#I pick favorites and thus far out of the like. six total character ideas

[lovelesslittleloser]

I have produced. An art

His name is Rat

He is selling things that are less-than-legal

I also made art for an event that may or may not happen at some point in the game

This is Rat’s sister, Mouse

She is either reading inappropriate fanfiction or recording you on video. She may be multitasking

[army-of-mai-lovers]

Jet and Yue’s Deaths: Were They Necessary?

Two of the most common ideas I see for aus in this fandom are the Jet lives au, and the Yue lives au. I’ve written both of these myself, and I’ve seen many others write them. And while yes, fanfiction can be a great way to explore ideas that didn’t necessarily have to be explored in canon (I’m mad at bryke for a lot of things, but not including a Toph and Bumi I friendship is not one of them, even though I wrote a fic about it), it seems to me that people are mad that Yue and Jet are dead, to varying degrees. There’s a lot to talk about regarding their deaths from a sociopolitical perspective (the fact that two of the darker-skinned characters in the show are the ones that died, and all the light-skinned characters lived, is ah... an interesting choice), but I don’t want to look at it that way, at least for right now. I want to look at it as a writer, and discuss whether these deaths were a) necessary for the plot and themes of ATLA in any way whatsoever and b) whether it was necessary for them to unfold in the way that they did, or if they would have been more impactful had they occurred in a different way. 

(meta under the cut, this got really, really, really long)

Death in Children’s Media

When I first started thinking about this meta, I had this idea to compare Jet and Yue’s deaths to deaths in an animated children’s show that I found satisfying. And in theory, that was a great idea. Problem is: there aren’t very many permanent deaths in children’s animation, and the ones that do exist aren’t especially well-written. This may be an odd thing to say in what is ostensibly a piece of atla crit, but Yue’s death is probably the best written death in a piece of children’s animation that I can think of. That’s not a compliment. Rather, it’s a condemnation of the way other pieces of children’s animation featuring permanent character death have handled their storylines. 

I’ve talked about this before, but my favorite show growing up was Young Justice, and my favorite character on that show was far and away Mr. Wally West. So when he died at the end of season 2, it broke me emotionally. Shortly thereafter, Cartoon Network canceled the show, and I started getting on fan forums to mourn. Everybody on these fan forums was convinced that had Cartoon Network not canceled the show, Wally would have been brought back. And that is a narrative that I internalized for years. Eventually, the show was brought back via DC’s new streaming service, and I tuned in, waiting for Wally to also be brought back, only to discover that that wasn’t in the cards. Wally was dead. Permanently. 

So now that I know that, I can talk about why killing him off was fucking stupid. Wally’s death occurs at the end of season 2, after the main s2 conflict, the Reach, has been defeated, save for these pods that they set up all over the world to destroy Earth. Our heroes split up in teams of two to destroy the pods, and they destroy all of them, except for a secret one in Antartica. It can only be neutralized by speedsters, so Wally, Bart, and Barry team up to destroy it. It’s established in canon that Wally is slower than Bart and Barry, and it’s been played for laughs earlier in the season, but for reasons unexplained, the pod is better able to target Wally because he’s slower than Bart and Barry, and it kills him. After the emotional arc of the season has wrapped up, a literal main character dies. There’s some indication at the end of that season that his death is going to cause Artemis to spiral and become a villain, but when season 3 picks up, she’s doing the right thing, with seemingly no qualms about her position in life as a hero. In the comics, something like this happens to Wally, but then he goes into the Speed Force and becomes faster and stronger even than Barry, in which case, yes, this would have advanced the plot, but that’s probably not in the cards either. 

In summary, Wally’s death doesn’t work as a story beat, not because it made me mad, but because it doesn’t advance the plot, nor does it develop character. Only including things that advance plot or develop character is one of the golden rules of writing. Like most golden rules of writing, however, it’s not absolute. There is a lot of fun to be had in jokey little one off adventures (in atla, Sokka’s haiku competition) or in fun worldbuilding threads that add depth to your setting but don’t really come up (in atla, the existence of Whaletail Island, which is described in really juicy ways, even though the characters never go there.) But in general, when it comes to things like character death, events should happen to develop the plot or advance character. Avatar, for all of its flaws, is really well structured, and a lot of its story beats advance plot and develop character at the same time. However, the show also bears the burden of being a show directed at children, and thus needing to be appropriate for children. And as we know, Nickelodeon and bryke butted heads over this: the death scene that we see for Jet is a compromise, one that implicitly confirms his death without explicitly showing it. So bryke tasked themselves with creating a show about imperialism and war that would do those themes justice while also being appropriate for American children and palatable to their parents. 

The Themes of Avatar vs. Its Audience

So, Avatar is a show about a lone survivor of genocide stopping an imperialist patriarchal society from decimating the rest of the world. It’s also a show about found family and staying true to yourself and doing your best to improve the world. These don’t necessarily conflict with each other, and it is possible for children to understand and enjoy shows about complex themes. And in a lot of cases, bryke doesn’t hold back in showing what the costs of war against an imperialist nation are: losing loved ones, losing yourself, prison, etc. But when it comes to death, the show is incredibly hesitant. None of the main characters that we’ve spent a lot of time getting to know die (not even Iroh, even though he was old and it would have made sense and his VA died before the show was over--but that’s a topic for another day.) This makes sense. I can totally imagine a seven year-old watching Avatar as it was coming out and feeling really sad or scared if a major character died. I was six years older than that when Wally died, and it’s still sad and terrifying to me to this day. However, in a show about war, it would be unrealistic to have no one die. Bryke’s stated reason for killing off Jet is to show the costs of war. I’ve seen a lot of posts about Jet’s death that reiterate some version of this same point--that the great tragedy of his character is that he spent his life fighting the Fire Nation, only to die at the hands of his own country. Similarly, I’ve seen people argue in favor of Yue’s death by saying that it was a great tragedy, but it showed the sacrifices that must be made in a war effort. 

Yue

When we first meet Yue, she is a somewhat reserved, kind individual held back by the rigid social structures of the NWT*. She and Sokka have an immediate attraction to one another, but Yue reveals that she is engaged to Hahn. The Fire Nation invasion happens, Zhao kills Tui, and Yue gives up her life to save her people and the world, and to restore balance. Since we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know Yue, this is framed less as Yue’s sacrifice and more as Sokka’s loss. Sokka is the one who cares for Yue, Sokka is the only one of the gaang who really interacts a lot with Yue on screen, and Sokka is the one we’ve spent a whole season getting to know. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Yue a prop character (i.e. a character who could be replaced by an object with little change to the narrative), she is certainly underdeveloped. She exists to be unambiguously likable and good, so we can root for her and Sokka, and feel Sokka’s pain when she dies. In my opinion, this is probably also why a lot of fic that features Yue depicts her as a Mary Sue--because as she is depicted in the show, she kind of is. We don’t get to see her hidden depths because she is written to die. 

In light of what we’ve established earlier in this meta, this makes sense. Killing off a fully-realized character whom the audience has really gotten to know and care about on their own terms, rather than through the eyes of another character, could be really sad and scary for the kids watching, but not killing anyone off would be an unrealistic depiction of war and imperialism. On the face of it, killing off an underdeveloped, unambiguously likable and good character, whom one of our MCs has a deep but short connection with, is the perfect compromise. 

But let’s go back to the golden rule for a second. Does Yue’s death a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to the first is yes: Yue’s death prompts Aang to use the Avatar State to fight off the Fire navy, which has implications for his ability to control the Avatar State that form one of the major arcs of book 2. The answer to the second? A little more ambiguous. You would think that Yue’s death would have some lasting impact on Sokka that is explored as part of his character arc in book 2, that he may be more afraid to trust, more scared of losing the people he loves, but outside of a few episodes (really, just one I can think of, “The Swamp”) it doesn’t seem to affect him that much. He even asks about Suki in a way that is clearly romantically motivated in “Avatar Day.” I don’t know about you, but if someone I loved sacrificed herself to become the moon, I don’t think I would be seeking out another romantic entanglement a few weeks after her death. Of course, everybody processes grief differently, and one could argue that Sokka has already lost important people in his life, and thus would be accustomed to moving on from that loss and not letting himself dwell on it. But to that, I’d say that moving on by throwing himself into protecting others has already shown itself to be an unhealthy coping mechanism. Remember, Sokka’s misogyny at the beginning of b1 is in part motivated by the fact that his mother died at the hands of the Fire Nation and his father left shortly thereafter to fight the Fire Nation, and he responds to those things by throwing himself into the role of being the “man” of the village and protecting the people he loves who are still with him. Like with Yue, he doesn’t allow himself to dwell on his mother’s death. This could have been the beginning of a really interesting b2 arc for Sokka, in which he throws himself into being the Avatar’s companion to get away from the grief of losing Yue, but this time, through the events of the show, he’s forced to acknowledge that this is an unhealthy coping mechanism. And maybe this is what bryke was going for with “The Swamp”, but this confines his whole process of grief to one episode, where it could have been a season-long arc that really emphasized the effect Yue’s had on his life. 

In the case of Yue, I do lean toward saying that her death was necessary for the story that they wanted to tell (although, I will never turn down a good old-fashioned Yue lives au that really gets into her dynamism as a character, those are awesome.) However, the way they wrote Sokka following Yue’s death reduced her significance. The fact that Yue seemed to have so little impact on Sokka is precisely what makes her death feel unnecessary, even if it isn’t. 

Jet

Okay. Here we go. 

If you know my blog, you know I love Jet. You know I love Jet lives aus. Perhaps you know that I’m in the process of writing a multichapter Jet fic in which he lives after Lake Laogai. So it’s reasonable to assume that, in a discussion of whether or not Jet’s death was necessary, I’m gonna be mega-biased. And yeah, that’s probably true. But up until recently, I wasn’t really all that mad about Jet dying, at least conceptually. As I said earlier, bryke says that in the case of Jet’s death, they wanted to kill a character off that people knew and would care about, so that they could further show the tragedies of war and imperialism. Okay. That is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. 

My issue lies with the execution of said idea. First of all, the framing of Jet’s original episode is so bad. Jet is part of a long line of cartoon villains who resist imperialism and other forms of oppression through violence and are punished for it. This is actually a really common sort of villain for atla/lok, as we see this play out again with Hama, Amon, and the Red Lotus. To paraphrase hbomberguy’s description of this type of villain, basically liberal white creators are saying, “yeah, oppression is bad, but have you tried writing to your Congressman about it?” With Jet, since we have so little information about the village he’s trying to flood, there are a number of different angles that would explain his actions and give them more nuance. My preferred hc is that the citizens of Gaipan are a mix of Earth civilians, Fire citizens, and FN soldiers, and that the Earth citizens refused to feed or house Jet and the other Freedom Fighters because they were orphans and, as we see in the Kyoshi Novels, Earth families stick to their own. Thus, when Jet decides to flood Gaipan, he’s focused on ridding the valley of Fire Nation, but he doesn’t really care about what happens to the Earth citizens of Gaipan because they actively wronged him when he was a kid. That’s just one interpretation, and there have been others: Gaipan was fully Fire Nation, Gaipan was both Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation but Jet decided that the benefits of flooding the valley and getting rid of the Fire Nation outweighed the costs of losing the EK families, etc, etc. There are ways to rewrite that scenario so that Jet is not framed as an unambiguously bloodthirsty monster. In the context of Jet’s death, this initial framing reduces the possible impact that his death could have. Where Yue was unambiguously good, Jet is at the very least morally gray when we see him again in the ferry. And where we are connected to Yue through Sokka, the gaang’s active hatred of Jet hinders our ability to connect with him. This isn’t impossible to overcome--the gaang hates Zuko, and yet to an extent the audience roots for him--but Jet’s lack of screentime and nuanced framing (both of which Zuko gets in all three seasons) makes overcoming his initially flawed framing really difficult. 

So how much can it really be said, that by the time we get to Jet’s death, he’s a character that we know and care about? So much about him is still unknown (what happened to the Freedom Fighters? what prompted Jet’s offscreen redemption? who knows, fam, who knows.) Moreover, most of what we see of him in Ba Sing Se is him actively opposing Zuko and Iroh. These are both characters that at the very least the show wants us to care about. At this point, we know almost everything there is to know about them, we’ve been following them and to an extent rooting for them for two seasons, and who have had nuanced and often sympathetic framing a number of times. So much of the argument I’ve seen regarding Jet centers around the fact that he was right to expose Zuko and Iroh as Firebenders, but the reason we have to have that argument in the first place is because it’s not framed in Jet’s favor. In terms of who the audience cares about more, who the audience has more of an emotional attachment towards, Zuko and Iroh win every time. Whether Jet’s actually in the right or not is irrelevant, because emotionally speaking, we’re primed to root for Zuko and Iroh. In terms of who the framing is biased towards, Jet may as well be Zhao. So when he’s taken by the Dai Li and brainwashed, the audience isn’t necessarily going to see this as a bad thing, because it means Zuko and Iroh are safe.

The only real bit of sympathetic framing Jet gets are those initial moments on the ferry, and the moments after he and the gaang meet again. So about five, ten minutes of the show, total. And then, he sacrifices himself for the gaang. And just like Yue, his death has little to no impact on the characters in the episodes following. Katara is shown crying for four frames immediately following his death, and they bring him up once in “The Southern Raiders” to call him a monster, and once in “The Ember Island Players”, a joke episode in which his death is a joke. 

So, let’s ask again. Does this a) advance the plot, and/or b) develop character? The answer to both is no. It shows that the Dai Li is super evil and cruel, which we already knew and which basically becomes irrelevant in book 3, and that is really the only plot-significant thing I can think of. As far as character, well, it could have been a really interesting moment in Katara’s development in forgiving someone who hurt her in the past, which could have foreshadowed her forgiving Zuko in b3, but considering she calls Jet a monster in TSR, that doesn’t track. There could have been something with Sokka realizing that his snap judgment of Jet in b1 was wrong, but considering that he brings up Jet to criticize Katara in TSR, that also does not track. And honestly, neither of these possible character arcs require Jet to die. What requires Jet to die is the ~themes~. 

Let’s look at this theme again, shall we? The cost of war. We already covered it with Yue, but it’s clearly something that bryke wants to return to and shed new light on. The obvious angle they’re going for is that sometimes, you don’t know who your real enemy is. Jet thought that his enemy was the Fire Nation, but in the end, he was taken down by his own countryman. Wow. So deep. Except, while it’s clear that Jet was always fighting against the Fire Nation, I never got the sense that Jet was fighting for the Earth Kingdom. After all, isn’t the whole bad thing about him in the beginning is that he wants to kill civilians, some of whom we assume to be Earth Kingdom? Why would it matter then that he got killed by an EK leader, when he didn’t seem to ever be too hot on those dudes? But okay, maybe the angle is not that he was killed by someone from the Earth Kingdom, but that he wasn’t killed by someone from the Fire Nation. Okay, but we’ve already seen him be diametrically opposed to the only living Air Nomad and people from the Water Tribes. Jet fighting with and losing to people who aren’t Fire Nation is not a new and exciting development for him. Jet has been enemies with non-FN characters for most of the show’s run at this point. There is no thematic level on which the execution of this holds any water. 

The reason I got to thinking about this, really analyzing what Jet’s death means (and doesn’t mean) for the show, was this conversation I was having with @the-hot-zone in discord dms. We were talking about book 2 and ways it could have been better, and Zone said that they thought that Jet would have been a stronger character to parallel with Zuko’s redemption than Iroh and that seeing more of the narrative from Jet’s perspective could have strengthened the show’s themes. And when it came to the question of Jet’s death, they said, “And if we are going with Jet dying, then I want it to hurt. I want it to hurt just as much as if a main character like Sokka had died. I want the viewer to see Jet's struggles, his triumphs, the facets of Jet that make him compelling and important to the show.” And all of that just hit me. Because we don’t get that, do we? Jet’s death barely leaves a mark. Jet himself barely leaves a mark. His death isn’t plot-significant, doesn’t inspire character growth in any of our MCs, and doesn’t even accomplish the thematic relevance that it claims to. So what was the point? 

Conclusion

Much as I dislike it, Yue’s death actually added something to atla. It could have added much, much more, in the hands of writers who gave more of a shit about their Brown female characters and were less intent on seeing them suffer and knocking them down a peg, but, in my opinion, it did work for what it was trying to do. Jet? Jet? Nah, fam. Jet never got the chance to really develop into a likable character because he was always put at odds with characters we already liked, and the framing skewed their way, not his. The dude never really had a chance.        

*multiple people have spoken about how the NWT as depicted in atla is not reminiscent of real life Inuit and Yupik people and culture. I am not the person to go into detail about this, but I encourage you to check out Native-run blogs for more info!

[maxwell-grant]

Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular. 

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known). 

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured. 

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now. 

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes. 

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them. 

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains.  Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular. 

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary: 

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally. 

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity. 

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon. 

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way". 

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness. 

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

[beneaththetangles]

Reader’s Corner: Springtime of My Life, Fly Me to the Moon, and the Star Collector Audio Manga

The Springtime of My Life Began with You, Vol. 1

It is honestly times like these where I wish I could collect digital manga in paperback. The Springtime of My Life Began with You is a new digital title from Kodansha, and while I’m excited we have this new story to read in English legally, I’m bummed that I can’t go to the store and pick it up because I want to be able to flip pages to my favorite scenes and dialogue. But enough moping! This delightful volume gives me a lot of When We Shout for Love vibes (which I LOVED!), and I caught myself leaning a little closer to my computer screen to keep reading. I love these kinds of stories where the shy main girl steps out of her shell into becoming a young woman she’s always dreamed of being. Suehiro is such a relatable character and I absolutely love her love for books and desire to celebrate that love with other friends. While I feel Takasago may appear to be the typical popular guy falling for the shy girl, I was actually surprised how this plot point turns into something deeper. He’s not just this super popular dude who just “happens” to fall in love. The bookish aspect, the characters, and the hopeful journey of growing self-confidence makes this a manga one I would recommend and read again! ~ Laura A. Grace

The Springtime of My Life Began with You, Volume 1 is published by Kodansha.*

Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower, Vol. 1

If you’re looking for something like The Apothecary Diaries but with more cooking and less sex, or something like I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends but with an imperial China flair, then the light novel Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower might be for you. The setting of an imperial China-inspired inner palace is there, as are all the consorts, eunuchs, and an emperor and his servants. However, the focus here is more on Rimi, a consort from not-Japan as she has to deal with an emperor who thinks her country’s offerings of unique cooking “ingredients” are trash and thus worth beheading the poor girl over. This leads to Rimi literally having to cook for her life, with the help of a handsome cuisinologist, a beautiful eunuch with a strained relationship with the emperor, and a cute “mouse” who may be more than just mere ratatouille. Rimi herself is a solid protagonist who does struggle emotionally with the difficulties of being in an unfamiliar environment, but is also plucky enough to deal with everything that comes her way, even including the emperor’s personal problems, and she is very passionate about cooking. Add in some hints of romance and of course some cooking details, and you have an interesting series with a fair amount going on, and one that I definitely want to read more of. ~ stardf29

Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower is published by J-Novel Club.

