#its because it does indeed have plot. perhaps too much plot. but it does have plot

[jewishevelinebaker]

"gore isnt a plot" says the saw fan

[layzfy]

CONNECTED - a late night call with yjw

SYNOPSIS:

wc. 1.7k+ fluff gn! reader — 심야 전화 after a first date with your childhood best friend yang jungwon, he decides that his time with you today isn't over after a phone call and makes his way over to you, like he always does. bookshelf

메모: might have some plot holes... wrote this in like 2 hours with a nesquik bowl in my hands so please excuse the abuse of commas and adjectives ... i'll edit this later

To be honest, Jungwon has been missing you like the warmth of a cozy blanket on a frosty night ever since he dropped you off at your house after your date about five hours ago. Despite his best efforts to mask his nerves during the evening, he knows how fortunate he is to have his childhood best friend—someone he has been in love with secretly for years—agree to go out with him, making him nervous to ruin that chance with a simple mistake.

Now, sprawled across his bed in soft, rumpled pajamas, a faint glow from his phone illuminates his face as he thinks back on the night. Memories of your soft hair dancing playfully in the breeze fill his mind, along with the enchanting sparkle in your eyes when he surprised you with your favorite snack from the store. Every time he made you laugh, he felt his heart thud with joy, each beat echoing a sweet reminder of what you mean to him. The thoughts swirl in his head like a maelstrom, driving him to the brink of madness.

He lets out a heavy sigh, flopping his arm onto the cool, inviting bed sheets while his phone dims in his grasp. He gazes up at the darkened ceiling, the dim moonlight spilling through the window and painting his room in soft, silvery hues. Should he dare to call you? Would it seem too forward? The night is still young, and given your unpredictable sleep habits, you might still be awake. The notion sends a wave of uncertainty crashing over him. It’s not like things would be different now just because they had been on a date, right? A mental pep talk ensues, reassuring him that he shouldn’t allow the nerves of a “silly date” to reign over him.

But then there's the undeniable fact that he is indeed nervous—his heart races, and his hands tremble slightly as he hovers his finger over your contact’s call button.

With determination, he finally presses the call button, catching a glimpse at the time ticking away at the top of his screen: 1:35 AM. Instant doubt creeps in; is it too late to call you? Would you even pick up? The ringing reverberates through the silence of his room, and a wave of frustration washes over him as he contemplates hanging up. What was he thinking? Surely, you wouldn’t answer at this hour.

Just as he prepares to surrender, he hears the soft rustle of movement on the other end.

“Hey, Wonnie…” you greet him in a hushed, sleepy voice, yet the warmth in your tone is unmistakable. “What’s up? It’s kinda late, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I know," Jungwon replies, forcing his voice to remain steady amid the anxious flutter in his chest. "I was just thinking about our date and how much fun I had.”

A soft giggle emanates from the phone, its sweetness washing over him. “Me too! I still can’t believe you bought me one of those ridiculously overpriced snacks.”

“Hey, seeing you smile like that? Totally worth it,” he retorts, unable to suppress the immense grin spreading across his face. "Besides, they were your favorites! How could I resist?"

The sound of you shuffling in your bed carries through the phone, igniting a slight flutter in his stomach. He envisions you all snug in your own bed, perhaps wrapped tightly in a warm blanket, the night wrapping around you in a calming embrace. “What are you up to now?” he asks, hoping to keep the warmth of the conversation glowing between you.

“Just trying to wind down, but honestly, my mind is still buzzing from all the fun,” you reply, your voice weaving through the cozy space of the call. “It’s hard to fall asleep after such a great night.”

Jungwon inhales deeply, the words flowing from his lips cautiously. “Same here… You know,” he hesitates, the moment tinged with a hint of nostalgia, “I’ve been really missing you since I dropped you off.”

A silent pause settles, and he wonders if he might have overstepped. But then you soften the moment, your voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve been missing you too. I didn’t want the night to end.”

At that, Jungwon feels his heart swell with warmth, a rush of affection flooding through him. “Really? I thought I was being dramatic.”

“Not at all. I just… really enjoy being with you, Jungwon,” you confess, your words enveloping him like a soothing melody in the quiet between you.

His heart races, and he fidgets with the edge of his blanket, an idea bubbling up from somewhere deep within. “Uh… I have an idea, but you might not like it,” he says, uncertainty lacing his tone as nostalgic memories wash over him like a familiar tide.

“What is it?” you ask, your curiosity piqued, a hint of delight coloring your voice.

He takes another steadying breath as a familiar playfulness returns. “Remember how we used to sneak out and break into each other’s houses when we were kids? Just to hang out late at night?”

A soft laugh escapes you, and he can practically envision the mischievous smirk dancing on your lips. “Oh my god, how could I forget that? You were always the one climbing through my window!”

“Well,” he starts, his cheeks warming with excitement, “what if I sneak into your house now? Just like old times? We could hang out, talk, be a little reckless like we used to.”

A heartbeat of silence stretches between you, his anticipation mounting as you process the bold suggestion. “Are you serious?” Your tone brims with a mix of exhilaration and disbelief. “What if my parents see you?” “Honestly, it’s worth the risk if I can spend some more time with you,” he replies, a hint of mischief in his voice.

"I don't know, Jungwon, it's really risky—" You were about to dive deeper into your concerns when his voice cut through your thoughts.

“Okay, I’ll be there in five!” His excitement was palpable, a rush of energy even through the phone. You could practically picture him shuffling around on the other end.

“Wait—Jungwon—” you started to protest, but by the time you glanced at your screen, the call was over. You sighed, staring at your lock screen in resignation. This guy was going to be the death of you someday.

You set your phone down on the bed and burrowed into your blanket, the warmth wrapping around you like a cozy cocoon. It almost lulled you to sleep, but you knew you had to stay awake to let him in. With a reluctant groan, you pushed yourself up.

Your heart raced as you slid out of bed, glancing out into the familiar street. Memories flooded back—the reason Jungwon had never gotten caught sneaking into your room when you were kids. Your houses were barely a block apart, making it easy for him to come and go undetected. Plus, your room was right next to a sturdy tree that served as his personal ladder.

Lost in nostalgia, you suddenly caught sight of bleached blond hair vaulting over your backyard fence. Jungwon scaled the tree with impressive agility, seemingly relishing the climb.

Quickly, you opened your window and couldn’t help but smile at his antics. He maneuvered through the branches with the confidence of someone who had practiced this for years.

“Hey…” you whispered, grinning as he landed on the branch beside your window. He mirrored your smile, his eyes dancing with mischief, and you stepped back to invite him in.

“Hey, I made it!” he said, trying—and failing—to sound casual as he scanned your room.

You chuckled softly at his giddy enthusiasm. “You’re insane, you know that?” Your voice was filled with excitement, despite the words.

“Well, I couldn’t miss hanging out with you,” he replied with a cheeky wink before effortlessly slipping inside. Without a second thought, he closed the window behind him and turned to you, arms wide open.

You stepped into his embrace, wrapping your arms around him, feeling the warmth radiating off his body. It felt so comforting, and you breathed in his familiar scent. “I missed you,” you murmured against his shoulder.

“Me too,” he replied, pulling back just enough to meet your eyes, his gaze softening. “You look so cozy.”

“Because I am,” you admitted, a little shy. “I was winding down for bed, but now… I’m not so sure I can sleep.”

Jungwon chuckled and, without warning, took your hand, leading you to the bed. “How about we just hang out for a bit? You can tell me how tired you are while I take up all the space,” he teased, flopping dramatically onto your bed.

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t contain a soft laugh as you settled next to him. “Okay, fine, but once I lay down, I might just fall asleep,” you warned, stretching out beside him. The bed felt too inviting against your will.

“Good thing I’m here to keep you awake!” he exclaimed, inching closer and propping himself up on one elbow to look at you. “You can’t sleep on me just yet.”

You tried to protest, but the weight of your eyelids was a betrayal. “Jungwon, I’m serious. I’m really sleepy,” you said, your voice softer now, almost dreamy.

He smiled indulgently, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “Then just close your eyes for a bit, but I’ll keep talking. I promise.”

With a small nod, you nestled your head against his shoulder, his warmth enveloping you like a safety blanket. The fabric of his pajamas brushed against your skin, a comfortable reminder of his presence.

A few minutes passed, and you felt yourself surrendering to the pull of sleep. Just as your eyelids grew heavy, Jungwon’s voice broke the peaceful silence. “You know, I wish I could freeze this moment forever.”

Surprise flickered within you as you looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, nights like this with you? They’re my favorite,” he confessed, and your heart swelled at his words. You opened your mouth to respond, but the heaviness of your eyelids was intoxicating, making it hard to stay awake so you just hum in response.

“Okay, fine. I guess I’ll just… close my eyes for a minute,” you mumbled, finally giving in to the soothing allure of sleep.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered, and as you drifted off, you felt the comforting weight of his arm around you, holding you close, his fingers brushing through your hair making everything feel just right.

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Have you played the new deltarune chapters? I have lots of thoughts on them.

Hahaha what an excellent and timely question! No, I have not had a chance to play the new deltarune chapters yet. …But my curiosity got the better of me and I've been reading a bunch of theorizing this week anyway. 😂

So yes I would LOVE (wait, uhhh maybe I should use a different word there) REALLY LIKE to hear your thoughts!

My own rambling impressions (spoilers for all of Chapters 3&4, including the Weird Route):

.

Deltarune has always been an intriguingly odd blend of genres.

As presented in Chapters 1 and 2, the Dark World plot is a very classic portal fantasy story. We have our group of misfit teens who get whisked away to a magical land where they are the Chosen One(s) and must to Save the World from some nebulous Evil Thing according to a Prophesy.

Indeed, we've known for a while that the Darkeners are everyday objects such as toys that are brought to life - thematically tied to escapism and play. It's the kind of story set up where you expect the protagonists to go on an adventure, learn some big lessons about themselves, and then they say goodbye to their fantasy friends and return to the "real world" as better and more mature people for the experience.

Naturally, adults can't and shouldn't know about the other world, because this is fundamentally a Coming of Age story centered on kids.

…So what initially shocked me most about the events of Chapters 3&4 is how much that portal fantasy is already breaking down and bleeding into the normal setting. Adults are being abducted. The Prophesy is not just known but tied to religion in the town. Asgore has a Black Shard and looks about to create the next Fountain. What the HECK is going on with Carol and why does she know about the Red SOUL??

(But of course, there will still be a festival arc! Can't miss that, hehe.)

Which brings me to the other genre Deltarune draws from: the small town mystery with a disappeared child and a surreal secret. The way that Dess haunts the narrative (especially the Snowgrave/Weird Route) has always had strong Life is Strange/Night in the Woods/Omori/Beacon Pines vibes but I get even more of that impression now.

So what happens when these genres collide?

Omori in particular has a lot in common with Deltarune, including having an otherworld themed around escapism and taking part in a fun heroic quest. [Implied spoilers for Omori for rest of paragraph] Also, the more we see of Kris's true personality (and I'm fascinated and endeared by the new flashes we see in 3&4), the more it seems like they're a quirky but well-meaning goofball. I could very easily see the mystery at the heart of Deltarune's backstory ultimately being similar to the mystery of Mari. Perhaps one of Kris's pranks accidentally went very wrong and got Dess killed/corrupted, and they drifted apart from Noelle for the same reason Omori can't bear to be around Basil.

(But would such a story - two kids getting in over their heads, and the trauma of that reverberating to the present - be too predictably similar to Undertale?)

I'm unsure how the Bunker fits into this puzzle, because that seems the nexus of where the genres break down the most. My current theories are all wacky stuff like: "Inside the bunker is something akin to the True Lab, where Carol (and/or Gaster??) were experimenting with SOULs but the Red SOUL got accidentally put into Kris instead of its intended vessel when they wandered in. Also somehow Dess was involved (and maybe some part of her became the Roaring Knight after being infused with Kris's original SOUL?). The fallout from this shattered the Dreamurr family and Asgore is still trying to figure out what happened."

But that doesn't explain the Dark World and what's going on with the Prophesy. It also feels a little too abruptly and incongruously sci-fi… though perhaps I shouldn't discount that given how fundamental EarthBound is to this genre soup.

What else…

So far, I don't think anything in the new chapters has contradicted my big theory post from Chapter 2! Heck yeah! If anything, a lot of 3&4 confirm pieces of it, removing any doubt that Kris's actual personality isn't malicious, and that they do care for their friends.

I think the one major aspect I'm more certain of now is what the Red SOUL wants from Noelle on the Weird Route. Given the way the SOUL can read her thoughts, some of the strangeness with missing dialog/rain after That Scene in Chapter 4, and maybe even some things people have found digging into the code… I'm on board with the theory that she's being turned into a second vessel. (Hence Kris's horror at everything, given how much they hate being a vessel themselves!)

The Red SOUL wants out of its cage, and into a stronger and more cooperative body.

And yet I still come back to the same question I was circling at the end of those Chapter 2 thoughts. Why does the Red SOUL want this? Is it trying to break free from the Prophesy? To adhere to the letter of it, but subvert the spirit? ("Love will find its way to the girl", huh…) Or is it trying to enforce the Prophesy, when in the normal route we will find a way to go against destiny?

(Or are its motives something else entirely? Like Undertale, Deltarune is in many ways a ghost story…and what does Dess want? Or Gaster, for that matter?)

