#we all get so few opportunities to do a good fakeout how could i ever pass this up

[paingoes]

Just Kidding ;P

i dont know why i was so determined to do the fake-out ending for some reason i just thought it would be really funny to leave you hanging for a day. destroyer IS technically over but thats only because this is where the story splits in two :)

Rubies is Delta’s post-captivity arc, pretty heavy on comfort and the aftermath of severe abuse/conditioning. light elements of dubious (but very well-intentioned!) caretaking and dehumanization.

Crash-Out is Paris’s post-royal arc. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it or spoil anything but since it’s Paris you can expect there will be a lot of discussion around addiction and abusive behavior. also there will be lady whump! 

i carried over the same taglist from Destroyer because these are continuations of the same story but if the change in content is something that turns you off and you’d like to be removed from either of them please let me know! 

as you know Destroyer had kind of an insane update schedule and i will not be able to maintain that for two stories at once, especially not as summer ends. this will likely be more of a slow burn.

also there will probably be a few more of those bonus chapters for Destroyer just in case you think delta got off too easy. so i guess even thats not really “over”.

anyway! thanks again for all the support <3 !

[quintessence-sentimentalist]

From 10 to 20

10, 11, 15, 17, and 19 have already been answered, but the rest are below! 

12. Will and Matt’s relationship?

…You ever have those pairings where you don’t really put the energy into shipping them, but you’re also not keen on shipping them with anyone else? Because that’s pretty much where I stand with comic Will/Matt at this point.

Look, their cartoon counterparts? The crown jewel in my carefully curated collection of OTPs. I adore them so much and season 2 really made their relationship a compelling story. Now in the comics, I used to like them well enough because they were one of the main relationships in the series, slowly gathering traction since issue #1. Will was my favorite growing up, so naturally I wanted her to be happy, and Matt seemed like a good, nice guy worth her affection. I was eager for the day when they’d end up together, and hopefully Will would tell him the truth and clear up any weird past behavior.

I think the fatal flaw with this relationship is the fact that they took too damn long to get them to a good place, and threw in way too many conflicts on the road leading up to (and during) their relationship. We got a fakeout of Will revealing all in issue #20 (when their relationship was still tenuous because of Matt jumping to conclusions regarding Will hanging out with other guys), and it took twenty more issues before we got any real payoff. So maybe forty issues isn’t so bad for a will-they/won’t-they relationship, but it’s clear from the beginning that Will is interested in Matt, and he seems to return her feelings; they just dragged it all out with at least three storylines where one or both let their actions be ruled by jealousy (not to mention Astral Drop Will) and set them back even further. You just never knew where they stood this week – one issue they’d be crushing on each other, and the next they’d be at odds again because of a misunderstanding. I’m not saying couples have to be all sunshine and rainbows all the time, but when you’re rehashing the same plot points multiple times to keep them apart before they can officially become a couple? Not a good sign.

So issue #40 rolls around, I rejoice, and… things don’t get much easier moving on from that. They’re a couple now and it’s cute, but the fact that Matt’s now in-the-know is its own conflict. But it eventually resolves, and Matt gets to take part in running damage control when the girls are away (listen I live for this as much as I do for battle couple scenarios) and they get to be a cute couple for a few issues and it’s all adorable.

And then the Ludmoore arc happens and Matt gets sucked into the book partway through. They get him back, and then he decides to tour with Karmilla. And then the New Power arc happens and I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole and a hazmat suit.

The thing about Will/Matt is that they had so much potential, but they just ended up being the couple where nothing ever goes right and the narrative just wants to keep tearing them apart for The Drama. I think we really only had around 10 issues of them as an official couple sharing the same space – they were still together both times Matt was away but we never got to see them together. And by the time they’re sharing the page again Matt’s entire characterization has been put through a meat grinder and spat back out something unrecognizable.

I’m going to curb my tangent here because it already got out of hand, and end with this: I still feel protective about Will/Matt because of all the things it could (and should) have been, but the majority of their canon relationship can just flounce on off.