Star Collector (Audio Manga)

Voice actor Todd Haberkorn’s (Natsu, Fairy Tail) considerable talents are highlighted in this audio version of BL OEL manga Star Collector, in which he voices the two primary characters. With a run time of a little more than two hours, Haberkorn, who also produced the recording, is joined by the always-welcome Caitlin Glass in various roles as he narrates the story of delinquent, chain-smoking Fynn and his budding relationship with classmate and stargazer, Niko. The voiceover work, along with whimsical music and well-timed sound effects, brings life to a story that is inconsistent, at times providing picturesque descriptions that, when combined with the excellent performances, evoke a sense of theater in the listener’s mind, but which at its worst comes across as an amateur’s attempts at clumsy, erotic fan fiction, with characters that feed a romantic’s imagination at the cost of coherent characterization. Still, there are far worse ways than to spend two hours on the road than to listen to Haberkorn’s dulcet tones—just make sure you’re not pumping the audio manga through your speakers while with someone else. Just trust me on that. ~ Twwk

Star Collector is published by TOKYOPOP.

Fly Me to the Moon, Vol. 5

What can I say? Fly Me to the Moon continues to be hilarious and sweet. If you read it, you will laugh, and you will get warm fuzzy feelings. This manga’s pop culture reference game remains strong, with nods to The Six Million Dollar Man, the Sega Dreamcast, the infamous “off course” typo in Final Fantasy VII, and more. “If this were a romantic comedy, disaster would be sure to strike!” Spoiler: Despite being a romcom, the only disasters are the ones Nasa imagines. Then there’s Tsukasa’s sage observation: “With a smartphone, the warlord Nobunaga really could have gone places” (which bears at least passing resemblance to more than one anime out there). Other highlights of this volume include Aya going full mother-in-law before bonding with Tsukasa over video games, Nasa’s junior high teacher getting the wrong idea about Tsukasa, and Tsukasa and Kaname trolling Chitose. It’s a small moment, but also I appreciated the realistic detail of getting confirmation that Tsukasa really was injured back when she saved Nasa from Truck-kun at their first meeting. I heartily recommend this manga. ~ JeskaiAngel

Fly Me to the Moon is published by Viz.*

In Another World With My Smartphone, Vol. 22 (light novel)

So all of the major threats to the world are dealt with, and Touya’s married to his girls… what else is even left to do in this story? Well, for most of the volume, it’s just more of the usual filler hi-jinks: some matchmaking events (including a side-character mini-harem that’s not in the orientation you might expect), silliness regarding the BL-writing princess, and the like. They’re the kind of small adventures and happenings that filled the space between major events in previous volumes. Likewise, towards the end of volume 22, the next major event of this story is revealed, as Smartphone pulls a Fire Emblem: Awakening and introduces children from the future! Obviously, with no huge danger to deal with, they’re just here to play around and meet the parents, but it still adds the the sort of fun little twist that should please anyone who’s enjoyed this series enough to still be reading it over twenty volumes in. ~ stardf29

The light novel of In Another World With My Smartphone is published by J-Novel Club.

Golden Japanesque: A Splendid Yokohama Romance, Vol. 2

Sometimes we need people to come alongside us and show us who we could be and stir our hearts to change despite the adversity we may face from others (or even in Maria’s case, family too). I found this to be very much true for Maria in the delightful second volume of Golden Japanesque: A Splendid Yokohama Romance. Maria is such a sweet character, but due to the constant negativity she has had voiced to her, she’s so fearful of doing the wrong thing, offending someone, or upsetting her mother. Yet that fear doesn’t completely define who Maria is, and I loved seeing her slowly grow a little bolder in this volume! She has a hidden “brass” to her as others have claimed and a little more boldness then even she realizes, though thankfully Rintarou is helping to bring that out (Speaking of, glad he is still his teasing self!). I hope Maria continues to bloom and grow as a person and not just in romance. Seeing her bravery near the latter part of the end made me want to get up off my couch and cheer for her! I could imagine I’ll being doing a lot more of that based on the teaser we were shown for the upcoming volume! ~ Laura A. Grace

Golden Japanesque: A Splendid Yokohama Romance, vol. 2, is published by Yen Press.*

Trapped in a Dating Sim: the World of Otome Games Is Tough for Mobs, Vols. 1-2

You’ve probably seen the reincarnated-into-an-otome-game story premise before (especially the kind that takes place at a school for nobles and royalty), but Trapped in a Dating Sim manages to put some fun twists on that concept. The protagonists of these stories are usually girls, but this book’s MC, Leon, is a guy. And he isn’t reincarnated as a major character from the game, but as a nobody who doesn’t actually have any connection to the game plot. The setting is downright dystopian, with slavery, classism, and rampant sexism against men. The world is also illogical in other ways, due being based on the wonky mechanics and shallow world-building of the game. Leon eventually meets the game’s protagonist (Olivia), antagonist (Angelica), and five love interests (Greg, Chris, Brad, Julius, and Jilk), but something has gone awry. The love interests are barely even aware Olivia exists, instead fawning over some other girl named Marie. Did I mention the snarky AI sidekick, or the fact that since the original otome game included airship battles and giant robots, the isekai world has them too? I enjoyed volume one enough that I dove right into volume two, and while I find Leon obnoxious at times, overall I like Trapped in a Dating Sim enough that I’ll continue reading. ~ JeskaiAngel

Trapped in a Dating Sim: the World of Otome Games Is Tough for Mobs is published by Seven Seas Entertainment.

With the Sheikh in His Harem, Vol. 1

When I first saw the cover and title of With the Sheikh in His Harem, I was admittedly nervous that it would be about a young woman joining other wives/concubines for one (handsome) man. Thankfully my fears were unfounded. It’s probably the first manga I’ve read with an exotic location and I’m totally here for it! Another one reason I found this to be such a compelling story is because of the character Sanagi, who is such a diligent worker. I absolutely love how that even if her situation changes, Sanagi still seeks to be true to herself and work hard. Prince Lui is another fun character; I enjoyed how he is discovering the beauty and joy in life with Sanagi. I like how passionate he is and how he not only wants the best for her, but that he will also do whatever it takes to keep her around (and safe). One of the best parts, though, is how the mangaka includes mini-travel guides. I LOVEDDDD that! It was a very fun feature to this manga and definitely “bumped up” my enjoyment of this story. Overall, I really enjoyed With the Sheikh in His Harem and thought it to be a fun escape and highly enjoyable, recommended to anyone who enjoys reading shoujo manga but is looking for something that combines a good romance and Arabian-like setting! ~ Laura A. Grace

With the Sheikh in His Harem is published by Kodansha.*

=====

Reader’s Corner is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works their reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works and older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.

[calliecat93]

Top 5 Things I Liked About Red vs Blue: Season 2

(Top 5 Dislikes)

One post down, one more to go… and then twenty-six more to go for the rest of this series. Why did I decide to do this again? Meh, whatever. Let’s just get on with it as we resume looking over Season 2.

#5. Machinima

Okay, this might sound weird, but hear me out. The machinima last season was… basic. Not bad mind you, there is only so much that you can do without a lot of creativity and resources. Resources that RT didn’t have at this point in time. But mostly, they just went through the default motions. Nothing really stood out. It had some cool stuff, like them somehow managing to blow the Warthog on top of Red Base. I think they even said in the commentary that trying to replicate it for the remaster was a pain in the ass. Still, it just didn’t stand out, though the humor made you not notice.

Clearly, the RT guys wanted to push themselves a little more now that they knew how Halo operated and they could machinimate better. Which they did. I noticed a lot of little things when watching the season. Like having Caboose jumping up and down during the opening gunfight while behind a rock, or even Doc just pretending to fire his blaster. Or having Simmons more or less trembling in the finale when his… ugh… fax parts act up and you can tell what Grif is staring at when he questions it. Or adding in things like Lopez’ note in the finale, and even having it written in binary. Heck, we even have smoke come out of Grif’s helmet when Simmons catches him in the act.

These are small things, but it helps make the world and characters feel a little more alive. Clearly, machinima has its limitations, and we’re a long way away from them adding in animation. But creative people will find a way to work within their limitations, and even use those limitations to their advantage. Considering how long this show has been going, I’d say that they succeeded.

#4. Caboose’s Mind

One of the most memorable parts, and one with some actual effects on the characters, is when Church and Tex go into Caboose’s mind to kill O’Malley. It’s one of the weirdest, yet funniest parts of the season. We get to see how Caboose views everyone, with Tucker being stupid and Church being obsessed with being Caboose’s best friend. He gets them wrong, but it makes sense because it’s how /Caboose/ interprets these individuals. They aren’t supposed to be accurate. It’s especially funny when we see the Reds and only Simmons is close to right Grif is Yellow (which they outright did to prove that he was Orange to viewers), Donut is a girl since that’s what Caboose thought at the time, and Sarge has a pirate accent instead of a Southern one. 

It’s just funny to see Caboose, who at this point had been portrayed as the most dim-witted, and how he views these people. It kinda reflects what he wants with Church being his best friend and the Reds fearing him and his greatness. His ideal version of himself is pretty much a cool version of himself, though otherwise not too different. Church’s reaction and frustration at all fo this, especially Caboose!Church, only makes it funnier as is Tex being unfazed by all of it. It did kinda throw me off when I watched it the first time, but God it’s funnier on rewatch now that I know what’s going on. It’s a nice look into Caboose’s mind, and we got to see glimpses of the others int he S14 episode Head Cannon.

I think the biggest things though were for one, we got a location that wasn’t Blood Gulch finally. Sure it’s pretty much a standard video game map with a bunch of cubes, but after having the only setting be a canyon, it was refreshing. We also have some major impact with this since due to all the chaos, Caboose’s character becomes what it is now. We can debate all day how we should view Caboose and his intellectual level, but I do think that this helped endear the character to people and allowed him to stand out much, much more. Even now I know very few people, if anyone, who dislikes Caboose so while maybe they should acknowledge that he was more or less brain-damaged, the character himself has become better due to this. Which is nice~

#3. O’Malley Subplot

Speaking of Caboose’s mind, the O’Malley plot was by far the standout in this season. At first, it wasn’t too much since only Tucker cared about Caboose’s sudden murderous behavior. But once Tex came back, things picked up. While the backstory wasn’t totally accurate, it would certainly lead to more ahead. The fight in Caboose’s mind was fun. Tucker got to show some genuine competence when he came up with the plan to make the Reds turn their comms off and even using Lopez as a backup plan. With how much more competent Tucker grows later once circumstances pretty much force him to, this was an early sign showing that he is capable. He just needs to be pushed into doing it.

O’Malley himself didn’t stand out too much, just being kinda murderous. Then he escaped into Doc. I’ll go more into this next season, but this was the best decision ever. Doc is a whiny goody-two-shoes while O’Malley is gleefully, over-the-top evil. The contrast of the two personalities works super well and is just really funny to watch, though again it applies more for the next season. By the end, O’Malley makes his move and firmly sets himself up as the first proper Big Bad of the series, and he’s the perfect villain for the Blood Gulch Chronicles.

Overall, the whole subplot was really fun even though it did kind of have a slow start. It brought back Tex, had some really funny moments like the Reds' reactions to Lopez’s horrible love song. At least Donut liked it, haha~ It gave us our first proper villain, which led to one Hell of an insane finale. Even everything in between with Donut getting captured by the Blues and them trying to use this to make Sarge build them new bodies was fun to watch. The first half of S2 s super fun, but the second half is, without doubt, the best part for me. O’Malley was the catalyst, and to this day is one of my favorite villains. Love it~

#2. Improved Production Standards

Season 1 was good but flawed. It was clear that the RT guys weren’t really sure what they were doing. Audio quality was meh, jokes could drag, and the pacing was rather slow. It makes sense though when you read about what the original plans were. RvB was meant to be a miniseries, and nothing more. But pretty much a combination of them not getting to what they planned as soon as they thought (Donut was supposed to be in pink armor much sooner for example, and they realized how long it was taking to get there) as well as just coming up with more ideas extended things to a nineteen episode run. So there was no long term plan and things like writing and machinima were done in mere days in between releases. Plus there were only two main machinimators, Burnie and Geoff, and if you listen to the original S1 commentary they are both clearly exhausted. Burnie even said on a one-on-one podcast with Geoff on how they had pretty much had every conversation ever and they’d be like some old married couple just staring at each other. You can find it here if you’re interested, it’s a fun one~

So yeah… when you look back you can kinda tell that S1 was a bit of a rush job, and a tiring one at that. It’s still very good and like I said, they found ways to use so much you barely notice things were made up on the fly. But clearly, they needed a better system. Enter Matt Hullum. He had already been voicing Sarge, but he ended up stepping in to play a larger behind the scenes role. He joined Burnie on writing and directing, and thus they started planning things much farther ahead. As such, they knew the general plot and thus things could be tightened. The pacing is much better with episodes feeling faster, but having plenty of things happening. I already talked about the machinima improvements, which having Matt as well as Gus coming back from Puerto Rico also helped there. The voice acting, while still amateur, improved as well as the audio mixing. The filter is still a little distracting, but it and the general audio mixing is greatly improved. Pretty much every aspect of S1 was improved big time. It wasn’t perfect, but still, they clearly put a lot in creating a more quality product.

Season 2 had a hard job. Season One had to prove that this was a show worth watching. Season 2 had to prove that it could keep going and wasn’t just a one-hit-wonder. And ho boy did they. It’s funnier, it’s more ambitious, and even starts adding in some story. This season got the viewers from last time to come back, and probably brought in some new ones. It proved that this was a show that was sticking around and that RT had staying power. If this season failed, RvB would probably just be remembered as this funny Halo show. But it succeeded because they wanted the show to keep succeeding and be good, and that effort shows.

#1. Improved Characterizations

The thing that I enjoyed most about Season 1 was the character interactions. They just had natural chemistry and their interactions were funny. The characters themselves though were a little one-note. They had personality, but they didn’t really stand out when you compare them to other comedies like The Simpsons or South Park. I guess that RT realized this as well because this is where the characters really begin to become the same ones that we know now. Not all of them mind you like Simmons and Tucker are the least fleshed out here, but even then the signs of who they would become are there with things like Simmons clinginess to Sarge and the joke about Tucker’s rock, as well as the previously mentioned show of competence when pushed.

Donut and Grif show more of their personality, with Donut expressing his hobbies like home decor and growing to like his lightish-red armor. Grif shows his more lazy slacker attributes, like sleeping during meetings and forgetting the ammo, and his unhealthy habits like smoking and his constant eating. Which he’s pretty much doing intentionally to annoy Simmons and mess up the parts that he got from him. Lopez also got a lot of personalities now that he can talk. Namely, after the Reds nearly kill him and the Blues use him for their own means, he hates them all and his apathetic personality has stuck ever since. Poor guy has had such a hard time, haha. And I already went into Caboose, so there's no need to repeat myself. Even Shelia got sassier this season~

The one I think got the most improvement though is Sarge. In S1, he was just kind of a standard sergeant character you could find in just about any military movie, and the voice reflected it. Here? Matt just goes off the wall. He said in the S2 commentary that Sarge is pretty much the combination of various 50’s character tropes, like the grumpy old guy and the mad scientist. It shows. Sarge’s hatred of Blues and love of warfare are much more evident, especially in the finale. His hatred of Grif is also much more played up. We see that he is absolutely insane with his conspiracy theories about Lopez being brainwashed by the Blues instead of reprogrammed and turning Simmons into a cyborg instead of just getting a new robot. Sarge is the opposite of sensible, and having this guy be the leader and forcing everyone to follow his plans due to it is freakin’ hilarious. Matt exaggerating the accent from this point on only adds to this characterization and is much, much more fitting.

The characters, in my opinion, are the best part of Red vs Blue. This season demonstrates that very well. Unlike S1 where there were only shades of their later portrayal, this one uses broad strokes. I think some of the better voice acting can also be due to this since the cast now has more of a character to fool around with instead of just having to more or less act like their everyday selves. The characters were stronger, and as such the interaction and humor were even better. As such, it is my favorite part of Red vs Blue Season 2. Can they keep it up in Season 3? Well… we’ll find out soon~

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 218: Purse Pilferage and Mouse Murder

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan and Deku sparred in an attempt to draw out Deku’s mysterious new power once again, but to no avail. In a brief flashback, the OFA Scooby Squad (now including Bakugou!) discussed Deku’s recent visions and his multiple quirks. Kacchan pointed out that it was very similar to All for One’s power, which seems to be weighing on Deku’s mind some. That evening at the fanfic dorms, Shouto approached Deku asking if he had been hiding a second quirk. Deku assured him that the new quirk surprised him as much as everyone else, and fibbed that it was probably derived from his original quirk. Meanwhile the U.A. faculty accepted Shinsou into the hero course, and Aizawa acted all weird and cagey about someone from his past named “Shirakumo.” Later, Monoma met with Aizawa, Mirio, Deku, and Eri at the teachers’ dorms and unsuccessfully attempted to copy Eri’s quirk. Eri apologized for being so troublesome, and the others assured her that she wasn’t and Deku told her that even seemingly dangerous quirks can be used for good. It wasn’t lost on him that this applied to his own powers as well, and he resolved to keep working to master OFA.

