#Had her story arc been her gradually choosing to not be around people anymore then ok maybe yeah

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

I think one of the reasons why the theory that Arya will go away at the end of the story because she’s too far gone to assimilate back into society is so unconvincing is because she literally spends the latest two books (AFFC and ADWD) doing that very thing! Like her training hasn’t been about her being a reclusive murderous hermit. She literally spends the two books talking to people, making friends, integrating into new cultures. She’s around people all the damn time! And even if we bring up her ACOK and ASOS arcs which were rather dark in nature, she’s still around people interacting with them, still being a part of society (even if she’s quite low on the totem pole in those books).

Arya is a character who feels so strongly and whose arc is often dictated by how she interacts with the people around her. So to take that away from her is not only a bad understanding of her character arc (not to be condescending or anything), but it’s also not very satisfying as far as character/narrative progression goes. Because if the narrative has proven so far that even in her darkest moments, Arya can laugh and love and be such a passionate member of society, how then does it make sense for her to go away and be on her own?? How does that make sense when AFFC and ADWD prove that she still loves being around people?

[margridarnauds]

🖊!

It's funny because I was just thinking about how much I love Eleanor's personal aesthetic -- it's this sort of proto-gothic Elizabethan -- lots of black velvets, lots of furs, with her gradually getting more opulent designs as time goes on and she acquires more power (even though, in reality, a lot of the jewels are reused from gown to gown -- economical splendour, as she likes to think of it.) She'll often pair those black overgowns with a kirtle of cloth of silver -- there's a method to the madness on that one, since it's designed to be a total visual contrast to her Great Uncle Lugh, who has a white and gold color scheme, as well as visually align her to the Fomoire, who I tend to give a lot of silver as well. Overall, I designed her, from the beginning pretty much, to look like a Bad Guy -- besides all the black, she also is heavily scarred, very tall, and she smiles very little, except for around very close friends.

But in terms of her plot, there's also a ton of gothic elements to it that, I realize looking back, was/is me having fun with the genre. On the broader scale of things, there's her own arc, which is all about finding out hidden family secrets, coming to terms with her own fractured identity, confronting the past, etc. She doesn't speak all that often until about...a solid 1/4 of the way through her main arc, and at least part of the cause of that is supernatural in origin, and she only really starts to find her voice when she has to decide to either speak or, essentially, be killed. And then, when she finds her voice, there is the realization that people liked her more when she was quiet and convenient -- she used to be a really easy martyr, and now she's alive, she's communicating what she wants, and she isn't as easy to control. Her arc really starts when she is imprisoned, and so you have the kind of classic "lady in the tower" element to things, and then, once she's able to escape, her skin is very pale, her face has been scarred, she doesn't smile, she doesn't laugh -- it's an arc about trauma and, specifically, given that her brother locked her up (and his dynamic with her is...questionable) family trauma, but it's also that...she's a ghost now. She can't be that girl anymore. So she becomes this sort of ghost in her own story, and, when she's not in focus, she actually creeps quite a few people out because of how unearthly she can be. (Her biological father being one of the Fair Folk doesn't help.)

Then there is at least one subplot where she has to go toe to toe with an actual undead spectre, who is this a sort of manifestation of the past, this sort of manifestation of The Family™, that simultaneously rejects her (because, unknown to her until this point, she isn't Part of the Family, being a bastard, her mother having had an affair) and also wants her to join it. It wants her to become that same embodiment of greed and patriarchy and cruelty and she says "No" and proceeds to wreck him. And she continues that trend to the end -- she has the choice to either fully become queen, after ousting her brother from the throne, and either disinheriting or killing his daughter, or become regent, and she chooses to become regent.

She's very compassionate, even as she becomes more brittle as she gets older (a central reason for why she decides to take in her niece is that she essentially looks at the body count of their family over time and is like "...enough. This cycle has to stop here"), very intelligent, very loyal to her friends, very grounded, but also, even as she starts off fairly gullible, because of her isolation, becomes much savvier and quicker to understand the different shifting dynamics. She is much more traditional and conventional than a lot of the women around her, especially Berenice, Indusa, Ragnhild, who all are much more willing to step outside the box in many ways (Berenice by actively ruling + being a bit of a hedonist, Indusa by being a warrior, Ragnhild by having had sex), and sometimes that can be a blind spot. Even as she becomes more adaptable over time, she's most in her element when she has a template to work off of. Yes, she is written as autistic.

In general, I just love working with her. I love working with someone who gets that kind of arc, I love her finding her own agency over time, I love when she can lighten up enough to smile a little, I love her dynamics with the various friends she's made over the years, I love the way that she reflects and contrasts with so many other characters. (Besides a few classical elements and folklore elements, I pulled a LOT from Irish material, even beyond her aesthetic, and she's designed to deliberately be a foil to a number of big figures in it, along with a number of OCs in that same verse), I love how unapologetically gothic her entire deal is. She's my girl, I've loved working on her over the years, and I'm, as always, excited to figure out where the two of us are going to go next.

[lordymaru]

I'm about to refute this entire essay with the simple explanation being:

The only interaction we've seen of these two is when she's a freaking 8 year old. Your self insert shows no boundaries.

And this is probably the last time I'll make a post about the stupidity behind the way the pair is viewed:

Note: I know there's people out there with a brain who ship these two in a more conventional way. In the end you do you, ship whatever you want, no one can prevent you from doing that, just don't be gross about it.

One of the parts being the Significance of their first encounter:

She’s a poor peasant girl who’s suffered immense trauma, suffering, and loneliness. Her initiative to help Sesshomaru came from her generosity

Exactly, she's alone for her family had been killed before her eyes, the villagers treat her like garbage. When she meets Sess he's wounded and simply in a bad state, both mentally and physically. Both of them are, the difference being he's a demon, a powerful one and for him to have ended in such a bad shape only stabbed at his pride- Rin on the other hand is a child, a human tiny child who is vulnerable and to him she poses no threat. Both of them are weak then.

At this point, it’s observable that despite knowing her story, her scars, and her difficulties, humans do not even empathize, let alone sympathize with Rin. It is the feudal era, after all. She’s a young, disabled orphan and the villagers only see her for what she lacks: a voice, a family, and a place of belonging.

Again with your feudal era shit. I can assure you the world is just as ugly today as it was before you and I existed. Next.

When he asks about her bruises, this is the first time anyone had ever afforded her a second glance.

This was a huge step forward for Sess, a huuuuuuge one for he showed interest in another living creature, not just any creature but a human. And for her it was probably like Christmas, for no one had showed her any mercy or interest. Ok you get a point. But oh, boy, how I'm about to spit on the next one:

The audience can see Sesshomaru calculate her body language, recognizing that she is mute. Instead of pressing her further or ignoring her outright, he attempts to comfort her (in his own way), making her feel that it is okay if she chooses not to answer him; that her desire to reply to him should only be a desire, not an obligation. I think, on one hand, that was the first moment of something that would resemble compassion that Sesshomaru had ever administered, trying to put himself in her shoes — if someone had asked him to do something that required, for example, his left arm, he probably would have appreciated them saying “you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to” so to provide him agency for something that he actually cannot do. And the same goes for Rin. He recognizes her disability, maybe even resonates with it and decides to empower her with a choice. Choice is important when it comes to the Sesshomaru/Rin dynamic and it’s a word that will come up often. 

Ok why are you comparing the loss of his arm to her not being able to talk? Not all disabilities are the same, you moron. Or am I dumb for thinking this way? If so, feel free to call me out on my lack of common sense kr whatever you wanna call it. Sess physically couldn't do shit with his left arm because well- it was gone! That's a physical disability. Rin had "lost" her voice after what she witnessed and so she wouldn't speak anymore. Have you heard of Psychogenic Dysphonia? If not, you can click here and give it a reading or do your own research. The more you know: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0892199703000158

So you say he "empowers her with a choice" that is "important when it comes to the Sesshomaru/Rin dynamic" let me get this straight, a choice because why? She's a child? A female? Because you said so yourself, it's the Feudal Era after all and therefore women had no choice in life, no voice, no agency, no nothing. So he was being magnanimous then? You know... This is where you start edging into the gr00ming territory. Can't you see? No? Alright, moving on.

BRUH WHAT THE FUCK?! Are you fucking good? See how you self insert? Bye. Next

The next time Sesshomaru sees Rin, it is suggested that he actively sought her, whether it be by curiosity or concern for well-being

He did... It is not suggested, he actually did asdfhkl. For both curiosity and he probably was worried. He also states he wants to test out his sword, what a perfect chance to do so for Rin is pretty much dead and that's the only way to make his sword work. So she was both being a guinea pig and an itch he wasn't quite sure how to scratch. Next.

Silence Rin.

Rin screams endlessly, annoying Sesshomaru. Firstly, this is the first time we hear him call her by her name. Secondly, Sesshomaru is visibly annoyed by her noises, however, he does not tell her to “shut up” as he normally would with Jaken or even InuYasha. He simply says “enough of that Rin, stop it.” (In Japanese he says, “Silence, Rin. You make too much noise.”) Even analyzing the Japanese dialogue, it is evidently softer than Sesshomaru’s usual ‘kisama’ (貴樣) manner of speech that we see depicted usually. This is the first time he’s had a companion who is not a demon, someone with compassion, and who has had his general best interests at heart with no expectations in return. His softer tone is a logical deduction to make.

Ok... "someone with compassion, and who has had his general best interests at heart with no expectations in return." Bruh... As if he would even consider meeting someone's expectations. Are you sure you're talking about Sess? Another thing is, he always speaks in a calm tone, he rarely yells or loses his composure- he had no reason to be rude to her either, you're excusing his regular behavior simply because she ain't Jaken. Anything else?

Rin doesn't change Sesshomaru overnight, it's a gradual and long process

Well duh!!! Just like you don't lose the pounds you gained from eating in one sit 12 donuts a week ago. Stating the obvious and for what? What's exactly your mf point?

The silence part is important, idk how to tell you there is a power imbalance in their relationship from the moment he tells her to be quiet. He didn't say please, he didn't ask her to, he told her to be quiet. Like a parent would, if I could count the times my mom told me to shush.... That's your first indicator he is not her friend, he is not her equal.

Letting you Be Yourself: The Panther Demon Arc

the first frame the audience sees in the anime sets the scene, painting the Sessshomaru entourage in a serene manner, indicating a level of comfort between group members (episode 75). This is vastly different from our last depiction of Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship. In episode 44, he was unable to withstand her (albeit annoying) childish antics. But here, it’s observable that Sesshomaru can accept her and her package of unconventional fun. Not only does he tolerate and even more so, accept Rin, but he accepts her influence on his vassal, Jaken and allows them to be free around him.

Is called developing patience. I can assure you that when you're a parent or an older bro/sis and your kid/younger sibling is noisy af you either learn to tolerate that or get used to it for kids are kids abd you have to let them be kids. Next.

She's a child, she's not stupid.

The Abducted Rin: Calling her Name

The respect that Sesshomaru shows Rin is insurmountable. However, the InuYasha franchise is clever to portray the subtlety of Sesshomaru’s respect for her. KV on Twitter points out how highly he regards his companion and never relegates her to anything less than the value that she as a person embodies (@KVndie via Twitter). He consistently humanizes her. 

He only sees how important she is to him after her ass dies a second time. What do you mean? He respects her enough to not coddle her, she is independent and taught her to be self sufficient from the very start. That's respect. He consistently humanizes her because... She ... Is ... Human! OMG WHAT A SHOCKER!

As Naraku remarks on his hostage to Sesshomaru, "Naturally, the girl you're looking for is not here…,” he continues, “the girl is in custody outside of the castle..." Naraku never makes an attempt to give her personhood, leaving her unnamed, disposable, and relegating her to a mere "girl." But Sesshomaru doesn’t take any of this. He is a cold-hearted Daiyokai, yet he still makes an effort and upholds his principle to refer to her as Rin — not a replaceable “girl.”

Naraku is a mf genius. It didn't quite click until now he wanted to see if she was important or not to him and to what extent. For he planned his moves that way, making people turn against one another. While he wouldn't have made Rin turn against Sess he set everything up so he would end up wanting to kill Kohaku and in doing so, Inugang would have engaged against Sess.

Sesshomaru’s insistence on using Rin’s name isn’t only highlighted in this isolated incident though. It pays off. It is an ongoing theme in their dynamic throughout the series.

That's her name ... How you want him to call her? Baby?

I could go on and on but... This is a fucking essay. And then I stumble against more bullcrap:

The second point I want to highlight here is Sesshomaru’s reaction to Rin’s fall and her risky expedition. At this point, it’s unquestionable that Rin has a special place in his heart.

Of course she has a special spot in his heart. I won't deny that. What worries me is how you're trying to justify the way she's important to him since she was a child. As if his way of seeing her had changed.

I'm gonna disagree by agreeing with you in a few pointers. Kagome and Kikyo were rivals, they both romantically love the same guy. Kagome being the only one who could save Kikyo chooses to help her, knowing damn well Inuyasha would have suffered if Kikyo had died- further more, if it was in Kagome's hands to do something about it.

Rin on the other hand, I will applaud to her how she grew past her fear of Kagura after being kidnapped by her, she saw her body in the river and said fuck it and did her best to try to pull her from the water. I loved how stubborn and brave she was, even tho Sess had to pull everyone out of the water- she deserves a gold star. You go baby girl!!!

Rin later makes a cheeky comment, noting Kagura’s romantic interest in Sesshomaru. Jaken brushes this off as childish naivety. But for the spectator, this establishes two things: (1) That Rin does not see Kagura as a rival for Lord Sesshomaru’s attention, let alone affection; and (2) that Rin is still a child. Rin is certainly a child, with a youthful and fresh outlook on life that brings out the best in people. But even as a child, her relationship with Sesshomaru is incredibly healthy, clear, and surprisingly communicative.

Why would she? She's not a spoiled brat

Nah? I thought her double D indicated otherwise. OF COURSE SHE'S A MF CHILD.

Why do you keep mentioning is healthy? Do you need reassurance of it? Communicative in what way? Cuz if you wanna talk about communication let's talk about how he didn't even acknowledge her ass when she gave birth. He didn't even say her name, didn't even look at her. Tell me now how they are communicative and healthy?

I could go on, I really but all I'm getting from this load of bullshit I'm forcing myself to read is how you do in fact need to reassure yourself thr ship is god tier and is... How you said it was? Ah, healthy.

Anyways, thanks for reading and if you see any typo ... My apologies, I tried. Also if you have any input or I was out of line in some way, my apologies once more.

[thecatprince]

Roman vs Catra

A comparison and additional thoughts by me

Disclaimer: I am only on s4 of She-Ra at the moment, and so all of this is an observation from s1-4. Thank you and enjoy.

Part One - Introduction

So while watching She-ra and the Princesses of Power, I was thinking a thought that many fanders had probably thought before (unless they are normal) which is ‘what characters are most like what side?’. It is one of my favourite things to do, assign the characters of whatever show I am watching to one of the sides or fusions of the sides. It is kind of like sorting characters into Hogwarts Houses!

So I decided on the obvious ones, Scorpia being most like a version of Patton (she is so friendly and kind and has lots of love), Entrapta potentially being Logan (being entirely motivated by knowledge), but when it came to Roman I had an interesting take.

See, the most obvious choice for Roman was Adora. She had the classic hero’s story, gifted with incredible power, having to save the world and wanting to be for her friends, and having the mistakes of someone who had her power before her to amend etc. And that seems like a classic Roman thing, being Thomas’ hero (yes I went there) and a prince. But there was another character who was almost too perfect of a fit. Catra. Let me break it down...

Part Two - The Comparison

- All her life Catra has been told she is not good enough by Shadow Weaver, so much so that she does everything in her power to prove herself worthy, no matter the cost. Roman has the same mindset, although he has never been told he wasn’t good enough directly he obviously believes it and it is not out of character for him to do whatever it takes to feel worthy and become good enough.

- Everyone Catra loves, or even didn’t love, leaves her. It started with Adora, who couldn’t stay with the Horde when she found out what they were doing and joined Glimmer and Bow. Catra takes this to heart, believing that Adora left her because she didn’t care about her, making her more insecure. A comparison would be Patton accepting Janus, which Roman would take as him choosing Janus over Roman and that Roman wasn’t good enough, making him more insecure.

- When Catra is feeling insecure she lashes out, ironically causing others to leave her, which just makes her more insecure. Guess who else does this? Roman!! When he feels insecure he tends to lash out (take the making fun of Janus’ name as an example)

- Catra will do whatever it takes to prove herself, no matter the cost, to make herself worthy in the eyes of Hordak and prove everyone who doubted or hurt her wrong. Roman does a similar thing, choosing the wedding over the callback to please Patton, being nice to Janus to make up for his mistakes with Virgil, then being against Janus to once again be seen as good in the eyes of Patton and Thomas. They both crave validation and base their self worth in how someone they look up to or in a place of power perceives them.

- They both mask their insecurities by acting a certain way. With Catra, it is by being nasty and mean, lashing out at people and intimidating them. She is a pretty good actor (take when she is talking to Hordak in s4 ep 11, she looks perfectly fine and in control but the moment the call ends she bursts into tears). With Roman it is by being overly dramatic, hiding everything with his acting as much as he could and playing every off as a joke.

