#I’m already thinking of plot lines for these colonies. send help

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AUGH… AUGHHH…. AUUUGHH

I don't think I'm gonna go anywhere with this (unless i jinx it) but I just got a cool idea for a fan colony: basically angels and demons. they're two civilizations, consisting of birdformers and batformers, created by one titan who split into two. The angelic formers live in the sky while the demonic ones live underground. They've been at war with each other for thousands of years and the surface of the planet is considered the neutral zone where killing is allowed on both sides

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Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.

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If I were doing the Avatar Remake

Just a list of things changes and tweaks to the original I would make to Avatar if I was in charge of this netflix remake, given that we’ve all lost hope in it and now I’m just speculating to make myself feel better. I’ve already made a list of things it really needs, and this list includes them, but I’m just going to go hog wild with my imagination and opinions on Avatar. In a rough order of when I think and them and what episode it becomes relevant.

How long are these new episodes going to be? I’d like to extend them for more story content, though am wary of overdoing it. How does thirty minutes sound? Enough for some more depth to some episodes.

I think it should be pointed out earlier on that there are more villages across the South Pole. This is canon, and would make the Southern Water Tribe feel more alive.

Aang’s friends from the past: in addition to Kuzon and Bumi, give him a Northern Water Tribe pal. He’s never been to the South Pole, and was deliberately coming to make new friends somewhere the Monks wouldn’t think to look for him. We can reference this friend again when we reach the North Pole.

Somebody, probably Iroh, mentions Zuko’s name in front of Aang. It’s always infuriated me that the Gaang know’s Zuko’s name suddenly in Warriors of Kyoshi without anyone telling them what it is. I don’t think it needs its own episode, just somebody says it while he’s captured.

The terms of Zuko’s banishment don’t restrict him from the colonies in the Earth Kingdom, so they don’t consider those colonies to be proper Fire Nation territory. I feel they should have their own name, just to make the politics of the show feel deeper. “The Eastern Protectorate” is a nice reference to the Chinese “Protectorate of the Western Territories.” Zhao can namedrop it when they go to his port.

The fact that Kyoshi Island has such a different culture from the main Earth Kingdom should be brought up. The answer is a mix between isolation and cultural exchange with the Southern Water Tribe. Katara and Sokka probably have a passing knowledge of the island. “Oh, that’s where we are.” Also, if Aang knew to come here for the Koi fish, how didn’t he know about there being Kyoshi revering settlements there?

There should be an adult Kyoshi Warrior training the others. She approves of Suki training Sokka, and comments on the rarity of outsiders and men being Kyoshi Warriors. I feel Sokka is the first outsider, but there was another man. Adult warrior gives the explanation that when she was a young trainee, a man working on the docks was teased for “fighting like a girl” so warriors taught him exactly like a girl.

There should be an Earthbending Kyoshi Warrior. I mean Kyoshi herself was a bender, the art can’t be exclusively a non-bending form.

Maybe point out that there are multiple villages on the island. This is in fact canon.

Haru’s mother and village could use some actual names.

We never see any non-bending Earth Kingdom soldiers. I loved how the Fire Nation has different uniforms for its bending and non-bending warriors, and I’d like to see the same for the Earth Kingdom troops.

I want to know more about those pirates? The captain is ethnically a Fire Nation citizen. Is there a story behind that? A navy deserter? Like an opposite of Jeong Jeong, deserting not for ethics but because he didn’t like duty getting in the way of fortune? I’m probably just overthinking it.

The names of the Freedom Fighters are obviously pseudonyms, and Jet probably urges the Gaang to adopt some themselves.

While I don’t actually feel that Aang lying to the two groups in The Great Divide is an unforgivable wrong, I feel the lie itself was a little demeaning and could have been a little more sophisticated.

I have seen that post saying there needs to be more Indians in Avatar than just Guru Pathik, given how many Indian concepts are in the show. Many people also share the opinion that there should be Indian airbenders, so yes they should appear in the flashbacks in The Storm (and The Southern Air Temple as well). Also some Earth Kingdom villages should be Indian based as well. I think the market from The Waterbending Scroll could be a good place to start, maybe the port from The Storm as well, though probably somewhere that isn’t just a background place as well. Maybe the nuns in Bato of the Water Tribe too.

Iroh could be less creepy with June.

Ah, The Northern Air Temple. Honestly I feel that while the ultimate message of Aang being okay with the Mechanist and his people settling in the Air Temple is okay, I feel it needs to end with a greater emphasis on the Mechanist’s people being more respectful to the site. Ramming pipes through historical mosaics and demolishing statues is really not on. Also, while Sokka being cool with industrialisation is in character, I do think he’d disapprove the desecration.

I feel the fact that a lot of the Fire Nation’s technological might (not all of it, though) is riding off the back of a blackmailed Earth Kingdom citizen is something that could be brought up more often.

Yue’s story with the Moon Spirit needs to be explained almost immediately, so that it’s not kind of an arse-pull when the plot needs it.

Legend of Korra makes a big deal about the South gaining independence from the North, but they’re already treated as separate nations? I think it should be mentioned somewhere, probably from Hahn, that the South is technically subservient to the North, though operates with a great deal of autonomy that comes with not being able to contact each other.

The North is pretty sure it’s the original Water Tribe, but can’t say for sure. Hahn thinks of the South as nothing but a colony, though Arnook is more progressively minded and notes there are no records of who came first and treats the South as a sister tribe.

I think there’s another character worth adding, a captain of the Northern warriors. He can appear several more times throughout the series, which I’ll elaborate on.

Zhao comments “there’s a reason they’ve survived a hundred years of war” whereas other comments suggest the Northern Water Tribe has been sitting out of the war. Apparently the North did take uniforms from soldiers 85 years ago, so I think the idea should be that they received one big siege back then, and since then they’ve been experiencing raids since then culling their villages and forcing them into that single fortified city-state. Since then, their ability to send ships out has been impeded by Fire Nation ships patrolling those water but not engaging the city itself until Zhao’s siege.

Yue, when mentioning the waterbenders learning from the Moon, should reference humanity receiving bending from the Lion Turtles, just to introduce the concept that bending could be given and therefore by implication taken away.

There’s a historical character I want to introduce: an Earth Kingdom general that was nearly able to push the Fire Nation out of the Earth Kingdom around half-way through the 100 Year War, but was taken down by internal Earth Kingdom politics. The Fire Nation had to do its conquests all over again because of him. It would help fill out a century of history that is poorly explained. I think he could be introduced by Sokka asking General Fong how they still have an outpost on the west coast when most of that region has been occupied by the Fire Nation.

Azula’s blue fire should be depicted like blue flames are in real life: very straight jets rather than the flickering things you see in the animation. Since it’s basically just powerful fire, I think it should be seen with a couple of other firebenders, though Azula is the only one that exclusively uses it. Jeong Jeong and Iroh would be good people to use it.

I saw a post once by a Korean rightfully upset that the only Korean characters in the show (Song and her village) are lumbered in with the essentially Chinese Earth Kingdom as if they’re the same culture despite Korea obviously being separate and having a poor history of China attempting to enforce hegemony over it. I think maybe something could be made of Song and her people being a distinct culture that has had a generally poor relationship with the Earth Kingdom at large. Maybe the previously mentioned Earth Kingdom general was screwed over for being of this culture.

I’m not sure how to depict the Swampbenders. They'll no longer be caricatures of the guys in the next studio, so they’ll be more respectfully treated and not hillbillies. I’m not sure if they should be Vietnamese (given the original characters have Vietnamese names) or southern Native Americans (given they’re waterbenders, and the other waterbenders are Inuits).

After failing to get Bumi as Aang’s earthbending teacher, they throw around suggestions. Since Aang is learning waterbending from Katara they consider a similarly aged Earthbender. Katara suggests they go find Haru, while Sokka suggests the earthbending Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned before.

I saw a post once suggesting that the Beifongs were collaborators, and while I think this is somewhat extreme, I would like to explore the interplay between their wealth and their position in the war. Also, the fact that Toph had been sheltered from the war and has far less of an emotional stake in it needs to be explored in more detail.

In the Zuko Alone flashbacks Azula really needs to be made out as a normal child with a bad influence (her father) instead of an inherently bad child. My sister points to this episode and claims Iroh or Ursa should have just drowned her and that’s something incredibly fucked up to say about a ten(?) year old.

In that vein, Iroh’s “no she’s crazy and needs to go down” line really needs to be changed to something more compassionate. Most Avatar meta states that Iroh doesn’t actually hate Azula; he’s just prioritising Zuko’s safety, and his line here needs to reflect that.

Aang should recognise the Lion-Turtle, and know that they gave humanity their bending powers. Just to keep that concept in mind, so that when it comes to the energybending climax it’s less of an arse-pull.

Wan Shi Tong’s morale compass and lumping a bunch of kids attempting to avoid genocide in with conquerors needs to be called out more, and I feel Katara should be the one to do it.

Suki gets to stay on for one extra episode and help fight the Drill. It also makes for a better explanation of how she got back. Right now it’s implied she went back across the Serpent’s Pass; in my own she’d explicitly head along the wall and go back with the ferries.

I want more discussion of Ba Sing Se’s social stratification. Was Jin able to visit the Jasmine Dragon? Or was she blocked from entering higher rings?

Toph’s lie detecting thing made into a spiritual or chi related thing. The whole heartbeat thing is pseudoscience.

The Northern Water Captain I mentioned earlier reappears, having met and joined his men with Hakoda’s. Hakoda praises his son with helping bridge the gap between the two water tribes.

Ty Lee gets more appearances in Book 3, even if just in the background. She got some nice development in The Beach and I want to see more of it as Azula’s brought her out of that circus and back into the Fire Nation nobility.

Sparky Sparky Boom Man’s tattoo has a different design that is not a villainised appropriation of a Hindu symbol. Something nice and geometric, maybe sun based.

Hawky at some point returns to Team Avatar. I want them legitimised as a member of the Gaang! Equal status to Momo and Appa! Also I suppose bringing a letter back from the Beifongs could have significance to Toph. But let Hawky return!

Hama has a more compassionate ending. I feel after she’s led away, Sokka figures it’s pretty fucked up that they’re handing one of their own over to the Fire Nation so they go and rescue her. They give her a choice between joining them to fight during the eclipse or returning to the South Pole to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe (given that there’s Notherners helping rebuild she could help make sure they rebuild it in the style of the south and not a facsimile of the north). She chooses the latter.

No weird Guru Pathik during Aang’s hallucinations please.

While discussing the allies that Hakoda picked up, he mentions some people he couldn’t get: they couldn’t find the Kyoshi Warriors, the Sandbenders didn’t want to come, the Omashi Resistance wanted to use the eclipse to retake their city, and General Fong’s outpost had been overrun. Just flesh out things a little.

Sokka and the other Water Tribe warriors should be wearing that facepaint for the Invasion.

I want more interaction with The Duke, Haru, and Teo with the Gaang.

Chit Sang’s girlfriend and friend join with the second escape instead of being strangely absent. Also, who is he? Sokka probably looks him up to make sure they’re not bringing a serial killer into their midst. Preferably not, I like to think they were thrown in there for opposing the war.

I’d like Suki to learn from Hakoda that the other Kyoshi warriors are alive, if imprisoned.

Suki doesn’t like wearing prison clothes and attempts a facsimile of Kyoshi islander clothes by stealing Katara and Haru’s clothes.

Some more emotions between Sokka and Suki relating to her imprisonment please. There’s a lot of pent up trauma there and I’d like them to work through it.

People like to play up Katara’s “you obviously didn’t love her as much as I did” line into an insight to a horrible character rather than just something stupid said in the heat of the moment, though I do think Katara should apologise, if only to show the haters that this isn’t her personality.

Training with Aang, Zuko finds out he has the peace of mind to do lightning. He wouldn’t use it against Azula, but it would be a nice demonstration that his inner turmoil is more or less resolved.

The adult Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned at the very beginning of this reappears as a White Lotus member. She, for whatever reason, has a replacement warrior uniform for Suki, because I feel Suki shouldn’t have to go through the climax in a Fire Nation disguise. Also maybe Sokka should be wearing his warpaint too? I mean it’s culturally significant to him.

You want lightning? No I don’t. Azula’s growing inner turmoil denies her the use of lightning, mirroring Zuko’s original inability to use it when he was lost and confused. So when it comes to sneakily zapping Katara it’s just her fire, but a flame more concentrated (and by implication, rage-fueled) than we’ve ever seen from her. A veritable beam that Zuko has to put his all into deflecting, opening him up to an attack. A non-lethal attack; Azula still has that line about “the family physician”. She doesn’t want Zuko dead and leaves him be when he’s down. Despite going off the deep end there is a spark of compassion in her that stops her from doing that.

As I’ve stated previously, Aang needs to do something slightly more significant and spiritual in order to access the Avatar State again rather than that stupid rock. Some sort of spiritual lesson.

As I’ve said a few times now, the Lion-Turtles should be known to the audience by now, along with their ability to give bending to humans, so that the ability to take bending has been implied.

The weird orange-vs-blue lightshow with the energy bending was kind of melodramatic, though the corruption-vs-purity thing could still be visually represented by Ozai trying to physically overpower Aang and failing.

Possibly to be continued.

[forlornmelody]

Take Your Girlfriend To Work Day

Rating: E (it’s smut with a little bit of plot thrown in)

Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda

Ship: Sara Ryder/Suvi Anwar

Summary:   Sara Ryder has Concerns™ about taking Suvi with her on a mission. But she's always wanted to show her the badlands of Kadara. What could go wrong?

Linkage: clicky

Note: Written for FallingOverSideways over at @spectre-requisitions-exchange. Now that reveals have happened, I can finally share this all with you!

-*-*-*

Sara would give Suvi the entire galaxy right now. The way she stretches across the tangled sheets, the light of a distant sun making her hair glow like fire. How the light glistens on her sated body, and catches in her eyes like the pools on Kadara. It’s probably why Sara sticks her foot in her mouth while her breaths are still ragged.

“I wish you had been there with me.”

Suvi’s smile vanishes and Sara feels it like a pain in her gut. “Sorry?”

Shit. “I’m not mad.” Sara swallows, pushing an errant lock out of Suvi’s eyes. “It just would’ve been nice to have you on Kadara with me, before the vaults went online.”

“When the water was toxic with sulfuric acid?” Sufi’s brow wrinkles like it did when she poured over the Scourge data, looking for solutions to a big-ass problem. 

Just keep digging your grave and lie in it, Sara. “I mean. I loved the look on your face when you looked over the data I gathered.” Sara traces the line of Suvi’s swollen lips, smug knowing their romp made them that way. “It would have been even better for you to see it in person.”

Suvi’s lips twist as she bites the inside of them in thought. “I’m sure there’s still useful data for us. Maybe we could go together next time?”

“I would love that!” Sara rolls them so that her hands are braced on either side of Suvi’s pillow, and she peppers her face with kisses, imagining them swimming together in a hot spring, or a cold one, with bikinis on, or not. Drying off on a ridiculously large beach towel and licking that now potable water right off her--

“You’re going tomorrow, right? Maybe I could come with you.”

Sara’s lips freeze on the hollow where her neck meets her shoulder, and Suvi giggles at the slack-jawed expression she gives her. “Tomorrow?”

“Aren’t you going to Ditaeon to talk with Tate about trade?”

“...Yes.” Christmas Tate’s not what sets the Pathfinder's heart racing. It’s not his colony, either. It’s all the mayhem around it. Sara can all too easily imagine an eiroch crushing her girlfriend against a boulder or rylkor whipping her off a cliff with its tail. She needs to find a reason for Suvi to stay behind. Maybe she needs more arms training? Or they could wait until they fit her with some armor? Watch some training vids? 

“Why don’t I go with you?” Suvi trails her fingertips down Sara’s spine, and suddenly she’s spineless. 

“Sure!” Sara says brightly. This is a bad idea, isn’t it? 

----

Turns out Cora’s not much different in height or build than Suvi, so the human commando loans her a set of armor, and a manual on how to care for it. Suvi walks around in it stiffly, and Sara would find it comical were it not for how the components accentuate some of Suvi’s best features. As much as she shouldn’t, not right now, Sara can’t help but imagine removing it piece by piece as she kisses her senseless. 

“Worried about me, Ryder?” Suvi says as they make their landing. 

The airlock disengages, and Sara looks around for any sign of danger. “Just don’t lick any rocks,” she says wryly. 

“But--”

“No, Suvi.” Both her and Vetra say it together.

“Fiiine.”

-----

Suvi loves Kadara. Or maybe she loves being on the ground for a change. Either way, Dr. Suvi Anwar sits on her knees, scanning a small rock, and Sara Ryder can’t look away. The sun catches in Suvi’s flame-colored hair, making Ryder wish she had brought her here sooner. She aches at the soft smile on her face, the warm glow in her blue eyes. Ryder’s in the middle of pulling out her omni tool to take a picture when--

Sara. There are weapons warming up behind you. It appears they are aiming for you, Vetra Nix, and Dr. Anwar. I suggest-- 

“Got it, Sam.” Sara Ryder says nothing to Suvi, only dropping her in a tackle and ruining the picture-perfect moment. Actually, whatever exiles who were shooting at them ruined the moment, and the thought makes Sara’s blood boil. 