Today on BnHA: Early one December morn, the kids of 1-A gather in their common room to watch some TV while they wait to hear if Bakugou and Todoroki passed their provisional license retest. The news is reporting on a company called Detnerat which has recently entered the hero equipment business. Their CEO is some Joker-looking dude who’s apparently a big fan of AFO’s old nemesis Destro of Meta Liberation Army fame. Destro’s book has recently been republished and is making the discussion rounds. DetCEO discusses it with his cute lil mouse subordinate Miyashita, but Miyashita isn’t really a fan. This proves unfortunate for Miyashita, as DetCEO is all “that’s too bad, guess I’m just gonna have to snap your neck then.” Like, for real though. Anyway so then DetCEO heads to a secret meeting of like-minded individuals who are apparently Destro’s descendants and are seeking to make his goals a reality. We then segue to a group of purse-snatchers led by someone who I really thought was Shirakumo for a hot minute, ngl. He’s not, though. Anyway so they’re wreaking some havoc and stealing people’s shit -- that is, until two good boys who just earned their provisional licenses after three months of hard work show up to spoil their fun.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 225, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

HOLY SHIT

BABY WE GOT OURSELVES SOME MOTHERFUCKING SNOW IN THE FANFIC DORMS!!!

holy shit. and it’s the weekend! ARE WE GONNA HAVE SOME ANTICSSSS YES PLEASE I REALLY NEED THIS SO BAD RIGHT NOW YOU HAVE NO IDEA

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

KIRISHIMA WHY ARE YOU TAKING YOUR CLOTHES OFF

I hope they get a ton! I WANT SNOWBALL FIGHTS AND SNOW FORTS AND TODOROKI TO LET IT GOOOOOO LET IT GOOOOOOO

ahh but apparently he and Bakugou are away right now

wow they even got that class on Sundays now, huh

also, who did Sero borrow the tankoubon from? because more likely than not it was Bakugou since I can’t even picture Shouto reading manga (unless he borrowed some volumes from Deku, maybe). so that means Bakugou is (a) a big ol’ manga-reading nerd who brought his manga to school with him, and (b) sharing with friends. both of which make me so, so happy

(ETA: Viz translated this as “I want to borrow the next volume of this manga from Todoroki,” but as far as I can tell, in the RAW version he doesn’t specify who he borrowed it from. I think Caleb Cook just doesn’t think Bakugou is capable of sharing. give him some credit, Caleb Cook.)

Deku says they should be back around six, and Iida says it’s apparently the last day of their provisional class!

OHMYGOSH. hold up. so that means that their re-test is in like a week, no? holy shit. oh my god I’m so hypppppped ahhhhhh

SDLFKHASLDFKJLK HOLY SHIT

IT’S TODAY!?!??

YOU CAN DO IT KIDS I BELIEVE IN YOU. YOU GOT THIS

KACCHAN ARE YOU READY TO OFFICIALLY BECOME KACCHAN THE HERO

(ETA: maybe we’ll actually get Kacchan’s hero name before I grow old. maybe.)

SDFKASLDHK AND LOOK AT THIS SETUP!? AHHHHHH PLEASE DON’T CUT AWAY FROM THIS. OH MY GOD

but snow antics though. oh my god I’m so torn lsdkjlk

anyways of fucking course we cut away, and I don’t really mind because I love cozy 1-A snow day dorm antics also. plus everyone is gossiping about Todo and Baku, and Satou is baking a cake like the Princess Peach he is

Kami is playfully lamenting the fact that he’s about to lose the one leg-up he had on those two, and flipping on the news

oh shit are we gonna get some Plot

I guess so. what is this

Detnerat?? is that a portmanteau of something? an acronym? or another Star Wars reference I failed to pick up on??

(ETA: yeah so it’s the word “talented” spelled backwards. except with an r instead of an l.)

so the news is showing some people with mutant quirks, including a four-armed lady, a jello child, and a walrus with a bowler hat

and the narration is talking about how people like this used to be a minority but now “their era arrived”

interesting. I guess there’s pretty much no such thing as “one size fits all” anymore these days huh. so does that mean there’s been a shift back to custom-made tailored items?

this pointy nose guy is extremely theatrical

calm down buddy

so he says his company has come all this way while building products that meet the needs of each of their customers individually

this is cool and all but I’m trying to figure out why this new arc is opening with an infomercial

I’m expecting things all right, but I think it’s a little too early to say if they’ll be great

and now we’re cutting to this guy’s office, where his employee is concluding his presentation. apparently he was showing his boss the finished commercial

and now they’re discussing the thus-far lukewarm reception to their recent announcement

(ETA: holy shit. famous last words. fuckin’ jinxed it Miyashita.)

are you guys... good guys? bad guys? how is this related to the plot?? a new arc all about stock holdings and market shares. Iida did you write this arc

so pointy nose says that they’ve been doing this on a much larger scale for a long time already, so he’s confident they’ll be successful

oh shit

it only just occurred to me that he used the word “superpowers” instead of quirks

AND LOOK AT THIS SHIT

IT’S THAT BOOK. THE ONE THAT WAS PROBABLY WRITTEN BY DESTRO OMG

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

IT WAS DESTRO. CALLED IT WOOP WOOP

Mishiwhatsa says he read the book too but “it’s a load of crap if you ask me”

he says that what the army was doing was nothing but terrorism at the expense of innocent people, and yet Destro “had the gall” to act like he was in the right

hot damn this guy really was Magneto. are we going full-on X-Men in this arc. I want the works. I want fucking sentinels and everything oh god please

oh shit I’m starting to worry about ol’ Mishi here

MIYASHITA, RUN

OH SHIT

IS HE GOING TO SNAP HIS FUCKING NECK!?? HOLY SHIT!??

holy fucking shitballs oh christ

this dude is straight up murdering his best employee, Nezu’s cousin, all because he didn’t agree with his favorite book!?

...

holy shit

fuck. I’m speechless

okay. okay shit. well. uh. Detnerat, huh

you have my attention, plot

hooooooooooly shit

holy shit holy shit holy shit

okay. calm down, self. let’s jot down some thoughts real quick

okay so one, that one shot of that guy with his hand on his hat has a decided Ian McKellen vibe to it. I’m telling you guys. X-Men references all over the damn place in this arc

two, the word “supremacy” was used. meaning this wasn’t just a “quirk rights” group, this was a quirk supremacist group. or is a quirk supremacist group, I should say. these people believe themselves to be the future of humankind. they don’t want liberation, they want control. and assuming we continue to follow the X-Men parallels here, they also believe themselves to be superior to those without superpowers and they’re looking to assert their authority over them

they clearly believe the current laws restricting the usage of quirks are a form of oppression and persecution and are looking to eradicate them

this seems like exactly the type of philosophy the League of Villains would be eager to spread, and I wouldn’t be surprised if another team-up is in the works here

lastly, if these guys are now in the business of making hero equipment, whoever buys from them had better be really careful, as I can easily see some sort of Iron Man 2 plotline going down in which there’s a secret command built into the coding of the new equipment which will sabotage its users once activated. or if you’d rather think of it in Star Wars terms rather than MCU, call it an “order 66” ploy

(ETA: well I partly called this one. still up in the air honestly, who knows.)

also: friendly reminder that Bakugou’s gauntlets were recently destroyed and he’s gonna be needing new ones! (:

so having said all that, let’s see how this pans out!

and right away, the prediction about them teaming up with the League is panning out. waste no time, huh

so Hooknose is telling him to do so at once

oh shit hold up

WELL I SURE GOT THAT BACKWARDS NOW DIDN’T I

lol oh shit. I totally forgot that AFO was the one who bombed the Army’s HQ all those decades and possibly centuries ago. I can’t believe these guys still remember that and know how AFO was connected to boot

also, is there a Rorschach thing going on here? I wonder if it’s a reference to the psychologist or to the comic book character from Watchmen. I’m betting the latter given the way they’re using the inkblots as masks, and also because this is a manga based on superhero comics after all

(ETA: yeah, Rorschach, Joker, and Magneto... drawing on a lot of classic villains and anti-heroes in this arc.)

ah so now we’re getting details on their new bid to enter the hero market

HOLD UP

WHAT THE FUCK THIS GUY LOOKS AWFULLY FUCKING FAMILIAR

IS THIS SHIRAKUMO??? AIZAWA WERE YOU NOT CONTENT WITH THE STRIKING SIMILARITY YOU ALREADY BORE TO KAKASHI? HAD TO GO AND ADD THE OLD FRIEND TURNED EVIL BACKSTORY TOO?? OR WHAT

given that this guy seems to have some sort of cloud-based power (look at what he’s riding! and now the people he just harassed and stole from are describing it as “carbonated water”), and kumo means “cloud”...

(ETA: nope, this is just good ol’ Soda Sam. Carbonation Carl.)

okay and now we’re cutting to a conversation between two as-yet-unknown parties that seem to be witnessing this robbery from a distance, and deciding whether or not to intervene

for a moment I entertained the idea that this might be Kacchan and Shouto with their hot-off-the-presses licenses, possibly talking to All Might? but none of this dialogue seems to have that Kacchan flair, and it also doesn’t make much sense for them to have attended the lesson accompanied by All Might and no one else. Aizawa’s been pretty good about making sure there’s always at least one other fighting pro accompanying them

so now this group of merry bandits is celebrating their new haul

OH SHITTTTTTT

ODDS OF THIS BEING BAKUGOU AND SHOUTO JUST SHOT WAAAAAAAAAY WAY UP OH MY GOD?!

OH MY GOD IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT?!

I SHOULD STOP DOUBTING MYSELF AND HORIKOSHI’S PROPENSITY FOR GIVING ME EXACTLY WHAT I WANT ALL OF THE TIME

motherfucker. you just know Kacchan spent that entire cab ride with his nose pressed to the window trying to sense danger and keeping his fingers crossed something like this would happen

(ETA: him and Shouto both, since the dialogue suggests it was Shouto that spotted it first! so basically one of them stationed at each window with All Might sandwiched in between wondering if he’s even going to survive this trip. the answer is yes, All Might, but not without it becoming Eventful.)

also, 30 minutes or 30 seconds, it hardly matters All Might. you know these two spent the last three months anticipating this moment every single minute of every day. they’re gonna go do reckless hero shit, All Might. THEY’RE JUST GONNA

oh my godddddddd

TodoBaku fighting against Aizawa’s possible friend-turned-villain in the snowwwwww having JUST EARNED THE SHIT OUT OF THEIR NEW LICENSES HELL YEAHHHHHHHHH

and it appears Kacchan does have a gauntlet. goddammit. make that propensity for giving me almost exactly what I want, most of the time

anyways, I don’t really care! life is good. life is fucking amazing, fam

[fanfictionquotess]

Rec List: The Umbrella Academy

Part 1  Part 2 I’ve been hit hard by cupid’s arrow and fell in love with The Umbrella Academy. It’s all I’ve been reading this past week. So, I’ve decided to start compiling my rec list now.  Everything listed in this rec list are gen fanfics.  I most likely will only ever read gen fanfiction for this fandom (unless I see a particular Klaus x Dave or Agnes x Hazel fic that catches my interest). In addition, this list only includes completed works. I’m also going to include an all encompassing drug-content warning because Klaus Hargreeves. 

Total Fics Recommended Thus Far: 26 This is my second Rec List, so feel free to let me know what you think of the formatting and whether or not I need to make adjustments (like splitting it up into two parts bc this is more than I expected). 

As always, my inbox is open to rec list requests.

 Is the sadness everlasting? (love, I think it is) by ArmedWithMyComputer

Words: 3161   Chapters: 2    Post-S1

Summary:  A look into what Klaus' newly discovered ability could mean for the siblings.

---

Things Aren’t Quite the Same by oscarwildechilde

Words: 6632   Chapters: 1   Pre-S1

Summary: Ben reads to Klaus when the dead get too loud for him to beat. He’s always there for him, and always will be.Ben and Klaus’ friendship and the start of Klaus’ problems.

---

Simpler Times by  bucketbarneslove

Words: 5181   Chapters: 1    Pre-S1

Summary: On one of the last nights that the Hargreeves siblings get to be anything close to normal, Klaus suggests they have some fun. His idea? Heading over to the 24/7 doughnut shop and getting absolutely trashed on sugar.

---

Ghosts of You(th) by SilvertonguedClotpole

Words: 10,110  Chapters: 1    Post-S1, e10 au

Summary:  It was a mausoleum, and right now it was probably the best chance they had at hiding from those chasing them. But of course, a mausoleum isn't just a mausoleum to Klaus. It was a hell. And his siblings were about to see a true glimpse of what it was like being Klaus Hargreeves.

When they're forced to hide in the cemetery, the siblings get more than they bargained for when they have to fight to remain hidden, and fight to keep their brother from toppling over the edge.

---

For the Record by aye_of_newt

Words: 3645   Chapters: 1  Post-S1, e10 au 

Part 1 of Vague AU

Summary:  Diego finds Klaus' police record.

---

I know That Everyone Gets Scared by MidnightRavenFromTheClock

Words: 2945   Chapters: 1  

Summary:  What if the Hargreeves siblings did a little better?

---

Some have names but most do not (If you find one, please let me know what piece I've lost) by  Brain_Brainson

Words: 3235   Chapters: 1    Post-S1

Part 1 of  Real Names, Fake Names, Chosen Names

Summary:  Five has only been around for a week but already Klaus won’t leave him alone.“You need a name,” he says, hanging upside down from the couch.

“I have a name,” Five says.

Comments: Did anyone say Non-binary!Five?

---

I've been searching for my Father (I can not explain why he grows old) by  Brain_Brainson

Words: 5481  Chapters: 1    Post-S1

Part 3 of  Real Names, Fake Names, Chosen Names

Summary:   Despite being the perfect fairytale villain, Five doesn't actually hate their Dad.

Comments: Somehow I missed p2 and need to rectify that immediately In all likelihood it’ll also be recommended.

---

Secrets I have held in my heart (are harder to hide than I thought) by  Brain_Brainson

Words: 7732  Chapters: 1      Post-S1

Part 4 of  Real Names, Fake Names, Chosen Names

Summary:  Your Family is caught up in some emotional bullshit and everyone is ignoring each other and it’s making you feel things you don’t wanna feel?Well, what the fuck do you do then?

Comments: I really love their portrayal of Luther.

---

Something of a Success by magikfanfic

Words: 3130  Chapters: 1     Pre-S1

Summary:  Klaus is the first to know.

Comments: CW for Major Character Death. In particular, our boy Ben.

---

A Little Family Bonding by dirkygoodness

Words: 1954   Chapters: 1

Summary:  Each and every one of them flaked on world-saving as soon as it was out of his mouth.So instead of getting up and being productive Five jumped down to the local liquor store and stole two bottles of whiskey for himself. If everyone else wasn’t going to give a shit, then maybe he’d give it a try too.

---

Whatever It Takes by Galliumite

Words: 1033   Chapters: 1   e10 spoilers

Summary:   A One-shot in which the probability map in episode 5 of the show gives a name that Five doesn't want to see. And that leads Five to responding to Luther's threats towards Dolores slightly differently.

Comments: An interesting AU idea. 

---

Ordinary by Fourfivesix

Words: 987  Chapters: 1   Pre-S1

Summary:  Klaus wishes he was ordinary like Vanya.

---

The Boy At The End Of The World by Devilbaby

Words: 2093  Chapters: 1

Summary:  There's no crying in the apocalypse; water is too valuable a commodity to be wasted on tears and sorrow. The world didn't care about his suffering, so neither did he.

A character study about Five, why he is who he is and why he does what he does.

---

Your Father Isn’t Here by GiuGiu

Words: 2388  Chapters: 1    Pre-S1

Part 2 of TUA Kid Fics

Summary:  “We wanted to be bird feeders.” Number Four grinned, leaning over to pick a chia seed off of Number Six’s ear.

“Like the one we made during crafts.” Number Six elaborated, pushing his brother’s hand away from his face. Grace had used last week’s recreation time to make peanut butter bird feeders with her children. She had carefully written the report asking for permission, justifying her choice with data about gross motor skills and basics of biology instruction.

This had not been in her contingency report. She would need to be more thorough next time.Or, raising seven four-year-olds while having limited free will isn't easy.

Comments: Grace-centric and beautifully written.

---

Just In Case by starsandsupernovae

Words: 1171   Chapters: 1

Summary:   Vanya and Five are kids and it's cute and happy and then it's not

---

Blood Like Lemonade by Ford_Ye_Fiji

Words: 2860  Chapters: 1

Summary:  Hunting high and low to seek revenge, Brand new moral code, got made reluctant renegade. Leaving empty souls when he avenged, Evil spirits flowed he drank the blood like lemonade.

-Five's sordid past comes to light in, quite possibly, the most unpleasant way

Comments: Really cool idea to explore, personally.

---

breathe in, exhale (the blood flood) by doc_boredom

Words: 852  Chapters: 1

Summary:  Diego Hargreeves held his breath and counted to five. Not second by second like a normal person would, but minute by minute, until his lungs threatened to explode.

-Also known as Diego Hargreeves carved my heart from my chest and I let him do so willingly.

---

show me how to struggle gracefully by Karturtle (karturtle)

Words: 3197   Chapters: 1  Post-S1

Part 1 of you ask me where i've been(like i ask you where you are)

Summary: Ben watches his family as it heals, and starts to do a little healing himself.

---

love you without any strings attached by Karturtle (karturtle)

Words: 4739   Chapters: 1  Post-S1

Part 2 of you ask me where i've been(like i ask you where you are)

Summary:   Ben and Klaus have been a pair ever since Klaus was old enough to drag his brother into mischief.

---

I’ll never dance again by The Séance (TheHavok)

Words: 322   Chapters: 1

Summary: ONE SHOT, Klaus Hargreeves badly dealing with losing his lover.

---

bright by classyfanperson

Words: 1133   Chapters: 1    Pre-S1

Summary: There's no reason Klaus can't have pretty things, even if he has to steal them.

---

Every Mountain You Climb Takes Me Further Away by siriuslyrose

Words: 3061  Chapters: 1   Pre-S1

Summary:  In 1989, Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopts seven babies from around the world. By 2007 only one remained.

They all left for slightly different reasons. But for all six of them it was The Monocle that forced them out the door. Ironically, he was also the reason his Number One never follow them.

This is the story of how the Umbrella Academy went from Six (Seven) members to One.

---

Elide by Willowcatkin

Words: 484    Chapters: 1

Summary: And even when her home crumbles to nothing around her, no one will hear it. Debris born from grudge that stems deep into its foundation falls. Rocks and ash drift like stardust, muffling and soft like sound through water. The walls that used to block out the notes, amplifying them and distorting their intricately crafted meanings, collapse and fold like the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wings.  

