#i do think its a dumb and exploitative storyline

[teriwrites]

November 2019: Castle on the Hill

Wordcount | 77,022 Genre | Historical Fiction POV | Multi-3rd Person POV Setting | Heidelberg, West Germany, Status | Complete Draft, WIP

Synopsis

Heidelberg, West Germany 1963 It's the night of the Castle lighting ceremony. Under the cover of a dark summer night, an age-old secret society from the local university meets to induct its newest members. But barely before the words of the rite have been finished, five figures slip out to rejoin the city in its annual festivities. We follow these five - Josef, Klaus, Georg, Peter, and Hans - through their year at university, as they figure out their paths, their lives, themselves, and where they fit into the new generation taking its first steps into the workforce of a divided nation.

First Line

The night sky was illuminated by fireworks, casting a scarlet glow over the small, [West] German city of Heidelberg.

Characters

Josef Weber - 19, 2nd Year Business student, Rich Bitch, heir to an automobile company, takes himself too seriously, red hair and redder temper, actually way less sure of himself than he presents Klaus Müller - 20, 3rd Year Philosophy student, intolerable in a way you'll always tolerate, Han Solo-level confidence in himself and somehow he's right, easy charisma, the kind of guy who doesn't study and aces the test anyway Georg Aachen - 20, 3rd Year Pre-Law student, driest wit in the West, can shrivel anyone with a single look, actually nice if you're not dumb, inexplicably best friends with Klaus Peter Oberlin - 22, Grad Student in Political Science, somehow the baby of his family but forced to be the dad friend to his pals, thinks he has to have everything figured out despite being literally 22 years old Hans Faust - 18, 1st Year Pre-Med student, Shy Guy, sweet but he's probably judging you a little, Stressed, pretty sheltered only child growing up so going through a culture shock experiencing sibling-like relationships

Pre-Reading Thoughts

We've officially made it full-circle back to the WIPs that I've introduced through this account! My first posts all circulated around those five lads and their various exploits, and I can't wait to dive back into it. I don't think I've read the full draft since back around the time I finished it in 2020, but I remember a lot more clearly the various storylines and how they came together than I do for anything else I've discussed so far. In fact, it's crazy to think that I was polishing it off five years ago, because it feels like it's been half that time. Honestly, I don't feel like I have much to say about preparing to read it. I'm in for some dropped sideplots, some emotional soul-searching, and a lot of quips. TBD on how well any of those actually land, but I have a little more faith in my 2019 self's writing ability than I did in, say, 2013. Time to see if I'll eat crow for saying that!

[booksbabybooks]

My 9-1-1 hiatus rewatch is up to season 6. Weakest opener of all the seasons, I think, and the Buck sperm donor storyline is dumb even by this show's standards. Also want to warn Marisol to run, girl! He's hot but he's not worth it.

This is also definitely the worst season for Athena's hair - WTF is that little ponytail she has in episode 1? Angela you are an executive producer don't let them do you wrong like this! (At least wardrobe continues to recognise she has Excellent Shoulders and gives her the chance to show them off as much as possible).

BUT we do get Henren begins, which is a delight (love Chim the matchmaker, and their steamy date). Hilarious that the way they show both Hen and Karen as younger is put them both in terrible wigs (Hen begins, we haven't forgotten you). Also Denny is SO CUTE.

Madney also adorable in this season.

Also the super fun Cursed episode, which I had completely forgotten, actually gives a backdrop to Eddie's distrust of curses and jinxes - that he's had experience of belief in the supernatural being used to exploit someone he cares about - that I think gets overlooked. (Possibly because, the lightning arc and the finale aside - and I know lots of people didn't even like the finale, but I did - this is probably the weakest season alongside s7, and at least S7 has the excuse of the writers' strike).

(I do think S7 had its moments and I'm glad we got bi Buck out of it, but I felt it was pretty underwhelming and the Kim of it all was a little too insane for even this insane show.).

[motheatenscarf]

God we are a barely over a fucking week out from Dawntrail but all I want to holler about is my fuckin dumb accidental parallels that I made through making my WoL a Garlean defector and why YEAH, I KNOW, everyone ships their fuckin WoL with Emet-Selch, I KNOW, everyone knows the reasons why everyone ships it, but lemme scream about it anyway because I'm a big dumb idiot.

I've mentioned before that Talia was an ex-Garlean soldier who defected over having her faith in Garlemald and its false promises shattered. She grew up in the heart of the empire in a relatively well-off and marginally respected military family, tenuously upper class. She was protected from seeing a lot of the worst aspects of it and had a similar world-view to Gaius' where she actually believed in the supposed meritocracy and the initial goal of ridding the world of false gods to free the people from being enslaved to them. She missed the memo where the cruelty and the oppression and the caste system of exploitation were the point of a fascist empire, not an accidental byproduct of rapid expansion. She was involved with the Populares who wanted to fix the empire without tearing it down and her naivete got her twin sister killed. She vowed never to be a soldier again after that and fled the empire to become a wandering adventurer, helping people to try and atone for how wrong she'd been about everything and maybe seeking her death in doing so.

Cue the whole ARR storyline and she's given the chance to live out that idealism she had of ridding the world of Primals and risking her wretched life in the process- Win-win! But she has to hide who/what she is from these people, so she doesn't really connect with them, and they're certainly eager to send her into danger carelessly, risking her life on increasingly more petty conflicts when she is the ONLY PERSON who can kill primals, but fine, she'll do it. And then they start militarizing. And she starts getting that sinking feeling like it's all gonna turn out like Garlemald did, rapidly expanding with a grand ambition that'll only sour and turn to poison that drowns the whole world, and she promised on her sister's grave she would never be a soldier again. So she maybe projects some criticisms onto Minfilia similarly to how she projects onto Hydalen what she can't say to her own mother, since, y'know, Minfilia's right there to yell at while the Emperor is dead in the ground on the other side of the world.

Except that he isn't. So, 2 expansions happen and she becomes a Dark Knight and a Reaper to deal with her grief and rage respectively in losing the Scions (twice) and her sense of self as she becomes more fixated on annihilating Garlemald off the fucking map (one finger on the monkey's pawl curls down). Then Shadowbringers happens, and Talia is an ex-Garlean Dark Knight who walked out of Emet's newest empire because the universe keeps playing the same joke on him over and over apparently.

I did not mean for this to happen, it just happened, and I lost my fucking mind at the reveal that Azem was a defector from the Convocation and then literally had to take a walk to calm down at the reveal that yes, Emet was a Dark Knight. He probably founded the fucking discipline. And hey, Fray sure does take an "I only berate you because I want you to be safe and take care of yourself," attitude, and has those gold eyes, and hey, we know that Dark Knights are really rare, maybe this is the same stone that Emet made some ten thousand years ago that holds an echo of why he took up the blade in the first place. COOL.

Anyway, I dismissed the impulse to EmetWol at the time because like, yes, it's tragically compelling, but at the time didn't think Emet would stoop to settling for a shard and was still trying to decide how Talia would feel about everything that was happening. Decided she's a lot of things, but if she learned anything from Garlemald, it's how to admit when she's wrong. For all that she hated Solus zos Galvus, that is one of many facets to him, and the unbearable burden of Emet Selch was something that... kinda resonated with her. Learning more about the ancients, she understood why he did what he did. It was unconscionable and unforgivable, and she still didn't trust him because fool me once, but she didn't have it in her to hate him anymore.

During the Heavensward/Stormblood era, she'd kinda lost sight of herself when all the Scions were taken away. She hadn't been close with most of them to this point, but thought of Alphinaud and Alisaie as the children she'd never have. Finding Alphinaud's empty body left her with a thin, frail thread of sanity that she only clung onto for Alisaie's sake, and then Alisaie was taken right in front of her very eyes, powerless to save her, just like her sister, and Talia kinda lost it. Threw herself into the Ghimlt Dark with the plan to raze a path from Ala Mhigo to Garlemald, no room for survivors, no room for rubble, just blood and cinders, or die trying. All because she was alone, all because the people she loved had been taken from her. So yeah. She... unfortunately understood that better than she wanted to. Even without being tempered and

Tried to think about what a Talia who wasn't a silent protagonist would say to him and how they'd get along. Wasn't sure how Emet would react to a WoL who gives as good as they get in the "Condescending Sarcastic Supervillain" running commentary. Like, he barely seems to tolerate these people as is and has no patience for their questions, no way he's gonna put up with a WoL who will also complain about his bad attitude and make fun of his dumb hair and ask pointed questions about how poorly Garlemald is run and ask if that was his idiot plan, even if they're mostly joking.

AND THEN I GOT TO ENDWALKER. And like. Subject A.) Unburdened Ancient Emet Selch, he's still just. Like That.

Turns out him being exasperated and barely tolerating people is just his personality. That's him showing affection because if he didn't want to be around these people, he'd just leave. He just has to complain at all times or he'll die, that's completely understandable.

And then Subject B.) Hythlodaeus, beautiful ray of sunshine to everyone else but professional Emet wrangler who knows exactly how to give as good as the man dishes out and oh, hey, maybe that's actually why Hades likes him. Maybe it's reassuring to him when people aren't put off by what a miserable grouch he is and kvetch back at him and with him about everything. Waldorf needs his Statler and all that. Maybe it would actually be weirdly comforting to just have somebody to riff off of and actually, her beef with Solus' actions is refreshing because for once it's an incarnation whose issue isn't really about Hades or Emet-Selch. And maybe with the looming threat of her Death, Doom, Gonna Die, all throughout SHB, it's kind of a relief for there to be at least ONE person with whom she shares any kind of cultural touchstone or framework, even if they're both contemptuous of Garlemald and Garleans as a whole.

... oh no!

And then that percolated for like 4 months fretting over like, does this interpretation of the character fit in with canon, is this too self indulgent, how much am I gonna embrace the tragedy of it, there are so many ways to interpret Emet Selch

Cuz the last thing I want is for The Loud Idiot in any lit class to come to my inbox and tell me I missed the point because buh-buh, the text has one rigid interpretation and it's Strictly Mine, that's how art works, durr

and then I realized that imaginary idiot was basically the only thing holding me back, so. WHY NOT! Yes, it's embarrassing and stupid, but so is everything, fuck it, I don't care, WoLEmet be upon ye, more thoughts to follow in the days to come, i'm writing this on break from my D&D game

[otakween]

I'm Standing on a Million Lives - Volume 15

I'm impressed that this series has made it this far. Literally no one talks about it, but there are much dumber things being published, so I guess it deserves its spot. It's definitely a mixed bag of highs and lows, but I'm mostly enjoying the ride. Still have no clue how many volumes there's going to be. No end in sight yet.

Ch. 70

Iu is goin badass mode and I'm loving it. Kinda giving Joan of Arc vibes.

The disconnect between Iu casually chopping off someone's fingers in one panel and then freaking out because she killed someone in the next was pretty wacky. Like...girl...what did you think was going to happen? Either way, I guess she got over the shock pretty quick because by the end of the chapter she's just slaughtering everyone lol.

It's kind of surprising that it took the characters this long to be worshipped for their immortality/resurrection ability. Then again, I guess living long isn't as rare in this world since there are sorcerers and dragon bishops and what not.

Ch. 71

This chapter was 100% fantasy politics. It was a struggle reading through all those silly made up names, but there were some interesting nuggets here and there.

