#and is mostly based on like; complexity of story. chemistry with my character. that sort of piss.

[invinciblerodent]

i think you guys are not appreciating enough that i'm not openly adding thirst under every single gifset and screenshot of Davrin.

just saying. i am showing such remarkable self-restraint that I'm frankly impressing myself, and nobody has as much as told me that i'm doing a good job staying only mildly annoying about it, instead of being entirely obnoxious.

[somethingorotherer]

alright so, Exolitic (that's the name of the thing) is mostly focussed around the development of magical theory, which may seem like a weird thing to focus on, but i can't write characters to save my life and i don't really think i can do countries to the same standard as the rest of my stuff.

let's start with the basics, then I'll get into the timeline. Exolitic is set on Earth, to a certain degree. outside the planet, most things are the same as real world, all astronomy is as it should be and the like (except for some experiments i'm not sure about making cannon yet). Magic in Exolitic runs on Mana, and mana runs on space. When a mage attempts to pull mana (called channeling), they draw on the magic that saturates the space inside their own bodies. Critically, this is not taking from the body itself! there is no danger in casting magic, that's not the limiting factor. The real limiting factor is knowledge and complexity, just like any other part of human existence (see, chemistry, engineering, storytelling, farming). Magic is a part of reality, so it's really complex and requires study and community effort to use to it's real potential. i won't go over how magic is used just yet, but i'll get on that in another post. onto the timeline, the timeline of Exolitic is split into 3 Ages, each handily numbered. each age is based on a form that fantasy has taken as a genre, and the edges are defined by the use of something called the "grand entrance" which i don't have time to go over here, but let's go over the ages quickly. there are also smaller "periods" within Ages, but these are murkily defined and historians in universe debate them consistently; it's basically like real history. Age 1 was based around old fantasy, mostly drawing on fairy tales and to a lesser degree mythology (though i always feel like taking those stories is sort of disrespectful to the people who actually believe in them, despite that not seeming to be remotely true.). in this age, the gods still lived. these were not good gods, and they were absolutely out for humanity's collective heads. most humans either lived in small, hidden villages, or moved with herds of animals, as these were the only things that could be effectively hidden from the gods. again, we're hitting territory i don't have the time to explain here, so just know for now that we did manage to force the gods out of reality, through the Grand Entrance. i know that's a lot to gloss over, but i need to stay on track. Age 2 was based around Tolkien and descendant fantasy (I include DND type fantasy, and honestly a good most of modern fantasy in this), and is probably the age i know most about. This was an age of high magic, where the land was dominated by wizards towers that stretched taller than skyscrapers. Each tower was unique, because each was under the command of a single Archmage. Archmage's were powerful, studied, and talented mages proficient in all magic that was known of at the time, but their power was not internal. If you met an Archmage, they would only seem like an unusually good quality mage - it was the tower that held all thier strength. by engineering these magically reinforced structures, fed by the mana of the towns that grew at thier bases, they became practically unstoppable within thier small sphere of influence. as the age progressed, towers grew taller and cities grew larger, and magic was at it's most powerful. At one time, when seven Archmagi were convinced to combine thier strengths, the greatest tower was produced, and with it the greatest city - The Magnum Opus, who's peak reached so high up that gravity could not be felt. Age 2 was ended by two events at the same time; the discovery of the Counterspell Formula, and the reopening of the Grand Entrance. okay bad news tumblr won't let me put it all in one post. 1/2 i guess

Oooo, I saw in your bio you're working on a fantasy world which is AWESOME!!! can you tell me about it (only if you want of course, sorry if I'm being a pain)?

yes100%immediately alright i need to think of somewhere to start with this because it's not straightforward. hold on, take this post as confirmation while i think of somewhere to start.

[script-a-world]

How do I create species in depth but have little understanding of biology? Which parts are more fundamental or at least fundamental to what I'm focusing on. I most certainly want to highlight different organs and body functions as well as skeletons. I find researching biology very difficult, even at basic ideas I get so confused.

Tex: We don’t know what you don’t know - organs, body functions, and skeletons are some fundamental things to know, so that’s good to hear from you because that helps lay down starting points for research.

Rather unfortunately, successful worldbuilding in a given subject requires a solid understanding of the basic topics therein, because otherwise your internal consistency is thrown off and creates plot holes which can be difficult to patch. Any sort of checklist would be useless, then, because lack of background in the subject, no matter how casual, would make the list look like gibberish as soon as you have the slightest problem or question about it.

I’m going to err on the side of caution and start with recommending this book: “CK-12 Life Science Concepts For Middle School” for a few reasons. One is that it’s interactive, in that review questions pop up on the side while you’re reading - this will help direct you to understanding what the pertinent topics are, as well as acting as a study tool. Another reason is that their “Resources” tab has a lot of PDFs for answering the questions posed within the book - this is a good method to help reinforce knowledge and reduce any anxiety surrounding learning new subjects.

Lastly, if you find that you like how information is presented in this book, there’s more in the series! That link directs you to middle school level texts, but the homepage does offer some variability in grade levels (mostly downward, but it does make for engaging reviewing of fundamental concepts in many subjects).

CK-12 also has something called a “PLIX series”, which offers interactive ways to learn many of the subjects presented in their textbooks. Here is the link for their biology section. There’s a lot to pick from!

If you feel you’ve either already mastered this level, or picked up the topics well, then there’s this higher-level textbook to read (PDF). It has more complex language, and isn’t as interactive, but the upside of it is that you can easily copy down the terms you don’t know and make a study guide of it. It’s at this point familiarity with chemistry is crucial, however, so if you’re weak in that area, I would recommend repeating the same steps with chemistry as I outlined with biology.

Once you have a good foundation in the subject, researching is much easier - this is mostly because you’ll have a set of keywords already trained into your mind, which will help immensely in fine-tuning your searches. At the very least, it will help make reading the nearly inevitable Wikipedia pages a lot easier to comprehend.

Constablewrites: There’s always the team-up. It doesn’t even have to be a full-fledged co-author--I had to have my characters infiltrate a fortress and I’m not much on strategy, but I have a friend who is, and I’d already talked to him about some of the fundamentals of my setting. So I bought him dinner and laid out the situation and the resources the characters had, and we worked out a basic plan of attack. Granted, such friends can be rare and valuable diamonds. But if you know someone who groks the subject better than you do, get with them and pick their brain.

(Also, I’m a little curious why you want to focus so much on their biology when you find that subject so difficult. Usually a writer’s focus in SFF reflects their own interests and areas of expertise. There are plenty of stories out there with species that are biologically… questionable that are still good stories. So if it’s just that you want to create a somewhat plausible and interesting species, don’t feel like you have to be able to build one in the lab.)

Brainstormed: Here’s the starting question: what do you want this species to do? Fly, swim, sculpt, hunt, etc, what is their niche? Maybe there’s a few cool traits you want them to have. From there, do some research on real creatures that fill that niche, and study the anatomy that makes this possible. I find nature documentaries and, interestingly enough, anatomical oddity or vulture culture communities to be particularly useful for this if you’re intimidated by a source that uses mostly academic language like Wikipedia.

Birds can fly? Look at their wings. Look at the different types of wings and how their shapes affect their flight style. Look at how their respiratory system works (it’s pretty funky, let me tell you). Look at all the little ways they’ve adapted to streamline their bodies and lose weight to make flying easier, for instance, hollow bones with interior scaffolding for strength. Look at what diet is necessary to maintain the energy output for flight. Look at how their digestive systems adapted to that kind of diet.

It may seem like a dizzying list of questions, but I think of it more as a rabbit hole. Once you start with the first few, you find yourself with a dozen more. Just keep asking “how” and “why”, and look at multiple species within the same niche to get a variety of biological traits. Base your species off of what you’ve learned! Pick and choose the things you like and what makes sense to you. If you feel like you have a good grasp of it, you can even try figuring out how two completely different sets of organs or skeletal structures might blend together. It’s incredibly difficult and arguably impossible to write something completely new, because everything we know comes from what’s around us. Using existing biology to create a species is your best bet for solid, believable specbio.

To some degree, you can cheat and just copy-paste the cool bits from what you see. There are plenty, seriously plenty, of good stories with unrealistic or even unbelievable species design, as Constable said. But if you do end up throwing a bunch of disparate parts together in a jumble, it may not make much sense by the time you’re done. If you have a poor understanding of biology right now, you can either try what Tex recommended and study some general biology (which I also recommend), or try jumping in at a specific point of interest. If you want to learn about wings, start with wings, and then branch out into related biology from there. All of biology is an interconnected web, and one organ, skeletal structure, muscle group, or bodily function exists in relation to all the others. Maybe a starting point of a particular piece of anatomy can help get you started. The degree of realism is up to you, but getting at least comfortable with what it is that you’re writing should help you a lot.

[piccolina-mina]

That Wentworth show you reblig sometimes. It's Netflix? Could I ask how diverse it is? How gay is it? Is there people of colour?

Yup. Wentworth (or Wentworth Redemption) is an Aussie show on Netflix that takes place at a women's prison. It just aired its 8th season (and they dropped the latest season on Netflix already).

Diversity, it's fairly diverse.

It's predominantly white, but they do have characters of color and they have improved on that as the seasons progressed.

The main character of color for all eight seasons so far is Will Jackson. The actor is Samoan.

In the early seasons, there was also an inmate, Doreen. She's Aboriginal. She was one of the warmest, and sweetest characters out of the brood.

But outside of those two, there weren't any main characters of color. And they had a couple of recurring background characters who were Asian, mostly of Chinese descent, I believe, but my apologies if I'm wrong on that.

In later seasons there are two main characters, both Aboriginal. And they have dominant storylines. Rita and Ruby.

And the last season there is a Black British character who is prominent.

You also see more racial diversity in the background but outside of an Asian gang of inmates who cause trouble on occasion, they have limited or no speaking roles.

Is it gay? Well, nonny. It is a women's prison after all. If you want Sapphic goodness? They got you.

They have lesbians for days. I'm pretty sure within the first five minutes you get your first sexy scene with Queen of the Wentworth Lesbians, Franky Doyle.

And the beautiful thing about her arc is we actually see her go from a casual bang kind of girl to someone who falls in love, and it's one of the most notable relationships in the series.

But man, we have good lesbians, we have bad lesbians. We have complicated and flawed lesbians. We have disaster bi's.

I only emphasize it like that because there IS disturbing things or potentially questionable depictions like promiscuity that may seem stereotypical on one end, and there are sexually abusive, sadistic, flat out rapists on the other end.

I feel like with a diverse group of complex queer characters it balances out more, if that makes sense. There are multiple queer characters. Mostly women. And two male guards. Although, unlike the women, who range from flawed or complicated to just flat out "bad," both men are honestly pretty damn crappy, IMO.

If you haven't noticed, all of Wentworth's characters are hella gray and the show doesn't really subscribe to the good/bad dichotomy in a traditional way. Some of the most loathsome characters ended up being my faves down the road and such. If you watch, you'll understand what I mean.

But yes, many canon queer characters (main and recurring), and it's explored. Actually, to get an idea of how they handle their queer characters, it's only now that I'm typing this that I realize how many queer characters there actually are. Enough where you just don't even think about it. So yeah, nonny. U suppose it is hella gay AF. 🤣.

But yeah, stories including a character sort of realizing that they are queer but minus the clichéd identity crisis angst, which is pretty refreshing, I think anyway.

Actually, the majority of romantic relationships on this series have been queer ones.

There is also a lot of gay subtext. Like soooooo much subtext it almost feels like just text. If you do choose to watch it, you'll figure out what I'm talking about. And it's delicious tbh. If you appreciate the concept of enemies to lovers and twisted love based on electric chemistry that probably shouldn't even be there and is twisted AF, you'll love one of the most popular ships.

But there are homophobic slurs and language used. There is sexual assault. There is mentions of homophobia etc. I imagine many things that could be potentially triggering.

Personally, while canon never confirmed it, there's one character who felt strongly Ace. But that's just my own personal thing. That's another thing about the show. There are so many complex characters and the subtle intricacies of them leaves ample room for interpretation.

Um, there are two confirmed trans characters with significant arcs and narrative importance. One trans female in the middle of the series and one trans male in the latest season.

HOWEVER. Maxine, the female trans character was played by a cis-man. So there's that. But I'm not exaggerating when I say she's easily one of the best characters of the series. She's one of my absolute favorite characters of the series.

But Reb, the trans male character that came later is played by a non-binary actor, so that is certainly progress from before.

And both characters deal with a lot of transphobia. Again, because this show spreads the wealth, if you will, putting all of their characters through the ringer and addressing so many issues, it's not a matter of only piling on disenfranchised characters for kicks, you know?

There are conversion therapy scenes that come up, so if that's triggering, just a heads-up.

There is also body diversity. There are plus-sized characters. But the most prominent one does fall into so many of the usual tropes, the lovable lug, the bully and muscle, etc. I've heard it critiqued.

There is age diversity. There are older characters as well as younger ones. It's not all about a bunch of young, pretty people in there 20s and 30s.

And these older women are still strong and sexual and powerful etc,.

It may sound weird or whatever, but it's also refreshing that most of the characters look just normal, you know? None of that super glammed up stuff. They look like everyday people, and I love that.

Offhand, I can't recall disabled characters. Actually there is one character who has a brain aneurysm and suffers from seizures.

There are also characters who battle PTSD, someone with severe OCD, um, dementia, Depression, and anxiety, a lot of addiction. These are all Canon and confirmed.

It also toys with the potentiality of Aspergers, Sociopathy/Psychopathy, and other little things like that with characters.

Ummm, obviously there are a lot of women. They do have some male characters but whether they're behind the bars or in front of them, it's mostly women.

And there isn't much going for religion or anything like that. I don't recall anything distinctly religious at all, so nothing to say from that angle.

I'm rambling, probably? I just bingewatched the entire series within the past couple of months, so I'm no expert. But I hope that answered your question or gave you an idea of what the diversity looks like or whatever.

[livlepretre]

tysm for all ur FE updates!!! i'm really excited for elijah's introduction in this dynamic. i feel like he's just as acquainted with elena's morally complex nature as klaus's since, after all, he was the first one she ever lured in and daggered (call-back to that scene was GREAT btw). i'm just curious how you view elena/elijah's dynamic vs. klaus/elena's, even outside the scope of the fic, esp since they've had more canon interactios

This is an ask after my own heart, nonny! 

This is such an interesting question-- it’s true that Elijah and Elena have a lot more canon interactions to work with, although the Klaus and Elena interactions we DO have in canon are so ripe and explosive that it lends itself to a lot of speculation. 

So, here are my thoughts: 

Elena/Elijah: Elena and Elijah both operate under the false assumption that they’re both honorable people. In fact, all of the trust they build together in season 2 is based on this idea, with both of them going to great lengths to negotiate and prove themselves to the other. They both think they’re being extremely honest with the other-- the deal they make in 2x11 utterly fascinates me, because Elijah honestly asks Elena to die as her part of the deal, and she agrees??? It doesn’t sound like he tried to hide that from her at all. Now, Elena DOES dagger him, but she also proves herself to him later and is able to account for her actions. All of that combined with the insane levels of attraction between them (WHEN HE SMELLS HER AND THEN GIVES HER THAT LITTLE WAVE IN 2x08????) make for really captivating television. There’s also a lot of interesting framing going on with the camera angles-- if you look back at it, notice how often Elena is shown in mirror reflections during her early scenes with Elijah-- all the time. What a great call back to how he sees her not just as herself, but as her role as the doppelganger. I do think he BEGINS to see her as herself as he gets to know her, especially by 2x19, but that takes time. 

