#where maybe the plot and characters aren’t well made but it’s so absurd that it turns out to just be so much fun to watch

[aesthetic-uni]

I’m still very much in the belief that the FNAF movie is either going to be really bad or really good but you know what there’s obviously a lot of care put in the movie so idc I’ll watch it either way

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

There’s always been something that bothered me about whenever I try to explain the concept of Hatoful Boyfriend and most people’s immediate reaction is “oh! Like Doki Doki!”. My response is always just “…I guess?” because I could never quite explain why that felt wrong to me but I think I finally can put a finger on it now.

(To be clear, I’ve played and enjoyed both games. They’re both fun - this isn’t a criticism at all! I just think they’re, at their cores, two very different things. Also I don’t spoil anything for either game here beyond the obvious; that is, that these games are not what they seem to be at first glance, which I’m pretty sure most people know going in. If that amount of spoiler still bothers you, then stop reading here and play the games first!!!)

When people compare the two games, I 100% understand where they’re coming from. It’s the same gimmick I suppose: cutesy looking or joke visual novel actually turns out to be a smokescreen to hide the horrors within. But. Like. I feel like that’s where the similarities end.

See, DDLC’s whole point is to be shocking. It’s intended to make you jump and disturb you. It’s primarily a horror game with you, the player, as its focal point, and as a result the characters are only really there to be used by the story. The majority of the characters, with the exception of one, are pretty straightforward and lean heavily on the tropes commonly used in dating sims so the game can later distort them in increasingly horrific ways - with the intent of shocking and scaring you. The characters are more tools to be used to tell the story and create the experience than fully fleshed out people, which I think works out well thematically for DDLC. It’s effective in the sense where the characters aren’t really what draws you in, but rather the premise and the anticipation of getting a good scare out of it, with some existential stuff mixed in there for a pretty cool experience. You came to get scared right? Well that’s what you got.

But Hatoful is very different because its intent is not to shock or scare you necessarily. Hatoful, since its initial development, has been designed to make you care. Hato Moa made the game intending for people to start it because of its ridiculous concept, but then to discover it’s depth along the way. Hatoful doesn’t want to jump scare you. It wants to tell you a story. It delves into horror, that’s true, but the horror is much more psychological and it stems from the character’s actions. It’s a character driven story at its core, and it does this by taking itself seriously. It knows it’s completely absurd and leans into the absurdity, but the character interactions are real, so that when actual plot begins to happen, you’ll wonder when you started getting so attached. The characters twist typical dating sim tropes again, but this time to ask “hey why is this character like this? maybe it’s not so straightforward as you think”. And then the game goes a step further and reveals that there is an actual in-universe reason for its insane setup of “a human girl goes to bird school which is for birds and dates pigeons”. Hatoful is less tongue in cheek and more completely unabashed about it’s ridiculous premise and plays it straight - which in turn makes its serious moments shockingly genuine. That, to me, is why it works. The point is to delve into the characters. The plot is driven by the characters. It’s horrifying at times because the characters will sometimes make or be forced to make horrific choices. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a cohesive story. It’s just asking you to dig into it a little further to get there.

Tldr; DDLC is a cutesy facade and Hatoful is unabashedly absurd. DDLC wants to scare you and Hatoful wants you to care. DDLC uses its characters as tools for the experience while Hatoful’s whole point is the characters.

Editing based off a reblog that made me aware I was not completely fair with DDLC here (again, still trying not to spoil too much): The experience in DDLC is heavily based on its thematic content. When I say “the characters serve the experience” and “it wants to scare you” I don’t mean this shallowly, and I think it can and has been frequently misinterpreted in this way. In DDLC, the horror comes from the situation. In that sense, it’s thematically appropriate that the characters are tools in that way - that’s actually part of it and you are meant to feel bad for them - their situations, issues, and personalities are thematically relevant and sympathetic. I shouldn’t have juxtaposed “to scare you” and “to make you care”; that was far too simplistic a summary to the point where it is inaccurate. They both want you to care - a story only has power if you care about it. But I do still feel strongly that DDLC’s draw is the terrifying situation it impresses on the player, and the self-aware questions it asks (in which characters are put through the existential oppressive wringer to emphasize these themes), while Hatoful primarily relies on you slowly but surely acclimating to the absurdity so it can tell what is simultaneously an off the walls story that is also genuine and believable for the characters you’ve grown to know.

[renaissancewoodsman]

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

Video games as a medium and a cultural movement include a lot of repetition. The respawn, where the punishment for failure is repetition. The roguelike and soulslike genres, where you are expected to fail often and try again. New Game +, where you play an entire game again, sometimes with many changes, sometimes with none. The speedrunning community where replaying a game into absurdity is the norm.

Video games have existed in conversation with tabletop games for their entire existence. Video game adaptations of D&D started only a year after it was published. 

But this one has stayed where it originated. No other medium has embraced it (Besides maybe in the culture surrounding long running television shows, or time loop stories). 

Drudgery

A major hurdle to overcome is that repetitive video games largely get you back into the action really quick. A dark souls boss run over 60 seconds is agonizing. Having to do the same D&D 5e combat twice would turn me into an afflicted husk of some variety.

A system like this would need fast resolution. I mean 1 vs 1 combat resolved in a single roll fast. Or even zero rolls.

Most tabletop games would shirk from being able to die in one bad roll, or saying “this monster is stronger than you, you die”. But in a game with respawning of any kind, that harshness is mitigated. 

Repeating but not Repeating

One of the big reasons repetition is so acceptable in games is that you’re not actually repeating. You are repeating the content, but your approach is different. If not, your skills can grow.

A tabletop game that takes these mechanics on has to include that. You have to be able to approach a situation differently, or get better at the minute to minute gameplay. It can’t just be enforced by adventure design, though that would be important. It has to be inbuilt in the mechanics themselves.

Games in the 5e-like canon don’t have a lot of gameplay skill. Some build skill, a tiny bit of knowledge skills (Knowing what damage type to use). But because most people aren’t playing adversarial games, not playing “to win”, skill-based gameplay has been disincentivized in many modern games. 

The focus on collaborative storytelling is great, but doesn’t work with every concept. Likely one of the main reasons this video game concept hasn’t made the jump.

Further complicating the matter is that highly repetitive video games (souls-likes and precision platformers) tend to have a high dexterity skill set that does not translate well to the tabletop. 

A certain subset of roguelites rely almost entirely on strategic skills, like Slay the Spire. Those rely on a huge sense of novelty in the sheer volume of options available, and the ways they can combine. If one wanted to adapt roguelikes to tabletop, games like that would be a good place to start (And of course actual Roguelikes, like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and NetHack)

But what about the simple addition of respawning?

But Why?

What do we gain from this? What are our goals? The primary one, as I see it, is a problem almost every game master knows well.

RPG players are very risk averse. Scheming any way to get through a frightening segment without putting their beloved characters at risk. It’s a case where the optimal way to play is not the most fun.

Now this isn’t a huge problem. One, it’s diegetic, you should be risk averse while in a trap-laden tomb fighting a thousand year old evil skeleton wizard. Two, lots of narrative games are low lethality or very fun when your character gets hurt, mitigating it.

But imagine. Imagine if it took less time to try and fail and respawn than it took to plot. Now, the optimal way to play is to, as the ancients say, scream Leeroy Jenkins. That would be fun

Skill Testing

This game would have some form of player-skill based action resolution. Some randomness is fine, but you have to be able to improve. 

The types of skill you can test here:

Tactical. A player’s understanding of the optimal combinations of moves to choose, and the ways that changes in different scenarios. You’d want to have a wide variety of options; also status effects, terrain effects, or similar game state modifiers. 

Knowledge. A player’s knowledge of the fictional world their character inhabits. Some concepts that fit are: enemies with resistances and vulnerabilities; items that can mitigate certain dangers but limited inventory; and objects with complex instructions for use. You could also require player knowledge for something like spellcasting. Rather than “I cast fireball”, they say “I take two fire rubies and chant the seventh incantation”, a ritual the player must learn alongside their character.

Dexterity. The player’s skill at a physical game of some kind. This can be seen in a game like Dread using Jenga, but any common game of skill could work. Choose slap jack to lose friends and break fingers.

Social Deduction. A player’s ability to read other people. For example, a game based not on chance but on hidden information. A simple example would be rock paper scissors. The skill ceiling can be increased by using a more complex set of rules or with partial information given, like a game of blackjack where one of the dealer’s cards is face up.

Speed. How quickly a player can come to a decision. Imagine if your roll for an action was determined by the number of seconds it took you to take it. In combination with other strategic variables that would usually slow down decision making, you could have a simple system with a high need for skill.

Conclusion

I’m sure a tabletop game has explored this space before, but I wanted to lay out some of the way it could be a fun inclusion. If anyone has played a game like this before, tell me about it!

[retvenkos]

There have been rumors that sab is going to include six of crows next season. Any thoughts?

whoo, do i have some thoughts™. 

i should preface by saying, though, that if you are excited, good for you! if you think it’s a concept™, it most certainly is, and if you don’t want to see hate for the idea, then do not read ahead. i have some things to say about the idea, and none are too positive.

let’s get into it...

lol, plenty of spoilers ahead. mostly for the six of crows duology.

✧ *:･ﾟ

first of all, let’s hit it from an obvious, show running perspective.

six of crows is a lot™. there is so much happening in that book, and even more happening in crooked kingdom. not only are there new characters to add and explore, but there is new lore and new places that would all have to be hit. already, i felt like shadow and bone season one went fast. there was a lot to establish, and even more to expand upon, and i think there is so much to cover that trying to squeeze it all in would be a disservice to the characters and the world, which is the exact opposite of what the showrunners want, since they are lining up the grishaverse to be the new fantasy hit.

especially when the shadow and bone trilogy is adding in new places and characters, i don’t see the need for them to shoehorn in the six of crows duology. i’m sure there’s plenty for the crows to do, during these following two seasons. in fact, i’d even be fine if they wrote the crows out of the third season (which would ideally follow ruin and rising) entirely and maybe threw in a cameo at the end to get viewers excited for a six of crows show.

basically, there’s so much to cover, and shadow and bone already hit the ground running. i think that adding in the six of crows story arc would be too much of a time crunch, on the runtime of the show.

✧ *:･ﾟ

secondly, i’m ranting about a couple of characters, and how they are not six of crows duology ready.

the easiest one to talk about is kaz brekker, because book!kaz is dirtyhands kaz. our first introduction to kaz in the boks is him telling an opposing gang member that he can’t kill kaz, because if he does, his girlfriend will burn in a fire, and no matter how fast he runs, he won’t get there in time. kaz is like... “do you smell that? i think it’s her hair burning.”

and this is a more mild transgression of dirtyhands kaz. in the same book, kaz pulls a man’s eye out, he swallows lock picks, and he plans and executes the greatest heist of all time.

compare this to kaz in the show. kaz in the show is just a mean, angry boy in comparison. and this isn’t me hating on freddie carter - he did an amazing job. and this isn’t me hating on the writers either. i understand why they did that.

decidedly, there is a lot™ happening in shadow and bone season one. you don’t really get a lot of time with any one character, and if you do, it’s the shadow and bone characters. the showrunners knew they had to make kaz a likeable character to people coming into the series blind, and kaz brekker is a pretty hard character to like when you don’t get his backstory or even the slightest hint of it. part of what the six of crows books had going for it was the changing point of views, and inej’s trust and feelings for kaz. inej narrates a lot of stuff, and she does it in a more sympathetic way, making us give kaz the benefit of the doubt - especially since inej is such an upstanding character. you get a little bit of that is the netflix show, but you can’t get a lot of it because (1) time constraints, and (2) inej and kaz are actually at odds for a lot of the show - especially the opening bit. literally, their first interaction is a fight.

so, to get newer fans invested in this emo teen, they made him less dirtyhands. this is also fine because these events happen before the six of crows duology.

if we start the six of crows arc in season two, however, there is too much growth for kaz to do in between seasons. we need to see some of that on screen. especially since his plans were a bust, and the most dirtyhands thing he did was with the inferni, and he wasn’t the one to kill the inferni - inej was. (and i love that scene like the rest of you, but there could have been other ways to get inej to save kaz while letting kaz show some more of that ruthlessness.)

and that’s just kaz. admittedly, he’s an easy character to pick apart, but we have to talk about a few more.

nina zenik? yeah, let’s talk about her. the six of crows nina we knows has a lot of guilt over what she did to matthias - even if a lot of it is repressed. she has a slew of complex emotions over matthias, and it’s all been fermenting inside of her for a year. point is, in the show nina still thinks what she did was right, and she hasn’t had time to question that inside of herself. sure, in the books she still posits that what she did was justified, but there’s a bit of uncertainty there, caused by the acidity of guilt. i want to see that war inside of nina. it makes their love story all the more compelling.

and while we’re talking about helnik, let’s just cover matthias helvar real quick, because, personally, his character needs that time spent in hellgate, now more than ever.

i’ve already mentioned my beef with aging up matthias is a few other posts, but why don’t i reprise it?

matthias is an incredibly complex character, and part of what makes his change earnest is two things - the struggle he continues to feel throughout the duology, and his age. now stick with me.

part of matthias’ struggle is that he is still that little boy whose family were killed by grisha. in the books, matthias is only 18. that seems mature, but by all accounts, it most definitely isn’t. he doesn’t know anything about the world. he has been training to be a religious soldier, where he was heavily indoctrinated. what has matthias truly seen of the world? likely, very little.

furthermore, because he’s only 18, how many expeditions has he been on? sure, matthias has seen grisha tried for their “crimes” and he has been training against grisha since he was a boy, but do you think they’re putting eleven year old matthias out there, against full grown grisha? my bet is he only started truly hunting grisha when he was 14.

when he meets nina, he hasn’t been hunting grisha long, and he’s young enough to where we could truly see how him being smitten with nina could impact his thoughts.

matthias in the show is played by a man who is 27. no hate, this isn’t ageism, but if he’s been hunting grisha since he was 14, he’s been hunting grisha for 12 years. he has gone out on numerous expeditions. hell, in the show they give matthias a large amount of credit for capturing nina. it is sO much harder for you to buy the “nina is a beautiful grisha and has changed my life” storyline when he’s 27, almost 30. furthermore, this matthias has seen way more grisha trials. the concept that he doesn’t know that grisha aren’t given a fair trial is just absurd, at this point. furthermore, you add on the fact that he’s been indoctrinated longer, and it makes his story all the more difficult to grapple with.

on the one hand, i understand that they aged everyone up (which i was happy about, for the majority of characters. kaz, i am once again looking at you). on the other hand, it puts a huge strain on matthias’ character, and if they were to try to juggle the six of crows plot with the shadow and bone plot, so much nuance would be lost and the majority of new fans would not understand people liking matthias. you would risk alienating his character (and nina’s, by effect) and that is not what either character (or actor!) deserves.

they’ve already made it so hard for us to buy the “nina changes matthias” storyline - even though they’ve made him a tad sweeter and more likeable - and if they try to fast track it, it’s going to fall through.

i think matthias needs his time in hellgate for some soul searching and some struggle. with matthias, the only way out is through, and we need to have time for that to happen.

inej and jesper are a little less difficult to juggle since they’re are done pretty well, but i don’t want to see their complexity and nuance fall through (especially jesper’s) because the show is doing too many things at once.

basically, the crows are currently in their fledgling state, and if they were to be thrown into the six of crows storyline, it would not be nearly as fulfilling.

✧ *:･ﾟ

finally, i just want to say that the overall genre and theme of six of crows and shadow and bone are completely different. i feel like there would be far too much dissonance in the show. you could already feel it in season one, but because alina fears being kidnapped and then she goes on the run, it works. six of crows, though, is a completely different show and i think it would be odd to shift from ~life aboard sturmhond’s ship~ to ~breaking and entering in the ice court~.

✧ *:･ﾟ

anyway, those are my thoughts, anon. surely you didn’t ask for this, but you received it, anyway.

[murdereraisuha]

I wrote this for myself to try and organize my current theories on TWST, but I might as well keep this blog going even though I’m out of ideas for card maker memes.

This is basically a rant that starts out with theorizing about RSA, the Cater=Cinderella theory, and Split Card, but then spirals into a Cater character analysis.

For anyone who doesn’t know the Cinderella theory, it’s basically just Cater might have something to do with Cinderella because he has two bossy sisters, and during the ghost marriage there was this whole thing where Riddle needs to rescue Cater before midnight because of some Queen of Hearts rule. 

Spoilers for Cater’s personal stories (including his halloween outfit story) and chat, and chapter 4 of the main story. Okay now let’s get into it. Over 1,800 words geez what am I doing with my life

   Aight so Ace and Deuce don't have their unique magics yet and there is obviously Something going on with Cater so it really makes me think that we're gonna return to Heartslabyul somewhere down the line. We know there's gotta be more stuff with RSA, so that might tie into the Cater = Cinderella theory. Maybe we have a chapter focusing on RSA and Cater will be the main focus or ally for that. IDK man, I'm still kind of eh on the Cinderella theory cause it makes a lot of sense but we already have Mozus being the evil stepmother. Him and Cater are from the same hometown (?) but my concern is that if Cater is a main focus and he gets connected to Mozus then Mozus would also be in the spotlight which would be odd given how nothing seems to suggest that the teachers (except Crowley) getting bigger roles in the story. However, it could always be a situation like with Farena where Mozus is there and some sort of connection is briefly discussed but he isn't important and maybe someone else takes the role of evil stepmother in the story.

   Ok idk so we're gonna go back to Cater. If the Cinderella theory is true, we gotta consider how exactly Cater represents Cinderella. Does he represent Cinderella in the way that he's twisted from her (ex. Azul & Ursula) or that he just takes the role of Cinderella for a chapter (ex. Azul & The Genie)? The fact that he uses dark magic points to it being the latter, that he really is twisted from a card soldier. However, we gotta consider 1. the nature of his unique magic 2. the plot of Cinderella. Though we know he has the ability to clone himself, we don't know how exactly this works. Are the clones identical, or do/can they have differences? In episode 1-15, the Cater clones all have slightly different responses ("はーい" "まかせて！" "おっけー♪") to getting ready to paint the roses. Given how clones don't exist in real life, it's impossible to tell whether this variation indicates actual differences in personality, is just due to the clones' slightly different experiences (like a sort of butterfly effect), or if it's just a decision by the writer so they aren't repetitive. Another thing to note is that in that same episode Cater claims that cloning himself is tiring. If this is the only source for this information, there's the possibility that it just was a lie to let him manipulate the 1st years into helping him paint. Finally, Cater's ability makes me think of Twice from BNHA. Can only the original Cater create clones? Or is he like Twice in that his clones can also make clones, therefore making it impossible for anyone, including himself, to tell who is the original?

  What I'm getting at here is the possibility of Cater having clones that 1. stick around permanently and 2. are significantly different than him. This would create the possibility of him being twisted from both the card soldiers and Cinderella, but he is able to use his clone ability to split up those aspects of himself. One Cater is the card soldier one normally walking around NRC and who has dark magic, but then there's another Cinderella Cater who has light magic. Assuming this is what is going on, it would kind of connect to his two-sided personality, where he presents his bubbly, social-media addict personality to the world but has another, depressed, more private personality underneath. 