13. Caleb and Cornelias breakup?

Well, another one that I don’t think was handled very well in canon. To be honest, I wasn’t as invested in these two as I was with Will/Matt, probably because they were technically an official couple right away (even though the majority of their development can be summed up as “I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream”). Alright, cool, these two are going to be a thing, I can roll with that, whatever.

Then we get flower Caleb and the interlude between the first and second arc (which I still very much dislike), and then they’re separated until Caleb ends up in trouble again, and when they’re reunited right before a battle Cornelia decides it’s the most opportune time to reveal her true form, and her youth is off-putting to Caleb as if the Guardian form is the only one of value.

I’d say this is another relationship plagued by primarily one-sided views on the relationship rather than the duo together, as well as being a relationship framed primarily by conflict and battle. So much of their narrative is how much Cornelia loves Caleb and everything she’s willing to do to get him back and protect him, and a couple moments like this on Caleb’s end too. But when we see both of them together, it’s always in moments of crisis – even when Caleb returns to life and they kiss, they’re being held in Kandrakar for treason. They never get a moment to actually sit down and get to know each other in a moment of peace, to air out any concerns or crucial bits of information they feel the other should know before they go all-in with their love epic.

I ended up doing a better summary here of how things could have gone if they still wanted to do a break-up arc but leave the door open for a later reunion, or just develop this relationship beyond destiny and battle. But even if we look solely at their relationship as it was in canon, the break-up was poorly executed because it was done without regard to Caleb’s actual characterization. After considerable time framing him as the romantic hero, the narrative spins him as the tactless jerk solely for dramatic purposes. Maybe it could be passed off as a point that neither of them know the other as well as they think they do, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that Caleb’s always had this side of his personality and just kept it under wraps.

So let’s play with that idea a little bit more—keep the circumstances behind the breakup the same, but think on what would make it more believable/flow better. If they wanted to make us believe that Caleb’s jerky behavior is actually in-character, then tease it out a little beforehand! Let Caleb’s flaws shine through a bit earlier on, build up tension that maybe CxC aren’t the fairytale romance they think themselves to be (and have convinced the readers they are). When the moment comes where Caleb sees Cornelia as something other than a fellow warrior, an equal (or even superior), and turns condescending, the reaction should be “disappointed but not surprised, the hints were there” rather than the “this was badly written without any regards to the characters” we get with the canon version.

Curbing this one here too, but long story short, if I’m coming up with ways to both salvage and decimate a doomed canon relationship, that’s a pretty bit hint that the actual breakup was Not Good.

14. BatMatt? (that time Matt revealed he’d been from kandrakar All Along)

There isn’t a scream loud enough for how much I haaaaaaaaate this development. To save ourselves some time, I’m just going to link back to my New Power rant on this post, because the earlier paragraphs of that sum up how I feel about this situation, and if I try to rehash all my anger about it from scratch we’re going to be here all day.

Long story short, Matthew Olsen never deserved to be so brutally characterization-murdered and cobbled back together into something with his face and name but nothing else recognizable.

16. Taranee and Nigel’s relationship?

Hmm, this was another one I didn’t feel too strongly about. I think they were sweet at the beginning, where Nigel was learning to show that he was a good guy despite being part of a band of delinquents.

But that’s the thing: even after Nigel split with Uriah and his crew, the narrative never let us forget that he was “the bad boy.” Judge Cook disapproves of her daughter’s relationship many issues after Nigel was last involved in trouble, purely for drama, it seems. Then Nigel’s brother—with his own criminal record—comes back, and Nigel just falls right back in line. I can’t remember what happens between that and Taranee starting at the dance academy, but then we get their explosive breakup and that’s that.