- Everything builds up until they finally snap. With Catra, it had started with Adora leaving and ended with Scorpia leaving, everyone slowly leaving her behind, she started to become angrier and angrier, she craved more and more power, and she pushed herself to the absolute max and then she finally snapped. It was a gradual buildup of all of her insecurities, everything everyone had told her, and everyone she had ever cared about leaving her, and then at the end of s4 she finally fully snapped. You could see the tear in the rope become thinner and thinner. With Roman, it started to get real at around about CLBG, and gradually built up, with some particularly heartbreaking moments during LNTAO, CTM, SVS and POF, and you could see it was very gradual, until Roman finally snapped at the end of POF (I am not entirely sure if this is the peak of his arc or if there is something worse to come but this is the start of the peak at least). With both Catra and Roman you could see the build-up, you could see everytime they were hurting and you knew why, and you could see what was coming. But they sort of kept it up inside them and hid behind a mask until they couldn’t anymore.

I think Catra and Roman are scarily similar, the main difference being the exact circumstances (duh) and the fact that Roman is a light side and Catra is on the evil side. Which is an excellent segway to my next section of called...

Part Three - Dark Side Roman!!

So, I don’t actually think that Roman will become a dark side per se, given that the definition of a dark side in the Sanders Sides Universe is a side which Thomas either doesn’t know about or hasn’t accepted. So, no, I don’t think Roman will become a dark side. However, I do think there is a possibility for a darker Roman, a more villain Roman if you will. And if that happens I think that Roman will act exactly like Catra (minus the cat noises of course). If he becomes dark, I reckon he will drive everyone who stood beside him at first away by lashing out because of his insecurities, he has already finally snapped and he would do whatever it takes, no matter the cost, to prove himself worthy to Thomas and probably Patton too. It is entirely in Roman’s character to act like this, and I think that Catra is a sort of reflection of the traits that they share in a more villain/darker light. After all, Catra said in the Crimson Watse ‘threats only work on someone who has something to lose’. Catra had nothing to lose, and after POF, neither does Roman.

In Conclusion

Roman and Catra are scarily similar in terms of their personality and their arcs and their situations in a broader sense. I think that if a villain/darker Roman were to happen he would act exactly like Catra and that Catra is a reflection of their shared traits turned dark. Despite them being two different characters, they are the most similar out of any Shera/Sanders Sides comparison and it sheds a new light (for me at least) on how Roman’s character arc could play out and what a villain Roman could look like.

But that is just my opinion and a theory. Feel free to tell me your thoughts!!

Also tagging @moxy--sanders101 because she expressed interest (hope you don’t mind ☺️)

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 508

I mean, shame on me for allowing myself to get my hopes up that the show might have turned a corner last week. I should know better by now.

At least Young Ian’s back. And Marsali had a nice moment. And that’s about all I have to say about this episode that’s positive. I swear to fuck, this show hates Claire as much as the author of the books does. Where the fuck is the lead protagonist, show? Can she come back? Can she get a story line of her own that’s more than just a random scene every few episodes, please? And can Bree please be given something to fucking do that doesn’t involve Roger, Jemmy or rape? Does Fergus still even live on the Ridge?

But yeah, I guess let’s just all watch the episode twice so our dumb lady!brains can understand that Matt’s stupid silent movie gimmick was actually ~ArT~ and not, you know, a stupidly bad creative choice. Seriously, fuck that guy.

I can’t tell you how much idgaf about watching Roger teach. Also, Bree’s like his students’ age since she was in college too. So really all this bit is doing is to make me skeeved out about their age difference.

“Can you tell me why anyone would go to the trouble of burying one?” he said, condescendingly, like the doucherocket he is. Do not disrespect Young Ian like that, asshat.

“People live and die by their words.” *gestures to the beautiful shitposts on this hellsite* sure jan dot gif.

I already want to fastforward.

Would 100% rather sit through a lecture on suspension bridges than watch silent movies, tbh.

Hate the title card. Hate this whole gimmick.

Hate.

HAAAAATE.

Roger got hanged. Roger was dumb, Buck was an abusive and toxic fuckwad. But still, Roger got hanged and this is how we find out he’s alive and how he was saved?

It should be this big emotional moment. It should make me feel a thing in spite of myself. But nope! Gotta do this fucking silent movie thing. Which is hilariously terrible. And I laughed at it the whole time. In a mean and judgey fashion. What a craptastic creative choice. Whoever’s idea that was is a fucking idiot. *stares at a certain pompous af showrunner*

Ok but for real though, does LJG just like live in North Carolina now? Why is he always around, besides, you know, so we don’t forget he’s a character who exists.

For real though, he lives in Virginia and gets more screen time than fucking Fergus and Marsali who live fucking next door.

At least writing this recap is gonnna be quick and easy since they waste so much time re-showing the stupid silent movie footage.

Yes, I know, they’re trying to show Roger’s PTSD. Which involves flashbacks. And gradually turn it to color once he’s like come to terms with what happened and starts to move forward. But the execution is so bad that the whole arc is wasted because it’s just so poorly done.

Oh hey! A Claire and Bree scene! I love those. Except oh wait, it aggressively fails the Bechdel Test.

I JUST WANT THE FUCKING WOMEN ON THIS SHOW TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO THAT’S COMPLETELY FUCKING SEPARATE FROM THE MEN. ARGH.

Jocasta singing at Murtz’s cairn is a reminder that everyone should check out MDK’s music.

And her wearing the necklace Murtz gave her makes the existence of show!Duncan even dumber. Like oh hey, new husband, don’t mind me, just mourning my dead boyfriend and wearing his jewelry. But it’s totally normal since my niece-in-law still wears her abusive ex-husband’s ring.

Sorry, show!Duncan, but a more pointless character was never included. Show!Duncan wins the prize for most BeCaUsE tHe BoOk dumbassery.

Repeatedly showing what’s basically a snuff film is...a choice.

LJG has no sense of personal space when it comes to the Frasers. And it’s fucking creepy.

Oh look, another scene where all Claire gets to do is comfort someone about a man.

*BANGS FIST ON TABLE* GIVE CLAIRE BEAUCHAMP THE STORY LINES SHE DESERVES.

Jemmy aged like 3 years in the 3 month time jump.

Ok, I totally get why Roger hadn’t spoken yet. But once he did, the seal was broken. Not talking after he yelled to stop Jemmy, even a little bit, is just a dick move. Not that he’d be magically better. But he like refuses to even take baby steps.

CAN WE PLEASE GET THROUGH AN EPISODE WITHOUT A MUSICAL INTERLUDE. I FUCKING HATE THE CLEMENTINE SONG.

GRANNIE CLAIRE AND GRANDA JAMIE ARE MY FAVE.

OMFG AN ARROW. THAT CLEARLY MEANS...YOUNG IANNNNN!!!!!

So glad he’s back. So fucking glad. Yes, it means one more character to dilute how much time we can spend with any given person, but it’s a character that I like so hopefully he takes away from some of the time given to ones I don’t like?

Aaand Roger can’t even bring himself to try to talk to the guy who gave himself up in his place. Fuck Roger.

Claire does a better job at first than Jamie at picking up the vibes Young Ian is putting off, but like, for two people who are supposed to be emotionally intelligence, neither of them do a good job at first of really *seeing* Ian.

John Bell is really good in this episode.

Omfg Marsali has tarot cards. She’s like leaning full on into being the white witch’s apprentice and I fucking love her so much.

Also, the Hanged Man card is representative of self-sacrifice and martyrdom rather than like being actually hanged as a punishment. But whatevs.

Ok I think the reason Jenny yelling at Jamie to snap out of it in S3 bugged me where this scene with Bree yelling at Roger doesn’t is because sibling dynamic is completely different than spouses where both of them have gone through something unimaginable.

That he can’t even say anything here. Or give her any kind of sign that he’s still in there is a dick move. He *can* speak. He knows that now. So does everyone else. He’s actively choosing not to. Even to say that he just needs more time to work through his shit. No one’s asking him to be a chatterbox and totally back to normal.

Young Ian just sitting there while everyone else does grace is literally me at every family holiday.

Oh look, a wild Fergus appeared!

Ok, I never got the surveying thing. Wouldn’t the land already be registered? Since they were given the paperwork and shit for it from the governor? I know there was some bit about it in the book about keeping it after the Revolution but like, who the fuck else are they registering it with that would make a difference? The gov’t is still the English gov’t?

“But there are things you keep hidden from others. You and Claire both.” Ok, can he please be talking about time travel? I mean, I know he’s talking about his wife and their miscarriages, but I just want someone else to know about time travel already please and thank you.

HOW THE FUCK IS MARSALI STILL PREGNANT?! SHE’S BEEN PREGNANT FOR LIKE A FUCKTON OF TIME.

Fuck yeah not-Catholic-anymore-Ian. No grace, talking about the creator in a way that isn’t explicitly the christian god. Good job, kid.

My parents called me to say happy easter and I had to be like, uh, you remember that I don’t celebrate that, right?

Happy Zombie!Jeebus Appreciation Day to all the still christian people. And happy chance to have fun with burner zoom accounts named Elijiah to the jewish folks.

Jokes aside, the scene with Young Ian and Marsali was really nice and Marsali remains a fucking saint. It’s nice that Young Ian has someone who like actually gets what it’s like to find a home in a group of strangers.

Oh Claire, think more highly of your assistant. Also, what a clunky fucking way to be like oh hey, one of the emo!bros is gonna try to off themselves.

Ok but with the paper airplane now too, can we please show Young Ian finding out about time travel? Please?

Ok, but Claire automatically jumping to Roger wanting to off himself with her herbs... It’s making me judge both of them a little that neither picked up on just how clearly Young Ian was suffering. Like come the fuck on, y’all. It wasn’t subtle.

Also, can we please have more Adso?

SOMEONE GIVE YOUNG IAN A HUG! NO, NOT YOU, ROGER! SOMEONE GOOD!

Yada yada yes they both have been through something shitty and call me a biased asshole, but I can’t bring myself to feel anything about Roger and I feel all the things about Young Ian.

So Roger won’t talk when his wife begs, but he’ll talk when someone calls him on his bullshit. Cool. Cool cool cool. Nice dude.

NO ONE WAS ASKING FOR THE OLD ROGER, YOU TWATWAFFLE. THEY WERE ASKING FOR *A* ROGER. INSTEAD OF A ZOMBIE.

Again, there’s more to that tarot card than a literal hanged man, but whatever, show.

Oh thank fuck the episode is finally over. Expectations are back down in the gutter for the rest of the season. Please pleasantly surprise me, show, but I will not make the mistake again of thinking you’re actually gonna be consistently good again.

[origami-teacup]

my grayza story (and a love letter to the creators of the grayza fanzine)

High on coffee, bleary-eyed, I had been in the middle of studying for my college finals last night when I casually reached over for my phone, just to check my notifications, and instantly got hit in the face with this: “[PDF] GrayZa Zine”

(Warning: long and emotional rant down below.)

My heart jumped in my mouth, my palms began to sweat, and with a slightly shaky thumb, I pressed on the notification. Now, you may find this to be a bit of an overreaction, but listen- I have been in the Fairy Tail fandom since 2010, and I left the fandom about 7 years ago (wow I feel old), not bothering to continue reading the manga after 400-ish chapters since I quickly realized what a clusterfuck the whole series had become and how OOC my faves were becoming (coughgraycough). Fairy Tail was the first anime I got seriously hooked on (besides Maid Sama). It started my weeb phase. 

It also happens to be the anime that slam-dunked me into shipping hell.

Grayza is the name of that particular hell.

I remember when I first fell in love with Grayza: it was during the Phantom Lord arc, when Erza rested her head on Gray’s chest (you all know what I’m talking about). And then Tower of Heaven happened, as well as Gray’s “I’m taking Erza back! She belongs with Fairy Tail!”. I was a wee lass, and my feelings for this ship were intense. I didn't even know that shipping as a concept existed back then, but I was doing it already- I drew tons and tons of fanart; I babbled to my brother about how beautiful their chemistry was, until he became sick and couldn't stand me anymore; boxes upon boxes of fanart are still piled high in my room, tucked away in a corner. Now that I look at them, they’re cringy, childish, silly, cheesy comics and much much more, but it was all a labor of love. 

Then, I stumbled upon this marvellous site called FanFiction.net. This is where I read my first Grayza fanfic. It was Warm Ice Melting Armour -one of my favorite Grayza fanfics even to this day- by the talented Irrevocable SaaSha. To this day, the first paragraph of that fic is branded in my mind: “She was curled up on the couch like a cat in front of the fireplace, the firelight reflected like liquid honey in her golden brown eyes, red hair spread out around her, like she was lying on a bed of scarlet fire. She was beautiful.”

I was in awe of the writing, starstruck even. I thought it was the most beautiful description I’d ever read. I still think so, even to this day.

And that’s when I decided- I wanted to write like that too.

So Grayza got me into reading and writing fanfiction. And reading and writing in general. English is not my first language, so I struggled. But it was a happy struggle, an endeavour I did not mind making. My first and second Grayza fics were totally abominable, but I was just a kid, eagerly playing around with these two dorks on paper with not a care in the world. I would lie awake in bed in the wee hours of the night, flashlight in one hand and a pen in the other, furiously scribbling away on a tiny notebook, and when I ran out of pages but felt too lazy to get out of bed, I would just write over my doodles.

It was a good time.

Again, my fics were totally shit (so much so that I deleted them many years ago out of embarrassment- a decision which I now regret; I wish I’d kept them up, for nostalgia’s sake), but everyone who reviewed was kind, friendly, encouraging. I talked to other writers, who were a thousand times more talented than little ol’ me but still so cheerful and humble. I badgered them by sending them PM’s asking for writing tips; I sent the daily readers of my fics little sneak peeks of the future chapters in their inboxes; I joined roleplay forums (always choosing Erza). Every once in a while a reader would PM me to tell me how much they loved my fic, how certain chapters made them laugh out loud, and that would melt my heart. 

I received my first hate comment from a Gruvia shipper, and I relished it. 

So basically, Grayza introduced me to fandom. 

I loved this ship with every fibre of my being. I still do. It’s my first OTP. 

Then Mashima fucked everything up. 

Juvia and Jellal got introduced. Gray and Erza’s interactions began to dwindle. I never hoped for my ship to be canon, but Mashima even forgot about their friendship, and that hurt. A lot. I actually like Jellal, and even ship Jerza on the side (just not as passionately as Grayza), but Juvia I did not like at all. I couldn't fathom why the majority of the fandom would ship Gray with her. It baffles me to this day.

And then it became canon.

Well, as canon as Mashima can make a ship, that is. By the time the last chapter came out, I was over Fairy Tail. I had moved on to better things, better media. But being the masochist I am, I still read the chapter (spoiler alert: it was shit). To calm myself and soothe my wounded heart, I went over to FanFiction.net -now a barren wasteland with old fics lazily drifting like tumbleweed and only a small number of new fics trying to emerge through the cracks in the ground- and read an old favorite of mine. 

It was like a soothing pick-me up after a harrowing day. But it was also a little sad, because all of my favorite authors, people I considered mentors and friends, had moved on. Have moved on. It felt like the Grayza fandom had kind of gradually, slowly, silently sputtered, coughed, and died, and I was one of the small numbers of people witnessing it.

Then, the announcement for the Grayza Fanzine came. I was excited, feeling a little bittersweet, as this would be the beautiful, heartfelt sendoff this ship of dreams would deserve. I desperately wanted to contribute, but my midterms were coming up, and I was busy with my studies, so there was no way I could churn out a fic with that mindset. So I mentally wished everyone contributing to the zine luck, and moved on, anticipating for the day I would get that notification on my phone.

 And then I got it.

I actually cried while I went through the zine. The fics, from what I’ve read so far, are all heartfelt and beautiful and managed to hit me in parts of my heart and soul that I thought I’d buried and mourned a long long time ago. The fanarts are all breathtaking. And the layout! I lovelovelove the overlapping blue and red stars scattered over the pages, the snowflakes! 

In the middle of the night, standing next to the kitchen (because that’s the only place where I could charge my phone at the time), with tears in my eyes, I felt like I was holding a gem in my hands. A treasure. And it is.

I couldn’t study after that. My anxieties about college and university had washed away: I felt like a kid again, in love with this ship all over again. For the next two hours, I thumbed through the PDF, marvelling at this labor of love, my heart raw and aching in all the right ways.

So thank you, everyone at @grayza-fanzine​ who made this zine possible. Every artist, every writer, everyone. I might not know any of you, but you all share my love for this wonderful, painful, glorious ship, and I think that is enough.

Thank you so, so much. 

[skvaderarts]

Apocrypha Chapter Seven: Encounter

Masterlist can be found Here! Thanks!

Chapter Seven: Encounter

Note: Today's chapter is going to be a little shorter because 1) I'm tired and busy doing things with my family 2) I'm planning the beach arc (lol) and 3) because it's an intermission chapter. Things are going to really kick off after the beach arc. I'm having a blast working on the new parts of the story, so stay tuned for more to come in the future!

(-~-)

Capulet was far from a 24/7 city, the metropolis somehow managing to maintain a quiet village-like appeal despite being very populus. It had it's rougher areas that most well meaning people didn't venture into such as the docks and the factory district, and no self respecting citizen would be caught dead (or alive) near the street that the Devil May Cry office called home, but it was still a relatively peaceful place when demons weren't wandering up the streets in search of human blood. 