  Now, getting into what I mentioned before about the plot of Cinderella, Cinderella normally looks like a humble servant. However, with the aid of the fairy godmother, she completely transforms herself into a breathtaking princess so she can go to the ball. However, once the clock strikes midnight, she transforms back. Basically, Cinderella has the ability of transformation, to have two completely different versions of herself. One version is her true, plain self, while the other is a flashy deception. This information strengthens what I just said about Cater's personality and clone ability.

  Actually, just going into Cater's personality for a bit (yeah, “a bit” lol)... He has a big focus on always being presentable. In his lab coat, he seems pretty desperate to hide all evidence of his true self, claiming that he just failed at putting his magic in the depressed mandrake and then hiding all his other mandrakes aside from the fun ones. This desperation is similar to Cinderella's, with how she flees the ball in a hurry once it reaches midnight so no one will see how she truly looks once the spell breaks. Now, why do Cater and Cinderella behave the way they do? I don't remember Cinderella's exact motivations for attending the ball, but wikipedia says that she had to flee the ball because if the spell broke there she could get caught by her stepmother & stepsisters. What is Cater's "ball"? Well, because of his strong social media presence, his "ball" is basically everywhere, all the time. If something happens on social media that exposes his true self, breaking his "spell", not only can other students see it, but his sisters can also see it.

  Cater hates sucking up to his older sisters, which implies that he has had to suck up to his older sisters and put up his happy front around them too. Just like how Cinderella can't afford to let her stepsisters realize her true identity at the ball, Cater can't afford to let his sisters realize his true self. It's honestly kind of sad; unlike Cinderella, whose stepsisters only showed up later in her life, Cater's older sisters have been around him and making him miserable for all of his life.

  Kinda unrelated, but looking though Cater's chats, in the one he has with Trey they talk about the Queen of Hearts and her love for sweets, Cater remarks that he wants to have tea with her too, leading Trey to say that Cater would be unable to befriend her since they're in different social classes. Isn't this basically a genderbent version of Cinderella, just a commoner, wanting to go to the ball where the Prince is? 

  Now going back to Cater's personality. Even if he does fear his sisters, that doesn't seem to fully explain his 24/7 pep and focus on being magicammable. Now, what if we say that happiness=nobility. In Cinderella, she dresses up like nobility so she can remain in the ball where the actually rich people are. What if Cater is acting happy so he can fit in with the people around him, who are naturally happy enough that they don't need to fake it? Is this a fake it until you make it situation? At the end of his ceremony robes story, after he says he's tired and doesn't care about the ceremony, he says he's just kidding and goes back to talking about the selfies he took that day. Even though he's alone and wouldn't really get hurt for dropping his performance. It gives the vibe to me that his situation is not like Jamil's, where he's fully aware he's unhappy, deliberately acts otherwise in front of others, and tries to eliminate the cause of his unhappiness. Instead, Cater is trying to eliminate his unhappiness itself. He grasps onto magicam because if he fills up his account with pictures of a happy life, it's like he's actually living a happy life.

  This idea I have of Cater trying to fit in also goes along with his focus on the current trends, like in one of his gym uniform voice lines where he panics at the idea of not knowing about a new popular game. Rather than making his own aesthetics or trends, he goes along with the crowd. Sweets and desserts are trendy? Then he'll take tons of pictures of them and say they're super delicious even if he actually hates sweet food. He disregards or evades his own preferences to create the appearance that he's just like everyone else, and he puts effort into staying up to date so he can maintain that appearance.

  Moving on, I reread his halloween outfit personal story. Something that stuck out was the end, when Cater thinks that Lilia wouldn't understand what he's going through. Specifically, Lilia wouldn't understand his 下らなくてどーしよーもない feelings. According to jisho, 下らない can mean trivial/not worth bothering with/worthless, and it can also mean stupid/absurd/silly. Then, どーしよーもない (どうしようもない)  means something that can't be helped, that has no way out of it. Doesn't this seem kind of odd? That he claims his feelings are just trivial then but also he can't help having them? Is this a contradiction? Or is it something like he believes that most people wouldn't have these silly feelings but he specifically is too weak to push past them?

  For self-esteem though, he seems to at least be trying to boost it. Like in his gym uniform story, when he decides to just clone himself and have each one run 1 lap instead of him running 5 by himself, his clones all praise him for the idea. However, this could be a fake it until you make it thing again. The praise does seem a bit heavy-handed. 

  There's also the whole thing in the 2nd part of the story where he talks about all the shallow friendships he has made. He notes that he'd rather have a casual time with people rather than get attached. That plus his family situation... means he's really never had anyone to trust. Anyway, he then goes on to talk about how magicame is amazing for helping him maintain all these casual friendships. So there we have another reason for his social media addiction: not only does it let him create a picture of happiness, he can get tons of feedback affirming his happiness and serving as proof of happiness. How can he possibly be lonely if he has so many friends?

  Both in his ceremony robes and halloween outfit stories have a moment where Cater is tired and admits he's tired but then downplays it. Yeah, the ceremony was tiring, but he got tons of great pictures out of it! Yeah, dealing with guests was rough, but at the same time all the halloween stuff was exciting! This sort of thing is a pretty common strategy for increasing the persuasiveness of an argument. By first agreeing (yes, he's tired) with the opposing view (he is not happy), he can then push his own view (he is happy) and point at his earlier concession as proof that he has looked at both sides of the issue instead of only looking for evidence of his own belief. 

 So basically what I'm getting here is that Cater Is Not Okay. Prevented from building close bonds with friends or family, he's reinforcing his isolation himself through his fervent efforts to never let anyone close and never let his mask drop. He's gone so far as to try and convince himself that he's happier than he actually is through self-deception and social media.

  Alright that’s all I got for now see ya

[intheshadowofsignificance]

The Handmaid’s Tale is stretching my suspension of disbelief to the limit. Spoilers for season 4 below. It’s a wall of text so please be warned.

I can’t insert a cut on mobile so have some space to speed scroll away if you don’t want spoilers.

[[MORE]]

I realize the sheer implausibility of a lot of fiction is what makes it great. I respect the ability of writers to avoid pressure from fans to make everything perfect or explainable. That said, there comes a point where too much plot immunity starts to breakdown the fabric of the story. That’s what’s happening here.

First of all, is it just me or has Gilead gotten immensely soft in season four? I was physically uncomfortable throughout June’s capture scenes because I kept expecting things to get real gory real fast. I’m not complaining about the lack of it, and I understand especially after the recent episode that there are things which impact June much deeper than some of the physical torture ever could, but we are talking about a society who cut out Janine’s eye to make an example of her for talking back. A society that genitally mutilated Emily for being gay. June has lost Gilead several Marthas who will confess everything they know, dozens of their “precious children,” and she gets...waterboarded.

This woman has proven she’ll run away at the first opportunity and inspire a resistance wherever she goes. You’re telling me Gilead really wouldn’t get to a point where they cut off her feet? Burn them until they’re unrecognizable?

Another recurring theme that’s starting to show some wear is the whole “we can’t kill handmaids because they’re a scarce resource” followed almost immediately by killing them. I understand the train couldn’t have been stopped, but for the driver of the bus to start shooting to kill right off? Either handmaids are expendable when they become criminals or they aren’t. Side note: They made it way too easy for the handmaids to run, I’m going to give that somewhat of a pass because maybe Nick had a hand in it. Who can say? But I’m pretty sure I remember Emily being handcuffed at the wrists and ankles on her way to the colonies. They would’ve at the very least done that for fugitives who have run multiple times and resulted in the loss of children, aka leveraging power, and the deaths of countless commanders to this point.

Speaking of Nick, I’m pretty convinced we’re going to find out he’s leading his own secret sect of rebellion among officers headed for “the front.” The guy has, like June, gotten an excessive amount of plot immunity to this point to not have people acting as double agents with him. That kiss in clear view of the bus? You can hide a lot, but being that boldly involved with a traitor in front of witnesses, even if it had just been Lydia? Weird. Now maybe because he’s a man and a trusted one, Lydia’s word wouldn’t stand a chance against his. But there have clearly been rumors that Nick and June are romantically involved. It’s hinted at by other characters all the time and I assume is part of the reason he’s always hanging around when June is dragged back to Gilead. That’s the kind of thing that should, realistically, in a society as strict as this, put him on the wall. At some point Gilead has to be past the point of “making them wish for death is worse than death itself” because someone, somewhere is smart enough to know that, that ideology is going to be what causes them to crumble.

Another thing that’s bothering me: the accommodations of the Waterford’s as war criminals. I can overlook this because their scenes really are interesting and I’m invested in them as characters and in their inevitable comeuppance. However, Serena’s referenced involvement with Nicole or even the idea of her having any hope of it if she can convince a jury she was abused/manipulated/brainwashed is absurd. It has always been absurd that she had access to Nicole in Canada, but now that they have 86 other stolen children, even more so. Obviously they’re not going to send kids back to Gilead even if they’re the product of rape and one biological parent still resides there. They’re shown trying to place those with no relatives in Canada into the foster care system. So WHY are we even entertaining Serena having access to Nicole? This above so much else is implausible to the point of being ridiculous. Fred acknowledges Nicole is no more Serena’s than his. And I can’t help thinking they threw her pregnancy at us to help aid in Serena letting that obsession go. Because seriously there is no way to explain letting that woman be involved with June’s daughter in any way.

Aside from plot immunity, one thing that seriously hurts THT’s credibility is the lack of any sense of time passing. Nick repeatedly references going to the front but it hasn’t happened. If this was really Gilead’s doing would they waste time, and exactly how much has passed since the threat until the actual follow through?

Same way with June’s infected gunshot wound going from oozing pus and not really responding to minimal holistic treatment, to healed enough she can hoist Janine out of a train car.

There’s so much this series does right. The fabric of society is so deeply harrowing and tragic, the characters well rounded and engaging. I love the theme of June’s humanity being rooted so deeply in her maternal love for Hannah and the sense of protection she feels for the teens/kids suffering in Gilead as they are brutalized by grown men. I love that Fred sees through Serena and that they’re both so narcissistic and manipulative and unsettling to the core. I love that the writers know a lot of that existed before Gilead and that they’re both responsible for the way they’ve become as individuals and a couple.

I love that Moira acknowledges her actions are paved in guilt because she’s free and June is suffering. I love that the show doesn’t forget to acknowledge how many people are suffering for June’s choices in such complex ways, and that the alternative to that suffering is compliance or resignation, which is just going to breed more suffering. I love that we see Luke grappling with June’s choices and where they’ve left him too. I love that no one is really made to be a martyr. Deep down, there’s a piece of them all still wondering: what about me? Don’t I matter? Am I going to be okay? And no one really knows.

Having seen THT is renewed not just for the current season, but a fifth, makes me feel like they’re going to push the series to the absolute limit of believability and ruin what had been, despite questionable moments, an amazing run. I really don’t know how much more they’re going to be able to avoid maiming June, killing Nick and Lydia, and a hundred other things. We’ll see.

One of the big spoilers of the trailer was June getting to safety this season, no doubt during the last episode so they can rope us into season 5 where I am praying Hannah hasn’t “reached maturity” yet.

[liddolwhynot2000]

Decisions Of a Capricorn

____________________________________

Summary: Levi Ackerman woke up one fine morning. In the past. Shit.

Genre: Angst, lets-change-shit, drama, liddol romance (Levixhappiness)

Pairings: Levi/Original Female Character, Levi/Petra

Warning: Manga spoilers

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Chapter 2: White Poppy

____________________________________

Summary: Capricorns are responsible and disciplined. You always make the most practical decisions. You think about things thoroughly before acting, and you make choices based on what provides the most benefits for everyone.

Alternatively, Levi decides what to do.

____________________________________

Usually, when he was left alone in his office, Levi was either buried in an absurd amount of paperwork, courtesy of Erwin, or trying to sleep a little.

Today, however, he was simply sitting at his desk and staring mindlessly at the table. He didn't even feel the urge to get himself some tea, too lost in his internal monologue.

He was back in the past. The Godamn shitty past.

Eren hadn't turned into a douche bag yet. Erwin was still alive. 95% of the people that had been dead to him a day ago, were alive and well. And if he played his cards right, he could ensure that at least some of them would stay alive.

He could and would change shit.

But.. How?

Levi was a practical man. He knew his own limits when it came to plotting and planning. There was no way for him to change things in a way that wouldn't result in the rumbling. Not on his own. Only the likes of Hange or Armin or-

Erwin

____________________________________

'Erwin.'

'Yes Levi?'

Erwin continued to work, not even bothering to look at Levi as he filled out forms for the upcoming expedition. It was late at night and the blonde commander was sitting at his desk, working away as everyone else slept. Others would think he was simply sleep deprived and that's why he was hardly paying attention to his trusted captain.

Levi knew better. Erwin was always sharp, he just preferred luring people into a false sense of security that he wasn't.

He leaned back against the couch, crossing his legs casually and took a sip of his tea.

'I've been thinking about your plan.'

'And?'

'I think we made a mistake.'

At this, Erwin calmly settled his pen down and finally deigned to look at him.

'Explain.'

Okay, time to put his plan into motion.

'We're sure that The Armoured and Colossal are like Eren right? Humans that's can transform into titans?'

'Yes.'

'The Colossal Titan and Armoured Titan appeared five years ago. Which means whoever is inside those shitty titans, they have at least five years of experience over Eren. Taking him and my squad into a battle field where they aren't prepared for enemies like that-'

Levi could only feel relief as Erwin's expression lit up with understanding.

'It means that I judged wrong. Of course, not all titan shifters would be like Eren. They've had more time and access to their power. More time to harness it in battle. Eren has hardly had 2 months and still can't transform at will. This makes it difficult to use him as bait to lure out the traitor, because simply put, Eren won't be able to protect himself. In which case, we would risk losing our greatest weapon and... '

Watching him open the drawer and pull out the mission plan, Levi realised that he had forgotten how smart Erwin was. He could practically see the gears turning in his mind. The brilliant bastard was changing the plan as they spoke.

'Exactly. And if the Armoured Titan comes after us, we're fucked. We don't have anyone except Eren who even stands a chance against it. And that's not saying much.'

Levi liked to believe it was sheer dumb luck that Annie had come after them, rather then Reiner. They could at least still fight and capture Annie with their limited resources--Reiner would have gotten away with Eren easily.

'Do you think your squad can take on a titan shifter?'

Levi blinked and snapped out of his thoughts.

'Frankly, no. If the shifter is Eren, he'll get his ass kicked. If it's the Armoured fucker, they're dead.'

His old squad just wasn't able to take on an opponent like that. They were all prepared to take on the worst, however, Levi acknowledged their lack of creativity and improvisation. They would simply think between to kill or to not kill, which was likely what would had gotten them killed in the first place. If they had let Eren transform first and tire out the female titan before they fought her, they would have likely lived. His next squad had proven better then them because of this--for they often found ways to fight and get out of it alive against the shittiest of odds.

'Even if we tell them about the traitor?'

'If we tell them, they'll judge accordingly and try to keep Eren safe no matter what.'

If he instructed his squad of the situation beforehand, he was confident they'd get out of it alive. They weren't the best at spur of the moment thinking, but they were still extremely talented. As long as they stuck to his orders and were informed enough, they'd manage well.

'Do you think we should tell Eren?'

Inwardly, Levi winced at the mention of Eren, remembering that he still hadn't figured out what to do about him.

'Yes. The brat needs to be prepared too. And.. I think we need to give him reasons to trust us.'

Erwin raised an eyebrow at him, silently probing for more. Levi obliged.

'The brat's a Survey Corps fanboy. The hero worship will wear off soon enough. I'd rather our greatest weapon actually trust us because we give him reasons to. Don't want to risk him acting out.'

'Fair. This is rather odd coming from you, I-'

'Don't take this the wrong way. I don't trust him. But he should trust us. We're gambling lives for his shitty ass.'

'Ah. I see.'

'How much are you going to change the plan?'

'I haven't decided yet. I'll tell you by tommorow. I need to think on it a little more.'

'I just want you to let me tell my squad about the traitor. The rest is your shit to figure out.'

'... Well, you do have valid reasons so-'

Levi smirked,

'So act in whatever manner you see fit.'

Levi nodded before making to leave. His job here was done. Just as he was about to shut the door and leave Erwin to strategise, he paused.

'You might regret letting me do what I want.'

Erwin smiled at him.

'No regrets.'

Levi almost smiled back, but instead opted to shut the door.

____________________________________

Early in the morning, Levi walked outside in the courtyard. The sun had risen a while ago and the air had been crisp. It wouldn't be long till his comrades would be awake, so he figured a stroll to clear his mind wouldn't hurt.

Had he made the right decision? Levi honestly didn't know.

Initially, he had planned to just tell Erwin everything. About Marley, Eren letting his inner lunatic out full blast, the truth about the King. But, he had stopped himself.

Maybe it was because he had grown used to not having Erwin around, that he was making decisions on his own? Or maybe it was just that he was tired of following orders that only got people killed?

He hadn't wanted to not tell his squad about the traitor, yet he had obeyed orders and stayed quiet. Resulting in their deaths.

He hadn't wanted to go along with the battle in Stohess District, but he had obeyed orders and watched countless civillians die.

He hadn't wanted to take part in any plan that involved keeping Zeke alive but he had fucking obeyed orders and done it. The end result had been a mass genocide that none of them had been able to stop.

He knew Erwin would lead them well if he knew everything, but for now, he would prefer changing things using his own authority. It was selfish of him, but he had learned his lesson.

Ever since that dark day in that field, when he had made his decision to serve in the Survey Corps, he had always relied on Erwin. Or rather, his orders. It had been easier to let him make all the decisions and just go with it. The objective was always completed, so the cost had always been brushed aside.

Except following orders like that had only worked for singular, short term goals. When it came to the end goal, it had only led to their destruction.

Levi was scared that if he followed Erwin half blind like before, history would only repeat itself. But what if he made it worse? Erwin had always been more visionary. The brains of the operation. Levi was used to being the brawns that just did as told.

He kicked a pebble, sighing. Taking a deep breathe he closed his eyes--only for someone to bump into his chest and fall to the ground.

Levi didn't so much as step back, hardly phased. He frowned at the person rubbing their head as they half lay on the floor.

It was a woman, with startling, long red hair. A basket lay next to her, full of flowers. Some had fallen out of the basket.

'Tch. Watch where you're going.'

The woman looked up at him, vivid pretty green eyes blinked up at him in confusion. Levi raised an eyebrow, and then realisation dawned upon her. She immediately scampered upto her feet

'I'm so, so sorry--I was - I mean- I didn't mean to bump into you Captain. It was an honest mistake.'

'Whatever.'

He rolled is eyes and gestured to the flowers on the ground.

'Well? Clean up this mess'

'Oh yes, of course.'

She began hurriedly picking up the flowers, before nervously apologising to him once more and running off. Just as he was about to walk back to his office, he noticed a flower she hadn't picked up.