Suvi squeaks from underneath her, but she doesn’t protest, especially after the first rounds hit the rocks behind them, and their shields shimmer with the ricochets. “Pathfinder?” she whispers cautiously.

“Exiles,” Sara growls under her breath. This is not how she pictured pinning Suvi on Kadara. 

“I thought--”

“They’re still around. Still wanting to shoot us, apparently.” Sara shoves Suvi behind a bolder, and squats next to her, pulling out her pistol, and deploying her combat drone. It dashes over, firing beams at their assailants, the cool evening air warming in its wake. 

Vetra looks at Sara sideways. “Really, Ryder? A drone?”

“What? Peebee showed me how to use it last night.”

Suvi glances between them, her eyes widening. “Sara?”

“It’ll be fiiiine.” On cue, the drone crumbles to the ground. Peebee will kill her later. “Well, shit.”

“We’re doomed.” Vetra sighs, powering up her assault rifle. 

“Oh ye of little faith.” Sara switches to her shotgun, firing off shots while her biotics cool down. 

Suvi giggles, and Vetra groans. “At least one of us is having a good time.”

Ryder really shouldn’t have brought Suvi with them. A little skirmish like this rarely fazes her anymore--more like target practice than a fight worth worrying about. Waste of ammo, really. But her heart thuds in her chest and her neck and shoulders tighten up at the thought of a bullet hitting the scientist next to her. Suvi’s so gentle, and kind. She’s not made for violence like this. Sweat gathers beneath Sara’s hard suit and her under armor, and itches around her joints. Her arm aches and her temples start to throb. Just a little bit longer---

There.

One exile remains, a sharpshooter with a sniper rifle that tries to pick them off like drops of water torture. Ryder ducks back behind their bolder, counting the seconds between shots. One Andromeda...Two Andromeda...Three--

Sara Ryder charges full force into her enemy, smashing him with a nova that sends his innards flying every which way. Turning with an adrenaline-fueled, shit-eating grin on her face, Sara looks at the boulder, craning to see the look on Suvi’s face. “Not bad, huh?”

“RYDER!  MOVE!” 

The ground rumbles beneath Sara’s feet, throwing her off balance. Enemy Krogan. 

“Shit!” Ryder screams as the berserker hauls her up in the air. Blood rushing to her head, Sara looks down at the battered Krogan growling up at her. “I thought I put you down already.”

“RAAAAH.” 

“Shit’s right! I’m out of ammo.” Vetra glowers, letting out a litany of Turian words SAM can’t translate. 

Don’t panic. Just grab your pistol and--One problem. It must have fell from her holster when she left the ground. The Krogan swings her back like a wet towel. 

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. 

Her biotics won’t fire--still cooling down. Ryder’s neck and temples still flare with heat. 

Sorry, Suvi. I--

A shot rings out, and Ryder sucks in a breath, bracing for a bullet wound. 

The Krogan drops her, and Sara rolls out before his body falls on top of her. What the hell??

Her eyes meet “SUVI??”

Nudging the Krogan’s body with her toe, Suvi blows the steam off the barrel of her pistol, and holsters it. She glances down at Ryder, a shy smile on her face. “You alright, Sara?” Suvi reaches out with her hand to help her up. 

“Damn, Anwar. Didn’t know you had it in you.” Vetra comes out from behind the boulder, brushing herself off. 

Sara doesn’t take her hand, too busy doing the math in her head. “Who taught you how to shoot?”

“Drack. He took me out on Elaaden. Said it would help my skills as a geologist if I learned how to shoot rocks.”

“Of course he did.” Ryder groans as she stands, checking herself for injuries. Her shoulder throbs from being yanked around like a rag doll, but other than that. “Anything I should see Lexi about, SAM?”

My scans indicate nothing but some swelling and inflammation. Though a visit would--

“I’ll see her later, SAM.” Sara has an idea. “Hey, Vetra. I think the Nomad needs an oil change.” She walks over, rummaging through the storage compartment for a very conspicuous picnic basket. 

“The Nomad doesn’t even...oh. Yeah. I’ll get right on that.” Turians don’t roll their eyes, but the way her mandibles twitch, Ryder bets Vetra would be right now if she did. Swinging into the driver’s seat, she starts the engine, and Sara scrambles to get the storage compartment shut in time. 

“Catch ya later!”

-----

“Do you ever miss them?” Their picnic long over, Sara and Suvi stretch out on the blanket, watching the sun set. 

“My parents?”

“Yeah.”

“All the time.” Suvi stares out across the lake, and Sara gets the feeling she’s not watching the clouds change color. 

“How did you find the strength to leave them?”

Suvi says nothing, and Sara wonders if she went too far as she listens to birds call in her silence. When she finally does speak Sara strains to hear her over the lap of the shoreline. “I couldn’t stay behind when there was a whole galaxy out there to explore.” She looks at Ryder, sorrowful, but without regret in her eyes. “I was miserable when I considered staying behind. My parents could tell. I was making them miserable with me.” A small laugh escapes her mouth. “It was them who told me to go. Told me they’d miss me if I left, but they’d miss me even more if I stayed with them.” Her smile slips away, and Sara would give anything to bring it back.

Think, Ryder, think. “Nice shooting earlier. You saved my life.” Sara runs her fingers down Suvi’s cheek, holding her breath as she waits for her face to change.

The smile doesn’t come back. Suvi pulls away, looking off towards Kadara Port. “Sara, I don’t think violence suits me.”

Sara drops her hand. “Oh.”

Suvi immediately draws it back to her cheek. “Don’t get me wrong. I admire what you do--the risks you take, the hard decisions you make.” She closes her eyes, taking a settling breath. “But I’d rather make my hard decisions in a lab, not with a gun.”

“I understand.”

Biting her lip, Suvi dares to search her eyes. “You do?”

“Yeah. We’re different. I’m better out in the field kicking ass, and you’re better in the lab…. doing...sciency stuff.”

Suvi’s laugh spills from her mouth like a bubbling brook. “Ryder.”

“I mean it.” Sara takes her chin. “I don’t want you to change who you are just to please me.” She’s already nose to nose with her before Suvi realizes she’s being kissed. And Sara wouldn’t have it any other way. 

While Suvi’s usually slow to kiss back, when she does, she makes up for lost time, always. She presses in, already reaching for Sara’s hair tie, pulling her hair out of that perky ponytail and winding her fingers through her hair. The motion pulls Sara closer, tighter against her mouth and she can’t help but part Suvi’s lips with her tongue, grabbing the collar of her uniform in her fist, and holding her close. 

Their hands and mouths move like binary stars, so close, but never close enough. Sara groans in frustration as her fingers roam across Suvi’s lab coat, searching for that elusive zipper. Suvi giggles, taking her hand and guiding the zipper down with her, her eyes dark with want. As the uniform falls from Suvi’s shoulders, Sara traces her tongue across her now bare skin, smiling at her goosebumps and drinking in her sharp breaths. Each freckle pattern forms new constellations, and Sara writes the racy mythologies to go with them. 

In Suvi’s sighs and goose-bumped skin, Sara finds a paradise better than the Initiative could have ever hoped for. She unhooks her bra, and finds the path between her breaths, scanning the terrain with her eyes and making contact with her hands. Suvi arches into her touch, and Sara smiles against her skin. “You mean the world to me, you know that?”

Suvi opens her mouth, but her sweet nothing is lost in her moan as Sara’s lips close around her tit. She should really take her time. They have little to interrupt them here, with the Tempest far away and Sam scanning the perimeter for trouble. But it’s been days since Sara had the chance to make love to the center of her universe, and so she dives headfirst into the gravity well, pulling the rest of Suvi’s uniform down with her. 

“I’ve missed you,” Sara whispers, trailing her lips down Suvi’s stomach. 

“Ryder. You see me every day.” 

“Not the same thing, and you know it.” Sara gives her a pointed look, and she can’t help but smile at Suvi’s parted lips. She sits up, running her fingertips up and down Suvi’s thighs, outside and inside, gently nudging them apart. 

Suvi sucks in her breath, and Sara pats her skin as she leans down. “Breathe, Suvi. I swear the air here is safe.” 

“Shh, you.” Suvi chuckles. 

Sara breathes in the scent of her pubis mons, grinning wickedly. “Make me.”

Suvi’s eyes widen, and for a moment Sara wonders if she should apologize, but then Suvi’s fingers grip her by her ponytail, pressing her between her legs and it is glorious. Holy shit holy shit holy shiiiiiiit. She never took Suvi for a dominant one, but Sara definitely want to explore more of this side of her. Tasting her, Sara gives her folds those nice long licks that Suvi loves so much. Her pushup routine comes in handy as her lover writhes beneath her. Just as Suvi starts to moan louder, Sara pulls back to wet her finger.

“Is this too much?” Suvi asks breathlessly. 

Her own mouth feels dry, and Sara reaches over to gulp some water from her cannister. “Not at all. Keep going.” She blushes at her own words. 

Suvi pushes her hands away, sitting up. Sara blinks, watching her go. “Actually, I have new experiment I want to run by you.” Grabbing Sara’s shoulders, Suvi presses her onto her back. 

Laughing, Sara replies. “Oh? What’s your hypothesis?”

“That you’ll love me sitting on your face.” Suvi’s cheeks redden as much as her hair. 

“Mm, that’s hard to quantify.” Sara smudges her lips together playfully. “But we can try it.”

Suvi crawls over her, and Sara groans as her scent overwhelms her senses. She whispers her name into her folds, sliding one finger, then two into her warmth. Gasping, Suvi grinds against her, gripping the top of her head. Sara fingers faster and harder, sucking on her clit until Suvi’s nails dig into her scalp and she calls out her name. 

The sun’s far too bright when Suvi rolls off her. “Holy shit. Holy shit,” Sara swears breathlessly. 

“Mmhm.” Suvi kisses her sloppily, running her hand down Sara’s side. “And what are...mm... our findings? 

Sara laughs into the crook of her neck. “I think your hypothesis may be right. But further tests are needed.”

“Mm.” Suvi presses a finger to her lips, looking up at the clouds as if the answer might be found there. “Perhaps we should increase our sample size?”

That notion jolts Sara off her back. “You mean like a threesome?”

“No!” Suvi laughs so loudly Sara swears the whole valley can hear them. “I meant you. Sitting on mine.” 

“Oh.” Sara stretches. “Maybe next time.” She kisses the pout right off Suvi’s lips. “Right now, I want to kiss you while you…” She grasps Suvi’s hand, guiding it between her legs. “While you…. demonstrate your expertise on the subject.”

“Sara!” Suvi shakes her head in mock humility. “I’m hardly an expert.”

Sara leans over, stealing another heated kiss. “Then maybe you should…” She can’t help her laugh. “....do a more in-depth study?” Their laughs sink into moans as Suvi trace and probes between Sara’s legs, putting just the right amount of pressure to make her beg. 

Suvi grins against her mouth, teasing her long and light, until Sara’s gripping her so hard, she swears she’ll leave bruises. Thank the stars Suvi wears long sleeves. “You like it rough, Sara?”

“Yes, please. Please.” 

Suvi’s teeth graze the skin of her neck in reply, hooking her fingers inside her and beckoning her to come undone. 

Maybe it’s minutes, maybe it’s hours later, when Sara’s always pushing Suvi’s bangs out of her eyes just to watch them fall again. “Y’know. I definitely learned something today.”

“What’s that?”

“I should bring you planetside more often.”

[timeagainreviews]

The Filler Fluff of the Cybermen

When is a two-parter not a two-parter? When the first part is tonight’s episode "Ascension of the Cybermen." As stories go, that was pretty damn sparse. I’ll be honest, friends, I don’t have a lot to say about tonight’s story. But that’s not why you come here, so I will try my damnedest to find something to talk about in this latest episode of Doctor Who. Right, now, how many words was that? Sixty-seven? Christ. This is going to be a slog.

I honestly shouldn’t be surprised. It had to happen. I was saying just last week that I hadn’t seen an episode I outright hated so far this series. We were due. That’s not to say I actually feel hate for this episode, more accurately, I feel very little about this episode. Usually, I endeavour to do more than simply trash an episode, but tonight, it’s either that, or I end the review here. So apologies ahead of time.

The episode opens on a Cyberman head floating in space with some knucklehead voiceover telling us about how the Cybermen have been mostly wiped out and what remains of humanity isn’t much better. The episode will now spend the next fifty minutes reiterating this point ad nausea. It was like a Star Wars title crawl, except in Star Wars, the crawl isn’t the plot of the movie you’re about to watch. Funnily, a lot of tonight’s episode reminded me of "The Last Jedi." Our heroes get split up. A slow chase ensues. No new information is gained. And it ends leaving us feeling like not a lot happened.

The Doctor and her companions come to a small human colony in the distant future. There are only seven of them left. The Doctor sets up a series of relays to help this ragtag bunch of humans kill off an oncoming Cyberman attack. Only thing is, they had never accounted for the Cybermen to first send out "Cyber Drones." Now, say you’ve got a room full of artists who love Doctor Who. And you tell them all to design drones that will be utilised by Cybermen. You can imagine they might have some rather impressive designs. Now, gather up all of those beautiful and creative drawings into your arms and throw them in the bin. Instead, we’re going to just use floating Cyberman heads. Was this because Chibnall is the kind of guy who thinks a dude with teeth pressed into his face is creepy or is this because reusing Cyberman heads is cheap? I’ll let you decide.

The Cyberheads and their eye lasers do quick work of the Doctor’s relays and sends everyone scattering to the wind. With three of the humans dead, Ryan, a young boy named Ethan, and the Doctor get left behind. Yaz and Graham, find themselves aboard a rickety gravraft with the remainder of the humans. With the TARDIS too far away, the Doctor decides they need to hijack a Cybership. I gotta give it to the Cybermen, they take better care of their ship than they do their own bodies. It’s almost as if there was no continuity in the design. Or maybe it’s like when you see someone whose life is a total mess but they have a dope car. I’ll let you decide.

After Ethan hotwires the Cybership, the Doctor pilots the ship to the most logical destination- her TARDIS. No, I’m just kidding, that would have made sense! Instead, she goes somewhere. I just double-checked with my boyfriend and we honestly couldn’t remember why anyone was doing anything at this point in the episode. After combing the episode I finally found a bit of throwaway dialogue where Ethan programmed the ship to go to a place called "Ko Sharmus." Meanwhile, the other group of protagonists are floating listlessly in space, making them the most relatable characters in this episode as that’s exactly how I felt.

By now you’re probably wondering why I haven’t gotten to the B-story happening in this episode. I guess here is as good a place as any, as it made just as much sense crammed anywhere in the episode it pleased. We see a young man and woman find a baby. This baby grows up to be their adopted son, Brendan. Brendan becomes a cop. Brendan gets shot and falls off a cliff. Brendan wakes up unscathed. Brendan’s dad looks at him like he’s creepy. Brendan grows old and retires. Brendan’s dad and boss, seemingly having not aged, wipe his memory. It makes as much sense as a wicker toilet and gives us no new information. At one point I thought he may have been Captain Jack’s kid, but then he grows old, so I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that you could have edited it down and made it into a far better cold opener than that Cyberhead floating in space shit.

The humans aboard the gravraft get stranded next to a giant Cyberman ship where a battle has gone down. Remnants of Cybermen ping the hull of their vessel like tiny asteroids. They get the bright idea to use the airlock to give the gravraft an extra thrust into the Cybership. I don’t know if it was intentional, but having Graham say "Don’t panic," right before they release the airlock was a nice little Douglas Adams reference. Or maybe it wasn’t at all, but I’ll take any joy from this episode I can get. Much like the idiotic hip bounce from "Can You Hear Me?" that knocked the sonic screwdriver up into the Doctor’s hands, the gravraft makes a million in one shot directly into the Cyberman ship’s docking bay. If they have that kind of luck sinking shots like that, they should really take their skills to the minigolf course.

The second I saw the ship, I knew that they were going to do the rows upon rows of sleeping Cybermen emerging from their tombs. It’s a Doctor Who trope as old as the Patrick Troughton era. My boyfriend was enjoying these bits as he is less familiar with the history of Doctor Who, so I let him have his fleeting enjoyment. I couldn’t even get jazzed about the new Cyberman design as they had already spoiled it with online photos. Basically, aside from the head-scratching B-story, the plot to tonight’s episode could be gathered by looking at promotional photos. There were new Cybermen. The Lone Cyberman was there. Nothing new to be learned here. Though, I will admit those new Cybermen are genuinely awesome.

The Doctor has a brief encounter with a hologram of the Lone Cyberman, or "Ashad." We learn that Ashad doesn’t just want to destroy all humans, he wants to destroy all life in the universe, for reasons. So I guess it wasn’t all a wash. Ashad heads to the Cybership where he begins waking up the Cybermen by what looks like torture. I have absolutely zero idea why he was doing what he was doing. It’s not at all made clear. Was he giving a titty twister so the Cybermen would accept him as their leader? Because after waking up the rest of them, they all seem to fall in line. Honestly, what the hell was he doing to that Cyberman? It makes no goddamn sense.

One thing I will say that made me happy was that one of my predictions from before episode one came true. They gave Graham a bit of a love interest. I called that shit. This possible love interest came in the form of Ravio, one of the human colonists. I found it rather amusing that in the future humans would still speak with British accents but have lost all context for Cockney rhyming slang. It was a cute bit of dialogue that falls apart if you think about it too much. The Cybermen force the humans into a corner to barricade themselves from the onslaught of Cybermen, and that’s where they’re left until next weekend.