Well. The crux of it all is that Elena goes through with her side of the deal-- the deal on which their entire relationship is based-- going to her death, losing her aunt whom Elijah fails to protect-- even though doing so was HIS part of the bargain-- and then Elijah is the one who breaks his word when he decides not to kill Klaus. This is the first sign we have that actually Elijah isn’t honorable at all; he thinks that he is, but really, he’s as selfish as his siblings. I don’t really think Elena ever forgives him for this. We see in season 3 that she still really is attracted to Elijah, and that she can’t quite help but be drawn in by him, but she never allows herself to really put herself in his hands again. She might feel bad about conspiring to kill him with the rest of his family in 3x14 and 3x15... but she also doesn’t hesitate. And she doesn’t exactly confess what she’s done, either. She just gets caught. I also don’t think that Elijah’s letter to her did anything to smooth over the wreck they’d made of their relationship/unspoken attraction to each other. The way Elena recites it back to him in season 4 says it all about how much she dwelled on his words, but it also implies that she’s still hurt and angry about it all all of that time later. I think she had this really powerful, idealized image of Elijah, and her disillusionment with him is profound. 

Meanwhile, Elena is also on a path throughout seasons 2 & 3 of discovering that she’s not who she thought she’d grow up to be. She is definitely more honorable than Elijah when they meet, and she means to keep her word. But Elena’s story is that she’s an orphan with no parental/mentor guidance influencing her in a positive and moral way; instead, she has a 26 year old aunt who means well but is totally in the dark about what’s really going on and pretty much in over her head, and maybe Alaric, who shouldn’t count as a good influence because, well, look at his life, look at his choices. And she has the Salvatores. The greatest influences upon her. Damon has the greatest part in tipping her away from the straight and narrow path, to getting her sense of right and wrong to slowly unravel until she gets to a place such as 2x05, when she watches Damon eat the deputies and she doesn’t bat an eyelash (how far she’s come from 1x07 when she slapped Damon and called him out!). I MORE than suspect that the infamous Elijah-daggering at the lake house was a Damon/Elena collaboration. But even Stefan, who the show frames as so stalwart and honorable, is still a terrifying vampire with ultimately little concern for human life. He still hurts people off and on throughout seasons 1 & 2, or doesn’t particularly have a problem with it when Damon does. I mean, do you see Stefan crying over what Damon did to Caroline in season 1? It’s inconceivable from a human view point. But that’s the point. They’re not human, and they’re the greatest influences in Elena’s life. No small part of Bonnie’s horror with the Salvatores is because she watches Elena slowly turn down this dark path with those two leading Elena by the hand-- human Elena, who should never cross through the veil into the shadow. 

She’s still in the process of straying from that path-- from her honorable self-- when Elijah meets her. By the time they encounter each other in season 3, she’s already left all of that behind. She stabs people in the back when they trust her. She negotiates and gives her word only to double cross as soon as the moment is right, and she doesn’t seem to lose very much sleep over it. Elijah’s issue is that he cannot see that in Elena-- he wants to see her as who she was when he met her-- who Katerina and probably who Tatia was-- as a miracle that he desires but doesn’t quite dare to touch-- but he is incapable of seeing that his betrayal of her at the sacrifice was probably the last straw that killed whatever innocence was left in Elena. 

I think the attraction and the yearning is always going to be there between them, but it’s so embittered, especially from Elena’s point of view, that it’s hard to say whether they would be able to work past that unless Elijah suddenly learned some actual introspection skills. 

Elena/Klaus: I’ve had to think a while about this dynamic to answer the question of how this relationship is as directly compared to Elena/Elijah. Obviously they both have the history and repetition element, of the dead lover whose face keeps reiterating through time-- what a dreadful and terrifying idea, honestly. Except where Elijah is almost afraid to even touch Elena (he SO desires her, but never ever acts on it), Klaus touches Elena all. the. time. There’s a real possessiveness to his relationship with her-- notice how he holds her as he devours her; how during the Reckoning he’s always physically close to her, leaning into her space, touching her-- whereas Elijah really physically backs off from Elena when he confirms her identity, Klaus comes closer. 

This is interesting because I’ve realized in thinking about this relationship, and what Klaus and Elena potentially have in common, that what they really share is their isolation-- their loneliness. Klaus explicitly states that this is why he desires Elena-- to make hybrids, so he won’t be alone anymore (Rebekah mocks him for it, but there it is). Elena, meanwhile, is at her most alone in season 3-- everyone walks away from her there, for reasons she has no control over. This is never really used as a point to bring them together as characters, but I find it really interesting as a possibility for connection. 

Another thing that really interests me is that Elena often tries to negotiate with Klaus the way she would with Elijah-- and mostly, it fails spectacularly. Klaus recognizes in Elena that she is a schemer and a liar-- because he is too. What’s fascinating though is that, just like Elijah, he tends to treat her as an equal in these conversations-- even if he doesn’t want to play. He doesn’t tend to treat with the other characters in this way, and that gives Elena an intriguingly special status there. 

In canon we really don’t have a ton to work with to talk about the Klaus/Elena dynamic-- it’s all potential. The idea of fate being so strong and impossible to avoid-- that in that sense, they’re almost warped soul mates?; the powerful fire imagery surrounding them (the only time Elena’s elemental coding switches from water to fire is with Klaus); the chemistry and attraction that bubbled over in all of their scenes, especially in the early days; the fact that she is just so constantly challenging him and wrecking him at every turn? Klaus’s big problem is that no one is his equal, and yet... here is Elena. Human Elena, whose reasoning is as warped as Klaus’s by season 3, who somehow keeps scrambling up to play against Original vampires and witches and all sorts of creatures who should be able to crush her and yet, she keeps besting them. That’s some potent stuff to work with. I tend to think that at the end of the day, Klaus actually understands Elena much better than Elijah did, because his view of her isn’t really muddied by idealism and instead really takes into account her more tarnished nature. My only regret is that the showrunners obviously feared ever really exploring Klaus x Elena x Elijah (EVEN THOUGH THEY COMPLETELY SET IT UP) because they felt that Stefan x Elena x Damon was already as much as the show could handle (it wasn’t-- we should have done both, obviously). 

[flying-elliska]

Ok I caught up with wtfock s3 because well, it felt weird to leave unfinished (except a few clips i just didn’t want to watch, like the attack one). here’s what worked and didn’t for me (i’m pretty critical so don’t read if that sort of thing upsets you or you’re not in the mood) because i still think having this story remade so often is an unprecendented storytelling experiment worth thinking about even when it doesn’t entirely work (and i think argumented criticism is good, but if you post hate about the actors/fans etc you really suck tbh) : 

- to start with positives : like many said, the acting was pretty damn good. overall wtfock has a really solid cast. the willems have succeeded in creating an onscreen queer intimacy that feels very believable, no holds barred and no awkwardness, and they have to be commended for that. there’s a lot of chemistry and tension at first between them, which then turns into something very soft and sweet and puppy-love-like. it was nice seeing Robbe evolve and the sweet bean energy that emanates from how the actor plays him is very very powerful. i also loved the warmth of the flatshare, and as a Dutchie I just adored the Sinterklaas bits, it was so funny and i loved the found family vibes. warmth is just something they do really well, esp with the last clips, perfume shopping, playing board games, the party at the end. They use the Christmassy vibes really well. the cinematography has its moments too, contrasts between warm and cold, the episode at the beach is gorgeous, the sequence in the tunnel, the light on their faces when they are in that classroom surrounded by drawings. wtfock as a whole is also good at creating some very lovable secondary characters, be it Milan, Yasmina, Noor, or especially king Senne. So, I do understand that there are things to love about this remake, which is probably why my disappointment feels so strong. I really wanted to care about these characters in their journey. 

- on to the controversial : i don’t necessarily fault them for wanting to show a more prononced aspect of homophobia. i think the debate about this often lacks nuance. on one hand, this is the sixth remake, and homophobia is something that is still often prevalent, and having one remake show that out of six is not in itself a problem. on the other, yes, happy fluffy stories are important, but sometimes people who have gone through stuff like this also need to see their experiences represented. the power of skam is that it shows difficult experiences BUT ALSO a happy ending. that can be very healing, i think, compared to other stories which focus only on the drama. the trouble is, i don’t think they dealt with it very well, or put any effort into processing the consequences of these harrowing things. and if you don’t, it feels cheap.

- on to my main gripe : the writing. previsible, i know. but to me, essential. and this is not about them ‘changing things’ - i like when remakes change stuff, when they do it well. the thing is, i have been burned too many times before. and when i sense that the writing is being wack, it makes it automatically much harder for me to invest emotionally in the characters. and simply put there were signs early on that made me distrust the writers. for starters, the first two episodes gave me a feeling that they didn’t have their priorities in order. the POV-immersion and depth is one of the most powerful aspects of skam, and it was lost. too many early clips felt out of Robbe’s perspective, and when it was him it was about Noor ; a few clips to show his discomfort were on point, but there were too many of them, and there were repetitive, losing time on what isn’t really an essential part of Robbe’s journey. and while they were spending time on clips that felt like misery flavored filler, they decided several times to condense original clips focused on Isak and Even, together ; like their first meeting and then their first hangout, or later in the series OHN and the minute by minute talk. and i think their story suffered from that. i think because they don’t have a real discussion early on, the buildup of their relationship feels mostly based on physical attraction. and while it certainly is a thing that happens, it just isn’t my fave love story thing. i missed the sweet pining from afar and tension that makes later drama believable. it felt like they brought the drama comparatively too fast without enough character work to make it worthwhile. Also there is just too much time spent on Zoenne drama, and their breakup seems like it foreshadows the dreaded s4 love triangle, which, yikes. the focus is all over the place, the rythm felt incoherent. 

- what’s more, they decided to introduce pretty grave elements of plot, like Robbe using slurs against Sander, the homophobic attack, the suicidal urges on both their sides, Sander kissing Britt while he was still saying I love you to Robbe in the morning, without either proper build up or resolution. It made it all feel cheap, jarring, and unearned, especially when they didn’t put trigger warnings or made jokes about it on insta or waited forever to give news about the characters being ok. it felt like drama for the sake of drama, and definitely not written with a vulnerable audience of queer teens in mind. and at the same time, when it came to the ‘big scenes’ of their relationship, like the first kiss or the universes talk or sander’s episode, it felt more or less lifted from OG without a lot of effort made to adapt it to them. i actually quit live watching/blogging after the first kiss scene, because of how similar it was, and how uninspired it felt, and lukewarm. it felt like a lack of imagination. when it came to OHN, the scene in itself was lovely, but the weird time gap, random timing and people seemingly doing nothing after a suicidal Sander disappeared, sort of broke it for me.  In the OG the combo of buildup, longing, realisation, fear, release works so well in a sequence, and splitting it over time really diluted it, to me. Similarly the quickly thrown out ‘life is now’ at the ending felt sort of out of nowhere, while in OG it was such a lovely bookend, him apologizing to Eva and reflecting on his growth. The symbolism, which ties everything so beautifully together in themes of rebirth, salvation, baptism, union, faith, deciding your own narrative in OG, here feels inconsistent. There is an attempt I see, something about wasteland vs. warmth/family, but it’s often absent of main clips. It’s nowhere near as coherent as it could be. 

- all of this builds up to the main problem for me, of the season. which is, i didn’t really get into Robbe and Sander’s relationship. Or their individual arcs for that matter. When it comes to Robbe, I guess he just isn’t my type of character. I feel like he is missing the fire of an Isak. A lot of the time he just felt too passive, like he let other characters make his decisions. I was waiting for him to stand up for himself more than he did. And there are too many scenes of another character doing his coming out for him. And then Sander ; I have to say I don’t understand all the love his character gets. Maybe because that’s because he sort of gives me Dutch fuckboi vibes...but there were several times he just came accross as a flat out asshole. I found him intriguing in his intro clip, chaotic and charming, but that never really went where i expected it to. i didn’t get his passion, what drew him to art. the symbolism around his character - basically Bowie, and drawing Robbe, and Chernobyl (which is a bit tasteless imho, turning a tragedy like that into a cutesy romantic thing), feels ...disjointed, and shallow to me. Like I never really got into it. And maybe some people did and noticed deeper links but to me, I got stuck at the surface. I saw a lot of interesting theories with what was going on with him but in the end they just copied OG. And I’m sad to say, but he ended up feeling like a manic pixie dream boy cliché to me, and i just didn’t understand what drew them to each other so strongly. Yes, Robbe is caring and Sander is in need of care, but that feels like a very reductive reproduction of OG. Beyond that...i don’t know. Certain complexities of the OG i loved  just...were sanded away, like Isak being ignorant about MI and learning compassion. This just...didn’t feel like it had the same depth, and often felt like soapy teenage drama, leaning too hard and too lazily on the actors’ chemistry. i like my romances wordy and solidly enmeshed in character development, and this was not it. It never felt like they had a real conversation about things, esp after the drama. 

- i think this is the first remake that made me actually angry for reasons not related to problematic cast shit, and so i’m trying to analyze that emotion. for me it comes down to too much drama, too heavy handed. Too much of the boy squad being shitty to Robbe, too much Noor, too much filler clips without any deeper meaning, too much things distracting from getting to know the main characters and going into their issues in depth. They changed stuff, but didn’t have the guts to actually follow through. They broke the mold but only in ways that ended up feeling shallow and unconsequential. Like I would have loved seeing Robbe go to therapy ! see his mom ! Zoe and Robbe go to the police together ! Sander have a complicated home situation ! or doing a Bowie related art installation to express his feelings of alienation ! seeing more of the underground graffiti scene ! or just...something, idk. And them also removing the faith-related themes also felt disappointing. and the ohn clip taking place in the place where sander draws feels very....basic to me, even if it was pretty. very ‘oh he’s an artist, here is his safe place’....hm, okay. I didn’t like that they made Britt into such a villain, I didn’t like how the boy squad showed no care for Robbe whatsoever for weeks until the plot said it was time for them to be redeemed in a way that felt too jarring, and I didn’t like that they made Moyo so horrible but redeemed him so easily. I actually thought they would show that it’s okay to separate yourself from friends who are that bigoted, because it just shows they are not willing to care for people. And him suddenly saying those sweet and mature things felt too out of characters and a ahah ‘gotcha’ rather than depth . I didn’t like that Robbe, too, was made so virulent by his internalized homophobia but got over it so quickly. I think what disappointed me most, in the end, was that I kept picking up potential and the show kept doing absolutely nothing with it, or confirming my fears, and it made me feel stupid and out of tune with whatever they were doing. And it’s, to me, symptomatic in modern storytelling of a trend to privilege shocks and twists over inner coherence and build up. And it makes for...Very underwhelming stuff, in the end. 

