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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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X-men Evolution; the great 2021 rewatch liveblog

exactly what it says on the tin, about halfway through the show I had TOO MANY FEELINGS and had to start writing some of them out haha (gets quite gambit & rogue/gambit heavy in the latter half, Because of Who I Am as a Person)

- this is my childhood’s x-men, my formative experience with them, and I’m happy to report that still seems like a good thing. the little eleven year old within me gets to geek out and have a good time with the characters and the surprisingly good animation and writing, adult me gets to CACKLE at regular intervals at the fashion/technology/absolute bonkers hot garbage comic book nonsense they use to justify a storyline every now and then, it’s been a good time

- I was like ‘ah well it is super dated it probably won’t be quite the same now’ and then rogue’s HAIR did the THING in the opening and ‘it’s all coming back to me now’ started playing in the background... the little baby queer in me swooning across time and space

- such a good beast, both his design and the writing, my heart aches for him all the time. he’s just so passionate! about being a teacher! helping young humans learn the stuff they’ll need in life! the most wonderful nerd man, just let good things happen for him

- I’m going to go ahead and assume that rogue’s ‘crush’ on scott is more of a deeply complex psychological process about desiring normalcy and intimacy and trying to figure out if she’s queer and dealing with her emerging sexuality and latching on to the first and best safely unavailable and nonthreatening older boy to project these issues onto rather than actually being a real thing, because I respect her so much as a person and I cannot bring myself to imagine she’s honestly attracted to a man who has POSTERS OF CARS on his bedroom wall. (I’ll give jean a break just because she seems to have a longer deeper history with him that might counteract some of that libido-kill, and also she’s a jock so lol)

like I am very sorry but can u imagine being a teenage girl with any interest in a boy with model cars in his bedroom when gambit’s swanning around being a much, much, much worse choice on almost every possible level but in a teen girl kryptonite kind of way? inconceivable

(I drag scott quite a few times in this and it’s not because I don’t love him, it’s just his tragedy to be the most draggable man in the world)

to be fair by the time gambit shows up that whole Situation has mostly played itself out I suppose but still

- toad’s design is so ineffably brilliant, I can’t quite tell you why but that ugly cute charm has really stuck with me, he’s one of the characters I remembered the best to this day just visually

- poor evan... he truly never had a chance, did he, they just saddled him with the most 90s teen bullshit they could come up with like he’s some kind of ‘what adult writers think teens like’ frankenstein’s monster ;______; it’s not your fault honey

- poor poor POOR storm, she gets one focus episode and they were like ‘we’re going to make an episode so racist -- ‘

I’m still STUNNED at how bad it was, but undeniably I laughed hysterically to the point that my neighbours were probably worried when that dude was earnestly like ‘He [stunningly breathlessly racist caricature of a ‘witch doctor’ guy] has stolen her powers, and he’s going to use them to take over Africa!!!’ fhajsdlfhsakjldfh oh really? tell me more, like how the fUCK this could be on television within my life time fasdlfhsdkjfhsad f just... fahjksdfh

- it’s a testament to gambit’s appeal as a character that his charm can survive what they’ve done with his hair and beard choices in this one fajskfhs regrettable but true I still fuckn LOVE him and in my highly biased yet Correct opinion he should have been around much more. get you a man who manages to stay hot through sheer Vibes even with a bowl cut

- aw scott/jean is kind of sweet in this show even if it’s taking them forEVER to get there, I like it

- it’s very nice of rogue to not mention magneto’s romantic daydreams and nostalgic memories about charles xavier after touching his face that one time... or maybe her brain did her a service and repressed it, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t have to know about your father figure

- the danger room is the very definition of ‘why do we even have that lever’ and I wonder what the fuck prof x does to have enough money to replace everything that gets busted all the time

- I’d say that a lot of the writing holds up surprisingly well! (but some of it is also incredibly inexcusably racist in ways that beggar belief, so... not full marks here) the characters have distinct voices and their arcs are set up and delivered on solidly for the most part, and there’s a lot of love showing through in small moments that are just there to have a funny/interesting thing to say about the characters and how their powers work separately and in combination. listen, sometimes I get so thirsty for like. basic goddamn competency in storytelling, let me have this

- ugggggh why is there captain america in my x-men have I not suffered enough... very very funny when prof x goes ‘sounds like you knew rogers personally’ and logan is like ‘I did ;)’ *all the students ganging up on steve rogers* “did you fuck our teacher, captain america?!”

- fskadfhas WHY are you showing me hot young-ified magneto’s ass fksjahfskj charles is not even here to see it, what a tragic waste erik

- ...I was sort of kidding before but uh I think logan genuinely did fuck captain america (or at least wishes very much that he did lol)

- wanda can have a little watching the world burn. as a treat for the way every single adult in her life has fucking failed her (’aren’t they treating you well here’ professor x she’s in a straightjacket)

- poor rogue tho can you imagine finding out after your biggest crush on a girl yet that she’s your fucking MOM in disguise... I would break out in cold sweat every time I thought about a boob forever after

- well seems like they really just had all that homoerotic rivalry stuff between quicksilver and spyke in their first ep only to never do anything with that again ever?? I mean even without the gay undertone that seems like a dynamic you spent most of an episode setting up writers what the hell haha

- dslhfkasjlh GAMBIT THERE HE IS MY BOY IS ON THE SCENE THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! I don’t even care about his awful hair situation or the fact that his eyes are wrong here (coloured contact lenses, maybe, for a watsonian explanation? though he’d probably have to get them made special, considering he needs the sclera and the iris covered up in different ways, I’ve seen some comic panels indicating he has been known to?)

(cute little detail: when he shuffles the cards the first time we see him he ends with removing the top card to show the ace of hearts beneath <3 foreshadowing baBEY he’s a... good-ish boy deep down. hey he tries okay shit gets complicated sometimes lol)

- cracking UP at gambit perched cheerily on the edge of a crate dispensing cards in the middle of the battle... he’s like ‘eh it’s a livin’ sfsajkhf remy stop working for supervillains just because you had nothing to do on a thursday afternoon and they said they’d pay you

- I’m guessing magneto must have imposed a strict order of silence on these guys or something because I cannot imagine any other reason for him to shut up, especially once he notices rogue is a QTE (or, far more likely, they hadn’t settled on any voice actors for the new characters until next season haha. it is kind of odd that they’re all keeping up near monastic silence, though, even sabertooth lol)

- WHAT an epic first meeting for us rogue/gambit fans here... first his shadow like there’s fireworks going off behind him lighting him up and then he gives her the fuckn king of hearts and she’s so enchanted by his dumb handsome face she doesn’t even notice it’s about to blow up in her hands and it all happens in heavily meaningful silence afjsdfjashjk no wonder this ship ingrained itself in my hindbrain

yeah look smug while you can remy she’s gonna have you on your knees one day and you’ll be happy about it lol

- god storm is so COOL, everything just fading out of focus when she really gets going... give her more screen time, show!!

- mystique is every person... this person... that person... that bird... that cat... that wolf... I’m not even sure she’s not also me... are you sure she’s not you?

- holy fuck I respect the hell out of the decision to just... blow up the entire status quo in a season ender, I only vaguely remembered that (actually in general I appreciate how good the continuity is -- buildings and places that get damaged in battles need to be repaired or rebuilt, it makes the consequences feel more real even when no one gets seriously hurt. where they get the money to restore scott’s car and logan’s motorbikes every time they go cablooie is still an open question tho lol is it credit card fraud, professor? is it telepathically acquired blackmail???)

- I first watched this when I was nine or so, so it’s a real experience to go from my starry eyed intrigued ‘oh my god... they’re teenagers’ to my horrified adult perspective of ‘oh my god... they’re TEENAGERS D:’

that goes double for the brotherhood boys honestly, I’m here with tears in my eyes like ‘I’m sorry the system has failed you so badly you’re all just a bunch of dumb kids whose caretakers clearly fucked up spectacularly’

like lance is always waiting for mystique to come back because she’s the closest thing he has to a safe parental figure, may we speak about how crushingly depressing that is

- rogue is so ready to throw hands at literally any moment and for that I love and treasure her immensely (I think getting to see her be so surly and unreasonable and sometimes difficult and jealous, like any teenager, meant a lot to me as a kid who was not really allowed to be any of these things, this version of the character has stayed with me so deeply. she holds on so fiercely to her right to feel what she feels and be what she is even when it’s ‘ugly’ or unreasonable, which I think plays in really interestingly with how her powers involve getting invaded by other people’s thoughts and memories to the point of overwhelming her own sense of self and the fact that she clearly has a lot of self-loathing and self-consciousness and confusion about her identity as well. I love her so much)

- oooof this is the ‘the gang experience a microaggression’ episode huh (well more like macroagressions really)

hits a bit different with adult eyes and perspective huh

- hearing jean sound almost like a child when she says ‘that’s so unfair!’ somehow has me like ;______; -- she has to be so adult and responsible all the time, and having her be reduced to the kid she still is and should get to be in front of this awful awful man she could squash like a bug with the flick of a thought... ugh I’m Big Sad (it is funny that jean seemingly plays Every Sport tho djfhaskj)

- MY BOY IS BACK!!! this time with the duster coat and his eyes the right colour, im so happy (too bad about the subdued colour scheme tho; I adore his dumb bright pink getup with my whole heart)

it’s kind of adorable that he takes the time to take the bullies aside and go ‘I know these guys can’t wreck you without getting expelled, but I think you’ll find no law set down by god or man would stop me from doing so whenever I wanted to. so piss off and leave them alone’ lol he’s looking out for them, in his own way

- in this episode: remy lebeau wrangles some kids while looking bored yet mildly amused the whole time. what the fuck does magneto have on you for you to agree to this level of babysitting duty buddy

- fun detail I noticed b/c when I get a fave I hyperfixate: he gave rogue the king of hearts before, but he ‘introduces’ himself to the brotherhood here (lol) with the jack of hearts, probably to symbolize he’s here as someone who works for magneto in this setting and not as his own man? it’s a demotion he’s given himself there, anyway, might be he’s not very pleased about his current position huh

- I like it when rogue and kitty team up, they’re not very effective together but their squabbling is so cute and non-aggressive

- pietro is what draco malfoy would be if I ever found malfoy interesting to watch for even one moment, every time quicksilver talks I’m like ‘what wonderfully insufferable thing is going to come out of your mouth this time you little shit :’)’

- a) why are scott and logan shirtless for this scene? I am not complaining on the logan side of things at least but why and b) I laughed so hard I almost fell off my couch when scott asked logan if he’d ever been in love and he was like ‘once. she was the most beautiful bike I ever saw’ falsdfhaskjfhsakjlfhasklhjfd THE BEST VERSION OF WOLVERINE EVER, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES

- mystique’s sheer dedication to being a petty bitch is kind of inspirational tbh, almost makes me want to go on a completely bonkers and extra crusade of personal revenge myself

- oooh they’re doing some genuinely cool things with vision/lack of vision in this one (it’s the scott left on his own in the desert without glasses one btw) even visually, dang! I’m so sad this show didn’t get more seasons than it did, honestly, it deserved it

- hell yeah jean wreck her, go get your man with the suspiciously specific clothing damage normally done to female characters

awww :’) okay yeah they’re super sweet, I love the tiny loving animation details like how he leans his head against her and her stroking his hair away from his eyes

- nooo don’t bully evan leave my t0tally r4dical sk8er boy alone :(

- I love the running joke of people fleeing in blind panic only to reveal that what they’re running from is kitty’s cheerful well meaning little face fskfaskh

- scott and jean are already peak married after officially being together for one episode and it’s adorable, and they just stone cold threw logan under the bus, rip wolverine we hardly knew ya

fjasdlfasldfhslajdkfhsadkjlfhsdkjalfhsdakfh h jean establishing herself as the alphabitch of this relationship by throwing her man to the wolves right after dsjfhaskjfhaskjhfsakjdhfaskjhfaskdhfskjahfskdajhf get smarter or get volunteered scott

- ...eyepatch lady is so hot ngl

oh evan went to the place hank used to go to calm down ;________; (honestly he’s kind of won a place in my heart just by being a pretty normal teenage boy haha)

- jesus fucking CHRIST can you imagine being storm having to look her sister in the eye as she tells her ‘I lost your only child, he’s *vague gesture* somewhere in the sewers we think’ this poor woman

- amanda the self admitted monster fucker you are so VALID (I love her and her family’s design so much tho!)

- it’s so cool that even in his human ‘disguise’ kurt’s fingers follow the shape of his actual hand beneath it rather than moving like a five fingered hand, it’s such a lovingly consistent little detail

- magneto and mystique in a breathless race to see who can be the shittiest parent... tune in next week for yet another parental nadir (also some low-poly gambit appearances in this one, for those at home keeping score (me), he’s in the background looking like someone drew him with their eyes closed fakjldfhasd look how they massacred my boy)

- someone please teach the brotherhood boys about consent huh

- jean ‘soccer mom before her time’ grey and her SUV dfhakjlhds :’)

- im sobbing rogue baby girl i’m so sorryyyyyy, this voice actress is so good, my parental instincts suddenly kicked into overdrive hearing the crack in her voice :( (bb me was right tho rogue centric episodes ARE the best episodes. that tension between ‘do I identify witn this character or am I crushing on her?? both???’ now has the fun new addition of ‘oh god oh no you are a baby I want to shield you with my body from everything trying to hurt you’)

- mystique is like ‘so you see despite you telling me you never wanted to see me again I completely disrespected that and posed as a friend your age, manipulated you by offering you the mirage of direly needed emotional intimacy and belonging and added some sprinkles of homoerotic tension to it just to massively worsen your already existing grievous psychosexual trauma and identity issues... out of love’

god go jump in a black hole you fucking monster

- there’s some very interesting and quite subtle subtext about the people she’s morphing into and what that says about her mental state/how it shows off some of her emotional baggage with the rest of the team. it’s like she’s switching between people/powers that fit the purpose as if she’s going through cycles of fight/flight (and then bursts of freeze where she’s herself, which is... so sad)

- this whole episode is hurting my heart but rogue at full power is undeniably epic

- ‘professor x get your goddamn act together and get this poor girl some fucking tHERAPY’ challenge

- SAFE PAPA LOGAN ;_____;

- EYYYYYY opening straight on My Lad, I cannot stop winning!!!!!

fasdfhsad disintegrating the window with a smiley face... remy I do love you more than my heart can bear honestly, hello may we speak about the fact that his urge to be a little shit is so deep and strong it survives mind control (that little breathed out ‘hiah!’ as he vaults the fence too dsakfjsd)

hahaha and he does up the coat fhsalfdsaj

- magneto dismissing other telepaths like ‘puh-lease, your Meaningful Looks have got nothing on my ex-husband’s’

- :’) rogue and kurt sibling timeees

- say what you want but this pyro guy’s got job satisfaction in being a creepy arsonist with a weird recurring horse theme (well at least twice but still weird)

- I love how beast is the kindest man to ever walk the earth but also straight up savage, this man drags people so hard their ancestors wince in their graves

- gambit taking the time to complete the guard’s game of solitaire -- this episode is giving me everything I want. u little disgrace mr lebeau

and THEN he takes the spider out in the most hilariously bonkers way my heart is so FULL

(I love that when magneto moves by he looks startled and has to quickly move his head out of the way to avoid getting kicked in the temple too that’s a fun detail)

I’m so INTO how this sequence shows off that his greatest strength isn’t even his powers (which are pretty straightforward, really, he makes go boom, longer time and bigger thing bigger boom) but that he’s clever and creative and always extremely ready to be the most harebrained-bananapants-extra-in-a-deceptively-laidback-sort-of-way person in the room (I actually have some genuinely Deep Thoughts about how his whole character does a really interesting thing with having the straightforwardly destructive nature of his powers yield to what his nature as a person is, and how using the playing cards play (heh) into it, maybe I’ll write it out some day. just the fact that he could use anything, but he deliberately chose something that adds style and playfulness and corny charm to it and that also limits the damage of the explosions compared to if he habitually used something with more mass... I find it fascinating how much he’s made a story around himself with it and how deeply it shows he does have a good heart, at the end of the day, in almost a metatextual way. he doesn’t want to destroy things or people, he’s at worst (and best lol) a thief.)

- I honestly have literally no memory of white nick fury (which seems so weird now isn’t it funny) in this series from when I was a kid, he clearly did not make an impression on me lol

- mr wolverine ‘assigned canadian at birth’ x-men

- oh man I dig the androgynity of x-23′s outfit (even tho they had to compensate with the long hair, which... kind of doesn’t make sense in-universe but does on a design level because it’s a crucial thing that she’s a female clone of logan so yeah okay fine whatever have your arbitrary gender markers if you must haha)

ooooooh that’s actually really clever, they make her gender gradually more obvious as she unravels through the episode and her outfit changes -- first the mask coming off, and then her jacket opening to show her silhouette more clearly, that’s cool!

- my god what really sets this show apart is how much it invests in little character and relationship moments, it’s just so fucking GOOD! it gives laura looking in on those moments such depth and weight because it’s new to her but established to us as an audience, this is how you make found family devastating people (storm growing bonsai trees is so charming too haha)

- ooof this is honestly quite harrowing

SHE’S SO SMALL COMPARED TO HIM I’M CRYING (at least that part of his genes translated over faslkfsjdh short king, I say this with all the love and support of a fellow short monarch)

- tabitha seems to just be running around doing precisely whatever the fuck she wants and you know what I support her even if she is an asshole her father left her a bunch of trauma and no fucks left to give

- still thrilled about professor x explaining the spider key fuckup to magneto after the fact like ‘magnus you dumb bitch this is why we split up’

- awww kitty has anime and movie posters on her wall and sleeps with a stuffed toy :’)

- remy rogue

🤝

doing completely unnecessary parkour around the brotherhood living room seemingly just for the hell of it... I’m not saying soulmates but fucking soulmates

- fhsadkjlfhsakjldfhsadjkfhsdajkfh just as gambit’s soul-level need to be a little shit survived his bout of mind control, rogue’s deep and urgent desire to kiss gambit full on the mouth survived hers I can’t breathe

she looks so pleased with herself too GOOD FOR YOU GIRL at least get something out of this other than more trauma

also not only the fact that he’s smart enough to figure out what’s going on (though he’s only partially right about who’s behind it. I do so enjoy gambit/mystique deep and sincere antipathy as a constant across all universes tho lmao pure wlw/mlm hostility) but also that he keeps fending her off like he’s not trying to hurt her even though she’s in nigh on unstoppable and invulnerable terminator mode... awww

- gambit having absolutely no patience for wolverine and sabertooth’s bullshit macho-off and consistently being this little biker trio’s one brain cell is adding years to my life with every passing moment

his voice is a little different in these scenes too, a bit softer and less like he’s trying to impress someone, it’s nice

- hank: well I barely recognize any of these (completely made up) ‘ancient egyptian hieroglyphs’ but from what I can make out -- *proceeds to infodump a perfect coherent narrative* fjdhfak

listen this whole thing is such nonsense on so many levels, I’m just turning my brain off so I won’t have to think about it okay, the compulsion to put ancient aliens in egypt haunts us as a culture

- I am CACKLING about gambit in the snow after having to listen to these two chucklefucks ooze testosterone at each other for hours

he started out taking it in good cheer and is now reduced to ‘dieu would both of you just jump off this fUCKING mountain please’

- ah. a little oops-a-daisy there, we seem to have unleashed the apocalypse. please stand by (they really don’t pull their punches with the season cliffhangers in this show haha)

- opening the season on gambit’s merrily grinning face is the easiest way to gain my favour. yes good this season may commence

baby u r my

ANGELLLLLLLL

(he’s so cute here tho haha I think it shows the design isn’t unsalvagable, just get him better hair and stubble more like logan has and you’ve basically got it)

love his exasperated eyeroll when the dude gets spooked (by his eyes? or just the general weirdness?) too

he’s just trying to keep this crazy family of evil mutants together and unmurdered by one another until they’ve managed to avert the end of the world, bless him

- oh NO rogue’s LIP wobbles my hhhhhheart ;____; such a good animation detail to put in

- like... I know kurt is just a sad scared teenager with a lot of shit going on and all the adults are too busy averting the end of the world to help him... but buddy maybe don’t ask your sister to wake her abuser (who forced her to kickstart the end of the world!!!!!) when she feels utterly unsafe even with her statue version around huh

- ...wanda is good and I want only good things for her. and for her dad to be disemboweled for what he did to her both the first time around and when he forced her to forget I mean what

- magneto throwing an epic satelite-slinging tantrum b/c ‘no I am the biggest sexiest strongest mutant of the pack :(’... erik fucking get over yourself

- yes boys absolutely go along with a plan suggested by a dude who looks at you like this

nothing bad can come of this surely asdfkhsa

- lance’s quarter of a braincell always trying to go ‘hey wait, maybe... not do this???’ and it never helps lol

- in this episode: Logan Has A Bad Day

...some very specific bondage positions he’s held in here, I am sure this episode awakened something in someone once upon a time lol

- logan shielding x-23 with his body... im fine it’s okay I’m not crying don’t look at me

- afsdhlsdfjasdlk those sure are some ‘scottish’ accents flsadkjhkdsjahfsd

- scott relieved to finally be able to cede the position of ‘charles xavier’s least favourite son’ to someone else fjsaklfhsajd (poor scott it’s not your fault honey)

supremely cowardly to suggest there is an ex-wife involved rather than charles slutting his way around the british isles back in the day but okay

- kurt with a cold is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. it’s okay kid it’ll get better soon

- ...is there an implication here that professor x is naturally blond. because I am losing my entire little mind about it (i mean he at least has to carry the gene, as does this lady?)

ETA: upon doing some research into this I can indeed confirm that charles xavier does seem to be naturally blond, and after this knowledge I will never be the same

- “listen, dracula” fskdafghasd oh scott you sweet baby angel I love you

- I know jean’s abilities are a bit ‘as strong or as weak as the plot needs right now’ at this point (so you can have the setup for what’s going to happen with them eventually and she’s basically invincible ;____;), and normally I’m cool with it but god I want her to just squash lucas like a little bug

- ewwwww please don’t ever say ‘daddy’ like that again

- ...what the fuck is even going on this episode’s a mess

like okay the split personality thing could be something but the way it’s done... what just happened lol

- MY BOY EVAN IS BACK! with a real glowup too (...though kind of weird how he suddenly looks like a grown man)

- augh scott’s eyes are so pretty oh my god ;__________________________;

- that episode in the first season where evan makes the ‘this is my new family!!’ video is so sad now (also, again, his poor poor parents)

- time for: life affirming road trip with gambit (involuntary) faskljdfhaskjd

stunt therapist remy lebeau

- I mean the way he goes about it is batshit insane and it’s very much secondary to what he’s actually up to but this is the first time rogue’s sounded genuinely hopeful and confident and like herself in like a season <3

- he is disconcertingly pleased about her nearly throwing him off the train, and may I just say I agree it’s so nice to see rogue with her old fire back

- the first time I watched this it was of course dubbed into norwegian, so I had no idea either of these characters were southern lol (though to be fair I probably wouldn’t have had much context for what it meant exactly either, I was like ten at the time and not too interested in america) I seem to dimly remember the norwegian voice actor did a little more of a ‘french’-tinged accent for gambit all over tho haha

- you know what respect where it’s due, pyro dude knows to live his life for the lols and one has to admire his sociopathic dedication to it

interesting that he, too, seems to have fucking hated magneto -- I wonder if the implication here is that he kept all the acolytes in line with blackmail or by keeping something/one hostage? (except sabertooth maybe he’d just have to say ‘you get to fuck shit up and fight wolverine’ and that’d be enough)

- fsdakfhsd he’s so focused on her he doesn’t notice that guy about to hit him fkafhsa

- fuck everything else except whatever the hell these two’ve got going on

- it’s weirdly cathartic to have rogue have a conversation with someone who was not happily adopted as well, I don’t think kurt like. gets it because his parents loved him unconditionally and still do

birds of a feather motherfucker

- fun detail: when the x-men team are on the shore and logan is sniffing around scott is stepping in something and trying to wipe it off his boots in the background

- when he wakes up after passing out from the touch he’s smiling even though she’s standing over him looking like the rage of god outlined by the moon fsajfsa well the last time he passed out like that it was from a kiss, maybe he still has some hopes and dreams in that direction lol (also he recovers from the tumble down the hill first and is checking on her before accidentally brushing her cheek with his hand, which I thought was sweet)

and it was in that moment he knew he fucked up *passes out*

- ‘I can explain’ can u remy. can u

- did it ever even occur to you to just. ask her. to help you. I mean I know it didn’t but like rogue’s always one second away from throwing hands with some bully and is stupidly ride or die, if you’d given her the puppydog eyes she would have crumbled immediately (fair enough I guess this entire episode is telling us he’s not from a background where he has much experience with people just helping him without a price haha)

- his eyes glowing when he’s angry or upset or using a lot of his power is undeniably cool as all hell. I’m just saying it would be Big Sexy if they sort of flickered with light in moments of genuine vulnerability okay

- his coat... his coat is what makes the Silhouette tm and I could not be happier about it

- another parent of the year contestant enters the running lol “hey remy have you ever considered that you’re more of a walking bomb factory than a person? that’s certainly how I think of you hahaha c’mon kid let’s go”

- the running joke of jean luc getting dollar signs in his eyes seeing the other mutant powers and gambit being like ‘nO!!!!’ and pulling him along is amazing haha

- from the way he looks when he touches rogue accidentally and the way he talks to his dad I’m sort of getting the feeling this gambit might actually be a bit younger than he looks?

here too -- idk why but it’s making the ‘wait is he baby???’ alarms go off in my head haha. very early twenties at most.

