#grieving characters

They exhausted themselves keeping up CPR for an extended period, several doses of adrenaline, tried anything they could think of, with no response. Finally it's time to call it. Whumpee's friends start to grieve.

All right, this scene is a contentious one to say the least.

I want to look at the elements that make up this part, starting from the very beginning.

After waking up in Gresit, Alucard had one goal:  Kill Dracula.  Throughout Season 2, he’s determined, he has points of dry, sarcastic humor, but as a whole, his personality is pretty grim.  He is absolutely unwavering in his determination.

Once Dracula was dead, though, he now has to live with the guilt of not only killing the father who loved and raised him but also the guilt over being unable to save his mother when she needed him.  When Lisa was taken, Alucard was traveling, and though he never explicitly says this, I would bet anything that ever since that night he has asked himself, “Why wasn’t I there?  What could I have done differently?  If I had done _______, she would be here right now and none of this would have ever happened.”  Alucard is a rational character.  He understands that what happened to Lisa was a cruel accident of fate.  She was accused of witchcraft, and he and his father were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They couldn’t have predicted her death, they couldn’t have changed it.

But this is how the Bargaining Stage of Grief plays out.  This is what sets him apart from Trevor and Sypha by the end of Season 2.  Between the three of them, Sypha still has her family waiting for her.  She still has her people and the optimism to still see the brighter future.  (Which is a trait she never fully loses.)  As for Trevor, he had already lost everyone he’d ever loved, and so he definitely already went through all the messy stages of grief to the point of sad acceptance that his family is dead and now he has to live with that.

Alucard can’t identify with that kind of acceptance yet, for either of his parents. The grief is too raw, and so I believe his decision to remain behind while his companions left without him was a form of self-punishment.  In spite of the understanding it wasn’t his fault, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy after everything that happened.  Sure, he says he needs to protect the accumulation of his father’s knowledge, and while that might have been true, I feel like he had other options.  The show demonstrates that magic is capable of the impossible, so I feel like there should have been some kind of spell that could be engineered to keep his father’s/the Hold’s collection from being destroyed or looted.  If he asked Sypha and Trevor to stay and help him, I think they would have.  Instead, he watches them leave without asking them to visit or even expecting to see them ever again.  And we leave him finally breaking down over his losses.

All this to say he was not in a good headspace when Sumi and Taka showed up, which they picked up on and exploited to their advantage.  (The guy was talking to dolls he’d made to resemble his friends, and he was mimicking their voices in pseudo-conversation.  Funny conversations, yes, but damn, that coping mechanism…)

The first thing Alucard tells them is he ‘will not be hunted,’ but there is a disturbing irony here.

Attacking them indicates that his guard was up and he was ready to end lives if he had to.  Self-preservation is on point.  It’s Sumi and Taka who de-escalate the situation.  “We mean you no harm.  We came to ask you for help.”  They’re smiling and laughing by the end of this initial encounter.  They tell him their story.  “We’re these poor, innocent waifs from a distant land searching for a way to save our people.  Pity us.”  They present themselves as non-threatening, wide-eyed victims who only need help, which is a ruse he unfortunately falls for.

“It’s time for your reward.”

It makes my skin crawl how despicable that one line of manipulation is.  This is the chink in Alucard’s armor:  the idea of guilt that persists after the mother he couldn’t save and the father he killed, especially the latter.  Understandably, although Alucard recognizes what he did was necessary, the fact he’s committed patricide is weighing on him.  There was Sypha’s words of comfort at the end of Season 2 that was it was ‘okay to love the man,’ but neither she or Trevor are around.  This leaves the opening for the toxic, false comfort of Sumi and Taka’s manipulation.  Here they are introducing the conflicting idea that what he did is worthy of praise.

Couple that with the factor that at this point, he’s only known them for a few days at most.  Obviously, that’s nowhere near long enough to establish an emotional connection that’s strong enough to say,  “Yes, I want to be with this person.”  But his silence is not consent; in fact, I see this as fear that if he does not go through with this like they want, it will make them leave him like Sypha and Trevor did.  Again, they are playing on that fatal loneliness.  Coercion.