- all in all, i think this remake illustrates why s3 of OG is not as easy to remake as it sounds. it’s very intricate machinery, with a pitch perfect rhythm (and an extremely passionate nitpicky fanbase lmao). and if you don’t get all the parts of why it’s so great, you’re going to lose a lot of it. (and all the remakes ended losing up stuff in translation ; more or less compensated by inventivity and charm of their own.) so many mainstream press articles praise the real time/social media format and the ‘real talk about teen issues’ which, yeah, is part of the success, but doesn’t explain the devotion on its own. there’s the way the story uses real time to build up a storytelling rythm that feels organic and makes sense as if it was part of the lives of the viewer. There’s foreshadowing and aftershocks. Wtfock often feels like they wrote the clip numbers on darts and randomly threw them at a week planner. If an episode of a regular series ends on a cliffhanger, we can be thrilled and frustrated and put it aside for next week. but if you end an episode with a character shown to be suicidal, or you don’t show them being okay after a beating, for hours or days, that’s the emotion you leave your viewers with, because skam is a continuous experience. and remakes who pile on drama moments without respite (looking at you too skamfr s4) don’t get how tiring and disengaging this can be, in this format. skam worked so well because of how benevolent it was, on the whole. and also, cheeky, with that ‘don’t take it too seriously’ deflating humor. grumpy isak in ‘hate me now’ mode getting bumped into. this lightness and comedy often feels missing here. also my god the social media is absolutely terrible. plus...there is too much filler. honestly, them having more time, on the whole...ended up being a bad thing. Plus Wtfock feels like it has so much more unadressed plot points, like...why did Sander change his mind exactly and kiss Britt again ? How did Robbe’s mom react ? Who did the attack ? What is happening w Senne now ? etc. And it feels like they just missed the fact that OG, however subtly, did adress those things. 

- now, don’t get me wrong, i’m happy it’s popular in Belgium. On the whole it’s still a beautiful story of love and acceptance. and that people found something in it that spoke to them. but as a remake, it’s probably one of the most disappointing yet, to me. and i sort of...don’t get the hype. and i don’t want to be too ‘oh cute boys kissing’ cynical about it. but i think this illustrates why in the end, this is also very subjective. there are probably things i missed because i didn’t feel the need to examine it in depth or do the extra emotional work that comes with being a devoted fan of something. and some of their choices made me angry, and i’m not forgiving when it comes to these things. i still wish them success for s4 and whatever else, but i don’t think i will watch live, at least unless it gets really rave reviews about their treatment of Yasmina’s season. i mean they got s2 right, who knows? 

[a-skyfull-of-starz]

Anime in the Time of Quarantine

This fine quarantine period, I have made it my mission to watch as much anime as possible, because I don’t know, I guess it’s better than wallowing in self-pity.  Here’s a list of everything I’ve watched to date and how much I recommend them, because I don’t know, I’m bored or something.

This list does not contain anime I’ve previously watched, because that would make it normal life anime. So don’t ask me why Shingeki no Kyojin is not on the list.  Of course it remains my favourite and I will continue to recommend it until my dying breath.

Also, this list is ordered in the order I watched them in, and does not reflect any standing other than that.  Also also, I get bored really easily, so if an anime doesn’t grab me immediately, chances are I’ll close it very quickly.  I’ve started a lot more anime than is on this list but got bored and closed it.  Hence, this list is almost entirely positive recommendations.  Also also also (I swear this is the last clarifier), I’ve been in a slice of life kind of mood, because my slice of life is boring and uninteresting to the extreme, so that genre is kind of over-represented here.  So with that being said, on to the list (sorry that it’s so long, I have an issue with verbosity).

Stein’s Gate: I started watching Stein’s Gate two years ago, but didn’t make it past the five minute mark, because I just didn’t get it.  I started watching it again a few weeks ago, and I still didn’t get it, but I persevered because I was bored and high on chocolate.  By the end of the first episode…I still didn’t get it. I continued to not get it until probably midway through the third episode, but when I got it, holy hell did it hit hard.  I absolutely enjoyed every second of this anime.  I loved watching Okabe’s journey from imagined insanity into actual insanity and then back again.  He went on a true hero’s journey, and I loved every second of it.  Miyano Mamoru gives a masterful performance (I always watch the subbed animes, and I recommend that everyone else does too).  The chemistry between Okabe and Kurisu is probably the best in anime that I’ve watched thus far (sorry Asuna and Kirito, your time has finally come).  This anime is rich with emotion, humour, tragedy, (some) romance, friendship, mad scientists and beautiful characters.  If you can stand being confused for the first three episodes, this anime will be an incredibly rewarding journey for you.  I highly recommend it.

Ao Haru Ride/Blue Spring Ride: I saw a clip of this anime in a seiyuu video and I fell in love with the art style and decided to give it a watch.  I have mixed feelings about this one.  On the one hand, the plot is interesting, although having watched similar anime, a lot of it is kind of cliched.  That being said, I did like the message of being true to yourself, no matter the cost.  And I appreciated the fact that Futaba (our main hero) wasn’t a stereotypical anime girl (although she really does cry a lot and I agree with Kou that it is annoying). I found Kou (our love interest) a very interesting and compelling character.  The clear winner of this anime though is the art style.  It is beautiful to look at.  Unfortunately, the first season ends on kind of a cliffhanger, and there doesn’t appear to be a second season coming any time soon, which is really disappointing.  If you like high school romance stories with an edgy bad boy in it, then this is the anime for you, but don’t expect a satisfying ending, because, well, there isn’t one.

Stein’s Gate 0: I watched this because my friend said that it made her cry after every episode (I personally didn’t think Stein’s Gate needed a sequel, but oh well).  Based on her recommendation, I went in with high expectations, which were kind of mostly unmet.  The plot was way more confusing, less compelling, it felt like the stakes weren’t that high, mostly because they were only introduced way later in the series (I know Stein’s Gate did the same thing, but it somehow felt more shoved in with this one) and because we already knew how it would end. Also the ending felt incredibly rushed. The only episode I really wholeheartedly enjoyed was the reunion between Kurisu and Okabe (sounds weird out of context, but I’m trying to remain spoiler free).  For the rest, I was left with mixed feelings, although I have to say, I probably love Okabe even more in Stein’s Gate 0 and Miyano Mamoru gives us another stunning performance.  I would probably have been happier if this entire series had just consisted of Okabe trying to move on from the fallout of what happened in Stein’s Gate and there was no drama of World War III.  So, I guess if you’re curious to see what happens if Okabe does not look for Stein’s Gate in the previous season, this is for you.  Honestly though, I’d probably be happier if I hadn’t watched Stein’s Gate 0.

Shigatsu wo Kimi no Uso/Your lie in April: THIS ANIME OH MY GOSH!!!!  I did not even know that this anime existed until I saw it on Kaji Yuki’s Wikipedia page (I’m a fan, so what?).  He’s barely in this by the way, but that doesn’t matter, because this anime is amazing.  I knew how it ended because I unfortunately saw spoilers when I was reading what the plot was about when I was deciding whether or not to watch this, and I still cried for about an hour after the ending (and I don’t cry easily, especially not with anime).  The writing here is probably the best in any anime I’ve watched (yes, better than SNK, the king has been toppled from his throne), the soundtrack is amazing (I’ve been listening to it on repeat for a week now), the acting is beautiful, the artwork is gorgeous (apart from Kosei’s disappearing glass frame, that was weird), and all around, this anime is just…perfect.  If you enjoy teenage romance and drama, if you love classical music, if you feel like bawling your eyes out for an hour because right now your life is pretty boring and pointless, then this is the anime for you.  And even if you aren’t any of those things listed, I still recommend this anime because it is gorgeous and deserves recognition for how incredible it is.

Welcome to the NHK: this is probably the direct opposite of Shigatsu wo Kimi no Uso in every way possible.  I haven’t finished this anime yet because it is extremely heavy, and I can only manage two episodes a night, but I still highly recommend it.  It’s a fascinating take on a lot of modern Japanese culture, specifically surrounding mental health, the hentai industry and consumerism. It’s also got a lot of black comedy in it, which I love.  All in all (and depending on the ending of the series), I highly recommend this one for its interesting writing and plot and excellent acting.  

Lovely Complex: honestly, this anime sort of crept into my heart as one of the most adorable, refreshing, hilarious and unexpected love stories of all time.  It basically tells the story of two idiot friends who slowly realise they’re in love with each other, how this impacts their friendship and how they navigate the very dark waters of teen romance.  If you’re looking for an uncliched high school romance anime, where the heroine is the opposite of a cute anime girl, where the broody handsome guy is not the object of our affection and where you get flashbacks of just how dumb you were as a teenager and how grateful you are to be out of that age group (if you’re my age I mean, I’m mostly talking about myself here), then this is definitely the anime for you. Also, the opening song is ska, how cool is that?

Orange: another time traveling story, except the time traveling is even more confusing here. Just kidding, the time traveling is probably the least interesting part of this story, which examines suicide, depression, guilt and bullying, and does it in a pretty mature way.  Our hero (dear lovely confused Naho) is unfortunately not very smart, but that’s ok, because she has Suwa, the best human being in the whole world, to help her out.  Honestly, this story would have ended very differently if Suwa had not been around and he deserves every award that can possibly be given to amazing human beings. This anime is sort of 13 Reasons Why, but in reverse, less exploitative and with better friends (you’ll understand what I mean when you watch it).  If you aren’t going to be triggered by discussions of suicide, depression and bullying, then I really do recommend this, as it is very interesting, well-performed, and largely well-handled.

So that’s my anime watch list thus far.  I plan to finish Welcome to the NHK soon, and then start watching Mushishi, as I’ve heard a lot of great things about it.  Also, now that you guys have seen what my tastes are, I would love it if I could get more recommendations.  Lord knows, I’m not going to be doing anything else until I can find a way home, so I might as well expand my horizons.  Also also…no, that’s it.  Have a good quarantine folks!

[semicolonthefifth]

Bats (1999)

“Clip their wings? Man, could you just shoot their damn heads off? And don’t miss.”

With our next animal based pick for October Horror, we go from the scaly and crawly to the winged terror: “Bats”. It’s certainly different than what I’ve been dealing with so far. Few horror films seem to follow mammals, with notable examples including works like “Cujo”. It’s more common for films to center their horror on the scaly or bug-like. I’d wager this is because mammals tend to be more easily loved than snakes, frogs, or bugs. It’s easier to sympathize or like something when its furry as opposed to it being rough or slimy. At least that’s my hypothesis - but that’s not really important.

Out in Gallup, Texas a growing swarm of carnivorous bats are flying throughout the area - murdering people and eating whatever they can. A duo of bat scientists are called in to investigate, finding that the bats have been infected by a modified virus that changes them to be smarter, faster, stronger, and worst of all - possessing an omnivore diet. The bats have escaped, have infected other bats, and are threatening to grow rapidly if not dealt with. Teaming up with a local sheriff and a CDC agent, as well the scientist who created the virus - everyone must work together to stop the bat menace- or else face the possibility of bats consuming everything throughout the country.

It’s surprising how serious this film is, especially considering the times. While it does have the odd joke, as well moments of extreme action, it does treat the horror of genetically modified bats quite well. It’s a good kind of seriousness, with the characters not acting dumb as they engage with the creatures. Although there is one character who makes jokey one liners, he does have usefulness. I’m not saying it’s a great film, as the story has some dumb moments - however I have to note that the film at least tries, which I can appreciate.

The characters aren’t too complex, but they get the job done. There’s thankfully no dumb drama between the cast, or times when they aren’t focused on what’s important. Although there is a silly moment where a scientist acts all evil about his experiment, it doesn’t last long and thankfully ends with some sweet karma. It’s good that the film focuses on the true villains (i.e. the bats) and that there’s no secondary villain to complicate matters. Although the military in the film can sort of count as such, it’s more out of ignorance of the situation rather than malice. The protagonists are focused, are rarely ever dumb, and they have some decent chemistry with each other. It’s not top grade acting, but it doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable.

The action scenes are great, and there’s some flashy bits of terror with the bats, but the film feels too action-packed to feel truly horrific. The bats range between CGI and practical puppets, and neither are that great. The CGI swarms are too obvious and are especially fake whenever the bat models start sitting down or crawling. The puppets are a bit better, though the faces on the bats, as well how they creep around, is a bit hilarious. However I do like when the bats swarm and are too fast for the camera, as the action and destruction involving them is well done. The bats cause so much havoc when they swarm, and it’s honestly a delight whenever it happens.

Stuff like the music and the cinematography is decent, but not really memorable. On a technical level, the film does its job as expected and I have no complaints about it. While I won’t be singing praise, I still have to give some positive recognition - especially when compared to what I’ve covered so far.

1999’s “Bats” is a decent, mostly predictable, but overall entertaining film. It won’t be the most memorable thing you’ll be watching, but I think it’s something that’ll keep you entertained. I give it a recommendation to see - perhaps not immediately, but it’s something you can enjoy while sitting back, relaxing, and enjoy some awesome bat violence.

[ctl-yuejie]

My thoughts on the conflict between TangYi and ShaoFei, the tone of HIStory3:Trapped  and how conflict and reveals get presented

Disclaimer: I love this show, I think the acting is great and I am very excited that the production team challenged itself with a more complex story than past HIStory seasons, upped the production quality and overall seemed to pour all the heart and hard work into this. Never forget that I love this show even though this might come off as very critical. Me nitpicking at a piece of media however doesn’t mean that I don’t like it (I seldom waste my breath on bad-mouthing something I didn’t enjoy unless it personally offended me), it only means that I enjoyed it so much that I spent hours thinking about the plot and the characters and generally had a lot of feelings.

        - spoilers up until episode 16 -

Now that the show has only 4 episodes left to air I wanted to take some time to sort my thoughts and feelings.

Overall, I really do enjoy this show, especially the acting, the chemistry between Chris and Jake is stellar (not to leave out Andy and Kenny, I just don’t think I’ve seen enough of their story to comment too much on them yet) and the  brilliantly written romance of TangYi and ShaoFei.

In the beginning the premise sounded tropey and fun and I didn’t expect them to seriously tackle the issue of a cop falling in love with a criminal because the trailer, while being action-packed, looked too light-hearted.

The show however took a surprising twist.

Sure, much of what happens is not realistic: the crime rate in Taiwan is famously low (we had one too many shootings and violent deaths on the show to match with the statistics) and I am pretty sure ShaoFei drawing his gun at TangYi every chance he gets in the beginning and not facing any backlash doesn’t comply with police protocol at all.

However, when they introduced the whole background story of TangYi I started to take the set-up more seriously. Prior to this I thought that I just had to suspend belief in order to enjoy the cop/gangster romance aspect of the show and to be able to ignore any ethical issues that might arise with such a dynamic.  But introducing him as this young adult who’d grown up into a life of crime and no choosing of his own, who tried to cut ties with the criminal world because of a promise he gave to his foster father made me rethink the tone of the show and I started to believe that they would honestly tackle the ethical issues of the relationship between ShaoFei and TangYi.

Trying to live an honest and upright life doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stop committing crimes on your way to achieve that goal (and I am pretty sure that HongYe setting up that business is textbook money laundering) but I liked to believe that revealing TangYi’s motivation would mean exactly that. Because this promised a challenge, suspense and a struggle worth watching.

Refraining from committing crimes and dismantling his organization while upholding his front as a stone-hearted mob boss would result in much more difficulties when interacting with gang members and trying to not get overpowered by enemies. TangYi would be too powerful otherwise. Most of the problems he has encountered on this show were connected to him trying to protect people that are dear to him, a task that is much more complicated to accomplish when you cannot resort to violence. 