Meanwhile, the Doctor arrives at Ko Sharmus which ends up being a person’s name as opposed to a planet. Chris Chibnall’s ability to name characters has not improved. Seriously, there are characters named Feekat and Yedlarmi in this episode. It hardly matters though as they’re all rather forgettable. I had to comb the episode and the internet just to figure out who was who. The Doctor never even introduces herself to Ethan. I had to figure his name out through one of the many throwaway lines of dialogue. That’s not to say that they don’t have real bits of character development. But you can take all of the character development in the world and wrap it around a hollow plot and it equals a lot of me not giving a shit.

Ko Sharmus was a welcome addition, simply because he was played by the charismatic Ian McElhinney. Turns out he’s a human colonist who stays behind in case any more humans might one day also come to this planet. There’s a sort of gateway or “boundary” out of the galaxy where many humans have gone to escape pursuit by Cyberman. Ko Sharmus’ job is to act as a guide to any possible newcomers also looking to reach said boundary. However, the Doctor quickly learns that the boundary is actually a gateway to Gallifrey. Only now it shows Gallifrey as the Master left it- in ruins.

Did I mention the Master? Well, here he is, making a "grand" entrance. The only thing at this point that was grand about the introduction of the Master to the story was that I was excited that something of substance was actually about to happen. Instead, this is our cliffhanger- this not at all surprising reveal that the Master is still alive. Of course, he is, he’s the Master. It’s a season finale with the Cybermen, of course, the Master is going to be there. It’s been that way for the past two Cyberman season finales. I guess the third time is a charm? What about any of this is supposed to be surprising? Remember how I said I was afraid they were becoming far too reliant on big reveals? This ending is the epitome of that. I think they expected to blow our minds by having the storyline they set up at the beginning of the series come into fruition. Try harder Chibs, this shit was weak.

The biggest shocker here is how little happened. What we were left with was akin to a classic filler episode where the Doctor gets captured. They padded out everything because they didn’t want next week’s episode to be ten minutes longer. Tonight’s episode exists purely because Chris Chibnall couldn’t edit down the script of a single episode into something shorter. This wouldn’t be so egregious if at least one storyline came to some sort of conclusion. If the B-story with Brendan had gone somewhere it might have made the entire episode feel somewhat worth the time and effort. Instead, we’re forced to watch a team of talented actors fill time.

I can’t help but feel like last week’s episode should have been this week’s episode with maybe a bit more setup for the finale. In place of this forgettable fluff, we could have gotten a single contained episode in its place. Something that had a beginning, middle, and end. Because of this, it’s almost as if we’ve been shorted an episode. Because of all of the wasted time in "Ascension of the Cybermen," I can only think of two outcomes for next week. One is an episode crammed so full of exposition that it will feel messy and disjointed. The other is an episode that is as equally underwhelming as tonight’s effort. Do you really mean to tell me they’re going to fit a Cyberman battle, Captain Jack, the Master, Gallifrey, the Timeless Child, and possibly Ruth into an episode and it not be a mess? It’s hard to have faith that there is a reason behind this much wasted screentime. I could use some of Graham’s optimism because at this moment it’s looking a bit hopeless.

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

🎻🔮🌷 . How've you been?

(I’ve been doing much better lately!)

send 3 emojis to my askbox and I’ll come up with a story premise/plot based on them

emojis used: violin, crystal ball, tulip 

~

Enjoy reading my original writing? Consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi under the name ibelieveinahappilyeverafter to keep more stories coming!

~

Title: Thrice Around and Thrice Again

Rating: Young Adult

Summary: Adrina is a simple cottage witch with regrettable friends whomake poor decisions. Unfortunately for her, one of those poor decisions comesright to her door. 

~

Ragged, freshly pluckedtulip petals slipping through her fingers, Adrina watched carefully as theseven petals floated down to rest in her mortar. A quick search and riflingthrough glass bottles that knocked together and tinkled pleasantly faded off asa vial of spring water was added next, a soft murmur mixing with the grind ofthe mortar and pestle, “Let’s see… Tulip petals, spring water, and… Ah, St.John’s Wort!” 

A quick addition andsoon everything was ground down into a smooth, pleasant-smelling paste thatAdrina took in with a soft sigh. “What do you think, Bastille? Thinks it’s readyfor Mrs. Basil and her impeccable taste?” 

A quiet, warbling meowanswered her, Adrina glancing down to where Bastille, formly nothing more thana starved, stray black cat, crawled up her desk before standing on his backlegs and wobbling. Adrina threw out her arm to stable him, laughing as his armshooked around her own as he looked at the paste curiously. 

“What a silly kitty,”Adrina teased, leaning over to brush a kiss against his head. “You know, if itweren’t for me making you my familiar, you would look quite terrifying likethis.” As it was, familiars always took on human qualities - whether by choiceor by magic. Bastille was still a bundle of purring softness, but he could nowat least walk on his back legs, overall shape of his body more like a youngtoddler than that of a cat trying to balance. “Well? What do you think?”

Bastille burst intopurring, Adrina laughing as she moved to begin bottling up the paste. Itwouldn’t cure Mrs. Basil of her joint pain anytime soon, but it would help easethe pain for a couple of moons. 

Whispering a few softwords and whistling a soft pink mist into the bottle, Adrina screwed a lid ontothe bottle and set it aside to be delivered soon. Settling into the familiarroutine of cleaning up her work bench, Adrina soon found herself humming,sweeping from one end of the floor to the other as she twirled in herskirts. 

It wasn’t until she wasconscious of the fact she was humming along to a violin’s sweet, trillingmelody that she felt herself trail to a stop. She then snapped her gaze to thedoor with a swear and a hiss of, “Sundrid.”

A look back to herfamiliar showed he was making small noises to match the melody, twirling aroundon her desk. She felt her anger grow because charming her was one thing, butcharming her familiar was another. 

Sucking in a breath andwhistling long and low, Adrina closed her eyes and listened to the echo thatdrifted around her small home, bouncing off the walls and slipping out throughthe open windows. A second later and she heard Bastille’s unhappy grumbles anda familiar voice swearing.

Stomping to her door,Adrina jerked it open, glaring right at the brightly dressed man in front ofher who had been fumbling with his violin with a frown. When he looked up,Adrina was pleased to see him pale before throwing on a bright smile that shonewith fear. Good. 

“Adrina, my beautifulflower! You look so lovely today! Have you done something new to your hair?That bright, lovely red shines like the sun and reflects your bright and fierynature-”

“None of your trickstoday, Wordsmith!” Adrina yelled at him, tempted to grab one of her boots bythe door and throw it at him. “The last time your presence darkened my doorstepI had to deal with a colony of drakes!”

“Ah, but what a fineadventure it was!” Sundrid, with sleek, tousled brown hair, brown eyes thatshone like captured sunlight, and a crooked smile that showed off a sharpincisor was charming enough to get his way in whatever he wished. Adrina hatedhim for it. “You, me, a couple of brave adventures, and quite a hefty reward-”

“I knew it!” Adrinathrew her hands up, stalking out into the grass and shoving a finger againstSundrid’s chest. “Don’t you think for one second that I’m going onanother mad adventure with you when I’m still recovering from the last one.”

Sundrid sighed,returning his violin to his case proper and taking her hand softly, eyeslooking into her own, “Dearest Adrina, I never meant to cause you harm. Theinjuries that befall you were ones I could not have planned for. I dideverything I could-”

Jerking her hand back,Adrina shoved it over his mouth to shut him up. She then took a few seconds toremind herself that murder was not something that was in her creed, but oh, howshe wished it was. She gave herself just enough time to not want tostrangle him before she spoke again after removing her hand. “How much thistime?”

“Ten thousand with thepossibility of a bonus depending on how quick we are about the matter.” Tenthousand. Ten thousand- Adrina could move anywhere with that amount!With a quarter of that amount! It was suspicious. It was too suspicious.

“What trouble have youfound now?” Adrina asked softly, eyes narrowed as Sundrid broke eye contact andlooked away and there. There was the twist. “Tell me you didn’t agree toanything foolish.”

“Of course not!” Sundridcrossed his arms, drew himself up, and gave one of his crooked grins thatAdrina rolled her eyes at. “I took on a quest that will make us legends.”Oh. Oh, no. It was this line of thought again. 

Adrina took a steadybreath, remembering that she loved the horrid, vile creature in front of her asa brother and had since childhood. “Sundrid. If this is about a dragon-”

“It’s about a dragon!”No. No. “Specifically, it’s about rescuing a princess from adragon- Adrina?”

Adrina scooped Bastilleup from the doorway, holding him close as she slammed the door shut, closingher eyes and sighing as she heard no less than six things hit the ground.Looking down to Bastille, Adrina asked a soft, “What do you think? Am I beingunreasonable?”

Bastille looked up ather, half-climbing over her shoulder and looking at the door before hissing.Adrina chuckled, setting him down gently and, right. Back to work. She had actualwork to do. Not- Not some quest. Witches like her did not goon quests. 

Picking up the few itemsthat had fallen, Adrina paused at the old, tarnished crystal ball that hadrolled into a patch of soft sunlight. Picking it up before any damage could bedone, Adrina paused as she saw a glimmer from the fractured pieces of crystalinside, reflecting a million possibilities and oh… Now that wasinteresting. 

Settling the relic downon her table gently, Adrina turned back to the door and stared before sighingand marching over to snap it back open. Sundrid, as she expected, was moroselysitting in the grass and pouting. 

Not stopping until shewas right in front of him and he was looking terrified, Adrina stared down athim. “Sixty percent. Take it or-”

“I’ll take it!” Sundridwas already up and clutching her hands and spinning her around, Adrina makingsure to not dare laugh or smile even as amusement curled around herheart. 

If nothing else, she had a feeling this questwas going to be interesting.

[vampiremeerkat]

What do you usually do when you decide on writing a new story? Do you first write a list of the events happening in it, or do you just start writing the story?

Music inspires me and I think of random stories with characters I already know to help me fall asleep at night. The latter spawned the Until See You Again series. I’m not the type of person to sit down with pen and paper and use valuable daytime staring into space. Concerning music; with every song I hear I ask myself what it could be used for. If I can imagine a music video or fake TV intro for it, then the song is gud. I’ll bother with an actual story depending on the characters I see starring in these. I can try to describe a thought process I had recently.In the bus, I was listening to the “Atomic“ cover by Party Animals for the one millionth time, and I guess it only then hit me how fun it would be as an intro song. Based on the melody and tone, this “show“ had to be grand and playful, so that was my starting point. At first I imagined a person transforming into something, Sailor Moon-style, but that’s not a story. The lyrics also had to be considered, but there weren’t many lines to work with. The men shout “Atomic!“ and the lady who replaces Blondie.. the same dribble about giving her a good night. And the one compliment to her man that his “hair is beautiful”. So alright, this main character needed nice hair and have it be a point of focus. Giving yourself such a demand is silly, but it worked out in the end.Anyway, because the name of the song is a specific word that gets repeated, it became a restriction; and “Atomic” had to be the title of the show. There're only two genres out there that could make a title like this work, namely science-fiction and superhero content. In short, I chose to make the main character a superhero, calling himself “Atomic“. I didn’t think it was the best name out there, though. It’s an adjective and hardly relevant to the powers I ended up giving him, but I guess animes would get away with it, so why not me. In order to excuse it further, I decided to do a misheard lyrics thing and make this character’s real name sound similar to it. A self-proclaimed hero would be this lazy. “Anton” was the first name I could think of, and with that I confirmed the character’s gender and roots. Back home I looked up Asian surnames that sounded like “mik“, since I already pondered whether the art style for this should be manga and the character partially Japanese. Because of the bad superhero name and earlier Sailor Moon thought and all that. Ended up going for an original art style.Anton is a German name, so I looked up what the largest population of Asians in Germany is, which are the Vietnamese. Not many Vietnamese last names have been shared on the internet, but the combination “Anton Mạch” sounded pretty close according to the Vietnamese Google Translate robot. Now this superhero needed a backstory. I already imagined a spaceship floating about in the intro, so he was going to be an astronaut. Or rather, a government test subject who spent his entire life alone in outer space, only for him to get killed by the first interesting thing he comes across in 80 years.You know how intensive space exploration is difficult for humans, because we don’t live long enough to reach new places, and I often wondered if we’d ever go as far as sending a colony of some sort, that would ensure new life is born and trained to control the spaceship and bring everyone further into this never-ending environment. It'd be a horrible reality that'd force these humans to live a restricted existence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it became a reality one day. I used this idea for Anton, who’s a lonesome orphan in a spaceship built by his dead parents, equipped to raise and teach a child. After the many years of nothing, he finds a light that destroys his ship and causes his death, then resurrects him again and basically gives him a second chance of life. This is more or less where the funny comes in, because I’m a sicko that likes tragedy and humor. And so does everyone else, otherwise Sans from Undertale would’ve never become this popular.Now that the character has a name and a backstory, thanks to this one boppin’ song, I had to think of the general plot and give description of Anton as a hero. You have to bring something new to the table here, otherwise what’s the point. It’s pretty hard to think of original powers and story arcs, since the superhero genre is enormous and the most idiotic characters that shouldn’t exist have their own comic book. I settled for a simple black bodysuit with white sleeves and high collar as his costume. The only reason we accept Spiderman’s clown suit is because we’re used to it, not because it looks cool. The hair thing from the song also had to be included, of course. The light’s explosion infused Anton’s once grey hair with some kind of mirror particles that reach so far, it shows the image of space in it. It was the easiest way for me to make his hair “beautiful“. Settling with this look meant his superpowers had to be related to space as well, but fine, I needed a theme. The environment of outer space is more or less his set of powers, like spawning comets, black holes, erasing oxygen, inflicting freezing cold, all that is highly unsuitable to use against normal human beings. Having that said, the story wrote itself and is about Anton’s Atomic character making a name for himself and people pretending to be content and obedient in his presence, as to refrain him from playing a hero.In short, I don’t write anything down. I think of stories at the most useless moments of the day, and if I still remember what I came up with by the time I place myself in front of a computer, I’ll make a drawing or write a Wiki page about it.If I don’t remember, then arguably my idea wasn’t good enough to remember.

[incorrectmlpquotes]

My Thoughts on Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks

Or: Are we sure this didn’t come out in 2004 rather than 2014? Because the “battle of the bands”  story line feels super dated for some reason. I feel like almost every early 2000s cartoon had some sort of music contest episode, and I never liked them. I blame American Idol for making those popular.

Some History:

I’m under the impression that everything in this movie I dislike is a completely subjective thing that wouldn’t bother someone else. I know that, from a movie standpoint, this is much better than the first, but I just don’t like it as much. Everything that warrants complaint comes from a personal hangup that I have (such as: my lack of any musical ability causes me to not care at all whether their band is successful), so if you disagree, I completely understand. These are all my opinions, and I’m aware that this is probably the best of the four movies. (As stated on a previous post, I haven’t watched any of the shorts from 2017 or 2018 as of this entry)  

There were a series of promotional shorts released before the movie debuted that explains how the members of the Main 5 came to play their instruments in Rainbow Dash’s band, and some other random stuff. Here’s the link to the playlist on youtube. Here’s a quick rundown of what I think:

Music to My Ears : meh

Guitar Centered : funny, but kind of mean spirited

Hamstocalypse Now : Hilarious.

Pinkie on the One : exactly what you’d expect it to be

Player Piano: a masterpiece

A Case for the Bass: Applejack is one word, why would she have AJ embroidered on the strap? I know people call her that but those aren’t her initials

Life is a Runway: There’s a reason they didn’t let Rarity write the songs

Shake Your Tale: Bad.

This was a pretty clever way to establish some musical background within the group without taking up time in the movie. It also is some sneaky foreshadowing with Trixie, which I appreciate.

In the actual movie: My nitpicks are going to be less Why is no one in class? Why is doesn’t anyone have homework? Because I realize this is a movie and depicting high school as it actually is would be boring to watch. Besides, there are plenty of other things to complain about.

We open on a scene of this film’s villains. And yes I am going to refer to them as villains instead of antagonists because 1) they are actually a threat and we see them doing bad things, and 2) other people will serve as antagonists. A villain is different from an antagonist, even though the terms are often used interchangeably. 

The Dazzlings are so cool, they make a cameo four years later. Either this is some really deep foreshadowing, or by season seven the writers were so desperate for an ongoing arc, they looked to other properties. But we now know that the guardians banished them over 1,000 years ago. So they really are ancient magic. And now they have to go to high school. Talk about eternal torment… 

Way to take all the credit, Starswirl

We are shown how they are a sort of siren, who feed off of people’s negativity and discord and use their beautiful enchanted voices to cause mayhem. Kind of like a mix between Ursula the sea witch and Spectra from Danny Phantom. Oh my gosh, this is the second one of these reviews that I’ve brought up Danny Phantom. Maybe this is why Butch thinks he’s so popular.

The Dazzlings, we can infer, have been exiled to the EQG-verse from Equestria. So apparently this universe is like the pony version of colonial Australia, where they send all their criminals and miscreants. A solid plan that couldn’t have any negative repercussions. The sirens see a beam of light that must be the one from the last movie. This is good news for them, but bad news for me because now I have no idea how much time has passed the two films. Has it been a couple days? Weeks? Moons? This will make a difference in regards to why people still don’t trust Sunset. But why waste time setting up the story when we can get right into the remix title card?

