Sans titre

[wellen66]

I was thinking, but it's interesting that almost nobody sees Amelia Dallon as a person.

Like, if you go through Worm (and somewhat later, Ward), nobody is ever like "Man, I'm glad to hang out with Amy!" or just "huh, wonder how Amy is doing."

Her first appearance is with her sister, who begs Amy to save her from jail and then uses love as a way to make her cave

Then there's Gallant, who doesn't care about her but does feel that she's jealous of him for some reason. Again, they talk as she's healing him and they never talk after - but Gallant does call her a bad person to her face, so there's that.

Bonesaw doesn't have a fixation like "Oh she's so awesome I love her!" but "oh her power is so great I love it!"

About all of her talks with Taylor / the Undersiders is asking Amy to use her powers or berating her for using her powers. (or judging her for not min-maxing her powers, thanks Taylor)

Mark is depressed, Carol dislikes her for her lineage... The only person (in Worm) who cares about her is her father, Marquis. And even then, for both their safety, he has to push her to use her powers.

The only other exception is Goddess. We don't have a lot of information, but Goddess never asked Amy to use her powers on the pages, and they were apparently dating. Of course, she ended up dead soon enough. After all, Amy had to chose between Goddess and Victoria, and that would only lead one way.

Then there's earth Shin, and- you get the idea.

Even Jessica, the woman who stared down The Faery Queen herself, was afraid of Amelia... because of her powers.

And it's interesting, isn't it? In a way, that makes her the single most lonely character in the whole story. Because nobody sees Amelia as a person, nobody likes her as a person - and that dates from way before the Wretching. As the story begins, she literally has nobody that doesn't ask anything from her power-wise.

Imagine if you were someone who knew computers, and the main subject of conversation you were in was "can you fix my computer?" "can you upgrade mine?" "can you clean it from viruses?"

That's the life of Amelia Dallon. Her choice of helping people in hospitals is almost never mentioned... outside of others being like "hey, can you heal that person from my family?"

Nobody cares about her choices, likes, dislikes and wants.

One could argue that Victoria cares. I'd say that in Ward, Victoria never mourns the relationship she had with Amy. She's never like "Doing X activity with Amy used to be great, and I hate her for making it so I can't enjoy it anymore." Victoria's only thoughts of Amy are related to Amy being a monster, and are always provoked by Victoria's relationship to her own body. Not to her past, not to their past relationship, just Victoria being traumatized. (As an example of what that could have looked like, Victoria lived with Swansong for a time. You would think that rooming with a woman and being close to her might have sparked some old memories of living with her sister and thus bad feelings, but it never happens.)

The only time we see Victoria loving Amy in any way on the pages is when she hugged her to convince her to do what she wanted (healing a guy), and when she hugged her to convince her to do what she wanted (come home). These are the only two moments.

I don't know, I just found that interesting.

[anendangeredspecies]

“Amy would be less of a loser if she was dramatically evil on purpose.” Said as though edgelords, posers, and prima-donnas aren’t inherently the most pathetic, laughable, and contemptible types of losers a human being can ever manage to become. Ffs girl, Amy comes from the same piece of media as Jack Slash in case you needed a case study.

While Jack is a mega-fraud, I do actually think Amy was more of a loser than him up until the s9000 (guessing Taylor's trigger wrong cost him all his aura). Jack's proactive poser bullshit still supercedes Amy's passive train of failures up to getting birdcaged.

Also notice I never said she had to be successful in hurting people. Amy could still suck as an intentional villainess to the point she's mostly harmless, which would make her cringe in an endearing and funny way rather than an edgelord murder. Dramatic girl-failures are loveable (see cherish) whereas jack's just a joker wannabe.

Even if she must suffer an irreparable aura deficit, otome villainess Amy who pulls 'monster of the week' bullshit on the wards would still be less of a loser than moping canon Amy and faux philosophical edgelord Jack.

[wellen66]

The whole "loser/not loser" thing always felt weird to me. Cherish is pitiful because she does things she doesn't enjoy and suffer for it. Meanwhile, is Jack a loser? I don't know, the man is having the time of his life. You could argue that he's confident but relies on his power, but so is Legend. Hell, so's Alexandria, and Imp, and Victoria, and Dragon, and Taylor - a lot of what she does, it's QA behind the wheel. Everyone relies on something.

You could argue that Jack is a *poser*, but even then, not that much compared to the average cape. Every cape has a costume and panache, an image they're trying to project. Again, Legend is fighting crime in a skintight suit.

Amy IS a loser, just like Cherish, because she does things she doesn't want to do and has a horrible time doing it. Whatever she does, she quite literally alway loses. That's what makes her pitiful.

[wellen66]

My humble contribution to making Amy suffer is to let her spend more time with Bonesaw.

Imagine, if you will, Amy stuck with Bonesaw (as her handler), just like in Ward. Now, whether this does happen post-Wretch or not is irrelevant, but I do believe it's funnier if it does.

Amy has to take care of Bonesaw. She has to double-check her work (and, more insultingly, the reverse is also true). Amy is also kind of stuck, because while Bonesaw can do things Amy herself can't ("Oh, of course I can make you non-permanent prosthetic arms, I can be trusted within 15.98 feet of other parahumans really", "Fix your brain and power after a bad trigger? Lemme take a peek!" "Yes, I can make a case 53 human again! And I can make it ("her", says Amy) - I mean her- the most beautiful artwork ever!")