- and we’ve officially seen him with all the face cards in the heart suit folks! (yes this is the sort of thing my brain notices no I don’t know either)

- poor logan running his ass off this whole episode in a panic and then she’s like ‘nah he’s fine (in several meanings of the word ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) please put him down’ hfaskfsda

- rogue without makeup!!! her eyes look so naked like this haha <3

- oooh here’s a really interesting thing that tickles my brain a bit in this specific part of the scene where gambit frees his dad -- the part where he’s leaning against the door frame waiting for jean luc, who’s about to suggest using the opportunity to ruin the rival gang from the inside rather than slipping away while they still can

from his expression here he knows what’s about to happen, what jean luc is about to say, and it’s clearly a ‘man who thought he’d lost all hope loses last additional bit of hope he didn’t even know he still had’ sort of situation. he KNOWS what jean luc is like, and it still hurts that he really, honestly can’t give him even this, can’t appreciate that remy’s already done all this shit for him when he extremely didn’t have to, without immediately (no really, it took him less than ten seconds to go there? jesus) demanding more.

remy tells him “I’m just here for you” and jean luc does not understand it. remy seems to be sincere in this motivation -- rogue certainly thinks so, having experienced it second hand and found enough at least emotional merit in it to decide he was worth saving even after all his bullshit (lol a bit of a running theme maybe. I think it’s very telling that after she absorbed mystique she was like ‘what the FUCK you’re a fucking monster’, and after she absorbed gambit she went ‘you did the wrong thing for the right reasons’ after she got over the first wave of outrage)

there’s also what he says as he stands there: “You don’t need me for that”, with the distinct implication that jean luc would only keep him around because he has a use for him and for no other reason -- and then jean luc shamelessly doubles down on that by specifying that it’s not even him he’s got a use for as such, just his powers. that’s some kicking puppies level of deliberately missing the point, it’s almost impressive in how cheerfully mean it is haha

this idea of using people is really important in this episode because remy’s doing basically exactly the same thing to rogue to begin with; it doesn’t really matter to his plan that it’s her that’s with him through this, just what her powers are. (I think it’s p r e t t y solidly implied that he does actually like her a lot outside of that too and maybe there is some comfort in having her around for this, but mostly he’s behind a smokescreen of lies through the whole thing sooo I doubt he’s even aware of it, honestly)

but then it does matter that it’s her when she comes back for him, even after what he did. and unlike jean luc he understands what that means, that she did that for him, and that she didn’t have to. and instead of asking her for more, in return he gives her the thing it’s been established is what he considers the most valuable thing he has; his ‘last card’, the thing he’s credited with keeping him alive many a time, basically. it’s gone from using to mutuality, a tentative place of friendship, and at the end of the day he is a different man than his adoptive father, with a capacity for selflessness and love he lacks. which is of course some of the same stuff going on with rogue and mystique too, except rogue acted from a more fragile and unstable place and did something she regrets, or at least has a LOT of doubts about now, and she found some catharsis in helping someone make a different choice in a similar situation. man there’s some Stuff going on under the surface here haha

(by the way it’s a weirdly... meaningless yet intensely meaningful thing, the gifting of a symbol? of an idea? but he’s putting something very crucial of himself into her hands, is the subtext, and he expects her to understand, which she also does seem to do. at the beginning of the episode he’s proving that he’s seen something true about her -- “You’re such an unhappy girl”, knowing where she comes from, the way she’s mourning her lost confidence and autonomy with her abilities -- and here she’s proving she’s seen something true about him. :’) I wish this show had gone on long enough for this dynamic to progress, it’s really interesting and touching)

- gambit dragging himself up onto dry land seeing someone approaching (to help?!): :D

gambit seeing that it’s logan and the look on his face: D:

- rogue using her powers so confidently and fearlessly in this episode tho!!!!

- *me crying* and then her FAMBILY comes to take her home and he says he’s looking out for her too and kurt still loves her even though they’re having a conflict thing between them and she’s finally able to use her powers without so much fear again and --

- ...did I just watch some baby lesbian love at first sight shit right now???

- okay last two episodes let’s go

- HELL YEAH STORM (I love that she’s like ‘don’t give me a dumb order like that and I won’t have to disobey it’ too sdfjsaj) her voice has such command I’m usually very much not the ‘step on me’ type butttt

- y’know I feel like apocalypse’s main fault across all versions I’ve seen of him is that he’s like an immortal superpowered god king and he’s not even sexy. like at least make him hot if he’s going to be insufferable in every other way

- also callout post for apocalypse: one time he made gambit into the Horseman of Death... and didn’t even make him sexy!!! you were handed remy lebeau, supreme bi disaster slut of the x men universe, and you couldn’t even make his brainwashed superpowered evil side hot?? a beautiful stubbled twunk with glowing red eyes and extremely charming :> face practically delivers himself into your hands and you do that to him???? I mean I’m sure apocalypse did some other bad stuff too but that was the worst one

(comics are so dumb y’all)

- having to watch jean cry is emotional terrorism!! ;___; she has such older sister/mom energy, whenever she gets sad and helpless it hurts

- oh, OH so PROFESSOR X you’ll make into a hunk and ~*strategically*~ rip his clothes to show off a nipple and a flawless pec in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable because he’s like The Dad??? apocalypse you are rotten to the core this is unforgivable

- so wait wanda never actually gets her real memories back. what the FuCk I hope that was a dropped storyline because they ended the show tragically prematurely rather than like. the plan

- why is spyke calling storm ‘storm’ show that’s his auntie o!! >:(

- as a society we need to acknowledge that apocalypse looks like a fucking clown

- ooooh yeah I have been thinking that this show’s greatest visual weakness so far has been not having a visual way to show telepathy/battles of the minds, but this is a pretty cool way to do it! better late than never

- I’m so happy rogue gets to end this herself, since she was forced into starting it against her will, it’s just nice and neat storytelling

- YEAH FUCKING TELL HER KURT AND ROGUE I AM SO PROUD OF YOU and she has the temerity to look pissed off oh my god

the only valid thing mystique has done in her entire life is be in love with destiny. literally everything else she gets up to is a travesty. like I know objectively she’s hot but my loathing for her stops me from even appreciating it. I do enjoy loathing her tho so please don’t change her haha

(a bit odd to have kurt’s attitude to her swing so much but I’m just going to assume he and rogue had a good long conversation after ‘cajun spice’ and that he understands what’s going on better now)

- this last part is such a cruel tease faskdfhsdaj ‘here are all the cool-ass things we had planned. sucks you never get to see it huh’ im devastated

- magneto without his helmet and playing charmingly with children like charles is going ‘well at least I saved my marriage finally’ fsadkhfjsd (honestly tho I would be super interested in seeing how they’d redeem this magneto because he’s been a real bitch the whole time lol)

there’s an interesting thing here where magneto looks down at wanda as the last thing he does on screen before this epilogue part (yeah I hope it fucking haunts you forever what you did to her erik you absolute piece of hot garbage) and the last thing charles does is look at jean b/c he knows what’s going to happen to her and it breaks his heart... Dramatic Parallells

- just the hint of jean as the phoenix has me in full D:D:D: mode tho maybe I wouldn’t have survived it

- gambit in the last groupshot with his arm around rogue ;^) I mean I’m sure they’re headed for some turns and roundabouts along the way but what’s that thing she says as her wedding vow, that she’ll always find her way back? anyway that got me in my heart

- man I really wish this show had been given more seasons, we were barely even getting warmed up here :’(

#x men evolution #x men #gambit #rogue x gambit #aaah this is like therapy for me... just dumping all my emotions into a tumblr post and then let them go into the ether #I am now wondering if I'm desperate enough to go all the way back to the x-men animated series (which I've never seen before!)#like am I willing to go there for more Contente. time will tell I suppose #happy tag #...this is very long #MAN why can't I channel this dumbass energy into fiction writing I'd get so much DONE

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sodamnbored · 3 years

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(Spoilers for HoO and ToA The Burning Maze, but I need to vent.)

The whole thing in HoO about Aphrodite kids breaking a heart as a sort of initiation, a mark of their parentage, is still bothering me in relation to Piper.

When she hears about it she’s a bit horrified and not at all interested in participating. She’s clear about not approving of it either with her cabin mates. She spends a fair bit of the series thinking on it as well in relation to her budding relationship with Jason; adamant that she isn’t going to break his heart because that’s not the type of person she is.

But then in The Burning Maze in TOA that kind of goes out the window doesn’t it? The exact line was something about Jason looking crushed, or broken, or devastated, or something like that.

And I know, it’s come full circle then, she broke Jason’s heart just like her siblings predicted. Not so different from the other Aphrodite kids then.

But that’s what bothers me about it so much.

Rick put so much emphasis early on about how Piper was different than your average Aphrodite kid. It was at least half her character initially. Every opportunity he got he was saying how she was exactly the opposite of her siblings (kind of how she was better than them too but that’s a different beef of mine).

Children of Aphrodite are obsessed with their looks, keeping themselves clean, your classic definition of shallow and pretty. But not Piper! She couldn’t care less about her looks: in fact she actively tries to downplay her looks so people won’t obsess over how pretty she is.

Children of Aphrodite aren’t good fighters, aren’t willing to get to work, and not much use in a fight or on a quest. But not Piper! She can hold her own: she’ll start scrapping with her bare hands if she has to, she’s won so many fights, she’s involved in so many more battles and solutions to problems than really a lot of the other seven because she’s awesome and capable.

And that’s fine. If that’s what she was supposed to be: debunking all the stereotypes about Aphrodite kids, no problem, I can roll with that. But it was so crammed down our throats just how different she was from her siblings in every possible way at every possible opportunity that it just bothers me that when it came time for her and Jason to break up that “she broke him”.

I just would’ve preferred the additional converse between her and the other Aphrodite kids if she had been the one to have her heart broken. Which sounds cruel, but I don’t mean it in a ‘let’s make Piper feel bad’ kind of way.

With a whole cabin telling her from her first day at camp “yeah, you’re gonna have to break his heart, you know that right? Oh you don’t want to? Well it’ll happen, trust me”, and her spending so much time reassuring herself throughout the series that she would be different and she wasn’t going to break up with Jason and break his heart, I just think it would’ve been better and a bit more of a swift left turn if Jason had been the one to break up with her and the Aphrodite kid was the one to have their heart broken for a change. That would set her apart from her siblings.

And I know they wanted her to have the whole insecurity about if the relationship and their feelings were even real and also the oh Piper’s so cool she had the awareness to see they’d just been put together by the gods and wanted to try something else instead thing. But honestly I think it would’ve been a stronger argument from Jason’s perspective.

Or at least if we’d gotten to see his side of it a little more. It could’ve been at least a little more balanced and mutual rather than she dumped him out of nowhere and he was utterly crushed beyond repair about it. What kind of an ending is that??

Sure, Piper had been manipulated too; she had false memories of a relationship and being in love with Jason when he woke up on the bus. But to be fair, she also had an otherwise rational and semi-normal starting point after finding out those were fake memories to pursue him. She was still herself and knew Jason was her type and all that sort of stuff. Jason had absolutely no memories. How was he supposed to know if Piper was his type or not? He hadn’t even known his own name. He just kind of rolled with this romantic set up while he tried to remember his damn address and go home. I kind of feel like he might’ve also had insecurities over if his feelings were genuine or not. That he would’ve had a case for breaking up to see what he actually wants, or that he would’ve at least understood and on some level agreed it was worth finding out. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

It just feels to me like it was undoing a lot of development and integral characterisation from the last series to have Piper be so fundamentally and aggressively different from what’s expected of a daughter of Aphrodite to then in the next series just have her do what she was always kind of meant to do in the first place.

So yeah, I’m still unhappy about their storyline in general, but I’ll never not be frustrated about the whole heartbreaker thing. Seems like a missed opportunity to have turned another Aphrodite stereotype on its head.

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elyvorg · 4 years

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Wandersong character rambles 3 of 3: Audrey

Wandersong is so incredibly good that I need to get all my Thoughts about it off my chest by writing a series of rambles analysing its three most important characters. Here’s the final one at last! There will be spoilers, obviously. Plus, this’ll probably be kind of hard to follow anyway for people who haven’t played the game. Go play Wandersong! You won’t regret it.

1 of 3: Kiwi (the bard)

2 of 3: Miriam

The bombshell

Encountering Audrey at the end of Act 3 was a huge, earth-shattering reveal for Kiwi. “Oh, hey, you thought you were chosen by Eya’s messenger as the hero who’ll save the world? No, actually you’re not the chosen hero at all; you’re nobody. Here’s the real chosen Hero: look at how cool and badass and swordy she is, exactly like a proper hero, not like some silly bard like you. And also? Your attempt to save the world was almost certainly never going to work anyway, and you should have just given up from the start.” Ouch. No wonder they moped around for half an act after that, with how badly they’d been wanting to be a hero and make a difference.

But that same moment would also have been an equally horrifying reveal from Audrey’s perspective. “Oh, hey, you thought you were chosen by Eyala as the hero who’ll save the world? No, actually, turns out she chose you to end it. Also, here’s this other person, some random nobody bard, whom Eyala also seems suspiciously friendly with – and apparently, they’ve at least been trying to save the world, unlike you.”

The thing is, Audrey’s grim task of ending the world is still necessary. The Overseers’ corruption is inevitable and cannot be reversed, only temporarily slowed. The world’s inhabitants would be stuck in a living hell for eternity if something wasn’t done – and the only thing that can be done (aside from the Earthsong, which has never worked) is to end this universe and start a fresh one. The “Hero” essentially exists to put the universe out of its misery once things inevitably begin to fall apart.

So, the problem with Audrey isn’t that she’s trying to end the world, because somebody literally has to, and that unfortunate somebody is her. The problem really lies more with how she responds to the part where having this task means she’s been arbitrarily designated “the Hero”.

This part’s kind of Eyala’s fault. A “hero” is not quite what you’d think to call someone with the job of giving the world and swift and painless end – but it’s pretty understandable given the circumstances. Way, way back in the very earliest cycles, the original few chosen people must have been extremely reluctant to carry out their task. How many cycles do you want to bet it took before Eyala started giving her chosen world-destroying warrior the title of “the Hero”? It’d be much easier to convince them to do it if she framed it like it was totally a good thing, including lying to them – or at least being very deliberately vague – about what killing Overseers even meant until the last one.

The only issue with this is the inevitable fallout when the “Hero” learns that they’re not really being a hero and saving the world at all. And since Audrey ended up learning this fact far sooner than she was meant to, this fallout is much more spectacular than it probably usually is. Especially because she seems to be a lot more desperate to be a hero than most Heroes probably usually are.

(I know the game doesn’t consistently capitalise the word “Hero” as referring to Audrey’s role, but I’m going to, because there’s a very pointed distinction between that and the normal definition of the word “hero”.)

End the world to be the Hero

When Audrey asks Eyala a little later, after killing the Queen of Winds, why she wasn’t told about the whole ending-the-world thing sooner, Eyala explains that it’s usually difficult for “normies” to understand why this needs to be done. That “normie” comment in particular really seems to get under Audrey’s skin – the idea that, despite having chosen her as the one and only Hero, Eyala nonetheless still sees her as a normal person. Heroes aren’t supposed to be normal people. Audrey’s not supposed to be normal. And apparently, the thing that makes Eyala assume that about her is the idea that she’d be freaked out over ending the world, huh?

But no, of course Audrey’s got to be more than just some normie. So she pretends to be super chill with it all (even though she definitely isn’t), with a cool, casual, “may as well be me, right?”. Eyala responds with “That’s why you’re the Hero!”, further cementing the idea in Audrey’s head that the Hero is supposed to be eerily chill with ending the world. By the way Eyala’s talking about it, if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be the Hero.

(In reality, this is probably never the case. That’s precisely why Eyala doesn’t usually like to tell them until the end! But that’s not how Audrey ends up seeing things.)

As a result, the next few times Kiwi and Miriam meet Audrey and interact with her, she appears to have settled into a sort of inherently contradictory doublethink in order to cope with what she has to do and make herself okay with it.

On the one hand, whenever possible, Audrey will act as if the fact that the world is ending has nothing to do with her actions. She calls her meeting with the king of Rulle to get the Overseer song “important saving-the-world business”, which is totally what she’s doing as the Hero, right. Kiwi and Miriam are the only other people in the world who know it isn’t, but that doesn’t stop her trying to frame it that way to them. She also frequently talks about how she needs to kill the Overseers to stop them corrupting the real world, and yet it turns out that things become at least equally corrupted once they’re dead anyway. Audrey even has the audacity to complain to Kiwi and Miriam that the spirit world is collapsing because three Overseers are dead, in a way that sounds like she’s blaming it on them. But, hm, I wonder whose fault that really is.

Yet at the same time, when she actually has to think about the fact that she’s ending the world, Audrey will be absolutely adamant that this is definitely what she has to do and wants to do and she’s completely okay with it.

Her justifications of this don’t even make any sense. She just clings to the circular logic of “I’m the Hero who has to destroy the world, that’s just how this works, I’m sure of it because I’m the Hero, and the Hero knows how this works.” She refuses to entertain any premise that involves her maybe not being the Hero, and she keeps repeating the words “that’s just how it works” to avoid thinking about the part where she doesn’t like how this works.

If she doesn’t end the world, she’s not the Hero. If she’s not making the right choice here, she might not be the Hero. If she’s freaked out and way out of her depth and isn’t even sure what the right choice to make is, then she’s definitely not the Hero. But no, she has to be the Hero, so she’s obviously making the right choice and obviously things happening this way is Just How It Works. The Hero knows best, and she’s the Hero, end of discussion.

As Audrey eventually more or less admits to Kiwi, albeit only when they’re trapped in a cave with no apparent hope of a way out, the reason she felt she had to hide all of her doubts about this is because otherwise, Eyala might think she’s not the Hero. She’s terrified that Eyala could revoke her Hero status and take away her power if she shows any kind of weakness in front of her.

Unfortunately, though all of Audrey’s desperate justifications to herself originated mostly for the sake of keeping up her façade in front of Eyala, they’ve become so ingrained that they’re still very much there even after she’s told Eyala to leave her alone. (It probably doesn’t help that, even aside from what Eyala appears to think, Audrey herself seems the type to personally agree with the idea that heroes need to be perfect and unflappable or else they’re not really heroes. That’s definitely how it works, right.)

There is a hilariously blatant contradiction between the way Audrey claims that she got rid of Eyala for telling her what to do all the time because “real heroes should think for themselves”, and yet she’s clinging to ending the world as what she has to do without actually truly considering whether it’s really what she wants to do. She says she’s not Eyala’s puppet, but she’s continuing to do precisely the thing that does just make her Eyala’s (or, like, destiny’s) puppet rather than having any agency of her own.

Kiwi even tries to point out to her that now that she’s ditched Eyala, she really can choose not to end the world. But Audrey’s having none of it. Obviously she has totally “considered all the angles” and come to a very rational conclusion here and isn’t just saying that so that she doesn’t have to actually think about it.

Maybe if Kiwi had had a chance to try and get through to Audrey sooner, they’d have made more headway. But at this point, Audrey’s spent several acts desperately justifying everything to herself while not being able to talk to anyone about how she really feels about all this, and all those built-up insistences and defence mechanisms have become nigh-unbreakable.

Audrey already knows she’s lying the moment she makes the promise not to end the world, and really she’s planning to break that promise as soon as she manages to get her sword back. In her mind, ending the world is a necessary part of her being the important chosen Hero. She’s spent so long focused on that by now that the thought of betraying some silly little bard’s silly little “promise” sure as hell isn’t going to make her throw it all away.

Despite Kiwi having fervently told her that she should be trying to find another way, as she’s trying to kill the final Overseer and end it all in Act 7, Audrey’s still clinging to her task like her life depends on it. She can’t ignore what she’s really doing any more, not now that the end of everything is right here – but instead, it seems like she might have twisted things around in her head and found a way to make herself okay with it anyway. It’s the whole entire universe, right? And she’s going to be the one to end it, the one who was chosen to end it. It might not be a good thing, but it’s a huge thing – the most important thing there has ever been. If nothing else will, this will make her matter.

Who’s the real hero here?

The thing is, when Audrey claimed that she ditched Eyala because Eyala was manipulative and kept telling her what to do, that wasn’t actually quite it. Audrey was the one who lied. As Eyala informs Kiwi later, the real thing she said to Audrey that set her off was something like, “hey, maybe you should let the bard get the Earthsong pieces before you kill each Overseer”. Seems a reasonable suggestion – let the world maybe be saved after all! – but Audrey couldn’t accept that. That’s because what she really heard from it is: maybe you should let that bard be the real hero instead of you.

Audrey’s other, bigger problem is the fact that she absolutely cannot stand that thought. She never, ever admits it, even when they’re trapped in the cave and she’s being more honest than usual about some things, but she is absolutely, blatantly 1000% jealous of Kiwi for being a better hero than she is and taking the spotlight away from her.

There’s a few little hints to this even before the big conversation in Act 6. In Xiatian, though Audrey ends up obligated to let Kiwi and Miriam join her in meeting the king, she makes a point that they’re her “flunkies” and outright refuses to let you walk ahead of her. She can’t stand the thought of Kiwi coming across as more important than she is. And then there’s that scene on the boat to Mohabumi, where Audrey’s attempt to get Kiwi and Miriam in trouble accidentally ends up making them seem cooler than her. She awkwardly leaves without another word, regretting everything.

You can even pick up on the fact that Audrey’s lying about why she got rid of Eyala in that conversation in the cave, before we hear it from Eyala herself. Audrey claims Eyala told her, apparently word-for-word, “the Earthsong is totally made up, and it’ll never ever work” – but this doesn’t even make sense. If the Earthsong is made up and doesn’t exist in the first place, then there is no “it” to potentially work or not work. The two statements contradict each other. Audrey is quite clearly bullshitting this whole claim and saying what she wishes Eyala had said, because she so desperately wants Kiwi’s quest to be futile. (Well, she’s either lying to herself here, or she’s lying to try to convince Kiwi to actually give up. Or, most likely, a bit of both.)

Not only that, but Audrey completely contradicts her insistence of “Eyala just told you what you wanted to hear” moments later when she makes it a point to clarify that, wait, Eyala actually explicitly told Kiwi they’re not the Hero? Kiwi confirms this, and then goes off on a big sad vent about feeling useless and wishing Audrey would do the right thing with her power, which goes completely over Audrey’s head because she’s so stuck on the they’re not actually the real chosen Hero after all, thank Eya, it’s still me.

(Audrey does give a brief “Really?” as Kiwi admits to being jealous of her, which is probably mostly about “wait really, you’re not the Hero?” but could also partly be a very heavily-suppressed “wait, you’re jealous of me?” Why would the obviously more heroic one here have any reason to be jealous of her?)

(I also love how blatantly she’s lying when she claims she doesn’t care if Kiwi thinks she’s the Hero or not. “It’s totally inconsequential,” yep. Hearing the person who’s actually been saving the world point out how unheroic her choices are is kinda getting to her, it seems.)

When the bugs show up to rescue them and Kiwi realises that they’re the one with the power to decide what happens here, saying that they could leave her here and go save the world right now, Audrey is Not Happy. “Don’t do that! That won’t…” Won’t what, Audrey? They’re going to save the world. Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t it ultimately not really matter if you get left behind in a cave so long as the world doesn’t end?

But no. She can’t allow that. She fakes her promise to Kiwi with the full intention of breaking it not only because she’s convinced herself she can’t not end the world, but also because she can’t afford to let Kiwi save it.

(It’s unclear precisely how the Earthsong was meant to work: whether, once assembled, it could have been sung at any time to fix the universe, or whether, like the Wandersong, it still needed to be sung after the last Overseer had been killed. If the latter is true, then Audrey could still have got to feel important by carrying out her task of ending the world while also letting it be saved. But it was never just about that.)

In Act 7, as Kiwi confronts her with the truth that Eyala never lied to or manipulated her, Audrey doesn’t even bother trying to deny it. Instead, she just frames it as “even Eyala turned on me”, and “she was WRONG”. She’s still utterly refusing to admit that maybe Eyala actually had a point about letting Kiwi try and save the world before she ends it – and she definitely won’t admit that perhaps Eyala really thought Kiwi was the better hero, despite who she officially chose.

After the fake-out first time she “kills” the Dream King (before the boss fight starts), Audrey declares, “I win!”. Like that’d ever have been her winning anything. It’s almost like the fate of the entire universe has twisted into a competition to her, to prove that she’s definitely more of a hero than them, that those two losers can’t make any kind of difference at all.

A bad way to be jealous

I love that this game’s three lead characters, who all want to be heroes in some way, are all jealous of at least one of the others for seeming more heroic than them. The big contrast is in how they deal with that jealousy.

Kiwi is so precious and non-malicious about it; they literally admit to it in the same breath as they remark that Audrey must be really special to be able to use the sword. Despite having grumbled a lot in the beginning, Miriam also manages to remain non-malicious about hers in the long run, admitting to being jealous of Kiwi at the same time as she admits that Kiwi inspires her to be like that too.

But Audrey? Not so much.

Those times she shot both Kiwi and later Miriam with her lightning-sword for no good reason were absolutely done out of jealousy. Audrey shot Kiwi right after learning that she’s really ending the world and Kiwi’s been trying to save it; it can’t have been anything but her lashing out in a heated moment of jealous anger at them for being better than her. (Sure, they were rushing at her – but she started charging her sword before they began to do that. And also, what was Kiwi ever going to do to her anyway? Angrily sing in her face?)

