#sometimes they kind of only do a main plot for big disasters

[buddivorce]

gavin mchugh (chris) asking instagram who's gonna watch the new episode on thursday because it's "reeeeeally gonna be good." confirming that chris is in the episode and therefore eddie. promoting this episode specifically for a nebulous reason. gavin what the fuck do you know

[7-deadly-cats]

·.✿ killing me softly // r.c.

M A S T E R L I S T // O N G O I N G S E R I E S

✿ G E N R E ✿ she fell first, he fell harder | slice of life | drama

!!! images are not depicting reader’s appearance. only capturing vibes !!!

✿ P A I R I N G ✿ s1!rafe cameron x overthinking!reader (f)

✿ S Y N O P S Y S ✿ your senior year of high school started, and you're just trying to make it through without completely falling apart. easy enough—until you're paired up with rafe cameron for a two-week project in art class. no big deal… except for the fact that you've been lowkey crushing on this guy since fifth grade, and saying hi without spiraling into a thousand worst-case scenarios? yeah, not exactly your style. so when caution and overthinking crash into impulsiveness and intensity, things are bound to get messy. he's pushy where you're hesitant, instinct-driven where you're always second-guessing, and somehow, the two of you drive each other crazy in ways that aren’t always for the better. but differences like that don’t always end in disaster—sometimes, they create the kind of chaos neither of you can walk away from unchanged. and while you're just trying to survive the two weeks without turning into a total awkward mess, rafe finds his patience tested, and every principle he's ever stood by starting to come undone.

✿ G E N E R A L C W ✿ ➥ suggestive themes & light steam but smut-free main story ➥ explicit content (if any) in separate extras or will be marked as such

swearing, strong/suggestive/unfiltered language (dirty jokes & sometimes references to sex but honestly nothing explicit), suggestive themes, lots of overthinking/awkwardness from reader's side, hints at anxiety, tension, drama, attempt at canon!season1!rafe, reader and rafe are both 18

✿ A B O U T R E A D E R ✿ ➥ meet killing me softly!reader NO description of her appearance except that she’s abled

✿ A / N ✿ i wanna try doing things organically aka developing their dynamic in a way that's not too rushed. this fic is a mix of everything. fluff, comedy, suggestive themes, jealousy, angst, drama. it’s an attempt at showing something real.

+ changed my posting rhythm; pls read this announcement for more information

+ this series will contain approx. 30 chapters

+ it's mostly written story with some smau elements (chats)

✿ A D D I T I O N A L S T U F F ✿ ➥ S U M M A R Y O F E V E R Y P A R T ➥ A S K S ➥ M E M E S

✿ S I D E C O L L E C T I O N ✿ this is where i collect everything that doesn’t fall under the main storyline of killing me softly — headcanons, blurbs, what-ifs, possibly one-shots, and random emotional chaos. 

i highly recommend reading all extras for the whole experience + adds a lot of bg info to the main plot

☆ indicates explicit content // 18+ // mdni

✿ P A R T O N E

✿ P A R T T W O

✿ P A R T T H R E E

✿ P A R T F O U R

✿ P A R T F I V E

✿ P A R T S I X

✿ P A R T S E V E N

✿ P A R T E I G H T

✿ P A R T N I N E

✿ P A R T T E N

✿ P A R T E L E V E N

✿ P A R T T W E L V E

E X T R A ➥ rafe confronting topper about his ride offer

E X T R A ➥ wheezie teaching rafe reaction pics

✿ P A R T T H I R T E E N

✿ P A R T F O U R T E E N

✿ P A R T F I F T E E N

✿ P A R T S I X T E E N

✿ P A R T S E V E N T E E N

E X T R A ➥ rafe buying you a gift at the gas station

✿ P A R T E I G H T T E E N

✿ P A R T N I N E T E E N

✿ P A R T T W E N T Y

E X T R A / ☆ ➥ rafe has a solo session thinking of you

✿ P A R T T W E N T Y - O N E

✿ P A R T T W E N T Y - T W O

✿ P A R T T W E N T Y - T H R E E

E X T R A / (☆) ➥ the boys' group chat reacting to your soft launch

✿ P A R T T W E N T Y - F O U R (soon)

...

✿ F I N A L E

R. C. M A S T E R L I S T | T A G L I S T F O R M

[oldandcrusty]

It was red lyrium all along!

I'm doing a series of posts on institutional change in each Dragon Age game. My one on Origins only got 3 notes but I'm doing this for my own sanity TBH. Feel free to read the Origins post for more context on why I'm doing this and what frameworks I'm using.

Anyway. Let's make like Hawke and nosedive into a class war.

Hawke is privileged

While Hawke arrives in Kirkwall as a refugee, and possibly an apostate, Hawke has a great deal of privileges which enable them to backflip their way to nobility.

Hawke is a human with exceptional physical skills. They gain a positive reputation for being good at their criminal job, leading to opportunities presented by Varric and others in Kirkwall. By the start of Act 2, Hawke is so rich that they have risen back into nobility. And, by the end of the same Act, they are so adored by Kirkwall that even Meredith cannot lock them away if they are a mage.

Hawke is also immune to being held accountable for any illegal activities. Hawke gets away with all manner of activities, including vigilantism. They can even sell Fenris back to Danarius without consequence (seriously, what the fuck, BioWare). Meanwhile, Hawke's cop friend Aveline is set on arresting the elves who hid among the Qunari, even when they did initially try to go through the legal route.

This is not to dismiss the challenges and fears which Hawke faces, nor the work Hawke puts in. But their work gets rewarded and their crimes get ignored because of these privileges.

The privileged change agent

Hawke flourishes in the institutions of Kirkwall. However, not all of Hawke's companions do the same. Anders, Fenris, and Merrill are particularly marginalised.

Anders is hiding in the sewers, hunted by Templars and fighting what feels like a losing battle for mage rights. Fenris is trying to fully free himself of the man who enslaved, tortured, and sexually abused him. Merrill is an apostate Dalish blood mage living in an alienage. She is a pariah to all the societies she encounters, despite her kind and curious disposition.

Hawke has an opportunity to help their companions. There is growing literature which seeks to understand by privileged people sometimes become agents of change for causes which they would not directly benefit from. (If you're curious about this, two cool studies - Ruebottom & Auster, 2017; Feront, Bertels & Hamman, 2024).

This allyship - true allyship, not just the performative type - often means the change agent will bear the consequences of standing with them. Indeed, if Hawke sides with the Templars, they are rewarded with becoming the new viscount. Meanwhile, they must flee the city if they stand with the mages.

Thus, Dragon Age 2 has a really good set up to explore what a privileged person may do for the unprivileged in the face of institutional evils. However, I think the game falls short in exploring this in a few areas.

For example, the game does not adequately address Aveline's blatant corruption, racism and double standards. In Act 3, she reveals that she employed one elven woman to the guard, and the game treats this as enough to absolve her of her past actions. If justice mattered at all in Kirkwall, she would have been at the very least kicked out of the guard.

But there is one, big, red problem which I think sorely derails Dragon Age 2's attempt at exploring institutional evil.

Red fucking lyrium

The main plot culminates with the revelation that Meredith has been driven mad by red lyrium. Red lyrium is a type of Big Bad, similar to the Blight (it is blighted lyrium, after all). It is a force outside of institutional evils which causes harm to people. A real world equivalent would be a disease or natural disaster.

However, red lyrium does not do this in Dragon Age 2. Instead, it diminishes the accountability Meredith and (in particular) the other Templars. In fact, the Templars fight her not because they care about mage rights, but because she's written off as crazy due to the red lyrium. This turns the Templars into heroes. Meanwhile, all the mages in the Circle are dead - aside from Bethany, if she was there.

In Origins, the Blight exposes the flaws and evils in the institutions of Ferelden. This is just like how natural disasters and diseases disproportionately affect people who have less privilege in their institutions. So, having a Big Bad in a story does not necessarily weaken explorations of institutions. It can actually be an effective way to spotlight the existing inequities.

One can argue that the red lyrium highlights Meredith's hunger for power and hatred for mages. I personally do not find that compelling; we know that Meredith has these traits, and the Kirkwall Circle is already considered the most oppressive of the Circles at the very start of the game.

Essentially, red lyrium eclipses institutional evils rather than highlighting them.

[nebulousfishgills]

Behind the scenes for Necrosis please!

1, 6, 7, 11, 17, and 21

Okay let's see here, one essay coming up :)

1) How long did it take you to write this fic?

According to AO3, I published the first chapter on April 20th, 2023 and finished it on October 5th, 2023, so theoretically that's just about 5 and a half months. Of course that doesn't include writing that first chapter and planning it out.

Although, I have planning messages (I wrote my outline on Discord like a Normal Person) that I first wrote on March 29th of that year. So... like six and a half months or so? Give or take?

Damn, when I do the math I'm kind of insane for that.

6) What do you need to write? Is there anything special you need to do/have to help your creative flow?

I have to have some kind of background noise, but that's just a general necessity for me. I can't do complete silence or I can't function. My headphones are going like 70% of the day playing music or whatever.

Writing specifically though, and for Necrosis specifically since that's the focus of the ask, typically it was like, rain/castle/fireplace ambiance. This one was my go-to:

Sometimes I'd also use instrumental tracks/playlists depending on the vibes, or even my Emily playlist (the Twilight one, ofc... god the fact that I need to fucking specify...).

7) What inspired the idea for the plot?

Okay so honestly, with Necrosis I just kinda found the plot along the way.

I knew I wanted to do a sequel to Diplopia of some kind to really give myself a sandbox to play in and see where this story could potentially go. But, eventually I found what I would consider to be my three main plot points, what I would later consider to be the three main arcs or "acts" of the story: Mele and Emily's "unwitting motherhood" arc, the ball and the disaster that befell that, and what I like to call "The People vs. Aro Volturi."

Mele just kind of came to me in a flash of inspiration after scrolling through wikis and looking into Life and Death (genderbent Twilight) and to be honest, all of it kind of stems from that idea. Life and Death has a lot of similar beats in the backstory for the Volturi presented. Sulpicia witnessing Didyme's murder, reporting it, having Mele steal Aro's gift to give it to her before he's executed. Regency ends up two-thirds female, you get the idea. Shipping her with Jane was just me having some fun.

One of my HUGE big brain moments was me deciding to have Athenodora's murder be orchestrated by Aro because he knew that she knew about his sister. In the original story of Diplopia (the full thing, not the very original one shot), I had Athenodora be dead just to cut down on the chaos of the whole situation, but I actually took inspiration from Caius' canon backstory for it. He hates werewolves in canon because he was almost killed by one and is utterly terrified of them. In my version, he hates them because werewolves killed his wife.

The subplot of Necrosis with Emily finding Athenodora's journal and putting the pieces together about what actually happened is still something I'm very proud of because that wasn't the original intention of Athenodora being absent, and I'm also proud that I had Thena's knowledge be somewhat of a mystery as well, so the reader only realizes it once Emily points it out when she's delivering her litigation.

Anyways, that was a tangent for only one plot point.

I chose to have a ball in the middle because I feel like it can be a staple in Volturi fics, and also because I wanted to include some more traditional vampire-type tropes. I wouldn't go as far to call it like a "red herring" part of the fic since it seems like a weird distraction from the main plot...

And this is where I admit that the HARDEST part of planning this fic was figuring out the conflict, and ultimately I landed on another Twilight fic staple: Newborn army conspiracy.

I knew that whatever this conflict was, it was only meant to be a plot device/distraction from the actual conflict of the fic, which was Emily dealing with this forbidden knowledge about what happened to Didyme. But this plot also couldn't be entirely pointless because it had to lead to some type of explosion that lead Emily to announcing this information. It was a lot of complex pinboarding in my head. So, I kinda just landed on Newborn Vampire Army and let that do what it will.

Fun fact about that, if in that first group of newborns caught in chapter 2, one of those vampires seemed a liiiiittle personal (the one Emily executes herself), it's because I based him on my ex. So.

Anyways, naturally the last plot point was the main reason I wrote the whole fic. Didyme and all that backstory is an aspect of the Twilight lore that fascinates me because it's genuinely interesting, yet never mentioned or expanded upon and I LOVE fics that deal with it.

I had to leave little breadcrumbs leading up to it, and I even foreshadowed it in Diplopia when I had Emily tell Sulpicia that she was sure "someone [t]here has sororicide on their conscience." Which seems like a highly specific and odd detail unless You Know.

Necrosis was all about showing some growth for Emily. She's been in Survival Mode for most of her life, and now that she's comfortable, she can enter that Growth Stage of living. Diplopia wasn't about character development, at its core it was about me being silly. Necrosis' entire thesis is basically me flipping a fat bird to Stephenie Meyer's dumb and hypocritical tidbit about vampires being static beings incapable of developing. Emily has the ability to care about others and for the greater good, she just was never in a position to try.

Those three plot points kind of showcase those developmental phases. Caring for and helping Mele learn and grow (theoretically this parallels Eleven), letting herself be frivolous and enjoy herself for the hell of it (dressing up all fancy, dancing, this arc even opens with Emily in bed with Heidi to explore her sexuality), and then choosing to act in the interest of the greater good because it was the right thing to do.

So, tl;dr, Necrosis' plot was very complicated to map out because I had the different destinations I wanted, but had to do some work to chart the courses.

11) Was there a scene you hadn't originally planned to include? Why did you decide to fit it in?

To be honest, most of Necrosis happened as I planned it, convoluted as it was. There weren't many outtakes, if any that I can remember. I suppose there were tidbits that I'd debated about including or not before ultimately deciding to add them in anyways. Emily and Heidi being intimate springs to mind as one of these elements because I always had assumed that they had some type of physical relationship, but only really implied or mentioned in passing. I felt bold, though, and just decided "fuck it."

I did this silly doodle a while back using that lesbian eyeshadow meme as a template (it's not very good, be warned) and I've made memes about them having some type of intimate relationship.

Something else that I never did explicitly state but I've headcanoned since basically the veeeeeerry beginning was some type of similar relationship between Emily and Sulpicia, even if it was only like once or twice. Maybe in my mind I think the way it goes is that Heidi was very obviously some type of awakening for Emily and when she's confused by this, she asked Sulpicia what the fuck is going on and Emily basically has to get the "gay urges" talk from Picia. Then, perhaps similar to that bit in Game of Thrones with Daenerys and her handmaiden in the first season, Emily has Picia show her what to do with a woman before she tries to work her almost nonexistent charm on Heidi... tbh this might make for a good one shot.