At this point, I can only assume that principal Celestia threatened to expel students if they told the news or the FBI about the magical winged demon that attacked the school, because no one seems too concerned about that incident.

But they have plenty of time to hurt my baby’s feelings

I’m going to be honest, when I first watched EQG I thought that Sunset was faking her remorseful act after being defeated. As cool as that would have been, she makes a much better reformed bad guy than an antagonist, because she really wasn’t in the last movie that much.

List of “evil” things Sunset Shimmer has done: send fraudulent text messages and emails that honestly could have been pretty easily disproved, made fun of Fluttershy, made fun of the steamers in the gym, somehow divided the school into cliques, ran a mostly unsuccessful smear campaign against Twilight’s bid for dance princess, threatened to destroy the portal to Equestria, transformed into a demon to hypnotize the students, and she dissed the Apple cider. 

Ok, that last one is pretty evil. But what really makes this and all subsequent movies great is that we get to see her learn and grow and change from the experience into a real friend.

I am glad to see that the Main 5 have forgiven her, but no one is quite ready to absolve her of guilt. Like, I might not think she did all that much bad junk, but the students of Canterlot High seem to think she was one tier below Mussolini  in terms of maniacal dictators, so I don’t blame them for being cautious. It takes a lot to earn back trust.

Back in Equestria proper, the Mane six plus Spike are sitting around waiting for the plot to affect them. They kindly provide some exposition and once again setup the fact that only Twilight can go through the portal, because the others can’t interact with themselves. So we think. I will be bringing this up when we get to The Friendship Games.

Back through the portal, Twilight  gets looped into the fact that Sunset has changed her ways. It’s fair to be a little apprehensive to trust someone who, the last time you saw them, was an actual literal demon. (Don’t worry though, Twi, you’ve still got two more unicorns to reform. It’s kind of your thing.)

Don’t reject her love Twilight, it’s all I have to live for

And now it’s time to discuss the small blue elephant in the room. I feel like I really need to explain why I dislike the addition of Flash to any of the plots. He’s kind of a waste of a potential. You want to add a male character: fine. But make them an actual real fleshed-out character. The show has proven that they can do it and do it well. Sunburst and Thorax are great characters who feel like a good addition to the story. And we got a real sense of who they were in one or two twenty minute episodes. I have no clue what this guy’s purpose is except to be a love interest, and this is not the show to do that with. With very few exceptions, the main characters of MLP have not sought out romantic partners, Twilight included. Why would she choose to do so now? I mean, I get why he’s into Twilight: she’s taken the form of a cute teenage girl. But he’s a species that doesn’t even exist in Equestria. She just fell through a portal and instantly got the hots for some weird otherworldly creature…

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Perhaps this isn’t compulsory heterosexuality. Perhaps Twilight Sparkle is just a Monster Lover™. I can respect that.

Moving on.

It was so very smart of the writers to have the Dazzlings brainwash the principals in order to get away with this scheme. That makes so much more sense and covers any plot holes that could arise (such as, someone claiming to be a new student despite having no transcript, no grades, and no knowledge of how to hold a pen).

Does time work differently between these two universes? Has it been months in Equestria but only a week in this world? (It really threw me off that the first four season of MLP took place over one year, and these movies don’t help that). And the sad thing is, this could be easily hand-waved away by a single throw away line, but it isn’t.

The Dazzlings are already better villains than Sunset, even from a character standpoint. We know their powers, we know their motivation, and we know they are capable of bringing about an actually believable rift between friends.

Then the best song, best montage, and possibly best scene in any of these films happen: the Dazzling come into the lunchroom and hypnotize everyone. This song is beautiful and eerie and exactly what you would expect a magic spell to sound like. I also enjoy the visual representation of the bands competing (and not just because I didn’t want to hear any of them perform) that we’ll see later. To give credit where credit is due, this movies has some great visual sequences.

Give ‘em the o’l razzle dazzle

At first I thought it was unrealistic that this many kids had bands, but I realized it was probably an effect of the spell. But I might not be the best judge: I think I know maybe three people, plus myself, who don’t play an instrument. I’ll just assume that the Disney channel exists in this universe, and all these children just really want to be famous.

It’s worth sitting through this movie just to see everyone’s pajamas. That’s not weird, right? No really, the scene of them all having a big slumber party is everything I ever wanted from this series. They managed to capture everyone’s personality from an article of clothing. Now THAT’s good character design.

I get the distinct impression that the writers of this don’t like Rainbow Dash.

Oh good, references to technology that couldn’t possibly date this movie in the slightest. Wait… this is Pinkie’s house. Aren’t the Pies supposed to be like Amish or resembling Amish-type folk? What is the human equivalent of rock farmers? Not actual farmers because those exist in the pony-verse. This really confuses me, but Maude’s cameo is fantastic.

The scene with Twilight and Sunset is one of those really well-done moments that reminds me why I love the show so much. It feels really genuine, and supports my argument that it was worth having Sunset as a crappy villain just to reform her.

Ah yes, the sweet, lingering glances that totally platonic female friends share with each other late at night. I know them well.

Our girl Twily seems to be having trouble writing a spell that can double as a catchy pop song (She’s no Lana Del Rey), so they go with an old set list. How long has this band been operational? Weren’t they in a huge feud for several years?

Mac is a close second for best cameo

So we get to watch the band audition, and it goes about as well an actual high school talent show. The CMC are in the outfits from Showstoppers (which is hilarious) and Snips and Snails rap (which is disturbing). In order to keep my goblin brain from exploding while trying to figure out the ages of everyone, I’m just going to assume that this is a combination Middle School and High School. So, if Sunset won fall dance princess four years in a row, she would be in the tenth grade now, so they would be about 15-16. The Equestria Girls Holiday Comic shows Rarity driving a car, so that could be a possibility.

A. Daft. Punk. Reference. Wow. Just wow. (Note: this was more shocking before season five, when there was a character that was basically Lady Gaga. And by basically, I mean very obviously Lady Gaga. Remember when the pop culture references in this show were subtle?)

Dash’s song is quite possibly the most cringeworthy thing I have ever heard. The only defense is it does sound like something a high schooler would write.

On that note, why is Rainbow Dash the lead singer of the group? I mean, I know why, but WHY? (and yes, I am aware that her voice actress is a singer. But Ashleigh Ball uses her normal voice when she performs. Think back to all the songs RD has sung in the previous four seasons before this aired. There are not a lot of solos or high notes. When she sings as Applejack, it is beautiful, but Dash’s voice is grating sometimes)

Really? A battle of the bands is the greatest thing you’ve done at the school? That whole “stopping an actual demon with magic” was just a regular Friday for you? I’ll chalk that up to the brainwashing, otherwise I might go full on rage and throw my laptop out a window.

I guess our merry band of protagonists weren’t paying attention to big cafeteria scene, because they just now figured something suspicious is going on.

Still haven’t fixed the lights in that dim corner of lockers. Fortunately, there are many dramatic confrontations to be had.

I think we’re supposed to see Rarity’s obsession with the outfits as a ridiculous thing, but I think it’s important to distinguish this universe from the one with the professional seamstress who has unicorn magic at her disposal. This is a teenager who has school, extracurriculars, and parents to contend with. If I went through the trouble to hand-make seven costumes for my friends, then found out no one would wear them, I’d be pretty ticked off as well.

Now this is how you montage. We get to play a fun game of “guess which characters are in which band,” and seeing their “humanized” designs. Lotta bootcut pants in this show.

I’m just going to leave this here...

This is some actually effective villainy. The whole school has turned against each other. Maybe they need to learn about the magic of friendship. Unfortunately, the gang is too busy squabbling over band stuff, and Twilight is too distracted to give an overly emotional speech.

No one in the rule book does it say magically turning into a pony is grounds for disqualification...I would assume.

If we’re being honest here, the Dazzlings are better performers than the Rainbooms.

And we’ve come to the crux of things. The scene where they’re locked under the stage is the perfect example of my biggest issue with this movie. I do not like to see Mane 6 fight. I don’t like Trade Ya, I don’t like Putting Your Hoof Down, and I despise Look Before You Sleep. Seeing this otherwise close group of friends constantly have petty arguments, even if it’s for completely valid plot reasons, make me want to turn the movie off. This isn’t a criticism of the screenwriting, it is just a reason why I personally dislike Rainbow Rocks more than the other films.

Of course, they make up because this is about the magic of friendship and what not, but notice how no one actually apologizes for their behavior. No, “I’m sorry that I minimized your contribution to the group or made fun of something you were passionate about.” I realize they were under the influence of magic, but they also knew that! They knew the Dazzlings had the power to turn people against each other! An apology is just a preamble to fundamental behavior change, and if they don’t realize why they were being bad friends, how can they learn from anything?

And the real kicker is, they knew what the Dazzlings were capable of. Twilight read a book about them immediately before going through the portal. It’s not they they just learned that they spread chaos. Why are we fighting? Gee, I don’t know.

DJ-ex-machina. I’m ok with this.

To the movie’s credit, the finale really has one of the best song of the movie. And by that, I of course mean Trixie’s song. Trixie is the most fun addition to the cast. She makes for a fun antagonist, on her own and as a Pawn to the Dazzlings.

Fight scene! Fight scene! We’re gonna have a fight scene!

Now that they’ve put their petty squabbles behind them, it’s time for a big music battle. The Dazzlings pony up harness the energy of the audience to project their Equestrian selves to...I don’t know. Take over the world or something.

This isn’t even their final form

Oh. This design looked better in book form

Sunset is Magic. That’s the show.

So the stones auto-tuned them, and that made everyone mindlessly antagonistic. I’m sure there’s some clever commentary there.

T’was the magic of friendship that killed the beast.

No, you don’t get to just rejoin the plot

Thank you, Trixie.

The real story here is how Principal Celestia will pay off the press.

Thus Twilight goes back to the land of horses, Starlight has been truly forgiven, and my Netflix suggestions will never been the same again.

I want to give a big shout out to the person who put all the captions on the image gallery for this movie’s wikia page. They are funnier than I could ever hope to be.

Some general thoughts:

The scene of Twilight awkwardly yelling “Friendship is magic!” to a room of confused teenagers is the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen, but it got a good laugh out of me. Look at the Dazzlings faces in this scene. “Ok, we legitimately didn’t see that coming.”

One of the reasons that I am so drawn to the show is that they are able to create conflict and drama without being mean-spirited. I have to deal with that kind of nonsense so much in my daily life, I just don’t want to subject myself to eighty minutes of it. But i get it: from a narrative standpoint, this is the most cohesive. There’s some good set up and pay off, and an actually intimidating villain who is actually present in the plot.

I love Trixie so much, I should be dead. She really is the star of the show. I forgot how little we saw of her before season six.

The stinger, oh the stinger. Forget what I said about the pajama party; it was worth sitting through this for the promise of an interesting sequel.

We’ll get to you soon, you marvelous lesbian disaster.

Starlight’s redemption is the best part of this franchise, and it’s worth all the nonsense to hear Rebecca Shoichet’s angelic voice.

From a purely film standpoint, this is probably the best one of the bunch. It has a clear structure, everyone’s motivations check out, there’s an actual climax that feels earned. I just don’t enjoy it. There are worse ways to spend eighty minutes 3.7/5

The worst thing to come from this, however, is the terrifying merchandise:

What Fresh Hell is This?

[hirazuki]

I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.   

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices. 

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right. 

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation. 

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien. 

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth. 

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD. 

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled???? 

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. 

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.    

3. The Female Lead: 

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her. 

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.   

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a  racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between. 

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture. 

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

[village-skeptic]

on “having it both ways”: thinking about S2 and looking ahead to S3

So apparently once a year I end up latching on to Riverdale pre-season promo and having WAY TOO MUCH to say about it.

Image analysis, pop-culture riffing, S2 criticism, meditations on resistant reading, my own discomfort with “wrongfully accused” narratives in this particular historical moment, and some hopes on the literal eve of the S3 premiere, below the cut...

So, last week when this piece of promo dropped, the very first thing that I thought of was the visual reference to Chicago and the Cell-Block Tango.

(I didn’t do it! - but if I’d done it? - how could you tell me that I was wrong?)

HOW perfect is that homage? The red lighting, the raised arms? The promo still just FEELS like a snapshot from a Fosse dance routine. (A little more on legendary choreographer Bob Fosse here.)

It’s a defiant pose, right in the center of the frame, but a slightly vulnerable one at the same time. There’s nothing hidden here; everything’s on display. The pose draws the viewer’s eyes inescapably to the body - a muscled body, but one which here seems like a gymnast or dancer’s body: lithe figure, tapered waist, power that is channeled into performance.

(this is tasty; this is plenty; this is hungry work)

So, on a first pass, insofar as it puts this demonstrative male body on display, it’s a little bit of a subversive image, I think. And that’s well in line with the way that Riverdale so often courts the female (and/or gay male) gaze, and at its best does some really unusual stuff with masculinity. 

I thought about all of this - and then, silly me, I saw that this piece of promo was NOT a still, but is, instead, a short clip. 

Archie doing pull-ups on the prison bars, as another heavily muscled dude saunters behind him, reads to me like a completely different type of performance! To the degree that it invites the eye, it sends the message: don’t fuck with me. In motion, we have purely the pursuit of greater strength, the purging of weakness in favor of the means of self-protection. 

Instead of Chicago, my mind jumps to 3x01′s title source: Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Dominate or be dominated. 

Realistically, I’m willing to believe that the ambiguous interpretation here between “still” and clip is just a quirk of how it happened to be uploaded to Twitter by a social media intern. 

Still - the interpretative gulf between the still image and the image in motion got me thinking how often Riverdale seems to want to “have it both ways,” and what that does to the audience’s experience and expectations of the show.

For instance:

Other people have written at length about how Riverdale’s pursuit of aesthetic homage or plot contrivance has created character inconsistencies that occasionally baffle. Cheryl is alternately a tragic Gothic heroine and a lacquered, ruthless Mean Girl; Jughead is both a sensitive loner writer and also a bad-boy gang leader; Betty is both Betty and Dark Betty. (GOD.)

Other folks have discussed how the show needs to really play out the consequences of conflicts between the characters. It’s not that the show shouldn’t drop bombshells like the Bughead breakup(s) or the conflict between Betty and Veronica/Jughead and Archie, but it seems all too willing to reset back to milkshakes in a booth at Pop’s without doing enough work to explain WHY things are okay again. (See also: resolving major conflicts between characters literally with a song.)

The desire to “have it both ways” also really shows up in the show’s tendency to engage complicated issues (racism, sexism, colonialism, the prison-industrial complex) on a shallow level - thus getting credit for mentioning them, without really taking the time to explore them meaningfully or to explain the characters’ investment in them. 

The result of this, in terms of storytelling, is that you leave a lot of room for resistant (even combative) readings of the text to emerge. To name a few of my own:

frustration with Jughead’s acceptance of what feels like a suuuuper patriarchal role as “the Serpent Prince” (and later King)

the fact that it’s really hard to sympathize with Veronica throughout entire swathes of season 2

a profound opposition to a storyline that sexualizes Betty’s mental health issues in a really exploitative fashion

And then... there’s Archie.

In the “Cell Block Tango,” the murderesses of Chicago (bar one) get to justify their crimes. Conversely, as we open the third season of Riverdale, the audience knows that Archie’s being blamed for something he didn’t do. Despite bragging about it (!!) to a bunch of mobsters (!!!!), Archie is not guilty of the murder of Cassidy Bullock. 

...but he IS guilty of so! many! other! things! across Season 2. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but aiding and abetting a criminal, covering up a murder, blowing up a car, and forming an extralegal vigilante militia group - TWICE - all come to mind. 

The last bits of S2 offer us a version of Archie’s amends-making that comes in the form of defending the Serpents, turning on Hiram, supporting his father, et cetera. And then the very last image of S2 - Archie being clapped in cuffs right at the moment that he’s supposed to be sworn into office - is meant to distress us.

But a season of watching Archie embrace fascism leaves some marks, y’all. And a not insignificant portion of the audience, still frustrated with the character’s choices, couldn’t help but say - well, he had it coming.

So, yeah. It’s been a few months between the close of S2 and the open of S3, and in most cases that would be enough time for me to sit with the story in and of itself, to consider more broadly where it had failed or succeeded, and to allow some of that “resistant reader” response to drain away.

But real talk, you guys: I’m finding it really hard right now, at this moment in American history, to connect emotionally with the story of a young man trying to fight the charges of which he has been wrongfully-yet-ever-so-plausibly accused.  

[Please note, I am NOT trying to say that RAS is somehow trying to weigh in explicitly on the SCOTUS debacle. The S2 finale laying the groundwork for this plot aired this spring, and S3E1 has (presumably?) been in the can for a while now. And, to its credit, Riverdale has in both seasons explicitly criticized a sexual culture that objectifies young women and reduces them to “points” (the football team’s playbook) and to prey (Nick St. Clair).]

But, for me personally, I can’t help looking at this plot and hearing echoes of “It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of.”

Here’s the interesting thing: I think RAS knows this, and I think the promo around this plot is partially designed to try to dispel these connections. 