Holding it in his hand, he couldn't help feeling a sense of peace. It was a white poppy. Clutching it tightly, he began to climb the stairs to his office, suddenly feeling more sure of himself then ever.

Hange had told him, in one of her I- learned-something-new-so-your-eardrums-have-to-suffer sessions, about what a poppy symbolised. Peace. The end and remembrance of a war. It had been one of the last happy conversations he had with her, right before Eren had unleashed hell on them.

Peace was all Levi had ever wanted--not just for himself, but for everyone living in the walls. And he would try his damned hardest to achieve that.

Yet again, he would believe in his own decisions. This time, he would trust himself even more. Feeding Erwin little information that made sense would be easy enough, the man was intelligent enough to draw conclusions that would benefit them.

And, there were somethings he would prefer that still happened. To keep things predictable for him. Like the 57th Expedition. He would capture Annie this time around and not let the Stohess Battle occur. The wall titans and humanity existing outside the walls could be proven when Historia was made queen and they reached the basement-

Wait, shit.

Historia was still part of the Survey Corps.

____________________________________

Levi stared blankly at the flower on his desk, debating whether if breaking the queen's legs before she was even queen would be considered treason. Because there was no way in hell he was letting her near any danger.

Historia was a game changer. A hope for the war. Levi knew some people would still die, but Historia was one who couldn't. Eren could be replaced, Erwin could be replaced, Levi himself could be replaced, but not Historia. He would have to get her out of the fold safely-

*knock knock*

'Come in' Levi answered without a second thought. Petra entered holding a tray full of biscuits and a steaming cup of tea.

'Captain, here's your morning tea. The staff had some biscuits today too.'

'Ah. Thank you. Just put it here.'

Petra settled the tea cup and plate on his desk, catching sight of the poppy.

'That's a pretty flower captain. Where did you pick it from?'

'I didn't. I got it from some girl.'

If Levi hadn't been busy checking the temperature of his tea, he would have noticed the slightly crushed expression on his comrades face. By the time he looked at her again, the girl was saluting him.

'Petra--go tell the others we'll be doing transformation experiments with Eren today. Everyone has an hour to get ready. If anyone's late, they'll have a special sparring session with me.'

'Yes Sir!'

Watching her leave, he resolved himself. He was doing what he could for them. He would try to get them closer to peace. He found himself looking at the white poppy again, the barest hints of a smile on his face.

He might just have to thank that girl for bumping into him.

.. And look into the law books regarding what injuries to historia wouldn't count as treason. There had to be at least one right?

__________________________________

A/N: hope y'all liked this! Sorry I've been MIA. My dad got pnemoneia and ended up admit in the hospital. Thankfully we caught it in time, so he's recovered well now. But it's been a crazy couple of days.

Soo, I debated Levi being absolutely honest with Erwin and telling him the entire truth but I realized it wouldn't work. The story is going to be set in more changing the timeline from chapter 4 I think, when the expedition starts. I'm actually writing this as I go sooo, *laughs nervously. Also poor historia. Will Levi actually break her legs? Till next time!

(also I'm working on those asks now, so they'll come soon)

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Monster Hunter Movie

Spoilers Will Be Present.

There are a lot of things one can say about the badness of the film.

To me there are two basic issues, which interconnect: Tone and Respect.

At the core of things the studio and director considered their own brands more important than the brand of their source material. This is an understandable mistake to make when you’re thinking business - after all how would you survive as a brand if you granted primacy to other brands all the time? - but concessions must be made or else you’re just appropriating the aesthetics.

That’s what happened here. And it’s half of what made the movie a bad movie.

I went in expecting it to be real bad and as a result I was only mildly disappointed in some missed opportunities as opposed to legit incensed the way some MH bloggers are. But I do not blame them for being angry.

The plot, basically, is: Some army folks include Artemis, who you probably know is the main character because a) she’s the captain b) she’s Milla Jovovich and c) she’s the character you played as in the movie crossover event in MH World two weeks prior. They’re looking for Bravo Team when they get sucked into a dimensional rift and dropped in the land of Monster Hunter. So far so Isekai.

They encounter a Black Diablos which doesn’t act much like the monster from the games. Also a hunter played by Tony Jaa fires a paint bomb warning shot at them - It’s unclear whether he was trying to get them to leave or just thought the paint bomb would let them know they were in mortal danger.

The Black Diablos kills one of them and they run into some rocky terrain to escape.

This turns out to be the nest of roughly a thousand Nerscylla - horrible spider monsters. These kill everyone else over the course of an 11-minute, uh, tribute to Starship Troopers I guess we’ll call it. Artemis survives. There’s a 20-second sequence I thought was very good as a scene but belonged in a non-MH film, where she escapes the nest where she just watched eggs on her buddy burst with baby Nerscylla and then suddenly rips off her army gear to check herself for eggs in this frenzied panic. Seemed like both a smart thing to do and a reasonable trauma response to expect from someone.

But it shouldn’t have happened at all.

Backing it up, the 11 minutes before it shouldn’t have happened.

Nerscylla isn’t a pack hunter. They don’t grow in gigantic broods. But more than that the whole scene was...mean-spirited, and ugly.

Something that is important to understand about Monster Hunter as a franchise is that the seriousness of the stakes - the town is always under attack, or some ancient species of monster has awoken, or some new deviant mutation is driving smaller monsters into settled areas - is always, ALWAYS tempered by a fundamental directorial optimism. I think this film may be the first Monster Hunter thing where anyone dies and we see it happening. There have certainly been characters who mourned or wanted vengeance (more in the manga than the games) but that’s always something that happened before what we’re watching, and that’s really important to the tone.

Jovovich also has absurd plot armor, which, frankly, would have been fine - possibly even admirable - if they’d been adhering to the “nobody dies on screen” rule. Having someone get blasted across the landscape and get knocked out for a bit...as a player I’d have found this hilarious. As it is, there’s definitely a “why is this lady still alive” vibe that keeps cropping up because the movie’s taken a lot of time telling us that people in its setting are fragile chunks of meat that can be torn asunder at any moment.

Anyway, after all this trauma she encounters Tony Jaa and they fight. Why? Probably because he’s a martial artist and they wanted to get some mileage out of that fact. This is extremely dumb. Again, the only place where I’ve seen anything more than casual ribbing between humanoids in anything MH is the manga, and even there it didn’t come to blows. And within the context of this film these people have no reason to think the other’s an enemy and two extremely deadly reasons - the nearby monsters - to work together. Both have been presented as smart enough to know this. But fight scene. Long, stupid fight scene.

The fight nearly becomes fatal, and they realize it’s dumb. There’s another 5-10 minutes of bonding. This is fine! Jovovich and Jaa have decent chemistry (never aimed at romance, which is kind of refreshing) and there’s a really cute Demon Mode reference and also a product placement that turns out later to be a pretty cool linguistic joke (she gives him chocolate, calls it chocolate, he later uses the word chocolate to mean tasty).

They have a plan to get Nerscylla venom and use it to hurt Diablos, maybe paralyze or put it to sleep, so they can get across the dunes it’s guarding toward Jaa’s team and the dimensional storm Jovovich came through from.

The venom doesn’t visibly have any effect, which makes the whole planning thing feel wasteful.

Also, everyone’s use of the basic Alloy and Bone set of weapons gives people who’ve played MH the impression that none of these hunters have successfully hunted any monsters ever. One of the core points with the games is the loop of fighting monsters, carving them up, and using their parts to make weapons and armor you use against other monsters. But more than that, the presence of monster-armor on your npc fellow hunters in camp makes the world feel lived in, makes the people feel like part of the ecosystem.

So with a bunch of needless gore, they kill the Diablos. I actually was kind of excited that she carved a piece off of it - ah, she was going to make armor or weapons out of this near-bulletproof monster’s hide! No, she made a pallet to carry Tony Jaa, who got hurt in the fight. Then when he can walk they leave the big ol’ scale behind. OK.

Did I mention Ron Perlman’s in this film? Well he is, and while it’s a good visual match to have him as The Admiral he’s also - like the film at large - not optimistic enough. The character he’s playing is an old warrior who’s survived tons of battles and laughs in the face of danger. Perlman’s rendition is moody and serious, which once there are fight scenes is a mismatch with his fighting style.

Like I said way up top, there’s a willingness to use the aesthetics of the beloved franchise. Just not the themes. They aren’t willing to present things from a Monster Hunter Franchise perspective, because these gritty, brutal worlds are the brand of this director. When the franchise he was working with was Resident Evil, gritty, gory brutality was a brand match and the resulting film was one of the better video game movies out there (yes, I know that’s not a high bar). Here, it led to a movie with a lot of visually beautiful work but a tone that seems directly disrespectful to its source material.

So that’s a problem.

I said the tone made one of the two big problems. The other would be an issue even if I knew nothing about Monster Hunter, which is a series of structural flaws in the direction - mostly around the pacing of the film.

Army opener, fine. Trying to set up rapport. Diablos fight, too long. Nerscylla scene, WAY too long. Jaa-Jovovich fight, WAY too long. Bonding scene, fine. Planning to fight Diablos, too long. Diablos fight, fine. Jaa’s desert near-death experience, too long (didn’t need to happen at all). Jungle region, a little long but not bad. Rathalos encounter, fine. Ship scene, exposition dump, long and also boring. Rathalos fight...

The Rathalos burns two hunters to death on screen. See above, this is bothersome. It’s also chucking people across the landscape. Jovovich gets tossed into a portal back to earth.

Also off a cliff. We’re back to the “how’s she alive?” problem. She gets rescued by the army, they start to take her for treatment, the helicopter is attacked by the Rathalos.

For a tonal mismatch this is probably the best scene. I think this idea, very Reign of Fire, is what the director really wanted from the film. MH monsters in NYC, Lagiacrus attacking surfers from underwater, all that. We couldn’t afford those sets, so we get a dragon attacking army toys in a desert.

Dragon wins. I honestly appreciated the sale of how a dragon could win this engagement. I think the direction and editing successfully created a scene where the army losing the fight felt plausible.

Of course, this makes Jovovich and Jaa taking it down feel a bit much, but okay.

And we finish with what amounts to a tease of the idea of a series. I don’t get the sense that this is a genuine appeal. I think the “idea of more fights” is the ending. It doesn’t work, mind you, but this has become a kind of trope for one way to end a video game movie.

The thing I like least about this trope is that to hype up the audience the characters in the film all seem suddenly excited to be engaging in the activity we’ve been shown to be terrifying and deadly for the whole film. NOW they think it’s fun.

And that’s an extra layer of disappointment, because it indicates that we could have been having fun this whole time, if the director weren’t obsessed with brutality.

[aurorawest]

⭐️⭐️Hi! Can you give a commentary for anything at all you'd like to talk about? 😊

Thanks! I’ll talk about far away from here and closer to somewhere else. I wrote this fic for Froststrange Week 2021. This fic is about Loki and Strange running into each other in Hong Kong. I did a lot of Google Streetview-ing of Hong Kong, and just a lot of random googling to get some sense of what the place looks like. I’ve never been, clearly. And now I want to go! It looks really cool. I decided to set it on Lamma Island, which is right offshore and has regular ferries. There are two towns on the island and a hiking trail that goes between them.

I went through a couple different iterations of what I wanted the plot of this to be. I knew Loki and Stephen would get drunk and play truth or dare, because those were the prompts, but one of my ideas was that they actually went to a restaurant and ate dinner together. Then I was just going to have them go to a bar. In the end, I settled on them basically having a picnic and drinking the booze Loki had earlier bought to share with Thor.

Throughout this fic, Loki is real thirsty for Strange. There is a lot of innuendo (if you thought to yourself, ‘did she mean to word it that way...?’ the answer is almost certainly YES). As he gets drunker (on baijiu, which I also researched, and have never had), he keeps having these really vivid fantasies. This is kind of the first time, chronologically in my verse, that Loki really confronts that he has feelings for Stephen. He starts out the fic sort of reveling in his sexual attraction, but by the end it’s freaking him out, because he’s kind of realizing that it’s more than that.

This is the section where they play truth or dare to the end. Loki chooses dare. Stephen thinks really hard about it.

He breathed out slowly. “Are you thinking of something?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Strange said. “I don’t—” He swayed. “—don’t want it to be boring. Like, I could ask you to sing. I’ve never heard you sing.”

“You don’t want to,” Loki said. “‘S’not good. 

My head canon is that Loki has a truly terrible singing voice. He also hates singing.

Also!” Coup de grace—Strange couldn’t dare him to sing after this. “I am far too…too…too plastered to remember the words to any of the songs you like.”

Womp womp. Shouldn’t have admitted to that, Loki. I just wrote a bit in an upcoming fic where Loki actually thinks about the lyrics to a song Strange played a lot and about how they apply to his situation (that fic takes place shortly before this one).

“You know them?” Strange asked. There was surprise in his tone.

Stephen is a way better actor than Loki gives him credit for. Loki thinks that Strange doesn’t give away what he’s feeling. And while that’s true...it’s kind of more than that. This thrills Stephen. Absolutely thrills him. It’s a sign that Loki knows his favorite songs. It’s a sign that Loki is interested in music.

“Maybe,” Loki said, only realizing at the last second that he shouldn’t have admitted this. “Or maybe I’m lying,” he added. “That’s why I didn’t choose truth, you know. Because I’m a liar.”

I both love and hate writing drunk people. This line makes me laugh because Loki sounds like an idiot.

“Uh huh.” Strange’s hands were resting on top of his thighs, twitching now and then. “Okay. How about this. I dare you…to tell me the truth about something.”

At first, Loki laughed. But Strange just watched him, looking smug, and Loki’s smile faded. “That doesn’t really seem in the spirit of the game, Steph—St—Strange,” Loki slurred.

This was one of the first exchanges I thought of once I had the plot of the fic nailed down. Strange basically cheats, Loki lets him...and also nearly calls him Stephen.

With a sloppy looking shrug, Strange said, “That’s the dare.”

Loki stared at him in consternation. Then his eyes flicked down to Stephen’s mouth, set into a crooked smirk, and he couldn’t help thinking, The truth is that I want to kiss you right now, but even as drunk as he was, he wasn’t drunk enough to say that. Was it even true? Or was it just…alcohol? Probably just alcohol. He was sure, quite sure, that if he were sober, he wouldn’t want to kiss Stephen Strange. So what if his lips looked full and soft; so what if Loki had always had a weakness for the feel of a well-groomed beard against his face? Just alcohol. And heatstroke, probably.

Does Loki even believe himself here? That’s kind of the question throughout the entire slow burn. Does Loki actually, really believe the bullshit he keeps telling himself, that he’s not in love with Strange? The fun thing with Loki is that he’s perfectly capable of lying to himself. In fact, he often elevates his lies over the actual truth, because he would prefer the lie to be true. So even when he knows it’s a lie, he almost gets into this state where he thinks if he just repeats it enough, he can will it to be the truth. This is actually something that Loki thinks about Thor sometimes - that Thor can just mold reality to his will if he wants something enough. Loki sees himself as telling stories, and he desperately wants the stories he tells about himself to be true. The fairy tale that he isn’t in love with Stephen, though, that’s a losing battle.

His mind turned to the ‘dare.’ There were many things that Strange didn’t know the truth about, some innocuous, some much less so. Some, they had talked about haltingly, but never in great detail. 

This was me hedging—when I wrote this last November/December, I knew that I was going to have Loki and Strange talk about their respective tortures at the hands of the Black Order in an upcoming fic (I’d already written some of that dialogue, in fact).

He could say, I know what Ebony Maw did to you because it was done to me too; 

Somehow, despite shipping Loki and Strange for over a year and adoring both of them, it didn’t really occur to me that they have this in common until like, six months ago.

he could say I understand what it’s like to think you’re someone and find out the opposite. He could tell him about sneaking Jotuns into Asgard, about the fact that he had delighted in being wicked during the Battle of New York because it was exactly what everyone had always expected of him and he was giving them the performance of his life. He could tell him how he’d hated Thor so much, but loved him with an equal fierceness.

But Loki thought Strange might know that last one already.

Strange doesn’t know about sneaking Jotuns into Asgard, but he actually knows both of the other two things Loki lists here.

Taking a deep breath, Loki said, “I think you have a nice singing voice.”

Strange actually looked stunned. That was worth something. For a full thirty seconds, he stared at Loki, a comically befuddled expression on his face. Finally, he asked, “You do?”

Loki compliments Strange very rarely. This is one of the most uncomplicatedly nice things he’s ever said to him.

Loki rubbed at a smudge of dirt on his pants. “Yes.” Flicking his eyes to meet Strange’s, he said, “Nicer than mine. But actually just…nice.”

It would have been so much easier for him to stick with the comparative here. This is character growth, that he admits that Stephen has a good voice, full stop.

There was another long pause. Then, Strange said, “Thanks.”

With a shrug, Loki looked out over the sea. “You dared me to tell the truth about something.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Well then? What about you? Truth or dare?”

Strange rubbed at his beard and Loki wondered what internal debate he was having. What the pros and cons of each choice were. Because Loki knew Strange. 

You can really see the absurdity of Loki’s repeated assertion that Strange and he aren’t friends right here. Loki is absolutely right - he does know Strange; he knows him so well that he can guess what he’s thinking, even though Strange tries pretty hard to hide what he’s thinking from Loki.

He knew that was the reason for the hesitation. Strange was trying to guess how far Loki might needle him.

Another few seconds of silence passed, and then, Strange said slowly, “Truth.”

Oh.

Oh. No jk. Believe it or not, the Oh. Oh. trope doesn’t appear in this series, because Loki never really has that moment of realization about his feelings.

Loki had assumed he would choose dare. Dare was easy. Loki would have dared him to do something stupid, like create a barbershop quartet composed of himself and invite the Avengers and their new young acolytes to a special performance.

I really struggled to come up with a stupid thing that Loki might dare Strange to do, for some reason.

But truth? Oh, he wanted to ask, is that something you want to talk about? The truth? 

This was one of the prompts for the event.

Which he supposed would have been a question that Strange could have told the truth in response to, and Loki could call it done, but…even that felt like opening a box he didn’t want to open.

Questions flickered through his mind. Impossible questions. Does the way you look at me sometimes mean anything? Do you even like men? 

Loki still thinks Strange is straight at this point.

Do you find me attractive? Do you want to kiss me? Do you know what a spectacularly bad idea that is? Do you understand why I can’t?

Loki doesn’t even quite know why he can’t. This moment is almost like...please tell me why I can’t, because I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t quite come up with a good enough reason.

He was so drunk. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, he clearly couldn’t drink this much, ugh, no, not around Strange, not when it was so hot and it had been so long since he’d had—since he’d been with—since he’d had any kind of romantic partner except his own hand.

The last time Loki had fully consensual sex (where he reached climax) is at least decades in the past. Possibly longer. In The Real Asgardians of the Galaxy, Kalmsh goes down on him, but Loki stops him.

That thought made him giggle a little. He had made supremely poor choices today. He was just sensible enough not to make another one.

Strange was staring at him. There was an odd look on his face. Loki couldn’t identify it.

But if he had to, he’d call it…expectant. No.

Hopeful.

Loki knows and tells himself he doesn’t.