Additionally, I don’t think I could root for TangYi and ShaoFei as a couple if TangYi doesn’t try his best to not hurt other people. Not only because ShaoFei is a policeman, there are enough corrupt or misguided policemen around, but because ShaoFei is introduced to us as someone with strong convictions and an even stronger sense of justice and upholding the law. And to me it didn’t seem like his character arc was set-up for him to delve into a moral grey-area or even to switch sides with TangYi. I thought that his journey would be to fall for TangYi and accept that not everyone is necessarily entirely good or evil and having to grapple with his senior being not the person he thought she was. This does fit in with the latest revelations that the police chief with whom he has a kind of father-son relationship is indeed not the good person we thought he was.

I have no idea how ShaoFei could deal with the idea of TangYi being capable of hurting people when it isn’t done in self-defense and if there are other, albeit more difficult, ways in which he could’ve taken action.

Especially because in the reality this show creates the problems a cop/gangster relationship entails don’t get entirely glossed over. Yu Qi reminds ShaoFei in the hospital that him and TangYi cannot be together, not because they’re both men, but because of their professions. (To be honest the only real beef I might have with this show so far was the weird “love is love” analogy that they freely applied to a gangster/cop relationship. I don’t think it was in any way intentional but reversing that thought might lead the viewer to the conclusion that you are either born into a certain profession or you can choose your sexuality...which is definitely not what the show wants us to think, I hope.) Even earlier on ShaoFei denies that he could have developed feelings for TangYi on the basis that they’re playing on opposite teams. So we have to assume that the show acknowledges the ethical problems of this romance in general but somehow conveniently forgets about this conflict when it should have an impact on the characters behavior. This is especially bizarre because the only function of those scenes then is to act as a tool to not make as forget how cold and ruthless TangYi can be. Because he is a gangster boss.

After revealing TangYi’s backstory on the mountain top I got more excited about the show because I thought I’d understood in which direction they wanted to take the main romantic plot and what kind of tone they wanted to set. The show would be slightly more serious and solemn than I anticipated but I welcomed that approach because it would make for an interesting show while not excluding any possible humour.

However, immediately in the next episode I had to start and rethink my assumptions. By now the low respect for rules on the police’s site and dilettante approach to their job started to stand out, however I was willing to not head those details that much attention because most tv series, even mainstream crime shows, mess up the actual technicalities of the jobs they’re trying to portray. ShaoFei’s fever dream on the mountain however took the disconnect with the previous episode a little bit further. The scene overall did fit in with the humour of the show but the way it was acted out and shot didn’t make it look like an organic part of the rest of the series. However, the scene just left me with a small nagging feeling and wasn’t anything that really bugged me.

My feelings for the show however got tested a bit when TangYi beat up that henchman. I was so convinced that the main conflict of the show would be TangYi trying to maintain is image as a gangster so his gang wouldn’t find out that he is trying to dissolve the organization while having to abstain from using any violence. Something that is made even more difficult by the police getting involved and the mystery from 4 years ago looming over him.

I truly believed that TangYi being left alone in that room would turn out to be a ruse to shake up Ah De (whom, as we later find out, he was already suspicious of). It also made me hope that Wang Kun Chen might have not actually died but that his death was faked in order to go after both the criminals and any corrupt policemen (I will come back to his death later on). But afterwards in a talk with Jack it gets confirmed that TangYi indeed beat up the henchman. This course of action didn’t surprise me that much but to be honest I was just disappointed with how straight-forward and unexcitingly TangYi dealt with Ah De and possibly some other close people going behind his back.

The intention of the set-up with Old Tang’s wish was only based on my assumptions so I can’t really feel that let down by it, but TangYi beating up that henchman threw me because I thought we were supposed to read more into Old Tang’s request and conclude that TangYi would have to live through a constant internal struggle.

In general, I don’t mind when unrealistic things happen in a series, however there has to be an internal set of rules that gets followed and scenes and characters have to make sense within the reality the showrunners created.

To me it is curious that TangYi doesn’t think that he has to adjust how he acts in order to disentangle himself from a life of crime in some scenes but in other scenes suddenly cannot take action in a certain way because of the same reason (mostly when it becomes urgent to eliminate direct threats). It is always up to ShaoFei to actively stop him from committing crimes and we never see an internal struggle. Sure, the task got imposed on him by Old Tang and TangYi doesn’t seem to be propelled by intrinsic motives but due to his emotional connection to Old Tang I’d have thought that he would really have to constantly struggle mentally and physically to refrain himself from using violence.

That does, in no way, mean that I wanted this show to be less dark. I think there’s still a lot of room for even more cruelty and angst even if the main character tries his best not to use violence. The whole set-up is very sad, the element of corruption could also lead to emotional distress at how hopeless ShaoFei’s investigation is, drug trafficking in particular comes with many victims, the betrayal inside the gang and every parental figure in this show either not living up to expectations or being outright abusive are also heavy subjects they could lean into even more. Heck, ShaoFei’s whole investigation and the police’s involvement raise the stakes because there is the possibility of capital punishment for drug offenses in Taiwan. We also have to deal with the fact that TangYi most definitely committed heinous acts in the past, the same might go for Jack. All in all, there are still many options left to make this show even more grim and bleak.

In the end it is up to the writers how they want to spin TangFei’s romance but to me it seemed like they were laying the ground for a different approach to the story then what actually played out. While I am not mad at this show (as I said before this is me nitpicking at a series that I highly enjoy) at this point I don’t know whether I can trust the hints I pick up because I don’t know if it was the intention of the writers to built-up a storyline or if what they did was totally arbitrary, or if they indeed simply forgot what they established in earlier scenes (this is where I had my problems with Hong Ye’s attack on ShaoFei and Ah De’s assault of TangYi. HongYe was introduced as more intelligent than that planned attack was and Ah De’s premeditated assault didn’t fit with his goals and the way he crossed the line earlier on).

This back and forth on characterizations, storylines and tone does confuse me quite a bit and is the only thing so far that made the show fall slightly short of what they could’ve accomplished with more consistent writing.

- - - - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - -- - - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Which leads me to how the show is dealing with its reveals. So far, we have the mystery from 4 years ago that still needs solving, TangYi’s real parents’ identity which got revealed in episode 16, Ah De not only being in love with TangYi but selling drugs behind his back, Jack’s identity and real motivation, who really killed Wang Kun Chen, Ah Zi being up to no good and finally the police chief being dirty.

I enjoyed/am enjoying all of these plot-twists, some were more obvious than others but again, the writing of how these things unravel or got revealed is very inconsistent.

I will start with our mystery men. The reveal I enjoyed the most was the police chief being a dirty cop. It pretty much came out of nowhere but now a lot of his actions do make much more sense, especially how he didn’t give much support to ShaoFei and how he was mocking about with his work which I initially wrote off as missing motivation instead of passive sabotage. It also gives us enough room to guess his motivations and to whatever conclusion we might come to, it fits perfectly into the story so far. He might have needed money, or averting his eyes might have led to bigger consequences than he expected, now he is scared to lose his job because his daughter is marrying, or he worked too long in the force so he decided to side with what he felt was the most harmless kind of corruption to be able to focus on the big fish. What is important is that regardless of his motivation his past behavior fits with the reveal and added excitement to the show (to behonest at the moment I kind of lost interest in what happened 4 years ago because it is both obvious and confusing at the same time). Ah Zi was an okay reveal and the general topic of corruption in the work force and presumably good characters turning out grey or bad is pretty interesting but how his identity got revealed with those taunting shots of a man in a jacket were somewhat lackluster. They only spanned over two episodes before the reveal and were pretty on the nose. I would have loved it if they’d built-up his betrayal over more episodes with secretive shots of money and drugs exchanging hands where we couldn’t be sure if we were just shown the inner workings of TangYi’s gang or outsiders trying to get their hands on some extra cash.

Again, two similar reveals came about very differently and with a different kind of depth and detail to attention as well as being tied into the show organically and not so much.

This change in style doesn’t do much good in my opinion. Jack remains much of a mystery even though we need at least some hints in order to root for him and ZhaoZi. Instead their scenes are sweet but not that telling and they never just appear in the background to tie in their romance at all times. There were missed opportunities and many scenes that they could’ve been in finished without them and we went two whole episodes without them. Hong Ye and DaoYi had the big advantage to be present in many of the main couples’ scenes so their romance felt very well written and satisfying. I wish they’d spend even more time and attention to detail on Jack and ZhaoZi because with the added mystery element to Jack’s persona I really need more to get emotionally involved.

Again, I am confused as to how deep the show wants us to analyze its characters’ actions and how tricky the story really is. Ah De selling drugs behind TangYi’s back was mentioned only in a throw-away line and we are to believe that TangYi wouldn’t act more guarded or cautious around Ah De? Are we supposed to question that Jack killed Wang Kun Chen? If so, why was TangYi supposed to get fraimed for his death when it was a set-up by possibly the police? If it was as straight-forward as it’s presented I have my problems with rooting for TangYi/ShaoFei and ZhaoZi/Jack because it would be the first kill since the start of the show and setting up TangYi and Jack as unredeemable in ZhaoZI’s and ShaoFei’s eyes (see my huge paragraph about violence above). If we are supposed to scrutinize the show on the same intricate level as the police chief’s betrayal, some of the other reveals fall flat and are just not on the same engaging level.

The same goes for the messaging: are we to believe that Ah De’s actions were despicable? Wouldn’t we have to apply the same rules to Jack kissing ZhaoZi?

Overall I wish this series was written more tight-knitted, intricate and consistent in tone and message. Because I believe that this otherwise very entertaining story could’ve only benefitted from that.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (102/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous Chapters conveniently available here.

[30 January, 233 Before Age.   Planet Server’la.]

Over the next six weeks, Guwar had learned a great deal about his new partners, but very little about the object of their search.

Treekul, the only non-Saiyan in the group, was an alchemical historian.    She knew a few techniques for preparing mystical elixirs and so on, but her main focus of study was the lore.    Unlike the sciences of chemistry and biology, which made progress through rigorous documentation and peer review, alchemy was a secret discipline, with reclusive masters teaching on a select handful of students.   When they recorded their work at all, it was always done in an esoteric style.   Simple instructions were expressed as complex riddles.   Ingredients were given symbolic codenames which would be meaningless to the uninitiated.   Typically, an alchemical scroll promised much: immortality, mastery over living things, the power to transmute lead into gold.   But once you actually sat down and read them, they delivered very little: Vague sermons, arcane philosophical tracts, and references to other works which were conveniently unavailable.   Guwar had heard about this sort of thing, and always assumed it was an enormous bluff, no different from the way he would use the Saiyans' reputation to make himself seem more powerful than he actually was.  

And yet, Treekul seemed to be able to make sense of it all, at least to a certain extent.   She had shown him a few documents she had worked on in the past, and explained how she was able to filter the "important stuff" from the "crap", as she put it.  Part of the alchemical tradition was to deliberately add a lot of pointless fluff to one's writings, in order to disguise the true wisdom and to trick the unworthy into dismissing their sacred knowledge as nonsense.    "Once you've studied enough of their writings," she had told him, "you can start to decode it, and see what they were really talking about."

Treekul hailed from the Planet Clytemnestra, whose people had pale purple skin and dark green hair.   Treekul preferred to keep her own hair as short as possible, as she said it helped her focus on her research.    "Don't ask me why, but that extra quarter inch of growth on my head just makes me nuts," she had said one day while he saw her applying a trimmer to her scalp.   As a result, Guwar noticed that she tended to leave tiny green clippings behind everywhere she went.  

Endive, one of the Saiyans, was usually the one flying their ship.   She was a smuggler by trade, though she liked to find a good battle between jobs, much the same way that Guwar did when his mathematics skills weren't needed.   Like Guwar, she had been forced to scale back her recreational fighting ever since Luffa had begun cracking down on Saiyan activity.  

"I tried getting as far from Federation space as I could," she once told him.   "I found a nice little civil war on Rofos III.    They had mechs, triffles, and all sorts of interesting weapons.    I was in heaven... for all of two weeks, and then she showed up and ruined the whole thing.  That was when I made up my mind.    One way or another, I refuse to be pushed around again."

Endive never had much to say, but Guwar enjoyed hearing it, if only for the chance to admire her looks.   She had woven the end of her black hair in to a short, thick braid, which hung between her shoulder blades like a piece of halyard rope from a sailing ship.   The bridge of her nose was at a steep angle, which he found aesthetically pleasing, especially whenever she frowned.  Luckily for him, she frowned quite often, since the ship's navigation system wasn't quite up to her personal standards.    She and Treekul had recruited him into this group by tricking him into thinking he would get to sleep with one or both of them.   Watching Endive handle the controls of the ship, he often wished that there was a way to take her up on it.

As for Lesseri, he had dealt with her in the past, though he had always known her to be a ruthless, indomitable warrior.   For years he had envied her superior strength and financial success.   For example, the ship they now traveled in was hardly luxurious, but it was fast and well-armed, and comfortably quartered six people, which made it far nicer than the broken down one-seater Guwar had left behind on Paxul's Planet.   From afar, he had always thought Lesseri to be the model of what a Saiyan should be: a warrior who could go anywhere and do anything she pleased, because she had the might to enforce her own will.  

Now that he had lived with her for a while, and seen her ship from the inside, he realized they had more in common than either of them probably cared to admit.   Lesseri thought of herself as a weakling compared to other Saiyans, just as he saw himself.  This surprised Guwar at first, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.    There was always a bigger fish in the pond.  He had always thought Lesseri retreated from untenable situations because she was so cold and calculating, but the truth was that she was afraid of dying, just like everyone else.   She was farther ahead of him in the search for greater power, but the gap between them was insignificant compared to how far they each had to go.    In spite of their past enmity, Guwar was beginning to like her.   When their quest led to searching a tomb on an abandoned planet, he was happy to join her.

"I killed my mother," Lesseri told him as she punched her way through the wall that surrounded the necropolis.  They had been talking about family, and this was where the conversation had led.  

"Why?" Guwar asked.

"You know those procedures where you can have your embryos removed from your womb and gestated outside of your body?"

"No, I had no idea you could do that," Guwar said.   He had no interest in procreation, and since he lacked a uterus, he cared very little what others did with theirs.

Lesseri shook her head.   "Men," she groaned.   "A lot of Saiyan women do it when they get pregnant.    Back when Planet Saiya was still up and running, they practically ordered people to do it."

"Okay," Guwar said.  "What about it?"

"My mother did it through a private company, only she never came back to get me when it was time.    Growing up, it kind of pissed me off.  My sister, she used to make excuses.   She thought mom must have died in battle, or she couldn't pay the bills or something.    When I got older, I tracked her down.   Wasn't even that hard.   She wasn't even trying to hide."

"Must have been a hell of a fight," Guwar said as he doubled checked their coordinates.    

"Nah, I checked her out first before I confronted her.   She was too close to me in power.   I might have won, but there was no guarantee, and I wanted a guarantee.   That was how we both ended up training with Luffa."

Guwar nearly dropped his scanning device.   "You trained with Luffa?" he asked.  