Despite this, or perhaps as a direct result of it, most places didn't stay open exceedingly late due to the suspicious activities that tended to occur at night that they could now confidently confirm was demonic in nature. People spoke in hushed tones about the shadows they jumped at in the dark as if speaking too loud would seal their citie's fate and it would instantaneously become the next Redgrave City. It was no secret that everyone in the region feared another large scale demon attack. After all, there had been three in the last two decades, four if they counted the Savior incident in Fortuna. Thankfully, the general public on the mainland didn't know much about what had happened that day, but there was one thing they did know. 

Each attack was worse than the last. 

And they were becoming more frequent.

In spite of it all, the bay area was still vibrant and full of life. They were cautious, but they refused to let the constant terror they lived in keep them down. There just wasn't as much of a nightlife scene as some would like. But things really came alive during the day. And this morning was no different. Certain places were a mecca of activity and the small coffee shop that Nico had just pulled up in front of was most certainly one of them. Even from inside of the van, the young gunsmith could see that there were at least a dozen people inside of the shop, although only a few were actually in line. Most were sitting at a table enjoying their meals and beverages or capitalizing on the free wifi. And she was here to join them. In all honesty, she couldn't remember the last time she had gone to a coffee shop. She didn't even really drink it that often at Nero's place. Kyrie was more of a tea person, so she tended to drink whatever they had on hand if she drank anything at all. For the first time in while, she was just going to relax and enjoy a hot drink in peace. 

Nico hopped down from her seat and closed the van door, turning her attention to the front entrance of the shop. The mist had transformed into actual rain, and she wasn't keen on being soaked all the way down to her underwear. As she hurried over towards the door, she made a mental note to acquire an umbrella and toss it into the back of the van at her earliest convenience. 

She slipped in behind someone who was exiting the building, ducking stealthiy behind them as they headed towards their car. As soon as the door closed and she turned towards the counter, a wave of warm, pleasant smelling air hit her. It was a combination of different coffees and a few baked treats that they kept behind the counter, cinnamon and spices hitting her square in the tastebuds. She was now woefully hungry and it showed. As she repressed the urge to allow a puddle of drool to form at her feet, she migrated over towards the line. There was only one person in front of her, which meant that she was in the express lane to receive a tasty treat. But how to pick one? bagels, cakes, cookies, crosaunts… it all looked delectable, and every moment she didn't have one sitting on a plate in front of her felt like an eternity of unfair punishment bestowed upon her by an angry god. She needed to correct that immediately.

"Ma'am, would you like to place an order?"

Nico glanced up at the barista and nodded in affirmation, somewhat distracted by the number of choices presented to her. At this juncture, she would settle for any regular coffee. But she was going to have a hard time picking one of these tasty desserts. The young smiled politely, seemingly amused by her lack of ability to pick.

"If I might interject, that blueberry pomegranate cheese danish is one of my favorites. I get it everytime I come here." A voice behind her said quietly. The deeper timbre was distinctly male in origin, and there was a certain melodious, almost somber, tint to their voice. They spoke as though they were putting a great amount of consideration or effort into something very minor, and she couldn't help but notice. This was mostly due to the fact that they were looming over her, although not standing overly close.

Before she could turn to face the individual in question, they stood up and faced the counter, handing the cashier an undisclosed amount of money before receiving a knowing look from the young woman running the register and reaching for a to go bag that was being handed to them from behind the counter. "One of these days you have to try something else on the menu! Seriously, you come in here like clockwork and always get the same thing. Doesn't that get old?"

"I enjoy the unpredictability of predictability," the hooded man said flatly, waiving off her attempt to pass him back his change and sparing a glance at Nico as she looked at him curiously," Please, keep the change. The young woman's order is on me. Thank you."

The young woman looked almost horrified, signaling to Nico that he had more than likely given her a sizable sum of money. The dark haired woman turned to confront him, taken totally off guard by his random act of generosity. "Um, thanks but I've got it covered. You don't gotta do that."

He nodded, turning towards the door with his order. He still hadn't taken the change. "Oh, I'm well aware of that. But I chose to. After I leave, you can choose to accept my offer or not. But why not benefit from the kindness of a stranger? It's not every day that I do something like this."

Before Nico could say anything further, the taller man slipped out of the front door, leaving her to make her decision. She considered going after him for a moment before going with her gut and staying put. Something told her that he was already long gone. She didn't even need to go over to the door and look. Nico spent enough time around abnormal people to be able to tell that sort of thing.

With a sigh, she shook her head briefly and then turned her attention back towards the counter. He made a valid point. Why turn down free food? "You know what? Sure, whatever! I'll take whatever that guy that just left had. For here, though. I'm not going back out there for a while. It's warm in here."

(-~-)

Magnolia jotted down a final set of notes before closing the notepad that she held in her hands and setting it down on the table in front of her, taking the opportunity to eat a fork full of tiramisu. She spared a glance towards V who was quietly doing the same. They were only mid way through their conversation, but she felt that she understood him leagues better than she had before he had arrived. While he had presented himself as a sort of closed book type at first, she was gradually realizing that he actually had quite a bit of rich internal dialogue that was just beneath the surface, ready to be shared if given the opportunity. He answered when spoken to and never gave her a hard time about any of the questions she'd asked him, most being cursory medical questions. But she felt it was time to change the subject. The last thing she wanted was for this visit to turn into something clinical and strenuous. While much of what he'd told her had been intriguing and she'd have to look into it after he left, she didn't want to overwhelm him. After all, he had to leave here with the desire to return at a later date.

"So, enough of that, then. Tell me a little bit more about yourself," She said as she reached for her glass of tea. She needed to wash down her snack." Do you have any hobbies or passions? Anything pique your interest at all? You seem like the intellectual sort, after all."

V shifted slightly, his prolonged sitting session starting to take a toll on his uncooperative back. "Not anymore. At least not of late."

The botanist gave him a curious look, sitting back in her seat and folding her arms. "What did you used to do? You can't expect me to believe that you don't possess any sort of talent at all, now can you?"

An almost impresevable smile slowly snuck it's way across V's face for a brief moment as he tilted his head to the side, the young summoner reminiscing on one of the few pleasant memories he had clung to all this time. "... I used to be instrumentally inclined when I was younger. At one point…" V trailed off for a second, seemingly second guessing his decision to share this sort of information with her,"... Are you going to-" Magnolia shook her head, already knowing what he was probably going to say. She gave him a playful shove, not so much trying to push him as she was trying playing with him. "Oh, hush now. You're not that old! Nothing you say leaves this house. We've all done silly things in our youth. Nothing to fear, dear."

V slumped slightly as he glanced in the opposite direction. He looked almost embarrassed. He glanced at her for a moment before breaking eye contact again. prefering to stare out of the open window just to the side of her. "I played the violin for a long time and wrote poetry. For a while I restored books as a hobby and..." He glanced down, very clearly flushing slightly as he tried to force himself to say whatever was on his mind,"... I was talked into dance lessons for a year or so by someone I knew at the time. I'm told I was… decent..."

The middle aged alchemist nearly choked on her tea as V let slip his secret shame, repressing the urge to giggle imaturely and go wide eyed. He was quite the multi talented young man, wasn't he? The idea of him dancing was supremely entertaining to her and she made a mental note to try and talk him into giving her a demo sometime in the near future. 

"I take back everything I said. You are old," She said with a pleasant laugh, nodding in approval," If I might, I'd like to pass your contact information along to a colleague. Book restoration is actually quite the useful skill in my trade. I know some people who would pay quite the hefty sum for your assistance."

He considered her offer for a moment before nodding. Yes, that seemed agreeable enough to him. "I can't make any promises. It's been some time since I've worked on anything."

Magnolia smiled, picking up her notepad again and flipping it open to jot down a few notes. This had been an eye opening conversation. "I wouldn't expect you to, dear," She said simply as she scribbled something down on her notepad," But I'd absolutely love to hear you play the violin sometime. I bet you're quite good at it."

V pales, the flush in his cheeks fleeing him like courage in the mists of battle. "Again, I make no promises…"

She stood up and walked towards the kitchen, intent on grabbing something else before they continued. She gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder before proceeding, hoping to calm his nerves. Although he seemed calm and collected, it didn't take a genius to see that he was flustered. "Just keep being you, dear. That's all I ask of you."

(-~-)

Thanks for checking out this chapter! The beach trip is nearly upon us, and I can't wait to hear from you all again! Have fun and stay safe!

[nellie-elizabeth]

Suits: One Last Con (9x10)

Okay, so then what happens next is that Harvey and Donna move to Seattle, and they become closer than ever to Rachel and Mike. At least once a week, Harvey and Mike have a "guy's night" while Donna and Rachel have a "girl's night." And then, gradually, they realize they've ended up with the wrong people. So they all get divorced and then Donna and Rachel become a couple, and Mike and Harvey become a couple. Someone please tell me they're writing that fic.

Oh, sorry. Was I supposed to talk about the episode? Let's get to it.

Cons:

I predicted last week that this episode would be overcrowded, and I wasn't wrong, exactly. I'm grateful that the conflict with Faye was over before the midpoint, so we could have a nice long goodbye with all of the characters. But while I do enjoy that, I also must admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. Faye was a season-long threat, and she's dispatched a third of the way through the finale. It just goes to show that as interesting of a villain as she might have been in the beginning, she didn't really matter. She was a figurehead. She didn't really change anything about these people and their perspectives on their lives. It all felt pretty pointless in the end.

No matter how much fan service a finale has, there are always going to be things that get missed. For example, it seems strange to me that Jessica couldn't have made a cameo at Louis' wedding. She's working on another show for the same creators; how hard would it have been to get her in for a few minutes? And I hate that Alex was the one to go to Katrina. On the one hand, I get it. They needed to find something for Alex to do in this episode, because he's been a pointless character for several weeks. But Harvey and Katrina never get a moment of apology, and that really sucks.

I've talked a lot in these reviews about my issues with Donna and Harvey. It's not that they're painful to watch, or actively unpleasant. The actors do a good job. It's perfectly serviceable. But I think I've finally figured out one of the reasons why they never quite clicked for me as a couple. Harvey is always talking about how Donna knows him better than anyone. But this is what editors mean when they say "show, don't tell." Donna knows Harvey. We've seen it throughout the years. But how does she show that she knows him? Well, she has the supernatural ability to read his mind and predict his requirements whenever the plot requires it. And she acts like is mommy just as often as she acts like his girlfriend, guiding him through his emotions like an enabler.

But Harvey can say again and again that Donna is the one for him, and how well she gets him... and then we can see Mike in the same episode, showing that same thing, instead of telling it. I'm not even pushing for a romantic interpretation, necessarily. It's just that Mike comes in, and they have their quippy banter. They work together to take down Faye. They re-enact Mike's interview with Harvey but in reverse. They find excuses to touch each other. And in an episode that involved two weddings and a health scare, the single most emotional moment in the episode is when Harvey tries to leave Mike's apartment dramatically after telling Mike he's never stopped trusting him, and Mike says "no," like the very idea of Harvey losing his license is torture to him. They have the chemistry. They have the beating heart of this show, and that's been true from day one. It makes the romance between Harvey and Donna pale in comparison.

Also, in an episode that had to accomplish so many things, so quickly, it was odd to add in that little health scare for Sheila. Why did her pregnancy have to have complications? It felt like something to add just to make for some more drama, but we really didn't need that. I'm glad that mother and daughter were both okay.

Pros:

I was always going to rant and ramble a lot in this review, since it's the last one for the show. But just because I had a lot to say in the "cons" section doesn't mean there was nothing to enjoy here. Let's start with my girl Katrina.

As I said, I was irritated that she and Harvey didn't have an on-screen reconciliation. But I am so, so happy for her that she gets to be name partner! It's so refreshing to have a character arc on this show be about a woman choosing her career over her love life, and having that be an empowering and rewarding choice to make. I'm all about it. She gets to come back to the firm, newly powerful, and stand with Alex, Samantha, and Louis.

Samantha and Alex were both underutilized in this finale, but I get it. I'd rather focus on the longer-standing characters, too. And the show did a good job of making this episode the end of an era for Harvey and Donna, and yet also a new beginning for the others. The image of the new firm name on the wall was really lovely. I especially liked that Samantha acknowledged how crazy it was that they'd kept changing the name, and decided that they can't change it anymore for at least five years. But Litt Wheeler Williams Bennett will be stronger for Katrina's presence among them.

Louis has one of the best glow-ups in TV history. There were times over the years where I didn't think I'd be able to forgive him. I still selfishly hold a grudge for that time when he physically attacked Mike. But at the end of the day, he has actually grown as a person. This is a great example of show vs. tell, actually. We've seen it all season - Louis has been calmer. He gets angry or worked up about something, but he doesn't fly off the handle. When he tells his therapist that he's ready to have him as a friend and have him officiate the wedding, it doesn't feel like empty words. Louis might still need therapy in his life, but he has the tools now to know how to get himself the help he needs. It was so fun to see his "final form" as it were. And then we see it put to the test, as Sheila goes into labor during their wedding ceremony. You might expect him to freak out, but he's calm. He's planned for this, and he's there to be supportive for Sheila during this difficult time. Even while he's frantic for her and the baby in the hospital, he keeps a cool head and doesn't do anything he would later regret. Yay Louis! (ps - Louis learning that Donna and Harvey were leaving was more emotional for me than Harvey and Donna's wedding). (pps - that scene of Donna and Louis holding hands in the elevator gave me LIFE).

It was predictable that Harvey and Donna would step up and take advantage of the pre-arranged wedding - a lot of fans predicted this exact outcome. And while I've spoken extensively on my mixed feelings about their relationship, I can't deny the cuteness of the scene. We get that lovely proposal, with Harvey's mother's ring. We get Mike putting his arms around both of them, with his little quip about being unlicensed to officiate. We get Harvey and Mike gripping hands as Harvey leads Donna out for their first dance. It's all very cute, and I feel happy for the big Darvey fans out there. They totally deserve to see all of that happiness, even if I don't agree with the couple at its core. This is the inevitable conclusion, and it was done quite beautifully.

Will I ever be over how much Harvey and Mike love each other? I really don't think so. Let's talk about the best parts of the episode.

First of all, I already mentioned it above, but that scene at Mike's place was just golden. Mike walking in to find Harvey already there was great - they have always just barged in to each other's personal spaces and that's such a testament to the trust between them. And then you have Harvey telling Mike the truth, and telling him that he's going to have to go on the stand and risk getting disbarred. Mike's reaction is genuine panic, and then the two of them concoct a plan that will save the day. I just love the idea of Harvey going over there not to ask for Mike's help, but because he couldn't stand the thought of Mike thinking he didn't trust him. That's love, baby.

Then you've got the interview-in-reverse thing at the end. I could spend hours just squealing about the fact that Donna and Harvey are leaving the firm and moving to Seattle (my home town! woo!) to be with Mike and Rachel. Hey, maybe the four of them could all be in a poly relationship... but that's for fanfic to decide, I guess. Good finales need to come full circle, and also need to set the characters up for changing futures. This idea of Harvey moving to Seattle, of Mike being Harvey's boss, manages to do both. They are quippy and cute with each other, but also genuine. Harvey decides to leave the firm in order to take out Faye, but he also genuinely wants a fresh start. His life changed forever when Mike walked into his life, and I really do feel like that was the final message the show left me with, when the dust had settled.

So... yeah. I can't find it in myself to be a hardcore Darvey shipper. This finale was never going to cater to all of my needs. But at the end of the day, I was mighty pleased with several of the scenes, and I love where it left all of the characters, in terms of their careers and happiness. For this finale, I'll give a rating of...

7.5/10

For the show as a whole? Well, I hate to break it to anyone who's unaware of this, but Suits isn't that great of a show. It has a couple of really strong elements, but over the years its stories became repetitive, and there's quite a lot that doesn't actually make sense about these characters and their motivations. But I don't grade these shows based on objective quality. I grade them based on the elements that I enjoy most in a show. For years, whenever Suits came back on the air, it was one of the things I looked forward to most each week. I longed for every scrap of content between Harvey and Mike that I could possibly get. There are moments over the years that I have gone back and watched in a loop because of those two. I also liked the way the show deconstructed toxic masculinity, and had a feminist message that didn't feel like something out of an after school special. I had fun watching this show, and I will think of it fondly for years to come. The show over-all gets:

8/10

[mittensmorgul]

10.07: Girls, Girls, Girls.

ROWENA! At the very beginning of her long, long journey. And :') she has come so far now. Imagine coming from this, and now she's practically a Winchester.

I also love this, because it apparently takes place immediately after 10.06, as they're driving back to the bunker from Connecticut and they detour to this town just so Dean can meet up with the first woman who apparently responded to his dating website profile. Since we've literally never seen him use this app before or since, I've always assumed he HAD installed it because he was looking into those cattle deaths and caught wind of the "demonic brothel" operating in town... because he wasn't so much surprised as disappointed when Shalene turned out to be trading sex for souls. But even more importantly, NEITHER WAS SAM. They just moved on from that without Sam ever ONCE teasing him for being so gullible as to fall for that scam, you know? He may have done so BEFORE they met up with Shalene, and this seems like the kind of thing that Sam would've absolutely used for taunting purposes throughout the episode if he'd actually been in the dark about the hunt from the start. So... logic dictates it was their plan from the start.