I think that’s another breakup that was poorly executed. While I love that Taranee rediscovered her love for dance, it was used too often as a source of conflict in the later arcs, starting with the breakup. I do need to reread the breakup since it’s been quite a long time, but I remember originally I was angry with Nigel for giving Taranee the “dancing or me” ultimatum. While ultimatums like that are never a good thing, it’s also horrendously out of character for Nigel, because he’s actually been a pretty darn passive character in the past. Look at his time in Uriah’s gang—while he certainly doesn’t seem to be getting a kick out of delinquency like the rest of the crew, he also doesn’t make much of a move to stop it outside of a few wary comments. Even when his brother comes back to town, he’s reluctantly tagging along and letting his brother dictate their actions. And while we’ve had some moments where he’s finally stood up for what’s right and holds his ground (see: saving Martin from Uriah), he’s never been aggressive about it.

The breakup not only features Nigel giving an ultimatum (which seems pretty hypocritical of him), but he yells at Taranee and is generally framed in an intimidating manner—he’s backed Taranee up against a tree, and makes a number of vigorous movements. This is the only time we really see Nigel as the “bad boy” archetype, and it’s solely for the purpose of this breakup, to shove more of the blame onto him than he actually holds.

Because that’s the thing—Taranee’s also at fault for this, due to some equally out-of-character actions, but since she’s one of our protagonists there can’t be too much of a negative light on that aspect, so Nigel’s role in the breakup is blown out of proportion to take more of the backlash.

If these two had actually been written in character by the time this conflict came up, I would see this going differently. While I still think Nigel would finally reach his breaking point and confront Taranee about committing all her time to dance, I think it would go down more like his previous confrontations, where he’s firm and holds his ground but isn’t aggressive about it. Let him have the courage to tell the girl for whom he’s had to prove himself multiple times that he’s feeling used and neglected, but rather than giving an ultimatum he asks for a compromise. He can deal with seeing Taranee a little bit less than usual if she’s doing something that makes her happy, but it would be nice if they can build out a little time for just the two of them. Maybe he apologizes for getting annoyed when she talks excitedly about the academy, and expresses interest in meeting her friends or stopping by to observe a class.

Taranee, on the other hand, sees where she’s at fault and works to do a better job of balancing her newly rediscovered passion with the rest of her social life, because while she might really love dancing it isn’t worth neglecting everything from before the academy. And maybe she puts in a little effort into learning more about Nigel’s interests as a fair trade, so he can tell her about something he likes rather than listening to her talk about dance for a change.

Again, another relationship that was ruined by out-of-character actions and could have easily been improved by communication.

18. Phobos?

Hrm. I’ve never particularly been into villains, and Phobos isn’t one of the exceptions, so I don’t have many strong feelings here.

I’ll admit that he does make a good villain, and was particularly crafty upon his return in the fourth arc. And I almost forget about this part, but I also thought it was interesting that we didn’t even get to see his face until, what, the seventh or eighth issue? Over halfway into the first arc, and we learned in issue #5 that he had every image of himself destroyed, and Elias was punished for daring to paint his face. I don’t think we ever got an explanation as to why Phobos didn’t want to be seen, so this is still a fascinating little detail.

20. Cedric and Orube’s relationship?

*cries*

Like with Orube alone, I need to do a closer reread later on to get more in-depth with these two, but I know for sure that they deserved so much better. And like I said in the Phobos post, I really don’t do villains, so it’s noteworthy that I grew to feel this way about Cedric.

I do like how their relationship developed, because my complaints about other canon relationships is that there’s hardly any communication. With Orube and Cedric, we don’t know in the beginning that they’ll be attracted to each other—they’re still enemies-in-law, shall we say (because neither were direct opponents before, for Orube it was more “enemy of my friend is my enemy”). I should hope that, to successfully get from this point to lovers, there would be some communication and development, which we got. They were cautious about trusting each other, but being aliens on a strange world certainly helped build the connection.

I also love how Cedric gets so flustered over Orube, whether because of her outfit or her successfully sneaking in without his knowing, and of course the cappuccino. It was refreshing to see this man defined by his schemes and deceptions get thrown off his rhythm by Orube, who isn’t even in warrior mode.