Comments: One of my personal favorites. I always love characters studies written with such nicely flowing prose.

---

And Then There Were None by friedlieb_ferdinand_runge

Words: 1005  Chapters: 1

Summary:   They were all broken in the end.

---

if you must mourn (don’t do it alone) by AndreaLyn

Words: 2120  Chapters: 1

Summary:  They're putting the grief in Hargreeves.

or “How the Hargreeves family moved on (except for the one who refused)"

[thiscrimsonsoul]

1, 2, 6, 25 (murder-popsicle)

@murder-popsicle​​ 

1. If you had to change your character’s FC for one day, who would you pick?

Mia Kirshner, specifically as Sarah from The Crow: City of Angels. 

Aside from the fact that she is another inspiring FC for me (I have an OC, Caitriona, that uses Sarah as her FC), that role had a very witchy vibe that I feel would have the right aesthetic and feel for Wanda, especially during some of her darker times in the comics or during Avengers: Age of Ultron for MCU Wanda. 

Aesthetics aside, Mia is another actress who is really masterful with emotion, and any FC I choose for Wanda needs to have that emotional component in order to help me stay inspired by her struggle. She has very pretty eyes and is incredibly expressive with them, but also just has a way about her in that movie that lends itself very nicely to some of the mystique surrounding Wanda and her mental powers, especially.

2. What drew you to rping this character?

I’ve loved Wanda since I was a child reading Marvel comics in my bedroom late at night under the blankets with a flashlight while my parents thought I was sleeping, haha. The Maximoff twins and Vision were some of my favorite characters, although as far as the comics were concerned, I preferred Wanda to her brother.

But as far as specifically making this blog, I hadn’t caught up to all the MCU movies until around May 2019, and before that I had only seen the first Avengers movie and a couple Thor movies. The movies just... didn’t interest me. I had heard that they really changed a lot of stuff from the comics and didn’t like that, so I just kindof hung back and didn’t get involved in the fandom. It wasn’t until I heard that Elizabeth Olsen was playing Wanda and Paul Bettany was playing Vision, two actors I have been a fan of for a long time and have a lot of respect for, that I finally became interested. If for no other reason than to watch some movies that two of my favorite actors were in, I would suffer through them. Well, I watched like six movies in a week to catch up, haha, and ended up really liking them a lot, despite all their issues. 

It was almost immediate for me after watching Infinity War that I wanted to write Wanda. Despite all of MCU’s shittery with regard to really messing up some core things about the comics and just generally having “big blockbuster action movie” types of issues, I adored Lizzie’s interpretation of Wanda and found myself being once again very inspired by the character. Like, she helped revive my enthusiasm for Wanda that I felt years ago, and I was excited to try writing my own version of her.

6. What’s something about your character that you wouldn’t like if you had to spend time with them?

Haha oh my gosh, not much! I think I could get along pretty well with Wanda, and her aesthetic is very close to mine so we’d totally be sharing clothing and jewelry ideas. But hmm... let’s see... Maybe just the idea that she could read my mind anytime she wanted, heh. Not that she would, but I think just knowing she could would make me a little uncomfortable around her. But I think I would get over it pretty quickly.

25. What’s your least favorite AU?

I mean... if I’m being honest... canon is my least favorite timeline for Wanda, haha, especially for the MCU version of her. But that’s a cop out answer, so I’ll try again, heh. I have so many AUs and verses for Wanda, not all of which I write on Tumblr, but still... my least favorite AU to write thus far has probably been after Endgame if Pietro was brought back by Clint during the time travel test. First of all, if I’m writing this AU with you, don’t take this personally or think I hate our thread, I don’t! It’s more of just... a problem with me getting inside Wanda’s head during that kind of AU. It’s a very dark place for her and to see her brother after that much time is very strange for her, and you would think it would be this great thing, but it’s not. And I want it to be, heh, and maybe that’s what I hate most about it. It ends up just being incredibly sad without much chance at a decent resolution anytime soon. The twins are such different people now, they’re different ages physically, their bond is forever changed, Wanda’s just so messed up and burned out by everything that happened in Infinity War and Endgame... and there’s just so much pain and poor coping that happens that it ends up being less fun to write and more something that I have to think very carefully about when crafting my replies. It’s not an easy AU that flows without much effort for me. Having said that, writing those kinds of things helps me develop the character and also helps me grow as a writer, so I certainly do want to keep writing it. =)

[erictmason]

THEY’RE GONNA WRECK IT: A “Ralph Breaks The Internet” Review

I don’t know that I ever would have told you that the original “Wreck-it Ralph”, one of the more pleasant surprises of post-Pixar-merger Disney, “needed” a sequel; the original’s story was compelling and complete enough on its own.  But the characters were so much fun to spend time with and the world felt so intrinsically interesting that it also seemed like a prime candidate to give a sequel to anyway.  And to its credit “Ralph Breaks The Internet” starts from a premise clearly designed to keep it from simply being a needless retread of the original, trading the halls of an old Arcade for the world wide web.  Unfortunately, the resulting film, while not exactly a TOTAL wash, also feels like it’s learned all the wrong lessons from its predecessor, taking an anted-up version of the first movie’s playful Video Game in-jokes that were there a mere garnish and here turning them into an inescapable aspect of the entire story that severely compromises its narrative integrity.

(SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT)

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(SPOILER SPACE)

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Said narrative picks up six years after the events of the original, with Ralph happy as can be with his lot in life nowadays: thanks to his friendship with “Sugar Rush” superstar Vanellope Von Schweetz, he’s more than content to just do his job and hang out with her goofing off all night.  Vanellope, however, feels increasingly constrained by the repetitive limits of her closed-off racing world, leading Ralph to try and give her a new surprise or two to cheer her up; unfortunately that just leads to "Sugar Rush” getting broken.  Ralph and Vanellope thus decide to venture into the arcade’s newly connected Wi-Fi system to reach The Internet in hopes of finding the part necessary to fix the game before it’s permanently unplugged.  

Which kind of sounds like a bit of an overcooked premise, and indeed the number of contrivances the movie throws at you more or less right out the gate to get to where it wants to go speaks to the problem at the heart of the whole thing, but to start things out on a relatively positive note: Ralph and Vanellope remain a great pair of characters, and if nothing else the opening few minutes of the movie honestly do make for a pleasant little coda to the first movie.  More to the point, there actually IS something admirable about how this movie chooses to dig into how their characters have changed and where they stand:  now that he has an anchor of affirmation in Vanellope, Ralph is able to find acceptance and fulfillment in the same places he once felt rejected by...but once that anchor is threatened (as it is when Vanellope finds herself increasingly attracted to the idea of staying online in the wild and unpredictable world of an online racer called “Slaughter Race”), all of his old insecurities begin to surface.  Meanwhile the same drive to strive for something greater that drove Vanellope in the first movie has now begun to slowly but surely push her out of “Sugar Rush”; this one’s a bit shakier (and the movie fumbles it pretty much completely in the execution but we’ll get to that) but you really can see the emotional logic it works on in a way that adds up, especially because the movie genuinely has the courage of its convictions and chooses to pursue it to its most logical conclusion rather than try to hedge its bets or chicken out at the last minute.  

As well, basically all of the new characters work.  The obvious highlight is Gal Gadot as Shank, the Boss Character of “Slaughter Race”; even as her presence in the movie overall is surprisingly limited given her importance to the main emotional arc that (eventually) reveals itself as the heart of the story, she is nonetheless an immediately enjoyable presence, at once tough as nails and On The Edge (one of the movie’s better sight gags is how the world of “Slaughter Race” is bathed in the reds and browns that dominated Video Games for most of the mid-00′s and Shank feels right at home in that tone) but also a caring figure who looks at her job with a genuine sense of Duty and Honor.  Likewise Taraji P. Henson’s Yesss is delightful, a beaming bouncing presence whose constantly-changing look is a consistent delight (and who may have the most enjoyably subtle details of animation of any character in the movie with the way her coat lights up whenever she gets excited being a personal favorite).  But even minor characters like the Search Engine curator Knowsmore (our now-traditional Alan Tudyk role) and Bill Hader’s J.P. Spamley are genuinely fun new additions to the overall cast.  You do find yourself wishing they could maybe get a bit more screen time or else be better integrated into the overall story, but even so I really liked just about all of them and they do a lot to buoy the whole thing.

Unfortunately none of them, nor the movie’s clever-if-not-especially-original conception of what “The Internet” would mean to this kind of world (my personal favorite touch might be portraying pop-up ads as old-school Newsies), can really add up to much in the face of the larger problem here.  See, even though they’re a relatively minor presence in the overall movie, the original “Wreck-it Ralph” hyped up the presence of its various Video Game character cameos (many of whom return here), and the attendant in-jokes that came with them.  “Ralph Breaks The Internet” apparently seems to have the mistaken belief that it was this wink-wink nudge-nudge meta-humor at the original’s margins that was in fact the key to its success and thus, using The Internet as a launching pad to broaden its range of targets, has made that element much, much more prominent this time around.  Sometimes that does make for amusing gags; the extended (and heavily-touted) scene where Vanellope meets the other Disney Princesses is indeed a particular highlight, and the one sequence where the movie comes even remotely close with reconciling its desire to indulge in fairly tired meta-textual snark with actually trying to tell any sort of real story.  Far more often we have to deal with things like how a joke about Ralph making the age-old mistake of reading the comments stands in for any kind of actual attempt to show how his old anxieties are resurfacing (in a moment that fails to land almost completely; it is honestly impossible to tell while watching it how seriously the movie expects us to take it), or even more frustrating how Vanellope’s realization that she wants to stay in “Slaughter Race” is told to us through an incredibly ineffectual and far too self-aware parody of the old Disney-style “I Want” song.  That Vanellope would in fact choose to leave Sugar Rush behind is already the biggest buy-in the movie asks us to make of its characters, so that failed short-cut proves especially harmful to the overall arc here.  It all leads to a finale that feels like it could, indeed even should, work for how frankly it chooses to tackle the underlying emotional problems at the heart of the story, but it ultimately can’t because the movie just flat-out has not done the work to really earn it.

There are other smaller problems as well; Fix-it Felix and Calhoun, the primary side-characters from the first film, are here given what feels like it should be the lead-in to an enjoyable and inspired B-story of their own but instead wind up being nothing more than glorified cameos.  I’m also not super fond of how the movie actively begs the audience to question the logical nature of its world and characters as often (and seemingly without much thought) as it does.�� But the real fundamental issue here is that “Ralph Breaks The Internet” just plain cannot square its two competing impulses; the desire to actually try and tell a story that meaningfully expands on the original’s characters in some genuinely-daring ways is ultimately undone by the far-stronger drive to weigh it all down beneath a lot of knowing referential humor that feels far less relevant and insightful than the writers think it is.  There really is something good deep in the heart of all of this, but, sad as it is to say, it basically gets wrecked this time around.

[aros001]

First time read through light novel vol. 3. Random thoughts.

The Six Witches had made the world scream, but this witch wiped them out in one fell swoop, ushering in a calamity that destroyed half the world.

A hero had sealed her flesh within a crystal, where she continued to sleep, even then, in some corner of the world.

I'd say Satella is like this world's Voldemort with how much people hesitate to even talk about her, but honestly she seems like she'd slap the back of his bald head and call him a bitch. Honestly, she's the character I'm looking forward to getting to know more about than the rest of the cast, even Emilia, whom I've heard gets a lot of her development after where the anime left off. Given how plenty of "witch" stories go in fiction and even Ram telling Subaru that the country naturally has a bias against the witch because of its connection to the dragon that helped seal her, I could totally see this being a situation where Satella was just trying to stop evil (the Six Witches) and ended up being persecuted and called a monster by history. ...But I wouldn't be opposed to her just being f**king evil. I love me a good villain.

I already liked Rem and Beatrice from the anime, but while I never disliked Emilia and Ram, I am finding myself a lot more into those two through these books than I was before. I can't quite put my finger on what's different. I suppose knowing where things go helps a bit but the narration and going at my own pace gives me better focus on their interactions and relationships with Subaru. I don't think I got as good a feel for Emilia's character in the anime and while I still don't know a lot about her, I do think she has a bit more reaction here. She can get angry, pout, and does seem to genuinely enjoy Subaru's company, where maybe she felt a little too one-note sometimes in the anime? I don't know. And Ram is just the best. I live for her attitude and she does give off a bit of a big sister vibe when she's with Subaru. Like Roswaal noted in the first loop in his and her private chat, Ram does seem actually fond of Subaru. Not in a romantic way. She just seems to have fun with him, especially with all her little jabs and slight bullying.

“My specialty is ice, but it’s actually fire mana. Fire relates mainly to temperature, so cooling that which is hot is classified as part of fire, apparently.”

I'm apparently a f**king nerd because I love getting rules for a world's made-up systems like magic and this is a pretty unique style compared to what I'm used to. The elements are not constrained just to what something literally is but rather how it relates to something. Ice is water but what forms ice is temperature. Water is more related to healing.

The right hand went for his heart; the other caressed Subaru’s cheek like it was fond of him.

Again, I'm really looking forward to knowing what the deal is with Subaru and Satella (assuming the hands are hers), especially since he comments that the hand on his cheek brought a sense of warmth and relief (while the other was squeezing his heart). Consciously or not, he's feeling some kind of connection to her.

I'm a big fan of superhero stories, and while there's nothing better than seeing the hero win after a hard fought battle, there is one trope I really like, where what defines a hero isn't just the battles they win but what they do when faced with a battle they can't. Credit to Subaru, he knew he had little to no chance of beating the shaman and its hordes. He was terrified, drained, badly injured, and even crying for his parents...and he still fought anyway. I think the narration implies that's part of what impressed Rem too when they were working to save the kids; Subaru doing everything he can to help in spite of his uselessness.

For some reason, when her fingers gently grazed his mind, Subaru wanted to weep. The wave of strange emotion washing over him suggested that he had always been waiting for her to do so.

He had an instinctive desire for the wriggling shadow to embrace him, to swallow him whole—and then it stopped. Something had stopped it.

Subaru’s mind realized that there was another shadow, its white fingers embracing him from behind.

Two shadows? I'm under the impression one of them is Satella but I'm curious who the other is? Given Rem was holding Subaru's hand when he woke up I'd think it was her but the narration talks about the shadow coming from behind him, nothing to do with his hands.

She had short blue hair. Her face was more the “lovely” than “pretty” type. At first, he thought she showed little emotion on her face, but she was coming around on that bit by bit. He wasn’t afraid of her. He wasn’t afraid of her at all.

There was a Rem who had made Subaru loop more than once, but here was a Rem happy from the bottom of her heart that he had come back alive. It was all by chance.

There was the Rem who ran amok for her sister’s sake, the Rem who acted rashly to protect Subaru, the Rem who ran off before switching to Berserker Mode so that she wouldn’t cause friendly fire—

One suggestion I've seen before about why Subaru might not ever be able to return Rem's feelings in full, beyond his own love for Emilia, is because he'll always have those past memories of Rem torturing him. That no matter how much he grows to like her their relationship will always be held back because he subconsciously still associates that horrible experience with her. I'll have to see how if the books ever bring that up, because while I can buy that being a thing, Subaru seems to view the Rem that tortured him and the Rem he knows as two different people, acknowledging how mixed up she is. His feelings for Emilia are definitely stronger, given that she's been his rock and oasis throughout all his lives and horrible experiences; the one consistently good thing he could always count on. But I'm not sure how much he holds it against other people. Only the three thugs and Elsa have been consistently awful to him.

Also, I'm don't know what's funnier: that they tied Emilia to a chair to keep her from going after Subaru, or that it was Beatrice's idea and Puck helped her with it?

Roswaal and Ram is going to be interesting going forward, especially because I'm not sure yet whether to trust him. Roswaal is a very fun character and has helped Subaru a few times...but he's definitely shady. And that comment that the hornless beasts obey whoever cut off their horns...so does that apply to demons like the twins as well? I'm not saying Roswaal had anything to do with Ram losing her horn, it easily could be just a situation he took advantage of.

I always found the source of Rem's guilt complex really interesting because it's such an extreme reaction but it also feels oddly realistic. She felt happy, just for a moment, about something terrible and spent the next several years of her life feeling so guilty over it that she gave up practically everything about herself to try and make up for it. There's no doubt in my mind that the sisters love each other and that's probably why it hit her so hard. If Ram was just some pompous bitch who didn't deserve any of her strength and skill it'd be one thing, but Ram did take care of Rem and Rem did admire and love her, thus why she feels like such scum being momentarily happy about one of the worst things possible happening to her beloved sister, just so she'd never have to live in her shadow again. You spend enough time obsessing and beating yourself up over something like that, of course you develop a complex. I don't blame Ram for not trying to straighten Rem out sooner either. She was also just a kid when it happened and while she told Subaru the loss of her horn doesn't bother her anymore (or at least doesn't bother her as much as it did), then that implies it was a major blow to her back then. I don't think she ever took it out on Rem, more likely that she was just depressed or felt empty/incomplete and Rem picking up the slack and always helping out probably made that time a little easier to deal with. By the time Ram is old enough to realize the complex her sister's developed Rem's too far down the spiral for her to simply be talked out of it. The only adult figure left in their lives who could have stopped all of this was Roswaal and he's made pretty clear he has no problem using Ram as a way to keep Rem loyal. I don't know his character well enough yet to say where his morality lies, but he doesn't strike me as the type of guy to sit a young Rem down and try to talk her through her guilt; not when it can be used in purpose of his great goal, something to do with when a dragon (assumedly the one from the Witch of Envy story) dies.

I've only seen the anime once so I can totally believe I probably missed all the parallels this arc draws between Subaru and Rem and I love them.