The other interesting thing about this episode is the whole concept of Raul's Girls. I mean, we're talking about DEMONS here, who literally can possess whatever body they want. And yet the demons themselves choose not to possess the hookers, but the pimps. They only acted as middle men, having to step in just to sign the contract and then let the human women do the deed. And honestly? WHY wouldn't they just possess the women themselves and save the hassle of having to manage all these women? I mean, to do a crossroads deal, demons just need to seal the bargain with a kiss. They wouldn't have needed to "pause the action" just to bring in some mook in a suit with a stack of legal paperwork to sign. Just... tempt the john into sealing the deal on the spot without having to go through all that other distraction. I wonder how many dudes just decided at that point it wasn't worth waiting around for some other idiot to witness their shame, you know? How desperate for sex would you have to be to sit there waiting for a girl's pimp to come by and kill the mood with legal documents? Tres unsexy, if you ask me. But in the end, Raul and his demon flunkies weren't willing to do the actual deed themselves. They couldn't even convince any of their friends to possess the hookers, you know? Kinda... sad, really. Which makes me 10000000x more in love with Rowena and the mission she chose in killing these particular demons. :P

Unfortunately, Rowena ends up showing just as much disdain for her new friends as Raul did, literally using them as attack dogs to make her escape, knowing the girls would fight for her until her spell burned them up and left them dead...

So much manipulation.

On the other side of the story, we have Hannah's journey with Cas. They're apparently making progress on returning the rogue angels to Heaven, and she's becoming more comfortable in her human vessel-- until she's confronted by her vessel's husband and feels the truly human anguish over what Hannah says and does with her body to convince her husband that she doesn't want him anymore. I mean... it's horrific, and she's overwhelmed and actually experiences doubt in the righteousness of her mission for the first time.

Cas compares her anguish to his over having taken Jimmy's vessel from his family, TWICE. But their situations are in no way comparable, imho. Hannah is CHOOSING this mission. The fate of the world doesn't depend on her rounding up these few angels who are intent on experiencing humanity for themselves. She believes they should all willingly return to heaven and resume their roles as they always had, but so many angels and their human vessels have died rather than return, and she's only now beginning to wonder if she might be pursuing the wrong mission... even though Cas has come onboard with helping her with it. Because Cas still hasn't begun to understood that there's something for him to live for outside of his own chosen mission. At least he has experienced true free will for himself, in his very own body and not a human vessel occupied by a separate human soul. But he's still struggling with what his mission should be, because he also knows he has a limited time left before his second dose of stolen grace will begin to fade and burn out again. He's not yet living for the future, you know? He believes he's living on borrowed time. Which will prompt his first chosen "solo mission," to attempt to at least ensure Claire's future security after what he'd done to her father. And I LOVE this whole entire arc for him.

Just as Hannah left Caroline to go back to her husband to make things right (and heck how do you even begin explaining the truth there?), Cas chooses to do what little he can to make things right for Jimmy's family, even though Jimmy himself is more than six years dead at this point. He might not be able to return Jimmy to them, but he can do whatever he has in his power to at least check in with them and do right by his original vessel's loved ones. It's a promise too long broken, and he can at least make that right before he dies.

HANNAH: It's hard letting go... of a story, a mission. But what of the humans whose lives we sacrifice in the name of that mission? CASTIEL: What of them? HANNAH: We always said the humans were our original mission. Maybe it's time, Castiel -- time to put them first. CASTIEL: Where is all this coming from? HANNAH: Being on earth, working with you, I've felt things. Human things -- passions, hungers. To shower, feel water on my skin... to get closer to you. But all of that was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw him. Her husband -- his anger and his grief. And Caroline was inside of me, screaming out for him, for her life back. These f-feelings, they aren't for me, for us. They belong to her. I know it's time to step aside. [Hannah smiles, leans forward and kisses Castiel on the cheek. Castiel nods.] Goodbye, Castiel.

Because Cas is only beginning to recognize that within him, in this body built at least three times over JUST FOR HIM, at this point, he feels both the Human Things and the Angelic Mission, but there's no separating out the two. They are ALL HIS OWN FEELINGS. And he's been trying to force himself to be the angel only, taking stolen grace and pushing aside his own human emotions and desires, convincing himself the mission comes first and everything else can be ignored. Until he can't anymore. And his first step is going to look for the Novaks. (the rest of his human feelings are still far too dangerous for him to even ponder yet)

And ugh ugh ugh, nobody likes Cole, but we can't deny his role in this episode. If only it had been played by anyone else >.>. But he is a representative of Dean's own past come back to haunt him, and Dean has no choice other than to address it with real words. Not like he did as an unfeeling demon, but after he's been partly cured of his supernatural ills (still got the mark, after all). But his entire conversation with Cole functions as a conversation with his own younger self-- driven by a "mission" for revenge, lacking so many crucial facts, and possibly bungling things he couldn't even BEGIN to understand at the time because of his single-minded focus on his mission.

Yes, this also serves as a reflection on Cas's current state, as well, because how often have angelic Orders and his Mission been justification for his lack of understanding of the bigger picture? "Have Faith" and "the mission is just because it comes from Heaven" were catch-alls to cover what he didn't know, and what he didn't know ended up hurting them all (but also ended up becoming the foundation for them gradually understanding the bigger picture on every level of the story, and through every turn of the narrative spiral).

So Cole stumbled over Dean about to take down Rowena in her first full episode, and at the time it was like GODDAMMIT YOU MORON NOW SHE GOT AWAY! But now? After 37 episodes of watching her character bloom like a rose, watching her journey from pure adversary to trusted family? I have to grudgingly give Cole this one... this one turned out for the best.

But it also gave us Dean saying things for Sam to hear, probably for the first time. He may have been saying these words to Cole, but they were at least as much for Sam, standing directly behind Cole and watching this scenario play out. Their issues since 9.01 had revolved around broken trust, and Sam's belief that Dean only cared about himself, so:

DEAN: Cole, hey, right here. We're talking, okay? COLE: How can I believe you, huh? {shouts] How can I believe you?! My whole life, I've been... DEAN: I get it. That was your story. Look, man, I got one of those, too. Okay, but those stories that we tell to keep us going? Man, sometimes they blind us. They take us to dark places --the kind of place where I might beat the crap out of a good man just for the fun of it. The people who love me, they pulled me back from that edge. Cole, once you touch that darkness... It never goes away. Now, the truth is... I'm past saving. I know how my story ends. It's at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. So, the question is, is that gonna be today?That gonna be that gun?

And dang if you can't just put Cole's words into Sam's mouth here... and this is effectively Dean explaining to Sam that yes, he does understand that feeling Sam's told him he's had since he was a child, that "impurity" he's told Dean about for years having been tained by demon blood as a baby and never feeling like he could truly be clean, truly be the hero. Now Dean understands exactly what that burned felt like, and Sam can't deny it anymore. Sam, who relies on common experience to truly make a connection with others (as the narrative emblem of sympathy), now finally understands this aspect of Dean on a level he never could've before Dean actually said it out loud like this. And Dean (as the narrative emblem of empathy) knew Sam needed to hear it stated this plainly, and finally stopped shying away from actually manning up and saying it.

I'm gonna call it progress.

[bigskydreaming]

Young Justice Season Three spoilers

YJ Producers: We have a Muslim superhero this season, look how great she is and how progressive we are!

Actual YJ episodes: Okay so Muslim superhero might be a bit of a stretch since well, if you wanna get technical, she’s actually a sentient piece of alien technology whose soul went into the body of a dead Muslim girl when her original alien tech got smushed. But even though she continually insists that she is not Gabrielle Daou, the Muslim girl whose body this was originally, and that’s the entire reason she chose a new name for herself, she is a completely different person aka a non Muslim, not even human person - she still wears a hijab! Totally counts!

YJ Producers: We always wanted to portray LGBTQ+ superheroes, we’ve actually had one the whole time and you just didn’t know it because mean old Cartoon Network wouldn’t let us show it, now that we’re on our own we can and will be showing LGBTQ+ characters this season!

Actual YJ episodes thirteen episodes into the season: Error 404 Content Not Found

YJ Producers: We’re finally gonna include Cyborg! Victor Stone is in the house, we love and appreciate that character so much, we really wanted to wait until we could do his story justice!

Actual YJ episodes: So see, after getting gruesomely almost-deaded after a huge blowout fight in which we showed Vic has a lot of rage cuz Black Teenage Boys Are Just Like That, that was all aimed at his dad for not showing any interest in his life and for never showing his son he cared until now cuz Black Dads Are Just Like That, well okay, yeah that sucks, but what happened NEXT is really cool - so his dad saved his life, right? Even if it was by using alien tech that every single person he came in contact with kept telling him wasn’t like normal tech, it was sentient and thus yes COULD be bad, which was further demonstrated through the fact that said life-saving tech kept like...hijacking Vic’s own body and turning him into a rage-monster that we could totally show being a Stereotype of Black Teenage Boy Aggression as he remorselessly hunted a terrified Violet but it wasn’t his fault, he was totally powerless to control his own actions cuz of the Evil Alien Tech in his body and like wait, whats bad about that, I forget the question??? Oh right! But stop WORRYING, its all good, see, as long as he stayed around Violet and never went too far from her ever, the woman of color had magic rage-pacifying skills that existed solely to calm down the Stereotypical Angry Black Teen when he couldn’t control himself because Reasons. LOL WHY ARE YOU UPSET, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT, THIS IS A GOOD VICTOR STORY, ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???

YJ Producers: We love and value our characters of color and would never hurt them, we’ve actually taken steps to make sure of that!

Actual YJ Episodes: Violet and Vic are both practically unkillable, see? As proof, watch us violently murder Violet in every single episode in new and creatively gruesome ways, with bonus Vic near-death experiences that allow us to show him just utterly wrecked in ways we’ve never shown a single white character, even in this season when we’re all about showing off how much creative freedom we have now without CENSORSHIP! 

YJ Producers: This season is also going to focus on the stress and mental health issues that go along with life as a superhero, and who better to demonstrate this by suffering from superhero-related PTSD than Jefferson Pierce? The guy whose divorce already showed the stress and relationship issues that go along with life as a superhero (since all our white heroes in relationships are still going strong)!

Actual YJ Episodes: Oh, nothing say about this one huh, PUNK? That’s right, we actually did exactly what we said we’d do, see? Just look at how much time we spend talking about how traumatized Jefferson is and how miserable he is after killing a kid, and that’s nothing we’ve ever done (or would ever do - SHH THEY DONT NEED TO KNOW THAT) to a white hero! PLUS, like, he’s definitely getting better though, thanks to the support of the much younger character he’s surrounded by, instead of y’know, turning to his established friends and colleagues his own age for support! AND AND AND don’t forget about his growing relationship with the white doctor lady who is definitely NOT super creepy and NOT likely to betray him and break his heart and/or force him to make painful decisions when choosing between her and the kids he’s vowed to protect at some climactic point later in the season that all of that is super clearly not building towards!

YJ Producers: And don’t forget about Jaime Reyes and Virgil Hawkins and Mal Duncan and Raquel and Karen! They’re all still here too!

Actual YJ Episodes: We’ve definitely forgotten that Jaime Reyes and Virgil Hawkins and Mal Duncan and Raquel and Karen are all still here too.

YJ Producers: Major life events have happened to these heroes offscreen in the time we’ve been away from them, stuff that’s really shaped who they are and who they’ve become by now. All this stuff really matters, its how we’re different from other shows, we don’t pretend these characters stop existing the second they’re off your screens! Looks, Barbara Gordon is in a wheelchair! She’s Oracle now!

Actual YJ Episodes: Why would we bother to explain when or how this happened with even a single line of dialogue when The Killing Joke exists and is available on our streaming service? You sound dumb.

YJ Producers: Kaldur is our proof of how important our characters are to our over-all universe, look how far he’s come! He’s not Aqualad anymore, he’s AquaMAN, he’s one of the co-chairs of the Justice League, right up there with Wonder Woman who he definitely doesn’t need to turn to for approval or oversight of his actual decisions!

Actual YJ Episodes: We’re pretty sure we covered all this in the two minutes of screen time Kaldur’s had all season!

YJ Producers: Look, bottom line, this season, being away from Cartoon Network really allowed us to stretch our wings and flex creatively, we’re doing a lot of stuff with this story that just wouldn’t have been possible before, when we were on a network like CN and had overseers restricting our every move! This season gets a lot darker, a lot more mature, a lot more everything cuz freedom of speech baby! That’s what its all about!

Actual YJ Episodes: In support of our thesis, watch us up the graphically violent content of every single episode and kill lots of people instead of just cartoonishly knocking them out and carting them away to jail! That’s it, that’s everything we wanted to do that CN wouldn’t let us, that now we have total freedom to prove in a myriad of ways! What do you mean, what about *looks at smudged writing on hand* LGB - look we can’t be expected to read what that says when we have graphic violence to depict, fuck yeah!

YJ Producers: Besides, in happier news, its not all doom and gloom this season! Connor and M’Gann got engaged! Now that we’ve completely moved past all the stuff M’Gann did in S2 and don’t consider it worth mentioning, Superboy and Miss Martian are back together, and SB is totally gonna marry the woman who betrayed him in the one highly specific way that goes back to the very source of every trust issue he has and reason he has so many walls pushing people away!

Actual YJ Episodes: Yeah this is definitely happening. Suck my dick, Connor fans and fans who relate to and identify with SB and his story and think its maybe just not the healthiest to wave a wand and go “Happily ever after!” With, y’know, the guy whose greatest canon fear and paranoia is the sanctity of his mind being violated and being unable to trust that his own thoughts are really his and not just being spoon fed to him in a pod at Project Cadmus or by his telepathic girlfriend when she doesn’t like his opinion or his criticism of her actions and just doesn’t want to fight about it anymore. Look, she said she was sorry, get over it. What more do you want? For Connor to move on and have a healthy romantic relationship with someone who he doesn’t ever have to wonder if his trust in her and second chance is real and valid and not just her making him say and do what she wanted, like the way she definitely has before? For him and M’Gann to rebuild their trust over time, gradually, as friends, with the understanding they can be close again but romantic intimacy between them specifically probably isn’t in the best interests of the guy who will always have to wonder now if his thoughts are really his, no matter whether or not that’s true? Yeah, no, that sounds like a lot of work tbh, and really, we just like Miss Martian and Superboy together, they’re just cute, you know? Sides, we killed Wally and we don’t actually wanna talk about why Barbara’s paralyzed now and like, focus on her as a character, so what other longterm pairings do we really have? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THESE ARE ALL OUR OWN CHOICES AND IF WE WANT BETTER FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR CHARACTER DYNAMICS WE SHOULD MAKE BETTER CHOICES? UGH GET OFF MY BALLS, MAN.

YJ Producers: We’ve got Terra this season, and we’re doing some really cool, brand new things there.

Actual YJ Episodes: Slade’s Apprentice arc from Teen Titans the show and The Judas Contract in the comics, but really aren’t they the same thing? If you think about it, is it even possible to do that in a new way? Look, its not like we could do anything MORE original than that, like what, did you want us to have Tara genuinely be the good and loving sister she was when she reunited with her brother and expressed how traumatized she was by the things she did when she was supposedly being mind-controlled, actually invested in saving other trafficked meta-kids from being used and hurt the way she had been? Like, the way it seemed she was being written before we revealed it was a fake-out and she was actually working for Slade exactly like those other times we swore we were gonna be more original than that? Ugh why are you so unrealistic, dude, you have such weird expectations.

Me: Like dear YJ, you’ve still got me watching, because like a) I’m weak and I need this, b) nostalgia, c) Dick, Artemis, Connor, Jefferson and the chance of Jason and also Violet, Brion and Vic are all still enjoyable as characters even though your treatment of them and your narrative choices are all extremely suspect and also craptastic and also I really wanna punch you for a lot of this.

But goddamn, this was NOT your best work, and after years of waiting only to get this? Like.....so not crash, dudes. Not even a little bit.

[teddystrap]

[神なる君と] Osananajimi Duo - Yakumo

Second route of the game. #mfw ==== (ง•̀_•́)ง‼

*

-Takekiyo Yakumo-

Niiiiisssssaaaannnnnnn!!!

Yakumo is the other osananajimi of the trio. He is one year older than Sakuya and Narumi, and acts as the protective big brother - when they were young, some older kids took Sakuya’s *precious amulet*, and Yakumo went to get it back from them and got beaten up really badly. 

Sakuya later tells him that at that time he seemed like a ‘hero’ and she had always looked up to him. So I guess there’s like a love triangle (...love flowchart??) that goes: Narumi --> Sakuya --> Yakumo since the very beginning.

Also early on in the story, Yakumo tells Sakuya in a ‘simulation event’ that, even if he loved her, he would never confess and they can never be together, because it would end in tragedy. Pfffft whatever nii-san, that just means I will have to make the first move *evil laugh*. 

My feelings during his route went from hilarious, to sad, to finally disconcerting. He’s kind of a poor bastard and MIA in half of his own route. When I finally got the the two endings I wanted to throw my game console out of the window... (╯°□°)╯︵ ԀSԀ

Yes, exactly.

Aaanyway, there are two big revelations here:

1. Aki’s backstory: Kibi Aki is the 16-year-old spirit medium sent by the Ministry to spy on monitor Kunihoshi Shrine, because Mikoto forgot to send in his report (#justMikotothings). After Sakuya accidentally fucks up one of her assignments, it’s revealed that she actually comes from a renowned onmyouji family, and left home to train under the ministry at a young age in order to prove herself.