Emily's the embodiment of repression, and she fell into a coven of actual slut vampires that do whatever they want is what I'm saying.

17) What was the hardest scene to write?

"Hard" can have multiple definitions. If we were to say scenes I was dragging my feet to get through, I'd probably say some of the ball scenes because they just weren't as meaty as I would have liked and I was itching to get to the chaos of the After.

Smut actually got easier overtime because I was practicing in private for little personal projects, but the hard part eventually became a wording issue. I've learned how to get nastier with it, but I know I need to hold myself back in certain regards because a) it's not the focus of the fic and b) not everyone is into hardcore smut. It's a balance that must be hit, but as one of my friends put it, "having to be eloquent about it is like pulling teeth."

Hard emotionally, I'd say that the bit in the last chapter when Emily and Caius are talking about outliving everything and everyone they knew. It was my last chapter and I hadn't intended for it to get that deep at all, but it was 2 AM and my brain just kind of led me down that angst ramble unplanned. Finishing Necrosis was always gonna be emotional for me and that just really hit a certain way. I actually had to stop and finish it in the morning because I had started crying over it.

It was the existentialism and my chronic "Emily Leaving Henry" guilt flaring up with a vengeance.

21) What was something you didn't expect people to notice or gravitate towards in this fic?

Something that was funny to me was how you in particular seemed suspicious of Mele and her actions lmao. I can totally see why, but honestly her quick acceptance of vampirism can be boiled down to three things:

1) In some ways she felt like some type of caricature of people who want to be vampires and would be like "yeah sure fuck it."

2) Plot Reasons/Mating Bond with Jane. Mating bonds/pulls aren't technically even a canon thing, but like eeeeeevery fic uses it to the point that it basically is canon. Another example of this is Caius being a painter. Not technically canon per se, but it's a pretty universally accepted headcanon.

3) I'm lazy. Somethings are just easier to handwave.

Although admittedly Mele being some type of twist villain would 100% be some type of shit I'd pull, so I don't blame people for thinking about it. It honestly hadn't ever crossed my mind because my lizard brain was focused on getting to Emily exposing Aro's secret.

And honestly, Emily trying "Caring for a Supernatural Child 2: Electric Boogaloo" was just such a fun concept.

I wonder if Eleven will ever know that she has several non biological/they're emotionally Emily's children siblings. One of them's also named Jane, how funny.

[deltaengineering]

Summer Anime 2023: GoHands saves anime

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale S2

I wasn't really all that impressed with S1 of Sugar Apple, but it was fun enough. There was a chance it would do away with its naive ruminations on chauvinism and slavery, after all. And yeah, it did that. But maybe I should have stated more clearly that that bland nonsense also needs to be replaced with something better, and that part certainly did not happen. The show fills the vacant space with two things: The kind of completely uninteresting worldbuilding and politics that were all over S1, weren't good there either, but were so insubstantial they weren't worth of note. Well, now they are. The other is that we get a ridiculously evil over the top villain that's amusing for one episode, but gets old really fast. Not to mention that everyone (outside of the designated villain, which is why you know he's bad) seems to love Anne now, especially Challe. So the spicy romance interplay is gone and Challe is now an edgy white knight that tips his fedora to m'lady. And the big finale is that Anne inspires a dozen pretty boys to invent Christmas, somehow. This one just is very poorly written and as of S2 has optimized out all things that distract from that. 4/10

Noble Farmer

The appeal of Noble Farmer isn't what the show does, but what it is: Notable action shounen mangaka Hiromu Arakawa telling a few anecdotes about her growing up as a farmer on Hokkaido. Of course we've known that since Silver Spoon, but it's still enough of a novelty to just barely carry this short series. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's not. As usual, a short doesn't actually need to be all that good to be an easy watch, but I've seen better ones. 5/10

Instead Of Zom 100 You Get NieR:Automata Ver1.1a

Why hello, we have a vacant 5/10 spot for mysterious reasons. Let's talk about a production disaster from the season before that just managed to end in this one. To be honest, I've already forgotten about Near A Tomato Service Pack 1 (Backer Beta) so I'll have to patch it up with my knowledge of the game, which is probably for the better anyway. Or is it? I am one of the few people that don't think that Nier Automata is the pinnacle of storytelling¹, so one reason to even give this a chance is to see if the story clicks better if it's told in a more straightforward way. But then it just seems that the opposite is true: Yes, it is indeed the main plot of Nier Automata, but the lack of nonlinearity and other assorted participatory/environmental storytelling just points out that there isn't all that much to that, especially towards the end when it's just about beating up the big monster, but in a sad way. The few things that it does change or add either don't amount to anything we didn't already know or have their payoff pushed onto the sequel. At least the music is still fantastic but it's just literally the game music, so that's nothing new either. This anime is probably for the fans, but even the fans will quickly realize that it's inferior to the real thing - though for them, inferior to the BEST. STORY. EVER!!!! is likely still plenty good enough. 5/10

¹ Before a million salty Yoko Taro fans jump down my throat, it's pretty good, okay? Just not as exceptional as you think. Thank you.

Yohane the Parhelion -SUNSHINE in the MIRROR-

So why does this exist. I can only imagine that Numazu has a bit of surplus marketing budget now, so here we go, Aqours is back... In the form of an appealing, but pretty bog standard children's show. Sunshine already wasn't the most profound Love Live show, nor did it have the most multidimensional characters, but naturally this is a shallower version of that - with the curious exception of Mari, who somehow is a more well-rounded character here than she originally was (though what that means is left as an exercise to the reader). Yoshiko herself of course has a bit more going on, but she better have, given that this show is very definitely about her and her problems - and it's still not really enough. All of this of course is expected from a children's afternoon show where the big bad is a vague "calamity" that doesn't even get defined as much as being made out of people's negative emotions or something like that. No it's just uh, bad (and by bad I mean purple), and then gets defeated by friendship and good vibes and an Aquors single. This show should have really done more random nonsense like Chika and her sisters randomly having a Sentai team and Dia being Kamen Rider for tedious IRL reasons, but that quirkiness is so minor it feels more out of place than anything. I don't want to be too harsh on this because it's still fundamentally a good time, but there really just isn't much to it. But I guess that's just how it goes with entrenched franchises, right? 6/10

GoHands presents the GoHands Power Hour featuring The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses and The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today

Before I get to the details of these shows, there's quite a bit they have in common, and that is, obviously, being made by GoHands. I have a pretty complicated history with GoHands. Yes, I did watch the whole Handhakersverse mostly because it was unbelievably ugly, but on the other hand, there is something to be said about an unique, consistent aesthetic: GoHands is dreamcore. I don't think it's pretty, but I do think it's fascinating, which is why I wasn't amused when every Anime Opinion Haver immediately wrote these two off as being unwatchable and took cheap shots on Ecks Dot Com. So I'll watch them. I thought. That'll show em.

The punchline was obvious: Neither of these shows are crassly ugly in a meaningful way. They're a bit overdone, but honestly they're more reminiscent of some SHAFT productions. Really, outside a few meme gif shots in the first episodes, there's nothing special about the looks apart from an overreliance on postproduction gimmicks like particle and lighting effects and stifling color correction, and everyone loves those when KyoAni does them. So there goes the reason to watch them... Except then, in a truly GoHandsian further twist, they're actually good. I'm as puzzled as you are.

Well, "good" is maybe a bit much. Glasses Girl is definitely watchable though, mostly just because Mie is remarkably cute. Of course, this being an entry in the "my classmate is wacky and I can't deal with it" genre, the same cannot be said of Komura, whose React-Man antics are most charitably described as "occasionally not annoying". The show gets a lot of credit for actually finding new ways to make the one joke that is in its title reasonably fresh, and it even manages to elicit some d'aww feelings towards the clumsy kid romance it develops into. I can't tell a lie, it's fine. 6/10

This one honestly is pretty good though, even though the absurd wish fulfilment setup of "I'm a lonely dysfunctional office lady but my cat is actually a perfect homemaker" seems thoroughly sketchy. To be honest, Yukichi actually does act like a cat, so I can only assume this is indeed written by a lonely dysfunctional office lady. As far as surreal daily life comedies go, this one's a winner though. It's cute, it's funny, and all that. A rather simple comedy about a very obvious joke setup, but there's enough going on in the periphery to make it not boring - and then there's hooks like half the female cast having a crush on Saku, which if acted upon would instantly make this one of the dankest yuri shows of all time. One can only dream. 7/10

BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!

It's always the same with these gacha franchise shows. Even when they're good, they're always bloated by too many characters, too many established plots, too much desire to make everyone equally likeable, and a strict adherence to the status quo. Over the years, many a time I have written "but what can you do". What can you do, indeed?

So here comes MyGO, where the plan apparently was "how about THIS time we just don't do any of that". Now, this part is interesting only for people like me who watched this show as part of the franchise. Nobody else would (or, honestly, should) care that this franchise show breaks the mould uncommonly hard — only whether it's good. Thankfully, MyGO is also just one of the best teen drama shows around, franchise or not. I guess it really helps if you make a show that a writer would actually want to write and not just a bunch of corporate mandates, but Ayana Yuniko takes it no the next level and does things that even "regular" shows in a similar lane don't attempt; for example, Tomori completely fixes the problems I had with Bocchi (of The Rock fame) by being treated appropriately seriously. Now, I don't want to oversell this show, you won't get the next Kids on the Slope here - it's still a small-scale anime about a bunch of drama kids that produces not one, but two marketable bands in the end. But within this framework, it really is about as good as it gets. Every character is complicated and has major personality flaws, which seems very risky but extremely worth when it pays off like here. In short, it's textbook character drama. It's a bit silly at times, but I'll accept that as yeah, teen girls in bands can be pretty goddamn silly. It also doesn't have an ending, but I'd question whether a low-key drama like this even can have a proper ending. They manage to make their disastrous teen band work for a bit, what more can you expect?

I guess I should mention the looks also, which are nothing particularly special when you know the fairly high level of CG animation Sanzigen have consistently been doing. Of course this serious show doesn't have much of the cartooniness, but makes up for it with select instances of really good direction — MyGO has a particular knack for uncomfortable wide angles.

In the end, MyGO is an uncommonly legitimate character drama with low stakes. It can dip into melodrama but not any worse than these shows always do. Ironically the most questionable aspect is that there will be a sequel based on the other band, Ave Mujica, which work extreme well as a joke about how they are everything MyGO is not. But that makes them an awful band full of awful people, and I'm not sure if I want to actually watch that. It's certainly a tall order, but then again, I didn't expect much from this show to begin with. For now it's an 8/10

[trainsinanime]

Season 4, Kwamis and Trust

Let’s do like the show does and put Chat Noir aside for a second. With that I think the themes of season 4 so far (after Optigami was released) are very clear: It’s about Marinette growing up into her own version of the guardian, expanding on her leader role, and the bigger message of how trust isn’t easy but ultimately worth it. And this is expressed most directly through the Kwamis.

With the Kwamis, Marinette goes against established precedent both in terms of the lore, and in terms of what the show has shown us before. Established precedent is that Kwamis can’t be let out, and they can’t use powers on their own. They can’t be trusted with the responsibility. Master Fu said (or implied) so, Su Han said so, even the Kwamis say so. And Marinette kind of ignores all of them. Marinette lets the Kwamis out (to their delight), and she lets them use their powers without a holder. She’s a bit hesitant about it, but by Optigami, it’s a well established part of her strategic toolkit. She even gave them their own phone. Now we don’t have time to unpack whether she bought it or stole it from somewhere, but that shows she is placing a lot of trust in them.

Of course, when the Kwamis do stuff on their own, accidents happen every single time. The Eiffel tower gets destroyed, or displaced, or bouncy, or… honestly I want to see what Pollen, Mullo or Wayzz would do with it. So far these things haven’t had an impact on the actual plot of any episode, but Marinette makes it clear that she considers it a problem. So the show is not at all saying that placing this trust is completely without issues.

On the other hand, it works to Marinette’s advantage. That’s why she’s allowed herself to rely on the Kwamis to begin with, and in many episodes, she wouldn’t have had any other solution. The trust pays off; it is worth the (very real) cost.

This directly mirrors what Marinette is doing with Alya. She trusted her, and it has caused problems - as of Optigami, potentially a lot of problems. But it has also given her new freedoms and new abilities, like the anti-akuma charms. Trust, teamwork and breaking rules has made Marinette stronger, but it hasn’t been easy.

In both cases, the trust has been earned in some part through intentions and long-running relationships rather than individual actions. Marinette trusts the Kwamis because she knows they mean well, even though she is completely aware that they are not good at controlling their powers and avoiding disasters. In Gang of Secrets, Marinette trusted Lady Wifi not because she was acting trustworthy at that point, but because she has known Alya for a long time. That trust paid off, and paved the way for the Alyanette reveal. And when she gave her the miraculous permanently, it was again based on Alya’s overall performance, while being fully aware that Alya sometimes makes mistakes - just like the Kwamis, or Marinette herself for that matter.

This is a general thing with Miraculous Ladybug: The show acknowledges mistakes, but in the long term, it judges people on intentions more than actions. When Marinette causes the circumstances that lead to an akumatisation (as always, I want to stress that only Hawkmoth actually causes akumas), her failure is rarely one of intention; she generally means well. Her mistakes tends to be about execution, or not having thought enough about how her actions may affect someone. Exceptions apply, of course, especially when Adrien is involved, but they are just that: Exceptions. Usually she wants to help someone and does a not-quite-perfect job of it, and usually, she reaches her goal in the end, because her original intention was absolutely solid. Now, in season 4, Marinette is extending that same set of values to the Kwamis and Alya.

We have also seen the counterpoint to this theme of trust in the first few episodes: In Truth and Gang of Secrets, Marinette thought she couldn’t trust anyone; not Luka, not Alya, not Chat Noir and not even really the Kwamis. She was more busy trying to wrangle them than treating them as partners. All of that made her and the people around her miserable. It led to a break-up and made things much easier for Shadow Moth. By learning to trust people, even if it is against the rules, she was able to turn this around.

Let’s bring this back to our favourite kitty. Right now you will find a lot, and I mean a lot of meta that talks about how Marinette is leaving Chat Noir by the wayside, and how that means he’ll be very sad and this will lead to a big conflict later. And that may indeed be true. But I don’t think it’s what the season will be about (meaning I think this conflict will at most be a two-parter). If we take the show at face value, what we’ve seen about the season so far has been Marinette learning that trusting people is risky but worth it, and that rules to the contrary may need to be rethought.