We're jumping from one hot button to the next, first was human trafficking as seen in...many places, and next was attacks on journalistic freedom which the characters compare to recent events in Hong Kong.

I hope they give the new girl more to do than be a genki background character. She's on the cover after all! I will say her singing Immigrant Song was pretty hilarious. Certified Shrek moment.

It's kinda funny how this world/game uses community service as its goal. It's not like a twisted death game where you have to kill the other players you just have to...contribute to society lol. I guess that's what makes it interesting because the challenges take a lot more brain/strategy than a death game or RPG-style game might.

Ch. 72

Eh, this chapter was kinda messy. Overall I enjoyed it, but why did they have to bring in a damn awkward narrator every two seconds!? The mangaka does this occasionally and it drives me nuts. This story does not need a narrator and it definitely doesn't need one spelling out exactly what's going on to the reader! It took me out of the story every time. :(

I did like Iu's internal struggle and her analysis of the tricky spot she's been put in. As I've said before, this mangaka is skilled at explaining difficult concepts (politics, sociology, war strategy etc.)

Thank God they sent Glen to help Iu and not Yusuke. This way it's a child asking an adult for help and not a "dumb" woman needing a man. Also, Iu needed Glen because she's emotionally intelligent (unlike Yusuke) and was good at calming her down and validating her choice.

Ch. 73

Okay, I kinda struggled to stay awake reading this one, it was a pretty boring info dump about the politics of the area Yusuke's in and how neither side is great.

Changing someone's entire political trajectory with one song? What is this, an idol anime!? (That scene was stupid lol)

The concept of force feeding someone monster meat to turn them into a berserker is pretty chilling. Fantasy human trafficking is even more brutal than irl trafficking I guess.

I continue to really dislike the made up names of this world. In this chapter it was the Sotaga vs. the Faida. IDK why but they just don't sound like real names to me, my brain rejects them. (IDK what magic makes some made up names sound good and others sound like you threw Scrabble letters at the wall...)

Ch. 74

This chapter was all about berserkers and how they relate to all of the ongoing storylines. I find this kind of fantasy slavery pretty interesting. Instead of IRL slavery where slaves were/are used for work, they're transformed into mindless weapons. Very dark, but I could see this kind of exploitation happening if monsters were real.

Of course the main big bad, president dude is wearing a turban...as this whole arc is a thinly veiled reference to extremists in the middle east. (Just feels weird to make this fantasy world so similar to the real world).

Some pretty brutal kills in this chapter, especially Ling getting curb stomped. I do enjoy that most of the gore is stake-less so it can get extreme like that. (Well I say "gore" but the player character deaths are actually bloodless).

Damn, dat fanservice at the end there. Overall this series hasn't been that fanservicey so it feels a little weird when it's tossed in like that. The art was decent, so I ain't mad.

The over-the-top evil all around (including Yotsuya's sociopathy) is a little eye-roll worthy. Verging into cringey edgy territory a bit.

[queerextremity]

(!CHUCKY SPOILERS!)

i finally caught some time to watch the season finale and it gave me a lot of flashbacks to how i watched the season 1 ending a year ago, being shocked just the same. i can and will criticize a lot of stuff that happened in the show, but it’s still the only horror project that’s able to give me nightmares sometimes and i do appreciate it.

this season has been questionable to me from the very beginning - i think the show got too carried away with the comedy, gore and bananas that it’s just hard to take it seriously. i legit don’t know how much more these characters can endure, because their lives are just constant spirals of trauma (that is also very similar from character to character - we have three orphans now, for example. i'm almost done with the brutal kills of the parents). when they get new friends, you know they’re gonna get killed. if they have a relative alive, you know they’re either gonna get killed or go crazy. i think the first season balanced it better. it sure was insane and gory and weird, but it still was possible to relate to the characters, their struggles and i was all there for the great found family trope. now they all just feel distant. not only from each other, but from the audience. i cannot bring myself to care deeply anymore, because so much shit happens to them that it's impossible to care for everything. you'll just explode. i just hate how chucky becomes one of these dumb slashers you watch simply to kill the time and scream "ooohhh yeahhh, he's gonna die now". you may argue that it's been like that, but i totally disagree, because the whole franchise always gave me some of my favorite protagonists ever. i just feel like this shows doesn't really care about anything besides gore anymore and it's not all i'm here for.

think about nica. the girl's literally my favorite horror character ever and the season 1 ending gave me nightmares. i still was excited to see what they do with her - that's what i always loved about the way nica's written: there's always a plot twist to her and she's never just one trope. but this season could've gone just the same if she had arms. the show proved its decision to be nothing but material for ableist exploitation. nica's barely a character, but she gets dozens of graphic scenes like ones with the mouth gag.

tiffany turned into joke a long time ago. i get that she never was a super serious character, because her introduction is "bride of chucky", which first turned the franchise into comedy. but now she just feels like a caricature of a caricature. everything about her's just so over-the-top that it isn't even funny most of the time.

however, i still enjoyed the majority of the season. most of the satire hits well, i LOVED-LOVED the mystery party episode, everything about gled&glenda is my favorite thing and i hope we get to see more of them as a doll. also lexi's addiction storyline was well-written and helped me get more invested into her character (which is rare for the season, as i mentioned)

s1 is still my favorite, because i'll forever be a nica/tiffany girl and the amount of great content it gave me is unmatchable. but it's my favorite horror show regardless <3

[jeanvanjer]

Such a good point that while Bridgerton is pitched as escapism, brining India and colonialism to the forefront will completely negate that. How can viewers get lost in all the splendor and stately homes and ball gowns while constantly being reminded where that $$ comes from? How will they position A&K as a “true love match” when he’s a direct participant in it? I am definitely (wrongly) assuming most viewers are critical thinkers, but this is something that critics and twitter will almost certainly call out. S1 managed to avoid any kind of real backlash because the “love conquers racism” line was kind of a throwaway, and was never really addressed again. (I also don’t think people were interested in seriously criticizing the show during peak pandemic.) It seems impossible for the India storyline to be akin to how S1 handled race, since it appears India will be how frame Kate and the Sharmas as ‘outsiders.’ Which is fairly integral to the plot.

This is just super dumb and overwrought and likely offensive. It all could’ve been accomplished with them living an insular life in Somerset. And it’s going to cheapen and undermine the love story. I can’t believe they took the strongest book and possibly managed to mess it all up.

Ooooh rant time. Sorry this is repetitive and long.

So yes. Yes! Thank you! Everything you said. All around yes. all this sucks. It truly truly truly cheapens what really is a wonderful love story. It’s so freakin dumb. I just want to ask them, “hey what’s going on? Why’d you do this? Why?”

We asked for a Newton pic not this bullshit.

I really thought the most problematic thing about S2 would have been the Study kiss. 😂

TVWLM is definitely the strongest book of the series and Kate and Anthony are definitely their strongest couple. There really isn’t any need to add anything to their story. And what’s wrong with being Indian without being Indian? They could’ve easily been from Somerset. The Indianness doesn’t need to be explored. Don’t give me no Indian music no Indian dresses I don’t want any cultural otherness to be addressed. Having Simone and Charitra was literally more than my desi ass could have imagined. That is representation, as an avid reader of the HR genre, I never thought I would get.

And You can’t show the balls, the peerage and extravagance within a country taht still benefits on its exploitive history of colonialism and slavery without complete colorblindness. Trulyyyyy they should’ve never poked this sleeping bear.

The dynamic of what makes Edwina better than Kate in the eyes of the Ton isn’t just Ed’s good looks now. Kate was a relatable character when it came to her insecurities but I can truly see it being a class issue now. Especially since the book never quite mentioned the peerage of Mary or Kates Parents with this much emphasis but the show seems to? And Show!Anthony’s belief that not all women are ladies? When they mentioned Mary, an earls daugther, marrying a merchant. I thought, okay this makes sense. That Merchant is definitely Kates father. With Kate possibly being of a different class than Anthony, it they could address why Kate is inherently different from Sienna and why Kanthony works and not Santhony. I get it. Didn’t care too much plot wise going into S2 then.

But now? The sharmas as outsiders? From India?”I talked about India being like America, a post colonial country with a better relationship with England, but even that is not great. At fucking all. But it’s very slightly less scummier than leaving India still colonized, which is was at the time in fact it was until 1947.

Give me an alternate reality where all that shit never ever ever everrrrrrrr happened I can accept. Kind of. For the sake of escapism, why not? But to tell me love solved/solves colonialism? Or like it’s colonialism but the good kind? Nah chief. It was hard to read when it was mentioned briefly in Fran’s book. It read of mysticism privilege and complacency. Micheal dear you were so hot why are you also a freakin colonizer? Why? Why? Why?

Shonda, CVD and the lot are trying to do too much and they’ve done more than enough already in terms of s1. With that horrid scene between Daphne and Simon, the whole Colin-Pen-Marina (and Eloise by extension) fiasco; it’s not looking good for any of the coming seasons. All this was implicit in its racial issues. But this? This is in your face. And it’s explicit.

Well, we’ll find out in two months just how big this shit show is. But really I do think they could do a semi decent job if they don’t go all woke politics on us. Maybe. I doubt this. At this point I’m just convincing myself it’ll be fine.

Honestly just spam the fandom with pictures of a chub little corgi. That’s all I better see from the production team till March. Don’t even give me a trailer anymore. I don’t trust none of your asses. None.

[fiction-in-my-blood]

Obey Me! Characters x Horny GN!MC HC (NFSW)

This includes all brothers and undateables (Diavolo, Barbatos, Soloman, and Simeon) I think I got a little carried away with Barbatos’ but, hey, its still a good read haha

