#which they're going to need once the evil uncle's forces come after them

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Me, faced with a shiny new story idea: Save it for the Inklings Challenge, save it for the Inklings Challenge, please save it for the Inklings Challenge, I'm begging you please save it for the Inklings Challenge

[thornfield13713]

6, 13, 15 (I was thinking for Rosie bc she's the bg oc I've seen most about, but feel free to go with someone else if you have more interesting answers for them!)

What companion are you platonically close with?

I have...a lot of trouble not befriending everyone all the time, in this game, but there are a few people Rosie is closer to than others.

The most notable example is Astarion, because they got close enough in this runthrough that I actually got his proposition at the tiefling party, and was planning to accept (with the intention of doing the 'you need a friend more than a lover' break-up later) if Karlach hadn't already made her move in the Underdark. Even without having briefly been lovers first, though, Astarion is probably Rosie's best friend in the party, in the same way that Wyll and Karlach are undeniably each other's. She was good friends with the rest of the party in various ways, but Astarion cemented his place as the closest to her by being the one who understood her situation with Bhaal most. They also shared a very dark sense of gallows humour that was often a bit unsettling for other members of the party.

She's probably second-closest to Wyll, though this doesn't emerge until after he's one of the only members of the group not to be (understandably) furious at her after her role in starting the Absolute plot comes out, despite the fact that, of the group, he's probably the member with the highest moral standards. The fact that they're both fundamentally dreamers who wanted to be like the heroes of the storybooks they grew up with helped a lot - Rosie, like Wyll, constructs a lot of who she is from half-remembered stories. She's doing it differently to him, but there's a certain amount of looking at each other and recognising the same coping mechanisms and the same careful construction of outward identity.

Minsc and Jaheira also very quickly became very close to Rosie indeed, once they joined the group as full-time companions. Those relationships are more familial than anything, given both of them make statements to the effect of 'you're family' over the course of the game, whether it's the 'cub' nickname or Minsc announcing that being Bhaalspawn makes him your uncle. And Rosie, who hasn't had a family since she was forced to murder her foster-family as a young child, likes having that to fall back on.

What are their thoughts on killing? Is it a necessary evil or do they enjoy it?

I mean. Rosie is a Dark Urge, which means that she automatically enjoys killing far more than she is comfortable with. Even early in the game, when she was just under the impression that she had a really bad case of the intrusive thoughts, she was very unsettled by how satisfying she found it to kill things, how much she enjoyed it. Which is a big part of why she did her best to avoid killing wherever she possibly could, lest it feed that part of her. This was...not an ideal strategy, as the Urge only got worse for not being placated, but thankfully for a while there were at least enough legitimate instances of no-other-option-but-violence to keep her mostly on top of her urges without random murder sprees.

That said, even killing in battle had a bit of a tendency to leave her guiltily torn between the part of her that loved every second of it, and the part of her that felt that killing ought to be a necessary evil and enjoying it was a slippery slope to whatever it was that led her to vivisect people in her former life (falling down to the Underdark early and getting her hands on noblestalk was enough to give her a relatively early insight into just how bad her past actually was, even if not the fact that she had greater ambitions than just back-alley serial killing) or kill people she wanted to be friends with in their sleep.

After losing her connection to Bhaal, this changed a bit, and Rosie had to come to terms with the fact that she still enjoyed fighting, she found satisfaction in it, and even the moment of the kill had something exhilarating in it still. She'd sort of been hoping her love of violence was purely Bhaal's influence, and it took a few conversations with Minsc and Karlach and other members of the party who enjoy violence, and whom Rosie feels, justifiably, have better grasps on the whole 'morality' thing than she does, to start getting past that sense of shame she feels about her enjoyment of fighting and killing.

What NPC's do they like? Which ones do they dislike?

I'm not sure her complicated feelings re: Gortash, Orin and Ketheric come under this one, but here's a quickfire of some of the major ones:

Depressingly, Rosie liked Alfira from the moment she first met her, and it was probably this immediate liking that led to Bhaal wanting Alfira dead right off the bat. That and Rosie having offered to help with her songwriting, which the Urge does not like at all. Unfortunately, Rosie being in some denial about how serious her urges are at this point, just assumes it's the same as thinking about Astarion's corpse the moment she meets him and lets Alfira come along with her, and- Well. You know the rest. She liked Alfira's hopefulness in the face of everything, she thought her song was beautiful, and was charmed and delighted by her eagerness to see the world - there was the beginning of a real friendship there, which just made what followed even worse.

