#I know I can’t censor/spoiler this and I know I can’t control the actions of others

[im-tired1124]

I’d like to apologize to the entirety of the Castoff fandom for this image. Unfortunately, I have once again been possessed by the accursed homosexual hand.

Alright, if you want context as to why the Hot Crispy Kentucky Fried Fuck this thing exists, I posted a picture of my face on Instagram, to which one @zerodoesartyay responded with:

To add context to this context, I made a collage of Frankie and Vector drawings, however since the only good place you can find poses that involve physical contact that aren’t horny, violent, hornilly violent, or violently horny is the “cute couples poses,” section, these drawings ended up being really really unintentional…🌈Gay.🌈 Hence, why with Zero’s latest comment made me go, “Screw it, a bit has been made, and I am going to commit to it, no matter what it takes.” That’s how this thing happened.

Please, god, don’t let Star see this, I don’t want to cause her any brain damage.

Only adding tags because Tumblr will give me shit if I don’t.

[makeste]

BnHA 6th Popularity Poll Reaction Post - Risky Spoiler-Dodging Edition

hey guys, so seeing as the results from the 6th popularity poll were leaked today, I figured I would do a separate reaction + analysis post this year, rather than piling it in as an extra on top of the chapter reaction post tomorrow. I figure this makes more sense anyway, since they’re really two completely different things. also this way I can write as much as I want lol.

also, just fyi, I am still completely unspoiled for chapter 293. and probably the smart thing to do to keep it that way would be to log off tumblr and hold off posting this until tomorrow, but I apparently have no impulse control today so oh well. anyway, so I’m hoping you guys will keep this spoiler-free if you don’t mind! as always, I would prefer to just jump right in completely unaware tomorrow like Troy returning to the study room with the pizza boxes lol.

okay so this first part is just going to be my predictions. fyi I am writing this part on Wednesday night, and then I’ll add on the results part on Thursday or Friday (ETA: Thursday, apparently, since I am impatient.)

okay so first of all, just as a refresher, this poll was open to Japanese voters from Aug 3 to Sep 30. meaning chapters 279 through 285. meanwhile last year’s poll took place around the tail end of the MVA arc. so between then and now we had Heroes Rising, the Endeavor Agency arc, and the War arc up to the part where the 1-A kids took on Gigantomachia in Gunga, and started battling Tomura in Jakku. so technically only a couple of arcs, but a LOT of stuff going down in them. oh and season 4 of the anime as well

so! firstly, I predict that my truculent africanized honeybee son will hold on to his crown at #1, coming off a year in which he did some internship-boosted soul searching, borrowed OFA in movie canon, and finished out the voting period as the my-body-moved-on-its-own character development MVP. like CALL ME CRAZY lol, but I’m pretty sure his title is safe. and then after him will be Deku and Shouto as usual

Aizawa should hopefully also have a strong showing because the dude had a banner fucking year. reunited with his old dead friend, took on Tomura with his hopelessly inept hero pals, and then chopped his fucking leg off. he had better be in the top 10. his fucking leg died for this, idk what else he has to do

Endeavor also stands a decent chance of doing well given the internship arc and the final episode of season 4. which I’m sure will go down just swimmingly if that does happen lmao. especially if he somehow manages to rank higher than...

Dabi, which I don’t think he will btw, but you never know. anyways though, but I’m thinking Dabi’s going to have a stronger showing than in past years (in the last poll he only got 367 votes and was ranked 19th). mostly because of his fight in the Gunga mansion, and his cheekily censored name reveal to...

Hawks, who is also going to rank pretty high here, I think. might be he loses some points for killing off Twice, but his back was basically to the wall there. and he has always been very popular, and I think season 4 will also give him a boost, along with his heavy involvement in the first half of the War arc

Tomura was already in 6th place last year and I think he cracks the top 5 this year. he’s gotten exponentially more popular since the MVA arc, and got a boost in the last poll even though his flashback had only just barely happened, and he hadn’t finished Awakening yet and all that stuff. anyway, so he’s only gotten cooler and more tragic since then so I think he makes a big play here

Kirishima, Momo, Tokoyami, and Mina should also hopefully do well, since the poll opened right in the middle of all that Gigantomachia action, and Toko had just got done being an absolute badass and protecting his birb dad. I don’t think he’ll quite make it to the top ten, but he should

and last but not least, I’m hoping that Mirko will come out and take the polls by storm, although I have no clue how popular she is in Japan lol. she’s clearly Horikoshi’s favorite though. she SHOULD be everyone’s favorite, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes

anyway that’s it as far as predictions! and so now, through the magic of writing stuff at different times, we will fast-forward to the part where we actually find out the results!

OH MY GOD YES, STEAMPUNK KHLKSLLKL. HERE FOR IT. JOLLY GOOD SHOW. 5 STARS

Kacchan looks SO COCKY and SO HAPPY and SO ADORABLE, YES I SAID IT. he is adorable as FUCK. I don’t quite know what it is about this particular Kacchan that just screams “LOOK HOW FUCKING CUTE MY STUPID, LOUD SON IS WITH HIS BIZARRE WINDOWPANE-LOOKING CONVERTIBLE SUNGLASS GOGGLES and his POORLY TIED CRAVAT”, but I think it’s because he looks like if a Digimon character and a FMA character had a baby

anyway, so it looks like most of the people present here are more or less who we expected to see. except that I can’t tell for sure if that’s Dabi or Shindou, and if it’s Shindou I’m going to punch somebody in the face so you will have to excuse me

Iida wearing a TRENCHCOAT and a TOP HAT with ENGINE EXHAUST GOGGLE ACCENTS is my new favorite Iida of all time. take note how there is no possible way he can wear those goggles with them sitting on top of his hat like that. plus he’s already got glasses on. these are just purely for aesthetic and IF THAT AIN’T JUST THE STEAMPUNK WAY

Deku out here speaking softly and carrying a lead pipe. Kacchan you best look out. seems like he’s done watching you take first place year after year while he languishes in the number two spot. your only hope is that he trips while attacking you because his boots are unbuckled

Shouto’s standing over there with the rest of the non-first-and-second-place characters, but what are the odds his results are actually within spitting distance of Deku’s same as always. anyway he doesn’t mind, though. also his outfit is by far the most sensible one here, but if you look closely he’s got some sort of fire extinguisher/jet pack thing strapped to his back that’s got a control switch on his belt. Shouto are you jetpacking or putting out fires

Kirishima out here all “I’m not sure what steampunk is so I’m just going to take off my shirt and pose”

AIZAWA WITH THE EYEPATCH SKLKSDLKFJLSKJLDFKJSLDFFJLDKSJFL:KS. SIR. SIR. also, lowkey furious that Horikoshi refuses to show us the automail leg that he is clearly sporting here but which we just can’t see, SHOUTO MOVE GODDAMMIT

Endeavor has TWO fire extinguisher-slash-jetpacks. THE BETTER TO... WHATEVER. look at you here in the top ten again. you really live for that controversy

HAWKS OUT HERE WITH HIS STEAMPUNK BEATS BY DRE AND HIS WEARING A RING ON EVERY FINGER. nice to see you’ve still got your wings there, kiddo. then again Deku still has both of his arms too so who even knows what is going on

BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH, IS THIS DABI OR SHINDOU. as if I don’t know the truth deep down in my heart. y’all I am gonna flip lmao. it’s not that I dislike Shindou, strictly speaking. but just... I can’t explain what it is, but if you put him and AFO next to each other and told me “you can only punch one”, I would be having a serious crisis. just, THIS FUCKING GUY, idek. STOP SMILING

Tomura looks like he just wandered onto the set here by mistake and has no idea where he is or what is going on. it’s because you’re wearing a bigass severed hand that’s blocking your entire view, Tomura. just take the hand off your face my sweet murder dumpling

anyway! so I managed to also find a link to the full poll results while somehow managing to avoid spoilers, and then I wanted to compare the results to last year’s poll, and so I made... this

hopefully you can all see this. if you’re on desktop you might be screwed, but on mobile you should be able to click and enlarge it. I mean, assuming you actually give a fuck about boring poll analysis spreadsheets lmao

anyway, so there were actually 13k fewer votes cast this year which is a bit of a surprise. is the series not still growing in popularity? do people apparently have better things to do during their quarantine lol

anyways but despite this, and despite getting 8k fewer votes overall, Kacchan still managed almost twice as many as his closest competitor. well fought, Deku. please put down that pipe

I somehow always underestimate the power of ship popularity to influence these things. but for example, it looks like Present Mic got that Vigilantes Trio bump. ride that wave for all it’s worth my man! hell, you got me on board

Iida fucking Tenya somehow got some sort of POWER BOOST out of NOWHERE which I can’t explain at all lmao, but I’m here for it. NOT BAD FOR AN OLD MAN

Sero managed to get the exact same number of votes in both 2019 and 2020. clearly the most loyal fans in the business

Mirko being all the way down at #20 is, of course, a travesty, and I hereby nominate her to be the one to punch Shindou in the face

ngl though, the lack of a single female character in the top ten hurts just a bit. it’s not overly surprising, but still. the worst part of it is that even if you kicked Shindou to the curb and moved everyone else up one slot, it would still be all dudes since Mic beat out Momo by a margin of a little more than a hundred votes. hard to stay mad at Mic for too long, though. ah well

Tomura actually lost a bunch of votes which is a genuine surprise to me. I know the villain standom isn’t as dominant in Japan as it is in Western fandom, but still. you can go ahead and punch Shindou too I guess

Tokoyami lowkey doubled his vote count over the past year while hiding down there at #18. he is slowly becoming more powerful. biding his time

anyway so I think that’s it! I mean not really, but I’m getting kind of tired lol. so just, you know, insert the usual gripes at Overhaul’s ranking here, although we can be happy about Magne making her way onto the list (r.i.p.), and Mineta and AFO taking a very satisfying slide down (all the way out, in AFO’s case; good riddance you bum). Hadou also got a huge boost which is awesome. Mustard’s persistent ownership of the #36 spot will forever remain a mystery to me, but oh well

anyways, this was fun. and I really do feel like everyone is looking away on purpose so that when Deku brains Kacchan with that pipe in about two seconds from now, there will be no witnesses, oh my fucking god

[blackjack-15]

Avenge My Twistery Depth — Thoughts on: Trail of the Twister (TOT)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: TOT, WAC, mentions of GTH.

The Intro:

Let’s talk about Trail of the Twister, shall we? No clever intro, no pun, no sassy statement on the quality (whether lacking or overflowing) of the game…let’s just Talk.

Like I said at the beginning of my WAC meta, TOT is one of two games that doesn’t really fit into a category besides it and WAC demonstrating HER’s growing pains. The world opens (kinda), the characters get a little deeper (kinda) and a few new things are tried with plots and character (to varying degrees of success). Both WAC and TOT — but especially TOT — represent a shift in the tone of the games and their approach. You can ascribe this to a lot of reasons — an aging fanbase, technology marching on, a new writer in the mix — but you really can’t ignore it, no matter if you’re a Classic Games Elitist or a Newer Games Snob (or neither one).

To paraphrase a fabulous song, there’s something there that wasn’t there before.

This is not me saying in any way that TOT is a fabulous — or even moderately successful — game. In fact, it whiffs a lot where WAC hit solidly, which makes playing them one after the other a sort of chore; WAC is weighed down by the knowledge of what comes next (after such a brief respite from games like ICE, HAU, and RAN), and TOT’s repetitive chore list seems even bleaker after the snack shop and secret societies of WAC.

Which is truly unfortunate, because hiding behind the rat traps and the car chases (or drives, if you drive like a normal person in this game) and the endless moon chunk offerings is one heck of a story. Unfinished and beleaguered and (to my suspicions) censored as it is, there is a definite, multilayered, morally ambiguous, honest-to-moon-chunk story in TOT.

Like I said, something there that wasn’t there before.

Playing through the games in order, it seems like the reason WAC is so solid is, in part, because the games before it have so little cohesive story as to be laughable. Playing them out of order will show you that though WAC does come off a little better than it actually is due to the games that came before it, it’s also actually a step-up from a lot of games in the complexity of its plot and characters. At this point in the series that’s about to happen a lot, but WAC is the first real instance where you get it. Like I said, these two games mark a tonal and approach-based shift in the games.

So let’s turn our attention to TOT.

There are a lot of things that bog down this game — it feels sometimes as if you’re simply going through Farmville-esque tasks to get from Point A to Point B — but its plot and characters (save in one large instance) aren’t actually the culprits. Surprisingly enough, we have a mystery here with enough twists, turns, small crimes, and red herrings to make for a perfectly serviceable plot with relatively well-developed (for the length of the game) characters (whom I’ll go into more below).

A huge difference from a lot of the games is that we have a prominent unseen character who isn’t the one who hired Nancy or who is part of the historical background. Brooke’s actions actively move the plot along no matter what Nancy does, and I do like that the world of TOT goes on spinning (as it were) without Nancy driving everything.

You get the sense that Nancy truly was just dropped into the middle of this without having any control over the situation, and that she spends the entire game (or most of it) playing catch-up, rather than being on the scene for the crime(s) or arriving shortly thereafter.

In TOT, this sabotage has been going on for a while — the competition is nearly over, in fact — and Nancy has to actually do some detective work to even get caught up, let alone to try to step a few feet in front of the guilty party.

One interesting thing is what TOT and WAC share: they both feature casts who are only a few years off of Nancy’s age; in WAC, they’re a tiny bit younger, while in TOT, they’re a tiny bit older. Nancy, being Nancy, is much more in her element with the ages of her suspects in TOT than she is with high schoolers — with how much time Nancy spends around people significantly older than her, I’d be shocked if she got along well with high schoolers when she was in high school herself.

As a side note, I know it’s sort of a fandom thing that Nancy gets along well with children, but honestly outside of Lucas, it’s not something we really see (no, I’m not counting pelting Freddie with snow 10 times sans mercy as getting along with children) — and honestly Lucas is just charming, so I see no reason why Nancy wouldn’t get along with him. Generally speaking, kids who grow up the way Nancy has [especially as an only child] are far more comfortable with ‘adults’ — well established, 35/40+ adults, who make up the majority of her suspect pools — than they are with peers or children.

There’s also a great deal of care taken with making all the suspects (mostly) equally likely for a large portion of the game; it’s not until past the halfway point that a suspect (Chase) is cleared due to his confession of a different crime, and even then, he doesn’t really become Nancy’s helper, as is the usual case with cleared suspects. This is actually one of the few games where Nancy doesn’t really have a helper; she relies on herself, the Hardy Boys, and (questionably) P. G. Krolmeister to get the job done.

And speaking of the Hardy Boys…you knew an intro wouldn’t be complete without my mentioning them, hush.

The Hardy Boys are arguably the set piece that benefit most from Nik’s writing (and yes, I’m going to ascribe it to him; he’s the most prominent variable). Don’t get me wrong, the Hardy Boys were great before, but the Nik games are where they start attaining a place of more prominence and solidify their distinct personalities other than “focused killjoy and playful scamp”. In this game, you get more of Frank’s protectiveness (directed towards Nancy) and Joe’s actual sleuthing abilities — not the least of which because this game coincides with that DS Masterpiece “Treasure on the Tracks”.

Oh yeah, we’re going there. It’s relevant.