Soft words, soft voices, and that is he what he needed to hear.

And Sumi and Taka knew exactly what to say.

Back in their flashback about Cho, Sumi and Taka talk how they ‘studied’ her, studied the way she fought, and learned about her weaknesses for years.  This is the subtlest bit of foreshadowing I’ve found so far in the series.  It shows that Sumi and Taka don’t hunt vampires the way Trevor does.  They’re formidable fighters, yes, but they were not born and raised to hunt like the Belmonts were.  They don’t have that specific training or discipline, so they make up for it with deceit.  They ingratiate themselves with their prey, observing them and looking for the weak point.

Alucard said he would not be hunted.

But he was.

The entire time they were there, Sumi and Taka were studying him the way they studied Cho.  They saw Alucard’s loneliness and they took full advantage of the trust he gave them.  He invited them into his home, fed, and looked after them, he saw himself as their friend while the whole time they were looking for a way to kill him.  They were continuously asking about weapons, magic, off-limits rooms in the Castle, when the Castle could be fixed, etc.  They were trying to zero in on the ‘kill room’ where he would be at his most vulnerable.

It’s hard to say how much of Sumi and Taka’s story was true given the outcome, but I’m inclined to believe it was but with one caveat.  I don’t think they helped their fellow prisoners escape.  I think they were the only survivors.  There’s no evidence of this other than the fact I think it’s suspicious that they left their friends behind to seek help.  Okay…Japan is a long way from Wallachia.  They couldn’t find anyone closer?  They didn’t try to smuggle more people away?  They don’t even mention their people in their angry ranting before they try to kill Alucard.

There’s also the brief line where they say they were given to Cho’s court as children.  It’s not clear whether or not their parents were forced to give them up as tribute to Cho, but that’s irrelevant if they themselves felt betrayed and abandoned by the people who should have loved and protected them.  There is the later line where they say everyone lies to them.  With that, I think they were so far in the fog of grief and anger that in their minds, they were unable to recognize Alucard could have been a genuine ally to them, and they only saw him as just another vampire who was evil and needed to be killed.

The beauty and the tragedy of both Alucard and Lisa’s characters is that they are both so incredibly kind and selfless, and they want to believe in people.  Even when the Bishop’s henchmen came to her home, Lisa didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion of witchcraft and fear.  She asked if the Archbishop was ill and if they needed her help.  When they started tearing apart her home, she told them whatever they wanted she would give it to them.  She didn’t try to run.  She tried to explain calmly about her medical practice and that what she did helped people.  Her undoing was a man who meant her harm.

Lisa’s arrest is mirrored in the moments before Alucard kills Sumi and Taka.  Even though he realizes what’s happened and the situation he’s in, realizing they aren’t with him out of love and this was all a manipulation, a trap, and even rape——even though he realized all that, he still wanted to help them.

Right before they die, he is begging them to listen, that is their friend, and he can help them. The world is not against them.  These aren’t the words of a man trying to save himself.  He is living admirably up to the virtues he learned from his mother.  He waited until the last possible moment before choosing to save his own life over theirs. And his last line to them is, “I never lied to you.”

There’s no condoning what Sumi and Taka did to Alucard, that is an undeniably fucked up thing to do to a person and the plot accounted for it by killing off their characters.  However, I do feel these two are a testament to how anger and hatred will destroy a person and are a kind of foil to characters like Isaac. Isaac was horribly abused in his past and he had every reason to resent humanity, and yet by the end of his arc, he was beginning to let go of his anger and start a new life where he could be happy.  This is the lesson Isaac learns by the end of Season 3 whereas we leave Alucard again weeping alone with the memory of people he couldn’t save:  his mother and father and the two people he thought were his friends.  Again, he is grieving.  “I was a good friend to them, wasn’t I?  I helped them, didn’t I?  What did I do wrong?’

The answers are yes, yes, and no, he did nothing wrong.  Grieving is coming to terms with that.

