#this critique is mostly from a narrative perspective

[applejuiz]

I did fall asleep for a little during the battle part of the episode last night so maybe I’m missing something but I’m very confused about the discourse over this decision. It seems very obvious to me at least that defeating Ludinus wasn’t going to be the end of this bc it doesn’t address the problem of Predathos at all. This is going to happen again, from what it seems Matt is laying down, either a Ludinus clone will work his way back here or another Ruidius-born, maybe not right this second, but at some point. They can’t just guard this place forever. There is no return to status quo for exandria now that this information is known.

Bells Hells is here right now. They’ve heard all the different perspectives on what to do about this problem and all have different opinions on it and they’re in the position to do something with that consideration instead of singleminded egotistical determination. They don’t think they’re right, they don’t know what the right thing to do is, which I think is the best argument for them being the ones to reach predathos. It’s not pressing a big red button just to press it. The dam is bursting and they’re trying to figure out how to reduce harm from a place of informed neutrality.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t see what other option there was. The debate on what to do about Predathos is being had across every faction in Exandria and this group has met with all of them. A decision has to be made by someone, and doing nothing is just kicking it down the line. It might as well be this group, the most educated and the most uncertain about it.

[idyllicbby]

i think we all as a collective need to put down irony, satire, and subversion in media for a lil while bc imo………a lot of times it’s not done right 😭

& the main problem with this is bc most creatives never really go into detail about what exactly their politics are and don’t affirm the subversion they’re stating in their art so a huge part of their politics/the subversive message tends to be whatever their audience project onto them/it.

this becomes an issue bc the original theme/message becomes construed & highly dependent on audience’s interpretation (that is colored by each individual’s perspective and nuance they’ve lived & also internal biases) instead of the intention of the original material. so it ends with the audience agreeing with the ironic, subversive narrative instead of what the narrative is trying to highlight &/or “call out” with those literary devices. so now instead of it being subversive it looks like the artist/message is endorsing potentially harmful rhetoric & being seen as a representative/mouthpiece of those ideals.

for example: Arcane writer, Amanda Overton & others and their character Mel Medarda:

In explaining her characterization of Mel Medarda, Amanda states that Mel is supposed to be a subversive spin on the common femme fatale trope, which usually depicts a woman who embodies beauty, mystery, seduction, and danger, using her looks to manipulate people where she wants them mostly with ill intent. Amanda says that she subverts this trope from Mel because as the series goes on the audience is met with Mel's nuances, trauma, emotional turmoil, vulnerability, and compassion that are used to distinguish her away from the trope and subverts it. So the affirmation of the subversion or the switch of Mel not being the trope anymore was when we saw her become vulnerable with her love interest, Jayce, & with her mother about her being exiled from her homeland & learning she became a councilor to prove to her family that she can be powerful/successful outside of their ridged expectations of power/success.

But this subversion failed because Amanda & the other arcane writers ignored how depicting a Black female character as a manipulative, seductress reinforces the jezebel caricature rather than challenging the femme fatale trope as they initially intended. They also highly underestimated the audience’s (comprised of mostly white/non-Black people) unwillingness to unlearn their internal biases of villainizing a Black female character to acknowledge the subversion/switch in the narrative. both leading to the misinterpretation and mischaracterizing of Mel as representation of the harmful stereotype rather than a subversion of it. this shows how the consequences of not explicitly affirming subversive messaging can result in the messages being misconstrued instead of understood, because without this clarity, the artist's intent is overshadowed by the audience's perception, ultimately leading to the reinforcement of the very narratives that were meant to be challenged/critiqued.

(it’s also important to note Amanda has done this to numerous Black female characters she has written & every time she fails to do the subversion, she claims to put in the narrative correctly)

[plaidos]

Hi, I really admire your homestuck takes and reading, especially because it's been a while since I last read it. Because of that I've been recently thinking about some discussions I used to have and because I don't see you talk that much (or at all, if it's for a reason please ignore this ask🫣) of the dancestors I wanted to ask a bit about Porrim specifically because back in the day I really liked her but obviously there's also this aspect of her being a caricature and idk I'd really love to hear your perspective on her character, who she is, her feminism, something a bit better than just me finding her cool as a teen haha. Obviously no obligation but also if you're feeling it please be as elaborate as you want haha. I really admire your work with Homestuck

i don’t really see Porrim as a caricature, which is saying something because like, almost all of the dancestors are one-note caricatures right?

out of all of the ancestors, to me, Porrim seemed to be taken most seriously in the narrative. whilst Mituna, Cronus, Kankri etc are all obviously just mean jokes through and through, the way Porrim’s values are presented in direct opposition to Kankri’s makes me feel like we’re just unambiguously meant to agree with her.

the set up of Kankri’s social justice warrior pastiche only works in comparison to 2012 era Andrew’s take on an actual serious activist. everything Porrim says about gender on Alternia & Beforus is placed side by side with a terrible take from Kankri where he is blatantly misogynistic in return; it’s so bad that even Karkat (at this point in the story starting to recognise his own problems with women) is utterly gobsmacked by how his dancestor consistently dismisses any feminist critique, even going so far as to call Beforus & Alternia matriarchies, despite Porrim pointing out that whilst they may have had an empress, the ruling & law-making/enforcing castes are overwhelmingly male dominated, leading to what Porrim describes as a “fuchsia-down matriarchy, purple-down patriarchy”. i think it’s pretty clear we’re meant to take Porrim as the Reasonable Normal Feminist & Kankri as the terminally online discourse poisoned social justice warrior. Really, Kankri is the caricature to Porrim’s correct opinion having straightman.

a lot of people also take issue with her being portrayed as promiscuous but i don’t really have a problem with that? besides, from what i recall, that’s information that we basically only learn through men being sexist to her (again — mostly Kankri).

in regards to her design, a lot of people forget but like, the whole “inked up feminist with cool homemade piercings” was like a whole genre of aesthetic back in the day all over this website (which is, of course, what the dancestors are ultimately parodying — tumblr).

[bad-system]

xletalis' new witcher 4 video is bad actually.

just finished watching xletalis' new video on the 'critique of the witcher 4 controversial trailer' and i have things to say. i've been following him for a long time and agreed with many of his critiques on the witcher 3* but i feel like this newest video was more of an indirect tantrum rather than a mostly valid critique.

i was really looking forward to his analysis of the new witcher 4 content, but i must admit i was surprised by the hostility in his response. while i’ve agreed with many of his critiques about the witcher 3 in the past, i think he might be jumping to conclusions here. a lot of his points seem based on assumptions from a trailer, which historically, like in the witcher 3, are more about setting a tone and showcasing eye-catching visuals rather than delivering an in-depth narrative or immersive storytelling experience.

his speculations about ciri’s motivations for becoming a witcher are fair, but the tone of his analysis suggests skepticism about whether CDPR can make her journey believable enough to engage him. it feels like he’s approached this new chapter with a sense of doubt rather than curiosity. i’m not saying he needs to be blindly optimistic, but being so skeptical right out of the gate might not be the best mindset when stepping into what is clearly a new era for the series.

additionally, his influence matters—a lot of people who watch his content take his opinions to heart, often without applying the same level of critical thought. this can unintentionally stifle excitement for the game, which is already in a bad place just because it was revealed that the protagonist is a woman. constructive criticism is important, of course, but it’s also worth giving CDPR the benefit of the doubt until more is revealed.

as for the "relatability" factor and ciri’s characterization, i think there’s an opportunity here that’s being overlooked. he mentioned that ciri isn’t a blank slate, which is true—she has established attitudes and beliefs. however, her becoming a witcher is clearly a major turning point in her life, and how she handles the fallout of that change could lead to significant growth and a shift in her perspective. this isn’t about her becoming a completely new character, but about seeing the same ciri we know grappling with new challenges in ways that will most likely surprise us.

to dismiss this because she’s a female protagonist or because her story might feel less "relatable" compared to geralt’s is, frankly, a weak argument. CDPR isn’t just offering a (male)power fantasy—they’re telling a story. much like geralt’s journey, ciri’s story is rooted in themes of magical monsters and moral complexity—experiences that none of us can "relate" to on a literal level, regardless of gender.

to sum it up, i think some of his expectations are rooted in holding this new trilogy to the standards of a saga that has already concluded. this is an intentional shake-up, and it deserves a bit more openness. it would definitely help him (and his audience) appreciate what’s to come.

[duxbelisarius]

Back to the Dance Part One: Targaryen Law and Governance, 1 AC-129 AC

Welcome or welcome back to my blog! If you've not read through them yet, here are my Military Analysis of the Dance and my First Dornish War Analysis master posts! This is Part One of a rewrite/revision of the former series, but more on that below.

i. Introduction

I wrote my 14 Part military analysis of the Dance a year or two ago following season one of House of the Dragon. The show got me back into the ASOIAF fandom and I had just read Fire and Blood, and wanted to do a critical analysis of what I believed were the flaws in how the war was written. If the response I got on Reddit, AO3, and here on Tumblr is any indication it seems to have been well received, but much has changed since I completed that series. HOTD Season 2 seems to have had a polarizing reception, but more importantly I've analyzed other events from Westerosi history like the Velaryon Blockade and the First Dornish War (Daeron's Conquest too!). Between researching and writing those analyses and receiving feedback from those following, I decided I needed to change my approach. Reading more secondary literature and even primary sources showed me that my conclusions in the Dance series needed serious revisions, and that there were areas I hadn't properly covered in the Dance which could give new perspectives. I also needed to find a better way to critique, since castigating the writer of a work can only go so far before it gets tedious, boring, and distasteful. I'm more than a year older now and wiser I hope, and intend to apply my experience and further research to create a more detailed, informative, and hopefully constructive analysis of the Dance of the Dragons.

For those of you unfamiliar with my Velaryon Blockade and Dornish Wars series linked above, my approach consists of analyzing aspects of the event/subject in question to identify issues in the writing and worldbuilding, after which I offer a 'fix-it' section to show how the scenario could be mostly if not completely retained with revisions. The 'theme' of my Dorne series which will be carried over into this one is that of scale and managing it: as should be well known in the fandom, George has problems identifying and judging scale which stem partly from his wanting things to be bigger and more grand in his fantasy setting. I believe this scale problem can be tied to issues of perspective more broadly, stemming from his self-described 'gardener' style of writing as opposed to being an 'architect.' George has talked about how most writers have elements of both in their approach to writing but will tend towards one extreme or the other, and George is very clearly in the 'gardener' camp. This seems to consist of keeping a general idea of the progress and end point of a story in mind while otherwise writing the story more from the ground up, with 'pruning' and 'uprooting' taking place as needed while still allowing for a return to those ideas or concepts that were excised later in the plot. This process gave us ASOIAF as we know it, so I can hardly dismiss it's effectiveness, but when it comes to TWOIAF, F&B, and the short stories that were incorporated into the former two works, the faux history premise he set out with clashes with this 'gardener' style.

In George's faux histories, the POV characters that he uses so effectively to tell his stories become historians or chroniclers writing an account of events based on sources, which already give them a sense of where the 'story' is headed and how events will unfold. I believe this creates an unfortunate tendency to treat the characters featured in these narratives as mere plot devices, tasked simply with moving events in their predetermined direction without adequately developing their motivations or reasoning for taking those actions. The result is that many of these characters act in ways that cannot be justified on a Watsonian basis, ie why did the character act this way in their world, leading the reader to look for a Doylistic justification, ie why did the writer need this character to act this way, which breaks immersion and pulls us out of the story. At it's worst the writing becomes narrowly focused on progressing the plot from point A to point B, leading characters to display ignorance and a lack of perspective of their own setting and surroundings in pursuit of the pre-determined outcome.

The piecemeal nature of the Dance narrative plays into this unfortunate tendency, since the final product as portrayed in F&B is an amalgamation of different works: The Rogue Prince, The Princess and The Queen, and segments of TWOIAF that have been fleshed out and expanded upon such as Aegon II's short reign and the regency of Aegon III. Events and characters appear in one part of the narrative that are not accounted for by another while the implications of one action or character's presence are never acknowledged or realized. This is perhaps the biggest downside of the 'gardener' approach: a lack of perspective resulting from a story being built from the ground up with a limited viewpoint in mind, leading to the implications or magnitude of an event or action appearing vastly understated or underwhelming if they are even acknowledged at all. If I could take back anything from the first analysis it would be my harsh treatment of George, when it's clear that his editors, proofreaders, and other aides did him no favours in compiling the narrative of the Dance.

While there are still areas of the Dance which are fundamentally flawed outside how the narrative was edited together, I hope to demonstrate that with some revisions and a more concerted effort to tie the strands of the plot together, the Dance could have been a much better story and served George's purposes more effectively. Doing this will require a much more detailed approach to account for different aspects of the Dance; the Dorne series was twice as many words as the Dance analysis despite having half as many chapters, and F&B devotes only 10 pages to the First Dornish War versus over 200 to the Dance! Expect this series to be a long one, as I've got a lot more to say than I did before; without further ado, once more unto the breach!

Although this series will still maintain a significant focus on the military aspects of the Dance, seeing as how it was a war, Part One is concerned with the political origins of the conflict in the succession crises of Jaehaerys and Viserys. My aim is to paint as comprehensive a picture as possible of how Targaryen government and law functioned in the lead up to the Dance, making the fairly disparate information we're given by the books accessible to the reader and to illustrate why the Dance came about as a failure of governance. This is important since it directly affects our perception of how the great houses of Westeros responded to the beginning of the Dance and whether or not George was able to effectively develop that perspective. Do we get the sense that the characters of the Targaryen court and their contemporaries appreciated the stakes involved in the build up to the Dance, or are their responses conditioned by what the writer demands for the plot?

ii. Establishing Targaryen Government

Analyzing Targaryen government requires us to start with the Conquest itself to get a sense of how Targaryen authority was established based on what we're told and can reasonably infer. The first step in establishing Targaryen authority over the Seven Kingdoms is one which we know surprisingly little about in George's writing, that being the creation of the Crownlands. We know from TWOIAF and F&B that Aegon requested the lands that became the Kingswood alongside Massey's Hook and the lands east of the God's Eye to the shore of Blackwater Bay in return for his allying with Argillac Durrandon, and these lands end up becoming the territory of the Crownlands. We have little else about how they were created exactly and how they were governed, and what little there is requires some digging outside of the faux histories. The Mystery Knight actually gives us the best glimpse into how the Crownlands are organized:

From Maidenpool had come Lord Mooton, from Raventree Lord Blackwood, from Duskendale Lord Darklyn. The royal demenses about King's Landing sent forth Hayfords, Rosbys, Stokeworths, Masseys, and the king's own sworn swords, led by three knights of the Kingsguard and stiffened by three hundred Raven's Teeth with tall white weirwood bows. (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, 348-349)

Although this quote refers to events taking place centuries after the Conquest, the outline it gives us is consistent with the 'high school textbook' style of feudalism in George's series. Excluding Maidenpool and the other Riverlords involved in Bloodraven's army, we have the Darklyns of Duskendale whose lands are in the Crownlands but who appear to have marshalled their own forces. We then have the 'royal demenses' about King's Landing which include the Houses Hayford, Rosby, Massey, and Stokeworth, followed by the Targaryen sworn swords led by the Kingsguard. Demesne is an Old French title for lands directly controlled by the lord of a manor, and was brought to England after the Norman Conquest when the feudal structures of Normandy began to be implemented across the Channel. We can reasonably infer a hierarchy from this passage within the Crownlands, with the Targaryens at the top as would be expected, followed by the Darklyns and other lords who are sworn directly to the Targaryens but appear to possess their own demenses, followed by the Hayfords et al who appear to be tenants that have ceded their demenses legally to House Targaryen but still administer those lands on their behalf, with the sworn swords at the very bottom likely being governed directly by the Targaryens on the land immediately surrounding King's Landing.

