Ins and outs of character dynamics and relationship in Lost (big spoilers btw)
I was going to start with a silly one, but instead I needed to rant and cry, so here we have
Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawking
She killed her son. Like that’s literally the problem here. Sure, in the moment of *shoot* she doesn’t know who he is and she’s very confused after she does it but she, later, WILLINGLY sends him to the island where she KNOWS she will shoot him, effectively making her pull that trigger with full knowledge and intention. All he ever is to her is a pawn and something that just happened and so must happen, because she doesn’t care about his hopes and dreams of music, his pursuits in relationships, his medical condition beyond it harming his physics work, and thinks anything beyond his purpose to do the things he did as extraneous and completely beside the point. She completely takes advantage of his condition, using it as leverage to convince him to do what she wants because he doesn’t have the memory or confidence in his own thinking to disagree with her whenever she suggests he do something, ultimately pushing him in the direction of what she wants because he RELIES on other people to make sensible decision for him because he needs help with sensible cognitive function since he was likely never taught to fight his condition to think for himself, as it’s very helpful for Eloise to have him take her word as gospel, which he does because he trusts her and doesn’t know any better (but he SHOULD know better than to blindly trust, because that’s what a PARENT should TEACH him), but that trust is entirely misplaced because of her horrible intentions. All this means she is completely apathetic to him, whereas HE is completely devoted to her and constantly seeks her approval, because in his eyes she has all the answers and will look out for him when he can’t take care of himself and she has his best interests at heart even when those decisions are difficult because she’s wise and cares for him and loves him - except all that is a LIE.
The one singular moment we need to see their entire relationship play out is the scene where she tells him to go to the island in The Variable: she pushes him, tells him it’s the right thing to do, that it’s “very important” that he agrees to it, he’s unsure of his own capabilities because he’s been treated lesser for constantly forgetting, she then uses his condition as leverage, outright LYING to him by saying what he could “accomplish” when the island bakes him “better” (all that he will accomplish is exactly what SHE wants him to do, then die, and never accomplish anything HE wants to do, and once again his only value in her eyes is his academic success - even if he did get better and return home healed, the only thing that will be good for in her eyes is the fact that he will be smarter at his work), then he asks “you really want me to go?”, because he’s been searching her approval all his life and has been taught that what she says is the utmost important thing, and when she says “yes”, he asks, and I swear to God I will cry, “WILL IT MAKE YOU PROUD OF ME?” because that's the ONE thing he never got, his mother being SATISFIED with ANYTHING he does, it’s never good enough for her, so now he FINALLY has a chance to make her proud and feel like he is worth something, so when she says “yes” again, by which she means that the only way she will actually be proud of him is if he goes and does what is necessary of him and then dies without anything for him in his life, he “then” agrees to go.
And in the moment that he finishes doing everything she wanted, and she shoots him, and he realises he’s been played by his own mother his ENTIRE life, he’s just so sad. He’s disappointed with his own life. Because he’s been searching for the approval of someone who will never give it to him. And right when he was starting to think he was finally making his mother proud of him, he realised that was always going to be impossible. And all his doubts about himself come rushing back, because he never mattered to anyone, and no-one ever loved him, and he was never worth anything, he was just there to do his work, get manipulated, and get betrayed.
And also? In the flash-sideways where his mother can be not-a-bitch because he has no island-dying purpose and can just live his life? Yeah. At her request, Desmond never wakes Daniel, so he never learns anything about the island life, because Eloise is scared he’ll see sense in how ridiculously ridiculous she was to him and he’ll drop her like he should. Bonkers.
Justice for Daniel. He never deserved a mother like Eloise.
I will absolutely say that every relationship on here is unique because of COURSE it is, that’s the point of this damn good show, but here I really REALLY mean it, because no two characters have ever been so ‘soulmates’ in the history of television. Post-hatch-implosion Desmond is a different person entirely in that he - in one precise moment - goes from ‘some guy in a ditch’ to ‘main character’. Instantly. No joke. And in that shift, we need to ask what his story is now hinging on, because while his ultimate goal is, like most others, ‘get tf off this damn island’, the visible, tangible, realistic, current goal indisputably becomes ‘save Charlie’, and if that’s not iconic idk what is. Just imagine for a second that some random guy who you barely know from a massive group of people is suddenly the object of all your strangest, time-bending thoughts. Now just imagine that some random guy you and your new buddies found in a hole who just caused a cataclysmic event is now tasked with saving you from dying via the most minor of inconveniences though psychic visions. (Sidebar: do you understand how devastating but hilarious it would be if Desmond didn’t see that first death and everyone was chilling when out of nowhere Charlie gets electrocuted and that’s the end of him because he’s fried. Crazy)
But the important thing is that these two have no reason to be so intensely linked. It seems the culmination of this ‘visions of Charlie dying’ plot is for all the deaths to be prevented until it’s a death that is meaningful not only for Charlie (because he gets to prove his purpose after struggling with it since the first season) but also for the entire group of survivors trying to escape the island. It had to have been Charlie in that underwater station because the code was something only he could have deciphered, but this whole chain of events only works if the ‘powers that be’ that made Desmond get these specific visions knew that:
He would prevent Charlie’s deaths even though he doesn’t know who that is
He would continue to do so even when it seemed futile
He wouldn’t tell Charlie about his deaths until it got the The Looking Glass
Once Charlie finds out about it, he’s willing to face it anyway
And ALL of those things came together to give them the chance to save everyone. And that entire sequence of events requires the Desmond and Charlie to be the most important people to each other in a way beyond friendship and all of human connection, because they are each other's source of survival on the island: Charlie, of course, relies on Desmond to prevent the freak accidents he gets himself into, and Desmond relies on Charlie to make his ‘powers’ make sense. Lest we forget, it is the act of Charlie singing Wonderwall (iconic) that unlocks Desmond’s higher plane of thinking and makes him realise he’s in the past when he has his time-travel visions after the implosion, and then in the flash-sideways it is the act of TAKING CARE OF CHARLIE that makes him remember life on the island.
Therefore I am not lying in saying this is THE most important pairing in the entire run of the show, so much so that Desmond is the last person that Charlie sees and communicates with before he dies, and Charlie is the one Desmond names his baby boy after (don’t anyone try to convince me Penny was naming him after her dad).
Their one crime was BFF-ing a little too close to the sun, they really took the ‘male bonding’ that was already going on in the camp and extrapolated it to the power of ten thousand.
The fact that Desmond caused Charlie (and everyone) to crash on the island is beside the point. That island was the best time of their lives and these two soulmates needed to meet, so I’ll most definitely allow it.