Gah, I haven't even played 3&4 yet, and I'm already desperate for Chapter 5! :D

[viperwhispered]

Trying to finish designing a fucking summative biology experiment when my brain just drops this: Imagine a scenario where the reader is once again faced with OB!Jamil. Maybe its a dream, maybe they're in Jamil's heart, maybe he OBed again cause of some magic, whatever. Except, Jamil and the reader have been dating for a while, so the reader is completely unfazed because a) this isn't their first rodeo and b) they now Jamil would sooner walk off a cliff before hurting them.

Anyway, Jamil starts going on his monologue about how its pointless to resist, yadda yadda, nobody's coming back, yadda yadda, classic villain stuff, yadda yadda, might as well just accept their place and maybe he'll be merciful, yadda yadda.

Then the reader just reaches out, uses a hankerchief to wipe off the blot goatee (no words can express how much I hate it), and pulls his fringe out of his turban (for reference here's a visual). They smile softly and go "There's my Jami!" in the sweetest tone.

OB!Jamil just goes red and melts.

Source

Cue Jamil silently cursing to himself "God damnit! Why are you so cute? How dare you be so lovely? Why am I such a FUCKING SIMP?! ARGH!"

The killing blow is when the reader says "Are you ready to go home now? I bought ingredients for a new curry recipe and there'll be a nice warm bath waiting for you. Tommorow's a Sunday and Kalim is going out with his clubmates, so we can just have a lazy day."

The sheer care dripping from their voice and the soft sweet way its delivered just one-hit-KOs his heart and he just goes "Fine" while being all tsundere. Meanwhile in his head he's thinking of all the ways he'll spoil you aftewards and plotting on how to build an empire worthy of you.

Bonus: I've mentioned this in my ask about bath scenarios, but washing the blot away sounds so romantic. The reader leading him to a river and gently scrubbing the ink of his skin. Jamil relaxing as their fingers stroke his hair, the snakes giving their fingers one final kiss until they each dissapear. As the blot finishes to fade away, Jamil is wrapped in a soft warm towel and recieves a kiss on his forehead. Cue pouting and asking for a real kiss (I swear this man will become so fucking spoiled).

Hasdfhs such impeccable energy and why does it make me think of like calming down a toddler having a meltdown.

(Also am I the only one who doesn't hate the goatee, lol. But maybe I'm just too busy being spooked by the sneks, because oh boy would they get to me.)

That blushy overblot Jamil tho… Delicious.

And hasdfgh why is he such a simp indeed. Could it be that it's just lovely to have found someone who's sweet and understanding and supportive and puts him first? Maybe perhaps?

And yes this man absolutely deserves to become so very spoiled. Just, smother him in a bit (a lot) of affection.

[panomiels-box]

【project eden's garden rambles ≫ spoilers! ⚠︎】

so eva's name (and her murdering in chapter 1) is without a doubt a reference to the biblical figure eve.

and damon, which has its own resonance with the name adam, also has symbolism connecting him to the latter: the apple that falls into his hand in the op (probably reaching here but his hair/ahoge also loosely resembles the shape of an apple, at least to me), the snake on his tie.....

but i wonder if damon's name (and character) could also be a reference to the greek mythological figure damon from the story "damon and pythias"

interestingly, this greek legend exemplifies the ideal bond of friendship with sacrifice as a central theme. to quickly summarise it;

pythias is sentenced to death by the tyrannical dionysius i of syracuse for allegedly plotting against him. before getting executed, pythias requested settling some of his affairs first, which dionysius only agreed to because damon, pythias's friend, offered himself as a hostage during his absence. it was decided that if pythias didn't return in time for his execution, damon would be killed in his stead. the story has a good end as pythias does indeed return in time, and pleased by their formidable friendship, dionysius forgave and freed the two men.

now, to come back to p:eg - what i find super interesting with this is that it could foreshadow a crucial aspect of damon's character development. as we know, damon is an arrogant and direct person, but he still has a very real softness deep down within him. in fact, it's clearly shown to us that there isn't a need to dig much for it to shine through. his bond with the other characters is still rather surface level and not on good terms, but at some point, i do see him making allies/friends.

so knowing that about damon thus far, i can also see him eventually sacrificing himself in one way or another (not necessarily by dying) for one (or multiple) of his friends, like the greek mythology damon did.

personally, i think the friend he'd do that for is kai, but i'm biased lol. pythias doesn't resemble any of the other characters' names after all, so that's just me theorising away. therefore kai it is! (also i can't forget about that detail in the op...it has to be some kind of foreshadowing) however, it doesn't mean that act of sacrifice will end as miraculously well as the mythological story. there's just no way it can unfortunately - this is a danganronpa fangame at the end of the day :,)

something else regarding the damon and pythias story i also want to talk about, is the closeness between diana's and dionysius's names. not the closest match, but still interesting to note i think. it's fairly certain that diana will play an important role in the future, one that could potentially be antagonistic too.

perhaps similarly to dionysius, diana will give damon an ultimatum of sorts in which she has the upper hand. it'll be the reason for damon choosing to sacrifice himself and, depending on how things go, diana will either spare or kill him (or someone close to him). i say kill, but it doesn't necessarily have to be to that extent - betrayal is the key theme here.

let's also not forget that diana is the name of the roman goddess of the hunt (and lots of other things like childbirth, crossroads, the night, the moon..) equivalent to the goddess artemis of greek mythology. considering diana's last name venicia is of italian origin further enhances that relation too. plus, hunting being the goddess' original main association could imply that diana will 'hunt' someone eventually.

or, it could refer to how she could just be used for someone else's 'hunt' (which eva did) since the goddess diana is often viewed as a lucky symbol for hunters.

and, just to throw it out there - with desmond being the ultimate marksman and all (not to mention he has arrows on his back just like diana/artemis is almost always depicted with) if he becomes a blackened, it's possible diana will also play a key role in that murder case, whether passively or actively. i can see some kind of alliance (good or bad) forming between those two at some point - but hey, what do i know!

all in all, there're definitely hints to links and parallels between biblical/mythological figures and some characters of the p:eg's cast. i'm probably very, very off, especially since it's highly likely the devs will strive away from taking too much direct inspiration from biblical/mythological/animal motif stuff otherwise things could get too predictable. still, i think it's okay to point these things out and just have fun discussing it!

[jasper-unofficial]

ME AND THEE: NOVEL VS MOCK TRAILER

[BASIC SUMMARY & CHARACTERS] - [FULL SUMMARY & OTHER SPOILERS]

ARCHER'S NOTE: Overall, it seems like there have already been a lot of changes made to the mock trailer alone, and there are even more usually made to the actual series. In some ways, this immediately makes sense to me. After finishing the 400-something pages novel, I thought that its plot would fit better into a 2-hour movie rather than a full series, so certain things would need to be expanded upon for certain (and, frankly, they need to be expanded upon, as the speed with which some characters are introduced for a few scenes only to be promptly yanked out of the novel forever is slightly jarring). That said, expanding on the existing themes and providing necessary context is not the only thing the writers did for the mock trailer, taking only inspiration from some parts of the novel or even stepping away from it entirely for some of the decisions they have made. This series is indeed a mystery to me, a person who has read the novel, almost as much as it is to someone who has not, or perhaps even more so, since someone who has not read the novel has no expectations for things to go a certain way.

When the writers for the series are announced and if I know them (and there is a good 90% chance I know them very well), I will likely make a separate post, speculating where they might take their ideas based on their previous writing and the mock trailer.

SPOILER WARNING! Although the trailer itself obviously couldn't reveal any major plot points, there are still some spoilers for the novel in my comparisons, so proceed with caution.

THE MAIN GIMMICK IS NOT IN THE NOVEL

Sorry to be the bearer of sad news, but what is possibly the most charming part of the mock trailer - Thee watching soap operas and reciting the dialogue by heart - is simply not a thing in the novel. To be fair! The seeds of it are kind of there.

Thee's mom did indeed raise him on soap operas - in fact, her own soap operas, as she used to be an actress before marrying her husband - and has all the DVDs of her works, which Thee loved watching as a child. Moreover, this all gets revealed at the end of the novel, after Peach spends the entirety of it making an inside joke to himself about how sometimes the way Thee speaks sounds like he came right out of a soap opera. I suppose all these factors came together to give us the far more comedic and dramatic image of Thee actually currently being a huge fan of soap operas in general, which is honestly a hilarious and incredible decision.

ROMANCE OR SEX?

Now, this is a tough one, because what Thee ends up saying in the trailer can be interpreted in many ways.

He does begin by talking about sleeping with Aran.

But the next comment is perhaps a little more dramatically romantic, although - as I said - it can be interpreted in many different ways and perhaps the "burning desire" of which Thee speaks is the desire to nail and bail.

Regardless, in the novel, Thee is strictly interested in having sex with Aran and nothing more - in fact, he has never been in a relationship before and (up until meeting Peach) is only interested in one-night stands. Especially in conjunction with Thee from the mock trailer being fully into soap operas, I feel like he might take a more romance-aligned approach after all, or perhaps they will remain novel-accurate here and he will only be interested in Aran physically. We shall see.

ARSENI? YES AND NO

So, fun fact! Thee is half-Russian in the novel and his father is actually a notorious Russian mafia. (This is also why the author gave Thee "cigarette smoke coloured grey eyes" which I had to read about one too many times - Gods protect us from contact lenses in this series, although I've heard the director X first thought of casting Pond after he saw a photo of him with blue contacts, so I guess they are helpful somewhere). Regardless of my hatred for Pond covering his gorgeous brown eyes, 'Arseni' is not just the name of the company Thee owns, but also his family's surname. Now, you are in luck, as I am Russian and can confirm: Arseni cannot be a surname under any circumstances, although it is a popular first name in the country, so the author's research has either not been extensive enough or has simply been unsuccessful. In any case, both the trailer and recently Phuwin in an Instagram Live confirm that Thee will not be half-Russian in the series.

According to the trailer, Thee's first two names are intact, but his surname has been changed to Lee - if I had to guess based on that alone, he could be of numerous descents, there are multiple countries where that surname is quite common. Another hint, however, might be in Thee's conversation with his father from the trailer, where he speaks English. That could just be because they are being hashtag international in the family or indeed because his father is from an English-speaking country. Honestly, we have no way of knowing right now. The only thing that we do know is that he is definitely not half-Russian anymore.

Oh, and that Thee's company is still called 'Arseni', as the trailer confirms multiple times.

A POND NARAVIT CHARACTER WITH A GOOD FAMILY? NOT IN THIS ECONOMY

In the novel, Thee has a shockingly nice family. He gets along with his younger brother Rome well, his mother is very warm and loving, and his father is incredibly open-minded and supportive. To be fair, there are crumbs of some... peculiar upbringing in Thee's backstory for sure. He is taught to not trust anyone outside the family (which is also why he is not properly socialised) and Mok is specifically raised alongside him to make sure he would be a trustworthy confidant to him. But, considering the "business" the family is in, this isn't totally unreasonable and the family does accept Peach and his sister Phlub into it with open arms right away.

The trailer, however, paints such a drastically different picture that I am confident this is a big change that they've made. A stern father's voice says over the phone "This business is not a place for the weak, not for the people who let their emotions get in the way. You know that, my dear son?" Although we never actually witness a conversation between Thee and his father in the novel as such, this just does not line up with what we know about him. That man adores his wife, first and foremost, and he wishes for his son to find the same kind of love he has and to focus on something other than work - he would simply never disregard all emotions in name of business. Not to mention that this isn't really even a conversation Thee from the novel would have to have with his father. The younger son, Rome, is in charge of the shady parts of the business that require one to be truly ruthless and cunning, while Thee keeps to the clean cover-up businesses, which are his main projects.

AND THIS ACTUALLY LEADS ME INTO TWO OTHER POINTS:

MOK'S ROLE AND ROME'S DISAPPEARANCE

Like I have mentioned, Mok has been raised alongside Thee to be his trusted friend and confidant. While we do not immediately find out about this in the novel, it slowly becomes apparent just how close the two are, and their upbringing is eventually revealed, as a last piece of the friendship puzzle.

What Mok says here is more reminiscent of a bodyguard who is only just trying to get close to his distant boss, which - if true - changes a lot, not just about Mok, but also about Thee's upbringing.

Rome is also not present in the trailer. And while I do acknowledge that this might be due to timing issues, he is a relatively important character and - perhaps more importantly - GMMTV mock trailers rarely pass up on the chance to at least hint at a secondary romance, which (by tried and true GMMTV rules) should be WilliamEst here, as Rome and Mock are in an on-again, off-again relationship in the novel. In conjunction with the changes they made to Thee's father, I fear Rome might not exist in the series at all, making Thee the single heir and placing much more responsibility and shady business on his shoulders.

A MAFIA HAS PROBLEMS TOO

In the novel, Peach is the one who keeps running into issues and Thee is mostly his ever-powerful knight in shining armour, rushing to save him and finally make him feel cared for and protected. Not only is there no trace of this in the mock trailer, the roles are seemingly reversed.

It is true that Thee does not really have friends, aside from his family and Mok (who is basically also family). However, this is an issue that is approached very matter-of-factly in the novel. It is simply how he was raised and how he has been living for the past three decades. It is clearly treated with far more gravity in the trailer.

Similarly, while Thee often feels cold and empty, this is his general state of mind in the novel and it is certainly not accurate to how he feels when he is around Peach. If I had to guess, I would say the trailer is going for Peach slowly melting an iceberg that encapsulates Thee's heart, while in the novel the two have a very natural connection that immediately makes them both feel safe and warm.