(For me, at least, it’s having mixed results.)

(source)

For instance, I can’t look at this still (young man, formal suit intended to project good character and youthful vulnerability, sullen face, flanked by counsel) without thinking, “Wow, this feels....Brock Turner-y.” 

I don’t know if anyone’s written about courtroom photos and sketches as a genre of visual composition, but I feel like I’ve seen variations of the Riverdale still a million times, often printed on the front page of the local university newspaper, discussing the controversy over the conviction (or NON-conviction) of a promising young athlete accused of something awful that no one who knows him EVER would have suspected he would do. (Nice boy, nice family, so many extracurriculars, such good grades!)

Of course, there’s a major difference between the photos above: Archie’s defense team is entirely female. 

Obviously this makes sense because Mary Andrews and Sierra McCoy are both major supporting characters who are also lawyers - but it also makes sense in trying to dismantle some of the potential gut reactions to this visual framing. There’s some “innocence by association” going on here, I think. And after all, Archie IS innocent of this particular crime!

This still lands with mixed effect for me though, because any defense strategy that suggests the intentional composition of a visual tableau feels inherently cynical, even when the character is sympathetic or innocent. 

For instance: I just watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which features a scene where the main character shows up in the courtroom in full Upper West Side respectable regalia to try to get the obscenity charges against her dismissed - she fails and ends up having to plead guilty, because she mouths off at the judge. Anyone who’s familiar with Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work will recognize this bones of this plot point in the courtroom scene in Gilmore Girls: Rory’s grandparents’/lawyer’s attempt to portray her as a naive little angel backfires, and she ends up getting a ton of community service as penance for stealing a boat. It’s important to note that the characters are both guilty of their charges - although, as another favorite show of mine might note, “the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that.”)

(source | source)

Another way in which the pre-season promo is distancing Archie from both his actions last season, and the present context external to the show, is to emphasize his profound contrition. In this teaser from Riverdale 3x01, we get Archie declaring that “whatever happens to me in the courtroom on Tuesday - that is what I deserve.” This a statement of universal guilt and responsibility (one might say martyrdom?) that goes well beyond the scope of his actual infractions.

Now - I really, really appreciate that we’re getting a sad Archie rather than a mad Archie. And I want to acknowledge that he’s so definitely a kid here, trying hard to “man up” and to grapple with the fact that he screwed up big time and that there are consequences for his actions. After a season of doing the wrong thing over and over and OVER again, he’s trying to do the right thing. 

But here’s the thing: Fred responds to this confession of near-universal guilt with what (in this snippet) feels like a pair of universally-exculpatory statements: “You are a good kid. You got manipulated by a mobster.” (Mary is more nuanced: “You do not deserve to be framed for murder.”)

Archie does not deserve to be framed for murder, and he certainly did get manipulated by a mobster. In fact, I would like to formally start a petition to have Archie not fall under the control of an unscrupulous adult in S3!

However. 

Instead of accepting guilt for anything and everything and being immediately absolved for non-specific sins because of his inherent “goodness,” I really want to know that Archie understands what he actually DID do last season. He climbed wholeheartedly on board with the plan to Make Riverdale Great Again, and in that process, he did things that were NOT AT ALL commensurate with being “a good kid.” I think both the character and the show would benefit from a more explicit meditation on exactly why Hiram’s manipulation was so effective, and why Archie moved so quickly past being merely Hiram’s pawn, and voluntarily embraced the role of Hiram’s very ambitious accomplice. 

One of the specific preconditions of restorative justice is that the offender has to acknowledge their actions and the hurt that they caused. Reconciliation and vagueness are incompatible for so many reasons, but one of them is because a BIG part of learning from your mistakes is thinking precisely about what you did so that you can choose not to do it again.

I read a bunch of the new Archie comics over the break, and I think I now have a greater appreciation for the trope of Archie as a schlemiel. Despite his best intentions, the Archie archetype keeps making the same goofy, klutzy mistakes over and over again. This is fine, even funny, when it means that Archie just keeps accidentally ending up with a bucket on his head. Whoops! 

It is super not okay if it means that Archie just keeps finding himself supporting fascists. ...whoops?

(At present, my entire country is being “manipulated by mobsters.” Clearly, I have some feelings about this.)

I don’t actually know how to wrap all the loose ends of this analysis up meaningfully and coherently at the finish here - but then again, that probably puts me into good company with our showrunners. Optimistically, I’m going to hope that that’s intentional - that I’m judging in media res, and that plotlines and character arcs in S3 will weave together in a way that will surprise and delight me! 

But mostly, I’m going to reiterate my hope that S3 makes meaningful choices. That the people in charge don’t waste their actors’ time filming oodles and oodles of material that gets sliced and diced to ribbons. That they make choices EARLY about major plot points; that they stick to them; and that they let the rising action and falling action of your narrative reflect those choices, and the consequences that naturally accompany them. 

I hope that the people in charge of S3 will resist the ever-present temptation to “have it both ways” - which ultimately works out to really no definitive way at all. Telling a sturdy story is risky in a totally different way than courting controversy - but it’s so, so worth it. 

[sometimesrosy]

The person that send the ask about JRoth refering to Echo and Madi in the past had/got made me take a sec and think because i understand refering to E in the past because i think that BE are going to break-up but why would he refer to Madi in past tense? and then i remembered aa spec that you sai regarding Madi staying in the planet and Clarke leaving with the others, i think? do you really think that would happen and can you talk more about it? 1/2

2/2 i mean i just don’t see Clarke leaving her daughter alone in another planet, altough there is always the whole flame thing, idk how that is gonna affect their relationship but i mean, would Jason really take away her daughter? that’s a new low, even for him lol

He might just have spoken about them in the past because he was speaking about what happened to Clarke and Bellamy over the time jump. That was all in the past. What happened OFF screen affected who Clarke and Bellamy were in the current timeline. 

As he’s writing, or storyboarding, that means that he’s developing THEIR story based on the past. It might have been a mistake just based on his focus as he writes. None of what they say in cons is edited, you know? You can’t expect them to be perfect or precise.

My speculation about them leaving Two Suns Planet is PURE speculation and just something they COULD do based on certain themes and foreshadowing and tropes and archetypes. It doesn’t at all have to be story they go for. Just ONE story path. 

But you say that taking a characters daughter away and leaving her on a planet alone with others is a new low for JR?

I think that is the EXACT SET UP OF THE 100. Abby Griffin lost her daughter, who was sent down alone onto a poisonous planet with 100 delinquents. 

New low? Or, hey, what this show is about?

Oh. Is it different because Madi is so young? 

Charlotte. Tris. Baby Lovejoy. Aden. Ethan. 

Kids don’t escape violence, loss or death on this show. This is BUILT IN to the narrative. 

Don’t confuse a plot line that you don’t like with something that doesn’t fit. Because it DOES fit. It’s pretty standard that kids on this show grow up a LOT faster than kids irl. And Madi HERSELF was left alone at the age of FIVE. So the concept that JR wouldn’t POSSIBLY leave a child alone is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. BTDT. Pay attention.

In many ways, this show is about the new generation, THE KIDS, learning to find their own power and stand up and change the world for the better. All our delinquents except for Bellamy were kids when they landed on earth. That is the NATURE of this show.

You identified with the kids, so you didn’t notice, except for occasionally, that our kids were actual kids, because you were inside their heads and instead you saw the freedom and the power and the challenges and the heroism. When we looked at the PARENTS, we saw them as characters who did stuff TO the kids, who abandoned them or abused them or sent them to earth or betrayed them or whatever it is. Maybe you didn’t notice because all the actors were playing younger than their real age, because the show WANTED you to think of them as active adult principals. But Jasper and Monty? What were they? 15? That’s only a few years older than Madi. And they had NEVER been left alone to survive by themselves. They weren’t as capable. Maybe the subtle shift of adults playing kids to kids playing kids means that the writers want you to think about what it means to grow up, to be responsible, to be an adult or a parent. Remember, their initial thought was to make the commander a child. They’ve actually gone BACK to their original concept. 

NOW you’ve got YOUR kid as the parent, as the person who is the hero with the motivation and desires and goals. So you see Clarke as the active principle and Madi as the passive one. But it’s the SAME story. 

Clarke raised Madi to be independent, she was driving and going off alone at 11. Hunting and gathering and facing a post apocalyptic earth alone. That’s how she raised her. Now that people are back, Clarke is clinging to Madi and trying to keep her safe when before she’d raised her to keep HERSELF safe. 

We’ve already seen Clarke struggle with the same thing Abby struggled with. Learning to LET HER DAUGHTER GO TO MAKE HER OWN DECISIONS. The audience is sometimes outraged that anyone would allow Madi to make these life or death decisions intended to save Clarke, but Clarke was making life or death decisions from ep 1, and we were outraged that Abby would try to stop her and keep her a child.

So what I’m saying here? This is a THEME we’ve seen in The 100. Madi is a bit younger, but she is also just as capable as Clarke. We have SEEN her be capable. 

Would JR have Clarke lose Madi? 

He had Abby lose Clarke, didn’t he? So yeah. He would. It isn’t some worse horror inflicted upon her. It is a cyclical story. The parent must release her child to her own future as her parent released her. The youth shall inherit the earth.

Actual literal line of dialogue. They PASSED THE BATON. 

So, we need to pay attention to these things if we want to understand something more about the story. 

so my theory about return to earth? ok

so the idea is that they will have to leave planet two suns, that they will have to DESTROY the comfortable, peaceful human society on the planet because it is, like MW, evil. I think we’ll have a parallel to MW. We already know that the eligius 4 mission was a colonization mission, intent on USING the planet for resources because the earth was used up. This is the bad kind of colony. 

We’re also contrasting “doing what is good for you people” with “doing what is right,” and I’m afraid that joining Russell in a peaceful world where their people can finally live life, which would be GOOD for their people, will actually be harming the planet and either another segment of humans OR the native aliens on the planet. 

So in order to do the right thing and be the good guys, they’ll have to destroy this “peace” and sacrifice and easy life for their people.

This would help Clarke and Bellamy resolve their trauma in MW, where they had to DESTROY an entire people, and never made peace with the fact that they HAD to because those people were not JUST another society, but a TOXIC one who was using other human beings as cattle and torturing them, and intending to take over the surface. 

So while this made her think maybe there were no good guys, the truth is, that even though they committed genocide, it was because that society was EVIL. They WERE the good guys. Sometimes you HAVE to do harm. 

So I think we’ll see this again and this time they will recognize that the choice is to let evil flourish through passive inaction and possibly benefit, or GIVE up the soft life and save a planet and a people from subjugation and STOP the cycle of violence that humanity spreads.

See, we’re working on making sure that Humanity DESERVES to survive. So being faced with a pretty, peaceful society that does not DESERVE to survive, means they have to make active choices against it.

The thought here is that they are subjugating or enslaving the aliens or alien/human hybrids or lower class humans of this planet. ECHO, being a child soldier and slave for the throne, while not feeling like she belongs to spacekru, will feel a kinship with the slaves on the planet and she will stay with them.

The other possibility is that Becca has given an ALIE AI to the new planet, so the flame is not irrelevant. Because the flame was created to STOP ALIE. So if there’s another ALIE helping to subjugate these new people, then the FLAME, aka Madi, is there to stop that. COULD someone else take the flame? Yes, because they’re all going to have to be nightbloods. But it’s possible that Madi herself feels too much responsibility and wants to stay to help the new people. but the story here would mean that Madi wouldn’t be alone, but Echo would be staying with her, as her protector. IDK. 

I don’t know it’s an idea. I got it when I realized that Raven said, “Just once I wish I could take off of a planet without it being on fire,” and she did that TWICE, which means the magic number three might have that coming true. So then I imagined raven taking off of this new planet, NOT on fire, but still needing to leave because they destroyed the “peaceful” society. Like breaking the cycle means they leave it a better place, rather than the earth, which humanity has killed. 

Also with the way the time is going, it took 75 years to fly to the new planet. If they go back to the earth, that’s 200 years total, which is the ORIGINAL speculation for how long The Ark would have to stay in space before Earth would be livable. That’s just too neat a coincidence for me. Makes me think that in, maybe s7, they might be back on the earth again. 

All just ideas. I know it’s wacky. But I’ve had a lot of wacky ideas, like using Cryo sleep to escape praimfaya. Or the exodus after they lose Eden. Heck, I told y’all after hakeldama that this show requires Clarke and Bellamy to be TOGETHER in order to work. So I have wacky ideas that I put together when I think about various narrative elements. So here. Have some more.

Also. Because we’re all responsible for our monsters when we let them out, right? Well humanity destroyed Earth. Do they really get to just ditch it and find .a new planet to ruin? I feel like they need to go home and face the mess they made of their planet. To EARN their survival, they have to fix what they did. They have to make amends. Stopping it from happening on another planet might do that, but also, taking care of the planet they hurt. 

[segadores-y-soldados]

Alexandra the Great

Alright, I’ve finished work, had a nice nap, drank some more coffee, and I am READY to rumble.

The new comic gave us a lot of great details to work with - some of it takes a little digging, some of it is speculation, but it feels like, after a year and half of slow, steady story and world-building, constructing the “details” is finally paying off for Blizzards.  This comic had so much to work with, and you can tell that the writers and the artist were so dedicated to making it feel like the most in-universe, grounded comic yet.

To start off with, I’m going to present a few things.

First, you should read these, if you haven’t already:

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/164852538245/overwatch-companies-and-corporations

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/164417776210/devil-in-the-details

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/163200042035/death-becomes-you

You should also have this:

(I’ve seen a lot of people get confused on things like Volskaya’s location vs the “Krasnoyarsk Front, Russia,” where Dorado is, etc.  These are straight from Michael Chu himself.  The columns go: [Real world locations] > [the versions that Blizzard wanted to make for the game] > [the end “combination”])

And finally, a rough timeline of where “Searching” fits in with the rest of the current events in the Overwatch plot:

[Infiltration] > [“Searching” begins] > [“Masquerade” comic occurs (approximately late February, around Carnival in Venice)] > [“Searching” continues] > [Doomfist attacks Numbani] > [Efi makes Orisa] > [Zarya arrives in Numbani]

This essay will be operating on the premise that Sombra and Reaper are working together in some fashion, specifically that they are working on either 1) uncovering the conspiracy that Talon is a part of together and/or 2) to bring down Talon together and/or to take over Talon together.

Let’s begin.

Corruption in Corporations

It was fantastic to see that the very first thing Zarya did was make an effort to seek out major corporations that could have been affected by Sombra.  Recall that at this point, most of the world knows that Sombra targeted LumériCo in an effort to reveal corruption by Portero and his corporation to the world.

The Sombra ARG also highlighted that Portero had direct connections with individuals in two other major corporations - Sanjay Korpal of Vishkar, and Katya Volskaya of Volskaya.  We don’t know the exact nature of these connections, but in “Companies and Corporations,” I write that the larger thematic issue we are being shown through these three companies in particular is that corruption runs in circle - a “network” of mismanagement, power, and control that results in profits for those at the top.

If anything, this comic reaffirms that idea, as Zarya works through her own list of “leads,” starting with a company that has quietly flown under the fandom “radar” - Lucheng Interstellar.

With the narration by Winston in the video, we have a better understanding of the unethical, probably inhumane treatment of the gorilla troop that lived in the moon colony.  The gorillas were subject to injections that gave them the intelligence of at least humans, and they were seemingly subject to some harsh rules.  Emails in the “New Details Emerge About Possible Fate Of Horizon Lunar Colony” article (https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20812209) show that the gorillas (or “specimens”) were often put in “in their rooms” when they acted up.  At the very least, one “speciment” (Hammond) was put in a cage.

Lucheng is suspicious for their probably unethical treatment of animal test subjects, the “genetic manipulation” of them, and their radio silence on the issue for what is apparently several years.

Lucheng has yet to play a “huge” role in the current Overwatch plot, but they do feature into the background of Winston, whose narration for the Horizon Lunar Colony map details some unethical and likely abusive experiments against the gorilla troop living on the moon.  Lucheng’s central control room is also one of the KOTH maps for Lijiang Tower, though no real explanation is given as to why people are fighting over the room.

Does Katya have connections to Lucheng?  Hard to say at this point, but rather, the detail of Zarya thinking that Sombra might have an interest in the company is a telling one, one that the comic dances around until the very end:

Though she does not fully realize it, Zarya is actually more suspicious of the looming power figures in the world than her “enemies” - Omnics...and Sombra herself.

Before I get more into that, I’d like to mention that I was thrilled to see a certain “corruption CEO” make an appearance:

I’ve said for quite some time now that the motifs behind Portero and LumériCo are representative of a really cool, really interesting concept grounded in Mesoamerican mythology, specifically Aztec and Mayan stories and world concepts.  Seeing this panel just confirms that the idea is still present.

Dorado itself was rather blindly (hah) designed by the Overwatch team who, in their haste to make a “bright, colorful village map,” drew references from an Italian city by the sea (gj guys, way to double-check your sources).  But the LumériCo power plant was almost certainly designed based on the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant, which exists in almost the exact same location as Dorado’s maps (note that the in-game map within the LumériCo appears to be incorrect, as the Uprising map confirms that Dorado is supposed to be further south on the Gulf of Mexico).  More than anything else, the LumériCo power plants are designed to evoke the pyramids of Aztec and Mayan design.  These were massive stone builds of ritual, political, and social power that were meant to mimic the mountains that gods such as the Feathered Serpent, Tlaloc/Chaac, and Huitzilopochtli were believed to live on.  They were also meant to be displays of power and regality by various kings, queens, and rulers.  