"If you can call it that," Lesseri said.   "Mostly it was Luffa and her alien wife scolding us like we were naughty children.   The leader of the group, guy named Zaperc, he tried to start this 'movement' where we'd learn to become Super Saiyans ourselves.   My mother joined on, and so did I.    Didn't want to risk her learning anything that might make her stronger and protect her from my revenge.    Anyway, Luffa found out about Zaperc's group and took over the whole thing.   Not that there was much to take over, but I guess she didn't like the idea of trash like us taking her name in vain.  Anyway, I waited until the right moment, then I rigged a bomb on my mother's ship.    As soon as things went pear-shaped, I knew she'd try to run for it, and sure enough--"

Lesseri clapped her hands together for effect.    "Boom.  Luffa didn't like it, but she didn't care much for my mother either, so she just sort of stood there while I left."

"What did your sister think?" Guwar asked.

"Beats me," Lesseri said.   "I haven't seen her in years.   She might be dead.    Hold on, I think this is it."

Near the center of the necropolis was a large mausoleum that looked like a great stone chrysalis.   There were small alien creatures clinging to its surface, and the glossy surface of their chitinous shells made the entire structure seem almost alive.

"Yeah, I think this is the one we want.   Let me take some readings before we smash our way in.   Wouldn't want to break anything important."

"So what happened after that?" Guwar asked.

"After what?" Lesseri replied.

"After you killed your mother," Guwar said.   "I've never gotten revenge for anything before.  I wondered what it was like."

"To be honest, it felt kind of empty," Lesseri said.  "I didn't regret it, but I'd spent my whole life on that one goal, and then it was over.    Mostly, it stuck in my craw that I wasn't strong enough to kill the old bag directly.   Luffa had no business giving me her opinion on it, but she was right.   It would have been more satisfying to fight her instead of blowing her up.    Mom didn't deserve the honor, but at least if I'd beaten her fairly, I would have had something to be proud of."

"I suppose so," Guwar said.

"That was when I started looking for ways to get stronger.   I've had enough of people pushing me around like I'm some bystander.    Being a Saiyan used to mean something, but lately it just feels like it makes you a patsy for King Rehval, or Luffa, or anyone else who happens to hit the genetic lottery.    I wanted to make my own opportunity."

"And that was how you met Treekul?" Guwar asked.

"Exactly," Lesseri said.    "I've heard rumors about Saiyans using a technique called 'Jindan' to increase their power.    I know we haven't told you much about it, Guwar, but that's only because we don't know much more than you do.   It's not easy finding a Saiyan these days, so if there's anything to the rumors, these jacked up Saiyans are staying out of sight."

"If that's true," Guwar reasoned, "then maybe this Jindan thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.   The Saiyans who use Jindan still have to hide from Luffa just like the rest of us."

"Could be," Lesseri said, "but it could also mean that they don't want the competition finding out about their secret.    If everyone could use it--whatever 'it' is--then we'd all be right back where we started.    And even if it doesn't make you as strong as a Super Saiyan, it could still be a big gain.   I don't know about you, but I'll take whatever I can get."

"I'm picking up some unusual readings," Guwar said.   "But nothing Saiyan."

Lesseri checked her own scanner and then compared her results to his.    "Yeah, Treekul was afraid of something like this.    We'll have to take a few precautions before we break into this thing.   Give me a hand, will you?"

*******

Thousands of years ago,  a brilliant scholar was interred in a mausoleum.   Over time, his students were buried nearby, and as the scholar's wisdom of the natural world grew into legend, a superstition arose that those who were buried near his tomb would pass on a blessing to their descendants.   Centuries passed, and the scholar came to be revered as a god, whose worshipers believed would one day rise from the dead and rule over the planet.   It was said that those buried in the necropolis that surrounded his tomb would be revived as his holy servants.

Before the planet's intelligent life forms vanished, their history included several wars fought over this sacred ground.    Conquerors thought that by controlling the necropolis, they could convince others of their supremacy.    New religions attempted to assimilate the necropolis's mythical status into their own theologies.   During more enlightened times, scientists would attempt to study the graves to learn the truth behind the legends.   But the scholar's mausoleum was never successfully breached, for when the ancient one was having it built, he planned to take his greatest secrets with him into the hereafter.    To ensure that graverobbers would not plunder his great writings, he treated the interior of his tomb with a concoction of his own making.   It would make the stone heal itself when broken.   In case this was not enough to dissuade intruders, he prepared a guardian, an unliving creature that would become active when fresh air entered the tomb.   Its creator had named it Qursss, and it drew strength from the very earth surrounding the mausoleum.   Once unleashed, it would not rest until it had destroyed all living things in the vicinity.   When its grisly task was finished, it would lumber back into the tomb, which would then reseal itself.  

And so, when the first breeze of fresh air entered the tomb in over fifteen centuries, Qursss stirred and reawakened to its strange un-life.   A blue flame ignited from a pile of ashes, and then it grew, transmuting into a vaguely humanoid form cast in minerals and the bones of its past victims.   Without hesitation, it rushed towards the source of the air current, and wailed its fearsome warning to any who could hear.  

"Woe betide you, graverobbers!   Know that you have summoned Qursss the Unquenchable, and for daring to defile my master's resting place, you must pay with your lives!"

It saw light from the fissure in the stone, and then the crack exploded into an opening large enough for a person to enter.  

"Yeah, I see it now," Guwar said as he peeked inside to look at Qursss.    "We'd better lure the thing outside before we proceed."

Qursss roared as it chased after Guwar.    "Mortal fool!" it shouted.  "You have sealed your doom this day!   Qursss shall pursue you to the ends of the--"

It paused at the threshhold of the hole in the mausoleum.  Guwar stood just outside, waiting patiently for Qursss to follow him.    The only thing missing from this scene was the ground.  Guwar was standing in midair.    

"Looks like you were right," Guwar said.    "This creature's immortal, but it doesn't seem to be able to fly."

Beneath them, Qursss could hear a second intruder, and its primitive intellect slowly realized that she was carrying the entire mausoleum in her arms.     "Aw, well, if he’s too shy to step outside," Lesseri said, "I guess I'll have to give him some encouragement!"

The whole structure began to shake, and Qursss lost its balance.   Unable to react in time, it tumbled forward, and as it fell, it realized that it was thousands of feet in the air.  

It wanted to threaten its enemies, to warn them that such trickery would avail them nothing, since Qursss would follow them and destroy them for as long as it took to restore its master's tomb.    But it had already noticed the ocean below, and Qursss knew that its master had designed it to sleep in the absence of fresh air.    No, there could be no reprisal.  Qursss would sink like a stone once it hit the water, and Qursss would fall dormant for a very long time.   Perhaps one day, when the oceans themselves boiled away, Qursss would stir once more, but that would not be for a very long time.   There was absolutely nothing it could do.    The enemy had won.    

Its final thought, as its monstrous body shattered upon the water's surface, was to wonder why its master had never thought to give it wings.

*******

[31 January, 233 Before Age.    Interstellar Space.]

"What I don't understand," Guwar asked Treekul, "is how you found that planet in the first place.    It was uncharted, and it looked like no one had been there in centuries."

"Geomantic extrapolation," Treekul replied as she ran her finger over the text of the parchment the Saiyans had removed from the mausoleum.    "You're sure this was the only scroll you found in the tomb, right?"

"Positive," Guwar said.    "What was that you said a second ago?"

She sat up from her bunk and finally looked at him.   "Geomancy," she said.   "In my line of work, you can't rely on the people who write these things to actually help you by citing sources.    Sometimes you have to use other methods to connect the dots.    That planet you and Lesseri went to, I don't know what it's called, or the name of the guy who wrote this scroll, but it's written in the same language as the last four scrolls I studied, and uses symbols and notations he would have learned from an older master known as 'Server'.   Not his real name, by the way.  None of these guys ever used their real name."

"You... you really haven't answered my question," Guwar said.  

She pointed to a disc-shaped object hanging from the opposite wall of her cabin.    It appeared to be made of wood, and hundreds of tiny characters and sigils were written upon its surface.   "That's a geomantic compass," she said.    "Normally you use it for aligning ki energies with planetary fields, but a specialist can use it to locate objects bound by special connections.   Server's other disciples had most of the information I needed, but not all of it, so I calibrated my compass with information from the scrolls I had, and used that to point me in the general direction of the one that I didn't.   It's taken a lot of course corrections to narrow it down, but considering how long the planet's been lost, I think ten days was a pretty decent turnaround."

Guwar was beginning to understand how some of his clients felt whenever he explained the more complicated aspects of probability theory.   "Look," he said, "I just want to understand how this gets us any closer to Jindan.   Does that scroll mention it?   Does that mean it was invented thousands of years ago?"

"No, of course not," Treekul said.    "You have to understand how this works, Guwar.    All we really know about Jindan-- and I'm using the word 'know' very loosely-- is that it makes Saiyans stronger somehow, and it just happens to share the name of one of the terms used for the golden elixir, a central concept of alchemical thought.    Until we find out more, our best chance is to dig through old writings, and hopefully find scrolls and records that were used to invent this particular Jindan.    We do that, and we'll have something resembling a lead to what you three are after."

He made a long sigh when he heard this.   "It all sounds pretty hopeless," he said.  

She smiled and lay back down on her bunk.   "Trust me, Guwar, I've been digging up old secrets my whole career.   If there's something to be found, I'll find it.    It just takes time.  And the occasional defiling of an ancient burial ground, but you and Lesseri didn't seem to have much trouble with that at all.   Even if it takes us a year to hit paydirt, wouldn't you say it was worth it?"

Guwar supposed he couldn't argue with that.   "I guess I'll leave you to your work then," he said as he rose from her chair and headed for the door.   "I could use something to eat anyway."

"Hey, drop by anytime," she said.  "It's good to bounce ideas off of you.   Oh, could you toss me my trimmer before you go?   My scalp's getting a little itchy."

*******

[9 February, 233 Before Age.   Thalos I.]

Days later, with nowhere in particular to go, the Saiyans decided to land on a planet to indulge in some hunting and gathering.    Guwar preferred gathering, as it made more sense from an efficiency standpoint.   The ship's sensors could tell him where to go to find abundant supplies of edible plants, and he could collect those much more quickly than he could chase down a comparable mass of wild animals.   Most Saiyans didn't look at it that way, and so when Lesseri and Endive chose to hunt large reptiles on the western continent, he wasn't surprised.

What did surprise him was when Endive approached him later, while he was bundling his first batch of roots and berries for the cargo hold.   They weren't supposed to meet up for another hour.

"I thought you were hunting," he said.  

"I decided to see if you needed any help," she said.    "Lesseri has things well in hand."

"She usually does," Guwar said.   "But I think I've covered my end pretty well."

"What do you think of our little band so far, Guwar?" she asked.    

He finished weaving a simple rope and began wrapping it around a stack of starchy plants he had found in a marsh.    "I'm used to working alone," he said, "but so far I'm impressed with the operation.   All of you are professional, sensible.   Treekul's a bit flaky, but she's an alien, so I won't hold it against her."

"Have you considered what will happen when we succeed, Guwar?" Endive asked.    She took a seat on one of the cargo crates and put her palms on her knees.  

"We'll all get stronger," he said.  "Much stronger, with any luck.   I, for one, plan to be able to write my own ticket."

"And what about Lesseri?" she asked.   "She's stronger than both of us right now.   It stands to reason that if our quest succeeds, she stands to become even stronger still."

"That makes sense to me," Guwar said slowly.   "What's your point, Endive?"

"Merely that we should be considering our own separate interests at this stage of the partnership," she replied.   "Our working theory is that there are already Saiyans out there using Jindan in secret.   They will not be pleased to see three more added to their number.   For every Saiyan that learns the secret, it depreciates in value."

"And if we were talking about treasure," Guwar surmised, "sooner or later we'd have to decide if it would be better to split it two ways instead of three."

"I see this as no different, Guwar," Endive said.    "The other Saiyans may try to stop us from reaching our goal.   But they may find two Saiyans easier to accept into their domain than three.   And if they happen to be fairly weak Saiyans--like you and me-- well, we'd hardly be much of a threat to their plans, now would we?"

"What exactly are you suggesting, Endive?" he asked.   He tried to keep his tone neutral, hoping not to tip his hand.   At the moment, he saw no compelling reason to turn against Lesseri, but he didn't want to appear to reject the idea, just in case she was on to something.

"For the moment, nothing at all," she said briskly.   "I simply wanted to share my appraisal of the situation.   When the time comes to make a decision, there may not be a chance to confer privately, Guwar.  So I thought we should discuss certain... contingencies in advance."

He was about to ask her what contingencies she had in mind, when the communicators on their wrists began to chirp.   It was Treekul.  She had found something.

*******

The closest thing Lesseri's ship had to a meeting area was the mess hall situated between the cabins and the cockpit.  Treekul presented her findings on a small display screen normally used for entertainment purposes.  Guwar found her delivery surprisingly polished and scholarly, considering that she was giving it in her pajamas, which bore flecks of green hair clippings from the last three times she trimmed her scalp.  

"I know a lot of what I just said went over your heads," she said as she finished explaining how she arrived at her conclusions.   "I just want to give you a bird's eye view of what I've done, so you won't think this I just pulled all of this out of my ear.  

"We've trusted you this far, Treekul," Lesseri said.   "And I think we get the general idea."

Lesseri had put her feet up on the table and crossed her ankles.   Endive was busy eating some raw meat from her hunting, while Guwar sat on the table itself.   He had some question about Treekul's data, but he decided to save them for when he could speak with her in private.   He suspected that the others would do the same.  

"All right, then here's the bottom line," Treekul said as she tapped the screen to advance to the next image.   The good news is that my theory was correct, and we've been on the right track.    We've established a line of spagyrist masters who studied techniques for increasing physical attributes.  We're talking about simple stuff, like healing minor injuries, or improving concentration, but each record we've found states that the masters were looking ahead to a refinement of the research.   A 'golden elixir', or a perfection of what they had begun to explore.  They called that ideal experiment 'jindan', which means whoever invented what we're looking for must have based his research upon their earlier work."

"But the scroll we just found was never used by anyone," Lesseri said.   "That tomb hadn't been touched in centuries, and the wax seal on the scroll itself was unbroken."

"Right, but it did give me more information to plug into my calculations," Treekul said.    That means my geomantic measurements will be more precise from here on out, and there's a lot less guesswork about where to look next."  She tapped the star chart on the monitor, causing it to zoom in on a single star system.   "Turns out we'll have to go to the Quadzityz System after all," she said.

"That whole sector is a war zone," Endive said.  

"Fine by me," Lesseri said with a smile.   "With all the fighting, we can slip in, take what we need, and no one will notice we were there.   We might even score some plunder if we have time."

"Yes, that does sound quite pleasant," Endive replied,  "but that isn't my point.  A stray bombardment could destroy our objective before we even have a chance to reach it."

"Not to mention the mercenaries working that sector," Guwar added.   "Saiyans or not, some of them are bound to be stronger than us.    If we're not careful, we could find ourselves outmatched.   Then we'd be the ones getting plundered."

"It's worse than you think," Treekul said.    "I monitored the war reports from that sector, just to get some idea of what we'd be getting into.    Turns out the fighting has escalated even more than we knew.   Someone brought slorgs into the conflict."