The big payoff for this character arc of hers of this could be her just asking people for their phone when she needs it.

That, or the more exciting possibility: How about breaking the oldest rule, and trusting her closest and yet most distant friend completely? It’s risky but worth it. Is this season really headed for a reveal? I have no idea, but it seems like a logical progression for what Marinette is currently going through. Maybe with a bit of conflict on the way, sure, but that conflict isn’t the point. The trust is.

As for Chat Noir being sidelined? Honestly, parts of that may just be a time issue. Optigami was a busy episode with a lot of plot points, and it focused heavily on developing Marinette first, and Alya second. Something has to give, I guess. I think the episode did more hinting at a Djwifi crisis (which could be a blueprint for Ladynoir, by the way) than anything else. The show generally isn’t that subtle, and if this was supposed to be a setup for a huge Ladynoir conflict or Chat Noir depression spiral, then it was an incredibly weak one.

I know this goes against the grain of everything the fandom (including me) has been saying up to this point, yes. But also consider that we don’t know how Chat Noir-centric the unreleased episodes will be. I’m still guessing Marinette will be the more important character throughout the season, because that is how the show has literally always worked. But this is the first season where we got an episode that was focused strictly on Adrien, with Lies. And with episodes like „Gabriel Agreste“ coming up or Nino’s remarks in Guiltrip, I think that probably wasn’t the last Adrien-centric episode yet either. He’s got some stuff to figure out for himself as well before a reveal, or for that matter a big Ladynoir fight, would really make much sense.

At some point, I think it’s more interesting to look at the show that’s actually there instead of the show that isn’t, which is right now the Chat Noir focused one. We don’t actually know enough to do more than guess there, while the main story keeps on telling us how Marinette grows into her role as not just fighter but team leader, and what values she develops throughout that. The Kwamis are a crucial part of that process.

(This is mostly an expanded version of what I wrote yesterday.)

[ladyloveandjustice]

Belated Spring 2020 Anime Overview: My Next Life as Villainess

For the Spring 2020 anime season, I mostly watched continuations of shows I was already into. The one new show I did pick up was My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! follows Katerina Claes, a spoiled young noble girl deviously scheming to win the heart of a prince- oh wait, never mind, she hit her head and remembered her past life! Turns out she’s an eighteen year old Japanese otaku chick who died and got reincarnated as the villainess in her favorite otome game. 

If you don’t feel like reading the wiki article, an otome game is basically a female- targeted dating sim where you play as a blank slate main character and date a bunch of pretty boys (and sometimes girls, but usually only if you go outside the mainstream ones), unlocking their backstories and collecting all the romantic endings.

Having played this game, Katarina is well aware that the Villainess character- who constantly tries to interfere with the game’s heroine and whichever boy she’s pursuing- is either exiled or killed in all of the games endings. And now she IS that villainess, living in the world of the game and all its characters! Does that mean she’s doomed to a horrible fate? What’s a girl to do?

Well, if you’re Katarina, what you do is be supportive and kind to the people around you and in doing so accidentally get every single character in the game to fall in love with you. And yes, this includes all the boys the heroine is supposed to date, the other female romantic rivals the heroine is faced with and the game’s heroine herself.

That’s right, we finally got us some bisexual romantic comedy hijinx last anime season, my friends! My Next Life as a Villainess was the delightful little show I really escaped into during these anxious pandemic times . All these girls casually falling in love with Katarina without it being treated as ‘weird’ was what particularly drew me to this show and warmed my gay little heart to see. It was honestly the perfect fluffy, low stress watch during these high stress times.

Anime has long been oversaturated with ‘harem’ stories- where a usually unwitting protagonist somehow gets a bevy of beauties in love with them- but it’s still unfortunately really unusual to see bisexual harems, especially ones with a girl at the center, so right away there’s a big draw to this story that helps it stick out from the rest.  (And worry not, the story is largely focused on Katarina having fun with these pals-who-are-not-so-secretly-in-love-with-her, rather than having a ton the dubious shenanigans you see in more sexually charged tales.)

Harem protoganists also famously tend to have the personality of potatoes, being so painfully bland it’s unclear why so many people would fall in love with them in the first place. But that definitely not the case for Katarina. She’s brash, ridiculous, kind and INCREDIBLY dense, and that for a pretty dynamic combination in this setting! She does genuinely come off as a fun person to be around. Unlike a lot of modern isekai shows, she doesn’t stumble into having incredible magic powers or skills, so her compassion is genuinely her greatest strength and what saves the day and wins hearts time and time again.

Katarina’s five brain cells doing their weekly check-in

(The moment she won my heart was when she responded to a tragic Frozen style situation with her friend locking himself away from people because he believed his magic was dangerous by taking an axe to his door. My kinda girl!)

The premise also allows for some plausible built-in reasons for the characters to take such special notice of Katarina- having been raised in a different world, she isn’t beholden to all the social rules, class divisions and noble family drama all the other kids in this very specific midevial-esque fantasy world are so embroiled in. This combined with her naturally earnest, accepting and straightfoward nature means she’s able to cross boundaries and reach out to them in a way they aren’t accustomed to. She was significant in each character’s life because she genuinely was the first to show them acceptance and affection without pretense, if only because she isn’t even aware there was supposed to be a pretense.

Katarina’s focus on trying not to die and her fear she’s going to meet the same fate as the villainess in the game also at least gives some kind of a basis to her comical obliviousness to everyone being in love with her. She assumes that everyone has to be into Maria (the heroine) and terrified of her because that’s how the game GOES okay, that’s CANON! Of course, this logic stretches thin as time goes on and it would be abundantly clear to most people that things have diverged greatly from the game’s storyline, but the show makes it clear that Katarina’s determined, one track mind is as much a gift as a curse. 

Her bullheadedness when it comes to picking up how everyone REALLY feels about her is an intentional gag on the show’s part and even her love interests are well aware of what a colossal dumbass she is and not afraid to point it out!

My Next Life as a Villainess isn’t without its flaws, and the personalities/backstories of some of the ‘love interests’ Katarina gathers may be a stumbling block on some- mostly the male ones.  Geordo, “the black hearted prince” has a bit of the “ possessive shoujo bad boy” archetype about him, and though he’s far from the worst that genre of love interest has to offer (there’s not much bad he can get up to due to Katarina’s obliviousness, the lighthearted nature of the show, and his rivals constantly getting in his way), the way he refuses to break Katarina and his engagement off despite her repeatedly asking him to, as well as some of his lines here and there, are definitely NOT cute. 

Keith is Katarina’s adopted brother, but clearly has a thing for her too. On one hand, they only first met when they were nine and he fell for her pretty immediately. On the other hand, he still refers to her as “sister” constantly which is kinda eesh. 

The other two guys are all right- Nicol’s big thing is he’s inexpressive and doesn’t talk much which, considering show doesn’t spend much time inside his head, doesn’t make him a very interesting character in the ensemble (maybe he comes across better in the novels) but there’s nothing wrong with him. Alan is undoubtedly the Best Boy in my book. He’s another common trope- rambunctious and competitive with Katarina but clearly soft for her- but he’s done well and they have a lot of cute moments together.

I find the girl love interests to be a much more interesting group overall, though this may be my obvious bias talking. Sophia has the strongest connection to Katarina, their backstories being intertwined in a surprising and touching way (I’m told in the novels her affection for Katarina was treated as more platonic, but the anime definitely plays it up as having romantic elements). Maria’s original role as the game’s heroine puts her in the most interesting position (and would make her the most narratively satisfying choice of love interest, if the show was actually interested in choosing). And while Mary is comically tenacious in her pursuit of Katarina, she’s doesn’t ever act ‘sinister’ or overstep boundaries in the way Geordo does, her “scheming” only really amounting to straightforwardly asking if Katarina wants to ditch her fiance and run away with her. 

As I mentioned, one thing that really contributes to My Next Life as a Villainess being a relaxing watch is that the queer characters are treated with casual acceptance. Mary in particular isn’t subtle about her crush on Katarina, but nobody bats an eye at her and she’s completely open and comfortable with herself too. The observing maid notes that the girls are in love with Katarina with the same bland affect as when she notes she notes the guys are. And while the social practices of the nobles are pretty heteronormative- girls are always engaged in arranged marriages to guys, the guys are expected to dance with the girls (something Mary complains about!)- there’s apparently a booming queer romance novel industry that inspires our young wlw.

Katarina, having grown up in a different world, seems to be the one most prone to heteronormativity of her group. She never really considers  that a girl would ever fall in love with her, but is also never hostile to the idea. It’s telling that when Mary very clearly indicates her desired romantic partner would be a girl, Katarina’s the only one that gets tripped up and has to walk back her assumption that Mary would be talking about a guy. 

Mary LAYING DOWN THE LAW

Also, Katarina has  SEVERAL “she’s so cute! My heart is beating faster!” moments with the other girls, on par in frequency with her moments with the guys. This strongly hints she’s an oblivious bisexual disaster.

So, My Next Life as Villainess is a fun, frothy watch and the rare positive example of silly wish-fufillment that’s inclusive to a wlw audience. But is the actual plot good, or remotely complex? The answer to that is no, the plot is fairly predictable and one definitely shouldn’t got into this story expecting a deep examination of the nature of fate or anything like that.There’s no real explanation of big reason as to why why Katarina was reborn into this game world and so on.

 The antagonist that does eventually emerge plays off otome game tropes a bit, but ultimately isn’t that interesting or built up all that well. . The attempts at drama the show makes towards the end fall a little flat, especially since it tends to rely on very-late-in-the-game-exposition-dumps (dark magic isn’t even MENTIONED as existing in this world until like, the second to last episode where it becomes relevant and we get a vague infodump explaining its mechanics). The conflict honestly almost feels shoehorned in and the climax is pretty standard and doesn’t really utilize the big cast of characters all that well

But in the end, that’s okay! The show makes it abundantly clear from the beginning it’s not here to be Deep, but to be some silly fun. And it really fulfills that purpose well, from it’s catchy, peppy theme tune to its consistently warm tone. It MAY get repetitive at times for some, and I do have some quibbles- like how I found the childhood segments to be some of the shows best material and wish we could have stayed in that section for a bit instead of rushing through it, how I wish Katarina had kept her cute little scar, etc- but overall, it was definitely the soothing balm I needed during a very rough time and I absolutely recommend it if you’re looking for a chill, feel-good watch.

 And hey, a second season’s supposed to be on the way too, so there’s something to potentially look forward to!

[dangermousie]

Heelo mousie! Love your blog! Do you mind recommending some of your favourite Chinese BL novels or shows?

I've seen the untamed and read it. I'm currently reading heaven's official blessing and I saw the donghua. Anything other than these two?

Awww, thank you!

Novels: I am gonna be lazy and literally copy/paste the entire danmei section of my top 10 web novels post (except MXTX’s stuff since you are already reading it.) Let me know if you need help finding any of these.

Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor   antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both  as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men   always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be  friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest  parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is  also finding the middle path between their two very different  philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or  dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and  setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period  setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with  character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our   protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant,   sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s  servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as  we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and  occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named   Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers  and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both  out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely  likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two  take up farming, get involved in  the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

The Wife is First - OK, this one did not make my top 10 web novels but it’s a sweet, fun gay cottagecore fest. Our ML, a royal prince, and his spouse, a smart if delicate aristocrat, keep house, eat noodles, play with their pet tiger, make out and spoil each other rotten, while occasionally fighting battles and outwitting their court enemies. It’s so very mellow. That couple redefines low drama - they are both nice and functional and use their brains. It’s as if a nice jock and a nice nerd got together and then proceeded to be wholesome all over the place.

I mean, the set up could be dramatic - our ML the prince, lost his fight for the throne and is about to be killed. The only person who stayed loyal to him is his arranged husband the aristocrat guy who ML never treated nicely since he resented marrying him (marrying a man in that world is done to remove someone from the ability to inherit the throne.) And yet the husband stood by him not out of love but beliefs in loyalty blah blah. Anyway, he transmigrates back into the past right after their wedding night and is all “I got a second chance OMG! I don’t want the throne what is even the point? I want to live a good long life and treat the only person who stood by me really well!” And he proceeds to do so to the shock of the aristocrat who had a very unpleasant wedding night and generally can tell the man he just married would rather eat nails than be married to him. But soon enough (no seriously, it’s not many chapters at all) he believes the prince is sincere blah blah and then  they get together and they pretty much become cottagecore goals.

In terms of dramas, I only do period dramas (or novels) so I am not the person to be able to recommend any modern BLs. There is a flood of upcoming (hopefully) period BL dramas but it’s relatively thin on the ground now. The two I will recommend is Word of Honor (which is AMAZING) and Winter Begonia (which I just started watching but which owns me already.) I have a tag for both - the one for the former is huge and I cannot recommend either strongly enough. I’ve heard good things about The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I am not big on mysteries so haven’t watched it for myself.

In terms of the upcoming BLs, the ones I am most looking forward to are Immortality and Winner Is King, but The Society of the Four Leaves also looks promising.

[growingstronglikeahighgardenrose]

Sanditon Season 2: all the news & my thoughts

So, we're getting not one but two new seasons of Sanditon! After a year of tremendous effort on behalf of the Sanditon sisterhood who kept the fandom alive, we'll be looking at a new season. Although I think the biggest thank you probably goes out to Bridgerton, which showed that romance, regency, a diverse cast and butts are a perfect mix to lure audiences.

I want to take this moment to reflect on what I think we'll win, what we'll lose and what we can expect in the future.

1. No Sidlotte HEA

This is probably the most heartbreaking salty news we could get. But I know Theo James, he likes new projects. And after divergent's disaster, I can't blame the boy for not wanting to hang onto another franchise. As a fanfic writer, although mainly an Esther/Babington one, I broke my head for over a year on how to get Sidlotte together. I had to imagine the grandest schemes to get them together. Tom needed 10 000 pounds in less than a month. Even Babington was probably not worth that much. That's over 6 million in today's money if adjusted to inflation. Regency era's England's top 1-2% made that in a full a year, and most of that is probably in assets and investments. And they don't just get to keep that money, most used a good chunk of it to keep their estates running and to pay their staff. Anyone know someone who has a casual 6 million lying around?

There's only two realistic solutions: either have Eliza die: which would be cruel and take years (unless you kill her in childbirth 9 months in), or create a grand scheme that would take months and see Sidney, Crowe and Babington actively work hard on their 'business' while in the meantime Charlotte, Lady Denham and Lady Susan get everyone including the prince regent to come to Sanditon. I kind of accepted they would have a hard time getting out of that plot twist. It was likely that Sidlotte could not be endgame.

