'I have to assume they're aware to an extent of how this relationship comes off (ie, incredibly unhealthy). I think anything else diminishes their skill as actors, their intelligence as people...' Wow, just wow. I don't really have a ball in this fight, I can see the good and not so good sides to Imogen and Laudna's relationship as it currently stands, but 'if Laura and Marisha don't agree with my view on it 100% they must be both untalented idiots' is an absolutely shitty take. Grow up 'adult'.
This is absolutely not what I said, and it's truly absurd that that is your interpretation.
The immediate context, which is relevant to understanding that statement, is as a response to this question, in which someone asks if Marisha and Laura are deliberately making the relationship seem offputting and unhealthy on purpose. My answer is that yes, I believe they are, ie, this is not an accidental or clumsy choice, but a thoughtful and a deliberate one. I'm saying "this isn't beginner's luck; it's good acting." Now, that does rely on the premise that this relationship is unhealthy, but since both I and the anon are in agreement that this does seem like a codependent, unhealthy relationship, I answered them with that premise assumed.
The larger context is that, in this fandom, it is very common for people to, when the women of the cast make choices they don't like, avoid or even implicitly deny the fact that the women of the cast are skilled actors who are able to make their own choices. This is especially common when it comes to their romantic choices, ie, people who do not like the canon endgame ships tend to act as though Marisha and Laura especially had no choice in the matter, when, in fact, they absolutely did (and were often, in fact, the instigators). I do think it is, in fact, both insulting to them to believe that their past characters ended up in those relationships by accident; and that it is honestly pretty horrifying that someone would blithely continue to watch a show in which they think the actors are not willing participants in the fictional relationships they are portraying.
I think that Marisha and Laura have consistently done a very good job of portraying their characters' romances in the past. The fact that I've enjoyed all of their past romantic choices, and felt they were thoughtfully and skillfully portrayed as loving relationships, and do not find Imodna to be the same, means I am saying that I trust Marisha and Laura are making deliberate choices to portray it this way.
What do you think of Taliesin, in the playlist foreword, comparing Caduceus to Captain America in that "the drama is not in how he changes, but rather in how he relates to the world and it in turn relates to him."?
I think that he’s saying that Caduceus, much like Mr. Steve Rogers, has a really firm grasp of his personal Moral Convictions that really won’t be shaken. You’re just NOT going to get Caduceus to shift on his position regarding What Is Good and What Is Evil. However, you will see him changing his actions and his relationship to what he expects and wants from the world as his journey continues and his situation changes!
Caduceus is anything but static in his actions, especially at this point in the campaign. Because we saw that he DID try remaining static as his situation changed - that would be the years spent alone in the Grove while trying to prevent the creeping decay from overtaking his home. Once he realized that that was definitively not working, he came at the problem from a different angle while still maintaining his position that the Corruption of Nature is Evil. He decided to leave with the Mighty Nein instead of staying in place and hoping for the best and he got the results he was looking for -- as well as some unexpected ones like “oh actually I like having friends outside my immediate family and I don’t think I fit in with my completely unchanged family anymore.” Now his perspective of the world includes those data points that factor into his core beliefs without fundamentally changing them.
I think of it like this: Caduceus’s faith in the Wildmother and his core moral beliefs are a FIRMLY FIXED point, and his actions in the campaign involve him revolving around that fixed point. My interpretation of Taliesin’s foreword is that the interesting parts of Caduceus’s journey are not how those beliefs change, but how he reorients himself to get a new perspective of them as he takes the steps to place himself into a wider world. He is circling around these core values, trying new things to get a full view of how those beliefs fit into the world without shaking or changing the values themselves.
Caduceus says “There Is Good In This World And I Will Cling To It No Matter What And Life Is A Journey Of Discovering How To Do That” and I love that!!
counterpunches replied to your post “spoiliors for you know what[[MOR] y’know when i was like “what if...”
helen no
rowanwould replied to your post “spoiliors for you know what[[MOR] y’know when i was like “what if...”
helen maybe?
wow!! guess i have no choice you guys really twisted my arm
i’m drawing, i’m just drawing
i’m remembering something, that’s all
It’s fairly easy to slip away. Anna has a list that drops to the floor of all the things she wants to do with Elsa while they’re together for the weekend, but she’s the queen now, so when the inevitable not-life-threatening-yet-incredibly-urgent crisis materializes (something about cheese?) Elsa just has to reassure her into the room for visiting dignitaries, and then she has at least a few hours to herself.
(Not that she wants to keep what she plans to do a secret, exactly, it’s just...something she wants to try out herself first.)
Her old bedroom looks untouched. Were it not for the conspicuous lack of dust, Elsa would have guessed that no one had set foot in there at all since she’d left it the day of her coronation. There’s her old bureau, the fireplace Father always took pains to light whenever he came to visit, the large glass window she’d spent more than half her life gazing out, ravenous and terrified of the outside world--
But that’s not the way to start this whole thing. The spirits had warned her that reviving memories is a tricky thing--stray feelings could get caught in the crosshairs, she could end up summoning something unexpected, or just irrelevant. There isn’t any reason to get all emotional right now, before she even started, there isn’t any reason to...