So Amy is stuck with this little, annoying, traumatized tyke with blond hair and blue eyes, and for the first time in her life she's both the Responsible One and the Not That Evil In Comparison one. She still heals people on the side, but a significant portion of her day is spent around Riley, who can turn a man into a toaster in less than twelve minutes but the last time they asked her to actually make food she somehow whipped up bile that tastes like strawberry ice cream to the hatred of everyone involved, so now they all look at Amy expectantly since she's the only one who's not scared of the girl whose small size is inversely proportional to her body count.

So Amy has to teach her what a balanced breakfast looks like and how to make it instead of "Oh I just extract the fat from my body surgically once a week" and how to have some bedside manners instead of saying "Hello, what totally ethical, totally non-invasive surgery with no bad consequences can I perform on you today?" and how to pet a dog instead of asking if she can turn it into spare organs (what the hell Riley, Amy only did it once).

More and more shit is put on Amy's plate since the PRT doesn't believe in child slavery or criminal slavery and thus Riley is treated like a young cape and thus should get an education like one, and who's the only person they can trust around Bonesaw, the one gal who's not going to wake up at the end of the study session convinced it all went well with suspicious scars at the back of her skull and Riley whistling with a bloody circular saw behind her back? Panacea. What's that, it's cutting into healing-people time? Well, it's not like people really trust The Wretcher, so it's all for the best really. By the way, Bonesaw is making prosthetic hands for Damsel of Distress, can you look after them? So Amy has to spend time sitting at a desk next to a little girl who is perfectly aware of Amy's bullshit and teaching her math and history, as if she had nothing better to do.

("Oh wow, look Amy, this Cleopatra girl almost married her brother! Isn't that romantic?" "I will bloat your tongue with so much cancer you'll never speak again." "I can replace it with a speaker!")

A lot of time goes by, Bonesaw grows up with Amy acting as the best, grumpiest big sister in the world. And at the same time, Amy kind of comes to see Riley as an annoying little sister too, in a weird way. They bond over healing, she teaches her things, and Amy feels almost proud each time Riley really heals someone without bad surprises (and yes, reinforcing someone's muscles with titanium mesh without their consent is a bad surprise, stop it. No, removing a potential cancer isn't the same thing, shut up.)

Then one day Amy turns around and sees teenage Riley looking at her with googly eyes, and Riley blushes a little when they touch, and is she is looking for excuses to spend even more time around Amy?

She realizes with dread that Riley has a crush on her. A crush that is painfully obvious. A crush that could not be more awkward because eww.

For the first time of her life, Amy is fully, totally in Victoria's shoes and she hates it.

[wellen66]

Reading Ward for the first time right now (just finished 14.9) and it's crazy how much it feels like a bashing fic.

For the whole arc, I feel like every scene with Amy in it could be summarized as:

"Amy I hate you"

"Okay but I want to fix that."

*Amy does something stupid and or evil*

"Amy I hate you"

Like a few chapters ago, Amy showed up. Characters told her to go fuck herself. She left. Characters were incensed that she left.

And all of this would be fine because Victoria is biased, so you know, irrational hatred and stuff. If it stopped there it would be more than fine.

Then you add that any character talking about Amy in a positive light is systematically an asshole about everything (except maybe Marquis, who is 'just' a crime lord). So okay, maybe Victoria is just so biased it colors her perception of everyone else.

All of Victoria's friends share her opinion, believe that what she's doing is wholly rational. Okay. Annoying but fine, they're friends. Fine.

The story uses any arguments people have had in the comments to say Amy isn't 100% a stupid evil person, make them come from Amy (which is bad optics, even if they're true) in the same chapter as Amy doing something stupid evil again? Less fine.

If someone showed me Amy from the end of Worm and Amy from ward, one seem like a character, the other like a hate sink strawman the author made of Amy to be sure no one ever like her.

The thing is, it means the main antagonist dynamic of Ward is Victoria and friends being an asshole toward Amy followed by Amy deserving it, over and over. It's been 14 arcs and the only thing that changed is that Victoria went from flight to fight, which is hard to care about since the narrative will always make Victoria in the right no matter what.

[swordlesbean]

[wellen66]

Two Force Captains at their finest.

[catrawhora]

it’s sad that people think that catra doesn’t deserve a redemption arc

it might sound redundant from an account that’s literally named catrawhora, but fuck. it’s understandable to not like catra, she’s done plenty of fucked up things.

but the whole series is just a story of the cycle of abuse?? hordak was bred to be evil and was thrown away, which ultimately leads to his mistreatment of shadow weaver, which leads to the mistreatment of catra. i just think it’s sad if she doesn’t get a redemption arc, because it sends a bad message?? that you can never escape the cycle of abuse??

like we know that adora already escaped and so has huntara, but adora was manipulated more than anything and we don’t really know the extent of huntara’s abuse, but catra‘ abuse was the only one that was truly showcased. as a kid’s show, it’s pretty disheartening to watch a character that has been explicitly displayed as abused just fall back into the cycle.

catra’s done pretty fucked up things, and it’s hard to redeem villains, but i hope that she gets the help and redemption she deserves. it’s gonna be hard, because there’s a lot of things she needs to make up, but i trust the she ra crew to execute it.

[wellen66]

It’s interesting to show this side of the debate. I personaly think Catra doesn’t deserve a redemption arc because she crossed the line. If you murder someone because you have issues (and that person is not the one causing the issues) then you do not deserve to be forgiven. Period. If the queen is still alive and come back, then Catra will just be guilty of trying to destroy all of reality. (Betraying Entrapta was not so much of a problem compared to breaking reality itself.)