"Slorgs!" Endive said with a gasp.    "Then it's only a matter of time before Luffa gets involved!  She'd never tolerate a slorg infestation anywhere near the Federation border."

"And that brings me to the 'Bad News' part of my presentation," Treekul said with a sigh.   She tapped the screen one more time, bringing up an image from a news periodical.   The photo accompanying the article showed a Saiyan with glowing yellow hair and tail, holding a Quadzity armored troop transport over her head.    Terrified soldiers were fleeing from her as she smashed the vehicle into a large boulder.

"Luffa's not just going to get involved on Quadziityz," Treekul said.    "She's already there."

NEXT: The War Against War

[kingedwardviii]

What are your thoughts on the narrative regarding David/Edward and Wallis portrayed in The Crown? Sorry if you’ve been asked before!

Hi! I was asked something like this a while ago, but it was before season 2 which kinda changed my view on the show a little bit. 

I’m actually still working on a pretty substantial series of posts for my other blog about the various allegations in episode six of season two, which are a mixture of complete bullshit and things deliberately taken out of context. But here is my latest post, with actual citations, about the various Nazi related rumors and the problems with that narrative. The odd thing about The Crown is that unlike most fictional portrayals of the royal family, you get the feeling that the research was done but then kinda ignored to make the plot go in the direction the writers wanted it to. 

Other than the fundamental issue of whether or not the Windsors supported the Nazis (tldr; they didn’t) after the jump are my pros and cons about the accuracy of their portrayal in both seasons. It has been about six months since I’ve watched any of it, so I might be missing a few things, though I did refer to some notes I had about season two. 

Pros:

-There was an impressive attention to detail when it came to recreating their clothing, Wallis’s jewelry, and some of the details in how they decorated. A lot of research and effort must’ve gone into it, and I was happy to see Wallis’s cross bracelet, the pug pillows, and many of David’s real outfits replicated. 

-There was a definite ring of authenticity to David’s letters home to Wallis, at least for the season one episodes. Since the season two plotline of him coming home during Billy Graham’s visit and being banished by Elizabeth was 100% fake, obviously the letters there weren’t based on anything factual. Apparently for reasons having to do with copyright, the letters in season one were rearranged and a lot of it was rewritten, but as someone who’s read the real letters and pretty much knows them backwards and forwards I was fooled at first into thinking they were real letters just cut up out of context. The nicknames were real, though I think the show implied they were more malicious than they actually were since David and Wallis had nicknames for *everyone*. He did call her Peaches, a detail other dramatizations have missed. 

-Wallis and David could both be kind of petty, bitchy, overdramatic people, especially when it came to the royal family. This came from a genuine place of deep hurt which you need some level of background knowledge to understand, but that is certainly a very realistic aspect of their personalities and their dynamic as a couple that comes through when you read their letters from any point after the abdication. 

-There aren’t really any fictionalized portrayals of David and Wallis that go into their life after the abdication, and even less so if you’re talking about after the war. I think The Crown did a good job showing their relationship in a realistic way, and showing the complexities of his feelings; though she didn’t get as much depth. It seems to be hard for some writers (both of fiction and “non-fiction” that is more like fiction) to wrap their heads around the fact that the Windsors, her especially, were bitter about living in exile, had their share of regrets, but also did genuinely love each other. They most certainly did not live happily ever after, and even had tension in their relationship over the abdication, but also showed a lot of affection for each other and tried to make their marriage work. Though I think some of this was the realistic chemistry and it’s more of a credit to the actors, who probably studied over old photos and videos quite a bit, rather than the writing or directing. 

-Considering they got a relatively small amount of screen time, the depth that we got of his characterization was pretty impressive. Peter Morgan does have something of a gift for telling you a lot about a character in a relatively small number of scenes, which is noticeable with other characters such as Tony Snowden and Jackie Kennedy as well. 

-David and Wallis Windsor were 100% the sort of people who would’ve thrown a birthday party for one of their dogs. I have no evidence something like this happened but if you read how they write about their dogs in their letters, it seems plausible. 

Cons:

-Wallis’s character is not given much agency or a voice of her own. She gets less screen time as David and has no real relationship with the protagonist of the story, so this makes sense on some level, but I also feel like there were some missed opportunities there. For instance, along with David’s letters to Wallis, we have her letters back to him which are an incredibly important, but often ignored, source of insight as to her personality and her feelings towards her husband. The royal family seemed to view Wallis as a one-dimensional villain character, and the media at the time and even today treats her as more of a plot-point than a complex human being. Even though The Crown at least shows her as affectionate towards David (which is accurate) and not totally lacking in humanity, there is no real attempt to subvert or reexamine the incredibly misogynistic narrative the royal family and their supporters built around her and some of the inaccuracies I’m about to mention play into this.

-Wallis is shown as being present during the abdication flashback scenes in season one, even being in the same room as Queen Mary in one of them. She wasn’t there, she was out of the country during most of the abdication crisis and, crucially, Queen Mary refused to ever meet her at all, during or after the crisis. The closest they came was over a year earlier when Wallis, at a series of large events David had gotten her into, was in the same room as King George V and Queen Mary and was briefly presented to them. I am guessing this is just a case of bad historical research; any biography of the people involved, even a bad one, would’ve set them straight. But it creates a very misleading impression because they missed something very significant to understanding David’s attitude towards his family: Queen Mary considered Wallis so far beneath her she refused to even be in the same room as Wallis once she knew David wanted to marry her. After the abdication, the rest of the royal family mostly followed her lead, so at the time both seasons of The Crown are set, Elizabeth II has only ever met Wallis once (or maybe twice), fleetingly, when she was a little girl. This was also widely covered in the press, so Wallis had to deal with the fact that not only did her in-laws hate her and blame her for the abdication, but the entire world knew that. Also, though the show doesn’t touch on the tension between Wallis and David over the abdication (except perhaps that weird exchange at the party in season two), which is probably the right choice given the time period covered, to make a very long story short if you want to understand Wallis’s side of that story the fact that she wasn’t there when David abdicated and he didn’t tell her until it was already put into motion is pretty fucking crucial. Making her seem more involved in that situation also serves to make the royal family’s treatment of her seem more justified than it actually was.

-That they even referenced (much less treated as factual) the ridiculous story about Wallis sleeping with the Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop is pretty disgusting. This is a somewhat distinct issue to the fundamental problems with the Nazi narrative as a whole that I covered in the post linked above. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever for this story, but it can be directly traced back to a misinterpretation of another false rumor that Wallis was overly friendly with Ribbentrop’s predecessor Leopold von Hoesch, Wallis at least knew Hoesch, who it’s worth noting was not a member of the Nazi party. Ribbentrop only met Wallis a few times, fleetingly, at parties. Of all the ridiculous “affair” stories, this one is the least credible (and none of them are credible), doesn’t really make any logical sense, but is also the most widely repeated. The reason for that is this particular story uses the decades of baseless slut-shaming that has been heaped on Wallis to give credence to the extremely flimsy narrative that she was some sort of Nazi agent. And because Wallis isn’t given a ton of agency or characterization, the viewer might find this allegation believable even though it seems to contradict what little we are told about her. Whatever pre-conceived notions you have about Wallis that might stem from misogyny, either through false allegations or taking an overly judgmental attitude to things that are true, will make you more inclined to believe the Ribbentrop story, and then that story in turn props up an entire narrative about her being a Nazi collaborator. It’s bullshit, but it gives people a more socially acceptable reason to hate her in this day and age and prevents any sort of feminist reexamination of how Wallis was treated. 

-Though we see a few bitchy comments from the Queen Mother, by and large the royal family’s nastiness towards David and Wallis is downplayed in season one, and then given a completely bullshit justification in season two. The entire plotline of the episode in season two, as it pertains to David asking Elizabeth if he can return to England and her telling him off because for being a Nazi, is completely false. It goes to show how much of an impact that The Crown has had on how the royal fandom views David and Wallis that people now seem to genuinely believe Nazi sympathies had something to do with the royal family’s banishment of the Windsors. The royal family viewed the Windsors as negatively (or possibly more negatively) before the war, than after it, and their vendetta against Wallis started before the visit to Nazi Germany, even. Their complaints about the Nazi Germany visit, to the extent that we have documentation of them, center around it being a publicity stunt rather than it involving the Nazis. David and Wallis were allowed in Britain more often after the war than before it. In the 1960s, Elizabeth II finally agreed to meet Wallis, agreed to let the Windsors be buried in Britain, and actually invited Wallis and David as a married couple to an official engagement; this was the closest to a “reconciliation” that ever happened and all of it was after the Marburg papers were published (which if you skipped the link earlier, didn’t exactly say what Peter Morgan would have you believe they did), and after episode six of season two of The Crown is set. I am going to guess season three of The Crown will not cover any of that because they doubled down on the Nazi angle to such an extent that it’s not only incredibly historically inaccurate, but pretty much rules out any reconciliation between David and Elizabeth unless they want to retcon some of it. Elizabeth II was mostly following the lead of her parents when it came to her views on Wallis and David, and her parents were pretty open about their feelings: they were bitter and angry about the abdication and how it impacted their lives, and they also held a lot of backwards, sexist views about Wallis, views that were not kept secret either in public or private. To the extent that Elizabeth’s attitude towards them changed during the ‘50s and ‘60s, she became less hostile to them because of changing attitudes about divorce and women’s rights, not more hostile to them because of anything to do with Nazism. 

-Around the time of David’s appearance in season two of The Crown, he was writing a book (Windsor Revisited, published in 1960) which he did go to Britain to research. Furthermore, at this point he’d already written his memoirs (A King’s Story, published in 1951) which were an international bestseller, so the idea of him coming to Britain to work on a book should hardly have seemed surprising or questionable to anyone. Also by this point David had basically given up on ever being given a position in Britain again; when George VI and Queen Mary died and nothing changed, he basically gave up because he realized the Queen Mother’s attitude was not doing to change and she would remain an obstacle even if her daughter was nominally head of the family. 

-The idea that the royal family was (or even still is) trying to cover up some sort of connection between David and the Nazis isn’t really backed up. Churchill, who had been a close friend of David for many years, did try to suppress Nazi documents that mentioned him, as did President Eisenhower, who was friendly with the Windsors, but also who was involved with capturing the deposits of documents to begin with and felt the Nazis didn’t tend to make very reliable sources. Bertie, on the other hand, said the documents probably should be published. Two of the men involved in sending the documents to the American researchers, insuring their publication, were closely tied to the royal family. One, John Wheeler-Bennett, who found out about the “missing” documents and insisted they be included in the publication with the help of American historians, was subsequently chosen by the Queen and Queen Mother to write the official biography of George VI and later was knighted by the Queen for service to the royal family. The other was Tommy Lascelles, and according to Wheeler-Bennett, he actually made the microfilms of the documents that were sent along and later published. More damaging than anything that has actually been published is this idea that there is more of it out there that the royal family is still concealing. Not only is there no reason to believe there is anything more out there or that the royal family has “covered” for David and Wallis, we know that the one chance they had to do so, they weren’t cooperative and may very well have helped undermine Churchill’s attempt to do so. And they really didn’t have a motivation; the narrative now is that David and Wallis were Nazi sympathizers or even collaborators, and perhaps that now is slightly damaging to the prestige of the monarchy, though it’s not like they didn’t have their share of questionable figures already and it’s not like other monarchies in Europe haven’t faced similar allegations, most of them more credible. But in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, if you read contemporary newspapers and magazines, the Duke of Windsor was still a relatively popular figure and polls suggested the public thought he should be allowed to live in Britain again. Even when he died in 1972, there was a large public showing of grief and sixty thousand people waited in line for hours to view his lying in state. For the main branch of the family during that period, it probably looked much better to encourage the public to think David was a bad apple and they kicked him out of the country so he couldn’t do any damage (especially if Wallis is blamed for corrupting him) than to say there was a decades long family feud where everyone (including George VI, the Queen Mother, and Elizabeth II) behaved badly and they kicked a popular member of our family out of both public life and private family events because of personal drama and attitudes about divorce that look more out-of-touch with each passing year. 

-The back story between Churchill and David is largely left out; their one major scene together in season one seems to hint at it (one of Churchill’s lines suggests he’s helped David before and it didn’t end well), but the little bit we see of Churchill in season two doesn’t hint at it at all. And theoretically that would’ve happened first; even though the whole show is written by Peter Morgan it almost feels like two different writers, one of whom knows that Churchill was a friend of David for decades and his primary supporter during the abdication crisis and one who either doesn’t know that or is choosing to go in a different direction. I am leaning towards the latter idea since I feel like David’s plotline in season two was written entirely in response to criticism from people who largely don’t know that history who thought the show was being too sympathetic to David and Wallis. I’ve seen some of these same people treating this as a plot hole, wondering why Churchill would’ve had dinner with David “knowing” all of these supposedly horrible things David did, but in real life they did remain friendly and Winston and Clementine Churchill had even went to stay with David and Wallis in France during the period he was out of office. Though arguably there’s a lot of back story relating to David and Wallis in general that perhaps should be included but isn’t. Especially for a show that loves giving back story about characters to try and explain their actions.

-Wallis never smoked, but weirdly most period dramas seem to want to show her as a smoker. She didn’t smoke, she hated the smell of it, believed it was unhealthy, and was constantly nagging at David to cut back. But if you’re someone that just likes to watch period dramas about her instead of reading books, you’d probably think she did smoke because almost all of them make that mistake. Or it may be some sort of deliberate stylistic choice because smoking while dressed in period clothing with period hair and make-up looks cool. Plus in old movies, “bad girl” characters always smoked and that is usually how Wallis is portrayed. 

-David and Wallis were in New York when he was informed of George VI’s death, which he found out about from the press rather than his family or the local consulate. They were also in New York when he was informed of Queen Mary’s illness and left to go see her. David’s sister Princess Mary, who doesn’t really exist in The Crown except a few off-screen references, was visiting New York at the time, and they travelled to Britain together to come see her. Princess Mary was the only person in the family who remained on good terms with David, and actually boycotted Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding when he wasn’t invited to it. Wallis was also in New York for the burials of both George VI and Queen Mary, not their house in France. 

[enchantedxrose]

Creating Believable Romance: Things Writers Can Learn from Beauty and the Beast (1991)

It always makes me laugh when Hollywood has these two hour films made for adults in which I feel like I know nothing about the cardboard romantic leads or why they even care about each other, when Disney’s little ninety minute family movie manages to develop much more believable chemistry. 

So how did they do it? What can writers learn from this movie about how to create a believable romance in their own stories?

I’m mostly going to focus on the animated film because A) it did this story first, and B) it has such a short run time and yet takes advantage of every moment to create a well-paced, well-developed relationship between the titles characters. (There is one thing that the live action movie added that I will touch on eventually, though.)

1) Establish your romantic leads as characters first, with distinct personalities. It helps if they have clear goals and interests.

This might seem obvious, but so many mainstream romance movies and stories have bland characters. 

On the other hand, before Belle and the Beast ever meet, we the audience have a strong sense of who they are as individuals and are interested to see what happens to them. The Beast is a tragic figure, dramatic, sullen, insecure, selfish, but still sympathetic in his shame and self-loathing. We see that there is the possibility for character growth in him. Belle gets a whole damn musical number developing her character: she’s sweet and kind, but also a bit of an oddity in her town, sort of scatterbrained like her inventor father, a prolific reader in a time when it was weird for peasant women to be well read. Most of all, she is lonely and yearns “to have someone understand.”