The time she shot Miriam was probably also a similar thing. Miriam had just been a hero to those two fairies by helping them escape – how dare she be more heroic than Audrey! And, no, Audrey’s The Hero Totally Knows Best excuse that Miriam shouldn’t have let the fairies out of the spirit world is simply a load of crap; the fairies are not corrupt or dangerous, and the spirit world was about to collapse anyway. (Not that shooting Miriam would have been justified even if that had been a genuine mistake; if someone makes a mistake, you don’t fix it by hurting them.)

It’s not Audrey’s fault that she’s feeling jealous of them, just like it isn’t for Kiwi and Miriam with their jealousy. Nobody can control feeling that way. But what Audrey can control is the way she acts as a result of her jealousy – and she chooses to act like a violent bully and use the fact that she’s the Hero to tell herself she’s in the right. That’s, uh… not a very heroic look for you there, Audrey.

There’s also some more signs of her tendency to put other people down to make herself feel better when she and Kiwi are escaping the cave. When she talks about Miriam, Audrey casually complains about Miriam’s personality like she expects Kiwi to agree with her. She secretly looks up to Kiwi and wants them to like her, not that she’d ever admit it, so she tries to gain favour with them by talking bad about someone she considers to be beneath both of them. That’s also the kind of thing a bully would do.

Naturally, Kiwi is having none of that crap and calls her out on it immediately, making it clear that they care about Miriam a lot more than her and refusing to let her forget the part where she hurt Miriam. It is so adorably Kiwi that they only vent how mad they are about her acting like a bully despite being the “Hero” when they’re thinking about how she hurt their friend. It is also very heartbreakingly Kiwi that they never even think to bring up the time that Audrey hurt them in exactly the same way with absolutely zero attempt at justification. (Their suffering doesn’t matter, right?)

In fairness to Audrey, this angry rant of Kiwi’s does get her to apologise for hurting Miriam and realise that that was not very heroic of her. But the way she explains her apology as “I’m doing my best to be the Hero and do the right thing” suggests that she’s mostly spurred to apologise because hurting someone makes her less of a hero. There’s still no particular indication that she simply genuinely feels bad for hurting someone, Hero or not.

Why care about people?

See, Audrey’s desire to be a hero appears to be largely self-serving, out of a desire for her talents to be admired and appreciated by others, not out of genuine desire to help other people regardless of what it means for her. She just doesn’t seem to have that selfless instinct that’s exactly the thing that makes Kiwi such a naturally good hero even when they don’t believe they can be.

When Kiwi is trying to explain to her why they were kind to the bugs, Audrey is really bad at grasping it. She gets stuck on “How did you even know they would help you?”, completely not getting that that’s not the point and that Kiwi was kind to them simply because everyone deserves kindness. Apparently she is thoroughly unused to the idea of doing something for others without expecting anything in return.

This is also illustrated by the part in Xiatian where she makes Kiwi and Miriam go buy a potion for her in exchange for meeting the king. She never outright needed the potion for anything; it’s just that it didn’t even cross her mind to help them without making them do at least something for her as payment. And it seems Miriam was correct in her assessment that really Audrey did this as an excuse to not have to help them, entirely on the basis that they didn’t help her first. Like nobody could possibly ever expect her – the Hero – to just, you know… do something nice for someone?

Also, in the bugs conversation: “Can you imagine how that feels?” “What, to step on bugs?” It does not cross her mind that Kiwi was obviously asking her to see things from the bugs’ perspective until they clarify. She’s just really unpracticed at caring about others.

Audrey explains to Kiwi that she was always strong and smart and pretty, but that none of those things made anybody care about her. Really, it’s fair enough that they wouldn’t, because those are pretty much just talents, things you have, rather than choices you make about the kind of person you are. But Audrey seems to feel like people should have automatically liked her just for those superficial reasons, rather than for anything about the way she acts. And since nobody actually did care about her for those talents of hers, things she was probably born with, she seemed to feel that there was nothing else she could do to change that. (At least, not until she happened to become the Hero overnight and suddenly her talents were awesome enough that people did care.)

But that’s not really how it works at all. That one crying dude who gets a dog in Chismest says something surprisingly profound in the ending: that while you can’t control whether other people care about you, you can control whether you care about other people, and this tends to naturally lead to people beginning to care about you, too. It seems like this is precisely the thing that Audrey never realised.

When Kiwi asks to be sure that, wait, really, nobody cared about her?, she just casually says, “Why would they?” like it’s perfectly normal. Having learned that being smart and pretty are not actually things that automatically make her liked, she doesn’t expect anyone to extend basic compassion and empathy to her anyway. And, in turn, she sees no point in extending any of that to anybody else, either.

Considering that Audrey felt nobody cared about her prior to her being the Hero, you’d think she’d have had an easier time relating to the bugs feeling small and insignificant, like Kiwi can. But… apparently not? Perhaps becoming the Hero simply went to her head and shifted her view of herself so much that she can no longer even consciously remember what it was like to feel unimportant. Or, perhaps more likely: she was just so used to the thought that nobody should care about anybody without a good reason that the bugs’ situation never crossed her mind as being something that she in particular should relate to.

It’s honestly kind of messed-up and sad that Audrey is like this. After Kiwi explains to her why kindness is important using the example of the bugs, the only comment she has is, “You’re so… simple.” Like she’s still just convinced somehow that their kindness-centring worldview is naïve and wrong. Why is she so sure about this? What kind of childhood did she have to make her grow up thinking this is how the world worked?

…I wish we knew. Or, at least, that we had enough hints to piece it together. I talked a bit in both the Kiwi and Miriam posts about the way their childhoods and awkward family situations explain a lot about how their issues came to be. And in Kiwi’s case, they didn’t even need to ever talk about it themselves for it to be possible to figure it out. So even though Audrey is definitely also someone who wouldn’t want to open up about this, I wish there had been clues anyway.

And there could have been! We don’t even know which of the regions of the game Audrey grew up in; not a single thing (at least, as far as I’ve noticed) indicates where she came from prior to showing up one day as the Hero. But what if one of the regions had had little hints that this is Audrey’s childhood home, something that could help explain why she grew up believing that nobody could ever care about another person without getting something out of it in return?

As it is, it’s so easy to just want to write Audrey off as A Bad Person… but nobody’s born that way. It would be so disappointing if that was just it. No matter how much I enjoy all of her hero issues and delightful obvious hypocrisy and appreciate her as a character, when this is all I can find after digging to the bottom, it’s unfortunately hard for me to like her as a person. And I really wanted to! I wish I could have truly felt whatever messed-up past made her tragically see the world this way, and cared about her as a result of that.

But it’s hard to fully care about a character who’s acting like kind of a self-absorbed dick for a reason that isn’t ever quite explained. It’s a small shame in an otherwise wonderful game, and an otherwise really interesting character!

“That’s not enough”

Another parallel I love about the three “heroes” of this story (using that word loosely in Audrey’s case) is that none of them like to admit to their weaknesses very much. Kiwi is an example of how not admitting weakness can be for the sake of helping others; Miriam is an example of how it can simply be because admitting weakness in and of itself is scary. And Audrey is an example of how not admitting weakness can be entirely self-preserving.

She just didn’t want to not be the Hero. She felt like she had to pretend she was perfect and unbothered by ending the world, because if she didn’t, Eyala might take her powers away and force her back to the way she was beforehand, when she felt small and weak… and normal. (What a strange thing to be afraid of being! Miriam at least would have really loved to be just normal, and a lot of her arc was about coming to terms with the fact that she never will be.) Whatever it was in Audrey’s past that messed her up like this, it’s something she’s really scared of going back to, so much so that she clings to being the true “Hero” who ends the world despite everything.

And Kiwi seemed to get this! Their absolutely lovely final speech to her, reassuring her that she’s special and amazing and really deserved to be chosen as the Hero but doesn’t need to end the world to prove any of that to be true, was something I genuinely thought was going to get through to her. It sounded like exactly what Audrey had always needed and secretly desperately wanted to hear. Her expression seemed like she was actually considering it and being swayed by it, too.

…Yet, somehow, that’s not enough. Despite everything, Audrey ends the world anyway, before Kiwi gets the last Earthsong piece, leaving no chance for saving it as far as she knows.

The reason, as far as I can see it, is that while Kiwi’s speech solved Audrey’s first issue of clinging to ending the world to feel like she’s “hero” enough, it didn’t remotely solve the second issue – namely the thought that Kiwi is more of a hero than her. If anything, it made that issue worse.

There Kiwi was, reaching out to her, being all kind and understanding and heroic, in that wonderful people-oriented way they have. If Audrey had accepted their speech, accepted that Kiwi has helped her, she’d already be accepting that they’re the better hero, before even getting into the part where they’re the one who can really save the world. She simply couldn’t bring herself to let any of that be true.

And Kiwi couldn’t actually address this half of the issue in their speech, because they didn’t even know about it. Why would they? There’s no way they would ever conceive of the idea that someone as cool and talented as Audrey could ever think that an ordinary, unimportant little bard like them was actually an even better hero than her. That never even crossed their mind for their whole adventure. So of course they didn’t bring it up while trying to help her.

But still, even if Kiwi had been aware of that and talked about that too… would it have helped? Or would Audrey hearing that from the person she’s jealous of have just rubbed everything in and made it worse? – look at just how perfect and heroic and humble that damn bard is that they can even recognise and forgive and try to help her with this. Perhaps it was a lost cause from the beginning, simply because the only person who’d ever have tried to reach out to Audrey and help her was the very root of the problem.

Or maybe it wasn’t? Things might have turned out differently if Audrey had happened to have a chance to properly talk with Kiwi earlier, in a different context where they weren’t enemies. Kiwi could have talked her out of ending the world before she’d had all that time to build up her insistent justifications that she simply has to. And more importantly, she’d have had more time to come to see Kiwi as a friend who cares about her and wants to help her feel like a real hero, rather than just someone who’s infuriatingly effortlessly better than her at everything she wants to be. (Just like Miriam came to do!) Maybe with that, her jealousy wouldn’t have mattered so much.

Audrey’s fate

The other big question is: where is Audrey now? She’s nowhere to be seen in the credits.

One option is that she’s still here, just lying low somewhere and no longer drawing attention to herself. One kid in Xiatian, who assumes Audrey’s the one who saved the world, comments that she must have wanted to live like a normal person and admires how humble that is of her. And, well, maybe he’s right. Maybe Audrey not being around any more is a sign that she’s finally learned humility, and she’s not going to try and take undeserved credit for saving the world when that wasn’t actually her doing.

But, really? I’m not sure I believe she’d be able to do that. She killed the Dream King in the first place, without letting Kiwi get the last Earthsong piece, because she still adamantly refused to let Kiwi take the spotlight from her no matter what. Those were absolutely the actions of somebody who’d then try to take the credit for saving the world when she didn’t deserve it. Everyone would have believed her, too! Nobody except Audrey, Kiwi and Miriam knew that the Hero’s job wasn’t actually to save the world.

If there was ever a moment for Audrey to learn humility and accept that the fate of the world is more important than her ego, it would have been that moment when Kiwi reached out to her. Nothing that happened afterwards seems like it would have been enough to change her mind, given that absolutely everything beforehand hadn’t managed to do it.

So, the other option as to what happened to Audrey instead? She’s gone. She didn’t make it into the new universe. She was the one person who didn’t join in with the Wandersong, and therefore the new world that was being created didn’t have her in it.

Consider the moment the world ended from Audrey’s perspective. She kills the Dream King and watches everything fall apart and tells herself she’s won. She’s beaten that silly little not-so-heroic bard. Everything’s been building up to this; in a twisted, desperately-justified way, this is meant to be her moment of glory. But then out of nowhere, she hears a voice, singing, soon joined by hundreds of other voices singing along. It’s that bard again, saving the world anyway, even though she was supposed to have just made it literally impossible for them to do that. They’re being the real hero of the hour after all, despite everything. Not her.

I think it’s very within Audrey’s character to have refused to join in the Wandersong out of bitter, jealous spite, despite knowing full well that she was throwing away her only chance to make it through this alive.

I read an account from the game devs saying that they originally tried putting in a scene with Audrey ambiguously falling to her probable death as everything crumbles after she kills the Dream King. But then they decided to leave it out, because even aside from the fact that it was kinda unclear what was happening, it felt too much like Audrey was being punished for her actions. I pretty much agree with that call; doing something like that would make it feel like Audrey was being punished because she killed the Dream King. That’s rather unfair when that’s literally what she was supposed to do in the first place.

Her real problem wasn’t that she killed the last Overseer in itself, but that she did so without giving Kiwi a chance to complete the Earthsong and save the world. So it feels more narratively appropriate that, if Audrey did in fact end up dooming herself out of existence, she did so as a direct result of her utter refusal to accept that somebody else could ever be more of a hero than her.

#wandersong #audrey redheart #the bard #eyala #character analysis #ramble #when your hero issues prevent you from actually being a hero

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

Text

Welcome back, everyone!

We’re now on Chapter Eight and once again the story is told from Velvet’s perspective. So our starting question is: why is she getting the most attention so far? If memory serves, the PoV order has been Coco, Velvet, Sun, Fox, Yatsu, Velvet, Scarlet, Velvet again — meaning that in a text balancing eight main characters, so far four of them have received a single chapter, two (Sage and Neptune) zero chapters, and one three chapters. That seems rather imbalanced. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense if we factor in RWBY viewers’ familiarity with Velvet, but I’d wager we’ve gotten far more screen time with Sun overall. My only point being, why Velvet? It’s not that you can’t make her a focal point of the narrative, I just haven’t seen anything to explain that choice in the first 100+ pages. Her perspective hasn’t brought anything unique to the story, something we couldn’t have gotten from the seven other characters involved in these events… but here we are, back with Velvet for the next six pages.

Yeah, this chapter is short. Silver lining?

We learn that Team NOVA is on their second mission — why bother showing us the first when they’re an entirely new, volatile team, right? That would be silly! — escorting a technician “through the Grimm-infested mountains just outside of Oscuro Combat School.” So Shade students regularly conduct real huntsmen work but throw a fit over having to spar with one another? Interesting. See, if I were a civilian who got even a glimpse of what goes on inside these schools, I would not trust these kids with my life.

Lo and behold, things go horribly! We learn right off the bat that “The technician had been knocked unconscious in a skirmish with a band of Dromedons.” For those of you with an iffy memory like mine, these are the camel-like creatures that spit acid and… that’s about all we know about them. That’s really all we need for this scene though because this grimm nailed the tech in his leg, a wound which now requires “serious medical attention.” Great. Gus Caspian, who I learn is a younger friend from the previous novel, is trying to treat the wound as best he can, clearly a little freaked out about being here, “but apparently Oscuro teachers didn’t coddle students any more than Theodore did.”

Do you expect them to? Despite Atlas being the only one who combines their academies with their military, we can’t pretend like these schools aren’t teaching teenagers to wield deadly weapons and kill things with them. There’s no institution on Earth (or Remnant) that should “coddle” those looking to take on that responsibility. I mean yeah, we had moments where Ozpin encouraged them to be kids, like after the food fight and during the dance, but he still took a hard stance whenever there was an actual lesson in the works: “No. You will be falling.” Based on the age of the students, the academies are akin to colleges. In real world college if you don’t do your work or don’t pay attention in class, well… nothing that bad happens. This is by no means a call to not do you work, merely an acknowledgement from a formerly grade obsessed student that individual test scores really don’t have the impact on your life that it feels like they will at the time. Trust me on this. So yeah, some leeway is great in the real world… but when the students are fighting monsters and defending others from death? Then the schools should absolutely discourage any slacker-esque attitude. The concept of any institution “coddling” huntsmen is horrifying.

Note though that the chapter starts after all the action has taken place. We skip the rest of reinitiation. We skip NOVA’s first mission. We skip the attack that landed Velvet in this predicament. It’s not automatically a bad technique provided you’re skipping over boring parts to get to the interesting bits… but this isn’t interesting. We learn almost nothing new from this scene: Velvet misses her old team, her new teammates don’t believe in her, Nebula is mean. Those are the emotional beats here — things we’ve known for at least three chapters now. The only thing that’s introduced is the advertisement on Gus’ scroll, which could have been been added to any other scene.

Let’s revise a bit:

We get to see the battle against the Dromedons wherein Velvet uses her camera, revealing her weapon to Team NOVA and earning more of their respect. Information about Gus’ improvement is shown through his combat abilities as he’s unexpectedly chucked into this battle (perhaps with him using his semblance to further his growth there too). While taking a hit he loses his scroll, slightly damaging it. In the aftermath Velvet retrieves it for him and finds this ad displayed, growing curious. Over the course of Gus’ explanations the rest of Team NOVA is clued into Velvet’s worry and suspicion. What’s wrong? It’s just an ad. But you’re clearly hiding something… Now, does she tell her new team about the Crown, or keep it silent and risk the tenuous trust they’ve just created?

Why is Myers skipping over all the action and potential growth?

Instead we get the boring stuff. Velvet admires Gus’ uniform because of how it’s built for the heat and recalls that “Coco had been messing around with new outfit designs for Team CFVY.” I swear though, 95% of my enjoyment with this novel comes from the throwaway details. I would actually like seeing how Coco combines her personal love of fashion with the necessity of designing combat gear appropriate for the environment. Maybe they frame it as merely a hobby outside of their huntsmen work, giving them an excuse to keep helping their former teammates. That could be cool!

Though of course, this is the series where Cinder, Neo, Hazel, and Emerald all walk into the ice Kingdom with skin bared, so...

(You all are going to freeze to death, have fun.)

“Velvet’s ears swiveled around, listening for danger.” That’s anything detail I like. At the very least Before the Dawn remembers that Velvet is a faunus and frequently incorporates that into her character. She’s on the lookout because other than Gus tending the unconscious technician, she’s alone “on the sidelines.” It’s framed simultaneously as the group rejecting her and as an unavoidable necessity: “it wasn’t like she didn’t have an important task of her own [repairing the relay], one that none of her teammates had the expertise to perform.”

Wait. Why does Velvet have this expertise?

The justification is that she’s “handy with electronics” and “Anesidora was incredibly complicated, and she’d designed it herself,” but that’s like saying “I built a computer so I’ll come fix your refrigerator. That’s easier.” I don’t know, maybe someone with the ability to build a computer from the ground up could figure out a refrigerator on the fly, but they feel like different skill-sets to me. All electronics are not built the same and claiming that because you understand one you automatically understand all others — even supposedly simpler pieces of tech — seems a little suspect. If that were the case, we’d have no need for experts who fix your phone, your television, your toaster, and your watch. Surely if you understand one you understand the others, right? It’s the same assumption here: If Velvet can understand building a hard light weapon, then she must understand relay communications too!

…right.

She even goes so far as to say that they “probably should have left the technician at Oscuro—she could have done this on her own” yet just a few minutes later it’s, “Velvet double-checked everything. She didn’t know what was wrong. She glanced back at the technician, Gus still at his side. The guy was out cold. He’d taken a pretty hard knock to the head. Well, she had tried.” So she’s confident enough to think that the technician is unnecessary one moment and then looking to him for help the next? Which of course isn’t followed by any sort of revelation. Velvet doesn’t acknowledge that her knowledge isn’t as specialized as she had assumed it was, or that huntsmen rely on non-combat experts for other things. She just shrugs and…

…kicks it.

Yeah. Velvet’s skill amounts to kicking the box until it works. Which, of course, it does.

I can’t with this novel.

More seriously though, that’s terrible characterization. Not only does it undermine Velvet’s actual skill to reduce it to being “handy with electronics” — isn’t every huntsmen “handy with electronics” then, considering they all build their gun/energy/dust weaponry in school? — but it adds another layer of supposed uselessness to the adult professionals around her. Theodore doesn’t teach them anything because, as their headmaster, he’s removed from everyday interactions. Rumpole can’t be trusted now and every lesson she tries to impart is rejected. The unnamed technician who is referred to only by his professional title is deemed unnecessary, knocked out, and then indeed proves useless when Velvet magically does his job for him. So why are any of them in school? Why aren’t they just running the world with their superior knowledge and skill-sets? Every time the RWBY franchise puts its characters in a position where they might actually learn something through failure, it pulls back at the last second. ‘Never mind, they actually knew this all along!’ Or, ‘Never mind, the things they’ve been taught are stupid, so best to forget them!’ I struggle to understand what kind of story I’m reading — or watching — when the characters are already framed as perfect. Or rather, flaws absolutely exist (as these recaps attest), but the story pretends they’re not there.

I hesitate to use the term “Mary Sue” here due to its origins and history. Meaning, the Mary Sue was conceived of as a parody, a deliberate exaggeration to comment on the types of characters written in the Star Trek fandom. Then people began using “Mary Sue” as a catch-all term for any female character that people deemed too talented (regardless of how talented their male counterparts might be), we started acknowledging the sexist undertones of that, then started reclaiming the term as something to celebrate and embrace… but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. “Mary Sue” is still a pretty loaded name to force on a character and it carries a lot of implications that I absolutely do not want to attach to Velvet. Yet it’s also the closest term I know to describe the act of an author giving a character what feels like a badly justified skillset. Such as “handy with technology” actually meaning “can fix anything powered by electricity or Dust as the plot needs.”

Velvet is the action movie hacker going, “I’m in” is what I’m getting at. It’s not a compliment lol.

During all this grimm watching and relay fixing, Gus wants to know why they don’t just high-tail it out of there. Especially since the person they brought to do a specific job can no longer do that job. Mission’s a bust. Velvet gives what sounds like a decent explanation: “Retreating from Grimm isn’t an option when you’re fighting this close to a settlement. If we leave without destroying them, the Grimm will just look for another target.” AKA the settlement itself.

Thing is, by this logic any grimm that are currently close enough to attack them are already close enough to the settlement to latch onto those people as the next target. They’d pick up on the civilians whether Velvet’s group was there to kill them or not. The group is there though, so they feel responsible, but why not just head to the settlement anyway? If the grimm follow you, fine. You can still fight them AND you now get the additional benefit of any other huntsmen/students who might be there. If they don’t follow you, great. If they were close enough to the settlement all along… again, this was always going to happen.

Which, to be clear, isn’t the worst stance to take. I understand them wanting to avoid any potential risk by leaving/leading the grimm towards anyone else. I only want to point out the additional stupidity of fighting them when you’ve already got an unconscious civilian in your care, a barely trained student, and the whole reason you came out here might now be for naught. Yeah, Velvet gets the relay working with her magic kick and yeah, the rest of the team handles the grimm just fine, but none of them are able to see into the future and know that both these events will occur. Gus’ ‘Why are we staying here? It’s dangerous and pointless’ question has merit.

But of course, no one in RWBY would ever consider retreat. It’s a very iffy characteristic at this point.

We learn — or at least I learn now — that Gus’ semblance is the ability to enhance others’ emotions, so basically the opposite of Ren’s. That would indeed be incredibly handy provided he has good control over it. We get another reference to Yatsuhashi’s “meditation exercises” that helped Gus’ grandfather in the last novel. Velvet theorizes that his improved memory has more to do with Yatsuhashi’s semblance than any generic meditation: “No one knew for sure what Yatsuhashi had done with his Semblance when he’d tried to heal Edward’s mind … even Yatsuhashi wasn’t sure. His ability was to erase memories, but it was possible that there was more to Yatsu’s Semblance than that.” Um… subtle yikes? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad things have turned out well for the guy, but if I were the grandfather—or a family member of his—I wouldn’t really want a student messing around with my mind when he “wasn’t sure” what he was doing. Especially when the base skill is to erase memories, not recover or strengthen them. Honestly, I love taking a good look at fantasy series because half the time you realize how horrifying things actually are, once you strip away the common place aspects of these skills. An equivalent third year college student is running around experimenting with peoples’ memories to see if he can achieve something other than erasing them. Great!

The good thing is that Yatsuhashi is just as suspicious of this power as I am. Velvet things that he “hated messing with people’s minds.” Understandable, bud. I’d hate the ability too.

While they’ve got this time alone, Gus mentions that he had planned to contact Velvet soon anyway. Two of his classmates have gone missing and though his school has told Shade about it—there’s at least some of that additional info that Rumpole mentioned—he wanted to let her know too because remember, no one in this franchise trusts the professionals to fix problems. It’s a mindset I’d better understand if the professionals were actually inept. Or the protagonists weren’t training to be those professionals. It’s still exceedingly weird to me that there’s so little respect and trust for huntsmen while they desperately try to become huntsmen…

Something something broken systems, but RWBY isn’t interested in exploring that.

So yeah, Gus ropes Velvet in with the hope that she can help. He says that they were last seen attending a new club called Mirage that hosts one-on-one fights for a championship title. So… it’s not really a club, right? Sure, sure, we’ve all seen Fight Club, but generally that’s used to describe dancing, not fighting. It’s a rather misleading term for what they were actually looking for. No one else finds this odd though. Nor that the information was sent out to select, powerful individuals. Nothing shady about this, folks! Velvet obviously recognizes all these details—a club, powerful semblances, a crown in the advertisement—and asks Gus to pass it along to her.

Our plot forwarded ever so slightly, their conversation ends as Arslan calls Velvet on the now fixed connection. One of the first thing she says is that Octavia used the other students as bait for the grimm.

At least Velvet shares my reaction: “What?!”

