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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

In Case You Missed It

Gameboys 2 is on GaGa now... for some, not me, tho.

Semantic Error the movie (a repackage with extra content) is being rolled out into actual theaters first (Korea, Taiwan, and Japan so far). So unlike the other Viki movies, we will have to wait for it. Hopefully not FOREVER like Cherry Magic.

Love of Siam stars, Mario (in the same shirt as the movie) and Pchy, reunited in an equal rights event in the middle of Siam Square. Love of Siam released in 2007 (Nov 22 will be its 15th anniversary). It’s wildly considered Thailand’s first BL.

About Youth dropped a trailer finally, it looks SO GOOD! Like Taiwan’s Love Sick. This is one I’ll be motivated to track down.... somehow.

Viki dropped the movie versions of Oh! Boarding House (review here) and Ocean Likes Me (review here).

They also got and are distributing (to USA) DNA Says Love You which I adore and highly recommended (so if you missed it on GaGa go watch it on Viki, push through the first 3 eps, it’s WORTH IT, I promise.)

Gossip

2023 Thai fundraising teaser dropped for a SF dystopian BL Wish You Luck from Studio Commuan (new to me, they have another one coming next month: SELF the series) about a luck-stealer and an optimistic innocent trying to survive after a meteorite global destroyer. Stars Tonnam (Dr Sing in Triage) and Title (our beloved baby Nut from the Yearbook). Normally I don’t report on teasers but I LOVE THIS IDEA. Tropes include: sci-fi, dystopian, survivor, paranormal, country setting, tsundere/sunshine. trailer. (Not to be confused with Wish Me Luck which is about office workers.)

@bluesandfilms reported in that the leads from Taiwanese BL Plus and Minus (review here) seem to be IRL dating. Warning: Their show has ended but they are both still doing promo. I checked their respective IGs (@.chenghao.shih and @.bbalin1000) and they look like an actual couple, but they are still tagging their couples’ shots with the show’s hashtag so... suspicious. Then again, actors are always ON. Anygay, I don’t read Mandarin, someone can confirm for me if they like. No formal statement has been issued from their agencies, but it’s Taiwan, they don’t haffa do any of this. I’m not being anti, just cautious. If they are together I wish them more success than most actor relationships. Also I *think* this would be the first gay couple to come out of a BL, are we surprised it’s Taiwan?

Adventures in Miss Captioning

Been a while since I had one of these.

“You don’t need to poke your face so close.” Technically the words used and placed are correct but also no one would actually say this in English. Except me now.

Next Week Looks Like This:

War of Y starts Tuesday on AISPLY and/or GMT+8 YouTube. COPY A BANGKOK brings us 20 episode of Cheewin’s nonsense starring the boys from Y-Destiny and SCOY. If it’s easy to get hold of Stateside I’ll watch it but otherwise, I’m not fussed.

On Cloud Nine (8 eps) a country-set atmospheric series from MindTrio starts Saturday. No idea on distribution, but since it looks sad I am, again, not fussed.

21 Days Theory (8 eps) a high school BL from Rookie Thailand that looks to be high angst, messy, cheating, and a secret crush, starring Bever (En of Love: TOSSARA, The Best Story, Love Mechanics) and Tee (The Cupid Coach) starts Sunday. Probubly airing on Rookie Thailand’s YT channel.

I have a list of all the BLs coming in August here.

This week’s best moments?

Calling all us out, sheesh (Love Mechanics).

Jean (Coffee Melody) my PRECIOUS CHILD who I love for ever and MUST protect.

Side dishes in Unforgotten Night giving the show, and me, life.

Don’t look so innocent, Shin, we all know what’s going on in that pretty head now, don’t we? (Minato’s Laundromat)

Gotta stan the confident gay (My Secret Love).

What can I say? (Vice Versa)

Want to See You bringing the neck kisses. Thank you.

(last week)

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agentnico · 4 years

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Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) Review

It all started with Sonic’s teeth. Ever since fans successfully bullied a studio into reanimating their titular hedgehog character after the abomination shown in the first trailer, fans realised that rallying together (on Twitter) can make a difference. So you’d think it would mean we could all come together to restore world peace and get rid of racism, injustice, poverty, war and negativity of all kind? Nope, nope it does not. But at least we get a better version of a bad DC movie that came out in 2017. I mean, baby steps I guess.

Plot: Fuelled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists newfound ally Diana Prince to face an even greater threat. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to recruit a team to stand against this newly awakened enemy. Despite the formation of an unprecedented league of heroes -- Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash -- it may be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

I recall my younger simpler self in 2017 at the early age of 20 soon to be 21, sitting down and watching the new Justice League film with zero to no expectations, as by that point the DC Extended Universe was a trainwreck and was a franchise that was literally falling apart before out unblinking red hay fever filled eyes. However, after watching Justice League I was baffled at the fact that I still managed to be disappointed after having zero expectations! With zero expectations this film took me into the minuses, and we all know I’m not great at mathematics so boy are we in the danger zone when we hit the minuses! Looking back at my review of the film back then, I used extreme yet fitting comments like “generic”, “predictable” “messy” and plain “dogsh*t”. Which is what it was. 2017′s Justice League is exactly how I’d imagine a dog’s poop would look if it was turned into an abstract film! It was truly abysmal. After that I thought I’d never have to talk about this film again. How wrong I was. But, in a rare turn of tables, I am glad that I was wrong...

A little history lesson first. Alright, settle down kids, settle down.... Rob, put the paper plane down, do not throw it, I said DON’T THROW IT! NO! Stop! Stupid child!! Headteacher’s office right now! Also, say hi to your mother for me, okay? I’m having brunch with her on Saturday and you better not be there as you should be doing your homework watching the 4 hour cut of Justice League and questioning your life choices!! Anyway, now let’s have ourselves a history lesson. The topic is - What In The Flying Fudge Happened Behind-The-Scenes Of Justice League For DUMMIES: Condensed Edition. A really condensed version as honestly none of us have the attention span to read loads and I’m probably losing the vast majority of you due to this overlong rambling session. So anyway, to the last couple of readers left, here we go! Following the success of Man of Steel, Warner Bros. gave Zack Snyder the reigns to oversee and create a DC cinematic universe to rival the success of Marvel. And so came Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, which turned out to be a bit of a hodgepodge, receiving mixed to negative reviews and though was a box office success, earned diminishing results to what Warner Bros. originally anticipated. However, by the time Batman V Superman released, Zack Snyder was already hard at work on the big superhero team up film Justice League (which was meant to set up many characters and future films for the DCEU) with a lot of filming already underway, so Warner Bros. couldn’t particularly pump the breaks on it by that point, even though they evidently lost trust in the Snyder formula. To be honest, at that point I too lost trust in Snyder’s vision and the DCEU as a whole, but my opinion doesn’t class for a single dime, whilst the opinions of Warner Bros. executives make millions, so there aren’t any hard feelings on my behalf for them not enquiring on my thoughts. Anyway, midway through production Zack Snyder was hit with a family tragedy with his daughter committing suicide, so Snyder naturally had to depart the project to be with his family during this grieving time. Warner Bros. had the option to pause production and await for Snyder’s return, or progress at their own accord. Naturally they decided to do their own thing cause they are a business and want that dollar dollar bill baby!! So they hired Joss Whedon who was riding fresh off the success of two Avengers movies and obviously had experience in cinematic universes and such, to rework the Justice League movie by condensing it into a 2 hour film (from the over 4 hour material that Snyder shot) and reshoot scenes to fit the smaller runtime. So you cannot particularly blame Whedon for taking out so many great scenes as he had a contract to fulfil with Warner Bros, but then you look at the many forced jokes and unnecessary reshot scenes and you realise how self-indulgent Joss Whedon was during filming, as he basically was spitting on everything Snyder did and was trying to do his own thing. Low and behold, the mess that is the 2017 movie is created, where its the visions and creative minds of two director with evidently different styles clashing and not really mixing well at all, and as such we have a messy movie that doesn’t really make sense and is a bit of a middle finger to DC fans and honestly everyone and all. Also, there was that little aspect of Henry Cavill’s deformed upper lip due to the fact that during reshoots he had a moustache that he’d grown and was contractually obligated to have for his Mission Impossible role, so the visual effects team had to digitally remove it in post production and the result is, well, see for yourself...

Yes, they made the dashing handsome my-sexuality-questioning Henry Cavill look stupid, and that is UNFORGIVABLE. Funny, yes, very funny but unforgivable!! So for this and many other reasons the 2017 film turned out horribly. Then after that many months later, Zack Snyder and cast and crew members began teasing of this mythical version of the movie that was befit of Snyder’s original vision. You see, apparently before he left the project, Snyder actually filmed everything he wanted and it was only awaiting to be reworked with visual effects and edited properly, but then Whedon came in with his scissors and cut everything mercilessly with a cheeky grin and his ginger beard. Speaking of his ginger beard, is Joss Whedon Irish? Or has Irish roots? Honestly, I would Google it, but wait, I don’t think I really care. So anyway, Snyder still had all of his filmed scenes saved on his ridiculously oversized hard drive just waiting to be looked at again. This is where the fandom did its magic by creating a Twitter hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut and began spam posting for Warner Bros. to let Zack Snyder release what he originally intended to. Honestly, who would have thunk it, but this actually worked!! Warner Bros. allowed this, and not only that, but gave Snyder an additional $70 million to finish up the visual effects as well as to film a couple of additional sequences and gave it the prestigious honour to debut it on HBO Max, so as to boost the subscriber rating on Warner Bros. new streaming service. And here we are.