The picture which emerges suggests that the Crownlands northwest and north of the Rosby road possess their own demenses, including Darklyn, Celtigar, Velaryon, and the houses of Crackclaw Point, while the rest of the Crownlands along the coastline of Blackwater Bay is the Targaryen demense including Dragonstone. Significant also is the fact that the Crownlands mainly encompassed territories that were disputed between the River Kings, Hoares, Durrandons, and Gardeners rather than territories that those kings had ruled consistently such as Tumbleton, Maidenpool, or Felwood. the Targaryens carved out their houses' own kingdom and did not annex large swaths of their new vassals territory, instead establishing a more or less stereotypical feudal monarchy, the government of which only reinforces this impression.

F&B makes it clear that Aegon did not seek to fundamentally overturn the existing norms and structures of the newly subjugated kingdoms:

Each of the conquered kingdoms had its own laws and traditions. King Aegon did little to interfere with those. He allowed his lords to continue to rule much as they always had, with all the same powers and prerogatives. The laws of inheritance and succession remained unchanged, the existing feudal structures were confirmed, both lords great and small retained the power of pit and gallows on their own land, and the privilege of the first night wherever that custom had formerly prevailed. (F&B, 42)

Aegon was recognized as the final authority in the realm, although he relied upon Rhaenys, Visenya, and his small council for day-to-day governance, since he spent half the year touring the kingdoms with his court including one of his queens and half a dozen maesters. These visits were clearly important for the Targaryens since they allowed Aegon to be seen by his subjects and to establish relationships and network with his vassal lords, having spent most of the Conquest itself campaigning in the Riverlands-Blackwater Bay region. The fact he was accompanied by maesters to inform him about local laws and custom also indicates he sought to be accommodating to his vassals and respect their authority, as it could have been easy enough for Aegon and his queens to travel simply using their dragons. Traveling with their court indicates that they governed through their advisors and vassals rather than imposing their authority arbitrarily as individuals, and this is in keeping with the feudal nature of the Targaryen monarchy.

Much like the creation of the Crownlands, the structure of the royal government itself requires us to do some digging in order to determine how it functioned. We know Aegon appointed Masters of Law, Coin, and Ships as advisors from the outset and established the post which came to be known as the Hand of the King; he later established the post of Grand Maester, and also sought the advice of the Grand Septon and other members of the Faith regularly. When Jaehaerys arrived in King's Landing following Maegor's death, we're told he had the King's Justice, Lord Confessor, and Chief Gaoler confined to the Black Cells, and with the end of Rogar Baratheon and Queen Alyssa's Regency we know he replaced a collection of lesser offices: the Keeper of the Keys, the chief steward of the Red Keep and his under stewards, the harbormaster of King's Landing, the Warden of the King's Mint, and the King's Justice among others. Tyrion IV of ACOK also gives us a list of royal officials and positions answerable to the Master of Coin:

The Keepers of the Keys were his, all four. The King's Counter and the King's Scales were men he'd named. The officers in charge of all three mints. Harbormasters, tax farmers, customs sergeants, wool factors, toll collectors, pursers, wine factors; nine of every ten belonged to Littlefinger.

We'll discuss the Master of Laws when we cover the legal system, but we know that the King's Justice, Lord Confessor, and Chief Gaoler are responsible for executions, interrogation/torture, and incarceration respectively. All the other offices mentioned are administrative posts concerned with the King's own authority or with collecting revenues owed to the Crown. Master of Ships is concerned with the Royal Fleet and may have some oversight of the Celtigar and Velaryon Fleets since they are also pledged to House Targaryen; Harbormaster and Purser are both connected to naval affairs despite coming under the Master of Coin's authority, the former office being responsible for overseeing the operations of King's Landing's port facilities while the latter is likely based off an Anglo-Norman office that was responsible for the financial upkeep and personnel management of royal naval vessels.

The rest of the offices mentioned above are concerned with fiscal matters: Tax farmers, customs sergeants, and toll collectors are responsible for collecting royal revenues through tax collecting, tariffs and duties on foreign goods, and use of public roads respectively. Wool and wine factors are wholesalers who deal in textiles and wine as their titles suggest, but their function is unclear; they could be responsible for selling textiles and wine that the Crown possesses through in-kind taxation, splitting the profit between themselves and the government, or they may be obtaining textiles and wine for the Royal Household's consumption and obtaining financial information in the process that the Crown can utilize for levying taxes. Keeper of the Keys, Warden of the King's Mint, King's Counter and Scales are likely connected to the Royal Treasury the Keeper of the Keys being responsible for accessing the treasury vaults and coffers, Counter and Scales being responsible for valuing their contents, and the Warden of the King's Mints is presumably in charge of supplying royal coinage and would have some connection to Westerosi mines which supply the precious metals. While most of these titles come to us via Tyrion's POV, I don't see any reason to doubt that royal finances were handled similarly in the days of Aegon and his successors; by comparing Tyrion's POV with F&B we know that the Keeper of the Keys has gone from one position to four between the reigns of Jaehaerys and Joffrey Baratheon, and there are now three royal mints instead of one.

The importance of Masters of Coin like Edwell Celtigar and Rego Draz post-Aegon suggests that fiscal unification was begun if not well under way by the time of Aegon's death. This makes sense given that Aegon was establishing his house at the top of the new feudal hierarchy of Westeros, and would have needed to collect his incomes in order to further establish his authority and that of his house over his new vassals. The existence of the Master of Coin and the rest of the Small Council does indicate that the approach of the Targaryen monarchy was to formulate policy with the council's aid and with respect to their vassals. Even when this wasn't the case as with Celtigar's taxes, the feudal tax system of the Seven Kingdoms was such that many lords avoided paying these taxes altogether, illustrating a need for the consent of the vassals in order to rule effectively.

iii. Function and Evolution of Targaryen Law

This need for some degree of consent and the use of the council to govern is best demonstrated by the evolution of the Targaryen legal system, although we first should clarify what the monarchy's powers were. F&B gives us a clear indication of this in its discussion of 'Queen Alysanne's Laws,' where Gyldan states that unlike Rhaenys or Visenya, Alysanne did not have the power to "enact laws, issue decrees, make proclamations, or pass sentences." Passing sentences and enacting laws are relatively straightforward concepts to grasp, since we have examples of both in F&B: The Rule of Six and the Widow's Law. In the case of Rhaenys' Rule of Six, a dispute was brought before the court involving a dead woman's husband and her two brothers, the latter accusing the former of having 'chastized' (ie beaten) her excessively for adultery and causing her death. We're told that Rhaenys consulted with maesters and representatives of the Faith before passing sentence, establishing a precedent that became part of the common law (more on that later). We can clearly see a form of legal process being used and counsel solicited, and this is also at work in the enactment of laws such as the Widow's Law. Widow's Law did not come about arbitrary but through Alysanne's 'women's courts,' which provided her with information about the plight of widows throughout the Seven Kingdoms which she subsequently used to persuade Jaehaerys of the need for laws to protect them, which he then promulgated (again, more on this later).

Issuing decrees and making proclamations are more difficult to get a handle on; search of Ice and Fire turns up only two uses of the word 'proclamation,' while 'decree' and 'proclaim' are heavily used in a more colloquial sense which complicates determining their legal usage. We can say that they differ from laws which are enacted as opposed to issued or simply 'made,' while 'A Question of Succession' in F&B lists them alongside court documents as records available to the historian or chronicler, indicating they are not simply verbal orders or commands by the monarch but are written documents. Regarding decrees, Sansa V of AGOT gives us clues as to how decrees function as Joffrey orders Pycelle to "read" his decrees (confirming them as documents), while Pycelle concludes each reading with "So the king has decreed. The small council consents." When Kevan Lannister reads out Joffrey's decrees in Sansa VIII of ACOK, he also concludes with "To all this, the King's Hand and the small council consent." In ASOIAF we see royal decrees made to appoint new members of the small council, grant new titles as rewards from the crown, legitimize bastards (which can only be done by royal decree), and order punishments such as the loss of a limb used to strike a member of royalty as referenced in The Hedge Knight.

F&B offers some other examples which I believe get us closer to the role and power of a decree via the reigns of Aegon, Maegor, and Jaehaerys. We know that Aegon allowed his vassals to keep much of their old powers and prerogatives, but he was also able to issue decrees regularizing customs, duties, and taxes which was previously in the hands of the lords themselves. He also issued a decree establishing the King's Peace, making it illegal to conduct warfare without the king's permission and obligating vassals to abide by the adjudication of their liege lords in disputes. We then have Maegor's decrees referred to in ASOIAF as "Maegor's Laws," which punished and disarmed the Faith Militant for taking up arms against the Crown, although F&B credits Maegor's new High Septon with actually dissolving the Warrior's Sons and the Poor Fellows. Finally, we have Jaehaerys' decree recognizing Baelon as his heir in 92 AC, which was made after consulting with his small council and especially Septon Barth, although Alysanne dissented. Based on these examples and the information we have from the books, I believe that issuing a decree is how a king exercises their power and prerogatives which they possess via the law or laws of the land. Decrees are formulated and drafted with the aid of the small council to ensure their consent to it's contents, but do not appear to have the same force as an enacted law. Maegor was not enacting new laws but was punishing the Faith Militant as their actions were objective violations of the King's Peace, nor were they acting on behalf of the legitimate claimant Aegon the Uncrowned. Likewise, Aegon was using his own powers to ensure the economic unity of his new realm, while Jaehaerys was clarifying the status of his new heir under the law.

Based on evidence from F&B and the other books, making proclamations appears to serve a different purpose than issuing decrees. Thus in F&B we have Aegon proclaiming the Faith to be exempt from taxes with the power to try their own members in their courts; TWOIAF speaks of Jaehaerys' proclamation as rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms at Storm's End, with F&B crediting Rogar Baratheon with proclaiming him king; while Jaime Lannister and Lord Crakehall exchange words over who shall proclaim a new king and whom it shall be in the throne room following Aerys' death in Jaime II of ASOS. Proclamations appear to be a way for the king to make announcements to the realm as a whole with the added legitimacy granted by the monarch's own voice; they can serve a legal purpose of drawing attention to an action being taken, whether proclaiming the succession a new king or official acknowledgement of an heir, which appears to be consistent with how proclamations are defined under English law.

Now that we've got a rough idea of the legal powers of the Targaryen monarchy pre-Dance and how that power was expected to be wielded, we can get into how that legal system evolved. As previously mentioned, Aegon kept the laws and customs of the Seven Kingdoms largely the same after the Conquest, hence why he brought maesters with him on his progresses who were knowledgeable in local laws and customs. The lords were made responsible for settling disputes and adjudicating within their own territories, while F&B states that Aegon was responsible for adjudicating disputes between the kingdoms. F&B and TWOIAF may unintentionally provide us some evidence of the workings of this pluralistic legal system via the Rule of Six and Widow's Law. F&B states that the Rule of Six became a part of the common law from that day onward, while TWOIAF says the Rule of Six is "now part of the common law;" since the Seven Kingdoms did not possess a single common law before Jaehaerys' Book of Laws, this suggests that the Crownlands possessed their own common law separate from the individual kingdoms. This helps to explain why Jaehaerys is described as promulgating the Widow's Law in 52 AC, prior to his codification project: to promulgate means to promote or make widely known, although it can mean to make known a law or enforce it, andf he would have had to promulgate the law if he wanted his vassals to adopt similar laws in their own jurisdictions. This is both interesting and unfortunate from a world building perspective, since we have no idea what formed the basis of these laws: did it use Dragonstone's laws? Were they derived from Riverlord laws, and did Stormlands and Ironborn law have any influences?

With the political and fiscal unification of the Seven Kingdoms already well advanced by 48 AC, it was under the new king Jaehaerys that the Seven Kingdoms were legally unified. We're never given a date for when the new code was completed, but the evidence is unanimous that it was completed while he was king. F&B calls the Book of Laws Jaehaerys' greatest achievement while TWOIAF credits him with giving the realm a single set of laws. The process of researching the laws of the individual kingdoms began in 55 AC and was completed two years later, while the actual codification was said to have taken decades. F&B refers to the code as the Great Code of Septon Barth and heavily credits him with the completion of the Book, so the Book of Laws was most likely completed between 67 and 98 AC or a decade after the research was complete but prior to his death. The research phase is also significant as it clearly indicates that written laws were available to be researched, from the kingdoms themselves and/or the records of the Citadel; this is important because codification refers not to the writing down of laws but the organizing of laws according to a system or plan. No one would seriously suggest that the Roman Empire and it's predecessors lacked written laws prior to the Theodosian Code and Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, rather its constitutions and sets of laws had not been brought together systematically despite past attempts.

Creating a single code for the Seven Kingdoms would certainly have increased the power of the monarchy, now that a Targaryen ruler could enact laws and pass sentences which would have direct influence over all of the kingdoms. Nonetheless, the lengthy codification process indicates that a serious effort was made to reflect the traditions of all the kingdoms by consulting their laws during the process rather than simply grafting some of the laws onto the common law as it existed in the Crownlands. We can safely assume that the Lords Paramount were aware of this project and broadly supported it in light of the two years spent by Jaehaerys and his "smaller council" of Alysanne, Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, and Master of Laws Albin Massey collecting and researching all these laws. As we said regarding the tax system, consent of one's vassals would still have been important for enforcing the new code since it fell to the lords and their lieges across the kingdoms to apply it and adjudicate in the absence of the king. With that being said, establishing the broad strokes of Targaryen government, law, and their functions now allows us to assess the lead up to the Dance.

iv. 92 and 101 AC

One of the first issues with discussing the origins of the Dance is the way in which the decision of 92 AC is made out to be less straightforward than it objectively was. While Prince Aemon was the Prince of Dragonstone and heir apparent to Jaehaerys at his death in 92 AC, we have no indication that the title of Prince of Dragonstone was deemed hereditary and could pass on the position of heir to his own children. To use a historical example, Edward III was succeeded by Richard II, the son and heir of Edward the Black Prince, Edward III's eldest son and heir apparent who pre-deceased his father. This put Richard II ahead of Edward III's other surviving son John of Gaunt, but this was the result of letters patent that the king had issued before his death rather than the operation of the law. On the other hand, the decision of 92 AC did not deviate from male-preference primogeniture, favouring Jaehaerys' surviving and eligible son Baelon over Rhaenys who was the king's granddaughter via Aemon. This is also how the succession was determined during Robert's Rebellion, as following Rhaegar's death his younger brother Viserys became the heir over Rhaegar's son Aegon. Nonetheless, "A Question of Succession" seems confused over this idea:

If the precedent set by the Great Council of 101 was followed, a male claimant must prevail over a female. In the absence of a trueborn son, the king's brother would come before the king's daughter, as Baelon had come before Rhaenys in 92 AC. (F&B, 358)

This seems to be George's lack of perspective creeping in, as it should not have mattered in 92 AC if Rhaenys had been born a boy or a girl; Baelon was the king's son and not his grandchild, so the succession passing to him was the correct decision.