She's also got a whole mess of feelings about Zevlor. At first, she admires and appreciates his protectiveness of his people, but then...well, then she finds him at Moonrise Towers after hearing everyone talking about how he broke, and there's a moment of absolute, agonising connection when he talks about how much he wanted to be a paladin again, and his guilt for what he was enthralled into doing. Sadly, that was the last she saw of him until the final battle, but there's something going on with those two and their relationships with their oaths and with the idea of being a paladin in general, and I sort of regret that, if Zevlor is anywhere in act 3 before the endgame, I haven't found him yet.

After they start talking, she and Dame Aylin also end up getting on surprisingly well, and I do slightly regret that there's no chance in-game to talk to her about the 'both children of the gods' thing, because it would be an interesting dynamic. Aylin is a bit more bombastic than Rosie, but she's also- in many ways, the sort of paladin Rosie wanted to be, but never quite lived up to. Which means that Rosie likes her a lot, admires her, but is...also somewhat envious of her.

Despite the above, Isobel is...uncomfortable...for Rosie, in that there's a certain...immediate, instinctive dislike there, exacerbated by the Urge screaming at Rosie to kill her even before Sceleritas turns up to make it an ultimatum. The Urge thing does just make Rosie dig her heels in, but that does just mean that she's quiet and awkward around Isobel, has a lot of trouble not rolling her eyes, and just does her best to avoid her at camp, despite getting on quite well with Aylin. Rosie herself can't even justify her dislike, it just...sort of happened?

Someone she is much firmer in her dislike for, however, is Wulbren Bongle. Yes, I know, if not the least controversial opinion in the game, it's up there. It's just- he has someone who cares about him enough to walk into danger and death for the chance of saving Wulbren. And Wulbren spits on it at every turn, treats the person who has gone to such lengths to rescue him like shit, and Rosie, who has...strong and complicated feelings about how people relate to one another, and about the idea of having people who cared enough to look- She wanted to throw Wulbren out into the shadow curse long before things came to a head, but that is the way it goes.

And then there's Sceleritas Fel, who scares her. Not because she fears him personally - even without her memories, she is quite confident in her ability to deal with him - but for what he means. She's as terrified to learn that she used to murder him on the regular (from the noblestalk thing) as she is by his delivering demands to kill her lover, because every word out of his mouth seems to confirm that she was an even worse person than she thought until he started talking, and she's genuinely terrified of just how deep and dark that pit truly is. All the same, seeing him killed to summon Bhaal hurt, in a way she has trouble explaining even to herself.

There are probably others I'll remember later, and kick myself for not including, but those are the ones that came to mind while I was writing this one.

[emperorsfoot]

Imagine how fun a MotU series would be if Skeletor weren't an antagonist, but instead a "domesticated villain".

They kinda did something similar in the Classics-Line comics already, so there's already a precedent for it in the franchise.

In the Classics line, after a trip to the past, He-Man finally manages to capture Skeletor.

They return to the Eternia of their present, but Eternia has been taken over by the Horde and all the Masters (and a number of Evil Warriors) are hiding out in caves. They need to pool their forces if they're going to win their planet back from the occupying Horde forces.

This leads to an uneasy truce between Skeletor and the Masters.

During the battle, Adora trusts Skeletor at her side, and is confident that the three of them (her, Adam, and Uncle Skeletor) can not just push back the Horde, but defeat Hordak permanently.

But Skeletor knocks his niece and nephew out of the way and takes on Hordak on his own.

This ends up being a dumb move on Skeletor's part as he is almost immediately injured and nearly killed by Hordak.

His niece and nephew rush to his aid.

He then "pulls a Skeletor", steals some life-force from a nearby dinosaur, and fucks off to outer space. Seemingly become a villain again.

Except, the next time we see Skeletor, he is once again working with Adam and Adora.

They're heading to Horde World to take down Horde Prime and topple the Horde Empire.

And when get to Prime, all three of them face him together.

Adam and Skeletor are teleported away in the middle of the battle though, so there's no real victory.

Upon finding themselves on yet another alien planet Skeletor does another one of his classic double crosses and he and He-Man are enemies again, and the remain enemies until Skeletor's death.

But at the end, his not vindictive or spiteful. Skeletor doesn't vow to come back as a ghost and haunt Adam, or curse him and his descendants, or anything like that.

They actually share an odd moment of connection. With Skeletor admitting that Adam was right and that his death is not Adam's fault.