Honestly, I thought seeing this Director’s Cut of sorts wouldn’t bring much to the table as I didn’t believe that a film that was so broken had originally been in any way good. After finishing this 4 hour Snyder vision I must admit though that I was pleasantly surprised. Completely baffled by the studio and Joss Whedon, but really happy for Zack Snyder. The guy was fighting for it and finally was able to accomplish and bring out his true original vision, and though Zack Snyder’s Justice League has its flaws, its so much better than what we got in 2017, and in fact is a soaring science fiction sci-fi epic that literally feels epic!! It takes time establishing the characters and every single plot point as well as building out this rich mythology of this world of the DC Extended Universe, and so as you move into the second half of the film, there’s a feeling of pay off. You actually care about the characters and understand the plot points and it doesn’t feel rushed. Its truly astounding that there are producers out there who thought it was a good idea to get rid of all of that and instead bring out whatever the heck Joss Whedon did with the 2017 version. Look, I quite enjoy Joss Whedon’s work, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel to Cabin in the Woods and his work on Marvel, the guy obviously has a talent, but also he obviously does not belong to the dark and brooding style of DC. Zack Snyder on the other hand, though makes his mistakes, truly embraces the epic feel of the DC material. And it seems once you give Snyder enough time and space, he can actually bring out something like this:

The main characters are all given so much more to do, or at least those that got side-lined in the 2017 version are given more to do here. One of my complaints with the original was how pointless the League turns out to be. Basically in the theatrical version the main team all end up being useless and only once Superman shows up he saves everyone’s asses and literally does EVERYTHING. Might as well have called the film Man of Steel 2 (feat. Justice League). However in this new version, every main character serves a purpose. Well most of them do at least. Cyborg and Flash are much more compelling characters with more layers and backstory, and in fact are a prime reason to defeating the great evil in the end. You now understand why Cyborg actor Ray Fisher was pissed at Joss Whedon, as the guy literally got rid of his best stuff. Superman strikes a cool black suit and is still powerful, however as the finale shows, he isn’t all-powerful and does need the help of the rest of the team. Wonder Woman gets a lot more to do in this theatrical cut, and in fact this is probably Gal Gadot’s best performance as Wonder Woman and she really shows herself as a powerful female superhero! Aquaman’s role stays largely unchanged, however to be honest Jason Momoa’s character was one of the only ones who didn’t suffer in the theatrical cut. That’s unsurprising seeing as Jason Momoa is such a naturally cool dude! A big panda that is friendly in real life, but when necessary can turn into a roaring bear. To be honest, the only League member that ends up a bit pointless is actually Batman. He still serves a purpose in the film in that he’s the one who assembles the team, but otherwise the rest of the group is so overpowered compared to him that in the end you do kind of think that he doesn’t really belong there. Still, Ben Affleck is great in the role and it’s a shame we won’t see much of him past Flashpoint film that will be released in the next few years.

There are a lot of characters in this film and one can still say the movie is overstuffed, but also seeing as the movie was originally intended to spring board the DCEU properly, all these teases are actually welcome. There are an abundance of cameos, and to be honest so many characters are so well cast that you do end up wishing that Snyder was given the opportunity to make his entire Justice League planned trilogy, but nevertheless at least we have this. There are truly an abundance of cool appearances here, from the menacing villain Darkseid (played by Ray Porter) to Willem Dafoe doing what Dafoe does best, only in this case underwater and I’m certain that’s gonna span many comparison memes with The Lighthouse. Joe Morton as Cyborg’s dad is given a lot more to do here and in fact is pivotal towards building up Cyborg into the important character that he is. There’s also a cameo from Jared Leto’s Joker, who in some ways redeems himself after his appearance in Suicide Squad. Also, we need to talk about Steppenwolf, who’s the main baddie in this film. In the theatrical cut the guy was the most generic one-note villain who also looked like a PS2 character. It was honestly embarrassing the way he was animated. Luckily in this version he’s been put through enough Skyrim mods to looks much more intimidating and is also given a better motivation. As we find out, the reason he does what he does is because he wants to go home. He’s been banished and he simply wants to earn his place back home, so it’s actually kind of sweet. Steppenwolf is a sweetie. I mean, yeah, he wants to destroy half of the world to fulfil his dream, but hey, haven’t we all taken something extreme measures to get what we want?

The film is far from perfect though. At the end of the day, the movie is just about a guy hunting down a bunch of magical boxes. That was the premise of the theatrical cut and its the same here too. Yes, there is more substance and gravitas to the proceedings, but at the end of the day the story doesn’t really surprise much. And with the entire thing running at 4 hours, it is definitely too long and there is the element where there is simply too much in this thing. Also visually, though the movie has plenty of gorgeous shots and Zack Snyder’s signature slow motion sequences are on full display here, there are still many sequences where the CGI and green screen are super obvious and look really fake. That being said there’s still so much visual goodness in this, and also I have to mention Junkie XL’s new music score that does reiterate the epic feel of this movie, in comparison to Danny Elfman’s weak uninspiring notes in the theatrical cut.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a massive surprise and completely changes the perception of what we saw in the original 2017 theatrical cut. It’s a sprawling massive adventure that’s a dream come true for any comic book fan. It shows how vital film editing is, and how important it is to have a cohesive plan when making a movie. Gone too are the silly forced jokes, and though there is still some humour here, it feels more grounded and fit of the setting and scenario. This is Snyder’s vision through and through, and though at times it is clunky, it overall is incredible to behold, as it’s this one guy’s mind and his love for the DC lore. It’s a credible achievement, and I’m actually sentimentally happy for Snyder that he finally managed to complete this. He even during the credits dedicates this to his daughter Autumn that passed away, and I found that to be truly bittersweet. Justice has indeed been served.

Overall score: 7/10

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g-perla · 4 years

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From “Nessian Shipper!!” to “Nessian…Shipper??”

This...is going to be a long one so strap in.

Years ago when ACOMAF came out and the kind people of tumblr posted screenshots of the Wings and Embers short, I found myself looking at Nesta and Cassian, considering the idea of them being romantically and physically involved, and found myself with the following thought; that’s my SHIP. These feelings were reinforced throughout the smattering of brief interactions between the two we got in ACOWAR, probably until the very end where it was unclear if Cassian had gone to see Nesta before or after she headed up the stairs seeming distinctly not ok. That wasn’t a very big deal though. For all I know he did, and she pushed him away, or maybe they did have a talk. Feyre’s perspective is very limited after all. This didn’t really stop my Nessian shipper heart at all.

My Nessian shipper heart became compromised in ACOFAS and in the teaser to ACOSF. I still haven’t re-read ACOFAS so I just want to make it clear that I’m still dealing with 2+ years of accumulated messy, largely unexplored feelings about this ship. That being said, I wasn’t very impressed by Cassian’s behaviour towards Nesta. The interactions between them we were shown left me questioning the stability of a ship I had previously loved with reckless abandon. I questioned Cassian, I questioned Nesta, I questioned their independent trajectories, and them as a couple in the context we were given. My conclusion was that I could no longer really ship them as eagerly in good conscience.

A week or so ago I wrote in a post that Cassian seems, to me, ashamed of Nesta. This idea came to me after considering his behaviour mostly in ACOFAS and to a lesser degree in the previous books. A post by @inyourmindeye, where they put forth their arguments about why Cassian isn’t ashamed of Nesta made me reconsider, however. I read their post carefully and took some time to gather my thoughts after taking in this other perspective. I will share them now.

First, I will say that the word “ashamed” perhaps isn’t the most exact word to express how I feel about Cassian’s complex emotions when it comes to Nesta. I think a more apt word would be conflicted. Second, I want to clarify that when I wrote “ashamed” I didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t care about Nesta. Feeling ashamed of something or someone because of the feelings of attraction or care one might have is certainly possible. Additionally, these emotions aren’t necessarily contradictory, nor do they necessarily depend on each other. They do, however, complicate each other and create conflict.

But what exactly is the source of Cassian’s possibly conflicted feelings?

In the most simplistic sense, I suggest the source is Nesta and the Inner Circle. Or rather, Nesta v. the Inner Circle.

Many in the fandom and some of my own posts have discussed the inherent incompatibilities between Nesta and the IC (as depicted in the canon texts we have access to as of 21/10/20). These incompatibilities are largely ideological such as different definitions of “free will” and agency. Nesta simply does not tolerate the messy dynamics of the IC and the tacit acknowledgement that Rhys has the most authority. For Nesta to fit into this world, she would have to abandon the elements of her character that constitute her core self and which make her subversive within the narrative and without: a disdain towards authority, a resolute mind that isn’t easily moved, quick to anger and abrasive and hostile in her expressions of this anger, but capable of making concessions if the situation gnaws at her strict moral code, morally grey, not nurturing, generally unpleasant to those she doesn’t trust, judgemental, unapologetic in her sexuality or in her femininity, lacking in patience when it comes to idiots and sycophants, critical to a fault, not immune to enacting cruelty, etc. See, if this were a man and if this book had been written during the Romantic period and we were reading it now we would just say “well, I’ll be! What a text-book example of a compelling Byronic hero! We love to see it.”

Note how the men (sorry, males) in SJM novels tend to have many of these same characteristics. They are also pretty good examples of Byronic heroes. The main difference is the energy most people bring when they criticise women. One of the characteristics of a Byronic hero is his refusal to be confined. This confinement can be moral, ideological, epistemological, or physical. Basically, people in the world of such a hero (or even in ours) can’t compute when they encounter him and are unable to put him in easy categories. This often manifests as irrational hatred towards this character because it offends our sensibilities about what is known and what is unknown.

It’s attractive to think that we are immune to this as people existing in the 21st century, but we are not. We still rely on the “Other” to define our identity by both creating it and violently rejecting it. I suppose it’s as good a time as any to share the thesis of my overarching analysis project; basically, Nesta is the ultimate representation of the Other. She is Other in her womanhood (or I guess femaleness), she was Other even as a human, now that she is high fae she is Other to humans but tragically she is also Other to the high fae because she was Made. She is Other as a magical being, she is Other to the IC, she was and is Other to her bio family. She is Other to many of us because we simply cannot comprehend her actions in ACOTAR (how could she have been so cruel????). As of now, there is not a single place where Nesta can exist without offending the very core of what a lot of people value.