Personally, I never felt a strong connection to Sidlotte, and had hoped that Charlotte, like Jane Bennet, would go to London with Lady Susan to recover from her heartbreak, and I kind of hoped James Stringer would eventually go down there for his apprenticeship, where a sort of Captain Wentworth-like situation would come to exist where he is a young man trying to make something of himself. I know Charlotte didn't love him. But I also knew that Charlotte wanted adventure and perhaps needed to grow as a person. But in the new season she'll probably be a bit jaded, closed off, and depressed. And will probably need a softer more available man. Growing up goes with swinging to extremes. She was an open optimist at the beginning, and eventually turned to the opposite, not letting her emotions shine through and being very guarded (@miss-holly-goes-lightly did a wonderful post on this). Adulthood is finding a good balance again.

So while I am saddened, because this brings along a long set of questions like: "Does Sanditon still take place in Sanditon then?" "Where will Sidney live, will he then live in London with his wife?" "Why doesn't he come help his brother the next season or visit his family, as we know Tom will make a mess of things" The show will have to answer these questions in a believable manner.

2. No Beaufort twins

Mollie Holder said on her instagram that the Beauforts wouldn't be returning. This leads to quite a few questions like: where will Georgiana stay then? What will be happening to Mrs. Griffiths? Will Georgiana be her sole ward while the Beaufort's absence is explained as them having married or having become governesses?

3. Who remains aboard

Rose Williams is definitely on board. It's also pretty certain Tom will be there again. Lady Denham is also likely to return. The child actors and their parents were willing, but worried about their increasing age a few months back. Old Stringer said he'd have loved to be part of Sanditon again and to see it continue, but he's well... dead on the show so he won't return. So who will join Charlotte?

Leo Sutter might not return. He plays an important role in the next spin-off of vikings. Vikings has a new season each year. On top of that he's currently busy recording Gateway 6. We don't know how long that might take. And perhaps by the time filming ends he's required for the next season of the Walhalla series. Leo Sutter is a rising star, he might not even have the time to return. Especially for two seasons. At his age and point in his career, he needs to cement his name, or he'll remain b-list while he has a-list potential. So he might have to give up Sanditon for his career. It's sad, I'd love a Stringer/Charlotte future where they both grow to being suitable for each other while becoming people confident in their own abilities. But in the end, I would be alright with it, as Charlotte didn't express immediate interest in him. Writing him out would also be fairly easy, they could just write that despite thinking he had to stay home after his father's death, he went to London in the end under Charlotte's encouragement. Perhaps he could then come back for a guest appearance.

Crystal Clarke will reprise her role as Georgiana. Clarke has, since Sanditon, spoken out about the sometimes tone-deaf director and scriptwriters. She had to step in a few times to make sure Georgiana was done justice. She also said she hoped Georgiana, if the show was continued, would get the space to breathe and be independent, instead of playing a minor role as token black friend of Charlotte while under the control of Sidney. It will be complex to have her return without involving Sidney, as his character will have to be written out. I imagine this can be done with a timejump, but the timejump would have to be 4 years to make Georgiana 'of age' as she is 17 in the show. They'll probably place her under someone's care while saying Sidney is "still her guardian, but away". Georgiana is, in my opinion, an essential part of Sanditon. Bridgerton showed the world wanted to see diverse faces. Austen wrote a black character as a wealthy and desirable woman. They simply have to do more with her in the future. Clarke will reprise her role, this time with black writers to do justice to her character. I'm excited to see what will be done.

The actor who plays Arthur, Turlough Convery, is a good actor and mostly in period pieces. However he's never overly in demand, and usually stays with shows for multiple seasons. I think he's quite willing to come back and it means Georgiana would have a friend. I also hope they delve into his character, especially after his "I don't think i'll ever get married".

Matthew Needham and Mark Stanley, Crowe and Babington, are Sidney's best friends. It will be hard to have them come back without them explaining why Sidney is never with them. But I believe they would work well as a duo: the drunk and the one braincell are a fun dynamic. Both are not much in demand, despite that I quite like them as actors. So we might see them returning. Their return would also be vital for the return of a few other characters:

Their return would also be vital for the return of a few other characters:

Charlotte Spencer's Esther Denham is married to Babington. Without Babington returning, how can Esther? And vice versa. Their storyline was also the main romance for me and a big part of the last few episodes. They kinda need to return. Babington is also Sanditon's access point to high society. To cash in on Bridgerton's success they should search that royal connection. Babington is friends with the Prince Regent. On top of that he has the most money. If he hosts a party and Charlotte is invited, this is where they get those grand-bridgertonesque scenes.

Lily Sacofsky's Clara had a romantic subplot with Crowe. In their final unaired scene they went to London together. She could return. However, the chances are quite slim. Clara is in London, and Sanditon takes place in Sanditon. Unless Lady Susan takes Charlotte to London for a while and she meets Clara and Edward there, cooking up a plan to get back at Esther and Lady Denham.

4. Predictions

There's no words to describe the popularity of Bridgerton, so this WILL influence Sanditon. I predict: more sex, more scandal, and even more ahistorically modern ideas and characters, multiple female characters and multiple male characters that each get screentime and their separate storylines and developments like in bridgerton, instead of just Charlotte's pov we follow. Glamorous scenes. And more POC.

The season will start with a timejump in all likeliness (as it is easier so they don't have to focus too much on her grieving). Charlotte will catch us up with what has happened while perhaps narrating over some letters she's written to georgiana and lady susan. She'll return to Sanditon during a summer. Sanditon will have been partially rebuilt with Eliza's money, and many activities will be planned. Sanditon will be in some kind of trouble. Charlotte will still be a planner. Her being very actively involved in things and having a vision was one of the most alluring parts of her character. In the books there was a rival town Tom hated. That might be a bit tricky to adapt so they could introduce some local competition for attention around Sanditon. A local duke hosting parties could overshadow tom's events. Or the social season in London could lure everyone there instead of to Sanditon. Charlotte will try to help Tom with this while getting reacquainted with everyone still in Sanditon, and hearing about the reasons why Sidney/Esther/Stringer/The Beauforts (to be seen) aren't in the show anymore. She'll also rebuild her relationship with Georgiana.

Then one day for an event Charlotte will invite Lady Susan, who will invite her to the London season to get over her heartache à la Jane Bennet. Charlotte will join Lady Susan to lure a crowd to Sanditon. There, she'll be confronted with some of her demons of the past season. Perhaps a pregnant Eliza Campion makes an appearance to rub it in Charlotte's face. In Sense & Sensibility Margaret discovered Willoughby's relationship in a most shocking manner in an almost public setting. Sanditon likes to nod at all Austen books so this could be a nod at that book when Charlotte discovers unpleasant news in a public manner. Charlotte will congratulate her and wish them happiness, and afterwards either a girlpower moment could happen with Lady Susan or Georgiana supporting her, or a love moment. Mrs Campion has tried to talk Charlotte down in front of people in the past, if she did it again, a new love interest could step in at that time to compliment her and then take her off for a dance. That could be an emotional moment for her, as she realized her feelings for Sidney in London during a dance the last time around as well. And she could have her cinderella moment by excusing herself and running off after the dance, uncertain of her feelings. She'll have some grand balls, might be harrassed by a man and risk a scandal, or try and prevent Georgiana from ruin during a scandal.

At the last moment she'll succeed in her goal and lure a crowd to Sanditon's events that will put Sanditon on the map. Either the local competitive duke, or someone from London will be impressed with her, but she won't be ready to marry yet. I trust that by the end of the second season, she'll finally have a realisation that she's quite happy with how she's living her life and how good her work is, and that she has finally stopped feeling sad. So the second season will stop with her atop a cliff, letting go of the traumatic loss she suffered on that same cliff a season before. By the end of the season, one or two love interests will be set up for the last season.

So the nudity and big romance will have to come from elsewhere. Georgiana will get more agency and action in the next seasons. She could be trying to tempt Charlotte in joining her adventures as a single wealthy independent woman. She might even leave to find her place in the world via boat, returning to where she was last truly happy: Antigua. The second season could maybe end with Charlotte overlooking Georgiana's boat leaving from the previously mentioned clifftop. Another option is Georgiana falling in love with a local man and taken an interest in the town. Financially speaking, Georgiana could be the only one able to save Sanditon. But I don't think she owes the town anything. Another option is the writers focus on Georgiana navigating her relationship with Otis, who might be back home for a holiday after navy duty. We could also see some political debates à la Poldark S5 about freedom, servitude, independence and so on. The first plan for Georgiana doesn't even have to exclude the second, she could decide to sail away with Otis to find their place in the world. In any case: race shall not be brushed under the carpet and Georgiana will kick some shins on her way to her happy ending. In Jane Austen, we have rarely seen a woman who tried to elope, or escape her guardian, get a happy ending. Georgiana Darcy, Eliza Williams, Eliza's mother, ... they're all tragic tales of women falling for bad guys who try to steal their virtue or take their money. And in the end they always become dependent on men again. I hope in Sanditon Georgiana will learn and grow herself, instead of being coddled by men. A lot could be done.

Esther and Babington could be a very cool insert if the actors join. They can really connect the high society to Sanditon. They could host balls, invest in Sanditon or drive the London plot. But they can also be an emotional backbone to the show. Esther married Babington, but she wasn't in love yet. I'm not a fan of the edward/Esther angle. After all he did, I rather she hated him with burning passion and never spoke to him again. But he could try to blackmail her and ruin her reputation in London. Perhaps become some kind of Lord Whistledown. With Charlotte coming to Esther's aid. Esther's plotline could be about learning to trust people and open her heart again. Perhaps she could have a conflict with Babington about him wanting a family and she still being uneasy with marriage, let alone children. Maybe they could have a fight, with one of them going to London. In their separation they might realize they love each other. And then the other comes back home from London with Charlotte and they fix everything. Another route is them having a fight, Esther going to confront Edward or Clara about their blackmailing or maneouvring. Babington thinks it's because she doesn't love him, but actually it's because she loves Babington and wants to be rid of her past. But she gets into an accident and Babington only realizes the truth later on, leading to a happy ending.

Other things I'd love to see: Mary finally growing a backbone and telling Tom to either be open about his affairs and finances or be gone. Arthur and Diana growing a backbone and telling their brother he's a fuck up. Charlotte realizing Tom is stupid. Lady Denham appointing Charlotte or Arthur to head of Sanditon after showing their worth an entire season. Tom being repentant. Diana getting over her fears. Arthur getting a love interest. Crowe being in Sanditon, I just love him. Kisses. Healthy love interests that aren't broody and traumatized and in need of fixing by women. Jane Austen's men need to do their growing ON THEIR OWN. And then they earn their brides.

5. What we'll lose

- A Sidlotte ending: once the new season comes out, Sidlotte is no longer headcanon.

- A happy Esther/Babington ending: they married and looked happy, despite Esther's rushed turn around. If they're in the new season, their marriage won't be perfect. They'll have conflicts, just for plot. Whatever headcanons we had for them will probably be falsified. We might come to dislike them or their relationship. I've seen almost all my ships crumble to dust on the rocks of multiple seasons dragging out relationships and piling on conflict just to keep it interesting.

- A part of what made Sanditon Sanditon: we'll lose many faces we've come to love. And the dynamics and relationships will therefore change a lot.

- Fanfics become dated: I know it is the problem of every fandom, but it's one I regret all the same. Part of why I love Austen fandoms is the fact that the books are written. The characters and relationships won't change. With 2 new seasons coming, all fanfics out there will become dated. The millions of hours authors put into Sidlotte fics will perhaps become barely read when Charlotte gets new love interests. All the headcanons I and many others wrote down for Sidlotte, Esther/Babington, Charlotte/Stringer, will officially become silly fantheories. I've been there a couple of times before that shows changed the entire course and personality of certain characters and then you can't help but feel exhausted and sometimes annoyed because these are your babies and you had dreams for them, and the writers took them in directions that sometimes don't do them justice. But it's canon so you gotta accept it. Sometimes fantasy is nicer than a writer toying around with storylines and characters just to create drama. And I'll have to write my characters in a new way that fits the characters based on the info from the new seasons. I might fall out of love with them. Ah, the burden of being a shipper weighs heavy.

- Perhaps we still lose a HEA: Season one ended with a happy babington/Esther and an unhappy Charlotte who learned a lot, and a Sanditon that was saved. Although Sanditon has been extended for two seasons it's possible that if the ratings for S2 aren't good they may still cancel the third season. If they don't learn from their mistakes and end season 2 on another cliffhanger even Esther's relationship and sanditon may be at stake. If they're getting 2 seasons they will also not marry or engage charlotte in the second, meaning Charlotte will still be single by the end of the series if they cancel season 3. The whole reason we wanted more seasons was for charlotte to have a HEA. So I'm really fearful that she'll be put in another hard spot. They at least need to get her happy by the end of S2.

6. What we'll gain

- More sanditon content

- More regency era content and images and music which is always lovely

- Seeing our favourites again

- Hopefully we get to see new challenges and romance and humor and tense moments and scandal and drama that will be fun to watch

- A Georgiana story arc: a black woman in a realistic historical setting living her life, being wealthy, and England just having to Deal With It. And as cherry on top she'll be written by black writers.

- Happy endings (hopefully)

- New hot men! This is a guarantee

- Perhaps LGBTQ+ representation with Arthur

- Frustration at Tom's antics (guaranteed)

- Maybe some interactions with Charlotte's siblings

- Esther Babington content

- New material to write fanfics and metas about

- Over 8 hours of viewing pleasure

[tarhalindur]

Rebellion’s Biggest Outstanding Question

(Big fat PMMM+Rebellion spoilers under the cut, natch:)

Homura, at the end of Rebellion, believes that she is rebelling against Madoka’s will.  But is she actually doing so?  Or is she acting in accordance with it?

Let me explain.

I’ll start with the point I’m sold on either way (and have commented on at least twice before, including my explanation of Madoka’s other big mistake): Rebellion is directly downstream of Madoka making a single mistake immediately after her ascension in episode 12, a moment when she could not afford to make any mistake at all.  Much like Madoka’s other big mistake in episode 10, this one is not obvious on the surface and only becomes clear when looking at the events through a symbolic lens.

Specifically, a Buddhist symbolic lens.