Warnings: Just straight up Not Safe For Work, a lot of mentions of rough sex, edging in Barbatos’ HC, references to open relationships in Asmo’s and Diavolo’s, Lucifer’s is a lil angsty.

~~~~~~

Lucifer:

More than happy to accomodate you at any time of the day, but you’ll have to hold off when he’s particularly busy at the end of the month when the bills need to be sorted.

(Maybe encourage Mammon to hold off a bit on the big spending so he isn’t too stressed)

And, if he does get overrun with work pushed on him by the student council or Diavolo, tease him but accidentally letting it slip you’ll just have to go to Mamo or Asmo to complain, seeing as he can’t pleasure you right now. 

He’ll definitely be invigorated to recover the pride he drastically lost even by the insinuation you’d go off spouting nonsense like that.

“I promise I’ve been good ~.”

“Their names wouldn’t even be on you mind if you were.”

You’ll be satisfied especially when he’s stressed, pounding all his frustrations into you, his demon strength pushing your head further and further into his pillows. That is if you make it to the bed. 

When he does have the time, however, and you’re particularly needy, he’ll tease you to no end, not touching you until he can’t hold himself back anymore. 

And, being overly sexual doesn’t mean rough all the live long day. 

He likes to take it slow most of the time, not just teasing you, but engraining your body into his mind. 

Because somewhere, deep in the self-sabatarging part of his brain, he remembers you’re mortal and he isn’t. 

He’s going to live longer than you are, he could already be your eldest ancestor, so that thought it always in the back of his head as his face is burrowed in you neck, taking you in every sense of the word. By smell, touch, taste, hearing your moans of his name, watching your face screw up in pleasure and resting next to him after a specifically sensual love making session.

Mammon:

Won’t notice that its sex that you want at first, taking you to shop with him countless time when you’ve said your bored and wanted to have a lil fun~.

When he does realise, however, good god how can you have some much blood at two end of your body? Rock hard and a blushing mess at you on your knees in your room, just home from RAD, pushing him on the bed and almost swallowing him whole right there. 

His face is bright red listening to Satan and Asmo tease him- you had ranted to them countless times that Mamo was completely oblivious and you were worried to spell it out for him. 

But now, he’s just as needy as you, if not more. He is the Avatar of Greed, after all.

Don’t worry though, even if he is clueless when it comes to you, he’s had his fair share of sexual payback deals, so he’s got thousands of years of experience. Witches have used his body like a piece of meat time and time again.

Well, now he’s not just greedy for money. You’ll be lucky to ever sleep in your own bed again.

Might roleplay a prostitute and pimp, stripper and client, secretary and CEO, whatever situation that would possibly allow one of you to hand the other money.

Both of you swap, but Mamo, being greedy, enjoys it more when you top, doing most of the work. Won’t admit that though. 

He relishes in the feeling of your thighs bouncing up and down on his hips, weight draped over his as you kiss him with so much pressure you might just be able to make diamonds. 

Leviathan:

Too busy playing games, watching anime and boasting about his collection to think that you came to his room for any other reason.

Gets the idea when you sit on his lap, though, mid-speech about Henry and the Lord of Shadow’s latest exploits, grinding against him and grinding his words to a halt.

Although momentarily caught off guard, blushing as he stammers out an apology for not noticing sooner, he wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you into endless amounts of bliss.

The boy has a few tricks from harem games he’s played, lets not play ourselves.

He will ignore you when there’s a new release, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use him however you like. 

Sucking him off from under his desk as he struggles to concentrate on what’s going on onscreen, whispering sweet nothings in his ear as his friends’ voices echo through the headset. 

He will get a little annoyed, you did ruin his 20 Kill/Death ratio, but a sensual plea for his cock to bury deep inside you and he’ll be willing to forgive you. 

That is if you acquire this figurine he’s been looking into buying but can’t afford because Mammon borrowed money from him again. This time without asking.

Satan:

Some say makeup sex is the best kind of sex. Well, how about sprawled over ancient texts, forgetting to lock the libray door sex?

It can be hard to get him to put down the books and stop watching the dramas, especially when a PSA for an animal charity comes on, but, when you do... Honey.

There’s a lot of risk to being needy with Satan.

Sure, he’s happy to make you happy, but if you intend of fucking him out of his private time when he’s particularly engrossed in an book, please don’t push it. Unless you wanna get rammed from behind in the hallway outside the dining hall while he’s in demon form.

Sometimes, even with a pride that could rival Lucifer’s, Satan just can’t get off- which makes him a little pissy. Don’t worry, though, you can make him feel better by putting on a show, playing with yourself until your screaming his name. Then he’s harder than should be physically possible.

If there’s a sex scene on one of his detective shows, he’ll complain about how needless it is to the storyline, he has already realised who the killer is.

But, when he notices you haven’t said a word on the subject and are moving onto his lap, grinding on his thigh, blocking his view of the lewd, but short, scene, he couldn’t be happier about the character’s relationship development. 

He will be rewinding when you’re done, though. You missed about three episodes because of that scene.

Asmodeus:

If he isn’t the Avatar of Lust, you sure as hell might be.

Even before you got together, it was incredibly difficult to resist him. And not just because of his devilish powers.

The horny gremlin could hardly keep it in his pants before you dated, but now. Luv, get ready.

He likes to dress you in whatever sexy outfit there is. Whether its a full blown nurse outfit or the smallest lingerie going, you’re both happy to try anything.

You tried a nun’s outfit one time and, coincidentally, almost got caught by one of the angels. You had been experimenting in the library of Purgatory Hall, so it’s only you’re fault, but it was still a very, very close call.

He’ll never leave you hanging, you’ll definitely have more than five orgasms a round, but he’ll have twice as many.

He might ask if you want to include another person, and you might agree, depending on your openness to sexuality, but he’s not going to make you feel let out. 

You’ll feel like a royal, more important than Diavolo, ravished from all side, just by him. If you did include anyone else, they’d be lucky to even get their hands on you.

There will be times when, just so they could sleep, Lucifer will enforce a ban on how far you can go. You’re a screamer and he’s a moaner, and all the brother have had enough nightmares as it is. 

They’ll go as far as put a chastity belt on him, locking him in his room and sending you to stay with the angels for a couple days so they can have some peace and quiet during the night. 

But, when you come together again, Asmo’s cock still locked away, he’ll go full demon-mode, form and all, fingering and licking you like no other time before.

Jokingly asks if you defiled the angels without him, you joke that you did. You never thought Asmo would be so openly jealous, but that look then was almost as scary as Satan. If it didn’t turn you on so much, it would be.

Beelzebub:

He’s not dumb. 

Watching you jump on the counter, flirtatously crossing one leg over the other as he has his late late night snack, comments about how well he eats.

What that tongue do tho?!

It’s become customary for you two to meet up in the kitchen on his nightly visit, letting him eat all the food he wants before he buries his face in you right there and then.

Never have you been happier to have a gluttonous, demon boyfriend.

He’s just as horny as you are, eager to taste you at any given moment. 

And he’s not secretive about it.

At first, he would just walk up to you as you talked with his brothers or the angels, asking you if you wanted to use this whipped cream you introduced him to from a care package you got from home a month ago.

“It’s just whip cream, Beel. From the can.” You correct him before excitedly agreeing.

Because of this, Asmo’s asked to join in a few too many times for it to be a teasing joke anymore.

Now, after you tell him he might break Mamo if he asked you to ride his face because he was hungry as school again, he’ll whisper in your ear how much he wants you. It’s not much less obvious, but at least everyone doesn’t know the specifics of your sex lives anymore.

Belphegor:

Honey, he may be asleep half the time you are together, but fuck if he doesn’t know how to treat you well. 

He’s surprisingly perceptive so, when you take him to the attic, mentioning how far away it is from all his brothers, meaning it’ll be harder for them to hear the two of you, he does chuckle at your not so indirect way of telling him you want him. 

Don’t get me wrong, he’s going to make you work for it. Although, not in a way similar to Lucifer.

He’ll finger you to the edge, give you oral until you just about to topple over, have you ride him and then rip you off his lap the second he feels that slight tightening around his cock, thoroughly enjoy that broken, teary-eyed expression everytime you cry his name in annoyance. 

But, if you can muster enough strength, and he hasn’t fucked it all out of you yet, you could wrap your legs around his waist, making him make you cum when you’ve reached your limit.

You’ll be severely punished, covered in delicious brusies, but it’ll all be worth it.

Diavolo:

At first, he jokes about your obvious, desperate advances. 

Like, seriously, how can a human have so much energy?

He finds it cute when you pout because he’s busy.

When he has to make diplomatic trips, his D.D.D is ringing every other hour.

“MC, I love you. With all my heart. But I don’t think God will appreciate me listening to you cum in our meetings.”

Not to mention the amount of times Lucifer and Barbatos have walked in on you going at it on the throne (which is your favourite place to do it, as of late).

You honestly couldn’t care less. Demons are allowed to be horny sex fiends, why can’t you?

Diavolo never thought he could meet his match, but you, this human that stole his heart, might just have worn him out. 

However, what gets him every single time? You whispering in his ear as he’s discussing important matters of Devildom with Lucifer, his smirk making the eldest brother blush because he knows, and can probably hear, the plans you’re nibbling into Diavolo’s ear. 

All the positions, all the memories you wanted to recreate, all the sweet cries of pleasure.

You might as well be humping his leg.

“Oh, and Luci, did you want to join?”

Barbatos:

Doesn’t react much in public. 

Or at all, really.

He does represent Diavolo in everything he does, so it’s not like he can go around with hickies covering his visible skin.

You do try to rein it in for him, you respect his dedicaion for the future king of Devildom, he shows you a fraction of that same dedication and you’re on cloud nine, but it does get in the way sometimes.

For example, you could be in the middle of getting dicked down, the first time all week and it was WEDNESDAY, and Barbatos stands up straight, pulling right out of you, leaving to attend to whatever need Diavolo might have without another thought to you.

This had happened a few times now and you were tired of being blue-balled.

You had to go to the source.

“Diavolo!” 

Eyes practically alight with rage, you stormed right into Lucifer’s office, where you knew the two would be. 

Mammon had seen you in all your radiant, disheveled desire turned furious and you demanded he tell you exactly where the prince was, even if he didn’t know in that minute. 

This fiasco was ending. 

Today.

Lucifer was angry with your casual referral to such a high-standing demon, but Diavolo brushed it off because you were you. You were the human he found so endearing, wanted to learn more about. And you were Barbatos’ partner.

“Stop calling Barbatos at night! Better yet, give him the weekend. I can’t do it anymore! I’m going crazy here with all this edging! I haven’t cum in a month!!!” 

The words slipped from your lips without you caring, Lucifer’s frown lifting into a smirk as he smelt and sensed the need for sex all over you. Diavolo laughed at how utterly needy you were, nodding when he noticed you glaring.

“I swear, on all of Devildom, Barbatos is all yours when the sun sets.”

That night, you pulled out all the stops.

Candles, blankets, boxes upon boxes of condoms, lube, his favourite food, and your sexiest lingerie. There was no way you weren’t getting laid tonight. You were going to make it that you couldn’t walk tomorrow, no. matter. what.

Barbatos enjoyed his dinner with you, which was unusually tame compared to how you normally were. You were still a little angry about last night, when you were a thrust away from finishing when, apparently, Diavolo needed help and Barbatos lifted you off him and redid his pant buttons like nothing had happened.

However, after all the delectable food, the show really began.

A strip tease. A blowjob. He even finished you off once with his fingers, but it wasn’t enough. You had been so close too many times. You were cumming on that dick if it was the last thing you ever did in Devildom.

“Oh, I think Dia-.”

“Don’t you fucking dare say that name.” 

You gritted your teeth, clamping your hand over his mouth to shush any attempt to leave you hanging here. Literally. 

He was standing, holding you up by the thighs as you bounced on his cock, sweat coating both of you and breathing mixing as you tried to kiss but couldn’t manage the absence of oxygen for less than a second.