It is to the Council of 101 that we ought to look for where things went wrong with the Targaryen succession, as it resulted in serious breeches of legal precedent by the king and his vassals. Owing to Baelon's death in 101 AC, Vaegon Targaryen's refusal to foreswear his maester's vows, and Jaehaerys' only surviving daughter Saera being disgraced and in exile, the king was left with no heir to succeed him. The choice was between the heirs of the heirs, with Viserys son of Baelon on one side and Rhaenys daughter of Aemon on the other with her children Laena and Laenor Velaryon. F&B makes it clear that those who spoke out against Rhaenys' and Laena's claims outnumbered those who spoke in their favour 20:1, but that Laenor's claim from his grandfather via his mother was deemed valid enough for the succession to be decided by a majority vote between himself and Viserys. More importantly, we know of legal precedents from Westerosi history that should have had bearing on the decisions of Jaehaerys and the Great Council, those of Joffrey Lydden and Mern VI Gardener. TWOIAF tells us that Joffrey Lydden became the first Andal King of the Rock after Gerold III Lannister died without male issue; in this case a council crowned Lydden king as the husband of Gerold's only daughter, but he was required to take his wife's family name with his claim deriving from his marriage to her, even though she was not made queen.

In the case of Mern VI Gardener, his predecessor Garth X also died with no male issue; his two daughters were married to Lord Peake and Lord Manderly respectively, and the idea of a woman succeeding was not the issue here but whether the Peakes or the Manderlys should be the ones to have their claimant sit the throne. The ensuing conflict nearly tore the Reach asunder until Ser Osmund Tyrell, the Andal Steward of Highgarden, rallied House Gardener's other bannermen to defeat both factions and place Garth's second cousin Mern on the throne as Mern VI. In this case, Garth's daughters clearly had better claims that Mern but he was chosen so as to reward neither of the warring factions for having brought ruin upon the Gardener kingdom. Mern's presence also means that there were male relatives in Garth's family at the time of his death, whereas this seems not to have been the case explicitly when Gerold III died. It appears that Garth X having male relatives would ensure that the male line of the family would continue even if a daughter held the throne, whereas the council that chose Joffrey Lydden seems to have created a new male line for the Lannisters as it would otherwise have died out with Gerold III.

This is important for assessing Jaehaerys and the Council of 101's decisions, since these historical cases clearly show that the First Men and Andals were willing to contemplate female rulership under certain circumstances. F&B also gives us examples of ladies governing great houses under the Targaryens despite the misogyny inherent in male-preference primogeniture laws, such as Jeyne Arryn during the Dance and Ellyn Caron during the rebellion of the First Vulture King. It can also be argued that Jaehaerys and even Alysanne helped the 101 dispute become the crisis it was, firstly by failing to find suitable matches for Saera, Viserra, Gael, and Daella Targaryen. This is an indictment of both Jaehaerys and Alysanne, as the matches were inferior (either men from lesser houses or far older men who already had heirs) and failed to produce Targaryen relatives in positions of power throughout the realm. This in turn meant that there was no Mern VI-style candidate who could have been selected in place of the two quarreling parties to avoid favouring one faction over the other, while also meaning there were no family ties that Jaehaerys could leverage among the great houses to de-escalate the situation, ensuring that Jaehaerys' vassals flocked to one claimant or the other, leading to division and near war.

The other way in which Jaehaerys and Alysanne helped create the crisis of 101 AC, although in this case Alysanne was long dead, is that the historical cases discussed again show that inheritance through a female line was not so great an obstacle provided some 'finessing' was done. Rhaenys' and Laena's claims might still have been set aside, but in light of Rhaenyra's later betrothal to Laenor to strengthen her claim this should have been the obvious solution for Jaehaerys. He could have declared Laenor his heir on the condition that he took his mother's family name as monarch, and that the 3-4 year old Rhaenyra would be betrothed to the 6-7 year old Laenor to unite Rhaenys and Viserys claims. A further step could have been to make Rhaenys, Corlys, Viserys, and Aemma responsible for setting up a regency council along with Jaehaerys, to help govern the realm once the king died and until Laenor came of age. This solution would have been in keeping with past legal precedent and would have offered both parties a measure of satisfaction, while allowing Jaehaerys to assert his authority as king and the final authority over the realm. Instead he abdicated his role and took the out that Vaegon offered him by leaving it up to his vassals to decide, leading to a result that both upended the existing laws of Westeros and laid the seeds of future discord, with Jaehaerys effectively handing the realm a poisoned chalice through his death.

v. Failure of the law under Viserys I

The problem moving from 101 to Rhaenyra's succession and the Dance itself is that while George's handling of the succession issues in 92 and 101 is somewhat shaky, his handling of Rhaenyra and the Dance crisis is suspect. It doesn't help that George's own comments in Hollywood Spotlight Magazine suggest his grasp of male-preference primogeniture is tenuous at best:

Would it have made a difference if Rhaenyra and Aegon were full siblings, only a year apart? If they were full siblings, regardless of age, the son have inherited rather than the daughter. I had to make it more complicated than that. Two children by different mothers, different wives? First wife and second wife? I always look to history for inspiration, and if you look at Henry VIII and his six wives, he had a daughter by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and that was Mary Tudor, Queen Mary I. And then he had a daughter by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and that was Queen Elizabeth. Then by the third wife, Jane Seymour, he finally had a son, Edward VI. He was third in line, but he was the first to become king. History is full of these kinds of conflicts.

Just so we're clear, Henry VIII's line of succession was fairly straightforward at his death. While there was some controversy over Mary being his daughter from an annulled marriage, once he died his crown passed to his only son Edward as expected. Edward's death without issue saw the crown pass to Henry's eldest daughter Mary, and her death without issue saw the crown pass to Henry's only surviving legitimate child, Elizabeth. This line of succession is not unclear or confused from the perspective of male-preference primogeniture, it's George's perspective or lack thereof which is at fault here.

This questionable perspective is where the issue lies, as we quoted F&B earlier on the subject of how 92 and 101 AC were seen as obstacles to Rhaenyra's claim versus Daemon, when they should not have been. 92 AC was the king choosing between his son and his granddaughter, 101 was a contest between his grandson, granddaughter, and great grandchildren via said granddaughter. 92 AC favoured the king's child while 101 was an issue because the king had no children able to succeed him, but Viserys has no such issues aside from the plot making it appear so. Given that the decrees of the council are just that, decrees and not enacted laws, it makes no sense why they should have applications to situations which are not at all analogous. We also have proof from the narrative itself that this is not the case: "The Blacks and the Greens" suggests that Jeyne Arryn might not be disposed to support Aegon since his claim against Rhaenyra might call into question her own claim, but this would have been a far greater issue decades ago had this been the case. We know that Yorbort Royce attended the Great Council on behalf of Jeyne as her regent and protector, and she tells Jace that her cousin Ser Arnold Arryn sought to replace her three times in the past. Viserys and Daemon are also tied to the Arryns and Royces by marriage since 93 and 97 AC respectively; if the 101 decrees were truly so far reaching and favoured the male claimant over the female in all circumstances, Jeyne's continued status as Lady of the Vale would have been a threat to Viserys' rule. We also have to think that Daemon would have seized on House Royce's support of her as reason to have his hated marriage to Rhea Royce annulled; the best answer in-world is that the Council's precedent is nowhere near as far reaching as is suggested.

The plot of the Dance is further hampered for reasons which I discussed in Part One of the first series: based on the inheritance laws of the Seven Kingdoms, Rhaenyra has no claim to the Iron Throne as of Aegon II's birth. Declaring her the heir made complete sense after Aemma's death and to fortify her claim with oaths, especially given how clearly unfit Daemon was to rule. However, Viserys unwillingness to declare an heir while Aemma was alive and able to bear children clearly shows he was aware of how the law worked, and I must stress law. Elio Garcia claimed in a 2015 Forum of Ice and Fire post that primogeniture is "customary, but not binding" in the Seven Kingdoms, and yet F&B which was published in 2018 clearly gives lie to this assertion. Aside from Aegon confirming the laws of inheritance and succession of the realm, as Maester Gawen reminded Maegor when he usurped the throne from Aegon the Uncrowned, Rogar Baratheon also reminds those arguing for Rhaena over Jaehaerys in 48 AC that "this is not Dorne, and Rhaena is not Nymeria." "A Question of Succession" reminds us that it was Aegon and not Visenya who was the first ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and then there's the fact that by 98 AC at least, all of those inheritance and succession laws have been brought together in a single legal code, the Book of Laws. This would include the Widow's Law, which affirmed the right of the eldest son to succeed, with daughters only being able to inherit if there was no son to do so. It also made it illegal to disinherit the child of one marriage for the wife and children of another, but this clearly means taking from one son to give to another or from one daughter to another since putting a daughter from one marriage before the eldest son by another wife would contradict the law itself.

By the time of Aegon II's birth, male-preference primogeniture is well established as the law of the land, but Rhaenyra's claim was secure so long as Viserys had no sons. With not one but three sons born to Alicent, Rhaenyra's claim is supported only through Viserys' ignorance of the law and his failure to govern. For starters, if Rhaenyra's claim can be placed before those of her own blood brothers, then how do the decrees of the Great Council of 101 have any legal basis whatsoever? What is the justification for favouring a king's grandson over his granddaughter, great granddaughter, and great grandson when a king can elevate his daughter above his own sons? Unsurprisingly, these implications are never even considered since the decision of 92 AC and the Council of 101 are only ever brought up as justifications for Aegon II's claim, not that they (the latter at least) form the legal basis of Viserys' own reign and that he is undermining his own legitimacy. Yet Viserys only compounds his error in ignoring the law by refusing to govern: he never calls on the lords of the realm to renew their oath to Rhaenyra despite her now having brothers; he never issues a proclamation to clarify his intentions before the realm; he enacts no law(s) with regards to the Targaryen succession to secure Rhaenyra's claim; nor does he issue any decrees either cementing Rhaenyra's position or removing Alicent and her children from the line of succession.

This situation is made even worse when we consider the wider context of Viserys' reign and the fact that he is threatening a succession crisis by not clarifying his intentions and ignoring his council. No one points out to him that there has not been a seamless succession to the Iron Throne since Aenys succeeded Aegon, as Maegor usurped Aegon the Uncrowned, Jaehaerys overthrew Maegor, and Viserys was made heir by a majority vote of lords of the realm which was subsequently recognized by Jaehaerys. By ignoring the law, Viserys is only guaranteeing that this lack of stability will continue after his death, while the message he sends to the realm by his treatment of Alicent and her children is also disastrous. After all, the Hightowers are not just one of the most wealthy and influential families on the continent, they have also been strong supporters of the monarchy since the conquest. Alicent is now the second Hightower consort to be treated with disdain despite her marrying into the royal family, and with the exception of Rhaena, a trend begun by Maegor is effectively continuing through Viserys by disrespecting his non-Valyrian consort. What message does this send to the rest of the realm that the Targaryens insist on incestuous marriages or marriage with cousins and their Valyrian vassals, while their treatment of even their greatest supporters is contemptuous when it comes to non-Valyrian matches?

Alicent's treatment is also important because it suggests a more sinister side to Viserys' character, aside from his horrific treatment of Aemma Arryn of course. It's unthinkable that Corlys Velaryon would allow Laena and her potential children by Viserys to be disregarded or that Rhaenys would tolerate further insult from her cousin were that the situation. This alone may explain the Hightower match since F&B claims there were murmurs that Otto had desired and sought the match, but only Grand Maester Runciter's suggestion of Laena is explicitly stated in the text. While a member of House Hightower, Otto was also a second son whose power stemmed entirely from being Hand of the King, a position he could lose if the king so chose. As a knight he also lacked the personal wealth and 'hard power' of a Corlys Velaryon, while Oldtown being much farther away from King's Landing than Driftmark means Viserys could get away with more against Alicent than if he married Laena. F&B describes Viserys as amiable and not strong willed and reliant and his council for decision-making, but in the case of the Alicent match "His Grace had his own notion, and no amount of argument would sway him from his course."

It's hard not to see sinister intentions in Viserys' actions, that behind the affable, weak-willed man was a deeply insecure, almost calculating individual who utilized uncertainties and grey areas in any situation to exercise power over others. It would certainly explain why he calls Alicent's children "her blood" despite being their father, while allegedly threatening to make Aegon his heir in order to compel Rhaenyra to marry Laenor. With the exception of Daeron and Tessarion being sent to Oldtown, Alicent's other children are essentially at Viserys and Rhaenyra's mercy; Aegon and Helaena's marriage means they cannot seek allies in other houses or obtain outside income, making them and Aemond entirely reliant on Viserys and his heir for their future livelihood, while the presence of Alicent's children and their dragons also means that Rhaenyra must cleave to her father to maintain her status as heir apparent and secure her own future. From this perspective, Viserys comes off not as a well-meaning, weak-willed king forever mourning the loss of his beloved Aemma as HOTD chose to depict him, but as an abuser and manipulator seeking to maintain his power at all costs. This perspective is not entertained by the narrative however, and subsequent events show little concern for how the rest of the realm might perceive the failed governance of the King.

The disputed parentage of Rhaenyra's three eldest children is the best illustration of the failure of Targaryen government prior to the Dance, and the absence of any kind of response from the kingdoms as a whole. HOTD confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jace, Luke, and Joff were bastards, but the evidence in the books is already overwhelming: Rhaenys children Laena and Laenor show no Baratheon colouring in their hair or eyes (despite Orys Baratheon being a Targaryen bastard), and neither of Laena and Daemon's daughters are anything but typical Valyrians in appearance; Rhaenyra is conventionally Valyrian by all accounts despite her mother's Arryn heritage, and Viserys children by Alicent are likewise despite their mother being a Hightower. Yet when Rhaenyra marries Laenor, a known homosexual who she was forced to marry, and leaves court for Dragonstone in the company of her sworn sword Harwin Strong, all three of her children with "Laenor" look nothing like their parents and are dead ringers for Harwin Strong. This situation suddenly changes after Laenor and Harwin die and Rhaenyra elopes with her uncle and rumored past lover Daemon, whereupon she has two more sons who are conventionally Valyrian in their looks.

This situation means that in addition to becoming king through objectively flawed and bad-faith means, in addition to undermining his authority and Westerosi laws by placing his daughter above his sons as heir, in addition to refusing to use his powers to clarify the situation, and in addition to disrespecting one of House Targaryen's most important vassals, Viserys is allowing his daughter to flaunt the law by claiming her bastards are true born and placing them in the line of succession, while sitting by and allowing her to humiliate another steadfast supporter of House Targaryen in House Velaryon. Despite all of this, the only real blowback from the realm itself comes from Vaemond Velaryon, Corlys' nephew in the books, and his five cousins (the future 'Silent Five'). Corlys takes ill in 127 AC and members of his house gather at Driftmark to discuss the potential succession, with Rhaenyra requesting that Lucerys be made heir to Driftmark since Laena and Laenor are dead. Vaemond presses his claim based on the assertion that Rhaenyras boys are bastards, and she retaliates by having Daemon decapitate him before feeding his corpse to Syrax. When his cousins flee to King's Landing with Vaemond's wife and two sons to plead for justice from Viserys, the King has the tongues of the five removed in keeping with his punishment for claiming that the Velaryon boys are bastards.