Octavia then takes an already bad situation and makes it that much worse. Listening in, she defiantly says, “That’s right. And it worked. It’s called strategy.” She confirms that the students are “mostly” okay and taunts Velvet about inviting them to her “Baby Brigade and you can all cry about it!” I hope I don’t need to take up precious document space by explaining how awful this is. Overlooking the fact that these would-be huntsmen are willing to put their younger peers’ lives in danger like that—and then mock them for needing mental health resources after the fact—why is Octavia the one pulling the murderous Mean Girl act? Yeah, she was an asshole during reinitiation, but wasn’t the whole point of that to demonstrate that she and Velvet got a little closer? Even if she won’t admit it? She saved Velvet from flying down that hole, but now she risks the lives of students at least three years her junior? If anyone should be this violent and antagonistic towards Velvet, it’s Nebula. The most she’s done for Velvet is offer a hand up, otherwise we just watched her express glee in getting to fight her and mock her for not abandoning Beacon… the same sort of behavior we’re seeing from Octavia now. Does Myers think that these two characters are interchangeable? That he can just pick one willy-nilly per chapter and let her play at being Velvet’s Mean Girl?

As a lovely anon reminded me recently, these are also the girls that were created and backed by fans. If I had put money and creative energy into these OCs, I’d be pretty frustrated with how the RT team has been treating them.

Arslan at least is complimentary towards Velvet for fixing the relay—“Truly, great work today”— and Velvet herself is appropriately shocked at Octavia’s behavior. That’s more emotional consistency than I’ve come to expect of this book, so I’ll take whatever little bits I can get.

Arslan signs off with plans to meet back up soon and Velvet thinks about how “everyone was safe after the mission, which was no small thing.” I’d agree… except for Velvet’s early thoughts about how easy this mission supposedly was and Octavia’s decision to put her teammates in danger. It sounds like if anything did go sideways, it’s in part because you chose to enter this overconfidently and then actively made it more dangerous.

Finally, the chapter ends with Velvet believing that she might be able to make her new team work with time. Our final line, in its own paragraph is: “If they had time.”

Am I the only one who finds this weird? The line reads like an omniscient bit of foreboding. Velvet thinks about how she just needs time and we, the reader, hear that this won’t be possible. Except this chapter is told from Velvet’s perspective. So why does she think they might not have time? Because of the Crown? I assume there will be an attack towards the end of the novel—can’t have a RWBY story without the final, epic battle—but right now Velvet has no reason to believe that an attack is imminent, or that the teams will change back, or anything else that would interfere with her hopes of strengthening this relationship… so why the rather confident sounding pessimism? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know anymore lol.

At least this chapter was short? As said, silver linings. We’re still treading water though: Velvet’s bond with her new team seems to have regressed after two missions, rather than improved, and Gus didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, just further confirmed it. I assume that next chapter Velvet and the others will visit Mirage. Let’s hope something actually happens then.

See you! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

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amphtaminedreams · 5 years

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Film Tier Ranking 2019: A Bad Year for Bird Films

Hi to anyone reading,

I’ve finally put it together: my 2019 film tier ranking! I know tier rankings are a bit 6 months ago but seeing British crisps sorted into god, good, mid and shit tier all over Twitter, the format really resonated with me and I was like I MUST USE THIS AT SOME POINT! And I guess since there probably isn’t much of an audience for crisp tier rankings on Tumblr, it makes more sense for me to do it with films instead, especially as doing a 2019 year in film review was something I previously claimed I would do; here’s to 2020 and following through on my proposals.

I think 2019 in general was an okay year for film, with the end of the year definitely outselling the beginning. One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of films that I would’ve been able to see in 2019, I.E Little Women and Parasite, didn’t come out until 2020 in the UK so they won’t make it onto this year’s list. It’s not a snub by any means. I more fall in line with the Elsie Fisher Film Awards school of thought than the Oscars, which have yet again disregarded several incredible performances this year: Florence Pugh in Midsommar, Taron Egerton in Rocketman, Lupita Nyongo in Us, and of course, Greta Gerwig’s direction of Little Women. I’m sure there are many more but those are the first few that come to mind. Oh to be in 2017 when nominations made fractionally more sense.

This list also includes films that weren’t necessarily released this year, but that I just got around to watching; there were a couple of disappointments but also a lot of films I can’t believe it took me this long to finally watch and have definitely made their way into my favourites. My goal for this year is to get through even more of the films on my verrrry long Letterboxd watchlist, and more specifically, watch said films without going on my phone, which is a really bad habit of mine. I find it hard to sit still! Let me live!

I also want to try and put aside my prejudices about visual quality and watch more pre-2000s movies this year; it’s really bad but I never managed to get more than half an hour into Psycho, of all films, solely because I couldn’t deal with the black and white. In 2020, I am going to stop being a whiney Gen Z/cusp millenial-er and give older films the chance they deserve.

So, without further ado, here is my film tier ranking of everything I watched in 2019! If you make it til the end and have any thoughts or disagreements, let me know. I love to hear other’s opinions and get new perspectives on things and am totally open to any criticism. Happy reading:-)

God Tier

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019)

Knives Out. What a film.

I feel like I waited forever to see this at the cinema. They must have started showing trailers for it in, like, August, and I had to wait til mid-November to see it. How are you gonna just dangle a film with Toni Colette and Lakeith Stanfield in my face and then make me wait 3 months? Totally unethical.

But that being said, when it finally came around and I did see it, as much as I love Toni and Lakeith, there was one stand out and it wasn’t either of them: ANA DE ARMAS. I have to admit I’d never heard of her before but she acted the shit out of a role I feel I’d ordinarily find irritating and gimmicky. Daniel Craig, whose character seemed annoying as fuck in the trailer, was actually surprisingly funny.

Stylistically, it was a very cool film and I liked the subtle commentary on class that was running throughout. Also, I thought the ending was very clever. My issue with a lot of whodunnits is that they just pick someone who doesn’t make sense for shock factor *cough, Bobby Beale in Eastenders, cough* but the shocks here were more in the details.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

There wasn’t one single moment of Hustlers I didn’t enjoy and it’s quite amazing that there wasn’t one single point in this film about strippers that I felt gratuitously sexualised women. THAT is why you fund female directors. It made the whole thing look like a calculated art form, which I think the unsexy amongst us can all agree that it is. Constance Wu was a fantastic lead, J-Lo was kind of robbed for a supporting actress nom, and Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart were hilarious too.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

Midsommar was such an experience that it took me a good few days afterwards to decide whether I actually liked it. I saw it the day it came out because I loved Hereditary so much and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I kind of had an idea of the way it was going to go, we could all kind of guess evil cult was the route that was being taken from the trailer, but I just didn’t realise quite how weird it’d get.

The gore was great, the visuals were stunning and the character arcs were surprising and for that reason, I think this is another game changer for horror from Ari Aster. I didn’t love it like I loved Hereditary but it continues to play on my mind and 7 months later I still can’t resist a good “Things you Missed in Hereditary” or “Hereditary Themes Explained” Youtube video essay. That’s how you know a film fucked with you and that’s the ultimate goal of going into a horror for me. Put that on my headstone after I inevitably get myself into some mortally dangerous conflict because I want to “get fucked with” a little bit.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019)

So here’s the thing with Booksmart: I was getting progressively more and more drunk throughout it so I might be a little biased when I say I loved it. That being said, worth revere seems to be a commonly held opinion so I’ll stick to my guns. Plus, movies like this, which just focus on girls living their lives, are few and far between. Why have we had to wait THIS long for the female Superbad?

IDK. But Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein and Billie Lourd proved it’s definitely a genre worth investing in so hopefully we see more lighthearted female-led coming of age comedies. One Ladybird per year isn’t enough for me.

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

I included The Favourite in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch that I made earlier this year so I don’t have all that much to say about it that I haven’t said already. To summarise, it’s an instant classic: the cinematography, the cast, the lines, it’s all perfection.

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

I also included Suspiria in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch list so sorry if I’m repeating myself, but I adored everything about it. If I had to sum it up in one sentence I’d say divine feminine energy, but inverted. Plus ballet. That dancing scene in the mirrored room will probably never leave my mind (if you’ve watched it, trust me, you’ll know the one I'm talking about), and if there were awards given out for creepy montages in horror, this would win all of them. It still blows my mind that Tilda Swinton played 3 characters in this film; 2 of them are so distinctly different, if anyone put two and two together without prior knowledge of this fact then I’ll blow my own head up too. This is why I got so mad when there was all that discussion around her being the new female Doctor Who and there were people asking who she was. How can you not know who Tilda fucking Swinton is!? She’s a legend!

Sorry, is the wannabe film snob in me showing?

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Though I initially watched it because it’s branded as a horror, Annihilation ended up being a surprisingly introspective take on human nature and our self-destructive tendencies. Nothing really went the way I expected it to, even though I was constantly trying to guess that trajectory from beginning to end.

Visually, Annihilation is magnificent. Like, it’s tense, and where exactly the plot is going is shrouded in mystery, but most importantly, it’s super fucking pretty. Sure, the only thing that was mildly horrifying was the *SPOILER* end result of that bear scene but I didn’t mind too much because there was always that edge-of-your-seat possibility something like that would happen again.

Also I realised that Gina Roduriguez is really hot in this! I would just say in general but that video of her saying the n-word kind of took away shot at real world magnetism. WHY SUCH A SHITTY APOLOGY VIDEO!? WHY?!

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 2018)

So I didn’t clock until I was looking up directors that Sam Levinson, Euphoria director, also directed this, and suddenly everything makes sense in the world. They both have that dreamlike, exaggerated feel that perfectly captures the emotional rollercoaster that is being a teenager, only in Assassination Nation obviously the threats are a bit more...tangible. As in its actually other people trying to kill our protagonists this time round, not just angst.

Not gonna lie, it’s not a patch on Euphoria because that show is probably the best thing I watched all year, but I did thoroughly enjoy it, even if I did feel the social commentary, despite how in your face it was, got a bit lost in translation at times. I think it’s the kind of film that, once again, would’ve felt more genuine coming from a female director, however that’s not to take away from how witty, modern, and completely relevant it still is as we move into 2020.

Sorry To Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)

Right. WHAT THE FUCK!?

Why don’t more people talk about this film? Like it has Tessa Thompson and the world’s best earrings! Lakeith Stanfield getting more than 10 cumulative minutes of screen time! Armie Hammer being that bitch we all knew he was irl (probably)! Scathing critiques of late stage capitalism! It’s insane, in the absolute best way.

SPOILERS AHEAD: I had a mini paragraph written about the last hour of the film and the descent into pure unadulterated chaos, and how it’s like, the internet’s best kept secret, because ordinarily you lot can’t keep your mouths shut about a film or TV’s shows most crucial reveals for more than 5 minutes and THEN...My FBI agent must be feeling real cheeky because THIS tweet pops up on my Twitter timeline.

Fuck this shit, I’m out. Onto the next film. MI5 stop peeping my drafts.

Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)

I don’t want to repeat what I said about Eighth Grade in my 50 Films you Should Watch list but Elsie Fisher’s performance in this is why I wish the Oscars also had some kind of rising star award category à la the BAFTAs. Honestly, every 13/14 year old should watch this; it’s a reminder that although feeling like an outsider is by its nature quite isolating, it’s prolific enough that a 29 year old man, 10 years out of “high school”, gets it.

American Animals (Bart Layton, 2018)

My sister and I absolutely loved this film so you can image our disappointment when we turned round to our parents at the end and our enthusiasm wasn’t matched...as in, I’m pretty sure they were both asleep for a lot of it. WHICH I DON’T GET. Because to me, there wasn’t a dull moment. American Animals is what happens when a group of university age boys with the finesse of the American Vandal Turd Burglar try and apply that to an Evil Genius stye heist, part Netflix, talking head abundant documentary, part live-action film. Splicing a stylistic reenactment with interview footage of the men who really attempted to commit the crime elevated what I probably would have put in the Good Tier™ to the God Tier™; seeing the guy Evan Peters is playing alongside Evan Peters playing him, now only the remnants of the arrogance we see in the reenactment left behind, sharply reminds you of the fall from grace these boys deservedly went through. Plus Barry Keoghan from The Killing of a Sacred Deer is in it, proving that unsettlingly stiff is NOT in fact his natural state.

Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

I wish there was a shorthand way to say I wrote about this in my 50 Films You Should Watch list so I’m gonna keep it short but here we are! This was great! If The Haunting of Hill House isn’t proof enough, Gerald’s Game (not to take away any credit from Stephen King) is a reminder that Mike Flanagan is the king of subtle, niggling sensation in your stomach that something is about to go very wrong horror. I hear he and Ari Aster have a timeshare situation going on with the crown.

The Ritual (David Bruckner, 2017)

Okay, so this is the film that made me realise we should all be very scared of forests. Nope, all the documentaries into the Aokigahara Forest weren’t enough, apparently. I subjected myself to this too, as if my unfit, cold-blooded, bug-fearing, scared of the dark ass doesn’t already have enough concerns about my survival odds in the great outdoors.

Really though, setting aside, this film maintains the sense of dread throughout and keeps you guessing what’s going on until the very end. Much like The Descent, the group dynamic and characters are realistic enough that it adds to the believability of a scenario I, in principle, know would never happen to the extent that I might keep away from vast, wooded spaces for a while just in case.

Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019)

If film Twitter came across this post and saw I’d placed Dumbo in a higher tier than If Beale Street Could Talk I can only imagine the outrage. And sure, the latter is probably a much higher quality film. But sometimes a movie, for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on, gets you right in the sweet spot, and Dumbo did that for me. Maybe it was that the CGI elephant reminded me of my cat (I know, leave me alone), maybe I was emotional that day, I don’t know, all I know is that I cried like 5 times and was smiling for the rest of it-to be fair, the exploitation of animals for our entertainment is something that is still very much going on and that was something that was playing on my mind a lot whilst I was watching it. IRL Dumbos should be free too. Dumbo rights.

The VVitch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

This film taught me that there’s nothing wrong with joining a coven of young witches and getting naked and levitating around a fire. And that’s an important life lesson. Plus it gave us the quote “wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”, which is not only so perfectly creepy and simultaneously empowering that I had to get it tattooed but also, created ASMR. I just made that last bit up obviously but Black Philip getting his own ASMR Youtube channel?

The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2006)

For me, much like The Ritual, The Descent is a perfect horror film: it’s got the ghouls but the situation the characters find themselves in is also terrifying by its own merit. The reason The Descent made it onto my 50 Films list and the Ritual didn’t is because, let’s be honest, it’s 2020 and you can get mobile signal in most places. You could probably at least make a 999 call if you got lost in a forest. If you DID get stuck in an underground cave and it collapsed in on itself, you’d be pretty fucked; the idea of it makes me shudder and I will never set foot in an underground tunnel at any point in my life for any amount of money EVER after seeing this. Also, the women in this are great and the creatures in this are genuinely quite terrifying, especially the first time you see them.

Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2003)

Ah, Chicago, the last film on the God Tier™, proving that this list is in no particular order. Because WHAT A FIM. WHY DON’T PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THIS MORE?! Like don’t get me wrong, I know it deservedly won Best Picture in 2003 but I’m talking about right now! I mean, fucking Titanic is still out here getting referenced left, right and centre and yet Chicago gets paid dust! Can you tell I’m mad and that I think Titanic is hugely overrated?! Is that maybe coming across?!

ALL the songs are bops, Catherine Zeta-Jones is hot (I saw someone on Letterboxd say that Catherine Zeta-Jones in this film was their bisexual awakening and honestly, if I hadn’t already known I was a raging bisexual, same, because I FELT things in that All That Jazz opening) and Cell Block Tango is the revenge fantasy anthem I never knew I needed. Smart, tongue in cheek, beautifully shot and makes men look like little bitches which is probably why my dad hated it but what did I expect.

Good Tier

Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer, 2019)

Onto the first film of the good tier, Zombieland: Double Tap definitely exceeded my expectations. I was super worried about the prospect of a sequel as I love the first one so much and assumed it would be crap. Obviously, it doesn’t match up to the original because the original WAS so original, but it was still a fun, easy, witty ride. And I was SO glad they didn’t *SPOILERS AHEAD* kill off Tallahassee at the end because I really thought that was coming and it seemed so predictable and unnecessary. Highlight was the introduction of the lookalikes at Graceland.

Judy (Rupert Goold, 2019)

So, this is the first of two consecutive rants I’m about to go on about Oscar nominations and people’s reactions online. Prepare yourself.

I’ll start with the underlying message: just because you think something else deserves the praise more, doesn’t mean the film/album/*insert whatever artistic medium you wish here* that IS getting the praise is shit.

Like people are angry that Lupita Nyongo wasn’t nominated for best actress for her performance in Us which is COMPLETELY valid as she carried that film on her back. In the same vein, people are also angry that more women of colour haven’t been nominated for best actress. Also valid; I’ve yet to see The Farewell but I’ve heard great things about Akwafina’s performance and I love her so even though I haven’t seen it, I’m gonna take the general consensus that she should’ve been nominated too. The Oscars definitely has a problem with recognising the work of POC. BUT, because of this, people are angry that Renee Zellweger has been nominated for her performance in Judy, saying that it’s typical “Oscar bait”. I agree, it is typical Oscar bait. However, a lot of the people saying this will in the same breath say (or tweet rather) that they haven’t actually SEEN Judy.

How can you possibly say that Renee Zellweger doesn’t deserve any of the praise she’s getting when you haven’t even seen the film? Don’t get me wrong, the film itself is good but not outstanding (hence its place in this tier), but you can see Renee genuinely put her heart and soul into this film; it was powerful, and it was sympathetic but it was also nuanced and subtle where they could’ve just capitalised on all the sensationalised stories of the actions of a woman clearly deeply suffering in her final years and had it be full of shouting and screaming. The Wizard of Oz has always kind of felt like home to me because of the childhood nostalgia factor and so I’ve always been interested in Judy and I think Renee captured her heart and her spirit in a way she would be deeply honoured by. Maybe the film itself doesn’t deserve the acclaim it’s getting but I think Zellweger definitely deserves the nom and I think most people who’ve actually seen it wouldn’t contest that.

Joker (Todd Philipps, 2019)

Okay so second rant. I’m sorry. I have a lot of feelings. Most of them aimed at the annoying tendency of internet users, Film Twitter™ and Letterboxd users I’m looking at you in particular, to be wildly exaggerative.

There just seems to be no nuance online. It’s not just yeah, I didn’t like the film personally and the message could be perceived in a certain way by certain individuals, it’s I HATE THIS FILM AND IT’S DANGEROUS AND THE DIRECTOR FUCKING SUCKS. I noticed this trend when La La Land came out (which if I had watched last year would certainly be in God tier for me). It’s like, if a film initially receives a lot of praise and buzz, there’s almost this wave of compensatory vehement criticism in response that’s usually disproportionate to how controversial the film actually is. People didn’t like that Joker was popular because they didn’t like Joker so suddenly it’s the worst film ever and the possibility of it getting any critical acclaim is wrong. I even saw people berating Todd Philipps for channelling Martin Scorsese as he’s the only person to ever be influenced and take direction from one of the most dominant figures in film of the 20th and 21st century. I mean, what’s wrong with that?! If it was any other director, it’d be called homage. But because everything has to be seen through this malicious lens, its copying.

I think one of the few very valid criticisms about Joker was that it further perpetuates the idea that psychotic people are dangerous, and I can totally see where they’re coming from. At the same time, we have to accept that whilst the majority of people who are psychotic aren’t a danger to anyone apart from themselves, most “dangerous” people don’t just become dangerous because they thought, fuck it, why not? A lot of people in the prison system ARE suffering with some kind of mental illness. The character’s psychosis doesn’t make him dangerous, it’s his underlying resentment and sense of entitlement that grows throughout the film that makes him dangerous, and I think a lot of people seem to miss this point. They say that the way the film ends implies Philipps is justifying the actions of the films protagonist. However, we KNOW the Joker is an unreliable narrator, he’s one of pop culture’s most infamous villains and that being said, both in film and in the real world, few villains see themselves as the villain. Joker is about why HE thinks he’s justified in doing what he does, not why he IS justified in doing what he does because he’s not, and that’s pretty clear from the moment he shoots someone in the head on live TV. Honestly, I think there’s a bit of wilful misinterpretation going on because people don’t like that film

I liked Joker. It was gritty, it was interesting, and sufficiently dark. I didn’t think it was the best film of the year but I understand why it got the praise it did. Obviously, it’s okay that people disagree and DON’T like it. But can we please get a bit more well-acquainted with the middle ground?

It: Chapter Two (Andres Muschietti, 2019)

Okay, essays over. Back to regular scheduled programming of less impassioned reviews. Though I will say I deserved better than my Letterboxd comment of “so you can just fucking roast Pennwyise to death?” getting absolutely 0 traction. One day my grand total of 5 followers, one of which is my sister, will recognise my brilliance (lol).

It’s hard to say how much I really liked this as I think my perspective of how much I did enjoy it is warped by how much I disliked the first one. Child actors really aren’t my thing and the only cast members I warmed to in the first one were Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer whereas the cast here were a lot more likeable, imo. Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain and James Ransone were all great, with the only let down being James Mcavoy; I love him, don’t get me wrong, but I just think he was really miscast in this role.

Another thing I enjoyed a lot more about this instalment was that due to the more episodic/anthology-like/Creepshow-esque structure with each character conquering different monsters from their past individually, the narrative felt like it had a lot more direction, and it didn’t drag as much despite it having a significantly longer runtime. I haven’t read the Stephen King novels and I don’t know much of the pacing issues are down to them so this is me coming at it from a screenwriting angle but it felt as if the climax of the first film just kept going on and on. Every time I thought it had finished there’d be another confrontation between the kids and Pennywise whereas Chapter 2 seemed to have a more definitive third act and I appreciated that.

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher, 2019)

So, here’s one where I WILL agree with the general online consensus: if Rami Malek got nominated for playing Freddie Mercury last year and Renee got nominated for playing Judy Garland, why the fuck didn’t Taron Egerton get one for playing Elton John? Why didn’t Rocketman itself get a nomination when Judy did? Though I personally preferred Judy because I’m more interested in her story, technically and narratively Rocketman is the better film in my opinion. This was so cleverly edited and sequenced and told with such a brutal honesty on Elton John’s part (it was co-produced by his husband David Furnish and he was heavily involved in everything from the set to the script), that I can only come to the conclusion that the obligatory biopic nomination only comes when the focus of said biopic is no longer with us as a kind of honorary thing. Whilst something like Bohemian Rhapsody was much more of an easy watch (which just goes to show how glossed over Freddie Mercury’s life was in the film), the way the story was told, by the time we got to I’m Still Standing that happy ending felt so earned.

Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019)

You can hate all you want, Prince Ali and Never Had a Friend Like Me are fucking bops and somehow they were even better in this incarnation of the film. I was initially hesitant about Will Smith being cast but rather than trying to impersonate Robin Williams he went his own route and it really worked. He was the highlight of the film. It was undeniably visually stunning too. Madonna’s ex did good.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

Ah, I feel so conflicted when it comes to Us. Like, there were some really strong points and it’s definitely a good standalone horror movie. It’s just you can’t help but compare it to Get Out, and with that unsatisfactory exposition dump ending, I left feeling so disappointed. It seemed to me that Jordan Peele got in a bit over his head here with trying to tie such a vague social metaphor and the actual in-universe plot together, and so ended up leaving both a bit half-baked. He tried to OutPeele himself and for me, it didn’t work.

The doppelgängers were so scary as this ambiguous, vaguely threatening presence that if you are gonna give us a full blown, sit down explanation of why they exist it needs to be really bloody good. And this explanation didn’t make much sense. For example, *SPOILERS AHEAD* I imagine that the tethered just not being able to walk up the escalator into the “real world” was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for social mobility but it’s not fleshed out enough to work. In our world, there are REASONS why the idea of social mobility is flawed. In the film, it’s just like gee, if they chose to just walk up the escalator and go on this murderous rampage now, why couldn't they have decided to do it years ago back before they all lost their fucking minds? Why were they just copying the originals for all those years? HOW did they know what they were doing? See, the metaphor as I understand it is supposed to be that we depend on the oppression of others like us in order to maintain our social status, but not only is this kind of too general a statement to try and use a feature length film to make, I don’t really understand how this dynamic works within the narrative of the film. Technically, there's nothing to stop the tethered and the originals co-existing apart from the tethered deciding not to walk up the fucking escalator. We’re not talking a bourgeoisie-proletariat relationship here. The explanation of it all just being a “government project gone wrong” was too vague seeing as the plot working seemed prior to this to hinge onto something vaguely supernatural and the eventual plan of the doppelgängers seemingly had no purpose or application to the real world like the climax of Get Out did. It just left me feeling kind of like...why? Why did this all happen? When the ending and the twist was that predictable (the old Pretty Little Liars finale style twin switcheroo was blatantly obvious from the mother’s “it’s like she’s a different person” line near the beginning, let’s be real), I was expecting some final revelation that flipped my expectation on its head or at least felt helped things click into place. Instead, it seemed a bit hamfisted and like I was supposed to feel things were deeper and more significant than they actually were.

All that being said, I appreciate that if anyone other than the writer of Get Out had come out with this movie, I probably wouldn’t have these issues. Us was funny, it was fresh, and the concept of doppelgängers is something I’m so glad to see brought back into our modern pop culture database. The people are right, Lupita was incredible in this and it is a travesty that she didn’t get nominated. My sister, who was so creeped out by her vocal performance that she had her fingers in her ears every time Red spoke, still won’t let me attempt an impression of it. And that Fuck the Police sequence? Iconic.

