevating himself to a sort of stolen godhead, remaking the world (sans humanity, unless they learned their place and worshipped him because he believed he deserved that) in his own image, and basically using the entire planet to give a big fuck you to God… I mean, these aren’t obscure and unknown things about Lucifer. These have always been the stakes when he’s been in play. Dean learned this firsthand in 5.04.

But there’s also Jack. You know, the kid they spent the back half of the season trying to rescue (along with Mary) from the AU? The kid that Cas had told Dean he'd literally argued his way out of the Empty to protect? I'm... ?????

It’s not possible for Dean to look Cas in the eye and NOT acknowledge that he’s just as focused on saving JACK (who just had his grace ripped out in front of his eyes after finally rejecting Lucifer’s status as his “father” and completely throwing his lot in with Humanity, making the ultimate declaration of his place in the universe as a member of the Winchester Family and TFW 2.0) as he is on saving Sam. To say otherwise is just… disingenuous at best, and completely ignores more than half of the season’s major themes to do so.

Just because Dean said he didn't care about himself, but did care about his brother a few episodes earlier... that doesn't make him saying yes to Michael ONLY about Sam. More than half the season centered around the rescue mission for both Jack AND Mary, and to reduce the emotional struggle Dean went through over them to something entirely unimportant in this ultimate moment of choice is just… gross. Even if Sam had died in 13.21, Dean would press on to get them home, or or what did Sam even die for?

Going back to the Cosmic Consequences of previous choices, Billie sort of warned him all along that messing with the AU was gonna lead to trouble, and here we are. I wonder what Jessica the reaper reported to Billie when Dean said yes? And I keep thinking about this from 13.05 when Dean chose to die:

Billie: That doesn't sound like the Dean Winchester I know and love. The man who's been dead so many times but it never seemed to stick. Maybe you're not that guy anymore, the guy who saves the world, the guy who always thinks he'll win no matter what. You have changed. And you tell people it's not a big deal. You tell people you'll work through it, but you know you won't, you can't, and that scares the hell out of you. Or... am I wrong?

She said that to him like she was issuing a formal challenge. That was the bait that dragged Dean through the rest of the season, and it got an immediate boost when Cas came back to him at the end of that episode. Cas gave him the emotional carrot to push through to the end.

The reapers and their "clean hands" policy can't interfere, but Death can do the usual Death thing of nudging Dean to where he needed to be. Giving vague warnings, and even vaguer directions… Like in s6 Death’s warning about “the souls” didn’t help change the ending, but it kept Dean pushing in the right direction to eventually understand; even if he couldn’t stop the bad thing happening, at least he’d be forearmed to fix it once it was broken.

So going back to Dean’s choice to say yes to Michael. It was always only ever going to come back to this choice-- not in a replay of 5.04 or even 5.22, but in the ultimate subversion of it, with a few conditions attached. And in a truly disturbing twist, this is exactly what Jack promised in 12.19…

Cas in 5.22, after successfully stopping the original Apocalypse, at great personal cost:

CASTIEL: You got what you asked for, Dean. No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same. I mean it, Dean. What would you rather have? Peace or freedom?

Dean asked for freedom, and he got it. Just more of the same. But in 12.19, Cas swallowed the kool aid Jack’s powers served up-- the promise of peace and paradise. And this is the result. In 5.22, Dean wasn’t terribly content with the consequences of his choices, and I mean yes they very much did save the world, but at what cost? And he couldn’t even begin to see the future consequences of his cosmic interference yet (see: the rest of the series post 5.22 for evidence).

And this result in 13.23? Is the cosmic opposite. For reasons entirely beyond their control (because the Winchesters are not omniscient nor omnipotent-- not even Cas or Jack), and all they’ve ever done was the best they could in any circumstance, it’s unfair to suggest that this ultimate choice Dean had to made wasn’t entirely the result of a season-long (or even series-long) flow chart gradually cutting off options until the final coin toss could only be between these two final options. Peace or freedom, flee or die, Michael or Lucifer. He’d just reached the last chapter of the Choose Your Own Adventure story, where the only way out is through.

Sure, Dean absolutely had a choice. He could’ve chosen to barricade the door to the bunker and wait for their inevitable death at Lucifer’s hand, but we know what he does in that circumstance (hello 12.22). So even if it gets them all killed, he’ll use the grenade launcher, because really, Dean will always choose to go down fighting rather than surrendering to fate.