I honestly think a full length series (either cartoon or comic) of Masters of the Universe where Skeletor is working with the Masters would be a fantastic story.

And it's not like the MotU franchise is hard pressed to find villains to replace him. There's Hordak, Horde Prime, King Hiss, the Unnamed One, Count Marzo, and Lady Slyther. Any of which would work as a decent main villain.

I just wanna see Adam and Adora fighting alongside their weird uncle, watching each other's backs and exchanging witty remarks.

And maybe every now and again they have to stop him from doing something horrible and gently remind him that, "No, no, we don't do that sort of thing, put their spleen back in their body and close the wound with you magic."

[fakeikemen]

The Roku/Sozin ancestry plot twist for Zuko

Like I’m sure this has been said before but the twist about Zuko being a descendant of both Roku and Sozin is actually a disservice to his character and his narrative as well? The way the narrative frames this reveal along with Iroh's dialogue, it backtracks on a lot of the story we are shown in Book 1&2 (and sometimes it even clashes with some dialogues in Book 3).

Iroh: “Because understanding the struggle between your two great-grandfathers can help you better understand the battle within yourself. Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy. But, there is a bright side. What happened generations ago can be resolved now, by you. Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world.”

1. This implies that there are equal amounts of good and evil in Zuko and his internal struggle is about choosing one of them.

The core qualities of Zuko as a character are empathy, compassion and kindness. A person who always gets upset when he sees or even thinks about other people in pain, a person who spoke out against powerful people to save lives that were being sacrificed needlessly, a person who shows mercy to people who don’t deserve it, a person who is willing to reach out a hand to save the life of the man who tried to kill him, a person who avoids fights when possible, a person who is willing to fight on behalf of a family he has known for only one night, a person who reaches out to sympathise after being yelled at— a person like this is definitely not struggling with equal parts of good and evil within them.

Zuko does have two selves, but they can be categorised as pre-scar and post-scar.

His pre-scar version is the version who was unabashedly kind and compassionate, who spoke his mind without thinking of consequences. But his post-scar version was a cover up of the pre-scar version. It was a lie that Zuko lived everyday. He convinced himself that this was how he had to be; because this was what Ozai wanted him to be and that there was no other way.

And yet, when the situation is dire and he is depending on his instincts or when he is given a free choice, we see the pre-scar Zuko spring into action. Because that’s who he really is. It’s not a struggle between good and evil within him, it is his supressed self making an appearance when he slips up and fails to maintain his facade.

Perhaps the line that describes his internal struggle the best is this:

Zuko, imitating Iroh: Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self, reveal itself.

And while this dialogue was played for laughs, it is the most accurate description of how Zuko had to reach for his suppressed self, his real self, to save himself from becoming what Ozai wanted him to be.

2. It also implies that Ozai and Ursa had equal influence on Zuko's upbringing and that he struggled to chose between what was taught to him by Ursa (good) and Ozai (evil).

The idea that Zuko has equal amounts of good and evil inside himself goes hand in hand with idea that the good and evil traits in him have been passed onto him by Ursa and Ozai's upbringings respectively which are legacies of Roku and Sozin.

I don’t need to look any further than “Zuko Alone” to know that Ozai's impact on Zuko's upbringing was slim to none. The flashbacks that we see, are dominated by Ursa's presence. Ozai hardly gets any time onscreen. And when he does, he is shown as a silhouette and when he isn’t a silhouette, we only see him smile at Azula's display of skills and frown at Zuko's attempt.

Ozai was Zuko's father alright, but never in the ways that mattered. We know that Ozai abused Zuko. He constantly belittled him and compared him to Azula. Partially because Zuko lacked the natural talent that Azula had and partially because he lacked the ruthlessness and cruelty that Azula displayed even at her age.

Which made Zuko copy Azula's behaviour to get his father’s acceptance. But whenever Ursa noticed this, she immediately corrected Zuko and clearly told him that it was wrong.

Ozai is never shown to tell Zuko that whatever Ursa told him was wrong. Ozai personally never taught him anything (except that one time). He appreciated Azula's behaviour and encouraged her to keep it up but he just kept on expressing his disappointment in Zuko.

Ursa: Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.

Zuko's innate kindness and compassion were protected by Ursa in the formative years when he was at his most pliable. And this is why no matter what happens, he never loses these qualities and is able to retain his real self even after he tried hard to suppress it.

3. It diminishes the extent of psychological damage and trauma caused by the scarring incident.

The one time Ozai did take it upon himself to teach something to Zuko:

Ozai: You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.