If I am right on both counts, the weight of the two characters in the series will shift significantly and - dare I say - the main character, who is undeniably Peach in the novel, even with all the Thee POVs that we get, might actually be Thee in the series.

A BETTER ROMANCE STEREOTYPE

The 'Me and Thee' novel is an interesting little thing, because it is simultaneously chock-full of very classic soap opera esque tropes, but also criticises some other ones very pointedly.

The questions of force and consent in particular are often brought up by Peach. A classic mafia romantic interest in a soap opera would usually not be respectful of boundaries, but Thee is very far from that kind of stereotype himself and is taken farther from it still by Peach's guiding hand. I don't know if the series will bother with threading this particular message throughout the entire plot or if it's just a line thrown into this particular dialogue, but the novel certainly does. Although, even if it will not be emphasised in the series, I am confident there will be no nasty shit happening, judging by the tone of the trailer alone.

TO ARANTAWAN OR NOT TO ARANTAWAN? THAT IS THE QUESTION

So, the 'Me and Thee' novel does not have a secondary couple as such, and if I absolutely had to give that label to someone, it would actually go to MokRome - not AranTawan. Aran and Tawan are mostly used to propel TheePeach's relationship a couple of times and otherwise have a very tumultuous and frankly kind of toxic relationship, we never see any of their sweet moments or anything like that - mostly just Tawan being jealous and taking it out on Peach.

Looking at the mock trailer, that seems to check out. So, sorry PerthSanta cowboys, but I would hold our horses, at least for now.

A DIFFERENT ROLE FOR PHLUB

If i am right in assuming that Bonnie is playing Peach's sister Phlub (which is highly likely), she seems to have a different role in the series and be a slightly different character overall. In the mock trailer, she basically explains who Thee is and warns Peach to be careful - in the novel, she doesn't know anything about Thee's involvement in Peach's life until way wayyyy later. Not to mention that Phlub from the novel would be more likely to mischievously grin and tell her brother to have fun with his new rich friend than warn him away. To be fair, her scene is very short and she could very well be working as a mouthpiece for Thee's introduction that was simply an author's note in the novel, so I can't say for certain if this is a big change yet.

MORE DETAILS

You know how sometimes you read a romance novel or watch a romance movie or what have you and the characters on their own are a tad underdeveloped? Like, sure, they are real, the relationship is beautiful, but we don't know anything about them outside of their workplace and maybe their tragic backstory. Yeah, the 'Me and Thee' novel is kind of like that. The series seems to be rectifying that, however.

Both Thee's interest in arcades (?) and Peach's interest in handpans are not present in the novel.

Although the boys' wiliness to share in each other's interests and likes is very novel-accurate.

[valjeancrazylover2]

A little introduction to Marius' new group of friends

Sorry to the Amis fans out there - but i've given Marius a new group of friends cause I felt bad for him. He does sort of... lose ALL of them on the barricade, and I had to give him SOMETHING to do once he recovered ... so i just made him some new friends (with the help of the genius mind of @24601orwhatever SHOUTOUT!!!) so hes not lonely.

Admittedly, one of them IS technically a character in the musical. None other than Jordan Simon Pollard's very own Gérard (he told me the name of the character when i asked, for which i am forever grateful. I've just taken him, given him a surname and expanded on whatever personality he displays in the musical. There are benefits to eagle-eyeing the ensemble in company scenes!!)

As a sort of .. i suppose Teaser? for my next fanfic due to come out (which was originally plotted as a chapter for the wrestling fanfic, but is now its own thing because of how off-topic it got), here's the section i have written in the fic which introduce these weirdos. These might not end up being the final versions, as I'll probably tweak bits here and there.. I've also attached the drawings i did not too long ago.

I'd love to hear any questions/assumptions, and additionally if anyone else has made a les mis OC to give marius a friend post-barricade? The boy's lonely, he needs them, I want to hear.

(Under the cut, since this is long)

~

First, there was François-Michel Dolosa. He was meek - not entirely suited to the bar, Marius thought - but he had a kind heart. Marius had seen the man, about half a head shorter than him, struggling to carry a large pile of books and offered to help, and the conversation between them began when he saw that half the pile was about various native birds. Along the span of the afternoon, of which was spent talking amiably with François, he noticed more bird motifs about his person. His waistcoat was adorned with beautiful tree-like embroidery, with birds atop their branches; his watch was engraved, with a small bird charm on his fob.

Marius had noticed but did not comment on the fact that François did not seem to be of a very wealthy standing, contrary to what his jewellery might have suggested. He reminded Marius of himself, before he had been married, living in that dingy apartment.  There were many difficult memories now tied to that place, but perhaps that is why he had found himself drawn to François. 

The next to come along had been Réne Gignac, an excitable young gentleman, who could always manage to stick his nose into someone else’s business. That was indeed how he had been introduced to Marius and François, when they had been discussing their families in their claimed table of the library. His demeanour was certainly enchanting, like he would have much liked to be a peacock, and his eyes shone with intrigue whenever he sensed the opportunity to inquire about your personal life.

He, unlike François, was clearly of good money, and seemed that he was studying law simply for something to do, and because it provided him with a sort of higher-class gossip. It was surprising, then, when Marius discovered that he was in fact a very competent student. 

René was also of great contrast to Marius and François in that he liked to make a scene, never one to be quiet, always talking to whoever happened to walk by where the three of them were sitting and they’d leave him with their life story. 

Marius supposed the reason why René had stuck to their small group was because he had elected Marius to be his ‘project’, to say. There was a lot about his life that Marius knew he must keep private, as being involved in an insurrection definitely did not look good for any chances of employment - he had enough trouble as it was with people inquiring about where the faint scars on his face had come from. For Monsieur Gignac, the plea of clumsiness did not satisfy, and so he stuck to Marius and by extension, François - who he enjoyed hearing facts about local birds from.

The fourth in the group had not made his own way into the company, but rather it was René’s habit of chatter that had dragged along Gérard Ambroise.

Gérard was an interesting person, to put it lightly. He reminded Marius somewhat of Javert, in that he was uptight and loved to argue, which explained the choice of career, as well as his passion for the public and the lowerclassmen. That was less like Javert, but certainly more like his previous group of friends.

Something about the similarity unsettled him, with the added fact that something about Gérard seemed familiar. He even bore a scar which looked fresh enough to have been open in the past year, but no less. No, it was too much of a coincidence. Marius would have remembered him if he was a friend, and certainly a person such as him.

He and René certainly made a pair, with Gérard’s rigid politics often clashing against René’s more blithe attitude, leading to Gérard hissing an argument until his face went red, received only by a shrug from the shorter man, which then infuriated him even more. René seemed to purposefully provoke him, seeking some sort of entertainment in seeing Gérard huff an agitated Well! and spout his opinions until his entire manifesto had been represented.

Marius knew René to be a genuinely cordial man, with enough chatter to speak for the entire group, always interested and attentive, so this behaviour was strange. 

Strangest of all, it was clear that René infuriated Gérard, so why Gérard bothered to stick around with a crowd he seemed to think himself better than was unclear. Though he did have his bouts of pleasantry - usually when politics was not in the equation. However, it seemed hard for him to avoid the topic, so these moments were not as frequent as what people would have usually liked in a friend.

It wasn’t that Marius disagreed with his points, in fact he agreed with him on many of them, but surely he could enjoy more pleasant conversation? At least he would listen attentively to François’ reports on the local bird population he had been observing that week, as they all did.

The commotion of this group of four attracted the attention of another student, the fifth and final member, a Monsieur Albéric Jean-Pierre Lafitte.

He was an average man, mild, good-natured and good-mannered, the kind of attitude that came from modest money, not quite old enough to have earned him a title or to have seen his family fall in the Revolution. He was the kind that followed in his father’s steps into law, not out of particular interest but because he knew nothing else, and of his life he had been expecting nothing else. While he did not seem to mind this - in fact, he seemed to have a very promising career in front of him - he seemed bored.

Marius thought that this was most certainly the reason he had ended up in this queer yet close circle. He often acted as the judge-umpire to the arguments of Gérard and René, like he counted it as practice for court. With Gérard’s staunch attitudes and René’s deliberate, feigned ignorance, Marius did not blame Albéric for taking them as a sort of case study.

~

And thats about it. More character details, including some physical descriptions, will probably come later in the text? (I can't decide if physical descriptions would fit into the above passage very well). The plot of the fic is a dinner party, so they will all get a chance to shine beside their friend Marius, with Cosette, Valjean, Javert and Gillenormand thrown into the mix. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

[hellerfanboy91]

Supernatural Revisited 5x13 The Song Remains the Same

Spoilers for 5x22 Swan Song, series 13, and 15x03 The Rupture

I first wrote my notes for this episodes almost four years ago and my general opinion on it has changed very little. On the whole, it is a sufficiently entertaining episode which nonetheless requires the viewer not ask too many questions lest the entire thing fall apart. It enjoys a 9/10 rating on IMDb, so it apparently did the job it was intended to do, but in my opinion it felt wanting. It is the second time-travel episode in series five and the second one to not do much at all for the plot. Its entire point was precisely the same as that in 5x04 The End when Dean went to the future, i.e. destiny is inevitable. This in turn is the same point as 4x03 In the Beginning made when Dean tried to stop the Yellow-Eyed demon in 1973 but had about as much luck as if he had tried to stop a goods train.

The root of the issue is the time-travelling nature of the episode. Unless it is Doctor Who, time-travel episodes are frustrating because they almost never change anything. Mary will still die after having her memory wiped yet again, John will be oblivious to the existence of the supernatural until he is traumatised by his wife's murder, and Dean and Sam are still going to say 'yes' to their respective body snatchers. Consequently, this episode only really providers a brief insight into John and Mary's lives in 1978 just before Dean was born, as well as some interactions between the Winchesters. Topmost of these is young!John unwittingly dragging himself in front of Sam, but more on that later.

A brief summary: Anna the angel 'escapes' from Heaven and goes back in time in order to stop Sam ever being born, i.e. to kill John and Mary. Without his proper vessel, Lucifer can never attain his full power and the Apocalypse will theoretically be averted. Cas takes Dean and Sam back in time to 1978 to stop Anna and save John and Mary. They almost fail, and it is only by Michael's intercession and killing of Anna that John and Mary are saved. The episode ends with nothing changed except for the viewer and characters having more context, meaning the song does indeed remain the same.

The title of the episode is an allusion to the Led Zeppelin song of the same name. As keen-eyed viewers will know, John and Mary bonded over a shared love of Led Zeppelin's music, or at least that is the version of events Dean was told. Led Zeppelin's song 'Ramble On' was also featured in the final episode of The Winchesters, something which cost so much money that Jensen took it out of his wages. While appropriate for the era, I have to confess to a lack of familiarity with or interest in Led Zeppelin. I was much more excited about Radio Company's 'Keep on Ramblin' being used on the show.

The writers mostly belong to the Boomer and Gen X generation and so get these references without having to think or search the internet, as do the viewers who belong to the same generations. However, a lot of the references are rather deep cuts which I often only vaguely get. Such is the way of things, however. I can make and see references to stuff which is a matter of course to me, but would flummox the youth of today. Just this afternoon, I quoted a few lines from the theme tune of the film 'Help I'm a Fish' and my 28 year old flatmate had no idea what I was talking about. Buffy is also a mystery to my friends in their mid 20s, but my friends in their mid-30s and older get it.

Other readers in their 30s and above will probably relate to this, but at some point one realises that one is no longer the target of new films, shows, music, or books. One perhaps feels irrelevant and even forgotten. In the last few years, the only times I have consumed a piece of new media and felt it was genuinely made with people like me in mind were the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film, the Shadow Generations game last year, and Nightwish's Human Nature album (now five years old). Most things nowadays feel like they were made for people in their teens and early twenties, and as a result I feel disconnected from modern pop culture. That in mind, I expect it probably very comforting for people in their 40s, 50s and 60s to watch something like Supernatural which is made with their cultural references in mind. But I expect younger people will be left clueless more often than not.

Anyway, returning to the matter at hand: this episode saw Michael finally make his first appearance. This is something the fans had been waiting for for a long time, and it seems like the majority got what they wanted. Some were however disappointed, or even irritated as evidenced by Paula's review. His entrance was cool enough and set him up as a force to be reckoned with. Uriel obeys him without question or snark, and Anna suffers a fiery death at Michael's hand. But then the action stops for five minutes to allow Michael time and space to pontificate. Who does this guy think he is, Negan from The Walking Dead?

While the talking did not especially bother or bore me, I can concede that it is not what I wanted or expected. All Lucifer has done is stand around whining about how hard done by he is, only for his older brother to come in and act pretty much the same. He even tries the same tactics on Dean that Lucifer does on Sam, i.e. likening his situation to Dean and Sam's as much as possible in an effort to make Dean relate to and understand him. This is fine if one villain does it, but two is too much. It means that there is Lucifer and Lucifer mk II. This is no fault of Matt Cohen's, just the writing.