Desmond himself has every right to not like the 815 survivors, as on both occasions where they ‘find’ him (in the hatch and later on his boat) they’re a ragtag group of weirdos pointing weapons at him and acting like he’s a threat, while they’re supposedly the main characters. Yeah right.
so vampire lore is just so willy-nilly that there are basically no rules. good on one hand, as it opens up all possibilities for new vamp media, but also ????? I remember watching all these for the first time (which happened quite recently, mind you) and being surprised about every little thing they pulled out their ass for the sake of convenience bc ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's convenient ig
anyway, for your viewing pleasure, vampire lore (in)consistencies:
In honour of the fact that I watched Fright Night (2011) three times within the span of one year (I am feral), I decided to add their vampire lore to my venn diagram. it's taken a hell of a while because 5-wide venn diagrams are a PAIN to even look at, but I did the best I could, hope you enjoy:
The concept here is an insight into time-travel couples and how problematic their relationships are.
Definition of a time-travel couple here is that at least one person in the relationship has to have access to time travel, and use it in a way that influences their romantic relationship with someone. ‘Problematic’ can be in a variety of ways, let’s just see what sticks out in each case, you’ll get what I mean.
The Time Traveler's Wife (2003/2009) - Henry and Clare
I will be fully transparent, reading the book for the first time recently is what made me go into analysing this stuff, because I was wondering if time-travel romance is inherently problematic due to the nature of knowing each other at different times and such.
In this case? Absolutely. There is seemingly nothing that should keep these two together as a couple apart from the fact that they both absolutely love to bone. I’m serious. There’s a weird deterministic bond between them, where instead of using time travel to create a loop in their wider existence that the romance is then stuck in (such as in DARK, will mention later), their romance IS the loop.
She meets him because he shows up at her doorstep, so to speak, and as an impressionable young child is amazed by the fact that he time travels right in front of her. He tells her about how they’re great friends in the future, and makes sure to stress many times how ‘what happened, happened’ and therefore you cannot change a single thing in the future, so she goes into her life KNOWING she will be with him, and this time travel thing has become so normal to her after all these years that there’s not even a thought in her mind to change that.
He meets her because she finally finds him after a few years, and immediately they’re assumed endgame. Because that’s just how it is.
There’s no choice in the relationship. Both seem fine with that, because that comfort, that stability, is nice for them, but let’s be outside observers and recognise how fucked this is. They both meet the other with full knowledge of everything about them, AND the knowledge that they will be together. Where’s the autonomy?
As to the relationship itself? Toxic. So enormously toxic. Apparently them both waiting for the second she turns 18 (while he’s in his 40s) is ✨cute✨ and ✨fun✨ and ✨endearing✨ and ✨not a problem, actually✨ … so he has to barely hold himself back from pouncing upon his future wife for the entirety of her being like 6 to 18 and then the moment it’s not a crime it’s normal to let him rip. And I know she was begging for it. Like literally begging and constantly asking to throw rules into the wind and have him take her before her birthday, but that’s because of aforementioned child coercion and the fact that her brain chemistry had in fact been altered when it came to dating autonomy (clarification: she no longer had any). ALSO he forces a kiss on her when she’s 15 and she is trying to resist.
She also gets completely mad when he goes missing for long periods of time. I understand this is not great for a wife to have to deal with, but I thought you of ALL people would be the one to understand it and at the very least tolerate it and not bitch about it, because you KNOW he has no control over it. Literally a lot of the time that he is not with you, he is visiting SMALL YOU, which you KNOW has to happen, and you KNOW happens, else you wouldn’t BE here NOW.
Then we get to the pregnancy plot. It annoys me. Both are bitchy. It's frustrating. But the worst part is how they deal with Henry getting a vasectomy, which he does because, as far as he knows, they aren’t able to have children due to his condition, and every attempt that they take at it ends in miscarriage, which damages them both emotionally and hurts Clare physically. So snip snip. The fact that they don’t make this decision together is already an issue (though at the end of the day his body his choice), but the worst part is that they work around it and have a kid anyway. This is where the book and movie diverge, and I’m not sure exactly why or which is worse, but here goes:
The book has Henry getting the snip after they’ve agreed not to try for kids anymore (though the first time he tries to get it he DOESN’T tell her and never INTENDS to tell her, instead she guesses and gives in, allowing him to go get it done), and then a younger version of him travels forward, wakes up Clare, and has sex with her while his older self is sleeping next to them, while Clare is unaware that it’s the younger him. That’s literally the scene. He travels in, sees his wife sleeping, and thinks, ‘might as well smash, best ignore the other me but also not tell her about it’. I guess he doesn’t care about boning with himself an arm’s reach away, since he literally had sex with himself many many many times, but also when Clare SEES the older Henry in bed next to them, she CRIES OUT, then goes ‘well, I guess it’s not that bad’, and goes along with it. WHAT THE FUCK
In the movie, maybe so they wouldn’t have to have two Eric Banas, Clare’s so mad at Henry for getting the snip that SHE finds a younger version of him and initiates boning. BOTH versions are severely underfunded in the communications department, as Henry decides not to talk to Clare about his decision that no kids is best (a sensible conclusion, given the circumstance, but a warated conversation nonetheless), then in the book there’s something to be said for HIM taking away his OWN bodily autonomy by providing swimmers when he didn’t want to be providing them, but Clare, the one with a full awareness of the situation, fails to say anything when she realises what’s up, and in the movie it takes that concept all the way PAST 100 because she just reverses his ‘my body my choice’ decision. Like YES he should have told you he wanted to get a vasectomy but that's HIS choice babes.
Yes it all worked out with them having a kid, happy ending bla bla bla, but that’s what makes it WORSE. This was a TOXIC relationship with a very PROBLEMATIC start, middle, and end, which should NOT have had a SINGLE second of happiness and working out, but it DID and that makes me MAD.
Ins and outs of character dynamics and relationship in Lost (big spoilers btw)
I was going to start with a silly one, but instead I needed to rant and cry, so here we have
Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawking
She killed her son. Like that’s literally the problem here. Sure, in the moment of *shoot* she doesn’t know who he is and she’s very confused after she does it but she, later, WILLINGLY sends him to the island where she KNOWS she will shoot him, effectively making her pull that trigger with full knowledge and intention. All he ever is to her is a pawn and something that just happened and so must happen, because she doesn’t care about his hopes and dreams of music, his pursuits in relationships, his medical condition beyond it harming his physics work, and thinks anything beyond his purpose to do the things he did as extraneous and completely beside the point. She completely takes advantage of his condition, using it as leverage to convince him to do what she wants because he doesn’t have the memory or confidence in his own thinking to disagree with her whenever she suggests he do something, ultimately pushing him in the direction of what she wants because he RELIES on other people to make sensible decision for him because he needs help with sensible cognitive function since he was likely never taught to fight his condition to think for himself, as it’s very helpful for Eloise to have him take her word as gospel, which he does because he trusts her and doesn’t know any better (but he SHOULD know better than to blindly trust, because that’s what a PARENT should TEACH him), but that trust is entirely misplaced because of her horrible intentions. All this means she is completely apathetic to him, whereas HE is completely devoted to her and constantly seeks her approval, because in his eyes she has all the answers and will look out for him when he can’t take care of himself and she has his best interests at heart even when those decisions are difficult because she’s wise and cares for him and loves him - except all that is a LIE.