Loki’s fingers curled into fists and he asked, “How did you and Wong meet?”

@mareebird suggested this for the question.

The change on Strange’s face was subtle. Nearly imperceptible. Loki was surprised he was able to detect it, considering the state he was in. The hope, if that was even what it had been, dropped away, replaced by…resignation. “I wanted to borrow a book from the library,” Strange said. He smiled, though it seemed joyless. “In Kamar-Taj. He took it too seriously.”

I wanted this moment to be absolutely devastating. To be honest, I don’t think I really pulled it off. C’est la vie. I plan on rewriting this and adding it to my series, so maybe I can fix it then.

“As always,” Loki said. His voice felt like it was coming out far too heartily. As though some line had been crossed and they both needed to retreat, but Loki was acutely aware, horrifically aware, that he had done something wrong, or if not wrong, then something that had wounded Strange in some way, and that was…idiotic. It was stupid. Nonsensical. There was nothing Loki could do to emotionally wound Strange. The man had proved that time and time again. He didn’t take Loki seriously. If you didn’t take someone seriously, they couldn’t hurt your feelings.

It really, really bothers Loki that Strange doesn’t take him seriously. He’s wrong about that, of course, but it’s something that’s driven him absolutely insane from the moment they met. At first it’s more of a like, dick measuring contest, lol. But it becomes much more than that, and the anger turns to this kind of...desperate hurt. Loki wants Strange to take him seriously. His unhappiness over the perceived slight appears many times.

Which was why Strange had never hurt Loki’s feelings, incidentally, because Loki didn’t take him at all seriously, 

Uh huh yeah sure.

this human sorcerer with his lovely eyes, blue or green depending on the light, and his soft-looking lips and neat goatee.

Riiiiiiight.

The two of them lapsed into silence. The drunken buzz had gone out of Loki’s veins entirely. Alcohol—it was fun until it wasn’t. Now he just felt foggy and slow. The world was spinning unpleasantly. How the hel was he going to fly back to New Asgard like this? He couldn’t. Sourness sloshed in his stomach. He’d probably be lucky not to be sick.

Now, this, I felt I described pretty well. It’s such a distinct feeling when you’re drunk and having fun and suddenly you cross some line that you didn’t know was there...and you’re not having fun anymore. And there’s no way to get back.

Loki’s legs felt stiff and he extended them. That other buzz had gone from Loki’s veins, too. It had been stupid. Stupid fantasies. [...]

His mouth was starting to feel dry. The sourness in his stomach was gaining more bite. The humidity in the air wasn’t helping, either. Loki felt like he couldn’t get a breath. He wasn’t quite nauseated, but the possibility didn’t seem far off. If he could breathe some cool, crisp air, he was sure he’d feel better. Everything would probably be better if he could just do that.

Me, writing this: Think back to all the times you’ve felt like shit walking around Disney World!

Strange shifted. Their shoulders had been touching, Loki realized. And now they weren’t.

“I s’posp…s’posp…” Loki grit his teeth. “I…suppose you need to get back to Yew Nork. New York.”

Realistically there would be a lot more slurring in both of their speech, but who wants to read that, honestly. I use that sort of thing sparingly.

There was a silence, so Loki turned his head to look at Strange. He was staring out over the sea, his gaze faraway, like he wasn’t here at all. Not thinking about Loki at all, let alone what had just happened. 

IDIOT. Obviously, Loki is exactly wrong here. Stephen is absolutely thinking about Loki and absolutely thinking about what just happened. His heart is breaking.

Whatever had just happened. Stupid thought. Nothing had happened.

Since nothing had happened, the barren hollowness inside him was just an illusion. And Loki knew about illusions. He was good at them. So that made sense.

I wrote Loki’s internal monologue in a simpler, almost more childlike way here to try to capture his inebriation. And also his sadness. He’s sort of like a kicked puppy here.

“Guess so,” Strange finally said. Without looking at Loki, he laboriously climbed to his feet, swaying alarmingly. Norns. What if he stumbled right off the cliff into the sea below? Flashes of that played out in front of Loki’s eyes, intrusive and horrible, and something that felt awfully like panic clutched at his chest. The idea of Stephen dying suddenly seemed so terrible, so very terrible.

Foreshadowing. Stephen will die in about fifty-five years. Loki will be devastated and never get over it.

Loki got to his feet too, ready to grab Strange if he wobbled too close to the edge of the cliff. But Strange seemed steady enough on his feet, now that he was standing. Silently, Strange unhooked his sling ring from his belt, shakily slipping it onto his fingers, as Loki vanished the empty food containers into his pocket dimension. They were a problem for a future version of him.

Just like Future Emily often has to cover for freaking Present Emily. She’s the worst.

The empty bottle, though—he bent over to pick that up, sliding his fingers over it. He was seized by a sudden, violent urge to fling it into the sea. Except you couldn’t fling a bottle into the sea on Earth without putting a message into it. That was a cliché here. A message in a bottle. A message you couldn’t send any other way because you were stranded. A message that had no hope of actually reaching its intended recipient. What kind of message would he send?

I hate you. I hate this.

Even if it was the opposite.

They’re caught in this limbo where neither one of them has the guts to tell the other how he feels. They quite literally have to resort to games, but even then, they both chicken out. Loki can’t even imagine being able to be honest with Strange about this. He can’t even be honest with himself.

Loki closed his eyes, then vanished the bottle into his pocket dimension, as well. Where had he actually landed his ship? Would he be able to find the way back? Everything seemed murky in his mind. And—this thought hadn’t occurred to him until now—was the ferry even running anymore?

This is your author realizing at the same time that Loki took a freaking ferry to get here.

Perhaps he’d have to spend the night here, leaning against the rocks until he nodded off into fitful, drunken sleep.

As though Strange was reading his mind, he said, “Let me bring you back to your ship before I go back to the Sanctum.”

“Oh.” Right. Stupid. Strange could bring him anywhere, instantly. “I…” It felt as though his head was full of wool. “Yes, that would be…thank you. Don’t think—don’t think the ferries are running anymore.”

Strange finally looked at him. “You think I’d let you walk back to your ship like this? Even if they were?”

His ship is the same one from The Real Asgardians of the Galaxy, The Bifrost, but I don’t name it in oneshots because I don’t like to assume that people have read that fic.

“Like what?” Loki asked. Drunk off his arse, clearly. Why was he even asking? Just to hear Strange say it? Even an Asgardian could be taken advantage of in a compromised state.

Loki has been sexually assaulted many, many times. He’s not really too concerned about it here on Earth, but it’s certainly something that would occur to him. His most recent experience is with the Grandmaster.

But Strange didn’t answer this question. Instead, he asked, “Where is it?”

There had been ships. Big boxes. Loki knew the kind of place. He knew the word. “Um, docks,” he said. “Container ships.” He closed his eyes. “It was Container Terminal 8.” Complete sentences—look at that.

Yes, this involved more Google Streetviewing.

“Okay,” Strange said. He extended his arm and circled the other. The portal started to bloom in front of them, swelling a little before it shrank back down. Orange sparks sputtered weakly. Loki stared blearily. There was a joke here, but the idea of making it seemed devastating in a way that he couldn’t articulate.

I checked with @mareebird before I made this erectile dysfunction joke because quite honestly she’s the queen of sexual innuendo, and I needed to see if it passed muster.

But Strange tried again, and this time it worked. [...] Uninvited, Strange followed him on board, where he stood as Loki drifted to the bridge. Loki mostly just wanted to lie down. He didn’t know why Strange hadn’t left yet.

Clearing his throat, Strange asked, “You’re not going to fly home right now, are you?”

Part of him wanted to say yes, just to see the look of horror on Strange’s face. Would Strange go into Good Guy mode and tell him he couldn’t? There were signs on some of the roads in Norway admonishing people not to drive their cars while intoxicated. Imagine what they’d think about flying a spaceship when he could barely walk in a straight line! 

A stylistic note - I almost never use exclamation points in prose like this.

The thought amused him and he started to giggle.

The feeling faded quickly and he swayed on his feet, then took several unsteady steps to his berth. As he flopped down on it, he said, “I’ll stay here. I’ll sleep it off. That’s what you want me to say, right? You want me to be good. Good Loki, he’s so well-behaved, doesn’t put a toe out of line. Can’t really, can I? I’m a guest here on Earth. We’re all guests.”

This is also me vagueing, because I knew future plot points but didn’t have them totally nailed down. Now that I’ve almost finished with the fic that will directly precede this in the timeline, this was actually pretty spot on. It completely calls back to that, which I didn’t really do on purpose. Gonna pat myself on the back for that.

He stared up at the underside of the other berth. A hard, swollen feeling rose into his chest, a feeling of wanting. Just…wanting. He didn’t know what he wanted. All he knew was that as good as things were now, as much as Thor and he had repaired things, there was something gaping inside him. It would be easy to say it was New Asgard, stupid tiny ugly reeking fishing village New Asgard, but it would be a lie.

Then again, he liked lies. Well, he didn’t like them. They were just easier. Lies were so much easier. The truth was hard.

Lies are easier, which was why he just repeatedly lied to himself in the paragraph above. Doesn’t know what he wants? Right.

He turned away from the raw ache and rested a wrist on his forehead. “Well?”

There was a metallic scrape as Stephen’s feet shifted on the deck. “I don’t want you to crash into the ocean and never be seen again.”

Loki snorted. Suddenly, he felt as though he was going to cry. “I’m sure you’ll see me again, Stephen.”

Every time Loki thinks of Strange as Stephen or calls him Stephen, it’s very intentional.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Strange take a step closer. He looked unsteady, too, swaying, his gaze unfocused, his hands shaking. Mentally, he dared Strange to come closer. Truth or dare.

Why the hel had Strange chosen truth?

The truth was too much. The truth was difficult. The truth was impossible. It was vulnerability and pain and handing your heart and soul over to another person. The truth was something Loki had no interest in. Certainly not whatever truth Strange would tell.

Deep down, Loki knows how Strange feels about him.

Slowly, Strange nodded. He was starting to look a little wan, as though he wasn’t feeling well. Wouldn’t be much of a shock. Loki didn’t feel well and presumably he could hold his liquor better, even with the heat. “Hope so,” Strange mumbled.

Head canon: Stephen actually doesn’t hold his liquor well at all. He never has. Because he sometimes takes painkillers from his hands, he’s even worse at it (I have to thank @nonexistenz for that one). Presumably he hasn’t taken a painkiller in several days in this fic, since he’s still conscious after drinking half a bottle baijiu.

The two of them looked at each other. Loki’s vision kept fuzzing around the edges, but he concentrated on Strange, Strange in his t-shirt and his jeans, looking so human.

In earlier fics, Loki admires how Strange looks in his Master of the Mystic Arts get-up. That shifts over the course of the future fics and Loki begins to find Stephen’s everyday clothes much more endearing and attractive.

Terribly human. Stay, whispered a traitorous voice in his mind. It was a voice that would have him move over on the berth and hold out an arm. An invitation. An acknowledgement.

This is the closest Loki has ever come to an admission of his feelings.

Impossible. Loki closed his eyes and rolled over onto his side, facing the bulkhead. “Good-bye,” he said, knowing he sounded pitiful. He had officially reached the stage where he wondered why he’d ever touched any alcohol ever in his entire life.

It’s a cliché but it will never not be funny.

“Thanks for dinner,” Strange said.

“Welcome.”

“Thanks for…” But Strange trailed off.

Strange probably doesn’t even quite know what he’s going to say here. He’s just stalling, hoping Loki is going to make the move that he (Stephen) is too afraid to.

“Strange.” Loki’s head was starting to hurt. “Good-bye.”

There was silence, then the sound of a portal, which spit, hissed, and closed.

The truth. The truth could go to hel.

Loki hoped he didn’t remember any of this in the morning.

He does remember a lot of it, but he’ll pretend he doesn’t, or chalk it up to drunkenness.

Thank you for asking!! Hopefully you liked what I chose 😊 

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

[theastrophilearchitect]

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Writing journey #4.

15/05/2021 07.22 My break has officially been over for five days, and i have done some writing, but it’s been incredibly inconsistent, so I decided to start this blog post over. Bay Tree has been archived, and though FSB isn’t done, I’ve realised I need to take a step back. It’s why writers leave weeks at a time between drafts--so when they return, they’re in a different mindset, and can improve their work.

For this same reason, I need to take a step back before I finish my outline. My thought process is becoming monotonous, which means I’m losing my excitement. When you start a project, you have the idea in your head as perfect, and when those ‘vibes’ become tangible, it is less exciting. That’s unavoidable. But I just need to take a step back, so when I return, I have fresh ideas, and the plot becomes more exciting to me.

So today, I’m going to start brainstorming a new idea I had, which I don’t have an alias for yet, and I have an idea to essentially bind every project I have together, but not in Grishaverse- or Shadowhunters-style where you need to read ten books just to read the one you want. Just a nod to anyone who does read multiple, like when Aelin falls through worlds and sees Rhys and Feyre for a split second.

So. Let’s brainstorm.

My plan, I think, is to alternate weekly. This week, I’ll work on the new one, next week I’ll do FSB. I could just take this new idea and apply it to FSB, except I just don’t see how that would work. I have different worlds in mind, and this new one is a fantasy where FSB is sci-fi(/fantasy. It’s kinda both).

16/05/2021 07.07 I really wish I was a pantser. Even though I haven’t got to the editing stage, my favourite part of writing is implementing new ideas and making changes, but I’m just not a pantser. I need to know where each part is going. Instead, I have to sit here, brainstorming, for days, to figure everything out.

18/05/2021 07.06 I did a lot of work on the 16th, but I was busy yesterday, and didn’t get any writing done, because, when I was free, I was just reading. So, I’ve decided I’m going to at least write before I leave the house, which gives me about 45 minutes this morning. 

23/05/2021 18.30 Based on the fact it has been five days, I think you can tell how good I’ve been about keeping writing. The problem is that I don’t actually have much past a concept for my new project, so I’m trying to figure out how, precisely, I could merge the two projects. FSB is interesting, but doesn’t have a huge amount of depth, which adding the characters from the new project would absolutely do, while the new project is lacking plot, which FSB (at least the first book I’ve planned) does. So, I’m going to start a new Scrivener project, and consider how I can merge the two concepts while implementing both plots.

Is it too much? I have only two main characters in FSB, but five in the newer one, which gives me seven main characters, divided into three groups. And do I want to write a book with so many separate storylines? I know readers (myself included) always end up favouring one storyline over another, getting annoyed when certain POVs come up. I don’t know what to do.

I could keep the new project, but implement FSB? Hold up. New Project (NP) has two protagonists who could undergo a similar development to the protagonists of FSB... I had a plan for the male protagonist of FSB, his arc, which wouldn’t work for NP’s male protagonist, but would work perfectly for its female protagonist...

Tumblr’s glitching. It wouldn’t let me reblog a post earlier, and now it won’t let me save this draft. Please, no.

Okay, so I had to copy what I’d written for today, disconnect and reconnect to the Wi-Fi, then wait for my drafts to load to paste it. Going great!

21.00 So I didn’t get a huge amount done, because I caught up doing ~evening things~, but I at least have a plan going forward, which is an accomplishment

30/05/2021 09.29 I’ve spent the last couple weeks doing everything I can to avoid writing, but i now have an insane amount of free time, so I have no excuse. I want to use this time in a productive way, and, for me, that means writing.

03/06/2021 10.31 I swear to god, I’ve had ‘writing’ on my to-do list every single day, except not doing it is probably my own fault, because it’s been so far down on the list. Also, I’m doing a buddy read, but am also unfortunately descending into a reading slump, so even reading 50 pages takes me about 90 minutes--they’re not even long pages.

I actually went back onto my old Wattpad account earlier, where I found a load of old, unfinished stuff, but none of it was as bad as I thought it would be, and the ideas weren’t bad. I just really have no idea what it is I’m writing right now, and I hate trying to figure it out.

11.30 There are so many Ss in the word ‘assassin’ this is not okay.

This is actually going so well. I have two storylines in my head, a complex cast of characters, and I’m so looking forward to plotting this.

04/06/2021 08.04 Look at me, two days in a row. Anyways, I’m thinking I ought to name these characters ASAP, because it’ll be easier to shape them to their names than it will be to find a name which fits them once they’ve been shaped.

14.41 Here’s what I’m realising: I like to pants plots, but I can’t do that while I’m actually drafting, so I think my plan is actually to bullet point everything that happens, then revise that, then start drafting, so the story is basically set in the first draft.

I’ve actually gone through a lot of stuff--I have workable plot material!

17.16 So, me being me, I’ve semi-outlined (I say semi-, it’s more like a tenth) a trilogy, meaning I have ideas for three books following this storyline, and it... makes sense. It’s the kind of story where I can follow multiple arcs, a few at a time, instead of several overarching ones, or maybe it’s just that I’m letting myself.

07/06/2021 16.44 I don’t have a damn clue what I’ve spent the day doing. I haven’t done anything in a couple days because it was the weekend and I was busy, but I’m back now. The thing is, I haven’t spent the day reading, watching, drawing, or doing anything, really--it’s escaped me. But, at the very least, I’ve relaxed, so who cares?

I’m not applying story structure to the ideas I’m having quite yet--rather, I’m just developing them to see how they bloom on their own, then I’ll fit it in; it just seems like a more natural and effective way to develop.

Yeah, no. It’s too late in the day for this. I have zero motivation.

08/06/2021 09.49 Maybe I’ll accomplish something today; who knows? Certainly not me.

I’m now applying the 3-act structure, but I’m realising I have way too many details worked out for this--switching to more acts.

22.20 Why am I doing this to myself? I wish I could say I’m not entirely sure, but it’s because I can’t sleep, because this project, and my character Lihan, are the only things I can think about, so here I am. I don’t want to be a night writer, but que sera sera (I wish I could type accents on an English keyboard).

23.22 I accomplished more in the last hour on this project than I have in the last four days.

09/06/2021 - 1,115 words 09.29 I really hope I don’t prove today that night-writing is my sweet spot--I don’t want it to be. Can the world just let me have a functional sleep schedule??

Anyways, so, as I’ve mentioned before, I use Scrivener, which enables me to sort which documents are part of the manuscript from the ones that aren’t. I’ve been working outside of the manuscript, but I think I’m going to move them into it--I have a plan I believe will be more effective for my own drafting. I think I very much need the events to be set in stone before I begin writing in actual prose, so how can I do that? Especially when I also enjoy pantsing, but not in prose?

Here’s the plan: I plot out the main events, then bullet point everything in very high detail, similar to what many people call a zero draft, in which they draft a book in short form. I’ll sort the bullet points into chapters (but not scenes, because as I discovered with Bay Tree, I find scene-blocking makes the narrative less natural), leave it alone a while, then revise, so I can have my plot more-or-less set in stone before I work on prose.

As a result, I’m going to shift my plotting into the manuscript section, because it is, essentially, an early draft, and also I want a word count as a progress metre.

13/06/2021 - 1,611 words 8.18 Alas, I have been busy the last few days, but I’m here now.

9.20 The amount of secrets and who-knows-what in this story is genuinely absurd, but I’m sure I’ll clean it up eventually.