A muffled sound of confusion came from him as his grip on your ass loosened, but you wrapped your legs tighter around him so there was no way he could escape.

“I need to cum with you, Barbatos. I can’t take it anymore. I need you.”

Your voice croaked, tears of desperation filling your eyes, and that was all it took to send him into hyperdrive. 

You were pushed against the walls with a heavy thud, hitting your head at the force, and it would have hurt it you weren’t suffering from such mind-blowing pleasure.

It’s safe to say, you were never going to be edged like that ever again.

Solomon:

It doesn’t take magic to see the hints you’re throwing at him.

Bending over in the halloween costume you ordered off of Akuzon, making sure it was way too small before you hit checkout. You got a Pigwart’s uniform, saying that you must have accidentally bought the kids version, but there is no way in Devildom a skimpy cropped shirt and the shortest, most curve-hugging shorts would be a kids costume.

You don’t make it to that year’s RAD Halloween party, but Soloman promises to bring you back to Devildom for next year’s.

That is if you can make it in the sexy witch costume you were already planning.

Your relationship had first developed when he gave you tips on how to survive as a human in a world of angels and demons, but now he’s giving you tips on how to give him head better.

Not that you need it, he just likes to order you around.

Simeon:

He knows, but he doesn’t act on your overly sexual nature.

It breaks him to watch you beg, so the second you’re making advances, he swallows his embarrassment to pleasure you, reminding himself to pray extra, extra hard that same night.

You’re the one to initiate most of your encounters, running your hands up his arms, poking your fingers under his shirt through the shoulder cuts.

There’s this one song you’ve been listening to lately. A very sexy song. One recommended to you by Asmodeus. You can’t help dancing around whenever its on, feeling yourself like you are that bitch. 

One time you get out of the shower, think fuck it, drop your towel and start the routine you’ve basically got planned out by now. Rolling around on the floor, sticking your ass up, flipping your hair and shaking your thighs so you butt jiggles. 

You were so wrapped up in yourself you don’t notice Simeon sitting at the small desk you usually use for school work, mouth open agape as you give him to most sinful show he’s every seen. 

He had come to help you study, but...

Since when have humans been able to move so elegantly?

He thought you looked like an angel, but the way your sex is reveal to him as you part your legs at one point, there is no God that could approve of what thoughts were running through his head. 

Even though you had fun, you were panting by the end of it, laying on your fluffly carpet and snuggling your face against the comfort as you laugh at yourself. 

That is until you feel the pressure over you as your wrists are pinned above your head. 

“I’m going to hell for this.”

“Love, you’re already here.”

[mst3kproject]

Mars Needs Women

This is one of the B-movies that a lot of people have heard of, although I’m not sure how many have actually seen it.  It was written, produced, and directed by Larry “They Just Didn’t Care” Buchanan and stars Tommy Kirk from Catalina Caper and Village of the Giants.  Happy belated birthday to Mr. Kirk, who just turned seventy-nine in December of 2020.  That’s not a bad score for a guy who’s done as many drugs as he has.

The planet Mars is suffering from a genetic problem – their chromosomes are so degraded that one hundred males are born for every one female!  Clearly this is not conducive to the survival of the species, so a group of Martians have come to Earth seeking another solution: they want five female volunteers to return to Mars with them and find out if our genes are compatible!  The army brass (all male, obviously) dismiss the idea out of hand, but the Martians cannot afford to fail.  They will have their way with the Earth Women, with or without the Earth Men’s permission.

We all know that Larry Buchanan couldn’t come up with an idea of his own, so naturally this is a remake of sorts.  Mars Needs Women was inspired by Tommy Kirk’s previous movie Pajama Party, which doesn’t sound like an alien invasion flick, but is.  In it, Kirk plays a Martian named Gogo (yes, really), who comes to Earth as an invasion scout but decides not to take over the planet because he falls in love with Annette Funicello.  Mars Needs Women dispenses with the teen hijinks angle in an attempt to be a straight-up sci-fi thriller, and fails miserably.

We get the normal Larry Buchanan types of suck, such as crummy lighting, appallingly awful day-for-night, a washed-out, colourless print, and copious stock footage.  There’s a long bit where the air force tries to attack the Martian ship and fails, which is entirely stock footage intercut with men in uniforms staring at something next to the camera.  We don’t see the flying saucer itself even once during this sequence, although they do have a model of it that shows up elsewhere and is almost definitely the best effect in the whole movie.  Not a high bar, of course, but seeing as they actually appear to have spent money on this miniature, you’d think it’d get more screen time.

The Martians themselves dress like a sort of noir version of the Chicken Men of Krankor.  Their costumes are black wetsuits decorated with duct tape and silver paint, with stupid antennae on the sides of their heads.  It amuses me that the first thing they do after acquiring some ‘Earth apparel’ is complain about how dumb neckties are.  There’s a mention about how they’ve been trained in ‘Earth slang’, which seems to have happened just so the movie would have no possible sources of humour.  When I think about Attack of the The Eye Creatures, I’m kind of grateful that Mars Needs Women never tries to be funny, but it leaves the whole film relentlessly monotone.

The acting is pretty crummy, even from the main characters.  Yvonne Craig (Batgirl – no, not one of them, the actual Batgirl) does her best with the material but the lines she’s given are such technobabble bullshit there are very few people who could deliver them with any conviction.  Almost everybody else is bland at best.  The women scream and faint, and the military guys tense their jaws and glare.  The only decent acting moment actually goes to Tommy Kirk as he describes the conditions on Mars, the dying planet.  His tone barely changes, and yet you can sense his nostalgia and regret.

Do I even need to ask if this movie objectifies women?  Well, yes, actually, I do, and you’ll see why in a minute.  The answer is a resounding yes and a good bit of run time is spent doing exactly that.  Before the opening credits we see three blondes abducted in broad daylight, dematerialized by the simple means of stopping the camera, removing the actress, and starting it up again. One of these hapless victims is taken from the shower.  We later learn that the beam-ups failed somehow, which I assume means the women died, but that’s apparently not worth more than a throwaway line.

Once the five Martians arrive on Earth, they disperse to go hunting for suitable subjects.  The first one goes directly to a strip bar, perhaps on the assumption that the employees will not be married (he’d be amazed).  We then watch the stripper dance at great length, cutting back to it repeatedly in between other threads of the storyline, which suggests that the Martian sat there for hours staring at her before making his move.  He seems to have been the least choosy of the five, simply taking the first woman he gets a boner for.  The others are a bit more discerning.

None more so than the leader, Fellow One (the Martians are Fellows One through Five, which did save the writers from having to come up with ‘alien names’ that sound like synthetic fabrics).  He decides on Craig’s character, Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert in ‘space medicine’ and ‘space genetics’ (this may be 60’s for astrobiology).  Her skills seem to be just what the Martians need.  This character is treated terribly by the movie and almost everybody in it. A news reporter commenting on Dr. Bolen’s arrival describes her as a stunning brunette who found it hard to hide her charm behind her horn-rimmed spectacles, and only then moves on to her qualifications.  She gives a news conference titled Sex and Outer Space, and the reporters who are supposed to be interviewing her have a laugh about the good time the kidnapped women will supposedly be having on Mars.  The prop department can’t even bother to spell her name right – it’s written as ‘Majorie’ on a sign even though the r is clearly audible when people say it out loud.

In contrast to this, Fellow One treats her with some degree of respect.  Their conversations about science are mostly nonsense, but you can tell what the script is going for.  They go on a couple of quick dates, one to a planetarium and one to a museum exhibit on human reproduction (yes, this is weird and icky), and while it is rushed, their little love story is actually important to the plot in ways besides Fellow One deciding to abandon the mission so he can bone her.  The movie considers Dr. Bolen a sex object, but from the beginning Fellow One sees her as more than that.

This brings us, in a sideways kind of way, to the thing I find weirdly fascinating about Mars Needs Women: the alien invaders are curiously considerate.  They steal a car, but they take one from airport parking on the assumption that the owner won’t need it for a while.  They request unattached women, not wanting to break up any happy partnerships. And most of all, they ask for volunteers for abduction!  This makes me wonder what would have happened if they’d broadcast their message to the entire world instead of one group of soldiers.  Humans being the way we are, I’m sure there’re lots of people out there who’d fuck a couple of aliens if it meant a free trip to Mars (or move to Mars if it meant they got to fuck some aliens).

The female characters even seem designed to want a trip to space.  Dr. Bolen might well have helped them willingly in exchange for this unparalleled chance to expand her research, and she does find it very sexy that Fellow One speaks to her as an equal.  Yet somehow, the idea never even comes up.  At the last minute, she becomes the helpless princess who must be saved from peril, and Fellow One simply tells her he loves her and asks her to flee.  Why not invite her along as a guest instead of a captive? It’s got to be worth a try.

The others can be made to fit this pattern, too. The stripper?  Maybe she’s sick of being gawked at like meat and would welcome the chance to be among people who will treat her like a queen.  The flight attendant?  She might feel like she’s been everywhere and seen everything – on Earth, at least.  The artist? A whole new planet to inspire her! The homecoming queen?  She’s a journalism major.  What a scoop if she can report back to Earth about the culture and history of Mars!  I want to see a remake of this movie in which the ladies really are volunteers, who must help the Martians outwit the military so they can start their new lives on another planet.

Sadly, this is not that movie, and its exploitative aspects stand rather awkwardly alongside the embryonic feminism embodied in Dr. Bolen, overwhelming it more often than not.  I do want to give it maybe half a kudo, though, for at least acknowledging that women can have interests and ambitions.  I guess the point of the ending is that Fellow One has realized they need to be allowed to pursue those instead of being forced to breed.

Mars Needs Women is probably Larry Buchanan’s best movie, which is a statement on the same level as saying that The Beast of Yucca Flats is Coleman Francis’ – by any reasonable standard it still really sucks.  While it has many problems, I would say that the one that kills any entertainment value is how the narrative totally lacks the urgency the title implies.  The ending should be a race to stop the Martians taking off with their prisoners, but no, it saunters instead.  If there were only some tension in the film, it could have been the guilty pleasure you’d want from a movie called Mars Needs Women.

[firstpuffin]

Defeating an overwhelming antagonist…again..:

A problem with any ongoing story is the need for escalation. Every conflict need to be greater than the previous and while there are a number of different ways to do this (I’m partial to an emotional element as opposed to greater risk), the easiest is simply to up-the-ante.

  The Star Wars prequels went from a single planet to the entire galaxy; superheroes frequently go from the villain of the week to saving everything; romance such as Kimi ni Todoke (which I’ve written about previously) starts with the lead trying to talk make connections and ends on trying to keep their friends, partner and life goal.

  Every genre will have different requirements. Heck, if pornography has ongoing stories then they’d have the same problem, although don’t count on me figuring out how to deal with it. More participants? Dunno.

 I personally love a good action story and it can be dumb like Dragon Ball, goofy like Gintama or serious like Bleach, and I deliberately named manga as examples as that’s the area I’ve chosen to write about today. Why manga? Well in my experience the scale of escalation tends to be somewhat more extreme and far simpler.

  I think I’d like to also write about escalation in other genres such as romance, slice-of-life and sure, comedy, and how they might, and often do, intermingle. But for now I’m gonna talk about the action genre’s Overwhelming Antagonist.

  Again.

  Sorry.

 I’m going to provide three examples this time, all manga that I loved (at one time at least) and while I’ve only just finished one of them, another has recently had a confirmation for its finale being animated. Going from bad to good: Bleach, Naruto, and Gintama.