The one singular moment we need to see their entire relationship play out is the scene where she tells him to go to the island in The Variable: she pushes him, tells him it’s the right thing to do, that it’s “very important” that he agrees to it, he’s unsure of his own capabilities because he’s been treated lesser for constantly forgetting, she then uses his condition as leverage, outright LYING to him by saying what he could “accomplish” when the island bakes him “better” (all that he will accomplish is exactly what SHE wants him to do, then die, and never accomplish anything HE wants to do, and once again his only value in her eyes is his academic success - even if he did get better and return home healed, the only thing that will be good for in her eyes is the fact that he will be smarter at his work), then he asks “you really want me to go?”, because he’s been searching her approval all his life and has been taught that what she says is the utmost important thing, and when she says “yes”, he asks, and I swear to God I will cry, “WILL IT MAKE YOU PROUD OF ME?” because that's the ONE thing he never got, his mother being SATISFIED with ANYTHING he does, it’s never good enough for her, so now he FINALLY has a chance to make her proud and feel like he is worth something, so when she says “yes” again, by which she means that the only way she will actually be proud of him is if he goes and does what is necessary of him and then dies without anything for him in his life, he “then” agrees to go.
And in the moment that he finishes doing everything she wanted, and she shoots him, and he realises he’s been played by his own mother his ENTIRE life, he’s just so sad. He’s disappointed with his own life. Because he’s been searching for the approval of someone who will never give it to him. And right when he was starting to think he was finally making his mother proud of him, he realised that was always going to be impossible. And all his doubts about himself come rushing back, because he never mattered to anyone, and no-one ever loved him, and he was never worth anything, he was just there to do his work, get manipulated, and get betrayed.
And also? In the flash-sideways where his mother can be not-a-bitch because he has no island-dying purpose and can just live his life? Yeah. At her request, Desmond never wakes Daniel, so he never learns anything about the island life, because Eloise is scared he’ll see sense in how ridiculously ridiculous she was to him and he’ll drop her like he should. Bonkers.
Justice for Daniel. He never deserved a mother like Eloise.
The entire point of the terms milf and dilf is that they're supposed to apply to people old enough to be your parent. So yeah, being young disqualifies him from being a dilf unless you're 12.
First of all, it'd be great to pinpoint exactly who we're talking about - great conversation, just wanna specify lol
second of, I always thought that a dilf was, by definition, a dad. sure, someone childless but older may fit into the category based on vibes, but someone like, for example, my dear my darling James Sawyer Ford, would fit in on a technicality since he is in fact a dad. and I would like to f- I mean look respectfully
oh my goodness, don't ask me why I'm getting on this now but I've just found the one (ONE) time I mentioned dilfs on my whole account (I actually thought it'd be more lmao) and it was this post where I said I was obsessed with loving husbands and gave 2 examples that were 'dilf material'.
It was Daniel Solace and Hanno Tauber from 1899 and DARK.
They are both dads. Also if you take it literally then Hanno was born in 1904, and during about half of the events of the show is 44+ years of age. and Daniel could have been born at any and all points in time. Both could be 'old enough' to be my dad.
AKA the comprehensive tier list of pain and suffering (fun!)
Characters are all ranked on a scale of S-E and are all relative to one another (yes, you can be sad and still go in E tier). To reiterate, they are NOT ranked based on how much I like them, how good their character is written, or suchlike (although there may be some correlation), this list ONLY takes into account how hard their life was, how much suffering they have had to endure, etc. Points are indeed taken away if you are the one actively causing the sadness (how much depends on e.g. whose idea it was/ how much enthusiasm you did it with).
(also I'm only referring to Adam's-World versions of the characters, unless otherwise specified, because we just have way more information about them)
Feel free to disagree/ counter-argue, this is just my list and my analysis (all for fun).
(OK I'll stop stalling) So why don't we get started with the best of the worst:
E Tier - You don't know what pain is
Hannah Kahnwald
She starts having the affair whilst she is STILL MARRIED (she was unawares that Michael was literally penning his suicide note whilst she was having a smooch with Ulrich) - she also has the inability to love imo, she just has the ability to love attention
She’s not even that good a mother either, she kinda leaves Jonas alone and is only really sad because she no longer has a mans to give her all that attention (PLUS her fling left her too, and then she has the AUDACITY to ask (not ask - FORCE) Alexander to DESTROY HIM for choosing to focus on his MISSING SON instead of HER!!!!!!
And then when Jonas leaves she’s just more attention-deprived so she thought about offing herself but then thought well if I’m dead no-one can pay attention to meeeeeee so decided against it
Then Jonas returns (33 years older but it is still her SON who displays AFFECTION towards her) and as soon as she finds out about time travel she’s like you know what this means? An opportunity to find more MEN, and she commits THEFT even though Jonas reeeeally needed that machine (she only cares about herself), and proceeds to go to Ulrich ONLY TO TELL HIM SHE HATES HIM BECAUSE HE TRIED TO SAVE HIS SON I MEAN WHO DOES THAT
yes I am well aware that he was unable to say he loves her when she did but I will get more in depth with that later and I mean, come on, man has other priorities, could you really not get him out of prison???? so he can save his son???????
And then obviously she promptly moves on to the first man she sees (married, but she doesn’t care of course) (it’s the guy she reported Ulrich to way back when in the future/past, but she doesn’t care of course) AND HAS THE AUDACITY TO SAY SHE LOST EVERYTHING like MADAM you did not care about your husband, your boyfriend only mattered because he gave you attention, and your SON has RETURNED with all the LOVE he has LEFT from this CAR CRASH of a reality and you RUN AWAY FROM HIM WHILST HE IS ASLEEP AND YOU SAY YOU LOST EVERYTHING MA’AM YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING I ACTUALLY CAN’T WITH THIS WOMAN-
I’m convinced she has a soft spot for kids because i can’t imagine what other reason she really has for having Silja (she obviously never loved Egon) so she has her and then she gets taken to Jonas and PRETENDS like NOTHING ever happened, like she didn't abandon him when he returned to her to go have a kid with someone else and she didn't steal his most important possession
And then YES she is tragically killed by her own son (which is usually a trait of someone very high up on the list (RIP in pepperonis Bartosz you are loved) but I don't care, she deserved it, otherwise the family tree would be 100 times more kaput if she was allowed to populate it even more, especially if she still has access to the machine) and that’s it, she gets a shut up/die
Ines Kahnwald
So people seem to be opinionated both ways with this one but here we go
I guess she WAS doing everything for Michael’s own good - he rocks up with no family or anything to speak of, he’s real scared and sad and she does in fact take him in when otherwise he would have been homeless jobless lifeless so yay Ines
And yeah I guess you could say it’s hard on her when he’s distant from her and everything but like? What did you expect? That’s not your real son bro???