And now we know that drive has ultimately led him to the unthinkable choice to accept what he’d always been told was his fate. Because it was either that or watch the world burn.

And yes, he knows exactly what Michael wanted to do to our world, and he understood there was a bigger risk to this choice than anything else he’s ever had to do. He knows exactly what Michael intended to do to the world, because in addition to the rescue mission aspect of the back half of the season, this was the other Major Threat, and the other side of the coin that Cas suggested might be why he was resurrected. Michael brings War. And Cas believed he was resurrected to also stop that war from happening.

So there Dean was, looking Cas in the face. Cas, who’d been Dean’s personal win in 13.06, and yet NONE OF THAT was stated by Dean directly TO CAS, while Cas repeatedly stated that his two-pronged reason for even being alive was 1) to protect and save Jack, and 2) to stop AU Michael from making war on their world.

(not even touching on Cas’s PERSONAL issues with Lucifer, and his personal mission to-- if not kill him outright, at least grind Lucifer’s face into the ground in every possible way, from everything about how impotent he was to even stand up to the least of his creations to adopting and teaching human love to the greatest of Lucifer’s creations… I mean, THIS WAS NOT INSIGNIFICANT TO CAS)

And in that moment, immediately after Cas had to watch his first mission go up in flames as Lucifer undid Jack and stole his grace, and had to confront this ultimate personal failure against Lucifer and the ultimate personal failure of his promise to Kelly, and his ultimate personal failure to protect Jack… even in that moment there was still one final choice to be made.

Dean clearly negotiated terms (which we don’t know the entirety of, but hopefully will learn in 14.01), because Lucifer was the immediate threat RIGHT FRIGGIN’ NOW. Not only to Jack and Sam, but to the entire universe. They had one weapon that could stop him, which was utterly useless without an archangel to wield it. But they also had one slightly used archangel in the scratch and dent bin and one perfect vessel…

Sometimes the choice is really that limited, but to say it wasn’t a choice is doing a disservice to the entire season, and to the entire series going right back to the start.

[ao3feedsamifer]

A Lesson in Pain, Agony, and Suffering

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2rtVjD8

by 48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue

They may always end up stuck together, but Sam is going to beat the Devil no matter what it takes. Sam loses a lot of battles, but he always wins the war.

Lucifer thinks Sam belongs to him and will do anything to keep it that way. However, he knows Sam's track record for beating him, and he's not taking "No," for an answer.

(Starts off sometime in the future, then kicks off after S13E21 and the timeline jumps around.)

Words: 17365, Chapters: 8/60, Language: English

Fandoms: Supernatural

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con

Categories: F/F, F/M, M/M

Characters: Sam Winchester, Lucifer (Supernatural), Jack Kline, Dean Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural), Kelly Kline, Other characters will be around

Relationships: Lucifer/Sam Winchester, Lucifer & Sam Winchester, Sam/Happiness and Sam/Curbstomping Lucifer and Punching him in the Face OTP, Very One-sided Lucifer/Sam, Lucifer/His Ego, Kelly Kline & Justice, Other endgame OTP is Sam/Freedom, Sam/Walking Out of Hell and Being Whole, It's mostly Sam/Lucifer for the majority you have been warned and disclaimed, Past Sam/Ruby but that was awful for Sam too, Sam/Jess but with a twist, past Samifer, but it was never happy because Lucifer is coercive, Kinda current Samifer, but Sam really is not happy about it at all, Side-pairing Dean/Castiel, but that is not the main focus