One framework for the Other was proposed by the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan. He basically said that the Other is that which we must reject when we start forming a concept of the Self. The Self is the known therefore safe; the Other is the unknown therefore dangerous and disruptive. The Self creates the symbolic order which is essentially the blueprint of accepted life to which the Other is antithetical. I can go on and on about the intricacies of this, and Lacan himself certainly did, but I’m working on a review of different conceptualisations of the Other so I will stop here. What I want to establish while bringing this up is that Nesta is essentially the Other to the IC’s symbolic order, i.e. fundamentally incompatible and an epistemological threat. This is a very theoretical way to explain the IC’s hostility and dislike towards her, but I find it compelling enough to pursue (and I am a nerd).

We can’t forget that Cassian is a known element of the IC’s symbolic order, thus one of the Selves let’s say. The Self should seek to annihilate the Other (as it usually does)…not love it, desire it, care for it. To do so is to enter a profound state of existential precarity. To pursue his feelings for Nesta, Cassian would have to question the fundamental assumptions that are at the core of his known world. There is nothing simple about such a task and I can’t really blame him for struggling.

Still, understanding something isn’t necessarily synonymous with liking it. I wish that the distance between these two characters were not so great. I wish both could just sit and talk with the respect I know them to have for one another. The constant insults and underhanded jabs made by both parties are messy and not in a fun way. As the ship stands, I don’t feel comfortable liking it with the same reckless abandon as before. I think their hostility is too raw, even if their actions contradict them most of the time. Is it unreasonable to want them to interact without reservations in situations other than those between life and death? I hope ACOSF can provide the development they both deserve. Maybe then I can stop having one leg in the ship and the other overboard.

#acofas #acotar #acowar #acomaf #wings and embers #nesta archeron #cassian #nessian #i figure sjm uses male and female because the fae are not human and quite animalistic #but goddamn if it is not cringe-inducing

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gizkasparadise · 4 years

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Recs! Top 10 dramas this year

My top 10 dramas that aired in 2020! These are not always Objectively the best, but rather my favorites/ones that crossed off all the tropes. Note that I haven’t seen or haven’t completely finished the heavy hitters It’s Okay Not to Be Okay, Hospital Playlist, Crash Landing on You, and Itaewon Class yet, but they all got high ratings

10. 18 Again | shitty powerpoint

Premise: Remake of the Zac Efron/Matthew Perry movie 17 again. Washed-up, tired husband gets transported into his teenage body and Shenanigans ensue

Highlights: The plot twists being all about how the main guy is actually a v nice man, an entire family ready to fight someone in a parking lot, moments of A+ comedy, so so much dad energy

9. Into the Ring | Review

Premise: local woman tries to take on the corruption of her district politics. her soon-to-be boyfriend says “kick their ass, baby, i’ll hold your flower”

Highlights: quirky sense of humor that stays consistent throughout the drama, one of the best OTPs with really refreshing dynamics, a chaotic good and a lawful good team up to fight crime! and fall in love!

8. Kingdom 2

Premise: zombies in joseon korea somehow don’t stop bullshit attempts to take over the throne

Highlights: Production Value(tm), great acting, great set design, lots of high-paced action

7. The Romance of Tiger and Rose | Review

Premise: A screenwriter accidentally ends up writing herself into her own television show, where she is in the role of a princess who dies by episode 3

Highlights: fucking hilarious, no really, probably the funniest drama i watched this year, a murder cat husband, A+ trope and self-awareness, cute!

6. Twisted Fate of Love | Shitty Powerpoint

Premise: A general travels 8 years back into the past in order to stop an uprising against the emperor and she tries to conduct many assassinations. local corrupt politician--who is actually one of the said uprisers--falls hard and tries to wife it up

Highlights: T H E power couple, anti-hero male lead who actually stays an anti-hero, one of the rare shows where i like the male and female lead equally, this will probably be higher but it hasn’t finished airing yet/being subbed yet

5. Flower of Evil | shitty powerpoint

Premise: a very attractive detective is married to a very attractive artisan who is basically a stay-at-home dad who cooks real well. this is all way too good to be true, and turns out it is, because her husband might just be a serial killer

Highlights: A C T I N G, one of my favorite couples this season, fast-paced and intriguing plot, just a really good time (but not for the characters)

4. Kairos | shitty powerpoint

Premise: a young woman, whose mother is missing, realizes that she’s able to call a man who lives one month in the future at 10:33pm every night. said man has just had his entire life torn apart. the two team up in an attempt to stop the tragedies in their lives

Highlights: great character development, tight execution, fast-paced, so many WHAT THE FUCK moments, cliffhangers that get you AMPED, great plot start to finish

3. Love and Redemption | shitty powerpoint

Premise: oh boy. *deep inhale* many years ago, heaven and the devil realm battled in a cosmic shit show, with THE GOD OF WAR being the trump warrior for heaven and THE STAR OF MOSHA being the trump warrior for the devils. THE STAR is defeated and the GOD OF WAR disappears

cut to today: xuanji is a girl who belongs to a warrior sect, and she was born with the inability to understand the 6 senses. she meets sifeng, who belongs to the most dramatic clique you’ll ever see, and he’s forbidden to love. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS.

and oh yeah she’s the reincarnated GOD OF WAR and so so so much shit is going to go down for everyone and it’s all set to a bitching soundtrack

Highlights: this was 100% percent my brand of crack, surprisingly feminist, surprisingly not heteronormative. just lots of pleasant surprises from start to finish on this one and awesome characters across the board

2. Go Ahead | Review

Premise: A slice of life/melo that follows a found family of two single dads and three kids as they all grow up together. as high schoolers, they’re separated by Circumstances, but they reunite 8 or 9 years later

Highlights: you wanna cry? this will get you to cry. probably the best parent/child relationships i’ve seen in a drama, lots of beautiful family moments across the board. all the mains are wonderful. deals with issues such as toxic parenting, emotional abuse, depression, and abandonment in real/respectful ways

1. Mystic Pop-Up Bar | Review

Premise: a shaman pisses off god 500 years ago and to repay she has to solve the grudges of 10,000 humans (i think, idr the actual number). to do this, she runs a pop-up bar where she gets humans magic!wasted and enters their dreams. she teams up with a retired ghost!cop-turned-sous chef and a magical baby young man whose touch gets others to tell their secrets

Highlights: my favorite female lead of the year, my favorite found family of the year, my favorite male leads of the year, my favorite ship of the year, the best the best

#mystic pop up bar #go ahead #love and redemption #kairos #flower of evil #twisted fate of love #the romance of tiger and rose #kingdom 2 #into the ring #18 again #kdrama #cdrama #gizkarec #long post

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stxleslyds · 3 years

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ALRIGHT, IT'S MARVEL COMICS TIME!

Yeah, I know I almost NEVER talk about Marvel here but hear me out okay? Marvel's january solicits came out today and I have to say that they were the most amazing thing ever, there is literally comics for everyone.

You like mutants, gotcha! You like events surrounding street level heroes, gotcha! How about Magic related events? You got it! Oh, you would like a bunch of comics led by Elektra? Here they are!

It was absolutely insane! I am not into mutant related books (unless Wanda is dragged back to them, looking at you Trials of Magento) or events that don't have my favourite characters but I still managed to have NINE books on my january pull list!

And SIX of them are female led! (DC would never)

Eternals #9 by Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribic

Black Widow #14 by Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande

Spider-Woman #19 by Karla Pacheco and Pere Pérez

Death Of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1 by Tini Howard and Ig Guara

Venom #4 by Ram V and Bryan Hitch

Hawkeye: Kate Bishop #3 by Marieke Nijkamp and Enid Balám

Silk #1 by Emily Kim and Takeshi Miyazawa

She-Hulk #1 by Rainbow Rowell and Rogê Antônio

Devil's Reign: Winter Soldier #1 by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing and Nico Leon

I would leave here! the complete list of Marvel solicits because I truly believe that anyone can find a comic that they might enjoy!

I come here more than once being all sad and mad about current comics so I think that I should show how happy and excited I am about them too!

I recommend Eternals and Black Widow the most as of right now, they are very well done and both writers are absolutely brilliant at what they do! Others like Hawkeye, Venom and She-Hulk I cannot recommend just yet bcause their runs haven't begun yet but I bet they will also be amazing!

Oh! Jason Nation, how are we feeling for next week? Are we ready for Task Force Z? I know I am!

I might even make that "What the Hell is Task Force Z" review that I said I would do for all of us to get on the hype train!

#marvel comics #marvel #comics rec #jason todd #jason nation #tati is very hype today

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fatesdeepdive · 3 years

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Entry 54: Demigod Shit Magnet

Got a lot of stuff to talk about, no time for intro.

Class Profile - Ninja

The Nohrian thief class and base class of Saizo, Kaze, Kagero, and Asugi. Has good speed and skill and that's about it. Wields shurikens, which make them work best for inflicting debuffs. Also oddly good at mage killing. Oddly enough, the game considers them to be the Hoshido version of a Cavalier. Their first skill, Locktouch, is a utility skill that allows them to open chests and doors without a key. Their second skill, Poison Strike, deals 20% damage to enemies after battle but cannot kill, helping establish their niche of injuring enemies from a distance so stronger units can come in and finish them off. Ninjas can promote to Master Ninjas or Mechanists. I like the Ninja design a lot; the light armor fits well and the scarves, headbands, and arm knife thingies look cool.