Treasure on the Tracks, as mentioned, was a game for the Nintendo DS (and the only one, mind you) focusing on the Hardy Boys. In the game (as in TOT), they’re tracking down the Romanov treasure with the help of a surprising ally — Samantha Quick herself. Samantha is under orders (from who, she never says, but a future game makes it obvious) to help the boys find the treasure aboard the royal train that the Romanovs used to own.

And yes, I would have loved that to be a joint Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys PC game, but I’ll push the bitterness aside for the facts. Which are that this game has a rad premise and would have been a very cool addition to the ND series…but I digress. Regardless, that’s what the boys are doing during TOT, so we get little hints to their investigation as well as having them help Nancy out.

I love that the Hardy Boys have an actual mystery that they’re investigating, as beginning with this game we see a lot more of their ‘agent’ side being brought out. It’s nice to feel that Nancy isn’t alone out there fighting against the forces of evil, and gives excuses to have the Hardy Boys in the games more, so I’m a big fan in general. It also helps build them up as investigators; while they offer hints to Nancy a lot, we don’t get to see them doing a lot of spy/detective work, and it’s lovely to be able to see it here.

And I love their sibling banter. It’s obvious that JVS and Rob Jones have a lot of fun with their roles, and it really lightens and enhances any Nancy Drew game that they’re in.

The last interesting thing that I’ll point out before diving into the game itself is what TOT does for the world of Nancy Drew. Beginning with this game, we start the tradition of each game leading directly into the next one; for her help in TOT, Krolmeister sends her to his favorite ryokan in Japan, which leads to her being hired for CAP; her absence and fight with Ned in CAP lead her back home for the Clues Challenge in ASH, and so on and so forth.

It really makes the world feel solid and cohesive, and lets our characters grow and shift and change without making it feel episodic or sudden. The Nancy of SPY is quite different from the Nancy of TOT in how she behaves and tackles mysteries, but her character growth throughout the games in between make it feel right and natural — like actual character growth.

The Title:

As a title, “Trail of the Twister” isn’t bad — it’s got that alliteration that ND books tend to like doing, and makes it feel a little classic. It also gets a play with words in there — you’re tracing the actual trail of the actual twister, and you’re also walking through the evidence left behind (aka a trail) of a twisting plot. Solid, if not exceptional, with its only real detriment being the hilarious acronym (TOT).

The book it’s (loosely) based off of is called “The Mystery of Tornado Alley” which, obvious to anyone with eyes, is a much worse title while telling us the same thing. It also doesn’t apply to the game as much – you’re not figuring out a mystery as much as unwinding the tangled threads of character motivations — and is supremely clunky to boot.

The Mystery:

Called in by P.G. Krolmeister to go undercover, Nancy joins a team of storm-chasers bent on winning a grant for their research — and beating the opposing team that wants the same thing. Nancy begins the mystery by finding a tin box full of cash (payment for an as-of-yet unspecified action) and it spirals from there, putting the not-so-amateur teen sleuth through her paces learning about tornados and storms, taking pictures, and trying her best to keep everyone happy and working towards the money.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, however. There are competing forces at work outside (and sometimes within) the two teams, and the personalities of the storm-chasers that Nancy must investigate mean that no one trusts anyone else. Things continue to go wrong and Nancy chases down the clues until the mother of all tornados hits town, and our culprit takes advantage of the distraction…

I mentioned above some censorship that I suspect went on in this game, and I’ll talk about it here. Given the darker themes of this game and the mentions of death and serious injury (more than most other games in the series at this point), I would say part of the reason why our story is a little more…displeasing, especially by the end, is that HER was really intent on the 10 part of the 10+ rating.

There’s lots to explore — the Ma storyline that goes nowhere, the collateral damage of these tornadoes, the fact that our cast is filled with genuinely unpleasant criminals — and yet it gets glanced over while feeling like the game is building up to it. Like CRE and ICE where I postulated a lot of the attention went to the new engine, I’m going to postulate here that the reason why we have hanging plot threads and injustice at the end (which I’ll talk about later) is that the game was censored by the HER bigwigs to ensure it still fit in a 10+ rating.

As a mystery, like I said above, there’s absolutely nothing wrong here. We’ve got plenty of means/motive/opportunity spread out in our cast (and in the periphery cast, just to keep things interesting), the threads and smaller crimes/wrongdoings/etc. are realistic in scope and in motive to keep them hidden, and it’s the personalities of the suspects that give us our conflict and tension, rather than random “interferences” by the writers. And speaking of our suspects, let’s go to the other area that TOT does (almost) nothing wrong.

The Suspects:

First off is Chase Releford, a junior who took Scott’s class for a science credit who got super interested in the actual work. The team’s handyman, Chase has noticed (and fixed, and fixed again) the equipment acting up, and is being stretched pretty thin in order to keep it all shipshape and in working order.

He’s also one of Nancy’s sources of Pa Pennies, if you wanna spend hours doing circuit boards.

As a culprit, Chase is a great option (which is a sentiment you’ll hear repeated for all of our suspects, never fear). He’s secretly spending his time looking for oil with Pa’s divining rods, which puts two crimes on his conscience (stealing the rods and not working on company time) and helps the team fall even further behind. It’s important to note that for a large chunk of this game, the likelihood of the suspect also hinges on how much they want Scott to fail, and Chase is pretty much the only one without any real anger towards Scott.

The owner of the local general store, Pa Ochs might be a surprising option to put ahead of Chase in order of culprit likelihood/suitability, but I stand by it. Having lost his wife (Betsy “Ma” Ochs) to a tornado (the warning sirens, which were Scott’s responsibility, didn’t go off), Pa alone mans the counter, helping Nancy find everything she needs — for a price, of course.

The price being annoyingly hard to get Pa Pennies. Unless you exploit a glitch.

Here’s where we start with the culprit possibilities that have an actual grudge against Scott. Though not as angry as he could be, Pa is deeply hurt by the loss of his wife Betsy, and has grounds for an axe to grind with Scott. As much as I would have loved to have the ‘friendly general store owner’ be the culprit, it would have been like a mix of DOG’s Emily and FIN’s Joseph (minus the Crazy), and it’s (sadly) best to leave that ground alone without re-treading it.

Frosty Harlow is next up; a second-year grad student in digital media, Frosty got his nickname (his real name is Tobias) from his storm photography and is, well, trying to re-capture that lightning in a bottle.

He also screams like a little girl. So that’s fun.

Like Chase and Pa, Frosty is a wonderful option for a culprit. His crime is selling university property (the video of the storm he and Nancy shot) to an aspiring photographer (who happens to be on the rival team) to help them get a toehold into the business, along with working with Debbie to try to stress Scott into quitting.

What really makes Frosty stand out is that, unlike Chase, Frosty doesn’t feel bad about what he did at all. He also holds far more animosity towards Scott than Pa does, and has a little more…innate anger as a person.

If you haven’t noticed by now, we’re going in order of “worst” culprit option to “best” (and then the actual culprit), and it really says something about how fleshed out these characters already are that we start with people who are solid options to begin with.

Though only appearing vocally and for a few minutes total of the game’s runtime, I’m going to list Brooke Tavanah as our next most likely culprit — in part because, well, she kind of is our culprit. The leader of the rival storm-chasing team, Brooke offered Scott money to sabotage his own team to let her team win the grant — an offer that he takes her up on.

Of course, Brooke isn’t the only one sleeping with the enemy (so to speak) to ensure her team’s victory; her videographer, Erin, is apparently so talentless as to need to buy footage from Scott’s team as well.

Things don’t exactly look great for the Kingston University team — as they can’t really get ahead even through sabotage and skullduggery, and one does wonder if they’d even be able to put the grant to good use. That, of course, is not the point; Brooke wants her team to win, come hell or high…wind…and a little thing like scientific ability isn’t going to stop her.

(Interestingly enough, this is the first of three times we’ll see Kingston University pop up; we meet their alumni again in TMB and DED).

I love that Brooke is guilty, because so often in Nancy Drew games the tendency is to implicate an unseen character and then to have that implication be a poorly done red herring. Instead, Brooke isn’t a distraction, nor a smoke screen — she’s just another piece of the puzzle.

Our last non-Culprit (by the games’ common definition) suspect is Debbie Kircum, a recent PhD graduate who is on her fifth time working with Scott in chase season, and who has gotten a lucrative offer to teach at a university in New York.

Worrying that Scott would let his resentment towards the college hurt their chances in the competition, Debbie leads the conspiracy to stress him out so much that he just quits. I’ll talk more about this later, but it is both one of my favorite and least favorite things about this game. For now, I’ll say that her plan works…but not the way that she planned; for her and lots of other suspects in this and upcoming games, the quote “the price for getting what you want is getting what you once wanted” works perfectly to describe their arcs.

As a culprit, (as Debbie fully qualifies as a culprit), Debbie certainly has the shortsightedness and nastiness that Nancy Drew culprits tend to have. She’s extremely good at getting what she wants…but see the quote in the previous paragraph.

She also over-contours her cheeks so much that it looks like someone slapped her with an open compact of bronzer.

That takes us to our final culprit and character, Scott Varnell, genius professor of meteorology and the leader of the Canute team. Scott is my personal favorite character not just because he’s the most interesting, but because he’s a tragic figure who isn’t historical/dead, and those are a bit of a rarity in Nancy Drew games, especially at this point.

Being an expert on tornadoes yet denied tenure based on his personality, rather than his academic prowess (a gripe I share as it applies to jobs/academia), Scott holds a grudge against those who don’t recognize his contributions to meteorology and to the study of tornadoes specifically. Unbeknownst to him, two members of his four-man team have been conspiring to stress him out so badly that he’ll just quit, as they think he’ll be a hindrance (again, due to his personality) in winning the competition.

Scott is in some ways the obvious option, and yet the game never turns into a howdunnit. Throughout the mystery he tends to be the prime suspect, but is also the prime victim — a dichotomy we’ve never seen before in the Nancy Drew Games. I’ll talk more about Scott below (a sentence increasingly common in this meta), but I both love and hate him as the culprit, and that’s something new (and interesting) that TOT brings as well.

The Favorite:

Don’t worry, we’ll get into TOT’s myriad flaws soon enough, but for now I want to focus on what it does right.

The first thing the game nails is the Hardy Boys. Their inclusion, their plot, their characterization, the voice acting — all of it is nigh-flawless, and is by far the most enjoyable part of the game. Don’t get me wrong, the Hardy Boys are usually quite far up there on the list of things I love about a game with them in it, but they really start to shine more in TOT, gaining some character development, plot relevance, and just overall depth.

Oddly (or perhaps not oddly at all) I don’t have a favorite moment nor a favorite puzzle in this game; barring that, I’ll talk about some of the great threads to the game, rather than any particular moment/puzzle that stands out.

I love that we get new and interesting layers to our story and characters. As I mentioned briefly above, there’s a real sense of the world existing before Nancy’s arrival, which works wonders for the world of the games, and our characters here are more layered, more distinct, and more ‘realistic’ (for the value of ‘realism’ in stories) than they ever have been before.

This is a game unafraid to deal with the topics of death and mistakes, and that accounts for part of the depth to the game as well. No, not the whole “Where’s Ma” thing — which I fully believe to just be a script that didn’t fire/didn’t stop firing in the game’s code after finding the newspaper that says exactly what happened to Ma — I’m talking about Scott’s mistake in the tornado warning system, Debbie and Frosty’s mistakes in dealing with Scott (which I’ll talk more about), and even Brooke’s miscalculations that lead to the ending of the game. Everyone here deals with the fallout of their mistakes, and it’s how they handle it that forms the basis for our plot.

It’s a seemingly small thing, but I love the sheer level of detail in this game. You can click on everything, read everything, explore everywhere — there’s a lot of information crammed into the game that sometimes you won’t get until the second or third replay (that is, if you have the stomach to play through this game repeatedly).

The use of our tertiary NPCs (Brooke, Krolmeister, Erin) is also inspired; they help the world feel whole and varied rather than existing simply for the benefit of the game, and show that Nancy doesn’t have control over everything when she’s investigating — and that she can be wrong in her focus of investigating (whether because she pays too much or not enough attention to the ‘minor’ characters).

Speaking of characters, I also love that our characters in this game – our suspects — are able to be fully formed without (on purpose, I feel) being particularly likable. It’s always fun to get a cast of characters that are hostile to Nancy, but TOT’s characters are slightly different from that: they just don’t care about her. She’s another intern to them, nigh-invisible except when they need a chore done. Nancy also doesn’t really try to befriend anyone because of it, and I like that too. Sometimes, a game should just be 1 vs 4, with some backup in the wings courtesy of phone friends.

The last facet of the game that I love is Scott himself as a character. Sure he’s cantankerous, blunt, egotistical, and a thousand other things, but the game is very clear that these ‘faults’ don’t make him anything other than what he is — a brilliant meteorologist and the foremost mind when it comes to tornadoes and tornadogenesis. The university undervalues him, but the team really can’t function without him, sabotage or no sabotage.

His motive for the sabotage isn’t the money nor fame — it’s simple tit-for-tat. For such a complex game (note, I’m still not saying it’s a fun or good game), our ultimate motive is deceptively simple: do unto others what they have done unto you. Tired of being devalued and having his worth judged on his personality rather than his work, he decides that if the university doesn’t care enough to keep him around (and for his worth as a professor, look at how accomplished and passionate his team of former students is), then they don’t care to keep up their program either.

It’s hard not to sympathize with that, especially if you’re the kind of person who’s been valued based on any defects in your personality — rather than your ability to do a job and do it well — and been found wanting. Whether you’re too serious (or not serious enough), too flighty (or too inflexible), or any other stupid “personality defect” that the workforce loves to throw around, we’ve all heard it before. Scott’s thrown into an unfair situation and — wrongly or not — decides that his troubles are going to have trouble with him.

The last thing I’ll add on the topic of Scott for this section is that I do love that Debbie and Frosty create their own villain. In figuring that Scott’s personality is going to prevent them from getting the grant (never mind the 4 other years that Debbie’s been on this team with him where it hasn’t been a problem), they decide to screw him over presumptively — and thus create a Scott who actually does want to prevent them from getting the grant. It’s usually a mark of a solid story (and solid writing in general) where the villain is created not from some problem inherent in them, but because they’re perceived to be a problem in the future — and thus live down to the expectation.

The Un-Favorite:

The problem with everything TOT does right — and that’s nearly a thousand words about what it does right above — is that it never combines to make a game that’s enjoyable to play. Before I go into the specifics, I do want to make that clear; TOT is a fascinating game to think and write about, but it’s honestly nigh-unplayable. The puzzles and chores are laborious (and repeated ad nauseum), pieces of the plot don’t make sense, and the ending is the bleakest in the series until GTH’s multiple endings took the cake.

A game should be well-written, complex, and interesting, but it just has to be fun to play as well. It has to. And that seems to have been forgotten during the course of making TOT. My least favorite moment is the ending of the game (more on that below), but I don’t have a least favorite puzzle — on the basis that most of the puzzles are equally bad. There’s no real standout…but that’s not a good thing.

Now let’s get into some of the bits and parts of the game that I really despise.

The handling of Scott is one of my favorite parts of the game, but it’s also my least favorite part of the game as well. They’ve set up a character who firmly believes that everything ends poorly, that he’ll never profit no matter what, and that, ultimately, no matter how hard he tries, nothing will go the way it should. And then the game confirms that worldview to the end. There’s no other option; no matter what Scott does or doesn’t do, no matter if he tries his best or blows it off, the end result is the same, and that’s a tragedy. Sure, you can argue it’s his actions that led him to a bad ending, but he only took those actions because he was heading to a bad ending anyway.