And seeing him struggle so hard to produce results in spite of inferior ability reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Both of them working themselves frantically, bottling up their feelings as their thoughts are running so fast that they're about ready to crack from all the pressure and guilt they're placing on themselves. When Subaru is attacked by the dogs upon pushing Rem out of the way she flashes back to when Ram got her horn cut off saving her, practically doubling her guilt complex. My favorite comes at the end after Subaru and Rem's talk. While she's not in his lap, her crying and letting her emotions flow while he gently strokes her hair is a great callback to when he was crying in Emilia's lap. While it's not exactly a dignified way you'd want to look in front of the person you love, making you seem a lot like a child, for Subaru and Rem's own mental health it was definitely what they needed. At the very least, in Rem's case, while he didn't hear the full story because he didn't want her to tell him, he'd heard enough to piece together her breakdown was over feelings of guilt and inferiority towards her sister. With poor Subaru, he can't tell Emilia the real reason for his breakdown. As far as her perspective goes, Subaru was so frantic and pushing himself way too hard simply because he was afraid of having to leave them, which technically is true, but she'll never know how real it is to him the possibility that he might just lose everything or how many times he's already gone through that.

“So I mean, you said you were a substitute, but Ram has no substitute for you, does she? I mean, if you weren’t there for her, can you imagine the state she’d be in?”

I love that line. It's a great callback, as while Rem will never know it, Subaru himself has seen how deeply Ram loves her and the state she'd be in if Rem died. But if I'm remembering correctly how the later arcs go, it's another nice parallel between Subaru and Rem. In this case, him being so lost in his devotion to Emilia that he doesn't consider her side of things, but I'll talk more about that if and when it does come up in the story.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/gmek8z/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_3/

[scuttleboat]

2 meta combo: Bellamy/baton + leadership themes after s4

I. Some disorganized thoughts on Bellamy and the hollow baton…

So I had a particular reading of the presence of the bottle prop in the end scene of 413 and didn’t think about it again afterwards, but this week I’ve read a lot of talk about what it means. So I decided to spill my reaction into one giant post. This is my general contribution to the broad discussion of the Baton as (one of several) symbolic prop for Bellamy’s character state. FYI it should go without saying that anything I write is in the context of being my opinion, but also I speak in declarative sentences a lot because I tend to believe my opinions pretty confidently.  To the point:  I don’t think the bottle is empty bc Bellamy is getting a fresh start.* The straightforward meaning is this: the bottle of liquor is drained when Bellamy gets to it because, as a symbol of power, it’s literally and metaphorically empty. Circumstances have rendered it sad and meaningless. A hollow consolation. It’s like… a really explicit piece of visual irony.

((* fyi, the positive hopeful element in that scene is not the bottle, it’s Raven’s steadfastness + Bellamy honoring Clarke’s memory through survival.))

Just going off of a lot of initial fandom reactions I’ve read on tumblr, some fans were so excited about him getting this baton at the finale that they missed that it was empty. And now that folks are discussing it being empty, there’s like this desire to see it still as a wholly good thing. To hold onto that excitement. Which I totally understand, because it seems like such a romantic idea. That he could inherit the thing that Jaha and all the Chancellors in history had. There’s appeal in that. But… he didn’t, and it’s not–emptiness is not a positive symbol in western media, guys. The bottle is empty because the Baton is a hollow dead object now. No more chancellors, no more Jaha, no more Ark ambitions of old. It represents a past dream that is out of sight of the current characters. He gets to a place where this potential symbol of leadership is in reach, and what’s it to him? This symbol that meant so much to Jaha has been reduced to a passing curiosity by a window. It’s not part of his future. Bellamy can’t preserve it and he can’t even drink it, just like he can’t act on the future of the rest of his people when he’s stuck up in space. His family is out of reach and the girl he loved is gone and the promise of a fresh start on Earth (written! right there on the bottle!) turned out to be an empty promise. They never had a chance… the world was gonna end in 8 months regardless of his and Clarke’s choices. This show is so fucking sad you guys. This is why I made myself cry writing about Bellamy in the Ark after I watched the finale.

The Baton is a piece of visual irony because the bottle now represents the hollowness (the ending) of the thing it used to represent in s1. They could have had Bellamy pick up any prop that had a positive and hopeful indication of his role, but they chose to give him the saddest and darkest prop they could. It’s marginally less depressing than a handgun or a photo. He picks it up but because it’s empty for him. (unlike the friend/family standing beside him, who together represent the true hope and the final image of the delinquents’ fortitude.)   That empty hollow bottle is the fragility of life and the tenuousness of survival in the face of a burning fireball of nature fucking you over (note: also a big whopping symbol visible in the same shot.) It’s the UNFAIRNESS of everything that has happened to these kids since the show started–they tried so hard and got this far and the bottle (the dream of Earth)–is *fucking empty*. They never had a chance on that world. It was always going to end.

[read a lot more below the cut, including meta #2.]

In terms of leadership this is the irony of the hollow Baton: Bellamy, who tried so hard to be a leader who was good and strong, and struggled to find his way, has finally has grown into a person who has a more balanced leadership style. This was foreshadowed in him letting go of Octavia and thematically cemented by him letting Clarke go in 413. Thus meaning he is finally “ready” by The 100’s morbid storytelling standards, finally balanced. Except now he’s faced with a situation where the ONLY thing he actually is in charge of is 6 people in a ghost-filled space bucket. Ding ding ding, it’s irony time! Whoo. XD …Meanwhile the world burns below and his love sacrificed herself…brings us to the other half of the irony, where i agree with pretty much the whole shipdom: they never got to have that drink. Because he didn’t carpe diem, didn’t open himself to the person he loves (thanks @velvet-tread). The universe is having one sick laugh at Bellamy Blake in 413, visually epitomized in that bottle.

I know my dramatic self has repeated this several times, but for real now ok— the Baton is literally empty bc it’s metaphorically empty. Drained of purpose. The old ways are no good, they’re surviving on their own, together. New generation. What matters here and now is that Bellamy and his friends will fight to stay alive as long as they can, even as hope burns away. They have each other and they have time so they’re going to stick together and try to survive. But what does the symbol of the Baton mean to that equation? To their future? Nothing–it’s empty. He’s holding it, accepting leadership, even as it’s a working like a visual pun.

ALL THAT BEING SAID---I do think it's fair to say that it being empty has little to no meaning aside from the fact that it was already drunk in an earlier episode and they needed to keep continuity. In that case, the only symbol that matters is the fact that it says "BATON" on it. Which is legit. BUT if we're going to speculate that its emptiness has meaning, then I'm going to say it definitely has a tragic and ironic meaning.

II. That age old leadership contest this fandom is obsessed with? After 4 seasons I think the point of The 100 is that it’s futile and nobody ‘wins’ bc it’s actually an endless struggle of self that C,B,K,A and J all wrestle with, where the “person” they’re competing with is their own failures until they individually learn to be wiser. That’s why the person who ended up in charge was the young interloper who wasn’t even a player til now….bc our main politically-driven characters aren’t in the story to win the leadership prize in the eyes of fandom, they’re in the story to grow.

I’m gonna go right to the explicit symbols of leadership in 413 and point out this: as of 413’s ending, Clarke’s *not* in charge of the future of their people and Bellamy is *not* in charge of the future of their people–Octavia is. While the show gave Clarke a heroic “death” and gave Bellamy friendship + an empty liquor bottle of used up dreams, Octavia was given the clothes / headpiece of the commander and stepped out to make a speech in front of the last of humanity. She has the support of the former leaders and the faith of the remaining majority. ((Whether you like Octavia as commander or not, that is what’s happening on the show right now. FWIW, I was hoping all season that it’d end with Indra.)) While Octavia is probably gonna be spending 6 years off screen going through what Clarke and Bellamy have gone through the last 4 seasons (i.e. emotional tests of being in power), Bellamy and Clarke both have a *reprieve* of leadership. AND ISN’T THAT KIND OF AMAZING? Bellamy only has to be strong and protective for six of his friends–that small team stuff is right up his wheelhouse. He doesn’t have to make decisions of mass death that cause him a season and a half of self-recrimination and doubt. Likewise, Clarke only has to be strong and protective for one person–she doesn’t have to make those mass death choices that cause her to break down crying or have horrific nightmares. She can love one person, unreservedly, without being torn apart by disparate loyalties.

One of the major themes for all the main characters on this show (except Octavia, who is on a different track) has been “How do I learn be a good leader?“ Well, I think 413 wrapped that up with a pretty bow–if the “bow” is the head/heart convo, Clarke’s choice to sacrifice herself, the Baton, and Octavia’s commander wardrobe. Honestly I could make a whole separate and much longer post about leadership as a journey for Clarke, Bellamy, Abby, Kane, and Jaha (guest starring Lexa and Roan as static roadmarks), but not today. I’ll just summarize and say that I think the last 4 seasons have been about the maturation process of Clarke and Bellamy’s leadership skills, starting as people who have the traits but not the wisdom/practice. Then pile on 4 seasons of triumphs and mistakes. By 413, Bellamy’s maturation process ends in letting go of attachment and Clarke’s maturation process ends in self sacrifice (foreshadowed by her taking the nightblood in 408).

I really really hope that the show uses the timeline to age up the characters in a way that the writers move on from this leadership question. That journey is done–Clarke, Bellamy, Kane, and Abby have all gone through a lot. When we meet them again, I don’t want to see them question their decisions every episode. Let them own their choices and move forward!! They’re grown-ups now omg. Give them all new dilemmas please.

If this is really a reboot for the show and for the characters then let’s tell a new story. “What will we do to survive?” is always gonna be the center of the series but I hope the writers approach it in a new way, that it’s not about the toll of constantly escalating power. That journey is done.  It’s been told, and by the end of s4 our favorites have all grown and changed as a result of it. When the survivors emerge from the bunker neither Clarke nor Bellamy will be in charge–so I hope the show takes this opportunity to try new things for their characters. For example, explore the drama of small group politics. Explore family in a way that isn’t just about conflict. Explore discovering love again when everything you used to understand about your loved one has changed. Explore new people and new alliances and new tests. Let’s see ADVENTURE again.

By s5, Clarke and Bellamy are free of the agonies of traditional leadership, now responsible only to their small family clusters. We’ve never seen them this separate from group obligation. I want to see what kind of people that reprieve has made them. Please @the100writers, show us the characters growing new directions.

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Gen 1

So with the first 151 Pokemon under our belt, let's look back on this ol' bunch of weirdos.

I was pretty young when Pokemon was first released in 1998 in the states, a whopping six years old. And even then, I think I was slightly late to the Pokemon craze. Maybe? Apparently, the anime had been airing the US for some time before the games actually came out, which throws off my mental calendar a bit. The very idea of Pokemon was unheard of, and this little sub-genre of Monster Collector RPGs had only just started. I know Digimon's still kicking, but is Monster Rancher still around these days? I know today we have the likes of Ni No Kuni and Yokai Watch. Ni No Kuni's a little closer to a traditional RPG for my liking, and Yokai Watch just isn't my style, but I appreciate that Monster Collector games aren't exclusive to Pokemon.

Like I said, traditional RPG games really aren't my cup of tea. It ends up feeling slow and I would much rather be swinging a sword myself than be telling a character to swing it for me. Pokemon comes to a beautiful middle-ground where it makes sense that you wouldn't be performing the actions yourself, you're the one giving commands to your pretend mice and dogs! It's that distinction alone that attracted me to the idea of Pokemon. It's an adorable game where you collect your little freaks of nature and grow attached to them as they wreck face across your journey, growing stronger and stronger until you got a super-dog biting the faces off of anything that stands in your way. That right there is the core spirit of Pokemon.

But that's more like my feelings about the series as a whole and what attracted me to it. What about Generation 1 itself?

It's a shame Pokemon's golden years are over. It's so weird to think about. For me, Pokemon's always been massively important, constantly there. To look back at it in retrospective, it's mindblowing to think Pokemon became a world-changing phenomenon for a while, to a point where Pikachu was probably a bigger face for Nintendo than Mario was for a bit there. Hell, there was a second wave of that when Pokemon Go came out!

I can see why Gen 1 has that kind of appeal to it. The First Generation of Pokemon has a flavor to it that's hardly touched upon in the series anymore. I can get why some old fans that dropped out of Pokemon feel the way they do. Me, I both love and am a little tired of Gen 1. Moreso love, I’m just the kind of person that likes to see new stuff. There’s just no denying Gen 1′s style was classic, and with Pokemon shifting the style every generation, it’s a bit no wonder why more “casual” fans of Pokemon were put off at one point or another and left. I'd rather each Generation has its own flavor than feeling like one gigantic entity of creatures.

And, in all honesty, Gen 1 hasn't aged amazingly for me. It aged better now that I've dug through them all to pick out ones I like, but also I sure did find a pretty handful that I actually kind of dislike. While yeah, I’ve always known there’s Pokemon I’m not too much a fan of, I never quite realized how many are from Gen 1. That’s why I’ll end up saying Gen 1 is one of my least favorite Generations if you ask me. Least favorite, not that I dislike the generation as a whole.

I don’t think it’s necessarily Gen 1′s fault either, a lot of it is just how my taste in my pocket monsters changed a lot since I was younger. I appreciate that they're there, but I've wound up gravitating more towards newer Pokemon that have wilder color schemes, and with designs that look a little more exotic. Gen 1′s very much a product of its time, and I’ve been of the opinion that Pokemon’s generally (barring a few hiccups along the way) has only gotten better with Pokemon designs. Sadly, the sacrifice has been that newer designs are little less weird until recently.

No matter what I think, Gen 1′s clearly done a lot right. It’s spring-boarded the series into success for a reason, even if it’s not likely Pokemon will slam into the level of success Gen 1 had. At least, not unless they make some major revitalizing game like Pokemon Go.

For now though, I'm gonna follow suit with Bogleech and create a few categories to sort some Pokemon into.

Top 10 Favorites of Gen 1:

For future Generations, there's going to be a “Favorites as of this far”, but obviously with just Gen 1 done so far, that'd be redundant. Also, clearly these are from left to right in order.

My tops change quite a bit throughout the years. For a while, I could comfortably say Flareon was my favorite, but then I had a little rediscovery with Vulpix and Ninetales. Vaporeon and Victreebel are also newcomers to my list from recently.  And man, Venusaur’s probably gonna remain on this list for good. That nostalgia factor is too strong.

Bottom 10 Least Favorites of Gen 1:

My least favorites hardly change at all, really. I've pretty solidly not been very keen on any of these Pokemon for the better part of all these years. And really, Dragonite and Persian are only lower than Machamp because not only are they kind of boring, but they’re evolutions to things infinitely cooler than they are. The squandered potential!

I dunno if I'll give this category the treatment of the above one, where I'll keep track of my least favorites the longer this series goes on. Maybe, if nothing else to find out a list of my least favorites. Because I'm actually not that sure which Pokemon to call my least favorites.

Though, I got nothing against Dewgong or Tauros. They're just eh.

The Cutest:

These will be 6 instead of 10. And also in no particular order.

Perhaps what you'd expect where you ask someone to name off the cutest Pokemon. I'll stick Kangaskhan there for being a Pokemon with an adorable mother-child thing going on. Other than Kangaskhan, probably my official “would keep as a pet” tier.

The Coolest/Most Badass:

While having a little more variance in terms of which are my favorites or not, here's a pack of Pokemon that are unmistakably cool.

The Prettiest:

“Pretty” feels like a rare subtype of Pokemon compared to Cool or Cute, but I'll take a jab at it anyway. These are Pokemon that have pleasantly flowing designs and are just plain nice to admire. Maybe “Eyecandy” Pokemon would be a better name for them.

Most Creative:

Because my tastes are pretty conventional, the Pokemon that are more atypical deserve a shout-out too. I find them all neat or interesting, with varying degrees of how much I like them.

Weirdest/Most Unique:

And of course, here's some designs that are just plain out there, and very much unlike any other Pokemon. Gen 1's got a lot of these, but here's a handful.

Most Forgettable:

And of course, here are some designs that just strike me as generally unremarkable, and thus I just end up forgetting about them entirely. I may be “meh” about quite a few Gen 1 Pokemon, but these are just so thoroughly “meh” the only thing bringing em to mind at all lately is Pokemon Go. (And Sun and Moon, in the case of Persian and Tauros.)

Most Under-Appreciated:

There's a few Pokemon that either go totally unnoticed or are outright hated on unfairly. The latter are hardly ever in Gen 1, but there's quite a number of Gen 1 Pokemon that are under the radar by this point in the series. This one's a bit hard because I found it difficult to find Pokemon that I both liked a lot and that other fans don't like. Like, Raichu's not neglected by the fanbase exactly, it's got its fair share of fans. It's just there because of Gamefreak, really.

Summing Up Gen 1 in 6 Pokemon:

These are 6 cherry-picked Pokemon that I feel best encapsulate the spirit of Gen 1. You got your saurian badasses in Scyther and Rhydon, the cutie, pure animal-types in Raichu and Eevee. Pikachu aside, Charizard's basically the mascot of Gen 1, whether I like it or not. And then you got goofy little weirdos like Poliwhirl there. Possibly switch out Scyther or Rhydon for either Magneton or Koffing, because this generation also feels more industrial than the usual.

And finally...

My Gen 1 Team:

Though, bear with me. This was 18 friggin years ago and I was 6 or 7 years old at the time. I remember watching the anime and playing the spinoffs vividly, but for some reason playing the main-series game of Blue, in particular, is such a blur I honest to god can't remember my entire team. Hell, I'm not even sure if I had a full team of 6! For all I know I just cruised on through off of Venusaur, Raichu, Pidgeot, and Lapras alone. And then when I got to the Indigo League, I caught all the Legendary Birds and wrecked house using them. All of them probably had Hyper Beam too.

I'd also put my Leaf Green team here, but honestly I don't remember it either. And I'm fairly certain I never completed Leaf Green.

And at last, that’s all we have to say about Gen 1. I’ll take a brief break (About a week or so) before we move on to our next subject, Gen 2! See you in Johto!

[Archive]

[redscullyrevival]

Blood of Dragons: Rain Wilds Chronicles Rundown

Mixing up the format a little bit today, but we’ll make it through @sonnetscrewdriver!

Thymara

First lets state the truth: Thymara has changed a lot from the first book.

Thymara has undoubtedly grown and has gone on to make her own rules, her biggest change being she has learned to love and understand herself.

I see that, Hobb has made that clear.

What’s hard about Thymara is that while I’ve come far in appreciating her as a character, in the end I don’t really agree with her views.

Which isn’t like a big deal. It would be if Hobb didn’t express her character’s as well as she does but like most characters in Realm of the Elderlings I understand Thymara. 

I get her.

I just don’t agree with her, and I’m not talking about her “choosing” Tats over Rapskal, although the two boys do represent narrative ideas so in a way they are connected - but whatever ignore that for now lol.