Class Profile - Oni Savage

This game’s version of the Barbarian class and Hoshidan rival to the Fighter class. Wields axes, can promote into Oni Chieftain or Blacksmith. Weirdly, Rinkah is the only Oni Savage in the game, making the fact that it has two exclusive promotion classes weird. Oni Savages have great strength, hp, and defense, countered by atrocious luck, skill, and resistance. They can do good damage, assuming they can hit anything, or act as a wall, assuming they don’t die instantly to magic or a crit. Their first skill, Seal Resistance, lowers an enemy’s resistance after combat. I do not know why this was given to this class. Their other skill, Shove, is a utility skill that can be used to move a neighboring unit one space away. I actually like the Oni Savage design, despite it being ripe for fanservice, because the male and female designs are similar. My problem isn’t barbarians being shirtless, it’s when the game does stupid shit like have the female version of a class wear a thong while the male wears pants. The mask and beads worn by generic Oni Savages are also a nice touch.

Class Profile - Monk/Shrine Maiden

This game’s version of the Priest and Cleric classes, Hoshidan versions of the Troubadour class. Sakura and Mitama are Shine Maidens, while Azama is a Monk. Oddly enough, despite this game mostly getting rid of gender-locked classes, these two remain separate. They’re basically the same class, though. Both wield staves, have the same skills, and have good speed, luck and resistance, hampered by awful defense and HP. Oddly, Shrine Maiden has 5% better magic, while Monk instead has 10% better skill. Regardless, the job of these classes is to avoid combat and heal allies using staves. These classes can promote into Onmyojis and either Great Masters or Priestesses. Their first skill, Miracle, gives them a luck-based chance to survive a fatal blow with 1 HP. Their second skill, Rally Luck, boosts the Luck of nearby allies for a few turns. They also secretly have a 10% extra crit evade. I enjoy the simple, modest designs, which fit with the class’s aesthetic.

Conquest Chapter 8: Cold Reception

As Felicia leads the group to her village, Moron and Silas are separated by a blizzard. Moron faints from the cold and is rescued by Kilma, the Ice Tribe’s leader. Moron begins to introduce himself, but Silas reminds him that they’re here to crush a rebellion. Corrin bemoans the fact that everything is so morally grey. Honestly, I wouldn’t call this route morally grey, so much as it’s the same black and white shit as Birthright with Moron being to stupid to understand he’s on the evil side.

Kilma says he only let Moron into the village because he carries Yato, the sword prophecized to save the world. Kilma introduces Moron to his daughter, Flora. The fact that Flora and Felicia are the daughters of the head of a small country colonized by Nohr is kinda weird. Garon conquered the Ice Tribe, took the daughters captive, and forced them to work as servants for his other kidnapped prince.

Felicia and Elise show up and Elise blurts out that they’re there to suppress Kilma’s rebellion. Elis is an idiot. Flora sounds the alarm and the Ice Tribe rushes in to fight the Nohrians. Flora calls Felicia ignorant and says war is the only language Nohr understands.

This chapter uses the same map as Chapter 17 of Birthright. The gimmick of this chapter is centered on five villages spread around the map. A pair of enemy soldiers will try to go to the villages to summon reinforcements, while the player can visit them to get gold. At the start of turn two, Odin and Niles show up to save us, acting on orders from Leo. Moron has to convince them to not kill everyone brutally, because Odin’s a chunibiyo and Niles is genuinely morally grey.

Odin

Owain from Awakening, now a Dark Mage instead of Myrmidon and pretending to be an evil wizard instead of a legendary hero. He also switches his costume to this tight, garish yellow outfit with a v-neck that stretches to his crotch. I’d complain if it was any character other than Odin; for Odin, it fits. I did like Owain in Awakening, but I will admit his schtick can get old. His personal skill gives him a boosted crit rate when using a named weapon with a name more than 12 letters long, something ridiculous that fits perfectly for a guy obsessed with legendary weapons and powerful spells. Also, he can reclass into a Samurai, a Hoshidan class, which makes sense given his class in Awakening.

Niles

Leo’s other retainer, a sadistic Outlaw. His personal skill, Kidnap, works the same as Orochi’s capture. Conquest is a bit harder than Birthright, though, so I’m afraid I won’t be grabbing another Kenshi. Fun fact, Niles is the only non-promoted bow user in all of Nohr. Niles’s design isn’t half bad; I like the eyepatch, white hair, and hood, although I’d like to note that it’s a bit odd that the sadistic criminal has a noticeably darker skin tone.

Flora apologizes to Moron for standing by her actions, calls Felicia a moron, and tells Jakob she wishes she was meeting him under better circumstances. Felicia’s battle quote with Jakob is especially interesting, confirming she was a hostage and hinting that she has feelings for him. Kilma prays for forgiveness for fighting Felicia and says Moron deceived him.

Moron spares Kilma. In fact, he wins the battle without killing anyone. Somehow. Moron has Elise treat the enemy wounded. Kilma is shocked by Moron’s kindness. Moron negotiates a deal where the Ice Tribe stops rebelling in return for more autonomy, something he has the authority to do that totally won’t be ignored by the child kidnapping mass murderer Garon. Kilma says that Moron might be the legendary hero after all. Flora apologizes for defending her people from an invading army who kidnapped her and her sister as a child and swears fealty to Moron.

So, here’s my problem with Conquest. Nohr is evil. Garon is evil. But Moron is good. So every chapter has him win battles without violence or negotiate people into working with him. Rather than having Moron struggle with his morality, it has him keep his hands clean, even as he conquers neighboring nations for the glory of a brutal dictatorship. It’s idiotic. And it will only get more idiotic as this game goes on. But first, we have some Supports to read.

Support: Corrin/Odin

C: Corrin finds Odin posing. Odin says his stance needs a unique name. Corrin gets annoyed by Odin and walks away.

B: Odin asks Corrin to name his pose. Corrin says they need tome to think of a name.

A: Corrin tries to hide from Odin. Odin tracks them down and annoys Corrin for a while. Eventually, Odin comes up with a dumb name for his pose: Shadow Glitter. Corrin is relieved that they don't have to talk to Odin anymore.

S: Odin asks Corrin to marry him. Corrin gets tired of his long-winded proposal and demands he get to the point. Odin gives a heartfelt proposal and immediately gets back on his bullshit.

Review: Not bad. Odin toes the line between funny and annoying and seeing Corrin get sick of his bullshit is a good dose of realism. This is also one of the only times Corrin isn’t ridiculously friendly. Also, by marrying Odin, Corrin joins yet another royal family.

Support: Elise/Effie

C: Elise asks Effie to go on a walk with her, but Effie is full from eating and asks Elise to roll her like a barrel.

B: Effie uses Elise as a dumbell. The two of them reminisce about how they met: Elise snuck down to the underground and befriended Effie and, when the guards tried to take Elise back, Effie tried to fight em off.

A: Effie talks about how she trained for years to become a castle guard so she could protect Elise.

Review: This is what Corrin and Silas’s relationship should have been. That is, free from dumb bullshit about Corrin having the memory of a goldfish. Lore is always good in Supports and this does a great job establishing Elise and Effie’s friendship, while also having some great comedy bits.

Support: Felicia/Niles

C: Felicia spills some soup on Niles. Niles begins stripping seductively. Felicia offers to take his clothes to the laundry.

B: Felicia offers to give Felicia a special, heavenly dessert. Niles assumes she's coming on to him. Felicia gives Niles a cookie.

A: Niles mocks Felicia for not understanding his double entendres. After finding out about Felicia's childhood as a hostage, he apologizes.

S: Niles proposes.

Review: A fun, kinda dumb comedic Support.

Support: Arthur/Mozu

C: Arthur finds Mozu analyzing the soil around camp. Mozu rambles about how farming is awesome.

B: Arthur helps Mozu plow a field. Mozu corrects his form. A: While Arthur is plowing, a heard of dragons fly over and shit all over him. Mozu is overjoyed because dragon droppings are great fertilizer. Also, I'd like to note a script error in this Support: dragons and wyverns are not the same thing. Wyverns are the mounts with animal-level intelligence, dragons are ancient magic beings that can transform into humans. Unless a flock of demigods flew by to shit on Arthur, the game means wyverns.

S: Arthur proposes by giving Mozu a special flower that is supposed to be planted by a husband and wife. Mozu accepts because Arthur's bad luck is a good source of fertilizer.

Review: The start of this Support is a bit bland, but Arthur getting covered in shit is great.

#fire emblem fates #flora fire emblem #owain fire emblem #odin fire emblem #niles fire emblem #corrin fire emblem #fire emblem conquest #nohr

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foxbeast668 · 3 years

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Heroes Of Might And Magic 5 For Mac Os

Heroes Of Might And Magic 5 Tribes Of The East Mac Os

Heroes Of Might And Magic 5 For Mac Os High Sierra

GameHeroes of Might and MagicSize15.93 MbRuns OnMacAvailable PlatformDOSLanguageEnglish Updated2019-10-18

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For Heroes of Might and Magic III on the Macintosh, GameFAQs has 3 guides and walkthroughs, 19 cheat codes and secrets, and 5 user screenshots. Heroes of Might & Magic V: Tribes of the East Released: Oct 10, 2008. For the first time, play as the Orc faction and recruit heroes, build armies and manage cities as you explore and conquer legendary lands. Use tactics, skills and magic to outsmart fantasy armies while developing your heroes and unveiling the dark plot that threatens to tear.

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File: heroesofmightandmagic_dos_mac.7z

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How to install and play the game

Files for Mac can be run on all versions of OS X.You need to uncompress the 7z archive using the proper software (please use Keka to avoid problems). If the archive contains a DMG, double click it to mount the disk.After that, drag & drop the game icon into Applications (or another folder, Desktop will be fine too).New versions of MacOS block applications from identified developers. If you have this problem, just press Ctrl while clicking the game icon, and select Open.Alternatively you can use the “Open Anyway” button in the General pane of Security & Privacy preferences. See the Help page for more info.