 So we’re starting with Bleach. Hmm, what do you need to know to understand this? Well after writing this out once already I figured all you actually need to know is why the antagonist sucks.

  The antagonist in question is- uhh, f*ck it. His name is “Yhwach”, but screw figuring out the pronunciation for that, I’m calling him Deus (even though this will influence the SEO of this article, but whatever). Deus is quite possibly the worst example I can think of for a bad antagonist. His unique superpower, The Almighty, is to know everything that will happen, that can happen, and to freakin’ overwrite any future he doesn’t like!

  Like seriously! I can only think of one power that is harder to overcome and that’s the one that’s been floating around online about controlling probability. It’s the epitome of bullshit, and the overwriting-futures-he-doesn’t-like bit only comes out after he should have lost, and that’s what bothers me the most.

  If he had lost right there, it would have been a very satisfying end brought about from the hero’s, Ichigo Kurosaki’s, efforts, working alongside allies and previous antagonists and with some actual tactics; satisfying despite the nonsense of literally everything else in the arc until that point (contradicting established lore and generally making no goddamn sense-). Instead he whips out this Diabolus ex Machina (the villainous Deus ex Machina) so that something the writer included earlier (but hadn’t really established) could finish him off instead.

  This is all quite terrible, but what makes it so egregious is that Bleach had two, two, separate and very much ideal chances to end, but kept going. But basically Deus simply chose not to die, rewriting reality to do so, but couldn’t overwrite his actual loss? Care to explain that to us, upcoming anime?

 SECOND! Naruto.

  Naruto is also pretty interesting to me because I didn’t enjoy it at all for like, 50 episodes (and still watched it? why?) but it eventually became my favourite manga (for a time anyway). Me and my friends were worried about how well it was possible for a 15 year-long story to end, especially after that Bleach debacle, and we sort of didn’t want it to end just to avoid the inevitable tragedy.

  But it was good!

  I know that many people don’t like it, and for some of it I can understand why. The big bad was Madara Uchiha- scratch that (the author did), the antagonist is the up-until-now unknown Kaguya. Yeah, she hadn’t really been established, or even mentioned, up until she appeared and yeah, that was a problem. I think the reason why I gave it a pass was that her appearance was also connected to the origin of the culture of that world and was really quite fascinating, so I let it slide.

  Oh, and I liked her design. That goes a long way.

  Anyway, after a long and drawn out fight against the established (multiple times as-it-were) villain Madara, Kaguya is reincarnated through what can be summarised as the end result of Madara’s hubris and becomes the threat. She is an odd antagonist for an action manga, and not just because she’s a woman.

  Kaguya isn’t strong in the same way as all the other characters, punching and shooting lighting and such, but instead she’s powerful like a deity. She drags the heroes through dimensions and such while still getting her bearings, and I’m pretty sure she is defeated while still half asleep.

  Kaguya’s sudden appearance is the bad, so what’s the good?

  The heroes, our titular Naruto Uzumaki and his best bud the brutal murderer Sasuke Uchiha were, through some situation, gifted a power that they were using to try and seal Madara away like an evil genie, but this sealing power works just as well for Kaguya (if I remember correctly then that’s why she needed to be reincarnated in the first place).

  It all works on established lore and isn’t a stretch in any way.

 And finally, Gintama.

I really would not have expected this from a manga filled with so many scatological jokes that any metaphor would just bring unwanted images to mind, and whose very title is a dick joke.

  The antagonist here is Utsuro, an honest-to-god immortal. Over a thousand years old, heals from anything, dead inside (according to him “utsuro” means hollow), all Utsuro wants to do is destroy everything. I know, what a 2D character, right?

  Actually no. Being immortal, Utsuro has gone through the whole loneliness thing that stories about immortals tend to include, only he’s also had to deal with persecution on top of that. He may heal but he still feels it when his village burns him alive, or stabs him, or locks him away in a prison where he starves until the lock rusts away… the author doesn’t give him the typical “oh woe is me” flashback, but gives us plenty of reason to empathise with him.

  So fighting an immortal, and without the superpowers of the previous two entries, how does our hero Gintoki Sakata defeat him? That requires a bit of a history lesson; history in the manga.

  How many of you know of the Life-stream from Final Fantasy 7? That seems like a solid analogy. It is mentioned a number of times that the planets (plural as Gintama is a sci-fi) have some energy called Altana and while its uses aren’t really explored, we do know that one effect of it is that some people are born of it (also not really explained; planet sex? virgin birth?) and that these people are immortal as long as they have access to this energy, and that right there is the crutch of things.

 One of our leads is an alien whose mother was one of these immortals who left her planet and slowly died because the Altana of another planet won’t help. Utsuro is actually almost killed off of Earth and retreats back- oh, but if he’s only vulnerable away from the Altana then how else can he be beaten?

  In the end it comes down to a couple of factors, both of which are established previously; the time he almost dies, it’s because someone rams a foreign Altana crystal into his chest and our heroes go into battle equipped with these. Secondly, using characters and lore set up and forgotten a long, long time ago, the flow of this Altana is regulated by a small group who, with great difficultly, are able to staunch the energy during the fight.

  With small amounts of the harmful Altana being absorbed into his body through super-healing and no access to his literal life-force, Utsuro is able to be defeated and this is why Gintama is king. Gintama literally used what seemed like throwaway, not at all serious storylines and thoroughly established lore to exploit a weakness in this immortal.

 Compare this with Deus from earlier who has no such weakness and the only thing that can apparently defeat him not only hasn’t been set up, but should have been foreseen and avoided because that’s his power! That’s literally what he does! But Utsuro has this flaw and time was taken to establish a way to take advantage of it.

[amillioninprizes]

An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars

So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.

 It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:

Fire Rob Thomas

 While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?

Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff

A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.

Bring back Logan (alive)

You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.

Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.

Bring back Veronica

As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car?  (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:

Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director

This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).

Make an effort (and do your fucking research) 

Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.

Know your audience

A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.

Bring back the mystery of the week

This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.

Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”

Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place. 

Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.

Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).

Kill your darlings

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny. 

Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.

Improve Neptune’s gender ratio

Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.

Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project 

A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff. 

I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants. 

Recourt the fanbase

What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).

Map out an endgame

Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.

[mysterious-prophetess]

4 AM thoughts on the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy-A Rant

So, firstly I’ll say this: If you like them-More power to you. You do you. 

My thoughts are mine and I will not claim that they are the only opinion to have because that’s a wrong way to be.

Secondly: It is literally 4 AM as I write this. So, I will probably go off on tangents and there won’t be a lot of structure to this.

So, approx eight and a half months since I was dragged to The Rise of Skywalker and I go back to a trilogy and a franchise for that matter that I was kind of DONE with. 

Yeah. Disney Star Wars ruined my love of Star Wars in general and I even liked the Prequel trilogy!

I liked The Force Awakens when I first saw it, but I think it was my nostalgia goggles blinding me to its issues.

One of which it was almost a beat-for-beat remake of Episode 4. Being that 4 is my favorite of all the Star Wars films, this also worked in its favor as it was just fresh enough for the nostalgia and partiality to its predecessor to work in its favor.

Also, the new trio--Finn, Rey, and Poe-- had a lot of great potential. Especially Finn. Former Stormtrooper & taken from his home to be raised as a soldier to find he no longer could stay with the First Order, but terrified of them. Yet, despite that fear deciding to go save Rey--who was one of his first real friends. That was a character’s journey with so much potential and the marketing made it seem like he’d be a jedi. 

Yet, I wasn’t too upset when it was Rey. 

In retrospective, Rey winning against Kylo Ren was dumb. She should have been decent at the weapon since she was able to protect herself and Kylo was injured but, the planet falling apart could have happened sooner to prevent her from going on a ass-kicking spree of Kylo Ren.

Then we get to 8 which had an opening crawl it didn’t need since it was literally just after 7. 

I hated that btw

Then we get Poe who was shown as a smart ass in 7 but talked up as this great pilot but shown to be an IDIOT in 8. Rose’s whole storyline was badly handled.

People were shitty to Kelly Marie Tran over shit out of her control. Rose Tico was a terribly written character and the actress did what she could with what they gave her. 

What they did to Finn was undid ALL of his character development from 7 and turn him into a joke for the rest of 8 and nothing in 9. I’ve recently learned that this was done to appeal to a certain market that has never liked Star Wars anyway. Way to go, Disney. You fucked up your new character with the most compelling backstory to appease a market that hates this product in the first place. Bra-fucking-vo. 

The Light Speed tracking thing was bullshit. Canto Bite was a pointless side quest. Cut that stupid shit out of the movie and you lose nothing of value. You could cut from them landing on that pointless planet to them ending up in jail for parking illegally and saved the audience around 20 minutes of wasted time.

It didn’t advance the plot. It didn’t make Rose any more sympathetic. It just felt preachy. Also, Rose x Finn was so fucking forced. Kelly Marie Tran tried to sell it but again, she was given shit to work with.

I recently found out that who Rey was kept changing and It’s SOOO fucking stupid to not have a solid plan for a fucking trilogy. (and to find out my favorite idea of Rey as a Kenobi was the first one before Johnson came in and she was No One also is irksome)

Idk what Abrams planned but by not having it implemented over all and letting Johnson piss all over it with his ideas for a subversive mould-breaking story ruined any flow the films had.

Yeah, I am aware 4 was all but stand alone, but it was set up so it could connect to 5 & 6 just in case it was successful enough for 5 & 6 to be made. It was very stand alone because there was a chance nothing would come after 4.

7, 8, & 9 however, could be planned for there to be three because it was fucking STAR WARS. Which meant, they should have had people fucking plan out what they were doing. Instead, they didn’t, it shows, and it also seems to take an almost savage glee at pissing on the past.

Ruining Luke I-see-the-good-in-my-Father-who-committed-genocide Skywalker by having him give up on Ben/Kylo was one of the biggest betrayals of character I’ve ever fucking seen. 

Trying their best to get all the other OT characters out of the way so their new shiny replacements can take center stage without any nuance was also irritating. And this is at the parks too. It’s apparently all Sequel shit now with no legacy characters. 

Killing off Luke in 8 in a stupid way in how the force does not work. Continuing the force bullshit in 9. Wasting our time on a redemption arc for Kylo Ren/Ben only to KILL HIM AT THE END. 

No. Make him face what he’s done and atone as a living person. No more redemption=death. Death is too easy.

And I hate that they brought Palpatine back in a corporal form. Nice way to piss on the BEST moments of the OT where Anakin, finally throwing off the ties of bondage to Palpatine and the dark side and destroying the man to save his son, sacrificing himself in the process, dying at peace. Nope. That now means NOTHING. Palpatine survived.

Force Ghosts fucking exist. Sith Ghosts FUCKING EXIST TOO. Just make him a force ghost possessing some fucker and I might not have been as pissed off.

That force diad shit? Either play it up more or cut it out.

Snoke being a Palpatine puppet was fucking dumb. If he’d been Darth Plageius’s creation then that might have been better than “it was palpatine all along.”