The content of the conversation is not the most interesting but does raise a few points. The focus of the conversation is fate, with Michael doing his best to erode Dean's belief that any of his choices matter. It is an attempt at a psy-op to make Dean lose hope and give up the fight. This is essentially nihilism. Dean combats it with his belief that he can choose what to do with his unimportant little life, which brings absurdism to life. Far be it from me to bring philosophy into a discussion of Supernatural, but this reminds me a lot of certain scenes and episodes from Buffy where these themes are also explored, such as Angel's attempted suicide in 3x10 Amends, or 2x07 Lie to Me. In response to Michael's (false) nihilism, Dean essentially cedes the point that there is nothing he can do, but will keep fighting anyway because believing he can make a difference is the only thing keeping him going. In other words, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

Regarding Michael's claim that 'free will is an illusion', in the context of the Superverse he is mostly correct. Everything everybody does in the universe is predetermined as it is essentially a novel God is writing to process his own betrayal of his sister. The only bit of free will in the Superverse is Castiel who refuses to do what he is 'supposed' to do. This remains the case right up to the end of the show, and is the main conflict in series fifteen. Whether 'free will' exists in the canonical final episode is up for debate, but that is a discussion for another time.

As for our own universe, 'free will' is a dubious concept. One can make choices, but what are the mechanisms behind the decisions? Are we all completely free to make whatever choices we want about whatever we want, or are we essentially slaves to our instincts, genes, and social programming? My bet would be on somewhere between the two.

Whatever the case, Michael might not believe such a thing exists for angels, and he is determined to make Dean believe that it does not exist for humans. being an angel, he can only conceive of the world as he experiences it and likely does not believe humans can have free will. But does Michael actually think Dean has no choice in things? If so, and if Dean is destined to say yes to Michael anyway, why bother trying to convince him? It seems that perhaps Michael might not be as confident in things as he purports to be, something Paula picked up on in her review 15 years ago.

From my perspective in 2025, it is safe to say that Dean is in fact not necessary in the apocalypse as proven by Apocalypseworld in series 13. Michael did quite well as destroying Earth in the alternate universe, and he did so using A-Train's older brother as a vessel. Even in Superverse Prime Michael used Adam as his vessel in the first iteration of the apocalypse, and said to Dean's face that Dean is unnecessary.

This then renders the Bloodlines plot obsolete. Of course, that was about creating a 'perfect' vessel. Apocalypseworld!Michael existed in a world where Dean and Sam never existed (so perhaps a universe where Mary and John split up before having children). Rules in that universe might have been different, or perhaps Michael's vessel there was also the result of generations of angelic manipulation. Anyway, for Michael to give up on Dean at the end and go for Adam raises the question of why he focused so much on bringing Dean into being in the first place rather than making an army of possible vessels. Even John seemed fine as a vessel, and (take note) John said yes to Michael immediately. (...Which also suggests he might have said yes to Alice Tear pretty quickly).

Anyway, I still dislike the vessels plot. A large part of series four was about Dean accepting his role that only he could fill but that has sadly now been relegated to yet another of Dean's abandoned storylines. Even Sam's role has been hamstrung after Kripke decided he really wanted to write Good Omens and leave the Stephen King influence far in the past. At least Sam gets to do something in the cemetery in 5x22 Swan Song, though.

Mention of Stephen King reminded me that Dean and Michael's conversation has always put me in mind of Roland and the Man in Black's palaver at the end of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. Their conversation takes place in a pocket universe around a campfire and after it finishes Roland realises that ten years have passed. Stephen King's oeuvre is one of the biggest literary multiverses, Roland and the Man in Black's palaver explores the multiverse in a very impactful way. I am looking forward to one day reading the graphic novel version of that scene to see how it is handled.

Perhaps Kripke should have stuck closer to King than Pratchett and Gaiman (especially the latter, as 15x19 Hammer of the Gods makes clear).

As for Sam, he was the main point of this episode, as Anna wanted to go back in time to prevent his birth. Quite why she went back to 1978 to also prevent Dean's birth is not explained, but back to Sam: as cringe-inducingly awkward as his first words to his own mum were ('You're so beautiful') it was nice for him to actually have an opportunity to have an interaction with Mary since he does not even have any memories of her. It was also an interesting character development for him to say he loves and understands John in spite of the bad upbringing.

I have little doubt that Dean and Sam love their dad. But as has been mentioned many times in these analyses, love ad mistreatment are not mutually exclusive. Abusers take advantage of loving relationships, and the relationship is what makes the mistreatment have such detrimental impacts on people, especially when the abused in a child and the abuser a parent. Many parents who mistreat or abuse their children do so out of maladaptation rather than malice. Many abusers were abused as children and might never have had any support in dealing with it. They might not have even begun to come to terms with it. Consequently, they end up passing on the damage to their own children or even their partners because they have no other frame of reference for what parent/child relationships are supposed to be. They simply are not equipped to deal with parenthood. They have no malicious intent and do no wish to harm their children, but they do all the same.

I can accept that Dean and Sam might come to the conclusion that John was traumatised by the loss of Mary, as well as unaddressed PTSD from the Vietnam War (as shown in The Winchesters). It is believable that they might eventually reach a place of understanding for John, as Sam says here and as Dean later states in 14x09 Lebanon. They might even forgive him for some of the bad things he did and the deleterious effects his actions had on their lives. And then they can choose where to go after that. I think Sam would be quick to letting John back into his life and trying to build a new father/son relationship with John, perhaps in part because Sam is very much like John in his blinkered obsession and focus on achieving his goal regardless of the cost. Sam has done bad things like John has, so in forgiving John, Sam would be hoping for forgiveness for his own misdeeds.

I like to think that Dean would eventually come to an understanding (as he indeed does), and accept John for what he is and what he did. He might forgive John, but the healthy Dean who is not written to pander to casual fans would not allow John to have a role in his life any more. He can forgive and understand, but not forget or trust John.

What grinds my gears, though, is the apparent intent of some writers (Kripke included) to forget the past and absolve John of his responsibility. Young!John gives John a dragging for having raised Dean and Sam to be hunters. He calls John's disastrous parenting out and everything he says is 100% true. For a moment it feels as though the show is finally going to make it explicit that John purposefully endangered his children, abandoned them for weeks, and raised them as child soldiers. 'The number it must've done on your head'. Yes, say these things!! But have Dean in the room at the same time. Say it!! Scream it from the rooftops!

But then Sam rushes to John's defence. 'He was trying. He died trying.' Pfft, did he ever! Using your boys as demon bait, probably beating poco!Dean up, and all the other stuff John inflicted on them, was not 'trying'. The audience has been here watching the whole time, please do not insult our intelligence like that. As for him 'dying trying', bollocks he did. He died passing the torch on to Dean. Sam really is trying to portray John in the best possible light, and the sad things is a lot of the audience seems to eaten it right up. Even in the year of our lord 2025, people still defend John with meaningless platitudes such as 'he tried his best' or 'parenting is hard'. When pushed, a response might be 'It's just a show, why do you care so much?' Because I can see what is right in front of me. And if it's 'just a show', why does it bother you if John was a terrible dad?

On to Anna, whose appearance I was absolutely not expecting after the previously on focussed so much on her. She turns up in Dean's dream after 'escaping' Heaven, a fact which raises the question of why other angels -- Michael in particular -- do not make regular visits to Dean's dreams. One could argue that the warding Cas engraved on Dean and Sam's ribs protects them from even dream visits, yet right here is proof that it does not.

The possibility of Anna being let out of Heaven rather than simply escaping comes up pretty fast. Dean agrees to help Anna instantly in his dream, but Cas supposedly did not allow him or Sam to go to the address Anna gave Dean. Cas does not trust Anna because he has also been sent to Heaven's gulag for reëducation and knows that you only get out if Heaven wants you out.

The scene between Cas and Anna is not how I hoped their story would end. Before being dragged to the gulag, Anna represented the end point of Cas's journey. Like Shirley Phelps' children leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, Anna left the abusive, narrow-minded cult she was raised in and left to find her own way. She had to learn to take responsibility for herself and her own actions, as well as to make her own choices and live with them. In doing all this, she opposed Heaven and represented an existential threat to its existence, because if she could leave, so can all the other angels. Cas was just beginning this same journey to being an individual when we last met Anna, and she could have been his guide, mentor, and friend. Instead, she was betrayed, brainwashed, and turned back into a tool for Heaven to use.

Still, even though their story went in this direction, Cas and Anna's final scene together shows how different they are, with their roles almost reversed from this time last series. Cas is now in open revolt against Heaven and making his own choices, whereas Anna is what Cas was when he was first introduced.

Or sort of, at least. One thing which hindered Cas's growth was he fact he was rarely made to take responsibility for his actions. His role in freeing Sam from Bobby's safe room in 4x21 When the Levee Breaks has still not been addressed. Even though Anna tells Dean that Cas explicitly sent her to Heaven's gulag, this is never mentioned again. As a result, he does not learn vital lessons and keeps making stupid mistakes which result in the majority of series six and seven, as well as some stupidity with Dagon and ultimately getting a certain witch killed.

Cas: 'Something always goes wrong.'

Dean: 'And why does that something always seem to be you?'

Call Dean cruel and heartless as much as you like, but those lines from 15x03 The Rupture are far from false.

Returning to Anna, she hies her haste to 1978 after Cas warns her away from Sam and proceeds to... lure John into a trap by pretending to be his boss, and then twats him around a bit rather than killing him. Then Mary comes and Anna... twats her about a bit rather than killing her. Is there a reason why Anna did not resort to instant smiting? If she used too much of her power while travelling through time, smiting might have been too much for her, but she was painfully inefficient at assassination.

And regarding twatting about, Anna knocked Dean out cold immediately (which means Dean might have serious brain damage, or be dead) before proceeding to have a lengthy physical fight with Mary. It is hard to believe a human would last that long against an angel, but to the point. I noticed pretty quickly that all the men were rendered incapable of fighting in that scene post-haste, leaving it for the women to fight.

This put me in mind of something a friend of mine once said about watching children's cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s: that when there was a female character in a group fighting bad guys, there would always be one female bad guy for the female hero to fight. The women would never fight the men, as if they were not good enough to do so.

While Mary got to have her moment and show the viewer what she is capable of, the situation felt contrived. If Dean was knocked out immediately, Mary should have followed soon after, particularly after getting thrown into a car's windscreen. (She probably would have miscarried dean, too, as Paula pointed out.) But if Mary was able to hold her own, there is no reason why a bigger, stronger hunter who has not had a five-year break from hunting would not be able to. The conclusion I am led to draw is that it would have been unseemly to have Dean beating up Anna because people are generally deeply uncomfortable with seeing a man hitting a woman on screen. Quite why that should be the case in 2010, I do not know. This was fourteen years after Buffy started, and Supernatural was a spiritual successor to Buffy, yet it was right back in the realm of 1980s children's shows. Is this an adult show for adults or not?

It seems as though this has not really changed much in the 15 years since this episode was aired. Perhaps it is because of the shows I watch, but it always seems like if a man and woman get into a fight, the woman always wins. It is so predictable that it takes any tension out of a scene. Last Thursday, I was watching Ragnarök and in episode 5 there were two instances of this. In the first, Saxa (a female jötun) knocked Magne (Thor's son Magni, or reincarnation of Thor) flying into a wall and he... lay there shocked and did not fight back. A few scenes later, Saxa got into a fight with her brother and, even though he put up a bit of a fight, she still overpowered him and won. Yes, women can best men in a fight, but if the men never win in shows it strains credibility.

Oh, by the way, the same show had the headmistress having sex with boys who were almost definitely underaged and...nothing happened. This would not be the case if the sexes were reversed, but anyway...

After Dean got knocked out for gender equality reasons and Mary softened up Anna for a while, who else but Sam should come swoop in at the eleventh hour to save the day. Of course he snarks before banishing Anna because characters do not learn in this show, but he still gets the job done. It is a little tiring having other characters doing all the hard work, only for Sam to get to look like the hero at the end.

Unfortunately, this is Anna's last episode. I do not remember whether she is even mentioned after this episode or not. It is a shame she was written out after so little screen time. Her original storyline had been given to Cas (including being Dean's love interest) so what was there left to give her? It was probably better to kill her off rather than struggle to find a half-arsed plot to give her, but it was a shame to lose her.

Before moving on from Anna, her line 'Sam Winchester has to die' brought Gordon to mind, who said pretty much the same to Dean in 2x10 Hunted. From a utilitarian perspective, Sam dying might have prevented the Apocalypse. Of course there was really no chance of that happening so early in series five, but if one person's death can prevent the suffering of millions if not billions, the law of utilitarianism says he should die. Luckily we do not live in a completely rationalised, utilitarian world, but all the same the show has proven Gordon right many, many times.

That done, it is Mary's turn. Paula's wrote in her review that this episode makes Mary and John look entirely selfish and that they once again chose each other over their own children. It is hard to argue with this logic as, before their minds were wiped, they chose to stay together anyway. Mary claimed that it was too late for her and John to separate because she was already pregnant with Dean, but that argumentation is flawed. The problem was Sam's existence, not Dean's, so it was not too late for Mary and John to separate. Of course being a single parent is difficult, and my own mum's mum had to deal with being a single mother in the 1970s, but it was not impossible. Michael's mind-wipe rendered all of this ultimately moot anyway, but it still revealed an important aspect of John and Mary's characters.

This also reflects Dean and Sam's unhealthy relationship with each other; several times over the course of the show they choose to save each other rather than saving the world or whatever. While this felt like bad writing more than genuine character choices, it still reflects John and Mary prioritising each other over their own children. Mary has now chosen John over her own children twice and she is indirectly responsible for the mess they are in. She is horrified to learn that John will raised Dean and Sam to be hunters, precisely the life she did not want for them. Would not that be enough for her to leave him? Would not that be enough for her to leave him? Mary's bad choices continue later in the show where she choses herself and her own wellbeing over that of her sons, but more on that in due course.