Additional Tags: Jack Kline & Sam Winchester Friendship, Sam endgame pairing is happiness but boy is it gonna be a long time to get there, Major Abuse, Rape, non-con, mind-rape, Torture, Psychological Torture, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Hurt Comfort Fic, mostly horror, Cage Trauma, Sam is not about this life, Sam deserves happiness but life is like nope, In Honor of S13E21, Major Canonical Changes, Semi-Canon Compliant except for the stuff I forget or deliberately change, Flashbacks, bi sam winchester, Gender-changing Lucifer, Lucifer is also Jess, Lucifer is Also Nick, Stalking and Pain, Also making Dean less abusive and toxic than canon or at least acknowledging it, Assumed Abusive John Winchester past references, Sam is Jack's biological parent in this, No technical Mpreg because it squicks me out, I don't know what else to tag this other than the title is a lot of what you get in this fic, A lot of torture in a lot of different forms, Mostly a horror fic with alternate endings and some fix it tacked on after the suffering, Sam was in the cage longer than he's lived and boy does that trauma show, Enochian, Conditioning, Horrible family dynamics, Lucifer chooses to be a horrible person and wants to use Sam anyway, Lucifer thinks he's in love but doesn't know or care about actually not being abusive, Toxic Jack and Lucifer relationship because Lucifer sucks, Kelly Kline & Sam, The power of friendship, Sam is a survivor, Maybe some Prince of Hell and White Eyed Demon resurrections if not related to time travel, Multiple Endings, Also Sam/Ruby mentions, Probably not explicit sex scenes or they will be implied but sparse because I'm bad at writing them, if this changes you'll know, When Sam is male presenting in the show he's using male pronouns, If Sam is female presenting going to change pronouns when convenient, OH ALSO Demon Blood Addiction, Angel Blood Addiction, AND A METRIC TON OF MANIPULATION, Lucifer wants Sam to love him and feels something, Gender changing Sam, Chuck can fight me, Probably time travel, Probably some reversed character deaths, Surrogacy, because nephilim birth body counts, Sam Winchester Has Powers, S13 Spoilers!, sam is just done, and barely holding on to reality, Lucifer pays lip service to the idea of redemption, but is too self-absorbed to actually change, Lucifer tries to be a Dad but has awful role models, nevermind his actual personality, Casifer, Lucifer is an awesome antagonist, I just wanted to write something extra painful, Sam working with Lucifer to fight Michael, even though he'd rather not, Non-Linear Narrative, Hallucifer probably will be mentioned somehow, Implied Sexual Content, Dubious Consent, some of their earlier S5 interactions will be different and less antagonistic, sort of, Lucifer's Cage, Sam Centric Narration mostly, But I might add Lucifer's perspective in there too, I can't believe I forgot, Stockholm Syndrome, yay, Sarcasm, also Kelly is Jack's surrogate mom, she still dies but might come back, also more s5 type lucifer, then character development, let's just say Lucifer is pissed his OTP seems in denial, and that they are defending humanity because lucifer, so that's gonna change canon a bit, but only slightly because stuff still seems to play out the same, watch me justify all my canon changes badly, Lucifer is like why don't you love me?, Sam is like have you seen yourself? Do you need an itemized list?, destroying parts of canon with fire through sheer laziness, Lucifer believes in Sam but doesn't want to, Lucifer takes the abandonment from God and latches on to dear life, to the person he thinks can't abandon him even if he tries because Fate, It would almost be tragic if Lucifer didn't treat Sam so bad, which negates all potential sympathy imo, Dysphoria, sort of ftm sam, but I'm not sure how solid gender is in this fic, because Lucifer is a genderless entity who just chooses to present as whatever is convenient, and Sam only has issues with the gender change when its magic, and inflicted against his will, because Lucifer thinks pregnancy will force Sam to be even more tied to him, and because he likes making Sam uncomfortable, because revenge for perceived wrongs, and disappointment, torture and murder and awfulness are not answers to life's problems, but Lucifer sure as heck is gonna try to make them, these tags could be a fic of their own at this point., also this is listed f/f because Lucifer and Sam switch genders in this fic, sam doesn't really care about gender too much, but the devil generally mirrors sam's gender unless there's an ulterior motive, because possessiveness and possession, honestly though Lucifer was going the Labyrinth Goblin King route in this, until Sam beat him and he had a tantrum, Possession, also Lucifer's MO is basically, everyone else: Lucifer no, and lucifer, canonically from every point ever: Lucifer yes, Majorly diverts from canon after I deal with S13 and the flashbacks, Sam trying to beat the Devil at his own game, Pseudo-redemption (except it fails for obvious reasons), Sam's level of hate and fear for Lucifer is canonical or even more, Plus past feelings, and past betrayal, Also Jack is a beautiful ray of sunshine, who also only deserves happiness, so him and Cas and Dean are gonna be trying to make things right, and maybe give a break from all the pain and suffering all the time, Trauma, All aboard the MAXIMUM ANGST TRAIN, Lucifer is like an Ex that won't accept you've broken up, Angels are also basically eldritch monsters, which is basically canon, Suicide Attempts, but we all know that doesn't work, also everything is this fic is completely out of order, until I finish it, because I can't write linearly at all