I’ll leave the full explanation there to this post, which lays out the Buddhist influence on base PMMM’s themes and imagery and on Madokami’s ascension better than I could.  (Although its author is missing a few points.  First, the shot of Madoka expanding to galaxy size is DIRECTLY out of ego death symbolism.  Which makes sense, because there’s enough accounts to suggest that regardless of whether or not it has any deeper meaning beyond brain chemistry the people who’ve had it are describing a single class of subjective experience, and “one’s consciousness expanding to the size of the galaxy” seems to be a common feature of it - I’ve read at least one account of that kind of experience from, of all people, a random Protestant minister who claims to have had such an experience on a vision trip to the Amazon and only later realized that there was precedent for that kind of experience in Buddhist traditions, and he mentions that exact expansion as part of what he went through.  Second, the flower on Madoka’s bow is a rose, not a willow... which makes sense, because “Guanyin/Kannon and the Virgin Mary are two aspects of the same goddess” has been a theory in certain parts for at least a century, and the rose has a traditional association with the latter goddess - there’s a reason they call it the rosary, after all.  (I’ve seen speculation out of a few polytheist/less orthodox Christian circles I keep tabs on that Pistis Sophia is yet another aspect of the same goddess, too...)  Third, note all the mandala symbolism floating around - most obviously Walpurgisnacht’s appearance and Kyubey’s exposition in episode 11.)

And that influence is important here, because part of the process of the escape from samsara is the breaking of all karmic ties to the world.

Except... Madoka does not do this.  She leaves one karmic tie behind.

This one, to be precise:

Now, in theory it’s possible that the tainted miracle of Homura remembering Madoka has another root.  But I have my doubts, and the biggest piece of evidence there is the OST: the track that plays when Homura meets Junko in the finale and offers to give up the ribbons is named Taenia Memoriae, aka “the ribbon of memories”.  HMM,

(That Junko scene is in this regards the single most enigmatic scene of the main series finale to me.  My instinct is that it’s drawing off of Christian mythos again, either canonical or Gnostic, but I can’t quite place what piece; I kind of want to compare it specifically to the Denial of Peter.)

Now, there’s two other pieces here that are worth noting.

1) While Homulilly is described as the Nutcracker Witch in Rebellion, Homulilly’s name and Witch card are first revealed in the PSP game, and there she goes by a rather different epithet: Witch of the Mortal World, nature is karma.  Which is rather on the nose (the Mortal World [shigan] being another term for samsara), but then that’s probably by design - main series PMMM is not subtle at all when it wants to make a point.  And it is this epithet, not the Nutcracker Witch, that the Doppel versions of Homulilly in MagiReco draw off of, which suggests the staff considered it important.  (There’s a second distinction in the latter, because Moemura’s version of the Doppel implies that Homulilly’s nature was originally slightly different again - Witch of the Mortal World, nature is closed circuits - but I think for our purposes here this is a difference without true distinction, much like the Witch of the Near Shore pun for swimsuit!Moemura’s version of Homulilly.)  And there’s echoes of this even in Rebellion: the Clara Dolls are of course referred to as the Children of the Mortal World, plus of course the obvious “Homulilly’s Rebellion barrier as the Mortal World” take.  (Which, hmm.  Hello second-order symbolism - Homura failing to “break out of the egg” as failure to escape the cycle of samsara.)

2) The red ribbons of course suggest a very specific form of karmic tie - the Red String of Fate.  And you can be very, very sure that the staff intended that, too.  To drag a certain piece of key animation back out from storage:

While it’s hard to tell at this size, it sure looks to my eyes like the two ends are specifically tied around the girls’ pinkies.  You know, exactly where the proverbial Red String is said to be tied.

Or, to put it another way: AI YO.

Everything in Rebellion is downstream of this.

But all this is prologue.  Now that we have established the mistake, we can address the actual outstanding question: Did Madoka intend to make that mistake?  People have noted the applicability of Junko’s comments about intentionally making a big mistake when backed into a corner to Homura’s actions in Rebellion; do they also apply to the action Madoka took that led to that?

I am not sure.  Both cases are consistent, and I’d put about even odds either way.  But it’s the affirmative case I want to lay out here, to show that it does in fact exist:

- Let’s start with the one point someone else might bring up that I don’t really weight: Madoka’s final conversation with Homura in the flower bed.  This one, I think, can mostly be discarded.  We have word from both Kyubey and Sayaka that Madoka does not have her memories here; I can’t see both of them lying here.  (Also remember that Kyubey seems to have restriction that is sometimes said to apply to demons, at least under certain circumstances: he cannot directly tell a lie.  This is of course a very different thing from having to tell the truth, as episode 9 alone is enough to attest, but in this specific case it’s a boost to his credibility.)  If there’s an actual argument here, it’s a second-order one; it is possible, especially given her divine abilities, that Madokami was running a Xanatos Gambit and counting on her amnesiac projection to unwittingly relay her true feelings.  (In which case I would have to grab a certain infamous line from another well-known anime: “Just as planned”.)

- That one shot of Madokami’s gloved, scarred arm reaching down through the window to touch Homura.  Operative word scarred.  (And honestly, looking at one of the subs for that scene again Madoka’s comments there look potentially consistent with her actually supporting of or at least accepting Homura becoming a demon...)

- Mata Ashita, specifically the lyrics thereof.  With the perspective of the full series, Madoka’s character song is fairly clearly from the perspective of Madokami, and it’s suggestive that she is not entirely happy with the results of her wish and ascension.

- The fact that Rebellion happened at all.  There’s a complaint that I’ve seen regarding the mechanics of the Incubators’ plot in Rebellion: logically, by the wording of Madoka’s final wish the Incubators’ plan to use the Isolation Field to block the Law of Cycles should not work, since part of Madoka’s wish was to rewrite any rule or law that would prevent her from destroying Witches with her own hands, including the one the Incubators set up with their Isolation Field - doubly so if you take Madokami’s statement can see every world that ever existed or could ever exist and apply it to the Sealed Reality the experiment generates.  Except... there is one way that argument fails, regardless of anything else: namely, if Madoka saw what the Incubators were doing and intentionally allowed their experiment to proceed.  And at this point there is precedent for her doing something very similar; AIUI in her Magical Girl Story in MagiReco Madokami does something very similar wrt the MagiReco timeline, deliberately declining to destroy it despite its continued existence conflicting with the Law of Cycles.

(- Magia.  This point of argument I’m not convinced of either, but let’s lay it out.  (Honestly, even if I’m right I’m not sure how much of this was consciously intended, but creations can have a life of their own - especially creations where fucking natural disasters delay them so that they’re released on the most appropriate day possible!)  There’s two pieces to this, one I’m more sure of than the other:

1) The visuals.  Here’s the spot where I feel most solid about interpreting Magia: the ED visuals are clearly a reference to Madokami’s ascension.  (The show loves hiding that sort of foreshadowing in plain sight, why would you be surprised?)  Note the second half particularly, both Madoka’s hair lengthening and the starfield she’s running past.  (I think the order of the four other girls in the first half is probably how long they held out without Witching out.)  That leaves two issues, one more obvious to Western audiences and one less so.  First, that enigmatic and ominous shot of Madoka in fetal position (appropriate - her request in 10 and then her wish in 12 can be rephrased as “don’t let me grow up”) in the eye of Mephisto.  Second, there’s a point I’ve seen raised in analyses of Connect: in Japanese cinematography, motion from right to left indicates a correct course (unlike its Western equivalent, where the opposite applies)... and for the entirety of Magia Madoka is moving left-to-right.

2) The lyrics.  This is the part I’m less sold on, but once again let’s lay out the affirmative.  My line here derives from a hunch: Connect is famously from Homura’s perspective despite appearing to be from Madoka’s, perhaps the inverse is also true?  I’m still not sure there, but especially if you’re considering the TV version it can work... provided the lyrics are specifically from Madokami’s perspective again.  Grabbing the wiki version of the translation: “The light of love lit within your eyes will transcend time” sure fits better if we’re talking about Homura rather than about Madoka, likewise “with this power that can break even darkness” sure sounds like a better fit for Madokami to me.  And in that case the most interesting stanza is the second: “Swallow down your hesitation.  What is it that you wish for?  With the direction of this greedy admiration, will there be a short-lived tomorrow?”  The former two lines  are quite consistent with Homura’s decision in Rebellion (and I note the visual of Homura biting down on her Soul Gem to break it!), and “tomorrow” is consistently a reference to the possibility of Homura and Madoka meeting again in other PMMM songs (Mata Ashita again, Colorful, Connect full version) - which is realized courtesy of a greedy admiration, no less.  So.  Magia’s full version might count, too - there’s lines there that are harder to square from a Madokami perspective (”if I can move forward without hesitation then it’s fine if my heart gets broken” especially), but “Someday, for the sake of someone else, you too will wish for great power; on the night love captures your heart, unknown words will be born” fits Homura’s fall better than Madoka’s wish, I think.)

- If Madoka’s mistake in 12 is intentional then it more closely mirrors her (unintentional) mistake in 10: she’s implicitly asking Homura to once again do something she can’t and stop her from/alleviate the effects of her making a mistake.

- At a Doylist level, if they go for a proper happy end (either in Walpurgis no Kaiten or in a hypothetical sequel to the same) I’m not sure there’s any way they can get there without using this interpretation.  (In general, the two outcomes that make the most sense to me are “Akuhomu becomes the core of Walpurgisnacht, cue ending scene with Moemura making her wish” (the Logic Error ending, consistent with the Eternal Return of the Self; cue MagiReco as the way out) or an ending based on the answer to this question being yes - the easy version being a movie of everyone except Homura fighting to let Madoka rejoin the Law of Cycles only for her to surprise everyone with some sort of ending based on “actually, I was counting on her to do this from the start”.)

[katewaliss]

! write with me or fight with me!

you either die by my sword or the most painful head canons imaginable! *merida vc* choose yer fate

just kidding!

 hey there gaymers, i am crissy! i am 22, live in pst, go by she/her pronouns and honestly would very much like a distraction from life -- preferably in the form of 1x1 and rp in general. i am currently doing online school plus trying/failing at adulting, being a crazy pink haired college student living on microwave dimsum with my crazy fluffy demon cat, but that still leaves me with a lot of time and what better way to spend that time then crying and dying, am i right, boys? 

so without further ado ( adieu? idk gusundheit ) here are a list of discomboblulated plot things that have been floating around in my head that i might be fun to do ( plot fragments, ideas, ocs, fcs i like, settings, genres etc )! i’d prefer a message if u liked any of these in the inbox or dm form, my tumblr ims are open and my discord user is mr. worldwide#2918 ( pitbull supremacy ) but if ur shy i will message u and be annoying! 

lastly: i prefer hcing in the dms to replies, however i will do replies/ask memes slowly, i don’t really like making blogs and prefer google docs/discord and i ask ( gently and respectfully ) that minors do not interact.

thank u and happy hunger games! xx

COLLEGE TOTALLY SPIES -- i was really obsessed with this picture right here and i thought that the picture would be a good premise for a little four person group based on totally spies. i was thinking that these three college students/young adults some friends maybe not some enemies or just on completely different ends of the social agenda get bonded together when they accidentally end up roped in a top secret spy organization that is fronted by a record store. the details and flesh of the plot i think would be cute to figure out all together maybe in a google doc or a big discord so we can make the rp to perfect world building specifications. right now i have two spots open! 

my friend lexi over at comradc has taken the cool goth asian girl and is using lyrica okano

i am playing the freckly backwards hat lesbian in the red polo named aj mccallis and i think im using diana silvers ( not sure might switch to tati rodriguez )

we also have the cute blond girl w the dyed hair who is giving me kind of like sydney sweeney energies, blonde girl maybe like lalisa manoban/jinsoul,

and we have the rad black girl with the bandids who i would only accept black fcs for for such as diamond white, ryan destiny, salem mitchell, 

i’d prefer if this stayed kind of sapphic and female and enby friendly. we can def make make npcs and characters but i’d prefer if the characters looked like they do in the picture ( minus the white girls who can be racebent as long as there are vibes ) mostly bc i want the poc people to stay the correct poc! but yeah! if u like this message me specifically!!!!! seperately and hit me w a role ud like maybe an fc an idea anything < 3 im working on a google doc and discord sever

- i really want to play a himbo skater boy evan mock like its my dream i know nothing abt him other than he probably goes by something like mouth or juice or tris or dex or dante but !!!! he has buzzed hair he buzzes designs into, does stick n pokes, hates cops, will kiss anyone, likes to mosh at house shows, smokes a lot and sounds like crush from finding nemo, probably ur parents worst nightmare if im honest rodrick heffley energy -- adopt him for any plot

- i also really am obsessed with simay barlas who is my mascot rn -- i want to play her in some sort of dark academia setting with like gossip girl blair waldorf energies lu from elite and have her be really mean and cold and pretentious and play the cello and probably have secrets and be uptight idk the name mallory is resonating hard w me ( we could even do a gossip girl the secret history type group if people liked that ) 

-ok i also really really want to play streak aka silas montgomery who is like very like sidekick best friend to the golden boy main character, does a kick ass goat impression, class clown, relentlessly hits on like the most difficult person in school, does crazy things for laughs and attention, just wants to make people happy, only wears hawaiian shirts, finger guns, is going nowhere in life, his dad is probably the dean at whatever prestigious school also he is very very depressed and drinks often! love u! a I Feel Like Im The Worst So I Always Act Like Im The Best electra heart baby PINTEREST

also yes his hair is pink reg verse he did it on a dare but hp verse he did a potion wrong and it never came out

SOMEONE DO A LADY HANNIBAL WILL GRAHAM RP KILLING EVE RP W ME! i made this will graham adjacent gal for a genderbent hannigram rp her name is bisexual disaster enida johnson and sometimes goes by needy or will bc her middle name is willamena! has basically all the will things wears flannels is a mess but has a bunch of cats instead of dogs in her woods log cabin and im using crystal reed bc it fits perfect in my head idk if u like her hmu hit me w a lady hannibal PINTEREST

other stuff

ok i really want to do a princess and knight plot but with knight zendaya and princess anya taylor joy ???? ALKHALKSHALK LITERALLY HELLO literally modern or like dnd style i do not care but know i love dnd! we could make it like them goin on some skyrim quests like hi

speaking of dnd and skyrim if anyone wants to do like anything based in dnd stuff or skyrim stuff i am DOWN

jennifers body plot!!!! maybe set in college!!!!! sounds spicy i will do a f/f or m/m version leggo leggo 

UNTIL DAWN UNTIL DAWN!!!! i wanted to do a little like 6 person or mumu until dawn thing where everyone either makes new characters or characters based on the existing six! i made a girl adjacent josh character named riley PINTEREST who i love very much ( fc might change im thinking maybe medallion rahimi ) pls hmu if ur down

i looooooove breakfast at tiffanys!!!! like i really love breakfast at tiffanys we love a call girl broody author ship and i want to play a mishti rahman holly golightly type character so so bad 

pygmalion plot!!! basically like an author and the main character of their book comes to life and the book character is probably from a different period of time or realm so doesnt know how to do modern 2020 stuff like microwaves and the tv! and then maybe they get sucked into the characters book world thats written by the author and have to navigate that! enchanted! w the kdrama! energy!