2. Kunugi’s backstory: Kunugi is the shape-shifting demon who stole the *magical seal* that protects the town, and Aki’s target of investigation. I didn’t expect to like him at first, but his tragic romance is pretty kewl I have to admit:

Kunugi was a douchebag since birth and terrorised the village so all the villagers hated him. One day, a girl named Yuki wandered into his territory. She was a grade A-level village idiot idiot, and after 3 days of trying and failing to find her way out, he gave her some food and water so she wouldn't die on his grounds. She was very grateful and started to get close to him. She also begged him to stop terrorising the village. Eventually she annoyed him enough that he agreed.

Then gradually, he began to help the villagers here and there, and even became friends with them. One day they wanted to thank him for his help. They gave him a small wooden box, and told him it was some kind of national treasure. Just then Yuki intercepted, and the box emitted some light beam that went into her body.

After that Yuki got progressively sicker and on the brink of death. Out of anger and confusion, he tried to destroy the box, but it's more sturdy/fireproof than an LV tote bag. Eventually she told him that the box contains a cursed rock (i.e. the remains of the Great Demon), and once every two hundred years the village has to offer a human sacrifice to prevent the curse from escaping and causing disaster. This time the villagers chose him, so she gave her life to save his...

Kind of hard to imagine how she fell in love with this (ahem *Aki*)... hopefully a few hundred years ago he took on a sexier appearance...

But I digress. Let’s get back to Yakumo XD. So his deal is basically that the Takekiyo bloodline has been chosen as the human sacrifice every 200 years. As a result, Yakumo is inflicted with a curse that puts him to sleep for longer and longer periods, until he eventually goes into a longggg sleep and never wakes up. This also explains his superhuman athletic abilities and sixth sense, because the Force be with him powers of the Great Demon live within him.

Early on in the common route, he occasionally says things like, ‘you must live on happily when I am gone’ and gives Sakuya a #sadface, like someone with a terminal illness. Eventually Sakuya finds out the truth from his parents, after which he couldn’t hide anymore, and starts to reveal all his fears and doubts, as well as his feelings for her.

As it turns out Yuzuru knows a way to break the curse, but it requires putting Yakumo into a coma for years, and there’s a good chance of death. Basically the supernatural equivalent of a high-risk medical operation I guess. He has until the hoshimatsuri to decide whether to take a gamble with this method, or let the curse continue slowly chipping away at his lifespan.

...Of course he chooses the former. You’d be an idiot not to.

1. Good End: It’s been 7 years (!), and he still hasn’t woken up from his coma. According to Yuzuru, 5 years is the ‘safety period’, and after that he’s as good as gone. Sakuya doesn’t give up, and **10 years later** (#tumbleweeds) he finally wakes up on hoshimatsuri night. They go on to have a baby who looks ridiculously like Yakumo ...and will probably be affected by the same curse...? Oh well let’s hope Yuzuru is still alive by then to do his thang.

2. Tragic End: Under Yuzuru’s advice, Sakuya gives up and lets him erase all her memories. Yakumo eventually wakes up after 10 years anyway, and it sucks for him because unlike in Narumi’s end, Yakumo still remembers everything and has to live with it for the rest of his life. Like I said, poor bastard...

Understatement of the year.

*

[Thoughts] Somehow this route felt shorter and less tearful than Narumi’s, maybe because I got used to the general setting and gameplay. Yakumo’s ema events feel like they came out of a shounen manga and had me in stitches the whole time. I can’t recall any other otome game that made me laugh this much (...except maybe 「私のレアルは充実している」).

What I like about this route is the added tension here compared to Narumi’s route: in Narumi’s case it’s pretty obvs that he has a crush on Sakuya. He said it himself that he’s never viewed Sakuya as a sister from the beginning. So on that front there’s no doubt from his side, his whole conflict revolves only around the ‘forbidden love’ aspect.

Whereas with Yakumo, when he shows hints of feelings towards Sakuya, they’re often ambiguous between the actions of an older brother towards a little sister vs. a love interest. That made it all the more exciting.

Also apart from the curse/risk of death and that stuff, Yakumo also had his ‘manly pride’ to reckon with - letting Sakuya see his weak side and realise that he’s not always her ‘hero’. It was pretty damn emotionally satisfying when he finally came clean about his secrets and started letting Sakuya into his world. Although, much of his later dialogue is pretty cliche tbh. I actually found his baka persona more interesting. But eh.

I guess it’s this pride of his that makes it necessary for Sakuya to be an adult here. Whenever his white lies or ‘fake cheerfulness’ made her angry, she had to learn/choose to coax things out of him gently instead of calling him out on it. Conversely I felt that with Narumi she was more direct, and had more leeway for wagamama.  

The Aki/Kunugi story arc was a high point of the route for me. Aki’s background helps to explain her personality in so many ways. I love her character growth and development here, as she eventually learns to accept help from other people, instead of trying do everything by herself. Ahh... her whole story strikes so many chords with me. I also love how she got her own grand love story here.

(Part of me is curious if the Aki-lookalike and Kunugi’s ‘true form’ will make an appearance later on. It’s a long shot, but let’s hope!)

This route also revealed a lot about Yuzuru, whom I’m liking more and more and whose story I’m really looking forward to... I thought I had more to say about him but nahhh. Asshole who’s a secret softie at heart <3.

I’ll sign off this post with the following pun from Genpei which I thought was pretty cheeky -

[him-e]

Hey! I love your analysis’ of Reylo. They’re my favorite. I have a loaded question (hopefully you’ve never been asked) — when do you think both Rey and Kylo became PHYSICALLY attracted to each other? And when do you think Rey became ROMANTICALLY attracted to Kylo, because I think we can all agree after killing Han Solo and their fight on Starkiller Base, she was, and rightly so, hostile and angry. Sorry if it’s a stupid question but you just seem to go really in depth with details. :)

ok so I noticed a very similar ask is already making the rounds on here, but since I started writing this post before I saw it, you’re getting mine too, yay. 

First: physical vs romantic can be a false binary. Some people don’t experience a difference in physical attraction vs romantic attraction. On a literary level, and especially in the context of a space opera/fairytale geared towards a young audience, the distinction might be entirely redundant: the two spheres coincide, as the sexual element is never explicit in fairytales, and the romantic interest is often a stand-in for both. You don’t get a point where the characters are “only” physically attracted to each other in this kind of stories.  

Second: going from hating someone to falling in love with said someone is a pretty standard romantic trope. It’s juicy, it’s sexy, and it’s all about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. In enemies to lovers stories, the initial hatred is not an obstacle but part of the romantic build-up.Usually there isn’t “one” turning point where the relationship dramatically changes, but many. It’s a gradual evolution. 

With that said… I believe a degree of attraction was always there on both sides (Kylo’s side being a bit more self-evident than Rey’s, though Rey’s part is interesting as well, more on that later). The romantic feelings, on the other hand, are still a work in progress. They still haven’t acknowledged them. 

Let’s start with Kylo because it’s easier. 

1) Kylo is VERY attracted to Rey since the beginning.

Our boy is very transparent when it comes to Rey.He instinctively recognizes that there’s something special to this girl, and he’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

^ He looks her up and down. Adam emphasizes this gesture with a blatant head motion because he’s wearing a mask and he can’t be subtle about it. Which means he was probably asked to be unsubtle.

^ He gets in her personal space immediately after that. There’s really no need to be this close if he wanted to simply mind probe her. 

This is especially interesting because the way this scene is edited we don’t see how he got so close that he’s practically…what, sniffing her neck? Whispering in her ear? So I guess the final cut was rather toned down compared to the raw footage of this scene, and it’s for the better, since Rey is immobilized and terrified and in no position to give consent to this closeness. (tbh, I suspect he was originally meant to touch her or cup her face in this scene, and they cut it because they wanted to make sure that Kylo never touches her—aside from bridal carrying her into his ship. See also how he touches her during the interrogation in the tfa novelization but not in the movie. This is an excellent decision in my opinion. It’s crucial that Kylo doesn’t cross that boundary without Rey’s consent, so it makes it all the more poignant when he touches Rey’s outstretched hand in TLJ. Yeah, don’t tell me this wasn’t all planned.)

This attraction isn’t conscious on Kylo’s part—he seems to be completely clueless about it. Both Rey and Kylo are coded as very immature for their ages, both because they’re supposed to have a coming of age arc (which in true sw fashion overlaps with a hero’s journey), and because they’re emotionally stunted as neither had a “normal” adolescence (for different reasons).

^ more unnecessary closeness and he’s also blatantly looking at her lips and neck here. I won’t go in deep into the interrogation scene because there’s too much to dissect, but yeah, the whole thing is Kylo being ridiculously fascinated by Rey and not knowing what to do with it.

But this is also where he starts going deeper into her… ahem, poor choice of words, sorry. I mean he looks inside her mind and he’s enraptured. He sees her loneliness, her fear to leave the place where she’s bound in a forced state of childhood, he sees the island of her dreams—and her affection for Han, which immediately triggers a cascade of unpleasant feelings for him. In short, this is where he connects with her emotionally (although forcibly) and where it stops being just curiosity and attraction and becomes something more, on a deeper level than just the physical, for him.

(casual reminder that this is a space opera so yes, Kylo can see a kaleidoscope of Rey’s inner world and HOPELESSLY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT in the span of 2 minutes of mind probe. This isn’t to be taken literally.)

As she slips out of his grip just when he’s starting to know her, Kylo LOSES HIS SHIT. He gives in to a childish temper tantrum at the sight of her empty interrogation chair, and when she shows up again at Finn’s side, he sees red. This is very possessive/jealous coded behavior.

THEN REY SUMMONS THE LEGACY SABER AND HE’S LIKE:

^ Heart eyes, motherfucker. I think at this point our boy’s fallen HARD. He still doesn’t know, of course. But it’s clear that this moment—the whole duel with her—left a huge impression on him. Later in TLJ, he tells Rey that she has “that look in her eyes, from the forest”, which, wow, someone’s been thinking about Rey’s eyes A LOT and memorizing that particular expression and romanticizing the shit of of it.

Verdict: Kylo immediately finds Rey attractive but has probably no idea why he feels that way, and starts making a lot of irrational decisions in order to take her with him and make her stay. By the end of TFA, he’s already caught a variety of Feelings. They will only intensify in TLJ, but the foundation, both in physical and emotional terms, is already there.

2) Rey. Rey is more complicated because she’s our protagonist/main pov, she’s female—female attraction is depicted differently than male attraction—and most importantly she’s in a situation of disadvantage for most of TFA. Due to her limited agency she is forced to react rather than act, and she’s constantly in a fight or flight mode. 

This, of course, makes her (subtle) attraction hard to notice and problematic to discuss, but we’ll get there.

^ Her first reaction to a full masked Kylo Ren is blind terror (with reason: Kylo chases, immobilizes, and then threatens her with his lightsaber). But remember: per the novelization, “she has seen this man before. In a nightmare, in a dream”. This already introduces an element of ambiguity: why this distinction? Was the dream pleasant? Kylo is, at this stage, the physical manifestation of a shadow that seems to be haunting her (in her subconscious, but also in the force vision she had minutes before). It isn’t as much repulsive as it is scary. 

Soon enough, she starts conversing with the shadow. Once the initial terror fades, she regains composure and starts demanding answers, even as tied up to a chair as she is.

The unmasking is a crucial moment.

^ This is when Rey sees Ben’s face for the first time—the prince underneath the beast—and it confuses her. It’s where she loses her combative attitude and has to regroup for a minute. She blinks, she breathes in, her eyes wander across his figure.The novelization states that it’s because he looks so average (LOL, sure) and not monstrous at all, but beyond the surface reading, this already tells us that Rey took time to register Kylo’s facial features and find them strangely unthreatening–even familiar. She definitely doesn’t find him repulsive or odd-looking.

From this moment on, she has trouble looking at him. She’s constantly avoiding his eyes or stealing short glances at him—he turned from creature into man, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of his closeness and her restraints. (this is where most people feel uncomfortable with that scene, because it’s dripping with ambiguous tension). Then she finds Kylo in her mind, she fights back and locks eyes with him again, this time unafraid. She chooses to look into the monster and while she turns the tables on him, invading his mind, she finds herself “inexorably drawn to”… something. His fears? The novelization leaves this unsaid, but the choice of words is interesting. She’s not merely pushing him out, or defending herself anymore. She finds something that intrigues her in there. That draws her in.

This scene is where they truly reveal themselves to the other—Kylo’s humanity and weaknesses, and Rey’s powers and strength. It leaves them both shaking and bewildered. It’s a sort of initiation—for both. To each other’s force powers, but also to the attractive power each has on the other.

Then comes another turning point—Han’s murder, which Rey witnesses from a privileged perspective.

^ There’s a sort of softness, but also enrapture, in her expression here. She’s completely sucked into this scene, all but forgetting she could shoot Kylo from where she is and end this at any moment. No, what she’s seeing is another side of Han, but also another side of Kylo Ren.

It goes back to when she was first introduced to the story of Ben Solo.

See? Raptured. Camera zooming in on her face. Light spheres floating around her as Han tells her about the boy who destroyed it all. This is a magical moment, the cinematography is telling us. 

On some level, even before meeting him in person, she’s drawn to him. Remember, this is a fairytale.

By the forest scene Rey is horrified, angry, exhausted, grieving. In the span of two days she was forced to grow past childhood, cut her umbilical cord to Jakku, and enter a scary phase of transition into adulthood, which Kylo is, like it or not, a big part of. Now she’s seen him murder his own father—he is a monster with a human face, something that seems to enrage her even more. The following duel is more of a discovery of her own powers (and potential darkness) than it is about Kylo (whereas for Kylo it’s definitely about Rey), but in the end she can’t bring herself to kill him. Again, this tells us more about who Rey is and what is her inner conflict than it does about her relationship with Kylo but… it’s something. I think on an instinctual level, even at this early stage, she recognizes something in him that resonates with her. His loneliness, his anger, his misery perhaps.

Verdict: at the end of TFA, Rey is mostly angry and scared of Kylo. All her actions revolve around getting the hell out of dodge, keeping Kylo out of her mind, and punishing him for Han’s death. Understandably. 

But she’s also curious. This man confuses her. He shows up in her subconscious, and he’s inextricably linked to her understanding of the Force, and her first experiences with it. It’s a sort of imprinting.

TLJ is when the really meaty part begins for Rey. In broad terms, TFA was Kylo’s romantic/sexual awakening to Rey, and TLJ is Rey’s to Kylo.The peaceful, safe setting of Ahch-To and the fact that through the force bond they can communicate but NOT hurt or manipulate each other draws Rey out of her fight or flight mode, allowing her to explore on her terms Kylo’s character, and all the questions and doubts he arouses (heh) in her. 

In their first force bond interactions, Kylo is calm and collected. In the other scenes he’s had so far he’s a hot mess of boiling rage and hurt (just minutes before, he smashed his helmet and launched an attack to the Resistance in which he thinks his mother perished), but with this girl who slashed his face in half and left him bleeding like a pig in the snow, he’s quite the soft spoken gentleman, lol. I think he’s been thinking a lot about Rey, he came to terms with his fascination for her, and now he wants to make Rey think about him too. He tempts and taunts her, from a place of relative knowledge/wisdom (or so he thinks). Rey’s the one who is in emotional turmoil. 

^ Initially, she tries to stick to her feisty heroine script, and she still has a lot of genuine rage and disgust for him, but mostly she can’t make sense of him. She feels insecure in what she knows (not just about Kylo but also about Luke, the Force, her role in this, everything. Nobody is telling her anything!), so she overcompensates with knee-jerk aggression and a false display of confidence (”I know everything I need to know about you!”). 

She also calls him “murderous snake!!!!”, which is hilarious and very revealing. IDK about snake symbolism in the GFFA, but here on earth, and especially in western culture, snakes symbolize insidious seduction, and that’s certainly the authorial intent behind this choice of words. By saying this line, Rey is framed as the quintessential virtuous maiden trying to resist (sexual) temptation, that biblically goes hand in hand with knowledge—which is exactly what Kylo offers. 

On a subconscious level, I think she already recognizes Kylo as a seduction.

^ This is the first thing that throws her off balance. She was probably expecting some angry shitty warped-moral-compass rebuttal, instead he quietly agrees that he’s a monster, while also “coming into the light” to let her see his face better. To make her see him. During the whole conversation, and part of the following force bond scene as well, Kylo is almost morbidly insistent to share with her the details of his past (”Did he tell you what happened? Did he tell you why?”). He wants her to see him, ugly as he is (in a spiritual sense).  

At this point, Rey’s sexuality is GETTING ANSWERS AND FIGURING SHIT ABOUT HER ROLE IN THE FORCE. And Luke (the biblical “God” of the island) is giving her none of that, other than hippie lessons about how the Force is a superior power blah blah and you better not fuck with it blah blah don’t go in the dark wet hole and remember that the Jedi aren’t supposed to intervene in mundane shit, blah.

I actually think the deleted fish nun party scene is important to understand Rey’s state of mind entering the third, and crucial, force connection. The point of that lesson—at least the way Rey understands it—is teaching her inaction and second-guessing her instincts. Luke is projecting his own disillusionment on her. He’s telling her to stop believing in heroes, when what Rey actually needs is believing in herself as a hero. She comes out of it feeling more frustrated and humiliated than ever. Depressed, almost.

Kylo, instead, gives her answers. Not definite answers, but something that propels her into action. He tells her, “do this and this in order to become the person you’re meant to be”. He strokes her ego. He talks about her destiny. He echoes and validates her suppressed anger and frustration. He digs up a painful truth about her family, and encourages her to face it. Even as she demands to know the reason he murdered his father, he makes it all about her. First, he made her see him; now he’s making her see herself through his eyes.