It’s just such a waste. Star Wars was a film series about hope. The first film was retitled to have its subtitle be “A New Hope.” These films? Are not about hope at all. They’re about cynical cash grabs and trying to signal the right virtues to try to exploit the movie going public of their money and attempt a moral high ground. 

One more thing that bugs me: the fact they shunted a lot of shit per film to the novelizations. Fuck that shit. If your medium is FILM, you tell all your shit in that damn film. I shouldn’t have to read your tie in materials to understand your fucking film.  e.g. Palpatine’s son is really his clone is in the last film’s novelization. That stupid casino world allegedly has a full explanation too. 

No. It’s a sign of really poor planning and command of storytelling that you shunted this information into your peripheral materials. Then agian, we know the planning was shit because they couldn’t even fucking settle on who Rey was WHILE FILMING THE DAMNED TRILOGY AND EVEN DURING 9 THEY WERE CHANGING THEIR MINDS. 

And there are lots of other things but better minds than mine have talked about them-like everything wrong with Poe’s backstory. That can of worms I won’t touch because I don’t have the expertise beyond wondering if Disney has a single person with any sort of common sense or any awareness of optics on staff.

Final mini-rant: 

I fucking hate the way they’re trying to push their oh-so-special OC’s as better than the original cast at times. Luke and Leia were presumed to have been born the same day the empire was founded because THAT’S THE FILM’S APPARENT TIMELINE. But now. Now, somehow that took 2 days and now their new special snowflake character from Rebels Ezra Bridger has that Empire Day birthday and is force sensitive too and has a jedi teacher. 

Like, I’m sure that the character isn’t as Gary Stu-ish as I just bitched about there, but from the outside looking in, it pisses me the fuck off because of all the other shit Disney’s been pulling with Star Wars to distance themselves from legacy characters and push the new characters at all costs.

It’s just I hate what they’ve done in their corporate greed.

[loopy777]

A larger question that needs two asks to cover. One of the biggest criticisms against the star wars sequel trilogy, is that all the OT main characters died complete failures after having all their work undone. Luke was the shining hope for new jedi, but had his academy killed, gave up, and essentially just became a bitter Yoda, then after returning to the man he used to be, he dies. Han saw his son become evil, abandoned his wife and became a smuggler again, and died failing to redeem him.

Leia worked so, so hard to make the new republic happen, only for it to die ridiculously easy. Essentially, there's an argument to be made that all their work was undone and they all died miserable failures. What's your thoughts on the subject?

Well, my take on this comes my philosophy on sequels in general. Unless it’s something with enough entries to really play with things, sequels need to maintain or escalate the story stakes. James Bond and Marvel movies, for example, can sometimes go big and sometimes go smaller scale, because they’re essentially episodes in a television series or chapters in a massive book.

Star Wars, on the other hand, is all epic all the time. Its movies are always events- and when they aren’t, the titles of the movies themselves tell us that they’re small skippable little things. Episodes 1-6 are about the greatest threat ever to the galaxy and Jedi; a sequel trilogy can’t follow that with a story about mopping up and just doing the stuff implied by the ending of Episode 6. But Episode 6 was meant to be the finale to the saga, so there’s no remaining threats or plots on the same level as Palpatine, the Empire, and the Sith.

I thought the sequels, at least TFA and TLJ, had an interesting way around that by being about the concept of sequels themselves. In order to create the proper stakes, the heroes were indeed turned into failures- and the heroes are directly reacting to that! Leia reacts by digging in trying to keep fighting. Han reacts by going back to just surviving. Luke reacts by giving up and trying to die. They hate the sequels turning them into failures as much as the audience.

And then TFA brings them back into things by having them become aware of the new heroes and the cycle of stories. What so many people took as Han’s moments of “Wow, I think Rey might be my daughter,” I took as “Huh, another wide-eyed prodigy from a desert planet who’s dragging me into an epic adventure.” I took Luke’s reaction to Rey offering him the lightsaber as him realizing that the story is starting over again and trying to draw him back in. Even Kylo Ren is actively trying to fit into the Darth Vader role and is frustrated that he’s just a cheap copy.

(I could have done without the repetition being so explicit with the return of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, a jungle base for the Rebels, another desert planet, Bigger Death Star, etc. The themes could have been there with new visuals that merely homage the old stuff. But I think the choice to recycle so much was a direct ploy to ease people back into Star Wars after the reactions to the prequels, so hoping for a lot of new stuff in TFA was probably always futile.)

And then TLJ directly follows this up by making the concept of a repeating story one of the major themes, explicitly! I considered it solid validation of my interpretation of TFA! (Now I honestly have no idea what was intended with TFA, because I think Rise Of Skywalker is completely disconnected from it. If ROS indeed represents the original intentions of J.J. Abrams, then TFA must have been heavily pulled off track, to its benefit, by Lawrence Kasdan.)

Han’s death, to me, was a mix of triumph and failure. On the one hand, he finds the strength to give himself over to The Story, to let go of survival and offer everything up for the chance to save his son. I think he knows that it’s not going to work, but he understands that it’s a step that has to be taken, and so he makes the attempt and lets his life be claimed.

This is the problem facing the young cast in TLJ. They trust too much in The Story, in heroes and last stands and destiny and redemption and sacrifice and a righteous cause. Luke, on the other hand, sees how all of that accomplishes nothing in the long run; he sees The Story at work and knows that a Happy Ending depends on where the storyteller stops, that continuance inevitably brings back the darkness. He realizes that the storyline of the prequels was forced on him in a repeat, despite his victory in Episode 6, and wants no part in an endless cycle of dumb movies about space wizards killing people.

It’s Leia who seems, in TLJ, to see the possibility for a path of balance. She’s still part of The Story, still values the things that the younger generation does, but she also sees that those things won’t bring victory by themselves. They need to be smart about how they participate in The Story. Strategic with when they invoke The Story and when they should shy away from it. The failures of the younger cast eventually teach them this, as well. Rey uses the Millennium Falcon to bait the First Order at the end of the movie, pulling TIE Fighters into a reenactment of Return Of The Jedi to save her friends, but she no longer thinks she can force the redemption of Vader onto Kylo. Poe and Finn learn lessons about how the true value of Heroic Stands isn’t taking out bad guys, but changing the direction of The Story.

And Luke finds the path of balance as well, finding that The Story can be turned against the darkness. Where Finn and Poe learn when not to invoke the Heroic Stand, he rediscovers the moment when both a Hero and a Last Stand is the greatest weapon to employ against the enemy, and so steps back into his role in a way that will let the younger generation learn and continue to grow. That he does so in the single greatest feat of the Force in the entire saga makes it especially triumphant.

Kylo Ren, meanwhile, has likewise become frustrated with the nature of sequels, but instead of finding a balance between new and old, he casts away everything old (”Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It's the only way to become who you were meant to be.“) and seeks only something new- and in doing so is defeated by the protagonists who have weaponized The Story against him. Because a franchise like Star Wars can’t go fully New as there’s too much valuable IP to mine.

This is why I had such high hopes for ROS. Luke had already turned the tide of The Story, and the next cast had been set up to find an Ending that would prevent The Story from happening again. Literally all the next movie had to do was deliver on what was already set up with some plot mechanics.

And that’s why Rise Of Skywalker is so bad, to me. After two sequels dealing, on a meta level, with the concept of sequels themselves, ROS just copies tropes from the classic trilogy without adding anything, without finding new meaning in anything. Rey learns that her father is Darth Vader (metaphorically), and struggles with the same themes Luke did, eventually coming to the same conclusions. She confronts Palpatine just like Luke did, with the aid of a darksider she helped pull back to the light, and makes the conflict into just another clash of Jedi vs Sith, doing nothing to guarantee that another sequel down the line won’t bring that enemy back for a nostalgia cash-in.

Even Leia becomes a failure, throwing a Redemption trope at her son with no meaning behind it, turning him away from the darkness but without any insight into how he became Anakin Skywalker Redux, how she and Han and Luke had previously failed. She did nothing to prevent it from happening again in another generation; she just solved this one problem and then died, tidying up her subplot but having no lasting impact.

All of this confirms that Han, Luke, and Leia are merely failures, as you describe, as ROS shows that they’ve left nothing behind that will continue. Where TLJ introduced the idea that they had to fail in order to gain greater understanding of The Story, so that they could teach its mastery to the next set of protagonists and end things with merely one Sequel Trilogy,

And thus ROS confirms that failure is inevitable; Rey, Finn, and Poe will fail again the next time Disney needs to exploit nostalgia, because they never mastered The Story. The full cast tried to confront the nature of Sequels, saw the conundrum that they can have no impact while Disney sees more money to be made from Star Wars...

And they all give up, surrendering to cliche. Han, Luke, and Leia repeat their acts from previous movies, or the acts of their predecessors from the prequels, and cash their checks and walk away. I don’t mean the actors; I truly mean that ROS turns Han, Luke, and Leia into Space Opera jobbers.

So yes, they all died as miserable failures.

But, dangit, until ROS, I thought there was going to be a greater, beautiful point to it.

And there’s no fixing it now. This isn’t a story that can be retconned or ignored. ROS’s abandonment of the themes of the previous two sequels stands as a glaring Statement Of Intent from Disney: there is no meaning in these movies, just the exploitation of a thing we once loved.

And that’s going to take a lot come back from.

[mysilverylining]

Don’t Renew Veronica Mars for S5

One of our Burned Marshmallows received a response from @hulu this morning claiming that the forum we were directed to leave our complaints and feedback in was merely tech support and our complaints will be “archived”.

I’m posting my complaint here for posterity, and I suggest that other Burnt Marshmallows do the same.  

I'm a longtime lover of Veronica Mars and one of the co-founders of a large and very active VM fan group spanning multiple social media platforms. I contributed heavily to the Kickstarter and attended the NYC premiere of the Veronica Mars. Since then, I've put in time and effort every single day to keep the fandom engaged through rewatches, activities, and challenges, and to ensure that when a streaming service came calling, they would know the fandom was ready and waiting. When Rob and Kristen called on us to demand more Veronica Mars, we used our platform and our social media cred to organize and make it happen. All this to say, I feel qualified speaking for the pulse of the fandom - both before and after the release of Season 4.

We DO NOT want another season of Rob Thomas's Veronica Mars.

Either replace Rob Thomas as show runner, or put Veronica Mars out of its misery.

Rob Thomas's name has been stained by the betrayal of his fans. Not because he killed off a popular character, but because he made this decision back in 2014, knowing it would cost him a large chunk of his fanbase, and then continued to use and exploit the "Marshmallow Army" for his purposes. Milking every last drop of activism and goodwill from us before we could turn against him en masse.

I do not want a Veronica Mars without Logan. Let me clarify. I would have applauded a cordial LoVe breakup in episode 8 for the sake of Logan's mental health.

I LOVE an angry female protagonist. I seek these characters out as a rule. But Logan was absolutely INTEGRAL to Veronica. Not as her boyfriend or husband, but as her truth teller. He was the only one who knew all her dirty secrets and was the only one with the guts to stand up to her when she was wrong. He pushed her to grow and heal and to be honest with herself. Keith is a wonderful character, but he has neither the knowledge nor the chops to push Veronica kicking and screaming on her journey.

Rob Thomas has no business writing women's stories in an era of #MeToo and #BelieveWomen. In the novel, Mr. Kiss and Tell, Veronica is hired to disprove a rape victim's story. On its own, this is bad, but if you combine it with Season 2's "The Rapes of Grath" and most of Season 3, you'll find that Veronica has disproved more rape accusations than she's caught rapists. This is extremely harmful messaging and contributes to the public perception that false rape accusations are common, committed by vindictive women hoping to ruin a man's life. Statistics prove the opposite, yet the messaging persists. Perceptions like this explain why rape victims are terrified to come forward and have their character put on trial.