GOSSIP GIRL PLOT ENERGIES

any sort of the secret history murder society until dawn ahs horror type setting i am on a kick rn 

i still really want a deaf sailor and siren plot bc that is so spicy or even like anything involving sirens like maybe one thats like vegetarian and doesnt like to eat humans so it ariel rescues one and keeps it safe!! or like only men are susceptible to the sirens song but aha! i am a woman! Romance!

anything in the realm of percy jackson i love mythology lets go i kind of want a echo narcisuss plot and i want it to hurt me so bad 

i will do harry potter stuff but only if its completely removed from the current canon like years in the future no existing families also maybe beauxbatons salem and drumstrang plots bc thats what matters

iiiiiiiii really like anime so i will do anything kakegurui, soul eater, ohshc

i kind of like grew up on the hunger games so i will gladly take any hunger games plots like young effie and haymitch is spicy or like a career tribute and one of the weaker poorer distracts enemies to lovers leggo

i have a kind of oc that had their parents die in a factory gas leak that was the governments fault and it turned them into a vigilante assasin that is slowly picking off bootlicker government people one by one pretending to be one of them until bam! gets attached to the rich asshole son or daughter of the head hauncho or one of the higher ups ... drama

rich little celebrity fussy wussy being held captive by the mafia and the tired stoic mafia guard but they fall in love 

i kind of like any plot that involves one person that is really loud or angry or dramatic or whiny and the other one is kind of sweet and gentle or does not talk much idk make brain happy 

speaking of!

no nonsense law student studying abroad in a european country and an artist there falls in love w them and is all romantic and gush and is like ur my muse!!! and they are like Go awAy and they explore the city together and themelseves its nice!

i want to be an avan jogia super villain idk why i need to but i do 

not to be a disney adult bc i am not but anastasia princesses dont kiss kitchen boys 

rival cheer captians? best friends brother? pop princess celebrity singer and like antiestablishment really angry rockstar in a publicity relationship? broody detective and sunshiney diner person that works at the diner they eat at everyday?

idk i will think of more hmu these can all be made f/f or m/m if they arent 

[tinamaetales]

Fine, not fine

When the pandemic broke out in 2020, I was left with nothing to do. Our WFH arrangement during those times is not something I consider as a heavy workload so most of the time I just find myself alone with my own thoughts – which is one of the scariest scenarios for me. To kill time and distract myself from my own self-destructive thoughts, I decided to watch documentaries on Youtube but there really isn’t enough for me so despite not having a huge salary, I decided to subscribe to Netflix and from then on, I was able to watch a lot of movies, series and documentaries. I really wanna write a reflection on each of the stuff I’ve watched but I’m too lazy these days (and yet, here I am writing one).

As I mentioned, I watched a lot of stuff on Netflix but the last three that I’ve watched lately (before I start being invested with American Horror Story series), Angel’s Last Mission: Love, The Good Place, and Mystic Pop-up Bar tend to have a common theme – life, death, afterlife. I didn’t even do it on purpose; I was just really interested in the plot of their stories. What these 3 shows have in common is that they discuss about the morality and consequences and these days, I’m really interested in those topics. Lately, I’ve been questioning myself about what kind of person I am – am I good or bad? I also keep on having an internal debate with myself as to whether or not there is an afterlife and if there is, then where will I end up? Heaven or hell? Those questions are kinda giving me some headache these days but at least it’s a good distraction from my own self-destructive thoughts. Somehow, Philosophy seems interesting to me now (during my College years, I dreaded that subject but still managed to get a 1.25 final grade lol). Anyway, here are my thoughts about the shows:

Angel’s Last Mission: Love

Major lesson: Keep the faith

This kdrama has such a beautiful way of presenting its story that you will fall in love with it in just the first episode! (Also because Kim Myung Soo’s dimples are to die for, omg I’m so in love) Anyway, this drama’s plot is interesting: an angel who disobeyed the law (he’s not allowed to meddle with the lives of humans especially since he’s a guardian angel for animals) on his last day was given the most difficult mission – to make the fallen ballerina know what love is. As I am writing this, I can’t help but feel emotional because the show knows how to attack one’s heart. I will not be telling more of its plot for I might end up spoiling it so I’ll just provide my major take away from this kdrama. (This is one of those kdramas that I can watch again and again coz it’s beautiful)

I was raised in Catholic faith, which is really not a surprise for a Filipino like me since this country is heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, but ever since I’ve become an adult and finally opened my eyes and allow myself to stop living under the notorious gaslighting of people around me, I struggled with my faith in God. It’s really difficult living a traumatized life. In 2018, I seek for professional help and was diagnosed with Dysthymia and Social Anxiety Disorder. And despite therapy and medication, I have not yet healed and sometimes feel like my situation is getting worse. As such, I felt so alone in my struggles which became the reason why I relate to Yeon Seo’s character. People labeled her as a cold bitch and most of them are expecting her to just move on and heal without fully understanding where she is coming from. When Yeon Seo said “Do you know what it feels like to be left behind? It feels like I’m abandoned alone in an endless desert” it hit close to home. I know that one’s pain should not be an excuse for acting up and being mean but people should also understand that healing is different for all of us – we heal at our own pace at our own time. Pain can change a person – I know it fully well for I’ve become a completely different person because of all the pain I’ve been through. But what this show taught me is that God is a merciful God and He will not let us be drown into the abyss of darkness…..somehow, He will make a way to get us back on track and sometimes it’s in ways we never imagined it to be. Like how they sent angel Kim Dan into Yeon Seo’s life, God will also be sending us the answer to our prayers for He loves us and He is the only one who will never give up on us – even though we gave up on ourselves.

The Good Place

Major lesson: There is hope for humanity

I’ve been obsessed with sitcoms since 2019 (if I remember the year correctly) for they’re easy to watch and just fun but I never expected that a sitcom will make me become philosophical and somehow question my own morality: am I a good person?

For a show with only four seasons and fifty-three episodes, The Good Place sets the bar high for a sitcom.  It did not drag its plotline but is able to tell the entire story in a way that leaves the viewers satisfied with it. The Good Place is a story *SPOILER ALERT* that revolves around the afterlife lives of the four main characters: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason who all end up in the “good place” because they earned enough points on Earth but there’s a catch, two of them are not actually meant to be in the good place. Eleanor and Jason both mistakenly went to the good place because they died at almost the same time as someone with the same name as them but the other two actually deserved to be in the good place. The dilemma started when Eleanor admitted the truth to Chidi, a Philosophy professor who specialized in Ethics for he is torn between helping them or snitching on them. But perhaps the biggest plot twist of all, *SERIOUSLY STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT ANY MORE SPOILERS* they are not really in the good place. All four of them are in the Bad Place disguised as the good place and they were specifically chosen to torture each other, just like what Jean Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people” Now this gets interesting because while none of these four people have committed heinous crimes which can then make them deserving of a spot in the bad place, the actions they’ve done during their lifetime on earth has bearing. At first I find it surprising how Chidi and Tahani end up in the bad place considering that Chidi spent his life in the pursuit of goodness and Tahani is a philanthropist who raised millions of dollars for charities. But then, as the show progressed, I understood. Chidi’s vast knowledge of morality made him become an indecisive person which led towards the suffering of others. Chidi made other people suffer because he finds it difficult to make a choice. On Tahani’s part, she raised millions of dollars to help improve the lives of others but such is a self-serving interest – she did not do those things because she wanted to help but because she wants to make herself look good. On Eleanor’s part, while she did not commit serious crimes, she was a big ass jerk towards others during her time on earth. With Jason, although he is kind, his actions often lead to disasters and although unintentional, harm towards others. With these in mind, I guess it’s safe to say that humans are doomed for the things we do are most of the time self-serving. It’s hard to make it to the Good Place because in one way or another, we do some things that affect others in a negative way. But what this show also taught me is that while it’s true that hell is other people……humans have a chance to improve and be better when given the proper environment as well as when they help each other out. Just like what Michael said “The point is, people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t?”

At first, this show kind of made me realized that I’ve been a bad person….that most of the decisions I’ve made in life are self-serving….I only do things that benefit me and I could not care less about other people but my biggest realization here is that, I acted this way because my unhealed pain and trauma is manifesting itself. I have been hurt way too much that it made me become a bad person and end up with the mantra that life is shitty anyway so why try to be good? And because of that, I felt bad. Now, I try my best to do good things, not because I want to feel good for myself but because it’s the right thing to do. I have come to the realization that just because I was hurt does not mean I have the right to inflict pain on others. I know that morality is not something that can easily be answered since it’s such a complex thing and humans are flawed but as what Michael said (he has a lot of great lines from the show, I can’t help but to keep on quoting him) “What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is, if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from? That’s my answer.” Please, please, please watch The Good Place! I guess it’s one of the best, if not the best, sitcoms ever.

Mystic Pop-up Bar

Major lesson: Grudges are the heaviest to carry/ the art of letting go

One word to describe this k-drama? HEARTWARMING. With only 12 episodes, this k-drama was able to provide me comfort and healing. I did not actually expect much from this as I only watched it because of Yook Sungjae but what I failed to realize is that this kdrama’s approach to storytelling will be heartwarming. The plot is pretty simple for a fantasy drama: a woman, Weol-ju, runs a pop-up bar in order to fulfill her mission of settling the grudges of 100,000 people but as the years went by, it became difficult for her to have people to open up. When people fail to open up about the grudges they are holding, then it will be difficult for her to help them in solving their problems. And since it is taking her way too long to finish her mission, she was given an ultimatum of having to finish her mission within a month – good thing is she found two people to help her with the case: the afterlife police agent Gwi and the human with special ability of making people open up to him just by having a slight physical contact with them, Kang Bae. I love the way these three main characters complemented each other and I sometimes wish that I was given the chance to be a customer at the Mystic Pop-up Bar not just to have them help me solve my grudges but because sometimes, all we need is people who will listen to us.

As mentioned, Weol-ju’s mission is to help people settle the grudges they are carrying and she makes it happen by having people go inside her pop-up bar, let them tell their stories to her and then she will eventually offer them a special drink (which she disguises as an alcohol) that will make them fall asleep so she can enter the dream world and do her work in settling the grudge. While watching this drama, I can’t help but wonder: why do people drink when they have problems? For someone who never drinks and is not interested in drinking, I’ve always been curious of it. They said that alcohol tastes bitter, so I don’t understand why it seems to be helping people in dealing with their problems? Some say that by drinking, it helps them escape their reality for a while. I did some research about this topic and according to Origins Recovery, alcohol contains anxiolytic properties which means that it helps in inhibiting stress or anxiety. As for the bitterness, I heard from someone that as time passes by, the bitterness become sweet unlike life itself in which as time passes by, it becomes more overwhelming. I guess drinking really helps people to take a pause from the absurdity of life despite its bitterness as well as the headache that follows after drinking. Moreover, who am I to judge people who rely on drinking when their life becomes a mess when I also have my own ways, sometimes self-destructive, of finding an escape from this horrible world that we live in? After all, when life gets too tough, we all just want an escape – even though it’s temporary.

With every episode, Weol-ju and her squad helped people settle their grudges and each time they do, it makes me feel emotional. This show makes me realized that all of us are carrying grudges we don’t talk about and when we do not have the avenue to vent it out, then it eats us up alive. All of us are no stranger to struggles, but it is important to be strong and courageous. We can choose to struggle alone but asking for help does not mean you are weak.

Let me end this blogpost by putting my favorite line from Weol-ju: “No matter what’s making you suffer right now, things will settle and pass eventually. Hang in there until then, and you’ll find yourself stronger”

x,

TinaMae

[trashcatsnark]

Hard agree on you about CDPR's characterization of Johnny. It's not only that he doesn't show up as often as he should, and that his lines are a bit wonky sometimes (side gigs mostly), but they also kinda made him more of an asshole than he actually is? Like, they made Rogue say that he cheated on her. Three times. That is not in the actual lore. Why did they add that??? In the actual story they even share a sweet moment with him saying she's the best and calling her by her actual name.

Part 2 For Context: Another thing to add to my post, TTRPG Johnny also buys entire warehouses and converts them into living spaces for homeless artists and such. He does free concerts to expose NCPD brutality. The guy even felt bad in 2013, when he made the people rally against Arasaka bc he didn't want any of them to die. Like, he's a shit, but he's actually a very decent man too. I guess 2077 Johnny is just an engram and not the real one, but still, could've done better with his writing.

I'm trying to think carefully of how I wanna word this. Because I know when discussing problematic character behaviors, its a slippery slope at times. So, I wanna preface by saying, I am by no means justifying his actions by any means.

However, my issues with his characterization have less to do with me wanting him to be nicer and/or closer to his TTRPG counterpart. I'm not someone who was heavy into the TTRPG, I never played, I've just done some cursory research into it out of curiosity after playing the video game. Mostly out of curiousity of what still could or would fit into the video game. I've talked a bit of how I think the Silverhand Studio warehouses could fit as a project he tried when he was younger that failed. And I could easily see the police brutality awareness concerts still being something samurai did, cause Johnny in cyberpunk 2077 still cares about and is passionate about those issues; but he's a giant fucking asshole disaster who treats people like shit. At least thats how I see him.

And like, again, not justifying his actions but from a character and narrative standpoint. I like the decision to make him an asshole. Because to me, personally, his growth and redemption is the best part of the game. Like, obviously I love a lot of other things in the game and it has value beyond that. But to me his redemption and changing is so critical to the plot. That if he was just good guy johnny who is still good guy johnny by the end, it would take a lot away from the game to me. Which may or may not be fucked up that I prefer an asshole who becomes nicer than nice man who stays nice. But a journey is more interesting than a sit, ya know?