On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder, 2019)

I apologise in advance for the shittiest “review” I’ll ever write, but honestly I can’t remember all too much about this film other than it being good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I’m sorry. You’re a cool lady.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2019)

EURGH, THIS WAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL FIM. The score, the shots, the rawness. I imagine it’s devastatingly real. Like, *SPOILERS AHEAD* you think there’s going to be a happy ending but there’s not. It should be disappointing but it’s an honest choice. And side note: fuck those annoying middle aged white ladies in the seats behind me and my friend who lost their shit and started giggling every time the N-word was used, JFC. I hate living in a Tory stronghold.

Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018)

So, as I said, I’m a fan of the whole doppelgänger thing. It freaks me out. The point in this film where the protagonist is approaching her bedroom door whilst she watches HERSELF livestreaming from inside that same bedroom had my heart in my mouth wondering what she was going to encounter on the other side. And you see, the ending of this was a lot more ambiguous than the ending of Us, so I should’ve had less questions. Whilst I’ve seen other people saying it WAS unsatisfactory and that they felt like we were owed more of an explanation, I liked the simplicity of the answer we got and the wiggle room it leaves for our own interpretation. The way I see it, given that we were told by the fan the protagonist meets with in the motel room that *SPOILERS AHEAD* it was a case of some kind of software copying these women’s likenesses to steal their viewers and thus their profits, is that Cam is a kind of a commentary on the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies and the demand for (and desensitisation towards) sexually violent content; we don't necessarily need to know who is behind the virtual cloning, which is terrifyingly believable given how realistic some of the deepfakes I’ve seen are, because it doesn’t matter. We're basically told money is the motive and we know the kind of lengths some people will go, and someone DID go to in Cam, to in order to make a shitload of money and that’s as true in real life as it is scary. On the other hand, if you want to believe there’s a more supernatural presence behind the events of the film, there’s enough left to the imagination that you can go down that route too. Some films are better left un-exposition dumped and this is the proof. My one criticism, is that, like many films, it would be even better if directed by a woman; I’ve seen people say that its portrayal of online sex work isn’t entirely accurate and though I can’t say with certainty that women working in this industry weren’t consulted in the first place, I imagine a female director would not only be more likely to listen to their concerns but could translate the confusion and fear that comes with being expected to makes oneself sexually desirable to get ahead in the world but then shamed and used for doing so even more viscerally. A few tweaks and it’d be God Tier.

Colette (Wash Westmoreland, 2019)

The costumes, sets, and Keira were so, so stunning. Also it was just an inspiring, beautiful story. The navigation of womanhood, so called “deviant” sexuality and self-expression against the backdrop of early 20th century Paris with a load of Edwardian era tailoring thrown in, it’s everything I could possibly want and more; 10/10 moodboard content.

The Boy (William Brent Bell, 2016)

I can’t believe this film was made in 2016, and it almost makes me move it down to mid tier based on the fact that a lot of the allowances I made for cheese factor I made on the assumption it came out earlier in the decade. BUT, that being said, I was creeped out for a good portion of this film. Most horrors I watch and I’m probably a bit too chilled (a head comes off or some witchy ass ghost screams into the camera and my only thought is some kind of judgement of the SFX), and yet I felt like watching this behind my hands. I don’t know what it is about dolls and puppets, Chucky was my childhood fear even though I never actually watched the film, but something about the uncanny valley of it all makes me just spend the whole time they’re on screen silently praying they don’t start moving or talking. So in a way, given the resolution of the film *SPOILERS AHEAD*, the premise of The Boy was actually a lot scarier to me than the reveal of what was really going on. Someone hiding in my walls? NBD. That demons are real and that they live inside creepy old dolls? Terrifying. Why does everybody I debate this with disagree!? You can't call the police on a demon! At least with a human being you can stick them with the pointy ending of something! Regardless, I enjoyed the journey and trying to work out how things would end and if there IS anybody secretly living inside my house right now, even if you are a supposedly dead murderous family member (last time I checked I didn’t have any of those so I should be all good), kindly vacate. Thanks.

Oprhan (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2009)

So the fact that this film is based on a real life case makes this all the more terrifying. It was a bit campy and tacky at times but the shot of *SPOILERS AHEAD* Esther taking off her makeup in the mirror and revealing her true age will always be iconic. Plus I love Vera Farmiga, even though I did struggle to see her as anyone other than Norma Bates.

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)

A hauntingly beautiful film with a lot of room for interpretation. There were so many gorgeous shots and so much subtext, this is proper 10/10 media studies essay material.

The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015)

I would say the concept and implications of this film, which don’t fully hit you til the final shots, are a lot better than the film itself. It feels very realistic though and is definitely tense.

As Above, So Below (John Erick Dowdle, 2014)

I was so stoned when I watched this that a lot of the allegory and Dante’s inferno references went straight over my head, and it just seemed absolutely balls to the wall wild. I couldn’t buy that the characters would just KEEP GOING either when things began to get terrifying, like people in horror films really out here making the most nonsensical decisions and it drives me mad. But anyway, it was definitely entertaining and there’s a lot more to it in terms of plot and mythology than most similar quality horrors and I appreciate that

Climax (Gaspar Noe, 2018)

Climax is an interesting one that I think I’ll have to watch again to judge how much I truly like it. As with Us, I know it’s a good film, but I think my expectations of what it was going to be left me slightly disappointed. See, when I read about the premise I assumed that the horror was going to come from seeing the perspective of the characters on said acid trip and that leaves so much room for any kind of terrifying visuals you want whether that be something based in realism or fucked up creatures of the imagination. Buuuuut, it wasn’t that at all; at no point does Climax take place from the first person perspective of any of the characters. Similar to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, the horror comes from not being able to do anything but watch as everyone starts losing their minds and the situation gets increasingly more dire. It’s pure stress; the acting is so unnervingly good that you really do feel like you’re watching some unintentionally horrific incident take place. That’s not a bad thing-I like it when films make me feel something intense, whether that emotion be positive or negative. It was just a different viewing experience to the one I had precipitated.

Mid Tier

Nativity (Debbie Isitt, 2009)

I find Mr.Poppy hilarious. Does that make me a child? Probably. I’m not really one for Christmas movies but this one’s alright.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal, 2019)

I get that it’s based off a book so it’s not exactly like the “monsters” were a secret in the first place, but for those of us who didn’t read the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books as a kid, my main beef with this film was that they basically revealed all of said monsters in the trailer. Like how It: Chapter 2 spoiled the scene with Beverly in the old lady’s apartment but with EVERY. SINGLE. CREATURE. The only one that wasn’t was the “jangly man” and the only takeaway I have from him is the “jangly in the streets, but is he jangly in the sheets?” Letterboxd comment I read afterwards. Like the creature designs are the selling point of this film and by showing us them all before we’ve even seen it, any anticipation that would’ve built up from their reveal was kind of gone. Plus, it definitely felt like the writers were trying to ride on the hype train of “It” when they wrote this-only they made it even more childish. I mean, I know it was classed as PG-13 in the US which is maybe part of the reason it was so tame but the Woman in Black was a 12 when it was released here and it could be the bias of my 13 year old brain but I remember that being terrifying to watch in the cinema.

Also, I found it weird how *SPOILERS AHEAD* a couple of the main characters died and there didn’t really seem to be any consequences? Idk, maybe that’s because I found them all a bit one dimensional but I’ve seen others make the same criticism so I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a BAD film. It just wasn’t super good.

Charlie’s Angels (Elizabeth Banks, 2019)

I’ve never seen the 2000s Charlie’s Angels so I really don’t have anything to compare to, but I don’t think this was THAT bad. I was fairly entertained throughout and I enjoyed Naomi Scott and Kristen Stewart’s characters. My main issue was the unnecessary inclusion of Noah Centineo, and that weird ass montage at the beginning of stock video shots of girls just...doing miscellaneous things. Why, Elizabeth Banks, why!?

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

In some ways, I see why Toy Story 4 was narratively necessary: co-dependency had been a running theme throughout and we needed to see Woody (I feel stupid saying this considering he’s a fucking toy but allow it) realise that he can exist independently of Andy, and that there’s more to life than pleasing somebody else. The way Toy Story 4 ended felt like a satisfying conclusion to his character arc, and as well as the animation being top tier, Forky was a hilarious addition to the cast. However, I don’t think it carried the emotional weight of the 3rd Toy Story, which I think people had accepted as the last instalment and had used to say goodbye to the franchise, and therefore the sceptic in me thinks that the obvious purpose of this addition was a cash grab. I don’t doubt that a lot of people worked incredibly hard on it-I’m just saying that the propelling force behind the film probably wasn’t “the people need to see Woody’s character growth” and that was quite apparent throughout.

Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

There were some really beautiful scenes in Doctor Sleep; the astral projection sequences in particular were magnificent and I loved Rebecca Ferguson as the villain. Stylistically, though I didn’t find out he was the director until I was writing this up, you can definitely tell it’s Mike Flanagan, and like I’ve said, he does horror very tastefully. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t all that interested in the premise and I wasn’t hugely invested in grown up Danny Torrance either. The execution was great and the return to the Overlook was brilliant, of course, but the story just wasn’t for me and nothing much sticks out as being a particularly intriguing plot point.

Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2019)

What to say about Mary Queen of Scots other than...yeah, it was alright. I mean, I really should’ve liked it more than I did, because these specific events were part of the Edexcel A-Level history curriculum (Can I get some Rebellion and Disorder Under the Tudors students representation up in here!?) and I usually love seeing history translated onto screen, plus it centred around Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. It was just very...meh. I feel like there’s so much more complex a story here than was told. Both women were undoubtedly a lot more complicated than this film made them out to be and I think to reduce Mary Queen of Scots to a Mary Sue-ish heroine was a disappointing choice. Plus, if we’re gonna talk historical accuracy (which all the racists came out of their caves to discuss at the time), Mary and Elizabeth never actually met; I’m sure there was a more creative way to explore their dynamic than by forcing an interaction that never actually happened.

Apostle (Gareth Evans, 2018)

There were elements of this film I really liked; the mythology behind the cult, I.E what the townsfolk actually worshipped when you stripped away all the secrecy was pretty interesting. However, I felt it depended too much on atmosphere and not enough on plot, and I didn’t warm to any of the characters.

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, 2018)

It’s difficult because technically, Searching is obviously an ingenious film. My issue is the way it ended, which was imo, super anti-climatic, and honestly pretty predictable in that it seemed like the writers just went out of their way *SPOILERS AHEAD* to make the culprit the person viewers would’ve ruled out by default for shock value, and then work out WHY that person was the culprit from there. I was expecting something a lot darker to be behind the protagonist’s daughter’s disappearance-irl, these situations usually are-and so maybe it’s just me being a bit of a sadist but I was disappointed by how things resolved themselves.

Deliver Us from Evil (Scott Derrickson, 2014)

So, this isn’t boring. It’s interesting to have a horror navigated through the lens of something as procedural as a police investigation. But ultimately, the acting isn’t great, there’s very few scary moments, and it’s a little cheesy. As horrors go, it’s pretty shallow-it is what it says on the tin.

Dumplin’ (Anne Fletcher, 2018)

I watched this right at the beginning of the year and I can’t remember all too much about it, but I remember not hating it? See, looking at the cast, Odeya Rush and Dove Cameron are both in it which would suggest I’d come away hating MYSELF instead but yeah...I got nothing.

Lights Out (David F.Sandberg, 2016)

The concept is very scary, the execution not so much, and the actual storyline is a little cheesy. I found myself just being like OH MY GOD, IT’S BELLA’S DAD FROM TWILIGHT! And then *SPOILERS AHEAD* getting mad that they did Charlie Swan dirty like that by killing him off in the first 10/15 minutes.

The Goldfinch (John Crowley, 2019)

So I LOVED the book of The Goldfinch. I read it after the Secret History and even though most people seem to prefer the latter, the former hit me right in the sweet spot. The length was almost one of my favourite things about it; I felt by the end that I came to know the character so well he felt like someone I knew in real life. When I heard Ansel Elgort was cast as Theo, I was really happy; I’m not necessarily a huge fan of him as an actor, I've only ever seen him in shitty teen-y dramas which I forced myself to like at the time E.G. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, but he looks kind of exactly how I pictured Theo looking. Almost like an Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood situation. And then honestly, the actual film came around, and I found myself much preferring the young Theo sections. I get that Theo is quite a muted character and I hate to properly slate anyone’s performance, but Ansel as him felt a bit flat. The casting in general was pretty whack; I love Nicole Kidman but she didn’t feel right as Mrs.Barbour and it seemed that they added a lot to her character to the detriment of Hobie’s character who was a much bigger part of Theo’s life in the book. Also, can we talk about Finn Wolfhard as Boris? I’m sorry, but that accent was godawful. Really bad. Boris’ accent was always supposed to be kind of ambiguous but this was just butchered Russian. Another gripe that my friend and I, who also read the book, had with the Vegas section of the film (which was otherwise probably the best part) was that they never properly explored the complexity of Boris and Theo’s relationship. Obviously I’m not saying that I want 2 minors to shoot a sex scene but it could have been referenced when they reunite as adults because the kiss on the head when they part in Vegas seemed misleadingly platonic. It was heavily implied in the book that there was some kind of love that went beyond friendship between the two and I didn’t get that in the film at all.

Ultimately, when you try and adapt a book as long as the Goldfinch, you’re always going to have some pacing issues and people complaining that things were left out or that X or Y character didn’t have enough screen time. But in ways, I think the fault here was trying to stay TOO faithful in the limited time available. They definitely could have focussed less on certain relationships and more on others, and when it comes down to it, I think we lost a lot of the grittiness of the original book for the sake of pretty visuals.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Don’t get me wrong, this would 100% be in shit tier if it wasn’t for the last hour or so of the film and all the Manson lore which is so disappointing because I love Tarantino films and I love that era. As for the first couple of hours, I loved the vibe and I love Margot Robbie, and I think it was very respectful towards the Tate family (if anything radiated through the screen more than anything else it was Sharon Tate’s sweetness), but I just wasn’t that invested in Leo or Brad’s characters-it all just felt a bit pointless. I really like Brad Pitt and even that couldn’t really save it for me. Maybe if you took away the remaining 2 hours and 20 minutes of Leo DiCaprio making vague allusions to his own career to a girl only slightly younger than the combined age of all girlfriends past I’d enjoy it more but then I don’t think there’d be much footage left. I guess we should just be grateful that Tarantino managed to refrain from unnecessarily sprinkling the N-word into every other line of his script this time, right?

Also.

SO. MANY. FEET.

But then again, this did result in Brad publicly mocking Tarantino’s foot fetish during his speech at the SAG awards so...I’ll allow it. Sometimes kink shaming is okay. Especially when it’s this guy:

Isn’t it Romantic (Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2019)

I guess as romantic comedies go it wasn’t AWFUL because it was self-aware but still just not my cup of tea and it didn’t really make me laugh. Plus, I feel like it did just follow the plot of a conventional rom-com in the end so...what was it all for, you know?

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2016)

I think my disappointment with this film was a case of too high expectations. It wasn’t as gory as I hoped, in fact, there was very little on screen gore at all. I was just expecting something very messed up and I didn’t get that. But then again we did get Maeby from Arrested Development singing a fuck Nazis song so I guess that was a nice surprise?

Shit Tier

Birdbox (Susanne Bier, 2018)

First the disappointment of the Goldfinch, and now Birdbox (although they were chronologically the other way round but for the sake of this review, let’s just ignore that). It really is a bad year for bird films.

It’s weird because when this first came out I remember everyone hyping it up and making memes about it and stuff and then I actually watched it and dear god, it was boring. Honestly, who paid you lot to pretend you cared enough about it enough to make content? And where can I get in on this action?

I mean it didn’t start off terribly but then they killed off SARAH FUCKING PAULSON and somehow managed to make SANDRA FUCKING BULLOCK unlikeable. How does one do that? The mind baffles.

Pet Sematary (Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer, 2019)

The kid acting was bad, the leads were meh and there wasn’t one creepy moment. This should be SO MUCH MORE hard hitting than it actually was given the subject matter and it just fell completely flat. I will say, though, *SPOILERS AHEAD* that the ending was appropriately doom and gloom and even though I’ve seen lots of others say they hate it it was probably the only thing I actually liked.

The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019)

Seth Rogen and Billie Eichner were the only good things about this which is sad because I fucking love Donald Glover and I was so excited when he was cast as Simba. Like, it was pretty but empty and unnecessary and I’m not one of these people who think CGI remakes always have to be this way-I loved Dumbo and I liked the live-action Jungle Book too! I just think the people who made this cared too much about good CGI and realism and less about heart. There was no personality whatsoever and it’s such a waste when you think about the fact that they had Donald and Beyonce on board.

Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence, 2018)

Eurgh, I hated this. I think Jennifer Lawrence is stunning and I usually love her films but every shot of her in this felt so male-gaze oriented, even the ones which were sexually violent, which I found to be completely unnecessary in the first place. At times it felt almost torture-porn-y which was not what I expected at all seeing as the marketing made it seem like some kind of female empowerment movie.

It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

I literally can’t remember fucking anything from this film. Clearly there is a very, very fine line between atmospheric and boring.

Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

Maybe it’s because I watched this about 6 years too late and the whole human-girl-falls-in-love-with-supernatural-creature hype train has long since left the station but I couldn’t even finish it. Cutesy necrophilia ain’t for me, sorry Nicholas Hoult. Still love ya. You’ll always be Tony Stonem to me xoxo

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2005)

I’m pretty sure this movie won a lot of awards so I’m sure this is a very unpopular opinion but the way this film ended was so...depressing. SO depressing. Did it have to be THAT depressing? The Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode outsold.

This is the range Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank wishes she had.

Would You Rather (David Guy Levy, 2013)

Started off well but became cheesy and predictable as it went on. The acting wasn’t great either plus there was another unnecessary attempted rape scene here too.

Christmas with the Kranks (Joe Roth, 2004)

So I watched this movie in the run up to Christmas because my best friend and her mum were referencing it like it was this cult classic (which I guess for some reason it is?) and I’m sorry to her and her mum but what the hell is this shit?! It’s not even so bad it’s good. It’s just bad.

The plot, the characters, EVERYTHING, it’s ridiculous on every level. I wasn’t into it enough to suspend my disbelief that anyone’s neighbours would actually care THAT much that they weren’t celebrating Christmas. Go on your damn cruise, take me with you whilst you're at it, ease my seasonal depression! I wouldn’t mind so much if it was funny or if the protagonists were likeable but it wasn’t and they’re not. Nobody’s actions made any sense. It didn’t put me in the Christmas spirit at all it just made me angry that Jamie Lee Curtis’ agent made her do this shit. She’s a scream queen goddess and she deserves better.

ANYWAY.

I’m now realising that I should have started on shit tier and worked my way up to god tier because now this post has ended on the rather sour note of me getting worked up over Christmas with the Kranks, lol. As always, these are just my opinions and I love to hear other people’s; when it comes to something like this, it’s all a matter of preference and there really isn’t a right or wrong answer, so I’m open to discussion!

With the Oscars less than a week away now I rushed a little to get this out on time, so apologies in advance if anything doesn’t make any sense or there’s any typos, I will look back over it at some point over the next couple of days to check.

But if you read to the end thank you! And stay tuned for my overview of Paris Haute Couture Week S/S 2020 if that’s something you’re interested in as that will most likely be next post!

Lauren x

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culebratia · 5 years

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Honest opinions on horror villains

Okay so I love horror villains and horror in general. Most of them are really interesting and have a sort of grotesque charm to them that I can’t really describe, it draws you to them and pulls you into wanting more. But there are some horror villains that are either overrated and underrated, and today I’m here to discuss some of them! (I’d like to reiterate that I don’t hate any of these characters, I actually like them all! But I’m just talking in a general perspective and my view on their popularity and the actual movie they come from.)

LESLIE VERNON

* overrated.

* okay, I know, people are going to get upset at me over this. This was an amazing movie, they said. It’s so new and different from the others, they said. And I completely understand that! It’s unique and inventive and I love the whole premise of the movie, but goddamn did it bore me..

* I like Leslie Vernon as a character, but I don’t love him like I do with other characters. He’s cool! I adore his slasher design, but his personality bores me a little bit at times. There are some points where my emotions and feelings on the guy are a little bit like a rollercoaster — up and down, up and down, up and down. It’s crazy.

* once again, I like the concept of his movie, but the way it was presented in a filmmaking point of view is underwhelming.

ART THE CLOWN

* underrated.

* there are three movies I know of with Art in them: The 9th Circle, All Hallow’s Eve and Terrifer. And all of them are equally shit, which is to be expected since it was written and directed by a young guy who specialises in special effects. But damn was Art interesting to watch.

* there are some points in the movies where I think “why couldn’t he have starred in a better made film?” because if that were so, he’d get so much more publicity! Art is an absolutely terrifying demon clown creature, way more scary than Pennywise, and people from around the world should know his name! He’s the only character in all the movies who actually has good actors.

* shitty movie, fantastic character. I hope to see more of him.

MICHAEL MYERS

* overrated by a milestone.

* look, I’m all for Michael Myers. He’s hot, lemme tell you that. But he’s a really boring character. It’s all the same (apart from the 3rd movie)! Michael returns to his hometown to find and kill Laurie, killing a whole other group of people who she happens to be involved with at some time during the movie.

* when I watch a horror movie, I want to have the villain to have some sort of character. At least with Jason, you can see some emotion in him which defines him as a whole! But with Michael? He’s a clean slate, and that is soo uninteresting.

* first two movies were great, others were unneeded honestly.

BILLY LENZ

* underrateeeeed.

* stinky attic boy needs some love. He is what started the slasher genre for peats sake and yet everyone overlooks him as a horror villain. Let me tell you, that phone scene in the beginning was absolutely fucking terrifying when I first watched it, and it’s still unsettling to this day even after I’ve watched it a million fucking times.

* we never even got to see Billy’s face properly throughout the whole movie and yet he made such an impact on everyone who ever watched Black Christmas! And that ending scene? Perfect cliffhanger. (The remake was shit compared to the original)

* great movie, great character, needs more credit.

BRAHMS HEELSHIRE

* overrated.

* bet y’all are shocked at this aren’t you? He’s the character I most often write for. But that’s really because he’s heavily requested. I actually don’t really like him all that much, too much exposure I guess. I mean I have nothing against his character as a whole, he’s attractive to me and interesting but I don’t actually know.

* now the movie is something I do know about though: bullshit. Absolutely terrible. A basic plot line (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing sometimes, it just needs to be played out right) and a director which results to cheap jump scares because apparently that’s ‘scary’. The movie as a whole is so predictable and it never scared me once when I went to watch it at the cinema. I can understand why people like it though.

* decent(?) character, bad movie.

OTIS DRIFTWOOD + family

* underrated.

* okay this might have something to do with my weakness for Bill Moseley, scarily cute women and clowns, but man do I love the Firefly family. Each and every character, even the ones we barely see, within the family is so perfectly polished and unique, and I love Rob Zombie for it. He can’t write dialogue for shit but man do I love his horror villains.

* although the first movie was very confusing at some points. Like, what?? What was with that ending? It was a very good movie in my opinion and was actually pretty horrifying. It used things that disgust us and manipulated that to terrify every single one of its viewers and that’s perfect. Hated the protagonists though.

* fantastic movie, great villains, shitty protagonists,

FREDDY KRUEGER

* overrated.

* now don’t get me wrong, I love Freddy, I grew up loving Freddy. He’s witty and fun to watch, maybe not like Chucky, but after a while he gets so repetitive that it gets really really annoying. Couldn’t they think of something unique and interesting for him to say instead of him just calling everyone a bitch??

* the writing becomes boring after a while, the directors add so many unnecessary features, weaknesses and powers we had no clue even existed up until this very point, and it’s overall not a very good franchise when you get into it. I enjoyed the first and seventh movie a lot, but all of the other ones didn’t really excite me all that much.

* okay character, okay movie, but isn’t worth all the attention.

NUBBINS SAWYER, DRAYTON SAWYER, CHOP-TOP SAWYER + GRANDPA SAWYER

* un👏🏽der👏🏽ra👏🏽ted

* these boys deserve just the same amount of attention that Leatherface does. I know that Bubba is a really cool character, and he deserves attention too! But that doesn’t mean that his family get to be left out. Each and every single one of them helped shape the Texas Chainsaw franchise to what it is today, and honestly it wouldn’t have been as amazing without them in it.

* Texas Chainsaw has so many metaphors within it nobody really goes into. When we first meet Nubbins and he’s kicked out of the van, Franklin very obviously points out “would you be able to do that?” referring to Nubbins slicing his hand up, and later on we see Franklin blowing raspberries at his friends due to the fact that he couldn’t go upstairs because of his disability, which is exactly what Nubbins was doing when he couldn’t get into the van. This area is the director exploring the ways that people could so easily turn into madness without people realising it.

* Drayton Sawyer is your average looking fellow who runs the Sawyer household, but he is not average at all. He’s sadistic, witty, hypocritical, and surprisingly still a Christian. He claims that he “doesn’t like to do the killing” and yet he’s shown constantly poking and prodding at the final girls like they’re some caged animals, living only for the pleasure of himself. The fact that he’s an elderly man basically screams “wolf in sheeps clothing”, because usually when you see an elderly person, you assume them to be kind and wise, whereas, Drayton can’t even spell ‘sex’ correctly.