And finally, we have the gruesome way in which he ‘displays’ their bodies outside the Castle as a means to warn off other travelers or intruders.  Impalement was a very degrading means of execution.  It was excruciatingly slow, extremely painful, and those who faced this sentence would suffer for hours if not days in public.  You see the rage and humiliation he feels, and so by impaling the corpses, he in turn inflicted that humiliation on Sumi and Taka.  It’s probably as close to the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality as he gets.

Worst case Scenario AU.

Marinette is dead.

full stop. No redos. No second chances.

She died protecting Lila from an Akuma attack. Out of sight of everyone but Lila.

In her surprise (possibly greed) she ended up taking the Ladybug Miraculous for herself.

She was too shaken up to use them. Besides Chat had defeated the Akuma and cataclysmed the butterfly, so there was no way to fix the damage.

Hawkmoth learned about her death and connected the two dots. Then ransacked her home to find the miraculous box. He succeeded.

He also killed the Dupain-Cheng's for their unknowing involvement.

News gets around about it all and suspicions are high about the why. (Cause no-one else knows.)

Lila's guilt eats away at her for weeks while she has, but doesn't use, the earrings.

Chat has dealt with several Akuma's since then and the city is scrambling not repair everything without a cure.

People are dying.

alternate help us being suggested.

Lila finally puts on the earrings and while Tikki is understandably distraught about Marinette. She's not mad at Lila.

watching someone die is horrific for everyone.

The next Akuma attack she shows up. Clumsy, out of pace and generally lacking in skill.

everyone's glad for the reprive from permanent damage and death. Even if she's a different Ladybug.

Chat, does not like her. At all.

No. The grief of learning the REAL ladybug is dead (from Plagg) and that she was his 'good friend ' Marinette had made him cynical and brutish.

he's not fighting FOR Paris any more.

he's fighting Akuma's to take out his rage on Hawkmoth, cause he is the only defense left.

When Ladybug!Lila turns up he goes ballistic. All he needs is the earrings to bring back his lady and he'll give up everything for her.

Akuma attacks are a three way fight now: Lila trying to cure the Akuma and fend off Chat, Chat trying to get the earrings and take out the Akuma and the Akuma trying to take both of them down.

The worst part for Lila?

previous weilders souls get trapped in the miraculous, so they can train future weilders how to use it effectively.

Marinette visits her in her dreams. Teaching her about the intricacy and creativity needed to use charms, things to say that will stop chat for just long enough for her to do her thing.

and not once does Marinette condemn Lila, hate her or refuses to help her. Quite the opposite, she's happy to do it.

and Lila is torn by it. Cause Marinette should hate her, should refuse her. For all she's done, the pain she caused her. GOT HER AND HER FAMILY KILLED.

She always wakes up crying, Tikki always comforts her, although the Kwami is crying too.

half of Paris hates her, she can't call on for help as Hawkmoth has the other miraculous and Chat wants her gone.

But she must continue. Not for herself but for Marinette's memory.

cause it's only now. After she's gone. That Lila realised just how... Stunning Marinette truly is. And she falls for her, just a tad.

the thing about jellyfish

Ali Benjamin

minimal to no romance

from back cover;

"Suzy Swanson has always known things that other kids don't. She can explain the sleep patterns of anys. She knows there are 150 million jellyfish stings on the planet every year. She knows that the average middle school student kid contains about 20 billion of Shakespeare's atoms. But she can't understand how Franny Jackson's lifetime could be cut so short. . . before Suzy could make up for the worst thing she'd ever done to her best friend. When Suzy formulates a bold plan to travel across the globe--alone--to learn the truth about how her friend died, she discovers that the answers she most needs could be fight in her own backyard.

Already a beloved abd acclaimed bestseller, Ali Benjamin's stunning debut has been hailed as 'a shining example of the hifhs and lows of early adolescence' (Publishers Weekly) that will touch readers if all ages in the most unexpected if ways"

Self-editing masterclass snapshots: Characters are grief stricken – how do I stop that becoming monotonous?

I’m running a series of the smartest questions from my recent Guardian self-editing masterclass for novelists. Previous posts have discussed how much extra material we might write that never makes the final wordcount, and how to flesh out a draft that’s too short. Today I’m looking at an interesting problem of pacing: Characters are grief stricken – how do I stop that becoming monotonous? One…