Before finishing, one thing which bothers me to no end is that characters in this show insist on cutting their palms to extract blood. This is a bad idea because of all the nerve endings in the palm, as well as the fact that the skin and flesh moves around a lot. This endangers the nerves in the hand, risking paralysis, as well as seriously hinders healing as scabs will constantly be ripped and opened by normal hand usage. The back of the arm is a much safer place to get blood from, as it moves around far less and contains far fewer nerve endings to be damaged.

The reason for the human blood was to draw the protection sigils on the walls, but for reasons never explained these sigils disappear, allowing Uriel, Anna, and Michael to enter the house. The circle of holy oil is also erased without explanation. This was deeply unsatisfying.

Before finishing, the episode began with Dean dreaming of being in a strip club, and I am once again left bewildered as to what the appeal of strip clubs are supposed to be. The dancers are exploiting men's horniness for money, and the men cannot even touch the dancers lest they get thrown out by big muscly bouncers. The dancers in turn are probably being exploited by their employers. But aside from that, it feels anachronistic. In the 1970s and 1980s, porn was much harder to come upon, so strip clubs might have seemed more attractive, but the idea of a 30 year old man bothering with them in 2010 is a bit far-fetched. I am aware they still existed in 2010, and I used to walk past the Spearmint Rhino on Tottenham Court Road several times a week when I was at university in London, but Dean fantasising about that feels forced to me. It really does seem much more like a Boomer thing to do, unless one is going there with friends like Prince Harry sometimes did.

Alas, I never saw Prince Harry when I was in London, but I do remember the episode of Dark Angel when Alec went to a strip club. Good times, goooooood times.

In conclusion, this episode was alright but requires a lot of suspension of disbelief to work, otherwise the cracks are too obvious.

Thus concludeth the analysis. You can read more of my analyses here:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Sundry

You can read Paula’s review here and TwP’s here.

[chialattea]

Would you perhaps like to share your thoughts on WHA? 👉👈

YES INDEED

SO!! This is going to be a very disjointed ramble, I’d like to write a proper essay about the manga, its themes and the way it characteristically deconstructs popular character tropes and plot points while also serving as a love letter to manga as a whole. However the most important thing for me, at least while I’m writing this, is the way disabilities are treated in this manga.

The whole “magical world inaccessible to all but a select few” is something so common nowadays many shows take it as face value and run with it, not bothering to spend more than a few seconds to think about how such a place would naturally develop. Like yeah yeah you know the drill, magic exists but only if you’re cool or chosen, now let’s get on with the wish fulfillment etc. WHA however has too much respect for the reader to let that fly, and just as it does with so many different topics the author sits down and fleshes it out. Things like, “what sort of implications does a world where a life-changing power only exists for those born in certain groups” and “why the actual hell wouldn’t they just take over the world/ why would they hide/ how is it even POSSIBLE for them to hide/ are they stupid?”. Because. You mean to tell me there’s a group of people with the power to level continents flat… and they’re still paying taxes or whatever? Why the hell would there be kings unless they’re witches? And HOW would the common folk not know like, at a certain point some secrets are impossible to contain, and the existence of magic is quite the flashy one. The principles every witch has to follow works perfectly as both a quick way to set the scene (there are principles, which means they have superiors that dictate their code of conduct, which means that witch society is highly organized, which means it has a WAY of enforcing said policies given the existence of outlaws, which means there’s also a way for witches to communicate between each other plus their own culture plus so many cool stuff) and ALSO as the first taste of the conflicts the manga will deal with (blindly upholding rules of old without considering the subtleties of every scenario, a society clinging to tradition and denouncing any sort of change, the inherent classism of having the means to save people but refusing to do so in an almost paternalistic sort of way)

[azems-familiar]

"Can you just- for a minute, can you pretend that I mean something to you?'

this. uhhhhhh. got a LOT longer than i intended it to, and also had a lot less angst, though if you consider the other pov there is definitely so much more. and also with literally all the context. anyway. have 5.6k words of emetraha, because i have brainrot and the prompt worked so well for them i had to choose between multiple options.

The Exarch being away is the last thing Emet-Selch expects when he arrives at the Crystarium for their usual discussion and debate over tea. The man is bound to the Tower; while he can leave, it weakens him, and thus in all the time Emet-Selch has known him he has only left Lakeland’s borders on the rare occasion, usually to treat with Eulmore (prior to Vauthry’s birth, of course) or in the event of some emergency. According to the Captain of the Guard, however (who had seemed faintly amused when he asked as to the Exarch’s whereabouts), he left the Crystarium three days ago to make the trek to Rak’tika to meet with the Night’s Blessed. The matter of this meeting, she informs Emet-Selch, is something the Exarch himself can decide whether or not to disclose to a non-citizen, and he is not expected to return for another four days, but she can offer Emet-Selch the approximate location of his destination, should he so desire to bother their leader directly.

He does, in fact, so desire. The endless waiting is the most intolerable part of any Rejoining, and while the millennia have gotten him quite accustomed to patience, he is terribly bored, and there is only so much he can do. Should he push the shard too quickly, the Light could consume it entirely before the Source is prepared, leaving a hollow void as useless as the Thirteenth - and Emet-Selch has no intention of repeating Igeyorhm’s mistakes. Thus the necessity of filling his time with activity unrelated to his plotting - and the draw of his weekly meetings with the Exarch. It has been some time since he sparred with someone near his equal in intellect, after all.

Of all places near a Warden, Rak’tika is less burdensome than others; beneath the boughs the shadows are deep enough to provide some measure of relief from the omnipresent Light and its burn. Thus Emet-Selch does not particularly mind teleporting to a location just outside the Night’s Blessed’s fort and asking after the Exarch once again from their sentries. What he does mind is being informed that the Exarch is late and has yet to arrive, and that they’re considering sending scouts out to search for him if he does not arrive within another few hours.

Emet-Selch sighs. Their scouts are near-guaranteed to be ineffective fools, and he is admittedly curious as to what could delay the Exarch, which means the solution, while distasteful, is an obvious one. “No need,” he informs the sentry, a slight bite to the words. “I will find him myself.”

Truly, how frustrating. And all because he desired a cup of tea and a stimulating conversation.

With the star as shattered as it is, his sight is without equal, and though the presence of the Light somewhat hinders him it takes very little effort all the same to find a shadow to hide in and look into the aether, with a range that far outstrips his usual vision. There’s a glaring brilliance in the sky that reflects off the currents in the ground and air, fragmenting his sight and making it difficult to pick out specifics, but after a moment of squinting against it he catches a hint of the Exarch’s familiar aether, far away and fluctuating with some kind of stress. It could simply be the knowledge that he is late for his meeting, Emet-Selch allows, but there is something…a greater concentration of Light around him. Sin eaters, perhaps? It would be unfortunate indeed were the great Crystal Exarch to be so waylaid.

…Emet-Selch has yet to have an opportunity to see the man in combat. His skills as a mage are whispered about in the Crystarium, but much of what he has accomplished can easily be attributed to his command over the Tower - which, Emet-Selch has to admit, does make him a mage of some high caliber. The Exarch is capable of directing the Tower to perform feats Emet-Selch had not expected from a Sundered soul, and his attempts at turning Allag’s voidgate technology into a summoning spell speak to his grasp on the theoretical. Combat magic, however, is an entirely different beast, and Emet-Selch is curious. And perhaps any observations he might make could unlock some of those secrets the Exarch so furiously guards.

Thus decided, he spirits himself away through the shadows, off in the Exarch’s direction. It takes four attempts for him to actually reach the man; when he finally does, he steps out of the rift into the scene of a small massacre. An overturned wagon lays sprawled across the major path through the Greatwood, crates of supplies and possessions scattered about, some torn open. Several bodies, viis all, have been flung about, deep wounds across multiple of them, marked by claws and swords, no life left in them whatsoever, and scorch marks litter the ground, patches of grass smoldering still. Smoke is heavy in the air, smoke and the spark of fading Light aether and the metallic tang of blood, a rather unsavory pall, and without any wind there is nothing to disperse it.

Emet-Selch arrives just in time to watch the Exarch, standing in the middle of the carnage, gesture with his staff and send a bolt of flame through the last remaining sin eater.

For all that he makes a heroic figure, robes bright and staff gleaming, his body language is anything but. His shoulders are tense and hunched, his fingers too-tight around his staff, his skin pale where it is visible, his legs trembling slightly. And curled against his side, held there by his flesh-and-blood arm, is a tiny viis child with wavy grey hair and small ears pressed flat against the sides of her head, her fists clinging to the Exarch’s robe, an expression on her face that is the kind of fear that has passed through the event horizon of utter terror and morphed into stillness again. Blood streaks her cheek and one arm - a gash in her forehead, another on her bicep. From her size she cannot be any older than three or four years.

“Well, well,” Emet-Selch murmurs, sweeping his eyes over the bodies - yes, that one, with the similarly-pale hair, bears enough resemblance it could be her mother. “So it was sin eaters that delayed you. I wonder, did you involve yourself before or after you knew the child yet lived?”

He takes a few steps out from behind the tree he’d teleported up against, carefully skirting the edges of the Light dappling the ground, bringing him within two or three yalms of the Exarch, though he has to pick his way around the detritus of this family’s existence as he does. The girl’s eyes snap to him as he does, but she doesn’t move except to lean her cheek against the Exarch’s shoulder. There is a rather worrying glassiness in her gaze, if he were to concern himself with such things.

The Exarch’s breaths are coming in short, shallow pants, he notices absently. Pain? “...before,” and the man’s voice is tight, raspy. Emet-Selch knows him well enough by now to know when it is in fact pain that burdens him, and this- despite his lack of visible injury, he must have put himself in harm’s way. “I would not chance passing by if someone yet lived and abandon them to such a fate.” He breathes out, shakily, and returns his staff to his back, brushing his crystal hand gently over the girl’s hair. “...you’re safe for now, little one.”

The child does not respond.

“I believe she may have a head injury,” Emet-Selch informs the Exarch, though he has no particular reason to do so. Why should he care if a single Sundered child lives or dies? And yet…it would be too easy to recall the terrified children on the streets of Amaurot, fleeing the beasts they could not contain. “You may wish to tend to it, should you desire her survival. Considering your boundless compassion for these poor creatures you consider mankind, I assume you do.”

He paces a few more steps away and crouches down to absently rifle through one of the crates - dried fruits and meats, a sack of nuts, a small store of root vegetables, nothing particularly interesting. Behind him he can hear the Exarch murmuring a quiet thank you before the aether ripples with the telltale shimmer of a healing spell; Emet-Selch does not watch, just moves on to investigate the rest of the supplies, half out of curiosity and half because it gives him something to do while he waits. Perhaps the Exarch will be more inclined to conversation once the child has been seen to and calmed.

Perhaps, Emet-Selch considers, he ought to offer the Exarch healing for whatever injuries he bears - but he has never been much of a healer, and there is a difference between providing some oblique aid to his enemy that they may continue their game and directly intervening in affairs that could hinder the Rejoining. The Exarch may be the most intriguing and capable enemy he has had the chance to face in quite some time, but he still stands solidly against the Ardor, and he has never entertained the delusion that the Exarch would set aside their enmity to join with him, no matter that he would make such an excellent addition to their cause. No matter that Emet-Selch has of late found himself wondering more and more what the Exarch would be like, were he Unsundered, soul as bright as it should be. As clever as he is now, Emet-Selch can only imagine what sort of mind he would have were the star whole - enough intelligence to rival Azem and their greatest researchers, he would think.

…it is a futile thought, he knows. But he does not intend to forget the soft rose color of the Exarch’s soul, and should he chance to see it again, when he and his brethren have succeeded- well.

For a few moments, the only sounds are Emet-Selch’s footsteps and quiet rummaging and the Exarch’s breathing, still too harsh and short. With little left to investigate, he eventually stands and stretches absently, turning back to the Exarch - as he watches the man finishes casting another healing spell and the last of the wounds across the girl’s skin close and fade. Not something one with no healing training whatsoever could accomplish, and Emet-Selch raises an eyebrow, musing. His power comes from the Tower, of course, but the knowledge of how to use it - perhaps it was found in the archives. The Exarch does seem to have few hobbies beyond studying and assisting his people.

Before he can question the Exarch, however, there’s a rustling of brush, the sound of wings on the air, and four middling-sized eaters wander out onto the path, drawn straight towards the Exarch and his living aether - and perhaps that would mean little at all, but one of the large winged eaters, bearing sword and shield and the ability to force a transformation, Light pulsing through its white-marble body in waves, descends from the sky, sword held in front of it and gilt wings spread to their fullest extent. The Exarch spits a curse, drawing his staff once again, and sets his feet, and the little girl whimpers and closes her eyes.

Emet-Selch leans against the overturned wagon and watches, untouched by the eaters. Their Light is antithetical to his Darkness, indeed, the brush of it burns like hot oil, but so too is his Darkness more than enough to quench their Light, and they have the intelligence to know his aether would not sate their hunger. He is of no danger as long as he does not come face-to-face with a Lightwarden.

The Exarch does not have that same assurance, and the tension in the corners of his mouth, his pursed lips, speak to his own knowledge of such. But Emet-Selch wishes to observe, and he would truly be a fool were he to intervene now, when this will give him an excellent view of how his enemy handles being pressed and when actively fighting back against the Light, within the Light, would exhaust him far more than he is willing to extend himself for a Sundered soul who would oppose the Ardor.