But my issues are generally; at times inconsistencies, consequences for his assholery, and just wish we saw more.

Ive talked somewhat about how he can be inconsistent in his development between main quests and side quests. He can be very erratic, which that also is probably just part of his character rather than an inconsistency. But those things can make it hard to understand him and can feel odd. But that also can just come from sidemissions being mostly nonlinear. In my ideal world where cdpr gave themselves more time; i would have liked if side quest/gig dialogue changed based on Johnny and V's relationship, the same way it does in the quests with kerry and in the endings/embers. Like if he do a gig with 0 affection, he may not show up or be a dick. But if you do that same gig with 70% he for sure shows and is more concerned for V. Like just that little level of consistency. Which i know it'd require more time and getting keanu back in the booth but, it'd have been nice.

Ive talked at length before about how I wish Johnny faced some more consequences for being a dickhead, so I wont bore anyone with more of that.

As far as the Rogue stuff you mentioned, that kind of goes into my issue of wishing we'd seen more. Cause V is suppose to have Johnny's memories lurking around their skull but we only see 2 memories??? Rogue says at the date: "lets go back in time before i knew what a bastard you were" there was a time when he was at least on some level decent. I refuse to believe he managed to convince Rogue and Alt to date him, being an asshole out the gate. There had to have been softer moments. But we the player dont get to see them. We only see the worst of Johnny in the past, despite supposedly having all his memories as V.

Like Johnny who cheated on Rogue and the Johnny who was soft with her and called her by her real name: very much can be the same guy and both having happened. Johnny getting attached and that scaring him so be does dumb shit and destroys everything. Johnny having genuine feelings but being unwilling to embrace them fully. Johnny giving breadcrumbs of affection to keep people around then snapping and doing something devastating when he worries they've gotten too close. Then regret it and give another breadcrumb of affection because he does feel that affection, he cares, but hes fucked in the head. Intentionally or not, stringing the people who care about him along. He's whiplash and a whirlwind. And that all makes sense and fits his in video game character to me, because hes meant to be a toxic asshole who really does care but has to get his shit together big time. But we dont see the nicer moments enough, we dont see what drew Rogue, Kerry, and Alt into his life. We dont see enough of those moments in my opinion. The closest is, when alt dies, if you choose the nice goodbye to kerry, and the way he tried to smooth things over with alt in the alley way before she was kidnapped, oh and the little hand hold. You get really brief moments but you mostly just see the assholery. It would have been nice to see how he met the people who mattered to him, seen more of his good, more of that charisma he claimed to have. In general, I would have liked more exploration of his character and his relationships

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

You say the story of Rescue Team frustrates you? How come?

Rant ahead. Rant ahead about a game I unironically love, but I spend far too much time overthinking the plot of, hence my grievances.

Maybe I just held it to unfair standards on account of playing it for the first time after Explorers of Sky. Which is easily the greatest pokemon game ever made, accept no substitutes. Nah, Rescue Team DX is addicting, the music is incredible as always in these games, and the gameplay has been massively overhauled and made far superior to the original, which while fun, was pretty buggy. And the game does have some pretty cool characters, too. Like...whatever I may yell to the heavens about Albus Dumbledore from HP, make no mistake that he’s an exceptional and three-dimensional character. Same goes for Snape. And that applies to this game as well. 

The main reason this game’s story irritates me comes down to Gengar and Alakazam. Again, they’re very well written characters...but I hate them. I despise both of them. I don’t know what it is, but Alakazam rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. Him and his whole team are so self-important, so arrogant. They condescend the MC and act like they’re the ruling body of the town square. Alakazam goes around telling people that he knows everything. That’s a god complex if you ask me. At several points, the characters make decisions based on the assumption that he is stronger than the MC, which you as a player never get to challenge. (Think of Leon from Sword/Shield, but a million times worse.) The Partner character is so in awe of them, so enamored by them. Yet behind MC’s back, Alakazam knows (or suspects) them to be the human of legend and doesn’t tell them “for their sake.” Which gives me strong Nozomi (SMT IV: Apocalypse) vibes, since later on he ignores all responsibility for having been "complicit" with the MC's secret. 

The Fugitive Arc doesn't make any damn sense. First of all, Xatu claims that the disasters, all of the trouble, are being caused by the Human from the Ninetales Legend. Ninetales later debunks this. When I first played this game, I legitimately thought Xatu would wind up being some kind of secret villain, that he had lied, and that the Fugitive Arc was all started by him. This doesn't wind up being true, and we never get an answer for why he thought the Human of Legend was responsible for the state of affairs, nor did anyone question his being wrong or acknowledge his role in all this. But the one who really started everything was Gengar. He doesn't really annoy me until the Post-Game (I'll get to that) but everyone else's reactions to Gengar's story bother me. He is a known liar, a known trouble-maker who no one likes. It's well known that he has a vendetta against the MC. He has no proof whatsoever of his allegations. And everyone just buys it, despite MC now having a great reputation, because...I guess MC didn't actively deny it? Which the player was given no agency in? And it doesn't stop the accusation from being ridiculous? 

Enter Alakazam. Apparently, everyone held a town meeting that must have taken all of ten seconds, to decide what to do about MC. They held this meeting without MC or the Partner present, because having them there would make too much sense I guess. Team A.C.T. prepares to...I guess kill MC? As well as the Partner, even though they're completely innocent. Before Alakazam hesitates and decides to give the MC a day to run away. Hold on, if he is so convinced that MC has to die to save the world, how do he justify letting them go? I guess the same way he justifies how he "knew" MC was the human of legend this whole time and said nothing about it? He bids MC to run, and throughout the entire Fugitive Arc, his team is the looming threat. Which was quite frustrating for me, already a Diamond Rank and probably higher leveled than Team A.C.T, because I would have been happy to settle things with Alakazam right then and there. It is beyond frustrating that the story denies me this chance. Not to mention, half of the town shows up to say goodbye when MC and the Partner take off. Like...okay, at least half of the town believes in MC. How in the hell is this even happening? Why do we have to flee when so many characters are on our side? When there's no proof? Why is Alakazam's word just considered law? If he “knows everything” how come he doesn’t know that Gengar is human as well, if he could sense MC’s humanity? 

You don't know how badly I wish there was a fight with Team A.C.T. when all was said and done. And the game could have done it, too! Just have it take place at the top of the Mt. Freeze, before Ninetales shows up. They have a skirmish that takes place in a cutscene, but even in the remake - there's no boss battle. Why not? It's not like this dungeon has a boss battle otherwise. Wouldn't it have been a fitting conclusion to this arc? Maybe I'm biased, maybe I just think it would have been cathartic to kick Alakazam's ass, to make him put his money where his mouth is...because again, the arrogance. He demands Ninetales tell him what happened, and that "depending on your answer, I may be forced to eliminate MC" Ah, slow your roll there, buddy. Ninetales already broke up the fight and made it clear that it's not going to happen. You're a guest in their domain. On top of that, Team A.C.T. basically forbids you from going to Magma Cavern to challenge Groudon. As if you haven't just proven yourself capable of braving dangerous dungeons. As if, after they chased you halfway around the world and were proven completely wrong, they have any right to talk down to you or tell you what to do. Again, I so, so wish we could have fought them and taught them a lesson. 

In general, this is a consistent thing with the other characters, following the Fugitive Arc. Everyone focuses on how happy MC and the Partner must be to have their names cleared, (Again, the Partner was accused of nothing. Like, literally nothing.) and no one stops to address that everyone in the Town Square should be falling to their knees and begging our forgiveness for what they put us through. Several of them tried to kill us. Upon returning to the Town Square, Gengar acts like MC is turning them-self in because they don't have any proof, even though he never had any proof to begin with, and it's only after MC is "cleared" by Team A.C.T. that everyone remembers that Gengar is untrustworthy. Reading the words "under the watchful eye of Alakazam" has always made me extremely salty. I don't have much to say about the Mankey brothers but they irritated me as well. Maybe I was just out of patience after the Fugitive Arc but I found myself wondering why we appeased them at all. Initially, we give them the chestnuts because they attack us if we don't. No matter how many times we beat them, they keep attacking if they're told no. I realize it's a staple in Pokemon games to have false yes/no choices, but those are especially noticeable in the games that focus on story. And sometimes the excuses are just pathetic. Meanwhile, the other pokemon continue to treat you as rookies, as kids. You are once again "forbidden" by...um, the other townsfolk, from going on the Rescue Mission until you talk them into it. It's like...guys. You put us through hell. We could have died a dozen times over, because you bought into the mob mentality for no good reason. How does everything just go back to normal after that? 

I don't mind Gengar at first. He's a villain, and a well-written one. He's got a clear personality and there's hidden depth in there as well. He's one of my favorite characters in the game, easily. And all of the stuff he does in the main story? Stealing the mail, manipulating Caterpie, and the stuff during the Fugitive Arc? That weird psychedelic sequence where he's dragging MC down to hell at the end? (Or whatever that was?) All fine by me. He's a villain. He's doing bad things. But sweet Arceus is Gengar annoying in the Post-Game. I wonder if this must be how Merula Snyde Antis feel, over in the HPHM Fandom. Because the MC has absolutely no motivation or reason to help him out. He just demands that they act as his bodyguard, offers nothing in return, and won't leave you alone until you say yes. Buddy, my team has like thirty pokemon at this point and they're all hanging out in the Friend Areas a few feet away. You think you can intimidate me? The only reason I'm helping is to progress the storyline. And throughout this entire storyline, you have to help Gengar even though he hasn't earned it. 

He does not deserve forgiveness, or a reconciliation with Gardevoir. What if I don't want to help him because I don't think Gardevoir would want to see him? What if I think that it would do her no good to see him? He's unrepentant and awful, the story does the bare minimum to suggest that he's changed. Now I will admit one thing: I love the moment that Ninetales first appears, sees Gengar, and simply goes "...What do you want." Like. Like that was the moment that I put it together, before he went on to tell the rest of the story. I love simple moments that make the big reveal crystal clear without needing to directly tell or show the audience. I've always dug that. But everything that happens after that is frustrating. Gengar demands the curse be lifted, despite having no justification to offer Ninetales. He threatens to attack them, but then clarifies that MC will be the one doing the fighting. Excuse me? Why would I ever do that? MC just found out the truth about Gengar, what he did to Gardevoir, and then how he pinned it all on them during the fugitive arc. Gengar, why would I attack Ninetales after this, instead of attacking you? Tell me I don't initiate battle against you right now? Thankfully MC doesn't have to actually fight Ninetales, but they are still forced to testify at Gengar's "trial" and it's a forgone conclusion because no matter what answers you give, it's treated as MC acknowledging his growth and he is forgiven at the end. 

Oh, I’ve just thought of something else. MC isn’t given a reason for why they have to leave the Pokemon world, or why they were able to return. Explorers gave a reason. Gates to Infinity and Super Mystery Dungeon made a whole post-game story out of their reasons. Here? We get nothing. MC’s “role” has finished and so they have to return to the human world. Never mind what they want. Not until after the dramatic moment where they have to leave has passed, anyway. That voice at the end who suggests that we may be able to see our partner again just by “wishing.” Who the hell was that? What did they mean? Look, by Pokemon standards, the Rescue Team story is quite substantial. By Pokemon Mystery Dungeon standards? It’s...probably the weakest story. I mean, to be fair, Super Mystery Dungeon had the endless schoolhouse arc that added up to nothing in the second act. But hell, that was still fun. And I suppose the Fugitive Arc and Gengar’s “redemption” were fun too. Just frustrating as well. 

[prairiedust]

More Last Holiday Musings...

I want to poke at that interdimensional geoscope a little more, because upon reading it over again, I think I splashed it up a little fast and there are a couple of points I’d like to be clearer about. I meant to queue this up to post last night but also want it to be up before Gimme Shelter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This is more blue curtains lit crit with a dash of folklore and an honorable mention for post-structuralism. And we’re talking about Supernatural after all, so this is sort of... well, it’s about endings.

Last Holiday was not a typical “filler” or even a typical MOTW episode. It felt extremely insular, possibly more so than any other episode I can think at any other point in the series. As opposed to the usual crowd of “locals,” a spate of victims, and a couple of red herring suspects, the only other people in this ep besides the Winchesters (including Jack) and Mrs. Butters were the two vampires and Cuthbert Sinclair. There was no “case” as in a usual MOTW-- there was no Chuck Struggle, either, and the lack of mytharc was strange against the lack of “filler” schema. That lack of “MOTW investigation” marked this episode also as being about “curiosity”-- the Winchesters all-too-quickly took Mrs. Butters for granted-- Dean even dismissed her as a “Magic Roomba” and that seemed to settle the matter. Furthermore, the moment that Dean spotted Mrs. B in his room, the stage was set for Antics ™ when she held up his goofy Scooby boxers, and indeed a zaniness, an almost manic energy drove the action forward at a breakneck pace. [Spoiler alert, we do get “investigation” in the next episode, 15x15 Gimme Shelter, as stills and the preview show that Castiel and Jack will be teaming up together, in yet another shake-up of the usual “MOTW” template, almost like we can expect the other side of a coin when Sam and Dean switch places with Cas...] These features set Last Holiday apart as not so much “filler” as “between,” as in there was struggle before, and there will be struggle after, but for a while there was cake. (Contrast this to the usual “peril of the threshold” that usually shrouds liminality if you’d like.)

At the end of Last Holiday, however, we finally get to find out what that old blue telescope really is, and with that name we get confirmation that there are no more alternate universes-- Chuck has burned them all. Viewers are left to come to the conclusion that in retrospect the telescope-thing could have changed the course of season 13 completely. The reveal is played off as darkly funny, but it’s also kind of a gut-wrenching moment, too. All the heartbreak of the last two and a half years, reviewed now through the lens of “if only.” If only they’d known about Mrs. Butters from the time they found the bunker, “none of this would have happened”… they’d have had monster radar, they’d have had the geoscope, they would have had supernatural help of a completely different level.