* Chop-Top wasn’t present in the first movie sadly, but it’s explained why, which is understandable in a filmmaking perspective. He is probably the most terrifying character out of the bunch. He’s impulsive, disgusting, and absolutely fucking insane. Whether or not this is due to his time in Vietnam I don’t know, but man does it make a great affect. And that time in the movie where he was introduced? It was absolutely heavenly. No one in today’s horror industry would build up suspense like that and cause so much raw fear from a petty jump scare. The fact that he carries around his damn brothers corpse like he’s puppet, treating him like he’s still a living being adds onto the scare factor as well.

* great villains, good movies, everything after TCSM2 wasn’t really very good though.

Okay, now that’s over and done with! Let me show you my top ten favourite horror villains (from actual horror movies), you’ll either be completely shocked or completely not! :)

Pinhead — love the creature design. Fantastic personality and concept. Annoyed he’s not a woman.

Bubba Sawyer — baby boy needs love. And affection. And kisses. And basically anything positive. We must protect him.

Chop-Top Sawyer — terrified me when I first saw him as a kid. I wanna fuck Bill Moseley. I love his personality. Wish his movie came out.

Captain Spaulding — funny ass motherfucker. Always cracks me up. I want him to be my daddy.

Hannibal Lecter — interesting in a psychological perspective. Has a way to make your skin crawl without doing much.

Art the Clown — scarier than Pennywise. I wish his movies were better. Why didn’t Terrifier make it obvious he was a demon?

Otis Driftwood — boy’s a hottie. But please stop fucking corpses. Once again, Bill Moseley.

Stu Macher — first fictional crush. He’s my irl type of guy. I dated a guy like him once.

Jennifer Check — movie was ahead of its time. Legit was about having a succubus gf. Lesbian scene was hot. I’m gay for Meagan Fox.

Billy Lenz — terrifying phone calls. Nasty boi. The remakes will never be as great as the OG Black Christmas.

Anyways, so that’s it! It’s past midnight currently so I might just go to bed lol but whatever. I’ve wanted to write this out for a whiiile but decided to just get it over with now. I’ll say it all again: every character I write for, I like, I just have different levels of like, so please no hate over this. Thanks!

#horror #movie #pinhead #art the clown #brahms heelshire #leslie vernon #michael myers #billy lenz #jennifer check #chop top sawyer #drayton sawyer #nubbins sawyer #freddy krueger #otis driftwood #baby firefly #captain spaulding #bubba sawyer #stu macher #ghostface

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blookmallow · 4 years

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and now we return to outlast 2, where-

THINGS KEEP GETTING SO, SO MUCH WORSE

(i have... a LOT im trying to process about this whole section sorry for upcoming text walls. really nasty #blood / #gore in here as well though) (i didnt realize i was This far behind on liveblogs lmao i drafted this. a while ago and didnt get back to it until now)

---

so i fell off the bridge (shock. horror. who could have predicted this) and right into the scalled village

what.............happened to you

fuCKING GO D

so it turns out “the scalled” are... some kind of leper colony banned from the town and left to fester and rot out here alone

most of them are just lying around suffering and dying, i dont know what the fuck happened to them, there’s some mention of like. wildly untreated syphilis/potentially other stds they’re being told is their curse for the sins they’ve committed but does.... syphilis do that to you. it might actually be leprosy i dont know i dont want to research this. all i can think about is when i watched jesus christ superstar in high school and the leper colony song where they’re all crowding around jesus all trying to touch him REALLY freaked me out for a while

i mean its like. probably a combination of disease left horrifically untreated and massively infected given the absolutely appalling conditions these people are living in (everything’s run down and full of blood and shit and who knows what else), starvation, who knows what they’re even finding to eat out here so that’s probably causing even more disease but still jesus christ

at first it just made me really sad, sure these people came from temple gate too so they were. fucked up cultists to begin with but a lot of this is like... result of longterm emotional and mental abuse and manipulation, some of these people might not have started out as depraved evil murderers, and like. nobody deserves to live like this. except knoth lmao throw him down here, but

so i thought maybe it would turn out that you realize they’re human too, they’re just in a fucking LOT of pain and maybe you can’t do anything to help them (i dont think there’s any hope for anyone down here at this point) but maybe they’d turn out to be on my side and do something to help me fight back against the leader who abandoned them, “the most absolutely fucked up looking people are actually the most human” kind of thing but uh. that is not how things went. at all,

ill get into How Fucking Bad this got in a second lmao but like

most of them dont really do anything to you other than bleed on you and beg you for help, some people lash out but thats like, understandable given the horrifying state they’re in, but

as it turns out, being the “scalled messiah” is a VERY bad thing, they went from occasionally lashing out at me to outright tracking me down to murder me to death which, like, honestly kind of disappointing

bc one of the things i liked the most about the first outlast was how many of the prisoners were clearly just victims too, some of them (lookin at you, naked twin guys,) were just evil and murderous but some of them were just very very mentally unwell (exacerbated by horrible living conditions and the fact that the people who were supposed to be protecting them and helping them recover were actively, intentionally working to make their symptoms worse) and couldn’t really be blamed for acting violently toward you, but

then sometimes there’s people who warn you about dangers ahead, people sitting in corners hiding and scared and wont hurt you unless you give them a reason to think you might be a threat, people just trying to stay alive, people who need help

but that’s. not the case here, and there’s definitely a particular kind of horror in “absolutely no one in this hell town can be trusted, nobody will help me, everyone here wants to hurt me and every time i think ive made any kind of progress it gets so much worse” (except that ONe guy who tried to protect me. im still sad about him) but. i dont know i feel like there’s a missed opportunity here. im not sure if im supposed to feel like the scalled deserve to be like this because of the kind of people they were before, but i dont. i feel like the “what the fucking shit HAPPENED to these people” horror is heightened by the realization that they’re people, and just kinda using them as attack zombies is. missing something, somehow. i dont know, i cant figure out how to word what i want to say here

i mean its absolutely fucking horrifying, i was scared out of my mind going through all this, and i still gotta give props to a video game experience that left me legitimately feeling like i needed to go take a shower and crawl under a blanket for a while

i guess ultimately with outlast im coming here to be scared shitless more than anything else and boy did they ever fucking deliver

ok im gonna stop bc i will keep talking in circles about this forever if i dont, moving on

WHAT EVEN ARE THESE GUYS, APART FROM COMPLETELY TERRIBLE

im guessing theres some kind of... inbreeding birth defect situation going on here but i cant even process what im looking at

that and its hard to look at them at all considering the only times i see them im getting murdered to death. my panicked screenshots hoping to get a better look later did not help

PRETTY SURE THEY JUST MADE HIM DRINK THEIR BLOOD,

how the fuck has my dude not thrown up like 90 times already. im glad he hasnt bc im bad emetophobia but outlast 1 did it so im honestly surprised that hasnt happened unless ive just forgotten it in the blur of nightmares im going through here

THAT’S... NOT GOOD

THAT IS REALLY, REALLY NOT GOOD

FUCK SHIT MOTHERFUCKING FUCK

i gotta say im impressed with how FAR they GO with this one, i have no idea how much game i have left but considering this isnt even the ending i am HORRIFIED to see what the fuck is gonna happen next

i mean outlast 1 has you getting your fucking fingers sliced off and whistleblower has. That Scene (even though like. it stops before waylon actually gets cut its REALLY CLOSE)

this whole time i kept thinking something would happen and they’d get interrupted, I’d escape somehow, they aren’t really going to have the player character get literally fucking crucified from your own perspective,

but then the nails go in

and you’ve got one hand literally nailed to a cross

and then they start the other one

and i was like, WOW FUCK, THEY ACTUALLY DID IT, BUT NOW HE’LL ESCAPE... SOMEHOW.... RIGHT ???

but they lift it up

and you’re hanging there

and for a second i legitimately thought it was gonna end there for him, i thought he was actually just going to die there and the game would continue with lynn or something (which, to be fair, would be a pretty cool twist, but i dont WANT blake to just die here like this)

ANYWAY!! FUCKING GOD, THAT SURE HAPPENED

but against all odds HE SOMEHOW DIDNT FUCKING DIE, and managed to find the strength to rIP HIS HANDS OUT OF THE NAILS AND FALL DOWN

i cannot fucking IMAGINE what that would feel like. i dont want to imagine it but i sure the fuck am now

i dont know if its possible to like. die from bleeding out in this scene if you dont find the bandages fast enough but it sure felt like i was going to

fucking hell i can practically feel it in my real hands i HATE THIS i HATe it

god. fuck. im gonna be thinking about this scene for the rest of my life i didnt think anything would ever be worse than the finger slicing scene in outlast 1 but this. i think this wins

wHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?!??? THERES SOMETHING CHASING ME IN THE SCHOOL FLASHBACKS NOW IM NOT EVEN SAFE HERE ANYMORE

WHAT *IS* THAT??!??

w OA h

i still have no IDEA whats going on with these flashbacks either, clearly his classmate hung herself and he feels subconsciously responsible for it because he didn’t do anything to stop her (though it doesn’t sound like he Could have done anything, and. they were kids), there’s definitely some buried trauma he never dealt with thats resurfacing now but

i still dont think its just a manifestation of trauma, because like. the recordings are still coming out as fucked up static, if he was just having really intense hallucinations there wouldn’t be any record on the camera, it would just be him filming nothing and talking to himself through a panic attack, it wouldn’t be getting consistently corrupted ONLY during the flashbacks so what the fuck is happening

COLA

DRINK IT

i m losing it its the cola machines from the first game i diD NOT EXPECT THESE TO BE HERE

what the fuck is christian salad

you didn’t think i would see this, outlast devs, you thought you could hide this on the menu board and i wouldnt notice. i did notice and i demand answers

NO!!!! THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF OKAY THIS IS THE LEAST OKAY I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE

WELL!!!!! OKAY!!!! ALRIGHT!!!! NOW THAT I’VE BEEN LITERALLY FUCKING CRUCIFIED, FELL DOWN A HILL AND STRAIGHT INTO A FENCE OF BARBED WIRE, GOT DRAGGED OUT HERE AND BURIED ALIVE, CRAWLED MY WAY OUT OF MY OWN GRAVE AND NOW HAVE HOARDS OF DISEASED ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE CULTISTS SEARCHING FOR ME SO THEY CAN DEVOUR MY FLESH, LET’S GET GOING, SHALL WE

THIS IS FINE!!! EVERYTHING IS FINE I CANT SEE SHIT AND THERES NOTHING BUT TREES AND BARBED WIRE EVERYWHERE AND NO INDICATIONS WHATSOEVER OF WHERE I NEED TO GO BUT IT’S F IN E IM DOING GREAT

#lucy plays outlast 2 #was further behind than i thought lmao but heres some more

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mossflowermouse · 5 years

Text

Second ‘When Christ and His Saints Slept’ reaction post (part one here), covering chapters 11 to 20 aka the bit where I start shipping actual historical figures for the first time ever (other than Wars of the Roses-era people, but that’s different because they were actually married and it wasn’t a ship ship in the same way these are. Anyway.)

Chapters XI and XII:

Annora and Ranulf still love each other :) and they found a loophole so they can get married when Maude's queen! I really should've remembered about that plight-troth. Now a bit worried about all the ways this could go wrong, not least because I'm aware Maude doesn't become queen, but that was really sweet and I'm glad they're happy and things have been resolved (ish)

UGH, GEOFFREY. He's being awful about Maude and Henry's overhearing :(

Between the odd mentions of her here and what little I know about her historically, I'm so excited for when Eleanor of Aquitaine shows up!

Whoops, Chester. Genuine anger and a lack of mercy from Stephen may be a rare thing, but I have a feeling this has crossed the line.

I like it when Maude has interactions with people she likes and trusts - her brothers, Adeliza, and now Brien. It's good.

...okay I might be starting to ship this.

Oh dear I'm definitely shipping this. It's impossible and a mess and they both (Maude especially) seem like they'd rather be swallowed by the earth than actually admit to feelings, but it's so sweet and they trust each other so much and must have such a long shared history? Help?

And also lbr this is just That One Dynamic that absolutely kills me in every piece of media. The mutual trust, the quiet but unbreakable loyalty, the circumstances making things so difficult for them? This is absolutely my thing.

This might be the first time I've actually shipped people who existed. Like, there were some good moments in TSiS but all with people who were actually couples in real life. But with this, I don't know many of the specifics, I have no idea what happens to Brien and only know slightly more about Maude. This is strange.

AAAAAHH. Maude you can't do this to my heart. You just can't.

Chapter XIII:

I like Robert.

Hmmm. Looking at both sides' chances in this battle, and knowing Stephen gets captured at some point during the Anarchy, I have a feeling I know how this will end.

Why does it feel like the awful déjà vu of this part was intentional. This is making me have Bosworth-related emotions all over again.

Okay, wow, that was all quite a lot to take in. Chester's plan was good, and I'm grateful that he saved Robert; wasn't expecting William of Ypres of all people to flee*; Stephen's determination is also making me remember Bosworth in TSiS; I liked the bit with him and Robert and Ranulf at the end.

Chapters XIV and XV:

Aww, family (Maud and Robert and Ranulf)

Maude :')

Matilda just found out about Stephen :(

Maude's going to have trouble winning over the people. London's apparently still loyal to Stephen, and their favour was often an advantage in struggles like this war (looking at you, Edward IV)

I'm feeling more sorry for Constance with every scene she's in or mentioned. Things just keep getting worse for her.

William de Ypres just showed up; Matilda is (understandably) furious about the Battle of Lincoln and letting him know it.

Alliance time! This is one of the things I was vaguely aware of before starting the book, and the anticipation of it has been a lot of fun. Also, I like how honest he’s being here - he made a choice, realised/decided it was the wrong one, and is making no excuses, instead being clear that he wants to try and make things right. The contrast with, say, Bishop Henry’s total lack of self-awareness (or maybe it’s wilful ignorance?) about his moral bankruptcy is wonderful.

Chapters XVI and XVII:

My ship! They're interacting!

HAND. KISSES. My weakness. I know they're the norm and not necessarily romantic at this time but still.

I am deceased. This ship has killed me and they've only had two direct conversations.

Bishop Henry is possibly about to switch sides. Again. I ought to keep track of who’s betrayed both sides the most times (probably him right now).

It's been four months since Matilda joined forces with William de Ypres to try and save Stephen, I wonder what they've been up to? (They haven’t been mentioned in the novel since then)

Everything about this:

and then THIS:

I love this conversation for so many reasons. Most of which involve Maude and Brien because apparently now I’ve dedicated my life to being emotional about them.

Matilda!!! It’s been too long.

Okay, so based on Northumberland's thoughts:

hmmm, new ship?

they're using nicknames they're being familiar this feels like a Big Deal for people in their position at that time. It’s certainly a level of informality that very few others have in the book so far.

Wait they just mentioned a Thomas Becket. Is he that Thomas Becket? I know his feud was with Henry II, whose reign begins in about fourteen years, so it's possible.

I love every mention of the chronicles. It's really cool having the regular narration of the novel interspersed with little pieces of old accounts.

I also love the little moments like Ypres here and his quiet admiration of/confidence in Matilda.

Chapter XVIII:

Not content to just leave me to deal with my feelings from the last few pages, the chapter opens with this:

Immediately following that last part, we now switch to Matilda’s thoughts about de Ypres? He’s trying to hide his exhaustion and she’s not having it? Literally standing over him to make sure he eats? Fond??? Yup, I'm definitely invested in it now. These relationships will be the death of me.

Stephen listing Ypres as one of the people who he could never expect to help Matilda :')

And he's just found out about their alliance!

The guard saying "No one knows how your lady won him over" before being cut off is just really funny. I'm just picturing all of England in total confusion about how Matilda managed to get this cynical, battle-scarred mercenary's unwavering loyalty after Stephen couldn't manage the same. Just. The entire country, collectively looking at this alliance and going '???'

"I had my own miracle all along. I'd married her!" Stephen you cinnamon roll you're completely right

Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien Maude and Brien

:DDDD

...I have become hopelessly obsessed. This book has two ships that are my favourite dynamic. Two. This is turning into Code Geass all over again.

(The dynamic is "mutual trust, admiration and respect; if there are romantic feelings, they might be ambiguous and possibly not acted on for any one of a number of reasons, most of which can be summed up as ‘external circumstances getting in the way’; absolute loyalty through thick and thin; help each other grow and get through difficulty; one or both is probably also a little scarred by the world". Bonus points if they have a long history, or any period of time spent together that’s not fully described in canon and can therefore be speculated about.)

Chapter XX (and some reflections on XIX):

The thing about recognising Matilda’s habits:

made me think immediately of this post

Hell yeah teaming up to get Chester to leave.

Ypres just internally being like “oh god I’m actually caring about someone’s emotional wellbeing what is this what do I do”:

(also “the one man she trusted not to lie to her” is sweet but it’s also kind of upsetting that Matilda’s surrounded by allies and yet knows she can’t fully trust most of them)

my heart???

Some of my favourite ships are the ones where I don’t even know if I see it as platonic or romantic, just that these people have such deep affection and trust for each other and it’s wonderful. This is absolutely one of those ships.

I’ve not written anything about the destruction(s) of Winchester, mainly because this book is once again difficult to put down, but suffice to say that it’s pretty harrowing. Seeing things from the perspectives of Maude and Matilda, who haven’t witnessed this side of the war up close before and are feeling responsible for everything awful that’s happening, as well as Ranulf, who’s similarly horrified and hasn’t seen this kind of destruction before, possibly makes it even worse. Also I love the occasional scenes from the point of view of ordinary citizens – it really makes the wider effects of this civil war between cousins sink in. This may have begun as a personal tragedy for Maude, Stephen and their loved ones, but it’s become a catastrophe affecting so many more people across England, Normandy, Anjou…the fact that the narrative brings in the thoughts of people from all across society in recognition of this is one of the things that makes this book so good imo.

Okay, so I’m getting very attached to quite a lot of these people and it’s occurred a few times that I don’t actually know the dates of death for anyone except Stephen. But because this is history and also the first book in a trilogy spanning many decades and the characters are (as far as I know) not immortal, they’re all going to die at some point. I just don’t know when. There is no way to be prepared for the sadness that this book and its sequels will bring.

OH NO RANULF

At this point he should really just stop trying to break into nunneries. As Gilbert mentioned, it never seems to go well.

Wait, if they’re specifying not to kill Ranulf does that mean everyone else who was with him was killed? FEAR

Okay good there are more survivors

That fire was awful. Although I’m going to keep in mind that Gilbert and Marshal are only dead according to the people outside the church – the narration moved away from them when Marshal lost his eye, so there’s still hope (albeit not much). Also, this really showed both sides of de Ypres – he’s managed to be merciful and ruthless in the same paragraph.

Ancel!

And Ranulf is free, but with a hefty dose of survivor’s guilt.

Awww, Maude’s really openly relieved he’s safe. Robert too.

Gilbert’s alive too! I’d suspected but wasn’t sure. Glad for him and Ranulf that they’ve got each other back.

*I’d known that he’d abandoned a battle at some point before allying with Matilda, but had thought that referred to his feud with Robert during the Normandy campaign, which was briefly mentioned earlier, so this came as a surprise.

#when christ and his saints slept #sharon penman #witness my slow descent into madness #a solid 90% of which is thanks to about five characters #and the realisation that this book contains That Dynamic #that I'm always weak for #iz.txt #penmanblogging

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 5 years

Note

hi! I am one of your fans on ao3. I love your immortal Lily series and I just can't stop thinking about a crossover of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and "When Harry Met Tom". Sorry to bother you but I am so curious. Would you please tell me what may possibly happen if Lily and Wizard Lenin meet Harry and Tom?

Glad you enjoy my work so much.

Well, the way I see it, this can happen two ways. The first, Lily and Wizard Lenin mysteriously end up in the “When Harry Met Tom” warped timeline (as always I blame Rabbit) or else Harry and Tom end up in “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” (I blame Harry’s bottomless stupidity).

Lily and Wizard Lenin Mess Up “When Harry Met Tom”:

In the first case Lily would either try and fail to get the pair of them into Hogwarts (much to Wizard Lenin’s irritation) or else would say, “To hell with Hogwarts! I’ve already been in the 1990′s I don’t need to go in this weird version of the 1940′s dimension”. So, as a result, Lily and Wizard Lenin probably end up sitting around Hogsmeade a few days wondering what the hell they’re going to do now.

Wizard Lenin, not simply being lost in time but dimensions as well, probably officially gives up at this point. Either Lily bullshits them home (which isn’t happening because reasons) or else they have to do something dangerously unknown and stupid like walking through the veil of death (and Wizard Lenin likes being alive). So, to get him out of his sudden alcoholic stupor and general “woe is me, life is pointless, I have to live in an era where I went through puberty all over again” Lily probably suggests that they can start from scratch. They’re still in an England, after all, and Wizard Lenin wasn’t really attached to anything in the 1990′s. It may take a while, but they can just pick up his world dominating schemes here. Conveniently some dark lord of the day named Grindelwald, whose hair looks oddly like coleslaw gone bad, has done ¾ of their work for them.

Naturally, having the literal god that is Lily on his side who has natural right to the elder wand, Wizard Lenin and Lily anticlimactically defeat Grindelwald and take over his forces with their eyes set on England. The true seat of Wizard Lenin’s non-existant empire.

Also naturally, Wizard Lenin is moody and ambivalent as he likes the idea of ruling Western Europe but not so much the reality and he likes the reality that Lily could easily do it on a much faster scale than he ever could even less. So, moody brooding Wizard Lenin is moody and brooding.

Harry, meanwhile, who has been at Hogwarts this whole time trying and failing not to make ways in her teenage narcissism falsely concludes that whatever actions she’s taken at Hogwarts have somehow led to the premature defeat of Grindelwald and the rise of this new dark lord out of absolutely nowhere (details on Wizard Lenin hanging around in France being sparse at this point).

Feeling absurdly guilty as well as her need to fix everything. Harry decides to drop out of Hogwarts and go confront this mysterious dark wizard who was powerful enough to utterly destroy Gellert Grindelwald.

Tom, being a fool in love and denial, rushes out with her damning his education to hell in order to prevent her inevitable gruesome demise. Harry is unappreciative and unimpressed but can’t seem to shake him and really can’t afford to get him killed (the future has plans for Tom Marvolo Riddle after all).

Harry likely plans some very stupid kind of ambush with Tom trying to make it less stupid (though infinitely more cowardly) and bringing up the very good points of, “This really really really is not your responsibility, Harry”. However, probably around this point, Wizard Lenin makes a public appearance giving some ridiculous speech without any heart in it (that still gets rapturous applause as he’s just so damn pretty and charismatic it hurts) with Lily at his side and Harry realizes things have gone to funky town and back.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, it seems, has time traveled back to the past as well as Harry and like the Terminator is undoubtedly trying to stop her from doing whatever she’s doing to stop him (which makes him more Kyle Evans than the Terminator, but we’ll ignore that). Worse, he’s brought her underage mother along with him. And for reasons Harry can’t quite figure out, they’ve taken over France.

Harry naturally feels very betrayed by Tom, who was turning out to be less terrible than she’d assumed, while he’s just very weirded out by the whole thing and has no explanation himself (except he thinks time travel’s right out). He concludes, hesitantly, that that man up there may be his father. Tom then remembers his daydreams of grandeur and legacy, of a father who isn’t from the white trash Gaunts, and his ego explodes all over the place as he is now, in his mind, crown prince of this new magical empire. Naturally, he now must meet this man and adore him/rant at him for leaving him in that goddamned orphanage for sixteen years when he had the time to pick up that red-head girl standing with him.

Seeing what the king looks like, Tom proposes a new plan, he’ll take an aging potion (which should get him to look eerily like the newly crowned emperor of the magical holy roman empire) and take Harry in with him. This should get them past any low level guards and they’ll make their way in. This is just the kind of desperate idiocy that appeals to Harry, and while she doesn’t like Tom Riddle coming along in any capacity, agrees with the thought that she may have to destroy him in the past in order to prevent his time travelling future self from being here and taking over everything.

On their way in, they’re confronted by Lily, who quickly figures them out and is also very weirded out by what she correctly realizes is a time travelling biological sister of sorts and a Wizard Trotsky aged Tom Riddle. Lily has a lot more experience with this wibbly wobbly timey whimey bullshit than either Tom or Harry.

Lily then decides that this has to be taken up to Wizard Lenin, no matter how depressed he is, and maybe acting as a mentor for his alternate younger self will somehwo cheer him up (since the prospect of crushing all of Albus Dumbledore’s hopes and dreams doesn’t appear to be doing the trick).

Neither Harry nor Tom expected it to be this easy, but Lily has the ins they need, and soon enough they find themselves meeting Wizard Lenin who is already so past done he can’t even see the point where he was done anymore.

Naturally the most ridiculous conversation ever recorded is had at this point in which each party member is coming from it at very different angles. Tom is hurt and betrayed by the prospect of his cool dad abandoning him for so many years yet equally yearning for that idea of paternal guidance, Harry is increasingly confused and alarmed by the idea that this older Tom Riddle isn’t acting like Voldemort and doesn’t seem to recognize her at all (worse the girl she assumed was her mother is very much not her mother) which means that Harry has really gone and screwed things up, Lily is trying to rouse Wizard Lenin from his bout of depression via ridiculousness, and Wizard Lenin hates the very idea of his teenage self and is very tempted to murder the poor boy just to wipe all memory of Tom Marovlo Riddle from existence.

Lily forces things into a state of peace, offers to continue Harry and Tom’s education (since they now certainly can’t go back to Britain), which Wizard Lenin of course balks at knowing full well how capable Lily is at teaching the children, and schemes to give Wizard Lenin and Tom some good quality father and son bonding while she gets closer to the sister she never knew she had.

Both of these ventures go fantastically poorly.