And then she has to deal with his suicide (but again, he was kinda distant anyway it seems) and you get alienated by Hannah (honestly a good thing) but all in all it is nothing in comparison so you get a meh/maybe I don't actually care all that much, Hannah has taken all my energy
Doris Tiedemann
You did cheat on your husband. Idc who, why, with who, whatever, if you cheat then you a bitch for that and i have nothing more to say on the matter
Yeah then Agnes goes missing, then they potentially reunite, it’s all tame in comparison let’s be honest, idk/idc
Anyone else who I do not mention in any tier is either not a particularly significant character or they do not compare :) stay tuned for D Tier if you want
okay so yes, its taking me ages between each tier, BUT it time for
D TIER - Suck it up
Martha Nielsen
For someone who people view as pretty central to the narrative… she ain’t in the narrative all that much? (it’s Jonas’ memory of/ longing for her that makes her significant) (reiterating that this is NOT meant to be an in-depth character analysis… it’s mostly an excuse to call out people’s bitch moves and major tragedies)
So childhood seems cool overall, maybe parental tension, maybe somewhat absent father moment, but all in all not bad
Here’s where it starts to be fucked tho… so she basically starts a relationship with Jonas (he kissed her at the lake, then they do the dirty at her house, etc.), then literally the next day (or very soon after that) you find out his dad just suicided, and now you don’t see him much/ he isn’t there for the start of school so you just… move on from him?? For his best friend??? Literally THE other guy in your friend group (who is not your brother)??? I’m sorry but this does not scream ‘we have a very deep and profound relationship’ to me. It screams ‘I was going to start a relationship but you’re not conveniently there rn so bye’. Either that or she just a bitch.
If you disagree with my take then… okay have fun with that
Then she does take a lot of the ‘missing people’ trauma onto herself (Mikkel, Ulrich, Jonas, her mom’s basically missing with the amount she distances herself) so I’ll give you that
And then all the funky messed-up shit with older Jonas, yada yada
And what a tragic death, killed whilst she was trying to be saved, shot dead by a random old man/ literally her (ex?)boyfriend who’s convinced himself this is all for you… can you tell it’s a pain to piece this together from her point of view? Congrats you earned yourself a ‘doomed by the narrative’ out of ‘dooming the narrative’
Egon Tiedemann
*the lil guys from Gnomeo and Juliet* A cheat! A cheat! That’s what you are! Oof!
Honestly the amount of people I am saying/ will say this for… I’m getting tired and this is only D Tier… oof…
There is no excuse for cheating my guy. Also big cheater man asked his gf if the baby was his. Girl, not everyone is like you! (I mean in this case yes she is but that’s not the point)
ENYWAYS man has no wife anymore pretty much (which is like?? Technically not completely his fault so I would feel bad for him except if she knew what you did it WOULD completely be your fault so nope, I get to keep my pity for another day), so he is SAD
Oh yeah he had a spooky encounter with a random lady/ his daughter buuuuutttt for a universe full of crazy quirky cosmic happenstances, his was relatively mild
Then we skip STRAIGHT to when he is all grown up (I mean old, but) and he has ANOTHER crazy quirky cosmic happenstance that relates to… earphones. Ya. … . imma just move on
Then he has all that drama with Ulrich both old and young and i guess that was odd but he never fully went into depth with it and never figured out what was going on really
Ofc, him dying at the hand of his own daughter (who was actually doing everything to PREVENT his heath) is giving him quite a few points (literally the thing that saved him from E tier), especially since they were just about starting to reconcile and restart their relationship :( oh well, you don't get a rating for making me smh at all the cheating
Franziska Doppler
Did in fact participate in the missing people / overall weird stuff happening shenanigans but let’s face it she was mostly an innocent bystander that didn’t do much (we love a queen who doesn’t do much, never lift a finger, that’s not ur job babes)
Oh well now you’re a victorian-era lady and you get to spend more time with your bf, good for u girlie ig
From her loyalty to Sic Mundus imma just assume she is chill with all this, they’re pretty much making the best out of a bad sitch-EA-shun
But she basically never gets to see her entire family again. Yikes, feels bad, girlie
So not the best and not the worst, well done on receiving a slay/queen
Agnes Nielsen
Basically had no parents, since I doubt Bartosz wanted anything to do with the kids after he found out just how he got got by Adam (not even his marriage and kids were safe from those grimy, time-meddling hands), but was raised by their nanny I think, which looked ok
Got recruited and pretty much her whole life is dedicated to Adam’s shenanigans now
She has to have Tronte with The Unknown and take care of him all by herself which sucks, but again she is doing it for Adam because she thinks its the right thing to do or smth
She is honestly just such a pawn, like, her telling Noah about the notebook pages is what makes him kill Claudia (who was ok with it because she knew it needed to happen, but still), and THEN, right when Noah finds out this whole schtick was a lie and he is never getting back to his family (cry), SHE MURDERS HIM like ffs I excuse a lot of behaviour that is done For The Cause but usually they are manipulated/ tricked into it somehow, but Agnes is just so willy-nilly following whatever Adam says, I’m just so done rn
And then she just leaves her son to fend for himself. Like sure it all works out for the best for him (because he didn’t want her to be their anyway) but that is not an EXCUSE madam, especially when she left him to just go back to Adam in the future
Who knows what happened to her after that but she is a PAWN /out of/ a single game of checkers
Silja Tiedemann
So the first 5 years of her life were a bit iffy (her mother was Hannah after all, no father (unless her ma had a mans that knew how to take care of kids, but probably not because then she wouldn’t have all the attention on herself), no siblings and probably no friends (and she got that face scar somehow)) and then she was just thrown into 2041 without any warning after growing up in the 80’s
Therefore a lot of the memories of her mother were likely lost (actually that’s a good thing because then she was raised by Elizabeth, so, mother upgrade x100) and although she had to live in a post-apocalyptic cult it sounds like it was pretty chill for her (despite Eli’s likely PTSD behaviour)
Then when Adam fully accepts her into Sic Mundus she just gets to go be Bartosz’s wife (which sounds pretty good, ngl) then she has her kid
I’M CONVINCED SHE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING AND WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN DID YOU SEE HER FACE WHEN SHE SAID HANNO, SHE WAS LIKE GO ON BARTOSZ, STOP ME, I DARE YOU, YEA HE’S GONNA RECRUIT YOU IN THE FUTURE, WHAT ABOUT IT
THEREFORE I don’t know what her relationship was like with him because it seems like he really was in love with her (bro his face when he met her AND his face when she died… it says it all), but if she knew she had to go there and have his kids just to RUIN his LIFE… yeah idk if she loved him
I assume she was actually a decent mother (½ because I’m sure Bartosz tried a lil bit but was overall very much an absent father because of the induced trauma, and ½ because try to tell me Hanno wasn’t the cutest kid, I dare you), and then she DID up and die (Agnes’ first but not last family member kill) which was kinda sad for her and I’M NOT SAYING SHE WANTED TO GIVE BARTOSZ THE TRAUMA but that's exactly the goal she achieved and she did it actively, knowingly and willingly
So overall she cannot really complain in comparison (if you look at the absolute malarkey others had to deal with), so she gets a whohurt/myboybartosz
as always, this is just my opinion, and lmk if I missed anything. this one was annoying, imma nap for another 6 months before posting the next part
It pains me to say your father is a cheater but he doesn’t seem detrimental as a father, so we’re assuming a chill enough childhood
He is in and amongst ‘missing people’ drama which would take a toll on a guy, ESPecially when they get introduced to time travel (doesn’t mean you can treat Bartosz like that though? Damn chill)
Then he gets transported to 1888… my apologies sir your life sucks now but also… you didn’t die in the apocalypse so? [more in-depth 1888 take here]
Martha The Squeekuel pops up and that’s a whole lotta shit to deal with but… he’s not the one that has to deal with it? Though it is probably rubbing salt in the wound that he lost his sister in the Apocalypse
Why work with Jonas though? Why work with Adam? From what we have seen this is not the most persuasive man in the world so, other than a tainted sense of duty to him for saving your life, why would you follow along with all the shit he is doing? Why would you, YOU, send Adam into the future to ‘preserve the loop’ when you KNOW what he means is he will KILL your SISTER? Same thing with him then sending AltMartha to them. Ain’t no way he actually buys into the ‘greater good’ crap. The emo anarchist should at least have ‘bullshit immunity’. Come on. Because there’s no explanation for why he goes along with it. He should HATE Adam and Jonas. Makes no damn sense.