Heroes Of Might And Magic 5 Tribes Of The East Mac Os

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scoutception · 4 years

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Dragon Quest I & II review

Dragon Quest: the definitive Japanese role playing game series, the one that started it all, kept improving upon that foundation, and has kept sight of just what made it a success, and stuck to it, for almost 35 years. In Japan, anyway. While the series certainly put in a good effort, managing to release the first four NES games overseas, under the title of Dragon Warrior, it was just too little, too late, in each case. The first game only got localized in 1989, 3 years after its original Famicom release. By then, the third game was already out in Japan, and the original Final Fantasy, an undeniably more advanced game than Dragon Quest I, would be localized less than a year later. Despite acclaimed offerings in later gens, like Dragon Quest VIII, and the DS remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI, the series has just failed to make an impact in the West despite its importance, and while it’s currently probably the most popular it’s ever been, thanks to the release of the even more acclaimed Dragon Quest XI, and the Hero’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it’s still a far cry from its status in its home country, and thus, out of curiosity, I decided to start going through the series myself, starting with the SNES remake of the first two games. Note that this version was never actually released outside of Japan, and thus requires a fan translation to play in English. Almost every other release, including a similar remake on the Gameboy Color, and a collection including the third game on the Switch, were officially localized, and so may be better options. Either way, let’s start on it all.

Dragon Quest I:

Story: The story of Dragon Quest I takes place on the continent of Alefgard, ruled by King Lorik of Tantegel and protected by the Sphere of Light, a magical object originally bestowed upon Erdrick, a legendary hero who once saved the land in ancient times. Alefgard’s peace is shattered, however, by an invasion by the Dragonlord, an evil sorcerer residing within Charlock Castle, who caused a mass appearance of monsters throughout the realm, stole the Sphere of Light, and kidnapped Princess Gwaelin, Lorik’s daughter. Just when it seemed Alefgard would be permanently shrouded in darkness, however, a descendant of Erdrick appeared, and with the assistance of Lorik, sets out to defeat the Dragonlord and save the realm as his ancestor did. That’s pretty much the extent of Dragon Quest I’s story. There’s really not a plot so much as just a premise. The towns have no story going on in them, no substantial events happen as you progress through the game, even saving Gwaelin is more for the sake of gameplay than anything else, something I’ll get to later. That said, it was 1986, and the game even having as much dialogue throughout as it does throughout was extremely uncommon in those days. It also had a few neat twists throughout, like rescuing Gwaelin happening partway through the game rather than being the ultimate goal, similar to Final Fantasy, the Dragonlord making the Hero a deceptive offer of alliance instead attacking on sight, and the Hero speaking, after spending the whole game silent, to decline the king’s offer to rule the land, deciding that if he is to rule a kingdom, he wishes it to be one he makes himself. The original NES translation, and the revised translation for the mobile version, also have pseudo-Elizabethan dialogue that, while incredibly cheesy, gives the game a lot of charm. Overall, there’s really not much to find in Dragon Quest I’s story, and is quite possibly the most basic JRPG story there is, but it deserves appreciation for what it did at the time, especially considering that Yuji Hori, the designer, also made The Portopia Serial Murder Case three years prior, an adventure game that helped influence visual novels as a genre. It may not be impressive now, but it was significant all the same.

Gameplay: As you might suspect, the gameplay of DQ1 isn’t much more advanced than its story. You control the Hero, and, unlike almost all other RPGs, only the Hero, exploring Alefgard, visiting towns, fighting enemies on the world map and within dungeons, gathering equipment, and collecting various plot items necessary to create the path to the Dragonlord’s castle. Combat simply consists of physically attacking, using magic, namely healing, attack, and status effect spells, defending, and running away. Monsters are only ever encountered one at a time, and there’s only four bosses scattered throughout the game, with only the two phase Dragonlord being outright mandatory. Equipment comes in the form of weapons, shields, and armor, plus a few accessories that can be equipped, and consumable items such as herbs to restore HP, torches to light up dungeons, and keys to open locked doors are also available. The Hero naturally learns spells as he levels up, and besides the aforementioned combat spells, he learns utility spells as well, such as Glow, which lights up dungeons without needing a torch, Repel, which keeps weaker random encounters from appearing, and Return, which automatically teleports you back to Tantegel Castle.

While you can get some information talking to NPCs, generally, you’re left to figure out just what to do next on your own. Most of the time, the answer is grinding. It’s not an exaggeration to say that most of the game is made up of grinding. With only four dungeons in the game, one of them being completely optional and only containing some items, and another being little more than a passage way outside of containing Gwaelin and the first boss, and only six towns, with nearly nothing to do within except buying items and resting at inns, the game would be absurdly short on its own. That said, while justified, it’s not the most forgiving time. While equipment is obviously quite helpful, the limited availability and high price of each piece means that, invariably, you’ll have to go out onto the overworld and grind for lengthy periods of time, either to accumulate levels to make you strong enough to safely make the trip to your destination, or earning gold for items that’ll fulfill the same purpose. Trying to go anywhere underleveled almost always results in a swift death, not helped by how difficult it can be at times to discern just where you’re meant to be next, and Tantegel being the only available save point doesn’t help. Not even the start of the game takes any mercy, with you only being given a torch, a medicinal herb, if you look around, and a fairly piddly amount of money, which really stings when you start absolutely no equipment. You either have to forsake proper armor in order to buy the second best weapon, or buy armor, and be stuck with a bamboo spear that’s barely better than your bare fists. Grinding out for the rest of the equipment either way isn’t especially dangerous, but it sets the tone for the rest of the game quite well.

That said, as restrictive and unforgiving as the game is in a lot of ways, it’s surprisingly relaxed in other ways. The lack of story, and sheer strength of the random encounters, means there’s surprisingly few physical roadblocks, other than doors that need magical keys, which mostly show up in dungeons anyway, and the path to the Dragonlord’s castle that requires the Rainbow Drop, the culmination of the fetch quests throughout the game, to be traversed. Otherwise, assuming you’re strong enough, you’re free to go wherever you wish. Additionally, assuming you know what you’re doing, important parts of the game, such as rescuing Gwaelin, which requires fighting the Green Dragon, and opening up Cantlin, which requires fighting the Golem, are completely optional; their main purposes are to help locate a key item on a nondescript part of the world map, and if you know where to find it, you can simply collect it on your own and save yourself the trouble, something most later RPGs would usually bar you from. The game will even alter the ending a bit if you don’t mess with rescuing Gwaelin, or don’t return her before the end of the game, showing it was very much intentional. This helps give the game a very casual feeling pace; since there’s not that much to see or do, there’s not much reason to try to rush. You can afford to take it slow and steady, which helps make the grinding a bit more tolerable than if it were keeping you from some detailed plot event. There’s not even a way to actually game over, as death simply sends you back to Tantegel, at the cost of losing half your money. Punishing if you got caught off guard during a grind session, not so much if you were simply exploring after gearing up.

There’s also a good amount of surprisingly thoughtful gameplay elements throughout. For example, the Golem boss is normally a very difficult opponent, but there exists a flute that can put it to sleep when used in battle, making it much, much easier. Despite this, however, you can still beat the Golem without the flute, if you’re strong enough, so it’s more just a way of letting you beat it at lower levels. There’s also the infamous Metal Slimes and Gold Golems, who can be encountered in specific parts of the world map, and reward massive amounts of experience or gold, respectively, if you can manage to defeat them. While more than a bit luck based in the case of the Metal Slime, as they take minimal damage from physical attacks, are immune to magic, and will gladly flee at any opportunity, they’re still massive boons if you can defeat them, and save you a good amount of grinding. There’s also an example as far as equipment goes: the second best weapon and armor, the Flame Sword and the Magic Armor are prohibitively expensive, and trying to get enough to afford them could make you do more grinding than you’d need to beat the game anyway, but the best in those categories can simply be found for free, with Erdrick’s Armor being guarded by the third boss, the Knight Aberrant, and Erdrick’s Sword being found in the depths of the Dragonlord’s Castle. While acquiring them is obviously a bit more difficult by skipping buying the sword and armor, and the best shield, the Silver Shield, needs to be bought regardless, it’s still very possible, and can save you a good bit of work, especially with the armor’s ability to heal you with every step you take.

The experience is also streamlined a good deal by the changes this remake, and all the remakes afterwards, make, most notably reducing the amount of experience needed to level up, and increasing the amount of gold dropped by enemies to make grinding slightly faster. Additionally, compared to having to go into the menu for actions such as talking and opening doors, a general purpose button has been added that do such things automatically, and stat boosting seeds have been added across the game, allowing you to strengthen yourself a bit more than usual. Overall, saying Dragon Quest I’s gameplay is primitive by today’s standards would be an understatement, and yet it’s held up oddly well despite that. The grinding is simply emblematic of NES RPGs as a whole, and because of its simple gameplay, it’s nowhere near as cryptic, overly convoluted, or frustrating as many others that would come afterwards, such as the original Mother, Final Fantasy II, or its own sequel. That said, it’s so simple and repetitive that it’s unlikely to do much for you if you don’t have a taste for older games, and most of those games with much more visible flaws are often much more entertaining experiences.

Graphics: As this remake uses the engine for Dragon Quest V, it looks quite similar, comparable to the SNES versions of Final Fantasy IV and V. Generally, the graphics are decent, but unremarkable, especially with the overworld sprites. Dragon Quest famously features art and designs by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, but while the art and designs themselves look great, they aren’t translated into the game the best. While it’s certainly an improvement over the NES version, the overworld sprites are still small and simplistic enough that they don’t look that great, and the rest of the characters and environments aren’t anything special either.

That said, the enemies are a whole other story. Toriyama created possibly the most adorable bestiary of enemies ever, from the famous smiling, tear drop shaped slimes, to bats with equally goofy smiles, ghosts wearing witch hats, and even the Dragonlord looks pretty goofy at first. It’s hard to be intimidated by most of the enemies, but it gives them a lot of charm, and the more serious looking enemies, like the golems and dragons work quite well. Their sprites in battle are a huge improvement over the overworld sprites as well, and are easily the highlight of the game’s visuals.