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2rtVjD8

[roxilalonde]

[S]:Collapse

mayhaps im just repeating what someone else has already said and said better but [S]:Collide needed to be way smarter than it was 

like. i genuinely think hussie wrote the scene and its prior framing around the striders, terezi, vriska, and john and/or roxy, and then tossed in the rest w/o regard to what could reasonably be deemed a satisfying ending to their arcs.

here’s what could have been tighter:

jake and karkat

so we get jake and karkat in what is ostensibly the most disappointing of all possible ends to their character arcs as people who idolize & emulate their cultures’ respective cults of war - neither a) recognizing that said cult is bullshit, a la the infamous Dave vs. Heteronormativity pesterlog, or b) fulfilling the ideal, i.e., actually doing something heroic requiring combative/physical strength. they take out the Felt. which, ok, sure, but there’s a narrative misstep in pitting your two characters with most aspirations to prove themselves in the field of battle against your weakest enemy for their final portrayed conflict.

put it this way: when karkat talks to meenah he’s clearly still putting a lot of onus on being The One, the guy who fights the big bad, so he can justify his own existence to himself. this is a big problem for karkat - he perceives himself as weak, because of alternia’s unreasonable standards of strength and bravery, so to face LE is to prove his dead planet wrong. he makes a point of it. and then, right before he’s supposed to - nope! he’s fighting a bratty green smuppet. or jake: built up as ultimate superclasspect, in the game-over timeline the big powerhouse in the session: also fighting a bunch of green smuppets! 

and yeah, you could blame it on vriska, but her rant was never narratively treated as bad strategy. even though your most powerful classpect is hitting your least powerful enemy. 

vriska

first of all, see previous: vriska isn’t a good strategist. she puts her weak players (which is vriska. vriska is a weak player, compared to the other people on the battlefield) against the strongest enemies, and her strongest players against the weakest. her arrogance gets in the way of critical thinking. nobody has a problem with this. 

she and terezi don’t get a resolution. vriska isn’t held accountable for the shit that she’s done to the other members of her party. she’s not held accountable for her relationship with terezi (how did that evolve? what changed about them? is she less reactionary? the wonders of a retcon that makes defunct three years of character development) the only place she gets closure is in a dream bubble, and even then, that’s (vriska).

finally: vriska deploying the weapon against lord english is interesting. it fits her, as the person who’s always trying to shove herself into plot developments headfirst. on the other hand: vriska shouldn’t have succeeded. it validates her previous efforts to shove herself into the action - it’s like the narrative is saying, “yes, vriska is so good at this, look at how successful she is when she tries to be the protagonist.” ignoring that a critical part of vriska’s character is that whenever she tries to do something like that, people get hurt. because vriska’s mistake is assuming her importance comes prior to others’ safety. throughout the story we’ve been told “vriska should under no circumstances be allowed to play protag,” and here she is, successfully playing protag.

jane

i would probably have written some pretty scathing analysis here if there was anything involving jane to fucking critique

in all seriousness: jane is sidelined (big surprise) and gets a brief, decent moment with Nannasprite about her issues adjudicating how passive/active to be in her own life. it’s a good moment for the Jane Collective. 

but she doesn’t kill the condesce. i can see why - she’s needed to run around healing people. but if nannasprite can do the exact same thing, there’s no reason that jane, who has the best reason to resent the condesce, shouldn’t be the one to fight her. and yet here we are. jane is the “main” of the alpha session. why is her “big moment” having another version of herself telling her how much cooler she is and then going off to be a passive aid? shouldn’t jane’s conclusion be, “wow, I should involve myself in battles that have personal value to me,” and go off to fight up the condesce?

then dad comes back. which, for a story about growing up - the point is that the kids are learning to live without their parents. there are a lot of allusions in homestuck to the game accelerating maturity: forcing them to “parent” a new world, develop extraordinary skills, growing as a person in accordance with the demands of their classpect. dad coming back alleviates jane of the need to do that: every other parent in homestuck dies. let that sink in. jane’s dad is the only parent who survives, and it’s not clear why. jane should be allowed to mature with the rest of her friends. it’s a feel-good moment, of course, but it’s a regression. what’s driving jane is no longer her dad’s welfare (we should hope); it’s the fate of the new universe. jane’s father should not be her reward. jane’s reward should be her friends’ safety, and the ability to progress as a person - i.e., leave the game. 