So like the Temple of Anubis, the LumériCo power plant is a remixing of “real world mythologies” with the dev team’s “vision of the future,” a vision where humanity celebrates its diversity and the beauty of its multitude of ideas and histories with a “futuristic twist.”  

But what it also implies is that Portero - the CEO of LumériCo - is imposing himself as a psuedo-ruler in Mexico.  

From here: http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/159665523340/overwatch-apocalypse-now

The entire Sombra ARG was about Sombra attempting to “dethrone” Portero.  This isn’t even subtext or close reading - this is literally how Sombra herself describes her actions:

“The King Guillermo Portero of LumériCo invites cordially, his loyal servants, to participate in his crowning event and to celebrate his infinite greed and treason toward the people of México. We gave coordinated the publication of info that demonstrates that Portero is a viper, that have for a long time ripoff the riches of our country for his own wealth. He has corrupted our government, turned our sisters and brothers into beggars, and he won’t stop until controlling the whole country under his dominance. But we, Los Muertos, won’t tolerate the celebration of his reign of corruption. We’ll demonstrate to our new conquistadores (conquerors) who will take the reins of the future of our country! On November 1st, we’ll dethrone the King Viper and we’ll celebrate the recovery of our home.”

Zarya references this fact as well, on the next page of her comic:

Here, she talks about Stepan Razin, who led a popular uprising against the Tzardom and nobility of Russia in the 1600′s.  The implication of these three panels is that everyone in Dorado (save LumériCo) knows who Sombra is, but they aren’t telling Zarya and Lynx because they support Sombra’s actions.

This is important 

because Zarya is the exact same type of “popular folk hero” to the people of Russia as Sombra is to the people of Dorado.

From Zarya’s hero profile:

Aleksandra Zaryanova is one of the world's strongest women, a celebrated athlete who sacrificed personal glory to protect her family, friends, and country in a time of war.

Now she serves—a symbol to some, a stalwart fellow soldier to others. But for Aleksandra, it is a chance to use her great strength to protect the ones she loves.

Though subtle, we start to see some of the doubt being cast over Zarya about her actions, the things Katya told her, her interactions with Omnics (and Lynx specifically), and this seemingly wild goose chase she’s been put on.

Is Zarya’s power helping the people...or is it helping something more sinister?

Soldier or Hero?

I think I actually gave an audible gasp at this point.

This is where we can see the details of Blizzard’s slow, almost painfully deliberate world-building process start coming together.

These sets of panels are a great reference to the “Hero” animated short, and show us how everything in the Overwatch story - every line, every action, every idea - has a ripple effect.  It’s been about a year and a half since the “Hero” animation was released, and, in theory, about approximately the same amount of time has occurred “in-universe” in the main Overwatch plot (“Recall”/“Alive,” “Hero,” and “Dragons” all occur approximately at the same time as the game’s official release, with “Recall” leading right into the “Are you with us?” message Winston sends to “agents” aka players).

At the end of the “Hero” animation, we see that Soldier: 76′s actions of fighting Los Muertos members and saving Alejandra has resulted in her being inspired to be braver and more heroic.

Alejandra: You’re one of those heroes...aren’t you? Soldier: 76: ...Not anymore. Alejandra: ...I think you are.

And finally

FINALLY

after all this time

we see some of that pay off.

In “Searching,” one of the Overwatch main cast finally comes in contact with Alejandra, and what do you know -

It happens to be the woman with the same name.

“Aleksandra” and “Alejandra” are both linguistic derivatives of the feminine form of “Alexander” - “Alexandra” in English.  All of these names generally stem from the most famous “Alexander,” Alexander the Great, the often romanticized Macedonian general and king who founded one of the greatest empires in antiquity.  Names deriving from Alexander are meant to inspire thoughts of heroism, bravery, courage, and - 

Oh yeah - 

The name Alexander is derived from the Greek Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros), meaning "Defender of the people" or "Defending men" and also, "Protector of men", a compound of the verb ἀλέξειν alexein, "to ward off, to avert, to defend"and the noun ἀνήρ anēr, "man" (GEN ἀνδρός andros).

So, inherent in her very name, we see Zarya’s dilemma arise again:

Who is she defending?  The people?  Or those already in power?  Who is she “a friend” to?

These panels between Aleksandra and Alejandra are great for highlighting a major turn-around moment, for both characters: Aleksandra shows her charm, her kindness, and her patience, getting down on the same level as Alejandra, telling the girl that if she helps her, Alejandra “would be her hero.”

And as we know, being heroic is what Alejandra wants and believes in more than anything else.

We can even see some of the hesitation here: Alejandra, who presumably knows Sombra as all the other people of Dorado do (by her civilian name), is reluctant to give away Sombra’s information (Sombra also has a line on the Dorado map about “stopping by the bakery,” implying that she knows Alejandra and her mother or at least sees them on a regular basis).  But Alejandra makes the decision to “be a hero” and explain where Zarya and Lynx can find Sombra, especially because Sombra has “done something wrong.”

Connecting the Dots

“There’s something bigger going on.  It will affect everyone.  Everything.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Hahahaha, listen, mi amiga.  Between me and Katya, one of us hasn’t lied to you.”

This is, by far, the most cryptic part of the comic.  Why does Sombra want Katya to have considerable social and political power in Russia?  Hell, even real military power, when you consider her mechs?

Since all the Overwatch characters are unreliable narrators, you can’t always take their word at face value.  We do know that Sombra believes Katya should stay in power - we saw this in “Infiltration.”  So at the very least, she believes Katya is of more use alive rather than dead.

What we need to look to next is other clues that we have.  And the biggest one is Sombra’s version of her interconnectivity/relationships web.

So we also know that there’s a conspiracy - probably the “something bigger” Sombra tells Zarya - represented by The Eye symbol at the center of Sombra’s web.  And the “corrupt” corporations like Volskaya and LumériCo are connected to it, along with “a group” in Numbani, Talon, and even Overwatch.

It’s difficult to say at the moment if The Eye represents the Talon council alone, or something “much bigger,” which it is definitely looking like.

Remember what caused the original Crisis?

A corporation that got caught up in fraud and corruption.

Doomfist’s goal is to bring about a global conflict that will drive both humanity and Omnics to be “stronger.”  His ideology is a twisted form of Social Darwinism, but if you’ve read some of my other stuff, you’ll know that he’s not “wrong” in the sense of history.  Forcing conflicts helps a very select group of people:

The Military-Industrial Complex.

This is a term to describe the people, groups, corporations, technologies, and industries that “profit” off of war.  Typically, these are weapons manufacturers or defense companies that produce the supplies needed in wartime endeavors...

(From here: http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/164852538245/overwatch-companies-and-corporations)

It is tantalizing to speculate beyond this, but at the moment, it’s not clear who or what exactly is involved in this.  Rather, I would say that Doomfist’s “revitalized” Talon’s goal is to set out to create a conspiracy “network” that enmeshes many of the larger corporations and organizations into a unified “conflict” organization that can create wars whenever they need to.

And before people jump at this, remember.

Doomfist already has one “corrupt corporate” member on his council.

Sanjay Korpal...

Who has connections to Guillermo Portero...

Mr. Portero, 

I have conveyed the contents of our latest discussion with the executive directors and they are all in agreement in principle on the framework for a deal. Of course there will be a lot of discussion and communication in the coming days, but I am optimistic that we can reach a mutually beneficial understanding.

I understand your concerns over the recent press about our Rio de Janeiro development, however I can assure you that this is just a blip on the radar and that we are taking care of it. And of course, we are more than happy to keep our negotiations private until such time that you feel comfortable in discussing them with the public. And of course, we are more than happy to assist with smoothing over any conflicts that might come up in opposition of our proposals.

Sincerely, Sanjay

Who has connections to Katya Volskaya.

The Sanjay link is a big deal.  I’m not going to say that Guillermo and Katya are “part” of the Talon council until we have further proof of their direct involvement.  But at the moment, they look like they might be...beneficiaries of some sort of overarching protection, possibly “enforced” by Talon.

I’ve seen almost no one comment on this, but Portero being exonerated “of his crimes” and then reinstated as the CEO of LumériCo is a major detail - 

Because, in theory, it “undoes” all of the work of Sombra’s email leaks.

Sure, yes, it could mean that Portero never actually did anything wrong.  But no one believes that at this point.  Even if Sombra is an unreliable narrator and her motivations are not “just” or “noble,” we still have his emails, his shaky connections to Volskaya, the weird power plants, the psuedo-Mesoamerican-styled “pyramids of power.”  Even Soldier: 76 is suspicious of him.

And of course, we have his connection to Sanjay, and therefore to a member sitting directly on the Talon Council.

And this is another great detail of the Zarya comic:

Almost everyone “in power” is corrupt in some way.

Zarya should not be able to go to the police of another country, ask for highly sensitive details on a black market hacker, and get vague promises of being shared results. (And in the background, Omnics are being “herded” somewhere.)

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And corruption bleeds down to everyone.

This is a thematic issue that we will see repeat itself time and time again - that corrupt companies and corporations are undermining global stability and peace, whether directly or indirectly.

Corruption and the misuse of power are not “structural, hierarchical ladders” in the world of Overwatch.

Corruption and the misuse of power are circular, connected, linked together -

into a spider’s web.

What is also great about the Zarya comic is that we get a new web to double-check Sombra’s against.

We have to keep in mind that Lynx’s web is a little bit different - Lynx is an outsider “looking in” at the pattern of Sombra’s attacks and her connections.  Lynx seemingly has “no connections” to the larger story, but they do come “recommended” by Katya.

But Lynx’s web does give us some insight because it offers some minute locational data that Sombra’s web does not.

Yellow simply represents a direct “line” to Sombra, whatever that line represents.  Red represents secondary lines of connection (again, whatever that means specifically).  The blank box connected to Soldier: 76 is likely Ana, who Sombra is already aware exists.  Lynx’s web might not know who Ana is, but might call her by her bounty hunter name, “The Shrike.”  One of the other blank boxes with a direct link to Sombra might be Doomfist.

Remember, this could be Lynx’s “speculation.”  It’s difficult to say.

In my opinion, the most interesting part here isn’t actually the Soldier: 76 - Sombra link, but the weird triangle connected in the top.

Katya has direct ties to one of these individuals (possibly Portero), who - along with two others - have connections to a circle around...

Switzerland?

Now, before people jump up about Chateau Guillard and Annecy -

Widowmaker’s line actually terminates at a specific location in the web.

Yup.

That’s probably Gibraltar.

Which is weird, because we have no reason to believe she’s been there.  In fact, Reaper has been to Gibraltar “recently,” when he went to steal the Overwatch agent list from Athena and “inadvertently” caused Winston to initiate Recall.

So believe me, I’m just as confused by this as you are.  I don’t know what it means.  I don’t know if this is an error and Reaper and Widowmaker’s portraits in Lynx’s web were misplaced.  I don’t know if it means something more.  For now, I’m taking Lynx’s web with a grain of salt.

What we do know is that there are three individuals or groups that Sombra has “hacked” or made some sort of connection with who have ties or their own connections to something or someone in Switzerland.

Which, I mean.

These maps of “active Overwatch investigations/areas of interest” from the “Uprising” comic provide additional support for the circle on Lynx’s web being something related to the Swiss Base Watchpoint.

Could Blizzard tease us any harder?

Even if she herself isn’t looking at people with direct connections to the fall of Overwatch, Sombra is actively investigating people with ties to Switzerland.  Which is very interesting when you consider that two of the people who have portraits and “direct lines” to Sombra

Are also actively investigating people with ties to Switzerland - specifically, the fall of the Swiss Base.  Reaper’s investigation of the matter is more hypothesized/speculated (again, this essay assumes that the hypothesis that Reaper and Sombra are working together “in some way” is correct), but Soldier has actually stated multiple times that he’s trying to figure out “who caused the fall of Overwatch.”

Now -

Lynx doesn’t know any of this.

Hypothetically, this makes Lynx an unbiased source.  Again, take all that with some skepticism - Lynx was recommended by Katya, and they were also hacked by Sombra while Zarya and Lynx were still in Numbani (we don’t know when exactly).  So “biased” vs “unbiased” is very loose here.  But I do think we can at least use Lynx’s web to explore some theories.

Lynx might suspect that Soldier: 76 is Jack Morrison - hell, the entire world of Overwatch “suspects” it at this point (https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/19809396/), but Lynx has no idea who Reaper is, and what his connections to Sombra are, just that the two work together “for Talon.”

But we the audience know that isn’t entirely true.

Michael Chu has stated that the only people who know Gabriel Reyes is Reaper are Soldier: 76/Jack Morrison, “The Shrike”/Ana Amari - 

And Sombra.

Therefore, Sombra’s in-game interactions with Reaper can be considered “canon.”

Sombra: What's the plan today, Gabe? You don't mind if I call you Gabe, do you? Reaper: Stick to the mission.

Reaper: Try to stick to the plan, Sombra. Sombra: Look, someone has to be ready when all your careful planning doesn't pan out.

And that includes this fun little tidbit on Oasis:

Sombra: So what are we doing here, boss? Reaper: I need to pay a visit to a friend.

If you’ve read my other essays, you know that I generally support the theory that Reaper is in Oasis to visit Mercy, or someone connected to her.  Mercy’s last known location as of Recall was somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, “close” to Oasis’ location.

Based on the “Reaper sightings” map on Necropolis, Soldier: 76 and Ana are also aware that Reaper has been to Oasis (these locations are: Los Angeles in “Reflections,” Gibraltar in “Recall,” Numbani in the Museum Heist trailer, St. Petersburg in “Infiltration,” and Oasis for some reason).

I would argue that, even if they have their differences, there is a tentative trust between Reaper and Sombra - he trusts her enough to bring her along on his “personal mission” in Oasis, and we know they “have a plan” together.

I will posit the hypothesis that Sombra is feeding information about Reaper to Soldier: 76 and Ana, though I don’t know how much I buy it myself.  Either way, the breadcrumbs are there, if you wish to make that connection.  I just find them a little too thin, even for my own speculating, conspiracy-lovin’ ass.

No matter what, I will agree that Sombra is at the center of a movement to try and “bring down” a major, global-politics-dominating conspiracy, which may have had a hand in destroying Overwatch.

Which Katya has “some sort of connection to.”

This is alluded to at the very end of Zarya’s comic, in which Zarya has - much like Reaper - decided to tentatively trust Sombra over Katya.  It is not known if Sombra somehow gave Zarya more information, or promised to, but at the very least, Zarya seems to have pieced together that “something bigger” is happening with Katya - “something bigger” than just using Omnic technology in her mechs.

The dialogue here gets really awkward with the layout, so I’ll try to give a direct transcription, and then my interpretation of it.

Direct:

Katya: To be honest, I didn’t think you’d get as far as you did.  Well done.

Zarya: Covering it up...Why not take the gun from her hands? Confess

Katya: Ah, Aleksandra, it is not so simple.  Someday they will understand that I was doing what I had to do...But not today.  Not yet.  For the good of our people, this must remain our secret.  Yes, Aleksandra?

Zarya: It is simple.  Friends should not lie to each other.  So to you, I am Sergeant Zaryanova.  But for the good of Russia...Yes.  Our secret.

There’s a ton to unpack here.  I’m going to give my interpretation/rewrite of the lines first.

Interpretation:

Katya:  To be honest, I didn’t think you’d get as far as you did.  Well done.

Zarya: Hiding the truth...Why don’t you simply admit to the public where you get your tech from?  Take the “gun” from Sombra’s hands?

Katya:  Ah, Aleksandra, it is not so simple.  They won’t understand that I was doing what I had to do.  Maybe someday, but not today.  For the good of our people, this must remain our secret.  Yes, Aleksandra?   

Zarya:  It is simple.  Friends should not lie to each other.  So to you, I am Sergeant Zaryanova.  But for the good of Russia...Yes.  Our secret.

What’s happening is that there’s a very interesting implication of “something more” lurking behind Katya’s words - that if she admitted she got technology from Omnics to the people of Russia, “something bigger” might come out.

(I also wanna say that I love the return to the lines on the first page here - the reference to “friends not lying to each other,” “I am Sergeant Zaryanova” vs “Aleksandra,” “it is (not) simple,” etc.  Even if the layout of the dialogue is awful, the actual writing is wonderful.)

What is also implied is that, very subtly, Katya and Zarya have settled on different meanings of “for the good of Russia.”

While Zarya is willing to keep the secret about the Volskaya mechs - and possibly “something bigger” - in order to maintain some sort of peace, she recognizes that her own goals are for the people, whereas Katya’s goals are for herself.  We have come back to Zarya’s biggest dilemma:

Who is she defending?  The people?  Or those already in power?  Who is she “a friend” to?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Michael Chu has danced around the word “friend” with regards to Sombra and her “allies” within Talon.  Specifically, Michael Chu has said that Sombra considers Reaper and Widowmaker “friends,” though to Sombra, “friends” and “enemies” are not so different.