Rapskal was being an asshole during his and Thymara’s confrontation right before the dragon’s flight to Chalced. He was angry and hurt and probably scared and was lashing out with words and accusations. 

But while he was in the wrong, he wasn’t making stuff up.

“How is that fair? What sort of love did you have for me, that demands that I must always remain the same?” - that’s some real shit right there.

“You still can’t step away and decide things for yourself.” - like DAMN!

This Elderling series was all about changing the rules, changing social structures, just as much as it was about physical changes being tied to our inner personal changes. 

I mean, it’s not a ~coincidence~ all the Keepers are adolescents; The Rain Wilds Chronicles is a unveiled (hah!) coming of age story displaying all the insecurity, fear, sexuality, mental tribulation and physical changes one experiences when stepping into adulthood - and when social constructs are restructured anew.

And at the end of the story Thymara is still pretty childish. 

Which isn’t inherently bad! 

Thymara is just going much slower than others are. She is choosing to go slower and that’s her choice and it’s a choice expressed well within her character arc, her agency is clear. 

What I disagree with is Thymara’s belief that her views, her chosen pace, is ‘correct’ (and I’m a little miffed the narrative leans towards supporting her view, which in my opinion dilutes the potency of the CHANGING THE RULES! themes).

Now, Thymara doesn’t express this directly towards others that often and really the only person she seems intent on passing judgement on is Rapskal (well, and Jerd) - and a part of that is because Rapskal puts her in that position, he pulls just as much as he pushes that’s true.

Which is why Tat’s won out in the romance department and that was the right choice for those characters in keeping their characterization honest. 

My point is that Thymara has made the correct choice for herself, that’s thoroughly explored, but her continued unease about whatever everyone else is doing and how they are changing (especially Rapskal) is telling. 

And as a third independent thinking party Thymara comes off as a bit pious to me. 

I feel in my bones if we ever come across her again we may see her look back on her early steps into adulthood with embarrassment.

Thymara is going to come out of her adolescence a lot safer, a lot sturdier then others due to her slow pace but not necessarily more emotionally or mentally secure. 

Her risks remain low, Thymara only starts to actively engage her own life at the end of the tale.  

But what was her last moment in the series? She flew! However briefly. 

I believe Thymara’s wings are representative of the idea that she is going to continue growing, that eventually she’ll be higher than everyone and when she rises her perspective will drastically shift. 

Because time is it’s own change; aging is it’s own change; incorporating experience into your life is it’s own change; and Thymara has taken the tortoise route. 

Then there is this guy:

Rapskal

Rapskal is in the opposite direction of Thymara with his own terrifying adolescence pitfalls.

Rapskal believes that because he has absorbed memories of older people (in passage of time and age) he thus has experience - and that’s somewhat true! 

Reyn confirms this when he is shocked that Rapskal can beat him in swordplay. Rapskal’s body absorbs and remembers Tellator as much as his mind; he is built mentally different than the other Elderlings and he is stronger both in body and conviction. 

The rub is that Rapskal uses memory stones as shorthand for his own existence, uses them to bypass his own early stage adulthood and skip to being someone new entirely. 

He’s already committed to his new perspective, he has already flown whereas Thymara is only starting to believe that maybe someday she can.

But he is still someone of his own making, incorporated memories and all!

Rapskal has made choices just as much as Thymara has. Neither of them are wrong in their choice because the point is that the choices belong to them individually, the issue is that they can’t see it that way yet.

Because that’s growing up; can't see the forest for the trees.

And sometimes people get lost and/or grow apart. 

Thymara shouldn’t have sat around and sulked and felt sad about how SHE was loosing her friend Rapskal - she thought of him only as how he related to herself and what she wanted him to be.

Rapskal shouldn’t have pressured Thymara into treating the memories she absorbed as he was treating the ones he did, he made the same adolescent mistake when it comes to growing up in close proximity with others - he too considered her as how she related to himself and what he wanted her to be to him. 

Basically Thymara and Rapskal are seriously convincing teenage protagonists! LOL

Those teenage years are full of selfishness, confusing, draining, terrifying, selfishness. They are! That’s what’s so hard about them, you don’t see it until you’re past it, until you’re above it.

And I think that’s the deal with Elderling’s coming from Humanity.

Check it:

Plot/Narrative/Setting

We know now that Elderlings come from humans; so in a lot of ways we can view humanity as an adolescent stage.

Kelsingra itself is like the adult form of Trehaug; traveling up river the water starts to run clear and the ground begins to firm.  

Growing up is hard, the physical changes take getting use to; the solid ground feels odd compared to the swinging imbalance of the last place.

Humanity is changing to survive and learning to coexist with dragons once again; the growing pains of which is it’s own social, ideological, adolescence.

I think you get my point!

No one knows exactly what they’re doing. Everyone is just making Elderling society up as they go for the most part - the beautiful self discovery and terrifying responsibility of adulthood transferred onto an entirely new race and society.  

It’s a little frustrating we won’t get to directly see the Elderling’s ascend but they’re now far too big a presence in the narrative space to not come back to, possibly even sooner than later! I’m excited to see what Fiz and The Fool has to offer me and what kind of thematic extension it may be to the end of Rain Wilds.

Because this last book feels like another set up, doesn’t it?just a little bit? It feels like Blood of Dragons is leaning into another book - but that could just be the anticlimactic tone lol.

I’m super excited to go back to Fiz and see how he’s doing and what nonsense he’ll be sucked into next but, again, it’s frustrating I won’t get to experience the keeper’s owning their choices and owning adulthood - as with Thymara I’m really pressed to see how time and age will change their views of their journey up the river and into Elderings. I don’t want to wait! Haha, silly. 

Something that was disappointing with the end of this book is that because the cast is so large it doesn't feel like a lot of people get any kind of closure for the reader, you know?  

Tats and Thymara getting the last scene made me a little worried, like maybe I misunderstood the series? I worried that maybe their relationship meant more to the narrative then I had picked up on simply because it was given the weighty place of being the last scene, whereas many loose threads among the many other characters were left dangling.

So that was a bit unsatisfying. 

But all in all most everyone got their grand (to little) moments of confirmation in who they’ve become.

Not my favorite book in the series but still a solid entry!

AND MY BABIES LIVED! Yaaayayyaayayaaaaaaaaaa *gurgle* 

Alise

Alise is off and rolling! I hope she gets the recognition she deserves for her scholarly work and I hope she continues to pursue it, just as I hope she continues to pursue her new life.

I appreciated how quickly Alise found happiness, found what she wanted, and didn’t torture herself with denying herself that happiness (unlike some Six Duchies men I know...)

Alise and Leftrin’s bond is secure and I really liked how the confrontation with Hest was at no point played for will-she-won’t-she-drama, we knew she had no remote desire to return to hest, no hesitation to cast him aside to his face. 

Alise’s total and instant shutdown of Hest was hard won on her part and I liked how it wasn’t treated in the narrative like this glorified shiny moment but rather a resented necessity. 

Captain Leftrin

The sweetest and most stoic man, partner to my favorite Liveship. 

Just a treat. <3

Sedric

Good job Sedric! Well done!

Sedric has come a long way and still has further to go.

His struggle with trying to untangle himself from what Hest shaped him into and then what of that shape he genuinely enjoys or wants to discard is interesting stuff that I wish we could have dug into a little deeper - another draw back of having such a huge cast.

Overall we leave Sedric in a good place, I get the feeling he’ll settle into a place of some importance in new Elderling society and I hope his organization and communication skills are put to good use, for his and other’s benefit. 

Precious man. 

Tats

So I’m sitting here, trying to think of what to write about for Tats and the first thing I did was think, “Well, why did Thymara want?”

Why am I thinking about Thymara when I’m trying to talk about Tats?!

That’s what’s so frustrating to me about this character! 

I. Don’t. Know. Him.

I don’t want to say Tats is boring but Tats is borning.

He is nice.

He is patient.

That’s it?

I’m indifferent to Tats and Thymara ending up together. I’m not invested in their relationship and never was, nor was I ever really sold on the non-love-triangle stuff.

And that’s why the ending of the series felt like maybe I missed something? LOL 

Like, I was sitting there going “Wait, really? We’re ending on this note with these two? Oh shit I didn’t invest right.” 

It was a weird realization! I also realized I didn’t care lol 

I think I still got plenty out of the series and understood the wider themes just fine even if the specific route of Thymara/Tats eluded me.

Highlighted Passages

She could change. She wasn’t chained to her past. She could become someone who wasn’t merely a product of what others had done to her. It wasn’t too late.

Isn’t it what humans have done for generations? We claim the land as ours and turn it to our purposes. We change the channels of rivers and the face of the land so that we can travel by boat or grow a crop or graze cattle. And we think it only natural that we should shape the whole world to be comfortable and yielding for humankind. Why should dragons be any different in how they perceive the world?

From Ronica Vestrit of the Vestrit Traders, Bingtown To Whatever Incompetent Bird Handler is accepting messages in Cassarick

Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living among the shattered pieces.

She’d had to change her image of herself from the very bones out. Ultimately, she knew, it had been good for her. That did not mean she enjoyed being reminded of it.

When she ventured into her memory sampling, it was for a specific purpose and she kept her attention tightly focused on what she wanted to know, refusing all other tugs at her attention. It was like diving into deep cold water to retrieve a sparkling stone.

It was Tarman’s way, and for himself, Leftrin was grateful that his liveship was more taciturn than most. He did not think he could have enjoyed a chatterbox like the Ophelia or a moody and dramatic ship like the Paragon. But there, it was probably like it was for children. Each parent thought his was the best, and doubtless every captain would prefer his own liveship to any other.

She tried to see him impartially; was he an ugly child, doomed to be rejected by other children as he grew? She had found she could not tell. He was Ephron, her little boy, and his differences were part of who he was, not points to be compared with others.

King and queen. It made her ridiculously sad. The dreams of Malta the girl might come true even as the longings of Phron’s mother were destroyed. 

He blurted out the words and then was horrified. He had never intended to speak of it to anyone. Having someone else know about it made it real.

“There is something about knowing that someone is taking pleasure in giving you incredible pain . . . with no remorse. It changes how you see yourself; it changes what you can believe of other people. It changes everything.”

Elderlings found a way, but I do not recall the details of it. They could touch it and wear it on their hands to work their magic. It gave intent to stone, and it spoke to wood and pottery and metal, bidding it be a certain shape or react in a given way. And those things did as the Elderlings bade them. They made doorways from it, entries of stone that they used to travel to their other cities. They created buildings that stayed warm in the winter. They made roads that always remembered they were roads and did not allow plants to break them. The most powerful of them sometimes used Silver to transform themselves at death, going into the statues they made to preserve a strange sort of life for themselves.

And ridiculous red Heeby flew wherever she would, now part of the formation, now trailing it, now flying to one side. Her slender scarlet rider sang as they flew, a song of anger and vengeance, but also one that praised the beauty of angry dragons in flight and painted a glorious victory for them. Ridiculous, and ridiculous that she and the others enjoyed it so. Thymara had complained more than once about how freely the dragons used their glamour to compel their keepers to tend them. Yet not once had she ever admitted the power that human flattery and praise in song could exert over dragons. She was not the only dragon who flew with her mind full of Rapskal’s glorious images of exotically beautiful dragons triumphing over every obstacle.

But Sedric, what have you done? All will know that you . . .” “That I am what I am,” he said calmly. “I do not apologize for that. Ever.”

“I knew Hest existed. I knew you’d been his. There were times when I felt like a thief. There was a day when Sedric took me on about it, saying that I was going to ruin your whole life by loving you. Made me feel selfish and low for wanting you.” “It seems a lifetime ago.” She smiled at him. “We used to worry about such peculiar things.”

“He made no cry for vengeance when I was the one who was dying,” she observed sourly to her Elderling. “Yet let them succeed in giving him a bellyache, and he will melt all their cities with venom.”

Malta was not pleased to let him go and not only because she feared for him. No, she had wanted to be the one to ride the queen into battle.

He and Carson and Malta had had several long and philosophical conversations about how these new Elderlings might form their society. This was his first unveiled look at it, and he tried to conceal his surprise and dismay. 

Distantly he heard Davvie shouting something about “you torn-up old umbrella!” 

“You’ve seen many things in the stone, haven’t you, Tellator?” He looked at her consideringly. “I lived many things,” he replied. “And other things I know from the stone ancestors I chose for myself. If one is to be a warrior, then one chooses the accounts of warriors, to read them from the stone and to use their experience again. And so I am Tellator, but I am also the ones that Tellator incorporated into himself.”

Brashen scratched his chin and then smiled at Althea. “Changing history seems to run in your family. First Wintrow and Malta, now Selden.” He took a sip of his tea. Paragon spoke up, his voice wry. “So fortunate for you that you married the sane, responsible female in the family.” Brashen choked.

We begin a new time. Perhaps we begin with new ways.

[find-your-rp-partner]

Fandom partner search

Hello everyone! Estrella here. Right now I’m searching for some new roleplay partners. Long term or short, looking for both. Some stuff: Partners must be 18+, no exceptions. I write in paragraph form I use third person, past tense Email only Smut is fine with me Limits: In the roleplay itself, no limits for me. I go by what the other person is comfortable, and each of my characters would have their own ‘limits’ depending on their personality and how they are written. Please let me know what your limits are, and if there are any kinks you, or your character, has. Please do not god-mod my character. Most experience with m/f, though willing to m// or f// Can do single characters, also willing to double, or use multiple side characters. Alright, so with that over with, here’s what I’m looking for. Fandoms – AU, though we can stick fairly close to story if you want. I just like AU because it gives a bit more leeway in the writing. Original ideas – always good in my opinion. Fandoms I am interested in at the moment: Video games: ***Final Fantasy 15 (have played Final Fantasy 10, 10-2, 12 and 15, willing to do rp based on any. Have ideas for 10 and 15.) ***Persona 5 – can also include earlier persona, though I’ve only played #5. Pokemon – Mystery Dungeon, Coliseum, and any of the other games. Have not watched anime past first season, and picked up a few here and there. *Assassins Creed – have played all of them. *Rogue Galaxy – or a version there off. (Zegram is my favorite character, though they are all cool) *Mafia - #3 is the only one I have played, but Vito is my favorite character by far. Really enjoy his storyline. Books/Movies: Three Musketeers Count of Monte Cristo Avengers   (Loki redemption anyone? Fine without it, but he is my favorite character and I have a plot twist for him. I would like to play as him) Black Butler – or something based off it. **Tortall – I’d like to do an AU of any of Tamora Pierce’s books that are set in Tortall, or come up with an entirely new story set in that world. Harry Potter  - have read the books, have not seen movies. Lord of the Rings Vampire Knight  - or a variation of it.  *Cross-overs.    These are always welcome.