Not only was Vaemond's death contrary to the King's decree, which specified muteness and not execution as punishment, but Vaemond is Corlys' bannerman not Rhaenyras. It is the duty of Corlys or the King to deliver these punishments, not hers or Daemons, which renders Rhaenyra and her consort murderers by default. Not only do we have the laundry list above of all the failings of Viserys and Rhaenyra, but we now have the heir to the throne and her husband being guilty of murder and the King refusing to acknowledge the crime or deliver justice. This is where the edited nature of the narrative completely undercuts the writing, because the implications of Viserys and Rhaenyra's actions here and prior cannot be adequately addressed in the Dance itself. A member of one of the oldest houses in Westeros and one of House Targaryen's most steadfast bannermen has been murdered by the heir apparent and her consort, in full view of the realm, and the King took the side of the perpetrators over the victims. The absence of the Silent Five in the narrative of the Dance until after the war ends, combined with the widespread support Rhaenyra enjoys at the outset of the Dance, cannot be reconciled with the scale of this event and Viserys' previous failures of governance. Vaemond's death alone should alter the course of the Dance given the terrible message it sends to other vassals, but because The Rogue Prince was preceded by The Princess and the Queen and no alterations were made to better edit the two together for F&B, this cannot happen.

vi. Conclusion

The 'fix-its' for this part are fairly simple, since my opinion hasn't changed since I wrote the conclusion of my military analysis series: Rhaenyra must be an only child and Viserys legal heir. Rhaenyra and Viserys transgressions are easier to accommodate if the law is on their side in the matter of the succession, meaning that the conflict between Rhaenyra and Aegon's camps becomes one of politics from the start and thus a more genuinely complex and complicated scenario. George's scenario as it stands requires us and the setting to completely ignore how the laws of the Seven Kingdoms work, because the plot is at odds with the world-building. This is not a problem if Aegon, son of Baelon lives to adulthood and is the one to marry Alicent and father Aegon II, Helaena, Aemond, and Daeron instead of Viserys. Alicent's husband can die and Viserys can either marry her to silence those calling for him to remarry and have more children, or simply point to Alicent's four and say that his youngest brother already gave him 'spares.' The fact that the Council of 101 set aside the female claimants can be used in Aegon's favour, while also pointing out that Rhaenyra is the King's own child and thus a direct heir, with the issues truly arising with Rhaenyra's bastards. Obviously George placed himself in a bind since Stannis says Rhaenyra usurped her brother's throne in ACOK, but making them step-siblings could at least mitigate this problem.

That wraps it up for part one; I hope you've what I've written thus far! Part two onwards is when we'll get into the military dimensions of the Dance in greater detail than I managed to do originally. Having established the nature of the Targaryen political system and the issues with it that led to the Dance, we'll step down a level to discuss some of the overarching factors that should govern how the Dance was fought. Stay tuned next time for "Environment and Logistics in the Dance!"

[litnerdwrites]

"You shouldn't criticise/analyse SJM's characters/worldbuilding because it just isn't that deep." Is a take I see a lot when someone analyses or criticises SJM, and while I get where you're coming from, I do have a couple of issues with this take.

First of all, it's important to be able to criticise all media, even your your favourites, no matter how good or bad they are. Media of all formats is a product of it's time and goes a long way into helping us learn about the sociopolitical climate of the time it was written, from the past, present or future. As a result, no piece of media can be considered 'perfect' or without points to criticise, and analysing it can give us perspective on issues we may not even realise exist. This is true for most, if not all media, from books to news channels to music or tv shows.

If you don't want to analyse or criticise it though, that's fine. Just ignore posts and videos of people who do, since there's no use in telling them that they're wasting their time. Some people enjoy criticising/analysing the media they consume, but if you don't, then just let them be.

Now, here's the bigger issue I have with this take. It might really not be that deep to you, but it might really be that deep for other people. Especially since SJM books have a pretty young fanbase. The books are YA, and are advertised as being for ages 12 and up.

Many kids, young girls mostly, that read, even just the first book, are shown Feyre forgiving Rhys at the end of the book after SA-ing her for three months or Feyre getting back with Tamlin after he watched her get tortured for three months, and romanticise it. Then there's the second book, where she ends up with Rhysand despite what he did, and even lets him do it again at the CON.

Nesta is pressured by Elain and Feyre to let her use their home for something incredibly dangerous despite her very reasonable concerns, only to then be insulted by Feyre's friends for a situation he wasn't even there for, only for some romance to between them to be hinted at. In Acowar she's further pressured by her sister, and strangers who hate her, to put her healing and coping from her trauma aside to push her clear boundaries to help her sister even more despite her and her friends not having a great track record of holding up their ends of deals from Nesta's experience.

And don't even get me started on the train wreck that was ACOFAS- ACOSF. If these actions and behaviours were acknowledged as being toxic or wrong, that would be fine, somewhat. However, the narrative paints these characters and behaviour in a positive light, despite the fact they aren't. For young readers to look at this, and to idolise these characters and their behaviours, thinking that it's what they want in a partner, is disturbing.

It's fine to not want to critique or thoroughly analyse a book, but discrediting people who do, especially if they're pointing out harmful behaviour being perpetuated in said books, is not. Ignoring the harmful behaviour these books perpetuate is making you a part of the problem, and I truly hope that your view on this behaviour would change if it was coming from a living person instead of a fictional one. Be it towards you or somebody you know.

[wardevilwins]

What is the point of a hero?

Anticlimax in Chainsaw Man Part 2

Part 2 is garnering more and more criticism as it extends its excruciating middle portion towards the inevitable collapse. There are talks of Fujimoto losing the plot, skipping over important details, the story not making sense, Asa being flattened into a supporting character for Denji, and more.

To my mind, these criticisms center on the same thing: anticlimax.

The Falling Arc ends with the first major anticlimax of the entire Chainsaw Man series. That moment turned out to be a sendoff of many aspects of the series which had defined its identity in part one: the breakneck pacing, the grotesque monsters, the ultraviolence, the detailed rendering, and most significantly, the cycles of catharsis.

Part One was a face up rendition of the heroes journey: the cathartic cycle. This cycle was paralleled with the hedonistic cycle of consumerism. From the very origins of the series, Fujimoto was critiquing the heroic narrative by exploring a different perspective on the hero’s existence. In the lineage of Devil Man, Evangelion, Utena, etc. Fujimoto considers the harm that heroism does to the hero.

However, in part one, we don’t understand this dynamic until the final arcs of the series. The hero’s journey is played mostly straight, with exciting adventures, a lovable cast, a host of creepy monsters, despicable villains, cosmic fantasy. On the surface, this is normal Shonen Jump. The walls are closing in behind the scenes.

This is the mechanic behind the Makima turn. It is a reveal, but not a twist. We are well aware that Makima is not human, is suspicious, and has some malicious intent surrounding Denji. The reveal is what those intentions are, and what makes it so compelling is the nature of her intentions.

We learn that all the events of this story — the job, the romance, the organization, the friends, the family, the adventure — were being manipulated with the express purpose of destroying Denji. His cycle of catharsis was always leading him to his doom. It was made to destroy him. His tragic flaw is ignorance: he didn’t stop to think about what was going on.

Part 2 picks up on Denji in this same state. He is still chasing the cycle. He goes out, defeats the monster, everyone praises him. It’s great. However, we see the same lingering signs that something is off. The people he abandons in his fight against Cockroach. Corrupt government institutions using him as a popular spectacle.

But in the first Asa-focused section of the story, we the readers are also locked into the cycle. Asa follows the same journey — literally the same, from bat devil, to the eternity devil, to a final climactic battle where she faces her childhood trauma and arises an actualized hero. Or did she?

Because that isn’t what happened to Denji. The cycle of catharsis was not a journey of self discovery; it was a trap. A distraction. A cover for the underlying intentions of the state as embodied by Makima. Even the idea of Chainsaw Man as a hero was a part of the plot to destroy Denji’s life.

But with Asa, as we approach the apex of her story, right as she has asked Chainsaw Man to save her, and she herself is using her own powers to save him as well, overcoming her fear of the other to risk her own life, plummeting towards certain doom! How will they escape!

They don’t. They get eaten. And somehow Nayuta is there and she just saved them. ??????????????????????????????????????????

It’s like their powers didn’t even matter! What about all that character development? They just lose? And then it doesn’t even matter that they lost? Then what was the point?

What is the point of a hero?

Asa’s introduction ends with the series’s first anticlimax, but that will not be the last. In fact, it is only the beginning. Because for the rest of the series, it will be constant. Every single tension will be diffused. Every single horror will be dodged. Every build will break.

Let’s go down the list:

Denji is forbidden from being Chainsaw Man, and his identity is stolen. He isn’t Chainsaw Man anymore.

Denji thinks about rejecting Fumiko’s advances, but can’t.

It appears Fumiko and Denji will fight, but then they don’t.

Asa becomes a minor celebrity and cult figurehead, but we never see any of it.

It seems like Miri will be Denji’s friend, but he’s an insane cultist.

It seems like Miri and the other hybrids will go on a spree, but Quanxi stops them.

It seems like Denji, Nayuta, and Fumiko will have to fight a mob of monsters, but Quanxi saves them.

It seems like Yoru will fight Yoshida, but he runs away.

Denji fights and defeats the hybrids, but is attacked and captured by a random mob.

Nayuta is in danger, but we cut away.

Denji gets chopped into pieces, and is quickly put back together.

Quanxi appears again, defeats everyone, but immediately surrenders.

Asa’s time as a hero is explained away as a passing fad.

As a reader, I can’t lie, it is annoying. And aggravating. And it is so blatantly intentional that it pisses you off. Fujimoto is refusing to give catharsis. Even the climactic moment of Denji’s arc — facing down Barem in front of his burning home — is not catharsis. It is torture. More building trauma and tension. Never any satisfaction.

Basically, he’s narratively edging his audience. And face up telling you that this is what is going on too. He even does it as a gag during Fumiko’s introduction. He gives a little peek at the catharsis that he knows we all want to see, but he won’t do it. He can do it — he was doing it all through Asa’s development — but he is deciding not to, and showing you that he’s deciding. He’s playing with his cards face up, but folding every hand.

Asa’s celebrity being totally sidelined is by far the most controversial of these instances. Her introduction fully engages us in her hero’s journey — a true hero’s journey. She isn’t a hedonist like Denji; she has ideals. She is fighting to save people. She actualizes. She becomes a real hero of the city.

But we don’t see it. Instead, we leave her story and look at Denji, who explicitly can’t be a hero. And through Denji’s story, we see the other side. Asa’s heroism is Denji’s downfall. She is getting everything that he was after. We understand what Asa has by what Denji lacks.

Asa’s catharsis is hidden. Or rather, her heroic catharsis is hidden. We got to see her journey to becoming a hero — to taking Chainsaw Man’s place — but not what happens when she is living that life. The same kind of life Denji lived under Makima.

Denji had Makima rooting for Pochita, manipulating and deceiving him. Asa has Fami rooting for Yoru, manipulating and deceiving her. Makima made Denji a hero to manipulate the public. Fami made Asa a hero to manipulate the public.

So in some sense, there’s no need to show it because we’ve seen it all before. But you still could. And it would be fun. Everyone would like it. It’s fine to, right?

Right?

Running parallel to the anticlimax is a long winded critique of popular culture. Particularly fandom culture. That is to say, hero worship.

The members of the Church worship Chainsaw Man because he saved them. The media uses Chainsaw Man and Asa as distractions from the horrors of life under threat of devils. Fans of a certain idol are driven to stress and conspiracy by a scandal. Meanwhile, wars are breaking out, government facilities are being invaded, people are turning into monsters.

Their love of Chainsaw Man turns them into monsters.

Barem and Fumiko are a notable skewering of the real-world Chainsaw Man fanbase. Fujimoto roots his critique of hero stories in a critique of his own hero story. While it is a reckoning for his fans, it is more so a reckoning for himself and the impact that his story had on the world. What was the point of what he did? What did it accomplish?

As of writing, the story isn’t finished, so the ideas aren’t complete, but at least at this point (chapter 164) it doesn’t look good. We see Fumiko is lost in her sexual obsession, abusing her target. We see Barem is completely insane, overwhelmed by a glorification of violence. We see a vast mass of fans whose obsession is harnessed to turn them into mindless killers.

You cannot help but think about the Chainsaw Man fandom in the wake of the anime. Harrassing the series director, constant asinine opinions all over the internet, the discourse around MAPPA — not around Chainsaw Man at all. Egregiously horny art. Legitimately disturbing sexualization. Popular response focused on the action and violence, not on the meaning of the story.

Is this what he wanted? Is this what heroes inspire? Is this what happens when you give people catharsis?

Is this what heroes are?

So, for Asa, he doesn’t do it. He won’t do it. He won’t create a cycle of catharsis. He won’t make a heroic tragedy. Instead, he will divert, avoid, hide, pause, deny. When she follows the path, we look away. When we want the hero, we get nothing instead.

Fame — heroism — isn’t a triumph. It’s a flash in the pan. An illusion. A tool of distraction. A vector of misogyny — society. A corruption of the self. For the hero and the fans.

Denji’s long arc is the positive exploration of the negative space Asa’s story leaves. Look away from the hero at hand and look at the hero that was. Look at what it did to him, what it does to him. Think about what this story does to you. Think about what it does to the world.

We are done with the spectacle. We’ve left catharsis behind. We’re living beyond the high. So, what is there? What can there be? What other story can you tell? How do we relate, exist, outside of saved and savior? If the hero is a lie, who will save the world? Can the world be saved?

We’ll have to find out.

[flightfoot]

The thing about the London special not outright accepting or condemning Marinette's actions itself, to me, feels like giving her more sympathy and grace than she deserves for her actions. There is no moral ambiguity here. Marinette is 100% in the wrong. And the London special goes out of its way to try and frame this as some "no right answer" type of situation and takes away every opportunity it can to have someone meaningfully confront Marinette about the impact her actions could have on Adrien.

They deny her the chance to even consider it beyond "is lying wrong?" She's almost gaslighting her boyfriend into thinking his abuser was a good person, and now she doesn't even have the excuse of not knowing how bad it was. The whole special focused on how awful Marinette felt for doing something so despicable. And I apologize for my harsh words, but that's really just how bad it is. There's no way around it, and it's honestly quite disheartening to see all the posts about Marinette being under a lot of stress and being 14 or whatever. Like sure, but I don't see nearly the same number of posts sympathizing with Adrien, who is by all means Marinette's own victim now. And anytime someone points out the very reasonable critique that Marinette is doing an incredibly bad thing, they get swamped with these excuses.

Hm... okay. So I agree that Marinette's actions in the London Special were wrong, and that she should have told Adrien the truth, even if it hurt, instead of lying to him. I disagree about there being no moral ambiguity, since "wanting Adrien not to be hurt worse than he already is and wanting to honor the last wish of a dead man, even if he was awful" are reasonable things to value, they just don't override Adrien's right to know about things that concern him, and the way she's done it is likely just as, if not more upsetting than just telling Adrien the truth.

So with the focus on Marinette during the special (and in a bunch of the fanfics that were made based off of the special, though there haven't been all that many) being mostly around Marinette's feelings about the lie, being sympathetic towards her... yeah I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think showing her perspective is valuable to understand why she did what she did, and to show that she was conflicted about it and honestly believed that she was doing the right thing, or trying to do the right thing at least.

On the other hand, it did sometimes feel like the London Special went beyond "these are the reasons Marinette did this, and this is the effect this decision has had on her, please empathize with her reasoning even if you disagree with her choices (even she isn't sure her choices were correct)" to "Poor Marinette, struggling under the burden of the choices she made, but she will bravely shoulder them for Adrien's happiness." I thought it mostly did okay with balancing it except for the last part, with Ladybug and Chat Noir talking about secrets and them both hugging each other over the burden of what they can't tell their partner. Because Ladybug COULD tell Chat Noir, and the person she's hiding all this stuff from IS him, so it felt icky to me to have him help in comforting her for it, when he didn't even understand what he was comforting her over.