The feeling you get at the end of the game isn’t a feeling of justice served, nor success — it’s pity in a way that’s never been cultivated for any criminal up to this point in the series. And it’s not cathartic — it’s just more misery.

The other huge thing that I hate about this game ties into it — there really is no justice. The supposed ‘happy ending’ is Debbie getting people from both teams to ‘win’ the grant (where does it ultimately go — Canute or Kingston? Can it count as winning if there’s only one team? HER certainly didn’t bother to think about these things)…but Debbie’s hands are just as filthy — and I think more so — than Scott’s are.

Debbie leads Frosty in conspiring to make Scott quit and actually created their own monster — does she even know Scott at all? He’s lead a team through at least the last 4 years, probably more, and not had a problem; why now? Power? Greed? Pride? Whichever way you spin it, she and Frosty are guilty.

Frosty and Erin (of the Kingston Team) are also guilty on a separate charge; Erin for buying the footage and Frosty for selling it. If Brooke and Scott are kicked off, Frosty and Erin (at least) should also go for the same conspiracy charge. Everyone on the team (excepting possibly Chase) knowingly sabotaged their team; why is Scott the only one punished? Why does Debbie (and Frosty, and Erin) get off scot-free (pun intended) to win the prize, despite everything?

When I say that there’s no justice nor success here, this is what I mean. The whole thing stinks from top to bottom, and any way you look at it, a culprit walks.

Honestly, the ending should have just been “Chase, guilty only of petty theft, led the team (of himself and Pa) and was given the grant, which they donated to a charity for tornado victims”. Kingston actively cheated and Canute doesn’t deserve it either. In a game where everyone deserves to lose, declaring a winner just leaves a bad taste in my mouth — and a black mark on the game.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Trail of the Twister?

My feeling is that if you’re going to go with a downer ending — which TOT is — then go for a full one. Have Nancy discover everyone’s crimes — and I do mean everyone’s — and report to Krolmeister, asking what he wants her to do. Don’t forget, Nancy’s got an actual client in this game, and can’t go off half-cocked like she tends to in her more informal mysteries.

In the end, as nearly everyone would be disqualified, the competition should go to a third party — a storm chasing team that’s not Kingston nor Canute — and create chances for less corrupt institutions to study tornadoes at a level they haven’t been able to before. Sure, our suspects would lose, but, honestly, outside Chase…does anyone deserve to win?

I’d also be a fan of Scott getting a second chance due to outside sabotage (directed solely at him) with a job opportunity to consult for storm chasers. It’d be an arena where he’d be seen as the expert he is, without having to deal with the namby-pamby bureaucracy that infects universities (and that he hates anyway). He’d get the name recognition and the ability to actually do work in his field that he needs without being put in situations where he can’t help but fail. Honestly, I’d prefer that P. G. Krolmeister offered it (while saying he’s going to be keeping an eye on him), but really anything would do.

Exposing the crimes of everyone – and focusing on more than just Scott’s — would be the quickest way to improve the story of the game. The puzzles, on the other hand, need to be completely redone; a mix of ostensibly tornado-related intern-type chores (like the circuit boards) and more detective-type puzzles (fingerprinting suspects for a match on the tin bribe box, tracking everyone’s movements, solving codes used for communication) would be a big help in making TOT not just feel like a list of chores with a bad ending.

Oh, and fix the broken code leading Nancy to ask about a man’s dead wife over and over again. She lacks tact as it is.

[unforth]

List of Differences Between MDZS and CQL/Untamed

I haven’t seen a comprehensive list of differences between the Modao Zushi novel and Chengqingling/The Untamed. Someone in one of my Discord’s asked earlier today, and in reply, myself, Joythea, @floofz, HeadphonesGal, and mustache apologist compiled this list, based on what we remembered. I’ve reproduced that list here with permission of the people involved in the conversation. I’ve tried to include what happens in both the novel AND CQL for each item, but in general, the list was more written as, “here are things that happened in CQL that didn’t happen or happened differently in the novel,” with an eye toward explaining it to someone familiar with the novel but not with the live action adaptation. 

Note that this contains...like...all the spoilers. Also, I am not an expert on either the novel or the live action, though I’m better acquainted with the second. As a group we did our best to make sure this was accurate, but I’ve transcribed and expanded it for posting and I can’t promise I haven’t made mistakes. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG and I will amend it (that’s why I used a read more - so I can make changes without it getting all messed up by reblogs of different versions)!

General Concept/Overarching Differences:

Death, Fierce Corpses, and Puppets: Censorship means that none of the things they hunt in the Untamed are actually dead. Once, they’re even able to explicitly “free” a group of controlled puppets and they revert to being regular people. At times this means certain events are...extremely poorly...explained, such as what happens to Wen Ning, where it’s never explicitly said that he’s dead - it’s instead implied that Wen Ning was on the verge of death and that Wei Wuxian controlled him and was able to save him. However, though it’s never explicit that there are essentially zombies in CQL, it would be difficult to explain events by any other interpretation. Much like with homosexuality, they flirt as close to what the censors will allows as they can and allow a viewer to infer from there.

The Yin Iron: In the novel, there is no Yin Iron. Wen Ruohan’s motivation for his actions is simply more power and is entirely “human.” The Wen don’t do demonic cultivation. Xue Yang doesn’t have a piece of the Yin Iron, and his ancestor didn’t create it (obviously, since it doesn’t exist). In the novel, the “Founder of Demonic Cultivation” is clearly meant to be Wei Wuxian, whereas if the concept of “Modao Zushi” ever came up in the Untamed it would be ambiguous at best who was being referred to, since both Xue Yang’s ancestor and Wen Ruohan could theoretically deserve the title. Since there is no Yin Iron, many of the things ascribed to the Yin Iron obviously don’t happen, nor does it drive the plot in the “past,” nor does it play a part in the death of Xuanwu, nor is it what Wei Wuxian uses to craft the Stygian Tiger Amulet.

While this isn’t explicit, it seems (at least to me) like everyone is a few years older in CQL than they are in the novel. For example, in the novel, the Lectures start when the young cultivators are all 15 - 16 years old. That...doesn’t really fit with how they look in CQL? I personally think they’re more like 17 - 18 in CQL, and then events proceed from there. However, their ages aren’t stated in CQL canon so this is open to interpretation.

Technically, WangXian is subtext in the Untamed, by the slimmest of obfuscations. Seriously, it’s so borderline to being canon that calling it subtext is slightly ridiculous but since it’s never ACTUALLY explicit...I guess that makes it subtext. Also, ya know, there’s porn in the novel.

Characters and Characterizations:

Mo Xuanyu: Mo Xuanyu isn’t gay in the Untamed, unlike in the novel. In the novel, it’s said that Mo Xuanyu falls out of favor with the Jin clan because he’s made inappropriate sexual advances on Jin Guangyao. In the Untamed, the implication is that he made similar advances on Qin Su. In both, it’s also implied these weren’t the real reasons but it’s also never explained what actually did happen. Also, in the novel, he favors wearing thickly caked makeup to obscure his appearance (and subsequently Wei Wuxian does the same) whereas in CQL while makeup is mentioned he’s basically only ever shown or discussed as wearing a mask.

Wei Wuxian/Mo Xuanyu: In the novel, Mo Xuanyu sacrifices himself and Wei Wuxian takes over his body. However, in the Untamed, Wei Wuxian is more...reborn?...whole, in his own appearance (the logistics of this, or if he was ever dead, or where he was if he WAS dead, are never explained). He wears a mask because if he didn’t, everyone would (and ultimately does) recognize him. 

Wei Wuxian: In the novel, doing demonic cultivation clearly twists Wei Wuxian and some of his actions are either accidental but still his fault, or intentional. For example, the torture of Wen Chao is intentional and brutal, and the loss of control of Wen Ning at Qiongqi Path is accidental but still his fault - a result of his hubris and poor decisions. In CQL, a second flute is played at Qiongqi pass and also when Wei Wuxian fights the cultivation clans outside the Nightless City - both of the major times when Wei Wuxian ostensibly loses control. Though Wei Wuxian himself thinks it’s his fault, it’s actually not - the person responsible is Su She - and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji eventually learn this. However, CQL does still show Wei Wuxian being changed by the resentment. His temper is more volatile and his trust more limited; for example, he loses his temper with A-Yuan at one point, which doesn’t happen in the novel.

Lan Wangji: differences in Lan Wangji’s characterization are a little harder to quantify but in general in CQL he seems more open/expressive/comfortable in his own skin, and less prone to anger. For example, when he steals Wei Wuxian’s first kiss on Phoenix Mountain in the novel, he loses his temper and destroys an entire grove of trees. This...would not be in character for Lan Wangji in CQL (and of course they don’t kiss in CQL). However, putting it in definitive terms is complicated. For another difference, in the novel, Lan Wangji confronts the cultivation clans to protect Wei Wuxian, and thus is given 33 strikes with the discipline whip. In CQL, his actions are more ambivalent in Wei Wuxian’s defense...certainly, he doesn’t stand against everyone else in a pitch to save Wei Wuxian’s life...but he’s still explicit enough for Lan Qiren, who has him beaten 300 times with a stave. (the end result is still “covered in scars,” just different punishments.)

Jiang Yanli: Jiang Yanli’s role is expanded from the novel. She accompanies her brothers to the Lan clan Lectures, and she carries a sword, implying she’s a cultivator, though she never uses it. The back-and-forth related to her engagement to Jin Zixuan is also expanded. Furthermore, she’s with her brothers when they flee Lotus Pier, and at Wen Qing’s outpost when they are in hiding, for at least part of the time. (but not enough of it to be involved in the Golden Core transfer). The overall result is that she feels much less “fridged” in CQL than she did in the novel (or at least, that’s how it felt to me - obviously, some of these bullet points are subjective to varying extents).

Luo “Mianmian” Qingyang: In the novel, she’s a member of an independent cultivation sect and she’s first introduced during the Wen Clan indoctrination. In the Untamed, she’s a Jin clan disciple and she attends the Lan clan Lectures, and is shown to have a good relationship (friendship, not romantic) with Jin Zixuan. She later renounces her membership in the Jin clan when the clans turn against Wei Wuxian after the end of the Sunshot Campaign. 

Wen Ruohan: In the novel, he’s just a badass mo-fo power hungry pain in the ass. In CQL he is a demonic cultivating megalomaniac who uses the Yin Iron to be, like, Comic Book Evil.

Wen Qing and Wen Ning: Unlike in the novel, where Wen Ning is introduced outside of Lotus Pier, and Wen Qing is introduced after Wen Ning needs a place to hide Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, in the Untamed, Wen Qing and Wen Ning attend the Lan clan Lectures. Wen Qing is there under instructions from Wen Ruohan to seek the Yin Iron; he blackmails her by threatening Wen Ning. Furthermore, Wen Ning is unusually susceptible to spiritual influence as a result of an encounter with the Dafan Mountain Goddess/Fairy statue when he’s a child. The statue kills their parents and starts to drain him, but Wen Qing saves him. She’s not able to heal the damage to him, though, and it’s implied this is part of why it’s possible for Wei Wuxian to raise him using demonic cultivation. Wen Qing in particular has a much greater role in CQL, and she has a romantic subplot with Jiang Cheng. She bears a sword, and she’s also shown to do spellwork and influence people using acupuncture needles.

Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen: In the novel, we first meet them at Yi City, when their story is already tragic. In CQL, they are introduced right after the Lan Lectures, and are therefore older.

Xue Yang: As with Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen, he is introduced earlier in CQL than in the novel. In CQL, he also possesses a piece of the Yin Iron that he manages to keep hidden and a secret despite multiple attempts by different parties to obtain it (it’s hinted at times that he’s in cahoots with Wei Wuxian, but this is just a character smear). His ancestor created the Yin Iron, and he’s known to be an expert on demonic cultivation.

Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao: Meng Yao is introduced much earlier in CQL than he is in the novel, as we see him when the Nie cultivators are welcomed to the Lan lectures (and we’re shown upfront and immediately that Lan Xichen treats him more respectfully than most others do). In the novel, we don’t find out much about the evil things he’s done until Wei Wuxian does Empathy on Nie Mingjue’s head; in CQL, more of that is shown “on screen” as it occurs. For example, he’s shown conspiring with Xue Yang in the Unclean Realm, and right after that is when Nie Mingjue catches him slaughtering another officer (which none of the other characters know about). He also saves Nie Mingjue’s life during that scene, painting him as morally ambiguous and complicated from a very early point. We also “see” as it happens the incident in right after the fall of Nightless City, where Nie Mingjue goes to kill Meng Yao and is prevented by Lan Xichen, and there are more explicit indications that he’s manipulating Jin Guangshan and is involved in the plot to turn everyone against Wei Wuxian.

Ouyang Zizhen: Ouyang Zizhen appears only briefly in the novel, during the Yi City arc. In CQL he has a much expanded role and is a pretty much perpetual fourth to Jin Ling, Lan Sizhui, and Lan Jingyi (especially post Yi City). He’s present most of the times they meet, and involved in Jin Ling’s confrontation with Wen Ning, and is present at the Second Siege of the Burial Mounds, where he intervenes with his father on behalf of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. And he’s one of the best beans.

Sequence of Events:

In the novel, when Wei Wuxian awakes at Mo Manor, the Lan clan disciples come and they find an evil left arm that kills and possesses people. In CQL, they find a sword that does the same. This leads to changes throughout the plot in what, exactly, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are searching for. In the novel, they pursue the pieces of Nie Mingjue’s body to various sites. In CQL, they instead are led to the same sequence of places by a sword spirit which turns out to be Baxia.

When Mo Xuanyu raises Wei Wuxian in the novel, Wei Wuxian has three curse scars representing three people that need to die: Madam Mo, Mo Ziyuan, and...one of the servants I think? In CQL, Wei Wuxian has a fourth cut that represents a fourth person he must kill: Jin Guangyao.

Because the risen dead don’t exist in the Untamed, the Dafan Mountain Goddess/Fairy statue incident plays out a little different. For example, Wei Wuxian doesn’t figure out what’s happened by observing graves, he figures it out by seeing “spirit grass.” However, the outcomes are essentially the same from a plot point of view.

In CQL, the extended flashback to the lectures starts right after Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian meet (right after Wen Ning is summoned and then flees). I don’t remember exactly how the timeline/intermingling of narratives from different points in times is structured in the novel but I know it’s different. They spend far longer in the “present” before going to the past, and jump back and forth a bit more too.

In CQL, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have an early bonding period during the lectures (the lectures over all get more attention/time than in the novel) when they are drawn into a cave in the backhills that they enter through the cold spring. Within, there’s a guqin and a bunch of rabbits and the...spiritual embodiment?...of Lan Yi, who is introduced as the first female leader of the Lan Clan, a close friend of Baoshen Sanren, and the creator of the Chord Assassination Technique. Lan Yi acquaints them with the existence of the Yin Iron. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji also engage in a symbolic hand-fasting during this scene. In the show, this is where the bunnies come from; Wei Wuxian doesn’t capture them and bring them as “presents” like he does in the novel.