Final Fantasy 10:  In the game, Tidus is the son of the person that became Sin. Well, I have an idea for an OC, to take Tidus place.  Sorta.  Back when Yunalesca obtained the 'Final Summoning' that was not, in fact, the true final summoning. She was supposed to activate a lift in Zanarkand that would take her to the final temple, that floated high above Mr. Gagazet. There, she would wake the final summon - the man named Yevon. Yu Yevon's (being inside Sin) brother. By calling on all the summons she had obtained so far she would give the final summon wings - Valefor, strength - Ifrit, Sword (or spear) - Ixion, and ultimate attack - Bahamut. Other summons would add other things as well. However, she chose to not do that, instead creating her own Final Summoning and challenging Sin without the true Final Summon. Thus creating the cycle of death. Yeven slumbers on though, still waiting for the day he would be summoned for a battle against his brother, to save the people from Sin's destruction.  - We could start by playing part of that storyline out, or we can just jump to where Yevon (or whatever name he goes by, when he's not the summon) is woken from his state as a fayth by Auron. Shortly after he is woken, Sin attacks- in this case, Jecht could still be the oc's father, or we could have it that he was a guardian of the OC, when the oc first did the journey to gain strength and become the final fayth. After that, general follow the storyline, though the OC would have a connection with the summons. ***Final Fantasy 15: I have a couple ideas for this one. One is basically the main storyline, the other one is a possible redemption arc. In this version, King Regis and the Emperor were in peace talks when assassins hit (From a cult of Ifrit), trying to take out both rulers. King Regis is now in a deep sleep (almost like an Odin’s sleep), while the Emperor is injured but able to rule. Since Regis is currently passed out, the Emperor claims control and takes over, saying peace talks will resume when Regis wakes, but till then he will rule to ensure the country remains ‘protected.’ Some of the Kingsguard remain to protect the sleeping Regis, while others go to try and find the assassins, and figure out who did this. Meanwhile what Noctis and crew is up to remains the same, only he learns his father is in a deep sleep, not dead. The Emperor puts out a ‘search’ for Noctis, claiming that he thinks the prince should be with his father. Though Cor and the other Kingsguard do not trust the Emperor’s intentions, and advice Noctis to avoid being taken back to Insomnia until they know what’s going on. After Noctis meets with Cor, and gets the first of the Royal Arms, Gentiana pays a visit.  Here’s a little ‘clip’ that explains it fairly well. Cor paused as he stepped out of the Royal Tomb, frowning slightly as he saw the tall dark haired woman standing nearby. “Gentiana? Why aren’t you with the Oracle?” “The Oracle is resting for now, and I’ve a message I must deliver.” She turned, her eyes locking on Noctis. “Two paths lay before you, following the same road for the most part but branching at times. When the path truly splits one way leads to many deaths, but a cleansing of this world. The other path leads to many trials, but to a redemption. Both paths involve the dark king of old. In the first path, you will have to kill the dark king. But in killing him the chance of saving your father dies, and the astrals will claim their payment as well. The second path before you is the harder of the two. Where you redeem the darkened heart of the dark king. Once redeemed he has the ability to heal your father, and to drive the darkness away. This path is a dangerous one, as some astrals will support you and others will not. Just as their support was split on him. Shiva was killed for defending him, and he was cursed because the astrals feared him. To redeem him, you must understand him. To understand him, you must learn his past, discover how he became as dark as he now is.” Gentiana shook her head. “Both paths will be trying and tiring. Both will be hard. Make your choices carefully. The Dark King sees you as his salvation. Either his death or redemption. He also sees you as competition.” She motioned to the royal tomb. “There are twenty six tombs total. He has already collected the weapons from three, and searching for the others. You would be wise to focus your search and find as many as you can, before he. If he gathers more then you, there is no chance of you defeating him. For redemption, or death.” “Dark King? Are you saying there’s another King of Insomnia?” Ignis demanded. “Impossible, King Regis had only one child, and Noctis is the only living relative.” “The dark King was born ages past, and cursed by the astrals with immortality and cursed healing because they knew with the royal ring he would surpass their power. They would not be able to demand their usual price. He was once a healer, a protector, but his many years in darkness have made his heart cold.” She shook her head. “That is all I can tell you, for now. Your paths will cross again and again, this is without a doubt.” “One way is death the other redemption huh?” Prompto looked at the others then turned to ask Gentiana another question, but the woman was gone. In this setting I’d like to have an Ardyn and oc pair that we follow. He is determined to destroy the power of the astrals and return free use of magic to mortals. He also wishes to free the royal line from having to pay a price, to protect the country.  Would also like to see Noctis’ group followed. Each of us could choose one character as our main the other two would be secondary. And go from there. Since this is Au, I’m fine with switching out the party members some. Could have an oc instead of one of the original party. ***Final Fantasy 15 / Persona 5 crossover:*** The Final Fantasy portion would follow what I have above (or something similar depending on what we decide.)  The Persona 5 part would occur in the Lestallium, the Persona 5 world is in Lestallium, and the area stretching north of that, but it would have a social structure similar to in the Persona 5 game. In this AU, the metaverse and the real realm have already ‘crossed over’ to some extent, as daemons are shadows that were powerful enough to cross over on their own. By defeating shadows in the metaverse, it reduces the amount of daemons in the ‘real world.’ Akechi would find redemption in this version, or could, depending on how it plays out. The black mask is because his own shadow has grown powerful enough to take control of him in its shadow form. (Just not as badly as Ardyn is) He is a wild card, like Akira. Though if Akira and the others are able to free Akechi before it’s too late is up to be seen. (Very possible that Akechi has a sibling who is doing the killings willingly, while Akechi is actually being manipulated by ‘Igor’ though that depends on how the story goes and what the person playing him decides.) For the most part these two would be going on at the same time, but separate. We could focus on one and switch back and forth between the two, or we could do both at the same time. One on the top part of the email the other on the bottom. At some point they would encounter Ardyn, and there would be a way to tie the two together. Perhaps Ardyn’s full ‘redemption’ is impossible without his palace being explored and treasure taken. They may even learn about his palace right after they finish the first one, but find it impossible to go past the first floor at first, so they have to focus on other things while they work at becoming stronger, trying to unlock more of his palace. Also thinking that eventually (not at first) they discover they are able to call on their persona in the real world, for protection.  Of course any ideas or suggestions on the above is welcome. Persona 5:  I would have a ton of fun doing this one. I’d like to do a redemption for Akechi. As I mentioned add a second dark mask- his brother or half-brother. Or even a half-sister. Have the black mask represent a shadow, instead of a persona. The mask is black because the shadow is in control of the person, not the person in charge of the persona. Assassins Creed: My idea here is a combination of the present day, and trips into the animus. In the present day there are two people, a man and a woman, that are being sent into the animas to search for artifacts, live through memories, and so on. In the real world, one is an assassin the other a templar. In the animus, the family lines jump between the two some, sometimes the two working together, sometimes the two fighting each other. The chain of memories they are following clashes repeatedly. Going as far back as the Crusades, to as recent as the World Wars.  The two don't realize they are meeting another person inside the animus, at least not at first, but they slowly start to form a connection until things just click and they realize the other person is another person inside the animus memories. So, what happens? Does the assassin convince the Templar to join the Assassians, or does the Templar convince the Assassian to betray the Assassians? Do they go their sepreate ways, or do they fight? Only time will tell. So those are my current ideas but if any of the other fandoms catch your interest, or if you have a different idea all together, feel free to let me know.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in any of the ideas above, or have an idea of your own, shoot me an email at estrella.lemar@gmail.com

[theworstbob]

i listened to the 100 most popular songs from 2016 today

100) "Perfect," One Direction

I am glad that this list started with a lovely cover of Tay Tay's "Style." I was worried none of these songs would actually be good! Like, this cover isn't anywhere near as good as the Postmodern Jukebox version, but they handled it capably, and it's hard to go wrong with this song. These five nice boys picked a very good song to yap!

99) "See You Again," by Wiz Khalifa ft/Charlie Puth

I honestly can't believe that Fast and Furious is the most reliable institution in America. Think about everything in this country that has failed or is failing us. Think of what is happening in this country, and then think of the few things that are happening which are good. It's Fast and Furious and the DVSBlast Twitter account. Those are the only two things we can trust right now.

98) "Timmy Turner," by Desiigner

So I’m not sure why this song brings up The Fairly Odd Parents, but this is a nightmare to listen to and think about, and I wanna talk some Cosmo. I believe, with my heart and my soul, Cosmo belongs in the Dumb TV Character Pantheon. This feeling exists within me because I will always remember this exchange from one of the movies, after Cosmo is separated from Wanda: Cosmo: I can't date again! I'm terrible at small talk! Ask me about the weather! Timmy: Um, how's the weather? Cosmo: JEFF! Cosmo is such a good character. I am glad for this excuse to talk Cosmo.

97) "Wicked," by Future

So is there a difference between Metro Boomin not trusting you and Metro Boomin being [indifferent to/unaware of] the fact of my existence? I don't think I should be shot simply because Metro Boomin has never met me and thus would have no reason to trust me. I suppose that wouldn't be a good intro to the track. "If Metro Boomin doesn't care to know who you are, you will be permitted to continue living outside his (admittedly limited) purview."

96) "Humble and Kind," by Tim McGraw

Let's take a second to appreciate the irony of the demographic which made this the 96th-most-popular song in America in 2016 is also the exact same demographic which voted for Trump. "Bitterness keeps you from flying/Always stay humble and kind." HEY GUESS WHAT LORI MCKENNA, BITTERNESS DON'T KEEP YOU FROM SHIT. YOU AND TIM DID NOTHING.

95) "Adventure of a Lifetime," by Coldplay

Oh come on why is this like this is no why

94) "Starving," by Hailee Steinfeld and Grey ft./Zedd

Every song Hailee Steinfeld has made would have been a better closing moment for Pitch Perfect 2 than "Flashlight." Again: imagine all the Bellas past and present on stage singing "I didn't know that I was starving 'til I tasted you." And what did Pitch Perfect 2 try to do? It tried to make Jessie J happen, the least noble pursuit possible short of trying to make Robbie Williams happen. They also made Pentatonix Canadian? We don't talk enough about how Pentatonix was randomly Canadian in Pitch Perfect 2. We don't talk enough about how there are two full movies about a capella music and Pentatonix had a total of three seconds of silent screen time.

93) "All in My Head (Flex)," by Fifth Harmony ft./Fetty Wap

Trap Rappers Doing Feature Verses in Pop Songs is already my favorite thing. Like when Kendrick appears in a Maroon 5 song, it's weird because Kendrick made To Pimp a Butterfly, but you can see how Kendrick can fit himself into a pop song, traditional rap serving at its core as a second percussion track. Fetty Wap is on a different plane of existence.

92) "Really Really," by Kevin Gates

I listened to Islah because it showed up on some list somewhere and I remember listening to this song but don't remember anything about it. It took me a few minutes to remember this was a separate entity from Danny Brown's "Really Doe." So I guess I don't mind this, which is enough for this to take provisional second place.

91) "Cut It," by O.T. Genasis ft./Young Dolph

As much money I would have put against the "In Love with the Coco" guy ever having another hit, I would have put even more money against me enjoying it as much as I enjoyed this song. I'm not gonna tell my grandkids about this song or like listen to it again, but it gave me three and a half minutes I mostly enjoyed.

90) "No Limit," by Usher ft./Young Thug

Usher is basically a dorky dad at this point in his career. You kinda knew he was spiraling into the dorky dad phase of his career when he started on The Voice, and his dorky dad status was cemented when he did an American Ninja Warrior course on Ellen (ANW being a healthy conduit for midlife crises), but he does a song with Young Thug, and it is clear that, okay, maybe the man who made "Yeah!" no longer 100% understands what's going on in this crazy world, but he's down to show us he can still party like he used to. Look at him dance! Betcha didn't think your math teacher could move like THAT, huh! Has anyone seen Thugger? Thugger? Thugger, where a -- oh, the -- Young Thug, what are you doing. No, Young Thug, come on. OK. I think we're all funned out. Get in the car. No dessert for you tonight, mister.

89) "Back to Sleep," by Chris Brown

In the interest of perpetuating the notions that protests are effective and that wrongdoers will be punished, I will be continuing my ban on willingly listening to Chris Brown. I'm still listening to "Waves," tho, but I also didn't exactly acquire that album, so I don't feel like I'm breaking rank with that. I understand I listened to a Kevin Gates album, and I will offer a defense of that action just as soon a -- /dashes away/

88) "Watch Me," by Silento

I really wish Billboard would make a rule prohibiting songs from appearing on year-end lists two years in a row. Like, OK, people were listening to this song in 2016, that's OK, but it was released in March 2015! This cannot be one of 2016's 100-most-iconic songs when it was a Song of the Summer contender in 2015!

87) "All the Way Up," by Fat Joe, Remy Ma, and Jay-Z ft./French Montana and Infared

this beat, though. I'd really like to know if that's synth or a real brass, because I can't find any liner notes for this track, and I can't get over the idea of someone picking up saxophone in fifth grade when they needed to start doing extracurricular activities, realizing they loved playing music, working their ass off to become a highly proficient saxophone player, getting to the level where they have turned the saxophone into their career, getting the call to come to the studio to lay down a track with Fat Joe, and then just playing two measures and it's the most popular thing they ever did.

86) "I Know What You Did Last Summer," by Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello

The girl kinda sounds like Meatwad and the dude kinda sounds like Master Shake. There's a good song somewhere in here but jfc these muppet voices.

85) "Lean On," by Major Lazer & DJ Snake ft./MO

KEEP IT IN 2015. I AM NOT A CRACKPOT.

84) "Hide Away," by Daya

There was a time in my life where I could listen to a song like this and it would be appropriate, and that time was precisely 13 years ago. I think I have to knock on all my neighbor's doors and let them know that I am a 27-year-old who listened to "Hide Away."

83) "When We Were Young," by Adele

So okay I didn't realize I had listened to some dude do this as his The Voice blind audition, and I didn't even look up what this song was because I was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN the dude was singing a Billy Joel song, and now that I know that I heard a cover of an Adele song and thought with absolute certainty that it was a Billy Joel song, I sort of understand why every Adele song leaves me cold.

82) "Pop Style," by Drake ft./The Throne

You know how sometimes, you'll watch some god-awful Dreamworks animated feature that thinks pop culture references count as jokes, and then you get to the end and it gives six different people a "written by" credit? This is why, when I hear a line like "Got so many chains they call me Chaining Tatum," I believe even harder that Drake has a ghostwriter. That line is the sort of painful stupid that only exists when a corporate committee tries to make a joke. Drake is basically if the social media presence of the restaurant Denny's learned how to rap.

81) "On My Mind," by Ellie Goulding

20 deep and we finally found a song I can fully endorse.

80) "Middle," by DJ Snake ft./Bipolar Sunshine

/adjusts glasses /clears throat um maybe turn down for this /bows

79) "Wildest Dreams," by Tay Tay

Man this is 2014 so EXTRA fuck this, but I'd like to say, before we move on from Tay Tay: I think we all know Tay Tay had a rough 2016, or at least as rough a 2016 as anyone could have had while still ending the year being worth tens of millions of dollars. Whenever she releases her follow-up to 1989, it will be overambitious, it will flop, it will be derided, and only overthinking morons like me will stay with it long enough to find its tiny triumphs. But the thing about Tay Tay is, she 100% doesn't need to be a pop star. The second the pop world is done with her, she's going to go back to Nashville, and those hicks will welcome her back with the openest arms imaginable. Her country comeback is already my favorite album of 2019.

78) "Sit Still, Look Pretty," by Daya

BOY AM I EVER NOT THE TARGET DEMO FOR DAYA. THIS FRESH TEEN HAS CORNROWS AND I AM NOT MEANT TO BE AUDIENCE TO HER BRAND OF GIRL POWER.

77) "Side to Side," by Ariana Grande ft./Nicki Minaj

This song gets a lot of goodwill for being the follow-up for the important Ari/Nicki masterwork "Get on Your Knees," and though this is a far inferior work, it does not squander the goodwill built at all.

76) "Lost Boy," by Ruth B

This is easily the second-best sad song with a Peter Pan theme I heard in 2016. Shout-out to Kelsea Ballerini.

75) "Antidote," Travis Scott

One of the things I will miss most about Twitter is the adventures of @dances and Leany, his Travis Scott ad-lib parrot.

74) "Say It," by Tory Lanez

The intro to this music video has two female characters with lines of dialogue, and I don't think I've ever seen a hip-hop music video come closer to passing the Bechdel Test. Anyway this song is nice! It's a lot like that other song I said I enjoyed but wouldn't remember, in that I enjoy it but probably won't remember it by the time I get to the next nice song.

73) "Hymn for the Weekend," by Coldplay

I didn't want to listen to this song, but I told myself I had to for the sake of completionism, and I just, I have so little life's time, and I spent four minutes with a song that I know is bad, that you know is bad, simply to report back to you that this song is, in fact, bad. I don't even have a joke. It's a Coldplay song. What could I possibly have to gain from listening to a Coldplay song in 2017.

72) "Can't Feel My Face," by The Weeknd

I took this excuse to listen to this song again, even if it should stay in 2015, and I learned that they're still making Grammy nominee compilation albums. I still remember, there was one year my mom bought one of those Grammy compilation albums, and I was looking at the track listings, and somehow Bowling for Soup was on it? And I think about Bowling for Soup's Grammy-nominated hit "Girl All the Bad Guys Want" a lot, because it's a potentially problematic song. Like, when you listen to it, it sounds okay enough, it's just a young man recognizing that he's out of his depth with a young woman, recognizing his own flaws and trying to keep up. But then you remember what Bowling for Soup looked like? And the tone of the song is called into question. How can we be sure this song isn't about a young man bleating about how the young woman isn't working hard enough to appreciate him? If you could completely divorce art from artist, "Girl All the Bad Guys Want" would be an undeniable jam, but we cannot, we have to consider that Bowling for Soup left the house every single day thinking looking the way they did was acceptable, and we must consider the persepective from which they saw the song.

71) "Sorry," by Beyonce

One of the funniest things about Serena Williams' extended run of dominance at the top of the WTA is her "rivalry" with Maria Sharapova, because you know Serena is EXTREMELY AWARE that Maria Sharapova makes more from endorsements than she does, and Serena has made it her #1 mission in her tennis career to destroy Maria Sharapova’s credibility every time they meet on a tennis court. I don't think I ever saw Serena Williams play a better tennis match than the final at the 2012 Olympics, like I have no idea how Sharapova didn’t just retire after that match. One of my favorite stats is that Serena Williams lost more matches to Alize Cornet in 2014 than she has to Maria Sharapova in over a decade of head-to-heads. I don't have a comment about "Sorry," y'all know I love this song, I just want to point out the work Beyonce has been doing in getting America to appreciate Serena Williams, and to speculate on who the Maria Sharapova of the extended Beyonce universe is. It's not Tay Tay, Tay Tay is the Angelique Kerber of the EBU (one good year while Beyonce took a few plays off), but who's Beyonce's Sharapova? Katy Perry? They've never been in direct competition, but that might be it.

70) "Luv," by Tory Lanez

This was less nice than his other song.

69) "Down in the DM," by Yo Gotti ft./Nicki Minaj

When asked to summarize 2016 for future generations, I will play them this novelty trap single about sending nudes on Twitter. And then also apologize for the whole Trump thing. I miss snow, too. But "Snapchat me that pussy," tho.

68) "Sucker for Pain," by Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, & Imagine Dragons, w/Logic & Ty Dolla $ign ft./X Ambassadors

That this song is actually coherent is a minor miracle. Honestly, I think you could stack three or four more featued artists on top of this before it really became messy. Also shout out to how apparently the lead singer for Imagine Dragons and the singer for X Ambassadors both have shaved heads and beards. This song didn't do enough to convince me those are two different bands.

67) "Unsteady," by X Ambassadors

My favorite thing in the world for years has been my Imagine Dragons cover band, Imagine Imagine Dragons. No one I have ever told that joke to has thought it was funny, but I only need one laugh.

66) "Close," by Nick Jonas ft./Tove Lo

I AM NOT A CRACKPOT: music videos with stuntwork in them should give the stuntpeople a shout-out in the credits. Stuntpeople should get more respect than they do. Like, the fact there's not even an Oscar for stuntpeople when every single movie is comic book nonsense is a travesty. Anyway this is an okay enough song about hot people who want to make out with each other.

65) "White Iverson," by Post Malone

To everything, no. How dare you.

64) "Die a Happy Man," by Thomas Rhett

I take issue with this guy singing the line "Between the bottle of wine and the look in your eyes and the Marvin Gaye." This dude has probably only listened to one Marvin Gaye song in his life, or at least he thinks he does, because this dude 100% thinks Marvin Gaye sang "Let's Stay Together." This is a song about a man who thinks a girl is hot and wants to have sex with her. Like, that's it. This isn't a love song. This dude is just extremely horny and made a slow jam about it.

63) "Ex's and Oh's," by Elle King

Please, my friends. I know losing this song will be difficult, but join me in pretending we do not walk the same earth as Rob Schneider. We have seen what distorting one's own reality has done for the other team. We will be happier in the shared experience we create for ourselves.

62) "Me Too," by Meghan Trainor

As long as this is what you wanted. As long as you can live knowing you have the power to choose how you live. It didn't have to be like this. But if this is the way you wanted it, then I accept that you have made a decision, and I wish you the best.

61) "In the Night," by The Weeknd

It's kind of amazing that The Weeknd released an album called Kissland and somehow recovered to become a legit star.