I have the same problem with most of the fanfics about the London Special which have cropped up. I'm okay with there being some sympathy towards Marinette in the narrative for being conflicted and feeling like she should lie to Adrien "for his own good", given that she has good intentions, but a lot of it traipses into "poor Marinette is struggling heroically with having to sacrifice her commitment to the truth for the sake of Adrien's happiness." I especially don't like when Adrien feels guilty about Marinette feeling bad over that. While that's not totally out of character for him, I feel like his feelings over his own horrific situation should be centered more, rather than Marinette's guilt over feeling like she should lie to him in an effort to make his situation seem better.

Marinette IS only 14 and I can see why she honestly thinks that lying to Adrien about his father being a better person than he is would be better for him, she hasn't exactly had a lot of classes on the effects of child abuse and the different forms it could take. But there is the angle that Adrien is ALSO 14 and doesn't even have the luxury of any amount of control over the horrible situation he's in with his father.

The main sympathy I've seen given to Marinette is that well, what would YOU do if you were thrown into the situation of having to tell your crush that his father was a supervillain, he was gonna die anyway, and decided to do the one good thing of sacrificing what remained of his life to save your substitute mom? Which... yeah I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable having that conversation, but I wouldn't lie to Adrien either, I'd foist it off on Nathalie. (I do agree with the criticism that Nathalie ought to have been responsible for telling Adrien all these uncomfortable truths, given how deeply she was involved in both Gabriel's supervillainy and in Adrien's creation, but the show has decided to give Marinette all the power and all the responsibility of deciding what to tell Adrien, so here we are).

I would like there to be more attention paid to how Adrien must be feeling after all of this, with finding out his father died and being led to believe that he was actually trying to protect him the whole time, and dealing with that knowledge, than just sympathy for Marinette's position. Marinette had a choice in what to do. Adrien did not.

[renaultphile]

More of a novelist than a queer......

Gay fictions : Wilde to Stonewall : studies in a male homosexual literary tradition by Claude J Summers.

I recently discovered this book searching for material on The Charioteer. Although this post is mostly about the things I disagree with in it, I do recommend the chapter on The Charioteer for the historical and political context he gives, both from the US and UK.

What really got to me was the rather patronising suggestion that the poor benighted English lady accidentally wrote a quite good gay novel.  

A personal response to the book is one thing, but when it comes to imputing motive and intent to the author (as he does liberally), I feel compelled to challenge some of his assumptions.  It is true that some of the material I am referencing may not have been so easily available in 1990.  All the more reason to draw attention to it here, then.

This paragraph sums up his attitude pretty well:

The unconscious homophobia of The Charioteer results in part from a failure of vision, but it also reflects the extreme difficulties faced by writers who attempted to broach the issue of homosexuality in 1950s popular literature. At the same time that the novel mirrors 1950s homophobia, however, it also subverts that ideology, and in a peculiarly satisfying way. The context in which the book was written thus provides a gauge against which to measure its successes even as it also helps explain its failures.

Summers seems to make the assumption that the entire social context which Renault depicts in the novel is inseparable from her own attitudes and beliefs.  Yet her other writings show that she did not believe in the theories of Freud, or in the ‘sickness’ model of homosexuality, or in the inevitability of psychological harm.  I expect that is why Alec reports that psycho-analysis cured his stammer, not his sexuality.  A nice bit of symbolism there.  In ‘The Friendly Young Ladies’, she ruthlessly satirises the medical model of homosexuality through the antics of Dr Peter Bracknell. 

He continues his argument as follows:

The [accommodationist] movement's premium on respectability......its acquiescence to religious, medical, and legal professionals as authorities who are qualified to dictate the nature of discourse about homosexuality — all parallel the strategies adopted by Renault, who determinedly presents Laurie, Ralph, and Andrew as rare respectable homosexuals, only slightly "bent," and willing and able to adjust to societal demands as articulated by the "authorities."

The important caveat here is that these leading characters see themselves as ‘rare respectable homosexuals’.  It’s not the same thing.  Once we analyse the actual behaviour of the characters, the ‘good gay bad gay’ split starts to break down pretty quickly.

Another crucial aspect of this book is the degree to which the action is filtered through a narrator who is intelligent but judgemental, hyper-vigilant but prone to self-delusion, intuitive but often inarticulate, and almost completely lacking in experience.  The other characters, though vividly drawn through speech and action, are given no interior monologue.  This mode of narrative gives her the perfect vehicle to rehearse and critique all kinds of of theories, social perspectives, and psychological responses.  The clichés, the stereotypes, the prejudice, the unsolicited and contradictory advice, are all a necessary part of the story because it is a story of discovery. 

It seems unlikely that she went to all the trouble of espousing principles she did not believe in, just to court publishers.  We know she had trouble getting published in the US, but the cuts she made between 1953 and 1959 show no sign of appeasement  - quite the opposite with her removal of Ralph’s disparaging use of the term ‘red’, which suggests she did not want to give succour to the McCarthy-ites by using the term.  (By the way thank you to @awizardcommandingsleep for pointing out that cut.)

So what is the significance of writing about people who were invisible to society, and perhaps more importantly, did not wish to reject it?  Technical, scientific or political knowledge tends to have limited scope for breaking down prejudice.  More commonly the change begins when people meet each other.  But how can that process start when those people are invisible?  The paradox is laid out particularly well in this post of an article from One Magazine.  

One of the things a novelist can do is bridge that gap of knowledge.  Anyone who picks up this book can meet these men. Her readers can get to know them and like or loathe them as people, not as ciphers.  Summers identifies Laurie’s remark to Alec, ‘You’re more a Doctor than you’re a queer’ as problematic.  I imagine for Renault it was literally the point of the book. 

Consequently, I would argue that The Charioteer has aged pretty gracefully, moving seamlessly from the contemporary to the historical. Lord knows, it is not the only story, and this is not the only way to tell it, but it is an important one, well told.

[quibbs126]

I can finally post this, after weeks!

But yeah, this here is something I made to celebrate the 9th anniversary of Evoland 2

Some people may remember this work in progress from weeks ago, but now I can finally show the finished product. Which I finished 2 weeks ago

It’s based on the 3D picture you get when you finish the game, specially the 100% completion, and more specifically, my screenshot that I took when I first completed the game and got 100%

Though I should probably also note that this was the only picture I had of the beach scene until I was mostly done with the picture, so there are some inaccuracies between it and the original. Except for Reno in place of the Prophet, that was completely intentional

This game was I think the first (and will probably be the only) game I’ve ever 100% completed, and when I did it the first time, it was just because I knew that games would have extra things for those who 100% it, and I wanted to see what the game would give me. It’s the only time I was so invested in a game that I had to know what I’d get if I got everything. It’s also the only game where losing nearly 10 hours of progress due to a (maybe) glitch does not make me give up the game in frustration, but instead complete the entire thing within a single school week

I may gripe about my issues with the game, but I absolutely love it, and I have a lot of fun playing it. Well, aside from the parts I’m bad at, but that’s just because I’m bad at them. I feel like I have next to nothing to complain about from a gameplay perspective (which is in part because I don’t know how to critique gameplay, but also because I think any issues I have are my own fault), it’s just narrative stuff. And even then, I wouldn’t nitpick it so much if I wasn’t so invested in the world, story and characters

Maybe today I’ll start replaying it again, seeing how I’m pretty sure I’m free today from any schoolwork

I’m still holding on to some admittedly delusional hope that a 3rd game could release one day, even if I know it’ll almost certainly have nothing to do with this one, but even if it never does, I’ll still have this game to play over and over again, so I can accept it

I was disappointed that I missed the last two, since I first played the game in 2022, but not this year, I remembered!

Now to just talk about the art itself, the reason there’s two versions is because I originally made the background lineless, but after finishing the characters I thought it maybe clashed a bit too much, so I made a duplicate of the picture to do a lined version. But I also spent so long on the lineless version that I didn’t want to just leave it in the void, so I’m showing it too

Admittedly now I think I can say the lined version probably is the better one, but I can still show off both

I used the card colors for the characters, since all of them have cards for reference, but now I’m looking at the colors and thinking they look somewhat wrong. At least on Menos

Also as mentioned prior, I switched out the Prophet for Reno. I know I’m biased but I really think he’d fit in this picture of all the main characters far more than the Prophet, considering he’s kind of the reason the plot started, the second half happened, and he’s the main motivation for one of our party members. I mean, I see why the Prophet’s there in the original. He’s really the only other semi-important character with a 3D model, and Reno never had one, so they’d have to make an entirely new one just for this extra thing. Also it doesn’t make sense for him to have a 3D model in the first place, especially not of his Present era self. But not only is this now a drawing where I have the power to do what I want, this scene isn’t canon in the first place, so put Reno in the background there!

Overall though, I’m honestly surprised the piece turned out as good as it did. Those who follow me know that I was really struggling with drawing during the summer, more specifically drawing people and the Evoland 2 cast. But despite all that, I think the characters turned out pretty well. Certainly not the best, but better than I was expecting. And not only that, but the background turned out so much better than I thought it would, especially since I don’t usually do backgrounds. Though I suppose it does help to have a reference for all this though. But yeah, there was a reason I was so proud of how the sketch turned out, and while the final product may not have entirely been what I was hoping for after the sketch, it still turned out pretty good

As long as I can remember it next year (which I really hope I can, considering that’s the 10th anniversary), I’ll try to make something there too, hopefully with much improved drawing skills, since I’m still trying to figure all that out again still

Not sure what I’ll draw then. Maybe I could redraw the beach scene, or make an entirely new beach scene concocted by my brain. But it’s also the 10th anniversary next year, so maybe it should be something more special

Ah well, that’s next year’s problem. For now, have this to celebrate the game’s anniversary. For the minuscule amount of people who actually play this game, I guess

[milevenstancyendgame]

Warning: A little bit anti? Mostly critique of Jonathan's role in the narrative, but I don't like him, so take it with a grain of salt (or not).

While rewatching s1, I realised that the lack of understanding/conflict between Joyce and Jonathan is paralleled in the lack of understanding/conflict between Nancy and Jonathan.

In both cases, the other person is coming from a place of deep emotionality and intuition (Joyce being upset because Will went missing and sensing/perceiving that something weird is going on and that Will is trying to talk to her; whereas Nancy was upset because of the bullying she had to endure at work and she intuited that Mrs Driscoll's weird story had a deeper, important meaning).

But Jonathan is emotionally so closed down, he can't perceive what Joyce/Nancy perceive, and he can't open up to their experience, because he's barely keeping it together himself and is using all of his energy to suppress his emotions and just do what is expected of him/endure things (as a result of his childhood trauma).

Frankly I'm no fan of Jonathan, but the fact that all other characters have had life-changing experiences that led to varying amounts of personal growth, often centered around the theme of opening up, and Jonathan alone seems to remain completely stuck behind his emotional walls, is very disappointing.

From a storytelling perspective, his arc from s1 - s4 doesn't seem much like an arc, more like a depressing pattern. He bonded with Nancy, but it didn't work out (from the way s4 set up Stancy again, it just really doesn't look Jancy will be endgame). And yes, he made a new friend, but now he's smoking weed instead of growing up. His sole purpose in the story seems to be a catalyst for other characters. It's just very dissatisfying and such a waste of potential.

And I'd be honestly angry if he sacrifices himself for someone in s5, because that would really be bad storytelling. Not putting enough effort into a character's development, and then trying to "solve" that issue by getting rid of them/turning them into a martyr, because eh, they can't overcome their issues. That would be a horrible, harmful message to people with similar issues.

[iridescentoracle]

So, I talked the other day a Whole Bunch about how I’d rewrite Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney to make it actually good. Obviously, I’ve thought about the subsequent games too. It took me a lot longer to figure out what I’d do with Dual Destinies, and I’m still not sure about Spirit of Justice, but one thing that made a lot of stuff click into place was thinking about the original trilogy, and how it ultimately can be boiled down to three main themes/plotlines:

Satire/Critique of the Japanese legal system

Generational Trauma Surrounding the Kurain Channeling Legacy

[gestures at Phoenix and Edgeworth’s relationship]

There’s a lot of reasons the so-called “Apollo Justice trilogy” games all feel wildly disconnected from each other and also mostly the original trilogy, but I think a lot of it comes down to how the themes/plotlines from the original games get lost or are irrelevant because we’ve got a new cast of characters, but there’s nothing tying the new games together but a shared (and much more dramatically expanding) cast of characters.

So for this proposed rewrite project, I’m fixing that. The Apollo Justice trilogy is going to be a trilogy, and that means shared/extended themes and plots that tie all three games together, and tie this trilogy back to the original even though most of the original cast, in this version, have even smaller roles (see: Apollo’s shitty mentor in my rewrite of AA4 being a separate person from Phoenix, who we barely see, etc).

So:

The legal system satire/critique stays consistent in rewritten DD & SOJ, instead of getting completely forgotten about/undermined in DD and doubled down to the point of losing all meaning in SOJ.

Generational Trauma Surrounding the Troupe Gramarye Legacy

honestly i haven’t figured this part out yet but it involves apollo somehow. this rewrite project is a work-in-progress and i’m mostly figuring it out as i go

I’m going to get to each of these in turn, starting (more or less) with the legal system critique, although it’s about to look like I’m mostly complaining about bad writing (in the form of character actions that seem to have been written without any thought actually put into making them make sense from the perspective of the characters in question), which is fair because I kind of am; bear with me, though, I promise it’ll be relevant and I think it’s a pretty solid illustration of how the thematic issues are inherently also narrative/characterization issues and vice versa.

So, let’s talk about Edgeworth and Blackquill’s plan and why the hell they thought that was a good idea. I swear to god, I cannot figure out how that entire plotline makes any sense, unless Edgeworth worked out that Blackquill thought he was covering for Athena and also that the real murderer was probably the Phantom purely via considering the parallels to his own life.

Because, like, the thing is. “this convicted murderer is allowed to be a prosecutor in the last few months before his execution (for murder), thanks to the machinations of a man who has dedicated the last like eight years of his life to being Staunchly Anti-Prosecutorial-Corruption” is just. completely nonsensical. So Edgeworth has to have some reason to think he wasn’t actually the murderer. But the canon trial makes it pretty clear Blackquill was the only suspect thanks to #1 nobody checking the security footage carefully #2 Blackquill making sure Athena wasn’t one, so why would Edgeworth think that? But for that matter, how did Edgeworth even know Blackquill, like, existed, let alone learn about the Phantom? Like, maybe he heard about Blackquill from a third party and got curious and looked into things, or was, like, looking through records of Prosecutors Found Guilty Of Crimes for some reason and found a case he and Phoenix hadn’t been involved in (for once) and had Questions, okay, but he wouldn’t have found out about the Phantom either of those ways, so even if he also somehow learned about him separately, why would he think to connect the two? So he has to have learned about Blackquill’s information on the Phantom from Blackquill, but why would Blackquill confide in someone else like that?

The only way I can make any of those pieces fit together in my head is if Edgeworth figured out Blackquill was attempting to cover for a kid who set off all of the Parallels To DL-6 alarm bells in Edgeworth’s head, and Edgeworth’s two mental options are “just fucking leave. run for it now. never think about this again” and “okay but what if neither the kid nor the other adult in the room was actually the person who murdered the kid’s parent. maybe there was a secret third adult who killed them for mysterious reasons” and he picks metaphorical door #2 (rather than leaving through literal door #1 and going home) and man do i want to see what that conversation/logic chess sequence looked like. At what point did Edgeworth contemplate the possibility of watching Phoenix cross-examine the defendant’s pet hawk

Also, crucially when i say Edgeworth picks #2, I mean he says that out loud, bc I really don’t buy that Blackquill would have just casually confided in him (or anyone) about the Phantom, but Edgeworth working out that Blackquill was trying to protect Athena (who he thinks really did it) and immediately going “okay i see why you assumed it was her but have you considered: what if there was secretly a third party who was the real murderer all along” does seem like the one thing that would actually get him to talk.