(Notice that here too Ozai's form is silhouetted against the light behind him.)

The scar is so much more than just a scar to Zuko. It is the one lesson that Ozai taught him. The scar exists because of Zuko's innate compassion. It was put on his face in an attempt to burn out his compassion. It was put there to be a constant reminder of what would happen if he dared to do something that went against what Ozai wanted from him. The scar was Ozai’s brand on his face. It took away Zuko's autonomy to make decisions for himself. It was a constant reminder that Zuko’s opinions didn’t matter.

Post-scar Zuko is Zuko's attempt at supressing his real persona to become the person Ozai wanted him to be, because he learned the hard way that he didn’t have the choice to be anyone else.

In fact, the first time Zuko makes a deliberate choice to go against what was expected of him, (letting Appa go) he succumbed to a fever. His emotional turmoil of coming to terms with the fact that he didn’t need to listen to Ozai and abide by him; a notion that he had been force feeding himself, everyday, for the last three years, manifested itself physically in the form of a fever. That was how deep the psychological damage caused by the scar was. (I hate it when people call it an angst coma.)

Saying that Zuko was struggling with equal amounts of good and evil within him, oversimplifies the complex emotional trajectory he had about coming to terms with the abuse he went through and reclaiming his autonomy and his personal opinions and beliefs, into just a choice between two aspects of his personality.

Zuko: I wanted to speak out against this horrifying plan, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't. My whole life, I struggled to gain my father's love and acceptance, but once I had it, I realized I'd lost myself getting there. I'd forgotten who I was.

4. This implies that Zuko's destiny was pre-determined.

Iroh said in the dialogue that Zuko was born with the power to restore balance in the world and that only he could do it.

Zuko, the character who has always had to struggle to gain what he wanted is suddenly told of an advantage that he had just by the virtue of birth? Kinda defeats the purpose of: "Azula was born lucky; I was lucky to be born", if you ask me.

And even more importantly, he let go of the destiny that Ozai forced on him, only to take on another predetermined destiny; a destiny that was his to fulfil by the virtue of birth, and took steps to fulfil this other destiny, instead of making a destiny of his own and paving his own path to it by making the choices that he had been denied for so long because of Ozai. Which seems weird because all the other times Iroh talks to Zuko about this topic, he always emphasises on how it’s Zuko's choice to make his own destiny:

Lake Laogai:

Zuko: I want my destiny.

Iroh: What that means is up to you.

Lake Laogai:

Zuko: I know my own destiny, Uncle!

Iroh: Is it your own destiny, or is it a destiny someone else has tried to force on you?

Zuko: Stop it, Uncle! I have to do this!

Iroh: I'm begging you, Prince Zuko! It's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions. Who are you, and what do you want?

Crossroads of Destiny:

Iroh: Zuko, I am begging you. Look into your heart and see what it is that you truly want.

Western Air Temple:

Iroh: You know Prince Zuko, destiny is a funny thing. You never know how things are going to work out. But if you keep an open mind, and an open heart, I promise you will find your own destiny someday.

5. It indirectly implies that the good™ in Ursa and Zuko exists because they are a part of the Avatar's legacy.

Making Ursa a daughter of a nobleman (as intended originally)* would’ve served a much better purpose for the message that the episode was trying to get across: “the Fire Nation isn’t inherently evil”.

Katara: You mean, after all Roku and Sozin went through together, even after Roku showed him mercy, Sozin betrayed him like that?

Toph: It's like these people are born bad.

Aang: Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right? If anything, their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation have to be treated like they're worth giving a chance.

Had Ursa not been Roku’s descendant, then there would've been people other than just Roku and his descendants, who were Fire Nation and good™. (Iroh is literally the only exception.)

Moreover, Azula is just as much a part of “Roku’s legacy” as Zuko is, and yet is completely overlooked when it comes to it. She isn’t shown to be struggling with equal amounts of good and evil. She isn’t gifted at birth with the capacity to bring balance back to the world. It appears as if she had inherited only “Sozin's legacy”.

So, not only does this Roku/Sozin twist go against Zuko's fundamental characterisation, but it also partially deconstructs the narrative that had been carefully set up for him over the course of 2 seasons.

*(I have been looking relentlessly for the post where I saw two screen caps of the two different characterisations of Ursa: 1. Ursa as we see her in "Zuko Alone"; 2. Ursa as Roku's descendant. And I can't find it now otherwise I would've linked it.)