60) "Never Be Like You," by Flume ft./Kai

So before, my relationship with the music of Flume was, occasionally, some girl would appear in my "Who to Follow" section on Twitter with a cute avi and the display name "I'm Flume's bitch," and she was recommended because she followed people I knew IRL, and I said, "Hey, I'm like two degrees away from whoever that is." And now that I've bothered to listen to a Flume song, I now understand me and the girl from the Twitter recommendations box never could have been. :/

59) "For Free," by DJ Khaled ft./Drake

I downloaded the Snapchat app, but the first time I used Snapchat, it pointed my camera at me, and I knew immediately this was not an app I was going to use for long. And then I tried to figure out how to use it, and I realized that, by the time I figured out how Snapchat worked, DJ Khaled's Snapchat would have grown stale, so I deleted the app. Anyway here’s Drake, bleating as he ever has.

58) "Starboy," by The Weekend ft./Daft Punk

i mean this is just a fuckin' good song. i'm honestly sorta stunned it's in the middle of this list. i thought it was much bigger. these aren't substantive critical thoughts, but nothing else i've written is, so hey let's keep the party goin'.

57) "2 Phones," by Kevin Gates

This is probably the #1 songs in terms of hooks I have muttered to myself while switching my earbuds from my iPod to my phone after work because I work in a basement with no reception and also live in the year 2004 and need my phone and my music storage device to be two separate entities.

56) "Hands to Myself," by Selena Gomez

On the Wikipedia entry for this song, the "Composition and lyrical interpretation" section is four paragraphs long. This is a song in which a young woman whispers about how nice it is to have sex. The "composition and lyrical interpretation" section describes the song as "a come-hither about finding love through good and bad situations." Come-hither is not a noun. Remember earlier, when I lamented that I couldn't find out who did the instrumentation on "All the Way Up?" This information is available for "Hands to Myself," which is still, if you have forgotten, a young woman whispering about how nice it is to have sex. The song is in the key of E-flat major, yes hahaha major key that's right very good, and the tempo is 111 BPM. You ever just think about how much information is on the Internet, how much of that information is necessary, and how much information we decide to take in anyway?

55) "Oui," by Jeremih

I wasn't focusing on this song because I tried to copy and paste the flat symbol into the WordPad document in which I drafted this but it kept fucking up the formatting, which is an insane thing to think about given that I have to reformat this once I paste the words into tumblr, but I assume I didn't actually need to hear it beyond the immediate need of listening to some tunes for this piece.

54) "679," by Fetty Wap

The great and terrible thing about the absence of Punk Goes Pop compilations is that I think "Trap Queen" would have been an excellent pop/punk cover, but they would've given it to one of the screamo/hardcore bands. I'm still holding out hope for that Punk Goes Broadway comp, tho. Maybe if I write enough letters to State Champs, I can get them to cover "I'm Alive?"

53) "Exchange," by Bryson Tiller

"Next time around, fuck, I want it to be different." I respect this song for using fuck as a resigned interjection mid-song. As someone who describes his general aesthetic as "fuck, dude," I think it's a cool move.

52) "Gold," by Kiiara

Yo I dig this! I like how I could listen to this chorus for a million years and never be able to understand what she's singing. "Gold" by Kiiara! What's in there? I love it!

51) "Into You," by Ariana Grande

sometimes i think about "the way," and like i get why ariana grande is doin' what she's doin' now and i respect her and think she produces jams? but man, there were so many other directions she could have taken her career.

50) "We Don't Talk Anymore," by Charlie Puth ft./Selena Gomez

Two duets on this list so far, and they're both not great, but let's ask a question: what is the best pop/punk duet ever? Your contenders are: 1) "Vicious Love," New Found Glory with Hayley Williams 2) There is no two. I care deeply about pop/punk and find the fact there's only one pop/punk duet of note shameful. Do better. Thank you for allowing me this soapbox.

49) "H.O.L.Y.," by Florida Georgia Line

So we've had two bro country tracks on the list, and I have to think this is the last, and this is a really interesting echo. Chris Stapleton, a really unique artist who dropped a dope traditional-country album called Traveller in 2015, won that year's CMA for Album of the Year, which sent a signal to the world of country music: MORE LIKE THIS, YA YUTZES. So all of a sudden, you have the bro country asshats dropping nonsense like this to prove they're "real" artists, that they're about more than having a good time and oglin' babes, they could be Serious Artists. Except their definition of Serious Artistry is just Make A Ballad, forgetting that Chris Stapleton's "Parachute" is a wrecking ball of a song which still goes hard enough to anchor a truck commercial. (It is an important moment in a white trash boy's life, the first time he recognizes the country song in the truck commercial.) But country consumers aren't discerning, and they are happy to have just the slightest hint of emotional acknowledgement (not depth or complexity, just acknowledgement that, yes, emotions can exist, and are often even felt!), especially when paired with religious overtones. The two longest passages in this piece of shit so far have been me complaining about bro country, and I don't even care, bro country still needs to be stopped.

48) "Don't Mind," by Kent Jones

wow okay, that's a candid camera reference in 2016, i expected this song to be bad for a lot of reasons, but i didn't expect one of those reasons to be dated cultural references. y'all didn't you hear the song about using twitter to fuck? you can't honestly be on your candid camera game.

47) "Let Me Love You," by DJ Snake ft./Justin Bieber

I enjoyed that! Good job, everyone! Y'all crafted a nice 210 seconds, and I think this is the most accurately-placed song on the list! This was definitely the 47th-best pop song of the year.

46) "Never Forget You," by Zara Larsson, MNEK

So like the deeper I get into this list, the more I appreciate the seven minutes I spent with Daya, because OK that's clearly not for me? But at least her songs had a character which I could define as Not For Me. What is this. What am I supposed to be doing with this.

45) "No," by Meghan Trainor

dude same

44) "Let It Go," by James Bay

It took me a little bit to realize James Bay was a separate entity from James Blake, who himself is a separate entity from the tennis player. Basically I briefly thought I was gonna get a jam from the former ATP world #4. I didn't. I also briefly thought this might have been a cover of the Passenger song, though, so that's a plus.

43) "One Call Away," by Charlie Puth

About 15 years ago, Chingy made headlines when the video for his song "One Call Away" featured a performance from Keisha Knight-Pulliam, then and still best known as Rudy from The Cosby Show. The Wikipedia page for Chingy states that he has joined a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, which is for African-Americans who believe they are descended from the ancient Israelites, which, as far as wackadoo religious beliefs go, is far from the most outlandish thing I've ever heard; the Bible never said that, when God parted the Red Sea, he did so in a straight line. It coulda been a curve. We weren't there. We don't know. The point is, Chingy's "One Call Away" is still the song I will most associate with this title, despite Charlie Puth's best... efforts? It’s hard to tell.

42) "Like I'm Gonna Lose You," by Meghan Trainor & John Legend

goddamnit, guys

41) "Controlla," by Drake

I always forget that Drake is just okay at singing, too. Not a lot of dudes can be just ok at rapping and just ok at singing. He's a rare talent.

40) "Same Old Love," by Selena Gomez

Like, this. This is why I appreciate Daya. Daya wasn't this.

39) "Here," by Alessia Cara

But Daya wasn't this, either. Remember this song? This was a great time! A 2015 track if ever there was, but hey, nice to be reminded this song exists!

38) "i hate u, i love u" by Gnash ft./Olivia O'Brien

god this is ponderous. take yourself less seriously, man. "wedding bells were alarms." what is wrong with you. you're a pop musician. listen to Bright Light Bright Light or Fleur East for fuck's sake, get over yourself.

37) "Jumpman," by Drake and Future

I could try to make a joke about how the song Jumpman had its name changed to Mario when it was released somewhere else, but man, that sounds hard. Please just acknowledge that I have demonstrated awareness that the video game character Mario was originally called Jumpman. Please appreciate my knowledge of pop culture fun facts.

36) "Dangerous Woman," by Ariana Grande

I guess the thing is, Ari can release songs like this all she wants, but that won't change the fact that the rumor she has someone who carries her around like a baby everywhere she goes is the most believable rumor in entertainment. Like, everything about that makes sense. It's perfect, and I'm never going to stop believing it, no matter how much leather she wears.

35) "Don't," by Bryson Tiller

OK I officially really dig this dude after he just said the word "skurt" instead of doing the high-pitched trilled-r version of the word. Like, he just said the word "skurt," probably because he can't trill his rs. I love that. This dude's cool in my book.

34) "Broccoli," by Big Baby D.R.A.M. ft./Lil Yachty

i will never know the feeling of stumbling into a time machine and suddenly finding myself 1000 years in the future, the feeling of walking into a world and realizing it has advanced far beyond my comprehension. i can only listen to this song.

33) "Just Like Fire," by P!nk

I looked at the list of #1 country singles to see how many women had scored #1 hits on the country charts. It was three, which was about what I was expecting, but one of them was Pink, who did a duet with Kenny Chesney, and it's just, I accept mortality? But that doesn't mean I have to like it. At least Pink is still dependable. This is minor Pink, but I'd hear the worst Pink song ("Get the Party Started") a million times before I heard "i hate u, i love u" ever again.

32) "The Hills," by The Weeknd

one year, one list

31) "What Do You Mean?" by Justin Bieber

ONE YEAR, ONE LIST

30) "Low Life," by Future ft./The Weeknd

Man, when you put yourself in a situation where you have to listen to a shitton of The Weeknd songs in a short span of time, you appreciate just how good he really is.

29) "Too Good," by Drake ft./Rihanna

So I accidentally clicked on a video of two white teens singing this song instead of the original version? But like I've always said Drake's music is best when interpreted by white teens (see: the late Christina Grimmie singing "Hold On, We're Going Home"), so I'm not gonna say this was a mistake. Oh wait this is a trap cover. Okay. I was not expecting that. Well.

28) "Treat You Better," by Shawn Mendes

So okay I kinda only said this child sounded like Master Shake because the girl in the other song sounded enough like Meatwad that I was willing to say he sounded like Master Shake for the sake of the joke? But see, when I listened to this song, even though this guy didn't sound like Master Shake again, I still heard Master Shake. Create your own reality. Alternate facts. Personal bubbles. We are kings in our heads. I choose to believe this song is a cover of “I Want Candy.”

27) "Roses," by The Chainsmokers ft./ROZES

This song is pretty much "Closer, Jr." Like if you're not ready for "Closer," this would be a way to get you prepared.

26) "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)," by Adele

hey guys adele's morose again, wow, such a powerful artistic statement, greatest voice of our generation

25) "Cold Water," by Major Lazer ft./Justin Bieber & MO

You know, 2016 was awful for a lot of reasons, but Justin Bieber was not one of them, and that itself is actually a reason 2016 was bad. Luckily, time behaves as we want it to, so the world knows to be better because we put new calendars on the wall!

24) "Hotline Bling," by Drake

come on

23) "Stitches," by Shawn Mendes

COME ON

22) "Pillowtalk," by Zayn

Okay real talk we've had our fun the last few years with Ariana Grande's enunciation, but, and I'm willing to concede that I just don't follow the right people, but how the fuck are we letting this dude slide. The song is called "Pillowtalk." He gets six quarter-notes to append the lk. Nope. He just shouts "PILLOWTAAAAAAA." This is unacceptable. Also I'm writing this to listen to the song, and I minimzed the WordPad window after writing the last sentence to check the score of an NFL-brand football game, and I saw a woman bleeding from the eyebrows. Bro, this is a song about how nice it is to have sex. Calm the fuck down.

21) "Heathens," by twenty one pilots

I don't get this and I have zero interest in ever getting it. The reward for getting it isn't worth the effort it would take to get it.

20) "Ride," by twenty one pilots

I have a headache

19) "Me, Myself & I," by G-Eazy ft/Bebe Rexha

see, you know this song is worthless because it omits the oxford comma from the title, something it shares in common with the beyonce song of the same name, which is hands-down her worst single. i'm not even going to listen to it. why should i? it already aligned itself against me.

18) "Cake by the Ocean," by DNCE

THIS IS THE BREEZY SUMMER JAM I HAVE BEEN NEEDING FOR LIKE TEN SONGS, NOW. YOU HEARING THIS SHIT, ZAYN? YOU PAYING ATTENTION, GNASH? IT'S A SONG ABOUT EATING CAKE, AND MAYBE CAKE IS A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING BUT WHO CARES, THE SONG DOESN’T WANT YOU TO PAY ATTENTION, THE SONG WANTS YOU TO GET INTO A CHILL-ASS GROOVE. BLESS THIS FUCKING SONG. I don't feel compelled to acquaint myself further with this group and their works, but hot damn, if I can't get "Bad 4 Us" in the year-end Hot 100, this is an acceptabe substitute.

17) "This Is What You Came For," by Calvin Harris ft./Rihanna

Rihanna is the queen of songs where you just need one line repeated a million times for three and a half minutes. Also one of these days I'm going to figure out what I'm supposed to be hearing in a Calvin Harris song that everyone else is evidently hearing.

16) "Work From Home," by Fifth Harmony ft./Ty Dolla $ign

Having only seen two Fifth Harmony videos, I can say I have the utmost respect for what Fifth Harmony is trying to do with their platform. Bless these young women for committing themselves to putting a thousand hot sweaty men in their music videos. It’s important work.

15) "I Took a Pill in Ibiza," by Mike Posner

I was not expecting this song to be this. This is dope. It's the grooviest Medium post of the year.

14) "My House," by Flo Rida

I said this in a post about Eurovision or something, but Flo Rida has been making really good and trashy pop/rap singles for a decade, and his longevity is something we should be respecting. Flo Rida dropped "Low" the year Kanye dropped Graduation, and he dropped "My House" the year Kanye dropped The Life of Pablo. That is incredible. He's the Pink of the rap game. No one will ever write a think piece about him or think about his music longer than the song is being played, but he is a reliable dispenser of acceptable music. I love you, Flo Rida, for all you do.

13) "Needed Me," by Rihanna

"Pon de Replay" was released two years before "Low." Let's have a brief talk about how long Rihanna has been relevant. She's not even 30 yet! She won't turn 30 until next year! She's younger than Mike Posner, okay by like eight days BUT STILL! That's so incredible! And she has been doing the same thing the entire 12 years! Like, after the transition from "Pon de Replay"/dancehall Rihanna to "Umbrella"/pop megastar Rihanna, she hasn't really done anything interesting, just solid work on a million different songs! Consistency, man. I don't think there's one Rihanna song I could point to and say, "Now THAT'S a song!" or whatever, but I don't think there's a bad single in her oeuvre.

12) "7 Years," by Lukas Graham

There needs to be a happy medium between ZAYN saying "pillowtaaaaa" and this dude hammering every single sound like pronouncing every word correctly is the most important thing in the world.

11) "Cheap Thrills," by Sia ft./Sean Paul

Before I heard this song, I just sorta assumed that Sean Paul was trapped in 2003, where he belonged. Now that I have heard this song, I can confirm that he is trapped in 2003, but he doesn’t seem to mind too terribly. When "Get Busy" was a hit, Sia was on the Garden State soundtrack. That this song exists is a million miracles.

10) "Closer," by The Chainsmokers ft./Halsey

The definitive words on this song have been said, and I will only add that I'm stunned it's only the 10th-biggest song of 2016.

9) "Can't Stop the Feeling!" by Justin Timberlake

The thing about J Timbies is, we gave him a lot of credit for dropping "Cry Me a River" and winning the break-up with Britney, and he has been coasting on that credit for years. More people bought this song than the smash hit #1 single "Closer" by The Chainsmokers, featuring Halsey. This is just "Can't Feel My Face" by the nice white boy who made one good song 15 years ago. This is from the fucking Trolls movie. Say what you will about Despicabe Me 2, at least the franchise was semi-original, it had those adorable minions, it wasn't a pure cash grab, and it deserved "Happy." This is just gross.

8) "Don't Let Me Down," by The Chainsmokers ft./Daya

These dudes made "Selfie." What a stunning turnaround.

7) "Hello," by Adele

it's an adele song, i don't know what you want from me

6) "Panda," by Desiigner

i still don't understand why this song popped up on The Life of Pablo in its original form. Like, Kanye was just, "Yo dudes, I found this new track you guys'll really dig," and apparently we did?

5) "Stressed Out," by twenty one pilots

Like, I get it? Their whole thing? But I'm so fucking old.

4) "Work," by Rihanna ft./Drake

There's a video somewhere of a small pig jiggling in time with this song, and I will not find this video, because it is the sort of thing I believe should only be viewed once and permanently burned into the memory. This song is important solely for that incredible video of the jiggling pig.

3) "One Dance," by Drake ft./Kyla & Wizkid

You know what I just realized? I thought many rap records were better than Drake's. I get why Tribe or De La Soul wouldn't make an appearance in the top 100, and I get that Danny Brown has little mainstream appeal, but like Q doesn't get any love on the pop charts? Young Thug only gets in with a feature on a goddamned Usher track? Not enough people listened to YG's "FDT" to make it explode? Drake is really the only rapper the kids like? I just, I wish I understood. And DANCEHALL Drake, at that, easily the worst Drake.

2) "Sorry," by Justin Bieber

1) "Love Yourself," by Justin Bieber

So basically, Justin Bieber did the child star bulshit we expected he would end up doing from the moment we heard “Baby,” and then we released some jams and we forgave him for being a shit, because that’s what we do, “Ignition (Remix)” made the world forget R. Kelly peed on a minor, “Love Yourself” could’ve gotten Biebs exonerated for any number on crimes. He couldn’t pee on a minor, it’s not like legendary, but vandalism and DUIs, hell yeah, “Lose Yourself” can cover that. But: did “Love Yourself” need Biebs to be “Love Yourself?” Did Biebs bring anything to that song that made that song what it is, or is “Love Yourself” a song that would still be killer even if they gave it to like Gnash or some other chucklefuck?

THE TOP TEN OF THIS GROUP OF 100, EXCEPTING THINGS I LOVE BUT STRONGLY FEEL SHOULD BE DISQUALIFIED 10) “Starving,” by Hailee Steinfeld & Grey ft./Zedd 9) “Don’t,” by Bryson Tiller 8) “On My Mind,” by Ellie Goulding 7) “Gold,” by Kiiara 6) “All the Way Up,” by Fat Joe & Remy Ma ft./French Montana & Infared 5) “Cake by the Ocean,” by DNCE 4) “Starboy,” by The Weeknd 3) “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” by Mike Posner 2) “Sorry,” by Beyonce 1) “Closer,” by The Chainsmokers ft./Halsey