And, of course, he’s half naked through the entire thing. This is the first time Rey is confronted with something textually (as in, not simply existing in the subtext) sexual. The shirtlessness is obviously here for a meta reason too (to loudly communicate the romantic undertones of the dynamic, to symbolically strip Kylo of his layers, and to give the audience an eye candy) but even Rey the character is aware that this has to do with sex, someway. 

^ That’s why she stutters and averts her eyes. This is the unmasking 2.0, only this time the sexual implications are in the forefront. In a pg-13 format, of course, but still largely readable even for children.

This is where Rey starts wondering if they could actually touch. Gee, what a coincidence. 

The shirtless scene is a huge turning point where the romantic build up becomes, for a short while, glaringly sexual. It would be easy to say that this is when Rey’s physical attraction is born, but that’s an oversimplification. Everything in this movie and in the movie before has been building to this. Kylo Ren has been at the forefront of Rey’s thoughts since Starkiller. She has a powerful psychic connection to him, talked about him with Luke, wondered about the reasons of his patricide, questioned his backstory, exercised frantically to blow off the steam of their encounters. 

This isn’t when Rey first begins to feel attraction to Kylo—it’s where she’s first faced with the reality of it, and us with her.

And facing this reality is, in part, what prompts her to go into the dark side cave—the one the older male authority figure forbade her from going, the one in which she already subconsciously expects to walk a threshold. The threshold of knowing what happened to her parents, the question that she’s been avoiding for so long, that kept her bound to Jakku, to a version of herself who never grew up past childhood because growing up would make the years and years of abandonment painfully real, rather than just notches on a wall.

The cave scene has all the markings of an archetypal rite of passage into adulthood (and womanhood). The water, the near-drowning experience, the visions, the multiple selves, the mirror. Rey goes into it fully understanding that however it goes, it will imply a loss of innocence. Thematically, it’s a direct continuation of the other loss of innocence she’s just experienced—the sexual one, with Kylo.

Rey doesn’t get the answer she hoped for, but one that forces her to mature and come into her adult self—it’s time to take responsibility and be the hero of her own story, because the adults she were waiting for are nowhere in sight. So she comes out of the cave as more mature… but also desperate for human connection. Or rather, for connection to a specific someone. She feels “relief” when she senses Kylo’s presence in the Force inside the hut. 

And when she sees him, she thinks again of touching him.

In the movie we don’t get how the conversation started, and the novelization doesn’t delve into details either, and boy what would I pay to know what sparked Rey’s confession. But we can imagine. By this point, Rey already feels a kinship with Kylo, and her distrust and skepticism for him has eroded. She sees her own loneliness in him. She feels they were both betrayed by parental figures on some level. She’s made the mental connection that if Vader was brought back, then Ben could be too, by someone who loves him. Their force connections have been strange but they also gave her the chance to discuss stuff she would have otherwise bottled up. He’s physically attractive to her. He doesn’t judge her for going into the darkness. And when he tells her what she needs to hear the most—that she’s not alone—she makes that leap and reaches out to touch him.

It’s an olive branch, a comforting gesture towards someone she feels is just alone as she is, but it’s physical contact she seeks. She could have offered her sympathy in any other way, yet she chose to reach for his hand. Remember, she’s been thinking about touching him for a while already.

Kylo, after a moment of confusion, responds by taking off his glove. This is such a loaded gesture in terms of its romantic/sexual meaning that I’m still in shock it actually happened. He’s baring himself to her, so that this contact happens without barriers. His skin is not covered in first order leather when he touches hers. This is the real him.

^ And then they have their visions of the future, and that One Perfect Tear falls down Rey’s cheek and Luke blows up the hut and this is where my analysis can stop because by this point it’s completely obvious that our girl has FALLEN HARD, and since she’s the *shoot first, ask later* type, she hops on the Falcon to get her boy back before she can admit to herself she’s stupidly in love with him.

Rey saw a vision of herself with Ben Solo at her side, and she’s so blinded by the beauty of it that making it happen as fast as possible becomes her number one priority.

But feelings for someone don’t change overnight so radically. If she’s so massively affected by that vision, it’s only because her romantic attraction for Kylo has been building up at a consistent pace since the start of the movie, getting her to a point where she spontaneously sought an intimacy with him.

It’s the same for Kylo. Rey literally ships herself to him, but he’s no less reckless than she is in barreling into this promise of a future idyll. When Rey gets on the Supremacy, he already knows this has to end with Snoke’s death somehow. He doesn’t know how to do it, but he will. He will sacrifice his master to be with her, just as she did.

If you asked either of them if they’re in love with each other, I bet they would stare at you with uncomprehending eyes—it’s like they lack the basic lexicon to understand their feelings, let alone verbalize them. So Rey’s like “save the fleet because it’s the morally right thing to do!”, and Ben’s like “join me to rule the galaxy!”, and they’re both like, “you’ll stand with me!”. They’re trying to express the love they already feel but they’re doing it in non-romantic terms, because that’s all they know.

(gifs are credited with the “ ^ “ - click on it and reblog the op!)

[robbyrobinson]

So, Sinfest. It's hard to really say when I began to follow the webcomic, but if I were to choose, I'd have to say later 2006. Since then, I had been keeping up with the story. Created by Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest originally revolved around Slick, a self-proclaimed pimp midget who thinks he's all hot stuff when he really can't get a girl. Along the way you have Monique, a self-absorbed woman who took advantage of her looks, Squig, an anthropomorphic pig who loves burritos and smokes pot. There is also Seymour, a Christian fanatic, Li'l E, a young boy who wants the Devil to notice him, the Devil himself, and a truckload of other characters. For the most part, Tatsuya tended to take the middle ground when regarding societal issues. For instance, Seymour is exaggerated because of his extreme devotion to his faith, or other extremities were poked fun at. Tatsuya hardly ever took sides with any of these subjects.

For story arcs...for the most part, one thing that Tatsuya has difficulty with is telling a story. With the earlier strips, they were often episodic, but one storyline that I did like was the one concerning what is my favorite pairing, Fuchsia x Criminy. Essentially, Fuchsia was a succubus who worked for the Devil, her job being to ensnare the souls of men. But all that changed when she met Criminy, a young nerdy boy who was an avid bookworm who had a fortress built out of books that served to protect him from the outside. At first, Fuchsia tries to tempt Criminy as succubi do, but Criminy actually makes her question her position. The build up was slow, but it is revealed that Criminy's words had made Fuchsia reevaluate her life, and she gradually becomes less evil over time. Eventually, she quits her job altogether to be with Criminy. Yes, taht's right: she gave the Devil the middle finger and hightailed it out of there. Honestly, I found Fuchsia as one of the better characters in the webcomic. Her development was believable, and it actually further delves into showing how demon folk are mistreated by society. She was mistreated to the point where you can say that she believed that there wasn't anything good about her. But Criminy actually treated her like an ordinary person. No wonder she fell for him. My only gripe is that we hardly see her or Criminy as much in the webcomic like we used to, which sucks because that was one of the main reasons as to why I continued to read the strips.

Another character that received some massive character development was surprisingly Li'l E. After he received amnesia (long story), we learn that he was actually the son of the Devil and Lilith (a woman who was ostracized for forming a relationship with the Prince of Lies). Really, everything about Lil E's life is depressing. He was bullied for his appearance, his father was distant because he was disappointed that his son wasn't that evil as he'd hoped (he still does care for him), and his mother's missing...or dead. Though my only issue is that it doesn't seem complete yet. We still don't have the crucial point wherein Lil E became who he was prior to his amnesia. So with these story arcs, they were okay to say the least. Tatsuya still kept the middle ground on social issues, the characters were likable. It seemed that nothing would go wrong. That is, until she came....

Without much prompt, the webcomic became very pro-feminism. While I do agree that women should have rights in some areas, the webcomic completely went off the rails with it. The Sisterhood is introduced into the webcomic, led by a tricycle riding young woman named Xanthe. Now, when she arrived many thought that she was going to be an exaggeration of feminism much like how Seymour was one for Christian fundamentalism. But the problem was that the Sisterhood was always proven right in their accusations which gave little to no legroom for a middle ground. Suddenly, the webcomic became cynical as the Sisterhood completely derailed the plot of the story. For instance, Monique's character was completely changed. Xanthe gives Monique a red pill which reveals that everyone hated her (even though previous comics showed the contrary). Suddenly, Monique shaves off her hair, and becomes an embittered cynic convinced that everyone hates the very ground she walks on. The Sisterhood completely destroyed her life, and yet somehow they were in the right. That's not even getting into Monique's relationship with Absinthe, a demon girl who's kind of an airhead. Now, the strip wants to portray their relationship as cute. I know that many debate that this relationship was not fully developed, but I personally felt that the build up was okay. My only issue with this is that at no point in the webcomic's history was it ever implied that Monique was a lesbian. Throughout her appearances, it was made explicitly clear that she was boy crazy. She flaunted her looks, dated several men which ended in one nightstands, among other things. It would be different if at the very least she were bisexual, but that wasn't the case either. One strip was about Slick reading a porn magazine, and Monique makes a comment on it, and she also compliments a woman for her....assets. But that was because she was someone who craved attention. She always did something outrageous as she was a black hole for attention.

It doesn't especially help that by having Monique date Absinthe it actually destroyed one of the prevalent themes of the comic. That being whether or not Slick and Monique were ever going to hook up. Nowadays, Slick hardly ever hangs out with Monique during her post-transformation. After one of her poetry nights goes awry, all Slick does is accidentally give Monique bad advice that she takes as him labeling her a victim. There are even times where she nearly got Absinthe, her own girlfriend mind you, fired. Out of all of the changes the comic's gone through, Monique suffered the worst. Going back to the Sisterhood, though. These groups of girls started out as borderline terrorists. They would bomb factories, reprogram sexbots to kill people who took advantage of them, the vandalized property, etc. Yes, I know that the Patriarchy is seen as the evil force within Sinfest (with the Devil now being upgraded to the head of the organization), but the Sisterhood alone had done more damage than good, and yet, they're the ones who are supposed to be the good guys.

Though one of the worst aspects of this is how like I have said, Tatsuya doesn't know how to tell a story. One such story arc was the zombie one. Fuchsia originally would tell stories to the damned in Hell after her redemption arc. After she severed her ties with the Big D for good, the damned came together to form an undead zombie, and they went out to search for her. That story hadn't been updated for a long time. Or another regards Slick's doppelganger trying to become the dominate of the two. This hasn't been resolved yet either. And there are many other instances of where there are too many story arcs being juggled at once.

Overall, Sinfest was a good webcomic at first before it slowly became preachy. Really, Tatsuya himself had the habit of bashing anyone who complained about the drastic chanegs, assuming that they were misogynists who were peeved that Monique didn't shake her ass anymore. The art style is still alright. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes and other newspaper comic strips. It's simplistic, and cute to an extent. Though the Sunday comic strips are especially great. I would ultimately recommend the first half of the webcomic before its descent into radical feminism.

[drscotcheggmann]

Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You Review & Wider Reflections