The Exarch takes three steps back, dodging clawed swipes from two of the lesser eaters, and casts a spell - ice that freezes one of the eaters in place, something far less intensive than the fire he had been calling moments ago. The trembling in his muscles is more pronounced now, as is the sweat beading on his plaster-pale skin, and Emet-Selch takes a step of his own forward despite himself, unease stirring low in his gut. The Exarch is meant to be his opponent in the long game, not to get himself killed by sin eaters over a mere child unlikely to survive to adulthood before the shard is lost-

The greater eater swings its sword in a wide, sweeping motion, and the Exarch grits his teeth and raises his staff, summoning a shimmering barrier into existence around him, a spell clearly adapted from the Allagan defense technology he uses to defend the Crystarium. An impressive display of skill - and though the lesser eaters throw themselves at it, it continues to hold, even as the Exarch shifts and begins to mutter a teleportation incantation under his breath, gathering his aether to spirit himself and the child away. A wise decision, in the face of this threat, Emet-Selch thinks, though it leaves the eaters free to advance on the nearby village. The Exarch’s vaunted compassion, it seems, does not extend to risking his own life.

The greater eater floats back a couple of fulms, raises its sword again, and with little fanfare slices the blade through the air again - and this time, a bright bolt of Light sears forward off it, sharp enough Emet-Selch is momentarily dazed, his sight vaguely scorched by the intensity. The Exarch’s barrier distorts, twists, and collapses in on itself in a rush of aether, the distraction enough to break his teleportation spell before he can execute it, and though the lesser eaters hiss in something that approximates joy, they do not move. Instead they leave it to their seeming commander to lunge forward with a blinding rush, sword held at the ready.

The girl screams, terror so all-consuming Emet-Selch can nearly feel it. Something cracks-

A sound claws itself free from the Exarch’s throat that sounds nearly inhuman. Emet-Selch blinks, then blinks again, and - the Exarch has thrown his crystal arm, claimed by the Tower, between the eater’s sword and the girl he carries, and the tip of the blade is embedded in the sapphire crystal, leaving fissures spreading up the arm from the point of impact and a deep gouge in the flat of his arm just above his wrist. Emet-Selch sucks in a breath despite himself, because the Exarch may be tied to the Tower but that does not mean he cannot feel pain, and the force it would take to shatter the parts of him he has given over-

“Emet-Selch.” The Exarch’s voice is hoarse to the point of near-unrecognizability, taut with pain and desperation, stumbling along the edge of begging. He has never, ever spoken such in Emet-Selch’s presence. “Can you just- for just one moment, will you please pretend that I mean something to you?”

For- for some reason, Emet-Selch feels the words like an impact hard enough to steal the air from his lungs, like a constriction around his throat, like the knife of his loneliness he has lived with for so long has not only driven between his ribs but twisted. The eater draws its sword back once again, raising it for the kill - or to attempt to turn both man and child, more like. He thinks of- afternoons spent deep in debate over the minutiae of the Tower’s function and the technology the Crystarium survives on, Allag’s history and the actions of Emet-Selch’s own order. Of the lounge they typically take their tea in and how it has been Umbrally-aligned for decades, despite the extra drain that would put on the Tower’s resources in this climate. Of how eager the Exarch is to present Emet-Selch with new volumes of theater, whenever one of his people manages to find or pen one. Of the indisputable fact that this enmity between them, this game they play, has caught and held his attention in a way nothing has since his son died and he once again gave up on the Sundered entirely.

…he is here, in this Light-suffused forest, is he not?

Pretend that I mean something to you.

That is truly not so difficult, in the grand scheme of things. The Exarch yet has secrets Emet-Selch has not divined, after all, and it would be a shame to strike him from the game board before they are revealed.

In the breath between heartbeats, Emet-Selch steps through the rift and puts himself neatly between the eaters and the Exarch. A simple twist of his will brings up an unwavering shield of translucent violet - the greater eater’s sword bounces harmlessly off it, the lesser eaters’ claws are a barely-noticeable scratching, and he could maintain this indefinitely, as long as no great amount of Light was brought to bear against it or him, but considering the sound of the Exarch’s ragged breathing and the quiet, poorly-stifled noises of pain, he doubts the man has the focus to teleport at the moment, and- well. Perhaps he finds himself annoyed, and the loss of five eaters will hardly matter as long as the Wardens remain. To truly fight back will drain him, yes, but it is difficult to care.

He musters his aether against the heavy, suffocating Light, lifts his hand, and snaps his fingers.

It’s an easy visualization. Large, dagger-shaped blades of shadow leap forth from him and slam into the eaters, then burst in a rush of Dark aether that instantly vaporizes the lesser eaters and sends their commander crumpling to the ground, sword and shield both falling from its hands and fading into the aether. Emet-Selch takes a step forward, extends his hand, and summons a bolt of Darkness to send directly at its chest, and that last pulse of aether is enough to dissipate it as well - for which he is grateful, because the moment he drops his hand and lets go of the shield he can feel the drain, can feel the Light on the back of his neck, as hot as the desert sun, burning his bones. 

Heavens. The things he does for-

Emet-Selch shakes his head, rubs at his temples, and breathes through the discomfort. Brushes invisible dust from his palms. Turns back to the Exarch and crosses the space between them to take the man’s crystal arm in his hands, shifting his vision to that second sight to peer at the aether currents within. They’re pale and distorted, entirely broken wherever the cracks have spread, and he grimaces at the sight, absently running one finger carefully over the edge of the gouge where the blade impacted.

“This will be difficult to mend, Exarch,” he murmurs, low. “You have done a great deal of damage to your aether.” He sighs, shaking his head. “Give me the child.”

The girl is crying, tiny little hiccups muffled by the Exarch’s robe, but she doesn’t fight back when he hands her over, and Emet-Selch takes her carefully in his arms and settles her against his hip, the motion familiar. Relieved thusly of his burden, the Exarch seems to- shrink, almost, resignation and exhaustion and pain weighing him down until he is but a fraction of the man Emet-Selch knows. “...if you decide our enmity ends here-” he starts, his voice rough with emotion and agony, “at the least take her to the Crystarium, so she can live what life she has left.”

For a moment, Emet-Selch ignores him entirely. “Shh,” he murmurs to the girl instead, drawing on old memories of the mortal children he’s raised - both those he loved and those he did not - of children from long-ago Amaurot which he had on occasion been made to entertain. He had not minded, in truth; they had been discussing having children of their own, once. He lifts his free hand to gently stroke through her hair and over her ears, swaying her back and forth and humming snatches of an ancient lullaby until she quiets, the sniffles fading into shaky breaths. Only then does he carefully cast the lightest of sleep spells over her small frame - she seems unharmed, between the Exarch’s healing and protection, but distress will only keep her compliant for so long, and better to deliver her into the hands of her people docile than clinging to an injured man - or worse, him.

He does not- care about one lone child. He does not. The Exarch merely asked him to pretend, and thus he shall.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he finally says, directed at the Exarch, and heaves a sigh, turning to look at the other man again. “Come, then. There is little I can do for your physical injuries - I leave the frailties of your mortal flesh in the hands of your fellow mortals - but I believe I can do something to mend your arm, if only in part. But make no mistake; you will owe me for this.”

The Exarch laughs, pained and cracked, wincing and curling forward over his ribs as he does, the breath wheezing out of him. “...I shall have to break out my stash of emergency plays from Voeburt, then,” he manages after a moment, and Emet-Selch raises his eyebrows.

“You have plays from Voeburt?” he asks, torn between impressed and irritated that the man has never mentioned this before - and then he shakes himself. This is hardly the time. “Never mind that, I am not so easily distracted by theater as you believe me to be. A favor, Exarch, though I will allow you this: as I did not endanger mine own people in this intervention, neither will I ask you to risk yours. Now come with me before you collapse. I have no desire to be the target of your head chirurgeon’s ire when your heroic, self-sacrificial bent is certainly no fault of mine.”

“...then it must be before the endgame, I would think…” the Exarch rasps out, leaning heavily against his staff and taking a few shaking steps. “I look forward to seeing what you will demand of me. And to watching the chirurgeons yell at you shortly.”

Emet-Selch rolls his eyes and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from retorting, though he would dearly like to. Instead he shifts the girl in his arms to free one hand, reaches out, and wraps his hand around the Exarch’s upper arm - his flesh-and-blood one - and unceremoniously yanks all three of them through a rather rough teleport, which he would feel slightly bad about were he not annoyed. The moment they appear in the Crystarium’s infirmary, the Exarch is staggering sideways into his chest, and it is a sign of his exhaustion more than anything else that he simply stays there, trembling and wan, leaning heavily with his face tucked against Emet-Selch’s shoulder.

Emet-Selch lets him, and does not think about why.

The head chirurgeon, as it turns out, does not yell at him, though only because of the sleeping child in his arms. Instead she scolds both of them in a furious but low voice before guiding them to one of the few private rooms and immediately fussing over the Exarch; another one of the infirmary’s staff comes to relieve Emet-Selch of the child, whose name, according to the Exarch, is Lyna. Emet-Selch accompanies them to put her to bed in another room where they can examine her, and he suggests with an idleness he doesn’t quite feel that they leave her in the care of the Exarch, once he is fit for it. She is a terrified child, after all, and she will want the familiar. Beyond that, she is likely to consider the man who saved her life as safe, a courtesy he doubts she will be so willing to give strangers.

The chirurgeons seem surprised, but they do not disagree, and he is quite satisfied with that. The girl thus dealt with, he returns to find the Exarch with some faint color returned to his cheeks, enduring a lecture from his healer about what sorts of movements and magical exertions he’s allowed while his ribs and aether reserves recover. It is not a lecture Emet-Selch has been on the receiving side of in quite some time, and for that he is quite grateful. Eventually, however, the Exarch is free, and Emet-Selch convinces him to return straight to the Tower rather than checking in on Lyna mostly by not giving him a choice in the matter, a quite useful and effective strategy. The Exarch is too exhausted, it seems, to truly argue back.

It is not until they are ensconced in the Umbrally-aligned lounge - which finally eases the strain of holding his essence together under the Light’s endless onslaught, given the energy he’d expended - and the Exarch is seated on the couch that Emet-Selch sighs. “Well, very well then, let us get this supremely unpleasant business over with. I do not ask you to trust me, merely that you do not intervene; if this does not work as I intend I will be the one most suited to undoing it, and should you distract me in the moment of casting I cannot predict what might occur. It takes only a passing thought to disrupt this magic.”

“...might I know what it is you’re doing?” the Exarch asks as he drops down to sit next to him on the couch. Even with the cowl hiding most of his face, he is clearly exhausted beyond belief and still in no small amount of pain. His voice is thin and strained, wavering. 

Emet-Selch takes his crystal arm into his lap, running his fingers over its surface, carefully tracing the bumps and textured surface, bringing to mind the complex web of aether currents the Exarch has over many years bored into the crystal. He thinks of patterns and fractals and facets, the structure of crystals, the wholeness of the arm itself, and he draws ever-so-slightly on the Lifestream itself, unwilling to pour his own Dark-aspected aether into this. “Weaving the fabric of reality,” he murmurs, only half-paying attention to the words, eyes falling closed. Creation without a set concept is a risk, especially without an encyclopedic knowledge of that which one wishes to create, but beyond the cool weight of the crystal in his lap right now there are things Emet-Selch knows that will make up for the lack.

He knows the way the Exarch moves - the way he writes, the way he gestures, the way his fingers curl around a mug of tea or a pen or an Allagan relic. He knows the gentleness this arm is capable of, as evidenced by how tenderly he’d healed Lyna; he knows, too, the strength in it, as unyielding as the stone it is made of. Near seven decades he has watched this Exarch, has seen the transformation progress as the Tower takes its due for the magicks he wields, and beyond all academic knowledge he knows the essence of the man in front of him. They are but two sides of the same coin, after all, bound by duty to be in opposition and yet terribly alike, he and the Crystal Exarch.

The power of the Lifestream is a bright, raging thing, a river even he, with his rare gift of control over its eddies, only skims the surface of unless he has no other choice. He lets the pulse of life itself swirl around him, pool beneath his hands, and he holds the fullness of his understanding of this broken limb in his mind and snaps his fingers.

When he opens his eyes, exhaling slowly to let the energies of the Lifestream fade away, the Exarch’s arm is whole and unbroken once more, only a faint cluster of hairline cracks remaining where the worst of the breakage had been. For a moment he pays them no mind - he had not expected the magic to entirely mend the arm, after all, considering he was treading the line between working from a concept and working from belief - instead focusing to once again study the aether. The Exarch’s exhaustion means the flow of aether through his arm is sluggish at best, not ideal for confirming the recreation worked correctly, and- well. Emet-Selch has done this once before, has he not?

He pours a small fraction of his own aether into the man’s arm, watching as it bolsters the flow - there are a few minor hiccups but with some time those will, he hopes, smooth out - and the Exarch lets out a heavy sigh of relief and slumps sideways, tension leaving his body in a rush as he drops his head to rest against Emet-Selch’s shoulder. Foolish of him, Emet-Selch thinks, to let his guard down so around an enemy, whether they have been playing this game for decades or no. He sweeps one thumb absently back and forth across the now-smooth crystal, shifting slightly to let the Exarch’s warm weight settle more comfortably against his side, and shakes his head, reaching one hand up to carefully adjust the Exarch’s cowl before it can slide too far back from his face.