In CQL, between the Lectures and the Sunshot Campaign, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Nie Huaisang do some night hunting together. Among other things, during this time they meet Xue Yang, Xiao Xingchen, and Song Lan, when Xue Yang slaughters the Chang clan. This obviously has major implications for the role and age of these characters in CQL versus in the novel, when none of the three are met until Yi City. This time spent night-hunting is also when the flower spirit mini-side plot takes place, but it doesn’t get much screen time and isn’t as prominent as in the novel, nor is the entire “Wei Wuxian woos her where no one else did” thing a feature of the show. Also, they encounter the Dafan Mountain Goddess at this time.

The Wen Clan attacks Cloud Recesses in the novel because of perceived improprieties, and Lan Wangji is injured while trying to protect the library. Lan Xichen disappears, and Clan Leader Lan is killed. In CQL, Clan Leader Lan is already dead at this point and Lan Xichen is in charge of the clan (while it’s never explicit, it’s implied that the age gap between Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, and between Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, is greater in the show than it is in the novel). When Wen Xu attacks, they hide in the cave where Lan Yi appeared to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, but the disciples who aren’t members of the Lan specifically can’t enter, so Wen Xu begins to massacre them. To prevent that, Lan Wangji emerges, and that’s when his leg is broken. (Su She is also prominent in this scene in CQL, but he’s not in the novel.)

During the Indoctrinations, in CQL it’s shown that Wei Wuxian is afraid of dogs after Wen Chao locks him in a dungeon room with one. This also serves as bonding time with Wen Ning, who helps Wei Wuxian with medicine that Wen Qing has provided. This scene doesn’t take place in the novel; in the novel Wei Wuxian’s fear of dogs is almost entirely shown through his interactions with Fairy.

Also during the Indoctrinations in CQL, there’s a lot of friction between Wen Chao and Wen Qing because Wen Qing keeps trying to help the prisoners in small ways. In the novel, Wen Qing hasn’t been introduced at this point in the story.

Wei Wuxian’s Death: In the novel, Wei Wuxian retreats to the Burial Mounds, the clans unite against him, storm the Burial Mounds, and kill him - Jiang Cheng gets credit for the kill, but in actuality, Wei Wuxian's own resentment-controlled undead tear him apart when his magic backfires. (see this comment for more info) In the Untamed, after a battle outside the Nightless City, Wei Wuxian realizes how wrong everything has gone, destroys the Stygian Tiger amulet, and throws himself from the mountain. Despite a “tease” that Jiang Cheng stabbed him, it’s later shown that no, Wei Wuxian’s death was suicide despite Lan Wangji trying to save him and Jiang Cheng deciding not to stab him.

Wen Chao’s Death: While it’s implied in CQL that Wei Wuxian has been tormenting Wen Chao, it’s nowhere near as explicit as in the novel. It’s loosely suggested in CQL that perhaps Wen Chao’s condition when Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji find him is the result of fear and self-neglect - basically that Wei Wuxian’s torment is causing Wen Chao to hallucinate frightening things. Instead of, you know, Wei Wuxian’s torment causing him to eat himself.

In the novel, Wei Wuxian is dead for 13 years. In CQL, he’s dead for 16 years.

Wei Wuxian’s resurrection: In the novel, because Wei Wuxian doesn’t look like himself, he doesn’t realize that Lan Wangji has recognized him because he played WangXian, so he engages in multiple behaviors to try to disgust and drive Lan Wangji away (all of which fail, of course, because Lan Wangji knows the truth). In CQL, because Wei Wuxian looks like himself, when he wakes up without his mask in Cloud Recesses he immediately knows that Lan Wangji has recognized him and there’s no further mystery in that regard (except for how Lan Wangji recognized him while he WAS masked, which is the same in both - because of the song). (Lan Xichen also subsequently recognizes him while he’s masked, at an earlier point than he does in the novel unless I’ve badly misremembered. Which is always possible).

The Yi City arc is quite different between the two. Honestly, I skip the most painful parts of the Yi City arc, including the entire flashback sequences, because I knew they’d fuck me up right good without being worth it, so I’m not able to go into depth here, but. Some examples include:

Because in CQL, Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan, and Xue Yang were introduced during the “past” timeline, they’re considerably older than in the novel.

Due to censorship, A-Qing is not a spirit as she is in the novel. Instead, she’s still alive but she’s had her tongue torn out and been blinded by Xue Yang. She ultimately sacrifices her life to help Wei Wuxian et al kill Xue Yang.

In CQL, it’s shown that Xiao Xingchen would leave a sweet on Xue Yang’s pillow every day, and when Xue Yang dies the last gifted sweet falls from his hand.

(if anyone reading this wants to help flesh it out please do chime in because I know it’s incomplete but I Cannot with that bit of the story.)

During the Second Siege of the Burial Mounds, in the novel, after Wei Wuxian paints himself with the lure talismans, he and Lan Wangji are on the verge of being overpowered when the corpses of the Wen clan members that Wei Wuxian saved rise from the blood pool and help protect them. In CQL, the Wen clan members are hung by the Jin clan and left for the birds outside of the Nightless City, so they could never have been in the blood pool, even if such a thing would have made it past censors (which it never would have).

The novel contains pornographic content, including an illicit kiss that Lan Wangji steals from Wei Wuxian during the Phoenix Mountain hunt, and actual sex, with their first time being before the confrontation at Guanyin Temple. 

During the Guanyin temple confrontation, in the novel there’s extensive discussion of Jin Guangyao’s childhood in the brothel, including information about his mother and why he spared Sisi as opposed to all the other prostitutes. Further, it’s explicit that the Guanyin temple has been built on the site where that brothel used to stand and that the coffin Jin Guangyao is digging up is meant to contain his mother’s body. The entire temple is dedicated to her. In CQL a lot of this is simply not explained or left ambiguous.

In the novel, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are married and return to Cloud Recesses. In CQL, they travel together for a time, part ways, and then are reunited. Lan Wangji becomes the Chief Cultivator, replacing Jin Guangyao.

...that’s everything we came up with. Alright, everyone, what’d we miss? :D

[goldenkamuyhunting]

[EP31 Spoiler] When Tsukishima said that people in the 7th called Ogata "mountain cat" as a cruel joke, I'm surprised to see Sugimoto genuinely feeling bad for Ogata. Like bruh he straight up shot you in head, remember? I understand why Tsukishima appeared uncomfortable recounting this because he was judged by his father's sins too, but Sugimoto's reaction was a surprise to me. Your thought?

Honestly...

I don’t really think it’s surprising.

I’m not sure if you’re just an anime viewer or are you also following the manga (if you aren’t I recommend reading it as it’s much, much better than the anime) but I warn you my answer will include also parts that will refer to scenes in the manga that weren’t included in the anime (because the anime decided not to animate them) or that in the anime continuity have yet to happen as the manga is the original source of material and behaviours.

Anyway, let’s start with the part that’s common in both media, in short the scene in question.

Here it’s how it is in the anime.

And here there’s the manga version.

The dialogue and the core of the scene is more or less the same so I won’t dig too much into the small differences and just discuss the scene.

A bit of technicalities, first.

Words used:

Yamaneko (山猫)= “Wildcat”, litterally “mountain cat”.

Ōyamaneko (オオヤマネコ)= “Lynx”, litterally “big mountain cat”.

Meko Oyasi (メコオヤシ)= “Cat monster” (oyasi are, losely, malicious Ainu mythological creatures, Tsukishima will later see the meko oyasi as equivalent to the Japanese ‘Bakeneko’ (化け猫) = “monster cat”)

Now... the slang for geisha ‘wildcat’ has a complicate story but, back then, was used for ‘geisha’ who actually slept with customers. Now, a geisha isn’t supposed to sleep with a customer or engage with him in any sort of sexual act. That’s why ‘geisha’ who slept with customers were viewed as a fraud, people who deceive others, because they passed themselves for geisha when they actually were prostitutes.

So the sentence Koito said actually means ‘the son of a swindler is a swindler’.

The ‘joke’, if we want to call it as such, is objectively pathetic and dumb, a way to attack a person not over something he can control, like his character or his actions, but over something he can’t control, like who gave birth to him, made worse (although Sugimoto can’t know this part) by how Ogata’s mother didn’t slep with Hanazawa for money but because she fell for him and if there was a swindler in the story that one is Hanazawa who took advantage of her feelings and then dumper her.

But, back to Ogata, he has no control over his mother’s work or what she chose to do prior to his birth, nor he had the chance to chose her over another woman as his mother. He is also not his mother, and being a swindler isn’t a genetically trasmissible trait.

So what the 7th division called a joke is actually a personal attack done in really poor taste based on a wrong assumption (that Ogata’s mother was a prostitute) and a fallacity (frauding behaviour isn’t heriditary) that aimed to hit Ogata not for a fault of his but for something he had no control over in a time in which he hadn’t betrayed the 7th yet (as the joke started prior to Ogata’s betrayal).

Attacking Ogata defining him a fraud, a swinder, was a big blow in a time where honour was held so valuable, so it’s not really minor.

Back to Sugimoto though, Sugimoto is an adult.

He can see it’s a low blow, something petty and childish, something completely different from calling Ogata ‘murderer’ or ‘jerk’ or even a ‘swindler’ but for things HE and not his mom, did, and it’s a joke the 7th division passed on way before Ogata shoot him and way before Ogata betrayed them.

Therefore, even if he wants Ogata dead, in such circumstance he decides not to side with people who take fun slandering others for reasons that aren’t connected to their crimes... or try to. But we’ll get to this part later.

(and of course there’s to keep in consideration Sugimoto is not overly fond of Koito either, so he’s likely not going to humour him).

There’s more though, as Sugimoto isn’t coming to this realization only due to his ‘deductive ability’ but more due to personal experience.

If you’re only an anime viewer you might not know it, but Sugimoto also suffered being attacked for something he had no part in. This part was completely censored in the anime, like all the scenes that end up involving Umeko, but Sugimoto’s whole family fell sick with tuberculosis. While Sugimoto was forced to watch his relative die one after the other the village he lived him shunned him and his family, with people considering to burn down their house with them in... and, although we don’t hear it, it’s possible they also insulted them.

The result is that Sugimoto takes very poorly when people badtalk about other people for reasons unrelated to them.

In case you missed it, the one Shiraishi does is another cruel joke.

‘Sono Ainu wa omae-san no kai inu ka?’

そのアイヌはお前さんの飼いイヌか？

Lit: “That Ainu is your pet dog?”

When he says “pet dog” this translates as ‘kai inu’’ (飼いイヌ) a word that sound similar to ‘Ainu’ and that therefore was used to insult Ainu.

Anyway Sugimoto can’t help but loathe that joke because he had been on the receiving help of something similar and can’t help but be reminded of it when Tsukishima explains him the whole thing.

He very likely wouldn’t have felt bad for Ogata at all if they had attacked him for something that Ogata did, but hearing them attack Ogata for something he had no control over had instead to ring a bell in him, reminding him of his own drama, hence the rejection of their actions, especially when Koito, whom Sugimoto sees as a spoiled brat, seems instead in favour of them.

Said all this, despite knowing what the men of the 7th was wrong, neither Tsukishima nor Sugimoto truly managed to avoid following their example, although in a more veiled way. I would say hypocritical much but the truth is that when you are angry at someone or even hate that person (for rightful or wrong reasons) in many cases YOU feel legittimate to be a jerk and do things you reproach in others.

Tsukishima, angry about how Ogata killed Maeyama, referenced to it calling him a ‘pet cat’ on his face...

...and later on referred to him as an ‘Ōyamaneko’.

Sugimoto too is not above making references to Ogata being a wildcat by saying Ogata claw things for the fun of it...

...and by using ‘nekoyoke’ (猫よけ), which yes, means “cat repellent”.

So as you can see neither Tsukishima nor Sugimoto are so morally above others they don’t slip into petting insulting despite knowing it’s wrong but, at least, both of them tried to be mature about it.

So that’s how I see it.

Sugimoto, despite hating Ogata, could see the joke was wrong because it rang a bell inside him, one he couldn’t ignore as it’s deeply tied to his personal tragedy so he refused to partake in the act.

However, as things between him and Ogata worsened, despite his attempts he slipped in the act, albeith not in an openly manner... because humans are often just like that, when they’re angry at someone it seems fair even attack them with slander instead than sticking to the right motivations. Which is sad... but human.

At least that’s how I see it. Of course I can be wrong in my interpretation.

Anyway, thank you for your ask!

[fanonskeletonstuff]

CPAU: DisCo

pls kno im not a serious writer thank;; also it’s my replies only, i didnt share anyone elses (unless they want to share killer and his s/o’s whole thread along with the sideplots, i dont wanna paste their replies without permission tho i plan not to)

this may include othertale spoilers and rahafwabas’ killer!sans comic references

gonna put this on wattpad too

—

Dust explores the CP. he sees Color and his rainbow cracked skull is the first thing he catches. Color sees him back and walks to him first. “heya. i see you’re about to cause trouble.”

“wh... what? pfff...” Dust is surprised Color already knows who he is. “i can’t if this is some large christmas gathering. isnt it on christmas, you have to be well... GOOD???”

Color jumps back from the yell. “of course you have to. but, you’re one of those sanses, so i can’t stop ya.” Then, he realizes something. “say, aren’t you killer’s friend? have you two met before?”

Dust remembers who Killer is. “ohhh, that man?? yeah, we had to date once during our bad sanses sleepover. horror held the event cause it was halloween at the time.”

“huh... well, this is dangerous of me, i’m talkin’ to ya and anytime you might just kill me.” Color chuckles. “however, I know sanses can control themselves. I know killer can. he thinks i have to kill him, but it’s just wrong. i think he can change. he doesnt have to fuel himself with thoughts of murdery.”

Dust feels roasted. “WOW?? heheheh!! you’re so smart those colors must be how high your IQ is!”

“heheh, oh, that. so, here’s my story. i absorbed souls in a genocide timeline. i was about to die, so it’s the only thing i had to do. that’s why i look like that... that...”

Color gets interrupted by Dance, who teleported next to him. “uhhh...”

//OH NO COLOR X DANCE CRACK SHIP ALERT CAUSE COLOR!SANS LOOKS LIKE THOSE LED LIGHTS THAT SWITCH COLOR TO COLOR AHSJSJSK

— — —

“heya. you’re quite the party lights in here.” Dance is getting the gay feeling.

“oh, heheh, wow, huh?” Color feels awkward. “heyy, i know you! you’re that shy dancer who doesn’t get much stage fright the more he gets used to dancing. hip hop, right?”

“yep. yeah, that’s my genre.” Dance blushes. “what AU are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“i’m from othertale. fun fact, the AU’s not about me! i’m pretty much undyne’s supporting character.” Color laughs.

“cool...” Dance likes him- “i like your colors. where’d you get your lights?”

“oh, i was just explaining to dust pal here I got it from human souls. i, um, absorbed ‘em. needed it cause i was aboutta die.”

“that must be risktaking of you for your own life, c...” Dance winks, his left eye open. “hey, maybe we should... dance, sometime...”

Dust laughs at Color and Dance, gives a hard pat on Color’s shoulder. “uh oh, GAY alert!!!” Phantom!Papyrus is probably shook at this point.

— — —

“heh... sorry to say, but you’re too nice and popular to be with me.” Color answers. “I, um... already had letters with someone. kinda like dust, but...”

“it’s ok. if i dance too much, that’s when the beats go off.” Dance understands.

“yeah... honestly, he’d kill you if he sees you. If he were in this party and you say that to me... he’ll overthink his actions and end up on a killing spree.”