14.01 A few days ago, I came across a post about balancing large casts, which is exactly what I have, and the first thing it mentioned was the two-trait rule, in which every character has two traits completely unique to them, to help both reader and writer differentiate. Which I’m now going to implement.

14.42 I have these two characters, and I know exactly what I want their dynamic to be, except I can’t decide who should be which part of it.

I have made my decision. It probably works better now, but it does alter their roles, so I need to fix that.

I literally swapped them round solely because I decided one was taller than the other and thought it would be more interesting if the short one was the sadist. Why do I make my own life so difficult?

14/06/2021 - 1,574 words 11.08 I didn’t make an enormous amount of progress yesterday, but I did make some, and made notes of ideas for relationship arcs last night, so I count that a victory (forced optimism--surprisingly effective). I’m currently just working through bullet-pointing book one, while making notes of events I want in the rest of the series (I’m projecting three books, and telling myself I will finish them). I’m currently fiddling with one of my storylines to see how I can mould it to FSB’s and OH MY GOODNESS I JUST HAD A GREAT IDEA must take notes, one moment pleaseeee.

Okay, so I have four bullet points for relationship arcs and an idea to adjust one of the storylines--I’d say I have six main characters, two of whom are really the protagonists, two of which are my favourites, and the other two are fun, but in need of development. They’re split into a group of four and a pair, and I’m definitely more into the storyline of the four, mostly because the four contains my two favourites, and it’s more developed than that of the pair.

I’ve been keeping a list of things to add: motivations, loose plot threads, plot points I want to include--I really need to re-organise it.

On another note, I am so glad I named the characters as early as I did. I’m debating having two of the characters swap names, but I don’t think I will, because I will absolutely mix them up, and one of them is part of the perfect ship name.

My mouse isn’t working. I changed the batteries, but it’s not working, so now I get the joy of trying to figure out if the batteries I put in are just old or if the mouse no longer works, which would suck.

Yes, I’m going to describe this. Mostly because when I changed the batteries the first time, it took a minute to stop working, and this will waste a minute. So, first set of batteries, which we’ll call set 1, don’t work. I don’t know if it’s both or just one, but if it’s one, I don’t want to throw away both. I take out set 1, I put in set 2. Set 2 works perfectly. So it’s not the mouse. Now I take out battery 2B, and replace it with 1A, so I have 1A and 2A in here. I know 2A works, but I’m not sure about 1A, but the mouse works, so 1A is fine. Let’s replace 1A with 1B.

Yep. 1B is the problem child. 1A works fine, but 1B doesn’t. Lovely. Crisis averted. It would’ve really sucked it I had to get a new mouse. And back to writing!

12.13 I’m bouncing between documents as I organise, which means my word count is actually decreasing, so I feel like I’m making significantly less progress than I am.

I just realised my two protagonists are cousins. I’ve had it in my head that one’s father was the brother of the other’s father, but somehow I didn’t realise that makes them cousins.

I’m about to delete a list because I’ve reformatted it--my word count is currently at 1,958, but is really about to drop.

AND NOW WE’RE AT 1,572. My session word count is -32. Minus thirty-two. I hate it here, but it’s fine, because we’re ~developing~.

15/06/2021 - 2,113 words 09.39 It’s not even technically summer yet, but it’s too hot, and I hate it here. All the windows are open, so everything’s cool, there’s a nice breeze, and lots of light, but the birds are so loud, and I have to keep all the doors closed because the open windows send them swaying and slamming. You know when you close a door when all the windows are open and it slams? Yep. Not into it. 

I feel like every day I try a new way to organise my plotting. I’m unsure as to whether that’s helping me or holding me back, because it forces me to review what I have, which usually sparks new ideas, but I’m not convinced I’ll ever get to the end as long as I keep doing this.

21/06/2021 13.40 I spent the latter half of last week with zero motivation, then I was busy at the weekend, but I’m here now. I’ve been trying to make myself write basically all day--I have a plan, and a list of things I’ve come up with the last few days, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I’m not in a good mood, but maybe this will help.

I have, however, just reminded myself that I need to prepare this week’s post, because I sincerely doubt either this or my ongoing Recent reads will be ready for Friday. Actually, if I do quite a bit of writing this week, this post might be, but I’m not willing to bet on it.

And oh, crap, now I just want to write a blog post.

No. No I don’t. I started looking at the list of ideas I had, and now I’m just not feeling it. I’m pretty sure when I open my document for this project I’ll lose all motivation too, but it’s worth a shot.

There’s a specific relationship in an anime I recently watched that I want to pull apart--there’s this ship, and the author of the manga has called the two characters ‘soulmates’. There’s just this huge amount of tension between the two, and I want to re-watch the show because I love it, but also so I can take notes to figure out what was so effective about it.

13.53 I’ve been doing this for 13 minutes, but I do think I need to leave this project/outline alone for a bit, give it an opportunity to ruminate, to evolve. In truth, I may not even come back to it until I’ve re-watched the anime I was talking about so I can tear that ship to pieces.

17.33 So I just learned brainstorming is apparently significantly easier on paper. Hm. I’ve just worked out so damn much, stuff I’ve been struggling with.

18.00 I have successfully tied up so many plot threads, simply by working with pen and paper. This is revolutionary. (I know, not really, but it is for me, someone adamant about working with a keyboard and monitor)

22/06/2021 09.42 Seriously, why did I never try actually working on paper before? Something about holding a pen to paper and scribbling and drawing a mindmap--it just works. I’ve been obstinate about avoiding working on paper because I hate physically writing, yet here we are.

25/06/2021 11.09 I’m really not managing much reading at the moment--since I started reading manga, my attention span has just gone down the drain. I’m currently reading Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater, and I don’t think it helped that I had to stop less than a third of the way in to do a buddy read, but I just don’t have much motivation to read it, though I do so want to. I haven’t been listening much to audiobooks lately either, because when I’d usually listen--when I’m getting dressed, waking up, going to bed etc.--I just want to listen to music, because I also recently fell down the well of k-pop, and the group whose discography I’m getting to know at the moment is BTS. Basic, but they’re the fifth group I’m doing, and they have so many songs. Which would happen after eight years, but still.

I want to read so, so badly, but I just don’t feel like reading Mister Impossible. But I do want to finish it before reading anything else. I think I’ll finish my current audiobook, then if I’m still feeling stagnated in Mister Impossible, I’ll switch to the audiobook of that, then just take a break from reading until I’m ready to actually read. 

But this post is for writing, not reading. I did write on the 23rd, but I just didn’t update this post. The 24th I was busy, but my wall is now covered in post-it notes of world-building, characters, gods, plot points, and a whole load of other stuff.

Also, I had an idea for a book title this morning--not for this one, just in general--and when I went to add it to my list, I found a title that would so suit this project. I don’t want to say it, but let’s just say this project will be called ItLotG--or not. That’s a hideous combination of letters. I promise it is actually a good title.

11.52 I’m having another crisis over these two characters. I’m thinking it would make more sense to have L’s betrayal ‘arc’ initiated before the catalyst, or rather have it be the catalyst, except the problem there is that they’re not in the city they need to be in to receive that offer.

UNLESS,,,, what if this point happens just while they’re in the capital.... I’ve got it. 

17.16 I’ve been taking notes this whole time of everything I want to happen in books 2 and 3, and I have so much now i think they’ll be so much easier to plot than this one.

The downside of working mostly on paper is that my plans on Scrivener have been refined to one document, which is now only 878 words.

Right now, there’s a glaring hole between the midpoint and the ending, but my climax is one of those where the climax itself is a very small part of a bigger event, so if I figure out what I want to happen in this big event which is essentially the whole of the third act, I should be able to fill in the rest of Act Two with the setup for that.

So I’m leaving it there for both today and this post. In the last month or so, I decided to start over and mash two projects together, which created a whole new storyline I love, and now I’m mostly done with the first outline. I want to treat outlines as more than just preparation for drafts, because I find notes so much easier to edit than actual prose, and I hate writing without a clear idea of where I’m going. 

I think I’m going to call these ‘runs’--an outline is a run through, a draft a run through, so I’m nearly done with my first run, and I’m very proud of that, so go, go write the idea you have, drink some water, take a nap if you need one, eat if you haven’t eaten in a few hours, and I’ll be back with another writing update innnnnnn probably august, honestly.

Go write that idea!

[mst3kproject]

The Ship of Monsters

Check me out, I’m being topical!  I had another review almost finished for today, but when I saw the news I knew I had to set that aside and find a movie about life on Venus.  This one is a ridiculous Mexican film starring Lorena Velazquez from Samson vs the Vampire Women (looking only slightly less like Cher) and one of those amazing cardboard robots you only get in the very worst of late 50’s and early 60’s sci-fi.

An atomic war on the planet Venus has killed off all the males, so an expedition is sent out in search of replacements, consisting of a native Venusian named Gamma, her Uranian navigator Beta, and their robot Tor.  After promising the Empress that they will bring back only the most manly of men, they wander the solar system a while collecting creatures with penises before an engine problem forces them to land on Earth.  The first human they meet there is Laureano Gomez, a singing cowboy with a well-earned reputation for telling tall tales.  One might assume one could predict the rest of the movie from there… but then Beta turns on Gamma and reveals that her true mission all along was to conquer a planet to feed the vampires of Uranus!

I gotta say… I did not see that coming.

The Ship of Monsters is supposed to be a comedy.  It’s seldom funny when it’s trying to be, although it mercifully avoids being the kind of desperately unfunny a lot of bad comedies are… possibly this is because it’s in Spanish, and by the time I’ve realized something is stupid there’s another subtitle to distract me. The jokes, such as they are, are pretty standard.  Tor the robot was created by an alien race, who were aware of Earth but never bothered exploring it because they thought the inhabitants weren’t very intelligent.  Laureano is in the habit of telling ridiculous stories to his drinking buddies, so of course when he claims the Earth is being invaded by space monsters they don’t believe him.  That sort of thing.  The movie is much funnier when it’s just showing us absurd situations, but to nobody’s surprise, The Ship of Monsters is at its funniest when it’s trying to be serious.

This hilarity comes in many forms, covering just about all the possible bases for a dirt-cheap 1960 sci-fi film.  We have spaceship sets made of cardboard, covered with buttons that don’t actually press and levers conveniently placed so people can bump into them during fight scenes.  We have Tor, with his tin can body that’s always a little dinged up but never in the same places, giving us clues as to what order the scenes might have been shot in.  He also has wiggly spring antennae and makes a little whirring noise every time he moves. We have space babes in silver bathing suits and glittery high heels.  Vampire-Beta, sporting plastic fangs that look like they came from the bottom of a cereal box, could be the female counterpart to the guy from Dracula vs Frankenstein, and the puppet used to represent her in flight is nearly as bad as the one from The Devil Bat.

The ‘monsters’ of the title are a bulging-brained Martian prince, a scaly cyclops, a spidery creature with venomous fangs, and the mobile skeleton of what appears to be a *damn worwelf (he tells us that his race has Evolved Beyond Flesh... apparently not Beyond Bones, though).  The costumes are all terrible, particularly the warwulf puppet, whose backbone extends into his mouth and who has to be carried around with his feet dangling in any shot that’s not a close-up.  It’s nice, though, that a little imagination went into them, and somebody gave a bit of thought to the idea that a monstrous appearance is relative.  The Martian tells Beta that he admires her ambition and might even marry her if she weren’t so ugly by his planet’s standards.

At the end, naturally, this alien invasion is defeated by Laureano, his twelve-year-old brother, and a cardboard robot, while Gamma just stands around and screams.  With a movie like this I expect nothing less.  The denouement contains my favourite intentional joke in the whole thing, in which Gamma stays on Earth with her True Love, and Tor the robot takes his, the Jukebox, back to Venus with him!  Tom Servo would have given a speech to congratulate the happy couple, and I can just see him breaking down into happy tears before he got five lines in.

(The wirwalf skeleton is not present at the climactic fight, by the way… no explanation is offered, and I strongly suspect that they broke the puppet trying.  I rather enjoy this omission, because it lets me imagine him getting lost or maybe buried by an enterprising dog, and finally finding his way back to the landing site only to learn that they’ve left without him.)

I called Laureano a cowboy but he only has one cow.  Her name is Lolobrijida and she is the very first time I have ever seen a movie spur a hero into action by killing his cow.  She gets a proper Teenagers from Outer Space death, with her skeleton left behind propped up by metal struts like a dinosaur in a museum!

I also called him a singing cowboy, which he is – there are several songs, including one in which he tries to explain to Gamma and Beta what ‘love’ means.  The songs have pleasant but forgettable Mexican pop melodies, and none of the lyrics make a whole lot of sense.  Being translated over-literally from Spanish probably didn’t do them any favours (my own Spanish tops out at yo no tengo dinero), but I still can’t imagine that the What Is Love song clarified anything.

Laureano himself comes across as kind of a fool, but he’s not actually a full-on idiot, which is quite important.  If he were the kind of one-dimensional ‘comedic nitwit’ embodied in characters like Dropo, or the janitor from Reptilicus, he’d be insufferable.  Laureano is no genius, but he’s got personality traits besides being stupid – he cares deeply for his little brother Chuy and for his animals, and he doesn’t treat Gamma and Beta’s appearance as two women for the price of one.  Very quickly he decides that Gamma is the one he loves, and he sticks to that, doing his best to let Beta down gently even when she offers to make him a king.  He’s also smart enough to trick Beta into dancing with him so he can steal the device she uses to control the rocket and Tor, and to listen to Gamma when she tells him about the various monsters’ weaknesses.

Gamma and Beta, on the other hand, don’t have a lot to them besides the basic fact that Gamma is the Nice One and Beta is Evil. Gamma starts out in the story with a strong sense of duty, and it’s a bit disappointing to see her abandon that because of Tru Luv.  I would have liked the ending better if she’d taken Laureano home with her so that the two of them could be the Adam and Eve of the new Venusian race.  Meanwhile, Beta shows no sign of any loyalty except to herself and her own ambition.  Her original mission, to secure Earth as a blood supply for the Uranians, falls by the wayside as she decides she’s going to conquer and rule the planet herself.

So The Ship of Monsters isn’t exactly a feminist manifesto, but neither is it complete misogynistic garbage like Project Moon Base.  The whole premise, after all, rests on a planet of women being able to develop space travel all on their own!  This is a fairly surprising plot point, because in many ‘planet of women’ movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Cat Women of the Moon, the ladies need the virile Earth Men to come to them.

There’s also a little bit of actual science peeking out of the cracks.  The moment for launch of the rocket from Venus is determined by when ‘the elliptical orbits coincide’.  Launch timing is, indeed, a delicate art depending very much on what’s orbiting where. There’s also the moment when, trying to land on Earth, Gamma and Beta worry that the friction, combined with our oxygen-rich atmosphere, will set their ship on fire.  This stuff is pretty impressive coming from a time when the moon landing was still nearly a decade away.  There are even a couple of scenes in zero gravity that honestly aren’t totally terrible.  I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen much, much worse.

There’s also one weirdly prescient moment when Laureano, telling one of his silly stories in the pub, describes being surrounded by dinosaurs – only to get a laugh a moment later when he mentions that they had beautiful plumage.  I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a joke in that Laureano is exaggerating an actual encounter with an angry bird into something more fearsome (I think we’re to assume that the whole story is totally made up), or whether it’s just supposed to be funny that Laureano thinks dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales.  Either way, it’s the equivalent of the moon Fornax in Menace from Outer Space being so reminiscent of Io.  There’s no way the writers could have known that, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The Ship of Monsters is very cheap and very dumb, but it’s good fun for those of us who like crummy old alien invasion movies, and I recommend it to anybody in that demographic.  As for actual life on Venus… I feel like a lot of the people getting excited are too young to remember when Bill Clinton told the world that we had totally found life on Mars.  Humans have been discovering life on other planets for about two hundred years and every single one of those ‘discoveries’ has turned out to be either a mistake or an outright lie.  We have plenty enough to panic about this year without a Venusian invasion.

[moonlight-at-dawn]

I actually enjoy critiquing the things i like, but many fandoms have asked me to leave or acted like that's a bad thing to do. I don't like the do-it-to-be-included culture that includes like, lapis lazuli is too neon blue in this episode, so steven universe is a problematic show. It's fun for me to figure out how a show could be better, but not fun to see people jump on silly unhelpful bandwagons. If you don't critique the thing you like at ALL, though, I don't like you. Everything personal.

This is clearly in response to that post I made in a fit of annoyance one night 3 years ago and left completely untagged, never expecting it to go viral. I can’t tell if your last two words “Everything personal” is meant to be “Everything is subjective to the person” or “All offense meant” lmao, I understand you were likely fighting against character limit, but with it follow “[...]I don’t like you” it gives it heavy implications of the latter.

So anyway, yeah, I’m slightly poking fun at the fact that you brought up that you love to “critique” but then you can’t even understand how, again, a single statement clearly composed in a fit of pique, is HARDLY indicative of my full views.

Of COURSE things should be viewed critically and critiqued, but common sense and common decency also come into play here. Common sense in that,

-nothing will be without faults because everything is created by individuals with their own biases and flaws, -so it’s important to always look at what was meant by the thing, whether or not it’s obviously a plot point or if it’s the author’s ignorance (seriously, when people are like “This character is MEAN and they make CONFLICT” ...YES! Do you not remember that CONFLICT is a key part of literature, this is 7th grade English in America, c’MON!), -and to then decide what is and isn’t a breaking point for YOU the INDIVIDUAL, and to respect other people’s choices! (No, I’m not saying respect people that, say, outwardly and loudly think L*lita is actually romantic, but you definitely should respect people who just like it, because you never know their story, and you aren’t entitled to it, but they may like it as a way of working through their trauma, or just as a way of investigating the human psyche, idk, I should’ve picked an example I’ve actually read)

And common DECENCY, in that, know when it’s time to say your critique. You’re welcome to them! But, let’s say I wanted to talk about the scene in Full Metal Panic, where Sousuke gives Kaname his lapis lazuli, and I talk about how meaningful it is, and how cute and sweet, and then you pop on and say “I thought it looked to bright :/” I’m gonna be annoyed! Because this isn’t the time or place! Make your own damn post! I’m specifically talking about something that brought me JOY, and now you’re coming in here and “well, actually”ing me, and it’s about something that ultimately doesn’t even matter! So what if it’s too bright!? I can understand being annoyed by it, hell, I might even actually agree with you, but it’s NOT the time or place!

So anyways, yeah, I never said “All critique is bad!” and neither do the vast majority of the people commenting on that post of mine. We’re just saying “Don’t come up with lies about morality just because you didn’t like this plot point,” “There’s no reason to ruin your enjoyment of something by nitpicking just because the internet told you so,” and other such related stuff.

The idea that everything needs to be dissected before you’re morally allowed to enjoy it is just absurd puritanical BS, and THAT’S the REAL “unhelpful bandwagon” around here.

EDITED TO ADD:

I ended up ranting and forgot to fully address, as there was one more thing I wanted to bring up. And that is:

ALL THIS SAID... You DON’T deserve to be bullied and pushed out of fandoms. There ARE going to be people will enjoy critiquing with you.