On Sunday afternoon I went to see Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You. As a longtime fan since Generation 1, the thirteen year old boy still hiding inside this now thirty year old man (sometimes not all that well hidden) was nothing short of buzzing; but while excitement was running high as the lights dimmed and the curtain went up, at the same time I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew what I wanted: a huge slice of nostalgia; to be transported back to the late 90s, a reminder of when my love for these little monsters was still in its infancy; a warm, tingling Thundershock of a hug from Pikachu and the gang. But would this be what I would get? Would the film alter or even damage my memories of watching the original Animé all those years ago? Getting up early before school, willing to forgo breakfast to make sure I’d watched the latest episode. Some will say “Get over yourself and stop being so precious”, arguing that no matter if good or bad, those golden mornings watching Mew dance across the screen as the ridiculously infectious theme tune rose to crescendo shouldn’t be and can never be touched by watching this one film. Yeah, that’s all well and good in theory but it’s never nice having a half baked reimagining or rehash of something classic seemingly shit all over your childhood. And this was a slight worry because....I’d heard things. That Brock and Misty had been ditched for two other male and female companions. That the movie was only loosely based on the original Animé and might stray from what longtime fans like me might expect. It’s always the longtime fans that feel most entitled, whether it be video-gamers, movie buffs or Pokémaniancs. So as Ash’s Mum comes in to wake her long sleeping son, dreaming of his future adventures in the early hours of his tenth birthday, the weight of expectation was weighing on my mind. But. I’m pleased to say that this longtime, entitled, nostalgia crazed Pokémon fan had nothing but a huge smile on his face when all was said and done. I would go as far as to say that I left the movie theatre, mentally waving my arms in delight, like a Togepi on speed. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect and it didn’t tick all of my own personal boxes but sitting at the end watching the credits roll, I realised that it didn’t have to. Looking around me as the lights went up I realised that it was about more than just me and all of the other Gen 1 superfans sitting there in the semi darkness (and I would wager there were quite a few of us)! Let me explain. WARNING: FULL SPOILERS AHEAD. Something for the Oldies The movie tells a story which is, at its core, rooted in the original Animé. Ash, a regular 10 year old boy living in a world inhabited by Pokémon, dreams of one day becoming the greatest Pokémon Master (yes, the greatest Pokémon master, not trainer). Ever. Like no one ever was (sorry, couldn’t resist). And in this fact alone, the film lavishes longtime fans with nostalgic riches at every turn. From Ash’s frantic dash out of the house (he doesn’t seem to shower at any point before setting off, as noted by my cynical cinema going companion), to those first wonderfully endearing moments of love hate interplay between Ash and Pikachu, it’s all just ‘kid in a sweet shop’, ear to ear smile inducing stuff. Another thing that struck me as a fan from the beginning is that I’ve never seen so many Gen 1 Pokémon in such a short space than in this movie. As Ash tumbles off a cliff into a river clutching Pikachu, a murmuration of angry Spearow in pursuit, a snarling Gyarados darts downstream in what is a near miss for our hapless duo (but at least he has a wash in the river). Pinsir prowl the forests, people can be seen strolling down streets and indoors with their Pokémon at heel. A slumbering Onix is provoked into pursuing our group of heroes. Nidoran of both genders, a Sandshrew and a Paras are all led into a cave to shelter from the rain by a certain legendary dog (more about them later). At one point, I even had to laugh as Ash approaches the summit of the mountain towards the end of the film, only to be greeted by an audience of exclusively Gen 1 Pokémon: Graveller, Venomoth, Golbat, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Magnemite, Magneton, Electabuzz and Magmar. You wonder if some of these even belong on a bloody mountain but this is the love the filmmakers are keen to show those fans of the earliest generation. A clear message: ‘Here we are! The originals. Back in all our glory again’. And the effect of this is wonderful. I actually began to go through how many of the original 151 Pokémon I hadn’t seen. There were still quite a few but not as many as you’d think. And it’s not only Gen 1 that seems to get that special treatment. Gen 2 is just as lovingly captured. Ho-Oh is the Gen 2 Pokémon at the heart of Ash’s quest in the movie, a quest which was never realised in the original anime but still has its roots there, as Ash spots Ho-Oh flying over the rainbow in the very first episode. But there are others too. The legendary dogs, Raikou, Suicune and Entei all feature, the latter most prominently. When I say prominently I mean this in the most literal sense for Entei - he’s the size of a freakin’ house! There’s even a glimpse of Lugia as the film draws to a close. As a longtime fan it’s great to see all of these guys on the big screen again but I’m also quite honestly glad that the movie did not become an exercise in crowbarring in every legendary Pokémon across the generations, just for the sake of it. Arguably seeing all 3 legendary dogs, who are so incredibly rare that hardly anyone ever encounters them, is a bit much but I was ok with this. It’s not all about the legendaries though; the not so legendary Pokémon spanning all generations are well represented. That first moment when I saw a non Kanto Pokémon alongside a Kanto one and the realisation that this wasn’t a world totally rooted in Kanto. It was great, despite my Gen 1 bias. It really showed how far the Pokémon phenomenon has come over the years and that the filmmakers weren’t afraid to lay out all their wares and risk upsetting those wanting a solely Gen 1 affair. What’s there to be upset about anyway? We all love Pokémon, right? Classic Pokémon from numerous generations are one thing but it’s the set pieces from the Animé that I still remember fondly today and some of these have been reimagined in this iteration of one of Ash’s adventures in Kanto. A clever use of the slightly jazzier (but not necessarily better) theme tune advances Ash’s journey as far as Erika’s Gym, but not before we see him catch his very first Pokémon in the form of Caterpie. We see those initial struggles (and shocks) with Pikachu, the Charmander left out in the rain and Butterfree’s departure to the spawning grounds, presumably to do some spawning with his female companion (can we not even say ‘mating’ anymore?). These set pieces are either bang on the money in terms of paying homage to the original or are slight twists on the original formula (most notably, the Charmander arc). Unfortunately for me, Butterfree’s departure to pastures new didn’t really have the same gravitas here as it did in the original Animé. I think the reason for this is partly due to the time constraints of the movie and that we don’t really get to see Ash’s relationship with Butterfree develop in any sort of meaningful way, except for seeing Caterpie evolve into Metapod and then into Butterfree. The tears flooding down Ash’s face, while they served as a call back to what was a particularly heartbreaking farewell in the Animé, just didn’t have the same punch. But perhaps without a direct comparison, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. Regardless, it’s still a touching monument, showing the deep and lasting bond humans form with their Pokémon; perhaps one of the best outside Ash’s relationship with Pikachu, which shines as brightly as it ever did despite having only 90 or so minutes to show it. And it’s perhaps because it seeks to wow its audience with so many of these individual moments, both past glories and new, that the movie feels a little disjointed in places. At times the action moves on a little too quickly, leaving no room for character development beyond the high octane chase/fight we have just witnessed. Consequently I didn’t feel that the synergy was quite there between Ash, Sorrel and Verity. Marshadow on the other hand is well deployed, being introduced gradually as the movie progresses. I actually thought that using Marshadow as the primary Pokémon antagonist was a good move as opposed to the likes of Darkrai or something a little more obviously evil looking. Marshadow’s ability to seem innocent enough but to pack a few punches when backed into a corner was well done, even if Marshadow isn’t a Pokémon just for the fans of yester year. But this is ok. More on why is coming. Team Rocket make their appearance as you would expect but maybe not in quite the way I expected. If anything, Team Rocket are fringe players here. There is no grand and bombastic entrance with the Team Rocket signature jingle; in fact, I can’t recall a moment when Ash and his friends actually come into direct contact with Jesse, James and Meowth. There doesn’t seem to be much of a grand plan from Team Rocket: they want Entei, then abandon that and go after Ho-Oh but are always thwarted without our heroes ever knowing, either propelled into the air or disappearing off the side of a mountain and always into a glinting star denoting that they might not be back for a while. But they do keep coming back, which is fine, but to no great effect. It’s all a little bizarre and you can’t help but feel, having watched the original Animé, that they could’ve been put to better use rather than simply be made to seem even more ridiculous than they already are. To the movie’s credit though (and this sounds like I’m wanting to have my cake and eat it here), the filmmakers don’t beat us over the head with Team Rocket, as was sometimes the case in the Animé. I remember physically sighing and rolling my eyes at times when Team Rocket would appear and break the flow of a perfectly good episode. The XY Animé moved away from this thankfully but I suppose it was nice to not have Team Rocket dominate, despite also being a tad underused. For longtime fans (or certainly for this one), there were one or two other things missing that, while they didn’t detract massively from the overall experience, just would’ve been nice and not too much trouble to implement. For one, although Ash seems to be largely the same character as I remember, here he comes across as even more gung ho and sure of himself than usual, to the point of actually losing some of the naivety that made him so endearing in the first place. At no point in the film does he whip out the Pokédex, looking confused and saying ‘What’s that?’ as he spots a Pokémon he’s never encountered before. Indeed, there is no Pokédex AT ALL as far as I can remember, just like the one so ceremoniously presented to Ash by Professor Oak in the Animé. There is a smartphone though which Verity uses to take pictures (sigh). Not even Kanto is free from the reaches of modern tech it seems. The lack of Pokédex and ‘what’s that?’ moment made me a little sad as Ash’s confusion was once my confusion, as a 13 year old sitting in front of the TV, pre widespread internet and readily available lists of information, wondering what this new and wonderful Pokémon Ash had just run into actually was. And then running into school to chat wildly with my friends about it - “Did you see this morning’s episode?! That was awesome!” I still remember the original speculation about who the Pokémon at the beginning of the theme tune was and why it wasn’t part of the original 150. Ash’s naivety was mirrored in my own. Don’t get me wrong, Ash is still green around the gills in the movie, pushing Pokémon to their limits at times without fully knowing their capabilities or strengths. But maybe the absence of this wide eyed naivety, even if only a little, struck me so much as I’m not that naive young person anymore. Someone who lives in a different world where information is at our fingertips and there is no excuse for not knowing. I’m digressing slightly here but it did make me think about the then and now. But perhaps the movie’s most striking departure from the Animé is the absence of some key figures. Brock, Misty, Officer Jenny. I understand that maybe 90 or so minutes just wouldn’t be enough time to make Ash’s relationship with Brock and Misty believable, especially when Ash’s relationship with Pikachu should be centre stage. I know that the movie is really only a side quest in Ash’s overarching journey. A snapshot of his travels on his way to glory. But a small cameo would’ve been nice. Fighting a gym battle in Pewter or Cerulean City, especially since the only gym battle we see is beyond this point chronologically and so it’s not a case of Ash having not run into Brock and Misty yet. Ash’s direct rival, Cross left me feeling a little dissatisfied too. What was wrong with good ‘ol Gary. Even though Cross goes from Pokémon masochist to seeing that there’s more to the whole Pokémon thing than ruthless ambition, he’s still a bit of an ass when he goes his own way, despite the fact he owes Ash (and Charizard) his life. The Charizard he abandoned as a Charmander. The bastard. Yeah, he wasn’t my favourite. Let’s leave it at that. Something for the Newbies While you may think that because I’ve spent the last section of this review picking at this bit and that bit and perhaps making unfair comparisons to the Animé days, I just want to reiterate: I loved the movie, imperfect as it was. I loved it for all of my own reasons, some of which I’ve mentioned and some I’m yet to mention but also for other people’s reasons too (bear with me on this one). For as I watched the audience file into the cinema (and I saw absolutely everyone file in, having been über keen in arriving half an hour early), I began to realise that the Gen 1, diehard Pokémon fan wasn’t going to be the only type of Pokémon fan represented. I’m talking about the kids, of course. Kids ranging in age from 4 to 14. The younger ones especially excited to be seeing their favourite Pokémon on the big screen for the first time. One particular Mum and Dad ushered their two young daughters to their seats, one carrying a Squirtle and the other with a Charmander tucked under one arm and an Eevee peeking out of her bag dangling off the other arm. This is a whole new wave of Pokémon fans, all of whom weren’t even born when Ash first set foot out the door and the Gen 1 hype was thriving. And I can’t overstate how much this is a great thing to behold. That the love of Pokémon is still running strong some twenty plus years later. And that’s of course thanks to Pokémon moving with the generations. Literally. I know I’ve been banging on about how wonderfully Gen 1 is represented in I Choose You but in actual fact the movie does a great job of pleasing fans of all generations. If you grew up with Piplup as a starter, you’ll be happy to see that little guy flapping about onscreen; Lucario is perhaps one of the most recent Gen Pokémon to be embraced by both old and new fans alike and he’s here by Sorrel’s side in all of his hard assed glory. And even if you just dived into the world of Pokémon last November with the release of Sun & Moon, there’s plenty to keep you happy here. Marshadow appears and disappears, Cross’s midnight Lycanroc is broodingly evil at all times, and Incineroar, while low down on my favourite starter evolution list, will have younger fans especially bicep flexing and fist pumping in delight. Personally I would’ve loved to have seen Decidueye unleash the full extent of his ghost/grass power, being what I feel is the most impressive starter final evolution in generations but the fight with Charmeleon would then not have been a fair one. Again, to hammer home my slight bias for the original 151, I was glad to see Charizard kick Incineroar’s ass in the end, not just in terms of satisfying the movie’s story but also as a mini victory of Charizard, THE ultimate fire starter Pokémon of all generations for many, over Incineroar, who I feel would look better placed on the side of a cereal packet. Rarrr! That was a bit catty but yeah, he’s just not a favourite of mine but I’m totally fine with these younger generations cheering him on. I did actually force my eyes to leave the action now and again during the screening, as I sometimes do, just to see if everyone else is enjoying the action as much as me. Of course there were the parents, some of them maybe older fans like me but there were an equal if not greater number of bemused parents whose faces seemed to be struggling to grasp what all the fuss was about. But I salute these parents for giving up a chunk of their Sunday afternoon for the sake of their young Pokémaniacs. And what a wonderful sight it was to see this new generation of Pokémon fans hanging on Pikachu’s every ‘Pika’. One little boy stood up through majority of the film, clutching and peering over the empty seat in front, so obviously brimming with excitement. Someone somewhere in the darkness screamed a giddy ‘Pika-pi’ at one point, causing a fair few chuckles. Another child sitting along my row had an expression of pure awe etched on their face the whole time and I can completely understand why: imagine seeing the Legendary dogs for the first time; not just onscreen but EVER. Imagine seeing Ho-Oh for the very first time, gliding over that rainbow; imagine hearing the names Articuno, Zapdos & Moltres, as they were mentioned at the movie’s conclusion, and thinking to yourself ‘I wonder who they are?’ and then rushing out of the cinema to look them up and find out. Oh, to be young again and see it all with fresh eyes. Something for Everyone So far I’ve tried to look at how I Choose You might appeal to the older generation of Pokémon fans as well as the new. But although I’ve painted a picture of distinct camps of Pokémon fans, the movie does a great job of bringing fans from all corners together thanks primarily to its rich visual aesthetic. Everyone can appreciate the sun drenched vistas, rainswept plains, snow capped mountains, billowing clouds drifting over fields filled with flowers dancing in the wind, dense forests and buzzing metropolises so vividly and vibrantly depicted; each area alive with Pokémon just waiting to be discovered, caught and loved. The visual feast starts and continues unabated to the end, never more so than in the Pokémon battles which have never looked sharper and more dynamic. Charizard zooms into the air with a menacing elegance; Pikachu nimbly dodges this way and that, all before landing a thundershock attack of seismic proportions; you can almost feel the flames lick your face as Entei or Incineroar unleash a frightening flamethrower blast; and some of the Marshadow-possessed Pokémon’s attacks land onscreen with the megatonne force of an atomic bomb, or so it seems, also offering a stark contrast between the affectionate side of Pokémon and their über aggressive side when given the chance. It’s all lovely to watch and your senses aren’t allowed a moment’s rest. And that goes for your emotions too. In keeping with the willingness of some of the more recent video game entries in the series to explore powerful and often dark themes, I Choose You also does not shy away from putting its audience through the emotional grinder (the dark lore threads in Sun and Moon are especially worth reading about; I still think about that abandoned Stuffl). There’s neglect (Charmander in the rain), physical pain (Lycanroc biting Cross and not letting go, something that shocked me particularly for some reason), the dangers of greedy ambition (as Ash ponders if Pikachu would’ve won the fight which his Charmeleon just lost). The latter is particularly interesting if we consider the end of the movie; we see Ash finally battling Ho-Oh and the scene cuts to a long shot of the battle taking place from afar, represented by flashes of light on the mountainside. But we never actually find out if Ash managed to catch Ho-Oh or even come close, despite seeing Pikachu looking a little worse for wear as Ash delivers him to the Pokémon Centre after the battle. And this is ok, because we don’t really need to. Arguably, Ash’s greatest adversary isn’t Marshadow or Cross; it’s himself, as he has to put aside all of his own ambitions to save his friends and his beloved Pikachu. Some may perceive this uncertainty over Ho-Oh as quite unsatisfying but Ash’s willingness to let Ho-Oh go might point to him growing and realising there is more to his journey than ruthless ambition. Viewed like this, I find this ending very satisfying and think that had Ash done a pompous and over the top victory dance having caught Ho-Oh, this would not have been tonally in keeping with what we have just seen: everyone escape with their lives narrowly and Ash come back from the dead (or a state of semi death at least in an alternate reality). I’m glad that Ash emerges at the end of the movie better off having not had a moment like this. The Pokémon Centre Lady’s ‘That’s nice’ when Ash tells her they’ve just been battling Ho-Oh is perfect in showing that the result of that battle (caught or not) doesn’t really matter. And, most importantly, Ash seems ok with it too. I would go as far as to say he looks pleased to have had the opportunity to battle Ho-Oh, caught or not and Pikachu having lost. We can see he’s come a long way. Ash’s brush with death is incidentally not the only occasion that the movie is happy with testing its audience. I sat wide eyed as I watched that Luxray found dead in the snow, frozen, trying to protect its infant owner from the fate it ultimately suffered itself. This idea that Pokémon are dispensable yet indestructible; that they can be pushed to the limit with few consequence that a Pokémon Centre wouldn’t be able to fix. With Luxray’s onscreen death, this notion is shattered in an instant and the world the movie seeks to flesh out is made all the more real and believable for it; a tenderness and bond exists between people and their Pokémon which shouldn’t be scoffed at. And, in closing out this section of the review, that bond between person and Pokémon is hammered home no better as Ash and Pikachu part into different worlds, at the tail end of the movie. That moment as they lie face to face and Pikachu speaks. PIKACHU SPEAKS. I actually thought I was hearing things. The minute I saw it I knew this would be a scene to divide opinion. The cynical side of me initially thought this was an easy pull on the heart strings. The Pokémon equivalent of Jack and Rose. But it’s actually much more than this. Having begun watching the original Animé, I’ve been used to Pikachu communicating with Ash by way of facial expression or tonal variations on the same word or half word for nigh on 20 years. But to actually hear what the little guy truly thinks of his partner, that he never wants to leave his side. I’m going to level with everyone reading this. A tear welled up in my eye. The fact that Pikachu never wants to leave Ash’s side wasn’t exactly a revelation I admit but to allow something like this to happen by way of them sharing different realities and one of which being situated a stone’s throw away from death. It was beautiful. It won’t win and Oscar and some won’t think it was anywhere near as impactful as I’m describing. Some will think that it probably wasn’t necessary at all, seeing as a trainer’s bond with their Pokémon seems to transcend language. But, to put forward the most compelling argument for the scene’s inclusion, this is arguably what gives Ash the push he needs to transcend death and push out of that nether realm. Not for himself, but for Pikachu who he would be leaving alone otherwise. Aww man, I can feel the tears coming all over again. Joking (or not) over tears aside, the willingness of the Pokémon universe, both in film and video game media, to engage with what are uncomfortable topics, gives me lots of hope for the future. I still hope for a more adult fan orientated game in which our hero feels like he or she is in genuine peril or at risk of death (I don’t think I fainted once in Pokémon Moon!), a game which makes fans confront real world problems but then allows us to eventually overcome them. I know I’ll be hoping for a long time, as Gamefreak would be unlikely to make such a move and risk alienating such a huge demographic represented by the series’ youngest fans. But, on the flip side, I wouldn’t want this alienation to happen either. The fact that the movie was able to articulate some of these themes and do so in such a way as to make it palatable for younger viewers is a triumph in itself. Those wide eyed children in the audience of my screening were the proof of the pudding and long may it continue. Conclusion I really enjoyed I Choose You. Even though the movie wasn’t perfect, it did one thing really well for me personally: it affirmed my love of Pokémon, as if that really needed any affirmation in the first place. It reminded me just why I fell in love with everything Pokémon in the first place and why that loves has endured until today. The world of Pokémon and the simple but powerful messages it communicates are timeless: that someone seemingly insignificant can achieve great things and make a difference; that we should all step out of the front door and pursue our dreams; that we can rely on our friends and family for support along the way. Never have these messages been more relevant and important than in the shitstorm of a world we live in today and it’s always nice to be reminded that this is the other side of what humanity is capable of, even if that reminder does come from a fictional world filled with fictional creatures. Such is the power of art and fiction. I’ll finish here with a reflection on a scene from the movie which really made me pause and think (to the point where I nearly missed the five minutes of the onscreen action that followed). The scene is when Ash first succumbs to Marshadow’s dark seduction and is taken to an alternate reality where Pokémon don’t exist. He leaps out of bed, a poster on his bedroom wall of a blue car, a red car and a green car in place of Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur. He’s late to school that day, not for Professor Oak’s lab. Just regular, boring old school. He looks out the window as he sits daydreaming in class , glimpsing Ho-Oh gliding high above, except it’s not Ho-Oh at all but an aeroplane. And when he questions what is beyond the confines of the school fence, we hear something along the lines of: towns, forests, fields, more towns, forests, fields and then the ocean. What is essentially being shown, described and imagined by Ash is a world without Pokémon. A drab, boring and monotone world which lacks a layer of purpose. Quite ironically, this is our reality. Real life. I remember sitting as a kid and thinking that the coolest thing in the world would be if Pokémon were real. To be caught, trained and loved. To some extent a virtual version of this was achieved via Pokémon Go but the initial hype has died down. I knew then, as a kid, and I know now that there won’t ever be anything approaching what Pokémon does in the real world but this scene in a Pokémonless alternate reality got me thinking about the wider implications of this being communicated (and I think intentionally) by the filmmakers. Imagine a world, this shitstorm of a world we live in, WITHOUT something as wonderful as Pokémon, even if they are only virtual monsters living on our screens. This phenomenon which has brought and continues to bring so many people together, be it via the TCG, games or Animé. The phenomenon which was a huge part of my childhood and is something I engage with in some way every single day as a grown man. Imagine if all of that didn’t exist and never had done. It’s a frightening thought and as Ash snapped out of his alternate reality and I came back to mine, I gave thanks for the enduring charm and appeal of Pokémon. The fact that I was sitting in that cinema seat almost twenty years on, still enjoying everything the Pokémon universe has to offer is something that I’m so pleased the film allowed me to experience and feel and give thanks for. Thank you for the memories, Pokémon and here’s to the memories still to be made. My final parting piece of advice: stay beyond the credits. A few shorts, a goosebump-inducing rendering of the initial start sequence to the original Pokémon games on Gameboy and a beautiful piano arrangement of the Pokémon Animé theme tune. A shout out also to @brayshgaming - I hope he particularly enjoyed the Noivern clip but also hope that it isn’t now a regular feature in his nightmares. There is no escape! Thanks for reading guys. Comments on my reflections are most welcome and I’d love to hear some of your own thoughts about the movie. This review was written solely from my memory of watching the movie (and thanks to lots of frantic jotting down of ideas the moment the lights went up, while they were still fresh in my mind). There may therefore be some inaccuracies in here which I cannot yet verify without watching the movie again. Apologies if so.