Dance knows who he’s talking about. “wait. you don’t mean... how...???”

“how?”

“how... how is he with you? wait, i must be assuming. who are you with, but not really?”

— — —

“u-uh... he likes... someone else, n-n-now...” Dance being the shy sweatpants boi he is puts on his hood blushing. “sorry, i said too much...”

“o-oh, no problem! killer chose me anyway, but i only chose him back cause he wants me to be his guy...de.” Color winks for the pun. guy-de for ‘guide’ lol.

— — —

Then, Color says his name.

“killer. he told me everything about himself. personally. there was no one else but me and him. like an error in his anti-void.”

“oh, uh... he’s h-here, actually...” Dance hesitates. “wait... i still have more to say...”

“ok.”

Dust walks out of the conversation, continuing to follow Red.

Red sees Killer being cute. “ah *shoes*-//“

he notices himself getting his words censored and thats embarrassing. “WHAT THE-////“

— — —

Color and Dance walks in.

“hey, what’s happening here?” Color asks.

“hi red...” Dance waves. “i hope your anger management’s doing well.”

Red’s starting to think he’s gonna have a BIG WHOOP. “OK, what’s goin’ on here?! who set this?! cigar’rus?!” he mentions US!Pap, the host of the therapy closet session.

— — —

Killer sees Dust and feels a bit scarEd. “hiya.”

“welcome to the party, that goes to the three of you....” Dance still shying out tho.

“hey buddy red. tough day? i heard you yelling back there.” Color helps Red.

“ya heard nothin, newbie!” Red nervously laughs. “feel like imma get stabbed by that dust guy there! or any of those funkers!”

Killer breaks up with Color 3 2 1-

“sir’s probably lookin’ for us, we should find a way out.” Dust puts a hand around Killer.

Killer blushes. “wait...// im still wearing this.”

Dust lets go. “ohhh’kayyy, take your time...”

Killer rubs both of his sleeves until he sees Color. “color....?”

“uh...” Color stops hiding behind Dance, holds Dance’s hand, and blushes. “yeah, it’s me.”

Dance blushes back, HE A HERMIT CRAB//) “(c-color, whuh)”

“long time no see.”

“heheh... i heard you found someone else, so... hey, it’s okay! if he can help you, honestly, i just said yes so i could control you. and, uh, manipulation is one of the bad things in relationships, right? so...”

Killer listens to Color. “don’t feel bad.”

“i’m gonna walk off cause i don’t wanna get caught. oh, and one more thing.” Color shows Killer he’s holding Dance’s hand. “once you see it, you can ditch me.”

“s-s-sorry/////“ Dance mutters while hiding in his hood hiding away his blue blushy flustering face.

last one: shoutout to outer sans being a fluffy pillow to the bad sanses out there uwu

Outer, still next to RainbowKill, looks at Dust while Color and Dance walk away together. Not only he should help Killer calm down, but maybe him too. He probably has a certain goal to calm down most Sanses that used to be good. Yep, still the most relaxed Sans AU.

[enbyleighlines]

Alright, let’s talk about the theme of homophobia in mo dao zu shi

Before I begin, some disclaimers!

Obviously everything I say here is my opinion and not the One True Way to interpret the text. If you disagree with what I say, or parts of what I say, then good! That’s how literary analysis works. Please write your own rebuttal post if you wish. You can even link me. I would be happy to read a different point of view on this issue

I’m not going to be talking about the author’s intent. I’m pro “death of the author” so it really doesn’t matter to me whether the homophobia depicted in mdzs is a reflection of the author’s own prejudice, or if it’s a social commentary on China’s views towards LGBTA issues, or even if it’s just being employed to push a “forbidden love” trope

I’m not going to be making judgment statements about the quality of the writing or whether or not the homophobia is depicted realistically. While that would make for an interesting topic, it’s not my main concern

I’m going to discuss spoilers, so if you haven’t read the novel, and you intend to read it, and you don’t want to be spoiled, please skip this post!

I’m going to be discussing things like societal homophobia and internalized homophobia. Also, I’ll be discussing Mo Xuanyu’s suicide, so please read this at your own discretion!

With all of that out of the way, let’s begin!

Homophobia is undeniably a running theme in the novel and audio drama versions of the story, and it even plays a minor part in the manhua. However, it is noticeably absent in the live action and donghua. In an ironic twist of fate, censoring the gay romance from the live action and manhua made it so that they also accidentally made the cultivation world a lot less homophobic. Because depicting homophobia would entail acknowledging that gay people exist.

Meanwhile, the homophobia in the novel and audio drama are not like front and center but they are certainly there. As merelhyn points out in this post that inspired mine, “…it’s so common that Wei Wuxian rolls with it and try to weaponize the homophobia to disgust people, hide himself and flee.”

While I don't think it's necessarily dangerous to be gay in the world of mdzs, it definitely is not normalized. The word “cut-sleeve” is most often used as an insult. At one point, Jin Ling calls being gay an “incurable disease”. At another point, the story says that “it was forbidden to engage in cut-sleeve behavior in public.”

Okay, so why am I even bringing this up? Basically, I want to do some character analysis of two of the three canonically gay/bi men in the story: Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu. Wei Wuxian could get his own post, and I might do that in the future, but this post just concerns Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu.

First: Lan Wangji

Personally, I think Lan Wangji struggles with internalized homophobia, the fact that he is attracted to men.

Lan Wangji is a gay man who cares so very deeply for the rules, he likes knowing right from wrong, good from bad, he likes making others proud and setting a good example, and yet he cannot help but break the rules. The Gusu Lan sect doesn’t have any specific rules against homosexuality that we know of, but I think "Do not indulge in debauchery" and "Do not be promiscuous" could certainly be interpreted to include homosexuality. After all, the Gusu Lan sect is descended from an aesetic monk, and their sect’s philosophy is very much about restraining oneself from earthly pleasures.

I like to imagine that at least part of Lan Wangji’s adherence to the rules is due in part to the fact that, inside, he fears that he's not actually a good person. And not all of it comes from his attraction to men. As we see in all the adaptations, Lan Wangji has quite the temper. He is also prone to jealousy and pettiness, like the way he acts around Wen Ning.

And there’s the childish side, too, the side that wants to play hide and seek or steal someone’s chickens when he’s drunk. Or how he continues to be overly sentimental, like how long he grieved for his mother.

And then Wei Wuxian comes around and Lan Wangji falls madly in love, just like his father did with his mother, except it's with a man, and try as he might, Lan Wangji cannot control his feelings. He can control everything else in his life, but he can't control his feelings. And I think that’s the lesson that Lan Wangji ultimately has to learn.

By the end of the novel, we learn that Lan Wangji actually confessed his love to Wei Wuxian before his death. We learn that Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren knew of Lan Wangji’s confession, and that later Lan Xichen even told Jin Guangyao. Yet Lan Jingyi once told Wei Wuxian, “HanGuang-Jun is not a cut-sleeve.” So Lan Wangji’s feelings are kept a secret, just how the details of his mother’s seclusion were kept a secret. They have to be kept secret, or they would ruin his reputation.

How painfully ironic, then, must it have been for Lan Wangji, when Wei Wuxian is reincarnated into the body of a man who is known and hated for being gay. And as previously stated, Wei Wuxian fully plays into the stereotype of the predatory, promiscuous gay man, in order to keep his identity a secret, and to keep other people from getting too close to him.

In the past, Lan Wangji had to struggle with his own internalized homophobia. And then, once he finally accepts himself, he has to deal with Wei Wuxian’s homophobia. It just makes his whole character arc all the more tragic.

Second: Mo Xuanyu

Admittedly, we don’t know a lot about Mo Xuanyu. We know that he was cowardly and timid, that he was gay, that he dabbled in demonic cultivation, and that after the abuse of his aunt, uncle, and cousin, “he often behaved in a crazy manner, almost as if his life was scared out of him.” He was also accused of sexually harassing Jin Guangyao, his half-brother, though the novel never really clarifies if this accusation is true.

Personally, I find it too much of coincidence to be true. After all, how likely is it that Jin Guangyao would have two half-siblings lusting after him?

If you compare Qin Su with the accusations against Mo Xuanyu, there are some interesting parallels.

It’s said that “Mo XuanYu had always regarded Jin GuangYao as a deity”.

It was also proposed by Wei Wuxian that Jin Guangyao and Mo Xuanyu were once close, since Jin Guangyao allowed Mo Xuanyu to study Wei Wuxian’s manuscripts.

Qin Su, on the other hand, is often described with words such as “innocent”, “naïve”, and “childish”, and apparently she fell so deeply in love with Jin Guangyao that she “never gave up, insisting that she wanted to be his wife.”

We also know that Jin Guangyao never again touched Qin Su once they were married. Now, it’s entirely possible that Qin Su accepted that without question, but it’s also possible that, being the persistent woman that we know her to be, that she tried to seduce him many times after their wedding.

And so, if at any point Jin Guangyao did want to come up with perfect rumor to smear Mo Xuanyu’s reputation and get him kicked out, then he could easily take inspiration from his own wife: A half-sibling, who loved him very much, and frequently expressed interest in getting intimate with him, to his continued disgust. If Jin Guangyao did make up the rumor to get Mo Xuanyu kicked out, we still don’t know exactly what caused his change of heart. But we do know that since Mo Xuanyu was already known to be gay, and since he was already known for following his elder brother around like a puppy, it’s quite easy to see how people would have believed the rumor.

At one point, Wei Wuxian questions whether it’s possible for a man as timid as Mo Xuanyu to have taken his own life. Now, I for one don’t like that interpretation. Suicide does not require bravery, just intense emotional pain.

However, I do think it’s safe to say that a man as timid as Mo Xuanyu probably wouldn’t have sexually harassed his older brother, the one he treated like a deity. He was probably just happy to have someone in his family, other than his mother, who didn’t abuse him. So while it’s not 100% canon that Jin Guangyao framed Mo Xuanyu, it’s what makes the most sense according to my reading of the text.

Aaaaand that’s it!

Kudos to you if you actually read this far. Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu are two characters I have A Lot of feelings about, so I wanted to condense it all into one super rambly post.

I hope you enjoyed reading it!

[megacross-ground-zero-rated-r]

Major spoilers for Chapter Seven of the sequel book Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit, minor spoilers for other chapters. 

I’m a bit over a hundred pages in and so far Eddie’s an asshole. Not grumpy, not a sourpuss, but a genuinely unpleasant person. There’s another, later scene that illustrates his thoughtlessness specifically towards Roger that prompted this rant, which I’m not going into here because I may do a mini-fic rewrite.

I can look past wanting to shoot Roger for breaking into his place again, because he has a history of doing that- It might be the one thing all versions of Roger from Censored, Framed, and Plugged have done aside from vehemently deny Jessica of any wrongdoing- And it almost got Eddie killed last time. 

What I can’t look past is threatening to shoot Roger for a genuine show of affection. Page 89.

***

“Calm down. Tell it straight and simple.”

He stood up and strolled the knolls of my Posturepedic. ((Positive point: Continues the trait of Roger pacing while he explains stuff.)) “I was on the Radio tonight. With Edward R. Murrow. He asked me terribly hard questions, one after another, but I handled them bippety boppety boop.’

“I know. I heard.”

He stopped short. His hangnail eyebrows boomeranged to the top of his forehead. “You gave up Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy for me?”

“Sure. It wasn’t even a contest.” I never bought the notion of a ventriloquist on the radio. Who’s to say he’s not moving his lips?

Roger’s pencil-lead mouth squiggled itself into a goofy grin. His yellow hands moved up and out. I sniffed a bunny hug aborning. I reached for my gat. I would have used it too, I swear. Except the rabbit, in a rare display of good judgment, cocked his noggin, rotated his mitts around to palms out, and backed off. Though his inky-dinky grin still split open his face like the snaky residue of a shaky-handed shave.

***

And in the next paragraph his internal narration says this, referring to the clouds of onomatopoeia word balloons that float from ToonTown:

His onomatopoetic exclamation drifted out the open window. Another senseless expression of violence polluting the landscape.

Oh, really. 

This wouldn't be so bad if the backup gun Eddie has in this scene was the only factor at play. But earlier Eddie borrowed a gun from the Director who gave him the case, Selznick, didn't know it was loaded with Dip-tipped bullets, and got into a fight that resulted in the death of a Toon actor named Enigman. An attacker that Enigman apparently thought was on his side got behind Eddie in a dark room, grabbed the gun, and made Eddie shoot. Positive: That was a curveball I didn’t see coming, I liked it the first time I read it. 

There was no, oh, God, what have I done moment by the way, no why didn’t I check the rounds, why was an unguarded display gun loaded in the first place. There was evidence that Enigman was potentially involved in harming one of Eddie’s relatives and he withheld information about that unless Eddie took him off the suspect list, but the initial crime being investigated was only stealing a trinket from Selznick. 

Eddie was threatening to kill him but c’mon, he can’t be that hotheaded. If the other attacker hadn’t shown up I doubt he would’ve gone through with it. Selznick knows he borrowed the gun, and as he said, paraphrased from Page 68, your neighbors for two blocks either direction will hear the shot. Coming from a purely practical standpoint Enigman is the only lead Eddie has on his relative. There’s evidence in the room that Eddie could use if he gets it to the right people.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been an emotional reaction to it lining up and feeling the kick of the recoil, even if he really meant to kill Enigman and really had no reaction to his death losing control of a deadly weapon should’ve rattled him. Especially significant if Enigman is only the second Toon he’s ever killed. The Roger Rabbit frame-up and presumably Doom’s death were stated to have happened by now. Grabbing for the backup gun he didn’t remember the gory scene he left Enigman at, take even a moment to say, oh, shit, maybe I shouldn’t be waving this thing around. Roger doesn’t know about the Dip-tipped bullet incident. If he did he’d have a very different reaction to Eddie going for his holster. 

On the one hand, he said only time will tell on the subject of if he gets his sense of humor back in Framed’s resolution, so this book could be if he didn’t actually change that much. I would guess the opinion of casual fans of the movie is assuming that he underwent a total transformation overnight, which I don’t want to encourage, either. 

I feel it should be something he wants and works towards rather than getting dragged into one case by an outside force and having that be it. By all means, make him earn his happy ending with more than a few days work, but if any movie-canon character should grow as a person and get that it should be Eddie. 

I would very much like to see significant consequences to his hostility and apparent hypocrisy over violence, but I have a feeling I won’t. Hell, keep his inner monologue bitter and snarkier than what he actually says, have him pick and choose the moments he expresses his true thoughts. When he wants to get through to someone he’s sympathetic to or call out someone he’s not, or a stressor pushes him past caring who he hurts. Have characters react accordingly: He’s still got that ten-ton swing even if he pulls some punches nowadays. He’s got the wit and the venom to cut your facade to ribbons. Don’t do something stupid and give him the chance. Make him try and fail at relating to / consoling his clients rather than still writing it off as wishy-washy nonsense.

That's the potential to be a multi-leveled character who’s relatable to those struggling with loss and depression. As he is now the peaks and valleys to his emotional state don’t seem to have much affect on his words, actions, or descriptions showcasing his worldview in a given chapter, he apparently only has one setting, cynic who bad-mouths 85% of the stuff he runs into on a given day. I could be wrong on that though, I’ll come back and admit if I’m oversimplifying.

Time will tell where these traits go, I  hope something more nuanced comes of it. I’ll admit that time period has to do with it, writers and readers are pretty tired of cynical protagonists now.