It seems, then, at that the end of this comic, Zarya has come to a similar sort of conclusion.

Omnics can be good allies.

Her “heroes” can be corrupt.

Her “enemies” can tell the truth.

And her “war” -

Her fight - 

Can be for “something bigger” than her country.

What does it take to make a hero?

Strength?

Courage?

Power?

Perhaps it is the ability to do what is right.

[beaft]

hey!!! so i went to see thor ragnarok yesterday, and i thought i’d type up some Thoughts while it was still fresh in my mind. so here goes. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS but also i don’t want to do a cut because my blog theme is hard to read things on, so just shut your eyes and scroll down really fast i guess? i’ll send you a psychic message so you know when it’s safe to open them again

things i liked

the humour in this movie was on point. i mean, it’s waititi, so obviously it was going to be, but everyone just seemed like they were having a fucking blast doing it. it didn’t even feel like it was trying to be funny or quirky or slapsticky – it just put the characters in daft situations and let natural awkwardness do the rest

the giant monster made out of blue rocks who seems to have no idea what he’s doing and just wanders around exchanging pleasantries with everyone in a gentle new zealand accent. he tried to do a revolution once but it failed because he didn’t print out enough pamphlets. i don’t even know his name but he was legitimately the best part of this film and i want him on a poster

the “get help” plan, which, for the uninformed, consists of thor just fucking tossing his brother at oncoming enemies like a person-shaped rugby ball, and has apparently been performed enough times for loki to instinctively dread it happening

i hate doctor strange and benedict cumberbatch and the fact that he was included in this film for no reason other than to appease people, but i did enjoy his cameo (albeit very, very grudgingly). he’s just so done with thor’s nonsense and i felt it on a spiritual level. also when loki comes at him with a knife and strange just fucking teleports him off to norway like “bye”

“this one time when we were children, he transformed himself into a snake, and he knows i love snakes, so i went to pick up the snake to admire it, and he transformed back into himself and was like, “YAARGH, IT’S ME!!!” and he stabbed me. we were eight” fucking classic

the fact that it wasn’t entirely comedy-centred. sure, the main emphasis was on the ridiculousness of the whole thing, but there were definite emotional moments, and on the whole they were done well. (particularly the exchange between thor and loki in the elevator, and the part immediately afterwards with the attempted betrayal. you know the bit i mean)

in most marvel films you know that ultimately the villain will be defeated, and the planet will be saved, and everything will turn out okay, etc etc etc. here, that gets chucked out of the fucking window. literally anything can happen, and it does, even as you’re like “nah, no way, they’re not gonna go that far…oh. well. okay, then.” and that dispensing of the traditional formula made the whole thing feel a lot more unpredictable. which is good, i think!

valkyrie. everything about valkyrie. i have a massive weakness for butch women, and i have a massive weakness for lovable assholes, and when those two things combine it’s just like. hnghhh

also i was worried that she was going to be shoehorned into the “strong female character” stereotype, but that wasn’t the case at all? like she had moments of weakness and was really dorky and cute and she just felt like such a real person (aside from the whole “semi-immortal warrior woman on a flying horse” aspect, obviously)

on that point: there was no love story. this is entirely personal preference, but love stories in action films really annoy me (unless they’re done well, and they rarely are). plus, it feeds into the idea that the only reason to have a woman on the team is for the purpose of creating a romance with the main hero. but they didn’t do that! there was some light flirtation between thor and val, but it felt more friendly than anything else, and was very much in character for both of them. super refreshing, honestly

the trouble with marvel is that because nearly every movie has a different writer, character consistency is often lost. (see: natasha behaving completely differently in aou than she did in any other film, steve zigzagging between rigidly following the rules and going off to do his own thing, character development being gained and lost and gained again, etc.) that being said: thor and loki in this film felt more like thor and loki than in any other mcu flick. thor was maybe a bit dumber than i usually like, but the smiley optimism and earnestness was very much there, and loki cut a perfect balance between being An Asshole and being An Asshole With Feelings (whilst occasionally slipping back into his patented “melodramatic diva” persona). bruce wasn’t quite as much of a success, but i’ll get to that later

“i’m here.”

hela was unbelievably badass and every time she was on the screen i got a little bit gayer. i think it’s the antlers, personally

things i didn’t like

where was sif? there was no sif and it was just. never explained??? i’m starting to feel like marvel has this weird policy where they can only have a certain amount of women onscreen at a time, and if there’s any more than that an alarm goes off and everyone starts running around in a panic like “OH NO! THE WOMAN METER HAS GONE INTO THE RED! QUICK! CULL THEM! CULL THEM!” they’ve added in valkyrie and hela, and in order to maintain the status quo, they’ve skilfully sliced out jane foster and sif, like soviet-era teachers razoring out controversial passages from history books. if they didn’t show any of the warriros three then that would’ve been understandable, but fandral and volstagg and hogun were all (if briefly) in evidence. but sif is just. not. it’s fuckin bizarre man idek

kinda wish they’d done a bit more with hela’s character than just going “oh, she’s evil, and she likes to kill people and do evil stuff because she’s evil.” she already looks amazing, and is possibly the most powerful villain we’ve seen so far – so it would have been nice to have a little more emotional depth there, especially considering how interesting her backstory is

the plot was a little bitty in places. it did work, but there wasn’t much of a connection between thor performing as a gladiator and hela taking over asgard. if they’d found a way to link those two plotlines together it might have worked better, but as it was, the whole thing felt a lil bit contrived

we’ve always suspected that asgard isn’t quite what it seems to be (after all, no one ends up ruler of the nine realms without a little blood being spilt along the way), and in this film that gets confirmed – but after the initial revelation it’s just not really explored? there are some pretty heavy overtones of genocide and colonialism/imperialism, and it seemed kind of mad to bring up something like that and then just gloss over it. plus, it ignores the fact that in the avengers loki was pretty much doing exactly what odin did himself several thousands years ago, but on a slightly smaller scale. like…there’s a wealth of stuff to be done with that information, and they didn’t do any of it? weird

i was sort of hoping that odin would play a larger role in the movie, considering that so much of it indirectly revolved around him and his actions. instead, he turned into obi wan kenobi and then vanished in a big puff of gold dust. i don’t think that he actually exchanged more than a few lines with anyone, although given the relatively short length of the film that’s understandable enough

bruce got flanderised from a hyper-controlled scientist with self-loathing issues into a twitchy ball of nerves who’s constantly out of his depth. he’s not my favourite character, so it didn’t bother me too much, but it was still a little jarring

they didn’t show us the hug at the end and i’m pissed about it

[the-colony-roleplay]

COL22EVENT: REBRANDED ➳ PHASE IV: THE FALLOUT

The Rebranding went on without a hitch. Shockingly, even to those three elusive little Messers, the plan went as planned, as well as undetected. Cloths and bandanas were passed out to those brave little deviants who participated, the branding gun was dumped to the bottom of the ocean in the waning hours of the morning (thanks to a certain Trade Merchant and much to the dismay of another certain Black Market hustler), and by the end of night, no one knew quite who had started the whole thing, who exactly they’d heard the rumours from—since everything had gone around in bits and pieces, from here and there—or who those masked, voiceless individuals were that had done the tattooing in the dark shadows of the quarry. 

No one, except those unnamed three, of course, and their few trusted allies sworn to secrecy. 

By morning, a couple dozen renegades braced themselves for the consequences that were sure to come, only no one knew when, or how. It was a disquieting time, a both thrilling and harrowing waiting game, everyone on bated breath, waiting ready at the defence for the other shoe to drop. 

And drop it did—but not for two and a half days. 

For two and a half full days, participants in the rebranding movement managed to go about their business, keeping their tattoos hidden under long sleeves, or wrist bands, when necessary. Some people even wore the cloth wrapped around both wrists, so as to draw less attention to the offending arm in question. 

Really, it was something of a miracle the evidence of the rebellion snuck under the radar as long as it did. But it’s being said that Elites who may have noticed a couple of arm bands, didn’t think much of it. At least—not at first. 

But all it took was one guard, and one suspicious moment, for everything to topple like dominos. When a patrolling security officer noticed his third black wrist wrap in a row, he grabbed passing Calyset civilian, Roy Walters, calmly but firmly by the forearm. The guard scrutinized Roy with a slow-burn, dubious look, before shifting his attention to the bandana itself, turning over the hand in his grip and pushing aside the cloth. 

It took three solid seconds of blank confusion and then a dawning, crawling frown, for the guard to piece together what he was looking at. A double check of Roy’s stats in his PDD confirmed it. 

Two minutes later, Roy was squirming under the seething gazes of the Chancellor and his representatives, and the entire security team was being ordered to round up each and every citizen and herd them back to their dorms, where a middle of the day roll-call would be executed and every wrist would be checked for similar signs of infraction.

And so a crackling, urgent message rang out over the P.A. system, bringing every active schedule and rotation, all over Colony grounds, to a screeching halt: 

“Attention civilians of Colony 22. Due to a severe breach of Colony Mandate, all personnel are to report to their corresponding houses immediately for roll call. No exceptions. Your cooperation is appreciated. Anyone who resists this order will be detained. Thank you.” 

The very same message flashed on the screens of hundreds of PDDs, all of which were now vibrating and blinking red and orange lights. 

With that, the waiting game was over. There would be no running, no avoiding this. The moment had been well anticipated, anyhow. Civilians went as they were told—some more quietly than others. Some with adrenaline pumping through their veins, some with shaking fingers. 

Each Head of House (or Elite House Representative) was instructed to check every wrist, of every man, woman, human and child. Every civilian discovered to have an illegal tattoo was dragged off to the correctional wing by a security officer and thrown into a cell to join the others of their ‘kind’. With not enough cells to go around for a violation of this scope, there were three or four civilians per cell, by the time the roll call was complete. 

To say that Clove Modius and other NWRF Reps were positively fuming, blindsided, and fuming because they felt blindsided, would be an understatement. 

Clove strode from the security office (and makeshift interrogation room), and didn’t slam the door—no matter how much she felt like she had the right to. This was mayhem. No one seemed able to provide much more than a bare minimal description of the tattoo artist—though some had given the names of individuals who had spread the information to them at the party, those individuals gave other names, and so on, ad nauseum.

So they were left hunting for a phantom in a black cloak and a gas mask, with no identifying features—not even a proper eye colour, or height for God’s sake, since they’d reportedly been seated. And all of it, this whole investigation, was still operating under some useless restrictions. Her suspicions (and she had a few) couldn’t be confirmed or denied, at least not like this, in the bright glare of day and under scrutiny from the whole colony on how the NWRF was dealing with it.

There had to be some way to make them crack, to make one of them reveal something more helpful. Clove just didn’t know what it was, yet.

She steeled herself, and marched over to the guard. “Next prisoner, please.”

Lined up like convicts in cages, the Rebranded Delinquents were berated, questioned, and threatened for any information they might have on who did this to them, and how. But results were frustratingly non-lucrative and interrogators spent hours going around in circles, getting no closer to answers. 

And so, by the end of a very long day, with lots of arguing in offices between Elite and NWRF, the conclusion that eventually rolled out was firstly that all fraudulent brands would be changed back immediately the next morning. Which also meant that all detained citizens spent the night of November 3rd in correctional.

Following that, all citizens directly involved in the rebranding would be put on a ‘probationary period’ of sorts, wherein they undergo four weeks of constant surveillance. Citizens on probation are to be escorted everywhere, from their dorms to their classes, to their training, and to meals. They will not be permitted to go anywhere on their own, and even their free hours will be monitored. 

Furthermore, the only way to see an early end to this surveillance, is if someone reveals the identity of those responsible for the rebranding. In other words, all those who stay silent will suffer. But since this particular plan of action had been executed with the consequences in mind, precautions had been taken. There were very few people who even had the answers the NWRF were looking for. And three of five of them were the Messers themselves, who would have nothing to gain from giving themselves up, except for perhaps relieving their friends from the constant watchful eye of the Reformists. 

But the consequences, in a way, were all a part of the success of the movement, of the point being made. Could all those in the know keep their mouths shut long enough for the NWRF to give up looking and accept the loss of this particular battle? Could this be the first battle won on the side of the Rebels, Radicals and everything in between? Withstanding a month of scrutiny would be taxing, certainly—but the Infected and Deluded weren’t the only ones being watched. Now all eyes in the Colony were on the NWRF, and how this supposedly ‘fair’ government would respond to these acts of insurgence. For as a dominating faction which was still claiming to have everyone’s best interests in mind, the NWRF had a reputation to uphold and had to play their cards right. 

The funny thing was, this move by those opposed the new government would appear to be something like a pawn putting a King in check. The players knew it—and so did the NWRF. And the players knew the NWRF knew it. 

And so, that in and of itself had ensured that a message had been sent: 

We’re here, we see you, and we will not go down without a fight. 

Well, there it is folks! 

As I’m sure you guessed it: 

THIS POST MARKS THE CLOSE OF THE OFFICIAL REBRANDED EVENT, AND THE LAUNCH OF THE AFTERMATH, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “PHASE IV: THE FALLOUT.”

With the ‘event’ status of the dash now over, you will now all be permitted to post non-event starters and threads. Here are some things to note about moving forward: 

You may of course continue your event threads, but please make sure they are tagged and titled as event threads. (At this point they are likely already all titled, so that should be fine). 

You may not post any new event threads unless they are specifically backdated plot explorations, in which case they should be titled and tagged clearly:

These should only be for extensions of plots that were already in action. So you may not add any plots to the event timeline, as it would not have been accounted for. For example, if your character did not go to get a tattoo, and you did not send in a message about it, it is too late to do so. If you plan on doing any backdated plot extensions, they must be run by the mods first just so we can help make sure it’s canon-safe.

You may start rp threads starting the morning after the party (November 1st) and beyond. Due to the extended duration of this event, we wanted to allow things to move forward and to give you all lots of flexibility in exploring your post-event storylines: 

For example, you may want to have a thread exploring your characters’ interactions the very first day after the party. Or you might want to have threads in the tense ‘waiting period’ of those two and a half days where the rebellions went undetected by the authorities. Were other civilians finding out about it? Were whispers and rumours being spread? What were the reactions of those who didn’t hear about it the night of? Alternatively, you may want to explore plots with your character getting interrogated by the NWRF, or those long hours they were detained in their cells. Were they excited? Scared? Regretting their decision? 

To help facilitate the flexible exploration of this over arcing aftermath time period, we have established three aftermath categories. ‘Rebel’s Window’, ‘Exile’ and ‘Inquisition’. Please use them as follows: 

For RP threads in the time span of the 2 and a half days before the discovery, please use the tag #col22fallout. Please also include ‘Rebel’s Window’ somewhere in your title. 

For RP threads involving the the mid-day roll call (on that 3rd day after the event, and the first day of discovery, so November 3rd) and interrogations, please use the tag #col22fallout. Please also include ‘Inquisition’ somewhere in the title of the thread.

For threads involving the cell detainment, either when they are first put there, or while they are staying there overnight, please use the tag #col22fallout. Please also include “Exile” somewhere in the title. 

Anything beyond these first three days, when probation has begun for those characters who were punished, does not to be tagged or titled any special way, as it will be an ongoing issue and will be outside the official aftermath of the event. These will just be standard procedure timeline and tagging. 

We will notify you when the probation has been lifted—or if there are any other plot-development related hiccups on the way! ;) 

Remember that self-paras are also acceptable ways to explore event aftermath, as are gif chats and paras. (You may even chose to do multi-character threads—3 or more muses—in some cases.)

As promised, below is a list of all tattooed characters who would have been detained by the NWRF on November 3rd. 

Lake Valentine

Corbin Ealy

Orson Hurst

Mason Quinley

Benji Imes

Clayton Boyd

Roy Walters

And here are some open bios selected to also be NPC participants, due to currently being considered canon colony citizens. We have linked to their bios for your convenience!

Issoria Feinberg

Madison Vega

Caelan Kip Whitmer

Minka Vane

Finally, here is a list of the cell groups during the detainment period! You are encouraged to roleplay with characters you haven’t had a chance to yet, or you don’t get to frequently! These characters spend the better part of 24 hours locked in a small cell together—explore this however you might like!

CELL1: Lake Valentine, Clayton Boyd, Jelka Dreher

CELL 2: Corbin Ealy, Roy Walters, Madison Vega, Issoria Feinberg

CELL 3: Benji Imes, Orson Hurst, Mason Quinley, Minka Vane

And for all those characters who were not tattooed or detained—we highly encourage you to explore the many other plot opportunities! They were subject to the roll-call just like everyone else. They may have noticed or been told about their friend’s tattoos before the NWRF found out. They may have heard whispers, or rumours. How did they react to the sudden Colony lock down? Did Elites try to interfere? Did Uninfected try to visit or help the detained civilians? We definitely encourage any Elite characters who might have been involved in the madness of the authorities trying to figure out what to do  about the delinquents, to rp out some of that juicy drama! And there are definitely options for Uninfected civilians as well!

Remember, here at the Colony, we encourage your own creative input and plot development, because it’s your RP too, so as always, feel free to hit us with any idea you have! We will help you navigate through any plots you want to explore with your character—we can also help you brainstorm if you know you want to participate someway, but are unsure how! Never be afraid to reach out :)

Now, Godspeed, have fun, and ask as many questions as you need!