Rob Thomas has no business writing mental health stories. Veronica's constant belittling of Logan's attempts to get healthy send a bad message, as does the idea of a single therapy session being a magical cure for Veronica's issues. Rob's statements after the finale only compound the damage. He tells us that emotionally healthy people and people on the journey to emotional health are not interesting. I could not disagree more. I found Logan's journey to be the most interesting storyline of the season.

Rob Thomas wants to move Veronica out of Neptune. Away from her father, her best friend, and the rest of her crew. He wants to focus on the mysteries instead of the personal relationships. The problem is, he's a TERRIBLE mystery writer.

His complex character stories actually worked to distract viewers from his gaping plot holes. Without the relationships we've grown to love, Veronica Mars would be just a 4th-rate procedural.

Just off the top of my head, I can point to the season finale. The edge-of-your-seat pacing is necessary, because if RT gives you a moment to think about it, you'll realize it was impossible for Penn to kill Don, plant the paper order slip, place the bomb at Kane High School and construct the backpack bomb, because HE WAS IN JAIL DURING THE TIME HE WOULD HAVE BEEN SETTING THIS UP.

Most Veronica Mars mysteries have similar inconsistencies, and the most insulting part is seeing the brilliant Veronica Mars being dumbed down for the sake of plot, forgetting other cases she's solved with the same M.O., and trusting villains with the exact same characteristics as the last 10 villains she trusted.

In conclusion, if you refuse to get a new showrunner, then at least just please put us all out of our agony and cancel it. This latest iteration was not the Veronica Mars anybody wanted.

[doing-forever-in-a-min]

Thoughts on the musical: A rant

(By someone who actually was fan of Heathers the movie and the musical before Riverdale was even a thing). 

In general, I think the talking interventions shouldn't have been erased, it gives the musical a sense of reality. But I'll analyze it song by song. 

Beautiful (5/10): It was alright, Casey is an amazing singer, we been knew. But it was repetitive when Beautiful is anything but. They shouldn't have cut the “freak! slut! burnout! bug eyes! poser! lard ass!”s of the song, they could’ve used them (with other word choice) to portray rivalries between the gangs colliding at Riverdale High. Veronica Sawyer acts as a narrator in the musical, they should’ve gone all the way with this and maybe give Kevin a voice if they didn’t want Josie to narrate (since Josie was playing Veronica).

Candy Store (3/10): Look, I’m biased about this, maybe it wasn’t that bad. But Candy Store is my favorite Heathers song. Why did they change it so much? The line “why now are you pulling on my dick?” was maybe a lot for the CW but they could’ve just radio edit it a little, not entirely change it. Also, they could’ve exploited Madelaine’s voice way more to meet Heather Chandler’s power. And the other Heathers were barely present in order to entertain Cheryl and Toni’s cat fight; it could’ve been used with this purpose in mind by having C, V and B perform it on their own completely neglecting Toni’s choreography and yes, having Cheryl say “shut up, Toni!” too, just as Alice sang to Betty in Carrie, but no. It was underwhelming. 

Fight For Me (9/10): Was greatly adapted to Josie and Archie’s storyline and it made me love them as a couple even more. Ashleigh is amazing, she should never stop and their chemistry is great. Archosie all the way. 

Big Fun (4/10): Then again, the line “let’s rub each other’s backs while watching porn in Cinemax” is a lot. But censoring other things such as weed, nudity and sex mentions is hypocritical considering THIS ENTIRE SEASON IS ABOUT DRUG LORDS, NOT TO MENTION THE AMOUNT OF TIMES THESE TEENAGERS HAVE SEX IN JUST ONE (1) EPISODE. 

Dead Girl Walking (3/10): It was cleverly played in the sense of “the demon queen of high school has decreed it” but I completely hated the Toni-Peaches N’ Cream-Sweet Pea threesome situation, absolutely nothing led up to it (with Toni and the others, not Toni and Cheryl). Josie would’ve been way better bECAUSE SHE’S THE ONE ACTUALLY PLAYING VERONICA SAWYER, her voice fits the song and they even could’ve done their threesome thing too, with Sweet Pea and Archie which would’ve created an interesting dynamic of Josie confronting the two. Some could argue that it was with the purpose of giving Choni a reason to get back together but it’s still dumb because if Toni was going to apologize to Cheryl anyway, they could’ve gone with “Toni is a smart character so she realizes Cheryl is hurting” or whatever. 

Our Love Is God (5/10): I’m only giving it this score because it was inconsequential, it would’ve have made ANY difference if it wasn’t there. Apart from this song, a plus all the other performances have is purpose, all of them carry the story in some way (Beautiful: Kevin’s justification for doing the musical to Hermione. Candy Store: Conflict between Cheryl and Toni. Fight For Me: Archie asking Josie to define their relationship. Big Fun: Tensions between Betty and Evelyn plus Veronica going back to Reggie. Dead Girl Walking: Then again, conflict between Cheryl and Toni. Seventeen: Teenagers wanting to be teenagers. Lifeboat: Veronica hurting over her parent’s divorce. But this bitch? 

Seventeen (10/10): Absolutely amazing, wouldn’t change a thing, it was powerful, the vocals were good, the acting was on point, it made me like Bughead and forgive Choni for being dumb, cleared my skin, cured my depression, was absolutely everything. No, for real, it really surprised me, this and Lifeboat were the only versions I actually liked more than the ones of the musical. This song fits Riverdale and these characters perfectly. 

Lifeboat (9/10): The only reason I didn’t give it a 10/10 was because they cut it at its most powerful when IT’S ONLY A MINUTE AND A HALF. But overall it was pretty great, Camila’s vocals were awesome and it was as if they designed it by measure to Veronica’s storyline. 

Seventeen (Reprise) (2/10): Hated it. It was an awful way to finish the musical, it was EXTREMELY underwhelming, not powerful at all, it sounded like the background chorus of the actual song. I’m so mad at how outrageous it was that I can't write about it. No, scratch that, it being outrageous would’ve been better than what it was. 

I’m sorry I didn’t post this yesterday but I was busy and only got to watch live like, the last ten minutes of it. 

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 4: The EED: Emotional Exposition Dump. Or why THIS is not friendship

So here we are. The last part of this 45 page three parter, meant to be about what Sam really means to the crew. And what have we seen so far in the previous parts? That Sam is not just their underappreciated, but downright exploited slave (yeah, did you know that in ancient Greece slaves supposedly had more rights than Sam in this one? At least they could buy out their freedom one day), that Dobson has no idea how to genuinely pace a story, turning what could have been a decent 100 page story if planned out and presented with more care into a 45 page short snore fest and that Hat Andy’s idea for jokes are either based on abusing token buttmonkeys, turning annoying memes into even more unfunny jokes or making dark comedy with dead orphans.

At least when South Park makes jokes about children dying, they are appropriate in that dark setting and the death is still in some way handled or refered to as a horrific event. In Dobson’s case however, it just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Sorry, I just can’t get over the orphanage thing. If Dobson wanted the reason for Sam leaving be that he finds out someone he cared about from his old life is dead, that is one thing. But did this asshole have to destroy an entire building with countless victims to do it? Couldn’t he just have one person die and the rest be still at that place? Honestly, I think it would have been funnier and more meaningful emotionally, if Alex and Co actually interacted with people from Sam’s past and in doing so learn more about him as a person, by genuinely visiting a still standing orphanage. Give the comic some meat on the bones and in doing so actually create the impression this comic is truly about Sam and not just about characters doing random stuff in relation to finding him. Instead Dobson goes for a literal overkill, which he then does not even treat as a tragedy but as a joke.

Dobson, THIS is a better and more dignified joke about orphans than the shit you did.

You got outclassed by Chuck Lorree of all people on this planet, you disgrace of a storyteller. A storyteller who can’t even keep his own barely existing continuity in the Alex-verse straight, now that I think of it. After all, according to Legends, the orphanage was closed and all the orphans were sold out to others, with Sam being the last of the litter

Which again is just unintentionally more horrific than Dobson likely intented. But you know, dumb people don’t know when they do dumb shit.

But I digress Let us just get into the last part. In which we finally see the “emotional” pay off of everything that happened so far.

 Spoilers, this is my reaction to that pay off.

And here is what everything led up to now.

 Sam ran away, because he wants to say his final farewell to his sister figure, we never knew about at all and about whom we do not learn one single thing really.

 Where do I begin with how this revelation fails?

Let’s start with the fact that this in execution does not have the emotional impact that was intended. And why is that? Because Dobson doesn’t bother to actually introduce us to the sister as a character.

If I may digress a bit to talk about One Piece here: In the manga, oftentimes Oda will “interrupt” an ongoing story arc to feature flashback chapters, through which he tells about past events referenced in the “present” chapters prior. Through those flashbacks he further gives meaning to why in present time the characters facing certain foes or having to win in their current situation, is so important, even on an emotional level. In short, those flashbacks are no interruptions, they are integral in giving those story arcs emotional weight.

Because now we are not just “told” why we should care about things and people, we have been shown why we should care. The old rule of “show, don’t tell” being followed on.

A good example from a more “recent” storyline I can think of, is through the flashback chapters of the Dress Rosa story arc, where we are not only being shown how De Flamingo took over the kingdom of Dress Rosa and brought pain and misery over its people for years to come, but also the past of characters such as the gladiator Rebecca and Mr. Soldier, her father figure that raised her up from the time she was 10 and De Flamingo took over… only for the flashbacks to also reveal properly how Mr Soldier is not just a father figure for her that took her in, but her biological father Kyros, who had been turned into a toy by one of De Flamingo’s henchmen via a power, that also took Rebecca’s memories of her dad away so she never identified the toy as her dad.

This way Oda achieves multiple things at once; Among other things, he establishes how evil De Flamingo is, how tragic Mr Soldier and Rebecca’s lives really are, adding to us the readers wanting to see them and Luffy beat De Flamingo into a pulp and it makes the later “present day” moment when Mr. Soldier and many other victims turn back to normal and Rebecca regains her memories and is reunited with her dad so much more sweeter. Cause now we care.

Truth be told, I myself believe that Oda is one of few storytellers on this planet, who truly has “mastered” the technique of emotional flashback storytelling.

A technique Dobson could have used in this part of the story, but didn’t. Cause honestly, the way he tells how Sam’s sister was “important” to our poor cabin boy is not emotionally engaging from a storytelling perspective. We are told she is important, but we learn genuinely nothing about her, not even what her name was and what she looked like except from that one picture in the locket from over 15 pages ago. Nothing about how “close” she and Sam truly were is revealed through showing, only telling and as such we don’t even begin to care for her relationship with Sam and how her loss is genuinely important to him. So the main goal of this story, to make us the readers feel something for Sam aside of pity for how he is treated by his supposed friends, has not been achieved.

 … Dobson, you are a hack. You can’t even use flashbacks, a basic technique in the realm of storytelling, to show us why we should “care” more, heck, even at all, about Sam and his loss.

If you just had adjusted a few things, you could have had something good here.

By adjustments I mean the following: Take the first page of this chapter as well as the first panel of the second page, and combine them into the final page of the previous chapter. In doing so creating a proper cliffhanger for part two. Then start chapter 3 of with a few pages (lets say 6 or so) showing young Sam and his sister interacting in the orphanage in doing so turning her from a nameless plotdevice into a genuine person to care about. And then use content of page 2 and 3 of this chapter, to elaborate on their relationship, potentially with small cuts always between present day Sam at the grave explaining himself and saying his farewells, with pictures of the past showing what they meant to each other.

 But nope. This very basic idea a fanfic writer now has come up with, a fanfic writer who never studied literature or took writing classes by the way, something I doubt you did at college the more I read your work, has never crossed your “superior” mind.