I’m still interested in his relationship with his family, the short scene with Heddy was great, I want to see if he lightens up or Roger expresses some displeasure about the way he’s acting. I admire that he’s getting a response from me even if it’s negative. 

[embidoesocrp]

Comprehensive RP Standards & Rules

Please Note: If I’m slow or unable to reply, there’s likely a very good reason behind it (ie. mental illness/lack of spoons, inability to get into character, personal matters, etc). All I ask is that you’re patient and understanding -- we’re only human after all! You can even occasionally inquire updates from my end since I do care about keeping both of us up-to-date. Thanks for understanding!

RP Standards & Guidelines

This RPer is friendly/practices [unless otherwise stated] towards the following:

OCs and muses

Multi-verse & AU’s (unless otherwise stated or specified in RP Blog descriptions)

Smut/SRP, NSFW, Fluff, Dark/Triggering content

Trigger Warnings will be tagged respectively -- please notify the mun if you’d like a TW tagged on a post!

SRP will be censored via Read-More Feature

Multi-ships – both platonically & romantically; Canon×OCs are welcome!

by default, i make ships strictly tied to a respective relationship sub-verse tag -- main verses are usually left without a permanent relationship.

because the mun welcomes almost all kinds of ships (albeit depending on the fandom), be sure to check for respective ship tags in order to blacklist appropriately for those you do not like!

Chemistry/Relations between muses = RP/Interacting with each other

This way, I’m able to get a feel for how you portray your muses, and can determine whether or not there’s compatibility. This also helps me understand you as an RPer, too!

regardless of muses being canon or OC’s, please consider having some chemistry (interactions/threads) done before trying to ship with my muses!

As much as I advocate having All the Ships™, jumping straight into ships without getting a feel of your muse(s) makes it difficult for me to get into them. (´・ω・｀) Apologies about that!

pre-plotted/pre-existing relationships will require that we’ve RP’d together enough for me to get a feel of your RP style, especially with OC’s.

canon characters & their canonical history/relations are assumed to be their default and are thus taken into consideration unless circumstances (i.e. AU’s, verses, etc.) state otherwise

regardless, i would still highly recommend we interact with each other enough so that I get a feel of your portrayal!

Format Leniency™ w/ icons, rp length and formatting as well as script-style and paragraph-style RPing (link for info on ‘em) 

script-style/in-character RPing for me will always be in third-person for action

basically, you are absolutely free to follow your own kind of format, and are not obligated to follow the length/format that I use so long as I have something to work with!

Getting referenced/mentioned/involved in other RP threads (IT’D BE AN HONOR.) 

muses that I refer to for specific circumstances (i.e. events from a thread, sub-verses, etc.) will be @mentioned on my part.

‘Read-More’ Censorship – for SRP, spoiler content, extreme gore [on a (N)SFW labeled blog], & long posts

Aged-up versions of fictional characters who are originally/canonically no younger than 14 years old.

I am perfectly, absolutely aware of the fine lines over aging up fictional minors for smut content and will admit that I am perfectly fine/understanding towards RPing such things—so long as it applies to the 14+)—while also fully understanding the controversy it brings.

Aged-up characters or verses that I RP/provide are never intentionally or solely made for smut/SRP content, nor will they ever be.

There’s a good chance that any of my originally/canonically minor teenager whose blog is labeled 18+ may imply an aged-up verse for SRP content. Hopefully, this will help determine if you should be wary of these blogs of mine!

If all else fails, you are absolutely allowed to politely and respectfully ask if there is an aged-up verse with potential SRP content! This way, you can blacklist appropriately.

RP Blogs with smut content will always be labeled accordingly

Rule of Thumb on Age Gaps for Ships: no more than 2 years between minors with 18-year olds, and 3 years between muses aged 18-20 years old with 21+.

Even then, minor×adult SRP/smut is PROHIBITED.

Both muns must take/understand necessary precautions when involving aged-up fictional characters or minor muses, consider any adjustments that may be needed, and must be both adults (18+). 

Of course, if you yourself actually condone pedophilia, I will block you.

This RPer is against/does not practice the following:

Godmodding Rude/Excessive reminders to reply to thread Complaints of unreplied/dropped threads

Engaging in SRP content with minors – will be blocked upon discovery

doesn’t include engaging in SFW content, but once you are blocked you’re unable to interact with me at all

I do not condone pedophilia and RP smut with RPers who are minors.

Reblog Karma – you are not obligated/required to send an ask in exchange for its respective inbox meme; feel free to reblog any memes from me!

If you, however, do practice reblog karma and I reblog without sending something in, though, please let me know!

Likewise, if you prefer people reblogging from the source and not you, please let me know if I ever do as such! I am a very forgetful bun.

Hate mail/anons in any shape or form (ie. suicide instigation, death threats, cyber-bullying)

Hate/‘Phobias’ towards any gender

Soft-blocks — you’re either permanently blocked or not, so be sure to act accordingly.

If for any reason I have blocked you by mistake or under a misunderstanding, I will either unblock or consider unblocking.

Likewise, if you have soft-blocked me for any reason and I, for some reason, somehow, still get to you, you have every right to let me know that I’ve made you uncomfortable and request that I no longer interact with you! (And if it still persists because I can be one hell of a forgetful bun, do remember that you have the right to permanently block me, I understand!)

I’m honestly still trying to understand these soft-block mechanics, if I’m honest...

Racism, Discrimination, Witch Hunts/Call-Out posts — being actively involved in one will automatically be an unfollow & potential block from me.

Pressure regarding thread replies/involvement in drama/desired content

Mutuals-Only interactions

More often than not, my RP blogs may be side-blogs to a main hub (especially if I’m RPing more than one muse in a fandom). Please be sure to check if they are! They’ll usually be mentioned in the descriptions of the blog.

If you are a mutuals-exclusive RPer, please let me know!

Outside Reblogs on RP Threads — Unless you are the RPer(s) involved, DO NOT REBLOG the thread.

Liking & commenting the post is okay for me. HOWEVER, please also respect what rules & policies the other RPer(s) may have! They have the right to react accordingly on their part.

This RPer has the rights towards the following:

Not expanding on ask-response replies

Refusing to start/continue a thread for any particular reason

Dropping a thread for any particular reason (especially when it feels that there isn’t much to continue on in it)

Giving more attention to some threads than others

Being finicky between doing legitimate RP threads vs. casually being IC

Being finicky with social interactions between individuals

Not becoming mutuals

Other Universal Standards & Guidelines

Dash Organization > Mutuals-Exclusive Practices

Follows & Mutuals =/= Interaction Privileges --- for me, follows are a means of controlling the content on my dash, not an indication of whether or not I want us to interact!

Depending on the blog’s popularity, RP blogs may or may not be fandom-restricted (interactions exclusive to canon/-versed/-oriented muses/OCs), unless exceptions for particular individuals are granted.

Multi-Muse Blogs are less likely to be followed (which might also be highly dependent on blog’s popularity) for dash content organization, especially if the muses extend across multiple fandoms.

Interactions > Reading Rules/Following when it comes to receiving a follow from me as it again depends on how often we interact.

Individual RP Blogs can and will have their own, more specific guidelines to follow depending on its fandom/popularity! 

 Policies can usually be found at the top of the blog’s description, listing what the blog consists of and what content is followed/allowed/restricted.

These policies can and will overrule respective universal policies here.

RP & Liked Content =/= Morals & What I Condone

Likewise, even if there are ships/morals/opinions that do not match with mine, it’s just as the saying goes: to each their own. So long as conflicts do not rise, we can still interact! People can like different things and still be nice to each other. God, I can’t stress this enough.

“I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don't want to put in your real life. I don't want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don't want to have an affair. I don't want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There's a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work's a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write about an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs] Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts.” -- Lin-Manuel Miranda [ x ]

Muse =/= Mun

Rule of Thumb: if the muse’s behavior is beginning to come on too strongly, chances are that I’m fully aware of this and will most likely show it via tags!

Tag Commentary — you are absolutely free to not provide OOC commentary in the tags, especially if you are an IC blog. This just helps show who I am as a mun!

Level of Investment = Thread Priorities & Muse Activity

I, unfortunately, am inspirationally-driven when it comes to my musings, and can therefore be selective with my activity or drop threads I’m unable to continue having a musing for. However, this does not mean I have anything against you, it’s just how my fuel for RPing works. 

Still, I do my best to answer all my threads, so please be patient and understanding with me! Thanks!

By default, I will always assume that threads with me are the lowest priority and can/will eventually be dropped at any time by you.

All in all, so long as we keep to our own lanes instead of actively pursuing the other on behalf of our differences in beliefs, there shouldn’t be any problems. RPing is meant to be a fun, creative and laid-back FICTIONAL environment that is meant to be kept separately from reality.

Regarding Asks & IMs

IC & OOC Asks outside of inbox memes are allowed!

If sent anonymously for side-blog reasons, tag your blog and it will be re-tagged for notification purposes!

ex: ((@nameofrpsidebloghere))

If responding to an ask-response, please post it in a new text post by tagging the blog name and adding a link to the ask-response!

ask-response posts and even photo posts clutter the dashboard and ruin RP consistency...!

You are free to IM me for plots and reply reminders! (I’m a really lenient, GWF/go-with-flow RPer) 

Please note, however, that if I feel the thread isn’t really going anywhere, no longer following a sort of plot, and/or isn’t keeping my interest, I eventually assume that it’s drop-able and will drop it myself.

Universal Tags for Inbox Memes & Themed Starters

For IC

Ask/M!A/RP asks --- #askmarp memes || #askmarp response

Ask/Inbox Memes --- #inbox memes || #inbox response

Themed Starter Memes --- #starter memes || #starter response

Drabble Memes --- #drabble memes || #drabble response

For OOC aka the Mun 

Ask/Inbox Memes --- #mun inbox memes || #mun inbox response

Themed Starter Memes --- #mun starter memes || #mun starter response

For NSFW Content

Ask/M!A/RP asks --- #nsfw askmarp memes || #nsfw askmarp response

Ask/Inbox Memes --- #nsfw inbox memes || #nsfw inbox response

Themed Starter Memes --- #nsfw starter memes || #nsfw starter response

For a Faster Inbox Response – include corresponding rp/ask meme post! 

 ex: [Name of Meme Here!:] ♡ - symbol description here!

If even after reading the standards you still aren’t certain how RPing with me is like, you can also refer to these universal tags:

#rp guidelines - guidelines I follow as an RPer

#chill rp blog is chill - worrisome topics I’m okay with as an RPer

That aside, when in doubt, just ask! I’m totally cool with it, and always want to make sure the both of us are having a fun, comfortable time RP/interacting IC with each other! Do also remember that you are always, always able to just unfollow me, even softblock me if you have to (though I’d appreciate a direct notification/explanation for the first time I address the softblock if that ever occurs...!).

Were you able to read the whole thing?

Feel free to let me know by sending ‘whispers among psithurism’ in the ask (you aren’t required to, though)! Thanks for taking time to read this! Happy RPing!

[introvertguide]

Spartacus (1960); AFI #81

Our next film that we reviewed is the bleak but powerful story of Spartacus, (1960) the Kirk Douglas answer to missing out on Ben Hur. According to some background viewing on the DVD and on YouTube, Kirk Douglas wanted to be the lead in Ben Hur and was angry when his part was given to Charlton Heston. He bought the rites to his own Roman Empire epic that he believed would rival his missed opportunity and Spartacus was adapted for the screen. Although Spartacus did not win the awards that Ben Hur did, the film won a Golden Globe for best Drama as well as 3 technical Oscars and a Best Supporting Oscar for Peter Ustinov. Spartacus is now generally considered the superior film (OK, specifically by me), mainly because it does not go in the direction that the viewer would expect for a movie of the time. Before I go any further, let’s spoil the story for those who just want to talk about the film without having seen it:

SPOILER WARNING! THIS MOVIE DOES NOT END LIKE ONE WOULD EXPECT SO THIS IS A LEGITIMATE WARNING! THIS REVIEW WILL RUIN THE ENDING SO WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST!

The movie starts with eight minutes of music and establishing shots, making sure that the viewer knows this is an epic. We see our main character, a slave named Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), is so uncooperative in his position in a mining pit that he is sentenced to death by starvation. By chance, he is displayed to a sniveling Roman businessman named Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), who – impressed by his ferocity – purchases Spartacus for his gladiatorial school. He tells his instructor Marcellus (Charles McGraw) to watch over Spartacus specifically because he thinks "he has quality". Amid the “training”, Spartacus forms a quiet relationship with a female slave named Varinia (Jean Simmons). She falls for Spartacus when he refuses to rape her for the entertainment of the guards claiming that he is not an animal. When she says “neither am I,” he respects her and realizes that she is kept for her physical abilities just as he is. Spartacus and Varinia are subsequently forced to endure numerous humiliations for defying the conditions of servitude, but their bond grows stronger as they suffer together.

Batiatus receives a visit from the immensely wealthy Roman senator Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier), who aims to become dictator of the stagnant Roman republic. Crassus buys Varinia on a whim and, for the amusement of his companions; arranges for Spartacus and three others to fight in pairs to the death. It was promised to the training gladiators that these death battles would only happen at the Colosseum. Crassus offers enough money that Batiatus can’t refuse, but this sets the rebellious attitude of the gladiators. During his fight, Spartacus is disarmed and his opponent, an African named Draba (Woody Strode), spares his life in a burst of defiance and instead attacks the Roman audience, but is speared by an arena guard and then finished off by Crassus. The next day, with the atmosphere still tense over this episode, Batiatus takes Varinia away to Crassus's house in Rome. Spartacus kills Marcellus, who was taunting him about his love, and the fight escalates into a full blown riot. The gladiators overwhelm their guards and escape into the Italian countryside. 

Spartacus is chosen as leader of the fugitives and he decides to lead them out of Italy to the sea where they can leave the country. The growing army of slaves and gladiators plunders Roman estates all over the countryside, collecting enough money to buy sea transport from the pirates of Cilicia. Spartacus and his group encounter numerous other slaves who wish to join, making the procession towards the sea as large as an army. One of the new arrivals is Varinia, who escaped while being delivered to Crassus. Another is a slave entertainer named Antoninus (Tony Curtis), who also fled Crassus's service. Spartacus feels mentally inadequate because he is uneducated, but he proves an excellent leader and organizes his diverse followers into a tough and self-sufficient community. Varinia, now his informal wife, becomes pregnant by him, and he also comes to regard the spirited Antoninus as a sort of son.

The Roman Senate becomes increasingly alarmed as Spartacus defeats the multiple armies sent against him. Crassus's populist opponent Gracchus (Charles Laughton) knows that his rival will try to use the crisis as a justification for seizing control of the Roman army. To try and prevent this, Gracchus channels as much military power as possible into the hands of his own protege, a young senator named Julius Caesar (John Gavin). Although Caesar lacks Crassus's contempt for the lower classes of Rome, he mistakes the man's rigid outlook for nobility. Thus, when Gracchus reveals that he has bribed the pirates to get Spartacus out of Italy and rid Rome of the slave army, Caesar regards such tactics as beneath him and goes over to Crassus.