Since this is the internet and everything is pushed out into the ether, free of body language, facial expression, vocal intonation, and individual context, it may be important to just give a little more information as you go into your posts, and then you may find more like-minded people! Make your own posts, or comment on other people who are also already critiquing, and maybe just make it obvious that you enjoy the thing but you might’ve liked it better if...! Or, another good method, is to make sure you ALSO talk about the things you LIKED, the things that went WELL. This is critical to true critique, and can go a long way towards making it more immediately obvious in the ether of text, that you DO enjoy the thing and you want to talk about it, you just like to talk in this WAY! And that’s okay! That’s a great way to engage with media and there’s nothing wrong with it on its own merits!

But, just, really, do NOT ever critique on a fandom post that’s gushing over something, it’s incredibly rude because of the way these things are structured, it’s like sitting at a lunch table and interrupting a conversation to talk about how everyone’s favorite band they’re about to see in concert had a really disappointing last album. You might think you’re connecting, but you’re actually just a bummer. I don’t know if this is something you’ve done, but it’s certainly something I’ve seen happen, and just, yeah, don’t, lol

ETA 2: So I don’t leave this all in tags... I’m the idiot lmao, I think I completely missed two entire lines of text when I read and started answering and hooboy they were important. I’m incredibly sorry for my misunderstanding evident largely in the original text of my response!

[rainhadaenerys]

Post season 8 fix-it headcanon/Jonerys fanfic outline

For Daenerys Resurrection Week, Day 1: Resurrection and forgiveness

A long time ago I commented here that I had written an outline for a post season 8 fix-it fanfic. And I did write some things, mostly about the political situation in the story, and character's motivations. As far as actually coming up with a proper story and proper scenes though, I didn't really go very far. And to be honest I really don't feel like writing fics, I'd rather spend my energy on metas. But I wanted to share my headcanon anyway.

To start, my headcanon is canon-compliant. I appreciate fix-it AUs, but I have a problem with them because I always feel the need to acknowledge canon. So I acknowledge everything that happened in season 8. But in my headcanon, I completely absolve Dany of everything. Instead, I tend to think Bran warged into Dany and made her burn King's Landing, urged by Sansa. So yeah, this is not for Stark fans. My headcanon is pretty much anti everyone but Dany and Jon. (By the way, if anyone has seen any fic with this premise, and that follows season 8 canon, can you please tell me? I don't know why, but it seems no one has thought of this so far? Or maybe I just haven't seen it, since I don't read a lot of fanfic, but I would appreciate reading a fic like this)

Ok, but now you're probably thinking, but why would Bran do this? Why would Sansa tell him to do this? Isn't it OOC? That's where my complete reinterpretation of Bran and Sansa's characters start. I'm sorry I had to vilify them, but I see no other way to completely absolve Dany.

First, Bran: When Bran had met Bloodraven, Bloodraven had hoped that by teaching Bran his abilities, he would have someone to help him look into the past and find an easier way to defeat the Night King. Probably, the children of the forest told him about something (like, maybe, some hidden magical artifact), but they didn’t know where this magical artifact was. So Bloodraven thought having another person with the Three Eyed Raven’s powers would help defeat the Night King. Bran followed Bloodraven’s instructions faithfully, but in the end, he didn’t find anything that would help, and that’s why he was useless in the War for the Dawn. The reason why the Night King was going after Bran was because the Night King knew Bran had the powers to find out his secret and destroy him easily (ie, without a battle). But Bran wasn’t able to do this in the end.

But Bran’s journey to become the three eyed raven wasn’t meaningless to the story. As Jojen once warned Bran, if he spent too much time inside the mind of a wolf, he would lose himself. And this is what happened. Bran spent most of his time warging on ravens, wolves, trees, trying to find the answer. He had seen in his future visions that the Night King would be defeated, so he wasn’t much worried about that (which explains his calm behavior when the Night King came to kill him), but he didn’t know exactly how, he thought he would be the one to do it, so he worked tirelessly and warged tirelessly (btw, Bran’s future visions are more flawed. He can look into the past easily if he knows what to look for, but the future isn’t as clear and it changes constantly, it is based on possibilities). Bloodraven had time to adapt before he spent most of his time warging. Bran didn’t have that time, because the need was urgent, so the time spent warging animals and trees made him start losing his humanity, in the sense that he stopped caring, and stopped having as much empathy. He loved his family to some extent, and he still had some sense of self preservation, but he had almost no empathy left for others.

Now, let's talk about Sansa. Sansa, during her journey, became a hardened woman. Unlike book Sansa, who keeps her kindness, show!Sansa has absorbed the lessons her abusers taught her: don’t trust anyone, look out only for yourself, take any advantage you can manage. This is what Sansa has been doing for quite some time. She doesn’t tell the truth about who killed Lysa Arryn, and the reason for this isn’t that she’s afraid of Littlefinger and sees no other choice. No. Sansa has entirely embraced Littlefinger and his plans. She later resents him for selling her to the Boltons, but this experience just leaves her more traumatized. So Sansa becomes a different person: her trauma makes her look out only for herself. She had always wished for power (since season 1 she wanted to be queen), and this hasn't changed, but now, it's also tied with her traumas: she wants power as a way for her to feel in control after lacking agency for so long.

So here's how I would interpret Sansa's actions since she escaped the Boltons. In season 6, when Littlefinger reminds Sansa that Jon is a threat to her, and only her half brother, Sansa starts plotting against him. She secretly corresponds with Littlefinger, and doesn’t tell Jon about the Vale army. She does this for different reasons: she thought that by doing this, Jon and Rickon had more chance to die, and she could become queen without Jon there to threaten her power. She also wanted to be seen as the hero of the battle, the one that saved them at the last minute, so she could have more chances of becoming queen. Not only that, but she didn’t want the Wildlings in the North and saw them as expendable. They were only a tool to her. She wanted to use them to get her lands and titles back, and used the fact that Jon saved them to try to convince Jon that they should fight (Sansa does say in season 6 that the Wildlings should fight for Winterfell because they owe Jon their lives). So she saw them as expendable tools to get Winterfell back, but she also didn’t care that they would die because she withheld information about the Vale army: the less foreign savages in the North, the better. When she doesn’t get her position of Queen in the North, she starts undermining Jon deliberately. Jon asks her to stop, but she continues doing it. When Bran returns, she offers Bran the position of Lord of Winterfell, and is relieved that he doesn’t want it. When the lords talk about putting her in Jon’s place, she doesn’t reprimand them. In her conflict with Arya, she was indeed going to kill Arya. After all, she sends Brienne away after Littlefinger reminds her that Brienne is sworn to protect both her and Arya. She only doesn’t kill Arya because she goes to Bran and learns that Littlefinger was manipulating her, and she realizes that Littlefinger is a bigger threat than Arya. She was fine in keeping Littlefinger as an ally before, she didn’t care about all the horrible things he did, but she realizes that keeping him alive would be more dangerous than advantageous. So she makes a sham trial to kill him, while also omitting her involvement in Littlefinger’s schemes in the Vale and the fact that she knew about them.

So by the time Dany gets to Winterfell, Sansa is a person that only cares about her position and privileges. When she hears Dany talking about her reforms in favor of the smallfolk, she is scandalized. Unlike book!Sansa, show!Sansa never lived as a bastard, and keeps her classism. Sansa is against Dany not because of pettiness or stupid distrust, but because she feels her power threatened, and because she thinks Dany is a tyrant for wanting to take away the privileges of the nobility. So Sansa tries to undermine Dany in every way she can: publicly telling Dany that she and her armies aren’t welcome; badmouthing Dany while Dany is fighting for her. When Sansa sees Dany giving Storm’s End to Gendry, she hates seeing it because she thinks giving Storm’s End to a bastard is an absurd (after all, she was usurped by her bastard brother) and also because if the Northern Lords see Dany’s generosity, they might not be so against her, especially after Dany fought for them. Finally, Sansa betrays the oath she swore to Jon in the godswood, telling Tyrion Jon’s secret, not necessarily because she wants Jon to be king, but because she wants to overthrow Dany. And she knows that if her plans succeeds, Dany will end up dead and no longer a threat. She doesn’t care that this could spark a civil war and that innocents could die. She doesn't care that she's plotting the death of a woman that just saved her. She only wants to retain her power, and she wouldn’t be allowed to do that if Dany actually “broke the wheel”. She continues not to care about anyone but herself by humiliating Edmure when he speaks (because she wants herself to be queen), and when Tyrion suggests Bran, she undermines him as well: first saying that Bran can’t rule because he doesn’t want it and can’t have children, and later by asking for independence, knowing that asking for independence would just lead to political instability and possibly war, but not caring about it, because she wants to be queen. So these are Sansa’s motivations.

So how would the idea of Bran warging into Dany work? Well, Bran has future visions. He doesn't choose to have them, they happen to him, and they are uncertain. But as we did see twice, Bran saw a dragon flying over King's Landing, and he saw the throne room destroyed. He later tells people in the Dragonpit that he knew he was going to be king. This implies that he didn't just have a vision of a dragon over King's Landing, but that he also had more detailed visions of what would happen later. He also tells Jon that Jon was "exactly where he has supposed to be", which implies that he knew Jon would kill Dany. So Bran knew many things: knew a dragon would fly over King's Landing, knew the throne room would be destroyed, knew Jon would kill Dany (meaning that he probably knew Dany was going to be responsible for the destruction), and knew the political ramifications of all that (he was going to be king). I think that, despite the fact his visions of the future are not as exact as visions of the past and present, every evidence seems to point out that Bran knew Dany would destroy King's Landing. So I choose to believe that he saw Dany, at the back of a dragon, burning everything, and all the subsequent events that happened with it.

So maybe, Bran started looking into the future and saw Dany becoming more and more depressed. He thought this would make her burn King's Landing. And he has seen how much Sansa craves power, and he still has some loyalty to his family. So he really has no interest in preventing an outcome that gets his family on top, and given that he has lost much of his empathy due to too much time warging on animais and trees, he doesn't really try to do anything to prevent the burning of King's Landing. He doesn't warn Dany or Jon. He tells Jon the truth about his parentage even though he knows that the truth would cause chaos. And so on.

At some point, he tells Sansa what's going to happen. And Sansa also does nothing to prevent it, and instead, wants to make it happen (like when she tells the truth of Jon's parentage). She takes Bran's visions of Dany burning King's Landing as a confirmation of her bias against Dany, which makes her feel righteous in her actions. And she wants House Stark on top, so she doesn't really stop to think that maybe, just maybe, she should be trying to prevent this from happening.

So when Dany marchs south, and attacks King's Landing, Bran watches over things to see what's happening, and Sansa waits by his side for him to tell her the news. But as time passes, nothing happens. Dany is not burning King's Landing as they expected. She is only attacking the soldiers, and is close to winning without bloodshed (This did, in fact, happen in the show. Dany never attacks any civilians before the bells, she only attacks military targets). Sansa starts to get anxious. Sansa was already expecting that she would become queen, and she becomes nervous when this possibility starts to be threatened. Then, when King's Landing surrenders, Sansa gets more desperate, and asks Bran to do something, telling him that they shouldn't allow Dany to stay in power. Bran, dispassionate as he is about everything and not really caring about people, tells Sansa that the possibility of warging into Dany exists. Sansa asks Bran to do it. He asks if she is certain, and in the desperation of the moment, Sansa says yes. So for Sansa, this was about seeing the power that she craved slipping through her fingers once again. For Bran, he was simply doing what Sansa wanted. He didn't particularly care about becoming King, but he didn't really have much empathy for the people of King's Landing, so to him it didn't matter.

Dany doesn't really realize what's happening. She is in a very emotionally fragile state, and she is already feeling certain things like anger and despair. This makes her vulnerable to Bran. A person with the mental strength to resist Bran’s warging could have done it, but Dany couldn't. So when we see Dany shaking her head in episode 8x5, before she starts burning King's Landing, it's because she was fighting against Bran's invasion, but in the end she couldn't resist it. So everything we see from that moment in episode 8x5 until Dany's death, Dany is only vaguely aware of the things she is doing, but is actually being controlled by Bran. And Bran is doing everything to make sure the outcome Sansa desired (Dany's death) happens: after Dany's attack, Bran makes her land with Drogon and makes her give Grey Worm the order to kill the Lannister soldiers that surrendered. He makes the speech about world domination. And Bran's warging is also the explanation why Dany acted so weird in the last episode. It's also the reason Dany didn't have anyone to protect her when Jon came to kill her: Bran made her give orders to her soldiers to leave her alone, and to let Jon come in without taking his weapons. When Jon stabs Dany, it's when Bran finally leaves her mind, and it's the first moment of full awareness she has since Bran warged her. So the betrayal and heartbreak she feels is even worse. She wakes from a trance and sees the man she loves killing her.

Now, you might wonder, why did Bran and Sansa have to go to such extreme lengths? Why didn't they warg a random soldier to do the job and kill Dany, instead of making her burn thousands of innocents to make Jon kill her? Expecting that Jon would make the decision to kill Dany is risky, because he could decide not to do it, and Bran and Sansa's plan would fall apart. But the problem is: they didn't simply want Dany to die. They wanted to destroy her reputation, to make sure that none of her followers could seize power. If Dany simply died, the throne would go to Jon, and measures to break the wheel could still happen. Sansa didn't want this to happen, she didn’t want to lose her privileges, she wanted the herself in power and Dany's forces neutralized. By warging into Dany, they could destroy Dany's reputation, make Tyrion and Jon kill her and destroy their own chances of seizing power, and destroy the chance that Dany's allies could seize power instead of her. With Dany burning King's Landing, Bran and Sansa could spin the narrative that Dany is a radical extremist, and that her wish to make reforms is what made her a tyrant. And so on. So this is why none of them thought of warging someone and making them kill Dany, or warging Dany and making her kill herself. (Besides, I headcanon that warging someone is easier if the person is in a fragile mental state, so maybe trying to warg someone else wouldn't work).

So this is my headcanon to explain Dany burning King's Landing. From this point, everything happens as in the show: Bran and Sansa get their crowns, Arya sails west of Westeros (and dies in a storm because I have no creativity to think of a story for her and I started to hate her show self anyway), Tyrion becomes Hand and Jon is exiled. Drogon obviously, takes Dany to Volantis to resurrect her.

In exile, Jon is miserable. On the one hand, he tells himself he did the right thing. After all, Dany seemed intent on "liberating" more cities, and could maybe kill his family. And regardless of whether she would burn more cities or not, or kill his family or not, he thinks that anyone who would burn innocents for no reason and call it "necessary" shouldn't rule.

On the other hand, Jon blames himself for all the ways he failed Dany. He thinks that he was so caught up in his own angst about his parentage, about how he and Dany were related, that he didn't notice how much she was hurting. So while Jon tells himself he did the right thing in killing her, he also blames himself for not comforting her, for disregarding her fears about the dangers of his parentage coming out and telling the secret to his family, for not standing up more for her. He wonders if he only could have comforted her, then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like that. He also starts to doubt his decision to kill her: if Dany did what she did because she became mad with grief, then maybe he could have helped her come to her senses. Maybe he didn't have to kill her. Maybe he could have helped her heal. So I headcanon that Jon would be really hard on himself and start to hate himself for killing Dany. (By the way, it's also important to consider Jon's state of mind when he kills Dany. I'm sure seeing thousands of innocents burned by dragonfire must be pretty traumatic, and would push him to decide that killing Dany was necessary).

But not only Jon blames himself, he also starts to blame his family for what they did to Dany. He starts to hate Sansa for conspiring against her (and almost leading to Dany's death, since Sansa telling the truth made Varys try to poison Dany). He blames his family for being so cold to Dany, for using her for her resources and then discarding her, and thinks about how things could have gone differently if they hadn't done these things. And at some point, Jon will remember Bran's cryptic line about him being "exactly where he was supposed to be", and start to get suspicious that Bran knew what Dany would do, and that Bran knew Jon would end up killing her, and did nothing to prevent it. But Jon will brush off these suspicions by thinking that "his family would never do this to him".

Meanwhile, Dany will, obviously, be resurrected. Drogon will take her body to Volantis, but since he is an animal, it's not like he knows what to do with it. So he will rest with her body and mourn her somewhere in Volantis, and some slaves will find him. Said slaves will recognize Dany. They have never seen her, of course, but seeing a silver haired woman and a black dragon, it's not difficult to guess who she is. And they will also mourn her, of course. Dany was a hope to many slaves. These slaves also hoped that Dany would come to save them, so seeing the dragon queen dead is the death of those dreams. They try to get to Drogon, and Drogon, slowly, comes to trust them to get near Dany. They bring a red priestess to where Dany's body is to make the rites usually done for the dead and honor the dragon queen. They don't really tell this to anyone, because they don't want her body to be found and desecrated by slave masters. So the ceremony is done in secret. But something they didn't expect happens: as the priestess gives her the last kiss, Dany is resurrected.

Oh, and as soon as Dany is resurrected, something terrible already happens: she has a miscarriage. Dany had found out she was pregnant very recently, and didn't have time to tell Jon. But since he killed her, the baby died, and didn't come back when she was resurrected. (I don't have the link right now, but I remember reading GRRM say that people who return from the dead are those who feel a strong sense of purpose, and I think a fetus wouldn't have that, so I don't think the baby would be resurrected)

Well, with all of this, Dany is incredibly traumatized. She doesn't know she was being warged by Bran, and she feels guilty for what she thinks she did to King's Landing. She has lost another child, she has lost her hope for the future, the love of her life has killed her. So she falls into depression, and starts to live hidden in Volantis (the red priestess that resurrected her helps her with a spell to prevent Bran from using his powers to see her). She has given up on the idea of helping people. And she doesn’t want to fly on Drogon anymore, because she has horrible flashbacks of what she did to King’s Landing, and because she doesn’t trust herself with a weapon as powerful as Drogon.

But after some time, Dany will start coming back to her former self. She’ll see the suffering of the slaves in Volantis, she will hear the news about Volantis going to war against the cities of Dragon’s Bay in order to re-enslave everyone, and she will hear about how some of the Dothraki have come back to their old ways and are enslaving again, and she’ll decide that she needs to do something about it. This is when she decides to ride Drogon again.

*by the way, here’s a parenthesis about the political situation in Essos*

Volantis has slavery, and is preparing for war against Meereen and Astapor. Meereen and Astapor are still strong and anti-slavery, because Dany left former slaves in the government, and she also left military forces to avoid her new governments being overthrown (like what happened the first time in Astapor, so Dany learned from her mistakes). Daario is still loyal to Dany, because he really loved her (and also because the Meereenese government is paying him to protect the city, so he really has no reason to turn on them). In Yunkai, however, Dany had wanted to do the same thing she did in Astapor (kill all the masters), but Tyrion convinced her not to do it, opting for only cutting the throats of two of the Yunkish leaders. This means that even though Yunkai is being watched by Dany’s army in the region, and they don’t openly sell slaves anymore (lest they provoke a war against Astapor in Meereen, which would be bad now that Yunkai is weakened), the Yunkish leaders are still conspiring to bring back slavery, but this time, instead of funding the Sons of the Harpy (once again, they’re not doing this anymore because Astapor and Meereen are aware that they were the culprits, and the resurgence of the Sons of the Harpy would mean war as well), they are secretly negotiating with Volantis, asking for help (since the end of slavery in Dragon’s Bay meant that the price of slaves went up, and Volantis’ economy was suffering because of this).