Perhaps it is the state he is in, pushing him to think so little of being vulnerable. It would be unsporting to take advantage of it.

For a few moments there is silence. Emet-Selch lets his aether settle and taper when the Exarch finally stirs again - which is good, he had begun to worry if the man was falling asleep - and sighs once more. He does not straighten, but he does extend his arm and twist it carefully back and forth, testing. Most of the motion is smooth, but his wrist hitches when he rotates it, and Emet-Selch frowns.

Ah, of course. The remaining cracks will need to be filled in if they are to be kept from causing problems. He looks more closely at them, admittedly curious - it is strange, as much as he had not expected the magic to fully succeed, for it to work as cleanly as it had only to leave such a small blemish behind - only for a cold weight to settle low in his stomach as he does.

Because he recognizes the pattern. The lines of it are thin and simplistic, barely visible against the veining, but there all the same - a constellation cut into crystal with such perfect precision it cannot be anything but a mark.

A constellation. His constellation, the sign of his seat.

Perhaps his mind had wandered during the creation after all.

He exhales heavily through his nose, swallows, and does not say a word, and the Exarch must be too tired to notice, because he simply rubs his flesh hand over the constellation and stays tilted into Emet-Selch’s side. “...thank you for this kindness, Emet-Selch,” he says very softly, his voice still somewhat raw but much of the pained tension from earlier missing.

“It was not a kindness,” Emet-Selch reminds him pointedly. They are enemies; it would not do for the Exarch to forget such, not when they yet have all the endgame to play, and he remains deeply curious how the Exarch intends to thwart his plans. “I will expect you to repay the favor when I ask for it, Exarch. You have ever kept your promises. ‘Twould be a shame indeed for that to change now.”

“I do not intend to let my debts go unpaid, or any kindnesses go unanswered, Emet-Selch,” the Exarch answers in a similarly deliberate tone. “Regardless of which they were meant as. But this was a kindness even if you did not intend it to be such - I would have been in pain for the rest of my life without your intervention.” This, Emet-Selch knows to be true - there would have been no other way of healing or regenerating the crystal without creation magicks, and thus the wound would simply have remained, and while it would not have killed the Exarch it would have always been a hindrance. “So- thank you.”

…if the Exarch wishes to think of it as a kindness, then Emet-Selch supposes there is little harm in allowing him to. Perhaps he can leverage it for some kind of knowledge or further concession later on. When playing such a tense game against such a clever and focused foe, with the eighth Rejoining as the stakes, he would be a fool to discard any potential advantage.

(Even if he is only doing what the Exarch asked of him. Pretend that I mean something to you. How could he act any other way, in the face of such a plea? It does not mean anything - not for them, not for his purpose here, not for his duty.

Perhaps, if he reminds himself enough times, he will not risk forgetting that truth.)

His people, his city, and his star hang in the balance, after all.

But for the moment, he can allow the Exarch to remain leaning against his side, a warmth that eases the ever-present ache of grief and loneliness in his chest, and perhaps the Exarch is not the only one who would like to pretend.

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

Cupid's Last Wish Final Thoughts

Watch It Or Drop It The Challenge

A fireworks show of a drama which suffered from a few awkward pauses and which, even though it ended with the dampest of squibs, was a joy to watch.

Strengths

I think part of the reason I held off on watching Cupid's Last Wish for so long was because I was a little leery on the whole "BL but with body swap" premise. Don't get me wrong, I actually love the concept of a good body swap plot, who doesn't, I just haven't seen it done well very often. Luckily, however, Cupid's Last Wish more than impresses on this part and what could have been a very messy plot indeed was instead an incredibly well executed exploration of the self, the body, and the complex relationship between them. Through it's central premise Cupid's Last Wish delved into themes of gender identity, gender dysphoria and, as @wen-kexing-apologist, @lurkingshan, and @so-much-yet-to-learn delve into in this post, maps out a truly trans experience and, for that, it shines.

Another strength of the show, linked directly to the body swap, was how well it handled the misunderstanding and miscommunication between the main pairing. Normally, when confronted with a romantic miscommunication situation in a drama, it makes me want to tear my hair out with how unnecessary it is and how easily it could be fixed but not here. I could literally see Korn sending the wrong message and Win completely misleading things and I could understand why. At no point (apart from perhaps the last 2 episodes which I'll get to in a bit) was I questioning why Win thought Korn was in love with Lin or how Korn was unable to see what his actions were communicating to Win.

A final two strengths (before I move on to the weaknesses) are the cast and the soundtrack. I won't go too into depth (after all I expected Earth and Mix to put on an excellent performance) but the dynamics between the central trio were fantastic and Jan and Mix sharing two dual roles was an impressive (and impressively convincing) sight to see. Likewise the soundtrack was pretty basic but effective, the use of Tillybird's "Just Being Friendly" was a highlight and I've had Mix and Earth's "Closer" on repeat for my own trip.

Weaknesses

For all that Cupid's Last Wish does right, I won't lie, it also does quite a bit wrong with the main issue being that as well thought out and as beautifully executed as the body swap plot line, everything else feels a little... half hearted, half baked, half done. The inheritance plotline felt silly within a second of it being introduced (I still don't get why Win was so angry or why he held the grudge for so long when everything we'd been shown up to the "big reveal" indicated he should have felt the opposite); the Aunt and Uncle were barely there and, brief attempted murder on the part of the Aunt aside, barely villains at all (and were actually quite reasonable once they got to have civil chat); and the whole plot twist with the mum being the homophobic mastermind behind Win and Korn's estrangement was so poorly done and so rushed I'm still angry about it (she did absolutely nothing to be forgiven and I can't believe her revelation was swept under the rug in seconds).

I wish I could say these were minor things but they were, technically, half the drama and really soured things when it was time to focus back on them. What really put the nail in the coffin though, is the fact that these weaker elements became the entire focus of the show in the final two episodes which meant it ended with a decidedly wet plop rather than with a bang.

Conclusion

There is much to love about this drama and perhaps even more to explore with regards to its central theme but unfortunately some of its weaker elements were just a little too loud to completely ignore. I would still rewatch it (in fact I plan to) and I would still recommend it to anyone thinking of giving it a go (and even foist on people who weren't thinking about it at all) but I would also say that I wouldn't judge anyone who decided to speed run the final 2 episodes.

Watch or Drop: WATCH (but with a minor warning)

Final Score: 7.5/10 (closer to an 8 than a 7)

Would I rewatch it: Yes, heck I even want to write meta about it if I can find the time.

Watch It Or Drop It Masterpost

[rancidslime]

oh gosh, i did not read the sequels haha, i actually thought there were just 2 books? i forgot most of the palace job plot except that it was a bit "someone excitedly describing their dnd campaign" in pacing, and also there was a sexy unicorn and like an offbrand carrot from discworld? and then the main character was a black woman and they described her very weirdly the whole time

i would be direly curious to know what happens in the others :')

BUCKLE UP (copy pasted from other people i've explained this to because why put that much effort into it am i right)

So, the trick with the series (Rogues of the Republic) is that it has fantasy races but makes them more alien in their mindset. Fine, fun, no problem. There is also intra-human racism. Also fine in theory, plenty of fantasy stories have done this quite well. The first problem is that it's very… I would describe it as direct. This is not an Unsounded where the racial dynamics are so unlike our world's that there's more room to play in the space and explore what bigotry could/would look like in a world with magic.

Again, not inherently a bad thing, but I think it's fair to say this really narrows your margin of error if you lack lived experience and cred as an author, and Weekes is very white indeed. There is a straightforwardly black ethnic group in the series - the Urujar - to which the lead and her second-in-command belong. The Urujar are a people who used to be enslaved by the majority-white Republic of the series, and racial prejudice - as it does - endures to this day, with even black gentry (which do now exist, but are rarer than their white counterparts within the Republic by several orders of magnitude) being unable to truly escape it. So far, honestly, could be worse. Baffling choice from Weekes, but nothing truly offensive yet.

Okay, so then we have the Imperials. This is our other major human faction. The biggest problem with the Imperials is that in a world of elven treeships and floating human Republic cities, the Imperials feel less like what they were intended to be (a vaguely Han Dynasty themed fantasy empire) and more of a loose collection of orientalist tropes. Imperial characters' names are presented "translated" so that they sound deliberately stilted to the reader (princess Veiled Lightning, general Jade Blossom) and the language around them just feels very exotifying in a way that doesn't really feel like it's coming from the characters. Everything about them feels icky in a way that I struggle to articulate without specific passages to hand; it's like a compounding effect of gross shit.

Now we get to the real whammy. The rest of the book could perhaps be chalked up to good intentions clashing with poor craftsmanship, but there's really no excuse for this worldbuilding choice.

So, this is one of those "the world lives in the shadow of its magically advanced precursors" settings, and in the second book you learn, oh, the elves and dwarves are the way they are because they were modified to make them better at certain tasks. (Elves, for example, use "natural" magic in the setting because being around the setting's more directly academic and logical "crystal" magic forcibly reorders their thoughts to operate like a computer, since that's what they were made for. It's to the point where crystal magic is outlawed in the Elflands.)

This bred-for-purpose rule extends to humans too. (Oh no.)

The bred-in purposes go down racial lines (Oh, NO.)

White men are favored hosts for the ancients, women are broodmares, and black people are fucking LABORERS. That's right, black people were canonically made to be fucking laborers in this setting by its precursors. Straight up, that is something Trick wrote. The black protagonist is the smartest character in the cast and the actual text of the book supports the irl knowledge that the actual differences between the invented distinction of race are completely superficial, so one could, if one were being extremely fucking charitable, see the germ of an idea about making a comment on racism and sexism, and I think if you asked Weekes they'd say that was their intent, but frankly it's so fucking mangled by this ghastly fucking choice to have black people be BRED TO BE WORKERS that all positive interpretations are obliterated in the face of it.

Like there were so many points where Weekes could have backed up from the edge, like, say, by having the entire human race in this story be made to be laborers and use that as a jumping-off point to discuss the artificiality of race as a construct. But again we see this Bioware inclination of needing to attempt to explain bigotry as though it were logical, and not merely a justification for exploitation

[actualbird]

my main problem with being stuck in 🔥REVISION-AS-YOU-GO-ALONG PURGATORY🔥 is that i actually really like revising 😭

in fact i'd say i probably like revising more than i do actually writing

(I suck at making plots and connecting plot points, the last time I wrote a plot heavy story was years ago and it was basically another fetch quest style story)

The only thing that's really worked for me in terms of reducing the time i spend on drafting is to straight up NOT look at what I wrote before while I draft, which I also don't manage to do very often hhh

I only get beta readers after I finish writing because otherwise I'm like, "hey can you beta read for me" "yea sure" and then i send them a finished draft like 6 months later.

also this is pretty unrelated but do you think it's still worth it to major in english with the rise of gen ai? i've heard of people losing their jobs to gen ai, my parents are obsessed with gen ai, i'm worried about not having job opportunities in the future with an english degree. (but also english is like the one thing i enjoy)

-📄

hi again drafts!anon :D

omg you and i seem like we're on opposite ends of the spectrum. i love writing and hate revising, you hate writing but love revising. if our brains merged together we could create a functioning writer. KBSKJDFBSDF

"The only thing that's really worked for me in terms of reducing the time i spend on drafting is to straight up NOT look at what I wrote before while I draft" if this works then maybe theres something here!! maybe you can like....idk somehow hide everything youve written as you go along. like writing on a super horizontally narrow window or highlighting what uve written in black?? ive never tried these but if what works is Not Seeing It, then perhaps that could be an option!!

as for ur last question, i DEFINITELY think it's still worth it. i didnt major in english, i got a degree in creative writing, but lord the world still very much needs and employs writers and those with good communication and critical thinking. off the top of my head, you'd still have a lot of opportunities in the publishing industry or in advertising

gen AI is really scary and it indeed has taken jobs away from people, which is horrible. but the thing about gen AI is that it still cant do the job of writing at the end of the day. even if it does, a real human writer needs to be brought in to refine the work of the nefarious gen AI. i truly believe that gen AI is a fad trend that will fade eventually. it wont ever be gone, not really, but eventually people will realize its limits (because everything has limits) and come to the conclusion that it's literally more convenient, productive, and cost-efficient to just hire a real ass human being

like, personally, as a writer in the advertising industry, i know gen AI cant replace me. because for it to do that, clients will actually have to be able to know and articulate what they want exactly, which is never gonna happen. it's more common for clients to have a Vague Idea of what they want and then theyll only really understand what they Really Want after we've showed them options of our work.

additionally, within the advertising industry, people have also become wary of writing created by gen AI. they generally look down on it, looking at it as the easy way out. which is a good thing!! because it means they value human work more than gen AI work!!

in general, dont stress about it too much. itll still be tough to get a job, because in General it's tough to get a job these days. but gen AI isnt gonna render your choices down to 0. there will always be places looking for people with your skills.

[variousqueerthings]

SO Hungry Earth/Cold Blood happening. I understand what these episodes are saying and doing and I quite enjoy a fair bit of them -- I think they're overall quite underrated in this season in favour of flashier episodes, however the politics aren't quite all there

I think this episode is one thing if you haven't seen classic!who and another perhaps if you have... slightly. mainly in the sense that it's essentially telling the same story as back in s7/Jon Pertwee's era, so there are comparisons to be made about what it's choosing to add to that story

back in that story ofc the Brigadier killed the Silurians that existed there, and in this one the Silurians are pretty antagonistic...