And tbh? I think everything makes more sense and is even more compelling if Edgeworth and Blackquill’s plan isn’t just to lure out the Phantom bc he’s a ~super spy with nefarious motives etc, but to lure out the real murderer, now that they’ve realized he probably exists.

To be clear, i don’t think that’s what was intended to have happened in canon, but i think it’s what would have to be true for Edgeworth’s involvement not to be hopelessly stupid and counterproductive.

And this is what I mean about the problems with the characterization/narrative choices being intimately intertwined with the thematic issues, because Edgeworth’s whole deal is fundamentally tied up in the legal system satire of the first three games (and Investigations 1 & 2, for that matter) and so it’s incoherent/inconsistent/nonsensical on a character/narrative level and a thematic level both at the same time. If we’re supposed to believe he did something as stupid as “letting a convicted murderer be a prosecutor without a reason to believe he had not, in fact, committed any crimes” then it undercuts his entire arc up to this point. Still, even that proposed backstory/context, while it would at least provide an understandable motivation/train of reasoning that would actually be in keeping with what we know about Edgeworth up to this point, is ultimately rooted in the Phantom plotline as it exists in canon, which I think is fundamentally flawed on three different levels, and genuinely fixing Dual Destinies requires completely rewriting it.

The three central problems with the Phantom plot, IMO, are actually pretty simple:

The legal system critique that ultimately was part of the heart of the first four games gets completely forgotten about.

Ableism

The stakes are too high and not personal enough, which undercuts the emotional impact and weakens the audience’s emotional investment.

To elaborate, because I’m not sure all of those are equally evident at a glance:

One of our main antagonists is a prosecutor who’s also a convicted murderer and… the worst thing he actually does is be mean to people. No evidence tampering, no forgery, no witness suppression, no actual murder. He’s just kinda scary-looking. The ultimate main villain of the game is a cop! He spends most of the game being nice and friendly and helpful but at the end of the day he committed a whole bunch of crimes, Dual Destinies says ACAB oh wait no never mind he’s actually an imposter and the real police detective he’s impersonating was probably genuinely a really good guy.

The whole “the Phantom has no emotions and therefore doesn’t really count as a person I guess so it’s okay to prove his identity even though the very explicitly established consequences are He Will Be Assassinated Right There in The Courtroom, Which Is Exactly What Happens but everyone’s pretty okay with that because hey, he didn’t have emotions, it’s fine, he’s exempted from, like, deserving basic human rights I guess???” is uh. you know. sure a choice they made

It sounds ridiculous to call the original games “grounded” or “realistic,” but like… at the end of the day, the culprits in the first four games are all just… people? The most powerful people who turned out to be murderers were, like, the CEO of a company, a chief of police, a popular actor, etc. Those are real kinds of people who do normal crimes in real life. The characters are ridiculous and over-the-top but at the end of the day the stakes mostly felt high because they were personal. Even when there’s magic involved, the actual crimes are ultimately things that could have happened for mundane reasons too! All the drama with spirit channeling and at the end of the day, half the spirit channeling-related crimes in the original trilogy come down to someone trying to kill or disgrace her sister and niece so that her own kid will inherit, or a teenage girl dealing with emotional abuse/neglect trying to escape and then trying to cover her tracks or get revenge on people she felt had personally hurt her. But now our stakes involve international espionage and a super-spy who can look like anyone? Absurd as it is to say, Dual Destinies doesn’t feel grounded the way the original trilogy did, and outside Athena’s trial, the personal aspects of the cases mostly come down to “the victim and/or suspect are cared about by the characters we care about,” which isn’t enough to bring the absurdly high stakes back down to something it’s easy to genuinely be invested in.

So. Let’s fix all of those. Conveniently, they all have the same solution: Bobby Fulbright is genuinely a cop. He’s exactly who he seems like up until the canon reveal. He is good-natured and cheerful and energetic and mostly pretty helpful to our protagonists. He’s also the man who murdered Metis Cykes and Clay Terran.

Instead of international espionage, he was engaged in corporate espionage. He was a security guard at GYAXA who got bribed to steal some of Metis Cykes’ research, but got caught and panicked and stabbed her. Even after Simon Blackquill was found guilty, he still felt too nervous to keep working at more or less the scene of the crime, and quit the private security guard gig in favor of becoming a cop. Seven years later, new Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth continued his whole signature anti-corruption deal, going through records of convictions of past prosecutors & law enforcement officers, and something about Blackquill’s conviction didn’t sit right, so he arranged to meet the guy in person. Hearing the story from Blackquill’s own mouth, Edgeworth saw some parallels between UR-1 and DL-6, figured out out that Blackquill had falsely confessed under the belief Athena Cykes had accidentally killed her own mother, and (mostly for DL-6 reasons) theorized that there could have been a third person on the scene who managed to escape undetected. Investigating the evidence, he found the security footage of someone in a security guard uniform and Metis Cykes’ jacket leaving the scene of the crime, and met with Blackquill again with that information and a record of Athena testifying at Blackquill’s trial that she’d seen a stranger in her mother’s lab before Simon arrived. At the time she’d been written off as lying or confused due to the trauma, but with the security footage proving her right, Edgeworth and Blackquill realize that she (unlike the security camera) likely saw the security guard’s face, and so would be the only person who could potentially identify him as Metis Cykes’ real killer—thus putting Athena in danger, if they ever happened to meet.

Without actual evidence linking the unknown security guard to the crime, though—no unidentified fingerprints had ever been found, and the footage didn’t show his face, so there was no way to figure out which of the security guards employed at the time was the real killer, if any records even still existed seven years later given that none of the security guards had been seriously considered as suspects at the time—the new evidence wouldn’t be enough to re-open Blackquill’s case, let alone overturn his conviction. (I have no idea if that would be true IRL, in the US or Japan, but this is Japanifornia, it’s fine, that’s how it works here because I say so. The burden of proof is on the defense and defendants are guilty until proven innocent.) Worse news: this whole discovery happened right after Blackquill’s execution date was finally set, severely curtailing their ability to investigate in any kind of normal sane way because Oh Boy That Time Limit, so: time for an absolutely terrible insane plan that would absolutely ruin the anti-corruption reputation Edgeworth has spent the last ten years working very hard to develop if it didn’t pay off. Also fuck it, Edgeworth says: let’s get Phoenix Wright involved, this is exactly the kind of batshit gamble he thrives on.

(Note: this game rewrite is set post–my Apollo Justice rewrite, in which Phoenix was never disbarred, and he and Edgeworth got together within a year of T&T. See here for elaboration and, like, a lot of complaining about how AJ should have been amazing and wasn’t.)

As in canon, the plan in question is, essentially:

Let Blackquill return to prosecuting crimes again while still a convicted murderer on death row

?????

The real murderer of Metis Cykes is caught and Blackquill is proven innocent after all

Profit

I have no idea what step two is supposed to be but given that step three of the canon plan seemed to be “the Phantom turns up to steal back the psych profile which he somehow finds out Blackquill had all along” and I didn’t understand step two there either, I don’t super care.

Blackquill agrees to the whole crazy plan, but only on the condition that both Edgeworth and Phoenix swear they won’t tell anyone about the real plan without his permission, and in particular they absolutely will not tell Athena specifically.

Phoenix, who just hired Athena like a week ago, and has definitely connected the dots to figure out she became a lawyer to save Blackquill and is seeing some parallels of his own:

…But Blackquill’s life is the one in imminent danger (his execution date has just been set) and the whole plan relies on his cooperation, so ultimately (after a lot of arguing), Blackquill wins and they agree.

It’s not easy; after 1-5 and 3-5, Edgeworth and Phoenix were not going to be easily convinced not to tell Athena. They have seen how Complicated Scheming With The Goal Of Protecting A Young Woman But Without, Like, Telling Her Anything goes before (not to mention the more general Bad Associations with the possibility that someone out there might be plotting the death of a kid for the crime of being inconvenient in some way, see 1-4 and 2-2 and arguably 3-1), but I absolutely do believe that Blackquill would listen to all their arguments and still be like “my only priority is Athena’s safety; if she finds out about any of this she will try to investigate and will not prioritize her own safety, I don’t care what you think, if you tell her anything I’m out,” so ultimately they’re stuck.

On a side note, Trucy (when she does turn up in Dual Destinies) is a delight, but her role is bizarrely tiny for someone who’s hands-down the best new character of the trilogy, so in this rewrite she actually spends most of the game investigating with Apollo and Athena. She’s not actually super happy about it, though, because she wants to be investigating with Phoenix but he won’t let her, or even tell her about what his current case is. She feels like he doesn’t trust her and she’s pretty hurt though she doesn’t want to talk about it, etc, and in general there are canon-typical levels of hinting at deeper issues without actually directly addressing them.

In the end, things get more or less wrapped up by Phoenix (and Edgeworth) being like “look we wanted to tell all three of you what was going on but we were sworn to secrecy, and it was Blackquill’s life on the line so we couldn’t risk breaking his trust,” with the implication of further discussions to be had off-screen/post-game abt the deeper insecurities and anything that still feels insufficiently well justified, but just like that, here’s Trucy in a larger role with a new emotional conflict/interestingly complicated relationship that nevertheless doesn’t require/get much screen time bc Phoenix isn’t there for her to be actively having this conflict with.

There’s also a whole new case added between 5-3 and 5-4 that revolves around the Gramarye family legacy, in which Trucy, Apollo, and Lamiroir all learn who they are to each other, but I’ll get to that later.

In the meantime, back to the Fulbright thing! As in canon, he’s both Blackquill’s assigned police detective and his parole officer, which definitely secretly kind of terrifies Fulbright because oh god oh fuck he was a suspect specifically because he used to hang around the space center with his sister & mentor back when I worked there, what if he recognizes me, but hey, keep your enemies close, right? Especially when they’re definitely planning something, and also the only person who knows they didn’t actually commit the murder they were convicted for that was actually your doing. So.

(If Athena notices that despite his cheerful demeanor and attempt to be casual about the whole thing, he actually sounds terrified of Blackquill, it’s ironically very easy to brush off bc like. Look he tries to be cheerful and good-natured but Blackquill’s a scary guy, okay, just look at him, etc.)

So, with Fulbright secretly there all along, not in on the investigation/unaware there’s new evidence that could help point at his guilt but still close enough to keep an eye on things, no further progress is actually made in the luring-out-Metis-Cykes’-real-killer project, and time starts growing short.

Meanwhile, GYAXA is preparing for a manned rocket launch. Time to rewrite some more backstory.

A bit more than seven years ago, Solomon Starbuck worked for a private sector rival of GYAXA, but their secret use of sub-standard materials nearly proved deadly for him, and upon returning to Earth, he quit and joined GYAXA instead. The rival company’s reputation took multiple massive hits (from the near-failure of the mission, the subsequent exposé about cost-cutting measures at the expense of employee safety up to and including materials used in rocket ships, and the newly-famous Starbuck’s resultant departure for GYAXA), and they promptly resorted to attempting corporate espionage (via bribing security guard Bobby Fulbright), leading to Metis Cykes’ death.

Seven years later, when GYAXA starts gearing up for Starbuck’s next trip into space, their rival company attempts to cause the launch to be canceled via phone calls claiming the rocket will be sabotaged otherwise. The hoax partially works: the director secretly arranges for the launch to be faked bc he believes better safe than sorry but he doesn’t have the authority to just straight-up officially cancel it, and meanwhile the police are also alerted of the claimed bomb threat, and a team is sent to ensure everything goes fine, which would’ve been fine, except Fulbright is on the team.

That would also be fine, except Fulbright is already concerned because Blackquill’s execution date is closing in so there must be something big going on that he doesn’t know about but even being Blackquill’s parole officer/detective hasn’t let him figure out what. (Ironically, he’s probably wrong; Edgeworth and Phoenix and Blackquill are all getting pretty stressed about things getting down to the wire, but don’t actually have any more concrete way to lure out the real killer or they already would’ve arranged it, and mostly what’s going on behind-the-scenes is arguments about getting more people (including Athena) involved in the investigation.) When he then learns about the bomb threat to GYAXA and (correctly) guesses that it’s likely the doing of GYAXA’s rival company who’d bribed him all those years ago, Fulbright is super paranoid about the possibility that the bomb threat might be real, and if it is that it might be the work of a new security guard, and if it is and they get caught, that the already-raised suspicions regarding Blackquill’s innocence will be basically confirmed, and Fulbright himself will finally be suspected of the murder of Metis Cykes.

As a result of his paranoia, Fulbright goes poking around in areas he wasn’t actually supposed to be, accidentally runs into Clay Terran, and (in a panic) kills him. Solomon Starbuck is deemed the primary suspect, Apollo takes the case, and a bomb squad specialist (disappointed the threat to GYAXA turned out to be a hoax) gets bored. The Cosmic Turnabout and Turnabout Countdown commence.

Things actually mostly go as in canon, just following on from the differences I’ve already established. The final major change is that while the hostage situation still happens, we’re lowering the stakes and making them more personal: it’s not a dozen people conveniently-for-Aura including Trucy, and there’s no fake robot uprising. Trucy is the hostage and Aura’s pretty open about it being her doing from the start.

Again, this is a sequel to my alternate version of AA4. Phoenix never got disbarred and he and Edgeworth have been together for years. It is common knowledge that Trucy is the daughter of Phoenix Wright + the new chief prosecutor. Since she’s Blackquill’s sister, Aura might even be one of the few people who knows Edgeworth found new information about the UR-1 incident (although she either doesn’t know about or doesn’t buy the security guard theory), and that this whole weird letting-Blackquill-prosecute-cases arrangement is part of some sort of plan to prove his innocence, so hey, win-win, right? Phoenix and Edgeworth try Athena for her mother’s murder, they prove Blackquill innocent just like Edgeworth was already trying to do anyway, and their daughter doesn’t get hurt.

Also there’s still room for an “oh no the robot uprising!” joke in there, potentially. The robots all start acting weird, someone’s like OH NO THE ROBOT UPRISING! CURSE YOUR SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYAL, I GLADLY SURRENDER TO OUR NEW ROBOT OVERLORDS etc and then via the nearest robot Aura is like “oh my god shut up” and it turns out all the robots are acting weird bc they’re all looking for Phoenix or one of his associates to let him know his daughter’s being held hostage and he better listen up.

Aaaand that’s about all I’ve got on that front. I know the culprit not being a super-spy and there not being actual bombs at the HAT-2 fake launch creates some plot holes but while I’m a life-long mystery fan, I’m not a mystery writer and that’s not really the part of this that I’m good at coming up with solutions to, although if anyone’s got ideas I am All Ears.

It’s not the most hard-hitting critique of the legal system, and I’m still working on figuring out how to improve it more; in particular, I’m honestly torn about Blackquill even turning out to have been completely innocent because it very much was a Whole Thing that all the prosecutors used to start out as corrupt and the ones we like had to become better, or, you know. go to jail for the crimes they very much did in fact commit. So it actually feels like a real step down, having the prosecutor in this one be a straight-up convicted felon who… turns out to have done nothing wrong and been a good guy all along actually, surprise! But I can’t figure out how to change that without undermining the whole resolution of the game and turning him into a fundamentally different character, so for now that part is what it is.