Boris / Alexander Tiedemann
Unfortunately nothing is known of his younger life, but he did in fact accidentally do a murder as a teen (how does he get a gun? I’m assuming nefarious activities so he’s not 100% innocent)
But then he protects Regina (and gives her SMILES like he’s so nice) and makes her so so much happier (especially with her mother disappearing/ grandad dying) and then they get married, have kid, and overall just become THE family ever (making Regina able to be the mother she never had)
THEN they all have to deal with her illness and he has to deal with being blackmailed (for absolutely no reason other than Hannah is jealous, self centred and straight-up rude, aka no fault of his own so he never deserved this)
And then he just has to die alone during the apocalypse (he doesn’t know that his family is able to survive it) which is v v sad
Overall he really went from low to high and right back to low so he gets a redemption/family from me
Jana Nielsen
We sympathise with son disappearance/death, as well as husband’s cheating, sure she loses her mind a lil bit and takes it badly but… who wouldn’t? She is excused
And then your grandson disappears and it's like the same thing happening all over again… bruh if i was her i’d live in fear of this psycho serial killer that likes repeating his crimes exactly only like a generation later but hitting the same family to really rub it in… terror, horror, tragedy
Plus your OTHER son disappears… holy shit
And then she probably dies in the apocalypse. Like not a single break for this woman
The reason she’s not higher is just the lack of psychological torture derived from the sci-fi-fuckery that happens to certain others - like apart from a few weird happenings when Mikkel disappears, it’s just the trials and tribulations of loss (not just but, you know what I mean)
Tronte Nielsen
Absent father moment? Ominous father moment? Your mother does not care about you and instead pretty much leaves you for dead moment? Younger Claudia is a predator moment? Damn this guy’s childhood sucks.
Then for a while it’s good, he has a whole family and everything, up until 1986
Your son is missing, your wife is a wreck, your other son is emo (what a tragedy), your gf no longer wants to bone, I mean he’s not got much going for him
Then he actually finds his son but its 33 years later which is weird to say the least and emotions come flooding back and whatnot and you’re confused but they moved on from that fairly quickly (apart from the fact that the police and you wife now have suspicions)
Then more of your family go missing in 2019 (cray cray) so it’s kinda hard-hitting for him
And the whole surviving the apocalypse without your family moment happens and your gf wants you to kill her kid? Weird but ok, that leaves you a bit thrown but hey, at least it wasn’t your kid
And that’s it he just dies afterwards so not the best but not anything huge, you get a stop/cheating/everyone
AltMartha
If it was split between martha and eva then martha would be way the fuck down in E but hey ho
Up to 2019 she’s absolutely vibing, yes her parents divorced but that was for the best babes, she has her siblings, she has a bf, she has friends, it’s dandy
Then we get JONAS which… I can understand being creeped out by what’s happening, and you get a connection with the guy because he shows you freaky time travel shiz and he proves that he knows you (or at least some version of you) but… do you love the guy??? Do you even actually KNOW the guy??? Because i don't think so in the slightest
So you ignore saving everyone from the apocalypse in favour of a spicy sesh (with the guy you do not know) and then he dies in front of you and… again you just don't know him well enough to be that sad bro
And yeah she has to then kill him after knowing she’s pregante but you don’t KNOW him, how many times do I have to say this
And she has her big epic quest to jonas and back… nothing much happened apart from her being weird and nervous and double-agent-y (i’m not saying any of that is bad, but was she suffering? No. Maybe in the cage. That was temporary.)