Meanwhile, some of the Dothraki returned to Essos. Of the ones that returned, some Dothraki believed in Dany, meaning that they didn’t return to the old ways and some even have hope that she will return, since she’s the Stallion that Mounts the World. While others have made up their own khalasars, and started enslaving and raiding again (even selling slaves to Volantis and other slave cities that remained). These khalasars that returned to the old ways are allied with Volantis.

I don’t  really have a headcanon for cities like Pentos, Myr, Tyrosh, Lys and others. I don’t know if they will still have slavery or not. The show doesn’t really mention it as far as I remember, so it could go either way.

*end of parenthesis about Essos*

So Dany starts by seeking for her khalasar, the ones that are in Essos. Some of the Dothraki (the ones that didn’t go back to their old ways and didn’t go back to being slavers) eagerly accept her back. Together with them, Dany starts again her army, and they end up defeating those other khalasars that started enslaving again. So once again, Dany unites the khalasars in Essos. But there are still some Dothraki left in Westeros, so Dany hasn’t reunited all khalasars yet.

After uniting the khalasars in Essos, stopping them from engaging in slavery, and stopping them from selling slaves to Volantis and other cities, at some point, Dany will reunite with the Unsullied. Together with her new khalasar, the Unsullied, and Drogon, Dany will start a war against the slave cities that remain in Essos. She will liberate Volantis and many other cities. She will go back to Slaver’s Bay and destroy the counter-revolutionary movement in Yunkai. She will reunite with Daario too, and things will happen between them, because I ship Dany and Daario, and also because I think Dany deserves to have some physical and emotional comfort before she reunites with Jon.

So with all that Dany is doing in Essos, news of Dany’s resurrection will reach Westeros, and they will greatly worry Bran, Tyrion and Sansa.

*And here’s another parenthesis, about the political situation in Westeros*

Tyrion is now theoretically Lord of Casterly Rock, but the Lannisters of Lannisport are opposing him (and unfortunately, ableism is a part of it). Tyrion has support from some of them, with whom he had a good relationship in the past, but not from most of them (and that fact the he killed Tywin is obviously another reason why many would oppose him). However, most of the Lannisport Lannisters start to die or disappear mysteriously - through suicide, through murder, or simply disappearing. This isn’t Tyrion’s doing, though. He doesn’t know why this is happening, but in the end, only his allies survived, and Tyrion starts to get a better hold on the Westerlands. (What is actually happening is that Bran has spies/ravens and is ordering the killing of those he views as opposition. He does this because he sees no other choice, because the situation in the Six Kingdoms is very chaotic)

In the Reach, Bronn is now lord, which is pissing off many lords (they think it’s an absurd that a sellsword was given Highgarden when many of the Reach families had better claims to it). He has the support of the Tarlys, because Sam’s family wants to support the new regime. But the region is in a chaos. Many lords are rebelling, the smallfolk are rebelling because Bronn is greedy and exploits them, and doesn’t give them justice (They aren’t necessarily hungry, because it’s the Reach. But Bronn is trying to indulge some lords to gain their alliance and be able to contend against the lords that are against him, so he let’s them do whatever they want with the smallfolk and offers the smallfolk no protection). Outlaw groups start to form to fight against Bronn and his allies, but he answers with brutality to those who oppose him or that try to ask him for anything better for the smallfolk. Bronn keeps his own sellsword army, that he rewards greatly to help him stop the smallfolk from claiming for more rights (and spending so much money on sellswords gains Bronn the enmities of some lords and smallfolk). Some of the Unsullied didn’t go to Naath (only Grey Worm’s closest friends went), and stayed in the Reach, and they help the outlaw groups.

The new prince of Dorne doesn’t have any allegiance to Bran. As soon as things calm down, he declares for Independence, given that King Bran gave independence to his own sister. He stops paying tributes, and Bran sends troops (composed of soldiers from the Crownlands, the Westerlands, Riverlands and the Stormlands) against them. The prince of Dorne answers, ready to fight for his independence. Bran brutally crushes his opposition.

Yara and the Ironborn want independence. Yara also resents the Starks for killing Dany, and also for making her brother die for them. She has taken back the Iron Islands from Euron in season 8, but now, without Dany’s support and the fear of dragons, some of the Ironborn don’t want a woman as their queen, and they want to go back to the old ways as Euron promised (while Yara, still loyal to Dany, has decided to uphold her ideals, decreeing that there should be no more raiding and raping). So the Iron Islands declare independence, but they are divided. Yara still has more support (since many of Euron’s supporters died in Dany’s attack to King’s Landing), but the few that don’t follow her start to raid the Riverlands, Westerlands and the North.

Edmure is a good lord, but the Riverlands have suffered greatly from the wars and the winter. When he tries to ask the Iron Throne for help to feed his people, the Iron Throne doesn’t send much. His niece Sansa is not going to help either (as she has her own concerns with food and can’t share), and Edmure starts go get disillusioned with the new regime and with his own family, who won’t help him, and who will also make his people fight in another war (against Dorne), while his people are being attacked by the Ironborn. And he doesn’t forget how Sansa humiliated him at the Dragonpit.

Gendry is loyal to the Starks, but only because he knew Arya and Jon. With both of them gone, his loyalty to King Bran is weak. He cares more about his own smallfolk. Gendry was a lowborn bastard after all, so he wants to do everything he can for them. But with time, he sees that the new regime is not interested in helping the smallfolk, just like they weren’t interested in listening to Sam’s idea of democracy. His loyalty also starts to waver. He also has problems with some lords from the Stormlands that don’t like that some bastard is now in charge, but it’s less than Bronn, since Gendry is indeed trying to be a good lord, and he is indeed Robert Baratheon’s son (he was recognized as such by Stannis Baratheon, and later by Daenerys Targaryen, so now it’s common knowledge).

The North also suffered with the War for the Dawn and the winter. Sansa is regarded as a competent lady by the Northern lords, but she has no love in the North. The Northern Lords kinda just got stuck with her. Sansa had stored grain in Winterfell to feed the castle and her armies, but that only means that the smallfolk in other parts of the North had to give up part of their harvest to send to Winterfell, and now, with the Winter, they are starving. To quell discontentment, Sansa tries bringing food from White Harbour, and Bran also sends her food. The fact that Bran is sending food to his sister for lower prices than usually done when trading with other foreign lands makes the lords of the Six Kingdoms angry. Bran stops sending so much food, so Sansa starts demanding more tributes from White Harbour. This angers Lord Manderly more and more, and Lord Manderly decides to demand for independence. Sansa had publicly complained many times about Dany being a tyrant for not giving her independence, so he uses the same argument Sansa used in the Dragonpit: White Harbour had suffered too much: they had sent their troops to fight the Night King alongside the Starks, but not only that, they had been the ones that most contributed to feeding the North. Because of this, he thinks he deserves independence, just like Sansa argued that she deserved independence from the Seven Kingdoms. He argues that what Sansa did created a precedent for independence, and that it would be tyranny if she refused to give it to him. Sansa is outraged, and sends her troops to make Lord Manderly bend the knee and force him to send food again.

The Vale will stay loyal to the Starks to the end, since they have mostly been left alone, and are not having as much problems with food (they weren’t very affected by wars, and their land is fertile). Nepotism also helps, because Bran won’t demand too much from his family. Edmure, also Bran’s family, was asking for help, but Tyrion advised that Lord Royce, the regent of the Vale and Sweetrobin’s advisor, was a proud man and their most loyal ally, and that angering him and making him send food to the Riverlands would be bad for them (Tyrion was wrong, as always).

By the way, winter isn’t over. Book speculation often said that the Others were the cause of the long winter, but in the show, we saw that there was snow in King’s Landing even after the White Walkers were defeated. So here, we’ll accept the fact that the seasons being long is just a normal thing for their world. After they kill Dany, Westeros goes through a few months of “false spring”, but winter returns stronger than ever after that. Crops die, hunger spreads through the land.

So basically, everything is chaos.

*end of the parenthesis about Westeros*

So with the chaos that is happening in Westeros, and the news of Dany’s return, Bran, Tyrion and Sansa start to get nervous. They pardon Jon, and Sansa sends men after Jon to bring him back from beyond the Wall, because she believes having Jon in Winterfell could serve as a shield in case Dany attacks (she thinks Dany might still love him, or that Jon might be able to negotiate with her. In a last case scenario, she could deliver Jon to Dany to make Dany leave her alone), and also, because she feels lonely, since her entire family left her.

Jon comes back to Winterfell. At some point, he overhears a conversation between Sansa and Maester Wolkan. Maester Wolkan was in the room when Sansa asked Bran to warg into Dany, and he knows the truth. Sansa sworn him to secrecy, but now, he comes to her with news of Dany’s resurrection, and asks Sansa if Dany would want revenge for Bran having warged into her. Sansa answers that she is not sure that Daenerys has memories or if she is aware that she was being warged, and if Daenerys doesn’t remember, she might not seek revenge.

So when Jon overhears this conversation, he learns that Daenerys was innocent, and that she is alive. He is horrified by what his family did, and also feels guilty for not believing in Daenerys, for having trusted his family and dismissed Dany’s fears, and so on. There’s a lot of angst. Jon then pretends he didn’t hear Sansa’s conversation, and pretends that everything is ok. He runs away from Winterfell in the middle of the night, without warning, with the intention of going to Dany.

From this moment on, I’m not really sure of what happens. I like the idea of Jon spending some time in the South, helping outlaw groups in the Reach, and learning about his brother’s tyranny. On the other hand, I don’t know how Jon could escape being seen by Bran’s ravens. So maybe Jon simply takes a ship and goes to Essos. But before he manages to take his ship, I still like to think that he talks with the smallfolk and hears what has been happening in Westeros (since he didn’t hear anything about it when he was exiled beyond the Wall).

Jon and Dany eventually reunite. Jon is brought to her in her war camp (because Dany is still at war with the slavers in Essos). While on the one hand Dany feels angry at Jon for killing her, for not supporting her and for giving up on her, on the other hand, she feels ashamed of what she did in King’s Landing and thinks she deserved to die (after all, Dany herself would have killed a person that burned innocents for no reason). So she accepts to meet Jon, but only with her guards around her, because while she still loves Jon, she is also afraid of him. Dany doesn’t have any intention of getting revenge against Jon, since she feels guilty about what she did. She is curious about what could possibly be the reason for Jon to look for her again, and thinks that he wants to kill her in the name of his family.

Jon is still very confused and tormented, and while a part of him believes that Dany is innocent, another part of him doesn’t want to believe that his siblings would have been capable of doing such an atrocity. So when he and Dany talk, he starts by asking her why she did what she did to King’s Landing. Dany answers that she doesn’t really know. That before she realized, she was doing it, like she couldn’t control herself. She tells Jon that her memories of King’s Landing almost don’t feel real, and that she is ashamed of what she did. This convinces Jon that Dany is indeed innocent, and he tells her the truth.

And this causes a lot of angst, of course. Initially, it makes Dany angry that he didn’t believe in her innocence and that he gave up on her so easily. She accuses him of having betrayed her, of having abandoned her. She also tells Jon that she was pregnant, and that because he killed her, he also killed their child (and this of course, makes Jon feel even more guilty). But with time, the anger passes, and she starts to see Jon as another victim of his family’s machinations (unlike Jon, who was hesitant in believing the worst of his siblings, Dany has a very low opinion of the Starks).

So Dany forgives Jon. They don’t return to their romantic relationship, but consider each other friends. And Jon starts to help her in her fight against slavery in Essos. This makes them content, since neither of them wants to ever return to Westeros. But unfortunately for them, news of Dany’s resurrection have started to reach more people, and lords from Westeros come to her to ask for her help in deposing Bran and the lords loyal to him. Listening to all the things that are happening in Westeros and how much the people are suffering only angers Dany. And it angers Jon as well. So they make plans to return to Westeros. Dany leaves a big part of her army of Unsullied and Dothraki in Essos, so that they could keep on with their fight against the masters. She returns to Westeros mostly with the army of their Westerosi allies (and her dragon, of course).

Dany has in mind a new political system, with a council of noblemen and a council of the smallfolk, so she negotiates with her allies with this in mind, making it clear that if they want to support her claim, they also have to support her reforms She has decided that she won’t hesitate to use force against the lords who don’t accept her reforms.

*another parenthesis*

Since I said I didn’t really have everything figured out, here are some alternatives to the things that I just described:

Maybe the reason Jon went back to Winterfell wasn’t because Sansa called him, but because when Jon was beyond the Wall, he saw that the White Walkers weren’t entirely gone. So maybe, what makes Dany return to Westeros isn’t that she wants revenge or because the lords are asking her to return, but because of the White Walkers. This would leave her conflicted, because the last time she tried to help those people she was betrayed and killed.

Or maybe Dany’s motivation to return to Westeros are just that she wants revenge. In this case, maybe she won’t even accept the alliance with the Lords, because she wants to change things for the common people. Or maybe she makes alliances with lesser lords promising them more political influence and that lesser lords would have as much sway as high lords in her new system (as well as smallfolk would also have more power).

*end of parenthesis*

Whatever Dany’s motivations for returning to Westeros are, she returns to Westeros, takes back the throne, and takes revenge. Dany is no longer the trusting soft person she was when she first went to Westeros. She comes with fire and blood, uses force when she needs to. Bran dies, because he is way too powerful for Dany to keep alive and trust that he won’t warg or spy on anyone again. As for Sansa and Tyrion, I could see different endgames: they could be exiled, imprisoned and kept as hostages, or Dany could kill them both for treason: Sansa because she revealed Jon’s parentage against Jon and Dany’s wishes, and also because of her part in the plan to make Bran warg into Dany; and Tyrion for telling what Sansa told him to Varys without Dany’s permission, which led Varys to try to poison Dany, and Dany could have died due to Tyrion’s actions; though I could see Dany being more lenient towards Tyrion than Sansa, since Sansa’s crimes are more grave. But I don’t see Dany ever accepting him as an advisor again.

Jonerys will reconcile and rule. There might be some conflict with Jon because he doesn’t want to see his family die (which is why there could be the possibility of keeping Sansa alive but as a prisoner), but in the end they get back together, marry and have children. Dany creates a new government in which both smallfolk and lords can have representatives and create laws, and she creates laws that limit the powers of the lords and stops them from abusing the smallfolk. She could also give some autonomy to each of the kingdoms: she doesn’t fully give them independence, but this greater autonomy helps quell the growing wishes for independence from each of the kingdoms.

So that’s my post season 8 headcanon. Dany was entirely innocent, the Starks were the villains, and Bran warged into Dany. Btw, if anyone wants to use this headcanon to actually write a fic, feel free to do so. Just please tell me because I’d love to read it.

[dreamsofthescreen]

Alluring or Meaningless? - The Ending of Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)

Renowned director Paolo Sorrentino's classic 'La Grand Bellezza' mixes the pathos of life with philosophical ideas, but does its ending even have the desired meaning that audiences were expecting?  

Giusi Merli in ‘La Grande Bellezza’

Paolo Sorrentino’s renowned 2013 Italian modern classic, ‘La Grande Bellezza’ (The Great Beauty) was certainly one for the critics to praise highly, yet there is a certain quality to its largely masterful storytelling that can see it lacking in true depth. Where much of the film’s entirety soars, its value seems to get lost amongst its artsy attempt to create meaning, where it really can appear as overdone and quite hollow. If we look at the last 30 minutes of Sorrentino’s work, we as an audience can certainly debate whether there is awe-inspiring significance or just overplayed rhetoric in the ending of La Grand Bellezza. Where whimsical characters and moments are introduced, viewers can be very easily swept up in Sorrentino’s foreign fairytale, where it really can be deemed as just pretentious. Yet, this point is far from black and white, as ‘La Grande Bellezza’s’ meaning is up to the audience to interpret, still making it a favoured and beloved work.

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s works have garnered praise for their dramatic and striking visuals, as well as their convoluted plots. He has been compared to Federico Fellini, and certainly does seem to take inspiration from the 1960s film icon. But Sorrentino is certainly no copy of Fellini, as his culturally inspired films do reach audiences well. Yet where The Academy Awards gave it the win for Best Foreign Language Film, and where critics seem to kiss it’s feet, this doesn’t always mean that it is altogether an expert piece of cinema. You can say that the beauty of film is that it can be totally subjective, which, in hand, is what makes such great art. So us as an audience can ask whether we view the film as more so pretentious or philosophical?

‘La Grande Bellezza’ follows former writer & popular socialite Jep Gambardella, a sort of philosophical muse for Sorrentino. As Jep’s life in Rome is consumed by materialism, it isn’t until his 65th birthday that he begins to look inwards. This leads him on a search for ‘the great beauty’, which has him relishing in nostalgia and existential simplicity, audiences closely following behind on that journey with him. The greater part of Sorrentino’s film does successfully have us questioning our place in the world, and where our values lie. Through comparing and contrasting the superficial high life with what’s most important to humanity, we are reminded of our own perspectives on what does and should hold the most substance or meaning.

Toni Servillo in 'La Grande Bellezza'

Yet as Jep has wandered around searching in different areas for beauty in truth and philosophy, his defining moment seems to be towards the end of the film, when he is introduced to Saint, Sister Maria. As Jep is told that she had ‘read his novel & loved it’ years before, we are left open to interpretation to who this Saint may be. Yet the answer in itself is somewhat disappointing. Again, it is not to say that the ending of Sorrentino’s film is wrong or terrible, but is surely very thought provoking.

This moment starts in the last thirty minutes of the film, and we are never given a backstory to Sister Maria when or before she is introduced. And she is introduced, literally, on a pedestal. As she sits there in silence, she wears a dusty, grey-blue nun’s habit, her olive skin lined with deep wrinkles, and expression truly dried out. Members of high society kneel to her, kissing her hands. In the chapel that she sits, there are priests, monks, African tribesmen and all in all, only established figures flocking to her, their eyes wide in honour of her presence. It is as though these figures are all awaiting an answer that they cannot find, and seek out from Maria. Though she is established as a wise old prophet with supposed life-changing aid, what makes her so respectable? She appears as though she has lived three lifetimes and has ‘only granted three interviews in all her life’, yet this alleged messiah altogether utters very little meaning. Sister Maria’s introduction has her appearing as a monumental figure, mostly due to the filmmaking aspects of the scene. In the chapel, lit with a chiaroscuro inspired light, along with medieval Roman Catholic music echoing throughout, with the purpose of warming our hearts. Contemplative looks from across the room, including a black priest, may be there to show the diversity that Maria is surrounded by, as those across the globe seem to adore her. The only interpretation gathered is that Sister Maria is an attempt to create a grandiose moment to close out the film in a profound sense. Yet what I’d gathered of this Saint, is that she lives so austerely that Sorrentino’s ending becomes muddled and pretentious.