So basically, the audience can see some possible trajectories for their character arcs. Each of them lack something that the other could provide: not only could Belle be the one to break the spell, she could inject some brightness and humor into the Beast’s melancholy life; the Beast could be the sympathetic, understanding companion that Belle needs. They could find some common ground together in their feelings of being an outcast from society.

The audience can see all this. But the characters, at first, do not. Which brings me to my next point.

2) Don’t just jump from Point A to Point B; let us see how their relationship changes.

Ah, yes, it’s the classic Pride and Prejudice romance trope, where the romantic leads dislike each other when they first meet. It was a pretty popular formula in the 90s. I’m not saying it should be used in every romance plot (it would get pretty boring after a while), but there’s a reason it became so popular.

Here’s the main reason why it works particularly well in Beauty and the Beast: they have good reasons not to get along well at first (not based on contrived misunderstandings), and they have good reasons to eventually change their minds about each other. The Beast imprisoned her father and she bargained away her freedom--I’d say that’s a valid enough reason to dislike someone--but it’s ultimately his childish, unkind behavior toward her that makes her avoid him. 

On the other hand, the Beast seems to think Belle is being stubborn and contrary out of spite and resents her for it. And he makes assumptions right off the bat about her attitude toward him (“she’ll never see me as anything but a monster”--blaming his appearance when really it’s his behavior she doesn’t like).

I think Disney learned from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty that it’s more interesting to let your audience see characters’ attitudes evolve toward each other, instead of jumping right into the infatuation stage. (And I’m not throwing shade on those movies, I just think Disney started telling more complex stories by the Renaissance, at least as far as princess movies are concerned.) 

Besides, with this fairy tale, it doesn’t make sense for Belle and the Beast to fall in love at first sight. 

The big “ice breaking” moment between Belle and the Beast is their conversation after he rescues her from the wolves. It’s arguably the most important scene in the film. In just a bit of dialogue, it accomplishes the following: 

A) assures the audience that Belle is not going to tolerate being treated poorly

B) shows that she is no longer afraid of the Beast

C) opens the Beast’s eyes to his own flaws in such a way that he can’t deny or escape them

 D) establishes some grudging mutual respect between Belle and the Beast, maybe even a tentatively friendly relationship.

Even before we see the rest of the movie, we can tell this is going to be a turning point of some kind. But there’s a few more things this movie has to show us before we can believe Belle’s confession and the magical transformation...

3) Let us see them have fun together.

People love fluffy romantic montages when done right. “Something There” juxtaposes the innocent fun they’re having (feeding the birds, the snowball fight) with their conflicted internal monologues about their changing feelings. 

Fun and humor are important ways for people to get more comfortable around each other and see their good qualities. Which is why I’m always surprised (and disappointed) when so many romantic plots are dour and ultra-serious. A bunch of mumbling dialogue and brooding about fate and *yawn.* It makes me want to say, lighten up, you guys. If your relationship is bringing you no joy at all, why are you even together??

4) Let us see them do normal, mundane things together.

Again, people love domestic fluff. Why? It gives us a glimpse into the character’s everyday lives together. Their entire life isn’t going to be comprised of dramatic confessions of love, so let us see them living comfortably side by side. Sometimes seemingly boring situations can still teach us something about the characters, even as simple as having breakfast together.

Look at them learning to compromise, even with the little things! 

5) Most importantly, answer the question “why do they like each other?”

Joke all you want about Belle falling in love because he gave her a library, it was a thoughtful gift that showed he was supportive of her interests--something she had never encountered from her judgmental village. Belle and the Beast find acceptance and solace in each other, and are able to comfortably be themselves when they’re together.

The film also (sort of) spells out what qualities they specifically like about each other. Belle begins to fall when she realizes “there’s something sweet, and almost kind” about the Beast. The Beast admits he has feelings for her shortly after their argument, whereas he had previously been dismissive of her (“she’s so beautiful and I’m...well look at me”). This leads me to infer that it’s her bravery and resilience that he comes to admire, that makes him see her differently.

6) Make them share something personal together to establish trust and emotional intimacy.

This is something the live action movie added that I felt actually served a good purpose in the story: the Beast helps Belle find some closure about her mother’s death. It shows that he cares about her emotional state. In turn she allows herself to be vulnerable in front of him, sharing some very personal thoughts and even crying a little, which shows the audience that she trusts him.

7) Now it’s time for some romantic gesture(s).

All these points above lay the foundation so that the ballroom scene can sweep us off our feet. By the time the Beast lets Belle go, we can already see they love each other. It’s just a matter of admitting it.

So there you have it. In my opinion, these seven things are what make this fictional relationship believable despite the film’s short run time. They’re relatively simple ways to make a romance in a story work, which I think writers (myself included) could benefit from considering.

[chibisquirt]

I have been asking people questions from these every time I see them on my dash because it's fun, so forgive me if I asked you any of these in a previous round.... FIC MEME: 10 (Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?), 30 (What inspires you to write?), 51(Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!)

I reblog these things pretty often, but you know, I almost never get many questions about them?  This time, though, I’ve gotten THREE asks, which I think is record!  *happy dances*

@the-flightoficarus asked for 51 as well, after first sending: 

1. 10. 19. 22. 31. 37. 41. 42. 44. 46. for the ask game!!! 

So!

1 What was the first fandom you got involved in?

That depends on how you define “fandom”.  The first thing I was a fan of was probably... Power Rangers?  Maybe?  And I also really liked Valdemar and Witch World around the same time?  But I didn’t “get involved” with other fans, even passively, until Gundam Wing, I would say.  Although--for years I’ve said that FAKE was the first fanfic I ever wrote, but in retrospect I think it was actually Valdemar.  I think there was a huge-ass Valdemar fanfic I blocked out in there, but I never published or shared it, so it kind of doesn’t count.  Harry Potter was the first fandom where I produced content, including reviews.

10 Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?  

Leverage, because I’m terrible with the cons.  Also Goblin Emperor, because the linguistics scare me.  And the very specific ship-fandom of Where In The World, which may or may not be the real ship name but if I find it, I’ll read it (which is sort of thematically appropriate).

19   Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?  

Rhodey/Tony.  It *should* work, it makes *sense*, but... I just don’t go there!  *baffled shrug*

22   Is there anything you regret writing?

I regret... actually, no.  I almost said, “I regret spending 120,000 words on my SBB considering no one actually read it,” but a) that’s just me being salty and b) it’s not true.  That fic exorcised some fuckin’ demons for me, and I’m glad I wrote it.  Especially that scene in chapter... four or five, don’t remember which, but the one that’s just incredibly painful?  That shit is based on my (failed, failed, failed) marriage, I needed to write that.

Actually, I take it back, there is something I regret writing:  after my ex-husband and my penultimate breakup, I started a text file on my computer titled “Why I Miss Dean” and just went off in it.  I probably should not have done that.

But the things I should be “ashamed” of?  The cheesy teenager fic, the shit I never finished in the DC fandom, the fanfiction-of-fanfiction that is my first posted work on AO3?  No, fuck that, I don’t regret any of that shit.  I needed it. 

30  What inspires you to write?

Stories.  There’s usually one scene in particular that makes me giddy with joy to imagine it, and I find myself writing so that I can have that one scene.  In the a/b/o multiship thing, it’s the after credits scene that I’m still working my way towards.  In Stars Fading, it was the reveal scene, when the identity porn curtains were pulled back.  In the Trashy McSupertrash, it’s a trope parody scene that makes me giggle endlessly to myself.  That sort of thing.

31  What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

@judearaya‘s comment on You Would Be In Clover:

I....cannot. My darling Bubbles. First thank you for being my porn buddy :D Second. I finished this last night and just...had to sit with it. I literally could think of nothing but it, it stayed with me so intensely.

You really wrote an emotional, difficult, lovely masterpiece here. The reader becomes so helplessly immersed in their world, in how complex and aching and challenging each of their lives are. I think that the way you portrayed Gwen and Bucky's relationship, how they loved each other, really beautifully. I love that you didn't shy away from how hard it was for them to love each other despite knowing that they were in such a difficult position. Particularly Bucky -- he broke my heart. He really did. Because throughout I just knew, if he could have, he would have given her anything for her happiness, and knowing there was this *thing* he couldn't just tore me up in the way you wrote it.

Sam is...amazing. He's Sam. I don't even know how to touch that one.

That last scene -- there was so much to love, but one thing was the way in which everyone had a very real place with the other, but how with Sam there, Gwen and Bucky were able to connect in a way they'd been struggling for years -- expressing their love for each other through physical intimacy that wasn't marred (I can't think of the right word) by everything else.

Thank you for writing this.

I legitimately teared up.  It still wrecks me.  It tells me that every single thing I set out to do with this fic, I accomplished.  <3 <3 <3

37  First person or third person - what do you write in and why?

Third, and there actually is a reason.  

Basically, when it’s first person, the conceit is that this is a story someone (the narrator) is telling you; when it’s third, it’s a story that happened.  A lot of the things that happen in the stories I’m interested in writing seem to me to be too personal to be told, especially to the anonymous audience.

41  List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

I’m not currently reading five fics.  *hangs head*  I’ve had a tough time reading fic in general lately; difficulty concentrating, plus I’ve kinda been sucked into the Dragon Age vortex again, plus plus whenever I go to read I get the guilty reminder that I should be writing my original fic, instead.  So basically, I’m currently reading one fic, because it just posted a chapter tonight and it is magical, and other than that I’m mostly leaving it alone.  

42  List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:

Nothing too shocking here...

Copperbadge

Dira Sudis

Chad

Nonymos

Sineala

44  What ship do you feel needs more attention?

Hm...  Maybe Sam/Steve?  Not that there isn’t fic there, but not enough, considering the INSTANT chemistry they had in the film.  Oh!  Also IN CHARACTER Steve/Nat!  (Because they are Bros, and if that doesn’t come through in the fic, then why are you writing them?)  And the related ship of StuckyNat--very rare, but when it works, it hella works.

46  If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

Oh, the long one!  Definitely.  But if they didn’t have the stomach for all that...  Either Nalattris or Best Served With A Twist.  Both are post-CW fics, both have Steve and Tony reconciling their relationship by the end, both are short and gen.  

My most popular fics are both soulmate fics, and you can find them by sorting-by-kudoi.  My hottest fic, anecdotally, seems to be the crossover with Marvel Noir (you don’t have to know Marvel Noir to enjoy it) (and people sure do seem to enjoy it!).  

51  Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

I really hate to rant--there’s enough of that on this website--so I guess I’ll gush, instead:  I love the creativity of it; I love the welcome of fandom.  I love the gentle, excitable way fans welcome other fans.  I love the drive underlying fandom to do better, always, although that’s rarely put into words, and what we’re doing better is as changeable as my underwear.  (Pretty changeable by this point, I’ve been wearing this pair all day.)  

I love that I could show up, a broken husk of a woman stinging on every surface, write terrible, fic-of-a-fic stuff, and get feedback on it that was loving and enthusiastic and not disparaging.  I love that disparaging feedback in general is a taboo.  ( @subversivecynic and @drakkenzero, who have met my family, will instantly understand why that’s exciting to me.)  

I love that, by and large, no one sporks anything anymore.  It had its place, and it’s done, and now we make other mistakes.  I LOVE that.

Thanks for asking!  :D

[hawkland]

for the in depth fandom questions: svu

@adarafaelbarbas also asked for my SVU thoughts, so here you both go! 

And it got long, so I’m putting it all behind cut….

Top 5 favourite characters: Top 2 are no surprise to anyone: John Munch & Fin Tutuola of course. After that? At the moment I’d probably have to say Casey Novak, George Huang, and Don Cragen. But that can vary a bit depending on which episodes/seasons I’ve been watching recently.

Other characters you like: Hmm, well, I’d say I “like” most of the regulars through the years, or else I wouldn’t be a fan in the first place, would I? If I had to pick say five more to round out my top 10, though, I’d probably go with Melinda Warner, Alex Cabot, Olivia Benson of the early seasons, Nick Amaro, and Rafael Barba. 

Least favourite characters:  Chester Lake, any of the ever-changing ADAs from seasons 10-12, Dale Stuckey (you bastard you killed O’Halloran!), Elliot Stabler from about season 6 onward, Olivia Benson from at least season 16 onward (though she started annoying me at times far before that, especially in her attitude toward Rollins and Amaro in Season 13).

Otps: Munch/Fin, of course, before any others! I also ship Cabenson pretty hard; it was probably my first ship when I was watching the show originally. 

Notps: Eeeeeh, I always sort of tread lightly around declaring NOTPs because there are a lot of ships I don’t particularly care for, but my reasons can be weird/personal and I don’t like stirring up wank talking about them or the reasons why. But I will say that I definitely never liked E/O as a romantic ship, only as friends. And I have a personal squick for shipping Fin with anyone but Munch because I just want them to be together (and yet I’ll ship Munch with pretty much anyone else, though maybe not as an endgame ship, so I’m kind of a hypocrite that way? IDK…) I didn’t care for Tuckson, and Barisi…I just honestly don’t really see it, and while I’ve tried reading it in fic I’ve rarely found a story that convinced me or felt in character to my mind.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Favourite friendships: Munch/Cragen, Fin/Amanda, Munch/Amaro, Munch/Benson, Bensler (early seasons before it all got fucked up)

Favourite family: I guess I’ll say Fin, because as messed-up as it may be, I do enjoy the episodes featuring Ken & I love the idea of Fin becoming a grandfather. I also really really want Ken & Alejandro to be together and be happy!

Favourite episodes: With so many seasons it’s hard to narrow it down to even a top 10. But some of the ones I will always rewatch when they’re on include Remorse, Nocturne, Legacy, Manhunt, Countdown, Denial, Careless, Painless, Haunted, Scavenger, Parts, Raw, Screwed, Alternate, Cold, Authority, Zebras, Anchor… ie, most of the very Fin and/or Munch-centric ones.

Favourite season/book/movie: Seasons 2 and 5 are my favorites—2 for the way the team really came together and so many of the cases/episodes featured ALL of the detectives working as a unit. 5 for some of the most interesting cases and the whole loss of Alex/introduction of Casey storyline.

Favourite quotes: Ah, so many but a few off the top of my head:

“If you don’t question authority, you lose your humanity.”

“I just know stuff.”

“That’s my Jew.”

“Once god gives you a uterus, then I’ll listen to your sermon.”

“Even a turd can float.”

Best musical moment: The final montage in Screwed set to Mark Isham’s “Sense of Touch”. The music is perfect and the ending of that episode always gets me emotional.

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: How do I even narrow it down?!?! Munch and Fin sharing a motel room in Manhunt, maybe, and finally having a bit of a heart-to-heart. That or when Ken has dinner with John to introduce Alejandro because I still insist there is no possible heterosexual context to that scene whatsoever.

When it really disappointed you: Oh so so many times but, probably one of the biggest disappointments for me was last year, all the hype about “Munch returns” when he ended up having all of about 2 minutes screen time—and really didn’t get to have any good interactions with anyone other than Benson & Noah.