Yes in one version she is ruthlessly and seemingly painfully killed… oopsie doopsie, we move on (this is one of the moments that actually bumped up her rating)
So she then has a son… who she maybe looks after for a few years… before just handing him off to his older self to roam around across time
Just this whole thing with her kid is so weird like… apparently he is her motivation to do everything, yet she gives him no name, she was acquaintances with his dad, and let's face it, she has no real maternal connection to him, at least from what we see in the show
HE feels a connection to HER, especially the version that is not his mother yet, but that looks to be because he WANTS a mother!!! Real bad!!! And no-one will give him one!!!! (no really that hug from smol unknown and the look in the middle one’s eyes, youch it was emotional) but she does not reciprocate!!! She only starts panicking about the time loop (yeah, i get that but still) and just doesn't really give a shizzle about her own offspring
Another thing that bumped her rating is middle martha. She looks lonely and kinda just going through the motions over in her desert, its kinda sad actually
Like everyone she knows is dead, and all she can do is spy on everyone and make sure everything’s happening as it should. It sucks
(there should have been a crossover between jonas and martha middle versions. They could have gotten to know each other like adults and they wouldn't be so lonely and insane)
That sorta continues over to Eva, like just how boring does it have to be
All day long it's just… keep doing what you gotta do… and that’s it…
And she usually gets oofed by adam but she literally knew it was coming and she had nothing else to do with her life and he had been making peace with it for 33 years so idc
But people have it way worse so she gets a stranger/danger
back at it again, really upping the drama now, as always I am itching to hear where people (dis)agree so lmk, hope you enjoy:
B TIER - debilitating sad times
Ulrich Nielsen
Lost his brother pretty young (seems like they had a relatively good relationship) - his parents (or at least his mother) were never the same again (likely contributing to a less-than-best home life), his dad is also a cheat (a ridiculously horny one at that), so that’s an extra contributor
Cheatercheater in every reality (like father like son) - he absolutely does not understand the concept of love and devotion (that’s just who he is)
Will do absolutely anything to save his son - had a moment of restraint before smashing Helge’s face in (was faced with the baby Hitler situation), but remembered he was doing it for his son and he absolutely went for it (can we also mention how powerful this scene was? He paused and started putting the rock down and I was like aw he can’t do it that so emotional- OH WAIT NO HE’S REALLY GOING FOR IT)
At the very least he cut off his affair when he was looking for his son - he just views relationships like a passtime in the Sims, so he can actually focus on the important things when he needs to, good for him
YES he was using Hannah to get out of jail in 1953 (because he doesn’t actually love her (aforementioned lack of ability to do so)), but I am convinced if he got out he would straight away go and try to save his son again (maybe would have started his relationship with Hannah again just to keep her happy but Mikkel is so much more important)
YES he basically aired his wife and remaining kids to look for Mikkel but honestly he was having a hard time coping and he was kind of in the right to do that - focus your efforts where they’re needed hon
Got terribly terribly done for by Egon in every time period - mans cannot catch a break- got wrongly imprisoned by him TWICE and then got sent to a mental hospital for 33 years (which I’m pretty sure MADE him at least a lil bit psycho)
Egon has the absolute NERVE to show up again to question him
AND THEN HE FINDS HIS SON and all is well because he breaks out and goes to him and he even recognises him!!!! (despite the drugs) and they run away together!!!! And they’re so close to the cave!!!! And then EGON shows up AGAIN to take him away, and then some RANDOM WOMAN takes his SON away from him
Then he has to go back to the mental health and they up security so he can’t escape back to his son again
AND THEN HIS WIFE SHOWS UP and she’s basically forgiven him for all the cheating if only they get their son back and go homesies so he waits for her… and he waits for her… and once again a woman he thought loved him leaves him hanging and left for dead locked up, he really thinks she just left him, she may have even gone to get Mikkel herself and just left him to die alone
And he DID have to die all alone in the psych ward, what a tragedy
He had so many glimmers of hope shine through but all of them just made his life even worse, just consistently was not great, so he gets a sad/sad from me
Katharina Nielsen
She has to deal with Hanna’s bitching when they’re in school (always trying to steal her mans) but more importantly her mother low-key high-key hates her
She’s put in the middle of the Big Bad when it happens, since her little boy goes missing, her family falls into depression, she finds out her husband is cheating with the BITCH that's always been trying to steal him, said husband is missing, overall what a mess
No progress is being made in finding anything out, so she rolls up her sleeves and does it her damn self, eventually finding out about time travel (not before accusing Hannah of sleeping with her son, lmao), which, as for most people mentioned here, is an absolute gut punch, especially when her lost kid is involved
Kind of perfect that her travelling saves her from the apocalypse, also because it means she has no idea the horror that happens to her remaining kids (you know, dying and being recruited to the fuck-ass time travel gang in 1888, my favourite time to see them in)
In this crazy attempt to get her son back, she finds out he’s not even there. What the heck. Disappointing is too mild a term for this.
However
She DOES find her cheating husband. Thankfully bonding over ‘we are now back in the 80s and our son is missing’ allows them to move past the cheating and into ‘i’m gonna free you and we’re gonna find our son together’
However
We all know how that goes. This is really the main reason she gets to go all the way up in B tier, because just as she has a plan and a way to get her husband and son back home and get away from time-travel fuckery, the last obstacle is the mother that hates her but doesn’t recognise her. A small one-on-one moment leads to something that, for her mother, is a terrifying instance of someone trying to kill her and therefore she defends herself, but for Katharina is her whole relationship of her mother hating her terminating in her trying to kill her but instead getting killed and tossed in the lake, never able to save her loved ones, and probably in those last moments thinking Mikkel will be done for, which he kinda will be.
You tried / you almost won
Peter Doppler
He has to deal with the death of his mother while a teenager, but thankfully it seems he gets quite accepted in Winden when he arrives, having Charlotte there for him, happy marriage, kids, yay
My bad, did I say happy marriage? He cheated. (WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE) At least they keep it chill for the sake of the kids
By absolute chance he gets roped into time-travel when Mads just, oh you know, pops into existence in front of him, then he has to dispose of the body in the woods when a creepy old lady tells him *vaguely* wtf is going on. And now he has a notebook with all the shit that's gonna happen and he and his wife have to piece together wtf is really going on with all this time travel. What a chore
Thankfully he and Elizabeth survive the apocalypse (yay notebook), but he loses his wife and other daughter, which… just imagine that dread. Go ahead. I’ll wait
Now he has to search for them all while trying to survive the post-apocalyptic landscape they’re in with his young daughter… hell
I’m not saying much because there’s not that many plot points beating him down but we all know they’re pretty heavy
Then of course his daughter, the one remaining family he has close to him (because as far as he knows the could be convinced Charlotte and Franziska are dead and he’s looking despite his convictions and for Eli to have a little bit of hope) gets attacked behind his back, he’s probably feeling like a failure of a dad for not being there to protect her, but he does everything he can, and saves her, only to get killed for it in the end
Good dad / poor husband
Regina Tiedemann
Raised by a single mother. No siblings. Bullied. It's not looking up for bestie
But wait…! What's this…! *airhorns* IT'S ALEKSANDER!!!!!
Just two besties being besties together, everything is great, (her grandad dies and her mother disappears which isn’t great), everything is great (she opens a hotel), everything is great (they have lots of money), everything is great (they have a son together)
Cancer
She has to give up her hotel due to aforementioned cancer, thankfully she has the full support of her awesome family, unfortunately not much can be done about aforementioned cancer, but then her MOTHER (missing for 33 years but seemingly unaged? weird) RETURNS which sounds good but let’s remember that she was a little bit (quite a bit) neglected by her and then completely abandoned so this is NOT good
Then she gets shoved into a bunker by her crazy young mother so that she survives the apocalypse? What is going on? Now she has to ENDURE THE APOCALYPSE with the mother she is reconnecting with, the cancer that's eating her alive, and WITHOUT her beautiful family. Her husband? Dead. Her son, who is but an innocent child? Essentially dead as far as she is concerned. Now all that’s left is for her to get KILLED by her mother’s boyfriend. She has no idea what’s happening. Why has she been roped into all this without knowing. This is terrible
Her rating is Zero to A Hundred because that's exactly what she got with this nonsense
Jonas Kahnwald
Jonas jonas jonas… the main man… where to fucking start…
Also no he is not going in the top tier, or even in second-top, and I’m about to explain why
That’s not me saying his life was not a shattered mess, BUT, hear me out
Everyone can agree he started with a pretty good baseline, having lots of friends and such, I’m putting my foot down on Michael likely being a saint of a dad despite everything
The suicide was then a big thing, which likely came completely unexpected and he didn’t know why his dad would just die like that for seemingly no reason, so now he has that to deal with
Oh yeah, then he comes back and his new gf (they literally got together a few hours before he had to take mental health leave) is now with his BFF. That’s not cool.