The temptation to read Last Holiday as a Chuck-free episode is strong, but fraught-- the threat of Chuck’s involvement has been established by a pattern this season (well the pattern is woven throughout the whole series really but Dabb has deliberately structured these last three seasons with an exponentially increasing frequency.) I feel like we’ve been conditioned this season in particular to hold ourselves in a perpetual flinch, to be afraid of what we’ll learn “in retrospect.” That geoscope was really_good_subtext, and it is entirely possible, even encouraged, at this point in the plot to take information we’ve learned from the naming of the object, examine our own conditioned response to this episode, and apply both things to the structure of the season so far and make a prediction as to what might happen in the main plot. That’s what I mean about subtext getting loud. We’ve been given the green-light to make a prediction about The Struggle and march forward with it, and see if we will be correct by extrapolating the pattern, or if that expectation will be subverted (the twist is set up to run either way, so either outcome is satisfying.) It is Melville-esque architecture of the highest degree;I could write another thousand words just about that. So I have a prediction that I’m hanging on to, because of what we’ve learned from the geoscope, and what kinds of clues were hung up in Last Holiday, and I’m super excited to either have my hunch confirmed or be frightfully and delightedly surprised. I mean, where the fuck did Jeremy Adams even come from? He’s like our own Mrs. Butters, showing up in the last quarter to run a couple game-changing balls into the end zone, it’s bonkers. I mean, I know writing mysteries is hard and requires still AND cunning, but damn, son.

But anyway, back to the geoscope… 

I’m perplexed, from a very “lit crit” perspective, but this is where I’m at and why I referenced blue curtains-- if you shine too bright a light on subtext, does it evaporate-- like looking through an interdimensional geoscope and not seeing anything-- or is “subtext” sometimes not some ephemeral fever-dream that we as viewers conjure up through our experiential interlocution with the text but something a writer has steeped into the narrative as part of their craft? Or when you’re talking about an evolving iteration of writers, is it possible that one picks up a thread that another wove in for something else, repurposing or amplifying it? And, when perhaps is something deliberately instilled in the text in order to become “text” at just the right time? In Moby Dick, [spoiler alert lol] Quequeg’s coffin-- formerly one of many symbolic vehicles used to foreshadow the doom of the Pequod-- is repurposed as a life buoy and becomes the actual object that saves Ishmael’s life, transforming it from a portent of disaster to a symbol of salvation and then to one of Ishmael’s guilt for surviving Ahab’s madness-- the guilt that had been made text by the very opening line of the book, “Call me Ishmael.” In retrospect, the connotations of wandering, exile and salvation behind the name that the narrator gives himself become crystal clear. The problem that the post-structuralist model of “reading” as simultaneously “creating the text” has manufactured is that the idea that “subtext” can often be discounted as something dreamed up wholecloth by the reader, and thus inferior, imaginary, even delusional (and I use that last word knowing what a loaded term that is in the spn fandom, but this is not about a ship, even) where once it was considered to be a valid and measurable part of the text itself, like that dang coffin. It was the basement, the underpinnings, the catacombs below the opera house sure, but it helped to hold up the structure. And for some reason, putting subtext into a piece of media has become passe, or cringe? Anyway, not to be bitter on main but it didn’t used to be this way, at least not in the heady early days of postmodernism. So that green light? Critical hit against blue curtains. And while yes, some readings are going to be better supported than others, and the wild variety of checklists in this fandom mean that some conclusions have been drawn which can’t pan out, if you’re paying attention to the structure, the subtexts, the alchemical/psychoanalytical/postmodern themata, the ending will be very satisfying. 

So. What was once speculated to be a symbol for emotional lows or turning points (among other things) in the bunker was textually hit with a bright green light, then Dean got curious about it in text, and we were told-- in text-- that oh it’s just a fancy spyglass, and now that the other worlds are gone, it has no purpose…. that’s what I mean about the geoscope now being “pure”-- it wasn’t clear whether the telescope ever had any function, subtetxtual or not, and now that it’s certain what it’s “function” was, it’s now freed up as a “symbol”-- unless like in Moby Dick it’s new “purpose” is revealed later, but right now it’s caught in this liminal place of not-quite-clue and not-quite-metaphor... 

However, and I didn’t put this in my first post because I was trying to be fast and not a wet blanket, but I felt like finally naming the geoscope was an ending. 

This is literally Singer, Dabb, and Co tidying up the house before locking it behind them.

I think when Dean said he didn’t see anything through the “telescope thing,” that we’re to understand that maybe this was the last hurrah of the cute, zany, campy “subtext” or even “metatext” if you’d rather that so many of us have been parsing and which has gotten so weird and bright since season 12/13. I think I said in one of the folklore posts that writing about some of the things I write about feels like making daisy chains in the endzone during the big game. Which is fun, that’s how I personally got through having to be in AYSO soccer for four years, by looking for four leafed clovers and eating orange quarters. And we got a wood nymph in this episode, textually even, so I could easily check the “folklore” box on this one. But the sheer euphoria of Last Holiday and all the sparkles it brought into the story aren’t meant to last. When you look back on fifteen years of text, a lot of it is bleak, miserable stuff. That’s not to say that episodes like Yellow Fever and Hunteri Heroici and Fan Fiction et al shouldn’t be celebrated. But I think from here on out, things are going to be less “golly gee, three birthdays!” and more “There she blows! --there she blows! A hump like a snowhill!”

This episode was a gift in many ways, not just for the sense of glee it transmitted-- it also did so much work and there are things I want to yell about in the way language was hit, the red versus green lighting, the way the backwards holidays worked, the projector as a metaphor for Mrs. B projecting her regrets and fears onto Jack, the amount of food that was created and consumed, how that smoothie was also an echo of “fairy food” or an underworld pact if you squint-- but the stakes are so high now. We haven’t been shown the next valley-- there was no final scene of Chuck rubbing his hands together like the villain from a melodrama, for example-- but the last image we got was Jack blowing out a candle. After the candle is blown out, the cake is dismantled and consumed. Once the story is over, all the themes that are so hard to grapple in a text like a television show can be gathered up and analyzed. (IS that all, though? After all, Dean made his own cake later, which, like, echoes of the “oh two cakes” comic lol...)

Since I really never want to leave anything I toss out on this blog on a last note of doom and gloom, however, I do want to say that I too understand what that last image meant. It meant, as Sam said, make a wish. Think of the future, think of free will, and hope for something wonderful to happen. (or do like me and wonder what the hell Jack wished for with dread and anticipation ha ha ha.)

[gosagacious]

HAWK fails at a postapocalyptic future

I’m waiting for my copy of HAWK from the library, but from what I’ve heard from other readers, it sounds like it hasn’t changed much since the ARC. That’s frustrating. Partly because there were so many plot holes.

In Maximum Ride Forever, the world has been hit by a meteor, and then gone through not only that fallout but numerous weapons like a lab-created plague and nuclear bombs. Major cities are flooded, or cratered, or experiencing nuclear fallout. A significant part of the population is dead. We meet only a handful of adults. The vast majority of survivors who we see are children, and quite a few of those are mutants. The ending features a battle between child armies. 

In MRF, we are given to believe that these are the people on whom the rebuilt future rests. 

In HAWK, we get a completely different fallout.

Take all of that stuff from MRF and add in a four-year-long nuclear winter. The surviving child soldiers do have resources and can work on planning, but all the characters we know of go into underground bunkers to survive.

Eleven years after that – sixteen years total since the extinction-level event - there are multiple cities full of people of all ages. These cities feature skyscrapers, massive drug labs, evil science facilities, tanks, cars, guns with government chips in them, paved streets, plumbing. Film studios, movie cameras, animated cartoons! There is a hidden canyon city with houses carved into the walls, which one imagines would have taken a very long time, but which is apparently quite well-established. There are doctors and nurses. Where did they get their degrees? Are they all in their thirties and younger, or were they adults who we didn’t meet in MRF? 

It’s difficult to tell the ratio of mutants to humans, but from what we see, mutants are occasional but rare. (So much for Itex’s plan to have their mutants rule the world.)

On to the social status quo. Now, bear in mind that Hawk never got an education and has lived in one place for as long as she can remember. Okay: Hawk does not know what the ocean is. She does not know what a squirrel is. She believes that horses and pandas are mythical creatures, and she talks about “Crismins” instead of Christmas.

More widely, everyone, including Americans, has adopted the metric system, people talk about the “gods” and some worship statues. Okay. Fine, I guess. I can even sort of take Max’s inspirational speech reminding the citizens that they deserve to be treated like human beings.

But it’s difficult to tell how much of this is Hawk being clueless and growing up in a hellhole of a city, and how much is meant to be genuine worldbuilding of “See! See how different this dark, gritty future is! See how much has been forgotten! Our main character has heard only a garbled version of the word ‘Christmas!’”

Except that it has been only sixteen years since the world ended. It has only been eleven years since they really had the chance to start rebuilding.  I know we only see two cities and one prison island, and it’s hinted there’s more of a connection to the previous world in the free city of Tetra, but this is ridiculous.

Technology, infrastructure and population should be low. Connection to the previous world’s pop culture and society should be high. There are adults running around for whom sixteen years is only a fraction of their lives. There would still be teenagers who would have been born before the apocalypse.

Instead, the book treats things as if it has been much longer. High population, infrastructure and technology. Low connection to the previous world. 

After sixteen years, things have changed so much that a girl born at the pivotal point does not know the word Christmas. She does not know what the ocean is; she has never heard anyone talk about islands, or cruises, or going to the beach. In a world where TV is a constant presence, she thinks horses are made up. But Christmas is what really gets me. Look at how much Christmas takes over stores and media around December. Are you telling me that in under two decades, people forgot the word Christmas?! They have TV and cartoons, and in the past decade and a half, nobody has ever cranked up some old carols?? 

After all this, I want to try a quick worldbuilding of what the Maximum Ride future might look like. This is just spitballing; there are any number of directions it could go.

What HAWK could look like if the future followed a sensible pattern:

To begin: after natural disasters, plague, nuclear bombings, and a four-year nuclear winter, you’d have a vastly shrunken population. Most of the characters seen in Maximum Ride Forever are orphaned children. There will be huge gaps in the age population. I’ll hypothesize that most adults died in the plague. By the time of HAWK, you probably don’t see anyone over 65, and even that might be pushing it.

On the other hand, I expect there will be a huge emphasis on repopulating the planet. The survival of the human race is still in question. Let’s say there was a baby boom right after the nuclear winter ended and people started leaving their bunkers. You see a lot of kids around 10-11 years old. Hawk will hardly ever meet anyone her age; she was born in a patch of time when pretty much nobody was having babies. There are no abusive orphanages. Children are far too treasured. Even if death rates are high and orphans are common, there will be people anxiously collecting up those orphans and raising them in a safe place. Hawk’s orphanage could still be a weird place, but the kids wouldn’t be disappearing or taken off to evil laboratories. Although—more on that in a minute.

By the time of HAWK, the Apocalypse’s shadow still looms; anyone 20 or older can remember where they were and what they were doing That Day. They reminisce to each other or to their children about the old days. Hawk can be skeptical, as in canon, that some of these stories are true. Enough people that the world was struggling with overpopulation? How is that possible?

The survivors are people who went down into bunkers. Let’s say there were bunkers scattered all over the world. You’ll get a lot of wacky survivalist types, and also probably some of those scientists and major businessmen who were talking about the end of the world in the older MR books, and who could afford to build bunkers. Speaking of which: Himmel! This was the main villain’s bunker that the Flock and their army of child soldiers ended up moving into. Chock-full of advanced technology.

The groups in these bunkers would have lived together for four years in close quarters, relying on each other to survive (or maybe fighting to the death, I don’t know). Groups like the one in Himmel will probably be incredibly close-knit. Even after the nuclear winter is over, it will make sense for people to use those bunkers as bases. Towns, and one day cities, will grow up around them. Some people may still live primarily in underground apartments.

Maybe (I could be pushing it here) there are some people who stayed out of the bunkers and ended up in a hunter-gatherer caveman-type existence. If they survived, this could be an important allyship or a source of tension with the bunker-dwellers. Do they join up? Do they keep their distance?

Major cities do not exist (so no “City of the Dead”). The older cities are uninhabitable and being reclaimed by nature, long stripped of resources even if they aren’t just piles of rubble. Most people are not concerned about rebuilding them right now, and there probably aren’t even enough surviving workers with the right knowledge; a lot of professions will have to be re-developed from the ground up. Suffice to say there are no new skyscrapers going up.

The immediate concern will be food. Agriculture will have suffered from the nuclear winter. Some people are working on traditional farms, but we do have that advanced technology from Himmel, and the surviving scientists will be in high demand for developing new food sources.

I’m thinking of lots of farming communities centered around the safety of the bunkers. They will spread outwards only gradually. And there was a large population of mutant “Aquatics”, so new towns may not necessarily be built on land. We could have towns built on or under the water, and farms focused on fish and seaweed.

Mutants make up a major percentage of the surviving population. There’s no more of scientists coming after mutants and picking them off. Mutants are the scientists now, in many cases; the mutant kids growing up in Himmel would have been studying the resources there and learning to build things necessary for the new world.

However, there’s a possibility of prejudice against mutants. Perhaps some of the human survivors, particularly from other bunkers, resent the mutants or see them as tied to the Apocalypse. The question of reproduction and having the human race survive? Maybe some people want humanity to be “pure.” They don’t want bird or fish DNA floating around in there. 

There will likely be a problem of ruffian bands who try to raid these settlements for food. Sometimes settlements raid each other. There may also be corrupt administrations, or gangs who offer “protection.”

There isn’t the same kind of worldwide connection. Although they certainly have the technology for long-distance communication, it will take a long time to rebuild the infrastructure and carry it all over the world. The postal system is gone. The transportation system is gone. Instead of booking a flight at the airport, you ask your buddy Susan if she can give you a ride in her crop duster to the next settlement. 

There are no huge, high-tech prisons, either. Nobody’s got the time or resources to devote to that, and there simply aren’t enough prisoners to fill up something like that. Prisons in this world? I’m picturing big old pits like in The Dark Knight Rises.

So here’s a shot at reworking the beginning of HAWK: Hawk’s parents leave her with a babysitter in a farming community, but while they’re away, it’s hit by raiders. In the destruction, along with food, the raiders also take kids to sell them. Hawk ends up in a weird orphanage obsessed with raising the new generation of the world and ensuring humanity’s survival. However, one of the administrators is bigoted against mutants, and when it’s discovered that Hawk is a mutant, she’s put aside with the other "non-ideal” kids, who are treated like servants. The orphanage might be under the “protection” of a gang - the Paters. Pietro can even still be around—except please less boring and maybe with a name that doesn’t sound like a tongue twister—and he might be a rare kid born around the same time as Hawk, maybe a year older, whose parents made it through the Apocalypse and kept their infant son alive because of their wealth.

That’s something I could have accepted. I can’t accept smacking Hawk in the middle of a generic dystopian city that seems a century or further into the future, when it should be only sixteen.