Music: Dragon Quest I’s soundtrack, as with the rest of the series, was composed by Koichi Sugiyama, and while the amount of tracks is quite small, it’s still a very catchy and classic soundtrack, especially in this version. Tracks like the Tantegel Castle theme, the overworld theme, and the battle theme have been significantly extended from their original versions, making them much less repetitive, and the music in general is updated very, very well. My favorite change is to the cave theme, which, in the NES version, would simply slow down and lower the pitch the lower you go in each dungeon. In this version, while not every floor has its own version of the theme anymore, the different versions are much more significantly different from each other, with the third version being downright sinister, and the exclusive version for the Dragonlord’s lair being near unrecognizable. It’s very much worth checking out. Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

Here we have the awkward middle point between Dragon Quest I, the game that started up the JRPG genre, and Dragon Quest III, the game that would definitively refine it. It’s not that Dragon Quest II was a bad effort, as it is in many ways a much more advanced game than DQ1, and holds up surprisingly well in most aspects, considering it had a mere six months to be developed, but at the same time, the greater complexity means it doesn’t have the simple appeal of DQ1, and the improvements are still well behind what DQ3 did, and that’s not even considering the problems within DQ2 itself. Unsurprisingly, it’s easily the least popular of the original trilogy, and one of the most obscure of the main games. Still, I tried to give it a fair chance, so let’s get into it now. Story: After defeating the Dragonlord, the Hero set out with Princess Gwaelin to discover lands away from Alefgard, eventually resulting in the founding of three different kingdoms, spread out between the landmass of Torland: Middenhall, Cannock, and Moonbroke, all ruled by descendants of the Hero. After 100 years of peace, however, Moonbroke Castle is attacked and destroyed by the forces of Hargon, an evil sorcerer and cultist seeking to destroy the world by summoning Malroth, the god of destruction. Though the king of Moonbrooke is killed in the attack, the princess of Moonbrooke escapes, as well as a lone soldier, who travels to Middenhall Castle and informs the king of Hargon’s attack and ambitions before succumbing to his wounds. As the king of Middenhall is too old to stop Hargon himself, he instead tasks his young son to join up with his cousins, the prince of Cannock and princess of Moonbrooke, so that they may fight Hargon together. Thus, the prince of Middenhall ventures out, to live up to the legacy of both Erdrick and the Hero.

It’s really not much more plot than the original, and while the game is a good deal longer and has more mandatory locations, it still doesn’t really have anything that could be called a defined plot, so much as just going through towns and dungeons for whatever plot item will let you into the next area. It does have the “twist” of Malroth ending up as the final boss instead of Hargon, but Malroth’s existence is only mentioned offhandedly in the opening before said event, so it’s ultimately just another thing that’s hard to appreciate past the era the game first came out. There’s really not much more to say, so let’s just move on.

Gameplay: The gameplay of Dragon Quest II is very similar to its predecessor. You go out onto the world map, grinding for EXP and gold, going between towns and traversing dungeons as needed. The big toss up is the party system. Instead of only having one party member, you gain a total of three early in the game: the prince of Middenhall, who I shall refer to as the Hero, the prince of Cannock, who shall be referred to as the Prince, and the princess of Moonbrooke, who shall be referred to as the Princess. Each character has different attributes; the Hero has access to every piece of the equipment in the game, with the best equipment in the game being exclusive to him, such as the Thunderbolt Blade and Erdrick’s equipment. He also has the best physical stats, such as HP and strength, and is in general an extremely effective physical attacker and tank, with the trade off of not having any access to magic, being the only hero in the series with this drawback. The Prince is a generalist, with a variety of magic, mostly supportive, and being capable of equipping most of the equipment in the game, making him an effective support character in each role. Lastly, the Princess has terrible physical stats, and has access to the least equipment, but learns much more potent spells, in particular having access to the best healing and attack spells in the game. It’s basic, but an effective change up from the first game.

To compensate for having more party members, enemies are now capable of appearing in groups, with certain formations resulting in as many as 7 enemies in one battle, though only specific types of enemies can achieve this, as bigger and tougher enemies seem to occupy more slots. Enemies also have access to a wider variety of magic and abilities, including being capable of summoning reinforcements mid battle. Status effects, such as poison, are more prominent, and with spells to cure them being among the new additions, along with defense buffs and debuffs, encounters have become a lot more tactical, with you often having to weigh your options to get through effectively. It makes the very prevalent grinding much more interesting, if much more difficult, and difficult is the word of the day, as this game is infamously brutal. Dungeons are much more prevalent, and much more complex, with the layout of some of them reaching spiteful levels of confusing. The limited inventory slots, previously a minor deal, since you could stack most of the important items available, quickly turn into a complicated juggling game, as item stacking has been removed, and key items are much more numerous, limiting the amount of healing you can carry around rather severely. Enemies show up in large groups so frequently that trying to take them out without group wide magic usually gets you smacked around a good deal, and tougher than average enemies will gladly show up in groups as well. The game is even less linear than the original past a point, which can easily lead you to areas you’re in no way supposed to access so early, and worst of all, the game is just plain unbalanced thanks to the rushed development, with the endgame land of Rhone containing enemies terrifyingly, and jarringly, powerful compared to even the dungeon before, being capable of demolishing you with little effort if you aren’t prepared. While the difficulty is more balanced in versions past the NES, with the Prince being given better stats and being able to equip better weapons, after being infamously weak and only being able to use a few weak, early game weapons in the NES version, to attack and the defense affecting spells having more of an effect, in addition to the rebalanced EXP and gold drops that were also in the original. You also have access to the bank, which allows you to store gold and items, and while its use in the first game is questionable, it becomes a lifesaver in this, simplifying the inventory management puzzle the game would be otherwise. It also makes a small, but important change to the final boss, namely removing the ability for it to use Fullheal, which, in the NES version, more or less made defeating it entirely luck based. Despite all this, however, Dragon Quest II is still a grueling experience, and the difficulty is certainly one of the big reasons why Dragon Quest II is obscure compared to other games in the series.

As for other new features and improvements, helmets have been added as an equipment option, though they’re very underutilized, with only 3 being available in the game, 2 of them exclusive to the Hero. Cursed equipment has been expanded past the few accessories in the original that only existed to inconvenience you. Here, they confer the biggest stat bonuses out of all the equipment in the game, on paper, but carry the risking of occasionally paralyzing the user in battle. Enemies are now capable of dropping items, from basic items like herbs, to equipment that could be sold for a decent amount, or even save you having to purchase them in the future, to items that can’t even be found elsewhere, such as the aforementioned cursed equipment, the infamous mad cap, the only helmet the Prince and Princess can equip, which cuts the amount MP needed to cast spells, and the dragon potion, which allows you to save your game anywhere you wish. Speaking of which, instead of only being able to save at the starting castle, many other towns and castles allow you to save your game, not only saving you a significant trek to Middenhall Castle, but allowing you to warp back to them with the Evac spell, which can save a lot of travel time. Most notably, the world map is much larger than the original game, including several different continents and smaller islands, accessible via a boat acquired fairly early in the game, marking the first appearance of transportation in the series. Alefgard is even visitable in a cool instance of continuity, though unfortunately, it’s quite underwhelming, as it is much, much smaller than in the first game, and only four locations that can be visited, with the only significant ones being Tantegel, which has fused with the town of Breconnary, and the remains of Charlock Castle, inhabited by the grandson of the Dragonlord, who, instead of battling the party, offers critical advice instead, in a fairly cool twist for the time.

While the game is certainly bigger and longer than the first game, most of it consists of just sailing around the overly large seas, with most of the locations being visitable as soon as you get the ship, barring the strength of the encounters. While it does give the game a much more open feel, most of what you do is just desperately scrounging for key items, many of which only have use towards the end of the game, and are often found in small, obscure locations. There’s little sense of progression, and very few dungeons manage to feel memorable or significant in any way, not helped the inexplicable lack of any bosses outside of the final dungeon. Sure, there’s a few scripted encounters, but only with enemies that are common within the area, or otherwise nowhere near dangerous enough to justifiably call bosses. While there are a few “quests” you have to do to progress at points, they’re all very short and simple, consisting of things like fighting a rather unthreatening enemy in an arena for the amusement of a king, or traversing a dungeon to grab the Wind Mantle, allowing you to cross to a different part of the continent, with said item never being used again afterwards. This all combines to make most of the game oddly dull, in my opinion, with the difficulty pretty much being the only thing that makes it stand out. As mentioned above, though, the endgame absolutely makes its mark, with the maddeningly confusing Road to Rhone being one of the most infamous dungeons in JRPGs, and the final dungeon, while being extremely simple to navigate, makes up for the lack of bosses elsewhere by having five of them spread out across it. Overall, while Dragon Quest II’s gameplay is technically much more refined than Dragon Quest I, it’s not necessarily much more enjoyable, and most of the time simply dances between repetitive and frustrating.

Graphics: The visuals of Dragon Quest II are, sensibly, about equal to the first game. The character designs do shine through a bit better with the party, and the battle sprites are once again great. Similarly to Final Fantasy II, though, the game does contain some of the weirder enemies to be in the series, such as baboons, giant Venus flytraps, and flying Medusa heads, though at the least, it introduced bubble slimes and liquid metal slimes. It also includes a few neat effects like parallax scrolling in dungeons that take place in high towers.