Tom and Wizard Lenin grow to loathe each other with every passing moment. Wizard Lenin realizes Tom is hopelessly infatuated with what he sees as Lily Lite, has little to no perspective, and is an overemotional mess. Tom, for his own part, sees that Wizard Lenin and Lily are alarmingly close, sees Lily as a more crass Harry with absolutely no sense of propriety, and finds his older counterpart passionless and pathetic.

Harry and Lily, similarly, completely fail to see eye to eye and despite getting over the time travel hurdle rather quickly (Lily having figured it out in a second) realize they have vastly different world views. Lily cares greatly for the fate and happiness of a select few, but has no loyalty to the world or any noble cause. Lily would gladly let the muggleborn population suffer if it meant Wizard Lenin’s happiness, she doesn’t believe it does, but she’ll let him figure that out for himself. Harry, naturally, is horrified by this as she’s the opposite. She cares greatly for the world as a whole but has more trouble connecting to people individually and will allow her relationships to fray in the face of just cause. That, and Harry likes quidditch, which is clearly unforgiveable.

Wizard Lenin and Lily likely then meet, going over their various disappointments and what they might have expected. They conclude that they gave it a good try but maybe it’s just time to go and take over England already. Or, you know, go on vacation or something. Lily’s always wanted to go and terraform the moon, you know.

Harry and Tom have a similar moment, probably being angsty teens that they are give into hormones after Tom says something ridiculous yet romantic. They’re then abruptly thrown out of the palace by Lily who tells them good luck and good riddance and if they’re looking for England it’s across the channel.

Harry and Tom enter the chaos that is “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus:

Via ancient magical ritual gone terribly wrong, prancing fairies, or what have you Harry and Tom find themselves whisked to the wrong future. Harry, naturally at first is delighted (and panicked as Tom isn’t supposed to be here) then really panicked as Tom being here seems to have changed everything. Tom, meanwhile, is just hopelessly confused and alarmed realizing that his future has passed by in a blink of an eye.

In a hopeless daze of depression the pair try to enter Hogwarts. Dumbledore, on meeting them, is alarmed and confused but for his own purposes that are filled with so many spoilers we’re not going to touch them, allows them entrance into Hogwarts.

There they meet what Harry figures is the her that somehow comes about with Tom Riddle MIA for fifty years. Although why Tom Riddle disappearing would produce red hair is beyond her. Naturally Harry wants to know and compare herself against this alternate self and quickly finds herself frustrated and alarmed as Lily is… Lily. Lily is at once vastly more powerful than Harry, far more intelligent, but callous and indifferent to the fate of the world. This Harry clearly does not have a people saving thing, Harry concludes.

Lily, meanwhile, is weirded out but again figures it out fairly quickly being a connoiseur of the strange and unnatural. She tries to judge what kind of Tom Riddle she’ll be dealing with today as well as what her other self might have up her sleeve and want. Lily reports back to Wizard Lenin but also endeavors to keep an eye on the pair as, if they’re anything like her, then Harry is undyingly loyal to Tom and Tom Riddle has plans for this place that will not align with Wizard Lenin’s or the good of Hogwarts.

Harry tries and fails to befriend her old buddies, who are for one reason or another in Lily’s camp, and only manages to get close to Ron who for the most part hisses and spits about Eleanor Lily Potter and how he once thought she was so cool.

Tom is mistaken frequently for Lenin Rabbitson’s dark haired evil twin, or else Lenin Rabbitson with a dye job, and finds himself very annoyed while also intrigued by this and does some digging into the Rabbitson brother’s mysterious and horrific past (told by Wizard Lenin in Defense one day in an effort to shut Lockhart up already).

He also tries and fails to figure out who picked up the mantle of Voldemort if he himself wasn’t there. Eventually he finds Tom’s special award for the school and NEWT exam records, and realizes that somehow, a Tom Riddle was in fact left behind even as he was whisked ahead. He has this mysterious doppelganger out there stealing his name and his future. Tom doesn’t take this well.

Lily tries and fails to befriend the pair, working on assumptions that just aren’t true, and eventually ends in a kind of uneasy truce with the pair of them as they realize that to learn anything of importance all of them have to get closer to one another.

Wizard Lenin, stressed from his ongoing campaign while also intrigued, probably sets up a meeting to meet the pair for himself. During a Hogsmeade trip he meets Tom Riddle and it’s a very surreal encounter in which, according to magical lore, Tom Riddle is facing the omen of his own demise. They end up dueling to the death.

Harry and Lily end up intervening, each taking their respective Tom Riddle’s side, and the story would then likely end with this faceoff unresolved.

TL;DR

None of them would get along at all.

#ask #lily and the art of being sisyphus #when harry met tom #plot outlines #writing #wizard lenin #female harry potter #tom riddle

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statusquoergo · 5 years

Text

And we’re back! Everyone will definitely be bringing their A-game after that nice little hiatus, yeah? This episode is going to hit it out of the park for sure.

Well, maybe.

The sexism and misogyny really hit the ground running as Harvey, preparing to accompany Samantha to Pittsburgh to meet her biological father, ambles into the living room to ask Donna if she’s “sure [she’s] okay with [him] going on this trip” because “not a lot of women would want their men doing this.” Fortunately Donna is “not a lot of women,” so Harvey has permission to go hang out with other girls, and without supervision, even! What a lucky guy. Not only that, but Donna points out that while any of them would willingly accompany Samantha, Harvey is uniquely qualified to understand what she’s going through because of his long-term estrangement from his mother, which, I mean, yeah, I guess so. Except then she says she loves him and he replies “Thanks,” which is a huge waste of a perfect opportunity to say “I know,” and then, for the first time this season, he says “I love you too,” smothered under an obnoxious cough into his fist, because he’s a mature adult who’s in touch with his emotions but he’s not too mature and he’s not a girl or anything.

Back at lawyerly headquarters, Louis takes advantage of Harvey’s two-day absence by sitting in his desk chair and contemplating listening to his records, gushing that he “can finally be Harvey Specter, and no one will ever know.” Yeah, there’s definitely no way anyone who works at this firm knows that’s Harvey’s office and might walk by and ask what he’s doing in there, of course not. He then sets off the comedic half of the episode by answering Harvey's phone and sort-of-but-also-not-really-accidentally setting up a meeting with “the Ted Tucker,” who wants a meeting with Harvey and he wants it today. Fortunately for Louis, Tucker has never actually met Harvey, and…you know where this is going.

Harvey pulls up to Samantha’s place in a vintage Ford Mustang (I want to say it’s a 1967) that stirs up some Feelings for her; he offers to take it back to the car club and exchange it, but she says it’s fine because she just wants to get on the road, and here comes the sentimental half: Twenty-five years ago, twelve-year old Samantha was…in a group home? With one other kid? Unclear, but the important part is that she lived in a house with some kid named Adam and their abusive father…figure, Ron. One day Adam and Samantha accidentally broke the tail light on Ron’s brand new car, a Mustang identical to the one Harvey’s driving; Samantha took the blame even though Adam threw the ball that broke the light, and Ron beat her for it, so. Feelings.

Louis shows up at Donna’s office in a truly horrifying wig (he calls it his “Harvey wig,” if you’d like to conjure up that mental image; yeah, kind of, but more chestnut-colored) for some information that’ll let him demonstrate to Tucker that signing him would be a conflict of interest, and to her credit, Donna begs him to take the wig off, but when Louis explains that he just wants to feel like Harvey for one lunch, she agrees to help him even though it’s “a really bad idea.” I’m gonna give her partial credit on this one; good intentions, poor execution.

Except then we actually get to see Louis at the lunch and dear lord, Donna, how could you let this happen? Someone on the writing staff (Korsh) is definitely indulging in one hell of a narcissistic fantasy by way of Louis, who, doing a pretty decent imitation of Harvey’s walk, waltzes into some high-end club or resort or something, passing through an endless gauntlet of waiters and attendants who each usher him toward the inner sanctum with a Stepford smile and a solicitous “Mr. Specter,” until he ends up at a table with Tucker, who informs him that the reason they’re surrounded by a ridiculous number of trays of food is, get this: “Well, I didn’t know what you liked, so I just ordered the entire menu.”

This fucking show, I swear.

Things only go downhill from there (from my perspective, not Louis’s) as Louis boisterously recounts a number of stories from Harvey’s life, including “Life is like this, I like this,” and that time Harvey brought Rachel to pick Mike up from prison in a limo. Tucker grinds the festivities to a screeching halt when he asks if Harvey knew Mike Ross was a fraud when he hired him, but fortunately for Louis, A Few Good Men is Tucker’s favorite movie, so screaming “You can’t handle the truth!” in his face is enough to make everyone forget about that silly question and get right back to their sinful indulgences. These people all have such integrity, it’s amazing.

Turns out a traumatic childhood isn’t Samantha’s only connection to the Mustang; Eric Kaldor also used to drive one, which skeeves Harvey out until Samantha assures him that when Harvey drives it, he does “make it look cool.” This dynamic is weirding me out so much; a week ago, she fucks over Mike Ross, Harvey furiously declares that he doesn’t trust people who lie to his face, Faye (justifiably) fires her, and then suddenly, with zero transition, it’s all hands on deck to get her back at the firm, and now on top of that, Harvey's her biggest cheerleader and also road trip buddy? That whole “I don’t trust you anymore,” was that just a hissy fit or what? I don’t… I don’t know what to do with this, I don’t like it.

Oh, wait, more flashbacks: Samantha and Adam steal Ron’s car to drive off in the middle of the night. Samantha, evidently recounting this story to Harvey, explains that they were pulled over on account of the broken tail light, but she assures him that “it could’ve been worse,” being that she ended up with a new family and neither of them had to go back to their abuser, and also she doesn’t know whatever happened to Adam so I guess he might show up sometime in the next three episodes maybe. I really wish I cared more.

That sounds mean, but hear me out a minute: Samantha was introduced in the beginning of Season 8. In fact, “The Greater Good” (s08e13) gives her her very own expository sub-plot courtesy of Judy O’Brien, through whom we learn…very little about Samantha’s experience in foster care, except who Judy is and what Samantha’s relationship is to her, which doesn’t matter at all because it never comes up again. (Well, it will in a bit, but not in any really important way.) It’s basically a waste of an opportunity to tell us things about Samantha that we don’t already know because all it does is build incrementally on things that we do, but in ways that are irrelevant. All the rest of the hints the show drops throughout the season about her backstory are shadowy and vague and mainly serve to establish her as an enigmatic figure whose mysterious past I guess I’m supposed to be dying to learn about, except that right from the start, “Right-Hand Man” (s08e01) establishes that she lies about her past to suit her own interests, so from the very beginning, I’m inherently suspicious of everything she says about herself, which makes it really hard to empathize with her.

The problem with the way her past is revealed is that it’s not really a running subplot, or a continuous arc; little hints and features are dropped here and there, but only insofar as they relate to a given episode’s broader narrative (i.e., she was a Marine, which is only relevant in “Special Master” [s09e02] for that odious misrepresentation of PTSD), which makes it feel like they’re invented on the spot because hey, we don’t really know much about her, who’s to say this or that didn’t happen? If you pay close attention, you might be able to collect enough clues to piece together a complete story, but with everything else that’s going on in this show, I gotta say, I really can’t be bothered. Especially when I have no idea how much of that story is even true.

Right, so, remember how Samantha knows that Kaldor has a Mustang? Well we seem to have graduated real quick from twelve-year old flashback Samantha to twenty-seven year old flashback Samantha, who reveals that while working a case together, she and Kaldor became…involved.

Ew.

Oh but wait. Out of absolutely fucking nowhere, present day Samantha decides “it’s time [she and Harvey] talk about the elephant in the room.” Not “[her] getting fired because of [him]” (she didn’t, she got fired for fabricating evidence), but “why [she] fabricated that evidence in the first place.” Harvey points out the obvious, that he already knows she did it because she hates to lose, and she asks, if he knows that, why he got so mad at her for doing it. (Oh I don’t know, maybe because she fabricated evidence.) Answer? “Because [he] told Mike [they] wouldn’t cross any lines.” And even though their client wasn’t technically doing anything illegal, “Mike’s always on [him] about doing the right thing, and now he’s out there walking the walk, and the least [Harvey owes] him is to think about right and wrong once in awhile.” (Uh, yeah, did he miss the part in “Promises, Promises” [s08e03] where he got their landlord to pay the maintenance staff a fair wage because he felt bad for the facilities manager? And I quote: “David, all I’m asking is do the right thing.”)

Oh but then.

“You really admire him, don’t you?” “I don’t just admire him, Samantha. He went to prison for me. Talk about someone who’s got your back.”

Okay. So… Okay. Yes, that is a thing that happened. It was a very big deal. Mike and Harvey spent six whole episodes fighting over which of them was going to be the one to take the fall. Except then Season 7 happened, and Mike spent sixteen episodes becoming increasingly distant from and combative with Harvey, culminating in that disastrous farewell at the wedding that Mike didn’t even invite him to. And then “If the Shoe Fits” (s09e05) happened, wherein Mike literally started off the case by promising Harvey not to do anything that could result in either of them being disbarred and finished it by doing exactly that, wrapping up his visit by condemning Harvey for having lost himself because yes, of course, Harvey’s the one who was being a dick that whole time.

Yet apparently, even after all that, Harvey still thinks Mike walks on water. I guess that does kind of help explain his behavior and the exceedingly weird dialogue the last time Mike showed up; Harvey’s got a little hero worship going on, or at the very least, he still has an enormous blind spot where Mike is concerned. On the plus side, there’s my quota of evidence for the episode that Harvey needs to go to therapy like, yesterday.

And about that whole evidence fabrication thing, props to Samantha for admitting that if “[she] could go back and do it all over again, [she] wouldn’t.” Donna could learn a thing or two from her.

Speaking of Donna, Louis hurries in to tell her that his lunch with Tucker was “the greatest lunch of [his] life,” all “because [he’s] Harvey Specter.” But things hit a little snag when he tried to demonstrate that SLWW would have a conflict of interest representing Tucker as well as some company called Reed Communications, because Tucker waived the conflict by buying Reed Communications on the spot, and that’s not even Louis’s only problem because Reed Communications’ in-house counsel is, dun dun dun! Harold Gunderson! Who wants to set up a meeting with Harvey, who knows nothing about any of this. Louis determines that since thinking like Louis got him into this mess, thinking like Harvey is going to get him out of it, and I’m confused, wasn’t the whole point of all this for him to be Harvey? Who’s he been thinking like all day? Way to commit to the role, man, no wonder you’re not an actor.

Filler time: Ten-years-ago Samantha and Kaldor have been together for six months and it’s been “one of the best six months of [his] entire life.” (Seems to me like a weird unit to increment his life by, but hey, man, whatever floats your boat.) In the present day, Harvey suggests stopping for burgers, but Samantha wants to get to their destination before dark, so he’ll settle for some M&M’s at the gas station. Equivalent exchange for the win.

Part II

#suits usa #s09e07 #season 9 #analysis

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albatris · 6 years

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WIP Tag!

thanks @cautiousgoose (@goose-scratch) for the tag!

I’m sorry this took so long, and that this got so long, this is the first tag I’ve done in like a century, I've been like..... moving house n stuff, I've been busy, kind of

anyway

I'm doing this for all the doors becaaaause. I'm lazy. yup

What is the working title of your book?

"all the doors are open"!

Where did the idea for the book come from?

honestly I don’t remember specifically, I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually plan to Go Anywhere with this plot, I just started messing round with it for fun then decided to keep rolling with it

but ok, yeah, serious answer, I liked the idea of an apocalypse story that’s not so much ABOUT the apocalypse, y’know, like.... there’s this premise of the story, which is basically..... “reality is coming apart at the seams and the universe is literally unravelling under our feet, we have no idea how long we’ve got and we’re all fucking terrified” but then just.......... well, what are you meant to DO about that, really

so then you’ve got just a plain old story about people being people, going about their lives as best they can, against this weirdass apocalyptic backdrop, which was just an idea I was super drawn to

and I wanted to explore the ways I could have this objectively horrifying world, and present a story that’s upbeat and hopeful and fun. or, like, a story that’s by definition about The Destruction And The End, but have almost every theme around ideas about creation and hope and new perspectives

that was a concept I was really keen to mess around with and explore c’:

What genre is your current work in progress?

hell if I know, I'm bad at genres lmao

most of my stuff falls into the realm of fantasy/sci-fi, and I think ATDAO is a little more sci-fi leaning than fantasy...... but yeah my science is absolute nonsense bullshit with no real world basis whatsoever

it's internally consistent in its nonsense bullshit though and that's what matters

guess you could call it some kinda YA coming of age sorta thing. idfk. in my brain I liken it to the same genre as "the rest of us just live here" by patrick ness. y'know. a people story that just so happens to be set against a fantastical background

Choose actors for your movie rendition.

oh good lord no, I can't do faceclaims, I'm so unbelievably picky, we would be here for a month

the only acceptable ATDAO movie renditions are either with an entirely new cast of characters or with every single character being played by brooms in various wigs

Give a one sentence synopsis of your book.

"maybe the real door was the friends we made along the way!!"

no that's definitely not it, fucking ignore me

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agent?

ehhh that's Future Logan Problems

I'd give traditional publishing a crack but in all honesty I'll probably just decide I'm too lazy to do either and I'll just fuckin post it online and be like "there have it it's free it's yours go!" because lmao

How long did it take you to write your first draft?

ohohohoho let's not open that can of worms

What other books could you compare your story to?

uhhhhh

well I already said vaguely "the rest of us just live here" by patrick ness in terms of genre, that’s probably the best I can come up with, in that it’s definitely a Story About People that just so happens to have this weird fantastical backdrop

and I've had people tell me in the past that my writing voice reminds them of douglas adams (generally only when I go full Phoenix Building Chronicles lmao. but that is, coincidentally, exactly when I have the most fun)

there's also a matter-of-factness with which people just sort of sigh and Deal with the objectively horrifying nonsense that's constantly happening around them as reality ever-so-slightly entirely unhinges itself, which is something that can I guess be likened to bits of WTNV??

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Who or what inspired you to write the book?

uhhhhhhhhh lots of people lots of places lots of things, but mostly like...... writing for me has always been one of the ways I process and explore the world, and..... I mean.... I sorta just write the sorts of stories I wish I’d had when I was younger, so in writing them I hope one day they’ll reach other people who need them. or want them. or whatever. aw that’s cheesy I’m gonna be quiet

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

bold of you to assume anything I've said so far has piqued the reader's interest

mkay there’s a lot I could mention here but I’ll take this opportunity to scream about something that is very important to me personally

so one of the main things for me is like....... I struggle so much to find stories with mentally ill characters that aren’t Capital A About mental illness. like. u know what I mean right. I know you know

mentally ill characters, they don’t really get to exist in fiction unless they serve a purpose or unless their mental illness is the entire point of the story, they don’t get to just go on a cool fuckin adventure because Fuck Yeah

like Tris deals with psychosis, he hears voices and has delusions, and Noa has what will eventually be diagnosed as borderline personality disorder, Shara and Kai and Alice have their own fuckery to deal with........... and like YEAH, the book’s discussions and depictions of mental illness aren’t ever something that’s watered down or played off as a joke, it’s one of the very few things I don’t poke fun at

but at its heart it’s still just a fuckin dumbass frolicking cross-dimensional sci-fi adventure. no nasty plot twists. no cheap gotchas. just a fuckin good time with a happy ending

anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve properly done a tag, honestly I have no idea who in writeblr likes to Be Tagged anymore and I definitely lost that list that was goin’ round........ also I feel like most of you have probably already done this one........ and ALSO it’s the middle of camp nano........ but I’m gonna tag some of my usual suspects and then some new faces, hello, feel free 2 ignore

@justaprettylittlesoulwriter @elliot-orion @christinewrites @itstheenglishkid @awolfthatwrites @breakeven2007 @spacebrick3 @chibi-shuuya aaaaand I lied I’m not tagging new faces that’s scary and I’m shy

#i mean........... tris and noa don't go on a cool fuckin adventure just because ''fuck yeah''#they do have like. actual motives and stuff #but #y'know #fuck yeah!#atdao #writeblr #tag games #funsies #what's this!!!! logan doing a tag!!!!!#shock horror #i'm going to bed #i see u guys tagging me in games or sending me asks and i appreciate it and hngnhngh i swear i'm getting to them k i promise #ily #<3 #also i'm gonna post some selfies in a minute. some tacky dress selfies. mmhmm #''maybe the real door was the friends we made along the way'' is...........#not technically *wrong*

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sage-nebula · 6 years

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Two new Steven Universe episodes have aired recently. Thoughts on them below the cut.

Now We’re Only Falling Apart:

First, I’m pretty sure this episode title was taken from the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. “Once upon a time I was falling in love / now I’m only falling apart . . .”

Secondly, this episode was . . . mmh . . . not so great.

At first glance it’s not bad. It’s . . . okay. And I guess it’s still okay after the first glance, it’s just that the more time you spend examining it, the more it falls apart.

First, and most obviously: Pink Diamond. Pink Diamond’s characterization is . . . not great.

I think the biggest issue with the way Pink Diamond was characterized in this episode is that her characterization feels inconsistent and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Our very first shot of Pink Diamond is of a petulant, spoiled brat who is harassing her mother-figure because she wants something. When she doesn’t get what she wants, she throws a tantrum and shatters a mirror. This sort of characterization fits in line a bit with what we saw in the most recent episode, most notably where we see Pink being bored because nothing is happening on Earth and she felt that running a colony would be exciting. It makes sense to think that a petulant, spoiled brat would want something there to occupy her attention and entertain her at all times. But this image is shattered (no pun intended) in the next moment when we see that what Pink Diamond really wants is someone to hug and play with.

That . . . doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I’m not saying that it wouldn’t make sense for Pink Diamond to want friendship or companionship of some kind, because it seems as though she doesn’t have any peers whatsoever. The other Diamonds are all older or more powerful than she is, and everyone else (e.g. Pearl) is a servant. It would make sense to think that she would want peers . . . but at the same time, she has also been raised to see those birthed in the kindergarten as more servants at best. I’m not saying this means that she should treat them coldly, or cruelly, but rather that it doesn’t make sense to me that her first instinct would be to hug one of them. When has Pink Diamond ever been hugged? When has that ever been utilized as a display of affection toward her? While I think that part of her petulance toward Blue and Yellow stems more from her being spoiled rather than from either of them treating her badly (more on that in a moment), I also think that it doesn’t really fit their characterization to shower her with hugs and warm welcomes, either. I’m not saying that Pink shouldn’t have been excited to learn that the amethysts were hatching, because it makes sense that she would be excited to have her colony finally coming to life at last, but I think that it would have made more sense to have her excitement stem from seeing them as a bunch of . . . new toys, almost, rather than friends or peers, because she’s never had the experience of having friends or peers yet, and has been taught all her life that the gems that are born on colonies are her soldiers and, in the eyes of a childish one like Pink, playthings rather than peers or friends. This should have been a mindset she grew out of, and we never actually get to see her grow from that mindset because we don’t see her in it in the first place.

And that sort of ties in to her reaction toward humans.

It seems inconsistent to me that Pink Diamond was horrified upon seeing humans on planet Earth and immediately deciding to save them for a couple reasons. First and foremost is that she . . . didn’t actually interact with, or even observe them for long, at all. She just saw them from a distance. She had no way of knowing what they were, or how deep their sapience ran. She had absolutely no reason to see them as people rather than just animals on the planet. I’m not saying she should have seen them as animals or disposable things---again, that’s a mindset she would have needed to grow from---but it doesn’t make sense to me that an alien princess who has been raised to view everything as tools for her to make more gems (who are then utilized like soldiers and more tools) would see a human and immediately think, “That is a person I should save.” It especially doesn’t make sense when you consider the behavior of one Rose Quartz later on, where we see her regularly and routinely treat humans like baby Sour Cream and her very own husband Greg Universe like funny little creatures or pets. Seeing and treating them as people on par with herself is a lesson she has to learn via Greg, and it’s one that we’re not shown she ever fully grasps. So why is it that Pink Diamond, upon seeing a human for the very first time, decides that they’re people worth protecting and saving? How in the world does that feel like even remotely consistent characterization? If we had at least seen her observing the humans for a long while, okay, that I could maybe buy. But she just spotted them across a river and all of a sudden decided they were worth saving, all of a sudden decided she’d be sad if they died. That doesn’t make sense. It feels like a rushed attempt to make us see her as a Good Person, rather than the nuanced character we had before.

The human zoo ties into this as well.

Before, we were led to believe that the human zoo was hers. It is a dark, twisted thing, but it made sense considering her characterization; she was “saving” humans, but not as people, but rather as cute little pets. It’s softer than what the other Diamonds wanted to do, but it was still stripping them of their agency and their freedom by treating them as, well, animals to be enslaved and bred and observed from a far. Blue Diamond maintaining the zoo even after Pink Diamond was shattered was seen as a way of paying respects, because even though Blue didn’t care for the humans herself, she wanted to do this for Pink even though Pink had passed on. Since Blue doesn’t seem to have really hit the acceptance stage of grief yet, it almost seems like perhaps she was doing it just in case Pink really hadn’t been shattered (uh, about that) and ever came back.