kanaya

the thing about strife animations is that we don’t have much time to actually see what’s going on. so for all i know, kanaya and rose were really critical to that battle. and it was really lucky they were there. but for the most part, they were side characters in an animation that concluded with roxy’s triumph. 

kanaya is interesting because the bounds of her mortality are not established. she survives eridan’s blast to the torso but not an incinerating laserbeam, so where does that line fall? pitting her against the condesce is on the one hand, a good decision, narratively (condesce comes from kanaya’s planet, kanaya’s problem; also, it’s clearly established that the condesce is capable of killing kanaya, raising the stakes); on the other hand, it’s hampered by the format. the GO timeline was told mostly in panels. that way, we felt the emotional impact. in [S]:Collide, kanaya could have come close to dying multiple times! as could rose have! our only definitive moments are her pausing in the middle of a battle to apply lipstick or read a book. which is, y’know, pretty funny, i admit! but also not conclusive.

meh, but not critical flaws:

rose: rose’s main power has always been as a strategist, informant, and manipulator of outcomes, and even though she’s formidable in battle, her time to shine should’ve been negotiating how things worked out. which is why i’m baffled that of everyone on that meteor, neither of the seers was the one managing strategy. amazing

terezi: her one-sided pesterlog with vriska was good in the same way the striders’ was good, but unlike the striders’, it’s never resolved, because it’s one-sided. the subject of her idealization is not there to disconfirm her idealizations. she also should have taken over strategy, she is far better than vriska at it

jade: i wish jade had a better-built arc. i’m not saying jade is unlikable or even a bad character it’s just that she does not have notable internal conflict or any struggle against societal norms to motivate her. her main problem is loneliness. but does she discuss that? does she get a resolution?? does she have personal problems derived from loneliness as a child that make her struggle to interact with people in person??? who knows, not the reader

here’s what did work:

roxy vs. the condesce. the condesce is the one who screwed up roxy’s planet; the condesce fucked with roxy’s friends in the GO universe, which only roxy remembers; the condesce subsequently killed rose, right before roxy’s eyes. roxy has reason to be in this fight. we establish early on in her story that roxy and the condesce are direct antagonists to each other and here we close that arc. good writing!

the striders. their chatlog was a detailed and satisfying ending to the strider brothers’ struggle with heteronormativity and flawed role models. “fuck being too cool for that” is a beautiful line in the context of their stories and their affirmation of being awesome without being ‘cool’ is fantastic. the way they work together in the last battle is touching and nice to watch. good writing! could have used more of it.

john. john’s role all along has been to be a friendleader, not a warrior. his minor role in the fighting coupled with his (debatably successful) speech prior makes for a decent finale. (later then we get john ft. Depression in the credits, but i’m not tackling the credits). i have no objections, but maybe that’s because the audience is never supposed to care about john’s development in the same way we care about the strilondes’ and the patron trolls’.

does it matter?

there’s an answer to all this that goes along the lines of “homestuck always defies convention, that’s why it’s lovable,” and while i can see the argument, a) this is really just me outlining why i, personally, am annoyed as fuck, which is to say that i, personally, do not always find it lovable, and b) convention exists for a reason. “convention” isn’t always an antiquated set of constraints aiming to to weigh down fresh creative thinkers; it can be a useful framework for building a good story. and if you reject that framework without maintaining some of the fundamental parts, you get a sloppy narrative. parallels, story cycles, foreshadowing: all of these things should be used conjunctively to set the stage for your conclusion. the stage was not properly set for [S]:Collide. i’m all for subverting obvious foreshadowing, but there’s a difference between “maybe this character will do X in the future, the text alludes to that possibility” and “it would make logical sense, given this character’s current development, for them to do X in the future.” subverting the former is fine. subverting the latter is messy.

and:

claiming dramatic realism does not alleviate you from the restraints of narrative structure and general good writing you shit

then the writer tries to subvert/avoid critique by giving dave’s spiel on “we aren’t characters, rose, we’re people, we don’t have arcs.” but. i’m sorry, but yes, they are characters. yes, they do have arcs. dave’s declaration of “we’re people” is made obsolete by the blatant falsity of what he’s saying - it’s more darkly funny than a legitimate response to criticism. so, yes, the author has a responsibility to tell a coherent narrative within the confines of his chosen medium. which means that yeah, maybe it’s “realistic” to leave their development dangling somewhere in the middle of Act 6, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.