Music: Once again, the soundtrack is absolutely great, with the highlights being the upbeat town theme, the calm castle theme, the intimidating final boss theme, and especially the world map themes, of which there are two, the melancholic A Lonely Youth, for the earliest part of the games, before you acquire your full party, and the extremely cheerful Traveling With Friends, for once you’ve assembled your party. Even if you have no interest in playing the games, the soundtracks are definitely worth a listen. Conclusion: Overall, I would have to give Dragon Quest I&II a pretty firm not recommended. While they’re not completely unenjoyable, and can be a decent time if you enjoy older RPGs, or are curious about the roots of Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest III and IV are much better options in both regards, not to mention others like Final Fantasy I and III, and the original Mother, as far as NES RPGs go. Still, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t have fun with them both, in varying amounts, and the remakes certainly make them much easier to digest. Either way, that’s about enough for now. Till next time. -Scout

#dragon quest #SNES #JRPG #square enix #game review #long post

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book-a-taxi · 4 years

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A brief guide to your Paris Vacation

Our life is adorned with a series of things in life and vacations are a part of that. People travel miles to gather the moments and cherish those memories for his or her entire lifetime. Our Earth is formed from tons of magical places which never fail to impress our lives. Paris city is one of the wonderful creations in them which still make people forget their hardest times in life and celebrate. No worries if you’re visiting first time and have nobody there to pick you up in and around Paris, there are many online shuttle reservation providers and airport shuttle services are waiting in queues, will pick you up from the Paris airports and drop you off to your dream destinations. So let’s have a detailed look at Paris city and tips when you choose a reliable airport shuttle service.

Paris, the word itself has magic in it that draws many tourists annually. you'll choose tons more places in Paris to explore. This tour guide will give you some tips to get to know the places in Paris city.

Eiffel Tower, the pride of Paris remains standing stronger and impresses people all the way. Often mentioned as the “Iron Lady” of France and “Crown jewel” of France, is one among the seven wonders of the world. It‘s truly magnificent to behold with its majestic contour lighted up against the night sky of Paris city.

Another exciting offering that Paris city offers to its tourists is the famous Disneyland. In Paris, you'll discover two parks. One is Disneyland park, which incorporates the famous Disney characters with attractions and adventure rides. you'll enjoy taking magic selfies together with your favorite Mickey, Minnie, Olaf, Anna, Cinderella, and a lot more. Seasonal shows that cause you to be speechless with their beauty and magic. Another park is Walt Disney studio park, where you'll enjoy the selfie spots with marvel heroes and a couple of more rides and attractions. Disneyland is a place where people can enjoy themselves no matter their age limits.

Yet, another famous and unique viewpoint where you'll enjoy the vast area of Paris city is Arc de Triomphe. This is often a famous monument in Paris, recognizable for its beautiful backdrop for photos. Also, reminds everyone, the patriotism and the victories over battles that were won by the French kings in the past.

Palace of Versailles, you won’t be missed out to go here at least once in your lifetime. It's one of the best achievements of France in the 17th century, where the seat of power became a museum within the late centuries. If you guys are interested to understand the history of France, then don’t forget to go to the Palace of Versailles.

One more destination was Conciergerie, which was the king's palace at the beginning, (10th century), but later, in 1310, the castle became a state prison by Charles V as he had to move, too much protest in the streets! This was also the last home of Marie Antoinette and Robespierre. The prison then was closed in 1914 and became a national monument.

These are a couple of places that we've mentioned in this article. But there are a lot more places in Paris, France is where you'll explore and cherish.

However, if you’re planning a visit to Paris, you ought to have mindful information from the destinations to hotels where you'll stay and restaurants to have your meals. So these are such common things and there's another thing that you simply would consider because the first thing you should consider when choosing is the transportation facilities.

As we mentioned within the first paragraph, there are hundreds of Parisian taxis waiting in queues that might confuse you and make your day a touch hectic to settle on the safe and reliable airport shuttle at affordable rates and 24/7 availability.

People who travel often are smart enough to seek out reliable and reputed airport shuttle or taxi services as they have experience on this to book a taxi or shuttle. But people that visit for the very first time don’t know.

Here are some tips that you simply can follow when choosing an airport shuttle in Paris;

Check the 24/7 availability of service and 24/7 call availability.

Check the reviews and customer feedback of the service provider

Make sure the company is safe and reliable and, being in the industry for a long time.

Confirm that the drivers are professionals and experts in areas and well English-speaking drivers to avoid language barriers.

Check whether or not they have extra fees or unexpected insurance fees or provide a flat-rate service.

On-time service and punctuality.

Check the comfortability and convenience that won’t ruin your vacation.

#onlineshuttlereservation #carwithdriver #book a taxi

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rajpersaud · 4 years

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Associate Professor at Suicide Research Unit discusses Meghan Markle Interview

You can also listen to this interview on a free app on iTunes and Google Play Store entitled 'Raj Persaud in conversation', which includes a lot of free information on the latest research findings in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and mental health, plus interviews with top experts from around the world. Download it free from these links. Don't forget to check out the bonus content button on the app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rajpersaud.android.rajpersaud

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr-raj-persaud-in-conversation/id927466223?

Thomas Niederkrotenthaler is associate professor at the Suicide Research Unit at the Institute of Social Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna. He is the co-chair of the International Association for Suicide Prevention's Media and Suicide Special Interest Group.

Reacting to suicidal revelations - is Piers Morgan right?

Research on suicide reporting suggests a surprising effect of Meghan's interview

by Dr Raj Persaud

Piers Morgan, a controversial TV host, has now left his national broadcasting position after expressing strong disbelief over Meghan’s confessions of suicidal thinking in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.

BBC News reports that Piers Morgan continues to stand by his criticism of the Duchess of Sussex. Ofcom, a regulator of broadcasting in the UK, is investigating his comments after receiving 41,000 complaints from the British public.

The duchess apparently formally complained to ITV about Morgan's remarks. It is reported that she raised concerns about how Piers Morgan's sentiments affect the issue of mental health, and what it might do to others contemplating suicide.

Is Meghan correct in her reported analysis? Or is Piers Morgan right to stand by his comments?

Or, in discussing suicide during an Oprah Winfrey interview, did she in fact make it more likely that others will self-harm?

Media reporting of suicidal behaviour has been found to contribute to an increase in suicidal thinking and actual suicides in the population. At this point Piers Morgan may argue the duchess is wrong to criticise him, and has only herself to blame, if there is a spike in suicides following the interview.

Recent research found that Google searches for “How to kill yourself” significantly increased after the release of ‘13 Reasons Why’, a popular Netflix American teen drama on the aftermath of high school student's suicide. The study calculated there were 900 000 to 1.5 million more searches than expected, for that time of year, in just over two weeks following the release of the series.

Another study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in February 2020, estimated there were 195 additional suicide deaths among 10- to 17-year-old youths between April 1 and December 31, 2017, following the series’ release.

One of the first studies to investigate this effect, analysed 34 newspaper stories that reported on suicides, and found a 2.51% increase in suicide during the month of the publicity.

More worrying still, about the possible repercussions of the extensive reporting of Meghan’s suicidal thinking worldwide, is that, research by Professor Steven Stack, an expert on the sociology of suicide, based at Wayne State University, USA, found that studies measuring the presence of an entertainment celebrity in a suicide press report, are over 5 times more likely to find a copycat effect, while studies focusing on female suicide, were almost 5 times more likely to report a copycat effect, than other research investigating the impact of suicide reporting in the press.

Another example reported by Steven Stack is that in the year of the publication of a book which focused on self-harm via a particular method, suicide by that specific recommended method, increased 313% in New York City. In almost one third of cases a copy of the book was found at the scene of the suicide.

On average, following the media reporting of a suicide, approximately one third of persons involved in subsequent suicidal behavior appear to have seen the reporting of that suicide and may be copycat suicides.

The suicide of actress Marilyn Monroe was associated with a 12% increase in suicide.

One theory as to why reporting of a celebrity killing themselves or feeling suicidal, according to Professor Steven Stack, is that the vulnerable suicidal person may reason, ‘If a Marilyn Monroe with all her fame and fortune cannot endure life, why should I?’

Copycat suicides following media reporting of self-harm has been termed the ‘Werther Effect’, following a notorious historical incident after the publication in 1774 of a popular novel in which the hero kills himself. Entitled, The Sorrows of Young Werther the book by Goethe was rumoured to be responsible for a subsequent epidemic of suicide in young people. European authorities were so worried about its impact, that the book was banned in Copenhagen, Italy and Leipzig.

Goethe is reported to have commented on the phenomenon; “My friends … thought that they must transform poetry into reality, imitate a novel like this in real life and, in any case, shoot themselves; and what occurred at first among a few took place later among the general public …”

However, now new research suggests that, in fact, Meghan Markle in talking about suicide, may have indeed performed a positive service in terms of suicide prevention.

The study entitled, ‘Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects’, refers to a ‘Papageno Effect’, which the authors claim may be the opposite of the ‘Werther Effect’, and happens when suicide rates go down following a particular kind of self-harm publicity.

The ‘Papageno Effect’, the authors explain, is based on Papageno's overcoming of a suicidal crisis in Mozart's opera ‘The Magic Flute’. If media reporting has a suicide-protective impact this should now be referred to as the ‘Papageno Effect’ the authors argue. In Mozart's opera, Papageno becomes suicidal upon fearing the loss of his beloved Papagena; however, he refrains from suicide because of three boys who draw his attention to alternative coping strategies.

Thomas Niederkrotenthaler and Gernot Sonneck from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, led a team who analysed all 497 suicide-related print media reports from the 11 largest Austrian nationwide newspapers, including the term suicide, between 1 January and 30 June 2005.

Reporting of individuals thinking about suicide (not accompanied by attempted or completed suicide) was associated with a decrease in national suicide rates. This study suggests that media items on suicidal thinking, perhaps as described by Meghan in her recent interview, formed a distinctive class of articles, which have a low probability of being potentially harmful.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that in marked contrast, media stories attempting to dispel popular public myths about suicide, in other words articles that you would have thought would be helpful, and were intended to be helpful as regards suicide, were associated with increases in suicide rates.