Love all ya nerds!!

xxMods

[agent-7-at-your-service]

Future Plot: Syer’s Rebellion - Chapter 10

((Sandra, Pyrrhus, Telemachus  Kitzeh, James and Market Splatoon, and President Howe belongs to me

Camille belongs to @inklingleesquidly

Nebula belongs to @agenttwo and @myzzy

Marina and Wish belong to @inklingleesquidly@agenttwo and @myzzy; designs are made by @teamuntyblue  / @ryan-sign-guy

Vix belongs to @teamuntyblue / @ryan-sign-guy

Beaker Jr belongs to @askvincent and @scrushling

Emerald and Sapphire belong to @son-of-joy and @twelvetailedkitsune

Suzy belongs to @son-of-joy

Mysteeri belongs to @dreadangel ))

((Insert opening: https://youtu.be/IBF9XEsnvJI ))

Last time on Syer's Rebellion: 

With the help of Telemachus, Sapphire, Emerald, and Mysteeri, Sandra and James take the Black Hills. The Reservations made by Howe break their chains and for a northern blockade. The Revolution attacked from the southwest to push the Splat-Coats east. 

Their attack and their victory would mark an end to the Central US Theater (aka The Great Plains Theater) with just one battle. And this shocks the population still in loyalty with President Howe and her Administration.

The Eastern US Theater is now beginning to conclude the Revolution.

With the Black Hills reclaims, James promised the reservations a return to their old settlements and the protection of the Black Hills. In addition, the Revolution continue the construction of Crazy Horse's Monument and the reconstruction of Mount Rushmore where it was eroding away.

And with the Splat-Coats losing the Central US Theater to just one battle, Texas, Hawaii, and Alaska finally join in the favor of the Revolution. Splat-Coat Loyalists that are still in the Central US Theater had to put down their weapons and allow the Revolt to march on the East Coast.

Chris Zorin, who was reassigned to defend the Splat-Coats in the Black Hills, is captured for interrogation before being hung and splatted. 

The inkomaton "Angel", Justice, is found critically damaged and had to be scrapped. And later, they found unfinished models of Prosperity and Happiness with documents indicating two things: Liberty and Justice were the only complete inkomatons made, and Howe decommissioned the "Angels of America" Project for prosthetics for her.

With the Central US Theater beginning, we find Sandra's party reuniting with Camille's and Nebula's in New Orleans. With the water levels receding, cities once close to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic were being rebuilt with little success. New Orlean, Houston, most of the Cities in Florida, and all the cities in the Thirteen Colonies (including Washington D.C.) have been successful. Louisiana was the first to be liberated in the Eastern Theatre.

While Sandra's party was making their way to Louisiana, Sandra got to know about how James formed Market Splatoon:

((Narration by James Hiller Syer during this part of the Chapter))

After Mom and Dad died, I took up by a small inventor's fair society where I meet Abraham who was at the time, my mentor. According to him, he was aware of President Howe's efforts to reinstate slavery into the country as "Extra-Jobs for those of poverty". His brother is currently living somewhere in South Carolina, working as a servant. 

For Henri, we found him when Abraham and I turn the inventor's fair society into an activist party. He was a French exchange student who ended up in the mess. We had to take him in or those Splat-Coats would've taken him for interrogation.

Then there's Elizabeth. I met her when Abraham brought the Revolution's operations to Southern California. She was an English exchange student if we never met, but she decided to stay, seeing what President Howe and her Administration was doing to the United States.

And together we made Market Splatoon after the Market Squid. I know it's an odd choice, but there was no other squid native here in the United States.

((End of Jame's Narration))

With everyone in New Orleans, they had a meeting that a few would find familiar. However, Sandra and James began the meeting with an agreement.

Forgotten Monument, Lee Circle -New Orleans, Louisiana - 11:30 AM

The place they made their meeting in once displayed a grim reminder: A simple column pedestal. Centuries ago, a statue was on that pedestal in honor of a human general who defended a Confederacy built from cotton and slaves. That confederacy is gone and his statue with it.

"Why did we pick this place?" Sandra asked, having learned about the General that the monument was built for. 

"It's nice to have a meeting with some fresh air," James explained, "We got privacy here in this area anyway."

Camille, Nebula, Pyrrhus, Emerald, Sapphire, Suzy, Mysteeri, Telemachus, Kitzeh and Celeste were sitting in an inner circle. Beaker Jr, Vix, Marina, Wish, and Elizabeth of Market Splatoon were sitting in an outer circle, only there to listen. Henri and Abraham were at the bay, managing a fleet for an attack by sea. Half of them enjoyed having this meeting outside, half thought it was better doing it indoors, but a small portion doesn't care.

"Anyway...," Sandra continued, "James and I talked this over after our victory in the Great Plains. I think it's best that I remain with my brother and his Revolution. Emerald, Sapphire, Suzy, Mysteeri, you're doing the same for the sake of that Revolution. Camille, Nebula, Beaker, Vix, Marina, Wish, I'm having Telemachus, Kitzeh, and Celeste send you all back to Inkopolis. I can't risk putting you guys in danger at this point."

The reaction varied.

"What!?" Celeste is in disbelief.

Telemachus said nothing and shook her head. Kitzeh pretended to spit out an invisible drink for dramatic effect.

"We're returning home?" Vix asked.

"But there's so much to do here!" Beaker objected.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Camille stands up. "Mysteeri is like family to me, if she's staying, I'm staying.

"You can't do this to us, Sandra," Suzy commented, "Despite our reasons being in the Americas other than Revolution, we're not going to separate, not after what Howe did."

"What choice do I have?" Sandra argued. "I already have my family. I don't know why I need you guys..."

Everyone was staring at her. Sandra looked down.

"I just thought I can move on, forget my foster parents, and just go on other adventures." Sandra takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. 

"Sandra, you're our friend, don't forget that we decided to help you," Nebula reasoned.

"To think I had you guys sail with me..." Sandra looked at Nebula and then at everyone. "Will you still sail with me?"

James stood back watching, arms folded. Elizabeth is beside him. When Sandra asked that question, there was silence until Pyrrhus stepped forward with one hand raised and with the other hand place where his heart is.

"If it means starting over for me, I will sail with you," Pyrrhus promised.

Soon the others followed, raising their hands and placing their other hands where their heart is. They followed Pyrrhus's example. Only Marina, Wish, Vix, James, Elizabeth, and Beaker Jr didn't participate, but they did nods in agreement; Sandra accepted their responses as yes. Suzy didn't respond for personal reasons, but Sandra can understand.

"You are still a sister to me, Sandra, and as a family, I will sail with you," Telemachus promised.

"Same! I'll sail with you, Sandra!" Kitzeh promised.

"A friend of Camille's is always a friend of mine! I will sail with you!" Celeste gave a grin.

"I have to agree with Celeste." Mysteeri has known Celeste. "I'll sail with you, Miss Syer."

"We'll sail with you until the end of our days," Emerald promised.

"As friends," Sapphire added.

"Sandra, despite everything, I'll do this for your father, my father, and my mother," Nebula promised, "And for that, I'll sail with you."

Camille rolls her eyes and gave a smirk. "Oh what the hey, I'll sail with you, Sandy."

Soon James and Elizabeth joined. 

"You're my sister, Sandra, therefore I will sail with you as a family," James promised.

"I'll sail with you for sake of your brother," Elizabeth promised while placing a hand on James's shoulder.

All Sandra can do was smile.

((Narration by President Evelyn "Georgia III" Howe for the rest of this chapter.))

"Just a few sparks, and it is done," the surgeon said, "This will be the greatest steampunk innovation we made since the Inkomatons."

I was lying on a surgical table this whole time; my legs have been scared and my abdomen was impaled thanks for the traitor, Mysteeri. But with this innovation, I am able to walk again with boots and wings made of the lightest but toughest metal my people can offer.

I am no longer a squid, but I am an angel. No need for four angels of America; Oh how foolish I was for commissioning that; just a waste of time and money. I personify me as the America's woman -- Columbia.

I am in Washington D.C. the capital of what is left of my people's country. America, shaped in my image, is shrinking thank to two indigo inklings and her allies from Inkopolis. My military are fools! How can they lose the Internment camp in the West Coast and the Black Hills in the Great Plains to them?

Once the surgery is over, I return to my office in the White House. My retainers and generals were all there with a map of the United States of America. The status of the country disgusts me; instead a war between the North and South, it's a war between West and East. States in the west of the Mississippi are already inspired to rebel: Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The rest of the East still remain loyal to me. I look to Europe and the Native Tribes in what's left of my country for allies and support.

My generals are already blabbering like idiots, mentioning the number of options we have: give a reminder to liberated states, gather all our troops at the northern borders near Canada, make activists an example and torture them, and so many other methods of keeping the citizens in line and fight the Revolution.

The Legislative and the Judicial are already considering one action to take, and that is making me dictator until the rebellion is quelled. I'm obliged to follow it, but they have to go through the process of passing it like a law.

The commotion in this meeting was then silenced. They reorganized their thoughts and spoke on at a time like real men at a meeting. 

"President Howe, at this point, the loyalist are lost, and those in our remaining states are starting to dwindle and lose hope," one general warned.

"President Howe, we don't have enough to pay our men," another general warned, "without money to pay our men, there's a chance they'll refuse to fight or worse, treason."

And I had to listen to all of this for 12 hours. 

But I already knew how I'm going to face the Revolution.

((End of Howe's Narration))

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

I finished!!! game time was like something like 138 hours but I spent a good dozen or so hours pausing the game to check my phone or wandering off to make dinner. 

I this said last night in a sleepy 4am haze, but I really enjoyed the ending. It was fun to play. The only time I died was when I accidentally fell into a chasm bc I didn’t realize a goddamn fiend was gonna come barreling out of the hall and ruin my “melee everything” scheme and I scooted myself right off a dang platform and respawned directly in its mouth. Whoops. When the Archon called up the Architect I was very Oh god not another one but then I didn’t have to actually try to kill it ever just avoid it, so that was fine. I LOVED how everyone came out to help at the end. It always seems unbelievable to me that your pals are content to hang back for the boss fight (ME2 I thought did well with having everyone else away on different tasks, and the ME3 citadel mission where everyone goes together is one of my favorite parts of the trilogy). And getting to run around with Kandros (who i love but duty calls and we can never be together) and Reyes (im still Very Sad i had to break up with him) and the Salarians!! and then your team coming in at the end :333 ah. It was a very feel-good, exciting culmination, and I think it fit the tone of the rest of the story well. Part of me was half-expecting disaster like you have to sacrifice Scott or a bunch of citizens or something, and while I eat that sort of tragedy up, I’m glad there wasn’t any for this game. 

Incidentally, all of my screenshots of Scott somehow turned out like this, and so I’ve decided this is a chronic problem his whole life and he has 0 good photos ever even when the rest of the fam comes out lookin great:

ah, Scott. someday i’ll play as him with this Ryder as his sister and it’s gonna have to be a wild ride.

Romance: I romanced Vetra!! I love her a lot as a character but I just kept wishing for more content. And I know I always crave more romancey content but I did feel like her romance arc had a lot less than what I knew people were getting from Jaal’s, especially because it takes you over halfway into the game before you get anything from it. Four flirt opportunities where she doesn’t really flirt back, my Ryder was dying and convinced her crush would never be reciprocated (hence the brief fling with Reyes). But I did LOVE the scenes you do finally get with her, the climbing date was soooo sweet, and I could not stop laughing when she tries to make you dinner. I’m never telling my beautiful girlfriend she doesn’t know how to cook steak. NEVER. she did it perfectly, i love cow. But I just wish there was a scene where YOU could do something for HER. Lexi even tells you that you should show her she’s appreciated and doesn’t have to take care of everyone all the time to be worthy of being liked but then you... never get a chance in game to really do that. Sigh. I definitely have a lot of inner-headcanoning going on for thier relationship. Though Vetra wants to eventually settle down and have a home and i’m... not so sure that’s in the cards for this Ryder. I may tweak the characterization of my Vetra-romance-ryder in some ways and redo this Ryder with Reyes for real next time. I think next up is gonna be a Jaal playthough though.

But, OVERWHELMINGLY, the relationship I was absolutely most fascinated by the whole game and spent way more time thinking about than romance, was the relationship between Ryder and SAM. I went into endgame thinking that the game really hadn’t gotten into that aspect nearly as much as I wanted, AND THEN!!! SAM GETS DISCONNECTED! And it’s revealed they took over WAY more control of the Pathfinder’s physiology than anyone had even guessed!! it’s not just “SAM can take access of enough systems to stop and then restart your heart” it was “SAM is so intertwined with you that they are integrated into these systems already and their absence makes it almost impossible for the Pathfinder to cope without.” I LOVED IT. I was so ready to address that, like, did Ryder know? Did SAM do it by choice or was it just an effect of Alec’s modifications? 

And then... nothing. You’re linked back up with SAM. No one questions it. You don’t get to talk to Scott about how SAM is different for you than him now. Or at least, not that I’ve found??? to be fair I can’t seem to find Scott post-endgame yet (where is he hiding???? i’ve been all over Meridian after leaving/going back), and I still need to go check out the colonies and see what people there have to say. But it really seems like everyone sort of was like “whew, glad that’s sorted out, SAM’s back and htis could never possibly be an issue again so we will all forget about it and never bring it up again.” There was one colonist before (Fawkes) who was one of the only non-main characters to ask a really detailed question about SAM/what the future of AI is gonna look like in Heleus and I was so psyched for that convo. There’s a couple dialogue responses you can take, I went with:

becuase I really like the idea that Ryder starts to think of themselves as not just Ryder, but a Ryder-And-SAM partnership. There’s a lot of sacrifice in that. You’re admitting that your body is not just You anymore, but a team where both sides are valued.

I’ve spent a lot of the game thinking about Ryder’s internal dialogues with SAM, and the dynamic it would add to their relationship. You don’t have a voice that lives inside your head (and gives you its 100% undivided attention while you’re in the field) and not end up talking to it all the time. SAM asks you questions back on the Tempest when you talk to them and I bet they would when out and about as well, just privately. There’s a line in one of the Vaults where Ryder starts talking to herself and then catches it--

--because she gets more and more accustomed to not being the only one in her head. SAM is always there. More than that, they always have your back, and are ready to feed you whatever you need to get the mission done. They’re not just a voice, they’re a tool; and they’re not just a tool, they’re a support system. Maybe Ryder knows just how intertwined SAM is becoming with theer body, and isn’t just aware, but welcomes it. The Ryders are a fucked up family who aren’t good at talking to each other, but SAM means you never have to be alone again. Someone is always there for you, protecting and watching out for you. 

So in the final mission, when SAM is ripped away from Ryder--it’s not just a physical effect. It’s like losing a part of your soul and a best friend and a, in some ways, a parent--because SAM learned through Alec Ryder before anyone else--and in other ways, a child--because Ryder is responsible for teaching SAM what it means to be a person and how to navigate the world. And I wish you could convey that emotional distress (even if less complex) in the game, and that Ryder was as worried for SAM’s well being as they are for Scott’s when they race to stop the Archon. Becuase in a lot of ways, I think my Ryder would have grown closer to same than she ever did with her brother.

Anyway, I wish the game hadaddressed these things more, but I also accept that like--this is a trope that I just am REALLY into and have been for ages. It’s not gonna be what everyone wants as the main focus, and it just wasn’t the big story they were trying to tell. At the beginning of the game the descriptions of SAM hyped me up so hard because they reminded me very strongly of my favorite short story, Silently And Very Fast by Catherynne Valente (which, if you haven’t read it, it’s really amazing and you can read the first part here (the other 3 parts are linked at the bottom of each chapter), or I can send a pdf of it if you want, it’s really good people read it please and then tell me about your Emotions). The story veered off not long into the plot of the game (I, along with many others, suspected for a while that SAM would turn out to be like the mother’s consciousness integrated into the AI or something) but I stayed pretty invested in it as a major part of my Ryder’s experience in Heleus. 

And like, I guess this would be something I’ll probably end up doing fic about now since the game didn’t give me as much as I wanted (and I only meant to write a short paragraph about it here and now i have like 9 whoops), so I’ll probably keep thinking about it with the rest of my Ryders. There’s so much potential there. Jade Ryder really grew attached to SAM, but there’s also potential for resentment there--SAM is always watching, Ryder essentially gives up any aspect of privacy in their life, even if SAM is polite enough not to comment on it.

wow this got away from me. anyway. that’s the game!!!!! i’m running around making sure i’ve talked to everyone still. I need to go check up on the colonies and stuff, but I did pretty much everything else before the last mission, so there’s not much to play. Just some assignments that don’t have navpoints. and then start thinking about my next Ryder!!! I played Jade Ryder as pretty logical and professional, with a tendency to open up more with people as she grew to know them better, though she struggled to be open/heartfelt when talking to Angara when her natural conversation style with them flopped hard at first. I think my next Ryder who I still need to name is gonna be way more casual/joke-y (tho i think Ryder is HILARIOUS no matter what, it’s so fun to have such a lighthearted protag) and probably more reckless and prone to following their whims. Gonna have to re-battle the CC though which I’m not so much looking forward to. 

oh also re: the second picture: i FUCKING LOVE that you beat the architect on Elaaden so hard it shoots itself into orbit and slowly decays and you can just sit there and watch it slowly fizzle in the cold vacuum of space