Crassus uses a bribe of his own to make the pirates abandon Spartacus and has the Roman army secretly force the rebels away from the coastline towards Rome. Amid panic that Spartacus means to sack the city, the Senate gives Crassus absolute power. Now surrounded by Romans, Spartacus convinces his men to die fighting. Just by rebelling and proving themselves human, he says that they have struck a blow against slavery. In the ensuing battle, after initially breaking the ranks of Crassus's legions, the slave army ends up trapped between Crassus and two other forces advancing from behind, and most of them are massacred. Afterward, the Romans try to locate the rebel leader for special punishment by offering a pardon (and return to enslavement) if the men will identify Spartacus, living or dead. Every surviving man responds by shouting "I'm Spartacus!". As a result, Crassus has them all sentenced to death by crucifixion along the Via Appia between Rome and Capua, where the revolt began.

After the battle, Crassus finds Varinia and Spartacus's newborn son hiding amongst the dead and takes them prisoner. He is disturbed by the idea that Spartacus can command more love and loyalty than he can and hopes to compensate by making Varinia as devoted to him as she was to her former husband. When she rejects him, he furiously seeks out Spartacus (whom he recognizes from having watched him at Batiatus' school) and forces him to fight Antoninus to the death. The survivor is to be crucified, along with all the other men captured after the great battle. Spartacus kills Antoninus to spare him this terrible fate. The incident leaves Crassus worried about Spartacus's potential to live in legend as a martyr. In other matters, he is also worried about Caesar, whom he senses will someday eclipse him.

Gracchus, having seen Rome fall into tyranny, commits suicide. Before doing so, he bribes his friend Batiatus to rescue Spartacus's family from Crassus and carry them away to freedom. On the way out of Rome, the group passes under Spartacus's cross. Varinia is able to comfort him in his dying moments by showing him his little son, who will grow up free and knowing who his father was.

So just to really hit this spoiler home: the slaves who escape are all slaughtered in battle or crucified along the road into Rome, the senator who tries to help them commits suicide, and Spartacus kills his close friend and is himself crucified to the sound of his slowly dying army. His one consolation is he sees his wife leaving with his child under the same man who turned him into a gladiator in the first place. Kubrick really knows how to end on an up note (sarcasm). This is not that surprising since Trumbo adapted it and he was not feeling like a happy ending was in his future. It was probably very cathartic for him to write out the script. 

This movie brags of having a cast of thousands and that is no lie. My mom commented during the battle scene when all the armies are marching out that “nobody was unemployed during the making of this movie.” There was no green screen or CG effects, just 8000 members of the Spanish military dressed up like Roman soldiers and marching in formation. There were apparently many gory scenes that were cut out of battle towards the end and only a shot of Spartacus cutting off a man’s arm remained. When envisioning the project, Kubrick had no intention of holding back.

I did learn from the DVD extras (this is released through Criterion so there are tons of bonus extras and commentary) that Kubrick considered this the only film in which he felt he did not have complete creative control. He fought with Trumbo about the lead character being too perfect. Spartacus was a rebellious slave with no formal education and a huge chip on his shoulder. Why would he be so nice and understanding when so few people had shown him any kindness? The studios also did not like that somebody who had been shown to be so good would end up dying so badly. Kubrick really distanced himself from this film as he got old because he considered it the one example of a movie that he helped create that wasn’t really his. 

One specific scene that both Kubrick and Trumbo agreed on but the studios did not like was the famous “snails and oysters” moment between Crassus and Antoninus. This is a famous moment in the history of homosexual representation in American film and involves two of the most well known actors of the time, Sir Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis. Antoninus is tending to Crassus during a bath and Crassus asks a series of questions about moral actions. He asks if Antoninus eats oysters and snails and asks if eating one is morally superior to the other. Crassus concludes that it  is a matter of taste and not a question of morality. During the questioning, Antoninus continually refers to Crassus as master while oiling up the man in a bath. Crassus is blatantly hitting on Antoninus and the only reason it got past the studio censors is that it was the villainous Roman tyrant. This scene would have been cut at the time if it would have gone any further, I think. Very interesting moment in movie history. 

More than any single scene, Kubrick was constantly fighting about his need to put in his special touch of over perfectionism which translated to demanding a lot of takes. This really slows down production when you are trying to direct and you are dealing with so many people. He is reported to have done a dozen or more takes for each dolly shot of the dead bodies on the battle field with specific instructions for every single extra that lay on the field. I am all about sticking to your vision, but that might be going a little bit too far when you are using studio money. I do love the final product, however, so I am probably not allowed to complain too much about the director’s process. 

So does this movie belong on the AFI list? Of course. It is an epic historical drama that won 4 Academy Awards. It stars some of the biggest names in movie history including the great Kirk Douglas in possibly his most memorable role, it was directed by the iconic Stanley Kubrick, and this movie marks the end of the blacklisting of writers who had been accused of being communists. This is a piece of cinema that strongly represents the time of its creation and should definitely be studied by groups like the AFI. Would I recommend it? Across the board. It is a great movie that actually moves through its 3+ hours. I found myself taking less notes during the movie and simply enjoying the entire viewing. I even watched again with commentary without a single gripe. Fantastic movie and a real tribute to the great actor Kirk Douglas. RIP and thank you for the entertainment. I am Spartacus!

[ortegatrash]

On transphobia and its effects.

I normally don’t like to get too political when personally speaking about things, but seriously.

Why is my existence politics? Having to justify myself for just...being...is tiring. I can’t seem to get away from it.

Today the person who sent me death threats years ago messaged me out of the blue to apologise.

All I had done was mention being transgender on an otherwise unrelated post and they had decided that was enough to harass me to the point of telling me to kill myself over it. It’s disappointing but not surprising nothing came of reporting them.

But that sort of thing takes a toll on already vulnerable minds.It was a wake-up call to me to realise people would despise me for my existence, that just by being myself people would want to harm me over it. That people would think of me as less than human and call me things like ‘it’.

Transphobia is not always so overt, unfortunately. Sometimes it takes the form of supposedly supportive friends who pay lip service to being supportive and reveal through their actions they might just be humouring you. Sometimes it’s downright negative reactions or threats of violence from unsupportive families where you’re too afraid to come out someplace not in public because as embarrassing as it might be to air your private affairs to the world, it’s better than not knowing if they will become physically violent with you like they have resorted to in the past.

Being transgender has only really come into the spotlight over the last few years, and that has brought attention - both good and bad - to it all. There’s still a long way for society to go in acceptance, I feel, because it’s still a very real thing that many people feel like they need to hide. We’re starting to get representation on TV that isn’t just men in a dress hahaha, but there’s still a lot of progress yet to be made. Our lives are still being depicted as being a tragedy, that being trans leads to nothing but pain.

Slight spoilers here, but in the TV show Sense8 there is a certain scene where I had to stop watching because it hit too close to home. The transgender main character is hospitalised and through events out of her control looks destined to be sent to a mental hospital with the aim of ‘correcting’ her of being transgender.

Unfortunately it’s not just a thing that happens in fiction. I remember sitting and watching my best friend break down and weep as she recalled some of her worst memories. Of being in a car accident and realising how fragile life was, and that she couldn’t stand living as a boy anymore. She hadn’t suspected anything when her family said they were taking her to the doctors for a checkup, why would she after an accident?

Only they had lied. She’d been taken to a mental hospital where she had to lie and claim it was just the head trauma confusing her after her accident and she was completely fine and did not think she was transgender at all, all the while stifling down the utter fear and betrayal she felt. Effects that still affect her to this day, she who went back into the closet for over a decade after that, until I met her.

These sorts of things take their toll, have been scarring in of themselves. But I can’t let them be swept over more than they already have.

I am human.

I have the right to exist.

I have the right to be upset about the way people treat us.

I have the right to speak up, to tell my own story, uncomfortable as it might make people.

I refuse to censor and justify my very existence just to play into what society wants of me.

I.

Am just so very, very tired.

[embidoesbnharp]

Comprehensive RP Standards & Rules

Please Note: If I’m slow or unable to reply, there’s likely a very good reason behind it (ie. mental illness/lack of spoons, inability to get into character, personal matters, etc). All I ask is that you’re patient and understanding -- we’re only human after all! You can even occasionally inquire updates from my end since I do care about keeping both of us up-to-date. Thanks for understanding!

RP Standards & Guidelines

This RPer is friendly/practices [unless otherwise stated] towards the following:

OCs and muses

Multi-verse & AU’s (unless otherwise stated or specified in RP Blog descriptions)

Smut/SRP, NSFW, Fluff, Dark/Triggering content

Trigger Warnings will be tagged respectively -- please notify the mun if you’d like a TW tagged on a post!

SRP will be censored via Read-More Feature

Multi-ships – both platonically & romantically; Canon×OCs are welcome!

by default, i make ships strictly tied to a respective relationship sub-verse tag -- main verses are usually left without a permanent relationship.

because the mun welcomes almost all kinds of ships (albeit depending on the fandom), be sure to check for respective ship tags in order to blacklist appropriately for those you do not like!

Chemistry/Relations between muses = RP/Interacting with each other

This way, I’m able to get a feel for how you portray your muses, and can determine whether or not there’s compatibility. This also helps me understand you as an RPer, too!

regardless of muses being canon or OC’s, please consider having some chemistry (interactions/threads) done before trying to ship with my muses!

As much as I advocate having All the Ships™, jumping straight into ships without getting a feel of your muse(s) makes it difficult for me to get into them. (´・ω・｀) Apologies about that!

pre-plotted/pre-existing relationships will require that we’ve RP’d together enough for me to get a feel of your RP style, especially with OC’s.

canon characters & their canonical history/relations are assumed to be their default and are thus taken into consideration unless circumstances (i.e. AU’s, verses, etc.) state otherwise

regardless, i would still highly recommend we interact with each other enough so that I get a feel of your portrayal!

Format Leniency™ w/ icons, rp length and formatting as well as script-style and paragraph-style RPing (link for info on ‘em)

script-style/in-character RPing for me will always be in third-person for action

basically, you are absolutely free to follow your own kind of format, and are not obligated to follow the length/format that I use so long as I have something to work with!

Getting referenced/mentioned/involved in other RP threads (IT’D BE AN HONOR.)

muses that I refer to for specific circumstances (i.e. events from a thread, sub-verses, etc.) will be @mentioned on my part.

‘Read-More’ Censorship -- for SRP, spoiler content, extreme gore [on a (N)SFW labeled blog], & long posts

Aged-up fictional characters who are originally/canonically no younger than 14 years old. 

I am perfectly, absolutely aware of the fine lines over aging up fictional minors for smut content and will admit that I am perfectly fine/understanding towards RPing such things---so long as it applies to the 14+)---while also fully understanding the controversy it brings.

Aged-up characters or verses that I RP/provide are never intentionally or solely made for smut/SRP content, nor will they ever be.

There’s a good chance that any of my originally/canonically minor teenager whose blog is labeled 18+ may imply an aged-up verse for SRP content. Hopefully, this will help determine if you should be wary of these blogs of mine!

If all else fails, you are absolutely allowed to politely and respectfully ask if there is an aged-up verse with potential SRP content! This way, you can blacklist appropriately.

RP Blogs with smut content will always be labeled accordingly

Rule of Thumb on Age Gaps for Ships: no more than 2 years between minors with 18-year olds, and 3 years between muses aged 18-20 years old with 21+.

Even then, minor×adult SRP/smut is PROHIBITED.

Both muns must take/understand necessary precautions when involving aged-up fictional characters or minor muses, consider any adjustments that may be needed, and must be both adults (18+).

Of course, if you yourself actually condone pedophilia, I will block you.

This RPer is against/does not practice the following:

Godmodding

Rude/Excessive reminders to reply to thread

Complaints of unreplied/dropped threads

Engaging in SRP content with minors – will be blocked upon discovery

doesn’t include engaging in SFW content, but once you are blocked you’re unable to interact with me at all

I do not condone pedophilia and RP smut with RPers who are minors.

Reblog Karma -- you are not obligated/required to send an ask in exchange for its respective inbox meme; feel free to reblog any memes from me!

If you, however, do practice reblog karma and I reblog without sending something in, though, please let me know!

Likewise, if you prefer people reblogging from the source and not you, please let me know if I ever do as such! I am a very forgetful bun.

Hate mail/anons in any shape or form (ie. suicide instigation, death threats, cyber-bullying)

Hate/‘Phobias’ towards any gender

Soft-blocks --- you’re either permanently blocked or not, so be sure to act accordingly.

If for any reason I have blocked you by mistake or under a misunderstanding, I will either unblock or consider unblocking.

Likewise, if you have soft-blocked me for any reason and I, for some reason, somehow, still get to you, you have every right to let me know that I’ve made you uncomfortable and request that I no longer interact with you! (And if it still persists because I can be one hell of a forgetful bun, do remember that you have the right to permanently block me, I understand!)

I’m honestly still trying to understand these soft-block mechanics, if I’m honest...

Racism, Discrimination, Witch Hunts/Call-Out posts --- being actively involved in one will automatically be an unfollow & potential block from me.

Pressure regarding thread replies/involvement in drama/desired content

Mutuals-Only interactions

More often than not, my RP blogs may be side-blogs to a main hub (especially if I’m RPing more than one muse in a fandom). Please be sure to check if they are! They’ll usually be mentioned in the descriptions of the blog.

If you are a mutuals-exclusive RPer, please let me know!

Outside Reblogs on RP Threads --- Unless you are the RPer(s) involved, DO NOT REBLOG the thread.

Liking & commenting the post is okay for me, but please also respect what rules & policies the other RPer(s) may have! They have the right to react accordingly on their part.

This RPer has the rights towards the following:

Not expanding on ask-response replies

Refusing to start/continue a thread for any particular reason

Dropping a thread for any particular reason (especially when it feels that there isn’t much to continue on in it)

Giving more attention to some threads than others

Being finicky between doing legitimate RP threads vs. casually being IC

Being finicky with social interactions between individuals

Not becoming mutuals

Other Universal Standards & Guidelines

Dash Organization > Mutuals-Exclusive Practices

Follows & Mutuals =/= Interaction Privileges --- for me, follows are a means of controlling the content on my dash, not an indication of whether or not I want us to interact!

Depending on the blog’s popularity, RP blogs may or may not be fandom-restricted (interactions exclusive to canon/-versed/-oriented muses/OCs), unless exceptions for particular individuals are granted.

Multi-Muse Blogs are less likely to be followed (which might also be highly dependent on blog’s popularity) for dash content organization, especially if the muses extend across multiple fandoms.

Interactions > Reading Rules/Following when it comes to receiving a follow from me as it again depends on how often we interact.

Individual RP Blogs can and will have their own, more specific guidelines to follow depending on its fandom/popularity!

Policies can usually be found at the top of the blog’s description, listing what the blog consists of and what content is followed/restricted/allowed.

These policies can and will overrule respective universal policies here.

RP & Liked Content =/= Morals & What I Condone

Likewise, even if there are ships/morals/opinions that do not match with mine, it’s just as the saying goes: to each their own. So long as conflicts do not rise, we can still interact! People can like different things and still be nice to each other. God, I can’t stress this enough.

“I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don't want to put in your real life. I don't want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don't want to have an affair. I don't want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There's a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work's a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write about an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs] Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts.” -- Lin-Manuel Miranda [ x ]

Muse =/= Mun

Rule of Thumb: if the muse’s behavior is beginning to come on too strongly, chances are that I’m fully aware of this and will most likely show it via tags!

Tag Commentary --- you are absolutely free to not provide OOC commentary in the tags, especially if you are an IC blog. This just helps show who I am as a mun!