But now it has been revealed that Blue and Yellow came up with the idea for the zoo to appease Pink, and before I go further on what this means for Pink Diamond, I want to take a moment to say that this is what I’m thinking of when I say that I don’t think Blue and Yellow really treated Pink badly, per se. To me, the way Blue and Yellow are being characterized in relation to Pink seems an awful lot like they were her stressed, somewhat strict (moreso in Yellow’s case) parents. They’ve spoiled Pink, but as she grows older it becomes harder for them to give her what she wants, especially when she enters a phase of teenage rebellion where it seems like nothing they give her is good enough. They’re trying to do what they can to make her happy, within what they see as reason, but every time they give her something she turns up her nose and stamps her foot and says that’s not actually what she wanted. As a result, they grow frustrated and snap at her to go to her room, and she agrees, only to sneak out the window. It feels, to me, like they really wanted to connect with and have a good relationship with her, but communication was so poor that they were constantly on different wavelengths.

Quite like, if you think about it, Hiccup and Stoick in the first How to Train Your Dragon movie.

In the first How to Train Your Dragon movie, the situation (from Stoick’s perspective) goes like this:

Hiccup: “Dad, I want to fight and kill dragons.”

Stoick: “Hiccup, you cannot fight and kill dragons.”

Hiccup: “But I want to!”

Stoick: “No!”

Hiccup: “FINE!”

Gobber: “Stoick, I think you should let the boy fight and kill dragons.”

Stoick: “Gobber, he’ll die if I do that, have you seen him?”

Gobber: “He might die anyway since if you keep saying no he’ll go into battle on his own, only this time he’ll go into battle without training since you won’t let him be trained.”

Stoick: “. . . Fair point. Hiccup, I’m going to let you fight and kill dragons.”

Hiccup: “Oh, cool, except I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Stoick: “What do you mean? You just said yesterday that you wanted to.”

Hiccup: “Yeah, but that was then, and this is now, and now I’m sure I can’t do it.”

Stoick: “You can and you will.”

Hiccup: “But I---”

Stoick: “GO TO DRAGON TRAINING AND STOP GIVING ME A HEADACHE, SON.”

Hiccup: “FINE!”

Now, of course we know that the reason why Hiccup changes his mind is because he couldn’t bring himself to kill Toothless, but Stoick didn’t know that. All Stoick knew is that Hiccup, after badgering him for probable years about wanting to fight dragons, was now suddenly saying “changed my mind lol” the second Stoick gave him what he wanted, i.e., being difficult for the sake of being difficult. And if we translate this to Steven Universe . . .

Pink: “Yellow, I want to run a colony.”

Yellow: “Pink, you cannot run a colony.”

Pink: “But I want to!”

Yellow: “No!”

Pink: “FINE!”

Blue: “Yellow, I think you should let Pink run a colony.”

Yellow: “Blue, she will die if I do that, have you seen her?”

Blue: “She might die anyway since if you keep saying no she’ll run off to the most dangerous planet she can find, only this time she’ll be doing so with no supervision or guidance.”

Yellow: “. . . Fair point. Pink, you can colonize Earth.”

Pink: “Yay!”

[one week later]

Pink: “Actually, changed my mind, I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Yellow: “What do you mean? You just said last week that you wanted to.”

Pink: “Yeah, but that was then, and this is now, and now I’m sure I can’t do it.”

Yellow: “You can and you will.”

Pink: “But I---”

Yellow: “GO COLONIZE THE EARTH AND STOP GIVING ME A HEADACHE, PINK.”

Pink: “FINE!”

It’s pretty much the exact same scenario, except with some extra appeasement (e.g. the human zoo) thrown in. Yellow and Blue were doing the best they could, but there was a lot of miscommunication and they were all on separate wavelengths. It just didn’t work out. But that said, I do genuinely believe that Yellow and Blue did care for Pink, and that they never really mistreated her (on purpose at least), and that a lot of Pink’s griping about “oh, they don’t care” comes from her being petulant and spoiled moreso than because they actually seemed to not care for her.

That said, back on the subject of the zoo . . . I feel that once again we’ve had a lot of the grey stripped out of Pink Diamond’s character in an attempt to make her appear more heroic. Obviously, opening a human zoo is a disgusting, abhorrent thing. Therefore, they made it so that the zoo wasn’t her decision (even though it would have fit with her earlier characterization), but was instead Blue’s and Yellow’s decision, against Pink’s wishes. (Of course, never mind that Pink let it stay open, I guess.) Rather than allowing there to be a situation where Pink Diamond at first excitedly opened the zoo, and then learned later that such a thing was wrong and shut it down (only for Blue to re-open it in Pink’s honor once Pink was dead), they removed the opportunity for that nuance and that growth by making it so that it was never actually hers at all. Rather than allowing Pink Diamond to be an even more fleshed out character from these flashbacks, what we instead saw was her sandpapered down into being a more two-dimensional character, someone who doesn’t have as much nuance or depth as before, all in the name of making her seem more palatable to the audience.

I have to say, I’m not a fan.

Pink Diamond’s characterization aside, the other major gripes I have with this episode pertain to how Ruby and Sapphire were treated, and how they were treated is abysmally.

First, I find it to be really distasteful that both Pearl and Steven dismissed Sapphire’s feelings in order to talk up how great of a person Pink Diamond / Rose Quartz actually is. First of all, the phrase “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” is a cliché for a reason. It really doesn’t matter what PinkRose’s intentions were. It doesn’t matter if she was inspired by Pearl, or Garnet, or whoever else. The truth is still that she lied to everyone, Sapphire and Ruby especially, and that she maintained that lie long after her death. Sapphire was upset primarily because she had been lied to, and because she hadn’t questioned anything or anyone for so long. She was upset because she had been misguided into blinding herself, and found out in one of the worst ways possible. She is allowed to feel those things, she’s allowed to be furious, and I feel like both Pearl and Steven saying, “no, it’s not like that!” over and over invalidated her feelings. They were basically saying that since PinkRose actually was a good person, it’s okay that she lied, and that Sapphire doesn’t have to quesiton what she has been doing with her life for thousands of years after all---that she doesn’t have to feel upset that her friends were killed for the sake of a war that was, ultimately, built on a lie. That she doesn’t have to feel even a little conflicted over the fact that she idolized someone who never really existed. Pearl and Steven were so obsessed with clearing PinkRose’s name that they didn’t consider the fact that Sapphire had every single right and reason to be upset, and that everything she had said up to and including that point was right on the money, even if she could have phrased it a little more nicely. The lesson I got from this episode was “intentions matter more than results,” and that’s not a good lesson to impart on kids at all.

Secondly, I feel that Sapphire and Ruby’s fight was extremely rushed. The one thing that I like about the Lapidot separation is that both of them are being given time to think through how they feel. Sure, it sucks that they’re apart, but they’re getting to spend some time with their own thoughts and feelings, they’re able to process things separately, and so when they come together they’ll do so with more understanding between them, and a better place from which to communicate. Ruby and Sapphire weren’t allowed to have that. Garnet received the biggest shock of her entire life when she learned that everything she had lived her life by for thousands of years was built upon a lie, and understandably, Sapphire freaked out when she learned of this and ran off. Yet she gets over it in less than eleven minutes, all because Pearl and Steven work to invalidate her feelings and tell her that she has no real reason to be upset after all. That feels incredibly rushed and unfair to her character, as well as unfair to the relationship she has with Ruby. This should be a time for Ruby and Sapphire to examine themselves and their relationship. Not that their relationship is a bad one, but think about it: They spend every second of their time literally fused together. It can be hard to just live in the same house as someone 24/7, let alone fused together. Ruby and Sapphire have never questioned this, though, because Rose told them not to. Now they have a chance to. Now they have a chance to maybe be a little less, I don’t know . . . codependent. I’m sure everything will work out and they’ll fuse again, but I think that they should be allowed to have this time apart, this time to question and mull things over, versus immediately resolving things so that the status quo can be restored as soon as possible. It felt incredibly rushed.

So that was that episode. On to . . .

What’s Your Problem?:

I feel like Sapphire pretty much immediately falling to pieces to the point where she can’t even begin to formulate a plan on how to find and reconcile with Ruby like an adult is just another highlight as to how codependent their relationship is. This isn’t romantic, it’s worrisome.

Aside from that, I . . . have mixed feelings on how Amethyst was handled. I see so many people praising her for not unloading on Steven, and agreeing with the show that she’s “the most mature Crystal Gem,” and I . . . just really don’t see it that way.

First of all, I think it’s important to note that Amethyst was never one of Steven’s “moms.” She has always been his older sister. Amethyst is an adult by Steven’s standards, yes, but she’s characterized as notably younger than the others. In fact, IMO, she’s even characterized as younger than Greg; in the episode where they start hanging out again, it felt an awful lot like he was her stepdad, and like part of her bitterness toward him stemmed from the fact that her mother (Rose Quartz) “remarried” and that her “stepdad” stole her away. She felt like an estranged stepdaughter. Similarly, the episode where Amethyst runs away to her kindergarten and she has that emotional moment with Pearl? It felt like Pearl was her mother, comforting her rebellious and estranged teenage daughter. People can do what they want, and I’m not going to condemn anyone who ship them, but I’ve never seen any romantic chemistry between Amethyst and any of the other gems. She has always acted like a teenager (or at the very least very young adult) in my eyes.

For this reason, I find it very . . . bad that the takeaway Amethyst seems to have here is that she’s going to bottle up how she feels in order to take care of Steven. Like, don’t get me wrong, I agree with her that she shouldn’t dump all her problems on Steven, as well as the fact that it is not his job to clean up after his mother and that he shouldn’t have to shoulder this. She’s 100% right in that. But the reason why Amethyst started to get so angry in the pizza place is that she feels that same way about herself. Rose Quartz was like a mother to Amethyst. Amethyst has always acted like Steven’s sister because she saw Rose as the closest thing to a mother she ever had, even though gems don’t even typically have those. And Amethyst, for the duration of this war, has been doing the exact same thing Steven has been doing, which is fighting this war in order to carry on Rose’s legacy. No, Amethyst doesn’t have Rose’s gem, but that doesn’t change the fact that Amethyst also inherited this legacy despite being born after it and that she has done it because she looked up to Rose as a mother-figure and felt that it was therefore her duty to shoulder this burden. Garnet and Pearl have taught Amethyst this in the very same way they taught Steven. And I’m just throwing this out there, but Amethyst is characterized the way she is for a reason. She might be an adult by Steven’s standards, but by gem standards she’s very much a teenager / very young adult. If she was human, she’d probably be about eighteen or twenty. That’s where her maturity is, and that’s not very old at all.

So the fact that Amethyst now feels that the appropriate course of action is to pretend like nothing’s wrong and bottle everything up inside is . . . not good. Repressing things is not good, and here’s the kicker: It’s not mature. Yes, it’s mature for Amethyst to recognize that Steven cannot be her therapist and that it’s not his job to fix her problems. However, it’s not mature for Amethyst to not talk about her problems to anyone, to decide “the future is all that matters!!!!!” and act like the past doesn’t affect her at all. She’s clearly affected. She can’t even ask Steven how he feels without getting bitter, resentful, and angry, because these are emotions that she feels toward the current situation. That he’s not angry about it is something that made her even angrier. And no, that’s not his fault at all, but what it means is that Amethyst is going to have to talk to someone about this. Shoving it in the back of her mind and pretending as though she’s not affected isn’t going to work. Bottling it up is not going to work. And once again, it’s not a good lesson to teach kids. You shouldn’t teach kids and that bottling your baggage up is “mature.” It’s not. It’s unhealthy and will do far more harm than good in the long run.

(Also, “I think you’re the most mature Crystal Gem” honestly sounded a lot less like Steven and a lot more like the writers. They used him as a mouthpiece to tell the audience what we should take away from the episode, and that’s just bad writing. I don’t approve.)

I’m glad that Amethyst isn’t using Steven as a therapist (though in honesty she never really has), but I’m not enthused that she’s not getting one at all. Hopefully that will change in upcoming episodes, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

#/#//#///#////#/////#su spoilers #steven universe spoilers

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makorays · 6 years

Text

Thael

[i decided to write an off-screen interaction between my two characters in the savage worlds campaign my friends and i are playing, figured i might as well post it here since i’ve already posted art of them. some parts might be slightly confusing without context but i think you can get a general grasp of things.

also, apologies if any of this contradicts what is meant to be canon scellor lore; we’re kinda just using what we know of the scellor race and filling in the blanks based on what works best for our particular story.

here’s a good song to listen to while reading, if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJ6LO1QIyk ]

In the science lab, an oddly short Orthe and an oddly tall Ulkam engage in telepathic conversation. Minyaxl: You know, Thael, I just realized I've never really run into you anywhere other than the lab. What do you do in your off time? Thael: uh...i don't really have off time M: Wait, what? What the hell kind of slave-driving operation is this? T: no, i mean, i'm allowed to have it but i don't really take it. i usually just keep working M: ...Why? T: i dunno what else to do T: sometimes nazira tells me i need to take a break so i go to my room and watch the tv but that's about it

M: ......Really? T: i don't really understand human tv, the words they use are totally different from the words i hear people in the base use T: i never hear anyone around here say things like "daijoubu" or "hisashiburi" M: ...I also never really hear anyone here say things like that. M: ... M: But anyway, wow though, uh... Minyaxl scans the room for other staff and finds none but Thael. M: Wait, are you in your off time right now? T: yes M: ...Thael, let's go do something. T: do something? M: Yes. Hey, when was the last time you saw the surface? T: when you took me to that other country M: I...see. M: ... M: Let's go outside! T: ok Thael puts down his scientific implements and allows the small scellor to lead him, retaining his signature blank expression the whole way.

A minute or so later, the two emerge from the base. Thael briefly loses his wide-eyed look as he squints and raises his hand to shield his face from the blinding sun, but eventually returns to normal once his pupils adjust. Minyaxl walks him around to the shaded side of the nearby boat house. Minyaxl drops to the grass, his back against a wall, and Thael feels obligated to follow suit. A cool breeze blows past them, lifting the bottom of their hair gently to the side. M: It's come to my attention that we haven't actually talked very much at all, so I was hoping we could have a bit of conversation. I mean, jeez, you're pretty much my favorite person in this whole place and I still barely know anything about you. T: ... M: What are your interests? Got any hobbies? T: no M: ...Well I guess that answers the hobbies question but what about the interests one? T: nope M: ...Is...is that a "nope" as in "nope, i don't have any interests"? T: yes M: Well y- ...I mean...y-you clearly take an interest in science, right? T: ......... M: ...Is something wrong? T: um T: i... T: i'm not very interested in science M: ...What?! But you're great at it, you were great enough to be qualified for this! You obviously have a lot of experience with it, you must have done a ton of studying...why would you go through all that if you didn't even like it? T: ...i used to like it. M: Used to? What happened? T: ...... T: ...i...um......i-i'm not sure if it'd be good to talk about that. M: Talk about...what...? T: ... T: i've never told anyone about it before. M: Well I'm sure you could make an exception for me, right? T: w-well...um...

Thael begins looking uncomfortable. M: ...Are you alright? I've never seen you look so...worried, before. Not even when you were getting shot at... T: ...... T: i'm afraid. M: Afraid of what? T: afraid of you thinking less of me. T: you're the first person in the last 5 years i've felt that for T: ...you're the first person in the last 5 years i've felt ANYTHING for. T: i don't want you to know that i'm a- T: ...there's just some things i don't want you to know. M: ... Minyaxl produces a devilish grin, in spite of his friend's clearly serious discomfort. M: You know I'm not gonna be able to stop myself from prying after you've said THAT, right? M: C'mooon, what are you that you don't want me to know about? Let's see, you're awfully tall by average caste standards...are you actually a Niaar who wishes he were an Ulkam? Or maybe a formerly proud Niaar who was forced into doing an Ulkam's work? M: Or maybe you're actually an alien separate from scellor and humans that's just disguised as a scellor? It could explain the unique...body shape... M: Wait... He lowers his voice to an almost whisper for this next question, even though they're still speaking telepathically. M: ...Are you trans? Because seriously I still don't know how a biological male could be so... His eyes glance downwards for a split second. M: ...adiposally gifted. M: I swear though you better not be another android thinking that you're subscellor or anything as obvious as that because we JUST went through hell to prove that we're accepting of Teri despite her leaking informatio- T: i'm a monster. Thael turns his head to face his friend. From Minyaxl's perspective, Thael is now looming over him, his blank eyes now looking less like the innocent windows of an endearingly lost individual and more like cold, emotionless portals to a neurological abyss.

A few moments of silent thought pass, and Minyaxl briefly wonders to himself if he maybe ended up getting emotionally close to a broken psychopath, whom he also repeatedly slept with. M: ... M: Ahah, come on, it can't be that bad...don't scare me like that, alright? Thael ceases his gaze, staring off into the space in front of him again. T: when i said you're the first person i've felt anything for in the past 5 years, i meant it. T: i never really feel anything in regard to anyone or anything. i haven't in a long time. T: but when you're around...it's different. maybe not by much, but there's at least something. T: when you enter the same room as me, i feel a little happy. M: Only a little...? T: a little is a lot more than nothing. T: and...i... T: ......i don't want you to stop entering the same room as me. T: i like feeling happy. it feels...good. M: If you like being with me so much then why don't you ever leave the lab to come find me during breaks? T: i don't want to bother you M: Oh come on, you're never a bother to me. Which is a lot more than I can say about some people... M: And I guarantee you that your story won't bother me. T: i'm sure it will, and i'm sure that you'll feel more apprehensive toward me afterwards T: and then you won't want to see me, and then i won't get to feel good anymore T: ... T: is that selfish? M: N...no, it's not... M: But...I do think you should have a little more trust in me. M: Thael, listen. I really really like you. I consider us to be close friends, and I wouldn't just turn on a close friend like that. I'd trade the life of any one of my squadmates for yours if it ever came down to it. I am PROMISING you that whatever story you have to tell, it can't change those feelings. M: Can you trust that? T: ......... T: alright T: i'll tell you.

Clouds begin moving in front of the sun that shone so brightly a minute ago. Minyaxl knows it's just coincidental timing, but he still can't help but feel a small doubt about whether or not he should have actually asked for the story he's about to hear. T: around 500 or so years ago, there was a scientist who wanted to find a way to control people's souls. T: to that end, he did terrible things. T: he'd take living, sentient scellor, and restrain them inside pods that were designed to psionically manipulate their souls. T: in his experiments he ended up destroying or otherwise irreparably damaging dozens of scellor souls, leaving them with no hope of reincarnation. M: ...W...w-wait, what?? What the fuck...??? M: How have I never heard of this?? T: it was kept fairly secret, but if you dive deep enough into government project records you'll find it. M: Government?! T: yeah. M: Wh-...I...but... Minyaxl recoils with a look of absolute horror. He looks like he'd be ready to start producing tears, but he holds back to focus on hearing the rest of the story. M: Entire...souls... M: Just......destroyed?? M: How the fuck could anyone do something like that?!? Let alone our...our own government... T: thankfully, he never succeeded in his mission, but the damage he caused was permanent. T: and just like you're doing now, anyone else who heard about his exploits would've just lamented those past victims and moved on, but T: while reading about the things he did, i started to remember doing them myself. T: and then i started remembering other things that hadn't been written about T: like the fact that the experiments would cause a kind of pain more pure and direct than anything the body or mind could normally experience T: and the sight of the bodies dropping to the floor as empty husks once their essences were erased from the world T: and as those memories invaded my head, it quickly became clear to me that i was the one responsible for all of it. M: ...Oh. I......holy shit... M: B-but, I mean, even though that man deserves no forgiveness, everyone knows your past lives don't have to determine who you are. You're basically not even the same person, even if you happen to have the same soul. T: that was my hope T: i was absolutely horrified, but that horror was reassuring to me, because it meant that my current self would never do something like that T: well, that's what i thought, at least. T: i went into university with an immense conviction to do good, to use science for the benefit of others and make up for those crimes of the past T: i was a lot more excitable back then. i felt like a superhero, so sure of myself, so happy to do the right thing. i had so much passion that people thought i was kind of crazy and needed to chill out, but i felt nothing but positivity. T: i graduated with immediate career prospects. i didn't even have to look for a job, my credentials were such that a government agency reached out to hire me right away. i jumped at the opportunity. T: i should've seen the warning signs going in. they'd always talk about the importance of making "sacrifices" for the greater good, and they'd constantly reassure you that you'd be doing the right thing. that seemed kind of odd to me, but the thought never crossed my mind that it was a flimsy excuse to pretend that what was being done was ok. T: by the time i realized the truth of the situation, it was too late to back out. that's how they'd get people; they'd be vague enough to get you to agree to the job and sign an NDA, but they wouldn't bring any attention to the fine print stating that you wouldn't be allowed to leave once you saw anything. T: and then as soon as you were in, you saw everything. T: i never even thought it was possible for a government operation to be so unethical. i always assumed there were serious laws in place, but either there weren't enough or the government just didn't care. T: i guess i shouldn't have been surprised considering my past self had a government position, but i guess i blindly hoped that his project was a freak incident and things like that wouldn't be allowed to happen again. T: that hope was misplaced. M: ...What exactly...happened in there?

T: they wanted to find a way to force sentient scellor to become drones again. normally you have to make a conscious choice to become a drone, and even then the state is reversible, but they wanted the ability to rob undesirables of their free will. T: they wanted to be able to deal with enemies of the state without outright killing them, so our organization was tasked with discovering a method to make people more...neurologically compliant. T: despite our nonlethal end goal, a lot of test subjects died in experiments. of course i didn't want to have any part in it but they wouldn't let me leave no matter how much i begged. T: i was pretty low on the corporate ladder. i wasn't tasked with a whole lot of decision-making, but instead given the grunt work of carrying out experiments designed by those higher than me. T: since not even the most powerful orthan can force someone to become a drone, we had to try more brutish techniques. T: i personally had to carry out everything they could think to try, from hypnosis to... T: ... T: well. T: imagine a short little praal girl, barely into adulthood, strapped down to an operating chair, crying and screaming and pleading at you with every ounce of energy she can muster, begging you not to lobotomize her. M: ...... T: i tried to do it but my hand wouldn't stop shaking and my tears made my vision really blurry, so someone had to come in and scold me until i was able to steel myself enough to get it done. they yelled so loud that i started to feel guilty for NOT doing it. M: ...Y-you...... T: i was really bad at the torture too T: the subjects knew i didn't want to continue doing anything to them so it was kinda hard to be intimidating, i mostly just begged them to become drones so i wouldn't have to hurt them any longer T: the torture actually worked sometimes, but it wasn't good enough for the people in charge. they wanted to be able to instantaneously convert someone from a distance. T: so they kept devising more ideas, and they kept making people like me try them out T: and i just kept crying. T: i cried, over and over, every single day T: during my free time, during the experiments T: i'd tell the test subjects how sorry i was, again and again, even continuing to say it to the corpses of the ones that didn't make it T: i must have looked almost as terrified as they did. T: and i'd just cry and cry and cry T: but i guess eventually i ran out of tears. T: at a certain point when doing those sorts of things you just stop feeling, because you can't anymore T: so i stopped, and i haven't really felt anything since. M: .........

Minyaxl struggles to organize his thoughts into any set of meaningful words. M: I...I-I um... M: Wow... T: do you understand why i didn't want to tell you about this now? M: ...... T: i want you to be honest Thael faces Minyaxl again, locking eyes. T: do you still want to be close to me? Minyaxl worriedly searches for signs of life in the set of pale, empty glass orbs currently confronting him with a dead gaze. His instincts tell him to turn away, but he fights them. M: ...... He's not sure he's found anything, but he decides he doesn't care. M: ......Yes. T: ? M: Yes, I do. T: really? M: Listen, I'm not gonna pretend that the things you did weren't fucked up, but...you wouldn't have done them if you had any way of avoiding it. You didn't have a choice. T: yes i did T: i could have refused M: But from the way you described things it sounds like they'd have probably just killed you and gotten someone else to do it. T: but at least i wouldn't have shared responsibility Thael turns away. T: i really have no right to be alive after what i did M: ... M: Please don't say things like that... T: i'm sorry T: ... T: i just......wanted to help people...... Minyaxl scans his friend's face, expecting to see tears running down his cheeks. He instead sees the same dry, emotionless expression Thael has continued wearing throughout the whole story. M: But...you ARE helping people now. M: Look at your current job! You're helping to save an alien race from genocide!! T: i know T: i sometimes wish i could feel happy about that T: it's good that my body is being put to use for philanthropic purposes, but...i feel like i'm just that. T: a body, being put to use. T: i don't feel like a person who makes decisions, i feel like a robot that carries out the tasks that it's given and sometimes responds to self-preservation instincts like sleep and food intake T: it's funny, my job was to turn other people into drones but now i feel like a drone myself. T: not that i'm really bothered by that T: as long as i'm being used for good, it's fine M: ... M: I... Once again Minyaxl lowers the imaginary volume of his psionic voice, a little embarrassed of what he's about to say. M: ...I want to help you feel things again. Thael turns to him, his eyes opening slightly more than usual with a look of mild curiosity. T: ...? M: I'm going to stay friends with you, and I'm going to do the best I can to brighten your days. T: ...what...? T: ...why would you make that kind of effort for me...? M: Because I think you deserve it. T: ...how could you possibly think i deserve it after what i- M: It doesn't matter how!! I just do. You don't need to worry about it. T: ... T: well i suppose i'm......glad...? T: ...i know i said i haven't really felt anything since those days, and i know i'll probably never feel much of anything ever again, but... T: like i said earlier, you...do help me feel a shred of something every now and then T: so......i'm glad that can continue. The slightest of muscle movements raise the corners of Thael's mouth; it's almost imperceptible, but he is definitely smiling.

#thael #minyaxl #savage worlds #tabletop #scellor #writing #the initiative

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