Meanwhile, at the end of the day: ACAB, including Bobby Fulbright who is actually genuinely a cop, and used his position to avoid being found guilty for crimes he’d committed (up to and including forging evidence to frame someone else). Which is to say, what the game almost said, without the haha nope nvm he was an imposter and the real Bobby Fulbright was probably a great guy actually of it all. Also in this version Fulbright casually tazing Blackquill is like. actually treated as fucked up and a reminder that oh right cops still suck and even if one seems friendly he will probably absolutely abuse his power over others given the slightest excuse, and also no one deserves to be subjected to police brutality. And while Edgeworth winds up being ethically in the clear in that he didn’t actually pull strings to let a murderer prosecute other people’s crimes bc he did know Blackquill was innocent all along, at the end of the day someone was in fact able to pull strings to let a convicted murderer etc. Which on the one hand requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, but on the other hand, like I just said about Blackquill: idk man I had to change this much just to make Fulbright work, I’ve only got so much to work with here and I’m not actually good at coming up with grand sweeping changes.

Also it occurs to me I haven’t actually established this yet but “the Dark Age of the Law” is stupid and we’re completely dropping that whole concept because if two relatively new lawyers apparently turning out to be bad people was enough to kick off a whole ~Dark Age~ and make the general public lose faith then where the hell was everybody during the reign of Demon Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, Chief of Police Damon Gant and Chief Prosecutor Lana Skye, and the forty-year win streak of Manfred von Karma. And so forth. There’s probably room for something interesting to be done with like, the ways in which public perception of a situation doesn’t always reflect reality and large populations can be slow to consciously react to major trends and sometimes one small incident can be turned into a symbol of something it isn’t really even an example of anyway or whatever but like… I have no idea how to do that in the format of an Ace Attorney game so personally I am simply ditching that plotline wholesale.

So that’s that. Now let’s talk about Troupe Gramarye. In canon, Apollo Justice sets the Troupe Gramarye rights up to be a major plotline, but then it gets completely forgotten about in Dual Destinies, and sort of half-heartedly continued but not really resolved in Spirit of Justice. In this rewrite, the Troupe Gramarye legacy is more or less what the Kurain Spirit Channeling legacy was to the original trilogy: a nominally magical element that at the end of the day is mostly the catalyst for a story about greed and complicated families and the trauma and destruction they create.

So, the Gramarye-related cases in my rewritten Apollo Justice go as established (i.e. actually basically like canon except Phoenix escapes unscathed), except with a couple more tweaks: Lamiroir’s face is hidden way better, and neither she nor the audience learn who she is to Apollo and Trucy yet.

That gets saved for Dual Destinies’ brand new Gramarye rights-centric case.

While it could probably go earlier, I think it would fit best between Turnabout Academy and The Cosmic Turnabout. I’ve already covered the latter, so some notes about the former: plot-wise it remains unchanged, but a lot of the dialogue is different because I would have thought it was unbearably preachy and condescending at age nine and this game was rated M. We Do Not Need The Lecture, Thanks. Also Aristotle Means looks slightly more human/less like an actual straight-up marble statue because that was so unbelievably distracting. There’s weird character designs and then there’s By The Way, This Literal Marble Statue Is Sentient I Guess.

The rest of the difference is that (following on from my proposed Apollo Justice rewrite) Klavier Gavin gets to be an actual human being with feelings and not 60% of a lovingly-painted cardboard cutout of a person. He shows up with a re-design—possibly a slightly different outfit in general, I don’t have strong feelings about that, but the important thing is that he’s gotten a haircut. In my head he’s got roughly the same style from the flashback portions of 4-4, but that’s partially just because I’m not good at picturing things like that. What matters is that his hair looks nothing like Kristoph’s anymore. Also it’s established in passing that he and Trucy and Apollo have had a whole bunch of conversations in the last year and are all on good terms now, despite [gestures at 4-1 and 4-3 and 4-4], and that Klavier is doing more or less okay. Emphasis on “or less” once his beloved mentor gets murdered, but in this version he actually gets to be part of the post-case denoument conversations and establishes that he’s pretty devastated (despite the return of his professional facade) but Apollo and Trucy and Athena are all well aware of that and are, so to speak, on the case, and with their support eventually he’ll be okay.

So. With that out of the way, here’s a new case about the legacy of Troupe Gramarye.

We start off by learning that Lamiroir is in town again and Trucy wants to go see her, because last time they saw her perform live things went pretty badly and it kind of soured the whole experience in retrospect, but she really did have such a beautiful voice that Trucy wants to see her again (hopefully with nobody getting murdered this time). She talks Apollo into going with her pretty easily; he might put up a token resistance, but he’s actually not really opposed since she’s performing solo this time and he likes her music a lot when the Gavinners aren’t involved. They go to the show, and it’s everything they could have hoped for and more, including that as it turns out, she’s working with Valant Gramarye again, and the effects are, again, super impressive.

But gasp, betrayal, after the show (possibly the next day, at the Wright & Co. Offices?) it turns out that Valant sucks even more than we thought (though, you know, framing his friend/in-my-version-brother for murder and abandoning the child of the woman he loved who had just also been abandoned by her father wasn’t exactly a great start): he’s suing Trucy for the Gramarye rights, based on the premise that she inherited them under false pretenses, because he’s discovered evidence that suggests Thalassa’s death was due to active negligence on Zak’s part, and he’s arguing that while Zak was the better/more talented magician, and thus Magnifi liked him better than Valant, Thalassa was Magnifi’s beloved daughter, and there’s no way Zak would’ve been given the first shot (so to speak) at earning the Gramarye rights if Magnifi hadn’t been blinded enough by grief to believe it was an accident, and while Trucy inherited the rights fair and square from Zak, he should never have had the rights in the first place, and Valant is the rightful inheritor.

I have no idea where the rest of the plot goes because I’m not a mystery writer and I don’t know how to come up with actual plots and red herrings and clues, but eventually there’s a dramatic reveal that there was active negligence involved, which Valant knew all along bc it was his fault.

…but that reveal is ultimately secondary to the one either shortly before or shortly after, that [drumroll] Thalassa wasn’t actually dead anyway

Which, again, I’m not a mystery writer, I don’t know if or how this would actually fit, but in my head there’s a great dramatic moment where the reveal happens for the audience—Valant, Trucy, Apollo, any Troupe Gramarye fans in the gallery, and the players—but not, for the first few moments, Lamiroir herself.

For whatever reason, she removes her veil/scarf, or they slip somehow, and so she’s there on the witness stand with her face visible around other people for the first time in years. The whole gallery (and Apollo) kind of collectively draw in a breath, while Valant says her name, genuinely stunned

And in almost the same moment, Trucy (who would sound five years old, if this bit was a cutscene) says “…Mommy?”

Cue discussion, Lamiroir learns who she is, the realization that Magnifi must have known she wasn’t really dead and the real cover-up was his doing all along etc, everything gets resolved, and Valant gives up on suing Trucy for the rights.

(The “hey that’s an awfully familiar-looking bracelet” reveal probably doesn’t happen until after the rest of the case is resolved, but I don’t have particularly strong feelings about that one way or the other.)

Everything winds up reasonably happy—Apollo and Trucy find out they’re half-siblings and their mother’s alive, Lamiroir resolves to get the surgery to restore her eyesight (and in the end credits we find out it helped restore her memory too), and Trucy gets to keep the Gramarye rights bc Valant’s suit was built on two different fundamental lies (that Thalassa’s death was Zak’s fault/that it wasn’t Valant’s, and that she was, you know, actually dead), and relatedly, in a shocking twist for the series, no one actually gets murdered, and there isn’t even an accidental death!

…but any hope of Trucy and Valant reconnecting/Valant becoming a positive figure in Trucy’s life again is pretty solidly destroyed, and there’s another two blows struck against the Troupe Gramarye legacy, bc not only was Thalassa’s accident actually Valant’s fault all along, Magnifi knew she wasn’t dead and abandoned her.

In a very direct parallel to Maya at the end of 3-5, Trucy spends most of the case uncertain whether she even wants these rights anymore—she ultimately decides the answer is yes, but it’s in question from basically the moment she learns Valant’s argument for why the rights should belong to him, and even him admitting the whole thing was based in lies and the rights are hers fair and square doesn’t convince her entirely right away.

Aaaaand then The Cosmic Turnabout kicks off and we’re back to the previously-established plot!

[vitos-ordination-song]

I’m trying to put into words why I feel so defensive over Thorfinn’s pacifism. Plenty of fans who like the non-violent direction still say things about it which make me cringe. Like “he’s gone too far with his beliefs” or “he needs to be realistic” or “he’ll have to figure out when violence is okay and when it isn’t.”

I have agreed with critiques of pacifism before. I don’t like it when people living privileged lives start to preach to oppressed groups, telling them not to fight for freedom. I don’t think moralizing is the right response to violence in general. Whether or not violence is “right” isn’t the question. We never know what’s right from wrong with certainty. The only thing we can do is look at the circumstances surrounding violence and decide how to proceed. I’m also not immune to enjoying, even celebrating, liberatory violence, which I believe exists.

However, in real life, what percentage of the time is violence positive in any way? For violence to be liberatory or justified, violence must already have been done. This non-justified, aggressive violence is far more common than violence done in self-defense, as not everyone has the ability to stand up for themselves. For the people who can fight back, being forced to commit violence is usually traumatizing. But in fiction, violence is more often portrayed in a positive light; heroes commit justified or “badass” violence, and those who act in self-defense come out on top. With Vinland Saga, Yukimura wanted to create one, just one story where violence isn’t justified, where the characters look for another way instead of making excuses.

Since Thorfinn is a former warrior who has no right to judge others, his character sidesteps being preachy. Additionally, his main foil is Canute, who uses violence to try to reach the same ends and is framed as understandable and pragmatic by the narrative. The work presents multiple perspectives on violence, enriching its themes, but I strongly believe that to the end, Thorfinn will never compromise his beliefs. Not everyone in the world has to believe the same way that he does, but it is right and good that he maintain his pacifism. Readers looking for complexity in a work often want characters to reach a middle ground, like this automatically means they’ve grown, but some of my favorite stories focus on protagonists who cling to ideals and resist change. Through being forced to test out their ideals in real life, they become wiser, better people, more able to live in accordance with their values. That is what I believe Yukimura is going for with Thorfinn’s character.

In my heart of hearts, I believe that Thorfinn is right. He’s never once said that violence is always wrong, only that it should be a last resort. He hasn’t killed anyone since his vow of non-violence, but he’s had to bust some heads. In a recent chapter, he said there’s no such thing as righteous violence; that’s not the same thing as necessary violence. He can do it—but he hates it. If you’ve ever felt a thrill of enjoyment in hurting someone, you know how seductive it is. Developing a disgust for violence is healthy antidote to this tendency.

Reading the Vinland arc, I fully agree with other readers that Thorfinn is naive. I just disagree on whether his pacifism is a part of that naivety. When I examine the story so far, Thorfinn’s failures as a leader mostly stem from his lack of experience. He spent 10 years of his life fighting, then he became a slave, and then he became a merchant. Technically, he has a lot more life experience than most readers. But there’s plenty of things he doesn’t understand because he’s never been exposed to them, like the settlers’ investment in private property. Further, Thorfinn has a kind of simplicity to him, maybe caused by his rebirth, the way he was emptied out and then filled back up. He’s surrounded himself with like-minded individuals, true and honest friends seeking the same goal as him. He also knows how to deal with enemies, warriors who make their intentions clear. Where Thorfinn has failed is in dealing with manipulators and opportunists, paranoids and backstabbers. He isn’t good at understanding people who might cooperate with him while harboring ill intentions or irrational beliefs. It was very naive of him, and the rest of his people, that they didn’t check new members for weapons before leaving for Vinland. I’ve felt from the start that Thorfinn shouldn’t have allowed Ivar and his group to come at all, and he hasn’t been able to handle them very well, not recognizing the threat they pose.

But I’ve seen people equate these failures with his pacifism. That’s where I disagree. If the settlement wasn’t peaceful, it would have already failed, like the one that Leif’s brother started. If Thorfinn wasn’t constantly reigning in the violence of others and trying to communicate peaceful intentions to the natives, war would have broken out a long time ago. It is a simple fact that if you approach people with mistrust, superiority, and violence, you will create an enemy, while if you approach them with openness, humility, and generosity, you will create a friend. It’s interesting how quickly people jump to calling pacifism unrealistic or immature, when violence is usually the true example of those things.

Regardless of whether Thorfinn is right or wrong, naive or wise, it is possible that Vinland will fail. He may not be able to hold it together. But is this because of his non-violent ways? After all, Canute’s violence will ultimately fail as well—historically, his stable kingdom collapsed after his death. Vinland Saga portrays human beings who long for something better while remaining trapped in their failures and misfortunes. Yet the story still praises the efforts of those who try. Following their ideals, foolish as they may be, they attempt to shape the world. This theme is introduced all the way at the beginning with Thors, hurting his family’s livelihood to save a dying slave. There is a nobility and strength in continuing to pursue what you believe is right, regardless of the outcome. That is the only way for us to live fulfilled lives.

[cageyworld]

A nuanced recommendation for "Unchained Love" (浮图缘 – fútúyuán)

“Nuanced” meaning a lot of disclaimers, probably. First one being: I’m a U.S. American viewer. I’ve been studying Mandarin at my university since 2021 and I watch a lot of Chinese shows, but I am not of the culture of the source material. Inevitably, my perspective of the show is colored by my own Western upbringing. I can’t pick up on the finer details of language, clothing, history, etc. that may rankle other viewers, nor will I be fully conscious of all the ways my cultural viewpoint impacts my perception of the show.

With that said: I’ve been so charmed by “Unchained Love” that I thought others—perhaps especially my fellow Western watchers of these lovely Chinese-made shows—might enjoy it, too. There’s a lot to love.

I will keep spoilers to a minimum.

Some highlights of why I love this show:

Women voicing their rage and grief about patriarchal systems

A romance of respect and clear communication

Badass Dylan Wang (looking incredible in his costumes)

Found family

Cute dog

Angst with a happy ending

Read on to allow me to persuade you even more…

CRITIQUES—A.K.A. “THE JANK.”

THE TONE

I’ve read the criticism that the tone can be uneven, especially if you come to this (like I did) right after watching 苍兰决 “Love Between Fairy and Devil”. I agree. The tone is super uneven throughout the series.

The storyline contains some truly horrific and dramatic elements (see the list of content warnings at the end of this post), and yet tries to maintain an overall soft, romantic dramedy feel. It’s not successful in this and does create some dissonance. This dissonance is only amplified by…

THE MUSIC

The opening theme is a banger, but the scoring choices throughout the show itself are distracting. Sometimes we get plinky, Mickey Mouse comedy music when the dialogue and acting convey drama and high stakes—and occasionally, vice versa. From my experience, this isn’t unique to “Unchained Love,” but oh boy, is it striking in this series. The music seems to work against the narrative at times. I found myself saying, “I don’t feel like laughing right now!” at the screen. There can be emotional whiplash, from the very serious to scenes suddenly meant to be effortlessly light-hearted. It is not effortless.

WHAT GOT CENSORED

This show got chopped for sure. From what I can tell, it was largely the scenes of more overt sexual content between Xiao Duo and Bu Yinlou. This couple becomes respectfully, mutually horny for each other and it’s a bummer that so much of that got trimmed. That said, what remains is still lovely (and quite sexy at times).

The ending is also rushed in a way that feels like aggressive editing. It ends happily for the characters I loved most, and leaves lots of room for fanfiction expansion or extension, but it’s still a little unsatisfying as a viewer.

WHY THESE DIDN’T PUT ME OFF, PERSONALLY

I was able to make peace with the uneven tone mostly because of where the unevenness struck. The most serious elements of the show nearly all revolve around some aspect of violence against women. While this violence was not always treated with the gravity it warrants, it also wasn’t played for laughs. The choice to include each of these incidents is questionable, but I never felt the show was downplaying the seriousness of that violence itself.