Level of Investment = Thread Priorities & Muse Activity

I, unfortunately, am inspirationally-driven when it comes to my musings, and can therefore be selective with my activity or drop threads I’m unable to continue having a musing for. However, this does not mean I have anything against you, it’s just how my fuel for RPing works.

Still, I do my best to answer all my threads, so please be patient and understanding with me! Thanks!

IMPORTANT NOTE: by default, I will always assume that threads with me are the lowest priority and can/will eventually dropped at any time by you.

All in all, so long as we keep to our own lanes instead of actively pursuing the other on behalf of our differences in beliefs, there will be no problems. RPing is meant to be a fun, creative and laid-back FICTIONAL environment that is meant to be kept separately from reality.

Regarding Asks & IMs

IC & OOC Asks outside of inbox memes are allowed!

If sent anonymously for side-blog reasons, tag your blog and it will be re-tagged for notification purposes!

ex: ((@nameofrpsidebloghere))

If responding to an ask-response, please post it in a new text post by tagging the blog name and adding a link to the ask-response!

ask-response posts and even photo posts clutter the dashboard and ruin RP consistency...!

You are free to IM me for plots and reply reminders! (I’m a really lenient, GWF/go-with-flow RPer)

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m pretty asocial, so more often than not I tend to forget about replying to IMs especially if there’s no need for it (like an end to the conversation topic). but, don’t worry, it’s not you! you aren’t annoying me! it’s just me being an asocial moron. ( ◉◞౪◟◉) you are in the safe zone, friend!

That aside, when in doubt, just ask! I’m totally cool with it, and always want to make sure the both of us are having a fun, comfortable time RP/interacting IC with each other! Do also remember that you are always, always able to just unfollow me, even softblock me if you have to (though I’d appreciate a direct notification/explanation for the first time I address the softblock if that ever occurs...!).

Were you able to read up to this point for the RP standards/rules? Then feel free to let me know by sending ‘whispers among psithurism’ in the ask (you aren’t required to, though)! Thanks for taking time to read this! Happy RPing!

[bmaxwell]

Number 45: Heavy Rain

Games often require a suspension of disbelief, more so as they hew closer to reality. Heavy Rain required a lot of suspension of disbelief. I have to get some things out of the way before I can talk about this game. David Cage seems like a clown. Between the allegations of toxicity at Quantic Dream, the way they responded to those allegations, the clumsy way their games handle delicate subjects, the way they tend to oversexualize women, and the way Cage speaks as if he is an auteur creating high art, there’s a lot to dislike here. I can’t blame anyone who gets a whiff of it and says “No thanks.”

I didn’t run right out and buy Detroit Become Human, and I kept my expectations low for the game. And yet when I did come around to it, I found myself engaged with the game despite all its flaws. The situations it presents are often shades of grey, or things that must be decided under duress. Characters can live or die based on your choices and how well you engage in the game’s Quick Time Events*. Playing through the game with my wife and oldest child is something that will stay with me. My kid telling me to shoot the stripper** then immediately regretting it; my wife getting angry with me near the end of the game when I got a key character killed, those are moments other games cannot give me. 

My journey here started with Indigo Prophecy on the Playstation 2 years ago. That game felt like nothing I had ever played at the time. I can’t say it’s a great game or even a good one, but it has one of the most memorable opening scenes I’ve ever played. It spent the next several hours slowly losing its grasp on that promise, but there was something there. A few years later a buddy showed me this video at work, which sold me on both Heavy Rain and Giant Bomb:

 This is a self-contained DLC side story and contains no spoilers for the game.

Heavy Rain is a story about a serial killer where the perspective shifts between four characters: a young female journalist named Madison, a private detective named Scott, an FBI agent named Norman, and a father named Ethan whose son has been abducted by the killer. The game frequently puts the player in situations where difficult choices must be made quickly, and the outcome of those choices is almost always permanent; that is, you’re not seeing a game over screen and trying again, and you’re not initiating a conversation again and choosing the other dialogue choice. The story just adapts to the outcome and you keep playing.

There was a scene in the game where I was playing as Madison, and my leads had taken me to a man’s house. He offered me a drink, which I politely declined as something just didn’t feel quite right about him. A few moments later he excuses himself and heads upstairs. I begin snooping around his home for clues related to the case, and the camera splits to show him up in his room with all the creepy medical equipment and restraints, filling a syringe with something and heading back down. I found what I was looking for and got the hell out of the house before he returned, but my heart was pounding in my ears the whole time. These games have a lot of situations like that. Sometimes they walk that tightrope deftly, other times not so much. 

This creepy dude who wanted to drug Madison and take her up to his scummy sex dungeon is one example. Madison is a gorgeous woman who is, at one point, the star of an uncensored, player-controlled shower scene. Beyond: Two Souls also has a similar shower scene***. Beautiful women nude and on the wrong end of potential sexual violence and dangerous situations with men are a common thing to encounter in David Cage’s games. 

I remember a moment where I, playing as Ethan, was in a situation where I was confronting a drug dealer in his apartment. The encounter goes south and he ends up shooting a gun at me, trying to kill me. Long story short, I ended up with a gun drawn on him in his little girl’s bedroom (she’s not there) and he’s begging me to spare him because his daughter needs him. I killed him then and there. I had a spirited discussion with a friend who chose to spare the man. The game is great for these “What would you do?” discussions.

I found myself deeply absorbed in Detroit Become Human in spite of its flaws.

And it’s a goddamn shame I can’t recommend games like Heavy Rain or Detroit Become Human with no strings attached, because these games offer an experience unlike any other games I have played. They are wonderfully immersive, and the way your actions and choices permanently affect the story lends a sense of urgency not found in most games. I know that much of this choice is illusion and affects the details more than the main plot, but I can buy in enough to be invested in those moments and outcomes. But the way women are sexualized, the way delicate topics such as racism and child abuse are clumsily handled are hard to ignore. Even the regular stuff is often handled with all the delicacy of a hacksaw. Detroit Become Human opens at a hostage scene in progress. An android is holding a little girl at gunpoint on a balcony in a high rise. You’re looking around for clues before confronting him, and you find a tablet in the little girl’s bedroom. As soon as you unlock it, a video immediately plays of the little girl and android laughing and playing, and the girl saying “I love you, Daniel! We’re gonna be besties forever!” The core idea isn’t bad, but it hits you right between the eyes with it in the most can’t miss way possible. 

I like that Cage really goes for it, I just wish he wasn’t so convinced of his own genius. The man desperately needs an editor, he needs someone who can tell him when he’s going off the rails, someone who can say “No David, this bit is a bad look, let’s punch it up.” If you go into this game (or any of Cage’s games) looking to find faults, you’ll absolutely be able to do that and will have a bad time. If you can buy in and go along with the ride, and take the heavy handed writing in stride, there’s a lot of intensity in the moment to moment situations and decisions the games present. Maybe you can sympathize with the characters; it’s not their fault they’re in a danger-filled, badly-written video game. They need your help! I played these two games as shared experiences, and that helped make them magical for me. 

*Still not my favorite thing to see in a game. 

**A proud moment for any parent. ***Someone used a debug mode to uncover a nude model of Ellen Page that is censored in the retail game; worth noting that the developers crafted those assets and left them intact in the game to be discovered

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 25: The Finale

So here's how I stand with The 100 now that the finale has aired.

I still haven't watched anything past 4x10, but I'm reading spoilers on my dash and keeping up with the general outlines of things. Before the finale aired, I was starting to get curious about developments again and thought I might just wait for the last ep to air and then binge the final arc maybe over the long weekend or something. Now that I know how the season ends up, my interest in watching has plummeted and while I think it would be silly of me to say 'I'll never watch it ever' (those are very much the sort of words a person like me later eats), I have no interest in watching it any time soon. Maybe over the summer. Sometime. Eventually. Who knows?

The biggest reason to watch the last episodes is to be able to have an actual leg to stand on for complaining purposes but frankly not being up to date on canon hasn't stopped me yet, lol. I just disclaim all complaints with 'I'm one of those annoying people who bitches about developments in episodes I haven't seen' and leave it at that.  

I don't want to be like the anti's, hating the show and talking about how much I hate it but sticking around in fandom anyway, raining on everyone else's parade. It worries me that people might come across my ranty posts and think that of me. But... okay, look, I have done a lot of complaining going all the way back to season 3 and I'm up front both about what I don't like in the show and about why I'm here in the fandom anyway. I like the fandom, I like the characters, I like the universe, etc. I still want to engage in the transformative-works aspect of the fandom. And honestly I've never been a meta writer or engaged in speculation or predictions so looking only at what I produce, content-wise...whether or not I like the canon or even whether or not I'm caught up on it makes no difference. It will matter even less now that we're in the hiatus and there's no new material to speculate on in the first place.  

Finally, and most importantly, I'm really honestly not here to ruin or even put a damper on anyone else's fandom experience. I tag my negative posts as negative. I censor names when I'm talking shit about specific characters or ships. I don't go into people's inboxes and I don't even have a Twitter but if I did, I wouldn't use it to harass other users or people who work on the show. Like, I just want to sincerely love the first two seasons, the general concept, and the characters, while bemoaning the state of the show as it is now. (Also, tbh...sometimes complaining is fun and the vast number of people who leisure-complain on any number of topics is evidence enough of this phenomenon—at least I'm honest about taking pleasure in the occasional bout of this is so fucking stupid inconsequential-rage.)

As for what I actually think of what I've heard of the finale.... I've tried to write this up a couple of different ways and I think (hope) I've FINALLY distilled my thoughts.

The two things I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT out of the finale were (1) for the characters to go to space and (2) a time jump of pretty much any sort. So now that those two things have happened, my brain has basically short circuited. I cannot even comprehend this. I literally don't have the words. Maybe I sound hyperbolic, but I'm just trying to explain how much disdain I have for these two plot points. I can't even fathom how anyone ever thought this would be a good idea; it's like I'm in an alternate entertainment universe. It's ludicrous.

My problem with the space launch is that it crosses the disbelief line for me. Obviously there's a lot of faux-science in this show and everyone has a different line as to what is reasonable-enough if you don't think about it too hard, and what is just absolute nonsense but, for whatever reason, this is my line. I don't know what the details were on the actual show come launch-time but just the concept of launching a space craft from a post-apocalyptic wasteland is so ridiculous that I cannot imagine a way to squint or turn my head or angle my screen so that it seems even remotely tenable. A ROCKET LAUNCH. FROM THE RUINS OF POST-NUCLEAR NEW YORK. Like ?????????????????????????. I previously described this possibility as sounding to my ears like riding a pegicorn to New Jersey to get the magic potion from Raul (s/o to my freshman year roommate for the Raul in-joke, so useful to me so many years later), and that's still how I feel.

My bigger problem is with the time jump. To put it briefly, it's a new show now. The combination of Radiation 2.0 and the time jump has cemented that.

I've felt for a while now that whatever it is I'm watching now isn't what I originally signed up to watch. I've seen a few other posts to similar effect, and even my mother (who acts as my Typical Casual Viewer one-person control group, even though quite obviously she is not representative of a typical cw viewer at all—still she's not in the fandom so she is completely untainted by what goes on in these parts)--even my mom said she thinks JRoth/the writers are basically telling a completely different story now than they were initially. I've had, and am still having, a hard time articulating exactly what makes it fundamentally different (as opposed to merely a show that's evolved over time, as long-running shows do), or even when exactly it happened. But I guess at its core the complaint is: this is supposedly a show about "the hundred," and of that group almost all have been killed or lost to the ether, and the remaining members have had their screen time chronically cut short to accommodate a growing cast of characters who have increasingly little to do with that core group or its original purpose or journey. The complaint is  partly one of frustration at the large number of delinquent deaths and the small scraps of screen time given to other alleged mains, and partly a more general annoyance at the loss of the whole meaning of the affiliation "the hundred." What does it mean to be a member of the hundred anymore? Basically nothing. And when it ceased to have meaning (by which I mean S3), the show became, in essence, a different show.

Obviously there's a counter to this whole general complaint (that the show is too bloated with characters generally and/or Grounders specifically), which I've also seen floated out there recently, which is that destroying everything on Earth will allow something more like S1 to flourish again, and a new emphasis to be placed on the core young people. To this I say, first, it's way too early to tell what S5 will be. And I'm in a particularly bad place to really engage with this argument, given how much of even the current canon I've missed. BUT I am skeptical. First, we were told S4 would feel like S1 again and IMO it most definitely has not. Second, most of the hundred are dead and/or gone—I'm not just talking about the toll among the original mains or even the original named characters, I'm talking about how 42 of the original captured teens made it out of Mt. Weather and all but 4 of them were never heard of again. So even if the show returns to caring more about, say, Monty than it does about Grounder of the Week, nothing can undo the destruction to the original concept; nothing can really solve the problem of which I'm complaining. And third, I don't think the writers think they're writing a bad show; I mean, they're the ones who brought us down this path in the first place. This, what we've seen over the past 2 years, IS JRoth's vision. Yes, sometimes showrunners make a mis-step and readjust course, and I thought perhaps that would happen for S4, but it hasn't, which means that he doesn't think S3 had the problems I think it had, which means there's no reason to think S5 will be any better than S3 or S4 were, at least from my POV.  

But anyway as I was saying—

Maybe there's been room for argument about this same show/different show question up to now; it's a fuzzy sort of concept in my mind with which I'm not entirely comfortable—I feel a bit like I'm just Complaining About Change like an old grandma, tbh. Despite how it sounds, I do want to be open-minded about others' creativity and to give the benefit of the doubt to ongoing projects/unfinished stories. Regardless, ending S4 in this way is a pretty big sign that the theory, whether or not it was right before, is right as of now. Is there any way to more effectively raze the ground and salt the Earth than to literally raze the ground and then skip ahead 6 years? I have a million problems with this large time gap, but on the top of the list is that, like everyone over the age of 25 knows, a person changes dramatically between the ages of 18 and 25, or 16 and 22, just in the normal course of events, apocalypse(s) not withstanding. The writers have given themselves carte blanche to do literally absolutely anything with these characters. Even for a show that's barely cared at all about consistency over time in pretty much any aspect, that's troubling. (Also, like, I signed up for a show about a bunch of teens in the forest, not a group of twenty-somethings...doing whatever they'll be doing in season 5. I feel a tiny bit like a promise has been broken, sorry.)

So having basically established that whatever this show used to be, it's not that anymore, I guess the question is: what is it now, and do I like it? I think this is the question every viewer basically has to ask themselves, consciously or no. For me, what I've seen the last two years is some mismash of GoT, general dystopia, repetitive story lines, action sequences, and nonsense "science." The plot is ridiculous,  the pacing is terrible, the emphases are (for my taste) in all the wrong places, the characters are shoddily drawn, and often times, it's fucking boring. It's a bad show. Things like loyalty to a few characters, interest in a few story lines, and sheer curiosity/inertia have kept me here despite it all, but at this point I feel the balance has just shifted imperceptibly the other way. Jasper's death has a lot to do with it (he was my favorite, he had the only good or even coherent story of S3, and the way his death and its aftermath were handled were so insulting one could easily justify a decision to stop watching as mini-protest), but I think that it was more the (very heavy) straw on the camel's back than anything else.

I guess the tl:dr version of this is GOODBYE BITCHES I'M DONE and yet I still can't even promise I won't be watching Season 5, like I can't predict how I'll feel in a year.