Other articles associated with increases in suicide rates include stories where the main focus was on suicide research, items containing contact information for a public support service and also the reporting of expert opinions.

In other words, all the previous so-called expert opinion of how the media ought to report suicide was not actually linked to drops in suicide rates, but instead increases.

The authors conclude that the actual reporting of suicidal thinking may contribute to preventing suicide. Therefore, it follows that whatever Piers Morgan may think or believe about the Meghan interview, the latest scientific research suggests she may have performed a public service in drawing attention to suicidal thinking.

One theory as to why this might be the case include the suggestion that reporting someone thinking about suicide enhances identification with the reported individual, and thus highlights the reported outcome as ‘going on living’.

This research suggests a new public health strategy as regards suicide prevention. This may be most effective when articles are published on individuals who refrained from adopting suicidal plans, and instead adopted positive coping mechanisms, despite suffering adverse circumstances.

The authors refer to this kind of press story as ‘Mastery of Crisis’. One example they quote: ‘Before [Tom Jones] had his first hit, he thought about suicide… and wanted to jump in front of an Underground train in London… In 1965, before he made the charts with “It's not unusual”, he thought for a second: “If I just take a step to the right, then it'll all be over”.’

Whatever else you may think of her, or the interview, the key question becomes, did Meghan exhibit ‘Mastery Of Crisis’?

REFERENCES

Piers Morgan stands by Meghan criticism after Good Morning Britain exit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56343768

Internet Searches for Suicide Following the Release of 13 Reasons Why. Ayers JW, Althouse BM, Leas EC, Dredze M, Allem J. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(10):1527–1529. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.3333

Association between the release of Netflix's 13 Reasons Why and suicide rates in the United States: an interrupted times series analysis. Bridge, J, Greenhouse, JB, Ruch, D, Stevens, J, Ackerman, J, Sheftall, A, et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2019; 28 Apr (doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2019.04.020).

Suicide in the Media: A Quantitative Review of Studies Based on Nonfictional Stories. Steven Stack. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 35(2) April 2005, 121-133

Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, Martin Voracek, Arno Herberth, Benedikt Till, Markus Strauss, Elmar Etzersdorfer, Brigitte Eisenwort and Gernot Sonneck. British Journal of Psychiatry, 197(3), 234-243. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.109.074633

Check out this episode!

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darkestwolfx · 4 years

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City Under the Sea - Re-Review #30

Some holiday this is! Here is a happy little family, doing your standard underwater holiday in a rented sub, fighting over ipads and whatnot, and not really knowing what they’re doing because they’re tourists! That’s a bit of an assumption on tourists - sorry, many tourists are quite wise - and not my everyday thought on tourists... this family however, definitely fit that mold.

Can I just ask though, 1. does anyone else find the logo on the rental sub hilarious? And 2. does anyone else get reminded of that fish from ‘Shark Tale’ (2005) that looked a little bit like that I think? Anyone, or is that just me?

Oh look, a big red exclamation mark! Now, I’m not an expert, but when that symbol appears on my car dashboard, the manual says to stop driving immediately. And look, it’s even got a little amber circle! Should so stop driving... piloting... whatever method driving a sub is actually called. I can’t think whist I’m trying to watch comic Gordon moments.

But yeah... point being, they drive on for a while first... foolish. Just saying.

Have they not taught this girl that pointing is rude? Eye spy is such a traditional stuck on the motorway care game as well. Playing it in the Amazon when you are not from there - just to say - definitely leaves an unfair advantage. I think that is the only time I have ever lost so bad at eye spy (and I mean, really, how do you even really lose eye spy?).

Don’t worry! International Rescue are on the way! Because, you have made it onto Thunderbirds are go, so there can’t be fear of you dying. That doesn’t happen here, folks. This is an escape from the real world (much needed right now as I’m sure we all know... which reminds me, I need to finish writing some irrelief2020 prompts... sorry, off track). Let’s move on to talk about Gordon.

You know, I really don’t know what Lady P sees in him... he’s such a... slob? I mean, maybe that is why he and Parker don’t get along so well.

“Aren’t you going to pick this up?”

“Of course I was! You don’t think a responsible member of International Rescue would leave trash lying around do you? Who do you think I am?”

“A slob comes to mind.”

Yeah, thanks for agreeing with me, Kayo. That makes me feel better about (not) insulting Gordon myself.

“Wow.”

“Go ahead. Just say it.”

“Gordon Tracy, you are a secret slob.”

“Oh, the wrappers? What can I say? Scott’s always at me about my room. This is my own personal domain.”

It’s also a rescue sub... but hey, who looks at whether there’s rubbish on the floor of the International Rescue sub when they’re being rescued? Really, what does it matter in the long run when he’s going to save their lives?

This city looks so so freaky. Whenever they were driving through it I was just like... shivers. Bay City must have been a greeeaaat place to live. I bet Lady Penelope has great memories of the Creighton-Ward building.

“Just follow my lead, Parker. I spent many a summer playing hide and seek in these walls.”

“Bit different with ha giant crab ship nipping hat your ‘eels.”

“Don’t worry, Parker. I always won.”

Oh...kay. She actually does!

“But the monster!”

“That’s not a monster. It’s the mechanic.”

You know, I think they’re two very similar things at the moment. Considering at this point we knew very, very little about The Mechanic, i think it was perfectly reasonable to think such. After all, he doesn’t really speak, and he attacks people and he has a bit of a temper, and he’s quite obviously... well, the bad guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-TbQnONe_w

You know, that’s just in case anyone wants to start a post on character theme songs within the 21st century, specifically 2020 - you know, I think that would actually be a great way to take our minds off of everything... please someone do that for me!

This guy really does have some serious tech, and the worst part is probably that he knows so well how to use it. He uses it like an extension to his own body (principles of martial arts here, guys, a skill worth having let me tell you) and acts like he’s completely in sync with it. Really it’s like he lives and breathes with those meccas. And that ship looks unsettlingly like a crab... don’t blame me if I make sure to look at them twice in the future You know. Just to be sure.

“But you don’t even know how to operate Thunderbird Four... Don’t scratch it! And be careful! Ah, Brains is gonna’ kill me. Woah! I didn’t even know it could do that!”

Um... you were saying, Gordon?

And, actually, I think it will be Scott who kills you before Brains when he sees the state of Thunderbird Four’s interior. After all, if he’s that fussy over Gordon’s room, he’s going to be a tyrant over anything IR related.

“Don’t worry, Brains can get mad at you for something else.”

I can imagine there’s quite a list.

“Unbelievable.”

Thunderbird Four is not Thunderbird Shadow... Please remember that for Gordon’s sake, Kayo. Although, maybe in her hands it is a little more like Shadow. Definitely appeared so.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“FAB. I’ll come up with some other way.”

You can bet she will.

Anyhow, back to the subject, I think Gordon does enough damage to Thunderbird Four without needing anyone to help him, so lets just discount this whole sea chase of Kayo’s.

But let’s so so not because it was awesome! I mean, as much as Gordon would love to claim that no one else can pilot Four, I don’t think Kayo (or Scott for that matter) do a bad job at all. I mean, she managed to give the Mechanic a run for his money and he’s a nasty character, so I think that really does mean something.

“You three get to the crash site.”

“Wait, you three? Underwater rescue is my thing.”

“But sneaking up on bad guys is her thing.”

“You have a point there.”

And that’s Virgil’s point proven I think.

Sherbet looking at the fish! I mean, I suppose that’s to be expected as it’s not natural for a dog to be quite that far underwater.

Hell, Parker really does have good driving skills. If I could drive half as well as he can through an old abandoned building which if half-decaying and underwater then I would be incredibly impressed. My best skill level is being able to park perfectly in one go like once a week every week most. You know what, I think I might just employ Parker for myself. Anyone have his contact number?

That past of Parker’s really does make a difference! The Mechanic’s face was such a sight to see. He got away - of course he did, he’s obviously the new series main villain and connected to some big plot twist with The Hood, so we couldn’t kill him off yet, that would just be a really bad use of an interesting (though slightly chill-provoking) character. Besides, I think he’s pretty hard to kill, but Parker gave it a pretty good go, so he’ll have to have a medal for trying and count that as good enough. Honestly, The Mechanic seems indestructible, much like another family we know... Yeah, that combination is going to go down swimmingly when they meet. It will be like two rhinos butting heads. Although we do have to wait a while for that, so let’s get back on subject.

“This won’t be the last time The Mechanic tries to get The Hood out of prison. The GDF needs to be on their guard.”

“Where The Mechanic and The Hood are concerned, everyone should be on their guard.”

Well said Lady P.

“Have time to make that Dad a hero?”

Oh yeah, and back on the subject, the final note is: what a great holiday that was. Real holiday of a lifetime.... Hooray for the happy family who got to see Thunderbird Four in action to rescue them from the very, very, terrible bad guy. Who are shaken up, but will probably be okay and oh there we go! Magically okay because they get to ride in Thunderbird Two, all the way to Antartica to see the Penguins!

So, I’m not sure it really works like that - ‘curing’ PTSD and shock I mean... but I do agree that Penguins can make everything feel better. They hug, brilliant creatures that they are.

Anyone want to know a fact? I’m sharing it with you because it’s my work-based knowledge - when penguins huddle together, they keep moving (waddling) whilst they huddle so that eventually the penguins on the outside of the group end up on the inside and so on. They’re so smart that they can realise the penguins on the outside of the huddle will get cold unless they rotate and they’re smart enough to realise that if they keep rotating, the penguins from the inside who then go on the outside, will be warm enough by that point (from being on the inside) that they won’t get cold because of how quickly they can keep waddling around each other. It’s absolutely brilliant. If you get the chance, definitely meet penguins.

P.S. You can thank me later for the penguins

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