Also, I find Sam’s text on page 3 really, really backwards in a way. Like, I get that we are meant to consider it a good thing Sam is this way. You know, being genuinely selfless and wanting to make others happy. And don’t get me wrong, generosity and selflessness are virtues I hold in high regard. But the way Sam talks about how he just wanted her to be happy while sacrificing any fulfillment of basic needs for himself feels more like a pathological disorder in that case than something to reach for. In fact, psychology speaks from different forms of generosity and the thing Sam describes here is likely “compulsive giving” or “unrelenting generosity”, a pathological variant that can be highly toxic for all people affected by it.

Funny how Dobson, a person who wants to claim he is all for mental healthcare, is essentially “promoting” the positivity of a psychological disorder via Sam.

 Then again, this also feels more like Dobson putting words into Sam’s mouth (in a literal sense) to retroactively make Sam’s treatment look less horrid. Cause now Sam doesn’t just do all the work because he is ordered around, he deep down is “happy” doing all of the work and gain not even some basic respect in return, because he cares so deeply for his friends.

… I feel myself get livid again here.

And the next few pages don’t really help me “calm down”.

 Cause now the “justifications” just go on. The thing that is meant to be a heartfelt farewell turning into Sam “justifying” that hey, it must be good that he ended up with Alex and her crew. Cause after all, by being abducted years ago and being treated as a slave who in the ginger’s eyes is worth less than lint, he likely avoided dying of shitting his pants and a crushing roof. Ignoring the fact that he was going to be sold out anyway back then and would have potentially ended up with a more generous master than the crew of non Captain Syrup.

Also, just all of the shit going on in page 6. Sam asking his “sister” to be at peace, when likely, if the girl could still talk, she may even just ask Sam the following: Who the heck are you. Cause really, if you think about it, if Sam did all the nice things for her in secret, did the girl even realize she had a “big brother” figure to watch over her? Also, him saying he is happy and he is doing quite alright for himself?

All the pictures of him sighing and looking in misery in this story alone, plus the cavalry of strips I posted about how Sam is abused in the first part of this post series tells me another story.

Finally, Sam’s message “At least now, we are both free”? Sam, she is dead, likely having died in pain when a house crushed on her, weakened by a deadly disease and traumatized by other children around her dying of said disease. And you are stuck with a bunch of people that haven’t shown to care for you up until this story and the only reason they may even care for you now is out of “sympathy” because you lost your sister figure, not because they genuinely love and care for you as a person. As far as I am concerned, you would be better off being the slaveboy of some nymphomanic pirate princess in the world of Berserk than you are on this plane of existence.

And now that the “emotional” farewell is out of the way, Dobson can go back to focus on the characters he really cares about in this shit anyway: Little Bitch Annie, lesbian chocolate rain Miroku and Deadpool’s pubes.

 Oh Alex, you are such a rascal. You really make me want to shoot you with a crossbow, stab you in the eye, hurl you out a window and shove explosives where the sun won’t shine.

Yeah yeah, you are a pirate, but that doesn’t mean you need to be that awful as a person or even protagonist.

Christ. For someone who complains how toxic Walter White is to the point he believes “sympathizing” with the character turns you into a nazi, Dobson certainly is blind to how awful Alex really is, particularly as protagonist in a comic series intented for little kids. Compared to her, I can think of freaking slasher movie villains with more of a moral compass. Like say what you want about Jigsaw, at least he never victimized genuine children or teenagers.

And Talus, thanks for ruining the “emotional” moment Sam “earned” by pointing out how weird it is he kissed a gravestone. Also, I am glad I know what happens in the next pages or else I would assume Alex’s great idea includes to dig up his sister and turn her into a life sized doll for Sam to cuddle.

No, their ideas to assure he is emotionally save and to redeem themselves for years of taking him for granted/hurting him, is to throw him a surprise party.

… you know, I think you may be the only individuals in fiction, that Pinkie Pie would think do not deserve to throw a party or get one thrown for.

 But I guess Sam is just so nice, he even throws you a party for no apparent reason.

Either that or now that his “sister” is dead he will overcompensate even more and this is the next destructive stage of his compulsive generosity.

… Sam, I am sorry for your loss. But you need to get help. Once by the authorities who will hopefully get rid of Alex and then by some psychologist who helps you redefine your own self worth.

By the way, I find it funny that the banner he made also actually only mentions Talus, Atea and Captain Daphne with a bad hair day. It just confirms that Peggy either never bothered to join the others or that Dobson developed an early onset of dementia and totally forgot about the fact that the midget is a genuine character in this trainwrack. And I am convinced the later is the case, which really just makes me wonder how someone is able to do that. To forget a major character of the thing they create and want to turn into a money making franchise. Imagine if Disney did e.g. a sequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, only to forget about the god damn dwarves themselves.

At least Talus finally realizes he is unworthy to get a party thrown or be Sam’s friends. Good. Now jump into a wood chipper and free ourselves from your existence you dog beaver thing.

Content of the next page in a just alternate universe… Alex: You are a better human being than I could ever be and this is all because my creator is a hack who does not know how to create genuinely likable personalities.

The reality:

 FUCK YOU, ALEX! FUCK YOU AND THE BIKE PUMP YOU FLEW IN ON! Atea and Talus have learnt more than you about what it means to be a friend and they don’t even bother to punch you in the face for still being the biggest red haired  raging cunt since Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

If this is how Dobson thinks “friends” should treat each other, it is no wonder he has a friendless background. Hey, Hat Andy, if you want to emulate manga, may I suggest you just become even more blatantly about it and simply copy paste One Piece? Cause Luffy at least knows how to be a friend. How much does he care for his friends, strangers and even at times former enemies of his?

He cares so much, that e.g. when a special military force that beat the crap out of him got hands on his crewmate Nico Robin, he did THIS:

He declared war on the world government. Fuck, even Jack Sparrow, who is an opportunistic jackass, in a movie where everyone stabs the others at least three times in the back, was less selffish than Alex, when he gave up his chance on immortality as Captain of the Flying Dutchman, just so Will would live in some form.

Metalbeard from the Lego Movie cared more about doing the right thing than anyone in Alex the pirate did. You created the worst friends and “heroes” I have ever seen in a webcomic since the entirety of sinfest. Congratulations for that accomplishment, Dobson. It really takes a special kind of anti-talent to show such level of not understanding the power of friendship as one of the most basic tropes in storytelling, to the point a show about pastel colored equines managed to profit of it for nine years.

 WOOOOO! We are the worst, we are the worst!

And look, Uncle Pennywise’s scrotum is back.

Anyway, here are the last two pages of this thing, to end on what is meant to be a whimsical note because Sam actually gets something from Alex that is not a beating or verbal abuse.

 Too bad anything that would feel heartwarming about this is drowned by a) me actually remembering all the shit Alex, the crew and the writer pull to get to this point (from abusive neglect of the characters to pathetic emotional manipulation on a narrative level) and b) the weird rapey face Uncle Peggy makes in the picture. Like Jesus, did Dobson try to emulate the Burger King here?

But hey, this story is over. And who knows, perhaps from this moment on, Sam will actually be treated better overall in the comic and Dobson will spend time actually developing an overall plot and the world of this com-

Tom Kenny: ONE COMIC STRIP LATER

And it is back to business as usual.

... How much would I need to pay for someone on the internet to write an alternate ending to the story where it turns out Sam actually poisoned the food at the party and while Alex is slowly dying, a now evil Sam who has finally broke under years of abuse, is going to become a genuine threatening pirat? that is after he villain monologues to Alex how much she sucks before scalping her?

Wow, I am entering a dark place right now. I think I need to take a break.

So I am going to give my final verdict on this story with the next post around the weekend most likely. Cause that is how much time I will now spend rereading One Piece and watching the Pirates of the Carribean movies in addition to playing the Pirates level of Kingdom Hearts 3, in order to forget this shit and remind myself why I think pirates are cool.

[captainderyn]

For Emeldir c; 1,4,7,8,10,14,20,23,25,26,28 I know it’s a lot I’m sorry I can’t help myself.

thank you for asking about the boy! I love all of them >:D

1.What would your OC’s last words be/what are they?

Hm, I actually haven’t really thought of this... I guess they’d probably in an angsty sense it would be something like “Run!” or “Risha/Rie/crew member, go!”. Something dumb and self sacrificing. Because that’s how he’s going out in an angsty sense. That or telling Risha if she’s with him that he loves her. 

4. Does your OC have nightmares? What do they contain?

Situational. He doesn’t get them often unless it’s been a particularly bad job experience or experience in general. And when he is hit by them they’re usually recycled and repressed memories from the Sacking of Coruscant or memories of whatever is bothering him. 

7. Does your OC have any weaknesses? Have these ever been exploited?

He’s! Too! Trusting! He sees the good in everyone and the amount of times its been used against him is ridiculous. It makes Risha want to slap him sometimes. But there he goes, being friendly and kind and giving. Dammit Em. 

8. What is the closest your OC has come to death?

Hoth with Rie, he was 19 at the time--speeder malfunctioned in a sudden snow squall, he got caught by either a snow nexu or wampa idek which for ending up too close to a nest; the creature attacked him, leaving the scars on his face, and if he hadn’t been found he probably wouldn’t frozen to death. Nearly gave Rie a heart attack finding him. 

Likewise on Hoth he and Risha were struck over the heads with White Maw blasters and tossed in a ravine of Wampas per the game’s storyline and had to fight their way out heavily concussed so that’s fun. Hoth is fun. 

10. What is the worst loss your OC has suffered?

He’s suffered a lot of near losses but he truly hasn’t ‘lost’ anyone close to him. So I’d have to say maybe the loss of his home planet...or part of it through the Sacking of Coruscant. Everything changed after that and I think because of it he lost a lot of...childhood optimism, seeing his home burn in front of his eyes and go two days without knowing whether his mother was dead or alive as a ten year old. 

Worst almost loss was nearly losing Rielay in the accident that lost her her arm and her eye. He very nearly thought he was going to lose her while waiting for the med shuttle and definitely thought he was losing her on the way to the medcenter. 

14. Would your OC let themselves be forced into a loveless marriage?

Hm...yes and no. If its just him? No. If the people he loves are being threatened? Yes. He absolutely would put himself into a situation of misery in order to keep his family or friends safe. 

20. How does your OC sleep at night?

Either curled up with Risha in their bed on the Phoenix or their apartment on Coruscant, tangled together, or uncomfortably propped in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Phoenix. Sometimes he sleeps soundly, when he’s in the latter position it usually means something is bothering him and he didn’t mean to actually fall asleep. 

23.Would your OC be considered good or bad by an outsider?

I don’t really think he can really be considered anything but good. He’s really a precious boy that doesn’t do much to offend outside of his mere existence to those who are his enemies. Maybe to bad gang members and bad smugglers he’s considered bad..but most consider him to be a very helpful golden retriever equivalent. 

25. What does your OC love most, and what would they do to keep it?

Rishaa....just kidding, while he does love Risha most she also can look at any threat and glare them back into hiding. It’s Rielay. He loves Rie almost more than anyone else and would do literally anything to keep his smol partner in crime safe. Even if it meant giving up everything he had and putting himself at risk. 

Y’all thought I was going to say his ship or Risha but nope. 

26. Has your OC ever had unrequited feelings of any kind for someone?

His feelings for Risha were unrequited for awhile...but those don’t really count. I think from time to time he’s had unrequited crushes but nothing really notable (and no one with names RIP. If any young gun wants to be an unrequited crush for Em on Coruscant hmu)

28. Would your OC ever reject someone?

Yes he rejected Ien after awhile

NO. He would reject someone, gently and kindly, if they were making moves on him he didn’t reciprocate or if he wasn’t comfortable with a step they were trying to take.