LITERALLY DAYS later, said gf’s brother (who he’s also friends with) goes missing after they heard creepy shit and he lost the little guy while running away in the woods. Absolutely wild occurrences, and Jonas is up there on the list of people most affected by this, directly behind Mikkel’s family
Hello time travel. Suddenly he’s thrown all the shit: Mikkel = his dad, cave stuff, actually traveling, FINDING Mikkel, the Stranger???? telling him to leave it alone and all that destiny and determinism stuff. At this point he’s kind of in the thick of it, where it’s a healthy amount of mindfuck to warrant B tier agony.
At the moment where he comes back from mental health leave he can get back together with Martha but then ofc he finds out she’s his aunt and (actually lmao) now he’s the one to drop her for no reason. God these two are actually ridiculous together
More travel to the past, he finds out his older self is weird and time traveling??, then he travels to the future, and the future is actually pretty crazy
He not only has to adjust to life in the post-apocalypse, but then when he finds a way out via new portal, he gets captured and HANGED
Well not really because Eli changes her mind at the last second but that’s quite a lot of mind-fuckery for one teenager
1921. Finds out he will be Adam. This is a particularly crazy occurrence and we can recognise it as such, especially because it allows us to separate the ‘Jonas’ from the ‘Adam’, which will allow me to make my main point later
He reaches a higher tier with the fact that he has to go back to tell his dad not to suicide, which then causes him to suicide. I am admitting that this is very big and should be enough to put him in S tier because… no-one should have to have that
And then he has to take Mikkel to the past too. Overall his relationship with his dad is very interesting, because obviously they love each other very much, and Micheal was a great great dad, and then when he was gone it really left Jonas incredibly hurt and empty, now left with just his mother who does take care of him but is far more distant and is also affected by the death, though it seems not to the same extent. That already is quite heavy, but then comes the fact that Jonas NEEDS his dad to die. And Michael is happy to do so for him, because of how much he loves him. Then, he NEEDS to ruin his dad’s childhood by taking him away from his family, working against every instinct he has to do bad things and perpetuate suffering because it just needs to happen. This I believe as the start of Adam-ification, though he’d be damned if he admitted it. It’s where he’s starting to do things for the ‘greater good’, without having his own choice in it, and even though right now he’s mad about having to do it, he does understand the importance of it that Adam has sold to him.
It’s officially the end of his real life now, completely sending him head first into doing time-travel shit, following Claudia when she’s old and teaching her when she’s young
Apocalypse time and it’s a mess. He goes to get Marta, only for her to get killed right in front of him by, well, HIM (I never fully got their relationship, like it was just never that deep for me, but let’s accept that they liked each other, and even if they didn’t date/ were aunt and nephew, they were childhood friends and he was literally in the middle of trying to save her from the apocalypse when Evil Him shows up to kill her anyway - that’s fucked)
Then we have the three realities: the one where he gets saved by Martha, transported to an alternate universe where he never existed, in a weird way makes this new Martha fall in love with him, tries to stop the apocalypse there, finds out its all for nothing, and gets killed by, why yes, Martha… this one is quite weird but does work as a final sucker punch to a good life that has been absolutely wrecked by existential time travel when he really wanted nothing to do with it, but found himself in a position where he couldn’t refuse and found a path always leading him to determinism when at every turn he secretly hoped and actively tried to do anything he could to break the loop of suffering. In fact, at this last point, where he has had it confirmed that nothing he does can change anything, he must be thinking about his older selves, and how he will soon become them, and resents it, but in a way he’s wrong. While his death is part of the loop in Eva’s world, his older selves were never in the position he is now, because when he is he will always die. As an ending to his arc, it's a pretty tragic one
Something similar can be said in the reality where they go to the origin world and break time travel in general. This is the ending where they wipe the slate clean, they’ve finally found a way that they can ACTUALLY stop all the time travel bs from happening, and it means they have to make everything stop existing, but if nothing exists then does anything even matter. It's a very ‘sweet and sour’ ending and they finally have what they’ve been working for this whole time, but will never get to appreciate it, and it involved Jonas having to sacrifice everything ELSE he ever wanted for the worlds to wipe and time travel to stop, but then again if he just wiped two parallel universes I don’t know if we can really call that HIS sacrifice to have made (or even his and Marta’s) - it’s just them doing the one truly necessary thing and then wiping everything along with its meaning because they never existed - in terms of suffering this is a net zero event
Then there’s the third eventuality, and this is the one that brings the Jonas suffering score plummeting
So he has to survive the apocalypse and then work on the new portal with the smart besties of the future. At this point, he is arguably in the THICKEST of the thick of it, especially because he wants to kms. Nothing is working, everything he cares about is gone, and he has to keep trying against everything to make time travel work and whatever - he’s basically given up all of his own happiness to be here (or rather it was taken from him) and he’s had enough, so he might as well die. The one thing looking up is that he has a new BFF (Noah) and probably knows his friends are safe in the past, even through he probably knows they will never truly be friends again because of how their paths have diverged and how his life is basically slave to the time travel loop - i will reiterate, HE IS MAD SUFFERING RN
Unfortunately he no longer has a bff because he is accused of stealing his child. Sad. But now the portal works. Happy! Only to now be a crazy, kinda mindless drone that has to trudge on and repeat events that happened to him, essentially doing all the work but simultaneously none of it
His bitch-ass mother steals his time machine
Honestly though, their reunion is quite a lot for him, and he finally gets to see her after so long a time, and someone cares about him for him, and he doesn’t have an obligation to time travel stuff right now, he just gets to be with his mother
He tries to stop Martha from dying in the apocalypse… soz babes, you literally SHOULD have known this wouldn’t work
And then ALL the lads take a trip to 1888, where they proceed to do fuck all for many many years!!! For reals tho, he saved them from the blast but really only because Noah told him to, then after bringing them there he refuses to elaborate and keeps them in the dark about a lot, and that’s a big deal when a big thing you’re hiding is the fact that he is Adam, the bitch that made all that happen
And thus, he slowly DOES become Adam, hell-bent on just destroying everything (which kind of makes the Jonas that prevented the car crash in the Origin world an Adam, since he just destroyed everything, discuss amongst yourselves), but in order to destroy everything, a certain series of events must happen, and so… he becomes an unredeemable bastard
He kills his mother. That thing about a heartfelt reunion with her that happened earlier? Wipe it. I take it back. This is the first time he has seen her in *calculates* twenty-three fucking years???? and you kill her that same night because what? she’s not necessary and you can’t have her intervene while you give her child away to the future? I'm not known to sympathise with Hannah much and I kind of brushed past it when doing her analysis because I was mad but this was fucking brutal from Jonas’ point of view
Now he’s manipulating people and lying to them and generally fucking shit up so he can no longer say anything about what he was made to do as a teen. Like. In essence, when you really look at it, really find the cause, you did it all to yourself
All the things he endured at the hands of his older selves? Wiped from his Suffering Score for the fact that he is now his own master yet consciously chose to do that to his younger self
The thing with him and Noah is that yes, Noah went berserk on him when he thought it was him that took the baby. IN HIS DEFENCE, he was told that Jonas would betray him (yes, a lie, but how was he to know?) so it makes a lot of sense to make that accusation from his end. And Jonas fr should have been more understanding of man's frustration. He has a hellish life too, has two things in his existence that actually matter dearly to him (a wife and baby), and one of those two things is brutally stolen and possibly endangered. He’s gonna go berserk. What else do you expect? But that’s not good enough for Adam, because now he has to make Noah go and find that Adam never really cared about him in the whole time that he was telling him what to do, never wanted to help him, never cared about him and his family, just makes him do his dirty work, and then has his own sister shoot him when he UNDERSTANDABLY wants to stand up for himself and do something by his own choice for once (kill the bastard that ruined his whole existence)
Then he kills Martha. Literally whatever at this point.