Feel.
Right now, Elsa hastily amends to herself as a vivid specter of Anna’s concerned, outraged frown appears in her thoughts. There’s no reason to get all caught up in feeling right now.
Elsa rubs her neck, feeling the telltale sign of a tension headache already blooming there. Right. The goal is just to see what kind of memory the water in this place might be keeping, since she knows it so well, and so much of her magic already marks its walls. She needs to leave herself open to the possibilities here: it could be just her. It could be Gerda dusting. It could be nothing at all--she’s never tried to draw up a memory that might have her in it before.
Deep breath. She’s home and she’s safe, and it’s been more than three years since this room had been the stone on her back.
Elsa finds a place to crouch down, then closes her eyes and begins.
The strain immediately makes itself known. This isn’t a waterlogged shipwreck; the castle is strong bedrock that extends down deep into the earth, and water has to travel obliquely. Still, the traces are there: melted ice leaving stains quickly painted over, cold scars on the ceiling, the corners. She gathers them up, lets them become. Concentrate. Listen.
--know that you have a choice--
“What?” Her eyes fly open. There's a figure coalescing around her old bed--slender, hair in a delicate bun, clad in a dress with a design that Elsa knowsknowsknows
But there isn’t enough water. The figure still looks blurred out, and the room seems spent. When Elsa tries to reach farther, deeper, the water from elsewhere--the garden outside, her own ice spires--tries to answer back, but she brushes them away; she doesn’t want this scene contaminated, doesn’t want it to change, she wants--
Tears drip down her face, and then she gasps as they, too, float up to solidify the form, her own contribution to the memory.
And then her mother is there.
“...know you feel trapped,” Iduna is saying, and as Elsa unconsciously moves closer to the bed she sees that there’s a miniature version of herself on the bed, twelve years old, curled up and facing away.
“I imagine that you feel horribly alone, like maybe...you don’t even belong here, in your own home, with your own family,” Elsa mouths the words in time to her mother’s voice; she remembers this, remembers it now. “But this is your home, Elsa, and--I know you think you have to do this, that you have to shut yourself off all the time, but I want you to know that you have a choice. You do. Your powers don’t have to be a prison, you can use them to help people. And if you don’t want your home--our family--to remain like this, you have the power to change that too. You get a say in how your life should proceed. I want you to know that I believe in you, Elsa, even if you--”
A stop. A sigh. “I want you to try,” her mother continues, “try just letting yourself be, Elsa, instead of hiding. Try thinking that maybe you can do good, maybe more good than anyone else could, because of what fate afforded you, and because you are good, Elsa, and I--”
“Love you,” Elsa whispers, after her mother’s voice in the memory cuts off and fades, “More than anything else in the world.”
In the memory her mother’s hand is reaching down, a hair’s breadth away from touching the braid of her past self. Elsa doesn’t bother sparing a glance down at what her own face looked like back then, stiff and terrified on the bed; she already knows.
Her face in the present is still wet; nil-three for keeping it together with memories of her parents now.
“I thought Papa sent you up here that night because he was tired of dealing with me,” she says. Her voice is steadier than she imagined, steadier and duller. “He usually...handled me, and when you came in I thought...maybe he needed a break. You usually didn’t come in here alone, and I...”
She sucks in a deep, slow breath. “I guess I just always thought that you were afraid of me.”
“Or that you were still mad about what I did to Anna. I didn’t blame you,” she quickly adds, “I couldn’t, not when I--anyway. Papa was always the one who came in to check on how I was doing, on my progress, and I thought that he was...so fearless, for still wanting to stay so close to me. But you...”
There isn’t much of her mother that she can remember in The Intervening Years beyond shadows and parts. A figure in a doorway, a hand on her shoulder, quickly shrugged off before she could do any damage. But that was all life to her in those days; even her father eventually became nothing more than the mantra and pinpricks of expectation. Everything had to be abstracted down to what she let herself see within the four walls of her room, to what she let herself feel within the vice of her heart.
She lets out a tired chuckle. “I guess I had both of you wrong, didn’t I?”
The sound of soft laughter filters through the door. Elsa tenses, but it just fades as whoever it had been walks past. Probably one of the new staff; the castle is so alive now, and it changes all the time.
Elsa reaches out and clasps her ungloved hands to her mother’s. “I am trying, Mother,” she says, and lets the memory crumble away.
This definitely isn't meant to tell you your feeling about this is wrong, especially because *Amazon*, but is the show not just another form of merchandising, like the t-shirts, comics and books?
It is! But that is just a byproduct of making art, is creating merch and opportunities from it. The problem is Amazon as a company, not the concept of people deserving financial compensation for their work through t shirts and such.