As previously mentioned, we are never given a backstory to Sister Maria, but maybe that is the beauty of it that Sorrentino was trying to portray. This icon in the film is looked up to for her granted simplicity. But by portraying something so obscure, Sorrentino’s work doesn’t always appear as interesting, but as an attempt to do so. Is it her goodness or her stripped back way of living that those aspire to? And why does it need to be members of high society that only seek her advice? Wouldn’t Sorrentino’s inclusion of ordinary citizens make it all the more realistic, or relatable and grounded, rather than once again getting caught up in something so grand?

Her grandeur is never explained, to which we can be inspired or simply baffled by the mystery, seeing it as something that creates interest, or just remains pretentious. Yet even if her significance was explained, and made this supposed icon as meaningful as someone like the Pope or Mother Teresa, aren’t we supposed to be inspired by the ordinary and the beauty in simplicity. Isn't the point of 'La Grande Bellezza' to celebrate the simple things in life, rather than an established, worshipped figure? The portrayal of this kooky character tries to make a point towards being so well grounded, that it is absurd. As she speaks to Jep, she asks 'Do you know why I only eat roots?', to which Jep asks why, her response following as, 'Because roots are important'. Now Sister Maria's actions line up with her values and grounded nature, as she genuinely decides to eat roots. This can be seen by some as profoundly inspiring, but is altogether quite a weak attempt to deliver an overly-artistic message. And sure, it isn't all pompous, as there is a great reference to the Catholic influences in Italy and the holy hierarchy of Rome & it’s art. But it is the aureate expression  doesn’t sell it as being moving, but is instead simply too showy.

When sat down at dinner with Jep and his fellow members of Roman high society, Maria is slouching at the head of the table with a vapid expression. The attempt at meaning that Sorrentino has so clearly tried to create is open to interpretation, yet it can be said that this is not one of the his finest writing moments. Sister Maria does not speak a word, and whenever she does, it is a brooding comment that is supposed to hold substance, but instead can be regarded as pretentious. The moment she lifts her head to comment on Jep's novel, all eyes are so enthusiastically on her. Sister Maria does not sleep in a bed, as she finds Rome’s 5 star Hassler hotel, ‘uncomfortable’. Her perspective on life can be seen as purely existential and somewhat nihilistic, or greatly generous. As she works alongside the sick and supports the Third World, her abandonment of any enjoyment and subscription to poverty has us question our place. Is someone really so empathetic that they’ll refuse any comfort, because others are worse off? Again, Sorrentino does succeed in communicating a message that has us asking questions like this, yet the point is too greatly emphasised through the worshipping and dramatically overdone expression of this holy character.

As Jep focuses on switching his hedonism for eudaemonism, his perspective on the finer things in life is the things he used to have, leading him to relish in nostalgia. Sister Maria seems to be an exaggerated symbol of his changing philosophy, as well as a turning point for him to once again write, after abandoning any such creativity for decades.

Something in meeting Sister Maria has Jep retuning to Giglio Island to report on a shipwreck, again, quite symbolic of Jep’s career position, having not written a novel in 40 years. Here, he remembers his first meeting with his first love, to which inspires him to write again. Apparently Sister Maria is the bridge between Jep’s despair & newfound hope.

Paolo Sorrentino's expertly expressive film is a no doubt a masterful passion project that communicates the pathos and joy of the human condition, impacting audiences greatly. Yet Sorrentino's attempt to create something meaningful to close out an already wonderful film filled it with more vanity than it needed. It is an entirely subjective work that involves the audiences thought and we can all interpret it how we see it, which is assuredly a good thing. However, Sorrentino’s quite bombastic ending was just a questionable cliffhanger and didn't line up with the greatness that the first two hours of 'La Grande Bellezza' provided. Though a fantastic feature, Paolo Sorrentino seemed to get too lost in portraying a message so obscurely overdone, that it had somewhat lost it's original meaning.

visit at: dreamsofthescreen.com

[whirlybirdwhat]

Oh I wonder how Katsuki would react to them! If it was an op au he would probably have Zoro's role (wants to be the best and doesn't care about what people think) but I don't know if he would like Zoro if he met him (and I really don't know what he would think of Luffy)

OKAY SO REALLY TINY ANSWER TO YOUR ACTUAL ASK AND THEN UNDER MY CUT MY FEELINGS ABOUT THAT KASUKI AND ZORO OPINION BECAUSE BOY. DID I FIND OUT I HAD EMOTIONS!

So! Kastuki be enraged. here are people who give no fucks about heroes, if bakugo’s better than him, have a drive he can’t match and the ability to cause bigger explosions than he could ever hope (Three Thousand worlds, red hawk, fire bird star... i can go on.) They aren’t bound by science like he is. And they don’t care about heroes, or the government, things that validate Bakugo.

So he’d be enraged. and then maybe ave a lil bit of respect? Because they are, sorry, stronger than bakugo in an objective sense and would wipe the floor with him. Especially since Bakugo wouldn’t have haki. And More, they wouldn’t care about what bakugo thought of them and would just do their thing. I think bakugo would want to be them. And He’d be 100% baffled by luffy who would just think his explosions were cool then show him his red hawk attack lmao.

NOW. Onto my very strong opinions underneath the cut. 

gonna be honest i havent watch bnha since i watched one piece, so its been awhile, but i also feel that Bakugo and Zoro are just. very different characters. especially due to the extremely different themes both medias have. Zoro has a goal, an unbeatable, impossible goal that he will sacrifice anything but his friends to get - and in the beginning, when we first meet luffy, he would have sacrificed him if he got in his way. Zoro, however, supports others - he believes, no, knows that luffy will be the next pirate king. He’s the first mate and steps up when the captain can’t (water 7) and knows what need to be done and what he won’t sacrifice (which quite frankly is only his crew mr “chopping my legs off to win a battle is a good idea” fucking dumbass ily). 

Bakugo, to my understanding as i stopped watching when Bakugo got captured, is literally. Not that. He has a goal yes, but its a goal shared by several other characters - deku, and i believe todoroki wants to be the number one, etc - and we also don’t know why beyond he wants to be the best. Its a baseless goal, as of right now, one that can only be given meaning through fan speculation. Which is in comparison to Zoro, whose goal to be the best is through a promise to a dead sister-figure and for his need not to be weak and to be strong enough for his captain - his crew - not himself, like Bakugo presumably. Additionally, Bakugo has literally stepped on others in a malicious way to get to the top, and while Zoro has done so, it is simply because he doesn’t care; he’s better than them in skill, and in the one piece world its a dog eat dog world. Zoro is staying true to the values he as a swordsman has. Bakugo wants to be a hero. Bakugo has less compassion for citizens than Zoro has, a world class criminal. Who has destroyed several towns and taken down several kings, tyrants, and government officials. 

Too my last point, Bakugo... isn’t really a leader. Zoro isn’t either but Zoro steps up and people listen. Bakugo steps up and yells, and people listen. Its different. 

And Bakugo does cares about what people think - he wouldn’t yell, proclaim he’s the best, be as competitive as he is, bully children, or anything if didn’t. He wouldn’t want to be the best with seemingly no motivation if he didn’t care what people thought.

Zoro has quite literally said that it doesn’t matter if he’s a pirate or a marine, or what people think of him - as long as his name rings across the land as the best swordsman, fufilling his promise to Kuina, he has achieved his dream.  (Chapter 5 -6 I believe.) 

This difference is of course to the themes of both manga. To my Understanding, BNHA is all about being a hero - what does it take to become a hero, what makes a hero, do not give up without trying, help others before yourself, theres a solution to every problem, etc. I looked most of these up because the only one I could think up off the top of my head is what makes a hero/ is it ability or your actions because how bnha handled it esp with its opening line pissed me off but!! thats a story for another time! 

One Piece’s themes disregard heroes. One piece’s themes are first and foremost - dreams, the romantic view of the world,  sticking to your ideals, being selfish, and freedom. I could go on for hours about it. In fact, I have. 

The One Piece world is a lawless place. the government is corrupt, slavery exists, and its heroes are either pirates who saved you only because you were their friend (strawhats, despite not wanting to be called heroes) or marine heroes who are chained to the concept of a ruthless justice and have to let family members die for it (garp). Everything is weird, but only one character in the entire history of one piece has been alienated for being weird - Katakuri, for his mouth, which is fucking absurd considering his brother literally has an oven on his head and his mother is a soul sucking cannibal who wears a polka dot dress.  In one piece your ‘quirks’ aren’t celebrated - its just normal. Fun even. Especially on. the Grand Line where the rule is anything can happen, from rubber boys fighting God or islands made out of food.

The world of BNHA is the exact opposite. While they have “quirks” which can be anything, its not something anybody can obtain, unlike one piece, where only Conquerors Haki is an unobtainable skill unless you are born with it. BNHA is a world buried deep in laws, heroes, and villains - black and white for the most part to my understanding. It is a world where if you are villain, you are pretty much expected to be evil or out for blood, and if you are a hero, you are generally expected to help people, even if you might be doing it for money or fame. Unlike one piece where each and every character has a dfiferent moral compass. BNHA is also a realistic world in terms of quirks - you won’t be finding islands of candy or the like, and it is pretty much contained in one setting, which shifts characters characterizations a lot. 

How does this affect Bakugo and Zoro?

Well. In a world where dreams and selfishness are valued, you would think Bakugo would flourish. I think he would falter, because of what you pointed out - his willingness to be the best. In BNHA, theres a structure for how you become the best, through school and a career, an official ranking. There’s nothing like that in One Piece, as bounties have been shown to be absolutely fucking worthless, and literally all the top bounties are just puns. fucking puns. I love it. 

If Bakugo went around as he does in BNHA, in one piece, a world where he doesn’t have people protecting him from his actions or not hurting him because he’s a kid, bakugo would honestly probably die. Bakugo’s drive to be the  best and his normality as typically being the best in BNHA would not translate over well.

In One Piece rookies get knocked the fuck out unless you have plot armor which honestly doesn’t always protect you. See the Baratie. Saboady. Fucking Marine Ford. Wano. Big Mom. Fucking FOXY. You can surrvive by staying lucky - Buggy, but it isn’t often.

What would Bakugo even be the best of? The Marines where he has to listen to the Five Elders? He’d be a less hateful Akainu (because no one can be as bad as Akainu) 

In a world without structure, Bakugo would fucking die. 

In comparison, in a BNHA au, Zoro has drive and would probably just be like an accidental villain like I have in my au. 

In the End, Zoro is a pirate, and Bakugo is a hero in training. Bakugo relies on organizations to help him reach the top while Zoro actively destroys them. Bakugo wants to lead but can’t (as of right now) and Zoro can lead but loves his captain, so won’t. Zoro’s goals are seated in concrete ideals, concrete promises that he has to keep. Idek why Bakugo wants to be a hero beyond being the best. 

BNHA could not work in a one piece right down to the fucking morals. Pirates Vs Heroes. The pirates could maybe be the heroes, but could the heroes ever set out to purposefully take down others, obtain land, and be free from responsibility?

Thats just a portion of my thoughts on it. BNHA characters are just... so incompatible with any world that isn’t theirs because their lives revolve around fitting the algorithm of UA and the Hero Career. OP, in its focus on selfishness and disregarding the rules of any place and bringing chaos anywhere, can pretty much go anywhere without being odd because even in their own world they ruin every thing.

Okay. Im done now. Sorry anon you opened a can of worms i didn’t think i  had thoughts on!! guess i do!!

[megaminds-destiny]

You know that moment in a movie, where the hero has tried to defeat the villain, they have failed and now they’re all upset, feeling like they can’t do it, and later on somebody comes up and talks to them and tells them they actually are good enough, and if they try again they will get it right, ect, ect.

This is not one of those moments.

Not by a long shot... in a way it sort of looks like one, and chances are that is what DreamWorks intended it to be, but if we just get straight down to things, Megamind had absolutely every right to say what he said in this scene.

I know that here, he definitely has doubt that he could ever defeat Titan. It would be foolish to even consider that he could beat him to be honest. After knowing closely, and blowing up Metro Man unsuccessfully especially, but that is actually entirely besides the point. In reality, it’s not even about whether he could defeat Titan or not, it’s whether Roxanne even has the right to actually ask him that in the first place.

Megamind was assigned to the role of villain at birth. He did everything that he could to tear himself away from that position, and aimed to become the exact opposite. This resulted continuously in abuse and punishment. Verbally, physically, implicative, you name the method, and that’s how the message was conveyed. Now... as a child, he thought to himself that what he wanted, what he was interested in doing, becoming, was important, and he wanted to prove that he could be good. But the world beat it into him that he was not. Is was actually in fact his Destiny, that he become a villain. It was actually HIS fault that all this abuse was inflicted upon him, his fault for trying to be something that he was not meant to be. Destiny, they hit a keyword there. ‘Destined for’ had a special place in his heart, as the last words his father had ever spoken to him, and without the need for that to be communicated out loud, it was picked up on by those around him, and used to get him to do as he was told, and accept whatever happened to him, while conveniently taking away his right to speak up or defend himself about it. So as well as that, at this point it’s become a spiritual thing, where people are actually using a Divine Entity as a logic system to convince Megamind that he actually has no say in the matter. In fact, if he tried to change who he was Destined to be, it would affect the balance of the universe- there can’t be any ‘Yang with no Yin,’ and this is the way the world stays ‘Perfect and Rosy’. If he were to fight this, it would not only destroy the balance, possibly the world, and hurt other people if he succeeded, but also there was no chance that he could succeed because Destiny ultimately had the control- not Megamind. And he would suffer continuous punishment for as long as he disobeyed. This is mental manipulation, and the way you convince someone to believe things that are absurd or untrue. (Similar to a cult, or abusive parent/child relationship)

So where’s the relevance in this? It IS relevant, because this is the mindset and logic system that Megamind has been following for his entire life. Believing with all his heart that his suffering in the past was the result of his own disobedience to the universe itself, and the only way to not be punished, the only right thing to do was to be a villain, as shown. And so? He stayed a villain all his life, and did the absolute best job of it that he could. Made a life out of it. Plotted and scemed, carried out his evil plans, got caught, sent to prison, escaped and repeated the process over and over. It worked. But of course, it came with it’s fair share of cons. Isolation. He never got to have a real family, it’s up to our imagination how the prison inmates treated him as a child, but even so they aren’t there with him anymore. Rejection. A lot of it. It was just a part of being a villain. He was accepted in a way, as a brilliant bad guy, but nothing more than that. He was never given the space to actually hope that one day he could have a friend other than Minion, he could have a relationship with somebody kind to him, or a family of his own in any regard. Purposeless. In the fact that while he does have a ‘purpose’, it’s not actually up to him whether that was what he wanted to do or not. And while we already know he makes the best of it all that he possibly can (as a result of acceptance and the sheer positivity and optimism of his character) it hurts him in the way that he will never feel what freedom is like, and he will never be granted the right to choice. He’s stripped of his right to go after his dreams of being a hero.

It would be hard enough if... if say somebody actually took the time and went to the effort to explain to him the truth... it would be extremely difficult to accept that the reason he was living this way all his life against his genuine will, was because a bunch of people wanted to be assholes and push him around for no valid reason. That’s how school kids are, but nobody seems to have ever stepped in. He wasn’t doing anyone any favours, and he should have been allowed to - in fact it should have been his right as a sentient being to get the choice in how he wanted to think, behave and live his life (without hurting anybody else or taking away someone else’s freedom). The prison actually had no right to keep him hostage as a baby/child, and somebody should have been there to protect him when he was being bullied. He needed and he deserved to have somebody step in in his defence, and tell him the truth about his situation. Long ago. Not now. And not like this- as a demand, without explanation, incompatible to the logic system, without acknowledging his current pattern of thinking (where it came from and how it came about) it can’t be disregarded, because this is what he does to survive. To not be tortured, punished, or suffer consequences. To do the right thing, follow the rules, keep the city, keep Destiny happy. He is in no position where he can just drop these rules and this logic system that he follows! His hands are metaphorically tied. Roxanne has offered him no alternative thinking pattern whatsoever, the idea is not compatible. She might as well have suggested he go and throw himself off a cliff, but even that wouldn’t have held the consequence of failing the Destiny he was assigned at birth, and throwing the universe out of whack. It already felt like he had messed with the balance enough as it was.

But wait there’s more! This discussion they had just had with Metro Man, was not encouraging as the former super hero had seemed to have intended. In fact, it was about as far from encouraging as he could have possibly got. Metro Man, in Megamind’s mind had basically told them that he didn’t feel obligated to his role as the ‘Yang’. He admitted that he didn’t really care, in fact he thought that the entire thing about fighting each other was just silliness. They were just messing around. There was no Divine Power, he never felt obligated to fill his assigned role. If the universe went out of whack because he decided he’d rather mess around with a guitar instead of mess around playing hero, then somebody else should do something about it. If the Universe really needed someone to fill this empty ‘Yang’ position, then why can’t Megamind just do it. Heck, maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that somebody else became a villain and pushed Megamind out of his role. Things were at an imbalance now, but all Megamind had to do was become a hero and he done with it. Problem hecking solved. No more Metro Man needed. But wait a second just hold up there Mr Jackass sir... why was it then, that when Megamind attempted to escape his role as ‘Yin’, he got so severely punished? How actually was it, that Metro Man managed to get off Scott free? As if in Metro Man’s own words- everyone in the whole city had a choice. Except the actual person being forced into things was actually Megamind. All his life, he is not only forced into this position he never chose, but also forced to accept it, forced to believe it’s actually a good thing, told directly that what he wants doesn’t matter, and that he is not allowed to question/rebel/change his mind/quit- ever. With consequences in place, waiting for him to slip up. And along comes Metro Man who’s been given the position Megamind sees as a GIFT, where he doesn’t miss out on connection, conversation, relationships, acceptance, love, affection, validation, just people actually liking him and caring about him and the only thing he really misses out on is... a choice apparently? For Metro Man to be preaching to Megamind how unfair it was that he didn’t have a choice in being a hero, when he was the one who actually initiated the whole thing in the first place, made up all these rules and pretended that all of this stuff was fact. But the worst part is... he still didn’t tell him that. Metro Man still, didn’t tell Megamind that he ought to have a choice in the matter too.

Roxanne is a smart woman, and she’s a reporter too. I don’t think there’s any way that she doesn’t know about Megamind’s background, therefore why he thinks the way he does. (And if not she never stopped to ask him why he thinks this way) I don’t think she had the right to ask this of him, to try to defeat Titan, as a hero, when just the night before she had actively participated in being one of those people who forced him into his role by not only rejecting him, but also saying to him that he would never get the chance to change his mind about who he wants to be. Because of what he’s done, and who his is- he can never change. She is the one who told him that, and for her to have the nerve to then turn around and suggest that it is up to him to change his Destiny, when Destiny has always been the one controlling/disciplining him... it’s just not a fair thing to ask at all. Especially after everything that while they were inside, Metro Man had just told him. That had already been just a massive slap in the face, and what Roxanne said to him afterwards was ultimately just another one. He has the right to be in grief. She was surprised at him, but genuinely there was no other reactions in the bank to be had.