Saddest moment: Munch’s retirement. You know, I still cannot watch that episode in its entirety? I’m not ready for the emotional gut-punch.

Most well done character death: Mmm…I might go with Sonya Paxton on that, because it was emotional and sad and yet she also was able to at least, in her death, provide evidence to catch her (and others) killer. Unlike Sister Peg and O’Halloran’s deaths which just felt cheap and unnecessary…and I won’t even go into how I feel about how they killed Mike Dodds (that’s why @ladyzootie and I are working on a story to set THAT right!)

Favourite guest star: Robin Williams in Authority, though I also loved Jeremy Irons, especially in his second appearance in Totem. As much as I love Huang, I would have enjoyed seeing more of Dr. Jackson as well; Irons was perfect in that role and brought a lot to the show with his character.

Favourite cast member:  Don’t make me choose between the Belz and Ice-T! I love them both too much to pick a favorite.

Character you wish was still alive: Mike. Dodds.

One thing you hope really happens: That the show either brings on a new full-time detective for the unit or starts using more supporting characters again: show the detectives going to the morgue, working with TARU, working with a psychiatrist instead of having Benson diagnosing and doing everything herself. But, I’m not holding out great hope for that.

Most shocking twist: Shocking in a not-good way: Tuckson. Sorry, I never bought it, I don’t see all this so-called evidence that the writers were “setting it up” for seasons before it happened. Total WTF??!?! for me.

When did you start watching/reading?: I actually vividly remember watching the pilot episode when it first aired in 1999. I’ve pretty much followed it on and off since then, watching regularly at least on thru Season 9 or so and I think that’s about when I lost at least some of my interest. But that said, I was mostly a casual fan until about 2 years ago when I really fell hard into it in a “fannish” way, after rewatching old episodes in reruns.

Best animal/creature: THE MONKEY IN THE BASKETBALL

Favourite location: The original squad room.

Trope you wish they would stop using: SAINT BENSON IS THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN DO EVERYTHING IN THE SQUAD. ENOUGH ALREADY.

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: Errrr…hmm. These days I can’t think of anything it does better than other shows besides bore and/or annoy me, sorry. In the earlier seasons I’d say it was unique in the way it tackled messy, painful, and often controversial issues of sexuality and “sexually based offenses”. It wasn’t always perfectly PC but it did a good job of presenting complexity and showcasing how societal ideas were changing and being challenged—without just feeling like a soapbox.

Funniest moments: All of Wildlife is pretty hysterically bad but in an entertaining way. In fact Mr. Hawkland just saw it for the first time this weekend and was laughing hysterically at some of the lines in it. But also Countdown, for having such a dark plot, is one of my favorites for all of the great one-liners and funny scenes ( “I’m not tipping all of you”, Munch and the empty coffee can, etc.)

Couple you would like to see: Ha ha ha ha, well of course Munch & Fin, but I know that will never happen. And honestly, even if it did I wouldn’t want it to be acknowledged as canon until the very last episode. Because the writers would surely fuck it up otherwise the way they do every other romance on this show. Otherwise I do kind of like Rollisi, not in an OMG I LOVE THEM sort of way but I do see potential for chemistry, and that Carisi could be a good kind of stabilizing influence on her with her crazy family life. But, would she in turn be good for him? That I’m not so sure about.

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: I would SO love to see more of Bayard Ellis. His character was great and such a good foil to Benson. I’d love to see Andre Braugher return to the role.

Favourite outfit: Any of Fin’s suits in season 2.

Favourite item: Fin having a picture of Spartacus and Maximus (Ice’s dogs) on his desk (which I never noticed until @sammael77 caught it!)

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: A few fan-produced t-shirts, magnets and other odds and ends, my MunchFin iPhone case, and seasons 1-15 on DVD

What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: My “squad goals” would be the team from seasons 5-8: Munch, Fin, Benson, Stabler, Cragen, Novak, Warner, Huang. That’s my all-time favorite team. 

Most boring plotline: Anything involving the Stabler family.

Most laughably bad moment: “Redchannit”

Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Eh, I think the few times they’ve done as much haven’t been very good. I know I really disliked the way they repurposed season 1 footage for Manhattan Vigil to change what those scenes were initially about.

Most layered character: All right so it’s maybe my bias talking, but Munch! Especially because I “cheat” and include all of his Homicide characterization too. But honestly…Munch really is a lot more than a sarcastic conspiracy theorist. I think where I really love the complexities of his character coming through are his struggles with issues like suicide and assisted suicide, which came through not just in Painless but also Mercy. On one hand he’s such a strong personal choice advocate and on the other, he knows first-hand how difficult it is for family members when a loved one commits suicide. And what about protecting those who are not being given the choice to end their life or live?

But also, I love that he’s one of the few (main) characters the show ever allowed to remain childfree, yet he was also shown to be incredibly caring and good with children (illustrating that not all childfree people hate or are bad with kids; they just know they aren’t meant to raise one full-time.) He has complicated feelings about women, sometimes (especially early on) seeming incredibly bitter and cynical but deep down he is a lonely romantic. 

Most one dimensional character: Honestly, at this point, St. Benson the Holy Redeemer of All Rape Victims. 

Scariest moment: Hmmm…I’m having a hard time pinpointing this or narrowing it down to a single “scariest” scene. In general I get freaked out any time they show a serial killer’s “work den”, like in Manhunt or Signature. Because thinking about what those victims had to go through before being killed just makes me really feel sick to my stomach and horrified.

Grossest moment: Hyena vomit

Best looking male: Dammit, don’t make me pick between Munch or Fin because I can’t.

Best looking female: Casey Novak

Who you’re crushing on (if any): Of the current cast, only Fin, who just seems to be getting hotter with every passing year. Of all years, of course Munch, but I also crush on Casey and early season baby!butch Benson. 

Favourite cast moment: I think I’ll just say all of the episode Countdown, because to me that was ensemble perfection.

Favourite transportation: Eh, doesn’t really seem to apply here to this canon, does it?

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): Still gonna go with the end of Screwed, because I love that final scene with Fin, Ken and Darius on the courtroom steps.

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: 

Hahahahahahahah so many so many….

Continuity/plot error: It still bugs the crap out of me (especially as a fic writer who is anal about canon facts) that in Season 2 they messed with Munch’s background from Homicide, and tried to make it sound like he grew up in New York. THAT IS WRONG WRONG WRONG. I’m not going to throw away the family/childhood details we got in Homicide just because the SVU writers were lazy. And it really pains me because it comes up in two of my otherwise favorite episodes (Legacy and Manhunt), so when I’m writing anything where that might come up I have to go through mental gymnastics to explain why he might lie. Or just ignore SVU’s “canon” on that

Unanswered question: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KEN & ALEJANDRO’S BABY? THAT POOR SURROGATE HAS BEEN PREGNANT FOREVER. Unless that’s just something they’ve completely forgotten about and we’re just to assume Fin is a grandfather now and never talks about it at work while everything and anything Olivia or Amanda does has to relate to them being mothers.

Best promo: Well, I really liked USA Network’s recent “Fin-a-thon” promo…especially for Ice talking about Fin & Munch.

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book:  I’ve mentioned this before, but the funny moment when I went from being a casual viewer to developing my current obsession was in Spousal Privilege when Fin said to Amanda: “ I learned two things in my 15 years here at SVU. One: you can’t take this job home to you. Two: you can’t take anyone from this job home with you.” I hadn’t been watching regularly for a number of years so immediately I was like, “WAIT A MINUTE DID HE JUST ACKNOWLEDGE HAVING A THING WITH MUNCH?!” It’s weird the things that set my shippy brain off. Suddenly I wanted to catch up on everything I missed, and that made me then want to rewatch EVERY episode, and mild fannishness became a total obsession.

[drink-n-watch]

Bungo Stray Dogs Season 3 is now over. As much as I miss it, I do like the freedom of not having to go home on Friday evenings to watch anime and write a review for the next day. It really does tie up my going out time. Ever since I started doing episodic reviews I keep telling myself never to do next day reviews…. So OF COURSE, I pick 3 shows for my Saturday post that all air on Fridays… Brilliant!

GRANBELM (Under a Blood Red Moon)

What I knew/thought before seeing the show: I knew next to nothing about the series literally only the title and the Crunchyroll thumbnail. My reasoning for picking it was “I like pink haired heroines”

What the first episode was about: A pink-haired heroine named Mangetsu goes out one evening and gets stuck in a virtual world where magical girls fight with mechas because reasons. She’s very energetic and optimistic about it.

Characters so far: We didn’t get much development since the episode was very action heavy. So far they are pretty shallow but not unpleasant. The two main characters are Mangetsu which is a genki girl archetype and Shingetsu which is a mysterious stoic archetype. I actually liked Mangetsu’s sister the most be we only see her in one scene at the beginning of the episode.

Technical aspects: The designs are cute and I enjoyed the art style. The limited palette establishes a visual identity pretty quickly. I immediately understood something ominous was going on from the colours alone. I was reminded of Yuki Yuna for a while. The voice acting is ok so far and the animation is good but a little jumpy. It comes in spurts.

First Impression: I had a good enough time watching this episode. I enjoyed the first half more than the second but I would continue watching this series based on the first episode. I really don’t have that much to say either way.

Hopes and Fears: I’m enjoying the Magical Girl/Mecha mashup, it’s an interesting genre. The world building has potential and there is a lot of room for this series to grow. I have been lucky with oddball cute girl shows. There is a potential for this show to be very messy though. The first episode did not do a very good job at establishing its world, laws or motivations and my pessimistic side is telling me there’s a big chance everything remains mostly superficial. The fight scenes were a little still and for some reason, I thought this was another mobile game promotion (doesn’t seem to be). Finally, Mangetsu is really striking me as a Mary Sue so far. Let’s see what happens in episode 2!

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FIRE FORCE (Playing With Fire)

What I knew/thought before seeing the show: Oh cool! An anime about firemen. Interesting. They’re athletic, maybe it’ll be a little like a sports! anime. Or a work based Slice of Life…

What the first episode was about: A young man named Shira finally accomplishes his dream to become a fireman (superpowered individuals who fight infernals). Some years ago, people started suffering from spontaneous combustion and becoming infernals, something like fire demons. Those who survived gained pyrokinetic powers which get stronger as they are passed along down generations. As a 3rd gen pyrokinetic, Shinra is particularly powerful but has also been seen as a monster and blamed for tragedies. He now wants to prove he’s a hero instead.

Characters so far: Ok, so this is not a sports! anime by any means but the characters could come from one! We only really get to know Shira but he already has a complex back story and clearly established personality, even a fun quirk of smiling manically when he’s nervous. That’s pretty decent development for one episode. I have high hopes for the rest. Sadly, aside from a few flashbacks to Shinra’s mom, both female characters have been used mostly as fanservice charas so far, which is a little disappointing.

Technical aspects: I actually really like this one so far. It’s probably my favourite style of the three I saw. It has a modern anime look with slightly more reasonable proportions and a variety of silhouettes. In a way, it may be the most realistic looking which is hilarious. The colours are similarly rich but grounded. On the other hand, animation is impressive and fluid. On top of that, the director used a few interesting visual tricks, successive jump-cut transitions in the firehouse, use of different art styles for certain scenes, flashback specific colour palettes… It’s a stylish looking show and I am enthusiastic to see more of it.

First Impression: So this turned out to be a fighting Shonen, complete with an optimistic and determined protagonist who has vowed to be a hero and has a tragic past to conquer. It’s not exactly special, but I really liked it. The universe is quite unusual and the characters have a lot of potential. I’m excited for next week and I’m not surprised this first episode is doing so well.

Hopes and Fears: I was impressed by how well the first episode established everything without it feeling like one huge exposition dump. It even left plenty of time for eye candy fights. They keep praying to an unknown god which I found quite intriguing. It sets up a potential sect or religious/political intrigue. Like I mentioned, two main female characters have some type of suggestive scene whenever they are onscreen unless they’re actively being saved by Shines. To be honest I didn’t mind much but it’s the most basic part of the narrative so far. There is a chance that this will turn into a one-man show/monster of the week type series and Shines doesn’t strike me as charming enough to carry the whole thing. There are some MHA parallels. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing but there you go!

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Dr. STONE (I’ve loved you over 1000 years)

What I knew/thought before seeing the show: Crunchyroll had been advertising this one pretty heavily and it kept calling it a Shonen. So I thought it might be a JoJo like series or perhaps just a classic Dragon Ball for a new generation. Leth told me it was “insane”.

What the first episode was about: It was “insane’! Taijo is a nice guy who goes to high school, is friends with the eccentric haired Senku (who reminded me of Dexter from Dexter’s lab) and in love with Yuzuriha. On the day he finally chooses to confess, a mysterious event turns all humans into sentient stone statues and they remain that way for 3700 years. When Taiju miraculously revives, the world is a very different place. He finds that Senku has also broken free and together they have to figure out how the restart humanity. My alternative titles for this episode review were “Adam and Steve” but they kind of made the joke in the show so it took all the fun away from it, or “Adventures in Wild Science”.

Characters so far: This one is impressive. Taiju and Senku both have clearly established personalities. Not too deep yet but with some variability. Senku is particularly fun to me as I enjoy a slightly morally compromised protagonist but Taiju manages to play the clear-eyed golden boy without being annoying. Even Yuzuriha has an actual character despite being only given a few minutes on screen and I understand exactly why Taiju would fall for her. The premise and setting give motivation and meaning to all the characters actions. To get this much development and plot in a single episode is quite special. I want t know both these guys better and I want to meet more people as well.

Technical aspects: There’s a sort of classic feel to the character design. I’m not saying it looks old but more like timeless. The very angular lines and hatched shadowing creates a nostalgic look for long time anime fans. The animation seems good although it wasn’t on display so much. Compared to Fire Force, Dr. Stne is much more straightforward in both visuals and direction. I do like that the setting gives us so many lush green panoramas to enjoy. The voice acting was probably the best in this series.

First Impression: They distilled booze. In the first episode!!! I really liked this one. It’s a mix of comedy, mystery, survival and actual science which is right up my alley. A very strong first episode that left me wanting to see the next one right away. I took a note that said only “YAY! Chemistry!” which should probably tell you all you need to know about me.

Hopes and Fears: As you may have noticed,  don’t have anything even mildly negative to say about the first episode of Dr. Stone. As far as I’m concerned, if it continues in exactly this way, I will be thrilled. Congratulations Crunchyroll,  you picked a good one this time!

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Oddly enough, all three shows I picked had all the same general tags apply to them. I would say I enjoy the technical aspect of Fire Force more than the other two shows, but the narrative and premise of Dr. Stone most! Poor Granbelm is the clear loser of these three, coming in last on every aspect but I still enjoyed it.

I’m going to keep watching all three shows but I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep reviewing them yet. Also, what do you think about this format? Should I split it up into three short posts? I know that would get more view but it seems more annoying for the readers. Then again if you’re only interested in one show you may not want to scroll through all the other stuff. Very few people ever comment on my episode reviews so I’m not expecting much feedback here. However, if you do leave some, thank you in advance!

Friday Night Sampler: Granbelm – Fire Force – Dr. Stone Episodes 1 Bungo Stray Dogs Season 3 is now over. As much as I miss it, I do like the freedom of not having to go home on Friday evenings to watch anime and write a review for the next day.