Also, I appreciated that the women were in the forefront of those moments. We were expected to empathize with their situation.

For example, the opening episode’s plot of the deceased emperor’s brides being hanged as tribute to him wasn’t shown entirely as the horrific nightmare that is—but it also didn’t make all the women nameless, weeping beauties who existed only as tragic figures. Our heroine comes from within that group, and we see each of the women find their own way to deal. Some (understandably) weep, others negotiate their way out or flaunt their privilege to do so, others accept their fate. And then you have our Yinlou who is always eyeing an escape or a new foothold to a better situation.

We’re invited, tacitly or actively, to identify with the women being murdered. The violence against them isn’t set dressing. It’s very much an implied motivator for everything Yinlou does—she is a woman who fears the “cages” in which society can trap women, so she’s repeatedly calling attention to all those various cages.

There’s a later scene that’s not of much consequence overall where Yinlou comes upon a concubines’ graveyard. There are no markers with their names. She comments upon this and identifies with them, as a woman in their same situation. I deeply valued moments like this in “Unchained Love”—a character acknowledging how men in power are so often surrounded by “nameless” women whose own hopes and lives are forgotten.

One of the show’s major themes is: It is dangerous when powerless women catch the eye of powerful men.

THE GOOD – A.K.A. WHAT MAKES EVERYTHING ELSE WORTH IT

DYLAN WANG as Xiao Duo

I mean, he’s why I’m here, so we gotta start with him. I adored his performance as Dongfang Qingcang in 苍兰决 and he’s even more impressive as Xiao Duo, the head eunuch of the feared Zhaoding Bureau (FYI: in episode 2, we learn he’s not actually a eunuch—he’s pretending). This is an Earth-bound tale, so don’t expect the wild range of body-swapping or high drama of Hellfire power. Instead, he gives a far subtler performance where the harshness of the character blends smoothly with his softer moments.

He makes excellent use of his ability to look cold and cruel, and even the fact that he’s very handsome is relevant to the plot (because he, too, catches the eye of someone dangerous and powerful). For me, he disappeared into Xiao Duo in this performance. His mannerisms, body language, and tightly controlled expressions all felt so consistent with this man’s lived experience. He felt thoroughly three-dimensional and authentic.

Xiao Duo judges him. You. Xiao Duo judges everyone. CHEN YUQI as Bu Yinlou

I left “Ashes of Love” having most enjoyed Chen YuQi’s performance, so I was thrilled to see her in this. I like her energy on screen, and her goofy little smiles. She’s an uncouth mess as Bu Yinlou, and yet can believably play the perfect imperial concubine when she needs to. My fellow Eowyn “I fear a cage” and Beatrice “if I were man, I’d eat his heart in the marketplace” girlies will love Yinlou. Her fear of that patriarchal cage is one of her primary motivations throughout the series, and Xiao Duo is often the Benedick to her Beatrice in a “name the heart and the marketplace, baby” kind of way. Yinlou’s go-to problem-solving strategies are: gamble, lie, or set it on fire (literally).

Yinlou shares her secret fourth method of problem solving. SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

Not a dud in the bunch as far as I’m concerned. Everyone’s acting is strong and all the major characters are given the opportunity to be three-dimensional, to have their own perspectives and hopes. I found one of the side love stories a bit silly and cringey, but even that couple won me over by the end. Yinlou’s closest companion is her servant (played by Nan He – Duo Er La from “Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty.” I was thrilled to see her!). Xiao Duo has his own devoted right-hand man, and even a himbo of a general. There’s manly devotion everywhere, women being friends, bonding with sex workers, and hierarchies dissolving to become “family.”

The four pillars of the found family.

A braincells trio.

XIAO DUO and BU YINLOU TOGETHER

This is very much a “the man falls first” story and it seems likely that some of the early scenes got chopped, which is unfortunate, but I will say, it didn’t bother me. Perhaps it’s my years of writing and reading fanfiction, but I could find the threads easily.

Bu Yinlou catches Xiao Duo’s eye first by being clever. He’s initially wrong about what she’s scheming—but he’s right that she’s a schemer who is smarter than she pretends to be. For her own survival, she tries to stay on his good side and he's used to people praising him (or paying him) to get his favor by flattering his power, his strength, his ambition. Bu Yinlou starts praising his kindness, his mercy, his intelligence. For his own reasons (no spoilers!), he’s deliberately made himself a terror. Bu Yinlou starts talking to the real person he is inside.

Xiao Duo gets the thumbs up from Yinlou.

We do get the delightful Chinese drama tropes like slow-motion gazing with the love theme playing, but I didn’t see it as a normal “oh, she’s so beautiful” sort of moment. She’s being ridiculous, and Xiao Duo is struck that this woman is being ridiculous for him. He’s the scariest man in the Imperial Palace! People literally drop to the ground or run when they see him! And here’s this woman trying to make him smile, or grabbing his sleeves, or heckling him. What a strange creature she is…and you know, she’s rather pretty, too…

Pretty (and drunk at the mo')

After only a few meetings, Xiao Duo and Bu Yinlou instinctively understand one another, even if they don’t fully realize it. They’ve met the other person who plays 4-D chess and who never wanted to be here in the first place. I find it truly a joy to watch them—two people who barely trust anyone—maneuver around one another and learn to believe each other.

The actors seemed very comfortable with one another, so there’s lots of casual intimacy and affection in their body language together. With Xiao Duo, Yinlou feels safe enough to experience attraction and express her own desires for the first time. Her giddiness and girlishness about him are so heartwarming to watch.

Something has been awakened in her...

We also get the fantastic subversion of some classic romantic tropes. I admit: I’m a viewer who is frustrated by major conflicts erupting from simple misunderstandings, characters deliberately withholding information from each other—or worse—not having the five-minute conversation necessary to clear the air. Xiao Duo and Bu Yinlou COMMUNICATE. They truly treat each other as equals.

Avoiding spoilers, there’s one moment where a bad guy captures Bu Yinlou to bait Xiao Duo into a trap. A man in love, Xiao Duo storms out to go rescue her—and then pauses. “This is a trap,” he realizes, and he goes back home. He trusts that Bu Yinlou can get herself out of the scrape—and she does. Bu Yinlou does the same for him a few times. They profoundly trust one another and it shows on screen through their actions, not just their words. I found that unbelievably refreshing, even if it means we don’t get the HIGH DRAMA of so many other romantic dramas.

It made for a subtler experience that is perhaps just for me (but I write this in the hopes that it’s not). All the pain of the later episodes comes from truly understanding that Xiao Duo and Bu Yinlou would be happy together. Not in a soft-focus, dreamy-eyed, picture-perfect way, but in a real and tangible way. They could live together with their friends and their dog, raise some goats, and have wonderful life with one another. But there are powerful, dangerous, unpredictable forces in the way, and that hurts beautifully to watch.

THE PLOT

“Nirvana in Fire” this ain’t. The imperial palace intrigues are broad and only rarely more than 2-dimensional, but I still found myself delighted by some of the unexpected twists. There are characters I loathed in episode 1, and then grieved in episode 36. That’s the good stuff.

Bu Yinlou is the emotional center of the series. She wants to be free. The primary conflict of the show, then, is built around two suitors: One who will help her fulfill her dreams, even if it hurts him, and the other who will make her dreams match his, even if it hurts her.

This is all happening within larger maneuvers of outside forces trying to take down the empire. To them, Yinlou is a pawn in a larger game to control the emperor and Xiao Duo. (And Yinlou does not appreciate being treated like a pawn.)

THE VILLAIN

I have complex feelings about the primary antagonist for the show. I think that’s a good thing. He feels, in many ways, like an Incel given imperial power—he is both a sad, awkward, lonely man, and an entitled, spiteful monster. He’s played so deftly by Peter Ho, it took several episodes for me to realize he was the antagonist. On rewatch, it can be heartbreaking to follow his story, too, because there were moments of intervention where it could have gone differently. That, to me, makes for a richly imagined antagonist—who goes full “scenery chewing” villain toward the end. That, too, is compelling to watch. Peter Ho was clearly having a good time.

A PERSONAL CONCLUSION (and maybe a plea for fanworks)

“Unchained Love” is not perfect, but there’s such clear heart in the performances that it more than makes up for the show’s weaknesses. They explore storylines and themes and especially gives Yinlou some moments that I’ve longed for in a show maybe all my life. I like that Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings movies talked about fearing “a cage.” I wish she’d gotten to talk more. Yinlou gave voice to so much of what I wanted to hear her say.

“Unchained Love” quickly joined the tops of my favorite Chinese media, alongside “The Untamed” and “Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity.” I will probably end up writing some fanfiction for it, and I hope others will too. The gifsets on Tumblr have been so excellent that I can only hope for more. More fanworks, I guess that’s what I’m saying. There’s such great fanworks potential in this series. It’s in that sweet spot of having compelling characters, beautiful costumes and settings, and juuuuussst enough left on the cutting-room floor that we fans have all the room in the world to play.

HOW TO WATCH

The first two episodes are up for free on YouTube with English subtitles. It’s also streaming on both Viki and iQiyi. I liked it so much, I bought it on DVD from AustinDVDStore on ebay. The subtitles move too fast sometimes, but hey, I’m practicing my Mandarin anyway…

CONTENT WARNINGS

For the show overall:

The entire show deals with the idea of women as objects—which means there are often people treating women like objects. This is depicted as a bad thing, but it’s still hard to watch.

Some gender essentialist nonsense is spewed in relation to eunuchs and what it means to be “a man.” Later in the series, the villain becomes particularly fixated on this concept.

For specific storylines:

Opening episodes revolve around concubines of the deceased emperor being killed in tribute to him.

Accidental death of a child in episode 4.

A man in charge of the Imperial Mausoleum targets and sexually threatens, harasses, and assaults a woman forced to live there.

Yinlou’s father is verbally abusive to the women in his family.

Yinlou’s sister is forced to marry an enemy prince; this enemy prince is violent and threatening to her. The emperor is also violent and cruel to this character. (Yinlou’s sister is essentially a “what if Yinlou did what she was told” character, so her storyline highlights that going along with these powerful men won’t save you… It’s rough.)

The emperor’s dissent into tyrannical behavior is paired with a physical disability he develops. He also becomes fixated on his inability to bear children.

[broodwoof]

brood's (ongoing) meta masterpost

note: i almost always approach meta from a watsonian, in-verse perspective - there are only a few exceptions to this <- just adding this for additional context

most (not all!) are also on ao3, -> here <-

ghilan'nain codex entries and possible timelines involved

fen'harel/andruil/ghilan'nain - exploration of them as a ship, but also character explorations in general

mythal as abused and abuser, a sympathetic examination of her dynamic with her family and elgar'nan in particular

solas' pov upon waking in the new world

solas' jawbone

leliana in dai about her death if you killed her in dao

examination of the "mental stability" of da2 characters, based on a poll

small point about codexes having in-world biases

cole - spirit or human? and personal preference for the spirit route

mosaic order and meaning in fen'harel's sanctuary

theories following the corypheus battle (clarifying ask/new theory)

mythal & andruil | flemeth & morrigan - comparing these two duos and examining some elements that are repeated

orlesian culture

exploration of each divine's rule well after the ending slides

morrigan, anders, and solas, and their different narrative roles and priorities

mythal, flemeth, or flemythal - who she is, what is she like; opinions on her

mostly vivienne meta exploring her pro-circle views; touches on anders and sera as well: no character hate since i love them all

which companions (from all games) would join solas

dragon age and germ theory

solas and varric and how they interrelate

solas seeing others as full people earlier than he wishes to admit, and solas + sunk cost fallacy

calpernia and solas as another set of narrative foils

hypothetical da4 directions (add-on/extrapolation of one of the directions)

personal characterizations of the evanuris

impact of the breach in-universe

softened!leliana as divine and religious assimilation/schisms with elves

arlathan and germ theory, post 1; + a messy rambling exploration of arlathan's culture, including what kinds of power they valued, & a brief exploration of ghilan'nain and her role/inclusion in the evanuris

what "as this world burned in the raw chaos" means

the three divine options and their relationship to faith

solas tearing down the veil: why i think it was necessary, and how it relates to the in hushed whispers quest

sera & solas as narrative foils of each other

sera meta - positive bc i fucking love her

evanuris musings/frustration

da4 theories & hopes re: solas and mythal - post dec DA trailer drop

dalish & red vallaslin dalish history/divergent origins

qunari & dragon blood musings

the vallaslin removal

technically not meta but sorta related: visual representation of solas' duality - critique : alternative

forgotten ones as titans, in-depth (mini add-on)

vivienne de fer pt 1/?

morrigan - dao and dai

solas' sleep

cullen rutherford, positive

forgotten ones as titans, vague

the iron bull & solas

inky & solas - conversation in the fade & implications

solas' actions

theories on solas' distant past

solas' personality/behavior

theories abt solas as a spirit+demon & forgotten one (note: I got confused with mythal and flemeth's backstory)

my first meta of solas as one of the forgotten ones

[unnursvanablog]

The White Lotus, s3 / tv show review.

This is a mostly spoiler free review of the third season of The White Lotus.

There are certain people who want The White Lotus to be a thriller or a murder mystery, when in reality it's a slow-burning character study and social commentary where the problems, worries, and desires of the characters intensify as they become more stationed and stuck in the place they're in, so far from their homes, habits, and everyday pastimes that usually distracts them. The hotel itself lets them stew in their own misery and concerns, which increases their restlessness and gradually throws them into disarray.

This is what actually drives the story forward, slowly and steadily, like a flower that's about to bloom and reveal all its many layers. The murder, which admittedly does excite the viewers, is just a side note within the story itself and not the main focus or the true end goal.

Each new season brings with it a large group of new, diverse, and challenging characters. That is a challenge in off itself, but I think each season does an excellent job of introducing us to them, the dynamics between them which are at once grand and dramatic but also grounded and real. And the story continuously reveals new sides of them as it progresses, all in a very limited timeframe.

They are all in this grey area where we love them and hate them. You sympathize with them in one episode and the next you're scandalized by them. The story manages to cover a lot in a short time, without overwhelming the narrative or making it feel rushed or treating the issues at hand superficially. The narrative style is certainly slower than in previous seasons, but I never felt the story lost steam or became too slow-paced and therefor boring.

I would say, however, that this third season suffered a bit from having too many characters. Mainly the supporting characters. Because so often it's as if every character we encounter has some great significance for the story. Especially if we're properly introduced to them, but here there were a few characters that I felt didn't have much weight to them. And then I'm specifically talking about Mook and the hotel manager. I was always expecting them to have more to do, or to say, within the story, and yet they were just kind of there.

The story delves deeply into the examination of privileges and consumerism of going on a vacation. This theme is always present, but manifests in different ways, and is always very well conveyed within the story of each season. This is a sharp social commentary on our Western world where the vacation, but also the isolation that the hotel provides, gives them all free rein and opportunity to indulge all of their most privileged impulses. The vacation is an escapism.

All the wealth and privileges you've earned won't buy you out of the problem you've created yourself and therefor things start escalate, sometimes to the point of no return, but more often than not majority of these characters go back home to their lives without having changed too much. It's actually the viewer who has gained a new perspective.

And although this latest season maybe doesn't break so much from it's structure of this The gossipy nature of story that The White Lotus seems to manage to capture so well, and provides people with the privilege critique and high drama that people expect from the show, they never feel too formulaic. The performance of the cast, as well as the script writing, ensure that viewers have plenty of things to talk about and enjoy while watching. And when the show is over.