[bonerhitler]

MHA2: Deku Boogaloo

So, as an apology for the delay here's a first ever follow up about a fantastic series: Boku No Hero Academia. Last time I wrote about this I tried to convince anyone who stumbled on this blog that it was awesome and they should read it, and if you haven't read it; go do so, it's awesome. This time I'm going to talk about some stuff I briefly touched on in that bit. Namely, what exactly makes it so awesome. The thematic choices, the character development and just what sets it apart from most shounen series in more detail than I did before. So, without further ado lets get to this.

Before I get into the meat of what's so spectacular about MHA, let me talk about other series. Because I think it would be best to get all this garbage out of the way first. So, to elaborate on a point I made before; a massive difference between MHA and another equally good series One Piece, and the vast majority of shounen series is the very basic structure of character development, the premises of the world and the core beliefs of how things work. That is to say, most shounen series have characters simply be born strong.

Take a series like Naruto for example. We are constantly told and shown that many, many characters simply are better. Genetically speaking they are objectively better because of their bloodlines. Other characters give up fighting because there's no way to compete, many times over the main titular main character is told there's no way he can win against these magical bloodlines, and later on in the series we find out that even Naruto himself is the product of ancient magical bloodlines that explains all of his powers. Rarely does a character just working hard and training themselves to be the best actually pay off. In fact there is a character who's entire gimmick is just that, he has no secret bloodline powers or anything and ultimately he achieves virtually nothing in the series because as they keep hammering home; you just can't compete with people who are objectively genetically superior to you. How can the guy who can kick harder than normal, or control bugs ever hope to be as good as the guys who can warp the very fabric of reality.

That's the biggest issue with most shounen series. They eschew characters the reader base can identify with or relate to in favor of power fantasies the reader would want to be. Not that this is necessarily bad. It just feels shallow. Even timeless classics like Dragon Ball, a personal favorite, are guilty of the exact same thing. Goofy, fun-loving Goku was just plain better than his equals like Krillin. Going on into Dragon Ball Z they introduced the saiyan concept and characters like Yamcha and Tien just stopped being relevent. This doesn't make Dragon Ball a worse series, don't get me wrong. It just makes it harder to relate to, but it doesn't really try to engage with its readers on that level. It's an entirely different approach and so, just to clarify, I'm not saying any of these series are worse or better than one another. I just want to establish why they're different and why it makes something like MHA such a breath of fresh air.

So, what exactly makes MHA different in presentation? It actively rejects the idea that people are objectively or inherently better. Whether it's a character rejecting their father's obsession with breeding a superior child, a character with a naturally powerful set of abilities learning that their ego and raw strength isn't enough to to get ahead in life, or someone simply realizing that because they were lucky doesn't mean they're the wrong person for the job. MHA puts a far heavier focus on individual growth and development and shuns the idea that someone who has an advantage from the beginning is set for life. One of the major themes of this series is that of identity.

The very first thing we learn about the main character, Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, is that he was not only born without a quirk(the term for everyone's natural born super power in this world is a quirk so I'll be using that from here on out) but despite this he was still determined to be a hero. He idolized not only the most prominent super hero of the age, Allmight, but his fellow classmates despite their negative attitudes towards him. During the early chapters before the story proper kicks off, we learn that all he wanted was for someone, anyone, to tell him that he could be a hero despite his handicap. We see him mocked and bullied for his determination to be a hero, we see his mother guilt ridden for being unable to support her child. We even see Deku himself start to lose confidence in his own path. Until a villain attacks one of his classmates.

At a moment where none of the professional heroes can help and someone he knows is in danger, it's the powerless Deku who rushes in recklessly to save someone. Thanklessly as it might have been, stupidly even, he alone forced action in this situation and finally someone acknowledged him. This event is what led to Allmight choosing him as his successor, led to Deku gaining a quirk and ultimately reaffirmed Deku's faith in himself. Not through being born with a totally awesome powerset that made him the strongest, not because sheer random luck made a radioactive spider bite him. But because he, at that moment, embodied all the values of heroism that Allmight respected and saw in himself. It's this, a character finally proving their worth to themselves or to the world, that makes a series far more identifiable than all the sad teenagers casually murdering entire armies will ever be.

The entire series is built around a structure like this. Most characters have the same long term goal of becoming a hero. But they all have different short term goals. Whether it's being “the best”, learning to control their quirk or learning to accept who they are despite their origins. Every single character comes to term with their goals, their realities and has to face difficulties regarding this along the path. In keeping with my talk of Deku (though I could easily talk at length about any of the other primary characters) I'm going to cut to one of his most important recent arcs.

After a major plot arc he, and the other students, are faced with a more advanced class where they're training to better hone their specific skills and Deku has to come to terms with the fact that so far his quirk usage hasn't been great. Largely due to his hero worship of Allmight and desire to be Allmight, his fighting style copied Allmight's. Except Allmight was very strong, physically, and before getting his Quirk had trained extensively to fight. Deku on the other hand is far more tactical and focuses more on strategy rather than brute force. So every attempt to punch a villain like Allmight would, or leap as far as Allmight can, would just destroy his body. He's forced to accept that he isn't Allmight. As obvious as this is, it's a massive personal step for Deku who hadn't yet started putting his own personality into his quirk usage yet. So in order to save his body from further destruction and better learn how to compensate for his weakness while still using his quirk, he adapts to a faster more motion-based style incorporating techniques taught to him by both of his mentors without wholly copying them. Combined with the fact that he starts to actually wear his hero costume, it's a sign that he's finally come to terms with his personal limitations but works around them rather than trying to force his way through to being someone he isn't. He doesn't want to be Allmight anymore. He's forming his own identity.

So hopefully with this super brief summary, and trust me it's hard strictly talking about one character without going over every single plot point because I love this damn series and could do that in a heartbeat, I've managed to actually explain what I meant earlier when I said MHA was different. It's a series founded on personal growth, characters change as the series goes on and it's amazing to see the amount of thought that went into each logical arc. We've seen as Deku went from being this weak, scared kid to destroying himself in a panic, to gradual competence and now he's a fledgling hero. That's just one, the main admittedly, character's progression as well. Each character has their own story as well developed and planned out. So I guess this is where I tell you to go read this series if for some reason you haven't started already. Because it's rad.

[pomegranate-salad]

This is what I see, welcome to reality

I wrote this on perversion in books and wicdiv to cope with today. As one does. I want to state that this is a topic that is in my sense underexplored outside of individual examples, meaning everything I’m saying here comes from my own thoughts and not any literary theory, so give it the credit you see fit. Mention of Deadly Class spoilers, abuse, and hope, maybe.

As usual, let’s start with a bit of oversharing. When I was I prep school, I had a math teacher who was an honest-to-god pervert. I’m not talking about a mean teacher, or a creep, I am talking about a pervert in the clinical sense. Every Wednesday, for four hours in a row, students would have to get to the board one by one, and remain there to be demeaned and humiliated over a problem they couldn’t solve, sometimes standing there for half an hour, until they were sent to their seat crying. Then, at lunch break, our teacher would seek the student still crying in the hallway. Not to console them, to tell them they could do it, or to apologize ; no, it was to tell them that thanks to him, they would manage to get better.

One of my friends was driven close to suicide by his verbal abuse. Yet, when she had to redo a year and had to choose whether or not to switch schools, she decided to stay because “our teacher is just so good at pushing students”. She was not the only one. I spent the year pointing out the obvious abuse to my fellow students, yet gradually, it was as if they were losing the ability to see or acknowledge it. People who were revolted by his way of speech at the beginning of the year were eating in his hand a few months later. But in these few months, any standard of acceptable behaviour was removed to be replaced by a unique reference, a unique basis. Soon, my fellow students started complaining that the other teachers weren’t hard enough on us, that to be the best of the bests you had to be under constant pressure. How could we complain that he was being mean to us ? Could we pass our entrance exam without him ? Of course not. We needed him. Without him, we were nothing.

 This is what a pervert does : cause pain, destroy a person’s self-esteem, trust and hope, and then replace it all with dependence to him. A pervert is not satisfied with making someone suffer : this person has to fall on their knees and say thank you. A pervert will lock you up and make you say they’re your way out.

But doing so doesn’t only involve destroying anything in your life that could help you get out, it also involves destroying the very idea of getting out. Why pretend you’re a good teacher despite abusing your students when you can convince everyone a good teacher is necessarily an abusive one ? A pervert goes after your values. The abstractions you believe in, without even realizing it, forming a net ready to catch you when you fall. When life gets hard, when relationships become complicated, when you fail, then you still have hope, friendship, self-love. Even when life is messy and you feel lost, you still know that truth exists. Values and principles bigger than you are still there even when you don’t see them around you.

But these abstract concepts are fleeting. They need reinforcing. Most of the time, a turn of the wheel is enough ; you were doubting, but then something comes along that makes you trust yourself again.

But when a pervert comes along, they will surround you with their presence, and they’ll start choking those values until there is no standard to refer yourself to, no principle to go by, to value to aspire to. You can lose friends and still believe in friendship ; when a demanding partner refuses you see your friends for months and months, tells you they don’t really like you anyway, when your friends start attacking you out of frustration for your blindness, it becomes harder to believe in friendship. You can be lied to and still know the truth exists ; when someone starts lying to your face, makes you doubt everything you hear, it becomes harder to believe there even is a truth. Systematically, one after the other, every benchmark erodes, until you have no scale, no basis to your judgement, no way to determine what is normal anymore. And when this happens, then the only lighthouse in your life will be the towering tyrant holding the keys to your world, because they built the bars themself.

 The subject of perversion has been on my mind a lot lately, for obvious reasons. But just like any psychological subject, it also exists in the media we consume. The way a pervert acts has been seized by countless pieces of media, not just to showcase it but to use it within their very foundation. Every book, movie, comic, builds a rapport with its reader. This rapport can be made of trust or doubt, fascination or disdain. Social and moral values are decisive when consuming a piece of media, because we are trained to expect positive consequences to acting according to principles, and negative ones when we break a social standard. Our normality when entering a story is one built by social values : get rewarded or get punished by acting within or outside their norm. Every creator has to play with these expectations in order to make a point about whatever values society holds. It’s not rare for a piece of media to try and get the reader out of their comfort zone, to deconstruct values the reader might take for granted. But what I call a perverse piece of media – with no implication that the author is themself a pervert – is one that has no other goal than to systematically destroy every established value the reader might have, to take away their sense of normality when approaching the story. There is of course no comparing a real-life abuser to what a book might do to its reader. But it can be enlightening to interpret the way certain books toy with and wreck their audience’s principles to the point where none of them has any relevance to the story.

A classic example would be Emile Zola’s towering saga The Rougon-Macquart : over the course of 20 books, any principled character sees themself degraded, every display of humanity is immediately punished, while the dregs of humanity gets what they want. Again, it’s nothing unusual for books to feature unfairness, to reward the absence of principles. But what makes this series not only cruel, but perverse in my sense, is the way it rams at higher values until they’re proven not only feeble, but completely vain. It’s not enough that Gervaise from the Dram Shop should fall into alcoholism despite having grown up with an alcoholic and trying her damnedest to stay away from the danger ; first it must be demonstrated that her efforts make absolutely no difference. First her entire world must fall apart because of alcoholism, then she is shown giving in to it. This is to me what perversion in a text looks like : acknowledge a value the readership holds – resisting degradation – and then destroy any impact this value might have on the character’s fate until the reader is just as convinced as Gervaise that there was no way she could escape her family’s stain. The menace has become our only key of comprehension of the character. The book replaces our values with its reality, a reality in which the only normality is the one it dictates. The same way a pervert isolates their victim from society until all standard is lost, a perverse book isolates its reader from the world they hold as real and drags them into a reality with no value, no other verity than the one it conjures at every page turn.

I’ve found this kind of world-building through merciless deconstruction of real-life values again recently in a comic : Deadly Class. Every arc in Deadly class takes on one specific moral value and then goes on to demonstrate its futility in the world it created. Maria’s bravery, Marcus’ aspirations of freedom, Willie’s kindness, Saya’s devotion to her friends, they all come not to support them but to hinder them in their quest for survival. Every noble impulse leads to death, any selfless move is the wrong one. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma with every inmate ratting on you. In the current arc, when master Lin tells Saya her nobility puts her in danger, you might not believe him, but you believe him more than at the beginning of the series. Every moral value was put on display to be proven futile ; every character’s death has buried their highest quality with them. Again, here lies the difference between a cruel book and a perverse one : a cruel book makes its character suffer for their actions but doesn’t question the higher values that led them here, a perverse one is after the principle ; the character is only the demonstration. By the end of arc 4, the reader knows no good deed is ever a guarantee of good results. If anything, any positive gesture is received with suspicion, as we know it will be used against a character later in the story. Deadly class has completely inverted the code of values with which we interpret the world : it dictates its own laws with every page, with every unjust death, with every treason, and each time our grip on our own normality gets a bit looser. The only thing to do now is to turn another page and wait for the story to provide us with reality, a reality that can no longer be compared or judged, but only accepted.

 To reiterate, I am not accusing Emile Zola, Rick Remender and Wes Craig of being perverts. I am not accusing the Rougon-Macquart or Deadly Class of being bad books. The Dram shop is a masterpiece and Zola, if you don’t know, was assassinated for taking a public stance against the tide of antisemitism.  Deadly Class is a gorgeously drawn, impeccably oiled story, the same way a military parade is impeccably oiled. There is much to be said for works that manage to drag you so deep inside their world you cannot grasp at your own reality anymore. Much to be learnt from them too. But in days like today, there is just as much to be said for works that stubbornly refuse to let themselves become perverse.

 The Wicked + the Divine is not a perverse book. In many ways, it is the opposite of a perverse book. It has become comically hard to praise something for daring to have ideals. Cynicism is an epidemic ; the marketing of a caricature of moral values so removed from reality they have lost any meaning, from feel-good anthems to Manichean summer blockbusters, has caused the knee-jerk reaction to any “inspirational” piece to be disdain and mockery. Optimists are deemed popcorn creators, pawns of the establishment. Great art comes from demolition.

But here’s the reality : swinging a fist at someone’s principles is damn easy. Rebuilding them afterwards, and rebuilding them better, is another story. For some reason it has become a sign of naïveté to still be harboring values while the world becomes a shitshow. I don’t know many steps of human progress that have been made out of cynicism. I know a bunch of them that were taken out of higher aspirations.

Wicdiv is not a faux-inspirational work. It doesn’t shy away from the increasing inadequacy between higher standards and the ruthlessness of reality. And yet it aggressively clings to these higher standards, refuses to pervert them to establish its own world where values don’t matter and you are free to impose the reality you want to your readers.  And yet it would have been so easy for wicdiv to do so. The news Ananke delivers to Luci in issue #4 has taken another meaning in light of current political events : the fact that she must remain in prison despite claiming her innocence is not just unfair, it also means the pantheon implicitly accepts her culpability as the reality. Did she do it ? It doesn’t matter, as long as the story works for the greater good. Truth is the last thing anyone cares about. And when Luci breaks out, it is not to claim her innocence, but out of desperation, and in a sense, ready to accept the imposed reality as the only reality.  If wicdiv had stopped there then we would have learned the futility of truth within its world.

But then you have Laura, seventeen years old, standing for what she has seen and heard. A woman who has decided to trust herself instead of the most powerful and adored people in the world. Through Laura, Luci and the readership hear the same thing : the truth does matter. And the story will not rest until it has been uncovered. There is a touch of sublime in that moment, in the way it seems to restore balance, in an instant, to a crumbling world. Why should we care about the truth ? Because the story cares.

A similar moment happens in issue #20, when after seeing Persephone’s story, Cass tells her she is sorry. It’s a small gesture, but has anyone cared to make it before or after her ? Why should we assume that human decency still exists in this world if no one ever displays it ? Kindness, empathy, the simple acknowledgement of grief and pain, should never be taken for granted. They are not a primal impulse, but a socially crafted behaviour that must be enforced to keep existing. Despite the gods and x-men fighting, this is still our world, and these people are still human.

 Even more impressively, wicdiv doesn’t hesitate to showcase how easily these values can be weakened. After Ananke's death, Tara’s description reads : “killed by Ananke in assisted suicide to frame Baphomet. No one buys it now.” And just like that, the story of a murder becomes the story of another one, once again a crude caricature of a complex reality, turning with the wind as the louder voice demands it. Yes, it would be easy to leave it there. But I have no doubt that wicdiv will eventually make it right by the truth. And it’s not something that I can say about a lot of works. Just like there aren’t a lot of works I can read knowing that behind the injustice, the hardships and even the cruelty, there is a world still standing for me to climb on. No matter how much our characters keep failing, they will not take down what is really important with them. Friendship matters. Love matters. Truth matters. Kindness matters. It makes a difference. We can make a difference.

  Maybe I sound naïve. But maybe this is a mantra we will all need in the years to come, as the most powerful pervert on earth and everyone acting alongside him will come after these principles, one after the other, and will sully them until it looks like none of them even exists out of fairy tales. During these times, I don’t expect wicdiv, or any work, to save us. But if we’re in for years of gaslighting, then we should be thankful for any work that still dares to tell us that yes, the lights are indeed flickering. So thank you, Kieron Gillen, Jamie Mckelvie, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles, Chrissy Williams, and everyone else involved in making Wicdiv. Thank you, Wicdiv fandom, for providing me for beautiful, touching, funny posts, and making the comic live. What you do matters. And that is the truth.