Then he kills Martha again. A different one. A pregnant one. Oh my bloody damn who cares. This bald bastard just annoys me now.
Then he manages to facilitate a situation in which an alternate reality ‘him’ can make it so none of this happens and everything is destroyed. Are you happy now? Are you? Is this what you wanted? What was the goddamn point. Everything bad that ever happened was because you were a bitch who couldn’t get over himself and his own importance. Goddamn I hate Adam.
Either way, B is way too high a ranking for Adam, but if we factor in the fact that the young Jonas had it rough, the Stranger’s whole schtick was him not even being himself and just being a vesicle for things to happen to his environment, and the two alternate Jonas’ having a really really tough time, B is a good compromise I think. 1/10, the only real ranking because he pissed me off to no end
Special Mention!!!!!
Claudia’s assistant (Jasmin Trewen). She did not deserve what happened to her, that stress of the job and then she gets killed for said job for no reason whilst pregnant. Truly a tragedy.
Okay so I started talking with one of my friends about (german) fairy tales and a question arose: what's the equivalent of "Once upon a time..." in other languages? Like, what's the usual way a kids' story/fairy tale starts?
Like, in French it's really simple, we have "Il était une fois...", (translation: "there was, once upon a time...), and I believe the Russian equivalent would be "Жили-были...", which translates to "(they) lived, (they) were", however a more accurate translation would be "(once), there lived, there were...".
There are also many others in Russian though, the most common ones, in my opinion, being "В некотором царстве, в некотором государстве" (In some kingdom/tsardom, in some state/government) and, as a variation, "В тридесятом царстве, в тридесятом государстве" (In three-tenth (30th) kingdom/tsardom, in the three-tenth (30th) government/state).
(note: I've also heard "за тридевять земель" (translation: beyond three-nine (21) lands), but I'm not sure how common that one is)
So yeah, those are all the languages I know of and can speak (fluently), but what's it like in other languages? Does anyone have any other examples?
In my language (Serbian), "once upon a time" is translated as "jednom davno" or better "nekada davno". Its literal translation is "once long ago". The second is more similar to how you start a fairytale. But when we talk about them, the beginning is usually something like "Bio jednom jedan..." or "Živeo jednom jedan...", which translates to "There once was a..." and "There once lived a... (man, woman, prince, king, princess, queen, etc).
As far as I know, Spanish equivalent is "Érase una vez", or just "érase" + whatever event/person you want to talk about.
Those two and English are the languages I speak, so there's that. I dabble in Russian, but you've already explained that and I wouldn't know it anyway 😆
get this, in Polish it starts off 'dawno, dawno temu...' which means 'a long, long time ago'. Nice, tame.
THEN it goes '... za siedmioma górami, za siedmioma lasami...' which vaguely means 'past seven mountains, past seven forests' (like saying it's far away) - I've also seen some versions with seven OTHER geographical landmarks (rivers, oceans, etc.) but this is the one I've seen most. just... why the seven? why so specific? weird.
also the way this has been integrated into certain dubbings of kids movies... oh yeah.
so vampire lore is just so willy-nilly that there are basically no rules. good on one hand, as it opens up all possibilities for new vamp media, but also ????? I remember watching all these for the first time (which happened quite recently, mind you) and being surprised about every little thing they pulled out their ass for the sake of convenience bc ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's convenient ig
anyway, for your viewing pleasure, vampire lore (in)consistencies:
Actually the funniest Lost mythology thing was that in the flashbacks, there's a frankly bizarre number of car accidents. Some are plot relevant but there's a lot of scenes where someone just incidentally gets hit by a car, like it's the one obstacle the writers could think of. But fans noticed that in several of these scenes, it was the same car! So they started speculating about who was driving the "Golden Pontiac" - theories about some mysterious figure who kept running his car into people who were destined to crash on the island, a mysterious assassin shaping timelines but only by one specific, omnipresent car
Anyway they later asked the writers about it, and it turns out there's only so many prop/stunt cars in Hawaii, and they were reusing one the production bought to save money, which is probably also why they wrote in so many random car accidents
how many plot lines or scenes or things in the show were just a result of behind the scenes production fuckery but it all added to make the show better, not worse
eg s3 lack of plot lines for a more wacky, slowed down view of island drama
this show could have been so much worse
it's not "making it up as you go along" it's thinking on your feet and being a creative genius
rewatching lost gives you insight into many niche and amazing little things.
such as the fact that Scott and Steve WERE in fact formally shown, they had 1 line each (that being "I'm Scott" and "I'm Steve", very on brand) and were constantly shown with the other bg losties, Scott until his untimely death (RIP Scott we miss you, Ethan why did you have to do that, I would have forgiven you if it was a random dude) and Steve until the end of s5 where he was in the lil dinghy boat with Daniel, the island moved, s6 started and he morphed into NEIL. you took him away in place of NIEL ffs.
if I had a nickel for every time Sawyer had intense beef with a wild animal in the jungle that just does what the animal does but it shakes Sawyer to the very core of his being that it consumes his life and he can't do anything else but wildly trudge into the jungle to look for it
I'd have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice