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 6/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored): 5/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 8/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 6/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 3/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 9/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 10/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 9/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 8/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 6/10

FULL RATING: 70/100 (if I can count….)

high ratings on the whole!

OBJECTIFICATION: Overall not too bad + there are several interesting women in this, of which the only one who's got any sexy-related jokes made about her... is Amy

so they step out of the Tardis and the Doctor announces Rio, except they accidentally landed in Wales, and therefore Amy is wearing... NOT a miniskirt, but minishorts. because she dressed for Rio (as if she would have dressed otherwise according to show-canon)

this is then the source of several jokes about how she's not dressed for the weather, because she dressed for Rio. Otherwise, pretty chill

PLOT-POINT: Amy's feelings are not really central to the story... until the end....... at which point Rory is swallowed by the crack and Amy tries desperately not to forget him, but of course she does

now this is of course where we're at subjectively with Amy/Rory, but I don't buy their relationship, which went from pretty bad to ride-or-die without any real reason for Amy's change of heart (or indeed Rory believing in it) -- when we see her trying to remember Rory they put in scenes of their past, there's not really... much to show. because the show hasn't given them real moments. one of the "bits that establishes their deep love" when she's trying not to forget him is when she was so uncomfortable being associated with him on a romantic level that he had to pretend to be her brother

However if we look at before that/assume they are deeply in love. there's an interesting thing that's happened where Rory really wants to protect Amy and is angry that the Doctor "allows" her to be in danger (both in Venice and here), but then of course it's Rory who ends up dead and forgotten

that's kind of sad. bit sexist, because again, Amy is not a part of this journey that Rory's having, but the underlying Stuff is sad

also camerawork: for some reason we're not really following Amy through the grief she feels about Rory dying, when she's screaming at the door, the camera is on the Doctor's face. it's the Doctor watching Amy lose her fiance, not... Amy....

COMPLEXITY: it's quite simple, sets up the conflict and then the denouement, and it's really mostly about how people react to the situation more than anything

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: we get a continuation of a plot from 1970, which is fun! and reintroduces the Silurians. the crack returns at the end, it seems to be stalking them... wonder what that's all about (I say, pretending I don't know)

character dynamics... eh, not so much. the main Thing in that is that Rory is killed, but there's not much of Amy and Rory before that on the whole, or Amy and the Doctor, or indeed the Doctor and Rory

COMPANIONS MATTER: Amy gets captured and then she escapes and then she gets captured again and then they let everyone go and then she sits at the table to talk about the future of Silurian/human alliances, and she's definitely not qualified and for some reason the director thought that her putting her head in her hands didn't make her look bored and out of her depth, and then they run away and Rory is killed and she forgets because of the crack in the wall *deep breath*

Rory for his part is... there. and then gets killed/erased

the other characters in this episode are the weight -- the people who have opinions, who have ideas, who make decisions (for good and for bad), who are emotional anchors, etcetcetc. Amy and Rory aren't really important to it, they could just as well not be there, but for the ending which could have been inserted into any episode

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: definitely just a guy! we love that! and he makes a few mistakes (takes his eye off Elliot the kid), and apologises, and really just wants everyone to get along!

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: It directly talks about the previous time Silurians and humans met and says that the humans killed them, which... yeah, is what happened. I don't think it necessarily needed more than that, especially considering they're different people to the ones they met before

"SEXINESS": Are we free at last? of witty sexiness? (maybe that's just Chibnall). Lost a point for Amy's final line though

INTERNAL WORLD: I quite like the Silurian set-up. it's especially fun on top of the previous episode, giving the Silurians more scale across the earth

the human characters also feel connected and interesting and like their dynamics matter

POLITICS: listen, they're talking about... sharing the earth. which they both have claim over. I think it has very good intentions, but its issue lies in the fact that I'm watching it in 2023 and it's therefore quite simple. but I believe in its beliefs! I like that it's trying to explore this. but yeah, it doesn't quite manage stick the landing

I think some of the experimentation storyline has uncomfortable AF connotations, especially considering the Doctor is like "well as long as you're only dissecting live adults and storing the young in a slowed down life-cycle so you can study their growth, that's good guy science"

also Amy being like "what about all these places that are deserted" and talks about places that have historically had indigenous people living there... but then Amy shouldn't have been there to begin with

I really like the characters who very consistently are like "lol no, we don't like humans/Silurians" and their minds aren't changed and they do indeed fuck it up at the end

the Doctor telling Elliot "let it be known, this planet is to be shared." this episode literally takes place in the 2020s. fascinating. what to do with all this. I'm not sure the episode quite knows

FULL RATING: 70/100 (if I can count….)

SO ON THE WHOLE: where this episode does good is on the other characters. I'm a big fan of them. It's a part of the world-building, which generally works for me, and is further cemented by being a loose continuation of a classic!who plot

where it doesn't work so well is the companions, who don't really fit into the story and are just tagging along and aren't given emotional dynamics that then lead into the supposed tragedy of Rory dying

the politics have both good and bad elements, but on the whole I like what it's trying to do, even if it doesn't quite manage it

also noting that Amy seeing herself in the future doesn't track with hers and Rory's eventual actual fates, I believe.... but I guess M*ffat can get away with it because everything is unfixed

[postgamecontent]

'8-Bit Adventures 2' Switch Review

I'm a bit tired of love letters. I'm not saying that love letters ought not to exist or anything. People can and should make what they want. But as a player and a critic and all of that, I'm getting somewhat exhausted with games that "pay homage to the classic 8- and 16-bit RPGs". Some of them are too ironic. Some too on-the-nose. Most of them are so busy trying to offer tribute to their objects of adoration that they forget to be their own thing. That's what I was expecting from 8-Bit Adventures 2, a sequel to a game I have yet to play.

I won't say that it completely bucked that prediction, but 8-Bit Adventures 2 is actually really good. It almost makes me wish that some of its more obvious winks to other games had been left out, because it makes it occasionally read as an imitation rather than the legit experience that it is as a whole. What I'll say first is that if you're in the same boat as I am, you don't need to worry about playing the previous game to understand this one. It follows up on that game, but it does a decent enough job of catching you up on what you need to know. I will probably go back and play that first game now, though.

A hero has gone missing, and the search for him kicks off this quest. It turns out he has fallen prey to something called a Glitch, and he's not quite himself as a result. It seems clear that if the Glitch is left unchecked, the entire world could be at risk. That Glitch has a story to it, and it makes for an interesting character in its own right. Indeed, if I were to highlight one aspect of 8-Bit Adventures 2 above all others, it's the character writing. This game's dialog is a pleasure to read, and while the plot sometimes wavers the moment-to-moment story remains engaging all throughout. It's a very sincere game, and it shows.

In terms of gameplay, not many molds are being broken here. Battles are turn-based and allow for three active party members at once. Similarly to Final Fantasy X, you can swap party members in and out during combat, and you'll often want to do that during more difficult encounters. You'll have access to a basic fight command with three different levels, trading accuracy for power as desired. You also get a number of additional abilities and magic that are tied to AP/MP. Defending not only lessens the damage you take but also restores some HP, which is a fun strategic choice. Eventually you'll unlock Chrono Trigger-esque combo moves, and there's one party member that beeps to its own beat just to keep you on your toes.

Things outside of battle follow the usual traditions, with dungeons that have treasures and visible monsters to get into scraps with. Some puzzles here and there spice things up. You have towns to visit, a world to explore, and lots of gear to upgrade with. There are, perhaps befitting a game aimed at evoking a particular era of RPGs, some very clever bits that help break up the usual loop. It threads the needle between adhering to traditions and doing some new things very nicely.

The solid writing even extends to the NPCs, to the point that I enjoyed my usual process of talking to everyone. One thing that really surprised me is the length of the game. I'm used to this kind of game running in the ten to twenty hour range, but this game runs way past thirty hours. Even more surprising is that it doesn't drag. It ramps up at a good speed and seems to know when it needs to throw in curveballs to keep things from getting repetitive. It's a well-paced ride that I think most RPG fans will enjoy.

Visually it is more "8-bit in your memories" than actually 8-bit, but it's consistent and I think doesn't egregiously betray the vibe it's going for. I really enjoyed the enemy designs in the battles, as they're detailed, cool, and very much old-school. Probably more 16-bit than 8-bit, but I'm already getting tired of being a pedant about that so I'm not going to bring it up again. The soundtrack sticks to the rules and it actually rules. Very good tunes in this game, which I think is vital to a good RPG.

Overall, I was genuinely surprised by how good 8-Bit Adventures 2 was. I've played tons of RPGs, and thanks to my work as a Kemcologist I have devoured more generic RPGs than any human ever should. I initially feared that this game would be one more, so imagine my delight when it turned out to be one of the more satisfying indie games in the genre that I've played. If you like this genre, I highly recommend 8-Bit Adventures 2.

Switch Score: 4.5/5

[tamilhobbit]

Paging @glorfindel-of-imladris .

To my knowledge, technically it's not that there are no other half-elves. There are potentially plenty! The issue is that they're all mortal - it is only the descendants of Eärendil and Elwing who are given the Choice, the ability to choose between mortal and Elven lives. This is because of the great deed of Eärendil, the peril that he ventured for love of the Two Kindreds.

And it is because of this that to Eärendil and to Elwing, and to their sons, shall be given leave each to choose freely to which kindred their fates shall be joined, and under which kindred they shall be judged.

Eärendil presumably had a mortal lifespan before that, but it's unclear since Tuor was granted the fate of the Elves. Elwing's Half-Elven father Dior married very young by Elvish standards, likely because as a mortal he had already grown to adulthood, but he and his twin sons were cut down too soon for us to know what their full lifespan could have been. (Dior was killed at age 30, having already married and fathered three children. Elves only complete puberty by age 50 and are considered adults at age 100 - there is no way Dior aged like an Elf, or he'd have had a child marriage!)

So there could indeed be lots of half-elves, lowercase, as in offspring of Elves and mortals. But they are all mortal except for Elrond and his Half-Elven line, since Elros already chose mortality for his line. The only named Half-Elves are Dior, Eärendil, Elwing, Elúred, Elúrin, Elros, Elrond, and Elrond's children.

Canonically we do have the royal line of Dol Amroth, which is descended from the Elf-maid Mithrellas and her Númenórean husband Imrazôr. Their children Galador and Gilmith were mortal. But their line is only described as having Elvish blood, not as Half-Elves. For the same reason that Aragorn, despite being a descendant of Elros, is not a Half-Elf; Elros' mortal children did not bear that title, unlike Elrond's Elven children. Tolkien presumably felt that after that many mortal generations, Elvish heritage was still present enough to have an effect, but not enough to merit being a Half-Elf, which is apparently its own Elven racial category.

So. There is nothing stopping you from inventing Elf-Man OC couples who have half-Elven OC children. You can even have them live in Imladris, since The Hobbit does specifically name them as living there. But according to the lore, those children are most likely going to be mortal. They will be beautiful and fey, and potentially very long-lived and wise, but they will age and pass away.

Now, as for Erestor. I don't know exactly when that change was made or why he chose to no longer have Erestor as a Half-Elf. But fan theories are that, since we do know Erestor is a high-ranking counsellor who's able to attend the Council and advise Elrond and argue against Glorfindel, perhaps Tolkien felt it was unrealistic for someone with a mere mortal lifespan to be able to do that.

Erestor, Glorfindel and Elrond all give the impression, through their speech and suggestions in the Council, that they're tired of having to deal with the dark arts of the Enemy over and over. Glorfindel wants to chuck the Ring in the Sea. Erestor wants to give it to Tom Bombadil. These are immortal beings who've waged many wars and are about to nope out and leave Middle-Earth. It doesn't make sense for Erestor to be speaking with the perspective of an Elf if he's mortal.

Or perhaps Tolkien also decided that including a Half-Elf introduces a new plot thread. If Eärendil can be granted the Choice for his deed, surely a Half-Elf who helps defeat Sauron should also be offered such a choice? But only the Valar can do that, and he explicitly keeps them out of LotR as much as possible. In order to stick to that thematic point, he may have decided against having any prominent Half-Elves. But that's just my personal theory.

This isn't terribly important, but just out of curiosity, does anyone happen to know when Tolkien decided to limit surviving half-elves to just Elwing and Eärendil and their descendants (Elrond, Elros, Elrond's children)?

Like, the Hobbit still speaks in general about there being people who had both elves and men among their ancestors, and mentions Elrond as their leader. At least one if not multiple early drafts of the Council of Elrond chapter of LOTR name Erestor not only as half-elven but specifically a descendant of Lúthien. I don't have the relevant volume of HoME at hand to check, but iirc that draft also kinda implies that Erestor isn't the only one of those around, just the only one besides Elrond that's relevant to name just then, but i might be off about that part.

But by the time LOTR is polished to the shape it's published, Tolkien has apparently changed his mind about that, seeing as the published LOTR and appendices only discusses Elrond and Elros as half-elves, and any mention of Erestor's being half-elf (or in any other way related to Lúthien or to Elrond) is gone so that presumably he's been changed into an elf

So my knowledge of when Tolkien decides on the number of half-elves is basically "somewhere between whenever Tolkien wrote that draft for the Rivendell part of the story, and when LOTR was finished", but I'm really curious if anyone knows anything to narrow that down further?